Eideard

Five years ago when Costa Crociere S.p.A first entered China, the cruise travel industry was an untapped market.

Today, the Genoa-based cruise operator, which has a 70-percent market share in China’s cruise travel sector, has to compete with other operators – all aiming for a slice of the strong momentum from Chinese tourism.

In 2010, there were 95 cruises departing from the coastal cities of China and 128 international cruises visited those cities, demonstrating a 19-percent year-on-year increase, according to industry figures…

In 2010, Costa Cruise saw almost all of its cabins for short destinations in Asia fully booked…

For 2011, Costa has plans for 41 cruises in China including six port calls from Hong Kong and 35 from Shanghai…

There are also great hopes for a new trend in the cruise market, catering for the needs of retirees who plan to take a cruise. According to industry statistics, 70 percent of senior citizens in China plan to travel abroad…

In addition, a cruise is also a popular way for companies to hold annual conferences or reward their employees, said Costa’s Liu.

Interesting – to see recreation, entertainment, vacation models from completely different cultures making the jump. It’s not a surprise to see it happen; but, I’ll bet there are some hilarious tales of cultural adaptation that were unpredicted.

The dead victims of the Tuscon shooting attack represented a range of people that might be found at any congressional constituents’ event.

They included a 9-year-old girl just elected to her school council who wanted to see a real politician close up; a federal judge who happened to be nearby and stopped to see his friend the congresswoman; a congressional aide responsible for community outreach, and several senior citizens, representative of the demographic of the nation’s most active voters.

Of all the tragedies, the death of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green seemed to cut the deepest, as children’s deaths invariably do.

The grade-schooler was recently elected president of the student council at the Mesa Verde Elementary School…

Her grief-stricken father, John Green, a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers, told an interviewer through a voice that broke at times:

“She was born on 9/11. So she came in on a tragedy and she went out on a tragedy. Those nine years in between were very special. We’re all going to miss Christina. We were four people. Now we’re three. All I can say is we’re going to be strong for each other. And we’re going to honor Christina because she was a beautiful strong little girl. And we’re going to remember all the good things about her…”

Also killed was U.S. District Judge John McCarthy Roll, 63…

Gabe Zimmerman, 30, was Giffords’ director of community outreach. He was a former social worker who was engaged to be married…

The three additional victims were retirees: Phyllis Schneck, 79; Dorwan Stoddard, 76, and Dorothy Morris, 76.

Dory Stoddard was a retired construction worker who threw himself across his wife to protect her. She was shot in the legs three times.

Just folks who live on social security checks and medicare. Those “socialist” plots that undermine the freedom to be a murdering gun-thug.

A cold wind whipped down the Texas plains on the night last month that Sharon Smith, 68, and her husband, Bill, 73, arrived here to be work-campers.

In the dark, they had trouble setting up their camper. But Ms. Smith, a former teacher’s aide from Sioux Falls, S.D., said she looked up at the starry sky, shook off a few of the burrs she had picked up lying on the ground working on their truck, and told herself it would get better.

It did.

The life of a work-camper, volunteering in places like Falcon State Park in deep South Texas in return for free rent, is not without its bumps. But as Ms. Smith also quickly discovered, the rewards can be deep as well — like making cinnamon rolls as part of her job at the camp recreation center, where she and Mr. Smith are working as hosts through the end of March.

“We’re here for three reasons,” she said, as she spread sugar on the dough. “No. 1, we like to travel. No. 2, we like people. And No. 3, we’re on a budget.”

An itinerant, footloose army of available and willing retirees in their 60s and 70s is marching through the American outback, looking to stretch retirement dollars by volunteering to work in parks, campgrounds and wildlife sanctuaries, usually in exchange for camping space.

Park and wildlife agencies say that retired volunteers have in turn become all the more crucial as budget cuts and new demands have made it harder to keep parks open.

RTFA. Reflect on the nation which to all intents and purposes invented national parks for the recreation and education of the people – now ruled by beancounters who care only for columns of profit and loss marching in obedient fashion through their budgets.

We have parks with no funds, retirees without adequate healthcare and a new generation left to fill out their American dreams with nonsense television and online myths.

Beer maker Molson is turning of the tap and cutting off the supply of free suds to its retirees, reports the Toronto Star.

Molson, a division of Molson Coors, said it was looking to “standardize” its complimentary beer policy. There are 2,400 Molson retirees in Canada and their free beer costs the company about $900,000 a year, the Star said.

Molson retirees in the province of Newfoundland will see their monthly allotment of beer fall from six dozen a month to zero over the next five years.

Current workers will see their allotment drop from 72 dozen bottles a year to 52 dozen.

“There was no consultation, we just received a letter that this is a done deal, which is totally unfair,” Bill Bavis, who retired six years ago after 32 years at Molson’s in St. John’s, Newfoundland, told the Star. “I think with the economic downturn they’re trying to take advantage of us, as a way to cut retirees’ benefits and justify it.”

If Molson’s wasn’t such crap beer I could understand the complaining.