Latest news with #Tourist
The Independent
4 days ago
- The Independent
The budget-friendly holiday hotspot UK families are flocking to
Marmaris, Turkey, has been identified as the cheapest short-haul holiday destination for UK families, according to Post Office Travel Money. A basket of 10 common tourist items in Marmaris costs £128.99, which is nearly half the price of the most expensive destination surveyed, Ibiza. The low prices are primarily due to a significant fall in the value of the Turkish lira against the pound. Despite local price increases in Turkey, the favourable exchange rate means British visitors will only pay approximately 10 per cent more than a year ago. Sunny Beach, Bulgaria, and Portugal 's Algarve were ranked as the second and third most affordable destinations for UK holidaymakers. The cheapest short-haul holiday destination for UK families has been revealed – and its not in Spain
Independent Singapore
03-07-2025
- Independent Singapore
US tourist says food is better in M'sia than SG — and many S'poreans agree
SINGAPORE: An American tourist in Malaysia has been very vocal on social media regarding his love for the country. His regular posts on the Malaysia Travel Tips Facebook page show that he's quite the super fan. A recent post he wrote touting the superiority of Malaysian food, especially durian, blew up, with many Singaporeans agreeing with him. On June 25, Brent Farris wrote that he was about to say 'something quite controversial.' While he apologised in advance if anyone found it offensive, he walked it back immediately and said he wasn't sorry after all. 'Anything you can find in Singapore (food-wise), you can find it in Malaysia for 1/3rd the price and tastes better. 'And, Singapore's national fruit is the durian. I'm sure they love durian, but they don't grow any. Malaysia originated it, and the durian from Malaysia is better than any durian grown anywhere in the world. Sorry Thailand. 'There, I said it. Whew, that feels like a weight has been lifted. I've been wanting to say this for years,' Mr Farris wrote. His post has since been shared over 800 times and received more than 1,000 comments. As it turns out, many people agreed with him, calling his post '100% true' and telling him that his opinion wasn't controversial at all. 'I'm Singaporean, and I agree. Malaysian food is delicious… and better than the versions in Singapore,' a commenter wrote. She added, however, that she found that non-Malaysian food, such as Korean, Japanese, or Italian fare, is better in Singapore 'because the actual people from those cultures are making it. 'Authenticity is the key theme here.' Another Singaporean wrote that they didn't find Mr Farris' opinion controversial. 'It's facts that some Singaporeans just refuse to accept.' 'Accurate and true,' one simply wrote. 'Even a foreigner like you knows the truth,' another chimed in. 'Oh, tell me about it. We went on a durian tour in Malaysia some years ago and it was the best place we spent our money,' a commenter reminisced. 'Am I missing something here? Why are you apologising for telling the truth?' a Facebook user asked. 'Okay. Now say it again. And louder this time,' wrote another. Perhaps encouraged by the feedback he got, Mr Farris in a more recent post offered no apology at all. FB screengrab/ Brent Farris (Malaysia Travel Tips) The Independent Singapore has reached out to Mr Farris for further comments or updates. /TISG Read also: American man learns from Malaysians how to be the most annoying and rudest tourist: beg-packing, not showering, insulting Malaysian food
Otago Daily Times
10-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
GG visits exhibition site
The vice-regal party inspects the under-construction New Zealand and South Seas exhibition buildings on Logan Park, Dunedin. — Otago Witness, 16.6.1925 Autumn travel worthwhile The first public engagement of the day yesterday for the Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson, was a visit to the Exhibition Buildings. The Governor-General and all the members of his party, including the Lady Alice Fergusson and Miss Fergusson, were met and welcomed by the chairman of directors (Mr J. Sutherland Ross) and most of the other directors. The party which inspected the huge buildings included all the chief officials of the Exhibition and many lady relatives and friends of directors and officials. Sir Charles was escorted by Mr Ross, who led the way through the Canadian and Australian building, the motor building, the Government court, the secondary industries court, the festival hall, the fernery and art gallery, the pavilion of provincial courts, the machinery hall, and, finally, the British court. Members of the Vice-regal party were evidently much interested and impressed with what they saw. Mr W. O'Connell (officer in charge of the local Tourist Office) has returned from a three weeks' tour of several of the South Island holidays resorts. Speaking yesterday to a Daily Times reporter, Mr O'Connell said there seemed to be a general impression that the month of May was too late for visiting the tourist resorts of the South Island, but during his tour to Queenstown, Pembroke, Mount Cook, Franz Josef Glacier, Buller Gorge and East Coast he experienced only two wet days. Moreover, the travelling, especially by motor car, was more pleasant during the mild May weather than in the hot summer. "What seems to strike one more particularly on this trip," said Mr O'Connell, "is the remarkable variety in the scenery and the special attractions that each resort offers. On the journey through the orchard country of Central Otago at this time of the year the autumn tints are very beautiful, especially round about Roxburgh and Clyde. The journey over the Crown Range to Pembroke is very interesting, and there is a fine view of Queenstown and the surrounding country to be seen from the top of the range. Pembroke," he continued, "is a resort which has become very popular during the last few years, and it is bound to become more so." Radical land policy The land policy of the Labour Party is directed to the destruction of all rights of private ownership in land. It is directed also to the abrogation of the law of inheritance. That this should be so is entirely consistent with the objective of the party, which is the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. It would be absurd to say that the land should be "socialised" and, at the same time, to recognise the right of any individual to own land. The Labour Party is, therefore, proposing something that is in complete harmony with its objective when it includes in its policy a provision that "privately-owned land shall not be sold or transferred except to the State." All land, according to the Labour Party, must belong to the State. Consequently, its policy provides that whenever a man wishes to realise his land there can be no purchaser other than the State. The policy is a coherent one, directed to the one aim of making the community the sole owner of all land. — editorial — ODT, 11.6.1925 Compiled by Peter Dowden
Observer
15-05-2025
- Business
- Observer
Tourist Information Centre coming up in Al Buraimi
MUSCAT: Work continues at a rapid pace on the Tourist Information Centre project at the Al Buraimi Gateway, one of the latest initiatives aimed at promoting the cultural and tourism landscape of Al Buraimi Governorate. The project has reached approximately 60 per cent completion, with some final supply and finishing works still pending. The centre is designed as a comprehensive cultural and tourism hub, combining recreational and informational services. It will feature a dedicated café for visitors, a children's play area, and a souvenir shop showcasing the governorate's cultural heritage. The facility is equipped with an advanced system of interactive digital screens, including a main display screen integrated with virtual reality (VR) technology, a semi-cylindrical screen, and four side screens, one of which is directly linked to the National Museum to provide rich and continuously updated cultural content. Obaid bin Salim Al Kaabi, Director of the Projects Department at the Office of the Governor of Al Buraimi, said, 'The Tourist Information Centre project is part of a series of initiatives aimed at enhancing the tourism and service infrastructure in the governorate. It represents a qualitative leap in the way tourism information is presented, using modern digital technologies to enhance visitor experience and align with national trends towards digital tourism.' He added that the remaining works include the supply of furniture, digital games, and a decorative fountain, with completion expected in the near future ahead of the official opening. Once completed, the centre is expected to become a key attraction for visitors and those interested in digital and cultural tourism in Al Buraimi Governorate, supporting both domestic and international tourism activity.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
I Thought ChatGPT Was Killing My Students' Skills. It's Killing Something More Important Than That.
This essay was adapted from Phil Christman's newsletter, the Tourist. Subscribe here. Before 2023, my teaching year used to follow a predictable emotional arc. In September, I was always excited, not only about meeting a new crop of first-year writing students but even about the prep work. My lesson-planning sessions would take longer than intended and yet leave me feeling energized. I'd look forward to conference week—the one-on-one meetings I try to hold with every student, every term, at least once—and even to the first stack of papers. In October, predictably, I'd crash a little bit, but by late November, I'd be seeing evidence that even some of my least enthusiastic students were beginning to take in everything I'd been trying to tell them. By the time classes ended, I'd be loving everything about my job again, especially in the years when kids would stay behind on the last day to shake my hand and say thank you, or write me a note. The second semester would go roughly the same way. The exhaustion would hit a little earlier, which made the recovery all the sweeter. The funny thing about this cycle is that I would forget, every time, that it was a cycle. In October, in March, I would genuinely believe that I had never had a group of students who had let me down like this before, and that I had never let myself and a group of students down to this extent before. The crash was new each time. Oh, sure, I thought, a year ago I kind of felt this way, but this time I have solid reasons—last year's solid reasons having already evaporated from my memory. The intensity of teaching brings a certain amnesia with it, like marathoning and—I am told—childbirth. I only know I go through this cycle because my wife watches me go through it every year, and reminds me. She remembers last year's solid reasons even if I don't. Since the 2022–23 school year, when ChatGPT-2 and then -3 hit the scene, this cycle now has a new component. About a week or so after the end-of-semester Good Feelings Era, I read the latest big journalistic exposé about the ubiquity of college-level Chat-GP-Cheat and start wondering whether anyone learned anything. As I end yet another semester, I have my pick of such articles, whether it's this ambivalent longer view from the New Yorker or this rather sensational on-the-ground exposé from New York magazine. The latter article begins by introducing us to a student named Lee (not his real name): Lee was born in South Korea and grew up outside Atlanta, where his parents run a college-prep consulting business. … When he started at Columbia as a sophomore this past September, he didn't worry much about academics or his GPA. 'Most assignments in college are not relevant,' he told me. 'They're hackable by AI, and I just had no interest in doing them.' While other new students fretted over the university's rigorous core curriculum … Lee used AI to breeze through with minimal effort. When I asked him why he had gone through so much trouble to get to an Ivy League university only to off-load all of the learning to a robot, he said, 'It's the best place to meet your co-founder and your wife.' 'The best place to meet your co-founder and your wife'! Only well-off people expect life to be this predictable; everybody else knows better. In fact, there are, if we have eyes to see them, many reasons in this early paragraph not to panic, not to feel that anything has fundamentally changed. Lee's parents, we're told, run a test-prep company, which means that he's part of a large, existing system that already treats education as a series of robotic steps even as it pretends to value students and learning. Well, any longtime writing instructor knows that there's no real way to stop a determined rich kid from cheating their way through a writing class. If nothing else, they can always afford to pay someone to write a paper for them—and even if you think you've attuned your paper requirements so thoroughly to your assigned readings and class discussions that a bought paper will fail your rubric, they can probably always pay someone enough to fake that. For ye have the rich always with you. Lee is almost charmingly brazen in his lack of integrity, almost innocent in his seeming ignorance of the possibility of having it. After he gets hauled into Columbia's honor court because he built a business helping other kids cheat their way through remote interviews, his story concludes thus: 'Lee thought it absurd that Columbia, which had a partnership with ChatGPT's parent company, OpenAI, would punish him for innovating with AI.' There's hope for Lee yet. Though maybe not for Columbia University, governed as it is by people who aren't even capable of this insight. Lee is a problem, but a problem of a sort that I'm familiar with. It's a student like Wendy who makes me panic: I asked Wendy if I could read the paper she turned in, and when I opened the document, I was surprised to see the topic: critical pedagogy, the philosophy of education pioneered by Paulo Freire. The philosophy examines the influence of social and political forces on learning and classroom dynamics. Her opening line: 'To what extent is schooling hindering students' cognitive ability to think critically?' Later, I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what 'makes us truly human.' She wasn't sure what to make of the question. What most worries me about this anecdote—which is perfect in its thematically fractal quality, with the first sentence of Wendy's ersatz essay embodying the intellectual decline that 'her' essay ostensibly describes—is that I'd be reasonably happy if a first-year student turned in something like this. It doesn't have that ChatGPT stiffness that I've learned to look for, and unlike a lot of (fake and real) essays that I always end up tearing apart in the comments, it immediately zeroes in on a single point, rather than messing about with the three-pronged '[Writer] does [X] by doing [thing, thing, and thing]' format that Advanced Placement classes have cursed us with, and that I spend weeks deprogramming my students out of. I would maybe cut 'cognitive' out of the sentence, but it's otherwise unobjectionable. If this is what cheating now looks like, I not only don't know how I'm supposed to tell if my students are cheating—I don't even know how I can be sure they wrote the thank-yous that mean so much to me. ChatGPT, in giving my students an alternative to skill-building, hurts their ability to learn, but more than that, it kills the trust that any teaching relationship depends on. Or perhaps it simply reminds us that that trust has always been a precious, much-abused thing. If I feel that my job now requires me to make judgments that are basically impossible—to tell an orderly, slightly stiff, reasonably good paper arrived at through hours of frustration from one arrived at through a minute's prompting and half an hour of light editing, for example—the job of my students has always been likewise impossible. There I am, demanding that they practice the extreme vulnerability of young adults learning in public, asking them to commit themselves to the study of things such as reading and writing that I consider to be living processes, open-ended and unmasterable. And there the surrounding society is—their justifiably anxious and perhaps indebted parents, who want them to be successful and happy; the corporate donors and partners that prestigious schools openly court and who want them to be productive and docile employees. What they want are people who have mastered various discrete and somewhat mechanized sets of skills. All of us insist on the life-and-death importance of a thing called 'education' while not remotely agreeing on what that thing is. And then there are the demands of their own big, half-formed, restless selves to consider too. What should we expect, but that they should take every shortcut in their doomed efforts to placate everyone? We asked them to work hard, but forgot to give them a consistent answer as to why. No wonder they cheat—they must already feel so cheated.
