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Travel Trends Shift: Consumers Seek Flight Deals, Hotel Discounts, Shorter Trips - Bloomberg
Evidence of a slowdown is everywhere: Online lodging platform Airbnb Inc. plunged by a record after warning that growth in bookings is decelerating, even in the middle of the peak summer season. European discount carrier Ryanair Holdings Plc went from expecting a modest rise in air fares to warning they’ll be “materially lower” because of thrifty consumers. And travel platform Expedia Group Inc. said Thursday that it’s revising down its annual outlook for a second time this year.Dengue Fever's Worrisome Surge | MedPage Today
Let's start with some ominous numbers in the CDC alert. While 2023 saw 4.6 million reported cases of dengue in the Americas, this year's count (as of June 24) had already doubled, reaching 9.7 million. And that's before much of the region would have entered its highest-transmission months. Gulp.What makes you happy
As a rule of thumb, your happiness will adjust back to anything that is stable and certain like your income, the size of your house, or the quality of your TV. These things do not change day to day so you can expect your happiness level to fade. On the other hand, infrequent or uncertain positive events, like quality time with friends or an exciting road trip, occur too sporadically to get used to. Inserting more of these hard-to-adapt-to experiences in your life will create longer lasting happiness.
Lejoyeux points to the “Florence syndrome,” described by French novelist Stendhal in the 19th century after he was overwhelmed by the beauty of Michelangelo’s David. The “Jerusalem syndrome” refers to “mystical” events and hallucinations experienced by some visitors to the holy city. “Traveler’s syndrome is an old story,” he said. The Paris syndrome is different in that it stems from the reality falling short of romanticized expectations. The visitors have to contend with unfriendly locals and tourism professionals who aren’t always welcoming, Zhou said. “Waiters are impatient, they don’t speak English,” he said. “Our clients tell us: Parisians are mean.”
When I left this country 18 years ago, I didn’t know how strangely departure would obliterate return: how could I have done? It’s one of time’s lessons, and can only be learned temporally. What is peculiar, even a little bitter, about living for so many years away from the country of my birth, is the slow revelation that I made a large choice a long time ago that did not resemble a large choice at the time; that it has taken years for me to see this; and that this process of retrospective comprehension in fact constitutes a life – is indeed how life is lived. Freud has a wonderful word, ‘afterwardness’, which I need to borrow, even at the cost of kidnapping it from its very different context. To think about home and the departure from home, about not going home and no longer feeling able to go home, is to be filled with a remarkable sense of ‘afterwardness’: it is too late to do anything about it now, and too late to know what should have been done. And that may be all right.
But Jozef doesn’t stay, and as the novella closes, we see him in Vienna airport, about to board a flight to America:He did not want to fly to Chicago. He imagined walking from Vienna to the Atlantic Ocean, and then hopping on a slow transatlantic steamer. It would take a month to get across the ocean, and he would be on the sea, land and borders nowhere to be found. Then he would see the Statue of Liberty and walk slowly to Chicago, stopping wherever he wished, talking to people, telling them stories about far-off lands, where people ate honey and pickles, where no one put ice in the water, where pigeons nested in pantries.It’s as if jet flight is existentially shallow; a slower journey would enact the gravity and enormity of the transformation.