Paris Around

Posts Tagged ‘Three’

Backpacks are generally categorized into three: frameless, external frame, and internal frame. The main purpose of a frame is to support the backpack and helps to distribute the weight across your whole body, mainly on the hips so that your shoulders are not bearing all the burden.

Frameless Backpacks

This is the simplest and most inexpensive type of backpack you can find. The most basic design consist of one main pocket and connected to a set of shoulder straps. They are more used for general stuff rather than hiking. However, some are suitable for outdoor activities like hiking. Some more advanced versions have a suspension system like waist strap, chest strap and padded shoulders.

External Frame Backpacks

This is an old favorite with backpackers because of its large capacity and strong frame. The frame is very rigid and it supports a sack made of cloth or other materials.

External frames allow for users to carry a heavier weight than a frameless pack could. It also gives the wearer more support and protection and better weight distribution. The frames have been made of wood until about the middle of the twentieth century.

This type of backpack is not very common today and the frames are now made of lightweight metal tubes, often aluminum and sometimes titanium or scandium. A system of straps and pads keep the sack and frame from contacting the body so you get reduced sweatiness.

It is normal practice to strap bulky items such as camping tents, sleeping bags and pads on the frame because some parts of the frame are not occupied by the pack. The main compartment is usually small compared to internal frame backpacks to allow for these bulky items to be strapped.

The problem with external frame backpacks is the center of gravity is very high up and away from the body resulting in instability. Keeping your balance especially when climbing up hills is not an easy task with external frame backpacks.

Users also complain of getting bruises as a result of the uncushioned frame rubbing or hitting against the body. However, external frame backpacks are very durable.

Internal Frame Backpacks

Invented in 1967 by Greg Lowe, the internal frame backpack has replaced external frame backpacks as the standard pack for hikers. Greg Lowe later went on to found Lowepro, a company specializing in backpacks and other carrying solutions for various equipment.  Read more...

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Literary;… More >>

The Three Cities Trilogy; Paris, Volume 1

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Trials (Treason); Antisemitism; Press and politics; Polemics; Jews; Biography… More >>

The Three Cities Trilogy; Paris, Volume 2

There are travel agencies which are still managing travels and tour packages manually. Too many papers are wasted daily to check on tours and collaboration among departments in the travel agencies is difficult.

Walk in to a typical travel agency and you see stack of papers on the shelf with all tour itineraries, some may even be outdated. If you are lucky enough, you get a good pricing for your tour because the travel agency did not update the pricing or tours on a real-time basis.

Main challenges for travel agencies include business operations, costings and employee management.

Business Operations Challenges
- Updates of travel packages were not applied across all departments and branches, affecting front desk staffs selling packages with old pricing – incurring losses
- Difficulties for front desk staffs to check on updates as there were no online, centralized database
- Break-down in communications among departments and difficulty to communicate among branches

Costing Challenges
- Tremendous amount of papers used and wasteful printings for travel packages and itineraries – incurring extra overheads
- Employees need to work extra hours to complete checkings and coordination manually – incurring extra employees wages
- Communications using traditional methods including faxes, scans, phone calls and land lines incurring additional costs

Employee Management Challenges
- Fraud of employees punching cards for each other, making losses for extra overtime payments
- Leaves are managed manually without accuracy and often miscalculated
- Additional employees needed every end of month to calculate working hours to compute payroll

Travel Agency Management System What is Good?

For a travel agency management system to work, it should at least have the below features. I am, however, generalizing based on typical travel agencies which still operate manually in Malaysia. For any IT systems to work, it should solve the biggest challenges and bottlenecks in your business. Therefore the below list is just a general one.

Real-time, centralized travel itineraries and uploading of tour files
- The travel agency management system should be able to centralize data and real-time to allow uploads of tour files for immediate viewing, real-time information across whole company, branches and even with external agents, also allowing front desk staffs to disseminate information accurately.  Read more...

Cheap travel means you get to go more often, go on longer trips or just save some of your money for other things. Fortunately, it doesn’t mean low-quality travel. If you find a way to get a cheaper plane ticket, for example, you might be flying on the same plane as with the more expensive tickets.

Of course sometimes you can save money by traveling differently, and that’s okay too. Why pay an extra $40 for a hotel if you like the idea of staying in a hostel with visitors from around the world? Why rent a car in countries where good bus and train systems make for cheaper and more interesting trips?

Essentially you can travel cheap in two ways. First, you can find cheaper ways to get the same thing. The other, perhaps more powerful way, is to alter your expectations and plans to create a more interesting trip that is also inexpensive. The tips that follow will help you do both.

1. See if you can book two flights cheaper than one.

My wife and I are thinking about going to Ecuador this year (2007). Checking for our approximate dates, I found that it would cost $950 each round trip from Colorado Springs, or $1,900 total. Then I checked from Colorado Springs to Miami. It would be $215 round trip. From Miami to Guayaquil, Ecuador costs $350 round trip. That makes it just $565 to Ecuador, or $1,130 total – a savings of $770.

Of course, if you are going to do this, you have to find flights that have enough time in-between them. You probably won’t get e refund if you miss the second flight because of a delay on the first. In our case, we have friends near Miami, so we’ll just arrange the flights to be a day or two apart, and go visiting. Even after the cost of renting a car for a couple days we’ll still be hundreds of dollars ahead.

2. Live in a new place for a while.

 Read more...