Tips to ensure a happy, healthy, summer holiday

A change is as good as a rest' and over the coming months hundreds of thousands will take to the roads, to the skies and even to the rail tracks in pursuit of their change.

While very few people go on holiday anticipating that they won't enjoy it, there are things that make it more or less enjoyable.

Surprisingly, even the tourism industry now scientifically studies the aspects of holidays that make them enjoyable.

However, I could only identify one study that measured the impact on psychological well-being. The study, published in the Journal Of Travel Medicine in 2005, was conducted by Austrian researchers and identified characteristics that predicted the psychological health outcomes of the annual holiday.

One hundred and ninety one, mainly white-collar workers, were administered a questionnaire one week after completion of their annual vacation, evaluating five broad areas, including: physical characteristics of the holiday (eg, duration, distance travelled to reach destination, time zone, temperature, etc), structuring of the day (eg, number of meals provided, planning of the day, etc), health and social activity (eg, amount of sleep, physical activity, making new acquaintances, etc), stress during the vacation (eg, rows, health problems, etc) and, finally, the physical and mental strain of work and basic characteristics, such as age.

Subjects were asked to rate their subjective feelings of recuperation and exhaustion in comparison to before the holiday. Some of the results were unexpected and counter-intuitive. A proportion of the outcome (27pc) could be predicted by measuring the variables.

The higher the mental strain of work, the greater the feeling of recuperation. In addition, a warm temperature at vacation site, the amount of time vacationers had for themselves and for their needs, engaging in physical activity, good quality of sleep and making new acquaintances all had a positive effect.

Interpersonal conflict was negatively associated with recuperation, but only to a very small extent (two per cent), while health problems during the vacation, number of hours slept and number of meals provided had no impact.

Turning to the predictors of improvement in levels of exhaustion, only 15pc of the variance could be explained. Time-zone differences, temperature and health problems during the holiday predicted improvement but, surprisingly, the duration of the holiday and the travel time to the destination did not impact on this.

The finding that the duration of the holiday did not effect exhaustion levels might seem surprising, since it is assumed that the longer the vacation, the greater the time to sleep and unwind.

However, other leisure research has shown that the greatest improvement occurs in the first three days of holiday and peaks by seven.

On the other hand, the extent to which leisure time predicts recuperation is proof of our intuition that freedom from obligations is central to a holidays restorative value.

Surprisingly, self-determination of daily activities or some scheduling of daily activities was not related to recuperation as other studies found, but the mood-enhancing effects of physical activity and also of social interaction were clearly demonstrated in this study.
source:http://www.independent.ie/health/tips-to-ensure-a-happy-healthy-summer-holiday-1402382.html

Cemeteries as tourist attractions?

The idea of a cemetery as a place to visit in the course of a vacation, may not exactly resound with Jamaican sensitivities, but Mayor of Kingston, Desmond McKenzie, has raised an interesting idea: making the May Pen Cemetery a tourist attraction.

The fact is we're not a 'cemetery people', despite our penchant for elaborate funerals and mourning rituals. There are, however, other places where cemeteries do attract tourists, particularly if they are the final resting place of celebrities.

One of the famous sightseeing spots of Europe, for instance, is the Pére Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, wherein lie some of the world's most celebrated artists and artistes, from centuries past up to contemporary times.

In other places, where celebrities are interred also, some tourists do find it interesting to visit the site as part of the experience of another culture.

But is our May Pen Cemetery ready for that? Most Jamaicans associate the area with inner-city neglect which we seem unable to put right.

It has been said that members of some of Jamaica's older families were interred at May Pen in the days when it was the major site for burials in Kingston.

It is posited also that the history of such families and the context of the times in which they lived could be presented in a way to attract visitors who like that sort of thing. Would that be enough of an incentive, however?

There are practical considerations which would have to be dealt with. It is not just the physical state of the cemetery which has to be improved, but the environs which surround it.

Mayor McKenzie is no stranger to the condition of the Spanish Town Road and adjacent communities. He knows, even more than most, the extent of the urban decay and blight which will require more than wishful thinking to reclaim and bring it to a standard which would make visitors, as well as locals, feel enough at ease to go in the cemetery. Perhaps, with time and effort, such an idea could bear fruit, but it certainly is not a short-term fix.

The current effort to clean up and attract public support for May Pen is but one of many in a series of several such drives. It has been tried before.

As he makes yet another go at it, this time using prisoner labour, Mayor McKenzie would do well to use his considerable leverage to put in place systems for continuity in the ongoing maintenance of the cemetery.

It is only when the facility can be accorded respect by our own people that we will have the confidence to indicate to others that we regard it as an important part of our national heritage and thus worthy of being an attraction.
Source:http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20071110/cleisure/cleisure1.html