Latest news with #Leisure
Irish Independent
03-05-2025
- Irish Independent
Series of events announced for Sligo during National Bike Week
The annual event, supported by the National Transport Authority and celebrated nationwide, aims to promote cycling as a sustainable, healthy, and enjoyable mode of transportation. This year's programme offers a variety of activities designed to engage cyclists of all ages and abilities including Balance Bike sessions and Community Leisure Cycles to Spin to Splash events. Councillor Declan Bree, Cathaoirleach of Sligo County Council said: 'Bike Week is a wonderful initiative that highlights the importance of cycling for both our health and the environment. I encourage everyone to participate and experience the beauty of Sligo on two wheels'. The week-long celebration highlights the numerous benefits of cycling, including improved physical health, reduced carbon emissions, and enhanced community connections. It also encourages individuals who haven't cycled in a long time to get back in the saddle or those who have never cycled before, to discover the simple pleasure of cycling.
BBC News
02-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Albert Avenue lido and water play in Hull to reopen for summer
A popular lido and water play area will reopen for the summer season heated outdoor swimming pool in Albert Avenue, Hull, was refurbished as part of a £10.5m project and unveiled in City Council said there would be a variety of sessions for families and adults until the end of September.A new twilight swim for adults will be staged on Fridays at 21:00 BST. Alison Walker, a director at the council's Hull Culture and Leisure service, said it was time "to turn on the heat" in the would be maintained at an average temperature of 28C (82F) over the next five months, she added. The lido, which was built in 1958, was closed to swimmers for more than 30 years until the refurbishment of the Albert Avenue Pools and Leisure can be booked at the reception or to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mural dedicated to fallen Walton County deputy on Pensacola's Graffiti Bridge
PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) — A tribute to fallen Walton County Sheriff's Office Deputy William May on display for the folks of downtown Pensacola by artist Rod Leisure, also known as RodmanVisions. Honor Walk and procession for fallen Walton County deputy starting in Pensacola 'My girlfriend saw it on Facebook, and I said, 'Well, let's go paint the bridge for him,' said Leisure. Graffiti Bridge's social media post on Friday has gone viral, with over 1,500 likes and 500 shares on Facebook. Rodman took his time selecting these particular style choices, wanting the mural to have a clean look. Walton County deputy killed in line of duty 'I wanted to do some really classy looking lettering on this one. That was the main focus of this and, I mean, obviously sharing the love and condolences. Every piece of artworks like that, you're trying to connect with people,' Leisure said. Leisure has been painting Pensacola's Graffiti Bridge for years. 'Some people get up in the morning and go for a walk, or they go to the gym, I come here and paint,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Regional Trade, Premium FIT & Business Opportunities Aplenty in ITE Hong Kong
HONG KONG, March 31, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Asia's leading international travel fair and named MEGA EVENT by government, ITE Hong Kong 2025 comprises 39th ITE (Leisure) and 20th ITE MICE, will be held from June 12 to 15 in HKCEC with two days each for trade and public. Pre-pandemic ranked Asia's 3rd or 4th largest market, HK outbound fully recovered. 2023 Outbound Spending 2023 Total Departures 2024 Total Departures US$22.7 billion 72.2 million 104.7 million 111% of 2019 Quality recovery, HK outbound in 2023 recovered more by spending (84%) than departure (77%)! But package tour recovery behind market: (a1)below 50% by March 2024; (a2) 2024-Xmas-cum-New-Year season business similar to 2023; and (a3)of 2.1 million HK arrivals in 2023 to Japan 7% by group tour. Thus, FIT including private group main contributor to recovery! Oriental Daily (a1) 20-3-2024; (a2) 12-12-2024; (a3) Japan Tourism Agency's 2023 International Visitor Survey Used 5 halls same as in 2019; ITE2024 had 87% of its 515 exhibitors and 46% of 7023 trade visitors from outside Hong Kong; 90% of 63027 public visitors prefer FIT; among 68 exhibiting countries and regions, 36% from non-Asia! The Greater Bay Area (Bay), which include China's top cities like Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou etc., contributed 74% of ITE's trade visitors while another 10% from other parts of China. With a combined GDP of US$ 1.97 trillion in 2023, the Bay would have ranked around world's 11th largest economy! Thus, ITE covers major source markets. ITE's B2B program includes Buyer-Meet-Seller though the main format free-flow; speaking opportunity in seminars on selected topic (some with translation service), assisting exhibitor to hold own trade seminar, and free publicity pre-show and onsite. Survey found public visitors travel frequently(b1), mature with 85% between 25 and 59; educated (51% university and 23% post-secondary); and 60% spending more on outbound in 2024. With hundreds of exhibitors from abroad, ITE provides these travel enthusiasts great shopping of outbound holidays. (b1) Travel Frequency 2024 Number of Outbound Holidays Jan–Jun Jul-Dec 3 or more 44.1 % 39.5 % 1 – 2 50.2 % 58.2 % Exhibitors welcome retailing to public visitors but shall check related laws! For example, non-HK resident exhibitors entering by tourist visa cannot conduct retailing activities in HK exhibitions. However, exhibitors can invite visitors use mobile to scan special offer QR-code, book and pay entirely online involving no cash which not against the law. ITE's seminars are popular! Last year had 77 sessions drew nearly 7000 audiences and exhibitors welcome applying for free seminar session. TV host, Jarvis Chow, whose seminar on Japan drew 500+ audiences in ITE2024, will speak again in ITE2025. Plenty of fun in ITE which always filled with special designed stands, cultural performances, chance to try national costume from different destinations, mascot show, games, travel map and souvenirs etc. Organized by TKS Exhibition Services Ltd., ITE strongly supported by Ministry of Culture and Tourism, with Hong Kong Tourism Board etc. as Supporters. Contact: travel@ | WhatsApp: +852 69361271 | View original content: SOURCE ITE Hong Kong; TKS Exhibition Services Ltd Sign in to access your portfolio
Atlantic
27-03-2025
- Lifestyle
- Atlantic
How to Be Excellent at Leisure
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. As a professor, my primary vocation is to teach young adults skills that will prepare them to excel in their careers. The implicit assumption society makes is that professional excellence requires formal training, whereas excellence in the rest of life does not. There is no Harvard School of Leisure, after all. Work demands discipline and training; nonwork is easy and enjoyable and comes naturally. Our higher-education system, including my university, operates on this assumption. But to me, it's very questionable. Leisure is not at all straightforward or easy. I have no interest in frittering away a minute of my day on fruitless pursuits. I want everything I do to be generative. I want to use my nonwork activities, as much as my work ones, to become a wiser, happier, more effective, better person. Leisure is serious business. My attitude is not, in fact, especially original: The 20th-century German philosopher Josef Pieper believed that when we understand and practice leisure properly, we can achieve our best selves—and even our capacity to transform society for the better. But to do leisure like this, we must treat it with every bit as much seriousness as we do our careers. Arthur C. Brooks: How to have your most fulfilling vacation ever Given their observable behavior, people evidently believe that leisure is desirable. As Aristotle reasoned in his Nicomachean Ethics, 'We toil that we may rest, and war that we may be at peace.' When our work is most demanding, we typically define leisure as its opposite: complete inactivity. For example, when the burned-out 51-year-old CEO of a $68 billion investment firm abruptly quit his job in 2022, he explained to reporters what he planned to do next: 'I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing.' Even if we're not finding our work overtaxing, we still talk about taking a break from it that will allow us to reenergize—in order to work more and better. Either way, we're defining leisure in relation to work, as the absence of work or as an adjunct to work. Pieper rejected this whole way of thinking. A follower of Plato and Thomas Aquinas, Pieper believed that leisure was an inherently valuable, constructive part of life, and he thought we misunderstood leisure when we defined it as work's opposite. In his 1948 book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, he described it as an attitude of openness to the world through deep contemplation. In Pieper's conception, the opposite of leisure is not work, but acedia, an ancient-Greek word that means spiritual or mental sloth. Leisure, in other words, is far from the modern notion of just chillin'. It is a serious business, and if you don't do leisure well, you will never find life's full meaning. Properly understood, leisure is the work you do for yourself as a person without an economic compulsion driving you. For Pieper, this work of leisure—no contradiction, in his view—would not involve such 'acediac' activities as scrolling social media and chuckling at memes, getting drunk, or binge-streaming some show. Rather, true leisure would involve philosophical reflection, deep artistic experiences, learning new ideas or skills, spending time in nature, or deepening personal relationships. Pieper especially focused on faith experiences, because he believed that 'culture lives on religion through divine worship.' Perhaps you have never thought of going to a house of worship as leisure, but Pieper would say that's because you never took your leisure seriously enough. You might be thinking that this approach to leisure doesn't sound especially fun to you, not so chill, but social scientists' findings suggest that Pieper knew a thing or two about well-being. We may intuitively think that the best way to get happier is, like the CEO, to 'go sit at the beach and do nothing.' But researchers have found that this kind of do-nothing leisure, including vacation travel, provides only minor, temporary boosts of happiness. What gives us more sustained well-being are pursuits involving social engagement, personal reflection, and outdoor activities. Arthur C. Brooks: Aristotle's 10 rules for a good life The point here is that just as we should be excellent at our jobs, we should become excellent at leisure. Doing leisure well will generate the sort of growth in our well-being that work cannot provide. We need to take the time to dwell on life's big questions without distraction, to learn to appreciate what is beautiful, to transcend our workaday lives and consider what is divine. To achieve excellence at anything in life requires time, effort, and discipline. In this spirit, here are three ways to build your 'leisure aptitude.' 1. Structure your leisure. The Catholic bishop Fulton Sheen was famous throughout the United States as a radio and television star from the 1930s through the '60s. His lasting legacy, however, was instructing people to undertake what he called a 'Holy Hour' of prayer, scripture reading, and meditation each day. He advised everyone whose schedule permitted it to keep this practice at the same time every day and for the whole hour. Millions of priests and laity still do so to this day, and people swear by it as one of the most helpful parts of their faith. Whether you are religious or not, consider observing your own Holy Hour. Maybe it can be a time in the morning when you read something truly meaningful, or a walk after lunch when you leave your device behind, or a period of uninterrupted conversation after dinner with the person you love best. But structure this Holy Hour into your day as you would an important work meeting. 2. Don't fritter away your leisure. One of the biggest killers of productive leisure is the inability to get started. If you have an hour off, you might start by reading the news, then answering email messages … and before you know it, the time has passed in merely routine and forgettable activity. To avoid this, program the time in advance and get right into it. If the leisure activity is to read a certain book from 6 to 7 a.m., have the book ready, start promptly, and do absolutely nothing else. Put your phone on silent and out of reach, and block all distractions. This is crucial time. 3. Set specific leisure goals. Humans are inherently goal-oriented. In any area of personal improvement, whether your career or your health, goals—and making progress toward them—are central to staying motivated. For example, you probably won't be able to keep to an exercise plan unless you have the ambition to get stronger and healthier in a measurable way, and see regular, tangible advancement toward that end. Goal orientation should also apply to your leisure activities. Instead of randomly dipping into a holy book in your religious tradition, say, set about reading the entire volume in a year. Similarly, your goal for daily meditation might be to work toward a week-long silent retreat. Or if your leisure purpose is to listen to music, focus on a particular composer with an end in mind: Listen and learn about J. S. Bach every day, for example, with the goal of attending a summer Bach festival as an expert listener. Derek Thompson: The free-time paradox in America Pieper's philosophy of leisure offers more than a formula for organizing your own recreational time; it also asserts that leisure is 'the basis of culture.' How so? Left to our educational experience and its basic assumptions, many of us naturally oscillate between being Homo economicus and Homo trivialus —in other words, a cycle of laborious slog by day and unproductive, numbing pleasure-pursuits in the evenings and at weekends. This is a culture of unenriching, unrelieved monotony. We have two ways to change this: One is through work; the other is through leisure. For many people, the former is not possible, at least not in the short run. But for everyone, leisure can be customized to make it enlivening, not deadening. How you use your leisure can be made to reflect your values and connect with other people in deeply meaningful ways. That is a culture of joy and interest I want to be part of.
