Skip to main content

1st World Happiness Report

Remember last year when Forbes published a 'Happiest Countries' Report? This year the United Nations published their first World Happiness Report and guess where the Netherlands are? This explains the ranking system.

1) Denmark
2) Finland
3) Norway
4) NETHERLANDS

USA comes in at 11.

Yahoo has an interesting take on the Netherlands. They ask a chicken or the egg question. Do the bicylces and Tulips exist because the Dutch are happy or are they the reason for Holland's happiness?

The Happiness Report is 1 of 2 reports filed this year ranking the countries of the world. The Happiest Countries Report shows a snapshot of the state of the world's happiness. While the second report "Happy Planet Index" (The Forbes article) tallies how a country balances personal well-being, environmental impact, and life expectancy. This list includes more countries that a vacation going would be interested in. The Netherlands is farther down this list.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Songs Called Amsterdam

iTunes free song of the week last week was a song called Amsterdam by Imagine Dragons. I've never heard of them but it's a catchy Alternative song. But it made me think. In my own personal music collection. I have a few songs named Amsterdam. Three to be exact. This may give to much away about my music tastes but hey, I'm out of ideas for posts as evident by the lack thereof. I don't read into song lyrics deep enough sometimes, so not sure what some of these are talking about but most are hardly about the city itself.  1) Amsterdam by Imagine Dragons Just got this one like I said. Not sure yet. Here it is below. Make you want to ride a train.  2) Amsterdam by Guster Couldn't find a good video for this one. But here is the song. I guess, it's easy to get lost in Amsterdam... 3) Amsterdam by Coldplay My favorite of this bunch. Turns out it's called Amsterdam because Chris Martin wrote this in Amsterdam. The song says nothing of the canal fille...

Holland is just a step away

When life gives you lemons make green tea lemonade. So, when one lives in the midwest why not make the best of it and explore the sites in this area? You don't need a lot of money or even a passport. That brings us to Holland, Michigan a Dutch settlement in America. Obviously the city is very proud of its Dutch heritage, as shown in the klompen picture at the top. Klompen is the name of the Dutch wooden clog dance. There are many dutch settlements in Michigan but what makes Holland so distinctly Dutch are its two festivals: the tulip time festival in the spring and the winter festival. The tulip festival is held in mid-May and lasts for 8 days. The festival includes tours at the local windmills, tulip farms, local dutch houses, as well as dances, concerts, street scrubing, and a dutch marketplace. One interesting thing about the Dutch costumes that are presented during the festival is that they are from the 8 out of 12 different provinces of the Netherlands. Here is...

Ambulance Garage = Home

So I couldn't sleep tonight so I thought I write my next blog entry about a place where you could sleep. See what I did there? That's called a 'segway'. I think. Recently MSN had an interesting article entitled '10 unique structures transformed into astonishing homes'. Structure 3 was a Parksite Ambulance Garage in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Here's the description from that article. "This 2,800-square-foot living space was converted in 2008 from an ambulance garage. The Doepel Strijkers team transformed what was a flat space into a multilevel[ed] habitation by creating a dugout in the center. [This] dugout also created room for a second level. The bedrooms are suspended over the sunken kitchen area in a polycarbonate 'light box' with integrated LED lights. The kitchen has custom cupboards. [Orange blocks] on the stairs to the living room act as a seating [area] or tables. A new glass wall looks out to the greenery of a park." If you search Doe...