.. is called Baracoa and it's awesome.
Travel
Back from Cuba
I'm still alive! Cuba was... an experience. I'll write more about it later, just wanted to show a sign of life here.
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Travel
Into the Wild
There is no other movie with greater immersion for me than Into the Wild. I realize that my own travels have been mundane and tame in comparison to the travels portrayed in the movie, but the feelings are the same. The mindset is the same. People who have not done a similar trip like that will simply not understand that feeling. It is impossible to understand that feeling unless you experience it yourself.
Having just finished the movie, my resolve is strengthened again after months and months of stagnating in silly old London. I must travel. I've long debated with myself on how I will travel next. I bought a suitcase thinking I will become a traveling programmer and I will hop from city to city, hotel to hotel. Unlike the movie I am nowhere near giving up money. I will use money as a tool wherever I need to, and I won't shun technology either. As long as it's lightweight, has a long battery life and fits in my backpack. Cycling will be the way to go for me. I am used to it.
My goal is not to make the most extreme challenging trip I can think of. I don't care about how I get my food or if I need to learn a whole new language to make the most out of my trip. In fact, I'd rather not as little time as possible on either of those things. The trip is about the trip, not about boasting to other people how difficult it was and how you managed to do so many difficult things. Bullshit. It's about traveling, seeing the world, having random encounters with people and exploring life. You can do that anywhere if you're in the right mindset, which means being unencumbered by menial things such as an apartment, a job and things. I don't want to prove anything to anyone, I just want to travel. People who argue with me that that is not what I really want do not understand me.
A lack of extremes conditions the mind to only think in a certain way. The more you think a certain way, the harder it is to get out of that pattern of thoughts. If all you think about is settling down in London then you will become a very boring Londoner. Or the Asian parent version: if all you can think about is studying knowledge from books then all you'll ever be is a robot. You need to get out there, do unexpected things, let life happen to you. Only then will your mind be free.
Fuck London. Next year I am cycling from New York to San Francisco.
Seychelles stamp
The stamp is a picture of the fruit of the female Coco de Mer tree. Not sure what you were thinking.
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Travel
Land of fire, land of ice
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to cuba in January! And in February I'm going to Iceland. How awesome is that? I'm very much looking forward to both. One thing I didn't expect though, was how attached I'd get to my work. I'll be separated from the project I am working on for 3 weeks, and I find myself wondering if it'll be ok, and if it will be easy to get back into that creative vibe after the long holiday. Time will tell.
Daily life is very normal, and very daily. I commute to work, read comics and books in the train on the way, work, eat sushi, work more, go the gym and go home. Such is my daily life. For someone who always proclaims he hates routine I have surely gotten stuck in it yet again. But that's why there's holidays, to stir things up again when things get too normal.
This weekend there's three things I must do: book the last stuff for the trips, fix my bicycle and study Japanese. The Japanese language test is on December the 4th and I've been slacking off with my kanji practice. My bike's been broken for weeks and it's really time I stop putting it off.
I'm right at the edge between too busy and pleasantly busy. For my peace of mind I'd love to have one day of the week all for myself. I'd also like one whole day extra to spend with my girlfriend and another whole day to finish all those work things (programming) that I never find time for during the week. Inventing a device that makes the brain work twice as fast is of the utmost importance.
And I still can't get used to the iPad keyboard. The train's nearly at my station. I'd better get out.
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Daily Life
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Travel
Places I've slept
Just for fun I counted the number of different places I slept this year. I came up to a total of 18 different places:
- Family, friends, etc: 4 places
- Apartments: 2 places
- Hotels and hostels: 11
- ..and 1 park.
Deep Blue Sea
(Click for massive version!)
Ah Seychelles, how I miss thee..
A Nomadic Existence
For a while now I've been contemplating about where to go. No matter where I go, I can't see myself working at the same place for several years, although I felt the same way when I went to Japan and I ended staying there for 5 years. In any case, I've been looking at ways to make my existence more nomadic.
There's three things that are absolutely vital when moving to a new place: finding accommodation, arranging transportation and getting a job. The relationships between these three things are incredibly intricate. Depending on where you go, it may be favorable to find a cheap flight first, and then arrange accommodation. For other destinations the price of a flight may pale in comparison to the monthly rent. And in both cases, if you manage to land a job then you can probably afford to worry a lot less about both accommodation and transportation. But getting a job is a whole lot easier if you're already accommodated in whichever city you're planning to go to. One thing needs the other, yet having one of them might mean having less trouble finding the other two.
The biggest dilemma perhaps is to look for jobs or to look for accommodation. I've been doing a bit of both, and had success with neither. Personally I'd feel more comfortable already being at my destination and then looking for jobs, rather than flying back and forth, landing interviews and hoping for that lucky break. Getting a place to stay first shows my resolve, and it means I can worry about one thing at a time. In my particular case I'm rushing things a bit because I have to be in London in July anyway, but logically it makes more sense to find accommodation first and then booking the flight. In fact, if you look at it that way, I'm doing things in the worst possible order. The best would be to get a job first, have them pay for the flight, then stay in a hotel while arranging long(er)-term accommodation. I got the flight first, now I'm looking for accommodation, and then I'll find a job. Oh well.
More importantly, I've been thinking about the long term sustainability of such a lifestyle. Provided one can find contract jobs that last between 3-6 months (of which there are plenty, it would appear) it should be possible to repeat the same trick later in a different city and country. It would be quite tricky to get a job without a face to face interview, so getting accommodation first would probably be best. But that means you're basically gambling with your life, hoping that the right job opportunity will pop up in front of you in the short time period that you are there. If it doesn't, you could always relocate to another place and repeat. It's just like gambling: if you land a job, you profit. If you don't, you have a nice long holiday in a city you've never been to.
Either way, it's more fun than staying with your parents.
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Daily Life
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Thoughts
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Travel
Seychelles!
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It's been over a week now since returning from the Seychelles. A good time to write up my thoughts on the trip. It only takes a little while to forget all the things you dislike about a place, leaving only the good memories behind. I've all but forgotten about the sweaty humidity and the sandiness. I still remember that it was hot and sandy, but that seems less important right now compared to the beautiful blue skies, the white beaches and clear waters. How could I possibly forget that? Seychelles was great.
The thing I'll remember most was the laid-back atmosphere. Our trip took us from the biggest island to islands ever decreasing in size, and as the size of the island decreases, so did the laid-back-ness increase. Life seems a lot simpler when you're on a tropical island with not a care in the world. I remember encountering a British guy in a bus on the way to the beach. We started talking, and I learned that he was an accountant who escaped Britain so that he could live on Seychelles. That's possibly the best place in the whole world you could do accounting. Or any other job, for that matter, although I think Java software developers are not very high in demand over there.
When on Mahe we failed to get a rental car for the busy weekend, so we tried our hand at hitch-hiking a couple of times. Every time we tried it was successful, and we got some nice rides, as well as some interesting conversations. On the day we left Mahe to go to Praslin our pre-booked taxi driver slash tour guide failed to show up in time, so we went to the roadside and tried to hitch a ride. It wasn't long before someone pulled over. Our driver turned out to be working for the water company in Mahe, which is just about the most important job one can have over there, as water is a precious commodity. It's thanks to the water company's efforts that the tap water is actually drinkable. The driver told us a bit about how they purified the water for drinking and then dropped us off right next to the ferry to Praslin. Excellent.
On Praslin we rented a car, which proved to be the right choice, as there were not a lot of taxis on the island. 2 days was just about enough time to check out every road on the island, which included some fun (30% incline) slopes and narrow, twisty roads. We also did a full day island hopping tour which brought us to 3 different islands and gave us plenty of chance to see the local wildlife. On the third day of Praslin we returned our rental car and took the ferry to La Digue, an even smaller island. Bicycles are the transportation of choice on La Digue, and we enjoyed cycling across the island during the next two and a half days, doing plenty of sightseeing, swimming and snorkeling along the way.
The hotels we booked were quite interesting. The Mahe hotel (Le Surmer) turned out to be quite crap, but in a fun and quaint way. We had to move from a tiny, well air-conditioned room into a bigger room on the second day. The water turned off after 10am, so no lingering about. Upon returning to our hotel that evening we found that we did not have electricity, a problem that only seemed to affect our room. That was soon solved by the manager, but 5 minutes after turning on the air-conditioning the power went down again. This whole process repeated itself a couple of times until it was finally fixed. The day afterwards it wasn't just our room, it was the entire hotel that got its power cut. An employee even came by with a candle. Cute, but I wouldn't recommend the hotel to anyone. Compare that to Praslin where our hotel was really great: no problems at all, quite clean and an excellent view to boot. Very nice. On La Digue we stayed at Vanilla Guesthouse, which had a completely different ambiance from the Praslin hotel, but not in a bad way. Vanilla was cosy and warm, and full of interesting things on the walls and floors and tables. A great experience.
As I'm currently looking for a place to stay in London (again!) I can't help but compare the cost of staying at Seychelles to staying in London. Seychelles is a lot cheaper than staying anywhere near London! I can completely agree with the accountant we met, who fled the UK to stay in Seychelles. It's good to have the skills to get a job anywhere. In my case my profession limits me to major cities, unless I take a major pay cut and/or do something I'm not specialized in. I guess that's life telling me to expand my horizons.
I recommend everyone I know to visit Seychelles. Stay at one of the small hotels (the government no longer allows large hotels) or guesthouses, hitch-hike your way to places or take buses, cycle around on La Digue and go swimming and snorkeling at Anse Lazio on Praslin. It's definitely something you won't soon forget :) .