My First “Real” Couchsurfing Experience
Couchsurfing isn’t a new concept to those who, like me, constantly lust for travel, but never have thick wads of cash to spend. To those unfamiliar, Couchsurfing is a website connects “surfers” a.k.a. travelers to hosts in the country to be visited.
While I thought this would be an idea I would immediately gravitate towards, given my cheapskate-ness, I didn’t actually have my first “real” Couchsurfing experience until my 45th day of traveling, while I was in Luang Prabang, Laos.
Though I’ve met up with some Couchsurfers in Siem Reap, Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang, and got hooked up with Hariharalaya Retreat Centre thanks to a Couchsurfer, this would be my first time to spend the night at a host’s home.
When Vegetarianism Isn't Good for the Planet
by Sarah Parsons; 2010-07-22 17:00:00 UTC
(via Change.org)
Take a look inside some vegetarians’ freezers and you’ll see a bevvy of frozen, fake-meat fare. Veggie burgers, fakin’ bacon, “chicken” patties—if there’s a real meat you’re hankerin’ for, chances are you can find a veggie-based substitute. And while these faux meat entrees serve as a source of lean protein, in most cases, they’re also heavily processed.
Last week, I wrote about ongoing plans to decrease cows’ carbon emissions, a pretty huge effort considering that livestock account for about 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Many folks promote vegetarianism or eating less meat as a method of curbing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. But does swapping a beef burger for a Boca Burger really benefit the planet?
How great leaders inspire action by Simon Sinek on TED.com
* Got this from @LoisYasay, a passionista out to help people / brands discover their WHY’s. :)
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And if you keep talking about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe.”
Brilliant video. Because of this, I was compelled to write a quick post on Punchdrunk Panda’s WHY. :)
Cheers,
Jen
Money Matters (Part 1 of 2)
Yes, money makes the world go ‘round; money makes me go ‘round the world.
This is a serious consideration for people planning to go on extended/frequent travel.
I’ve been saving up since I’ve been earning for both my short term travel plans (quick trips nearby), and my longer term travel plans (long-ish Eurotrip). I promised myself I’d do the Eurotrip before I turned 30, so computing monthly savings of P5,000 for say, 5 years = P300,000 (~$7,000). When you break it down into a monthly expense, it seems more easily digestible / attainable.
Likewise, I am also saving up for a Macbook Air, and if I break the cost down to a monthly basis, I could get it by saving P4,000/month for a year.
So whether you’re saving up for travel or other things, breaking it down to a per month cost really helps.
But you can take it a step further by considering monthly expenses as well, so you can compute for the actual amount of money you’d need to make and/or save to achieve your financial goals. Tim Ferris’ Dreamline Worksheet is a particularly nifty tool for this. I was amazed with how they customized the Excel sheet. (If you don’t know who Tim Ferris is, he wrote this book.)
But more important (though best if used with the Dreamline Worksheet), is really being anal about your expenses, because you can earn so much money, but if you don’t have the discipline to save or track your spendings, than you might not be able to achieve bigger financial goals.
I find that the best tool to help me track expenses and meet my financial goals is MoneyWell.
I tried several applications, but I swear by MoneyWell alone, and advocate its use to my fellow Mac-owning friends. I have to admit, there are times I failed to note all my expenditure, but it has given me a clearer picture of which expenses I can spend less on, and helped me stick to a specific allocation per month for each expense type. Oh, how I could go on and on about MoneyWell’s awesome-ness. If you can find a free download, good for you. (If you do, don’t install updates as this will limit the number of transactions you can enter, I think.)
I kind of fell off the practice since late last year when I would frequently come back home late and be too tired to update MoneyWell. But if you have an iPhone, MoneyWell for iPhone would make it exponentially awesome. Too bad I don’t have an iPhone. (Oh, how I desire you, Apple products.)
Hope this proves useful to someone new.
As for me, it’s time to get strict about my spending once again.
I’ve strayed for too long now. :P
Also, to read on some measures I’ve taken to try to earn extra money so I’m not scrimping ALL THE TIME, read Money Matters (Part 2 of 2) here.
Paper, paper, money, money,
Jen
Keep your goals to yourself | by Derek Sivers on TED.com
“After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone, but Derek Sivers says it’s better to keep goals secret.”
I got the link to this video from Connet after she read my last blog post, where I make very public declarations of my goals, which is the very thing this video advises against. :P
But he explained two sides, and gives alternatives. You can either 1) resist the temptation to announce your goal/s, or 2) delay the gratification that this social acknowledgement brings, and understand that your mind might mistake the talking for the doing.
Key is not to get any satisfaction from the public declaration, and lucky for me, I feel no one really reads my little blog, and Connet was probably the first one to speak any…I don’t know, kind words about my mission or whatever. Haha. But yeah, good to note that I should keep my feet on the ground and my eyes on the real prize and not be tempted to slack because I “half-achieved” my goals by announcing them.
And who knows, the public declaration might help me meet useful allies along the way. :)
How To Quit Your Job & Travel The World
Because you know you want to.
And because I’ve been putting it off way too long.
Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (by theRSAorg)
:) *happy sigh*
- Autonomy - the desire to be self-directed
- Mastery - the urge to get better at stuff
- Purpose - the want to make the world a better place
These are indeed what drive me as an individual, and as a part of Punchdrunk Panda. :D
I hope my team is driven by the same.
Cheers, Dan Pink!
via Frank: Elegance, Lightness, and Nothing
Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest, most basic ones.
There’s an old story, true or not, that people love telling about writing implements in space. The American space program discovered that normal ink pens didn’t work on missions (no gravity in orbit to pull down the ink), so they spent millions to research and develop a pen that could write upside down. The Russians, the story goes, brought a pack of pencils.
Now, I suppose one could think that this story is about the Americans’ rigidity in thought, the bureaucratic waste in creating an object with limited utility, or even the enthusiasm with which the space program took up a new frontier of upside-down pens. But I like to think that the story is about the elegance of thought in the Russians’ solution. It was a simple swap, an obvious fix that must have been face-palmingly infuriating and suddenly obvious to the American scientists, a bit like the first time someone told me that I could keep those automatic toilets at the airport from flushing on me by putting some toilet paper over the sensor.
We as designers strive for our solutions to be elegant, so what’s interesting about this story is how it seems to suggest that the most elegant solution, in certain situations, might not be creating anything new at all. Lightness is to be found in substitution or recomposing, not in rote addition.
But, hammer sees nail, and all that. The new and novel has an appeal to it that hypnotizes even those who are the most steeped in the design process. A particularly interesting example occurred a few weeks ago at a design conference where I was speaking. Talk about ergonomics, health, and the benefits of standing over sitting for eight hours a day came up over coffee. Many had said they were researching or had bought standing-height desks with small motors that could have their height adjusted to sitting level for the times they wanted to sit for a bit. And I just looked down into my coffee, and thought about saying, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy a bar-height table and a stool?” But I decided it’d be better to just say nothing.
