NuNomad Tribe: Social Networking for Nomads

Oh my god, this is the greatest thing ever. NuNomad.com has launched a beta of their new "Tribe" feature. I have been longing for a sort of forum for digital nomads like myself for ages. This goes several steps beyond. It's social networking for location independents. Shuffle on over to NuNomad and check out their video. Forums, groups, meet-ups, classifieds: it's all there. It's like a mash-up of Facebook and Craigslist for world travelers.

NuNomad Tribe

Where was this 18 months ago when I was setting out on my trip?

Boston, As Captured By Gail At Large

I haven't said much about my time in Boston, and that was several stops ago already. But since a picture is worth a thousand words, and Gail's are worth at least several, the following should make up for my dearth of verbiage. Below is my Boston experience as captured and condensed by Gail's lens. As usual, she manages to make my life look exotic and exciting. I wish she'd follow me around more often!

[thumbnails] [slideshow]



(If you're reading this on Facebook and the slideshow doesn't show up inline, click "View Original Post" to go to my blog.)

Staying Connected Abroad

You might think that as the world continues to shrink that staying connected while abroad would be getting easier. Not so. We are currently witnessing a sea change in world-wide wireless: Carriers everywhere are canceling their unlimited data plans. Android handsets are taking over and rightly inspire techno-lust, but the best plans are still for BlackBerrys. Sadly, BlackBerry OS is a terrible development platform--there are tumbleweeds in their app store--and their hardware inspires about as much enthusiasm as plain white toast.

Take, for example, the newly released and much hyped BlackBerry Torch.  Read the specs. Now read the review. Choice quotes:

If you don't already own a BlackBerry, you will not want this phone. And if you do, you still might not want it, even if it may very well be the "best BlackBerry ever."

 ... and ...

BlackBerry isn't good enough anymore if you're comparing it to other smartphones. What does it do better than the rest? That's the fundamental question. And the answer is that for most people, in most situations, compared to Android and iPhone, not a whole lot.

Ouch! I've been using a BlackBerry Bold 9000 for a while now, and while it gets the job done, I can't help noticing that the real party is happening in the Android and iPhone camps. Is it time to switch?

I called up AT&T (my carrier) and got the details of my plan and extras. The kicker is my unlimited international data plan, which is BlackBerry specific--and no longer offered. The rep told me if I ever canceled it, I'd never get it back. Yikes.

So I spent some of yesterday going from provider to provider and seeing if they can offer me something competitive. Here's what I want: an Android GSM phone with an unlimited international data plan. One by one, every provider turned me away: Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile. The closest I came was Sprint, which just canceled its unlimited international data plan about a month ago--and it was only for BlackBerrys. Bah.

Incidentally, AT&T doesn't even have any Android phones yet. When they get them later this year(?) I'd have to give up my magical BlackBerry-specific data plan to get one. No deal.

So BlackBerry, it looks like I'm stuck with you.

Walden Pond

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-- H. D. Thoreau

People sometimes ask me what gave me the idea to travel. It seems a crazy thing to say, but I wouldn't be on the road today if I hadn't read "Walden" by Thoreau 13 years ago. Going out to Walden Pond yesterday and seeing what Thoreau saw, walking where he walked and putting my feet in the waters of Walden, was deeply fulfilling.


View of Walden Pond from the site of Thoreau's cabin in the woods.

Thirteen years ago, I was starting my "grown up" life: I had graduated college and gotten a job. It payed well. I liked it well enough. I was on The Path. But something wasn't right, and I couldn't put my finger on it; I just knew that it was going to continue being not right unless I did something. So I read. A lot. Everything I could get my hands on.

I can't remember why I picked up that trade paperback copy of "Walden" at Twice-Sold Tales in downtown Seattle, but it came at the right time. It changed how I thought about life.


Walden Pond

In "Walden", Thoreau relates his experience living in the woods. Others will tell you it's a book about living simply and getting back to nature, the source of all morality. That's true, but it's not what really grabbed me. For me, it's more this:

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
--H. D. Thoreau

We're all born into a culture. We don't even see it most of the time, but it profoundly influences who we are. It's like religion: if your parents are Muslim, you're probably Muslim, too. Likewise, had you been born in a culture where the job/spouse/kids/house-in-the-'burbs/2-car-garage weren't the norm, you might be leading a completely different life. So how did you get here? Did you actively choose your life, or did you just accept the defaults?

By going out into the woods, Thoreau distances himself from his culture and so perceives it more clearly. Through his eyes we see that it can really be pretty absurd at times. Why do people break their backs working jobs they don't like to afford things they don't need? Why are houses so expensive? And fashionable clothes? Why do we think we need them? Why, why, why? Questions I hadn't even thought to ask.

Thoreau gleefully lobs philosophical grenades at the men of nearby Concord, MA, calling their lives, "lives of quiet desperation". That hurt. My life was one of quiet desperation, and I finally knew what had been bothering me.

I wasn't living deliberately.



Nothing dramatically changed after I read "Walden". I still went to work. I still payed my taxes. But I couldn't un-ask all those questions, and 13 years later I'm still finding my own answers. And sometimes my answers surprise even me. The journey continues.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
--H. D. Thoreau

Bostonian

I just got off the T in my new home, Boston, and headed straight to Harvard Square. You can learn a lot about a new place just by being inconspicuous, observing people and listening to their conversations. ("Eavesdropping", if you're the sort to put a negative spin on it.) Subways like the T are perfect for that. And just on the short ride here, I heard two older guys talking about XML, saw a young coed studying accounting and a professor-ish type with a meticulously kept chin-strap beard and a baseball hat that read, "Physics". I wanted to hug each one of them and exclaim, "YOU ARE MY PEOPLE!"

I think I'll like it here.

I'm off to pick up the keys to my new apartment. Check back in a few days for my first impressions of Boston.

Nicholas Perkins Dupre

On this day fifteen years ago, June 10, 1995, my friend Nick died.

He died of complications from his cancer treatment. Every year on this day, I mark his passing. He'd have some choice words for me for being sentimental about it. Better to remember him by having a party, he'd say; "After I'm dead, prop me in a chair with a drink in one hand, a girl in the other, and have a big party." Typical Nick-style gallows humor. He never wanted any sympathy or complained about anything. He worked hard when it would have been easy to give up. He always chose life, and lived it on his terms, right up to the very end.

I miss him.

Confessions of a Friend Binner

I recently received a very interesting email from an old co-worker. He wanted to know what he had done to offend me. Wha?! He said that on Facebook, he didn't have access to my wall or pictures or notes or anything. The poor guy was genuinely distressed! Oh, my.

Until I decided to leave Seattle and drift, I avoided social networking like the plague. I'd rather hear from you in person. Preferably over a beer. That you bought. Ahem. But from the road, social networking is simply the best option for staying in touch with folks. So I caved and joined. And it was fun.

But then co-workers started friending me. Aunts and cousins, too. You know the drill. I started worrying about offending someone with an offhand remark, or getting in a tussle with some loved one about politics or religion. It's easy to offend, out there on the intar-webs. So I dialed my privacy settings up to 11 and (oh, the shame!) put my friends in bins: friend, friend, family, friend, co-worker, etc.

But some co-workers are friends. Family, too. Why do social networking sites encourage us to bin our friends like that? And in case you missed the irony: by trying to avoid offending people, some people got offended!

So, f*%$!k all that. (Apologies if that offended you.) I'm done with putting my friends in bins. Friends are friends, and that's that.

"Another roof, another proof"

I'm not dead. I'm not done traveling, either. If anything, I've been too busy traveling. After Melbourne, I spent 2 weeks in San Francisco; 3 weeks in Seattle; a long weekend in Spokane, WA; a week at a programmers conference in Aspen, CO; and a week in Phoenix, AZ. I'm now burning the midnight oil at a friend's place outside Charlotte, NC. Next week, I'll be cooling my heels at my parents' place out on Long Island. Whew!

Why all the moving about? Necessity, in part. Being a traveling professional means keeping up professional contacts; hence, the conference in Aspen. Besides, Aspen is purty:

May snow in Aspen, Colorado

But in larger part, my moving about was to see friends and family, who are inconveniently located all over creation. (Why can't you all just move to the Bay Area?)

After Long Island, my next move will again be of a professional nature. I'll relocate to Boston to collaborate with another freelance programmer on a project that interests me. I was inspired by a stray comment made by a fellow conference attendee after he heard about my nomadic lifestyle. He said, "You don't look like you sleep on the street... much." Hah. That wasn't the inspiring bit. He then compared me to a mathematician named Paul Erdős. I'd never heard of the guy, but apparently he was a bit of a nomad himself, showing up on the doorsteps of other mathematicians and sleeping on their sofas while working together on papers. In fact, he's published so many papers -- more than any other mathematician in history, in fact -- that other mathematicians calculate their Erdős number as a sort of geeky six degrees of Kevin Bacon. (The title of this post is a nod to Erdős.)

Anyway, this whole Paul Erdős thing is just a round-about way of saying that I've found a solution to a central problem of my wanderings: no interaction with professional peers. I often prefer working alone, but sometimes it's nice to have a hacking buddy. Since I'm free to drift, I can just drift in the direction of the people and problems that interest me.

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming Boston hack sessions. I won't be crashing on my Boston buddy's sofa, but I still think Paul Erdős would approve.

One Year and Counting

April 1, 2010: April Fool's Day, the day marks the one year anniversary of my wanderings. Man vs. the world, finding his limitations, and all that other romantic nonsense. A fool's errand? Perhaps, but it's taken me some wonderful places. April 1, 2010 was also the day that I finally boarded a plane, left Melbourne and returned to the United States. Here are some pics I took in those last few days of my Melbourne life, days that went by so fast.


The apartment in St. Kilda where I lived for 3 months. On the sofas are Plato and Tess, the two dogs I shared the place with.


Inside The Pelican, a cafe/bar with wifi where I quickly established myself as a regular.


In a hammock-ish chair by a beach drinking coffee. 'Cause that's how I roll.


Sunset over St. Kilda. Until next time, Melbourne.

There...

A year ago, I told people I'd drift until I felt like stopping, but I told myself something different: a year on the road or bust. A year later and I'm still loving the freedom, but I've come to see the downsides, too. Christmas away from family was really hard. Saying goodbye to good people all the time is also really hard. Knowing I'll meet new good people in new places is cold comfort. I find myself wanting to pack my friends into my backpack and take them with me. When I planned this journey, I was obsessed with lifestyle, freedom, places, and technology. I never guessed that I would spend more time thinking about people than That Other Stuff. Look at that! I have heart.

That Other Stuff is important, too. It just turned out to be a lot simpler to be a nomad than I was expecting. In fact, it's been (almost) totally trouble free. Sure, I've had health issues and my laptop died, but those are small things. Take a bit of planning, add helpful and friendly locals, mix with a dash of winging it, shake and enjoy. Why don't more people do this?

... and Back Again

Now I'm back in the States, in the city I love, staying with the couch-surfers I made friends with over the summer. I've been gone long enough for American money to look funny. I forget to walk on the right side of sidewalks and run into people. Beer is suddenly twice as cheap. The coffee comes in enormous mugs. The Internet is free, pervasive, and very fast. People everywhere are obsessed with technology. (Blah, blah, blah, iPad, blah, blah.) But still, these are my people. I've never felt that before.

Funny the things you learn on the road.

Phone Phreak

A friend of mine who was about to set out on her own travels asked me the following question:

Hey, what are you doing for a phone while you travel? Did you buy a prepaid sim card for the phone you had? Or do an int'l phone plan? I'm trying to figure that out.

I remember having lots of similar questions myself before I left on my trip and wrote a few posts about it. Here is the answer I gave my friend:

I have 2 phones: a Blackberry with an international calling plan, unlimited data and worldwide email. And I have a second handset for local SIMs. The second handset is a piece of junk that I got for free from a friend in NZ, but it's quad-band, unlocked, and GSM. That's important. I had thought that I would just use my US number and not worry about the expense of international calls, but it turns out it's really important for a lot of reasons to have a local phone number.

I thought the Blackberry would be all I would need since (unlike an iPhone) Blackberrys can be unlocked and used with local SIMs, but I found that swapping SIMs was a real PITA -- I couldn't reliably receive calls at either number because I might have the other SIM in at the time. Two phones is a crappy solution, but it's the best I've found so far.

You know what's better than carrying around two phones? Tell me. Please.

The other day, a friend showed me his Skype phone, a phone that uses a local Wi-Fi Internet connection to let you call other Skype users for free, and all other phones (even international ones) for a ridiculously low rate. But I refuse to carry a third phone.

(Remarkably, there isn't a Skype application for BlackBerrys, though they keep promising one. There are other VoIP BlackBerry applications (e.g. Truphone), but I haven't been satisfied with them.)

The Great Ocean Road

I had been wanting to do this famous drive ever since I arrived in Melbourne in January: The Great Ocean Road. I mean, it sounds pretty ... great, doesn't it? With my couchsurfer friend T, a borrowed car, and a stowaway Punjabi passed out drunk in the back seat (don't ask), we picked up The Road in Torquay and set out for a weekend of long drives, beautiful views and peaceful slumber under the stars.

 
Required touristy photo op

The drive itself strongly reminded me of Highway 1 down the West Coast of the U.S.: a windy cliff-hugging road chock full of sights and tourists eager to see them all. It rained intermittently all weekend, making the driving conditions treacherous -- all the more so considering that the rear tires of our borrowed car were bald, as we discovered the hard way in one particularly tight slippery turn. No harm done, we took the rest of the drive at a leisurely pace.

We stopped at a campsite near Johanna Beach after a day of beach towns and surfer dudes. By nightfall, the guy in the back seat had roused himself enough to down most of a box of wine, blasting Punjabi music in the car and passing out drunk again. We turned off his music and quietly poured out the rest of his wine before falling asleep ourselves to the sounds of the ocean and the patter of rain on our tents.

 

The next morning, after a quick picnic brunch, we broke camp and headed West toward the Twelve Apostles, a series of sandstone pillars just off the coast. The rain cleared just enough for us to get a couple of sunny seaside snaps.

 

Mission accomplished, we turned around and cut inland for the drive back, through thickly forested park land, eventually setting up camp at the trail head of Beauchamp Falls. I was less impressed by the falls than by the trek, surrounded by towering beech and gum trees and a thicket of fern.

 

That evening, a noble effort of sausages and onions grilled over an open campfire was very nearly quenched by another sudden deluge. The rain let up long enough for us to scarf our damp sausages and retire to the relative warmth of our tents to sleep once again to the sounds of rain.

The ride back was uneventful, unless you count the sobering of our Punjabi friend, who then refused to pay his share of the petrol because he hadn't seen anything. <sigh>

Tasmania!

Some Aussie friends of mine were taking a long weekend in Tasmania, and I decided to tag along. Before coming to Australia, I probably couldn't have found Tasmania on a map. Now I know: it's the big island under the right butt cheek of Australia. Just a short, cheap flight from Melbourne, it's perfect for a long weekend get-away.

We flew to Hobart, the biggest city in Tasmania, on the south part of the island. My friends and I drove right onto a ferry and headed out to Bruny Island. For you Seattleites, think of the San Juan Islands, but with better beaches and water you can swim in.

 
On the ferry to Bruny Island.

 
The views in Tasmania are spectacular. On Bruny Island, the coast and the bay are separated by only a hundred meters or so in places. There are penguin tracks all over.

 

I'm a huge dork.

The water was a little cold, but we went in anyway. Lots of surfers on every beach we went to. Unlike us morons, they were wearing wetsuits.

Mostly, we wandered around Hobart and hung out on beaches, but one day we drove into the bush to visit friends of friends for a barbecue. We ate English sausage and drank Tasmanian beer. I can enthusiastically endorse Moo Brew. When the sun set, the pademelons (pronounced "paddy melon") came out. They're like small wallabys, which are like small kangaroos. Sadly, it was too dark for me to get any pictures.

I also didn't take any pictures of downtown Hobart, which is a pretty little English-style town. But Google street view works there, so have yourself a virtual walk-about.

Healesville Sanctuary

I had been in Australia for over a month, and I hadn't seen a single kangaroo or koala. This past weekend I rectified that situation. With a few friends and a rental car, I headed to the Healesville Sanctuary to get my fill of Australia's wildlife.

 
OMG, koalas! Zzzz...

 
It was a hot day. All the 'roos were out of hop. I tried hopping around myself to give them the idea. They looked at me like I was nuts.

 
Eric N, crocodile hunter!

 

We watched a pretty amazing Birds of Prey exhibit. This guy is a brown wedge-tailed eagle named Ace. We also saw a osprey, a brown falcon and owl that buzzed the crowd and nearly took off with some small children.

I still hope to get out in the bush and see some wild kangaroos. I'm having fun here in Australia, so I've extended my stay until the end of March.

Running Around Town, Melbourne Edition

Just another beautiful sunny day here in Melbourne, so I thought I'd go for a run and take some snaps. A guy could get used to this.


Boardwalk at St. Kilda Beach, about 3pm on a Thursday. Hoppin'!


Fooling around at St. Kilda Pier.


That's downtown Melbourne in the background.


Ahhh...

Melbourne and the Housing Search

January 2nd, I step off the plane in Melbourne International Airport into a new city, a new country, a new decade. I don't know a soul here. I buy a local SIM for my mobile, a bus ticket downtown, and I'm on my way. Whee!

 
Downtown Melbourne, the Yarra River.

It's late and shuttles aren't running anymore, so I walk to North Melbourne where I have lined up a hostel for my first few nights in town.

Housing

Finding housing is the most time-consuming part of nomading, and after traveling for 9 months, this is the best strategy I've found so far: find a place to crash for a few nights (hostel, home-stay, whatever) and use the time to find something better. Lining an apartment up in advance is pointless; until you see it in person, you don't know what you're getting. And couch-surfing is great, but more than a few weeks of that is exhausting. So I checked Gumtree and after a few false starts, I hit on a wonderful flat in St Kilda with roof access, a beach view (if you squint), and a 2 minute walk to this:

 
Beach in St. Kilda, and a hundred or so insane kite-surfers.

I'm happy with the flat, but it took a lot of hot-dogging around town to find it. I'm still looking for a better way. I tried to go to a local real estate agent to help me find a short-term rental. Alas, when I arrived, everybody was still on their New Year's holiday, so that experiment will have to wait. I've also considering hiring a personal assistant in India to help me line up places -- don't laugh, that 4-hour workweek guy suggests doing just that -- but then I'm back to lining up places sight unseen, not a recipe for housing bliss. So what's the answer? As in the words of Tevye from Fiddler On The Roof, "I'll tell you! [pause] I don't know."

Melbourne

But Melbourne! I love it here. There are dozens of different neighborhoods and hundreds of coffee shops and bars and live music venues and quirky alternative book stores, and beautiful, friendly people, and lots of sun. I spend much of my work days in the State Library of Victoria, where it's quiet and cool and the Internet is slow but free.

 
Chess Room in the State Library of Victoria.

My evenings are spent either exploring Melbourne's nightlife solo or meeting up with couch-surfers for drinks and live music. My weekend? A free concert in a park and then a Belgian beer garden with some new friends, and some coffee, a book, and a patch of shade at a street cafe in Carlton. Not too bad, eh?

 
"Coffee is my life.""

Shambhala, Golden Bay, the New Year, and Old Resolutions

Last year, I resolved to "live in a bigger world." As resolutions go, it was a bit of a cheat since I had pretty much already committed to my nomadic lifestyle. Regardless, it's a good resolution; I'm happy with it, it fits well, and I'm sticking with it.

So in that spirit of openness, I allowed myself to be talked into spending New Year's Eve with my Kiwi friends C and A at a hippie backpacker eco-resort called Shambhala in Golden Bay on New Zealand's South Island.

 
C and A in the Tea House at Shambhala, overlooking the ocean.

Shambhala has everything you might expect from a hippie backpacker eco-resort: solar power, rainwater collection, composting toilets, one totally imperturbable proprietor named John, one very hairy yoga instructor named B.J., and some of the nicest let's-get-away-from-it-all world travelers I've met anywhere who spent their days sitting in the sun reading, collecting mussels from the beach for dinner, playing guitar on the grass and singing silly songs, and generally having a good time.

 
A heading down to the beach to poke her toes in tide pools.

Just a short drive from Shambhala is Pupu Springs, where a whole river bubbles up out of the ground. It's the purest natural fresh water on Earth and a site sacred to the native Māori people. Looking down into the spring is like peering into a vast cathedral through bluegreenyellow stained-glass windows.

 
Pupu Springs in Golden Bay, New Zealand

Just a 20 minute walk from Shambhala is the Mussel Inn, a brewery and pub tucked amongst the wild growth of Golden Bay. A glowworm walkway through the woods gets you there. At night, the glowing worms form strange constellations that twinkle as the wind blows through the fern trees. The Mussel Inn was the site of our group's New Year's Eve celebration. Live music, fresh air, exotic beers brewed on-site -- definitely a proper way for this nomad to ring in a new year of travel and adventure. I almost didn't miss my usual NYE celebration in Seattle with all my old friends. Almost.

 
The gang at the Mussel Inn for New Year's Eve 2010.

And then it was 2010. From Golden Bay, to Nelson, to Wellington and then on to Melbourne, Australia, where I now sit recollecting in a coffee shop. But that's a whole other story...