Travel Immunizations

It's been a long time since my last update. Mostly that's because I haven't had anything exciting to report. Just bouncing around the US: New York, Fire Island, Seattle, New York, Baltimore, Charlotte, Charlottesville, New York, Syracuse, New York ... boring domestic travel. <yawn>

That's all about to change. In 3 days I board a plane bound for Hanoi, Vietnam! This will, without a doubt, be the most adventurous of my travels to date. It's taken a bit more research, and I'm that much closer to being the savvy global traveler of my dreams.

Stay Healthy!

I've often read on travel websites about the infamous "yellow card" that travelers pack along with their passport. It lists which immunizations you've received and when. You get stamps, just like with a passport. Some countries won't let you in without the right stamps in your yellow card. But I didn't have one.




So I got myself to the Seattle Public Health Travel Clinic. I told them my itinerary, and they told me everything that could kill or maim me in each of those places. A lot, it turns out. They printed it all out for me. They also shot me full serum. Both arms. Hurt like heck. But now I'm just that much fitter to travel.

I'm not quite ready yet, but I can at least cross that one off my list.

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.