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...

The Best and Worst of Wellington

My time here in Wellington is nearly up. In a few days, I pack up all my stuff and shuffle off to the South Island for a little New Year's revelry, and then on to Melbourne. So, what to say about Wellington?

The Bad

There's no doubt that my time here has been, uh, challenging. Both of my personal computers, the one that sits on my lap and the one that rests between my ears, have experienced spectacular hardware failures. If only my bio-ware were as easily replaced as my laptop.

The weather has been disappointing too; even the local are complaining about the lack of a summer. But there's something to be said for high winds in a city full of women wearing skirts. Never let it be said that I fail to see the glass as half-full. Seriously, watching women gamely trying to hold their skirts from blowing over their heads is funny, funny stuff.

And as a base for digital nomadism, I can sum up Wellington in two words: "Don't bother." There are no coffee shops with free WiFi, period. What Internet there is, is sloooow and expensive. Want coffee with free refills? Ha! You can't even buy filtered coffee here -- espresso only, and it's pricey.

The Good

I feel guilty complaining at all about beautiful Wellington. Like when I went for a short jog up Mount Victora the other day...

 

It took only 10 minutes to reach this breathtaking view:

 

And it's only 10 minutes in the other direction to walk into town, where I've made myself a fixture at several local establishments. I can enthusiastically recommend The Malthouse, a beer-lovers oasis. And! And! They have free WiFi. I know! The staff are beer geeks (and computer geeks) of the first order. Ask for a bottle of Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale. Good stuff.

I've also become close with the whole staff of The Jimmy Cafe and Bar, the site of my little medical mishap. They made me promise to keep in touch after I leave, and I will.

For a cafe with serious hipster credentials, I like Midnight Espresso on Cuba Street, and Fidel's. In fact, all of Cuba Street is pretty darn cool.

And obviously, I don't hold Wellington responsible for my health and hardware issues. On the contrary, I couldn't have hoped for a more forgiving place to encounter challenges like those. I've learned a lot about how to cope without really ending up worse off in any way. So bonus.

I leave in a few days for the South Island, where I'll experience complete radio silence. My next post will probably be from Melbourne, in a new country, in a new decade. So until then...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And what a year it's been!

The Nu Nomad, Now In Book Form

I've linked before to nunomad.com, a site devoted to location-independent living. Well, now you can learn the ins and outs of working and traveling from a easy-to-carry paperback. The Nu Nomad: Location Independent Living is available now from Amazon.com, just in time for the holiday!

 From the description:

Would you like to travel for months at a time and maintain or even increase your spending power while you have the time of your life? The Nu Nomad is a "how-to" manual for those who are serious about breaking out of the office and into the world. This resource includes information on all vital aspects of designing a location-independent lifestyle.

(Disclaimer: I haven't read it. This ain't a review or a recommendation.)

Making Lemonade from Laptops

The laptop I bought last week turned out to be a lemon. That's the bad news. The good news is that I can continue to use it until the new model comes in in a few days. Then, I get essentially a free upgrade. W00t!

Here's what I've learned from this experience:

1. Buy from reputable firms that will stand behind their product. For me, that was Harvey Norman, a big electronics chain in New Zealand.
2. Understand your power as a consumer. The technician first tried to tell me nothing was wrong. Then he tried to tell me that it's normal for trackpads to be jumpy when the laptop isn't on a perfectly flat surface. First, that's bull. Second, it doesn't matter. As a consumer, three words suffice: "I'm not satisfied." There's no arguing with that. Once I made that clear, we got straight down to business.
3. Be firm about your requirements. I can't afford any more downtime, so sending it away for repairs was not an option. The store manager understood completely and worked with me to come up with a solution.
4. Never let anyone talk you into buying the display model, regardless of how much of a discount they give you. That machine has been on and running for probably 8 months, and people have been pounding on it non-stop. Is it any wonder that the trackpad would be possessed be demons? The keyboard will probably give out too, and the battery is already weak. Just say no to the display model.
5. When hardware isn't behaving 100% to spec, don't hesitate; get it looked at or replaced immediately. Hardware problems never get better on their own, and they usually get worse -- much worse -- very quickly. Heard any strange noises coming from your hard disk lately? Run, don't walk, to the nearest PC repair shop. Really.
6. Don't scrimp when it comes to your professional tools. I tend to be frugal and make do with what I have. But when it comes to the tools of my profession, I'm not scrimping any more. The productivity gains more than make up for it. I'm putting myself on an aggressive upgrade cycle. Laptops, phones, accessories, services -- I deserve the best! So do you.

One other good thing has already come of this: I splurged for a bluetooth mini-mouse. How did I ever get anything done without it? It's a fabulous investment for any traveling computer professional.

Rotorua and Orakei Korako

Just got back from a weekend with C at Rotorua, New Zealand's geothermal stink-pot. Smells like rotten eggs, looks like nothing you've ever seen. These next photos were taken about 45 minutes South of Rotorua at Orakei Korako Thermal Park, where the ground steams, geysers erupt and mud boils. It's nuts.

 
 
 

Here is lovely Lake Rotorua, actually the caldera of an active volcano. That doesn't seem to trouble the hoards of tourists playing in its waters and enjoying the local hot springs and mud baths.

 
 

All the swans on Lake Rotorua are black. Isn't "black swan" supposed to be idiomatic for a statistical outlier? Nobody tell Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ok?