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Extreme Gratitude, Austin Edition

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Greetings from the capital of the Internet this week, also known as Austin, Texas. It's a fun place with fun people. In case you're not familiar with this annual event, once a year everyone on the Internet moves down to Austin for an annual pilgrimage. Big companies give away free drinks at various parties. People talk on stages and bands play in what appears to be an unlimited number of bars ...


An Interview With Yourself

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From time to time, it's good to have a conversation with yourself—maybe even an interview. This is how you do it.

First, sit yourself down wherever you like to sit. Get coffee or your drink of choice. Turn off the distractions and take it seriously. (Wouldn't you take another interview seriously?)

Then you open the conversation like this:

Dear self, you are x years old. What do you have to show for it? Are you living the dream?


Thoughts on Risk and 808,185 Frequent Flyer Miles

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Last fall I wrote about a special promotion where you could earn an enormous Frequent Flyer bonus by buying a large quantity of useless stickers.

True story, as odd as it sounds. It was one of the best travel hacking opportunities I've been a part of yet.

As I result of the promotion, I woke up yesterday to an influx of new miles in my US Air account. How many? Well, I had already earned about 280,000 a few months ago ... but this morning the new deposit read: 808,185 miles.


The Eight-Year Escape Plan: Interview with Tsilli Pines

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It's a new month, and time for a new profile. My friend Tsilli Pines recently quit her job to go full-time with the side business she's been building for the past three years.

Yay! Congratulations to her. And when we were talking, she told me how she had worked at the job for eight years, and has spent the past three years carefully building her business to the point where she could take a big leap ...


Site Update: March 2010

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Greetings from home base in the great Portland, Oregon. I've just returned from my first trip to Asia of 2010. The February trip was quite intense. First, I went to two faraway island groups: Papua New Guinea and the Maldives. I'm glad I made it, because they are both fairly time-consuming to get to. However, it's also true that flying to islands can sometimes present challenges ...


Overnight Success, Year Three

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Now that the birthday is over, we're officially heading into Year Three of World Domination. A few people said they were surprised that everything has happened so quickly. I regularly receive notes that say “I've been reading your blog for years.” It feels like several years to me too—but we've only just now crossed the second year point ...


8-Hour Flight Delay, Good vs. Great Work, etc.

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Greetings again from Bangkok, where I'm approaching the end of my latest trip around various parts of the Asia-Pacific side of the world. Coming out of the Maldives the other night, I got stuck for eight hours. Eight hours! Here's the lesson from that experience: no eight-hour airport delay is ever announced as being eight hours. It's always two hours, then one hour, then another hour, and so on—giving you false hope while sitting on hard metal chairs all through the night ...


Tips for Stress-Free Travel

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The title of this post is somewhat of a misnomer: I almost never experience travel that is truly stress-free. For starters, not all travel can or should be predictable. Sometimes the unexpected is better than the planned.

Secondly, not all stress is bad, because some of the most challenging times in our lives are the most stressful. No risk, no glory—that kind of thing.

Yet, when heading out into the world, it helps to control as many variables as you can. I'd rather experience travel stress related to something fun than something preventable that was my own fault. With that in mind, here's a primer on low-stress travel—and your contributions are welcome too.


Update from Manila about Everything

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Greetings, friends and readers. A few days ago I went to SFO, then I went to HKG, and then at 11pm local time (after 20 hours of travel), I made it in to MNL — also known as Manila, the Philippines. From here I'm jumping off to Papua New Guinea, but hold on a minute. The last time I was in the Philippines, I was about eight years old. I lived here from 1984-1986 as part of my first big jump in cross-cultural life. I have vague memories of riding jeepneys, eating chicken and rice every night, and occasionally starting small fires in small trees. Twenty-something years later, and here I am again. I don't eat chicken or light trees on fire these days, but I'm still happy to ride around in jeepneys. Fun times! Even when I'm jet-lagged.