Previous Trip Reports: Getting to India Five Journeys to Cotonou, Benin Easter Island to Beirut, Lebanon Leaving Hong Kong Homeless in London Full Archive *** In the parts of the world where globalization has truly set in, skill with languages is becoming increasingly irrelevant. In some cases, I’ve learned, it’s better to play dumb even…
Read MoreHappy 4th of July, everyone, live from the Russian Federation, en route to the new Republic of Moldova. I’ll tell you more about this part of the world soon, but for now I thought I’d say a few things about my homeland, the much-loved and much-hated United States of America. International readers, the 4th of…
Read MoreThis is how it all begins. The night before, I pack my bags. I can do this in about 20 minutes if needed, but to be safe, I usually take twice as long. After a lot of experience packing, I have a good system. Running shoes, two pairs of pants, three shirts, and so on.…
Read MoreLive from Amsterdam Greetings from Amsterdam’s nice Schiphol airport, where I’m spending the day in transit after arriving early this morning from Minneapolis. Schiphol is one of Europe’s nicest airports, so if you’re going to spend 8 hours waiting for a late-night connection like I’m doing now, this is a good place to do it.…
Read MoreOriginally published June 30th, 2008 Because I prefer to write content that will remain relevant for more than a few days, I don’t usually write about current affairs. We’re also coming out of World Domination Week, with the launch of my manifesto and everything related to that. But I decided to postpone what I had…
Read MoreI’m heading out on my next overseas adventure early tomorrow morning. I’m going on an independent journey through the Baltics (Latvia, Estonia, Finland), over to St. Petersburg in Russia, and then on to a couple of other exciting stops that I’ll discuss later. To get to my starting point, I’m using the second half of…
Read MoreHello everyone, thank you for reading my manifesto on world domination. Here is the first-ever Art of Nonconformity video update! I should warn you first that this is good (I think) but not great. My friend Ken, the amazing videographer, brought all this crazy stuff to my apartment and we did the whole thing in…
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Dear Worldchangers, Greetings from Seattle, Washington. Today I present to you your own copy of the promised manifesto, modestly entitled A Brief Guide to World Domination. –>Click Here to Open or Download the PDF Report *** Tech Notes: The report should work in all computers with Adobe Reader installed. *** A Few Things You’ll Learn…
Read MoreMy nice university-sponsored health insurance is ending soon, so I thought it would be good to go in for a check-up. On Friday morning I headed down to the university clinic right next to where I used to go to school. The good news is that I’m fit and healthy, as I expected to be.…
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First of all, welcome to my new readers. Many of you are coming over from Zen Habits in response to a guest essay I published there yesterday. The essay is called Three Truths to Creating a Life of Gratitude, and I am grateful for everyone who is following along on my own journey of gratefulness.…
Read MoreHi everyone… I had a bit of an adventure last week. My parents and little sister came to visit in Seattle, and we took a 7-night cruise to Alaska. A few years ago the ship we were on caught on fire during a Caribbean cruise, but nothing exciting like that happened on our trip. There…
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I arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after trekking through Jordan and Israel. Flying on Gulf Air, I stopped off in Bahrain for six hours, where I persuaded the immigration guy to let me into the country for a while even though I was in transit. Total cost: $10 for a one-day visa. Six…
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I realized recently that it’s been about 90 days since I started this web site and committed to the publishing schedule of three essays per week. I thought it would be good to summarize what I’ve learned, including the mistakes I’ve made as well as the things I’ve done right. Even if you’re not a…
Read MoreIf you’re reading this essay, I have some good news for you today: the odds are that you are very well-off in the financial sense. In fact, in case you’ve never realized it before, you are incredibly rich. Surprise! You may not have realized how rich you are, so I thought I’d show you how…
Read MoreEver play the lottery? If you have, did you spend a few seconds thinking about what it would be like to win when you scratched off that ticket or selected your magic numbers? Don’t lie—no one is listening except yourself. Here’s my guess: If you ever bought a lottery ticket, OF COURSE you thought about…
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