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Cargo ship travel takes you around the world
I want to do this…. and bad. The depressing thing is I’m crazy enough I might just try it. Anyone want to spend 45 days in a dirty room eating stew out of a can and stopping at every port up the yellow river, or hitting every island in the south pacific? Let me know if you want in, I’ll work you into the itinerary.
So I picked this (article here) up off Digg several months ago and wanted to comment on it then, but ironically I’ve been far too busy to touch it till now. It’s an article all about ‘Funemployment’ which defined in the article is “A period of joblessness that you actually enjoy — maybe you get to lay out, sleep in, work out, read up. It helps to have savings, severance, or an unemployment check to help pay the bills. We’re hearing this word used more and more, especially as people realize they may not be able to find a new job right away, so they might as well try to enjoy the time off.”
I think there is some merit to what the article goes after and particularly the phrase ‘funemployment’. There is a crowd of 20-30 somethings that are realizing that life isn’t as cut and dried as they’d planned and find themselves in an interesting place. Imagine the confusion if you’ve been told your entire life to get good grades so you can get into a good university, so you do. Then it’s work hard and take on internships and extracurricular activities so you can impress an employer and get a good job leaving school, so you do. Then after you’ve done all this, you find yourself out of school for a couple of years and back at square one wondering where you went wrong. It’s a common theme amongst many of my peers, as being jobless isn’t something that the ambitious, passionate folk I sometimes associate with have thought about enough to handle.
That being said, once found in a position of being jobless after only a few years on the market, you go through this phase of identity crisis. You weren’t in the job long enough to tag yourself as a ‘finance guy for the restaurant industry’ because honestly, you were only there for a year or two, so do you want to do that again? Or do you find something a bit more fulfilling? If you want to look elsewhere, what do you look for? For that matter, how did you get tied into the restaurant industry in the first place? And on and on the questions go. It’s so easy to get stressed out by the needs of life when a major piece like employment is missing, that this article makes perfect sense to me.
It talks about how people are sometimes reacting with going into a mode of “I’m gonna relax, I worked my tail off all through school, all through college, right into my job, but now, the bills are getting paid, let’s do book clubs and lunch dates and take a break.” Or even better, actually getting out traveling, or volunteering, or doing any of those things you always wished you had time to do, because right now, at the peak of a recession, time just needs to be used up, not slowed down. So they do. I do.
From my personal experience, I haven’t taken to lounging and drinking my juice box as I watch Dora the Explorer in my parent’s basement, but I do more of those things I never could before. I travel more; I work from my laptop on projects I’ve wanted to explore for ages, so I do. I pack everything up and hop in the car for a weekend road trip, then work the next week from a friend’s house in Utah while we mountain bike in the evenings, or head back to DC for the week to visit the girlfriend while I tour the capitol building and the white house. I now take on projects for charity and friends because I finally have time to squeeze other things in. It turns into a very glamorous and fulfilling life style.
The article goes into more detail on some people who have tried to do nothing with their lives (see the dora example earlier), but I haven’t seen this to be the rule. Most of the people I know who have been cut up in this wave of economic drama have responded as I’ve described. Filling their time with meaningful things that they always wanted to accomplish which can be a bit dangerous. I’ve seen more great pictures and stories told from activities enjoyed in this quasi hiatus in the working life than I’ve seen in a while, so the drive to get back into a cubicle somewhere may not be all that enticing. Of course, unemployment checks don’t last forever, nor will magical stimulus money keep making it last longer, so something has to give in the end.
I think this is a good experience to have though. I remember reading a book a few years ago about the rock climbing movement through the 70’s where people would just show up at Yellowstone or other good climbing spots, setup camp, and live there all year, then work 7-11 to make money during the winter to come back and do it again. The book glamorized the lifestyle, but I see it as kind of a waste long term. But the stories and experience from a year or two of that would be great to have, and sometimes if you don’t have the guts to drop everything and go do it, life fixes that for you and pushes you out the door towards some great adventure. Just make sure you come back in the end, cause no one wants to be that hippie uncle.
I only wish I’d taken my full unemployment instead of living off of the savings. Indonesia with Dan could have been a reality…. 
.
So I’ve had some exciting things going on recently!! Finally got the office done back in Missouri so I can setup a bookshelf and unpack some of the boxes I’ve been hauling around for 8+ years through college and life, as well as setup the server’s and various other computer hoo-hah that’s been waiting for a more permanent home than my BBP Laptop Bag (if I haven’t plugged bbpbags.com before, shame on me. They’ve been great, and after about 6 months after my original purchase, a plastic snap broke, and their customer service was beside themselves and insisted on shipping me out a whole new bag…. awesome) so that’s exciting. Here’s a pic of the office after it’s first painting -
office walls
and now I’m in Canada for a week, then a week in PA and a week in NH then home again. Fun things are underway work wise, so that’s good, dating life is lose, so that’s lame. But all in all, plenty to smile about. Tomorrow is Dave’s little brothers wedding, so I’ll throw up a few pics from that.
Enjoy
So I’ve recently decided to relocate from the very lovely, very snowy home I’ve enjoyed for nigh unto five months. This was imminent from the get go, as my living situation was always temporary up there, but all the same, it was the most permanent home I’d had in over a year and a half. Permanent, as in living in my best friend’s basement, stealing cheerios from the high chair of his little girl, that kind of permanent. As an ode to the time spent up there, we worked like the dickens and got three companies up and moving in the process. This equaled 20-22 hour days six days a week in the office, where I would literally take a lunch at the desk of a PB&J sandwich and not leave the house for 3-4 days at a time for me, and Dave still having to cover the daily bills with a real job would work his 9-5 and come home for a few hours with the family, then crank late into the evening, often crashing out around 2 am, where I would make him feel guilty for cashing in before the magical 5 am hour that was my wall.
We worked hard and had a blast in the process. It had been a dream to work with Dave since we grew to be such good chums years ago, and we’d giggle in gleeful spurts as we’d spin around in our chairs and sketch out strategies on our mini white board, then spin again back to the monitors to make it happen. It was great to get to realize that dream. We didn’t make our millions in 2 months, but we built some lasting companies that will hold a good legacy for a while to come. But anyway, home again, home again jiggety jig.
When I decided on when I was coming home, I didn’t have a calendar in front of me. I had, just two weeks previously, jetted down to Phoenix for Jared & Po’s wedding where I met a few new friends, slept in their apartment, and met up with so old buddies from Hawaii, then cruised up to Portland for the weekend to see Kim, Jane, and my old Institute director Bro Heiner. It was a solid weekend, and then flying home through DC, decided to take a week there to visit the girlfriend, then I got back to Canada. Well, turns out I was driving home 3 days later. Poor planning at its finest.
So for the trip home, I got my old roomie from Hawaii to fly out for what we have termed “The Ultimate Road Trip ‘09” which went like this – Pick Mike up at Buffalo airport, and drive through NY, camping out in the middle of northern NY, then about a week in Boston to visit some very good friends there (Ben and Mooney), north through Vermont, then south again to DC for a week of Sam & Audi getting hitched and hanging out with a woman friend of my own, up to Philly for 4 days with the BYU Hawaii SIFE Team to mentor and support and be mentored and supported by one of my dear friends out from Hawaii, then over to Gettysburg to see it for real (I’ve studied the battle my entire life), back to DC for a few more days, up to Baltimore to visit the family, down through Louisville, up past Chicago, then home to Missouri. About a month on the road in total. It was good to be reminded of how good some friends are, and really how much I have to smile about. Thanks to Mike and all along the trail who made it such a good adventure.
All in all, it’s been a great several months, but it’s good to be home. I haven’t had a summer back home in 8 years. Crazy to think it’s been so long, but it’s good to have some finality to the travels and be too poor to really go anywhere. I’m effectively back on the single scene which has removed the primary incentive for being out and about anyway, so I’m back in the office, cranking away. I’m on to company #7 now, which is fun to have some traction with what I’m doing and I find the diversity of my portfolio endearing. It’s fun to know I can pick up any industry from quilting to real estate, learn the inner workings and be an effective force in sales, marketing, and strategy all in less than 6 months.
Anyway, I’m working on a new project with a buddy of mine producing a podcast. So you’ll be able to hear my rants for about 30 minutes a shot, on a weekly, soon to be thrice weekly podcast in the very near future. But it has me writing and commenting a bit more regularly, so I’ll share some of that in the process.
Enjoy
So at the risk of having hordes of locusts sent down on me by Geoff’s mom, I’m going to share this story with you that she sent over to me the other for a couple of reasons. The essence of this story is that someone we know was almost scammed, and the way they did it is a bit uncanny for my liking, and at the risk that someone could try it on someone else I love, lets talk about it for a second.
The issue is that in today’s day and age, information is prevelant. It’s out there. Being a techno giz kid, as I am, I have pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about me posted somewhere on the internet. My thought around this is that I have my identity protected, my credit cards are all equipped with fraud protection, meaning if my info was stolen I could get my money back, etc. I feel like I’m covered. My oversight in all this may be illustrated in the story that follows. And honestly, with things like Facebook, Twitter, and blogging, gathering details like where I am, what I do for a living, who my friends are (just cruise pictures and find out who I’m with) even my birthday is relatively easy to get a hold of (the piece of information that thwarted this would be scammer). What I’m saying is that we’re all very open with our information, and in that light we need to be more cautious in how we live our lives.
I remember mom and dad, when we were little, setup a secret pass phrase (something like Camchucket or very near to it) that they would tell us in case someone ever came saying ‘yer mom and dad wanted me to come get you’ ie kidnapping rapists. Boom, just like that, we were covered. Someone asks you to go with them, ask them for the pass coeds. If they don’t give it, run. It’s funny that now that we’re older and more mature, we don’t bother with the simple things.
Moral of the story, take some time and protect yourself. Grandparents, nieces, nephews, etc, send them an email (link to this, don’t forward it for fear of the locusts) and give them a game plan you might use. If anything, take some time to think about what could happen, and spend a few minutes to prevent the worst of it.
Now, the harrowing tale -
Just wanted to alert you to something that happened to Geoff’s grandparents yesterday, apparently by someone who was either very lucky or has picked up enough info about the two of you to try a scam. This is an awful story but has a happy ending, just barely.Yesterday, someone named “Geoff/Jeff” (who knows the spelling) called my dad. He told Dad this was his grandson Jeff calling from Toronto. He told grandpa he had flown over from the UK to visit his friend in Toronto, they had been in a car accident, and he needed $2800 immediately. I don’t remember why — to get the car out of hock, to pay his friend’s hospital bills, not sure, but it was something plausible enough that my dad believed it. “Jeff” told Grandpa he could repay the money as soon as Jeff got back to London. He told Grandpa he needed him to wire the money to him via Western Union. He told him the account to send it to, and that he would call him back to get the pick-up number. (I remember this procedure from when I had to wire money to Geoff in Ukraine.)So, did my high IQ, savvy, well-educated but elderly parents think to call me to verify this story???? To see if I knew if Geoff was in Toronto? To ask why he hadn’t called his Mom first? Nooooooooooooo, I am alarmed to say. Instead they went to the bank, withdrew $2000, went to Western Union and wired it to “Jeff.” (ARGH!!!) When “Jeff” called back to get the pick up number for the money, for some reason Grandpa decided to ask him what his birthday was. “Jeff” didn’t know. “Jeff” said he was in a hurry, couldn’t tell Grandpa his birthday, and for Grandpa to just give him the pick up number. Grandpa said surely Jeff must know his birthday….but Jeff didn’t, so Grandpa hung up. My parents decided something fishy was going on, went to Western Union, got their money back, got the bank to cancel the check, etc. etc. So they barely missed being scammed by whoever this was.Sometime later, a man called my parents, saying he was from the Sacramento Police Department and that they had arrested someone trying to impersonate their grandson Jeff Evans. I’m not quite sure how this part went, but my grandparents think it was someone trying to get them to believe the scammer had been arrested so they wouldn’t report it to the police. Only my Grandpa, now suspicious, said his grandson’s last name wasn’t Evans. The supposed Police Department guy didn’t know the real Geoff’s real last name. When my dad started questioning the guy, he hung up.My parents immediately went to the local Police Department and reported this whole thing. The police department wasn’t the least bit interested because my parents hadn’t actually lost any money. They said they only investigate when a crime has occurred. (Kind of depressing the police had no interest, eh?)Anyway, I am amazed my parents almost fell for this, and so grateful they did not. But then I was thinking about it, and wondered if I might not have fallen for the same thing, at least part-way through. Whoever did this was either was very lucky (randomly called elderly people till they found one who did have a grandson named Jeff, or else getting Grandpa to give out the name, or who knows what, and then guessing Geoff was living in the UK and had a friend in Toronto [something my parents didn't know, but I would have]), or else this person somehow picked up enough knowledge to know Geoff is in the UK, is currently traveling, and has a friend in Toronto. If this person had called me and said he was Geoff in Toronto visiting his friend, I’m sure I would have volunteered Al’s name, kind of a fill in the blank thing. I would have questioned him, and in my confusion, likely provided enough info for him to continue with the story. I am confident I would have stopped short of wiring the money, but it’s all very creepy anyway. I have no idea how what happened took place, but just wanted to alert both of you, since the odds seem likely someone pieced together enough info about you to come up with a plausible scam. Yikes. I don’t know if there are any precautions you need to take at this point, but I did want you to know.I don’t think either of you would do this, but for goodness sake, don’t turn this into one of those chain emails sent around the world to alarm people about stories that happened to their friends. You can tell people about it verbally, but don’t forward the email or I will send plagues of locusts to haunt you.Cheers,
So I’ve had two great adventures this week. First, on Thursday my buddy Dan and his wife Lauren wanted to show us a place in Brantford called WingMaster, an establishment complete with a … wait for it … wingmaster. It was brilliant. This place has 300+ flavors of wings, everything from your classic honey mustard to pizza flavor to stuff so hot you have to sign a waiver. It’s crazy. So we order 10lbs of wings, and get the pizza flavor, the cherry coke flavor, sweet lava, etc. This place was seriously amazing. Then, after a healthy meal like that, we get our dessert of deep fried oreo’s. These things are amazing, sound disgusting, but amazing. My mouth was so happy. So we sit back and are feeling quite satisfied when Trey, this big black guy who runs the place comes out and starts chatting with us and we’re laughing and telling jokes, loving the whole ambiance of the place, and Trey goes in the back and says he’s got a surprise for us, and the dude whips out a cardboard box (like you’d get for a flat of soda, kind of shallow and such) and covers it in foil, then fills it with 10 lbs of poutine, which for those of you not in the know, is French fries covered in gravy and cheese curds. So seriously, enough to feed a small European nation, and he brings it to our table. As if we hadn’t already compromised the arteries, we opt not to offend the gift giver and start shoveling gravy and cheese covered French fries into our mouths. It was quite the night. And in other news, I felt heartburn for the first time in my entire life that night. Completely unrelated, but thought you’d like to know.
Second thing, I hit a Toronto Raptors NBA game in a corporate box seat. It was a fine moment for me, thank you Wayne, there’s just something wonderful about watching a game from a plush chair with snacks. Though it seems there’s expected etiquette for yelling from the box, I don’t think I’m invited back. We had a good run though.
So I flew from Boston to newark to London, barely skirting out before Boston got its first major snow storm of the season and made the all night flight to London. I got in and struggled to manage the monstrosity that is the Heathrow airport, and waited for about 2 hours for Mikale to show up from DC. We ran down to the subway or “Tube”
We rode down to Trafalger square and were pleasantly surprised to find a huge group of carolers out there putting us in the Christmas spirit.
So I want to really convey the experience / adventure this trip ended up being for me, and I figure the easiest way to pull this off will be to give you a day by day playback and throw up there obscene amounts of photos in the process. I’ll leave them all small, cause most of them will be cleaned up and put up on doangang.com
So I’m queing them up, one a day or every other day and you can follow what my journey, like Paul,
Enjoy,
So just a quick note, I got home from my travels a few days ago and heard about what happened to Jake and Misty. For the readers digest version, BJ (Misty’s dad) had recently picked up a carbon monoxide detector for their new house a few weeks ago, and both surprisingly and luckily jake had it up and running. Luckily cause new years eve misty and the kids had headaches and such and had ended up leaving the house when jake got home from work and the carbon monoxide detector started going off. After firetrucks and artery digging at the emergency room (read doangang.blogspot.com if you want the whole shpeel) they are fine and replaced the stove that was the potential deadly killer.
The thought though, that a family of four as cute as theirs was in that much danger of going to sleep and just not waking up really kind of shook me up a bit. It just makes me a bit more appreciative of how fragile we really are and how carefully we should tread at times. Props to BJ for being the proactive grandpa, and props to jake for not yanking the battery out of that thing and forgetting about it like we’d done with smoke detectors our entire life when they would start going.
In short, love you guys, and am glad your safe and that we’ll all be around for Christmas and New Years next year.
So I’ve made it to Cairo via Amman Jordan. Cairo is crazy. After a place like Israel, Cairo is so tourist driven. My experience so far is that everyone is trying to scam you and I’ve had to yell at my share of Arabs already.
It is something rather humbling to stand at the foot of the oldest structure on earth and have it be enormous and looming over you. At one point we just sat and looked, it’s all you can do.
The hotel we’re in is something of am adventure as well, I let Mikale pick it and she found one for only 12 USD! Bargains galore eh? Well let me tell you, turns out there are certain amenities I’ve grown accustomed to, like locks and free toilet paper. This place is a disaster. we’re moving out tonight cause I just can’t bring myself to relax in this room. And when I’m not on am iPhone I’ll write more.
Anyway. I’ll hit the Egyptian museum today and a few other sights then new years eve is reserved for sitting in my hotel (hopefully nicer than this one) room and writing in my journal, then new years day I’ll be flying home.
Thanks for all the comments and quick emails, it’s great to hear from people as much as possible while your out and away.
Enjoy