I don’t know how many different kinds of budget accommodation I’ve seen in my travels. Jjimjilbang in South Korea, where one can enjoy a hot soak and set out floor mats when it’s time to crash. Capsule hotels in Japan. Practically any hotel in Thailand. Couchsurfing. Each country and culture offers their own method...
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We see it all the time: friends who have obligations that keep them from fulfilling their potential in the workforce. Teenagers find themselves pregnant and needing money; instead of finishing high school and moving on to university, they must wait tables (or worse) to feed another mouth. A victim of a near-fatal car accident...
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Starting over in the states is an expensive proposition. I don’t really want to be location independent at the moment, so I can’t simply Couchsurf and rideshare my way across the country, having little space or time to call my own. I tried that in Boston, and while it didn’t exactly drive me insane,...
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Despite my best efforts, I gage the value of my life more by others’ perceptions than my own. In this sense, I’m a walking, talking contradiction. For you see, many people believe I’m living the dream, as a free spirit, traveling the world. But just as many, myself included, find this lifestyle wanting. I...
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It’s all starting to come back to me now: working the 9-5, staying in one place, being content without travel. Such is the power of American culture. I can honestly say the first time I left the US after graduation, it wasn’t due to the draw of the outside world; I was simply unemployed...
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I’ve been keeping my runs under 10 km for the last few months. The reason is two-fold: I’m back on the Vibram Fivefingers and not eager to repeat a stress fracture; I’ve been trying to keep a flexible schedule for work and life, and keeping my runs short (as opposed to a 20+ mile...
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My relationship with the federal government has evolved over the thirty years of my time on Earth. From the day I was born until I was fifteen, my involvement was limited to hearing choice bits on the news (remember, no Internet yet) and sending letters to soldiers in Desert Storm. During my high school...
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Once I saw that familiar orange and black packaging I knew a chilled Reese’s peanut butter cup was waiting for me behind the glass. Ignoring the lunch of issan sticky rice and sausage from Klok Kloi and the dinner of pepperoni pizza from Mars Bar in Bang Niang, I bought one for 45 Baht...
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It’s not the same as it was before, when I had to return to Dallas with my head hung low, lacking any job prospects and feeling pretty miserable about myself and the direction my life was headed. Such was the state I was in when I decided to apply to schools in South Korea....
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I remember a conversation I had in San Francisco as I volunteered to be in the background of a Food Network commercial in exchange for some free gourmet samples. Between takes, I offered up that I had traveled a lot in southeast Asia and the world, and such experiences tended to make me more...
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