I have learnt magnificent lessons on a 7,000 mile voyage, and it is those who are uninspired that have inspired me to write this today.
A well-deserved break I’d say. After a few months of very hectic weeks and tiresome ordeals, I am very glad to say that I am returning to Atlanta today. Well, hopefully. I have gotten a seat on my standby flight, and am ready to board. The only problem now is that, well, the flight is having technical difficulties, and so it’s just a matter of waiting now.
I had a pretty interesting idea recently, and it was kind of a crazy one, but I wanted to take a year off at some point in my life, and work for an airline. I would preferably like to work for Delta for just one year and see how things go because I think that would be a very fun and entertaining experience. As I currently wait for my flight, I can’t help but think, how cool would it be to be on that side.
Amongst my travels in Sydney, I met a friend called Daniel, who is studying his masters in robotics / computer science at the University of Technology at Sydney. It was the second time I had talked to someone who was talking about something in my field, and I couldn’t help but be a bit disappointed at how little they thought of computer science as a field that would allow them to change the world. I saw little inspiration, and a fear of failure. I saw frightened souls who didn’t have the confidence to fight for what they believe in. I’m not sure if this is computer science specific, but I have seen a certain fear amongst our youth that I want to talk to everyone who gets the chance to read this about.
If you’re the logical type, then let me make a very logical argument. Opportunities that you don’t seek are opportunities that you will not get. If you don’t apply for every opportunity and get your name out there, then what’s the point? What’s the point of you sitting back on your ass thinking that you’re not good enough? Thousands if not millions of people have said it in hundreds of different ways, you won’t know what your limit is if you don’t hit that limit. Say it the way you want to, confidence is only an issue if you make it be an issue. It’s as simple as building a resume and applying to jobs. You have the power to succeed in this world, you have the power to reach your goals and make a difference.
If you’re less logical, and more emotional, allow me to explain. Not seeking your ultimate capability and not going for the best will make you feel worse about yourself. You are brilliant inside, we all are. It’s not about our mental ability, or whether we are smart enough, I’d say that’s maybe 10% of what matters. In truth, what really matters is how much power and will we have to change things in this world. Our greatness lies in the 90% of believing. It lies in the passion towards doing what we love, and achieve the ultimate goal, you will be happy.
If for you it’s about the money, let me phrase this differently. As someone once wisely put it, ‘Money does not bring happiness, but happiness and creativity will bring you money’. Having the passion and dedication to achieve what you want is what will not only bring you happiness, but make this world a better place.
We all have dreams, it’s a beautiful world out there, and many of us are out there to pursue what we always wanted to do. Whether it is three gorgeous children and a loving wife or husband, or the exotic wildlife of Africa and the inspirational deserts in Egypt, we all have that inner self that wants to achieve the impossible.
Let it speak for you, and let it take you to places which will change the way you look at this world. There is no point of sitting around and not doing what you dreamed of, you only have one life, so for the sake of yourself, live it.
I’ve grown very concerned of when people I meet are working in fields they are passionate about, but somehow don’t find the motivation to take that leap and try and go for their wildest dreams.
Yes, you will get disappointed. Yes, things will stab you in the back, and you will break down to unimaginable weakness. You will cry and you will face adversity like you have never faced before. Sometimes, fear will creep up on you on a 6 hour bus ride to the middle of the desert in Egypt that you were told only lasted 4 hours. Sometimes, you will be facing death, but for the hundredth time, it is these experiences that will take you from being alive, to living your life.
For once, trust me, follow your dreams and do as you must, because a fake smile and an imaginary happiness will only fill your heart with regret in 40 years when you look back and think, why didn’t I just do it?
So, on this final note, go out there and do it. Inspire yourself to change the world and keep in touch. I’d love to hear your stories, and I’d love to hear your adventures in the pursuit of happiness. It’s not an easy path, but its better than a fake path that you fill your mind with, in hopes that someone will somehow spot your creative wisdom without you fighting to show the world how awesome you are.
Go for it lads, it’s now or never.
Cheers,
qk.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
How the future is going to work for me.
No, this isn't a post about some ridiculously futuristic idea, but rather what I have in my mind for the next few days, and the projects I have for the next few months.
So, on Friday I will leave for Sydney, and arrive promptly to my hotel around 3pm. I am very excited to see an old friend, Seref, who was part of my first official web design experience, when I was in THIMUN. After I spend two days in Sydney, I will depart for Panama in the longest travelling journey I have ever done. I will leave Sydney for Los Angeles, and then proceed from Los Angeles to Atlanta, and from there, I will continue onward to Panama, travelling for approximately 24 hours but experiencing only a 12 hour change in time, due to the time differences and etc.
After Panama I will return to go work in California around June 12, and then stay in California until August 20, where I will return to Georgia Tech for school and a lot of research.
I recently had an idea while I was in Melbourne about having a robot with a camera, and having it communicate to a Google phone so that you have an app that allows you to see what the robot is seeing. This way, you can move the robot around a room as if the robot was your set of eyes.
The other idea I had was using an EEG to control a robot, so that you can make the robot move, with your mind. I am equally excited for both projects and frankly, can't wait until I get to start them so that I can experiment all of these ridiculous ideas.
I'm getting kind of cold and its late, sorry I haven't written in a bit, I've been busy just relaxing and enjoying Melbourne. I am definitely happy that I feel ready to start 'working' again. I feel re-energized and truly ready for this summer to take off.
Cheers,
Daniel.
So, on Friday I will leave for Sydney, and arrive promptly to my hotel around 3pm. I am very excited to see an old friend, Seref, who was part of my first official web design experience, when I was in THIMUN. After I spend two days in Sydney, I will depart for Panama in the longest travelling journey I have ever done. I will leave Sydney for Los Angeles, and then proceed from Los Angeles to Atlanta, and from there, I will continue onward to Panama, travelling for approximately 24 hours but experiencing only a 12 hour change in time, due to the time differences and etc.
After Panama I will return to go work in California around June 12, and then stay in California until August 20, where I will return to Georgia Tech for school and a lot of research.
I recently had an idea while I was in Melbourne about having a robot with a camera, and having it communicate to a Google phone so that you have an app that allows you to see what the robot is seeing. This way, you can move the robot around a room as if the robot was your set of eyes.
The other idea I had was using an EEG to control a robot, so that you can make the robot move, with your mind. I am equally excited for both projects and frankly, can't wait until I get to start them so that I can experiment all of these ridiculous ideas.
I'm getting kind of cold and its late, sorry I haven't written in a bit, I've been busy just relaxing and enjoying Melbourne. I am definitely happy that I feel ready to start 'working' again. I feel re-energized and truly ready for this summer to take off.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
It's the little things that matter.
I'm really not ok with theft. It's just something I am not ok with because I feel it violates a lot of things that I fight for. One of my friends recently out of a bit of peer pressure and a bit of thrill and to save some money stole some potatoes from the supermarket. The argument went on for a bit because I really wasn't ok with it but that really wasn't what bothered me. What truly bothered me was more that It somewhat ruined my image of that person in my mind and I hated that because it was just a bag of potatoes. It was a tiny little thing that didn't matter at all, and yet it affected me so much. I don't know why I am writing this or why I should even care so much but it was just because I don't like when the image of other people is ruined for me and that did it. But oh well, it's so weird I just had to rant a bit because I am really not ok with what happened and this is helping me sort of, open up and express those thoughts.
Friday, May 27, 2011
I'm free to be whatever I want.
It's a beautiful thing to be reassured about what is significant and beautiful in this world. Coca-Cola recently came out with a commercial that warmed my heart ( see here. ). It's hard to not break up and realize how beautiful things are in this world because for all the stresses and difficulties that we encounter, its the difficulties that eventually make people realize that you are trying. And to all of those of you who feel you aren't being recognized, or like you aren't loved by any, I hope I make this clear when I say that there is hope out there, and that I, without even knowing you, or knowing what you have done, or knowing who you truly are inside, I love you. It was not an easy task to type that, but it's an even harder task to live up to it and yet, here I am assuring you that I care for you. We are all born as beautiful individuals and I firmly believe that a little part of that will remain with us forever. No matter who you are, or where you are from, or what you believe in, or the cruelties that you have done, or the times that you have done wrong, if we do not appreciate each other has human beings and we do not struggle just a tiny bit of discomfort for the greater good of understanding each other as human beings, then there is no point in life. It's all about empathy. It's the innate skill we are born with that allows us to understand other human beings. And that is at the very least, the most beautiful thing the world.
So, whether it is in inspiration, or something you have never done in your wildest dreams, here I stand daring you to do it. Whether its telling a loved one who you never thought would feel the same way how you feel, or whether its making a fool out of yourself amongst your friends, I'm here to tell you that its a truly beautiful world out there. Some people say, 'There is hope', a more famous and common Internet thing 'It gets better', which is a campaign towards helping the gay community have hope in their lives because of how difficult high school and sometimes college can be, and yet, so many of us happen to frown and feel sorrow in times where perspective couldn't make this a better place.
100 years ago, travelling to another place was an impossible life decision that would change everything, up to even never seeing your relatives again. Today, it's an easy choice.
Perhaps your 12, or 20, or 60, it really doesn't matter. There are some of us who are living in suffering and living in absolute torture and cruelty. My true and pure prayers for all of you, because I can only hope that things can change for all of you. I stand here writing this in hopes that something will change, in hopes that somehow the world will turn, and the happiness that we see amongst our friends, we will now see amongst the world. I hold it as my deepest desire that things will change, and even though I do not know if that will ever be the case, I still hold that it will happen.
Please enlighten me and let me know if I'm wrong, but the way I see it, sitting in a dining table across the world in Melbourne, Australia, 15575 km from where I study, and 14543 km from where I was born. Let me give you an idea of what that number means, that's about 35% of the Earth's circumference, the world has reached the point where things are better. There is a place for everybody in this Earth, and we are slowly but surely realizing that we are all human beings and that we must stick together through our hardships in order to truly survive our issues. It's pretty ridiculous how much stress is out there because we are trying to be successful in life, but its even more ridiculous how much we worry about these stressful situations when in reality, there is nothing to worry about. Yeah sometimes it can suck out there in the world, but in the midst of it all, there are people who care, and people who are fighting for us as human beings. If you are one of those people, thank you, and if you are not, do your best to change others in the slightest way, because once you have changed someone, you will realize how powerful the understanding of other human beings can be.
I'm really not sure where I am going with this but I had to babble on about different thoughts in my head, I hope that if you read this, it somehow changes you in a very small way, and that in some small way you go out there today or the next day, and change somebody in the smallest of ways, because the feeling, the feeling of giving back and helping others is greater than most if not all other feelings. I am positive that we can change this world because we already have. Things are looking good, and this second decade of the new millennium we will see remarkable things.
Cheers, to a bright and prosperousfuture present,
Daniel.
So, whether it is in inspiration, or something you have never done in your wildest dreams, here I stand daring you to do it. Whether its telling a loved one who you never thought would feel the same way how you feel, or whether its making a fool out of yourself amongst your friends, I'm here to tell you that its a truly beautiful world out there. Some people say, 'There is hope', a more famous and common Internet thing 'It gets better', which is a campaign towards helping the gay community have hope in their lives because of how difficult high school and sometimes college can be, and yet, so many of us happen to frown and feel sorrow in times where perspective couldn't make this a better place.
100 years ago, travelling to another place was an impossible life decision that would change everything, up to even never seeing your relatives again. Today, it's an easy choice.
Perhaps your 12, or 20, or 60, it really doesn't matter. There are some of us who are living in suffering and living in absolute torture and cruelty. My true and pure prayers for all of you, because I can only hope that things can change for all of you. I stand here writing this in hopes that something will change, in hopes that somehow the world will turn, and the happiness that we see amongst our friends, we will now see amongst the world. I hold it as my deepest desire that things will change, and even though I do not know if that will ever be the case, I still hold that it will happen.
Please enlighten me and let me know if I'm wrong, but the way I see it, sitting in a dining table across the world in Melbourne, Australia, 15575 km from where I study, and 14543 km from where I was born. Let me give you an idea of what that number means, that's about 35% of the Earth's circumference, the world has reached the point where things are better. There is a place for everybody in this Earth, and we are slowly but surely realizing that we are all human beings and that we must stick together through our hardships in order to truly survive our issues. It's pretty ridiculous how much stress is out there because we are trying to be successful in life, but its even more ridiculous how much we worry about these stressful situations when in reality, there is nothing to worry about. Yeah sometimes it can suck out there in the world, but in the midst of it all, there are people who care, and people who are fighting for us as human beings. If you are one of those people, thank you, and if you are not, do your best to change others in the slightest way, because once you have changed someone, you will realize how powerful the understanding of other human beings can be.
I'm really not sure where I am going with this but I had to babble on about different thoughts in my head, I hope that if you read this, it somehow changes you in a very small way, and that in some small way you go out there today or the next day, and change somebody in the smallest of ways, because the feeling, the feeling of giving back and helping others is greater than most if not all other feelings. I am positive that we can change this world because we already have. Things are looking good, and this second decade of the new millennium we will see remarkable things.
Cheers, to a bright and prosperous
Daniel.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Lets not think.
I originally thought of making the title, let's think of nothing, but it was then I drew the fine line between not thinking, and thinking of nothing. I urge you to stop thinking.
Have you ever sat in your bed and attempted to stop thinking? If you haven't please do so. It is a ridiculously difficult task which will probably take you a few nights to accomplish. I finally did it last night and it felt spectacular. My mind blanked, I had successfully eliminated every trailing thought that flew by my head as I thought, hmm, and almost got carried away. I even thought of nothing, of the concept and the idea of what nothing meant, but then realized I had to go [no pun / reference intended] deeper. I had to understand the way my mind worked in such a way that I could meditate and relax. It was a great sensation.
I met Cat while [and I am still here] in Melbourne, Australia. She is a great girl and has an absolutely fantastic character. Even more importantly though, she has taught me a thing or two about meditation and relaxing that I have gladly embraced. It has tempted me to plan and go on an adventure, sometime in the future. My plans are amongst the craziest I have had to date, and I am not entirely certain what they are at this time, but they will most likely involve mountains somewhere in Asia. That's for the future, but for me, and now, I think cheese, chocolate, and wine will most certainly have to do.
I am a more relaxed man than I was 5 days ago, and most certainly a better man. It is nice to free yourself of everything, and although I have not at all freed myself entirely, it feels nice to finally be on a path which relaxes my soul.
Sorry I have not written much this week, it has been an interesting process of finding myself and simply enjoying time with friends. I have come to realize yet again that you do not need much to find true and simple beauty in life, and I have found it time and time again in a cozy apartment that my friends have in Melbourne, Australia.
All the love and a certain touch of relaxation my dear world,
Sincerely,
Daniel.
Have you ever sat in your bed and attempted to stop thinking? If you haven't please do so. It is a ridiculously difficult task which will probably take you a few nights to accomplish. I finally did it last night and it felt spectacular. My mind blanked, I had successfully eliminated every trailing thought that flew by my head as I thought, hmm, and almost got carried away. I even thought of nothing, of the concept and the idea of what nothing meant, but then realized I had to go [no pun / reference intended] deeper. I had to understand the way my mind worked in such a way that I could meditate and relax. It was a great sensation.
I met Cat while [and I am still here] in Melbourne, Australia. She is a great girl and has an absolutely fantastic character. Even more importantly though, she has taught me a thing or two about meditation and relaxing that I have gladly embraced. It has tempted me to plan and go on an adventure, sometime in the future. My plans are amongst the craziest I have had to date, and I am not entirely certain what they are at this time, but they will most likely involve mountains somewhere in Asia. That's for the future, but for me, and now, I think cheese, chocolate, and wine will most certainly have to do.
I am a more relaxed man than I was 5 days ago, and most certainly a better man. It is nice to free yourself of everything, and although I have not at all freed myself entirely, it feels nice to finally be on a path which relaxes my soul.
Sorry I have not written much this week, it has been an interesting process of finding myself and simply enjoying time with friends. I have come to realize yet again that you do not need much to find true and simple beauty in life, and I have found it time and time again in a cozy apartment that my friends have in Melbourne, Australia.
All the love and a certain touch of relaxation my dear world,
Sincerely,
Daniel.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The beauty of mundane tasks.
I washed the dishes today. It was beautiful. I did some cooking yesterday, and it was also amazing. My friends didn't quite understand what my obsession with trivial tasks were, but allow me to elaborate.
I live in a society at Georgia Tech that is very work oriented. All we do year-round is work. A semester is a single driven intense experience where all you do is quite literally work non-stop. It's hard to explain how difficult it is to survive at Georgia Tech.
This morning, I woke up at 7am after a long time sleeping, and took a shower, came down to the kitchen and cleaned it. The satisfaction I derived from this is difficult to explain but it was truly brought back life to me. I hope to continue this every day, and continue to simply be at peace and do nothing because it is those tasks that bring warmth to my heart and help me re-energize before I go back to hard work.
I will now go make breakfast, and get creative. Then, i'll go out and maybe just take pictures of the world. Who knows.
Cheers,
Daniel.
I live in a society at Georgia Tech that is very work oriented. All we do year-round is work. A semester is a single driven intense experience where all you do is quite literally work non-stop. It's hard to explain how difficult it is to survive at Georgia Tech.
This morning, I woke up at 7am after a long time sleeping, and took a shower, came down to the kitchen and cleaned it. The satisfaction I derived from this is difficult to explain but it was truly brought back life to me. I hope to continue this every day, and continue to simply be at peace and do nothing because it is those tasks that bring warmth to my heart and help me re-energize before I go back to hard work.
I will now go make breakfast, and get creative. Then, i'll go out and maybe just take pictures of the world. Who knows.
Cheers,
Daniel.
1964.
Do it. I’ll explain the title later, but I must reiterate a point that I find is tremendously important in life. Often, if not always, you’ll find quite a few movies about those few characters that want to do something, but have some sort of life plan, or expectation from the world, their family, their friends, or somebody else, to do something different. The world tells them you ought to be successful, but the truth is, all they want is to pursue photography. I was watching this film where they mentioned an old Arab proverb that said, “Throw your heart out in front of you, and run out to catch it.” Although it is nice to live life with some type of assurance, and although its definitely nice to have some sort of certainty in what will happen next, and what you will do in the future, I am here to argue that perhaps it isn’t worth it.
Whether you’re mathematically oriented or not, it doesn’t take a brilliant man to realize that if our life span is 100 years, and you will, most likely, spend your first 20 years through school and uni. That’s already a good 20% of your life at most. Now, let’s take out the 30 years that you will spend (from 70 to 100) not being able to really function all that well, and living a more calm and relaxed life. We’re at 50% and half way there. So that leaves the time span of from when you are 20, to around when you are 70. That’s a good 50 years. Want to have children, and get married? Alright, that adds on another 30. Let’s say it’s a few years for finding your loved one, getting married, and a good 25 years for 2-3 children, depending on how separated apart you have the kids. Now, this requirement has a bit of a limit, because I would argue that you don’t want to take care of your children from when you are 60-70, because you are a bit too old to do so. Alright, so that leaves from when you are 30-60 as the time you will get married and take care of children. Makes sense, so assuming those are all things you want to do, as it is for most people, this leaves the age from when you are 20 until you are 30 as what I’d like to call the ‘prime time’ of your life. Now, don’t take any of the divisions I said previously as true, or hold me to them, because I think that’s bullshit. I’d like to argue that you can and should enjoy your life for the entirety of it, but it helps to start the argument about what you should do with your life. My point from here on is that perhaps you have seen a commonality in many movies where there is somebody in a very common day job, doing nothing with his/her life, who finally goes out and takes a chance and goes crazy. You do something spontaneous and that changes absolutely everything. To give a few examples, perhaps you’ve seen the movie 21, where Ben Campbell, soon to be graduating from MIT and accepted into Harvard Med, has no idea what to do to impress the scholarship that will give him a full ride into Harvard. Then, one of his professors sees potential in him, and invites him to count cards, and long story short, it wasn’t too much of a brilliant idea, but it was a life changing experience that truly made him live. More evidently, the movie Cemetery Junction truly hits the topic hard on, as three blue collar workers are doing nothing with their life and finally realize the importance of simply living it the way they want to. The imagery of a rich and bored husband who doesn’t even say thank you to his wife hits you to the core, as you realize that it truly is important to take your chances and go out there because a life that is secured and a life that has lots, to say, its question mark, is a life that has lost its excitement. What’s the point of living a life in which you have fully planned out and a life that is secure.
Maslow argued that security is a necessity in life, and that having that security is something you need in order to feel true happiness. I agree, but I think we have taken the definition incorrectly. Security does not mean knowing what you will do in the next 20 years. To me, security means having the confidence to know that because of what you know and who you are, the next 20 years will be truly amazing, because you feel confident and secure in who you are. That’s the true feeling that gets you happiness. No doubt, thousands of others go around and panic because they do not know what their family will think of them in a few years because they don’t have the confidence to believe in themselves. They are strong enough to hide away their dreams, and strong enough to hide their true desires in life because of the fear they have for what others will think. Well, if your strong enough to hide your beliefs, I can assure you that you are strong enough to follow them. I hope that if you are reading this, and you have something you have always wanted to do, you go off and do it. I hope that you don’t put it off another day, because even if it is dropping out of college for a semester and flying out to the middle of nowhere to find your true self, you shouldn’t continue to put it off because of your fears. Convince yourself that these experiences will change you and that you will become a better person, because only then will you have the courage. I know that sometimes it is really difficult and that sometimes we simply don’t know what will happen, but rest assured, it will be better than knowing what happens. You have the opportunity, and you have the ability to do everything you have ever wanted. Believe in yourself for the sake of a better world, because if we all didn’t tremble and give excuses for why we aren’t living, we would have a better world. It’s the nay sayers and those who don’t have the passion because they fear how others will look at them that make this world slightly more difficult to live in. I urge you very strongly to change the way you live so that you are satisfied with it, because once you do, you won’t be thanking me, you will be telling everyone else to change their way of life too.
So what is 1964? It is the year he stopped saying thank you for his morning cup of tea. It is the year in which she could have changed her life but didn’t. It is a moment in the movie Cemetery Junction, where the wife of a business man recalls how she didn’t take her chance in life, and didn’t live it, for the desire of having security. She made the right choice in wanting security, but the wrong choice in understanding what security was. The beauty of the movie is that she knew and acknowledged her error. She did not know how she lost it all so quickly, but she knew that her daughter wouldn’t go by the same path. It is a beautiful moment in the movie when she frees herself and leaves everything behind for a life of uncertainty and a life she has always wanted to live. So there’s a lot of significance to 1964, because it was the year he didn’t even notice his wife anymore. I hope that we will all seek and go towards any means necessary to find what we truly care for, because only then will we be successful in life. There’s a saying I think I watched recently that says, money doesn’t bring you happiness, but happiness and creativity does bring you money. People don’t find it amusing for those who walked the path that everyone thought they’d walk, they love those who discover a new path, and make something of it, because that is the most impressive and most successful feeling you will ever get.
So, my life, quick update, I am currently on my plane flying in Business Class to Australia, thank god I got to sleep a good 8 hours in their truly comfortable beds, and am ready to get off in Sydney, fly myself to Melbourne, and get ready for an experience of a life time. I must say this experience was truly wonderful, and I must applaud them because it seems in Business they appreciate blueberry as much as I do. Lots of love, and an exciting future ahead,
UPDATE: Alright cool so I made it alive to Melbourne and I’m at the Cooklin residence now =] and we had a wonderful walk around Melbourne and a fantastic dinner including dinner and amazing cheese, and wine.
Take care,
Daniel.
Whether you’re mathematically oriented or not, it doesn’t take a brilliant man to realize that if our life span is 100 years, and you will, most likely, spend your first 20 years through school and uni. That’s already a good 20% of your life at most. Now, let’s take out the 30 years that you will spend (from 70 to 100) not being able to really function all that well, and living a more calm and relaxed life. We’re at 50% and half way there. So that leaves the time span of from when you are 20, to around when you are 70. That’s a good 50 years. Want to have children, and get married? Alright, that adds on another 30. Let’s say it’s a few years for finding your loved one, getting married, and a good 25 years for 2-3 children, depending on how separated apart you have the kids. Now, this requirement has a bit of a limit, because I would argue that you don’t want to take care of your children from when you are 60-70, because you are a bit too old to do so. Alright, so that leaves from when you are 30-60 as the time you will get married and take care of children. Makes sense, so assuming those are all things you want to do, as it is for most people, this leaves the age from when you are 20 until you are 30 as what I’d like to call the ‘prime time’ of your life. Now, don’t take any of the divisions I said previously as true, or hold me to them, because I think that’s bullshit. I’d like to argue that you can and should enjoy your life for the entirety of it, but it helps to start the argument about what you should do with your life. My point from here on is that perhaps you have seen a commonality in many movies where there is somebody in a very common day job, doing nothing with his/her life, who finally goes out and takes a chance and goes crazy. You do something spontaneous and that changes absolutely everything. To give a few examples, perhaps you’ve seen the movie 21, where Ben Campbell, soon to be graduating from MIT and accepted into Harvard Med, has no idea what to do to impress the scholarship that will give him a full ride into Harvard. Then, one of his professors sees potential in him, and invites him to count cards, and long story short, it wasn’t too much of a brilliant idea, but it was a life changing experience that truly made him live. More evidently, the movie Cemetery Junction truly hits the topic hard on, as three blue collar workers are doing nothing with their life and finally realize the importance of simply living it the way they want to. The imagery of a rich and bored husband who doesn’t even say thank you to his wife hits you to the core, as you realize that it truly is important to take your chances and go out there because a life that is secured and a life that has lots, to say, its question mark, is a life that has lost its excitement. What’s the point of living a life in which you have fully planned out and a life that is secure.
Maslow argued that security is a necessity in life, and that having that security is something you need in order to feel true happiness. I agree, but I think we have taken the definition incorrectly. Security does not mean knowing what you will do in the next 20 years. To me, security means having the confidence to know that because of what you know and who you are, the next 20 years will be truly amazing, because you feel confident and secure in who you are. That’s the true feeling that gets you happiness. No doubt, thousands of others go around and panic because they do not know what their family will think of them in a few years because they don’t have the confidence to believe in themselves. They are strong enough to hide away their dreams, and strong enough to hide their true desires in life because of the fear they have for what others will think. Well, if your strong enough to hide your beliefs, I can assure you that you are strong enough to follow them. I hope that if you are reading this, and you have something you have always wanted to do, you go off and do it. I hope that you don’t put it off another day, because even if it is dropping out of college for a semester and flying out to the middle of nowhere to find your true self, you shouldn’t continue to put it off because of your fears. Convince yourself that these experiences will change you and that you will become a better person, because only then will you have the courage. I know that sometimes it is really difficult and that sometimes we simply don’t know what will happen, but rest assured, it will be better than knowing what happens. You have the opportunity, and you have the ability to do everything you have ever wanted. Believe in yourself for the sake of a better world, because if we all didn’t tremble and give excuses for why we aren’t living, we would have a better world. It’s the nay sayers and those who don’t have the passion because they fear how others will look at them that make this world slightly more difficult to live in. I urge you very strongly to change the way you live so that you are satisfied with it, because once you do, you won’t be thanking me, you will be telling everyone else to change their way of life too.
So what is 1964? It is the year he stopped saying thank you for his morning cup of tea. It is the year in which she could have changed her life but didn’t. It is a moment in the movie Cemetery Junction, where the wife of a business man recalls how she didn’t take her chance in life, and didn’t live it, for the desire of having security. She made the right choice in wanting security, but the wrong choice in understanding what security was. The beauty of the movie is that she knew and acknowledged her error. She did not know how she lost it all so quickly, but she knew that her daughter wouldn’t go by the same path. It is a beautiful moment in the movie when she frees herself and leaves everything behind for a life of uncertainty and a life she has always wanted to live. So there’s a lot of significance to 1964, because it was the year he didn’t even notice his wife anymore. I hope that we will all seek and go towards any means necessary to find what we truly care for, because only then will we be successful in life. There’s a saying I think I watched recently that says, money doesn’t bring you happiness, but happiness and creativity does bring you money. People don’t find it amusing for those who walked the path that everyone thought they’d walk, they love those who discover a new path, and make something of it, because that is the most impressive and most successful feeling you will ever get.
So, my life, quick update, I am currently on my plane flying in Business Class to Australia, thank god I got to sleep a good 8 hours in their truly comfortable beds, and am ready to get off in Sydney, fly myself to Melbourne, and get ready for an experience of a life time. I must say this experience was truly wonderful, and I must applaud them because it seems in Business they appreciate blueberry as much as I do. Lots of love, and an exciting future ahead,
UPDATE: Alright cool so I made it alive to Melbourne and I’m at the Cooklin residence now =] and we had a wonderful walk around Melbourne and a fantastic dinner including dinner and amazing cheese, and wine.
Take care,
Daniel.
Another Travel Post...
How do you consciously prepare for a 15 hour and 20 minute flight? I’d like to dedicate this wall posts to two trains of thought which I have been having, the idea of keeping/having ideas on a shelf, and how many hours I have been on a flight in the past week. Let me just list out my travels out in approximation of flight hours and all that stuff first before I get to ideas and projects on a shelf.
Date Current City Destination # of Hours Time Zone Change
May 11, 2011 Atlanta, Georgia Barcelona, Spain 8 Add 6 Hours
May 16, 2011 Barcelona, Spain London, UK 2 Subtract 1 Hour
May 19, 2011 London, UK Atlanta, Georgia 9 Subtract 5 Hours
May 20, 2011 Atlanta, Georgia Los Angeles, Cali 5 Subtract 3 Hours
May 20, 2011 Los Angeles, Cali Sydney, Australia 15 Add 17 Hours
By the time I land in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, at 6am, I will have flown for a total of approximately 40 hours. This is within the time frame of 11 days. That is only 15% of my time on planes. Well, dam, that’s actually quite a lot of time. I don’t really want to calculate how much of that time I have been awake or asleep but oh well. That’s the first part of the story. The second more interesting part is having ideas in the shelf.
Whether you have a physical or digital shelf, or a shelf in your mind, doesn’t really matter, although I think having an actual shelf makes this thought cooler. This idea was brought up in the FOWD conference in London, about keeping your ideas in a shelf. Twitter came out of this very concept, as the person who originally had the idea, came up with it in like 2002, and then left it in his ‘shelf’ for a few years before going back to it when the start up he was working for was essentially going down the drain.
Date Current City Destination # of Hours Time Zone Change
May 11, 2011 Atlanta, Georgia Barcelona, Spain 8 Add 6 Hours
May 16, 2011 Barcelona, Spain London, UK 2 Subtract 1 Hour
May 19, 2011 London, UK Atlanta, Georgia 9 Subtract 5 Hours
May 20, 2011 Atlanta, Georgia Los Angeles, Cali 5 Subtract 3 Hours
May 20, 2011 Los Angeles, Cali Sydney, Australia 15 Add 17 Hours
By the time I land in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, at 6am, I will have flown for a total of approximately 40 hours. This is within the time frame of 11 days. That is only 15% of my time on planes. Well, dam, that’s actually quite a lot of time. I don’t really want to calculate how much of that time I have been awake or asleep but oh well. That’s the first part of the story. The second more interesting part is having ideas in the shelf.
Whether you have a physical or digital shelf, or a shelf in your mind, doesn’t really matter, although I think having an actual shelf makes this thought cooler. This idea was brought up in the FOWD conference in London, about keeping your ideas in a shelf. Twitter came out of this very concept, as the person who originally had the idea, came up with it in like 2002, and then left it in his ‘shelf’ for a few years before going back to it when the start up he was working for was essentially going down the drain.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Back in the 404, feels like I haven't slept in years.
Before I forget mentioning this, because I knew you’d like this, Christine, as I was talking about my life, how I had gotten where I got and that, to this guy named Jay at the conference, he looked at me, and said, You’re a miracle. I thought you’d enjoy that.
Alright so I’m flying back to Atlanta, Georgia now. It’s really weird for me to say this, and honestly I am not sure how it all makes sense, but I think I can finally say that I consider Georgia Tech one of my homes around the world. I’ve only frankly said this about well, Panama, and Barcelona. Notice very carefully that I do not say that Atlanta is my home, because there are a few guidelines or requirements that I would like to say make up what in my mind I’d call home. I’ll proceed to elaborate in detail about each of these:
First of all, there are experiences and memories. A home needs memories. Without memories a city/country/place is nothing. If you haven’t changed when you lived in a place, and it hasn’t changed you, then there is no way it will ever have an impact in you. A home has to have an impact. As a subcategory of memories, there has to be shared memories. I have travelled to many places, like Egypt and Croatia, and in some of them, I don’t have enough memories that I share with other people that will truly impact me. This is something I believe is required for you to feel at home.
Secondly, you as a person should not only feel confident but be completely able to show any of your visiting friends your home if need be. This builds on memories because once you have enough memories of everywhere in your home, the stories that you can tell are endless. You can walk / drive / etc around your home and show other people. This is something I can say about Barcelona, Panama, and Georgia Tech.
Now third and last, you must truly understand, be at peace, and embrace the culture of your home. This is a clause that I put with great difficulty, because as a requirement, it is to say the least a grey area. It’s really difficult to know if you understand a culture, or if you can be at peace with it, and/or if you can embrace it. However, sometimes, you just know. Sometimes it is like becoming a citizen, or like finally perfectly speaking a language (not that many people ever get this feeling), or simply getting that feeling like I got when I arrived at Plitvice, Croatia, and truly understood the family I was staying with. A family which has taught me things that I can seldom say about most of the people I know. Now, this sounds a bit extreme, but I am being completely sincere. I have written a lot about them in my travel logs that I keep here and there but rarely in my blogs online. To keep a long story short and keep going with this blog entry, the family had been through suffering and war, and as prisoners of a war which they did not cause, they were removed from their homes, and spent years of their life being tortured. The father told me very calmly that he doesn’t even remember most of it, because his mind has learned to forget such moments. He was simply happy that after the war was over, he got the opportunity to return to the place where he lived, and to rebuild his home. He built it back, and sustained his family from then on. He became the Director of the National Park of Plitvice, in Croatia. This guy, he’s the man. My hopes and dreams are that one day I will get the time to fly over there and visit him for a day, or maybe two. If I could spend a week, all the better, but the fact of the matter was, I spend months of my life studying, and other months working, all for an illusioned success in society which is absolutely, and entirely worthless. Dare I say pointless too. Why, you might ask? To me, studying isn’t about being successful in the eyes of society, to me studying is about improving your skills in an area that you enjoy. If not, what’s the point? Yeah, you will make more money, and get a good job. Big deal. As I’ve heard time and time again, money doesn’t bring happiness, but happiness and creativity turns out to give you money. So if you’re not happy, I find it difficult that you’ll get loads of money anyways.
Now, to continue to elaborate on my story, the reason why Atlanta is not my home is because I do not feel comfortable showing somebody around Atlanta. All I’d show them is Georgia Tech, and a few restaurants here and there close by. I don’t know Atlanta. I simply don’t feel like it is my home, because Georgia Tech is my bubble, and my home, but outside that, its untraveled territory.
So, that was a long talk about being at home, now to continue my story. After the FOWD – Part 2 article, I remembered that I completely forgot to mention the after party I went to after FOWD – Day 1. I went out to the after party which was held in between Day 1 and Day 2 of the conference, and met a bunch of people (special shout out to Chris & Christopher from Chirpag.com!). They were all great, and I got a lot of advice on web design and on how to truly approach making a website. It is not a black and white process, but I certainly gained confidence that I will have to re-enforce with knowledge once I arrive in Australia.
So, now let me continue the timeline appropriately, so May 19, 2011, lets record what has happened so far.
I woke up very excited to finally be boarding my flight so I got my bags and checked out of The Generator Hostel, in London. I took the metro all the way to Heathrow, the airport, and realized the Metro only stopped in Terminals 1, 2, 3, and 5. The odds were, I’d be on the right terminal. But of course, I wasn’t, turns out Delta serves in Terminal… wait for it, … 4. First mistake of the day, things didn’t look good. After getting asked the following questions,
Did you pack your bag? Did anyone give you anything to put in your bag? Are these your bags? Did you purchase anything or get anything in the airport? Have you been with your bags at all times since you packed them?
I was getting quite irritated. Let me point out that the last question, you have to answer YES to even though it is obviously not true. Some truly honest people always mess up on that one when their brain goes, but, but… but I went to the bathroom and wasn’t really with them for about 30 seconds. Or like, I left them in the hotel. Getting back to the United States was becoming quite the hassle. Anyways, I went through the questions, and then once I was security checked by Delta to enter the US, I went to the machine to print my ticket, which kindly said, “I don’t accept that kind of passport”. What the fuck does that mean? You racist bastard. That’s what I wanted to say when it told me it didn’t accept my passport as if it was somehow different from any other passport. But I kept my cool, and kept going. I went through the line again, finally got my ticket, and headed through security. I’m proud to say security went perfectly, but I felt really bad for the girl in front of me. Let me draw how London security to the U.S. seemed to work.
In the diagram, keep in mind the dots are people. Now, I’m one of the dots near the GOOD BAGS area, which is filled in in blue. The girl in front of me got asked by an inspection officer who was filtering the “good” and “bad” bags, he goes, could you take out your iPod? She goes I don’t have one. Then he goes, take our your laptop? She is very confused and says there isn’t one in the bag. And he goes, bad bag, go sit down and wait [ in this line of about 8 other people who probably went through the same thing ]. Keep in mind the security officer asked these two questions almost immediately after each other and in a total of about 5 seconds. After like 2 more seconds she realizes what he ment and goes, oh, my Kindle is in there. And the guy goes, no too late, I asked you twice.
She kept her calm because if she didn’t she probably wouldn’t have boarded the flight. However, his rudeness, although it kept me on my toes just in case I got asked anything, hugely offended me. It was basically just verbal abuse, its like, I have more power than you and I don’t give a shit who you are, so although you answered both the questions I asked correctly, I’m going to be a complete douchebag to you because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It wasn’t a good day for my travels.
I got to my gate and eventually got assigned a seat, sadly, I was seat #45F, which is the last seat on the plane. I was hoping I’d get business, so I wasn’t very happy with this seat but things looked a tiny little bit brighter when the person next to me didn’t come so I had the two seats that are next to the window, all to myself! Woohoo! Anyways after we took off, I looked through the movies and was excited to find Black Swan which was heavily recommended to me, and a few other films that looked awesome. I clicked on one, the screen froze, and then returned to the main menu. Both of my seats had faulty or malfunctioning on screen entertainment systems, which really really angered me. Delta had never failed me before, and after they seemed to have gotten rid of their AMAZING cookies and now only served peanuts and pretzels, I wasn’t too happy. I asked the lady if she could reset it and she was very apologetic, which is the good
thing about Delta [service is good], and tried fixing it. No problem, I took out my laptop and launched Portal. I figured my computer would not last long and then, as it usually does, shut off while I was playing Portal. Then it didn’t turn on. Well lovely. With my laptop fried, and my phone with little battery, it just wasn’t my day. After about 1.5 hours I had given up and figured they just couldn’t figure it out so whatever. And then, a man came by, and informed me that he had been working on my screen for a while now and simply didn’t get it to work. He apologized and then granted me 5,000 miles. Let me just run you through that again.
5,000 MILES!?!?! I looked at him very calmly and said thank you and that it was no problem. Deep inside, my inner child was jumping for happiness and having a party.
YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So happy. Haha, Delta, just as I thought you were going to fail me, you realized your mistake, and were extra awesome about it. Oh and, I took out my laptop in the middle of all of this, and it turned on again. Charlie Sheen didn’t have anything on me. I had won. Period.
Well, that is that for this blog post. Got back to Atlanta, watched a movie with my good friends in ATL, now I’m back in the hotel ready to go to LAX, and then rest for a few hours before the flight to Sydney, Australia.
Until I’m down under, peace out.
Daniel.
Alright so I’m flying back to Atlanta, Georgia now. It’s really weird for me to say this, and honestly I am not sure how it all makes sense, but I think I can finally say that I consider Georgia Tech one of my homes around the world. I’ve only frankly said this about well, Panama, and Barcelona. Notice very carefully that I do not say that Atlanta is my home, because there are a few guidelines or requirements that I would like to say make up what in my mind I’d call home. I’ll proceed to elaborate in detail about each of these:
First of all, there are experiences and memories. A home needs memories. Without memories a city/country/place is nothing. If you haven’t changed when you lived in a place, and it hasn’t changed you, then there is no way it will ever have an impact in you. A home has to have an impact. As a subcategory of memories, there has to be shared memories. I have travelled to many places, like Egypt and Croatia, and in some of them, I don’t have enough memories that I share with other people that will truly impact me. This is something I believe is required for you to feel at home.
Secondly, you as a person should not only feel confident but be completely able to show any of your visiting friends your home if need be. This builds on memories because once you have enough memories of everywhere in your home, the stories that you can tell are endless. You can walk / drive / etc around your home and show other people. This is something I can say about Barcelona, Panama, and Georgia Tech.
Now third and last, you must truly understand, be at peace, and embrace the culture of your home. This is a clause that I put with great difficulty, because as a requirement, it is to say the least a grey area. It’s really difficult to know if you understand a culture, or if you can be at peace with it, and/or if you can embrace it. However, sometimes, you just know. Sometimes it is like becoming a citizen, or like finally perfectly speaking a language (not that many people ever get this feeling), or simply getting that feeling like I got when I arrived at Plitvice, Croatia, and truly understood the family I was staying with. A family which has taught me things that I can seldom say about most of the people I know. Now, this sounds a bit extreme, but I am being completely sincere. I have written a lot about them in my travel logs that I keep here and there but rarely in my blogs online. To keep a long story short and keep going with this blog entry, the family had been through suffering and war, and as prisoners of a war which they did not cause, they were removed from their homes, and spent years of their life being tortured. The father told me very calmly that he doesn’t even remember most of it, because his mind has learned to forget such moments. He was simply happy that after the war was over, he got the opportunity to return to the place where he lived, and to rebuild his home. He built it back, and sustained his family from then on. He became the Director of the National Park of Plitvice, in Croatia. This guy, he’s the man. My hopes and dreams are that one day I will get the time to fly over there and visit him for a day, or maybe two. If I could spend a week, all the better, but the fact of the matter was, I spend months of my life studying, and other months working, all for an illusioned success in society which is absolutely, and entirely worthless. Dare I say pointless too. Why, you might ask? To me, studying isn’t about being successful in the eyes of society, to me studying is about improving your skills in an area that you enjoy. If not, what’s the point? Yeah, you will make more money, and get a good job. Big deal. As I’ve heard time and time again, money doesn’t bring happiness, but happiness and creativity turns out to give you money. So if you’re not happy, I find it difficult that you’ll get loads of money anyways.
Now, to continue to elaborate on my story, the reason why Atlanta is not my home is because I do not feel comfortable showing somebody around Atlanta. All I’d show them is Georgia Tech, and a few restaurants here and there close by. I don’t know Atlanta. I simply don’t feel like it is my home, because Georgia Tech is my bubble, and my home, but outside that, its untraveled territory.
So, that was a long talk about being at home, now to continue my story. After the FOWD – Part 2 article, I remembered that I completely forgot to mention the after party I went to after FOWD – Day 1. I went out to the after party which was held in between Day 1 and Day 2 of the conference, and met a bunch of people (special shout out to Chris & Christopher from Chirpag.com!). They were all great, and I got a lot of advice on web design and on how to truly approach making a website. It is not a black and white process, but I certainly gained confidence that I will have to re-enforce with knowledge once I arrive in Australia.
So, now let me continue the timeline appropriately, so May 19, 2011, lets record what has happened so far.
I woke up very excited to finally be boarding my flight so I got my bags and checked out of The Generator Hostel, in London. I took the metro all the way to Heathrow, the airport, and realized the Metro only stopped in Terminals 1, 2, 3, and 5. The odds were, I’d be on the right terminal. But of course, I wasn’t, turns out Delta serves in Terminal… wait for it, … 4. First mistake of the day, things didn’t look good. After getting asked the following questions,
Did you pack your bag? Did anyone give you anything to put in your bag? Are these your bags? Did you purchase anything or get anything in the airport? Have you been with your bags at all times since you packed them?
I was getting quite irritated. Let me point out that the last question, you have to answer YES to even though it is obviously not true. Some truly honest people always mess up on that one when their brain goes, but, but… but I went to the bathroom and wasn’t really with them for about 30 seconds. Or like, I left them in the hotel. Getting back to the United States was becoming quite the hassle. Anyways, I went through the questions, and then once I was security checked by Delta to enter the US, I went to the machine to print my ticket, which kindly said, “I don’t accept that kind of passport”. What the fuck does that mean? You racist bastard. That’s what I wanted to say when it told me it didn’t accept my passport as if it was somehow different from any other passport. But I kept my cool, and kept going. I went through the line again, finally got my ticket, and headed through security. I’m proud to say security went perfectly, but I felt really bad for the girl in front of me. Let me draw how London security to the U.S. seemed to work.
She kept her calm because if she didn’t she probably wouldn’t have boarded the flight. However, his rudeness, although it kept me on my toes just in case I got asked anything, hugely offended me. It was basically just verbal abuse, its like, I have more power than you and I don’t give a shit who you are, so although you answered both the questions I asked correctly, I’m going to be a complete douchebag to you because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It wasn’t a good day for my travels.
I got to my gate and eventually got assigned a seat, sadly, I was seat #45F, which is the last seat on the plane. I was hoping I’d get business, so I wasn’t very happy with this seat but things looked a tiny little bit brighter when the person next to me didn’t come so I had the two seats that are next to the window, all to myself! Woohoo! Anyways after we took off, I looked through the movies and was excited to find Black Swan which was heavily recommended to me, and a few other films that looked awesome. I clicked on one, the screen froze, and then returned to the main menu. Both of my seats had faulty or malfunctioning on screen entertainment systems, which really really angered me. Delta had never failed me before, and after they seemed to have gotten rid of their AMAZING cookies and now only served peanuts and pretzels, I wasn’t too happy. I asked the lady if she could reset it and she was very apologetic, which is the good
thing about Delta [service is good], and tried fixing it. No problem, I took out my laptop and launched Portal. I figured my computer would not last long and then, as it usually does, shut off while I was playing Portal. Then it didn’t turn on. Well lovely. With my laptop fried, and my phone with little battery, it just wasn’t my day. After about 1.5 hours I had given up and figured they just couldn’t figure it out so whatever. And then, a man came by, and informed me that he had been working on my screen for a while now and simply didn’t get it to work. He apologized and then granted me 5,000 miles. Let me just run you through that again.
5,000 MILES!?!?! I looked at him very calmly and said thank you and that it was no problem. Deep inside, my inner child was jumping for happiness and having a party.
YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So happy. Haha, Delta, just as I thought you were going to fail me, you realized your mistake, and were extra awesome about it. Oh and, I took out my laptop in the middle of all of this, and it turned on again. Charlie Sheen didn’t have anything on me. I had won. Period.
Well, that is that for this blog post. Got back to Atlanta, watched a movie with my good friends in ATL, now I’m back in the hotel ready to go to LAX, and then rest for a few hours before the flight to Sydney, Australia.
Until I’m down under, peace out.
Daniel.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Day 7 - FOWD Part 2
It becomes very difficult to even explain how grateful I am for this opportunity that I had to attend and be a part of FOWD 2011. I find it difficult to name all of the things I learned because I could probably go on forever, but amongst the best ones were these:
1. Design for your user.
2. Learn how not to burn out as a freelance webdesigner.
3. Amongst those lessons, have a start and end time to your work even if "you make your own hours" so that you don't find yourself working at 3am because you felt you didn't accomplish enough during the day.
4. It's not about the money.
5. Etc.
But I think the funner and more interesting part of what I did today happened after I left the conference and constant thoughts of designs and the concept of 'empathic' design went through my head. I was trying to understand the different things that I could accomplish now that two worlds in my head had merged.
The first part in my mind was that of psychology and understanding human beings. That is a huge part of what I do and Psychology is a field that I truly find fascinating.
The other part, which seemed to me completely unrelated, was making websites. I made websites, and I loved understanding people. Now, although naively those seem unrelated, in depth they are one and the same. At the end of the day, it is people and people only that use websites. You must design websites for people. Suddenly it all made sense. I still had a lot to learn about making websites, but a huge barrier had been cleared, and I had at least taken a step in the right direction to understanding what it was that making websites was, and how to make them in a smart and justifiable way.
I often found myself just cramming in my head for randoms spurs of creativity, but two completely separate thought processes in my head merged today, and I am pretty ridiculously glad for that, because now I can truly understand the inner workings of web design, and move towards designing, to put it simply, much better websites.
I have also written an article titled, The 'World' Wide Web, which I will submit to A List Apart. I will not publish it on my blog until it gets accepted / rejected haha, but it covers interesting ideas of designing in such an interconnected world.
I will now play with ThinkVitamin to see if there is something I can learn from their membership, as I have high hopes that it is this design that will truly teach me everything there is to know about a well designed web site.
In travel updates, I leave for Atlanta tomorrow at 1pm, arriving at 5pm (although its a much longer flight :P). Then on Friday its hopefully to Australia!
So excited and so many great things are happening in my life right now, cheers.
Daniel.
1. Design for your user.
2. Learn how not to burn out as a freelance webdesigner.
3. Amongst those lessons, have a start and end time to your work even if "you make your own hours" so that you don't find yourself working at 3am because you felt you didn't accomplish enough during the day.
4. It's not about the money.
5. Etc.
But I think the funner and more interesting part of what I did today happened after I left the conference and constant thoughts of designs and the concept of 'empathic' design went through my head. I was trying to understand the different things that I could accomplish now that two worlds in my head had merged.
The first part in my mind was that of psychology and understanding human beings. That is a huge part of what I do and Psychology is a field that I truly find fascinating.
The other part, which seemed to me completely unrelated, was making websites. I made websites, and I loved understanding people. Now, although naively those seem unrelated, in depth they are one and the same. At the end of the day, it is people and people only that use websites. You must design websites for people. Suddenly it all made sense. I still had a lot to learn about making websites, but a huge barrier had been cleared, and I had at least taken a step in the right direction to understanding what it was that making websites was, and how to make them in a smart and justifiable way.
I often found myself just cramming in my head for randoms spurs of creativity, but two completely separate thought processes in my head merged today, and I am pretty ridiculously glad for that, because now I can truly understand the inner workings of web design, and move towards designing, to put it simply, much better websites.
I have also written an article titled, The 'World' Wide Web, which I will submit to A List Apart. I will not publish it on my blog until it gets accepted / rejected haha, but it covers interesting ideas of designing in such an interconnected world.
I will now play with ThinkVitamin to see if there is something I can learn from their membership, as I have high hopes that it is this design that will truly teach me everything there is to know about a well designed web site.
In travel updates, I leave for Atlanta tomorrow at 1pm, arriving at 5pm (although its a much longer flight :P). Then on Friday its hopefully to Australia!
So excited and so many great things are happening in my life right now, cheers.
Daniel.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Day 6 - FOWD Part 1
Waking up early was an absolute misery to be honest. I had to wake up by 6am so that I could go volunteer for the Future of Web Design wasn't the best feeling I've ever had.
Nonetheless, everything changes when you are the youngest of about 300 people who all talk about the very thing that you do.
And even better is when you get professionals in the area who not only stand up and talk about it, but tell you what you are doing wrong. At the age of 20, its a very nice and gratifying feeling to hear. Hey kiddo, you are wrong. You are doing this wrong, and by the way here is how you do it RIGHT.
There are a lot of things in Web Design that I have most definitely been doing wrong, and a lot of things that I have been taught, that I know find it extremely difficult to express the gratitude I have towards Cat @ Carsonified who has allowed me the opportunity to volunteer as part of the film crew for a conference which, in contrast to many other conferences I have been, changes the way I think.
One of the best talks that I had today by Aral Balkan really changed how I look at things. I had previously taken a course called Human Computer Interaction taught by Wendy Newstetter in Barcelona, Spain. Learning about HCI for devices was truly eye opening, but when Aral gave the talk at FOWD, and applied everything that Donald Norman, in his book, The Design of Everyday Things, talks about to Web Design, it all made sense.
It's hard to remember any other events throughout the day when you have one event that has such a ridiculous impact on the way you think.
After spending months designing a website, I want to change everything, I want to take everything I have done and re-do it to make it better, and easier, because I had forgotten the one thing that everybody in this conference was here for, design. I knew the web, but I was most certainly missing the design .
It takes a confident speaker to change your perspective on things and Aral was just that. He was focused and concentrated on what he wanted to talk about and his words truly marked the way I look at things.
Now, I am truly thirsty for knowledge, and for that, I have a few resources which this conference has given me that I will look forward to using, to hopefully become a better and stronger web designer.
For those of you that don't know me, I am a Computer Science major at Georgia Tech. I've never really done web design as a profession, which is what everyone in this conference does. Web design is my spare time, and I am glad to have been lead in the right direction for understanding how it works, and the things you have to do to truly change the user experience
UX is legitimately what it is all about, and I will have to change my perspective to focus on exactly that.
Until tomorrow where I'll report updates on how tomorrow's conference goes.
Daniel.
Oh and, I am really getting tired of hostals and I was about to book a hotel today but I went in to the one closest to where I am and it was all booked so i'll survive here for two more nights, and then fly back to ATL, where I'll hopefully spend a night in a nice hotel.
Nonetheless, everything changes when you are the youngest of about 300 people who all talk about the very thing that you do.
And even better is when you get professionals in the area who not only stand up and talk about it, but tell you what you are doing wrong. At the age of 20, its a very nice and gratifying feeling to hear. Hey kiddo, you are wrong. You are doing this wrong, and by the way here is how you do it RIGHT.
There are a lot of things in Web Design that I have most definitely been doing wrong, and a lot of things that I have been taught, that I know find it extremely difficult to express the gratitude I have towards Cat @ Carsonified who has allowed me the opportunity to volunteer as part of the film crew for a conference which, in contrast to many other conferences I have been, changes the way I think.
One of the best talks that I had today by Aral Balkan really changed how I look at things. I had previously taken a course called Human Computer Interaction taught by Wendy Newstetter in Barcelona, Spain. Learning about HCI for devices was truly eye opening, but when Aral gave the talk at FOWD, and applied everything that Donald Norman, in his book, The Design of Everyday Things, talks about to Web Design, it all made sense.
It's hard to remember any other events throughout the day when you have one event that has such a ridiculous impact on the way you think.
After spending months designing a website, I want to change everything, I want to take everything I have done and re-do it to make it better, and easier, because I had forgotten the one thing that everybody in this conference was here for, design. I knew the web, but I was most certainly missing the design .
It takes a confident speaker to change your perspective on things and Aral was just that. He was focused and concentrated on what he wanted to talk about and his words truly marked the way I look at things.
Now, I am truly thirsty for knowledge, and for that, I have a few resources which this conference has given me that I will look forward to using, to hopefully become a better and stronger web designer.
For those of you that don't know me, I am a Computer Science major at Georgia Tech. I've never really done web design as a profession, which is what everyone in this conference does. Web design is my spare time, and I am glad to have been lead in the right direction for understanding how it works, and the things you have to do to truly change the user experience
UX is legitimately what it is all about, and I will have to change my perspective to focus on exactly that.
Until tomorrow where I'll report updates on how tomorrow's conference goes.
Daniel.
Oh and, I am really getting tired of hostals and I was about to book a hotel today but I went in to the one closest to where I am and it was all booked so i'll survive here for two more nights, and then fly back to ATL, where I'll hopefully spend a night in a nice hotel.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Day 5 - Hakuna Matata :)
On Day 5, I was very paranoid. I had all of my travel documents which were very important, and if there is one thing in Barcelona that isn't good, it's theft. A few friends left and right had lost their phones, so you can imagine that I was slightly scared about losing my stuff. I woke up rather early, packed my bags, and was ready to go to London. I went to Starbucks and had some croissants, and a good orange juice.
From there, I took a taxi to the airport, which was surprisingly only like 22 euros. I am not sure why it was so cheap but I didn't complain and gave the guy 25 euros. From there I got off and went to check in with Easyjet. I checked in and went through security just fine, and then simply directed myself to the gate. As I was on the bus that took us to the plane, I kept having fun solving my Rubik's cube to the complete surprise of the person sitting to my left who was impressed haha. Anyways, after that I boarded the plane and asked what my seat number was considering my ticket did not have one. The lady kindly looked at me and said, oh, it's free seating so just pick any seat.
I giggled, you have to love Easyjet. Upon arriving at London, which by the way was an absolutely fantastic flight where I slept probably 90% of, I took a bus from Gatwick, which was where the plane landed, to Central London. I was very confused as to the route the bus driver took to be honest because he seemed to have made a giant loop, but eventually we arrived near an underground stop and I took the underground to my hostal.
I am staying at the Generator hostal again, after two years, and I am glad that not much has changed and that I pretty much remembered my way back. I bought a razor at the hostal but it was two-bladed, which made it nearly impossible to get a clean shave without constant cleaning but oh well, now its all good.
I got back, settled in and talked a bit with one of my room-mates who seems to only speak French. Then I went down and emailed Jeff who was booking my flights as I travel the world, and luckily managed to get in touch with him so that he could book my LHR - ATL flight, so that I could return to Atlanta on Thursday at 5pm. I am really glad we got to book that because I was planning on coming back pretty early to Atlanta so I could head to Sydney, Australia.
I realized that once Friday comes along, I will have a pretty ridiculous on flight to on land average considering I have been flying a lot. And after I land in Australia, I don't think I even want to count.
Anyways, my laptop seems to not be ok with the electricity here in London as I can most definitely feel a current running through the metal part of my computer through my body because every time I touch my metal chair I feel a slight burn (nothing painful only like itchy) which is pretty mest up haha but i'm almost done typing. My laptop is sadly dying and I will eventually have to purchase a new one once I get to Mountain View, California, but until then, it will hopefully survive.
I was wondering the different ways that Barcelona could improve its security so that theft wouldn't be a problem but the dilemma is so conflicting. Barcelona is a very free city and very open to everybody. Putting a bunch of security cameras or police would not reduce crime, it would ruin the city. The only reason people steal is because they are poor, so I came to the conclusion that Barcelona needs to improve their quality of life in their city by continuing to provide amazing infrastructure all throughout the city to eventually reduce and eliminate crime. Perhaps that will work, who knows...
I luckily have not lost anything so far, travelling only with carry on luggage around the world. I feel a bit more relaxed here in London, and am about to go outside to eat and to find out where my conference actually is so that tomorrow morning I do not get lost.
It's been a lot of travelling and partying and I feel like I am getting old since only two years ago I seemed to be perfectly ok with travelling Europe for two months from hostal to hostal no problem and now I feel slightly exhausted and it has only been two countries :p.
Time for food and directions.
Take care,
Daniel.
From there, I took a taxi to the airport, which was surprisingly only like 22 euros. I am not sure why it was so cheap but I didn't complain and gave the guy 25 euros. From there I got off and went to check in with Easyjet. I checked in and went through security just fine, and then simply directed myself to the gate. As I was on the bus that took us to the plane, I kept having fun solving my Rubik's cube to the complete surprise of the person sitting to my left who was impressed haha. Anyways, after that I boarded the plane and asked what my seat number was considering my ticket did not have one. The lady kindly looked at me and said, oh, it's free seating so just pick any seat.
I giggled, you have to love Easyjet. Upon arriving at London, which by the way was an absolutely fantastic flight where I slept probably 90% of, I took a bus from Gatwick, which was where the plane landed, to Central London. I was very confused as to the route the bus driver took to be honest because he seemed to have made a giant loop, but eventually we arrived near an underground stop and I took the underground to my hostal.
I am staying at the Generator hostal again, after two years, and I am glad that not much has changed and that I pretty much remembered my way back. I bought a razor at the hostal but it was two-bladed, which made it nearly impossible to get a clean shave without constant cleaning but oh well, now its all good.
I got back, settled in and talked a bit with one of my room-mates who seems to only speak French. Then I went down and emailed Jeff who was booking my flights as I travel the world, and luckily managed to get in touch with him so that he could book my LHR - ATL flight, so that I could return to Atlanta on Thursday at 5pm. I am really glad we got to book that because I was planning on coming back pretty early to Atlanta so I could head to Sydney, Australia.
I realized that once Friday comes along, I will have a pretty ridiculous on flight to on land average considering I have been flying a lot. And after I land in Australia, I don't think I even want to count.
Anyways, my laptop seems to not be ok with the electricity here in London as I can most definitely feel a current running through the metal part of my computer through my body because every time I touch my metal chair I feel a slight burn (nothing painful only like itchy) which is pretty mest up haha but i'm almost done typing. My laptop is sadly dying and I will eventually have to purchase a new one once I get to Mountain View, California, but until then, it will hopefully survive.
I was wondering the different ways that Barcelona could improve its security so that theft wouldn't be a problem but the dilemma is so conflicting. Barcelona is a very free city and very open to everybody. Putting a bunch of security cameras or police would not reduce crime, it would ruin the city. The only reason people steal is because they are poor, so I came to the conclusion that Barcelona needs to improve their quality of life in their city by continuing to provide amazing infrastructure all throughout the city to eventually reduce and eliminate crime. Perhaps that will work, who knows...
I luckily have not lost anything so far, travelling only with carry on luggage around the world. I feel a bit more relaxed here in London, and am about to go outside to eat and to find out where my conference actually is so that tomorrow morning I do not get lost.
It's been a lot of travelling and partying and I feel like I am getting old since only two years ago I seemed to be perfectly ok with travelling Europe for two months from hostal to hostal no problem and now I feel slightly exhausted and it has only been two countries :p.
Time for food and directions.
Take care,
Daniel.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Day Four - Uncharge and Good bye
It has been a ridiculous three nights in Barcelona, and it was only right if I had one relaxing night where I could get some work done. So Day 4, ahh, what a beautiful day.
I woke up at 11am, and was ready to go see my friends one last time before I left. I wanted to hit all of my important spots before I left, and visit all of the final places that I missed, and so I did. I took a few friends and went around, first to Espanya. After that I passed by the museum, and kept going towards the Olympic Park behind Espanya, where the sun and blue skies couldn't of have given us a better day. A chilly breeze on a sunny day, the weather was perfect.
We walked all through the Olympic area, behind the Olympic Pool where a really famous photograph of synchronized diving was taken, I couldn't find the exact one online but this one was very similar, ( see Image ). After that we continued our trail and went behind the whole ordeal to a smaller forest / field where it seemed really chill to just hang out and relax. I was very happy to have finally gotten back to a place which I often ventured into over a year ago. The calamity of this spot warmed my heart as it brought memories of sitting under a tree and observing as the sun finally went down as the clock hit 10pm, and as I turned my final page in a book which was rendered uninteresting amongst the wonders of Barcelona. Upon returning from our long adventures, after passing by a romantic Parc de Montjuic where a few Catalan couples share their passion for each other as the butterflies go by undisturbed.
It was good to see the children still walked these soothing trails, and played with their parents in nature, still growing up in the environment which many cities have long lost.
It was good to see that the chilly breeze and painted sunset still remained, and that a year had gone by, but beauty still remained.
It was good to see everything in this city, and it is sad to leave it all so soon. I now depart for London for what promises to be a fantastic conference, and can only expect the best from such an exciting city. In the midst of all that I have traveled, I am more and more convinced that Barcelona has something that I can only wish other cities would yearn to imitate.
I'd say its the people, or the architecture, or their regulations, or their design, but it is all of that and so much more, that I rather say nothing, and simply reassure you that if you are ever in this city, you will understand what beauty truly is.
I am slowly but surely falling asleep as I write this, so it will have to be until later,
Good night,
Daniel.
P.S. I showed Summit and a few other friends my favorite Kebab place, and to this day they have eaten the amazing 4 euro doner kebabs. They are absolutely in love with this stores Kebabs, its pretty ridiculous. I personally ate one every day I was here, and even had two today. It is simply such an amazing meal, that even after 2-3 months of Kebab last year, I find myself to still be addicted.
I woke up at 11am, and was ready to go see my friends one last time before I left. I wanted to hit all of my important spots before I left, and visit all of the final places that I missed, and so I did. I took a few friends and went around, first to Espanya. After that I passed by the museum, and kept going towards the Olympic Park behind Espanya, where the sun and blue skies couldn't of have given us a better day. A chilly breeze on a sunny day, the weather was perfect.
We walked all through the Olympic area, behind the Olympic Pool where a really famous photograph of synchronized diving was taken, I couldn't find the exact one online but this one was very similar, ( see Image ). After that we continued our trail and went behind the whole ordeal to a smaller forest / field where it seemed really chill to just hang out and relax. I was very happy to have finally gotten back to a place which I often ventured into over a year ago. The calamity of this spot warmed my heart as it brought memories of sitting under a tree and observing as the sun finally went down as the clock hit 10pm, and as I turned my final page in a book which was rendered uninteresting amongst the wonders of Barcelona. Upon returning from our long adventures, after passing by a romantic Parc de Montjuic where a few Catalan couples share their passion for each other as the butterflies go by undisturbed.
It was good to see the children still walked these soothing trails, and played with their parents in nature, still growing up in the environment which many cities have long lost.
It was good to see that the chilly breeze and painted sunset still remained, and that a year had gone by, but beauty still remained.
It was good to see everything in this city, and it is sad to leave it all so soon. I now depart for London for what promises to be a fantastic conference, and can only expect the best from such an exciting city. In the midst of all that I have traveled, I am more and more convinced that Barcelona has something that I can only wish other cities would yearn to imitate.
I'd say its the people, or the architecture, or their regulations, or their design, but it is all of that and so much more, that I rather say nothing, and simply reassure you that if you are ever in this city, you will understand what beauty truly is.
I am slowly but surely falling asleep as I write this, so it will have to be until later,
Good night,
Daniel.
P.S. I showed Summit and a few other friends my favorite Kebab place, and to this day they have eaten the amazing 4 euro doner kebabs. They are absolutely in love with this stores Kebabs, its pretty ridiculous. I personally ate one every day I was here, and even had two today. It is simply such an amazing meal, that even after 2-3 months of Kebab last year, I find myself to still be addicted.
Day Three - Recharge and Get Ready
Considering that on Day 3 I woke up at 7pm, there wasn't much of the day left for me to go out. Funny enough however, on my casual stroll down the city of Barcelona, I ran into a few friends from the BCN trip, who were also walking around at about 10pm. We went to the chocolate museum, and then proceeded to go to a few bars, I encountered something I had never encountered before, a new drink at a bar.
To my surprise and what to be honest, was a mind-blowing experience, they offered a Guarana with Whisky at this Brazilian bar.
Let me give you a brief background as to what this really means to me. Back in 2006, I went to Brazil for a conference and truly one of the most life changing experiences that started me on my adventures. After arriving at Brazil, and sitting patiently at a restaurant, the waiter was very persistent of us trying their local soda, namely, Guarana. A sip, and I was in love, the whole can, and I was simply speechless. How had this wonder of the world and absolutely amazing drink not been exploited to every corner of the world as the best thing ever, I did not know.
Regardless, those memories were long hidden away in a corner of my brain and they would occasionally return when I was to visit Brazilian friends here and there, who always seem to have a stash of them to offer.
On Day Three, not only was I welcomed with the beauty of a Guarana that I had the privilege of showing to all the friends who were on this Barcelona trip, I also had the privilege of trying it out as part of a drink. It was simply... I can't even explain it.
I am not a big fan of mixing whisky with things, but this seemed to work out all right. I think other types of alcohol may actually make a better combination, like, the right kind of rum, but regardless, I do believe I had made a very valuable connection. This is definitely something I shall experiment with in the future.
Anyways, moving forward in the night, we walked around, my friends purchased this little toy which you can shoot into the sky with a rubber band, and they were outstandingly entertained by how fun it was, I found it quite funny. I felt I had to mention that as part of the night because they were very entertained by its pretty colors as you shot it up into the night sky.
After that we went to George Paynes, a classic Irish bar off the Urquinaona metro stop, and from there, after it closed, decided to call it a night. I came back to my hostal around 4:30am, to make my arrivals back into the hostal 4:00am, 7:30am, and 4:30am respectively. I can truly and honestly say this has been one of the craziest weekends in Barcelona, and I am glad to have been able to show the GT students around a bit, as it seems they enjoy travelling and embracing new cultures as much as I do :).
Cheers and until London,
Daniel.
To my surprise and what to be honest, was a mind-blowing experience, they offered a Guarana with Whisky at this Brazilian bar.
Let me give you a brief background as to what this really means to me. Back in 2006, I went to Brazil for a conference and truly one of the most life changing experiences that started me on my adventures. After arriving at Brazil, and sitting patiently at a restaurant, the waiter was very persistent of us trying their local soda, namely, Guarana. A sip, and I was in love, the whole can, and I was simply speechless. How had this wonder of the world and absolutely amazing drink not been exploited to every corner of the world as the best thing ever, I did not know.
Regardless, those memories were long hidden away in a corner of my brain and they would occasionally return when I was to visit Brazilian friends here and there, who always seem to have a stash of them to offer.
On Day Three, not only was I welcomed with the beauty of a Guarana that I had the privilege of showing to all the friends who were on this Barcelona trip, I also had the privilege of trying it out as part of a drink. It was simply... I can't even explain it.
I am not a big fan of mixing whisky with things, but this seemed to work out all right. I think other types of alcohol may actually make a better combination, like, the right kind of rum, but regardless, I do believe I had made a very valuable connection. This is definitely something I shall experiment with in the future.
Anyways, moving forward in the night, we walked around, my friends purchased this little toy which you can shoot into the sky with a rubber band, and they were outstandingly entertained by how fun it was, I found it quite funny. I felt I had to mention that as part of the night because they were very entertained by its pretty colors as you shot it up into the night sky.
After that we went to George Paynes, a classic Irish bar off the Urquinaona metro stop, and from there, after it closed, decided to call it a night. I came back to my hostal around 4:30am, to make my arrivals back into the hostal 4:00am, 7:30am, and 4:30am respectively. I can truly and honestly say this has been one of the craziest weekends in Barcelona, and I am glad to have been able to show the GT students around a bit, as it seems they enjoy travelling and embracing new cultures as much as I do :).
Cheers and until London,
Daniel.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Day TWo - Oh my god.
Long story short, I got back to my hostal from the clubs at 7am, and went to bed for 12 hours straight. I partied on Thursday night, and then again on Friday night, it's been quite some fun.
I am getting ready for my conference in London on Tuesday, and I can't wait until I get to Australia.
I never really understood how much I appreciated the city of Barcelona and all of its gorgeous perks. While I was riding the metro back today I came to realize how beautiful everything and everyone is in this city, and how amazing the few hours I have been here have been. I am glad to have gotten the chance to show a few people in the city Barcelona, and look forward to sometime returning to this city.
I met a friend who is teaching English, and has made the decision to move to Barcelona for good. He was telling me how he lived here for two months and simply decided it was such an amazing city that he was now definite about moving here. I couldn't help but think the same thing. Maybe some day I'll move to Barcelona.
Anyways, things are going good, I met a bunch of great people from this years trip, and they all seem like they are going to absolutely love being in Barcelona. It's hard for this city not to be for everybody, and I think seldom will I find someone who genuinely does not like the city. It's just open to any and everybody in this world.
I've also been thinking somewhat about life in general, the whole getting married thing, it's been rather confusing to be honest. I can't really grasp the concept of committing to someone for your life, it's rather difficult I believe. Maybe in a few years I'll understand it, and obviously I'm still rather young but those thoughts sometimes go through my mind.
Ok so let me give you a summary of day two.
I woke up in the early afternoon, around 2pm, and met up with a few people from the group and went cell phone shopping with them. After that, I went back and we had a nice wine and cheese night, which I was happy to see other people appreciated. We also had this fascinating turkey chorizo, which tasted surprisingly like actual chorizo, it was rather interesting.
From there, we walked over to go to the Barcelona game celebration and before we got to the metro we ran into a few people who told us it was over so we took them with us and made a sudden change of plans to go to a mohito bar which I knew near by.
After we had some good drinks at the bar, we went to this plaza and just chilled out and had some beers in the plaza. Some of the people who were selling stuff got annoying, and a guy with roses came by and asked one of the girls in the group if she was a virgin which I found tremendously disrespectful, onto which I got in an argument about respect with a guy who was selling roses, and he tried insulting me as he walked away but something must have got lost in translation, as his last phrase was "I will fuck you", which I found rather funny. It wasn't like a 'fuck you' but just oddly like a 'I will fuck you', :p.
Anyways, from there, four more girls joined us in the plaza, for a few more beers. We continued our adventures down to the beach for more beers. Eventually, we entered Shoko, and had a blast as we danced the rest of the night away. One of the best moments I believe was as we were dancing, I simply turned around and looked at the horizon, and you could see the sun was starting to rise. I found it fantastic that we had partied literally all night until about 7am, which is approximately when I somehow managed to get back to my hostal, and fall back to bed.
At one point during my very tiresome sleep I woke up in complete confusion, and looked around, frankly having no idea where I was. I then remembered I was at the hostal, and even more confusion kicked in as to how I successfully got back, but I made sense of things and then realized how beautiful of a city Barcelona is.
That was all for today, I am now headed off to hang out with a few friends and then head back.
Cheers,
Daniel.
I am getting ready for my conference in London on Tuesday, and I can't wait until I get to Australia.
I never really understood how much I appreciated the city of Barcelona and all of its gorgeous perks. While I was riding the metro back today I came to realize how beautiful everything and everyone is in this city, and how amazing the few hours I have been here have been. I am glad to have gotten the chance to show a few people in the city Barcelona, and look forward to sometime returning to this city.
I met a friend who is teaching English, and has made the decision to move to Barcelona for good. He was telling me how he lived here for two months and simply decided it was such an amazing city that he was now definite about moving here. I couldn't help but think the same thing. Maybe some day I'll move to Barcelona.
Anyways, things are going good, I met a bunch of great people from this years trip, and they all seem like they are going to absolutely love being in Barcelona. It's hard for this city not to be for everybody, and I think seldom will I find someone who genuinely does not like the city. It's just open to any and everybody in this world.
I've also been thinking somewhat about life in general, the whole getting married thing, it's been rather confusing to be honest. I can't really grasp the concept of committing to someone for your life, it's rather difficult I believe. Maybe in a few years I'll understand it, and obviously I'm still rather young but those thoughts sometimes go through my mind.
Ok so let me give you a summary of day two.
I woke up in the early afternoon, around 2pm, and met up with a few people from the group and went cell phone shopping with them. After that, I went back and we had a nice wine and cheese night, which I was happy to see other people appreciated. We also had this fascinating turkey chorizo, which tasted surprisingly like actual chorizo, it was rather interesting.
From there, we walked over to go to the Barcelona game celebration and before we got to the metro we ran into a few people who told us it was over so we took them with us and made a sudden change of plans to go to a mohito bar which I knew near by.
After we had some good drinks at the bar, we went to this plaza and just chilled out and had some beers in the plaza. Some of the people who were selling stuff got annoying, and a guy with roses came by and asked one of the girls in the group if she was a virgin which I found tremendously disrespectful, onto which I got in an argument about respect with a guy who was selling roses, and he tried insulting me as he walked away but something must have got lost in translation, as his last phrase was "I will fuck you", which I found rather funny. It wasn't like a 'fuck you' but just oddly like a 'I will fuck you', :p.
Anyways, from there, four more girls joined us in the plaza, for a few more beers. We continued our adventures down to the beach for more beers. Eventually, we entered Shoko, and had a blast as we danced the rest of the night away. One of the best moments I believe was as we were dancing, I simply turned around and looked at the horizon, and you could see the sun was starting to rise. I found it fantastic that we had partied literally all night until about 7am, which is approximately when I somehow managed to get back to my hostal, and fall back to bed.
At one point during my very tiresome sleep I woke up in complete confusion, and looked around, frankly having no idea where I was. I then remembered I was at the hostal, and even more confusion kicked in as to how I successfully got back, but I made sense of things and then realized how beautiful of a city Barcelona is.
That was all for today, I am now headed off to hang out with a few friends and then head back.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Day ONe
Day One:
I have titled this WORLDTRIP 2011 because for the first time in my life, I am going to be travelling to three different continents over my summer (North America, Europe, and Australia)
I arrived to Barcelona, Spain yesterday, around 9am. As soon as I arrived, I was greeted wonderfully at the Duo hostel, which I was very glad to have booked. They are very secure and have a great environment, which made it a rather fantastic place to stay at. I went around the city showing my friends the different places, and then went to Chupitos [a very important tradition], and from there we went to Opium. It is always a shock to me how late they party in Barcelona, and even after arriving around 1am, we were still relatively early to the party.
Anyways, we stayed at Opium for quite some time, and then finally left the party. It was absolutely fantastic to be back and dance all night, and despite how tired and worn out I was, I was definitely happy and glad to be back in Barcelona. It is a very interesting group of people which I have grown very fond of, and really wish I were staying here for longer. However, I am also ridiculously excited about the next few days to come, where I will be flying to wonderful places in the world.
First and foremost, I will be flying to London on Sunday, in order to go to the Future of Web Design conference. At this conference I will be part of the film crew and definitely get to see some of the talks that they will be giving. I am very excited about this and can hardly even explain how fun this will be. After that I shall be flying back to Barcelona, to catch my flight to go to Melbourne, Australia. I am not exactly sure of how many / which connections I will make, but rest assured, once I get there, life will be amazing. I can’t wait to see one of my closest friends who lives in Melbourne, and spend a few weeks with her in the city [down under] as she calls it.
Oh well, I think that is it for my writing, I am off now.
Plans for today: Buy a converter and deodorant.
I have titled this WORLDTRIP 2011 because for the first time in my life, I am going to be travelling to three different continents over my summer (North America, Europe, and Australia)
I arrived to Barcelona, Spain yesterday, around 9am. As soon as I arrived, I was greeted wonderfully at the Duo hostel, which I was very glad to have booked. They are very secure and have a great environment, which made it a rather fantastic place to stay at. I went around the city showing my friends the different places, and then went to Chupitos [a very important tradition], and from there we went to Opium. It is always a shock to me how late they party in Barcelona, and even after arriving around 1am, we were still relatively early to the party.
Anyways, we stayed at Opium for quite some time, and then finally left the party. It was absolutely fantastic to be back and dance all night, and despite how tired and worn out I was, I was definitely happy and glad to be back in Barcelona. It is a very interesting group of people which I have grown very fond of, and really wish I were staying here for longer. However, I am also ridiculously excited about the next few days to come, where I will be flying to wonderful places in the world.
First and foremost, I will be flying to London on Sunday, in order to go to the Future of Web Design conference. At this conference I will be part of the film crew and definitely get to see some of the talks that they will be giving. I am very excited about this and can hardly even explain how fun this will be. After that I shall be flying back to Barcelona, to catch my flight to go to Melbourne, Australia. I am not exactly sure of how many / which connections I will make, but rest assured, once I get there, life will be amazing. I can’t wait to see one of my closest friends who lives in Melbourne, and spend a few weeks with her in the city [down under] as she calls it.
Oh well, I think that is it for my writing, I am off now.
Plans for today: Buy a converter and deodorant.
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