Ylliks

As mentioned yesterday I’m going on holiday to Mexico next week. And whenever I talk to someone and tell them that no matter what type of vacation I only take one carry-on bag I always get the same kind of question with the accompanying look:”How could you take everything with you in just one bag?” To me, one bag travel has all kinds of advantages. Especially the flexibility and the fact that it’s impossible for me to lose my bags during air transfer (if I don’t leave them in the plane myself of course) is a real plus.

When packing for travel everyone has their comfort zone. I don’t mind washing some clothes during my travels and I buy my travel clothes accordingly (quick dry, non-wrinkle, light, multi-usable). But if you don’t want to do that your only choice is to take enough clothing with you to last the duration of your stay. I also don’t pack for all eventualities. Some people like to take enough with them so that no matter what, they’ll have clothing for the situation. Although I wonder if it’s possible to pack that much.

What goes for packing also goes for how you spend your holiday/travels. Some are happy going to Egypt and stay in an all-inclusive resort. I would go to Egypt to see the pyramids and other historic landmarks. Some go to Bali to lay on the beach for 2 weeks, I would travel the country. None of the possibilities are either good or bad, it’s all about what you want out of your travels.

I’ve seen both sides of the story when it comes to travel. I come from a family with a mother who’s all about packing for every situation, while I now try to pack as little as I’m comfortable with. I did the laying-at-the-beach holidays and the ones where I went exploring. And for most of my travels I had a blast.

Being comfortable in your way of travel is important. For many of us a holiday is a way of letting of steam and relax. There’s no sense in having any stress then.

At the end of next week I’ll be off for a trip around the Yukatan in Mexico. I’m of course excited about the prospect of spending time there and seeing the Mayan cultural sites, but the fact that I don’t speak Spanish makes interacting with the locals a bit of a problem. That’s why I decided 3 weeks ago that it was time to learn the language as fast as I could. Or at least as much so I could converse with people.

To give you a bit of a background I now speak 3 languages well (my native Dutch, English and German) and a little bit of French. That knowledge has helped me on earlier travels, but since I’m now going to a part of the world where Spanish is the main language I do not have a real fallback when it comes to communicating. I looked at different courses, but the traditional ones don’t offer much because even with an increased learning speed it will take you several months to learn the language.

Then I remembered reading an article by Tim Ferriss on how he learns languages quickly. As he mentions in the article it’s not so much about mastering the language but knowing enough about it to put it to good use. So I put his methods to the test to find out if it would work for me.

Pretty soon I started to understand what was being written (Engadget Espanol helped me with that one). When it comes to actually understanding to what is said (I watched some football and basketball with Spanish commentary) it’s another matter. Maybe it’s because of the difference in phonetics or the fast speed with which they speak but I was able to understand maybe 5-10% of what was being said.

Despite that fact I’m pretty impressed with how his method worked. I’m sure that if I have time to put in a little more effort to perfecting my way of working it (which sadly will be after my holiday) I’ll be able to get the hang of it. For now I’m just happy with the way I understand some thing and I’ll just ask them to slow down a bit when they go to fast. And if all else fails: a friend who will join me is an interpreter so he can do the talking for me.

As I said in my last post I find it hard to find inspiration for a weekly blog post. One of the reasons why is the fact that I don’t have a real incentive to write every week. When I do have incentive (for instance when it’s work-related) I usually don’t have that much trouble. So in order to see if inspiration strikes when I have an incentive to write I will have a little experiment next week: I will write a post every day monday to friday of next week.

In order for this to be a bit of a challenge I’ve set up a few rules:

1. Articles have to be at least 300 words: This would stop me from writing a sort of tweet and consider it a post.
2. No writing on how hard this experiment is: So no post about “I have no inspiration today/I find it hard to write today” etc. etc. No, these posts should have a subject not related to the experiment.
3. No multi-parters: It would easier to find one subject and talk about it over a multi post spread. Nothing of the kind.

I know these are not the strictest of rules, but I think they well be quite a challenge for me as it is. If readers of this article have suggestions for other rules (open to interpretation from me of course) you’re welcome to add them in the comments.

I’m wondering how this experiment will work out. To be honest I have no idea. But I’ll soon find out.

I read quite a few blogs. Some of those publish every once in a while. Others do it on a daily basis. This had made me wonder how the latter find inspiration to write as much as they do. I can only talk about personal experience here but I’m having trouble enough coming up with an idea on my own to write 1 post here every week.

Take Chris Brogan. He’s a guy I started following on Twitter some time ago and subscribed to his blog soon after that. He’s one of those guys that writes great content on a daily basis (sometimes multiple times as day) and he has no trouble finding inspiration to write. The opposite it seems. So how does he do that? Is he just more perceptive towards possible subjects? Does the fact that he thinks he has to write all the time force him to come up with them?

Maybe when there’s a need to write all the time you’re more open to subjects to write about.

It’s been a while since I did some experimenting (although results of the experiments are still going on) so maybe I should do a writing experiment. I don’t know how I’ll set it up exactly, but I think it could be a nice challenge. Let me get back to you on that one.