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Two Years of Traveling

Map o' traveling

I’ve lived in Kuwait for a little over two years now, and although I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest place to live, there’s no doubt it’s given me a chance to travel more internationally. I have been able to travel from Southeast Asia to India to Northern Europe. I’ve learned how to get tourist visas and become familiar with several regional airlines (Ryanair, you are one shrewd bastard).

Traveling has been a tremendous and eye-opening experience. Even though I’ve always had a desire to be exposed to different cultures and make international friends, I’m still an American from a small city. It was quite a stretch for me initially to become accustomed to traveling long distances even within the U.S., and these past two years have further broadened my perspective and increased my traveler’s prowess.

As I prepare to move back to the U.S., I hope I can continue to explore the world (and even my own country). I’m more aware of what it takes to travel: everything from what to pack, to the physical toll long plane flights and jet lag can take, to (of course) the money required.

I feel a stronger desire than ever to travel now, and the world seems both smaller (I’m more aware of geography) and more immense (I feel like there will never be enough time to see it all).

Quote
"At some point the one machine we have made, the continuous cloak of electronic neurons wrapped around the globe, will produce some impulse, some emergent behavior, some new phenomenon that is evident to all did not arise with us, but came out of this gigantic web — and at that point many people will begin to see God in it."

The Technium: The Internet Is My Religion

Photo
theimpossiblecool:

Coltrane, Queens, 1963.
photo by Jim Marshall

theimpossiblecool:

Coltrane, Queens, 1963.

photo by Jim Marshall

Audio
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I just discovered Bon Iver.

Via cubicle17

Quote
"The United States Military (Waterhouse has decided) is first and foremost an unfathomable network of typists and file clerks, secondarily a stupendous mechanism for moving stuff from one part of the world to another, and last and least a fighting organization."

— Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon