Accidentally in Code

Tag: travel

  • Headphones (my Travel Indulgence)

    Headphones (my Travel Indulgence)

    Credit: Pixabay / StockSnap
    Credit: Pixabay / StockSnap

    I travel with three pairs of headphones. Which is clearly unnecessary. But I listen to music constantly, and it’s one place where the inefficiency is small (if I was less disciplined about accessories I would need a bigger bag), and makes enough difference to my happiness that it seems worthwhile. All product links are Amazon (affiliate links subsidise my reading habit).

    1. Bose QuietComfort 20 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones, Apple Devices, Black. These are magic, I’ve been travelling with them for years (see my travel packing list from a while ago). They block out sound on airplanes fantastically, and are comfortable enough for an entire trans-continental flight or full day of work. They’re so good – even with noise cancelling turned off – that I find them hard to do meetings in, and don’t like to walk around wearing them because I think they block out too much. But I never want to be without them on a long flight!
    2. Urbanears Plattan ADV Wireless. I hadn’t quite seen the value of wireless headphones and was generally opposed to having Yet Another Thing To Charge, but there was a half price thing on these with Spotify and I acquired them. So happy I did, because they quickly became my favourite (if you have seen a recent selfie I was probably wearing them). I love that I can get tea or whatever without untethering myself from my computer, and they are great for the airport because wires and no pockets and carrying multiple things is a pain. So no wires = better, in ways that I never realized were annoying me. Bonus: when it’s cold outside they help keep my ears warm.
    3. B&O PLAY by BANG & OLUFSEN – Earset 3i Headphones, Black. Normally my third pair is cheap and disposable, but I finally unboxed these after a year – I obtained them on the way back from Dubai using some vouchers I got after being mistaken for the inflight entertainment. The fact that I have grown to love a pair of headphones I was referring to with a prefix that reminded me of that whole situation is a testament to the fantastic audio quality, and the hinge system – which means I can take them out of my ears without taking them off my ears. I wear these when I don’t want to block out as much sound, or when the charge has run out on the wireless ones…

    BONUS ITEM

    MagicBox Wireless Speaker. Hands down the best speaker gift I was given in 2015 (and not just for the joke). It’s tiny, charges on the same USB as my Android / Android Wear / wireless headphones / Kindle / Bose, and plays music at a reasonable level and audio quality when I’m hanging out in the hotel room or apartment. This little box has made me way happier, especially when I had music only on my phone and not my computer (space). However because I just switched to Spotify (after all my music mysteriously disappeared from my phone in December) I left it behind this trip figuring I would use my laptop instead. I’ve actually really missed it, so it’s definitely coming with me again next time!

  • Start a Project. Kill a Project.

    Start a Project. Kill a Project.

    The Last Postcards (sent from Paris, Jan 3 2015)
    The Last Postcards (sent from Paris, Jan 3 2015)

    I have been enjoying everyone’s year in review posts, and reading what they hope to achieve over the next year. I love the enthusiasm and the new projects starting, but one thing I love even more is when I see people defining what they will do less of in 2016.

    For myself, I set my self a limit of 6 talks in 2016. This is a big constraint (in 2015 I gave 6 – different – talks in September alone). I’m also working to shed various things, most notably admin work (I will write more about how my word for 2016 is “scale”).

    Because the thing is, what you don’t do, is maybe more important than what you do do. When we say no to things, we create space. Then it’s up to us what we do with it.

    Like many people, I started the year with a new project. Well, instead I called it a challenge – it’s to send a digital postcard from every place I leave in 2016. I called it, since people ask me this a lot, Where the Hell is Cate?

    This came from the fact that I have realised that I only really stay in touch with people I communicate with on Twitter or IM. I don’t really use Facebook, and I am exceptionally bad at email. Sometimes I exchange emails with friends who are like “tell me everything” and I don’t even know how to respond… I mean I tweeted about it all, right? I don’t want to rehash it again. Every so often I send an email and include some longer form rambling about travel, or life. Things that aren’t particularly personal, but that I wouldn’t put on the public web.

    So: I decided that I could accept email as an outward bound form of communication, registered a domain, and started working on the first one (which I sent out yesterday from CDG airport). Basically I have taken everything I know about sustainable projects and applied it here. It may still fail, but at least should it fail it will fail in a new way that I cannot predict.

    1. Low bar. I firmly believe that most things fail because we set the bar for success too high. Whilst yesterday I sent out a lengthy essay talking about loneliness, languages, and commenting on the history of luggage, the bar is a picture and a favourite thing. I can put that together in 15 minutes at the airport as I wait for a flight. It feels very possible.

    2. Specific Trigger. I believe in a schedule. I operate my blog on a schedule. We run Technically Speaking on a schedule. If something is “optional”, it needs to have a specific trigger to happen because otherwise the constraint is “ready” and then it becomes very easy to overthink and delay. I usually use time as the trigger, but for this project the trigger is leaving. It’s the airport.

    3. Something Must End. At this point anything coming into my life means that something must leave it. When I contemplate a project I ask myself “what will I give up to do this project?” and if the answer is “nothing” then that is a sign that project should not happen. I shed a bunch of things to start my job, so projects that remain are ones that I really, deeply love. It is very hard for me to make space for a new project. For WTHIC, I am giving up two things: 1) the rambly emails periodically sent to friends, 2) sending postcards.

    One of the interesting and challenging things for me is the idea of creating something transient and ephemeral. I am very into the Documentation of Achievements, and rather than have the same conversation multiple times, I write things up in blog posts and then I can just share them. (Sometimes, when I write sentences like this, I am amazed I have any friends, let alone many). But one thing about transient and ephemeral is that is affords a greater level of privacy and a lower expectation of judgement than the forever web. A postcard is just a point in time. A blogpost is much closer to forever, or forever in digital terms, at least.

    Why Kill Postcards?

    I started sending postcards when I left Australia. It started as a controlled way to stay “in touch”, if you can call it that, with my favourite ex boyfriend. Leaving Australia also meant leaving him, and that broke my heart. Even though it was the right thing to do. Even though he and I were never going to figure it out. I started sending him postcards, from my adventures, as a way to let him know that I still thought about him, and still missed him, but not in a way that we actually had to… have a conversation.

    Over time, I started adding in other people to send postcards to, particularly friends who I knew were having a rough time. And sometimes I would tweet, and send a postcard to anyone who wanted one. This has been a surprisingly time-consuming activity. Sending 5 postcards from Paris yesterday took ~45 minutes (and where to find stamps had been on my mind for days). Sending 24 postcards (and 2 packages) from Easter Island took – I am not kidding – at least 3 hours. I spent 1-2 hours mailing postcards and failing to mail those packages from Santiago. I spent at least 2 hours writing and mailing things in Croatia.

    I was really happy to share a bit of my adventures with people, and really happy so many people wanted postcards! But this project was a prime one for killing for a few reasons:

    • I’m heading to Colombia, a place where there is basically no postal service (I bought postcards when I was there in April, and ended up mailing them from Santiago).
    • I get very little feedback from people who receive them. What was a feature of sending things to the ex – a communication medium outside, no need to respond – is a bug when it comes to sending them to other people. I asked a friend recently if he got the postcard I sent and he said, “yes I took a picture of it!” (He did not Social Media the picture, so does it really exist at all?)
    • It’s superficial. I write at most 1-2 personalised sentences per postcard, but usually just “hi from <LOCATION>. I pick cards that I think may speak to people, but usually it’s quite generic. I think people liked postcards because it connected them to my bizarre nomadic life, but did it really? It’s just a physical object transported from one place to another. It does not convey anything more than “I was here”.

    Onwards

    Start a project. Kill a project. Postcards are dead. For 2016, if you want to know about my nomadic life, let me send you letters from airports: Where the Hell is Cate.

    And if you are here for the musings about sustainability of projects and don’t care where I am, I leave you with the thought: things only exist if there is space for them. What space do the projects in your life need, and how do you plan to create it?

  • Denver, August 2015

    Denver, August 2015

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    I was in Denver for 360iDev (which was great), but decided to stay on and hang out for a bit. The conference put me up at the Sheraton Downtown, and then I stayed at this AirBnB (super nice).

    Denver is cool, walkable, with stuff to do. Mostly I did a lot of yoga at Kindness Yoga studio where I achieved a zen like calm (less the yoga than the feeling of time-abundance from having time to do such an inefficient workout) that did not survive my departure from Denver airport. I also went to Garden of the Gods with Chiu-Ki, which was really pretty. I went to the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, which I loved, and took a day trip to Boulder where I mostly wondered through a park and bought an entirely bamboo outfit (I think this is the Thing To Do in Boulder).

    The food was really good. My breakfast favourite was Snooze, and I found some really great sushi, notably Sushi Sasa which was also super close to my apartment! Another highlight was Little Man Ice Cream which was divine.

  • Croatia, June 2015

    Croatia, June 2015

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    Croatia was on my list of Places to Go for two reasons: firstly, the Plitvice lakes. Secondly, The Museum of Broken Relationships. It didn’t disappoint.

    After arriving we drove straight from Zagreb Airport to Plitvice, modulo some time negotiating an automatic rental car. It’s a longish drive but really pretty, although we get lost a bunch. We stayed at the Ethno Hotel which is OK, although the food is expensive and unappealing.

    Our first full day, and the third morning we spend exploring the lakes, which are spectacular. The water is so blue, the trees are so green. It’s amazing. The day in between we go kayaking and quad biking from Mirjana Rastoke which is pretty fun.

    Then we leave for Zagreb, where we stay at the Sheraton.

    Our first stop is the Museum of Broken Relationships, reached via the Funicular. It is everything I had hoped, and I collected a Storify of my tweets from there. We also went to the Botanical Gardens, which were pretty, and the Gallery of Naive art, which was cool, and a museum about the history of Zagreb.

    After the Museum of Broken Relationships, my favourite places was the mjo kocacic gallery. Paintings are created on glass, and built up from the foreground first. Fascinating technique, and the use of colour is stunning! The woman running the gallery gave me a beautiful coffee table book because I stayed so long just staring at the art.

    All in all I loved Croatia, especially Zagreb, hopefully I’ll be able to go back there sometime and stay for a while. It’s a great city.

  • My Life as a White Migrant

    My Life as a White Migrant

     

    Tiny Raccon perches on a pillow on a business class airline seat. Below sits a passport, in a case that says "without this I'm nothing"

    Ever since I read this article on the use of the word “expat” being exclusive to white people from western countries, I have been thinking about my own experiences living in a variety of places, through that lense. The words we use are not the only difference.

    When it comes to my immigration situation, there is what is legally true, what is in practise true, and what people believe. In particular, there is a vast difference in what is legally true and what people believe, which creates this disconnect as people make assumptions. For example I can’t visit America without people asking if I will be moving there, which would in practise be a 10-month-long legal ordeal (that can only start in January) involving lotteries etc, and then having to live in a precarious situation where if something happened to my job I would have to leave immediately.

    What is Legally True: As an EU Citizen I can live and work anywhere in Europe. Anywhere else I require a work permit to stay for any length of time. This is typically tied to my employer with an expiry on when I need to leave the country should I leave that job. It’s likely I have spent enough time in Canada that it would help me obtain Permanent Residency there, but in practise they denied me health insurance for travelling too much so who knows. There are visas which allow young (<=30 yo) to live abroad, typically these are limited to a year in duration and have further restrictions on employment.

    What People Believe: It is easy for me to live anywhere, particularly other “anglo” countries. Getting a visa will be a process that takes weeks, and merely a formality. Being from “The Commonwealth” makes it easy to move to other “Commonwealth” countries.

    What is in Practise True: As an educated white woman (with savings) I will eventually get a visa. Countries will enforce the law when it comes to immigration but in practise will believe I am OK, let me in, allow me to transfer my visa should I find a different job.

    So. Strange things arise from this disconnect. Amusingly, the only time people ever talk about “The Commonwealth” is when referencing my ability to move somewhere. Reality is, the Commonwealth is a cultural rather than a legal entity. Horrifyingly, people make racist comments about “immigrants” to me, thinking that I will agree, that I will be amused, when aside from anything else in practise I often have less right to live in that country than the people they are complaining about (e.g. the difference between PR and work permit).

    Anyway, when white people say that racism is over, I think about this disconnect, about the gap between what people think and what the legal system says, about the gap between what the legal system says and the selective application – and I remember when I was trapped in Canada for months because I was given the wrong work permit. It was too good, I didn’t qualify for it, and as a result it couldn’t be renewed. This was not a problem my friends with Iranian passports were having.

    A final story that captures what happens in practise better than anything else I could tell you: I was at US border control after they introduced the ESTA, but living in Canada I hadn’t heard about it and so didn’t have one. I was detained, and I sat in the detention area anxious about whether I would be denied entry to the country, and a border guy said to me, “we’re gonna let you in, we’re always gonna let you in, just sometimes we’re going to make you sweat a bit first”.

  • Rio, May 2015

    Rio, May 2015

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    I was supposed to meet one of my friends in Rio, but at the last moment we discovered she wouldn’t make it – she hadn’t known she needed a visa, and hadn’t been allowed on the plane. Whilst I love travelling alone, and I also love travelling with compatible friends too. But psyched up for an adventure with a friend, discovering I’d be by myself was disappointing. It was also towards the end of a long trip, after which I needed to go to France, deep in the south which is kind of a pain to get to (plane to Toronto, another one to Paris, one night in Paris, then the TGV to Avignon, then an hour in the car). As a result I took it pretty easy and had a relatively chilled out stay.

    Anyway I was immediately reminded that I wasn’t there with my friend, because the hotel couldn’t find our reservation – her name had been first because she was supposed to arrive before me. Still the hotel staff were really lovely, and it was eventually sorted out! I stayed at the Hotel Windsor Miramar, and the food was really good too – breakfast was amazing (really anywhere that has a chef and an egg bar I’m all over) and I ate dinner there one evening, which was fab. The rooftop infinity pool was tiny, but nice, looking out over the ocean, so I swam there every evening. It’s right on Copacabana beach, which is pretty nice to walk along.

    My first stop was the Botanical Gardens, which are incredible. I was excited to see them after seeing this article on a travel-porn blog I follow and adore. The gardens were just as cool as the photos, and I had a great time wondering about.

    I also went to this museum, it’s up a hill and connected to some kind of cultural centre? I never fully got what was going on, but it was a house turned into an art gallery, with a lovely garden where I hung out and took in views of the city. Then I took a walk to explore a little.

    A highlight was taking a cable car up to the top of table top mountain. The views were amazing and I could really see that Rio is a bay, with a bunch of little islands and hills. I walked down, which was cool, ending up by the ocean.

    I ate at a few different places, but generally wasn’t a big fan of the food (except for the hotel breakfast!) Rio is really huge, so I felt like I didn’t get to see very much of it. I don’t know that I would go out of my way to end up back there, but if I happened to end up there I’d be happy to keep exploring.

  • Easter Island, May 2015

    Easter Island, May 2015

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    What do you do if you’re turning 30 in a city you hate? Well if you are me, and the city you hate is Santiago, you catch a plane to Easter Island.

    Easter Island is a pacific island, but a territory of Chile, known for the Moai – stone statues of people – that may or may not have contributed to the collapse of a civilisation (the wikipedia page is fascinating, and there is a book, Collapse – Amazon – which also explores this). Still, it’s not a place that most Chileans get to visit – the taxi driver who took me to the airport told me that to go to Easter Island is a dream for Chileans.

    Tuvalu has been top of my bucket list for a while and as I have accepted it’s unlikely that I will make it there this year, it was exciting to go to a Pacific Island at all. Since I started to seriously contemplate leaving the tech industry, a Pacific Island without internet has been a dream – could I live in such a place? Develop Practical Skills? The answer to these things is probably not, but it’s good to have goals. And dreams.

    Regardless, flights from Santiago are daily, and not that expensive. Hotels are moderately pricey, and the luxury resorts are extremely expensive. But a nice enough place to stay is reasonable enough that once you’re already in Santiago, why the hell not. I was tempted to leave Santiago immediately and spend 2 weeks on Easter Island, but the internet is notoriously bad so that wasn’t an option because I had too much work on! Instead I focused on being productive in Santiago and took the opportunity to take a bit of a disconnected break once I got to Easter Island. Hotel wifi barely worked, but I had a Chilean SIM card and restricted myself to one photo a day on Twitter [day 1][day 2][day 3][day 4][day 5][day 6].

    I arrived on Easter Island super excited, and it was so beautiful. The airport is very chill, and I was met by a driver and a lei (garland of flowers). After checking in at my hotel – Hotel Manavai (bit basic, but great service and tasty breakfasts) I took a cab to a lovely restaurant by the ocean the guy at the hotel recommended (Tataku Vave), ate delicious food, and then walked back and roamed around for a bit, and then had dinner at Te Moana (also very tasty, great bread and virgin pina colada).

    The first full day, I took a tour of the island, which was mostly in Spanish. This was pretty exhausting, because my Spanish is not that great! I followed along for a while but it was super tiring and so I eventually stopped trying to follow what was being said and just took in the view. The tourguide was kind enough to explain some things in English! We went around a lot of the major sites of the island, Papa Tataku Poki, Aka Hanga, Ahu Tongariki, in the morning, and Te Pito Te Kura and Anakena beach in the afternoon. There were a lot of tour groups on the same route so sometimes it was crowded, but it was a good way to get a sense of the island. Afterwards I got dinner at Inkai (recommended by the tour guide), which was pretty fab. And then! Very exciting! I made a friend wondering the streets – another woman who was travelling alone. We hung out at Hakahonu Restaurant and decided to go quad biking the next day.

    Firstly, I love quad-biking. Secondly, Easter Island is an island that should be seen from an open vehicle. We set off around the island, seeing many of the same sights that we’d seen (she had been on a different tour) the previous day, and also the new to me Ahu Akivi and Ahu Vaihu. It was so fantastic. So, so, so fantastic. At first we got lost quite a bit, and there was a point where we thought this guy was chasing us off and I drove down a road that turned out to be… maybe not a road… in a panic. The only thing was that we had hoped to do a full circuit of the island, and that hadn’t been possible because of the barrier and the panicking. There was some issue going on that I didn’t fully understand, between the government and the Rapa Nui about tourist costs and revenue, hence the barriers and the confusion. We had lunch at La Kaleta (unenthused about the food but the virgin pina colada was amazing) and I had dinner at Kanahau Restaurant which wasn’t great.

    Anyway the following morning we got up early, it turns out way earlier than necessary, to go and see the sunrise. We drove out of the town which was a bit scary – there are a lot of dogs running wild on Easter Island, and horses (we saw some dead horses, which was pretty upsetting). The dogs bark and chase you. I’m pretty terrified of dogs so this was stressful, and I may have broken the speed-limit escaping from them. We set off towards the ocean and watched the sunrise next to my favourite moai, one standing alone turned inwards, nearby there is the saddest sight, all these fallen moai, with their hats looking like they are about to fall in the ocean. After hanging out a while there, we continued following the road around to what seemed like the best spot for the sunrise, and got as far as we had the previous day, to the barrier, but the Scary Guy turned out to be absolutely lovely, and after checking our nationalities (I think was the criteria was “not Chilean”), let us continue past. We drove on, determined to do a full circuit of the island. All went well, until the engine cut out. We were far from cell-phone service and cutting it fine for the quad bike to be returned. After some time, it worked again, and so in fits and starts we made our way back to the town… accompanied by a series of men in lycra who I think were on the same route but on pushbikes! Eventually we were rescued by someone who… flipped the dial to use the reserve petrol. Ai!

    In the evening we went to see a show, Vai Te Mihi, which was pretty cool. The dancing was incredible! And the outfits!

    Last full day on the island, took a hike to Orongo, which is like… a crater. And an old villiage. It’s really cool, and very different from other parts of the island. A long walk uphill in the heat though! We left early to try and get there before it got too hot, which was definitely a good decision! Then we went on a boat for scuba-diving. I don’t scuba-dive, and it was too choppy really, but I like being on boats on the ocean so that was cool. For dinner we went to the fanciest hotel, and ate at the restaurant,
    Kaloa Pasta Bistro Hotel Hangaroa. The food was pretty amazing, and the internet was so fast – which was pretty great after 5 days of very little internet!

    Last day, I mailed a vast quantity of postcards (turns out if you offer to send postcards from Easter Island, everyone wants one), and had lunch at Pea Bar (food was OK, but no virgin pina colada – sadness), before flying back to Santiago.

    I was so sad to leave Easter Island, but I think that amount of time was right. I would love to go back one day. But it did help me realize that I am probably not cut out to live on a pacific island… time for a new goal, a new dream.

  • Santiago, April-May 2015

    Santiago, April-May 2015

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    I go everywhere expecting to like it, but the truth is – I really didn’t like Santiago. It didn’t get off to a great start when I arrived at the airport exhausted, didn’t try and get a SIM card or money, but went straight to my AirBnB and found that it wasn’t ready. The following day was Sunday, and so I went out hunting for an ATM, food, and a SIM card. An ATM was relatively easy to find, but almost everywhere was closed so I was reduced to eating breakfast at Starbucks and went home still without data.

    Monday I tried again, found somewhere better for breakfast, and went around in circles trying to get a SIM card and being told “no” – even by places with signs in the window advertising the availability of SIM cards. I finally managed to buy one, and ended up paying for it a second time rather than buying credit for it which had been my intention (I’ve no idea what this was actually for… it sounded like some kind of insurance). Well… at least it was cheap.

    This generally was my experience in Santiago, and why I found it stressful – I had a very high failure rate. It took me ages to find a decent gym (the first one was so terrifying, I walked inside… and then walked straight out again), most times I went looking for a restaurant I couldn’t eat at the first one because it was shut, or not actually a restaurant. Sundays everything (including restaurants) was shut, and on national holidays (of which there was one whilst I was there). The AirBnB was OK, but didn’t have laundry in-suite, and dealing with that ended up being stressful, as the hosts instructions for using the communal laundry didn’t work.

    Basically it was just Hard Work, and unfriendly. Which when travelling alone you don’t have someone to reminisce with about “oh do you remember? Nothing was open and we had to eat at McDonalds!”

    But there were some cool things. There’s a hill (Cerro Santa Lucia) in the centre of town which was beautiful, and I loved Museo Ralli, lots of Dali including some sculptures, and some other artists I really liked. I went to the Artequin (cool building), and the human rights museum (dark, and not much translated text although I hear there is an audio guide) There were also some nice parks, including one with a plane in it.

    I went to the spa, which was lovely and just what I needed. I found a favourite breakfast place where I went every day – except Sunday – with lovely staff who taught me Spanish! There was a cafe in a cultural centre, Cafe Civico which I quite liked and was actually open on Sundays.

    Having arrived and hated it, I cut my trip short (I’d planned to stay ~3 weeks but left a week early) and went to Easter Island. I’d consider going back, and spending a couple of days in a hotel if I was in the area, but I wouldn’t go back for an extended stay again.

  • Bogota, April 2015

    Bogota, April 2015

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    I loved Bogota. I stayed in this adorable AirBnB, which wasn’t super close to downtown but taxis are cheap and it allowed me to get a lot of work done. It was about 30 minutes walk to where the good restaurants were, which was actually quite nice – I’d get an hours walk in when I took a break for lunch – and reasonably close to a gym. The gym wasn’t super nice but did have fingerprint authentication, which was exciting.

    I ate at Wok a bunch (there are a few, all over time) and also Teriaki (the lychee lemonade, I miss it), and went to Coffee and Jesus one time but only one time because it was quite literally coffee and Jesus (a religious bookstore where I asked for tea and got coffee instead).

    Like Medellin, Bogota has a Botero museum, which was amazing, and like in Medellin, I went twice. There’s also a Gold museum which was interesting. I also went to the National museum, which was OK, I’m not super into history museums. A highlight was Monserrat which had beautiful views, and a lovely restaurant.

    I also went to the botanical gardens (love!) and a theme park (again there was a plane! But it was closed, sadly), and a beautiful park which I had a wonderful walk around soaking in the sunshine on my last day there before leaving.

    Bogota is great to hang and slowly explore, which is what I did (I stayed for around three weeks) or would make a nice stop for 4 days or so. Medellin is vibey-er, and easier to get around – having both less bad traffic and better public transport. I loved them both and can’t pick my favourite… I will have to go back and gather more data.

    When I went to Colombia there were a bunch of remarks made about drug lords but I have to say I felt safe the entire time I was there, and people were nothing but lovely to me.