April 2012
12 posts
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It had me at donkey.
So I’m going on a honeymoon in two weeks. Which we plan to make a unique travel experience by doing no work whatsoever — no assignments or notebooks, no phone calls to experts or emails to chefs. An escape from travel writing for two travel writers. I found a hotel near Yelapa, Mexico, which is in a jungle on a hill over the beach, and which I’m told we can only reach by boat and...
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"Creative people...seek out the blank spots on the...
Now you can tell your parents that your maverick tendency to wander off may be the key to business success.
Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest...
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In honor of Administrative Professionals' Day: why...
Secretary: One employed to handle correspondence and manage routine and detail work for a superior. – Merriam-Webster It’s a basic definition but a complicated word. After its mid-century heyday, by the 1980s it took on a pejorative cast: It implied a woman stuck in a menial office job. Yet now, even if next week’s Administrative Professionals Day is officially called just that, “secretary” is...
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Chain of command on the road #traveltips
This week we had an elaborate border crossing from Laos to Vietnam. We waved passports at windows. Walked across no-man’s land. Greased palms. Waited. Then tried to get on a bus that was midway through its journey from Savannakhet to Hue. The bus conductor was keen, but a minibus driver claimed us as his turf. They got in a fight. The bus conductor threw down my suitcase and stalked off in a...
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Things that lie under the surface
I’ve just realized that all three of the stories I’m doing while in Southeast Asia are about things that have to be dug up from underground: artifacts, bodies, bombs. Huge swathes of Laos are still littered with unexploded ordnance from bombing during the Vietnam War. Here, a member of a clearance team gets ready to dynamite a submunition found in a farmer’s field.
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Real live digital nomads. @ribbonfarm
A few nights ago in Phonsavan we met a couple who have been traveling since 2009. They’re both 31. They know the weight of their backpacks down to the ounce. For money he does something with software. They know where they’ll be tomorrow and maybe next week, but that’s about it. They blog.
Their supremely well-organized lightness of foot reminded me of an essay I posted about...
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Books are loss leaders. #careeradvice
I’ve finally entered a nice phase in which magazine editors sometimes reach out to me for stories, instead of the other way around. It reminds me of something a hot young political pundit said. In the wake of a successful book, he has a regular column in a newspaper, a think tank fellowship, and a steady stream of invitations to pontificate on massively watched television shows. “Books...
People ask why there are so few female artists who... →
fette:
Marina Abramović interviewed by Elisa Lipsky-Karasz, for Harper’s Bazaar, March 2012. Via.
See also, Roos Shamanana’s interview with Marina Abramović for The Believer.
