Latest / bit of a Rambler / 155 My Gung-ho Travel Attitude

Transcript

155 My Gung-ho Travel Attitude · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: My name is Kai, and I am a bit of
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: And today I want to talk about my gung ho
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: travel attitude and how I can keep so positive and
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: keep traveling and have all this energy to book a
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: plane ticket and get my visas and go to countries
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: and for fifteen years for living abroad for fifteen years
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: so far, even if I hung up my skates tomorrow
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: and went on back home, because well, for whatever reason,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: fifteen years would be a long time traveling and people
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: would probably still ask me this same question I get
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: all the time about, generally paraphrasing, but my gung ho
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: travel attitude. Many of my friends back in the States
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: tell me that they just don't have the energy to travel,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and they wouldn't want to plan ahead, wouldn't want to
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: have to deal with the headache of planning a vacation
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: basically every week. And I was flabbergasted by this the
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: first time I heard it, because my life is so
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: much more relaxing and stress free as a traveler than
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: it ever was in the States. But I think that's
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: because I didn't really I didn't go back to the
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: States really for the first a long time. For the
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: first like six years after I left the US to
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: go to China and teach English. So I was in
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Beijing for three and a half years, and then, aside
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: from visiting briefly for a friend's wedding, I then traveled
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: after Beijing for nine to ten months across Southeast Asia
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: or maybe you're I don't know, I'd have to check.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I'm terrible with remembering the dates of things. But after traveling,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: because after Beijing for three and a half years, I
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: was like, Okay, I'm good, I'm gonna retire, folks. And
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: then after that my friend called me up and asked
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: if I wanted to start my own school with her
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: back in China, and I hadn't started my own so
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, that could be fun. So I started
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: my own school for two and a half years in Chungdu.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: But I know, yeah, over those six years plus six
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: years in China, plus the nine whatever months traveling to
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: a bunch of other countries, I didn't live in the
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: States again that whole time, So my outlook on travel
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: and my outlook on life on living life was completely different.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Just my day to day understanding of what life was
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: had somewhat gradually but entirely changed, so that when I
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: went back to the States for longer visits and I
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: started talking to a lot of people who expressed these
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: questions and concerns and often misunderstandings about travel. They would
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: frequently say, to my initial confusion, while you're so positive
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: or you're so gung ho, I don't know how you
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: have so much energy to travel. All the time, that
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: was flumixing, and I came across it a lot, and
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I still get it a lot. And I also got
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I can't understand how you can afford it, And that
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: one's a lot easier to explain, well, sort of, it's
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: easier to show that one to people anyway, because I
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: don't know how you can afford it. I can pull
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: up skyscanner and show them tickets, and people, invariable anyone
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: who says I don't know how you can afford travel,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: I show them how much it costs for a plane
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: ticket to fly literally halfway around the world, and I'll say, wait,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: it's only that much, and they're shocked at the prices,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: and I'm like yeah, And once you are anywhere, if
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: you're flying from one country to the next country that's
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: next to it, it's never going to be more than
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: one hundred dollars, Like if you're flying from Japan to
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: China or all around Southeast Days or anywhere. From a
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Western European country to another, it's almost always. I'm sure
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: there are exceptions, I'm not thinking about. China to Mongolia
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: was expensive. Like countries that don't have a lot of tourism,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I guess, like Mongolia, they'll be a little more expensive,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: like over one hundred dollars. But generally it's very cheap
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: to fly from one country to another, like from Ireland
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: to Morocco under ten US dollars still. And I booked
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: my Ireland to Morocco ticket a long time ago. I
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: don't know how long, but twelve years ago maybe, and
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: it was eight dollars or something like that. And I
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: always check that now and get like now and again
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: just to see what the prices are. And they're still
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: they still have under ten dollars flights the last time
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: I checked from Ireland to Morocco. So once you are traveling,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: traveling to the next country is very cheap. And when
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: people who are paying a mortgage or a lease on
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: their car or any kind of medical care or education
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: in the US, ask me, how do you afford it?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: I just have to show them the prices, and I'm like, well,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: it costs me way under one thousand dollars per month
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: to live abroad. This is and it costs everybody. Here's
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: the listing for a house. Most private houses and condos
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: apartments are under four hundred dollars US and then it's
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: only a couple hundred for food and data for your phone.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm spending six hundred to seven hundred a
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: month living abroad, and that at least that's easier to
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: show than the gung ho attitude. So much energy, because
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: those are the actual prices, and they're on every platform,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: and I only used like two things primarily.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I'm usually using.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Skyscanner or yeah, sometimes Kayak, like a couple other ones,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: usually just Skyscanner, and then usually monthly rentals on Airbnb,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: and those are very common.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Everyone knows what those are now these days.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Nobody knew what skyscanner was when I started using it. Actually,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: I just found out it worked so well. It's been
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: really interesting to see it become the dominant flight search
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: engine the past decade and a half, But they can
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: look it up themselves right there, and I'll show them
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: houses and all the places I've lived in and the receipts,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: like this one was two hundred and seventy dollars per month,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: this one's three hundred and thirteen dollars per month. And
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: these are large private apartments and housing. So even if
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: it's difficult to believe those prices are there, and they
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: see like it is available to purchase life in other
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: countries at a much reduced rate then living in the US.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: The gung ho travel attitude is more difficult because I
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: can't just pull up the numbers, but it's the same thing.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: It's the same practical reason as finances there are. I
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: explained that I don't have a gung ho travel attitude
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: anymore than I have a gung Ho I'm alive attitude.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I like eating ice cream, and I like reading books
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: and walking around in the park attitude, like I like
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: parts of being alive, and I want to continue enjoying
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: as many parts of the parts I enjoy about life.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: As I can.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: So in the same way that financially traveling abroad is
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: so inexpensive, it just makes practical sense I also receive
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: so many practical benefits by being abroad, like more time
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: to myself, more free time, way less stress in almost
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: every area, that it just makes sense to keep traveling
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: rather than live a sedentary life in the US. It's
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: just logically, since I like walking around in parks, I
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: can do that way more if I travel, And I
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: like climbing mountains and traveling across countries and learning new things,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: and that's much easier to do in like while I'm
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: abroad than it is while I'm living a sedentary life somewhere,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: and all live a sedentary life for three months at
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: a time, all of place, three months at a time.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Three months gives me a long amount of time, enough
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: amount of time to explore a lot of the geography
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: well that's not even true sometimes, but some of the
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: geography of where I am, and some of the inhabited
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: city populated part, but also all the natural mountains and
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: rivers and lakes and canyons whatnot around where I am
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: before I go to the next place. But if I was,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: if I chose like one country and I just lived
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: in Austria, let's say arbitrarily beautiful mountains, amazing place and
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: so many countries. When I get to them, as soon
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: as after I've lived there for a couple days, I'm like, yep,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: I could just live here forever. But if I want
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: to go from Austria to Germany, I have to go
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: there and then I have to go back, and it's
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: two trips. And if I want to go to Spain,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: I gotta go farther and I gotta go back. And
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: if I want to go to Japan from Austria, I
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: gotta take a bunch of flights, get to Japan and
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: then go all the way back. Versus if I'm I
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: fly to fly from Austria to England and that's a
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: direct flight and I just go over there. It's much
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: less time than if I had to take multiple flights
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: to Japan. And now I'm in England and then I
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: can take the next flight over to Denver and visit
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: some friends, and then take a flight down to Mexico,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: and then I can take one flight over to Hawaii,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: probably too. You usually go through LA and then from
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Hawaii I can go to a country in Asia and
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I can stay in whatever Korea for a month, and
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: then fly over to China and stay for a month
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: and then fly over to whatever and stay for a
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: month or three months, and I don't have to have
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: a return trip.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Basically, I don't.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Have to take care or maintain or pay for a
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: home base, because my home base is wherever I go,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: often for two three months at a time. And there's
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: nothing I don't have at these places that I would
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: have at a permanent, longer term residence. I have all
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: of the utilities, and I have all of the appliances
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I need. And if I don't have the appliances I need,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I can often buy them at the store very easily.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: And this is all to say that what seems like
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: a gung ho travel attitude is much more for me
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: about stability, about living a stable, comfortable life where all
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: of the practical matters are taken care of without excess stress,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: without stress or struggle that I don't need to encounter.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Travel just affords me that practical, comfortable life that I
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: understand many people are pursuing. Many people aim for retirement
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: because they want to stop working, and traveling certainly does
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: that for me. Because most of the countries in the
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: world a good I can I'm sure comfortably say eighty
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: percent of the world costs under one thousand dollars a
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: month or twelve thousand US dollars per year to live
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: in including the United States. You can get a private room
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: across the United States for six hundred bucks if you're
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: choosing from the whole country rather than just choosing from
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: one area in the country. As a traveler, my options
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: are open to the entire country. So when I stay
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: in an expensive housing crisis country Japan, Germany, a lot
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: of places in Western Europe, I guess I get to
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: choose from anywhere in the country, so I can always
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: find the best housing at the lowest price around the
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: entire country. Rather than saying, Okay, I'm permanently moving from
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: this place to permanently in this one place, and then
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: I have to in that place, so my radius to
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: find good housing is much smaller, a couple miles maybe,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: instead of the entire country. My work was English teaching,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: and that can be a completely remote job, so I
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: don't have to relocate based on my job and stay
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: within a particular radius of how far away my job is.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: And then I invested time and money into passive income,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: and now that's my primary means. So passive income, you know,
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: just is passively incoming each month. And index funds are
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: also something that everyone can put their money into. RIIT
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: real estate investment trusts, peer to peer lending our investment
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: vehicles that if you have one hundred dollars, you can
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: put it in there and you'll get four dollars back
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: every year at a bad rate. Many index funds are.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: They're more averagey around seven. I don't want to give
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: any numbers because index funds are so volatile, but they're
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: generally high enough that you can expect five percent at
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: least back. So if you invest a couple hundred thousand,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: you will get at five percent average all the investments
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: put together ten thousand a year, and that's eight hundred
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: a month. And that's far more than the five hundred
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: dollars a month you need to live in most of
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: the world because the housing is less than four hundred dollars.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And if the housing is less than four hundred dollars
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: in any country, then the rest of that five hundred dollars,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: the one hundred and fifty dollars left over, is enough
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: for you to buy groceries and a phone plan and
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: utilities are all included with the apartment. So traveling and
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: choosing from the countries for the best housing at the
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: best price, and the best wonder of the world of
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: that country, the best site to see at the best price,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: is just it's all practical matter. I don't have a
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: gung ho attitude, and it's been expressed to me by
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: many people who have not traveled yet that I must
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: have some kind of insatiable need to adventure and explore.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: And if they're asking about the prices, I can just
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: show them prices. But if they're asking about my insatiable
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: need for adventure, I have to explain, no, it's just
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: way easier living life this way. I can just get
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: all the things I wanted in life way quicker instead
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: of waiting. I can build up my savings for investment,
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: vehicles and passive income much quicker. If I'm only paying
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: five hundred dollars per month for my total living expenses
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: or one thousand per month in the expensive countries, rather
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: than if I was living back in the States or
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: in many any other higher cost of living country. I
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: usually live in the lower cost of a living countries,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: and even if I go to a higher cost of
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: a living because I get to choose from the entire country.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: If I'm in an expensive country like South Korea, I
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: still get the cheaper the cheapest cost of living in
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: that country that is available across the entire country, whereas
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: if I was sedentary or moving permanently to one location,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to make that choice. So that's
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the thesis here. My gung ho travel attitude is a
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: result of practicality. And when I tell them about visiting
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: anchor Wat, or hiking for three months across Japan, or
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: snorkeling with sea turtles or whatever it is I do
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: cycling one hundred miles from Beijing to Tianjin and back,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: I get that same like, oh, you have so much
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: drive to get this stuff done. And I do have
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: a drive to do those things, but I serve certainly
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: wasn't doing them in the US when I lived in
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: one place because I didn't have any free time to myself.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I liked the idea of doing things of hiking or traveling,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: or as is more common, staying in bed watching movies
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: all day. But while I was living and working in
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: the US, I didn't have the luxury of thinking of
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: anything I really wanted to do outside of meet some
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: friends a couple blocks away from my house, because I
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: knew I had to work soon, sometime soon, and I
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: couldn't risk not being there for that next shift in
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: even if it was two days off, I couldn't. I
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: couldn't make a decision to do anything that would have
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: a risk of me not being in that same physical
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: location in forty eight hours, because the risk of not
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: having that terrible job for forty hours a week meant
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: my tenuous grip on civilized life would collapse entirely if
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: I was fired in the US, Who knows when I
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: can find another, even crappy service job that I have
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: to sacrifice so much of my time for to pay
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: for my apartment and pay for my electric bill and
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: other utilities, and pay for my homeowner insurance and pay
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: for my whatever insurances cars. So even if you have
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: a couple days off, it's just not Even if I
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: have a couple of days off, it was not enough
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: time for me to think very broadly about what I
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: really wanted to do, because it was all constricted by yeah,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: but then in twelve hours, yeah, but then in thirty
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: six hours, I have to be back here again and
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: ready to go through the grind, and as soon as
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: I start teaching English abroad, I instantly cut my work
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: hours and a half and I had twice as much
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: free time, more than twice as much free time time
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: to think about, Wait, what am I doing? Why am
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: I working? What do I really want to do with
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: my free time? And it became something I could finally
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: think about because I finally had some free time, and
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I finally had much much more free time, and there
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: were not as many financial burdens to consider because China
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: is such a low cost of living, is one of
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: the half of the world that is a very low
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: cost of living country compared to the US ninety percent
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: cheaper easily. So I had savings after the first month,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: probably I'll say the second month, because the first month
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: I did buy a laptop, and I did buy an
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: electric scooter, and I got all the stuff that I
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: needed to for fun. But then by the second month,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I was already saving money because I was only spending
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: a few hundred a month, let's say five hundred tops
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: to be there, and I was getting twenty five hundred
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: a month, so I was saving a couple grand a
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: month month. The second Yeah, by the second month, I
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: was in Beijing. I wasn't as good with saving money then,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: but in such a low cost of living country, I
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: couldn't not save a large part of my paycheck every month,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: and that was again just a practical matter. Because I
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: was living in Beijing, I didn't need to use that money,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: and so instead of burning it and setting it on fire,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: I just put it on my bank account. I didn't
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: consider passive income for several years, but simply by living
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: in a low cost of living country, which is most
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: of the world, I was able to at least start
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: saving money, which was impossible for me back in the
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: States for several years. I would have had to until
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: I could become a store manager of whatever, or I
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: was putting a way what was left of my paycheck
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: in the States, but that was one hundred dollars instead
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: of fifteen hundred dollars or two thousand dollars. So in
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: one month I was saving more by living in a
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: low cost of living country than I would have saved
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: in over a year living in the States and saving
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: as much money as I could. And I was living
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: a way more comfortable and convenient life while teaching English
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: in China than I ever did in the US. So
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: it's really not a gung ho travel attitude at all.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: It is a very practical decision for me to travel.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I like doing exciting things,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: but not all the time. I don't have the drive
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: to own a private jet. When I can just instantly
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: fly from one country to another for one hundred bucks,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: there's not the thinking of doing any more work where
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: I would have to pay or to fly first class,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: let's say, instead of flying economy all the time. That
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem worth it to me at all. I guess
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: if I found a practical way that saves me time
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: and money to be in first class all the time
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: rather than economy, I would. The seats are bigger, they
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: have unlimited alcoholic drinks in first class, but they're paying
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: like five hundred one thousand more per flight, except a
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: lot of them are on business expense, of course, but
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: we're all going to the same place. It's taken us
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the exact same amount of time to get there. And
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I paid fifty bucks to get to the next country
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: or whatever, and they paid seven hundred fifty dollars. I
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: remember when I was young. That's that's when this practical outlook,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: that's this is what I think of. This might be
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: the seminal moment of when life became a practical matter
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: for me, but it never stopped. This perspective on life
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: persisted after this. I'm not sure how young exactly I was,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: but it was pretty young. It was like ten years old,
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: i'd say, when I found out like exactly what death
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: is or understood it in a new way, like exactly
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: how permanent it was. But eventually I did understand that
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I would die too, and all beings die. And because
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: of that when I realized that really about death. And
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: I have no idea if I was five or ten
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: or whatever it actually was, what age, But I spent
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: at least months, and on and off were ever after that,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: But for months at a time, I would go to
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: bed and then I would look up in bed as
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: soon as I was as soon as the lights were off,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about, well, gonna die someday.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: And I was aware.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: I was like, you're eight years old now, but eventually
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: you will die because everyone dies, as it had been
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: explained to me. So then what am I doing? And
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: I went through in existential crisis. I guess people would
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: call it now, but I was just thinking about it,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: like what does that mean for me? If life will
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: be over one day? And I don't think I came
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: to any conclusions as many months as I as many
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: nights over the initial months that I thought about this.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: I might I must have thought about it more than
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: a hundred times that first period of time, because every
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: night I would lie awake for until I went to bed,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: just thinking like, Okay, so we're all going to die someday,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: and I'm part of everyone, so I will die someday
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: and that's important, but I don't know why exactly, And
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: then I would be like, is it importantcause I'm going
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: to die? And I just go in circles in my head.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: But I still remember all those nights as a kid
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: thinking about that, and I cannot help but think that
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: somehow contributed to my practical outlook on li life, because
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: I don't ever want to wait to do something or
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: put something off. I would like to if I have
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: something I want to do, I would like to do
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: that asap. I'd like to do that as soon as possible.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: And I was aware that the hourglass was dripping sand away.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I watched Fantasy movies with heavy metaphors and allegory. And
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I realized after I had this like thinking about how
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: everybody eventually dies period of my life, how much of
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: the world was about that, How how many stories were
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: about the time ticking away? And even if that wasn't
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: like the direct plot that like your life will expire
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: in seventy two hours or three years, it time time
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: was still such an important part of life. And then
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I would read articles in magazines of old people and
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: they'd be like, what are you think think about life?
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And old people would say time is the most important thing.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: We only have one life to live. I wish I
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: had done more with the time I was given, and
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: very often was the sentiment, I don't regret the things
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: I did, only the things I did not do. So
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I guess what I'm saying is from that five whatever
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: that period was, five years old, ten years old, however
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: old I was when I went through this first, lying
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: awake every night thinking about how I had a finite
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: amount of time in practical matters, I came to the
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: conclusion yolo, as it has become known as, which is
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: such a dumb phrase but so incredibly accurate, because you
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: really only do live once. You really only get one life,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: and that's less of a reason to jump off a
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: cliff and scream yolo and get hurt on the coral below.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: But it's very good. Memento moriy.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Remember death is basically yolo, which I thought was really
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: funny after I realized the phrase. The import of yolo
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: momento Maury. Philosophy of death by monks and philosophers been
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: around forever. Memento Maury. It's like the classic Latin phrase
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: or Stoics phrase. I guess you have to remember death
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: because at any moment, your life will be over. Yes,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: you have life now, there's no guarantee you will have
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: life after now, after this moment that you currently are experiencing.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean you have to go scramble and
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: rush to do everything immediately, but you should. If there's
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: something you want to do, you should start making your
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: way toward that now, because tomorrow is not guaranteed. Memento Mori,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: remember death, Remember that life is finite. I don't think
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: remember death is the best way to say it, because
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: that lends itself to like, well, then what who cares?
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Because death is inevitable anyway? So what am I even
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: doing anything for I think life is finite is probably
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: a better way to think about it. Or ironically, Yolo
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: makes more sense these days because it focuses on the
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: positive experience currently, it focuses on life. It says, don't
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: remember what comes outside of life, don't memento more. You
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: don't remember death, but remember life. Remember the fact that
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: you have a finite amount of time right now that
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: if you're listening to this podcast, that is what you have. Now.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: What's life?
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Vivo, so memento vivo no aqua viti the water of life,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: So it's vti, so memento viti. Remember to live. It's
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: so easy to get stuck in a routine and to
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: get distracted by things that our body's experiencing. It's so
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: hot today, so cold today. I'm so tired right now,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: there's not enough time before I have to get back
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: to work. And all of those things are true. But
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: what is also true is that your life is finite.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: My life is finite. And those months of thinking about
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: it as a kid, yeah, really shaped the practical way
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: in which I view life.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I assume it. They must.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: I don't have a direct line to point to, like
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: I said, it's much easier to prove the financial ease
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: of this, but I do memento viti. I remember life constantly.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: I'm always I'm very aware of the fact that I'm
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: alive at this moment and the fact that I may
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: not be later, And this is the life I have
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: right now, and it's the only one I get. Every day,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: I'm every day is a day that I won't get
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: back after I have used that day, so I should
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: probably use that day for what I want to do.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: And this doesn't justify hurting others or exploiting anything or
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: doing anything harmful. But every time I don't take advantage
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: of an opportunity, things are different. Even if I have
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: the same opportunity again the next time, even if I
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: have a second shot at something, there was no guarantee
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: that second shot was going to come. So I tried
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: to be aware of opportunities around me the first time,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: and I try especially to live life well to be
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: a positive influence, because again, I'm so aware momento vtime.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: I'm very aware that this is the life I'm living,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: the single life, and the current moment is the only
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: moment I really have. All the past moments are gone, already,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: and all the future moments haven't arrived it I have now,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: And I grew up in the States, So when I
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: was growing up it was again as a child, I
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: thought about all this stuff, even though I could not
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: articulate it very well. But something always wrong, wrong, false
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: when grown ups told me how terrible their day was.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: But that's just how it goes. But that's just what
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: you have to do. But that's just the grind. The
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: grind never sounded correct to me. Because I knew how
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: big the world was. I at least understood the world
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: was so big. I didn't understand it at all at
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: ten years old, and I had read again all these
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: articles in Time magazine or whatever magazines were lying around
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: the house, and a billion novels as a child, And
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: even in the novels, I was like, look at how
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: differently people are living. Even though this story isn't real.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: The philosophy by which this person is living is not
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: the same philosophy by which the people in real life
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: around me are living. They view life differently. And I
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: wasn't reading philosophers. I was reading science fiction. The Mote
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: in God's Eye and Mercedes Lackey, The Black Griffin series.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: But those characters, they looked at compassion differently, they looked
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: at time differently, they looked at relationships differently, and just
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: the fact that these characters were real to me in
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: the story, I met so many of these characters who
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: looked at life and lived life in a different way
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: that when I did meet a person in real life,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: one of my parents' friends, who was different, who was
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: from a different country, or who clearly had different priorities
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: in life than my parents had, I said, ha, see, look,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: there is a different way to live life. And I
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: kind of I kind of always had that like that,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: that there is something beyond what my teachers were telling
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: me or my parents were telling me, what my entire
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: birth country was telling me, about the correct way to live,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: sacrifice your own life for the profit of the boss
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: of the company you work for. College being a necessity,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: and about you having to choose a career and then
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: move forward through that career until you got to the
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: pinnacle of that career. Which if that is the way
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: that you're going, If you go to medical school so
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: that you can become a doctor of surgery eventually, great, that's.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Your way to go.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: But I felt like I was being told that's the
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: only way to go that you have to pick.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll be.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: A lawyer, and then I'll go through school, and then
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: I'll become an intern, and then I'll become a whatever
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: it's called resident version of lawyer, and then a doctor
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: of lawyering, and I'll become.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: A partner blah blah.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: But you have to choose one career and then you
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: have to do that kind of stuff. And as long
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: as you follow the the tracks, and it'll take a
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: long time, it'll take decades of your life. But as
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: long as you stay on the track of that thing
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: that takes away decades of your life, at the end
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: you will get to retire. You will get to stop working.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: So it's okay if you don't really like the job.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: And in some ways that is true, like you don't
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: have to go to your dream job. Well, like when
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: I tell people to travel and I tell them, well,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: become an English teacher. They're like, oh, I don't know,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: I don't like teaching, or I don't know how good
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: I would be a teaching I tell them it doesn't.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Matter if you like it.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: All you have to do is speak English and they'll
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: give you twenty to one hundred US dollars per hour.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: It's that's the trade up right now for speaking English
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: in front of people who can't speak English. It's that's
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: that's what the rate is. But if you put all
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: of that into passive income, or you save up or
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: pay off your debt, then you're free to do whatever
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: you want, and you'll be able to do that very
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: quickly as an English teacher. So I completely understand that.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think you need to get your perfect job
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: right away. If you know what it is, If you
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: know you definitely want to be a race car driver
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: and you somehow get on that path and become one,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: that is great because you know exactly what you want
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: to do. But most of the people in my life,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: most of the people in my class growing up, elementary school,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: middle school, high school, most of the people in university
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: I knew, and then all of the adults around me,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: my parents and their friends, and any teachers or after
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: school babysitters what are they called child care or people
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: who look after the kids after school, any of that
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff, or coaches, any adult figure it. Whenever
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I glanced off these topics with them, like and you
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: knew you always wanted to be a basketball coach for
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: fifth grade boys. I could just feel them being like, well, no,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: of course not. And I was like, Okay, that's an
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: important data point for me, because this is the you know,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: you're in the ninety percent of people I know who
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: did not plan on becoming what they became. Teachers thought
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: the same thing, and engineers thought the same thing, and
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: computer programmers thought the same thing. Every adult I talked
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: to was like, Nope, but look where I ended up
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: here I am. And that also had me thinking like, okay,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: so in practice, most people don't even end up where
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: they think they're going. And then I read that there's
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: a bunch of articles on like, people who pursue majors
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: in college don't end up as a professional in the career.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: In the career based on that major. Like most engineering,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: it was something like seventy five percent of college majors
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: don't end up in the field that they were pursuing
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: after they get their degree. There was some large percentage
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: of people, and that was just another building block from
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: my understanding of how the world worked. So whenever an
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: adult by the time I was a teenager, whenever an
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: adult told me about the necessity of the grind. I
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: was just like, Okay, that's definitely wrong, because most people
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: don't even plan to get where they're going. It seems
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: like to me the grind was the last resort instead
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: of the first choice. But I was being told constantly
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: and still am that the grind is how you get
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: through life, that you grind out your life, that you
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: go through the grinder and you trade away years of
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: your life and then you get a little thing out
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: of the grinder and you get a little bit back.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: But I just kept reading articles, I kept talking to people,
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: and every now and then it would just bounce off
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: me again that there are other choices, that there are
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: other ways to live life. When I had a sneaking
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: suspicion that I could figure out one of those other ways,
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: even if it hadn't been explained to me or it
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: wasn't presented under a spotlight, just by virtue that I
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: was certain now that other ways of living existed, I
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: could probably find a way of living that was better,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: at least for me. That whatever the majority of people
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: are telling me in the States that choosing a career
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: path is the way to success, it just can't be true,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: because there are college dropouts who became happy, sometimes rich
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: and successful, and there are people climbing trees and eating
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: honey from beehives in other countries who are living. They're alive,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: they're living as long as my parents had, and they
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: never worked a day in their life. I mean in
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: a corporate job. They went and got honey from the bees,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: and they harvested plants the rest of the days and
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: ate them. So empirically, whenever someone in the US told
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: me this is how you live life, in my head,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I would say, no, no, this is how you live life.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: But definitely all the other people, everybody else, even in
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: this country, are living a different version of what you
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: think is the only version of how to live life.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: And at the time, there was a little under seven
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: billion people when I was younger on the planet, which
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: meant to me that means there are seven billion different
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: ways to live life happening simultaneously. And so even knowing
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: that and thinking about it for so long, probably about
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: twenty years, I couldn't figure out away myself, or at
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: least until I was, you know, an adult living on
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: my own. So until I was twenty two, when I.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Got out of college.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: So even if I was thinking that from five years old,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: for seventeen years, I still couldn't figure out a way
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: to not follow the path that so so many other
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: US Americans were following and people around the world do
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: follow to go to college and choose a major and
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: follow then try and get a job, and then try
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: and get a higher position in that job. It was
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: still difficult for me to figure out, even though I
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: was as certain as I was of anything by the
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: time I was living on my own, that there were
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: other ways to live life. I just didn't understand how
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: I could access those different ways without changing everything. And
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: that was that was the thing that finally happened, because
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: with one decision deciding to go to China, I did
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: change everything, or to take myself out of it. Everything changed.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: I just didn't realize how easy changing everything actually was,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: like how simple the process could actually be. A flight
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: and then everything was different, plane ride later, one day later.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: The job landscape is different, the costs of living are different.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Everything was different, but it was very simple to access.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: You can go back to the How I got started
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: episode and get this story. But I found an ad
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: in Craigslist, actually in the wrong part of Craigslist, and
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: I responded to it because it was about becoming an
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: English teacher in Beijing.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: And whatever felt right about that job.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Was insignificant in comparison to how wrong my life felt
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: living in the US, not barely making enough money like
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: I had done the math, so I could make just
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: enough money to pay for my apartment every month, but
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: I wasn't making any savings, and I wasn't going to
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: visit these places that people in magazines visited that National
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Geographic wrote about this is the town with the most
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: strainfall in the world. I was like, well, I'll never
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: be able to get there at this rate by what
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: I am doing. So whatever I am doing is incorrect
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: because I'm not I don't have access to the world
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: that other people do. And when I would ask adults
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: around me or people older than me, they would say, yeah,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: but if you save, then every year you can go
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: on a one week trip somewhere, and I was like,
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: that sucks. That can't be the correct that can't be
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: the only way to see the world. Trading fifty one
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: weeks for one week for time to myself and that's
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: all of my savings for the whole year, plus I've
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: have a family. I'm gonna have to pay for all
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: of that also, and we're all still doing the same thing,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: trading all of our time for this one meager respite.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: So I knew what the English job was off. English
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: teaching job was offering more time, more money, and that
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: all sounded nice, but much more than the proposed benefits.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: That I didn't have any tangible evidence where I wasn't
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: in China yet, I didn't know if the job was real,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: even though I knew people went to teach English in
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: other countries. Intellectually, I didn't know that what I was
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: doing was incorrect. And I mean, by twenty five, the
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: time I left the US, all of my friends had
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: already signed up for that life.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: They were all like, yeah, but I'll probably be.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Manager soon or assistant manager soon, or yeah, I'm gonna
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: get my tax refund soon, so then I'll be able
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: to pay for this knee surgery, or more often, I'll
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: be able to sign this lease for a car for
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: five years. They were making these bargains that I was
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: also making and had a huge problem with. But all
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: of the people older than me, and all of my
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: friends and everyone I knew at my age had come
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: to that conclusion that this is a fair deal, that
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: I will trade fifty weeks of my life each year
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: and I will keep two weeks of my life each
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: year to myself. That's how life is. And I never
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: accepted that bargain, even though after I started living on
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: my own, I did it for a few years. I
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: did it from twenty two to twenty five. I traded
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: most of the year for just a little bit of
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: time to myself and a tiny bit of extra money
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: to myself. So maybe it took the four years of
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: grinding for me to get there and understand that this
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: thing I was looking at, this incorrectly placed to add
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: in Craigslist, was an opportunity. Was an opportunity, is the
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: perfect way to say it. Yeah, And so I said yes,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: and then I went there, and then one day to
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: the next I went from fourty hours a week to
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: fifteen hours a week. But I went from one month
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: of pay in the United States paying for one month
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: of rent, to one month of pay in China, a
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: single paycheck covering two years of rent living in China.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: So every paycheck I got in China paid for twenty
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: four months roughly of rent in China. When I went
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: out with friends, instead of paying ten dollars for a meal,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: I was paying one dollar to two dollars beer. Instead
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: of paying whatever a dollar for a can of beer,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: I was paying a dollar twenty five for a gallon
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: of beer. Instead of paying the taxes I had paid
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: for the first four years, I was paying zero in taxes.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Because the fie IRS Form two five to F five,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: I was outside of the country for more than three
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: hundred and thirty days of the year, I didn't have
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: to pay earned income taxes. And because I was working
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: for a company that is earned earned income, so I
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: wasn't paying taxes on that. I'm probably still in that
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: paradigm shift moment. Because everything made more. I was like,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: if this is an option versus what everybody was telling
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: me back in the States, and what everybody has agreed
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: to the devil's bargain in the States, where you trade
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: fifty one weeks of your life or fifty weeks of
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: your life and you get one or two weeks. The
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: first week I landed in Beijing and started teaching, especially
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: the first time I got my paycheck for working less
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: than half the hours I was working in the States
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: and being able to cover two years of rent. I thought, well,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: this is the better choice. This is the more practical
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: choice for me. Certainly, I would much rather simply by
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: virtue of being in another place. I don't have to
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: work as much, and I'm saving way more money. And
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: I got all the rest of the week to have
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: so much time to myself to investigate what else I
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: like about life. I have time most nights now to
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: go on a date and the money to pay for
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: the date. I can buy a bicycle and ride it
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: for twenty four hours to the closest crazy mountain, and
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: I can go climb that. And I can visit this
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: famous river and have barbecue with my friends around it.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: We can grill sausages and show cow all day. Because
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: I had so much free time, I had so much
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: extra time back simply by being in a different physical location,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: a different part of the Earth's geography. It had nothing
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: to do with being Ah gung ho. I can push
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: through this. I can become an adventure abroad. I was like, Nope,
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: that's a way better deal. It was a practical decision.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: This the conditions, the terms and conditions here are way
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: better than the terms and conditions of living and especially
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: of working in the States, and my relationship with work
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: is completely different, and I'm still living in that completely
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: different world because I don't know if that was right.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if living there and teaching English was,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: you know, my perfect choice. But when I got there,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: I certainly knew, well, this feels better than how I
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: felt back in the States. This definitely feels more correct.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: I'm trading whatever, let's say half that I'm trading twenty
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: weeks a year, and I get thirty two weeks of
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: the year to myself instead of trading fifty weeks and
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: getting two weeks back. I'm only trading twenty weeks and
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: I get thirty two weeks to myself a year. That's
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: a much better deal. And for me it still is
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: a better deal. It really boils down to that practical
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: transaction of getting my time back for myself. And that's
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: why I eventually quit, because working I I was still
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: even training twenty weeks and getting thirty two weeks back. Hey,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: I already improved this equation. Maybe I can continue improving it.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: I just kept chipping away at that and I would
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: try to get more passive income, and it was only
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: three hundred US dollars roughly a month of passive income
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: when I started traveling. But those three hundred usd and
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: actually some of that was active ESL teaching on the
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: phone also, like one hundred dollars of that, so really
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: it was only two hundred dollars, but total three hundred
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: dollars of income, and that one hundred from the active
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: ESL teaching on the phone was only five hours a
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: week or let's say ten hours I guess a month, sorry,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: ten hours a month, so two and a half hours
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: a week. So yeah, one hundred and twenty hours a year,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: plus my two hundred dollars a month coming up from
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: passive income for three hundred between three four hundred per
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: month total income coming in, that's three weeks three standard
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: forty hour work week, right, Yeah, one hundred and twenty
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: hours per year. Ten hours per month of active work
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: is three weeks of forty hour weeks. So now I
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: was trading three weeks per year and I was getting
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: forty nine weeks back. And I wasn't living in private
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: housing at the time. I was living in hostels because
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: hostels are only one hundred dollars per month in Thailand
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: and Cambodia and cheaper countries. There's still only one hundred
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: dollars a month in Cambodia, by the way, I check
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: that all the time. Because they were nice hostiles. You
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: get air conditioning and hotch hours, and there's a pool
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: and a bar downstairs where you get a bucket of
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Margarita's for five dollars. But that's how this practical transaction
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: kept happening. It was never about how gung ho. I
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: was about how much I love travel, and I would
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: sacrifice anything to travel. My point was the Memento v time.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: My goal was living the life I had, and I
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: couldn't live the life I had if I was trading
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: fifty weeks a year of my life for two weeks
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: to myself, and then when I was teaching English, I
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: didn't even want to trade the twenty weeks I had
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: for the thirty two weeks to myself. That's a great deal.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: I still like it. I think that's great if you
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: can do that. But I was like, well, if I've
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: if I've leveraged my transaction this much already and I'm
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: working twenty I've already I'm already working thirty weeks less
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: than I was before. Can I get that further? And
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: then when I had my own school, I was probably
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: down to less than that. I was probably i'll say
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: fifteen weeks because my own school, I was making as
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: much as I was making working for the other school.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: But I made that much in about half the time.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: But we'll say ten hours a week, but I only
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: worked ten hours a week. I didn't do any of
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: the other stuff because it was my own school, so
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: I was running it very efficiently. So that's what forty
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: hours a month, and twelve of those so twelve weeks,
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: So I was Now I went from fifty weeks for
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: two weeks to myself in the States to twenty twenty
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: five weeks given to the company when I was in
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: China working for another school, and I got my thirty
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: weeks back, thirty two weeks back. And then when I
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: owned my own school, I gave them twelve weeks a year,
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: and I was getting forty weeks back. And then I
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: was bringing in that three hundred and fifty to four
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: hundred per month, and then teaching ESL online for those
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: three weeks a year of forty hour weeks one hundred
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: and twenty hours per year, so two and a half
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: hours per week. Now I was down to I give
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: them three work weeks and I get forty nine weeks
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: of time to myself. So I just kept trying to
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: improve that transaction and I got there. So now I'm
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: more than three weeks out of the year and I
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: get forty nine weeks to myself. But that's on a
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: stable level. I don't need more income. So every hundred
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: dollars I bring in that goes straight into passive income,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: and that's bringing back from investments five percent, seven percent,
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: whatever that's coming back to me. And then just build
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: up passive income. Just keep putting money into the same
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: investments that are working, and then I'm at zero. Now
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: I have zero weeks that I actually have to work
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: to pay for the other weeks of the year, because
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: after after it becomes passive income, then it's truly passive income.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: And I will still work and add money to that
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: passive income stream, but I don't have to do that.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: I just work now and then because I have I'm
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: free all the time. So if I work for an hour,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I'll bring in a couple more dollars per year. Here
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: and there. So if I want to work an eight
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: hour day, I'll bring in another seven dollars per year.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: And every time I do that, I bring in another
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: whatever per year in passive income. But once you hit
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: five hundred USD per year, you can live in most
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: of the world in a private apartment and have grocery.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: You're set. I am set, So I don't mind investing
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: a little time here and there to build up the
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: passive income, because it's just to build up passive income.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: It's just to I guess, improve the comfort of retirement
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: and prove the comfort of having all fifty two weeks
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: to myself. Before I needed to trade those fifty weeks
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: so I could get the two weeks to myself. I
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: needed to trade those twenty weeks so I could get
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: the thirty two weeks to myself. I needed to trade
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: to three weeks so I could get the forty nine
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: weeks to myself. But after that point, I had all
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: fifty two weeks to myself, and whenever I did teach
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: anything again or invest my time again, I just had
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: more resources with which to do stuff over those fifty
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: two weeks, okay, And now I have all the time
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: to myself, and I choose to spend that time living
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: for a few months here and there and going one
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: country to the next, and then go back to the original,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: the original conundrum of when I get back to the
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: States or talk to someone from the States, and sometimes
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: even other travelers, pretty rarely, but sometimes even other travelers,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: they would ask me why you must love traveling. You
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: must be so gung ho about it because I can
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: only get out here for two weeks or back in
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: the States. Like, Wow, You're sacrificing everything just so that
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: you can live in different countries. You must love that
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: hectic life. And I'm not sacrificing a thing. I'm receiving
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: so much more. I'm receiving everything in this transaction by
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: living in other countries, by living in these low cost
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: of living countries. I changed the equation by which I
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: grew up and was told I was supposed to live. Wow,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: you must love adventure. You have such a gung ho
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: attitude about getting out there. And that's pretty funny, because
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: you know you can tell right now, I'm sitting alone
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: in my room talking into a microphone. This is not
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: a hectic pastime for me. This is a chill activity.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: It is something I like to do. I like doing this,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: I like sharing these experiences. I like ordering these events
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: of my life. I like recording the things that happen
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: in my life. And I like encouraging and inspiring people
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: to take more control of their own life. But it's
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: not exactly what most people would think of as adventurous.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: This is what a lot of people do for a job,
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: sitting in a cubicle or a recording room, but I'm
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: not doing.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: It as a job.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: It's really a fun form of creative expression for me,
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: and I love hearing back from other people. And I
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: have a bunch of travel advice for people who write
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: in and talk to me. I don't know if I'll
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: be doing this forever, but right now, this is the
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: fun thing that I want to do, and this is
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: the most active thing I do. You have such a
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: gung ho adventure attitude. I am very often watching a
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: movie or TV show and eating snacks and drinking beer.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Or living in all those countries is so hectic, though,
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: I don't think I could do it, and I just
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: think back to lying in my bed for hours, scrolling
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: on my phone or playing video games. I'm just sitting
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: around looking at which restaurant near me looks the best
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: that day, the deadline for that activity being whenever I
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: eventually feel hungry, I get up and go choose one
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: of the dozens of amazing restaurants nearby to go. Try
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: reading or sleeping, just sleeping, just resting, relaxing. I do
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: cool things. I do, go to anchor what I do,
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: go snorkeling. I do have barbecue by the river, and
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: I climb mountains. But I don't pant and slaver at
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: the thought of completing every adventure I ever could. I'm
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: not like Okay, I gotta fill every single day with
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: a new train ride to a new location and a
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: new adventure.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Nope.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: Throw me in a country i'm interested in, which is
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: pretty much most countries. Get myself a comfortable, affordable house
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: for a few months, look around, visit a place, rest
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: for several days, visit another place if I feel the urge,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: rest some more. See what's up, see what's around those countries.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: That has worked extremely well in finding out amazing things everywhere.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: I didn't know ankor Wat was so close to cm Reep,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: but it's really close, like a fifteen minute well, like
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: a thirty minute bike ride away from the city, so
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: you can just riunt a bicycle and go there. And
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: now I'll just runt a bicycle wherever I am and
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: go just ride a bicycle around. There's so many things
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: to see that even so often the locals don't realize
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: or right around the corner from them, that that I
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: can find since I have the extra time to ride
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: around a neighborhood or walk around a neighborhood all day
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: and just be like, Oh, look there's a sushi restaurant. Hey, look,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: there's a new supermarket I haven't seen yet. There's a
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: giant outdoor market with four hundred vendors with products of
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: every and food of every shape and size that I
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: haven't explored. What is that mountain a mile away, I'll
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: go walk to it. I'll go walk to the top
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: of that mountain and see what I can see from there. Oh, look,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: the remains of an ancient city that happened in Peru.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: A lot I would I just started walking to mountains,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: because every mountain I went to, there'd be the remains
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: of a wall of some burial site or food storage
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: kolkas or town like town village walls all over near Cusco,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: so I just start walking to all the mountains I saw. Basically,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: there's so many ruins in Cusco. It's wild, and you
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: don't have to pay to enter any of them. There's
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: the famous ones if there's a ticket for it, like
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: it's already famous, and you can go to those ones.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: But if you're in Cusco, you just walk to any
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: of the mountains around there, and there are remains. Some
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: of them are as magnificent as these famous ones, like
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Machu Pichu, and it's free. You can just walk there.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: Because I couldn't believe how many legitimate, ancient ruins were
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: scattered all around Cusco that were never talked about. And
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: I just typed in ruins, literally, I typed in ruins
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: on my offline maps, and then I found one and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: I walked to it. And that's what I would do
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: one day, and then the rest of the week I'd
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: be like, hey, look, you climbed a mountain. Let's watch
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: two seasons of Star Trek, or let's drop pictures, let's
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: write a story, let's sleep for a couple days. That
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: mountain was a lot of work. You should probably have
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: eight beers and a bunch of smoked ribs I have.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: I'm interested in life, I'm interested in memento vita. I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: want to remember that I am living right now, and
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: that is not a guaranteed state of existence, yo m lo.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: But it's never had anything to do with an insatiable
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: need to experience to experience adrenaline all the time. I
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: don't need some crazy drive within myself. I just needed
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: more time to myself. That's what I wanted. I like traveling,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: I like eating good food, I like meeting new people,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: but it's not about an exciting, burning desire to experience
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: everything I can. Traveling has allowed me to comfortably live
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: life to the fullest as I understand it right now,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: and as I mentioned, a lot of that is relaxing.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: A lot of that is sitting around reading a book
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: and talking to my friends on chat, reading the news,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: exercising veggin out. So you do have to change everything,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean it's going to be more stressful.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: Like for me, I changed everything by taking a plane
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: to China and starting to teach English. But instantly my
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: life was more rich and interesting and less stressful. When
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: people are like, oh, I can never go through all
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: the hassle of getting visas all the time. If you're
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: from the US, one hundred eighty countries are visa free
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: travel or visa on arrival, so nine out of ten
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: countries you don't have to get a visa anyway before
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: you buy your ticket before you land in the country. Actually,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: and if you do want to go to one of
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: those visa countries, I always think, like, Okay, it takes
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: me fifteen minutes, maybe thirty minutes to fill out a
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: visa online. Versus if I was still living a sedentary
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: life and working for a company, that thirty minutes could
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: be a commute like one way to my job, and
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: I only have to do it for thirty minutes, and
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: I have ninety three days of residency there plus an
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: extra However, many if I want to extend the visa,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: So if I was still part of the corporate system
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: in the US, I'd be training that thirty minutes for
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: getting to work and being in that I trade fifty weeks,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: You give me two weeks to myself job. Versus, if
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I trade thirty minutes of my life for a visa,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: I get ninety three days at least of living comfortably
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: thirty minutes ninety days of living comfortably. And again nine
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: out of ten countries, US citizens don't even have to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: fill out visas until they arrive in the country for
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: visa arrival. But like most of Central South America, most
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: of Asia, most of the world, you don't need a
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: visa at all, not even visa on arrival.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Just fly in.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: They give you ninety days and you can extend that
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: if you want. You can get a long term visa
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: if you want.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: My gung ho travel attitude is I like having my
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: life to myself, and the easiest fix to that was
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: becoming a traveler, because I have to pay so much
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: less for such a higher quality of life, so much
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: more time to myself, and so many inter things around
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: me all the time. When I go every three months
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: to a new country, like in Peru, it was all
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: the ancient ruins of the cities. In Morocco, it was
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: the assorted meat's plate with camel hump and all sorts
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: of different things as cargo on the plate, and the
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: countless outdoor night markets in Thailand. In Japan it was
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: cherry blossoms and sushi. In Vietnam, it was a giant
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: backpacking trip through the mountains, and I was bike packing
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: the whole time, but I would take days off and
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: just sleep in a hammock and hang out, Like riding
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: a bicycle is fun, So when I got tired, I
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: would rest, and then when I was not tired, when
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: I was rejuvenated from resting, I'd go ride the bicycle again,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: because riding a bicycle is fun. And I'm not the
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: only person doing this. There are other people who travel
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: for the same practical reasons, for the same better deal.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: It's so and expensive to live as a traveler, and
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: you get so much more of your free time back.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: Five hundred dollars US per month gets you your own
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: private apartment and enough food for the month. A thousand
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: US gets you even more food and beer and free
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: money to throw on a snorkeling trip, rent a electric
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: scooter for the month, or whatever you can get a
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: little bit more. I don't have a super gung ho
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: travel attitude. I don't need the adrenaline of hopping from
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: experience to experience. I like experiencing some of those adventures
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: at my own pace and living abroad. Being a traveler
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: just gives me such a better deal than I got
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: back in the States. Of course, I did get an
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: RV in the States and put some put a solar
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: setup on there myself, and that was pretty sick and
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't mind doing that again.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: That was cool.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: Like you know, ual car registration, pay for the insurance
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: and it's like a one time payment. Then you paid
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: for your whole rent for like a couple thousand dollars
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: of insurance whatever it is.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Man, my review was so cheap. The insurance was insane.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: It was something like ten dollars a month.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: It was so cheap, fourteen dollars a month, so it
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: was like one hundred and fifty dollars for the entire
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: year for that RV.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: I still have no idea how that happened.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: But I lived in that thing for nine months, going
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: around the US, and I had free electricity from the sun,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: and I had a refrigerator and a full stove. I
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: had propane also, I had a propane tank that powered
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: the stove and the refrigerator.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: But I had full utilities.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: And then any electricity came from the sun. I took
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: electric bike around with me and it cost me none
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: of my time. I didn't have to work at all
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: because I was living inside the RV and had all my.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: For I don't know, a few thousand for the entire year.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: I just want the better deals.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: I want a better deal for my time, to myself,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: for my own life, to myself, to use my life
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: as I see fit, to experience life as I see fit.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: And once I looked at all the costs of doing
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: that and started living abroad, it was a parent that
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: was very and is very possible probably for you too.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: If you're listening to this and thinking like, maybe I
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: could do that. If you're thinking maybe you could do that,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: you probably can do that. Can do this if you
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: want to jam about it. If you want to talk
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: talk to me bit of a Rambler at gmail dot com.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: You can talk to me a bit of a rambler
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: at Blue Sky or Lemmy. Other people will think you're
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: a gung ho adventure traveler and you can mostly just
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: relax all day