This Guy Loves To Party

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You can learn a new language at any point in life, and relatively fast.  Especially if the language is similar to your native tongue, you can be talking comfortably pretty fast.

Well, I’ve got a fire hot language learning tip for you today.  Do you want to drastically elongate your language learning time?  Develop horrible grammar, poor pronunciation, and embarrassing speaking skills?

Well, then you should avoid real language classes at all costs.

I spent about six months in Latin America trying to teach myself Spanish.  I never took classes, and instead opted for every self-learning course I could find.

And after six months, I could talk like a retarded four year old.  (I would say a regular four year old, but I met a few of them in my travels and they spoke and understood way better than I did.)  Six months is a lot of time, and now I know that had I taken real classes, I would have been near fluent in that time.

Out of frustration, I flew to Ecuador and took five weeks of one-on-one Spanish classes.  And in those five weeks, I improved my Spanish many times over.  I was having comfortable, coherent conversations with adults for the first time ever, and after only five weeks.

In fact, one week of my classes was dedicated solely to unlearning a lot of the stuff I had taught myself.  I had unwittingly taught myself nothing but bad grammar and poor speaking skills, but everyone in South America was too nice to correct me.  (Think about it — do you correct non-native English speakers when you run into them in everyday life?  And do you make fun of their horrible broken English afterward?  Exactly.)  In my day-to-day activities, I was able to bumble out enough broken Spanish to get my basic needs across, and no one ever said a word to correct me, so I had a false sense of Spanish ability.  While spending time with my Spanish teacher, I typically committed one or two grammar errors in every single sentence I spoke, and she was not quite as forgiving.

For the frustration and annoyance of wasting 6 months trying to teach myself Spanish, the cost of 5 weeks of private classes was more than worth it.  I just regret not doing it way earlier in my travels.  I’ll be taking this approach for any future trips I make.

If you don’t plan right, eating on a road trip is expensive and nasty.  Restaurants are way too costly and not very good on your stomach or your health.  Both my opening sentence and the sentence that follow it are almost literally the same thing.

I’d love to write a detailed article on this, but there are really only two tips I need to give you:

1. Buy snacks that don’t expire easily at the supermarket before you leave.  Protein powder, mixed nuts, fruits, and dried meats like beef jerky are the best.  Don’t argue with me on this.  That’s a mistake.
2. Buy pre-prepared meals at supermarkets instead of eating at restaurants whenever possible, since meals at supermarkets are always cheaper.  Again, you’re making a mistake if you argue this.

If you take anything from this article, it’s that you don’t fucking argue with me.

I got a hot deal on a rental car that I’m keeping for two weeks.  In New Jersey, after taxes, I’m paying roughly $27 a day to have a fire-hot, sought-after Chevy Cobalt.  The pussy I pull with this bad boy doesn’t cost any extra.

Even the guy at the rental pick-up place seemed surprised at the deal I got on the car.  So, by popular demand (my mom suggested I write a blog post), here is how I got it.

1. First check expedia.com or kayak.com and do a search in your local area for deals on car rentals.  I went for a compact car because I don’t need anything more than that.  Find the cheapest and best deal and take note with which rental agency you’d get it.
2. Next, go to this thread over at the FatWallet Travel Deals forum.  Locate the “overall top five” portion for your rental agency.
3. Enter a few of the listed codes into the appropriate field at Expedia, Kayak, or directly at the dealer’s web site (this will likely be halfway through the checkout process).  See which one gets you the best deal.

I rented my car with Hertz, and one of the listed codes ended up giving me 20% off in the New Jersey area.

The other hurdle I ran into was at the actual rental location.  I haven’t driven a car for about 10 months, and for that reason, am not insured.  Insurance from Hertz cost more than the car itself every day.  However, I found out that if you rent your car using an American Express credit card, you get insurance from American Express themselves and it’s free.  If you don’t have an American Express credit card, this will still work if you rent the car under someone else’s name and list yourself as a secondary driver, as verified by a charming American Express phone rep.  Just find someone nice enough to rent the car on their credit card.  A family member is usually a good choice, and what I opted for.

If anyone has any tips on getting bullet holes out of rental cars or if this is covered by my insurance, hit me up on the comments.  It was my fault, if that’s relevant at all.

I’m in Bogota, Colombia right now, about to go back to the USA in a couple days.

But the truth is, I want to be back in the USA now.  All my goals are very USA-centric, and staying in international hostels doesn’t make me very productive.  I feel like I’m not really doing much here.  Being a tourist doesn’t excite me much.  I’m South America’d out, for now.

The problem, though, is that I booked my plane ticket a month and a half ago, and it costs $100 to change it.  Not worth it.  I’d rather spend that money intelligently on H&B (hookers & beer).

When out of curiosity I hopped onto JetBlue’s web site to see how much a plane ticket leaving tomorrow would cost, I discovered it was the exact same price as the plane ticket I bought a month and a half ago.  Son of a bitch.

And almost every other search I’ve done in the past has brought up the same results: a lot of airlines charge the same at the last minute that they charge months in advance.  Often, the last minute tickets are even cheaper.

This isn’t always the case, but it is often enough to have made me realize: buying a plane ticket even a month in advance is pointless, and I always regret it.  I hate limiting my time somewhere, or keeping myself trapped somewhere I don’t want to be.

From now on, I am only buying plane tickets at the last minute, when I know I’m ready to leave.

NOTE: updates on here are a little sparse right now because of my travel schedule.  I have a couple big updates planned for this site, and will be putting everything into action in the next week.  I recommend subscribing to my RSS feed to be automatically notified of my updates.

All my life, I’ve had a physically oversized head.

When I was 3 years old, I had the receding hair line of a malnourished 75 year old Filipino field worker.  (Google it.  You’ll get it.)  This was because my head was so large, my hair line didn’t begin in the right spot.

I’ve always joked that I don’t have a forehead, but instead I have a fivehead.  People always laugh at that because it’s true.  I swear to god a severely retarded guy in a wheelchair once overhead me say that one, took a look at me, and even started laughing.  It kills.

I have a set of veins on the side of my head that jump out when I get excited, laugh, or exercise.  They’ve always been there, and they’re not going anywhere.  People often point them out to me like I didn’t know they were there.  I usually respond by rubbing on them vigorously as I start panicking and yelling.  I think this is the response they expect, but I’m not sure.

But I’m not one to just accept my shortcomings.  If you also have an oversized head, then there are a few visual tricks you can use to make it look smaller.

Trick #1: Develop Your Shoulder Muscles

The best trick for making your head appear smaller is to build your deltoid muscles, which are the muscles surrounding your shoulders.  Specifically, you want to work the lateral head of the deltoid, which is the portion responsible for your shoulder width.

Wider shoulders give the illusion that you don’t have the head of a freak.  Narrow shoulders accentuate your bulbous cranium.

The lateral portion of your deltoids usually respond best to higher repetitions.  When you’re in the gym, try to throw in 3 sets of 15 reps of the following two exercises.  (Do this two times a week, preferably spread as far apart from each other as possible.)

Pitcher raise (lateral raise where, at the end of the movement, you “pour” the dumbbell downward so that your pinky is higher)

Pitcher Raise (Photo: t-nation.com)

Gironda dumbbell swing (ends the same as pitcher raise, but with a swinging motion on both arms)

Gironda Swings (Photo: t-nation.com)

The most important part of these exercises is that you’re turning your hands during the movement so that, by the end, your pinky is sitting higher than the rest of your fingers on the dumbbell.

Trick #2: Cut Your Hair, Hippy

I always get an urge to grow my hair out.  I think every guy does.  We always reach that one golden week where our haircut is absolutely perfect, and we get cocky and think to ourselves, “Why not just grow it out?”

I’ve done this many times before, and it’s a mistake for anyone with a huge head, especially if your hair just turns into a giant poofball like mine.  Cut your hair at least once a month, and keep it short.

Trick #3: Lose Weight

When you’re fatter, a lot of weight goes to your face, and since you don’t get proportionally bigger when you put on fat (your shoulders don’t suddenly get wider because you’re fatter, for example), it’ll make your head look like a giant balloon.

Trick #4: Wear a Poofy Jacket or Sweater

If all else fails, just wear a big poofy jacket or sweater at all times.  It worked for Diddy in 1996.

Join me in the war against big heads

I follow all these tips (except for the poofy jacket thing, I’m not black enough to do that) and have moved the attention away from my oversized head instead to my poor taste in clothing.

Good luck in your quest.

If you use a Mac and want to be more productive, then this tip will help you a lot.

The biggest problem with working for yourself and attempting to make money online are all the distractions you have.  Instead of focused working, I catch myself every 15 minutes checking to see which of my friends has updated their Facebook status, or to find out more about a random celebrity on Wikipedia, or to see if I have any new e-mail.  Sometimes my eyes get stuck on all the junk I have sitting on my desktop, or I zone out while listening to music.

Eventually, my mind is focused on anything but the work I have to get done.

I’ve fixed that problem, for the most part, by taking advantage of OS X’s multiple user accounts feature.  (This exists in Windows, too, but Windows is for shit heads, so I don’t know how to do it.)

What does this do?

A lot of people don’t realize you can create a second “user” on your computer.  This sets aside a small space on your computer with no personal documents, no messy desktop, nothing.  You go into it, and it’s almost like you have a brand new computer, aside from the existing applications you have.

I set up a new user — I named it “Work” — and whenever it’s time to get down to business, I simply log out of my main user, where all my personal documents are, and log into my “Work” user, where the only documents are those that are associated with my Internet business.

While in there, Facebook doesn’t automatically log me in, I have no e-mail accounts set up, and there’s no digital clutter to keep my mind distracted.  I’m a lot more focused on the task at hand.

How do you do it?

A patient-sounding man with a very robotic voice has saved me the trouble and already prepared an excellent tutorial on creating new user accounts.  Watch it below.

You simply need to select “log out” from the Apple menu when you want to switch between accounts.

Use this for any kind of project you have

I’ll be using this technique with all future projects I have.  The main advantage it provides is that the new user account has no data in it.  This decluttering will clear your mind and help you focus.  With a clear mind, you’ll find you get a lot more done.  When you’ve completed your work, just hop back over to your “main” account and spend as much time as you want on Wikipedia finding out what Stephanie from Full House is up to these days.

CouchSurfing is an amazing tool for nomads and backpackers.  Not only does it help you find free lodging — it also connects you with locals in almost any nation in the world.

The problem with CouchSurfing, though, is that as its popularity grows, it’s becoming more and more competitive trying to find a place to stay.  Many hosts have to choose between multiple “couch surf” requests every night.

For this reason, you’ve got to have a profile that stands out if you want to successfully grab a couch on CouchSurfing.

If you follow my guide, you’ll never have to face rejection again.

STEP 1: Selecting the perfect picture

“Greeaaatttt, a shot of you in front of Macchu Picchu.  This doesn’t show me what your tits look like at all.  NEXT PROFILE, please.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my hosts mutter this under their breath as they selected their next prospective guest.

CouchSurfing clearly bills itself as not a dating site, but that shouldn’t stop you from having a gratuitously sexual picture up.

I cut right through the middle man and opt for a picture of me in the shower.  And let me reassure you, I am very popular on CouchSurfing.

An example of the ideal CouchSurfing profile picture.

STEP 2: Filling out your “description”

Most backpackers are young, highly impressionable, trusting people, only truly discovering the world for the first time now, so you’ll need to absolutely take advantage of their kind, naive nature with your description.

The more curious and profound you sound, no matter how cliché, the more success you’ll have in landing sweet couches.

Follow some of these tips:

• Your “current mission” should be something emotionally powerful, but fairly cliché and empty.  I recommend, “Finding myself in this vast space we called Earth…..”  The ellipsis at the end is absolutely important, because it makes you seem like you think a lot.
• Your “occupation” should shamelessly point out that you quit your job and are traveling the world, whether it’s true or not.  Everyone respects that.
• Your “education” should indicate that you’re “still learning.”  Or maybe that you’re “a student of the world.”  You get the idea.
• Your “home town” is “Earth.”  I don’t care that you clearly grew up in a specific home town that qualifies for this answer.  Claiming to be a “citizen of Earth” is way more poetic.
• Your “all about you” should be focused on a story about volunteer time you did in some under-privileged nation full of dark-skinned people.  You found your soul there or some bullshit.
• Your “interests,” again, should mention something about volunteering, or something that makes it seem like you read a lot of books.
• And speaking of which… for “favorite movies, TVs, and books,” you had better only list books.  Don’t make the same mistake I did and indicate you enjoy “average people” entertainment.
• Your “personal philosophy” should be about doing what you love and not bowing down to the man.  CouchSurfers hate corporations; this is an absolutely proven fact.
• “People I enjoy” should just be “indigenous people and native Africans.”  Put your finger on an impoverished nation on a map and you’ve got the people you enjoy.  I credit this technique with landing me five or six couches alone.

Try it out!

That’s it for part 1.

In part 2, we’ll help you construct the perfect messages to send out to prospective hosts.

But in the meantime, get to work improving your profile, and good luck.

(Note: This is clearly a joke article.  However, I updated my CouchSurfing profile to match the advice I give here, again as a joke.  Literally one hour later I had a message from a local person in Medellin, Colombia asking if I’d like to meet up.  This is the first unsolicited private message I’ve received in six months of CouchSurfing.  I am not kidding.)

The giant red "X" suggests this is not smart.

Everything I own fits in one 35 liter backpack that I lug with me around the world.

One reason everything fits is simply because I don’t own a lot of stuff. But that’s not all there is to it; the real reason I can cram everything in my backpack is because I figured out the best method of folding and packing my clothes.

Folding Clothes To Minimize Space

Travel nerds all over the web are having a heated debate over the subject of how to fold clothes to minimize space in a bag.

The Methods That Fail

Bundle Wrapping
One popular folding method in the travel community is the Bundle Wrapping method. This one is popular simply because it seems exotic. In reality, it’s retarded, and I doubt many people use it successfully. That doesn’t stop them from blogging about it, though.

The problem with the Bundle Wrapping method: the entire idea is that you wrap items of clothing within eachother. This supposedly saves space. On paper, this seems great. In reality, you end up with a giant bundled ball of clothes that’s impossible to fit in any standard-sized bag.

Rolling
God I wish everyone would stop fellating the rolling method. It’s awful, awful, awful. It takes up unnecessary amounts of space, saves nothing, and wrinkles your clothes like no other. Essentially you just roll your clothes up into little cylinders and hope for the best.

The problem with the rolling method: for one, your clothes end up taking up too much space vertically. The rolling method also leaves small, unused pockets of space between your clothes on either end, since your rolled clothes are naturally thicker in the middle.

The Method That Works

After failing with the other popular packing methods, I found one that worked, still works after seven months of traveling, and will continue to work into the future.

It’s not special at all, but I’m going to give it a special name anyway. It’s the Rational Packing Method.

How The Rational Packing Method Works

Along with your clothes, you’re going to need rubber bands and (optional but very handy) ziplock bags.

• For jeans, pants, and other thicker items: fold them completely normally as tight as you can. Wrap a thick rubber band around them to keep them from unfolding. Put them at the bottom of your bag.
• For underwear, socks, and thinner items: fold them as tightly as possible, putting a double-wrapped rubber band around each one, and put them in the small available creases to the sides of your pants in your bag. Put any extras wrapped together into a ziplocked bag.
• For shirts: fold them normally, folding them over into as tight a square as you can. Put a double-wrapped rubber band around each one. Pack the shirts together into a large ziplock bag, which will keep them fresh and help keep them from sliding around in your bag, taking up more space.
• All other items (scarves, jackets, etc): wrap them completely normally, as tight as you can with rubber bands around them. Fit them in on top of the other items in your bag.

Step 1. HOW WILL THAT GIANT SHIRT EVER FIT IN MY BAG?

Step 2. Keep folding the shirt into smaller and smaller squares, completely normally.

Step 3. Once you can't fold the shirt over anymore, wrap it tightly with a rubber band.

Step 4. Take a picture with your folded shirt and write a blog post about it.

Essentially, you’re just folding your clothes into tight squares (with the exception of pants, which go somewhat flat at the bottom of your bag) and keeping those squares tight with rubber bands and ziplock bags.  When you pack everything into your bag, it’ll all fit together like one giant, satisfying puzzle, and not into a bunch of nasty clumps like with the other popular methods.

This method is very space-efficient and makes packing light very simple.  I have no problems fitting a full wardrobe of clothes inside a 35 liter (school-sized) backpack.  A nice bonus is that, surprisingly, your clothes won’t wrinkle.

The biggest draw-back, though, is that you won’t be able to blog about how great the Bundle Wrapping method is, and how you’re a revolutionary backpack packer because you pack your bag like a futuristic spaceman.  Sorry.

Happy, liberated hair.

I lived with a guy in Colombia who taught me a very valuable lesson, one that has resulted in the most vibrant, manageable hair I’ve had in my life.

Off-handed, he mentioned one day that he hadn’t used shampoo in over a month.  Although I’m pretty sure the comment was annoyingly out of context at the time, it made me think.

Is shampoo really necessary?  I set out to find out the truth.

So far, four months into 2009, I have shampooed my hair exactly twice, both times unintentionally by a haircutter.  (It seems rude to refuse the complimentary shampoo.  They just want to help.)

Whenever I’m in the shower, I just scratch my head under hot water for about fifteen seconds.  It feels great, and clears out any junk I have in my hair.

The result?  Dandruff-free, stylish, natural hair.  No gel or product necessary.  I don’t look as much like a Young Republican anymore, and I love it.

Shampoo is a con.  Join me in follicle liberation.  Bring your own gun.