Wanderlusting

So 2011 was the year the travel bug bit. I revisited this entry I wrote last year and a few things have sprung to mind:

• I haven’t written a Minor Details entry in the longest time! Actually, I already have a list; I’ve just been putting off the writing task.
• My thoughts haven’t changed: I still want to work for an airline (because I want to go places) and I want travel to be my investment.
• I really did go all-out in terms of traveling last year. My passport is no longer pathetic.

I’m a frugal traveler. Or, at least, I scrimp on what I can (e.g., airfare, land transportation, accommodation) and splurge on the finer things in life (e.g., food!!!). For now, my bank account can only afford to take me to nearby destinations (i.e., Asian countries). But reading travel magazines and viewing videos such as the one below only stimulate my yen to travel and explore the world.  

Now is that brilliant or is that brilliant? According to the Mashable article that featured the video:

San Francisco-based Kien Lam quit his job, bought a plane ticket to London and then spent 343 days traversing the globe and snapping photos along the way.

Ah, if only quitting your job to tour the world were that easy.

Needless to say, Lam’s time-lapse project is incredibly inspiring. Of course I plan to save up big-time and explore the other continents (with luck, before I hit 30). Like you, I have a growing list of places I want to visit in my lifetime and seeing the breathtaking scenery in this video has only rendered me impatient — I want to go places, and NOW.

But my travel fantasies will have to wait. In the meantime, I am totally ripping off this idea and putting together a collective video of my travels at the end of the year.

Travel Blogging

I’ve been blogging for almost a decade now and the content has pretty much consisted of the same old, same old: favorite songs, quirky finds, (reality) TV, some (unfinished) ventures, and a lot of narcissistic urges. Lately, I’ve been thinking about refocusing the content of the site so that it wouldn’t just be a hodgepodge of random stuff, even though I like to call the blog, “my beautiful dumpsite.”

For now, I’m considering writing more travel-related entries. After all, I’ve been going on quite a few trips here and there for the past year. I wrote about this before here and here but, come to think of it, I never once posted a proper entry on a particular trip! And that’s a shame because half of my travel photos were wiped out when my hard disk failed me last August. So yeah, I plan to go down the travel blog route and document my local and international trips.

I have a long list of places I want to visit so I’ll probably post one destination per week (Wanderlusting Wednesday, yes?). Then, I guess I should still write about (or photo-blog) the places I visited in 2011, at least those I still have pictures of.

I told my friends that I wouldn’t book another plane ticket until I’m done with my thesis. But I clearly went back on my word, what with all the successive airline seat sales and promos! As of writing, I’ve already completed one trip (in fact, I just came home yesterday), thanks to the long weekend. My plan is to go somewhere every month (doesn’t have to be by plane). I’ve already made travel plans 8/12 months this year and I’m still researching feasible places to visit on my vacant weekends.

Resources permitting, it’s a hobby I’d like to sustain (because, really, traveling is more investment than expenditure). And since I love talking about my (mis)adventures with my friends, colleagues, and students, I thought, why not share my stories here?

Method to Madness

Lately, it seems that the only way to achieve “equanimity” is by sweeping things under the rug. Because trying to find the correct and seemly solution is so excruciating. This search for the essential and ultimate fix has brought nothing but trouble and grief. It makes you wonder if there really is a true way around this madness, a true way to find a meeting of the minds.

So, in the meantime, sweeping things under the rug is our quick fix. Evasion is our band-aid solution to keep moving because we can’t stand still. The question is, until when? 

The Devil on Your Back

You know how I love Florence Welch (and her machine), so it’s no wonder how hooked I am to Shake It Out, the first single from her new album, Ceremonials. By hooked I mean, playing the song on loop at the office, at home, and while running. It’s one of those songs you need to play with the volume turned all the way up. You either listen to it on blaring speakers (or headphones) or you don’t listen to it at all!

I first heard it on Jam 88.3 late last year. I didn’t even have to bother taking note of the lyrics because this song was unmistakably Florence + The Machine’s! Oh it was love at first tune. Seriously, how could you not be drawn to those pure vocals set against sublime instrumentation?

So yes, I’ve been catching the song on the radio for a few months now but it was only a few days ago that I really listened to it. See, I’ve been sleeping for less than three hours a day (thanks to ze thesis!) so it’s truly been a challenge to drag my sleepy self to the office by 8am. But not last Wednesday, when this song played on Jam 88.3, on my way to work. Talk about the perfect perk-me-up to an otherwise dreary, heavy-eyed morning. If Florence’s powerful “shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out oh whoa” can’t shake out your morning sleepiness, I don’t know what will. Which gives me a wonderful idea: the chorus is the perfect alarm clock tone!

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To Leap Without Looking

First off, wasn’t that a delightful episode of Revenge? It’s been a while since Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke last destroyed a foe, of this magnitude. You knew she was going to exact revenge that way, what with the outward references to lighters, matches, and fire throughout the episode. Tsk tsk, you don’t mess with this girl.

And for our weekly screencaps, I found this dialogue between Jack and (fake) Amanda to be quite relatable:

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The Hardest Word

And Revenge is back on air! Oh how I’ve missed you, my dear cunning Emily Thorne.

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More Fun in the Philippines?

So yesterday’s hot news was the Department of Tourism’s new tourism slogan, “It’s More Fun in the Philippines.” Within minutes of its official announcement, it had become the #1 worldwide trending topic on Twitter. In fact, it’s still the #1 trending topic in the Philippines, as of writing. Until now, people are talking about it, and for good reason.

General feedback has been mostly positive. From what I’ve read, people like the conversational treatment of the slogan. Personally, I think it’s a tad too long — the shorter a slogan is, the better, for easier reference and recall. BUT it certainly rings true (will get to this later) and unlike our previous slogans, this one is a complete thought — It’s more fun in the Philippines, period. No, it’s not the most original or inventive slogan in the world (in reference to its ripping off a Swiss ad slogan) but, y’know, it doesn’t need to be. What it needs to be is understandable, relatable, and “owned” not only by the Tourism Department but by the country as a whole. On that front, I think this slogan succeeds.

As for the logo, the first thing that struck me was that it was very ABS-CBN, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The text is set in (presumably) Harabara, which I think is the perfect typeface for the slogan. Neutral fonts are too formal and businesslike so they are out of the question. Handwritten fonts might come off as juvenile, if not hipster-y. Ethnic-style fonts, while pretty, are limiting and might pose readability concerns. So I do like Harabara very much because it has the right balance of readability, ease, and versatility. I also like the addition of the banig graphic although I must admit that it took some time before I caught the Philippine map in the pattern. I’m not a fan of how the Philippine map has been deployed in clothing and other merchandise but there’s no denying that it has become an icon of the times. To feature it in the logo’s banig is brilliant.

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