I’ve written about this before but allow me to once again wax about something I seriously want to venture into.
It’s called Project: Orinoco.
Basically, I want to visit all the places Enya mentioned in her song, Orinoco Flow. I’ve done my (Internet) research and as far as I could dig, no one’s done this before, so that makes it a little more exciting for me.
Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia
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’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.
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?
Day 20 - A photo of something you enjoy doing
Initially, I was going to post a picture that had something to do with creative work but then I realized that, most of the time, I don’t get that sense of fulfillment any “creative” person strives for. Yes, the process may turn out to be enjoyable but I’m more of a destination (as opposed to journey) -kind of person and, unfortunately, it’s rare that I feel accomplished with whatever product I end up with. So I’m going with traveling instead as “something I enjoy doing.”
Photo was taken on my flight from Cebu to Manila last April. I looked out the window and was delighted to catch the fluffiest clouds I’d ever seen. They may not look that fluffy in the photo (because my EV settings were off, unbeknown to me), but trust me, they were FLUFFY. The entire flight all I could hear in my head was Rickie Lee Jones rambling about clouds and skies in The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds.
I wrote about my recent love for traveling in my first Minor Details entries. Inspired by my online and offline friends who’ve been jetting to various destinations, I decided early this year that it was about time I started traveling for real.
I think travel is wonderful… but it’s rather expensive even for a budget traveler like me. With the number of trips I’ve booked (and/or completed) thus far this year, I could have easily bought my dream camera (and then some)! Every time I visit a new place I find myself wondering why it took me so long to go out and see the world. Once I finally find the time to sit down and sort through my photos, I will write about the places I’ve been.
It’s a new hobby/interest that I’ll likely sustain, provided that I have the time and money to do so. It’s nice to know that I will go places.
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This entry a part of the 30 Day Picture Challenge
God bless Cebu Pacific seat sales. It seems there’s a promo every week, but last week’s zero-peso ticket sale to local and international destinations was just BANANAS. I dropped everything I was doing to see if I could snag tickets to Shanghai. Lo and behold, there were P0 going and returning fares!!!
But then I vacillated on booking the tickets all afternoon, worrying that I might not be able to fly out on the dates I selected. Stupid move because when I finally decided to do it, the promo fares were already sold out. Oh well, wasn’t meant to be. Mt. Huangshan shall wait.
Wanderlusting, academic woes, trivial pursuits, ruminations, creative forays, absurdity, feast & famine, acquisitive tendencies, Kodak moments, complexes & disorders, whatever it fakes.
Welcome to my beautiful dumpsite!
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Aldo teaches and studies at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.
