Nomadic Neil

[Photo Credit: Tony George]

The New Year’s celebration, like other holidays, has its peculiar traditions; fire-works, Auld Lang Syne and blog posts telling you how to stick to your resolutions. Not here though. For a start I still think of the year as following the academic timetable. In my mind the new year still starts in the late Summer or early Autumn. The Winter period is only the half way point while the time of transition and reflection is the Summer. Anyone else still have this years after they left education?

I can’t remember ever making any serious New Year’s resolutions. I try to continually steer myself in the right direction (though I’d like myself to evaluate an adjust course in a shorter time than up until now). Don’t get me wrong, I have goals that are written down in the SMART format; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. But I’m not going to share those goals with you today.

I realized a while ago that in order to do the things I want to do I need to be a certain kind of person. I need to live by certain values that can guide me to whatever goal I’m working towards. Below are some of the values that I want to align myself with. Although some of these could be described as traits or abilities I’ve decided to name them values because they are more like compass directions that I want to follow rather than some skill that I can eventually measure myself as having a 10 out 10 score in.

Authenticity: I’ve come to believe that this is the most powerful value I can live by. Being authentic seems to be the easiest and most rewarding way of being congruent in my thoughts and actions. This has real implications for how I carry myself, my presence and how I communicate with other people. I would say that at this point in time it’s the guiding value in my life.

Discipline: I think this is a something a lot of people can identify with wanting more of. With more discipline I can get more out of each day, each action, each moment. My current strategy for having more discipline is to make sure I keep my promises to myself even if it’s in very small ways.

Pushing myself / Living on the edge: Closely linked to discipline, but I feel it needs to be mentioned separately. This is the ability to do my very best right till the end. I find this very difficult because I find it hard to distinguish between merely being uncomfortable and genuinely not being able to do any more. I also find it difficult when to determine whether I’ve done ‘enough / what’s necessary / what’s productive’ and when I’m just spinning wheels just to fool my ego into thinking I’m doing something worthwhile. Any suggestions on how to get better at this would be appreciated.

Honesty: Be honest with myself and others. Not to the point that I hurt people, but I think there is room for me to be more assertive in some ways. I think assertiveness comes when I am more honest with myself and others about what I want and expect.

Do you have any values or traits that you want to align yourself with? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Stay cool.

Hey guys, I’m not one for sentimental Christmas messages so this is going to be a short one.

I know a lot of people are having a hard a time at the moment, people losing jobs, money being tight etc. Not a great situation, though in the greater scheme of things necessary and long overdue. I just wanted to put one idea out there today.

If you are reading this blog post then you are one of the luckiest people to have ever lived in the history of the humanity. Staying alive and prospering was a real challenge for the majority of our history and it is still the case for most people alive today. We have all the knowledge of the world within easy reach through the internet, can travel almost everywhere in the world within 24 hours and are pretty much free to do whatever we want with our lives. A heavy thought but one I need to remind myself of once in a while. Let’s not squander this opportunity.

If you do celebrate Christmas in your part of the world, have a great day! Otherwise just have an awesome time for no reason at all.

Stay cool.

This guy made a video of himself dancing around Koh Lanta. Have a look to get a sense of where I’m staying.

One of the Christmas traditions people in the UK like to enjoy is speculation as to what will be the Christmas #1 Single. It usually ends up being the song that grandmas and grandads buy as a Christmas present for their grandchildren. Songs that have topped the charts in past years include Bob the Builder’s ‘Yes we can’, Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ and ‘Mr. Blobby’ by Mr Blobby (look that last one up). It’s not the hugely significant cultural event that it’s made out to be (some people are nostalgic for a non-existent time when there were no novelty songs) but it’s part of the shared experience that lets people in the UK get into the Christmas spirit.

Now over the past four years the #1 single has been the winner of the X-Factor, one of Simon Cowell’s ‘talent’-spotting reality-TV-shows. The format may be familiar to you as American / Brazilian / German (insert your country here) – Idol. In case you don’t know it’s a show in which hundreds of contestants try to impress a panel of judges and the viewing public with their singing performances in order to progress through consecutive rounds so they can be crowned the winner. They get a record contract, money, C-List celebrity status and become an international pop-star (maybe) for 6 months. Then a new season of X-Factor starts and the whole cycle repeats.

This year Jon and Tracy Morter were a bit fed up with the predictability of it all and decided to thwart the eventual winner of this year’s X-Factor, Joe McElderry, in his quest for the coveted #1 spot. A Facebook group was started and they set about recruiting people through websites and twitter accounts asking them to buy ‘Killing In The Name’ by Rage Against The Machine so that it would be the top selling song of the Christmas period. Just imagine families sitting down to watch Top of the Pops and hearing RATM?

Long story short, RATM came in at number 1 on Sunday, setting records for being the first download-only #1 and the fastest selling download in UK chart history.

So what does this mean? It depends who you ask of course. Some people wanted to make a statement against Simon Cowell, against the X-Factor (on the whole there seemed to be little malice intended towards Joe McElderry), for rock / ‘real’ music, to support a charity for homeless people (profits from the RATM song will be donated to Shelter, more than £70,000 has been raised so far), or simply as a joke.

This is what it means to me. Two people were able to create a ‘tribe’ that went viral. They asked the tribe to buy a 17 year old song. More than 500,000 of them did just that. No money was spent on marketing as the channels were free social media sites and applications like FaceBook and Twitter. They successfully beat a TV show that is probably the most watched show in the UK and which has thousands of words written about it in the UK media every week. The single was unavoidable in every supermarket and department store across the country. To me it’s a real life example of ‘the Long Tail’ and the power of social media.

Not only was Old-Media thoroughly trounced when it came to marketing Joe McElderry’s song, they were sorely lacking (as usual) in realising the significance of how it happend. Of course you would expect that since old-media is rapidly losing viewers and readers to internet alternatives. I don’t know how many articles I’ve read in which blatant untruths were recited over and over proving once again that the poor excuses for journalists working for the big UK newspapers have not yet discovered that you can research stuff by looking it up through search-engines.

Writers at the Guardian and the Times thought they were very clever when pointing out that RATM are signed to a major record label owned by Sony and are therefore hypocritical with their ’stick it to the man’ message. Somehow they didn’t find any of the countless interviews with RATM guitarist Tom Morello in which he has discussed this apparent conflict. The band’s opinion is they’d rather get their message out there through mainstream means than have fewer people hearing it in the first place. In the same way that you can buy Noam Chomsky’s books in chain-stores they feel their message is not invalidated by the method of delivery (remember they got started before the internet was in mainstream use, to get big you needed to be with a major record label). Professional journalists were made aware of these and other mistakes in the readers comments sections but so far none of those articles have been amended or taken down.

What do you think, is this a significant moment in the history of new media / social-web / web 2.0?

And which song do you prefer?

Stay cool, stay awesome.

[Photo Credit: Tjeerd]

There’s a little bar close to where I’m staying that I used to hang out at. It’s basically a small shack surrounded by bar stools. There you can sit out in the open watching football (soccer) on TV, meet fellow tourists and get tricked into drinking horrible Thai whiskey to the amusement of the barman. All good fun, but sadly no longer for me. I’ve been informed through my friend that I am no longer welcome at the bar or allowed on the premises of the bungalow resort next door which is run by the same people (I stayed there for a week when I first arrived on the island). My friends, through their association with me, are also barred.

So what kind of behaviour has led to me becoming a persona non grata? Have I been smoking pot on the premises with the Swedish stoner dude. No I haven’t. In any case a blind eye is turned to drug use and the stoner guy is back in Scandinavia courtesy of the Swedish embassy. (He was walking around naked shouting obscenities at people. Probably due to one too many ‘Happy Milkshakes’, milkshakes that include psychedelic mushrooms as one of the ingredients).

Was it because I was drinking too much and causing embarrassing scenes? Vomiting on the bar and singing ‘Hotel California’ at the top of my lungs? Not really, I prefer water and soft-drinks, only drinking the occasional beer or cocktail as to not cause offense to the staff. To be honest if I had the choice I wouldn’t drink alcohol at all, but being the ‘rich tourist’ means I sometimes have to compromise in that area.

Maybe it was because I was taking an interest in the local Thai women, accidentally chatting up somebody’s daughter, sister, girlfriend or wife? Not true either. I’m not attracted to Thai women and my only interactions with them are with the waitresses in the restaurants and shop assistants.

The reason I am no longer welcome at my local, so my friend has been told, is that I’m ‘too good with the tourist ladies, and steal them away’. Yes, that’s right, it turns out that I am in fact a ladies man. How they got this impression I’m not entirely sure. I used to be quite shy as a child and made efforts to be more outgoing and social as a teenager. This means that I make a conscious effort to talk to people around me. Old or young, man or women, it doesn’t matter. So when I was staying at the resort I remember speaking to pretty much everyone, including those that everyone else ignored like the old chain-smoking German couple and the Swedish stoner.

Now the local Thai guys have a habit of falling in love with pretty much any Western (Developed Country / 1st world) girl that speaks with them for a few minutes. I think it’s because they spend a lot of time listening to cheesy love-ballads which has affected how they experience the male / female dynamic. So all the time that I thought I was being cool and courteous by introducing my Thai ‘friends’ to any women I was talking with, maybe they were actually growing resentful of me? The problem is that most Thai people just don’t speak English that well, so any attempt at a conversation with a Western girl quickly falls flat. Obviously my tales of high-adventure and my quest for fortune and glory are just leaving them in the dust, while I cruise off into the sunset on my moped with a girl on the back. Yes, in my imagination!

I think there are other factors at play, the fact that I moved from their resort to a different one 2 minutes away and being perceived as being cheap because I don’t want to drink a bucket of Jack Daniels, Red Bull and Coke every night could be playing a part. Anyway, there are plenty of other places for me hang out in the evening, I just hope this island isn’t so tight-knit that I get banned from other bars.

This incident does bring up the interesting topic of what kind of behaviour is deemed acceptable between the sexes in different parts of the world. For example the south of Thailand has a Muslim influence and the locals will ask that tourists to make sure they are dressed conservatively when away from the beach (that means not walking into a restaurant in a bikini).

Many parts of the world don’t share our decadent Western ways and places like Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Iowa aren’t comfortable with public displays of affection. The basic rules that you should follow are:

1. No hugging or kissing in public. Couples holding hands is usually ok, but check first.
2. Sex on the Beach (or on the Road as I saw in one bar) is just a cocktail. Not something you should do in certain countries like this couple.
3. Don’t chat up the locals. Many countries have a tradition of arranged marriages. People meet through friends and family. The girls you meet at the bar are probably ‘professionals’.
4. Dress appropriately. Bikinis are usually ok on the beach but anywhere else women need to be covered up. Guys can usually get away with t-shirts and singlets.
5. Observe the locals and do as they do, and if in doubt, just ask.

Have you had any experiences like this when travelling? Maybe you accidentally offended someone or had to fend off enthusiastic advances from the locals? Discuss it in the comments section.

Stay cool, stay awesome.

This is what the dread-locked Thai beach bums listen to.

So after a week of driving around Koh Lanta sorting out accommodation and our working area I was finally able to get down to being productive. As I mentioned before I’m out here with a couple of friends that have decided to stay in a serviced apartment while I commute 3 minutes down the road from my guest-house to use their internet and enjoy the air-conditioning. The photo above is actually misleading because it’s far too hot to work outside and having the sun shine on your screen isn’t handy either. But I didn’t want to destroy the ideal fantasy that some of you might have built up in your mind. Also, the reality of me sitting in an air-conditioned room with the curtains drawn just wouldn’t make for a good picture.

I usually arrive at the apartment around 10 and work until 13:00, we then go for lunch, maybe a swim, then work until 18:00. I’ve been doing this 7 days a week, although today we took the morning off because it was high tide which is ideal for playing frisbee in the sea. I should get out in the sun a bit more though because I’ve been here since the 20th of November and still don’t have a tan.

So far this week I’ve been working on a membership site for my brother and have been writing a couple of articles for one of my affiliate sites. My dad passed on some translation work for me to do and I’ll be doing that for the coming weeks while planning on how to move forward with my own projects. I’ve also fixed up a few things on nomadicneil.com including improving the SEO of the site. All I need to do now is choose some ads to put up so I can squeeze a few dollars out of you guys as well. You know I’m relying on you to pay for my cocktails right?

BTW, if you’re interested to know, the price for my accommodation is 7500 Thai Baht / 225 USD / 138 GBP / 152 EUR per month. Just a simple room, nice clean bed, a fan and a cold shower. The apartment my friends stay in is 1200 THB / 362 USD / 221 GBP / 245 EUR per month. They get air-conditioning, internet included and a warm shower. Plus they have a cleaner come in whenever they want. As you can see I’m slumming it somewhat, but I’m easy going. As long as I have a clean bed and a mosquito net I’m happy.

BTW, if anyone has any questions for me about anything just leave them in the comments section and I’ll be happy to answer them.

One of the things I have to bring with me when travelling is my guitar. Sure it takes up a lot of space and is awkward to carry, I worry whether it will be damaged on plane journeys and where to keep it safe when I’m staying in shared accommodation. But I can’t go a day without playing, I need it with me. It’s like some kind of drug, and I get withdrawal symptoms when I can’t play.

It’s no coincidence that I make significant improvements in my playing when travelling as a lot of time is spent waiting for trains, plains and buses to arrive and leave. I think every traveller should have a hobby that can kill the down time. Things like hacky-sack, poi or interpretive dance should do. You get bonus points for anything that can involve other people joining in or has the potential to impress a member of the opposite sex.

For me playing guitar is a great way to brake the ice with other travellers and locals because many people can play guitar, while everyone else can make a request. Old Filipino ladies have taught me blues licks and I’ve had Vietnamese teenagers ask me to play ‘Winds of Change’ by the Scorpions. Then there are the other travellers that like to sing along to Bob Marley and Jack Johnson songs.

A couple of nights ago there was a party at a bar near my guest house. The bar owner had set up some microphones, bongos and a guitar amp and invited anyone who was interested to come up and make some music. There happened to be a Swedish session musician present, he had an electric guitar with him so naturally took up lead duties. A Thai guy manned the didgeridoo, while a German played the bongos. I was on rhythm guitar and vocals. We made up some instrumental jams and performed a couple of my own songs. We also performed a cool instrumental version of Superstitious by Stevie Wonder.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it as we received lots of applause between songs and plenty of people took photos of us. I didn’t hear a ‘Booh! You suck!’ at all! I knew it was good when afterwards people asked us how long we’d practised together. The answer of course was not at all, we first met when we got up in front of everyone.

Here’s to all the musicians around the world. Keep jamming together in occasional unison and harmony!