Reading Erica’s 30 travel related things about me inspired me to follow my own advice on building a successful travel blog and share some of my personal travel habits. In no particular order here are 15 travel related things about me.
- I am habitually late for flights, buses, and pretty much any mode transportation.
- I never take pictures of myself when I travel.
- I enjoy sleeping in airports.
- My favorite city in the world is Istanbul, which consequently has the best airport I’ve ever slept in.
- I primarily travel with the small but efficient SwissGear Synergy computer backpack.
- The longest I’ve ever been without a shower on the road is 22 days.
- I always travel with my digital essentials – a laptop and encrypted USB drive (loaded with these 12 applications).
- I am never without a book, ever.
- No matter how much I fly, every time I get on a plane I feel like I’m pushing my luck.
- Traveling makes me appreciate everything I have and realize that family and health are things never to take for granted.
- I can’t leave a hotel room without checking it over and over only to still feel like I forgot something.
- Due to poor planning, I’ve run out of cash in the worst places.
- Bargaining is a great way to get a deal – and make a lifelong friend.
- I missed my first flight ever last December (see #1 above).
- Although I speak English, Turkish, and French, I always end up in places where none of those languages do me any good.
In case you thought you were off the hook, I’ll be asking some of you to add a few travel related things about yourselves next week. Until then if you’d like to get to know me better you can read my About page, see where I’ve been, or catch up with me on Facebook.
We share quite a few in common – 1,2,9,11,12.
Thanks for sharing!
@ Carla:
I’m glad we have #2, 9, and 11 in common. They always make me feel neurotic.
Great list. And you must have felt “so great” after 22 days without a shower. Haha!
Being able to sleep in “interesting” places is a great skill to have. What’s the strangest place you’ve ever slept in, Anil?
@ Byteful:
It’s funny, after the 7th day or so I began to feel strangely clean…until I smelled myself.
Hmmm…I’ve certain slept in some interesting places. As far as the strangest, I don’t know if I can narrow it down to a single one. Probably a park bench many years back, or with mice in the Minneapolis aiport.
I’ve heard that once the natural oils start working the way they’re designed, you feel like you really don’t need to bathe. I’ve heard that.
But wow, does this mean MSP is invested with mice? I’m pretty familiar with that airport and I’m surprised.
@ Byeful:
After some itching and discomfort I think the natural oils did kick in. I really did feel much more comfortable (but the shower after that one was great).
MSP has mice all over, I was stranded their twice overnight to witness all of them. I’ve heard similar stories from others as well. Makes me wonder if most airports aren’t infested with all of the entry points and accessible garbage.
Wow ! That’s a great list but I am afraid I have very few in common here. The longest without a shower was 4 days in a snowing region & 3 days in the heat of 48 degree C and though I changed clothes many times, when I smelt myself.. eeeek !
Anil,
I guess that makes sense, with all the entry-points of a major airport. Any tips on how to sleep when mice are around? I assume you slept at some elevated point, like on the chairs.
Great list – I never take pictures of myself either. And, I can’t even leave my house every morning for work without thinking I forgot something.
Turkish? That’s different! How did you learn it? Maybe you’re Turkish? 😀
Good list! I recognize myself in number 1, 2, 8 and 10.
@Cuckoo, The longest I’ve gone without showering is also 4 days.
@Susan, Same here! I always think I’ve forgot something when leaving my apartment.
@ Cuckoo:
You were just a few days away from that strange comfort your body gets from extreme filth! It just makes me wonder how people dealt with their body smells even just a hundred years ago or so when baths weren’t too common.
@ Byteful:
I’ll never sleep on an airport floor if I can avoid it now. I also make it a point not to put my drinks or food there, even if it’s just for a moment.
@ Susan:
It drives me crazy but the multiple searches comfort me somehow. Just leaving a hotel room without multiple checks just wouldn’t feel right!
@ Erica:
Thanks for the idea and inspiration for this post. I’m trying to work on #1, but I’m not sure how successful I’ve been or really can be with my personality 🙂
Woww. That’s too cool, Anil. I used to do some HS French. My parents speak Cambodian. I’m bilingual, too.
I had a teacher who majored in foreign lang acquisition. According to her:
Children don’t necessarily learn a new lang easily (and multilingual families makes it troublesome). For one, they have trouble w/abstract concepts (i.e. grammar). It also takes many years for them to attain fluency in their 1st lang (which slows their progress in the foreign lang).
The immersion setting is mainly responsible for their (passive) knowledge–which they can lose as they grow up. But if not, they might not have moved beyond their passive understanding.
Adults understand abstractions, making learning a new lang faster and easier. Also, we know for sure of a correlation between education and fluency–the more years of schooling, the higher the proficiency, usu.
Age shouldn’t discourage anyone. With time and motivation–anyone anytime can learn a new lang. 🙂
Eh…sorry if this was long. ^_^’
@ D:
French is a great language, I wish I had more frequent opportunities to use it.
Interesting theory by your teacher – Noam Chomsky would disagree. He believes that children have a programmed, from birth, innate understanding of human language (called universal grammar).
Chomsky also subscribes to the ‘critical period hypothesis’ where this innate ability is lost at the onset of puberty. The theory is difficult to study and test and is based on cases of feral/wild children who were found after puberty with no exposure to language.
I agree that education is one of the most important variables to fluency – and that age shouldn’t discourage anyone! The more languages you know the easier newer ones are to pick up, from my experience.
And I appreciate all of the comments, long and short, thanks!
I was talking about foreign lang acquisition, not human lang development–they’re diff subjects, as foreign languages are learned.
Feral children can’t be compared here for foreign lang acquisition, as their human lang understanding alone is abnormal.
“Passive understanding” is the ability to understand a foreign lang while not being able to effectively communicate in it. Usu. a phenomenon observed amongst second-generation children with foreign-speaking parents. When my parents speak Cambodian to me, I can answer back in English w/o necessarily knowing how to answer back in the mother tongue (unless I think about a long time). This isn’t innate–it was passively learned.
I think we’re mixing two diff subjects, and it’s beyond me to figure out how the two intertwine.
@ D:
I would argue that any language learned before puberty, is not, by the brain differentiated as a ‘foreign language’.
“A second language acquired during the teenage years, which is late in developmental life, is represented in the brain in a separate location from the native language. But when both languages are learned at the same time early in life, they are represented in areas that have a considerable amount of overlap.” (“Bilinguals Devote Distinct Areas of Brain to Native and Second Languages,” MSKCC: Press Releases, online.)”
NY Times 7/15/97
Agreed that feral children don’t make good examples since they have other major developmental issues but make interesting cases for linguistic research.
The research going on in the area of second language acquisition (SLA) is fascinating and many parts of it are controversial. I have spent time studying linguistics and can definitively say there aren’t many definite answers 😉
Thanks for bringing a thought-provoking discussion to the comments D, I think they are valuable for us all.
Oh, sorry–my mistake. You’d have passive understanding of a second lang–not a foreign one.
There’s a diff between a foreign lang and a second lang, as there’s EFL and ESL. Now we’re mixing FLA and SLA. I’m not sure what we’re trying to say: Do children learn a lang better than adults? Is that it?
So many theories proposed, but there are just going to be pros and cons of learning a lang at ___ age. The Older Language Learner: http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/87-9dig.htm
We also have different opportunites and circumstances, individual choices and actions. Factor all those in–the process becomes too complex to analyze. Oh well…
Well, tell me your thoughts about that article. And thank you–I’d say the same for you. It’s also very fulfilling to chat with a fellow lang enthusiast. But boy, I’m getting tired. :p
Thanks D, I finally got to read the article (my to-do list is a nightmare but I eventually get to each one on the list). There are so many theories…I love the endless pursuit for the truth in science. In the end it’s up to the learner, no matter the age.
@ D:
I’m on the road right now but will read the article and comment back sometime this week, thanks for sending it!
Anil, you are hilarious! I think I can relate with 2,7,8,9(especially), 10, 11, 12!!
@ jen:
I’m so glad there are others who feel like airplanes are like Russian roulette. I know, I know, the statistics, but still…!
And you’re better with the pictures than I am on Folie a Deux, I keep reusing the same ones over and over for this site! But I’m working on it, slowly but surely.
Speaking of Folie a Deux, parlez vous Francais?