Travel while you can

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But don’t fret, you’ll still be able to travel later.  It will just be more crowded.

In the year 1500, the world population is estimated to have been less than 500 million.  It took 300 years for that figure to double to one billion.  In 1960, the world pop was three billion.  By the year 2000, 40 years later, it had doubled to six billion.  You could call that explosive humping.  Today we are at 7.5 billion.  The rate of growth has eased a fraction, but still, given current trajectory, simple math puts us around 10 billion by 2050, a short 30 plus years from now.

When I first visited Cancun, Mexico, and Phuket, Thailand decades ago, they were beach outposts, minus the proliferation of high-rise hotels and the antiseptic feeling of an overrun tourist destination.  Similar outposts are fast being built to attract newer avid travelers.  And they will come.  Most major airports around the world are bursting at capacity, thick with worm-hole lines to check-in, security, customs, and immigration, while short of gates for arriving planes.  Many flights are delayed for takeoff because of congestion at the destination airport.  When I flew out of LAX in April, as we were sitting on the runway approach going nowhere, the pilot announced that we were number 12 in line and it would be another 20 minutes or so before takeoff.  As we turned the corner to liftoff, there were another 12 behind us.  

Chang Mai, Thailand

There are may places in the world, like the Inca trail between Aguas Calientes and Manchu Picchu, in the Andes of Peru, a typically four-day hike, that was independently treck-able not long ago. Because of its mushroomed popularity, the only way now to hike the old stone path built by the Incas a millennium ago is with a guided group tour. (It is still a spectacular hike)  

Not only will we be adding another 30% to the world’s population over the next generation, but consider also that two most populated countries, China and India, together more than 1/3 of the world’s pop, have been experiencing highly dynamic economic growth during the last decade resulting in hundreds of millions rising out of poverty and joining the middle class.  Tens of millions in these two countries are now financially wealthy.  These millions with new money will eventually be looking for destination feathers to stick in their travel hats.

A couple of generations ago, those who traveled wrote letters, books, or passed their travel exploits by word of mouth.  Today we have instant information streaming at our fingertips for virtually every spot on earth, complete with photos and detailed instructions how to get there.

Instant gratification for all

By adding up the following:

  • the earth’s ballooning population of homo sapiens resulting from our relatively recent insatiable urge for planting human seeds 
  • instant access to information about anywhere
  • significantly improved infrastructures coupled with more developed trade relations among most countries
  • the swelling class boom in China and India and their eventual yearn to spend,

and a solid long-term business may be owning a hostel or hotel in a lazy, soon to be overrun, tourist ghetto.

The day the new Dubai airport opened it was already too small.

Fluently Fluenz

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Although there is still much more about our brains that we don’t know than we do, what those who study our noggins have discovered is that learning a language is an activity that pays relatively high dividends.

Learning a foreign language creates more connections

For most of us, because of the complexity, learning a new language is not easy.  It takes time, thought, effort, recall, and lots of practice.  It’s kind of like aerobics, resistance training, and yoga all combined into a well-rounded mental workout.  And like physical exercise, the results are proportional to the effort we invest.  When we learn a language, brain scans are showing the firing of neural synapses actually help expand the plasma membrane where we need it most — memory and recall.

Good advice, but may not be too helpful for actually learning the language

As an added bonus, brain heads are also detecting a host of extra side benefits from learning a language, such as an increase in creativity, flexibility, openness, focus, and an improvement in general cognitive skills.

This seems to be about my speed

Having been in rural China (on and off) for a few years means that getting to know the basics of Mandarin not only makes life a bit easier but also a tad more enriching.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, most business communication is conducted in English, giving me an excuse and an out.  Still, I’ve poked around at several different learning methods, from podcasts, to classes, to a book and CD — each one improving my rationalization skills for avoiding the mental workouts.  I even tried using a stone of the rosetta variety, but nothing was sparking the neuron stimulation I was looking for. Then I found Fluenz.

While I’m still well entrenched in the beginner stage, it’s kind of thrilling to be able to direct a taxi and order food without pointing to everything like a dumbo.  After a few years, that’s not saying much.  Anyone with normal intelligence would be a lot further along.  But the fact that I’ve found something that is not a chore is thanks to the structure and format of this online and downloadable course.

This must mimic my own circuitry — minimal

The co-founder, Sonia Gil, has developed a method that actually makes learning the language engaging.  The premise of Fluenz is that each language requires a slightly different approach, at least for English speakers. I can’t speak for their other courses, but the Mandarin version consists of three levels, each one with more than a couple dozen sessions.  Each session is broken down into many, aptly named, workouts.  The exercises include a short dialogue with and without translation, explanations, matching words with photos and sentence structures, practice writing what you hear with the correct inflection (pinyin), and more. The sessions are pleasantly mixed and diverse enough that the learning process is stimulating.  Additionally, the iPad and iPhone versions are appealingly interactive.  The course also includes digital flashcards in a variety of formats, mobile podcast practice, and a short dictionary.

My rationalization skills for avoiding study time are still well-honed.  Many days spent justifying why not studying Mandarin is in my best interest has made me an expert at fooling myself.  The one phrase I’ve got memorized for the Chinese people who try to speak to me is “tīng bù dõng” which in essence means, I’m clueless about your language, so it’s fruitless to talk with me. But because I’m an oddball in their world, the locals are curious.  They want to converse. By not trying, tiny grains of richness evaporate, so it doesn’t seem right that I deny them, or myself, those scattered yet potentially wholesome morsels.

With luck, if the gray matter is not too thin and I can somehow overpower the phony excuses, I’ll eek out of baby phase at some point and into toddlerhood. If so, I’m hoping to eventually savor some of those residual benefits.  I won’t hold my breath, but if there’s a chance, it will be thanks to the Fluenz course.

And if I can power through, I just may pick up another Fluenz language and chalk it up to encephalonic health care.  Not being in the country where the language is spoken doesn’t mean there isn’t value in the effort.  Daily mental calisthenics with so many perks could be a worthy commitment.

Catching restorative Z’s

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During my 40’s & 50’s, I was an avid alarm clock user.  It was set for 5 am, weekends included.  I was either in the gym or outdoors doing something active every day at 5:30 am, no matter what.  The daily morning engagement was a commitment.  It didn’t matter if the evening prior was filled with late fun, the outdoor date with myself at 5:30 in the morning held.

To get up at five, meant I should have been in bed and asleep by nine the evening prior.  That never happened.  It was more like 11 pm, or sometimes 12.

We should not need one of these

In my 30’s I didn’t get up that early.  But the idea may have been festering for years. During the time I lived in San Francisco, I met a young, upwardly mobile, apparently successful and vibrant couple, each running their own business.  We became friends and occasionally jaunted up to Napa and Sonoma on our motorcycles for lunch.  Curiosity led me to ask about their workout routine.  They explained that they got up at 5 am to workout in their home gym so they could fit in their physical activity before their day jobs.  Their answer to “what time do you go to bed and sleep at night” left me with my jaw hanging open.  Nine pm they said. They were my age, early 30’s.  How could anyone go to sleep at 9 pm every day I thought.  But they did. They were not going to trade-off sleep.

It wasn’t until my later 50’s, that I was slapped upside the head (actually the neck).  Yea, ok, I’m a (real) slow learner.  Little did I realize that length, and of course quality, of sleep, is just as important as eating and exercising well.

Sleep researchers say that adults need between 7-9 hours of sleep a day.  Throw out the 3rd standard deviation, and that leaves more than 80% of us requiring between 7.5-–8.5 hours daily — depending on our individual rem sleep cycles.  If we trim or curtail our required sleep-time, we are not doing ourselves, or our bodies, any favors.  In other words, cutting sleep short creates metabolic distortions.  And, if we are getting the right amount of sleep we shouldn’t need an alarm clock to get out of bed.

A common habit — eating into healthy sleep time.

Most of us have (self-created) demanding, competitive, activity-filled lives, hell-bent on productivity and getting ahead, that a major challenge is squeezing life into our waking hours.  Unfortunately, sleep usually takes a hit.

It’s not surprising.  Many business success self-help books extol the virtues of waking up earlier, burning the midnight oil, and other push-the-envelope advice, ignorantly neglecting the health repercussions of extended sleep deprivation.

We’ve all had to work on less sleep from time-to-time, but when it becomes a lifestyle, then long term health is compromised.  The right amount and quality of daily sleep set us up for optimal physiological and biological performance.  It’s just as important as exercise and diet, if not more so.

The challenge for most of us is not waking up early, but getting to bed, lights out/devices off, so that we can wake up, alarm free, after a full night’s sleep.

I still have the morning date with myself but without the alarm clock.  It’s still a tug-of-war getting to bed on time.  But seeing that compromising sleep-time is a health disservice, it’s worth protecting like gold. 

Cigarette smoking is not harmful

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And if you believe that you might also be convinced that cellphone microwave emissions are not harmful.  But then again, it’s possible they both are.

One could argue, and make a strong case, that smoking one, two, or three cigarettes would not cause physical harm.  Likewise, the same could be said that one, two, or three five-minute phone calls with a cellphone against your head is harmless.  But the answer is, in both cases, different if we are talking about the cumulative effects over decades.

Smoking was sexy

It only took us (in the USA), about 100 years to go from romanticizing cigarettes after WW1, to permitting smoking in airplanes and hospitals, to then thinking they may be harmful, to realizing that they indeed are,  then making it compulsory for a warning label on the side of their package, to banning the marketing of them, to the airlines slowly going smoke-free, to moving the warning to the front of the cigarette package, and only recently prohibiting them from restaurants, bars, and public spaces.  Are we in the romance stage for cellphone usage?  It’s much too early to say, but initial studies are showing there are indeed undesirable effects.

No other generation in history has carried powerful handheld devices that emit radio frequency close at hand as we do today.

Taken from Dr. Devra Davis presentation

It was barely 25 years ago when I acquired my first clunky mobile cellphone.  It was a business expense since I was in the field working in Brazil, so not everyone had them.  It also wasn’t so smart and didn’t stay with me like an appendage.  There was no such thing as WiFi at that time.  Now of course, just about everyone on the planet has smart handheld devices and/or tablets with them at all times.  The market is so device saturated that we’ve begun advertising phones to children and tablets to babies.

Consider that the electromagnetic waves that power cellphone connections are the same kind and frequency used in microwave ovens.  They both generate heat.  The only difference is the power used to produce them.  The few studies done so far for cellphone electromagnetic safety have been industry funded studies.  (sound familiar?)

Taken from Dr. Devra Davis presentation

Consider also that companies like Apple bury the warning inside legal mumbo jumbo, advising against the use of these devices against the body.  The headset that is provided is not because they want to give us something extra, but because the radio frequency absorption rate tests indicate a potential health risk. They are implying that there could be consequences for not keeping space between your body and the device.  The statement leaves them legally off the hook.

In the about/legal section of every Apple mobile device

The fact is, we don’t know exactly how unhealthy sustained exposure to these microwaves is.  We do know that children and babies have softer bones and tissue.  Several countries, such as France, have recently banned marketing cellphones to children.

Cellphones emit the strongest pulse radiation signals when 1) a call is answered, 2) we travel (walk or drive) and connectivity switches from tower to tower or 3) there is other cellular activity.  The non-industry testing that has been done so far suggest that constant use over decades, beginning at an early age, points to negative consequences.

We won’t have real data until perhaps 40 years into continuous use.  We’re not there yet.  Then again, the difficulty will be the lack of control groups as nearly everyone uses these devices.  Therefore, it may be prudent to be safer rather than sorry(ier).

Following are a few tips:

  • Keep the phone on airplane mode whenever possible and use Wifi (wifi dosage is less than cellphone RF)
  • Use a headset or speaker to talk on the phone, not the phone against the head
  • Don’t keep the phone on your body when not in airplane mode (i.e., pants pockets or bra)
  • If you keep the turned-on device on your person, line your pockets or bag with an RF blocking material
  • Don’t sleep next to your turned-on device
  • Don’t let children carry phones if it can be prevented (unless you don’t mind them being part of a large experiment)

Of course, there’s always the option of keeping the phone turned off most of the time and living life outside the device.  But we may have reached the point of no return.

A slice of half-baked pie

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It’s tricky being in the advice business, especially the “what is right to eat” one.  There are thousands of diet books enthusiastically embracing a “correct way to eat.”  I’ve read a few recently published, written by smart, educated, scientific minds, several with medical degrees — strongly advising us what we ‘should eat’ to be our healthiest, giving us our best chance to avoid disease.  They all agree on one thing:  we should be eating real whole food and avoiding highly processed (junk).  That makes sense to any dummy.  Eating an apple, they agree, is healthier than a Snickers bar.  Duh.  

Since we are all so “food group” conscious, what the books don’t agree on are the ideal proportions of those whole food groups.  Some are polar opposites over saturated fats, particularly from meats and dairy, whether they are good or harmful.  One camp exposes a strictly plant based diet, showing studies of how animal fats are directly related to our maladies.  Others point to similar studies showing why animal fats and good dairy may help cure them.  Some champion low fat in general.  Others high fat.  Some encourage whole grains, yet others endorse avoiding them.  There are loads of conflicting beliefs and recommendations.  How can smart, educated, studied, professionals be so at odds about what whole foods we should eat?  They all can’t be right.  Or can they?

We’ve all been somewhat dimwitted when it comes to what we’ve been sticking in our mouths over the last century as we’ve radically changed our diets away from natural whole to processed food.  We gain weight and have health problems, then try to reverse years of bad habits, so we listen to what we hope is smart advice.  The thing is, most well-intentioned smart, nutritional advice givers, dedicated to helping people, don’t really know what is the best formula for eating. They can only look at slices of the pie.

We know that our bodies are a collection of atoms, too numerous to put a number to.  We’ve learned that atoms join together to form molecules and that these molecules are in constant communication with each other.  Life at the molecular level is highly dynamic and interactive.  What we eat and breath, ends up communicating with our cells, made up of those molecules.  Throw in coded messages from our non-stop thoughts and the quality of sleep, and our internal systems, from brain to toes, are constantly buzzing with vibrant interactions.

In affect, the advice-business folks make blanket claims about what is good or bad with blinders on.  We are learning that our molecular messaging system is so complex that  effects are sometimes not known for decades, or even generations, leaving us little choice but to make assumptions by looking at slices.

As a complex species we are somewhat the same, but each with unique messaging systems.  Is there a “best diet” for everyone?  From a logical perspective it’s highly unlikely.  At the same time, what is also logical is that food (including the food’s source) which has been manipulated (altering the original intended message) is most probably sending less-than-desirable information to our cells, whether that food is processed, whole fruits and vegetables, or animal origin.

So a hearty thanks to those doing the hard research and giving sound advice, particularly those warning that vegetable oils and sugars are highly toxic.  At the same time, it might be helpful for certain advise givers to qualify their advice and offer caveats, that studies have limitations and that their advice may not be for everyone.  Anything less is a half-baked slice of delicious home-made pie.

Projecting future experiences

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It’s what we do.  We plan.  Whether a goal, vacation, or appointment, we plan experiences.  Very few of us waddle through life bumping into “whatever.”  We think about what we’d like to have for dinner and where we’d like to be next year.  Our natural state has evolved into a highly anticipatory one.

Planning successful trips takes thoughtful projecting

 

It’s with a future experience in mind, now that the weather had turned clement, at least in the temperate climatic zone of Northern Hemisphere, that I’m projecting winters to be significantly less cold.  Which means relocating.  Where that will be is still looming as sort of an unknown.  I’m open to reasonable suggestions.

Niggas and Bitches

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And the music we listen to.

iTunes, like other music applications, makes it easy to listen to a variety of music by creating a myriad of playlists.  They are easy and convenient, allowing the listener to discover new music or enjoy a specific genre.  One such playlist is Beats 1 Best of 2016.   They say that “2016 was one of the best years for new music.”  Peppered throughout the lyrics in 15 of the top 30 songs on this “best of 2016” playlist is a profusion of “niggas” and “bitches.”  Many more of those tracks shout out words that would be bleeped from TV.

The Best of 2016 represents what we demanded to hear the most.  Fifty percent of the time, at least for the top 30 most played songs, we had an affinity for niggas and bitches.

Owned by Apple and available on iTunes, Beats is a radio station and a collection of curated playlists, available worldwide, incorporating most genres including not only HipHop/Rap, the most popular, but also R&B/Soul, Pop, Dance, Alternative, Electronic, Heavy Metal, Latin, and so on. 

Sure, Beats doesn’t represent the entire music-listening public, but it’s not a thin slice either.  No Country music songs made it to the Beats “Best of” list, which says something as there is a healthy swatch of fans who are fulfilled with twangy music.  This fetish for niggas and bitches appears rooted in the genres of HipHop/Rap, R&B, and Pop, so a large segment of the population enjoys melodic messages with plenty of strong overtones as part of our musical vernacular.

When I lived in Colombia 10 years ago, what amazed me was how every young adult knew, and sang, every lyric to every song that played on any radio pop station or anywhere music was played, even if the song was in english and they didn’t speak english.  I rarely know the lyrics to an entire song in my own language so it was striking to observe everyone, seemingly without fail, sing complete lyrics to every song.  For sure they are now singing about niggas and bitches.

There is no judgment here.  No right or wrong.  It just is.  I deleted the Beats playlist from my library, not because I mind lyrics about niggas and bitches, but because it was overly redundant.   But if you like hearing about niggas and bitches, then listening to Beats playlists and radio is where you want to be tuned.