Where I have been in the world

Work in progress…

Korea – business – December 2009

Vienna, Austria – vegan meetup ! – October 2009

Java, Bali, Indonesia – mostly business – August 2009

Stuttgart, Germany – Spring beer festival !! – April 2009

the Netherlands – because I’m in love – monthly since September 2008

all over Japan  – through the Vulcanus in Japan program – September 2007 to September 2008

all over Iceland – just for fun, with a big group of friends – Spring 2008

Malaysia and Indonesia – internship – November 2006 to February 2007

Japan (Kiyosato, Tokyo, Kyoto) – some work, some fun – Summer 2006

Prague, Czech Republic – for fun and networking for school – February 2006

California (Palo Alto, San Francisco) – internship and summer classes – Summer 2005

London, UK – Spring 2004

Cambridge, UK – Spring 2002

London, UK – Spring 2001

Munich, Germany – Spring 2000

Albany, USA – Spring 1998

New York City and Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, USA – first road trip ever – 1997

Anticipation

My colleague left for Thailand today. For good.

He had been running around for days and hadn’t slept of the night. I carried all his excitement for him.

And tried very hard not to feel envious. And failed.

I really really really want to leave now. I’ve never felt wanderlust so strongly – I’ve litterally had a pulling sensation in the chest all afternoon. Can’t sit still. Don’t want to count days. Want to leave now!

Trying my luck at the embassy tomorrow morning. No one on the phone could tell me whether my file was acceptable. Cross your fingers!

Traveling profesionals: bloggers that inspire me

image by aelle - yes that’s myself

As you probably know, 2009 I finished my studies and joined the Professional World in 2009. It left me with more questions than it answered. My job is cool, stimulating and lead to my expatriation, but… I feel there’s room for improvement (thank the stars there is, how boring would life be if we got all the answers right away?)

I have been thinking about ways to build a fulfilling career lately, and one non-negociable point for me is the ability to travel and relocate at will. In my dreams, I want to achieve location independence.

I have been reading a lot on the topic, and don’t really have any coherent reflexion or achievement yet – I’ll wait until I do to share my wisdom. In the meantime, I’ve been following a bunch of bloggers who seem to have achieved my dream, or are on their way. Enjoy.

image by Selflesh

The Little Travelers and their mama travel the globe, shooting and/or featuring in documentaries on travel through children’s eyes.

Annamatic lives off her crafts in Seoul and around Asia. Now that’s a role model for me. I bought one of her lizard pencil cases for Christmas and it’s been filling the gift receiver with joy ever since.

Nichole at Little Brown Pen lives between Paris and the East coast and works as a copywriter. I didn’t even know what a copywriter is. Then again, I started watching Mad Men three years after everyone else.

Garance at Garance Doré is… what the hell does she do? Something with fashion. At least she has a fashion blog – a really popular one. And she’s always somewhere new.

Anne at Prêt à Voyager shares her love for awesome graphic design and travel, from Paris.

Do you have any cool travel + something else material that you’d like to share?

image by Anastasia

Gome home and multiply

After Japan, it’s now Korea‘s turn to take creative measures to encourage baby making. At 7pm on Wednesdays, the Ministry of Health will turn the lights off in its buildings, thus forcing workers to get out of work already and go spend time with their families – and hopefully make them bigger. Although I’m sure it’d be a lot more effective to cut electricity in apartment buildings as well. What good is it for population renewal to get home and play WoW, really.

I already witnessed similar initiatives when working in Japan: on Wednesdays, working after hours was forbidden in my company – except that none of the executives complied to the rule. Wally can also testify on Japanese crazy work hours: when he sneaked a peak at his boss’s punch card, he found out that he had left the building before midnight only twice in the previous three months – once was on a Sunday afternoon.

At Feministing, Ariel puts this information in parallel with the figures of women’s presence in the workforce and conclude that maternity is already so detrimental to women’s career that the idea that sending the men home early will improve things is necessarily 1- a guy’s idea 2- shortsighted and 3- reeks of privilege. Commenters on the BBC News website concur.

However, I’m not sure that’s the only side of the story. Women’s liberation has progressed a lot slower in Far East Asia than in Europe and America, that’s true. Korea and Japan are going through a nasty baby drought that might end up sinking their economy, that’s also true. But when talking with Asian young adults, I find out that things aren’t as negative as they look from over here. I’d really like to find some data on how things have changed in the past few decades. I get the impression that young adults are also trying to avoid arranged or loveless marriages, women are trying to work on their careers longer, couples are trying to reinvent the rules by which husband and wife relate to each other. It looks like progress to me, and it makes for shaky but interesting times.


Nostalgia

I miss Tokyo. Don’t you?
Want to float along the Yurikamome line with me this morning?

via MatadorTV.com

Good luck…

Good luck to the applicants to Vulcanus in Japan, session 10-11, whether we talked by email or they read this blog quietly (yeah of course I know you come here, and you use the weirdest keywords to get help on the cover letter). You have 48 hours to submit your file, don’t you think it’s about time you get started?

travel journals: a question for my readers

The online travel magazine Matador runs this series where they publish pages from the readers’ travel journals. I love it. And it got me wondering: do you guys use a notebook, scrapbook, journal while on the road? What do you use it for? Do you use it to write notes and doodle? Do you paste pictures and old subway tickets in them? do you do watercolor?
What format do you like? Does it have to be small to fit in your pocket? Does it have to be big to give you lots of writing space?
Do you like to have an extra pocket to store maps and loose post-its, or does that get out of control too fast?
What is the lifespan of your journal? How many continents and weird modes of transportation has it seen?

Let me know in the comments or by email: aelle_aelle[at]hotmail[dot]fr

Image credit: matador network.

Welcome, 2010

And good riddance, 2009. You weirded me out. Too much waiting time, too many unanswered questions. Too many half victories that tasted of disappointment. 2009 was too much of a work in progress.

Here’s to wishing that 2010 will be mellow, cozy and exciting at the same time, full of clarity and improvement. And of creativity.

To get a good start on this, here is a little welcome present: a home made printable calendar, featuring 12 of my favourite pictures of Japan. I thought of selling it on Etsy at first, but instead here it is completely free, so enjoy! Personal use only please, reselling my free gifts is tacky and illegal.

Click on the image or on the link below to download the high definiting PDF file. Print it using the most performant settings of your printer. Using thick, matte paper will give the best results. Sorry Americans, the file is intended for A4 paper (210x297mm) so you might have to resize it.


Seoul under my hand – Earrings

Is it creepy to draw people facing you in the subway? I do my best not to stare…

Seoul under my hand – ASCII art

My rental phone came with dozens of preset ASCII images, from simple smileys to complex scenes, sorted by genre. Unfortunately they seemed to be filtered out as spam by all Western receivers. I could not leave without immortalizing at least one of the Christmas set and one of the fun one.