Frequent thinker, occasional writer, constant smart-arse

Tag: health

Measuring success

In March this year, I posted my still evolving thought process on what success is. In the post, I said how success, like religion, is a personal thing and so there is no right answer. But I proposed a framework to think about the question: whereby I defined success as having three dimensions, which have no minimum or maximum value but simply are a constant pursuit of development. Those dimensions are existence, freedom, and impact and which I suggest you read before continuing with this post.

The problem with that framework, is it actually is still too broad. And where it lacks in detail, it also lacks in something fundamental: metrics to measure success. Six months later, this is how my thought process has evolved — still evolving, but I hope can stimulate your own thinking about your life.

On the pursuit of existence
You can define existence as a variety of ways, but I think a fundamental concept is your life expectancy as well as the quality of it. How long can you live, in years, to your full ability — being the ultimate (never ending) goal.

Number of years you are alive I think is a pretty self-explanatory thing to say as a goal: 75 years is better than 50 years. Less obvious, is how able you are: a 65 year old on life support due to lungs, kidneys and liver issues from poor dietary habits, is by no means the same as a healthy 65 year old. If life span is the number to measure this dimension of success, then your health is the factor to create an expected value: 65 years at 25% capacity versus 65 at 95% is 16 years versus 62 years. Literally, a life time apart.

Which is why your nutrition matters: look after yourself in your 20s and you’ll be doing better in your 40s, not just in life span but life quality. Drinking soft drinks at 30 once  a day hurts your  long term health quality and will reduce your life span expected value. We forget that, and it’s only when people get older do they regret not thinking about this (so I’m told).

But then there is a flip side to being a health freak:  being 30 worrying about what you eat hurts you in different ways, like your freedom and experiences. More on that below.

On the pursuit of freedom
Whether you claim to chase money or not, the point is moot: money is what makes the world go around because it’s what we’ve agreed to be a mutually exchagable form of value. Money simply represents value, and its accumulation has value not from the paper bills/plastic notes/lumps of metal itself that money is printed as but what it represents: purchasing power to save your time (not a representation of your capital base, which is materialism).

In society, we are so focussed on the material and the bigger numbers but we forget the character of what matters. But its key to understand income  — recurring monetary inflow — is such a key concept to success, because it enables freedom: without the ability to pay for food and shelter, you’re going to spend the rest of your waking time trying to find solutions to these issues, an opportunity cost.

When I spent nine months backpacking around Europe in 2005, I observed how people travelling, like how I had become, are very primitive in their activities: look for a new hostel to sleep in, find a new place to eat food.  I was quite literally, a cave man. Even with cash to pay for these, the search took time. Now imagine you need a summer job as a working holiday to experience the travel, and you’ve just knocked out more time outs during the day to experience your “travel”. Travel might be temporary, but rephrase what I said now for regular life and the point remains. “Living” means surviving as its most basic, but we can do better than that as humans.

When it comes to measuring success on freedom, understandably income should be considered a core benchmark. Not how much you spend, but how much you can make — that spending power gives you not material wealth, but something much more valuable: your time. Income can buy you food, shelter, and the ability to outsource or delegate functions in your life that time would otherwise need to be expended.

However, how much you make is not the ultimate because its not secured. Which is why the ultimate measure of income in capital: after all, capital is simply the accumulation of income. Capital is the result of income, without the need to personally exert yourself from getting the benefit of it; more specifically, capital can been monetised, generating a passive income which is the ultimate in enabling freedom.

Therefore when it comes to success in terms of capital, $100,000 is much more valuable than $10,000, obviously. But a subtle point to remember, is that to get the value of capital it either is locked up making a passive income (say, in real estate with a rental) or it’s liquid so that it enables the ability for you to use that purchasing power for your life.

One million dollars in the bank that can be withdrawn tomorrow? Very successful. One million dollars invested in a property making a 10% return? Also, very successful though not very liquid:but that’s ok becayse it’s generating $100,000 a year in passive income, on top of the capital base that grows through capital gain. One million dollars locked up in an stock market investment that can’t be liquidated for a month? Not good — but very good if it generates a 10% return on say, the stock market in that month.

But simply attaining capital is not life accomplished because if inflation rates are 9%, then that 10% return on real estate and stock is actually only a 1% return. That passive income (or rather, purchasing power) now is only 1% of the capital base. And that’s fine because capital has value in immediate liquidity (also purchasing power), but sometimes it’s worth trading short term liquidity to grow that capital base otherwise inflation will catch up and any income dependent on that capital will actually erode in value. Capital generates passive income, but that capital needs to be secured through investment to not have it be eroded.

Therefore the ultimate measure of capital is lifetime cashflow in real purchasing power. You can try to accumulate it, and you want to grow it above inflation. But once you’ve done that, you’re now getting greedy: the time cost in your life now actually impacts on your freedom, the whole point of capital accumulation, passive income and purchasing power. But as you dance with growing your capital base , income stream, and ultimately freedom, let’s not forget being busy we dream of more time, but when you have too much time on your hands it can be downright depressing. Enter impact.

On the pursuit of impact
Impact, like existence and freedom, is a core tenent to life about what I think matters if you want to define success. Impact not only gives you purpose but it gives you direction in life. Impact boost your self esteem. Better still, impact benefits your surroundings better than how you found it.

However impact is a hard thing to quantify. Is it number of people you “impacted” and what does that mean? As a raw score, sure helping one person once a day is better than helping one person once a month. But nothing in life is free: “helping” often comes with a benefit for the other party, such as profit for the business merchant, conversion for the religious zealot, or an orgasm for the sexual expectant.

If you go though life travelling the world, you leave an impact through the people you meet; if you toil yourself to build a business, you leave an impact through the products you create. But when impact is simply measured by “number of people”, it’s actually not all that solid: their needs to be not a mutual exchange, but a net positive where an interaction outputted more than what was entered with.

So what makes it a net positive? When you’ve really touched someone. But you can never know if you did that, so failing that we need to make sure one person was touched by the impact: you. You might have spent three months suffering, but that story will inspire, educate, and benefit 1000 other people in a profound way — and we may never know until your funeral, though you remember those three months. You might travel speaking to one hundred thousand people, of which only 1% where meaningful conversations: but no one remembers your name to prove it, but you remember the experience.

So when it comes to measuring impact, it’s not just number of people but number of people’s who’s lives you have touched. And by touch, it’s not a number but a meaningful impact that comes from your own life experience. One hour a day in a homeless soup kitchen is a different kind of impact from one hour a day building a game that someone plays on their smart phone. And neither is better than the other, so long as someone’s soul was touched; the most important one, being your own.

Meaning, whatever it is you’re doing, you’re leaving an impact by touching the lives of other people, but one person who we can measure is your own in the form of experience which is the only number that we can reliably count.

Success: measured
For those that think in numbers, success as a number  = (Number of years you are alive times by how able you are due to health) multiplied by (capital base times by return) multiplied by (number of people impacted times percentage that were truly touched). That gives the theoretical optimum to the ultimate thing.

Otherwise said, if you have a long healthy long life and you have a lot of purchasing power to buy freedom, then you have more time to impact which ultimately leads to the only thing that matters: number of life experiences (which along they way, benefited others as well that increased their own existence, freedom, and impact).

And that, I believe, is a what a rich life is.

Defining success and its pursuit

People often think I’m joking when I say I’m not successful. They perceive the jobs I’ve had, the education I’ve gone through, the media exposure I’ve generated, and other fake indicators of success as somehow meaning I’ve made it. Not quite, status symbols are not what I consider success.

If you’re not quite sure what I mean, let’s say you measure success on money — then how much is enough? Or for those that consider fame to be success — how many media mentions is enough?

A few months ago, I did my first ever meditation and came up with an amazing insight on some thoughts that had been stewing in my head. It was what I realised was *my* meaning to life — what I needed to be happy in life. Today, I Tweeted a summary version of that insight and have had several people retweet and favourite it, flagging to me that maybe my meaning to life is actually something that a lot of other people can relate to.

So here it is my thought process; who knows maybe it can help you define your own success.

Existence 
What’s the point of life if you can’t be alive to enjoy it? That one question should pretty much explain what I mean by this — and you can broaden this to mean more than that. For example, our mental health is just as important as our physical health — family is something we consider a chore, but I personally consider an emotional need. Good nutrition, regular excercise, a close connection with your family, good friends around you, being in control of the demons in your head: each of us can interpret our existence in different ways, but they all fundamentally point to the same fact that without your full and able self, there is no life.

Freedom
When I went backpacking in 2005 for nine months, I would often start the day not knowing what country I would end up in. I was in between finishing my university degree and a guaranteed job at PricewaterhouseCoopers; I was living off my savings and had no need to work that year; and had complete freedom to do whatever I wanted whenever. I had never been happier.

Freedom to me is a relative term: personally, if I lost the functional use of all of my limbs or was convicted for a life in prison, I would die on the inside because my personality perceives those aspects for my life as essential to my freedom. That’s not to say I correctly perceive it,  but that’s my own personal interpretation to freedom. And without drilling down into this any more with the many anecdotes to guide this insight for me, having creative control can be one of the most liberating experiences you will ever experience and can bestow on someone. I call that freedom.

Impact
If you drill into the psychology of great entrepreneurs, it’s not money or fame that drives them even though they may say it is. It’s the fact they are building something of value. We’re all like that — our self esteem benefits from knowing we’ve done something that improves our surrounding. That’s why charity is deep down such a selfish act: it makes us feel good.

Again, impact is different for different people that no one person has the right answer. For me, I’ve come to realise the impact I want to have on the world is something that improves the quality of life for us all in society. What that means, is something I’d rather save for when I do it and can look back  but in essence I get extreme satisfaction that I’ve played a role that improves life on this planet by enabling the entrepreneurs and scientists who have the potential to do that.

 

What’s success?

The American forefathers may have not only already come up with this before me but put it much more eloquently. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Whatever you want to call it, it begs the big question: what does existence (life), freedom (liberty), and impact (pursuit of happiness) have to do with success? Money is not success. But income is: because that enables freedom. Fame is not success. But influence is: it enables you do perform the actions you believe ought to occur.

Success, like religion, should be a personal thing. There isn’t a right answer — but above, I believe is the framework that we can all apply to our own lives to think about what we want to do with our lives. Instead of thinking of what should you do, instead ask yourself — how can I exist more fully, have more freedom, and have a bigger impact with my being? This framework might not be the right one, but it’s a start to asking ourselves all the right questions that lead to the answer.

Control doesn’t necessarily mean access

I was approached by multiple people – PR professionals and journalists alike – after I gave my presentation at the kickstart forum yesterday. Whilst I doubt DataPortability is something they will pick up on for feature stories given the product focus these journalists have, the conversations with them were extremely encouraging and I am thank full to get their feedback.

One conversation particularly stood out for me, which was with John Hepworth – a former engineer whose has been freelance writing for over 20 years, and it was in the context of the ability to port your health information. I’ve been thinking a lot of the scenario whereby consumers can move their health records from clinics, and with Google Health launching and the discussions in the DataPortability forums I am certainly not alone. Something that caught my attention was Deepak Singh who recently posted an interesting perspective: we shouldn’t give users access to their health records, because they will make uninformed judgments if they have control of them. That’s an excellent point, but one which prickles the whole issue of not just who owns your data, but who should have access to it (including yourself).

Hepworth provided a simple but extremely insightful position to this issue: you don’t need to give users the ability to see their data, for them to control it. Brilliant!

The benefits of controlling your data, needs to be looked at not just in the context of the laws of a country, but on the net benefit it provides to an individual. Comments provided by your physicians in your medical history, whilst although they deserve to be given ownership to the individual they are about, they also need to be given access to people who are qualified to make educated judgments. In others words, you should have the right to port your data to another doctor, but you should only have access to it in the presence of a qualified doctor.

DataPortability should not equate in you seeing your data all the time – rather it should be about determining how it gets used by others.

Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time.

Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time.” Our fast-paced life has forgotten that reflection is a very important concept for not just quality in our work, self-improvement, and ultimately innovation – but also for our health.

More people need realise that a person has to slow down, if they want to go further. Having said that though, if “thinking” is so easy – why don’t we have more great ideas? The quiet engine of the mind works just as hard – people just don’t recognise the effort being expended because you’re not sweating.

Russia

My first experience with a Russian, was on the flight from Dubai to Moscow (connection from Tehran). She was my flight neighbour – a twenty-something singer-musician. She didn?Ǭ¥t say much, although she was taking a swig of her bottle of vodka every five minutes. I presumed she had a serious flight phobia.

Turns out there was no phobia. And that bottle of Vodka was three-quarters finished by the time the plane took off. Apparently, she drinks a bottle a day (I always thought it was an apple a day that kept the doctor away?). And what I thought was a quiet neighbour scared of flying, turned out to be a sarcastic alcoholic who started getting a little too friendly.
Half-way into the flight I decided to put her in her place and end the advances, which made the rest of the flight fairly awkward. But nevertheless, I had just had my first Russian experience: alcoholic, sexual, and incredibly sarcastic. Was this a premonition of the days to come?

A bear. Near the river in St Petersburg

Walking across, I saw this fuzzy bit of hair. I thought to myself “that’s a damn big dog”. I walk to the other side of the wall, and it turns out it was a bear.

I had an awesome time in Russia. I spent about ten days there, however to say Moscow and St Petersburg are Russia, is like saying London and Paris are Europe. Needless to say though, alcohol, sexuality, and every type of Russian stereotype you can think of, did feature prominently on my trip.

Russia and alcohol
The contrast between Iran and Russia with regards to alcohol is as startling as say, Osama being elected as the new Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. You can get a bottle of Vodka for practically the same price as a bottle of water. But it is not the cost of alcohol that left me shocked – it was the amount of alcohol Russians drink that shocked me.
An example was on my last day in Moscow, I was on the metro coming from the suburbs with my two buddies from the hostel. On the train, we started talking to some girls next to us – because they looked like they were not a day over 14, and drinking what looked like alcohol (one was also a dead-set ringer for Avril Lavinge). Turns out they were 18, but even so, the legal drinking age is a few years more. It was about 2pm on a Sunday afternoon, and these girls were drinking a 12 per cent alcoholic energy drink. They were also a bit pissed. And no one on the train found this unusual at all.
The streets are filled with people drinking in the middle of the day, like a woman causally having lunch with a beer. It’s not just excessive alcohol, but just a lot of alcohol! Kiosks in Moscow that dot the streets with food and beverages, are also stocked up with alcohol. Alcohol is literally everywhere. Even a seasoned Aussie drinker like me couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable at the drinking culture.

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St Petersburg is architectually awesome

Russia and sexuality and beauty
When someone would ask me what my ideal woman looked like, I never knew how to answer that question. In the 30 minute metro ride I had when I first arrived from Moscow airport to the hostel, I saw 28 versions of my ideal woman. Enough said!

I met this dip shit Australian at a nightclub, who been working in the security business for the last eight months. I felt like hitting him because it was such an imbecile, but he did say something that sums it up pretty well (when asked why he likes it so much here): “Because the women are beautiful and the men are ugly”. A little harsh, but so true. Women go out of way to display their femininity – which I suppose is something all European women do, but Russians definitely are a cut above the rest. In boiling hot Iran, all women have to cover themselves completely. In barely five degrees Russia, women are wearing skirts that you see on a beach party. And apparently they even do it in the middle of winter at minus twenty degrees weather.

As for sex: how many times do you go to a nightclub and there are professional strippers on the bar? This one club in St Petersburg, I would be dancing, and then there would be an announcement every hour or so. Everyone would gather around an elevated stage with a pole, and watch the five minute routine – men and women alike watching a strip tease dance that repeatedly left my tongue on the ground. When finished, the disco music would start again, and everyone would resume to dancing as if nothing had just happened.

Women in Russia - freezing, and yet they still wear short skirts

I asked a member of the female species why do they wear such short skirts, in such cold weather. Answer: “Because it looks good”.

Russia and stereotypes
Forget the stereotypes, this is what I experienced: Russians are educated, cultured, and will go out of their way to help a stranger. My shock of this last fact was exacerbated by how I was not expecting people in large cities like Moscow and St Petersburg to be friendly – which are the largest and fourth-largest cities in Europe respectively. A typical example, was when I caught the train to the city centre from the airport. Moscow’s metro is the best in the world – which also means it is bloody complicated, especially for someone still learning the Cyrillic alphabet. I got off the wrong metro station, and asked a man where the hell was I. In his limited English he told me to follow him and walked me to the next station where I was meant to be connecting at – a five minute walk completely out of his way. This is but one example where people went out of their way to help me.

They say that when in Rome, you do as the Romans do. And it?Ǭ¥s not just for experiencing the culture, but for safety reasons as well – you don’t want to stand out as a tourist. But stand out I did. My drunk neighbour on the flight had also made the comment that I looked different. Apparently “American”. Still trying to work that one out.
Fortunately, I didn’t have any problems even though I had foreigner written on my forehead and I did have a bit of fun with it. But the homogeneity of the population is amazing, and people that look different like the people from southern Russia, are constantly pulled up by police on the street for passport and bag checks.

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Can you see it, on my forehead? It says “I am a foreigner”

Actually, a slight tangent: in St Petersburg, a university professor from Cambridge university, tried to pick me up. To cut a long story short, I had coffee with him, whilst he attempted to impress me, and invite me back to his apartment for drinks and to see his jacuzzi. The reason I am mentioning this story, is not because of how disgusted I was that a lonely gay man twice my age tried to pick me up, but rather to vent my anger with him because this is my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.
During our discussion, he complained how the Russian academic staff at the university were all straight, which was a weird thing as everyone back in England in his architecture department is gay. And how it bothered him, how they treated him differently. I completely agreed with him, and how bad it is homophobia is so strong here – ever since I got over my schoolboy homophobia, I have always supported gay rights. But then he said two things that made me angry.
The first thing was how he likes St Petersburg because everyone here is white. He doesn’t like the coloured people he has to mix with in London.
The second thing, was how impressive the architecture is in the city. What makes it so impressive, is that the Tsars had millions of slaves dying to make this grand buildings – something a western European ruler would never be able to get away with. And that is what makes them even more special.
So here I am with one of Europe’s leading academics (apparently), sympathising with his inequality, and yet he goes on in the same breath to say how good it is to be in a city full of white people which was built by generations of rulers who had no regards for human life. I felt like getting up and yelling at this maggot to go shove a communist sickle up his arse.
However gay rights are something Russians are not exactly supportive. I had a few conversations with some girls on several issues, and it is interesting to see how traditional minded they are. Point being, how socially conservative the youth are ( just imagine what the adults are like!).

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This church in Moscow took 44 years to build, and was later knocked down by Stalin. They recently rebuilt it, using modern technology, in just four years. The interior is amazing.

Then again, the gay thing might have something to do with the fact that there are ten million more women than men in Russia! Settle down though boys – some statistics a friend of mine dug up show that the numbers don?Ǭ¥t actually skew until after age 33 – there are actually slightly more men than women before that. Yet the numbers do imply the affects of three of Russia’s biggest problems: AIDS, Booze, and Chechnya.

There were an estimated 860,000 people living with HIV at the end of 2003 in Russia, and this figure looks set to increase. It has the highest HIV epidemic in all of Europe, although numbers do appear to be falling. The affects of such a disease, especially with an aging population though – is bad.
Alcohol is a serious problem. When Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign was launched in 1985, within two years life expectancy for men increased 3.2 years for women and 1.4 for women. Those improvements have since been lost, but it does tell a sad story. Russia, with a population of 143.2 million, has 2.37 million registered alcoholics. The average quantity of pure alcohol per person is 8.7 litres. That’s like everyone in Russia drinking 53 ml of Vodka a day.

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Moscows metro: deep, man.

Chechnya is a topic sensitive to Russians. Especially given the terrorist attacks on ordinary Russians by Chechnya’s militants wanting independence. Vladimir Putin recently said he wishes all Chechnyans are flushed down the toilet “We?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re going to chase terrorists everywhere. If we track them down in a loo, we will rub them out in the loo, too.” This is the head of the government saying this. The fact he can get away with it – and also the reason why he said it – shows how much the war has affected the Russian psyche.
However the wars no doubt have had an impact on population numbers, especially with men who are the ones sent to war. Between 150,000 and 160,000 people have died in the two wars in Chechnya, according to Taus Djabrailov, the head of Chechnya’s interim parliament. The toll includes federal troops, rebel fighters, and civilians who died or went missing during both the first conflict (1994 to 1996) and the second, which began in 1999 and continues today. (Source). And lets not forget Afghanistan, which was Russia’s ‘Vietnam’ in the 1980s.

Mr Putin is also busy putting together the third Russian empire. People don?Ǭ¥t know who it is that controls their country, but as my friend Vera said, one more step backwards and she is out of there. Russia is a country in transformation. A strong man is needed to reorganise a country of its size, seeing as its democratic institutions have grown organically from a sick Soviet Empire (or rather, they have been re-branded as democratic). But a dictator is a dictator. The English-press in Russia seem to buzz with theories on how Putin will hold onto power, as he is legally restricted to two presidential terms. Given the nature of power, it is fairly obvious he will not let go the reigns of the government. However his decision on how he does this, will have huge ramifications on a country struggling to recreate itself.

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The double-headed imperial eagle, and the communist star – symbols of two former Russian empires. Wonder what Vladimir is cooking up for his new empire

Economically, the country is not healthy, reliant on oil and arms sales. Apparently 80 per cent of the country’s wealth flows into Moscow – which really makes me wonder what life must be like in the rest of Russia. One set of figures about wages I heard were as such: the average monthly salary is 9000 rubles. A doctor is payed about 3000 by the State (however his secretary probably gets 5000, because she is privately employed). Nine-thousand rubles is about 415 Australian dollars, 315 US dollars, or 260 Euros.

Those numbers are low, but it doesn?Ǭ¥t shock me that much, because I have been to a lot of poor countries where the wages are very similar. But what shocked me was that these are figures for people in Moscow. And in Moscow, I found the prices to be comparable to Sydney and New York. In Australia, the average monthly salary is $4,300 – ten times more than what I was told as the average salary in Russia/Moscow.

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You throw money over your shoulder for luck, and the babushkas behind you desperately catch the money. There are more billionaires in Moscow than in any other city in the world, and as you can see, plenty of poverty as well

Russia has one of the worlds richest histories, although a very brutal one as well. A visit to European St Petersburg makes you stagger at the cultural richness of the country, and Moscow’s fast paced, hedonistic consumer lifestyle, makes your head spin to think this was once the communist nerve centre of the world (communism? where?!)

If Russia’s leading two cities have transformed that much in 15 years, I am looking forward to see what it will become in another 15.

Party month

Judging from the amount of e-mails, text messages, and smoke signals I have received in the last month, from the standard “where are you now?” to the more dramatic “are you still alive?” I think now might be a good time to update my blog. Before I continue, this entry has nothing much interesting to read about travel destinations, and it purely is directed at my friends who are getting narky at my quietness.

So what have I been doing in the last month? After Paris I caught the bus down to Barcelona, with my friend from Australia, Max. We were there for a week, and we basically got drunk, slept, and ate kebabs in what seemed like an endless cycle. The cycle was as such: get up at post-noon, go to beach (or watch the cricket), hurry back to the hostel for Happy Hour which started at 6pm (two litres of Heineken for three Euros). Chat up some fellow hostellers, usually girls, and end up at some random clubs with those girls, drinking more beer, bourbon, and shots of, well, alcohol of some sorts. My memory gets hazy at that stage of the night. On alternate nights, we would do a pub crawl, the only difference being we went to five separate establishments in the space of a very short time. The three Euro Happy Hour Drinks and the chatting up of girls still featured prominently. As did the haziness.

I reached my fifth day in Barcelona, and said: “Hey Max, you know we haven’t seen anything of this city yet?” To which Max would reply: “True that, brudda”. It wasn’t until my final day there that I actually learnt how to orientate myself, and took some pictures of the place! So what did I think of Barcelona then? Well, it had a great night life!

Streets in Barcelona

I didn’t really like Barcelona when I first arrived, and neither did my sister who had left with her Contiki tour the day I arrived. If you spend just a day in Barcelona, you probably wouldn’t either, as all you would see are the dirty ghettos, the legless beggers and the shady juveniles with rat tails, eyeing you out. Barcelona is a city you need to feel to appreciate, in which you need time to realise. Its nightlife, relaxed pace of life, and general atmosphere: Put simply, Barcelona is a cool city, and it definitely ranks as one of my favourite places so far.

As my deadline to Greece approached (to meet my friends on the islands), it was time for me to move on. Our wallets and livers couldn’t handle any more, either. My plans with Max changed a bit: I wanted to see some of Rome before I hit Greece, and Max had a bit of thing with one of the girls we met. So Max went west with Dominique for Madrid and beyond for the following month, as I headed east for Rome. Although all roads lead to Rome, I was not arsed going by bus, and these two girls I had met heading the same direction actually found a flight that was cheaper than the ferry (and the bus). However my arrival in Rome wasn’t as smooth as you would expect. Basically, I nearly missed my flight, smashed a glass table at a cafe, and witnessed a gay-sex orgy in a toilet cubicle in Rome. It was the craziest 12 hours of my life. If I wasn’t so doped up on antibiotics, I might have the temperament to tell you the story. But I don’t.

Hilarious day

I spent close to a week in Rome, of which I spent only a few of those days sightseeing, as I had to do some trip planning for my Eastern Europe trip (visas, et cetera). Did all the main sites, and really enjoyed Rome. Rome is like London an imperial city, rather than a cultural city like Paris. Went snap happy with my camera there.

The colloseum at night

From Rome, I caught an overnight train to Brindisi. I made sure my booth lights were off, so that people would walk past, and I could have the booth to myself and the other guy I shared it with. Later, that guy, turned on the lights. Three minutes later, a family consisting of a nagging mother, a grandmother who stretched her feet right out, a hyperactive little girl who kept stepping on my feet as she ran in and out, and another little boy in the carriage whose presence just annoyed me, took over our carriage. Oh, and the little yapping dog, right at my feet. I wanted to squash that little shit. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep that night.

A friend was in Lecce, about an hour from Brindisi. I went down south with Enza and friends in what is the heal of the boot of Italy, having an awesome few days. My first day, at the beach we experienced an Italian airshow, with helicopter drops and race boats. Absolutely amazing. The next day, we went to this place that has an underwater hot-spring, which Enza and I managed to get a photo of (not easy!).

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I ended up missing my bus. As the next bus left in three hours, it also meant I missed my ferry.

And so, for therapy, I jumped off a cliff.

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We even managed to get Enza to jump off.

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Whilst Emmanuel and I kept trying to find higher and higher cliffs to jump off.

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The next day, I didn’t miss my ferry, and finally reached Athens. Reminiscent of the train journey, I had found myself a nice piece of carpet upstairs from the main lounge area. Rolling out my sleeping bag, with the other 50 people there, we started to sleep. And then, the disco music started – the lounge had a hidden disco floor. And it lasted until one in the morning. All the women on the boat, walked pass, peeking enthusiastically. Eventually, a bunch of 14 year old American girls hit the dance floor, which made me realise that girls learn to dance by imitating Britney Spears and Christina Aguilira, until the develop their own style. I hope they develop their own style, because they suck at imitating. The boys of the group tried to pathetically break dance, but that was at least funny. Not so funny, was this guy metres away from me taking pictures of the girls, and with a dirty paedophile grin on his face.

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My stop in Athens was a quick pit stop, before I was to hit the Greek islands of Mykonos and Ios with some school mates of mine. My partners in crime where Andy Perkes, Matt Butcher, and a friend of theirs that has become a mate of mine now as well: Dave Fraser. After about five days, we did it again in Ios, meeting up with a group of Monte and Riverview friends of Perkes and Butcher. That first night, there was absolutely no accommodation, and the only thing available was a patch of dirt ground, at Far Out camping. There wasn’t even an awning to cover everyone! Lucky for me, my little sisters Contiki tour had another two days here, and so I crashed in her room.

All the girls and some of the guys (we became a group of 12 now) reasoned they would rather go to Santorini, and book a place at Ios, ready for them as there was nothing available on the island. Well, anything acceptable by their standards. We didn’t agree, and stayed behind, and so a group of us six boys, rented out dog kennels (that is what they call them, and that is exactly what they are- human dog kennels). Had an amazing time.
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I left the guys on the 13th, as I had to be at my mum’s villages for the August 15 celebrations. Her village is deep in the middle of the Peloponnese – the highest inhabited village in the Peloponnese, and the fifth highest in Greece – and the August 15 celebrations is a huge church-related festival around Greece. This year was even bigger for my family, because my parents, as well as my brother and his wife and baby daughter, had flown up, to be with me and my little sister, along with all my cousins and aunties. There were 17 of us!
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After that, we went to the Greek island of Zakinthos. I was sick now for a little while. The doctor there abused me for letting it get out of control, whilst in the meantime, nearly everyone on the trip caught my virus, including my baby niece. We didn’t enjoy Zakinthos because it was so windy and busy, but we had a nice time nevertheless. We are now back in Athens, and I am recovering, with everyone slowly getting better as well. Went to another doctor, and was diagnosed with a minor bout of pneumonia, so my sickness is being treated a little more seriosly. I think I could strangle my mother and aunty is their mothering.

So where to next? Well basically, it is entirely dependent on my health. The doctor said I was not to move my arse for 15 days, as well as giving me medication, of which I have experienced every single side effect. I have been planning a trip around Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but now I have to do some replanning. Either way, hopefully the next time you hear from me, it won’t be in Greece!

So as I get back to the world of haemaphrodites (“Middlesex”, by Jeffrey Eugenides – worth reading), hope you are all well, and as soon as the doctor says “go”, I will begin my adventure.