Moving time

I'm giving up on Blogger and moving elsewhere. It'll be a part of my migration from The Google. Anyway, the new blog is http://whereishawkins.com/blog.

How to fail at Customer Service

"You do have a choice, but if you see the overwhelming positive reviews yours will be the sole negative opinion which you are entitled to."

Scott Jordan, CEO of Scott eVest.

The Tiny Ten Project

In 2010, I've decided I need a project. I'm in singledom perpetually, I love travel too much to ever quit at the risk of being broke my entire life and I'm too eccentric to ever just "go sit on a beach."

So in 2010, in lieu of trying to get to the World Cup in South Africa, I'm going to try to visit the 10 smallest countries in the world. And I don't know if I can pull it off.

What are they? The Vatican, Monaco, Nauru, Tuvalu, San Marino, Lichtenstein, Marshall Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Seychelles and Maldives. I've got two that I can do in Jan of 2010 (The Vatican and San Marino.)

Four are in Europe and are easily accessible. Saint Kitts and Nevis is accessible from Chicago on American Airlines (woo woo.) The other five... well, let's just say that places like Nauru and Tuvalu might be a little more difficult than most. Nauru requires a visa - if I can find their embassy first.

Who knows if I can pull it off, but it'll be fun trying.

Oscar Mike

Looks like I'm going to Rio twice - once in September, once in November. The airfare gods are not cooperating with me for SE Asia/Australia/Cape Town. Jerks. :(

Lobsters

While cleaning up the bachelor pad yesterday, I stumbled across an old gift certificate for a dinner for two from an ex involving lobsters. Now, I love lobsters, but I thought about what's the best way to deal with this. After a while, I didn't like any of the options presented, so I decided to return the gift card with a sob story letter.

Customer Service
LobsterAnywhere.com
308 South Broadway
Salem, NH 03079

Dear Mr. or Miss LobsterAnywhere.com

I’ve got a dilemma. For Valentine’s Day, I received a “Lobster for two” gift card from a woman I was dating with the assumption that we’d get to enjoy delicious lobster. Now that we’ve broken up, I’m at a loss for what to do with this gift certificate.

Not surprisingly, asking Miss Manners or handbooks on social etiquette are pretty useless on lobster courtesy. So I decided that these might be my options:

• Give the lobster certificate to someone else. That’s not a really good solution, because I’m basically a regifter, and would be forever known as “the regifter of lobsters.” I’m sure that at my funeral my Rabbi would be utterly confused about someone eulogizing about Nick, the lobster regifter.
• Eat both of the lobsters myself. I thought about this, but as a now bachelor, cooking up a lobster for myself is a lot of work. Not to mention – what do I do with the other lobster? Do I try to eat both? Do I put it in the fridge until the next day? It strikes me as a little Jeffrey Dahmer-esque to have live things in my fridge.
• Share it with someone else. Now, believe it or not and despite what the internet tells you about me, I do have a bit of a conscience. Not much, but some. And I’m afraid that conscience would get in the way of enjoying delicious lobster.

Since I’m at a loss as to what to do with this gift certificate, I thought that the only honorable thing would be to return it to you in order to have you figure out what to do. Better yet, if you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear them. My options basically are to look like a dick, feel like a dick, or look and feel like a sociopath – none of which seem like good options.

Yours in delicious lobster butter sauce,



Nick Hawkins
Lobster Enthusiast

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When in Rio

Ok, so I'm taking awesome self to Rio de Janeiro for some sun, hiking and photography in September. How long did it take me to decide to go and book? 5 minutes. Damn my impulsivity.

I'm honestly thinking about making the trek down to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. It sounds like my type of place!

Travel brands that are awseome and those that suck

I beat equipment regularly when I travel, and it's important to reward those who can be put through the test and those who fail.

Brands that work:
Patagonia. They make amazing bags that can survive travel
The North Face. Sure, every yuppie is wearing them nowadays, but they stand by their equipment and it can take a beating.
Canon. I've had a half dozen of them and they've been my faithful companions.
Sandisk. The only brand of camera memory I'll stick in my cameras.
Garmin. My Garmin 60csx rocks.

Brands I'm ambivalent towards.
Merrell. Their hiking books are great, but their trail shoes tend to not take abuse in the urban environment.


Brands that suck:
Scott eVest. Sure, it's good in theory, but you're only as good as your suppliers make your clothing. Out of the 4 shirts I got, all 4 developed weird lines in the fabric and a pair of $70 cargo pants took a beating and wore out after less than a week of wearing.

Excuses

I really apologize for the lack of blog posts. Seriously. But I have valid excuses.


1) The start of soccer season. As you guys know, I'm a supporter of the Chicago Fire and the Chicago Red Stars. I'm shooting (photos, not people, for a change) for both teams and have been tied up with that, along with general supporters stuff, including meetings that turn into 5 hours of drinking.

2) Grounded. I'm on-call at work for April, and I haven't gotten anywhere. I came back from my trip to find out I had a new boss, and all the fun stuff that entails.

3) Postpartum. It's very strange. When I got back from my Trans-Siberian adventure, I lapsed into a deep depression, which is bad because I'm already clinically depressed to start with. The best way I can figure it out is that I spent so much time planning and obsessing over this trip that when it was over, I felt a real sense of loss. But there's one way to get over it - plan another one. I've got a few minor trips coming up - Seattle tonight/this weekend, London over Memorial Day (you know you're hitting travel burnout when you're thinking - London - bah, no big deal. It's just a short 8 hour flight and they speak funny English, so where's the fun in that?)

4) Sleepthief. I suck at sleeping. :(

5) $$$$. Never buy a Canon 5D Mark II and expect to have pocket change left over. A $2700 camera gets even more expensive, with CPS services, a battery grip and a spare battery for my trip. That turned into close to $3400. So, no fun for Nick for a bit.

6) Twitter. I've been functioning in short bursts, but never much to compose into an actual blog post. So instead, I use Twitter to shout out brief bits of nothing.

I promise once I figure out where I want to go next, and my pursuit of 2 million miles on American Airlines (right now I'm at 1,877,550 lifetime), I'll start blogging more.

Photos and Videos

I've uploaded all of my photos to Fotki - my online proof sheet, as it were. All of the videos I shot are at Vimeo. I will, at some point, make a "Best of" photo presentation, but that'll come when I've got a bit more free time.

I haven't forgotten you

I will blog more - been concentrating on uploading photos, jury duty, soccer and the flu. Honest.

Beijing bound

After two long train trips, I was pretty apprehensive about getting back on the train in general. The novelty was wearing off, but I was determined to see this through. Mr. Kim from the hostel took us to the train station, and I got on the same train car with my Aussies and a French couple in their 60's who were on the same itinerary as we were.

The Frenchman was jovial enough and asked if I was British. I said, no, I'm a Yank and he said jokingly "Well, no one's perfect" and had a bit of a laugh. His wife asked if things were magically better since Obama was in charge and I said no, it's pretty much the same.

I had a new train companion, a Brit doing a post-University jaunt around the world (I'm always jealous of the "gap year" kids since I've always worked, but now I'm doing it better than they are - score one for me.) We also had a shower between each first class cabin, which was pretty nice. I didn't figure on trying to trying to use it. The trip itself was around 30 hours from Ulanbataar to Beijing, with the wildcard being the border crossing.

The China/Mongolia border crossing was... interesting, to say the least. They had to swap the bogeys of the train because of the different rail gauges. We didn't get a chance to get off the train during this process, and were locked in the train with locked bathrooms. Our passports were confiscated and our rooms were casually searched by the Chinese customs folks. Also, the train compartments were about 80 degrees, so we sort of sat around, were confused and were drug away in our car.

Around 10pm, the bogey changing started. It was traumatic and pretty anticlimactic. We were raised 4 feet or so in the air while we were in the train car and they swapped out the undercarriage. Then came 2 hours of being jolted around violently, then eventually lowered and set on our merry way. The highlight wasn't the bogey change, it was that our bathrooms were open and we didn't have to suffer the indignity of having to piss in a water bottle.

I managed to get a few hours of sleep when we were on the move and finally in China. I think collectively, our entire cabin was suffering from train fatigue, and we were counting down the hours until we arrived in China.

Once we were in China, a cabin attendant came by and gave us vouchers for a free breakfast and lunch (hurray for the perks of first class!) which turned out to be pretty sorry and we just used it as an excuse to sit in the dining car and have beers and chat about what we were up to in Beijing.

My roommate told me about the cute British girls he ran into in a different car, along with "the Swedes." Apparently they were younger guys in their early 20s, who spent the time on the train taking Viagra and watching porn. Apparently one of them was prancing around in the Borat swimsuit earlier in the journey. Naturally, I called bullshit because seriously - who does that? (Yes, I am being hypocritical - I've talked about how funny it would be to do things like that but never actually gone through it...)

Eventually, we arrived in Beijing around 3pm. Already the city felt different and more modern since I was there in 2006. The Olympics will do that to you - a 5 year runup to a 2 week pageant, leaving 15 years worth of bills. My Aussies and I left together, took photos of the Railway Station, and made plans for going to the Great Wall at Simatai the next day. We parted company and I went to the same hotel I went to in 2006, a rather generic Novotel. I figured I needed a hot shower, room to stretch and the ability to parade around in my underwear without the fear of being heckled.

I met up with Augusto, my trusty new friend from Italy to do a quick walking tour around Tiananmen Square and find a place to eat. It was a good time, and I was happy to see the square again, take better photos with a better camera this time, and not focus on being crazy like I'm pressed for time and thus obligated to see everything.
Augusto was loving it, and it was nice to see the energy from someone new. In a way, I was upset with myself for not realizing a) I'm in China b) I just had a fucking amazing experience and c) not being excited about it. But I chalked it up to fatigue, and planned on sleeping it off. Augusto and I wandered around, got some food, and just had a relaxing evening. He was in our plan for heading to Simatai the next day to hit the Great Wall, so it'd be a quick sleep for all of us, and prep for a busy day.

The ger and train rides

On my first day in Ulanbataar (or "UB", which is infinitely easier to use), I ran off with my new Italian buddy Augusto and we made a whirlwind tour of the city - starting first with Sukhbataar Square. It was a pretty large public square, but yet smaller than Tiananmen Square (yet to come). The security guards didn't mind me in front of the Government Palace doing Scarfapalooza for both the Fire and Red Stars, which was pretty nice of them.

The first stop after coffee was the National Museum of Mongolia. I admit that I was pretty interested because Mongolian history is new to me, plus I was hoping that their close proximity to the Gobi Desert would mean dinosaurs. It was cool to learn about how Mongolia found their own path after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has now turned into an interesting business opportunity (if I had $100k, I'd invest it in third-world telecom companies.) After that, we took a walk down to Choijin Lama Temple and then onto the Gandan Monastery (I'm perplexed why, that at a Buddhist monastery, they tell you to watch out for pick pockets. But then again, if you look at crimes per capita, the Vatican City is the most dangerous city in the world. Have people no respect for religious stuff?) The temples themselves were interesting, but my occidental nature doesn't help me understand why they are so fascinating. And after another inexpensive meal of mutton and beer, it was time for sleep to get up early to head to Terejl.

Another note: I stayed at the UB Guesthouse in Ulanbataar. It was a pretty good establishment. The beds were as hard as rocks, but there was nothing to complain about. Mr Kim, the proprietor, is a first rate man and took care of all of us, from the pickup at the train station at 6am to our overnight in a Ger at Terejl National Park. I'd stay there again.

We got up at the crack of dawn and got into a minivan only to find my Aussies from Moscow joining us. It was rather cool and fun to see friends from the train. Also joining us was a cute-as-hell Japanese couple who were in their early 20s. I mean disgustingly cute - like "pinch their cheeks" worthy. At the Terejl National Park, people rode horses while I wandered around, took powernaps in the sun and played with the dogs of the caretakers of the Ger we were staying at. It was nice to sit and relax and explore. We were all looking forward to spending the night in the ger - it's a tried and true design that would actually be pretty cool to have in a backyard. We all just sort of lounged around, swapped stories, planned our next days and drank beer. During the middle of the night, the fire went out and we all subsequently froze our asses off. But still, it was a great experience shared with fellow travelers.

We got back to UB in the early afternoon - too late to actually do anything productive - so we went shopping for souvenirs, food for the train ride and of course, Mongolian Barbecue. The food was the same as you'd get in the US, but Augusto had never had it, and was diggin' it. I guess the cool part of having a melting pot as a society is all sorts of great ethnic restaurants. And on the way back, my pocket compass failed me (seriously, the polarity got reversed and I left my GPS at the hostel) and I fucked up the landnav in the dark and led us in the wrong direction back towards the train station, about a good 30 minute walk away from the hostel. Please keep in mind that it was probably -10C outside and pitch black (UB isn't well lit), so I felt like I fucked up bigtime but Augusto was cool about it. I got us on the right track when I busted out my work Blackberry, turned on the GPS, said "twinkle twinkle little star", fired up Google Maps satellite view and voila, located myself and set us in the right direction. Seriously - how many compasses fail like that?

We eventually made it to the Grand Khan Irish Pub (naturally, I bought a shirt) for our final beers, went back to the hostel and crashed for a few hours, only to get up super early to catch the train to Beijing. I wanted to stay longer, but I can always come back.

Hello from Ulanbataar!