i am about to be cut off from Facebook and blogging for 3 weeks, so let’s get this in.

in the past week i have gone from austria to italy to thailand to hong kong to taiwan and in 1/2 hour i am off to China.

6 days, 5 countries; surprise, surprise i am utterly exhausted but mentally excited, if that even makes sense.

i have been planning this trip for many moons and i want to see the product of my labour and toil.

i’ve also brought a brand new notebook to jot down notes and thoughts and really let creative juices flow~

right now my only 2 trains of thought in rotation:

“How come all my friends are getting hitched one by one and I am slowly becoming the single-alien?”

and ”So tired, need sleep….”

my work neighbor is this really pretty Taiwanese lady probably in her 40s. she is very elegant and refined and around her i feel like a little girl all the time. 

i wrote her a note to say i’m finally leaving this joint and she sat me down for a one hour pep-talk to impart “life advice”

she told me that the best thing she ever did for herself…before stanford MBA, before marriage, before kids… is take 6 months off to travel. it completely transformed her from a lost ignorant bratty american to a well-versed, more worldly citizen fazed by nothing. 

and her defining essay about “what she learned while travelling” got her into stanford and intrigued the guy now her husband…she swears it’s true as i gave her my look full of skepticism. 

so once she heard i quit and saw the pile of maps on my desk and heard me calling my travel agent… she told me that 2 months is not enough, she told me that i should take 6 months minimum off to travel and felt it important enough to sit me down in a conference room to tell me so. 

i said “well, it’s just not realistic to be broke-ass and travel so much, i’m still need to be responsible” 

she said “being broke is all relative” because health and youth are the #1 elements that you will never get back.

at age 40 she NEEDS a real shower every day and @ least 4-star hotel…

the luxury of being 20-something is that you can sleep on a bench, in a tent, on cement, on a grassy knoll and your tolerance level would still absorb it like no tomorrow. 

i was like….wahhhhhhhhhh…. no adult has ever told me this?!

everyone tells me go get a job, climb the ladder, be successful, define yourself w a career, get married, have kids…

no one ever says “travel for the betterment of your life for ALL the days to come”