Chris Guillebeau's Blog, page 97
June 28, 2014
Lufthansa First Class Terminal at Frankfurt Airport
I love airline lounges and regularly spend four or more hours at a time working from them. This series explores some of my favorites from around the world.
What’s the best airline lounge in the world? Well, it’s a debate. You may prefer the service standards of Asia or the premium coffee machines of Australia or New Zealand. But any debate would certainly include reference to a secret world in Frankfurt, Germany.
Some airlines have lounges… Lufthansa has its own First Class Terminal. When flyin...
June 27, 2014
It’s Always Good to Run
Time after time I remind myself of this truth.
When it’s raining… when I’m tired… when I’m stressed or busy. Plenty of times, I just don’t want to do it!
I want to stay where I am and keep working, or have a drink, or take a nap.
But then, more often than not, I manage to put on my shoes and head out the door. And I’m always so glad. In these situations, the distance and speed are mostly irrelevant. It just feels good to do it. It’s always good to run.
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Giveaway: Empire Builder Bag from Tom Bihn
Every Friday is giveaway day. Comment to win!
Sometimes people ask about my travel gear. At least in this regard, I’m very basic and minimalist. I’ve been using the same laptop bag for more than three years. It’s served me well and if it ever wears out, I’ll probably just order another of the same kind.
That bag comes from Tom Bihn, a small business I featured in The $100 Startup (and who was a big part of the original Empire Building Kit from long ago).
Since those days I’ve become friends with...
June 26, 2014
Brand New Day (AKA “It’s Always Good to Change it Up”)
Greetings, friends and readers!
I’d like to welcome you to my new blog and online home.
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on an all-new layout and structure for the blog. I wanted to make these changes for two reasons.
1. It’s always good to change it up. Never rest on your laurels!
I haven’t felt challenged through the blog in a while. When it started several years ago, it was new and exciting. It never became a job or something I didn’t enjoy, but for a while I’ve wanted to take it...
“I’m Different from Most People. I’d Rather Go Back.”
Meet Jack: a 93-year-old man who lives in a cabin in the wilderness. He built the cabin 36 years ago and has lived in it full-time since his wife passed away.
“This house is five miles from the nearest road. That’s why I bought it.”
“It’s not that I don’t like people. I do. But I don’t like swarms of them.”
“I’m different from most people. I’d rather go back than go ahead.”
“Life has its problems. It’s how you contend with these problems that matters. I look back and I really did have a good life...
June 25, 2014
How Much Money Is Enough?: A Conversation with Gretchen Rubin
Research shows that money can buy happiness sometimes—but the amount of money isn’t one-size-fits-all.
J.D. Roth talked to Gretchen Rubin about how to find the number that works for you.
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J.D.: Once people have a certain amount of money or a certain amount of material comfort, that additional money only brings on a marginal increase in happiness. I should trace back where the figure came from, but they say, “After $75,000 there’s no difference in happiness.”
Gretchen: That’s is obviously not t...
“I Have a Compulsion to Do More for as Long as I Can”: Notes from Jon Mueller
This is a reader story. (Read others or tell us yours.)
There’s never a good time to leave a good job, but yet people still do so. Some of them leave for a new career, and others head off on a different kind of journey.
I’ve known Jon Mueller for years, beginning from an event he invited me to in Milwaukee. When I heard he was leaving his job to pursue a new adventure in music, I asked him to share his story.
Here’s Jon:
A few years ago, I started a project called Death Blues. Through writing, m...
June 24, 2014
New Ideas Are Better (and Ideas Improve Over Time)
From Neil Degrasse Tyson:
“In practically every idea we have as humans, the older version of it is not better than the newer version. With the invested effort of generations, and centuries, and sometimes millennia of smart people who have been born since the idea came out, we have improved ideas.”
Is new always better? Of course not. But much of the time it is. To avoid growing attached to the older version of ideas—a dangerous but common practice—consider being open to improvement whenever po...
A Box in the Mail Every Once in a While
Have you ever said to yourself, “I wish @chrisguillebeau would send me a box of surprises in the mail?” Of course you have.
Is your life incomplete without paper airplane books and whiskey stones? Of course it is.
Thanks to advances in technology and a new service in California, you can now solve both of these pressing issues.
The service is called Quarterly, meaning that you’re supposed to receive a box every quarter, but it’s more like every once-in-a-while. The good news is that they only cha...
Travel Hacking Graduate Earns 2.5 Million Miles: On the Road with Hao Tran
This is a travel hacking case study. (Read others or nominate yourself.)
When I put out the call for travel hacking stories, I received a flood of responses. One of the first to cross my desk was from 21-year-old Hao Tran, a recent graduate.
Introduce yourself.
I didn’t travel internationally growing up. During the summer of my first international trip to Dubai in 2011, I was working for a tech startup in NYC that built a loyalty program network linked with credit card spending. The CEO was a m...
