SUNDAYMy picks: Vampire Weekend | Social Distortion | Pretty Lights | Eric Prydz | Tame Impala | The Lumineers | James Blake | Grimes | The Faint | Hardwell | The Airborne Toxic Event | Father John Misty | Rodriguez | Paul Kalkbrenner | Jessie Ware | Loco Dice | Cloud Nothings | Parov Stelar Band | Smith Westerns | Hanni El KhatibWell, we might as well talk about the elephant in the room.
A few days before I arrived in India for the first time, a young Indian woman was tortured and gang raped by six Indian men in the nation’s capital, setting off a massive wave of protests.As I read about this awful story, I was reminded of two novels that had inspired my trip to India: A Passage to India by E.
WHAT MAKES SOME OF US hop off society’s path of expectations, pull out our machete and carve out a path in the direction we are pulled?For me, it was Karl Langdon.When I was 22, I was invited to Ulusaba, South Africa to Richard Branson’s private game lodge. My assignment was to write an article on the glam and cush of a $1000/night safari vacation.
![Learn to travel [TEDx talk]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3087/image_8fs5Dx90vid.jpg)
TED Talks are about spreading ideas. It says so right in their tagline: “Ideas worth spreading.” This is what resonated with me — and I think with the audience — the most from Robin Esrock’s TEDx talk in Vancouver (the largest in TEDx history, it’s worth mentioning) about travel. It wasn’t travel advice.
“C’est pas évident,” the locals and expats told me when I asked how to get more involved in local life: It’s not obvious, self-evident, or straightforward.It took me two trips to Martinique, one of the French overseas departments in the Caribbean, to figure out that simply being in a place didn’t necessarily mean that I would be able to give insight into what it’s really like.
My baby sister is coming of age. The bras, the boyfriend, the school dances, and the driver’s license all slipped past me without any sort of churning or folding in of the heart. It was the plane ticket that did it. The news of her traveling without any of us to chaperone dropped the scales from my eyes, and I saw her for the first time as the woman she has become and not the girl I want her to remain.
Whether you’re a failed novelist, a fresh college grad, an actual aspiring copywriter, a journalist, a poet in general, or simply otherwise unemployed, freelance writing as a career is probably the most manageable profession in writing today. But if you’re hoping to get started on a career in writing for other people, for agencies, or for publications from the comfort of your own swivel chair, there are a few notions you should probably have cleared up before you give it a go.
Aussie tourists surge forth in a last-ditch blitz to conquer their Balinese stronghold. Local forces stage a late-night guerilla resistance of alcohol and prostitution. The front lines of a battlefield gone wasted.Two a.m. Bloody Bintang singlet on the sidewalk. The invasion continues. Savage. Ungodly.
I’ve been home three times since moving abroad five years ago. The first two times were for weddings, but in January Mom had a health scare, and a few days later I was on a plane bound for North Carolina from Germany. That feeling of ‘not being there in times of need’ is, undoubtedly, one of the downsides of expat life.
Mirror Lake, YosemiteCarleton Watkins made the first famous photograph of Mirror Lake circa 1861. In it, one particularly tall conifer stands prominent against the sky between Mt. Watkins and Cloud& 39;s Rest, and in the near-perfect reflection on the lake& 39;s surface. Over the years, similar views have been made in a variety of visual media by such luminaries as Albert Bierstadt, Charles Weed, Eadweard Muybridge (& 34;the father of cinema& 34;), and Ansel Adams.
Matador editors selected this Community gallery for publication at the Network.I’VE HAD THE GOOD FORTUNE to visit Antarctica a dozen times. I find this part of the world wildly inviting, and I must not be alone. Traveling here has become more accessible than ever. For my most recent trip, I signed on as a guide for a three-week journey that took us to the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and ultimately the Antarctic Peninsula, all aboard the Ocean Nova, run by Polar Latitudes.
Bakso vendor is the most dangerous job on the island. The bakso cart is Bali’s version of the ice cream truck, serving up fish ball soup to five-year-olds in commuter traffic every afternoon. They push these little propane-filled carts up and down the potholed streets while motorbikes and work trucks rush by in crisscross chaos, dodging stray dogs, oncoming traffic, and (hopefully) their highly explodable pushcarts.
WHILE THERE ARE a ton of free SXSW parties, panels, and potential Twitter followers in Austin this week, you’re pretty much wasting your time if you aren’t pushing your new start-up. Sixth Street is a cesspool of early-adopters and venture capitalists ready with the Wells Fargo app running in the background if an opportunity arises.
THE CAFES OPEN at seven or sometimes even five or six, and by nine or ten breakfast is over. The hotels sell tourist breakfasts well into the afternoon, but the real Sri Lankan stuff is much better.I eat my breakfast at a cafe on the seafront. From the front it looks like little more than a snack shop, but inside it’s spacious and has an outside dining area that backs right onto the ocean.
IN A NEW PIECE at The New York Times, Matador staff writer Aaron Hamburger discusses how he stopped using traditional outlines in his writing process and evolved a system of outlining “in reverse” — that is, after the initial piece was written:Over the course of my 17-year writing career, I began to give up on outlining — that is, before I write.
Your travel writing is pithy, funny, and ‘beautifully written’…but does it matter? Josh Johnson wonders how we can make our travel writing more relevant.RECENTLY I THOUGHT: Does what I write matter? Aside from being a way to express myself, does my writing actually serve a purpose?It seems to me that most travel writing doesn’t matter.
WHEN OUT ON THE ROAD, the few seconds it takes to pull out your camera, focus, and capture a shot can mean the difference between an award winning photo or a blurry mess.With image stabilization technology built into digital cameras, it’s easier than ever to capture crisp and clear images. However, unsteady hands, low light, and other factors can still hamper your photography efforts.
For World Water Day, a reflection on the most vital resource.WE PROBABLY didn’t look like much — a merry band of American travelers lining up cardboard boxes and plastic buckets and handing them off to the men, women, and children of Gigante as quickly as we could before the storm rolled in. But I don’t think there was a person in this small Nicaraguan village who didn’t know who we were — or, I should say, who Monique Evans was.
I envisioned my family research going like this.Photo: authorI’d collect a few names, then trace my roots straight back to the Irish town from where they came. I’d easily locate long lost relatives, and then form a lifelong bond with them. I had visions of me showing up to tea at a brick cottage with my dear distant cousin Mary, while her son Joseph tends to the farmland and shows up at the window periodically for a glass of water.
The challenge: Piss off a Chilean.CHILEANS AREN’T SCREAMERS. I’ve seldom heard anyone yell anything, except in the name of soccer, and occasionally in a road-rage infused moment of frustration, and of course at education protests. Unless you include when people shout “ciclovía!” (bikepath) at me as I ride down the streets, no one has ever shouted at me.
![Used panties, gold bars, and caviar: 10 weirdest vending machines ever [vids]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3257/image_E1znvO5bqbltwZ6y.jpg)
