The Ultimate World Tour

This is totally unacceptable.

2007-05-08T02:49:00.000-06:00

9 games? 9 games out of the lead of their division? They're defending World Series champions! And I was hoping I could feel all cool wearing my StL hat around the world, but no.

Now since we don't get any baseball on tv down here, I can't say who's fault it is. And so naturally, the only way to make sure I blame the right person is to blame the entire city of St. Louis. So St. Louis, I'm ashamed of you. Yes, you. Now go fix this problem so I can have something to brag about when I mention St. Louis. Because 'Home of the former World Series champs and current last place team' doesn't have a nice ring to it.

Reasons Why New Zealand Is Cooler Than America

2007-05-03T22:49:00.000-06:00

So I figured I needed to post something on here, so here it goes. Why I like NZ more than the US, from my nearly 4 months in the country.

Sensible drinking age. Like most of the world that isn't America, they figure at 18 if you're deemed an adult, you should be old enough to drink. And I firmly agree. Mostly because I couldn't drink otherwise and living this close to downtown, the bars and clubs are a major source of my entertainment.
Censorship isn't as bad. For example, there's a hilarious billboard that's up on the motorway overpass on Khyber Pass Rd that says "I predict this billboard will get a shitload of complaints." I was cracking up laughing, cuz that'd never happen in the US. I also heard uncensored metal on the radio at like 8:30 one night. It made me happy as well.
Everyone's more laid back. It's true.
They have cooler fruit. Like feijoa and passionfruit. And it's delicious.
They have a much cooler accent.
Everything is multicultural. There are so many Maoris, Islanders and Asians running around everywhere it's excellent.
Every little town has everything it needs. At least around here, from what I've seen.
Everyone here laughs about military service because they know fighting in Iraq is pointless.
Everyone has house parties. All the time. There's yet to be a weekend where I haven't been able to find something to do.
I'm here.

And there are 10 reasons off the top of my head why NZ is far cooler than the US. Honorable mention, they use regular buses as school buses (they just slap on a sticker on the front that says SCHOOL) and today I saw a party bus called Purple Rain being used as a school bus. I wish I could've gone to school on one of those...

So I've gotten experimental

2007-04-18T16:03:00.000-06:00

Surprise, eh? I've realized how much I miss my weird indy flicks all the time and have gone on a massive internet binge for crazy media. And I've decided that although I want to study photography, I want to minor in film. I found a college down here that has a Photography/Film/Video course, but I can't start until next school year in February. So I'm going to go ahead and apply there and see how it goes. It's far cooler than MDS where my only photo option is in the graphic design program. I'm basically going to apply for heaps of universities for next school year in the coming weeks and figure it out like that.

But in the meantime, here's a video you all might enjoy. It's called Egg and it's an animated short by Benh Zeitlin. I saw it at the St Louis International Film Fest a couple years back and I remember thinking 'Holy shit! That's amazing!' and then I found out they put it on MySpace. But it doesn't have many views so here's me doing my part. Check it out.

Virginia Tech

2007-04-16T20:48:00.000-06:00

So I just heard about the VT shooting a few minutes ago. For those of you who know me, you know I tend to get all obsessive about any random shooting sprees that happen in more of a 'How did that happen?' sense than anything else. But this time it's kinda different.

I have a good friend who goes to that school, which made it quite a bit different for me. I found out about it through facebook. One of my friends changed her status to 'having a weird reaction to the VT shooting' and that's when I went ahead and checked the news. And then I realized Heather went to VT. She's alright, but it's still quite nuts. I haven't looked into it too much and I don't really care to. I guess her being there made it all seem a lot more real than just hollywood style shoot em up on the news.

I don't really have much to say but keep em in your prayers. They're gonna need em. And I'm glad I left America when I did. It's hard to realized just how messed up the place is until you leave it.

Employment, Round 2

2007-03-12T22:05:00.000-06:00

So I've spent the past couple weeks sending out heaps of applications and fun things like that and tomorrow it sounds like I'm actually getting a job. Not only does the company have a cool name, not only is it located 10 minutes up the road, but it's still in advertising. Yay! I'll post more about that tomorrow after the interview when I've figured out exactly what's included in that job.

I've also made a strict budget I have to follow. It's gonna be weird. I suck at keeping track of money so it's a good thing, though. I also sent my application into Media Design School this morning so I should hear back soon and start sorting all that out. I need 2 people to write letters of recommendation. Not quite sure who I'm gonna have write them up. I know I'm going to get one from someone at Poz but I don't know about the other one. Maybe I'll get em both from there.

I also have some saving goals, including concerts, iPod speakers, actually having a savings account, and a break dancing midget for my birthday party. Because all of that sounds pretty sweet instead of living off not much. So hopefully this job works out and I'll be all squared away. I dunno why but today seemed like a good day to organize and get my life started. Weird.

The Current Status of Me

2007-03-02T01:46:00.000-06:00

So I actually haven't written in this once since I got to New Zealand. Kinda ironic, eh?

Well here's your current update. It is currently 8:48 PM on Friday March 2nd, 2007. I'm 19 and sitting on a couch in the flat I moved into about 2 and a half weeks ago. About a week and a half ago I got fired from my job with 3P Advertising. I have yet to find another job. Instead, the past week has been spent sending out CVs to companies, growing a beard, rebuilding my photography myspace page, getting in touch with the photo world in New Zealand, and deciding that I'm applying to go to AUT next semester either majoring in graphic design or photography.

I'm going to make up a day in the life thing next week for you guys so you can see the flat, see the flat mates, and basically give ya a peek into the life of the random 19-24 year old life in New Zealand. You'll enjoy it, I promise.

But yea, just basically saying 'Hi, I'm still alive!' and such. More to come in a much sooner time span than this one.

How I make decisions...

2007-01-02T14:44:00.000-06:00

I leave for Auckland in a week. Let's run it through the flow chart.

Do I want to go to New Zealand? Yes. Will it likely end in disaster? Eh, most likely not. And even if it does it'll be a cool story. So that means I've reached my final conclusion. Do it!

Happy Today!

2006-12-25T00:00:00.000-06:00

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted Gregorian calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

No trees were harmed in the sending of this message.

I'll be home for Christmas

2006-12-24T11:59:00.000-06:00

Because I'm sick and feel horrible so I don't really plan on going anywhere else.

On the plus side, though, I have a few models who have agreed to help out with my project. So I guess there are perks to hanging out on the model websites all day while you're sick. Now I just have to start feeling better so I can do the shoots.

Hope your Christmas is better than mine :)

Not to be too overly cryptic...

2006-12-22T02:32:00.000-06:00

But I'm beginning the initial plans for a photography project that's been in my mind the past few years. I finally feel like I have the equipment, vision, and talent to pull it off the way it's been playing in my head. It's going to be rather dark and violent and the large majority of people won't like it, but for some reason they're images that won't go away for me even though I'm happier now than I have been the rest of my life. So I guess it's time to get them out of me and into prints, then maybe they'll leave me alone and I can move on.

That's all for now. I'll begin commentating on the world again shortly.

The future of our world...

2006-12-19T15:54:00.000-06:00

Being a celebrity is the 'best thing in the world' say children.

Children under 10 think being a celebrity is the "very best thing in the world" but do not think quite as much of God, a survey has revealed.
The poll of just under 1,500 youngsters ranked "God" as their tenth favourite thing in the world, with celebrity, "good looks" and being rich at one, two and three respectively...
God did come top again this year as the most famous "person" in the world, beating US President George Bush into second place.
Meanwhile "killing" and "wars" head the list of the "very worst things in the world", followed by drunks, bullies, illness, smoking, stealing, divorce and being fat. Dying is in tenth place...
Asked what rules they would make if they were king or queen of the world, the number one response from the under-10s was to ban knives and guns.
They would also put a stop to fighting and killing, telling lies, drugs, bullying, drunks, and smoking...
Here is a sample of some of the survey's results: What do you think is the very best thing in the world?
1. Being a Celebrity 2. Good Looks 3. Being Rich 4. Being Healthy 5. Pop Music 6. Families 7. Friends 8. Nice Food 9. Watching Films 10. Heaven/God

My favorite parts of the survey? Good looks, pop music and watching movies are better than God. Being fat is worse than death.

At least they want to get rid of wars, killing, knives and guns. I have more respect for the 10 year olds in England than I do for the President. Maybe there's hope for us all after all.

About the media. Part 2.

2006-12-17T02:09:00.000-06:00

So when I was talking about the article in Pop Photo, I didn't mention the coolest part of the article.

After they finished profiling the three photographers, there was a page called What You Can Do. That page is basically something I took as a sign. On that page of the article, they were talking about the process of volunteering your photography to help out these non-profit organizations with promo shots and just showing exactly what they're doing for the people in various villages they're working in. That page was when things really clicked for me.

I'm a weird tourist. I don't really have much interest in touristy things but I love traveling and exploring new places without any real plan of what I'm going to see and without much knowledge of what I'm getting myself into. That was really evident in my trip around Europe where I was like 'Hmm, this place sounds fun. Let's go check it out.' and next thing you know, I'm on a train there.

I decided a long time ago that I didn't want to go to all the tourist resorts if I ever went to Asia. I wanted to see the real Asian life. Sure, if you're in Tokyo or Hong Kong or anywhere else like that, it'll be very Americanized. But if you go out to Cambodia or Nepal or Mongolia, you're in for a bit of culture shock. And that's what I want. I read an article once about the difference between traveler and tourist and there was a sentence which was something like 'If you're going to another culture, immerse yourself in their culture instead of bringing as much of your own as you can.' And what better way to do that then to go join them in their own villages?

So I decided one of the safest ways to do that was to volunteer with these organizations. They'll send you out to real life in whatever country you sign up for instead of sending you to see the sights all the travel books tell you to check out. That's how I've decided to spend my time in southeast Asia. I'll volunteer somewhere for a few months working with the project, taking pictures to chronicle it all and then head somewhere else to do it again. I can't really come up with a more meaningful way to trek around than that. And on a practical note, my lack of knowledge in foreign languages won't be as much of an issue since the volunteers there can speak English.

This trip is beginning to get more and more exciting by the day. 23 days until I catch my flight to Auckland. And I can't wait to get started.

About the media.

2006-12-15T03:13:00.000-06:00

For those of you who don't know me personally, I work as a freelance photographer. I do mostly live band work and some model and portrait work on the side. Due to my photo nerdness, I have a subscription to Popular Photography. I got the new issue yesterday and cracked it open tonight. They have an article in there that I'm taking as a sign that I figured out what I'm supposed to be doing with my life.

The article was a simple 6 page feature on three different photographers. The feature is called "Saving The World One Photo At A Time". Basically it chronicled three different photographers who use photography to show people different things they normally would never get a chance to see. The first photographer, Stephen Wilkes, went down to New Orleans about six months after the hurricane and took pictures of the survivors there, showcasing their hope that their life will return to normality. The second photographer, Shannon Eckstein who normally works as a child portrait photographer, volunteered for a nonprofit organization to go to one of their missions in India and take pictures of the children there for promo and ad use, showcasing the work the organization was doing. The third photographer, Robert Glenn Ketchum, takes pictures of landscapes in Alaska. Those pictures spurred the passing of the Tongas Timber Reform Act in 1990 to preserve over a million acres of old-growth forest.

While I'm all for protecting the environment and believe we should be doing more about that, the first two photographers are what really caught my attention. Shannon Eckstein is the one in particular who really got me into this article. She got me thinking, what would happen if more people used their cameras and photography ability to open peoples' eyes to the world around them.

I've always thought it would be cool to be a photo journalist. I think war torn areas in particular would be amazing. Now, as much as that sounds like I'd love for a war to break out so I can go take pictures of it, ya got it wrong. I'd want to go, not so much to document the war, but to document the lives of the people in the lands where the war is being fought. Instead of photographing the explosion as the bomb goes off, I'd rather show people the irreparable after effects. While the destroyed building may be a powerful image, a much more powerful one would be of a family watching helpless as the war destroys their jobs, their homes, and their family. But that story isn't what the media wants so it's rarely told.

Maybe if we'd come to learn that people really are basically the same no matter where in the world you go, we wouldn't be so eager to drop bombs on them. Maybe if we saw what effect we were having on the citizens, we wouldn't cheer when city after city is "liberated" at the cost of only 24 U.S. soldiers and over 1,000 Iraqi "insurgents" (On a side note, I am in no way saying there aren't insurgents. But when we're in a kill first, ask questions later mindset, there's no way of knowing how many were insurgents and how many were civilians caught in the crossfire). Maybe then we'd find a way to help them that didn't destroy their land, their lives and their cultures.

But hey, I'm only 18. What do I know about the world?

The Realization

2006-12-13T12:53:00.000-06:00

So last night I was online until 6:45 AM. And honestly, I wasn't doing what you'd think a teenage boy would be doing when he's online til that time of the morning. I was looking at volunteer opportunities in a bunch of different countries.

I found a website a while back while I was planning my trek to Europe called GoAbroad.com. While I was on there last night, I found the volunteer section of the site which had a handy little search feature. This search feature let you pick a region, an exact country, what kind of work you want to do and how long you want to be there. This made me really excited, as I now know how I'm going to get around Asia and the Middle East in a way that will let me meet the locals instead of just hanging out with the other tourists the entire time.

Sure, it totally throws off my travel plans, unless I happen volunteer some places for just a few weeks, which is kind of pointless to me. I've spent the past two summers working at a YMCA summer camp in Missouri and have realized I love working with kids. One of the downsides to camp is the kids are only there for a week in most cases. This can also be a good thing at times, but it's usually sad because just as you get attached to your kids, they all go back home and you never hear from them again. Maybe they'll send you a package full of candy, but after that, unless you're both at camp again the following page, that's the end. If I'm going to be volunteering somewhere overseas working with kids, I don't want to just start getting attached and saying 'Peace out. It's been awesome.' I'd at least want to be there for a few months.

And while a lot of these programs cost a bit of money, it really isn't much if you do it for the long haul. I could go from New Zealand to Cambodia and volunteer there off money I saved from working in New Zealand. Then I could go down to Australia on a work visa and save up enough money to go to China and work there and then go somewhere else and work until I can afford to volunteer somewhere else. Right now it seems the ideal way to spend the next many years.

Anyone care to join?

Indian Government: stop spitting at tourists sites

2006-12-12T11:42:00.000-06:00

India hopes to shame its citizens out of spitting and littering at tourist sites with an advertising campaign showing schoolchildren looking dismayed and disapproving of the dirty habit.

The walls of countless buildings in India are streaked with dried red spit generated by people chewing paan, a mildly intoxicating preparation wrapped in a leaf and often containing betel nut and tobacco.

The tourism ministry wants to convince people to think of more discreet places to deposit their phlegm, and is spending 50 million rupees ($1.12 million) on a campaign to instill civic pride it says is widely lacking.

"Unfortunately spitting paan is considered an art in India," the ministry's Amitabh Kant told Reuters, adding that it was off-putting to many of the nearly 4 million foreign tourists that visit the country each year.

One of the adverts running in national newspapers shows four children looking distressed at the sight of a paan-splattered monument strewn with litter and covered with graffiti.

"What a shame that people like him have no respect for our heritage," one child says in a speech bubble, pointing an angry finger at a paan-chewing man on the brink of spitting.

__________

I find the campaigns foreign governments run to help make their countries more hospitable amusing. A week or two ago, there was an article about China and their "smile training" to make Beijing more hospitable for the 2008 Olympics. While it's true smiling and not spitting on the tourist sites can make a place seem more hospitable, it shouldn't be something you have to drill into your citizens heads.

In China, it's not customary to smile when you're happy. It's actually a sign that you've done something wrong. So by teaching them to smile whenever a tourist is approaching, you're trying to recondition them from the culture that they grew up in and that their parents grew up in to help make an American feel more welcome. But when I visit China, it's to see Chinese life. Not to be treated like royalty. If there was a section of China that was like something straight out of the kung fu movies, I'd spend my entire trip there. If I wanted American behavior, I'd stay in St. Louis.

Spitting paan is "an art in India" so apparently the citizens don't mind it, and by making an art of it have made it part of their culture. It'd be like saying "Alright, there's too much open gayness in America. You're free to watch Will and Grace in your own home, but if you bring it out into the public, YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED!" It's ridiculous to even consider that happening here. Yet it seems to be the norm in the world trying to attract American tourists and American money.

I guess I can add spitting paan on my list of things to learn how to do while I'm in India. After all, I'm always interested in learning a new art.

The Prologue

2006-12-12T02:10:00.000-06:00

Hello and welcome to the blog of the Ultimate World Tour. I'm Joe and I'll be your host for the next few years.

Why am I so important that you should read this blog? Simple. Because I've decided to give up the remnants of order in my life to travel the world and see what's out there. This has already begun, I suppose, as I'm fresh off a tour of Europe this fall where I visited 11 countries in nearly three months.

How do I follow this up? By moving to New Zealand. And then to Australia. And then taking on Asia. This is where our story begins.

I recently received an e-mail from the New Zealand Immigration Department telling me that my application for a working holiday visa has been approved. I am now allowed to enter and leave the country, as well as work a full time job while I'm there until December 1, 2007. And I plan on using it to its full potential. As a farewell gift, my parents bought me a one way ticket to Auckland, New Zealand where I'll be meeting up with one of my friends who owns a cafe there. I'll be working full time for the year after I touch down on January 11th and begin saving up to head to Asia. After that, I'm heading to Australia to visit friends there and work for a little while longer while trying to ensure I have enough money in the bank that I won't get stranded in the middle of Nepal with no way out. After that, it's show time.

For the next month, this blog will be about me getting ready to leave America for the foreseeable future to begin a new life in a new country. Think of it as the American Dream in reverse. After that, we'll just have to see how I do.

Let the fun begin.