Recognize that your experience of the world is not the world, itself. You have tremendous (potentially complete) control over the former, but virtually no control over the latter. #SakshiBhava
PROMPT: Life-Changing Tip
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Category Archives: Philosophy of the Traveler
PROMPT: Reason
No. I do not think everything happens for a reason, but I do think it is beneficial to see the positive in challenging life events. Both approaches serve to keep one from feeling victimized by life, but the latter doesn’t require that one believe in some grand architect twiddling the dials on one’s life events — and isn’t a Panglossian rationalization.
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Your Own Way
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Surrender
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PROMPT: Inspired
I would say it’s much more common for travel to inspire me to read a particular book than the other way about. I can’t think of a case in which reading a book was the prime mover in a decision to travel to a given place. But I do try to read some literature from every country or literarily active city that I visit.
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PROMPT: Anywhere
I could happily live any number of places — e.g. several places in Southeast Asia, the Caucasus (particularly Georgia — though with language concerns,) Taiwan, and South America spring to mind. As long as it’s neither brutally hot / humid most of the time nor Winter more than three months a year (and isn’t pricey,) I can probably learn to love it.
I would point out that if this is a forever and always deal, I’m not in. I don’t want to / plan to live any particular place for the rest of my life.
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BOOK: “A Cook’s Tour” by Anthony Bourdain
A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines by Anthony BourdainMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – Bloomsbury
Anthony Bourdain’s work is a joy to read if you love gonzo writing, and food — lots of food. It’s like reading Hunter S. Thompson, if Thompson were obsessed with the meals that he ate. A Cook’s Tour is Bourdain’s second work of nonfiction, after Kitchen Confidential, the book which turned him from Executive Chef at a high-brow New York restaurant to a Personality — writer, TV star, and celebrity. Where his previous book explored life in the kitchen, this one ventured out into the world, to Portugal, Scotland, Japan, Mexico, Cambodia, San Francisco, and Vietnam — to name a few.
I must admit, if Bourdain had been the kind of foodie that was obsessed with foam reductions and $300 per head tasting menus, his writing would hold limited intrigue for me. But because this was a guy who seemed as happy with a streetside bowl of pho or a simple hunk of grilled meat on a stick as he was with fine dining, I find his work relatable. It also avoids the cognitive dissonance of reading someone who wrote like Hunter Thompson, but who only talked about escargot and wine pairings. It lent Bourdain authenticity.
I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who travels, loves food, or lives at the confluence of the two.
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PROMPT: Languages
Daily writing prompt
Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?
Fluently: English; With a substantial grasp of vocabulary and grammar: Chinese; Only polite words and basic phrases: Spanish, Hungarian, Thai, Japanese, and maybe still some Russian (which I took in Grad School — the worst possible language learning environment.)
Starting to read Chinese has been thrilling. It has opened a whole new world, and the nature of the language is so different that definitely rewires the brain a bit.
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PROMPT: Biggest Mistakes
Daily writing prompt
What are the biggest mistakes people make when visiting your country?
Too much time in the big city and missing the beauty entirely.
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FIVE WISE LINES [June 2026]
When I was younger I could remember anything,
Mark twain
whether it had happened or not;
but my faculties are decaying now and soon
I shall be able to remember only the things
that never happened.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled,
Plutarch [paraphrased]
but a fire to be kindled.”
Judge a man by his questions
Voltaire
rather than his answers.
Resist much, obey little.
Walt whitman; “To the states“
People don’t take trips —
John steinbeck
trips take people.
