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Visiting the World, as a Geek?
Han Onymous asks: "In nine months my contract as a research assistent at my Alma Mater will come to an end. It will not be renewed, I don't want it to be anyway. But outside the economy is too ill to welcome me. I am young. I am healthy. And I want to see the world before I've got the wife and the kids and the double mortgage. I have no money saved, and I don't plan to save some until then. What can a skillful geek (electrical, electronical and software engineer, speaks three languages fluently) like me do to see the world. Volunteer ? Working for a multinational with exchange programs? Something with no connection at all to the tech world? Please share your experience."
The Wired Magazine article Mother Earth, Mother board is an article written by a hacker/tourist.
I've always liked reading this article, and it lists neat places to visit
Get some credit cards and slack. I'm serious. As a highly educated geek, you can probably get 10-20k in unsecured credit by filling out some forms on a web site.
Then, choose some country that's cheap to live in and go. Asian countries give you the nice added bonus of being able to generate an income stream readily by illegally teaching English. For example, in Taiwan you can teach English for $25/hr and meals cost about $3 each.
As an added bonus, you may find in some foreign countries women find you irresistible. Which is not so bad.
Finally, when the economy recovers you will be making gobs of money and not have enough time to spend it efficiently. The memories will last forever.
Is it traveling you wish to do? Seeing the world is great but I get enjoyment out of seeing the immediate world around me.
I've had two friends join the peace corps, one loved it the other hated. like most things it's about perspective. I would love to see Ireland, England and many others but it's come to my attention I have neglected to view my own country, my own city even.
I was going to join the Navy but realized military life wasn't worth it to me. The peace corps are out because I need money. So lately I've been thinking about helping others at youth centers in my area. It seems to be much more rewarding, not just for myself but for the kids.
With your skills you could be a great asset to the children. Rather than travel the world and look at the pretty sites, perhaps consider sticking close to home and getting more involved with local programs. It almost seems safer now too considering the bomb in Bali.
I would say go back to school. There are programs at various schools, including but not limited to state and private universities, that offer study abroad. Pick your country. I went to Spain this past summer for 2 months on a program to learn Spanish. That was it. Cost was $3600 including room and board and school. After the program was over I spent the next month hooving it around western Europe. With a month railpass, I was able to visit 12 different countries. Stay at hostels which are safe and offer clean, comfortable nightly accomodations for as little as $10 a night. Overall, the trip cost me about $6000. The best part of it was that I was able to get stafford loans to finance almost the entire trip. Nothing like a government gauranteed 3.4% interest loan that you don't have to pay back until you are not taking any more classes.
http://www.stickmanbangkok.com/teaching.html
the japanese government paid me to get a masters in EE from a japanese university. everything was paid for, i had a blast living in tokyo, and came home with 5k in the bank. for more details check out the japanese embassy webpage (monbusho scholarship).
I'll be blunt. My friend, you should consider joining the CIA. You fit their profile perfectly. As you can imagine, they are currently hiring with a vengance.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/employment/ciaeindex.htm
The experience is literally second to none in the world, and in a variety of private industries, CIA is solid gold on a resume.
-David
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
A friend of mine works as a Service Engineer(mostly software) in Kongsberg Offshore. He travels more than 100 days a year to places all over the world. Malaysia, Germany, Britain, etc, etc. You name it.
Of course you might not have that much time to do any sightseeing. However may places doesn't allow too much overtime abroad and that could be handy.
Be very carefull of these organizations sending you on free or reduced fare trips to foreign countries to teach English. You lose out on a great deal of flexability and money. They will control your schedule and take most of the money--providing you with only a "free" trip.
My advice is to pick a country, pack a backpack, buy an airplane ticket, buy a lonely planet guidebook, and just go. Once you are there and find a hostel to stay in, you will meet people that can help you with finding a job. You might also realize once you are there, and in the budget places that the little money you had saved up will actually survive quite a while.
Just go. Things will work themselves out once you are there. The hardest thing is picking a country or continent. I'm leaving for Southeast Asia next week if you need a place to start out!
Even when the economy is bad, if you're good you're going to find a job. So, spin a globe, pick a place, and send a bunch of resumes in that direction. Make sure you "live cheap" so that you will be able to fall into a "work 6 months, travel 2 months" schedule, or something like that. Travel a bit around the "work" place as well. Then you should have enough saved to be able to say goodbye, and travel for two months straight. Then find a job again, preferably somewhere else. Repeat 2 or 3 times......
Roger.
I spent three years in the military. I was gone a lot (approximately 5-6 months out of the year) but rarely saw anything more than swamps, mountains, wooded areas and jungles.
;)
There were some really cool things. My favorite was looking at stuff through night-vision goggles- especially the stars. Animals were cool,too- it was sort of like they knew you weren't really a threat because you can't see in the dark so they come out all around you. Another fun thing that you get to do in the army is board and ride passenger jets with automatic weapons.
Anyway, if you want to see the world (that is, cities and local people) without having to kill and bomb everything you meet then the army (or any military service for that matter) is the wrong choice. The Air Force might be better, but from friends I've talked to, if you REALLY want to get out and go places the Navy can't be beat.
Those guys go from one end of the globe to the other and get free time to wander around and explore- something we really didn't.
I'm guessing, though, that military service isn't what this guy is looking for.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
Just yesterday i was saying to my wife:
"I'm so glad I could travel around the wrld when I was younger. It looks like 20 years old people won't be able o do it before long."
On the other hand, my wife had to flee her country as a child because of another country politics deciding people like her parents(artists) needed to be persecuted. So she told me that she would have loved to stay at home to discover her own land.
This I also did. Travel through my country by bike. It's so different from being a tourist. People get in touch with you because they see you take the time to actually meet them.
Become a consultant. As a consultant I have traveled about 75% of the time over the last five years. Now in my case the travel has been strictly domestic, but my company has had international clients. There are many companies that specialize in technology consulting where the job is 50-100% travel. Data warehousing in particular is very mature in the US, but less so overseas. There may be opportunities for placement overseas, particularly if your language skills are good.
Admittedly, the job market is kind of sketchy right now, though many companies (including mine) are still hiring. The company I work for has actually still managed to grow our revenues and become profitable throughout the recession.
As an added bonus, you typically do not have any material living expenses, as your meals, transportation, and hotel are covered by the client. On top of that, consulting salaries are much higher than corporate IT.
If you make the cut, you will also get to work with very high caliber individuals who are experts in their fields. There are exceptions, but typically this type of exposure is difficult to get in a normal IT shop.
There is a downside, however. The work is stressful, you don't have the luxury of making as many mistakes, the hours are long, you are living out of a hotel, and it is nearly impossible to sustain meaningful relationships.
Good Luck!!!
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
My brother, who is in med school, decided that he wanted to do something completely different for a semester.
He contacted a freight company and got a simple job onboard a ship. The job was pretty simple (e.g., removing rust) but not that demanding (only 8 hrs a day). Being the only one educated among the sailors, he was often invited to have dinner and discussions with the captain, who had a lot of stories to tell. And of course, it was always plenty of fun when he and the other sailors were 'let loose' in some port for a couple of days.
Sounds like something for you?
Tor
My parents are born and bred in North America. They are high school teachers. My dad just retired and my mom just took a job with a college. In Qatar.
Sure, it's right on the Persian Gulf and all their friends are worried, but they feel guilty because they have it so good over there. Good pay, good work environment, and a quick weekend trip takes you to India or to the pyramids.
I'm saving my money to visit them next year.
Mozilla
I've been to many countries in 4 continents.
My sugestion is go somewhere very differenet from your home. It will give you a new perspective on the world, and probably make you more greateful for what you have.
Good choices in the world are currently:
India
Thailand
Vietnam
Cambodia
These are places where young toursist can easily cope. There is pleanty of tourist infrastructure to help you out, pleanty of like minded people, and an INCREADILBE amount of history you likely wouldn't even have thought of. India's definitely my pick of this bunch, I'll be returning again next year for a month, bringing my total to 8 months in the county. I first went as a student. My average daily cost of living was 6 USD. (but that was extremely cheap. 15 USD a day gets you reasonable accomodation, and good quality transport and food. you'll find pleanty of people to meet/travel with there.
These countries have huge varietiies of food to try, and are the locals are very friendly and comfortable with tourism.
As far as helping out. Travel as a tourist first. I've worked in rural thailand and Papua New Guinea. Working out what suits you, and what you think will be the most will benefit the local most from your skills takes time.
I've meet pleanty of peace corps volunteers in PNG, and volunteers with Mother T. in Calcutta. Most of these people where like kids on holiday. They where definitely committed and being useful, but often it was just like a holiday or an experience for them. Its hard to discribe, but they can be a bit condescending to the locals etc. Its like its just a summer camp with a twist for them. In PNG the peace corp all have breaks where they are piad to go to the fanciest resort in Madang. They do good, but they are a funny bunch.
Go and Look at the rest of the world before you decide to help them. Then you will get some idea of what is helpful. These people need the basics. Food, Water, Education, Health Care.
Go to somewhere like India for a holiday. You'll have a great time, and you will have some appreciation of what help you can offer if you choose to. don't start by joining the Peace Corps or equivalent. Do that after you know why it would suit you. There are litterally of thousands of NGO (non-governmental agencies) working around the world to help developing countries.
Elivs
www.solbeam.com
.com who quit before the .bomb to see the world. She seems to find work whenever she needs it, and her journal even gives some good tips on how to travel alone, find work abroad, and keep in touch with the world back home.
She was a tech girl for a
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
Although I can certainly understand that sentiment, in some cases the opposite is very true.
My experience in the matter happened this summer. I was working in Zambia and took several trips down to Zimbabwe during all of the land reformation madness. While all my friends and family back in Canada thought I was nuts, I ended up having amazing trips each and every time. Apart from the fact that Zimbabwe is a beautiful country and the people are warm and hospitable, the political instability lead to a black market on American currency (the exchange rate was being regulated by the government). So, while the official exchange rate for US dollars was officially about 75:1, the unofficial rate was somewhere between 400 and 1000 to 1. In the end, this difference translated directly into purchasing power for foreigners and I was consequently able to do stuff that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
Other than a little anticipation the first time I went there, I never felt in any danger at all. As long as you use your good judgement then chances are you'll be fine. That being said, the social and political issues there are immense, and it will be decades before they recover from everything.
I'm guessing you're American because I'm lazy. I know plenty of people who have traveled around the world, and when people ask them where they are from, they say "Canada". No one thinks of Canada as much of anything (Sorry, Canadians). People I know with Canadian and US citizenship who live here, travel with their Canadian passport. Worldwide, Canada is just another country the US picks on.
A friend of mine has been living in India for a while and that's kept her from getting her ass kicked. Don't wear American t-shirts, too.
I'm sure there's so many responses that you won't read this, and it'll probably be given a 1 so you'll never notice it.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
The world is neither overly dangerous nor completely safe. If you want to find out just EXACTLY how dangerous the world is, pick up a copy of The World's Most Dangerous Places. Odd's are, in almost any country in the world, if you're gonna die it's gonna be in a car crash. The Peace Corp won't send you to any of the 10 or so countries where that's not the case (Columbia, Chechnya, Burundi, Angola, Algeria, Somalia, and Afghanistan being the truly dangerous ones). In fact they won't send you to the next most dangerous tear below that either.
:)
While not a Peace Corp volunteer, I heartily recommend this approach. I've worked with the Peace Corp in both Africa and South America and it is one of the best organizations you can actually get in to. What's more it will give you enough free time and money to see more than just the host country. Be prepared to be a science teacher
> What can a skillful geek (electrical,
:)
:>
;> are all rooting for you, even if we are a bit jealous too.) :>
> electronical and software engineer, speaks
> three languages fluently) like me do to see
> the world. Volunteer ? Working for a
> multinational with exchange programs?
> Something with no connection at all to
> the tech world? Please share your
> experience.
I ended up doing the first -- volunteering -- and also took classes at the local university. I spent two years living in Europe and travelling through it and the then-current Soviet Union. I don't regret a minute of that time, although I didn't get started on a career or make much money.
You've got the right idea -- now is a great time to go.
First, if by "speak three languages fluently", you mean HUMAN languages and not Java or C++, you might want to pick a place where you speak the language. One reason I enjoyed my time in Europe so much is that I speak German and Russian. (Not fluently when I went -- fluently after two years, though.)
Then, find some charity or NGO that's doing something you believe in and would like to contribute to. Poke around and see if they have an "internship" or could even offer to pay you enough to pay for your room and board.
They might be willing to do that in return for computer geek skills, but your English skills might prove to be more useful in many parts of the world. (I notice a bunch of people suggested teaching English -- that is definitely one way to do this.)
You have nine months. I'd start at the college Job Placement/Career counseling office, and also contact a bunch of charities of your choice and see what they might have available.
And keep us posted! (Us old fogies
Catherine
Actually the department of Defense has many technical positions open world wide, and the pay is great. Go to google and type in dodds, this is the DOD school system. You will be working 8 to 5 wherever you get stationed but you have summer, spring break, a month for christmas, and all the local holidays off. You also get your housing and utilities paid for, and there are bases all over the world, so you can end up in some really cool places. A friend is in Japan doing this right now, and has been to China and will be going to Bali for the whole summer, assuming things calm down, all on uncle sam's dime.
I think you're being paranoid ('Latent IT'). Tell us the places you've visited and when you found them the most dangerous.
At the grand old age of 35 years old, last year, I packed in my job and bought a round the world ticket. UK- India (near the Pakistan border) - Singapore - Thailand - Cambodia - Australia - New Zealand - USA - back to UK. Best thing I've ever done. Forget your alma mater, travel is the university of life. Wish I'd been able to work in one of those countries, the other posters are right about trying to pick up a job and stay for a while.I only ever got into a scary situation once -yup, you guessed it, in the USA (three cop cars pulled me over on a desert road in Texas and pulled their guns out and accused me of smuggling drugs). Only time anybody pulled a gun on me.
Ok so bad things happen sometimes everywhere in the world but hey I can laugh about the scary bits now and I had some damn fine times that I'll be able to bore the grandkids with.The world's still a very safe place. A cheeseburger-eating habit is many times more likely than a terrorist (overeas or at home) or a sniper to cause you real harm.
We make these little choices every day that have much more impact on our health and well-being than do terrorists:
Americans want to be invulnerable, and then to blame others when things go wrong. The sniper in D.C. has probably shaved less person-years off residents' lives directly than have residents themselves through their own reactions to the crisis.
This week's Economist has an article "The Logic of Irrational Fear", examining American behavior in the face of risk. Check it out. They maintain that for a short time, the sniper has raised the overall chances of being murdered in the area by several times. But this increased risk must be short-lived, and Americans and their freedom-preserving media are overreacting to the situation.
Hell, I did it backwards. Had the good job and marriage right out of college. I was "right on track" for the "good life". After about 6 years of that, I said fuck it. It wasn't worth it. Now I don't have a "traditional" job at all. I'm happily married, but to a great chick who thinks the same way I do. She doesn't have a "traditional" job either. We're doing just fine. No kids, we get to travel plenty, and we're pushing 30. Neither of us will ever do the traditional route ever again, and we couldn't be happier. And a little secret... not doing the traditional job, kids, big house thing doesn't mean that you can't still make money, if that's your thing, either. I'm not saying that to buck the trend you gotta get covered in tattoos, join a band, and paint all day, and go around all day saying "fuck the system". There are thousands of different ways to live. I run a couple of businesses (because that's what I like to do). No cubicle or commute for me! I have a good friend who's going to law school so that the can practice law off of a boat in the Caribbean. I know a guy who does nothing but restore vintage cars for a living. I know people who do nothing but run massive porn sites and work from home in their undies. Jeez, there are so many possibilities, and life is so short, I *hate* to see people wasting time by doing what's expected of 'em. Think about it. Do you wanna wake up one day, 65 years old, and think "what'd I do for the last 45 years? Well, I saved up a nice nest egg"?? That's insane. Hell, so many people don't even make it that long. What if you get hit by a bus when you're 35? What do you have to show for it all? A nice suit and tie that you can be buried in? A bunch of people saying that "he was a nice co-worker"? Or "he had a really nice car"? Fuck it man. Life doesn't end when you graduate from college... Life is just beginning!
Ok, now I really do think that I gotta go watch Fight Club again.
The other answers are in the book. ;)
Seeing the world isn't nearly as expensive as we Americans think it is, and now is the perfect time in your life to do this.
Forget the Peace Corps.
...'?
Join the Army. I did it, and I loved every minute of it. You should also forget about using your 'tech skills'. Join the Infantry. You'll learn more about life in three years in the infantry than you would in a lifetime in some crappy cubicle or university lab. You might also get a chance to see some beautiful places like Japan, korea, Thailand, or Germany. You might also see some not so beautiful places under less than ideal circumstances. Which story would you rather tell your grand children: '... and our database design was better than everyone elses' or '... and there I was in my fox hole with bombs exploding all around me
If it's adventure you're looking for, look no further than www.goarmy.com. Freedom isn't free. Anty up and kick in.
Get in touch with the Athens Olympic Committee or the company doing the IT for the next few games, SchlumbergerSema. The pay may not be great and you'll probably work your ass off while you're there, but you'll meet more people from all over the world than you could ever imagine. If you do it right, it's easy to set yourself up to work for future Olympics as well. After Athens, the next games are in Turin, Italy (2006) and Beijing, China (2008). I worked in IT for the Salt Lake games and I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. In fact, had I not decided to stay in the states to finish my CS degree, I would have moved on myself.
I completely agree with the "you only live once" idea. The point the original poster is making, I believe, is based on the advantage of compound interest. Not only do you only live once, but you're only young once...
Consider two people. The first person invests $100 a month from the time he's 20 until he's thirty. Then he stops and doesn't withdraw until he's 60. The second person invests $100 a month from the time he's 30 until he's 60. Now, which person has more money at age 60? The first person, although he invest a whole lot less. That's the issue with getting your finances in order as young as possible.
Personally, I try to keep everything in line while still having a little fun now and then (I bought a new motorcycle this year).
I volunteered on the lady washington for a month and loved it.
on their site is a list of links to other tall ships
go to Belize or The Dutch Antilles for easy work in the tech field and the opportunity to live LARGE on a small budget. I prefer Belize, I'm going back again in Jan, English is the primary language and there are tons of opportunities if you have tech skills and the ability to talk yourself into a job...Bolivia is another gem if you know anything about cellular technology, and/or have some sales skills...I friend of mine buys used Voicestream GSM phones for $5-10 each here takes a hundred or so to bolivia and sells them to small businesses for $300 each. not bad for someone who only works 5 days a month.
check out alt.expat and www.escapefromamerica.com
Peace Corps does have a number of things going for it:
The "things going for it" you list don't exactly coincide with the poster's desires, but at least they're accurate.
I found that the Peace Corps bureaucracy is pretty much the worst nightmare of any free thinking geek. And the tech jobs they talk about just don't exist. While I wouldn't trade my time as a volunteer for anything, I certainly wouldn't sign up again.
I was accepted in 1997, invited in 1998, delayed, invited, delayed, and finally made it to Poland in 1999. I had planned to teach networking skills, having owned an ISP in the early days. I ended up as an English teacher in a rural school, because that's pretty much what Peace Corps does. The school treated me like a kid, because that's what their previous volunteers were.
I resigned after a year in-country, (having outlasted almost half of PC Poland 15) resolving never to work for the US Government again.
I certainly see myself volunteering again, but next time will be with a privately funded NGO. Or maybe just on my own.
Advice to poster: steer clear of Peace Corps. Do some serious research before committing to any organization. Or if you're not of that mindset, put $4000 in your bank account, grab "Lonely Planet" Eastern Europe, and wander around for a year. Email me if you like - I know your situation well.
Hell, just watch Fight Club a few times and *think* about it.
I can attest to this. Fight Club, one of my personal favorite movies, has several important morals. Two shine through as the most important to me:
1. People are easily manipulated.
2. Your life will lead nowhere if you never do things out of the ordinary.
Moral #2 was taken to a bit of an extreme in the movie. Perhaps they just wanted to make sure people got it. Or perhaps they just wanted at least one explosion before the end, who knows.
Just don't get *too* caught up in watching movies just to find the important morals in them, otherwise you're no better off than when you started.
+1 Insightful. There's just way too many interesting discussions on this article to sit and moderate, though.
Though some of my faith in humanity was restored when I heard a historian note that by the end of the Vietnam War pilots were refused en masse to run bombing missions over North Vietnam, having destroyed all plausible military targets.
Sorta like what some Israeli officers are doing in Palestine.
(The military is working hard to make sure something like that can't happen again, e.g., military drones)
Yes, there is the geek "contribution". Sigh. It would perhaps be better for the world, if not necessarily for each nation's military might, if all the World's geeks motivated to develop better weapons were to instead enlist. If nothing else, it might at least put a face on the death and suffering caused by the previous generation's "defense" geeks, rather than making the decision to kill a less human one.
With regards to the parent, I would agree that you are ultimately responsible for every action you take. Having "orders" is a dodge. My advice would be to join no military or organization that would issue you orders that you would feel uncomfortable refusing, should they conflict with your own judgement. Lend your skills and judgement to your employer, whomever it should be. Never give up your judgement, or become a tool for others to do evil.
I'm always reminded of the Allies and the Germans, at the signing of the Armistice at the end of WWI, getting up out of the trenches and meeting each other in No Man's Land for congratulations and revelry. Why didn't they do the same ten minutes earlier? Because the orders to kill were still coming in, and the order for peace had not yet arrived. How odd.
I believe there are very few people fighting wars that want to be fighting wars. The real motivation is coming from the top, the orders of people who aren't involved in combat. Everyone else is praying for peace, but have been stirred by a sense of duty to compromise their judgement in the service of the war mongers. Again, what an odd thing to value more than life itself.
I've seen the same thing - eerie politeness and rigid values.
Thing is, the people I've known seem to be genuinely happy. And I can thing of worse things than happy polite people. My thinking is that it just seems weird to the rest of us because it's so unlike the offhand rudeness of everyday life these days.
And they seem to have an easy time finding work, and do well at it.
Personally, I'd just as soon pull my brain out through my belly button as join the army, but I can't deny that it seems to do well by a lot of people. In particular, as others have said, people who otherwise suffer from a shortage of opportunities and positive role models.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Having been one of those people that went into a military environment quasi-normal and coming out shattered... This depends on you. Entirely on you, and on nobody else. If you thrive in a high-pressure environment, where rigid structure is present, good for you. If you are physically and mentally capable of joining the military, and accepting that when you joing the military you will not only give up substantial rights and freedoms but may be called to risk your own life or take another person's, then you might be a good fit. It is difficult, and anybody who has ever been there will agree, but you could get great things out of it. If you are a free-spirit, and orders that you don't understand don't sit well with you, if you object to use of force, then don't go. If you know in your heart you won't fit in, don't go into the military.
yellowcat ^_^ ??
The only thing to add to the Let's go advice is to use the web to find people willing to walk you around where you are going. Hello to "Damian Veen" who was so nice as to show my wife and I Paris. My brother in law knew him from, of all things, music chat.
By the way, you can still see most of the nicer places in the world with a job, a wife and even an infant. If you can't live in Paris, a week there is nice.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A few years back, I worked for Royal Caribbean as "systems specialist." Sort of an on board systems admin.
Didn't really see the "world" and what I did see was sort of "touristy." But the pay was good, and it was a decent experience.
What about some adventure in your own country? Another geek did this, and had many surprises.
Land Reform: an Audit of Death, Rape, Destruction.