Posts Tagged ‘wanderlust’
Ode to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Wanderlust
A few years ago, in the month of May, I took myself to Scotland. I went to the Cairngorms, Britain’s largest wilderness area.
I hiked mountains, rambled along wooded paths, and walked the shores of lochs. I was lucky to get fair weather and saw Scots sunning themselves, with some hardy individuals even braving the frosty waters of the loch.
Scotland is perhaps the only place in Britain where one can get lost in true wilderness, where the land rises and falls with a majesty and ruggedness found nowhere else on this compact island.
I remember walking through the woods, the beginning of a mountain path, and seeing a red squirrel, the endangered native squirrel of Britain, casually prance, like a bushy mouse-deer, across the sun dappled trail.
I remember buying a pack of sausages and a can of potatoes and cooking them in the hostel kitchen and swallowing it down with that fervid hungriness that accompanies a day’s hiking, when you eat with an enjoyment knowing that you’ve fully earned it.
I have to confess that for however long now I’ve been addicted to travel. Is it an addiction? That would imply that I can’t wean myself from it. That it’s a compulsion, a craving, even a dependence.
Read the rest of this entry »The Waning Wanderlust of a Serial Traveller
I shot this on my iPhone SE near my hostel.
It’s been almost a month since I arrived in Taiwan. I arrived May 2.
Although I have visited this island-nation before, I did not remember how affordable it is. I have been living in the same hostel now for about three weeks. It costs 350 TWD per night (£8.76/night).
I’m living in a student area, with leafy environs, some comely cloud-topped mountains in the near distance, and a bustling night market just around the corner.
I have enjoyed going out with hostel mates, hiking with an Icelander, chatting to a Canadian old-timer, watching movies with a Korean doctoral student, and meeting local Taiwanese luminaries.
A lot of the time I’m in the hostel working away on my laptop, drinking the free oolong tea (the stuff is addictive), and going out to exercise and walk around. I go to watch movies at the cinema, go swimming in the local sports centre, and eat out very cheaply.
It is a comfortable life and Taipei has surprised me with its easy-going, cosy nature.
I keep meaning to go somewhere else, and I will eventually (hopefully) make it to Kenting, which is right on the southern tip of Taiwan, as far away from Taipei as it’s possible to be on this island.
I genuinely don’t feel the pull, the pressure, to do all the travelling things, of having to find fun. I just do routine things.
And honestly, travel itself is a kind of consumption. In fact, it may be the defining consumption mode of the twenty-first century.
Whereas before people bought clothes and luxury brands, people now compete to outdo each other in experiences. On Instagram and Facebook and WeChat, people post pictures of their travels and their experiences. I do it too, of course.
But it is only a kind of consumption. And for those creative types, is it not better to create rather than to consume?
A freelancer’s journey in payment: my first 5 paid-for articles
The idea for this blog post comes from reader Sam Shan who asked via email about how, when you’re starting out, you first start asking for payment and how to negotiate this aspect of getting paid for your writing. I replied with my advice. A background blog post about my beginning days and my first five published articles for which I got paid I thought would be a good structure in which I could detail my thoughts and struggles of negotiating payment. As well as the stuff I did for free that were beneficial in other ways. Before anything though I will say this, always, always, at least try to get paid for your writing, the sooner the better really. And thanks to Sam for this post’s topic!
Lu-Hai Liang 