Quote: (01-14-2013 01:47 PM)thegmanifesto Wrote:
Quote: (01-14-2013 01:36 PM)46. Wrote:
Before globalization got hardcore, I was way more unique. Everyone gave me time to prove my worth. Chicks and curious kids have taken pictures of me with them on 3 different continents to prove they hung out with a "cool" black guy. I was once mobbed by a bus. Couldn't have been easier. Those days are over. Now I think the challenge is to recognize how the game has changed and adjust accordingly. Your look and nationality are becoming less and less interesting (in itself) every year. People are starting to look the same (ooh another Prada glasses guy!). Now what?? What are the new differentiators? That's what is interesting to me.
This is so true.
When I was younger and traveled, American's were "cool".
We dressed in clothes people wanted to dress in.
We had cassette tapes of music that people wouldn't get for another year or two.
We had dope kicks.
We had better surfboards.
We had fresh sunglasses.
We had tattoos.
We were like rockstars.
Clinton was pres.
Everyone wished they could be like us.
Today everyone around the world has access to all those things.
Now, music comes out and it is around the entire world in one instant.
That is why you hear the same music in a club in LA and you do in London as you do in Paris as you do in Buenos Aires as you do in Latvia.
Meditate on that for a moment.
But what you are both seeking is still available,in some places more so then ever before. We are still cool in parts of the world,we still get mobbed in some places but you need to be willing to hit more out of the way places and need really want to put up with the drop in comfort those places offer. If you really want those places I can tell you a handful where that happens but the truth is I don't think you do want it,you merely think you do.
If you want to be followed down the road by literally a hundred people who are fascinated by you and will just stare at you doing the most mundane thing then fly to Beijing,take a train for 12 hours to Linyi and from there take a bus for an hour in any direction. You will be a star. You will be like the pied piper with the town's folk following you. I promise you.
Go to 'Rot Front' in Kyrgyzstan. Old men will celebrate your arival in the village by buying vodka and hosting a party. School girls will wave shyly. You will be given a tour of the place by the mayor.
Go to the Urals and hit a small city. Attractive women when they hear you are a foreigner in the shopping centre will gather round you firing questions at you,laughing at your inane jokes,flutter their eye lashes all in front of their boyfriends who they have already forgotten is standing next to them.
Go to Dobrush in Belarus where you'll be invited into people's homes,force fed food whilst introduced to distant relatives who have come to see the foreigner. The local policeman will turn up and offer you his pistol so you can pose with it.
Go to Abkhazia where just being from a cool city like London can get you a bang,where people will almost gasp when they find out you are foreign because they have never met a foreigner.
The thing is that you also need to put up with shitty food,no English spoken,loneliness,lack of internet or a decent place to sleep....If however you are able to put up with that then go and find your place more to your liking where you still are a novelty. There are a thousand such places waiting for you. Try third tier Myanmar or parts of Indonesia,how about parts of Azerbaijan or Mauritania?
Do those places result in bangs though? That is another debate.