I slept at least one night in each of these places:
* Denotes multiple non-contiguous visits.
** Artwork by Patrick Moberg
*** Template via Zach Klein via Nick Gray
Facebook and Twitter make you forget about timezones, but with friends n family on the other side of the planet, its a nice thing to know local times. Windows 7 does it with a simple hover over your local time – awesome simplicity! :)
Click on ‘Adjust Date/Time’ > ‘Additional Clocks’ tab.
Choose upto 2 new time zones to track …
Voila – you’re done!
Stemming from a Twitter discussion I was having today with @rashmid I began to think about all the buzz around global warming, hunger, insert_global_or_local_problem here and the massive amounts of action surrounding these and other issues.
I’ve seen this action in person, volunteering my time with projects with kids, the poor and even during the horrifying tsunami incident – and believe me, its heart gratifying. Touching, inspiring, moving to say the least.
As an entrepreneur / business person or even on a basal level, as a logical person – it still poses a stark question in my face – action, yes – happening at the local and global level yes. But what about the results? Where’s the universal scoreboard?
Couple of years back after leaving Microsoft, I picked up a copy of ‘Leaving Microsoft to Change The World’ by John Wood. It caught my fancy because of the title of course, but it had me gripped once I started browsing through it. John Wood quit a lucrative, enviable position at Microsoft Australia – reporting at times, directly into CEO Steve Ballmer – to start an NGO, initially based out of Nepal. Their charter was to create a ‘room to read’ for young children who didn’t have the means to study. They created libraries and schools.
What fascinated me most, was the way their model worked – they would map individual / corporate donations against action, or rather results. That model is widely used these days by a lot of NGOs – I don’t care who pioneered it.
Bottomline – I’d love to see local efforts reflecting in a global scoreboard or check sheet which maps donations/actions taken to make positive change happen, with the actual results. Now wouldn’t that be wonderful?!
Finally starting to write about my (extended) South America trip. Lets begin from the pre-planning stage. Helps being a designer to create visual itineraries… this is what I cooked up.
Route, Dates and Initial Itinerary
The plan initially was to go through London, stop by and stay with a friend and move on to Brasil > Bolivia > Peru > Ecuador
Route Options & Costs
Made this using a website – I forget the name. Will update this post with it. Fabulous way to map your route, explore flight options and see costs upfront.
Visual Itinerary
This was my favorite piece of inspiration. Before this, the whole trip looked like a dream. Now it had a face. Spent half a day making this, but totally worth it! The dream was taking shape…
Next update: The real itinerary and first week in Brasil!
While browsing regularly through the Facebook homepage, I happened to hover around the language dropdown menu at the bottom left of the page and scrolled down to find “English (Pirate – BETA)” as a new option!
Fun little surprise, and makes for some fantasy entertainment…
Screenshot:
