Next adventure

I've been laying low and living a quiet chill-out life. Spending time with my family, resting in the forest, hanging out with my friends. Just what I needed and wanted. But now - it's time to move on and get ready for the next adventure.

So in about 2 weeks or so me and Sarah will be going to - Panama City. The goals for me will be to learn Spanish and get to know the local culture and the region. Latin America is an undiscovered place for me, so I bet my time there will be an eye-opener and a learning experience, not to mention the amount of fun I'm gonna have there.

I'm sure many of you would ask what will I do there? For some time now I've been doing some work for Frontier TV, an ethical business & living internet TV channel. I only require an internet connection to do the job, hence I am granted total mobility. So basically I can live anywhere in the world. Now I am taking advantage of this opportunity and Panama City is where I'm gonna hang out for some time.

Once I'm there, I will start sharing my experiences in the New World via this blog.

What to do with my life?

This is a question most of us ask ourselves, and it is often really difficult to answer. Journey of soul searching, trying to figure out what our passion is might take years. I have tried to find myself and my one purpose for a few years now and I know first hand how hard it can be.

The one thing I have learned is that only those who seek will find. So I have gathered the best resources out there and created a website called The One Question that aims to help people finding the answer to the question 'what to do with my life?'

Go ahead and check it out, let me know what you think. It's still in the testing phase, so let me know if you come across any bugs or if you feel the content could be improved somehow. I appreciate it!

Link: http://www.theonequestion.com

Green Challenge

All my dear socially responsible friends, now the time has come to think. It is imperative you that you go to http://www.greenchallenge.info and submit your idea that will save the world.

Green challenge is about inventing ways for a greener lifestyle. Invent a product or service that can help to restore the planet's harmony, submit it to the competition by 30 August, and you could win € 500,000. Richard Branson is the chairman of the jury.

I for sure am gonna think of it hard. So Peep saves the planet! Or do you have a better idea?

Enough time

I've been enough time away from Dubai. All the bitterness I had inside is gone (or at least most of it). Now Dubai has become a beautiful memory and I am nostalgic about it. Isn't it always so? Even a bad experience becomes a sweet memory. Dubai wasn't a bad experience, it was a damn good one. The time I spent there were one of the best years of my life. Sometime I think back to all the good times I had there... late night shisha, all you can eat buffets at the Iranian restaurant, manakish from lebanese bakeries, barbeques by the pool, house parties full of strange people and lots of booze, malls full of girls in abayas... Even the tough times with constant money shortage and sweat rain seem sweet now... Didn't think that I would say this, but I miss Dubai, the times I had. I wouldn't go back - that would probably ruin the image in my head. Thank you Dubai and thank you my friends who are still there, you made it unforgettable.

And now - on to the next adventure. More about that soon.

Saving the World

I was first exposed to the ideas of taking responsibility for our world and making a difference in my last years in the university, when I joined AIESEC. Then the gates were open and I could walk into this world of people eager to make a change, to make the world a better place. At first I thought it is this organization that I joined that opened eyes, but I came to see that there were so many more of us around. I met new exciting people from various walks of life who were all thinking great thoughts, who were above the as-long-as-I'm-good-all-is-good paradigm. I came to realize that the mass media and mainstream culture gave much more importance to the only-money world than it deserves. Reading relevant books, studying websites and talking to different people has made me realize that the number of people that care are increasing, and increasing fast. You can see the statistics in different studies that are made, you can see it in the amount of books, websites and movies that talk about this, in the number of organizations that are trying to do their part to heal the world.

Last year I wanted bad to continue my career in an organization where I could help to create the world I want to see. I applied to huge amounts of positions all around the world in large organizations (UN, Oxfam etc) and smaller non-profits. What I didn't anticipate is that the amount of people that want to do the same is just... enormous. For strong majority of the positions I didn't even make it past the pre-screening: the number of exceptional candidates was just so huge. Several of my friends that are really smart people with impressive credentials ran into the same problem: even though we badly wanted to work to save the world, we couldn't get hired. There are today literally millions of people who want those jobs. The demand for those jobs is far higher than supply.

In the recent months me and Sarah have come upon several non-profits and social ventures that take people on non-paid positions and imagine that: only the very best, the highly talented few get those positions. There is an application and interview rounds for these non-paid positions. Western world has evolved to a stage where money doesn't rule (as much) anymore, we are hungry for meaning. We want our lives to have a purpose. We don't wanna spend our lives making shareholders rich. We want to change the world and we are ready to work even for free.

Hint: It's probably the best time ever to start your own social venture; you can get badass employees even for free. Hey, starting your own gig is probably even easier than getting employed.

A quote

Whatever you can do, or dream, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic and power in it. Begin it now.

- W.H. Murray paraphrasing Goethe

27

Happy birthday to me. Another year has passed and for the first time I truly feel older. It was hard (tiring) for me to party 2 days in a row. The good thing is that I don't really want to either, so its not like I'm missing out on something. I guess that's the good thing about aging - even though you get older and can not do all the things you did when you were 20, you start to want other things in life, and that makes it all right.

I feel a bit older than young, too. Even according to the law and business I'm not young anymore, most youth related laws and discounts are valid until you're 26. And that's okay. I've also never weighed so much as do now (a nice way to say 'I'm getting fat'). Luckily, that's reversible.

Am I afraid of getting older? To be honest it is a little bit scary, but not frightening. I know now better than ever before who I am, what my values are and what I want out of life. I am pleased with the experiences I have gathered on my path and happy that I am living my dream. I am happy and in love. What more could I want?

So where to from here? The whole world is open. I'll be in Estonia for the next month or so, and then - only the universe knows.

Join RED

The best way to raise money to fight AIDS is to make sure that marketers make some money on the deal. RED is not a charity, its an economic initiative founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver, Chairman of DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) founded RED to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund (fight against AIDS).

They have teamed up with some of the most well-known world brands - launch partners were Motorola, Giorgio Armani, American Express, Converse, the GAP (list is growing all the time) - to produce RED-branded products. RED^™ is a branding mechanism companies license to sell these products. Part of the proceeds from the sales go to The Global Fund and thus to help people infected with HIV.To be clear, this is not a campaign. It is an ongoing commitment from businesses to raise awareness and funds to help fight AIDS in Africa. The initiative aims to deliver a sustainable flow of private sector money to The Global Fund.
The RED products are really cool. I bought a RED shirt and a cap by Gap while on the road trip, and most definitely I am gonna buy more RED stuff and choose RED products whenever I can. I think this is a way anyone can make a change in a small way.

I think RED is cool and a great way to tap into crowds who don't care about these issues otherwise. People are gonna buy the stuff anyway, now they have a choice between a product that helps only the manufacturer’s pockets versus one that gives a percentage to a good cause.

While the critics of RED say it is lame and even unethical to use shopping for such causes, I find it bloody brilliant. I think that making socially responsible shopping sexy is the way to go. RED website has also an “impact calculator” that lets you see what your money can buy (a $28 shirt provides 41 single-dose treatments to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission).

Find out more about RED on their website: http://www.joinred.com/

Goodreads

While I am an avid reader most of the time, I couldn't read much during March and April. Now being here I have found time to read again every now and then and I'm enjoying it to the fullest. It keeps me energized, empowered and I just love the feeling of knowing a bit more about the world.

Just recently I discovered a fairly new website called Goodreads that I find cool and useful and I believe most of the book lovers would agree. This site helps you to see what your friends are reading, what do other people think of the books you are interested in and you can discover new books. Definitely worth checking out.

End of the road

All good things must come to an end and so did our road trip. I will try to capture the highlights of the last 2 weeks and the trip as a whole.

America is a country full of amazing natural beauty. Our next destination after Stockton was the famous Yosemite National Park. "It's maybe the most beautiful place on earth", a friend of mine told me once. He wasn't wrong - the park was amazing. Full of mountains, forest, active wildlife. We saw a black bear munching away some berries or something and at we encountered at least 20 deer at a very short distance. The deer were used to humans I guess, or at least curious. We camped in the forest for 2 nights and at one time there were 7 deer at the same time around our tent. The bear activity was so huge in the park area that we were ordered to store all our food and other scented items in a special bear-proof canister.

We hiked, admired the waterfalls, listened to the wind, talked to the animals and enjoyed food cooked on a fire. It was a sublime experience one cannot put in words.

It was really hard to leave Yosemite, but we had to move on eventually to see other amazing places. Next stop - Sequoia National Park. Just before arriving to the park, we saw a sign saying "Cats Haven" and we decided to check it out. It turned out to be a small kind-of-a-zoo where they had endangered big cats, from tigers to leopards to karakuls. We got an hour long tour and saw many different cool cats. For me as a cat lover it was really cool and I learned a lot.

Later the same evening we arrived to the Sequoia National Park. Sequoias are the largest living organisms in the world (reaching up to 115 meters in height and 7 meters in diameter). They also live up to 2000 years and more. So the forest we walked through was older than so many architectural historical monuments. The bark of sequoias was very thick - ~30cm which makes them almost immune to diseases and bugs. The only way they die is by falling down (they get really big and heavy and the roots are not able to hold them anymore). They are so big that in order to get the whole tree on the picture I had to make 3 separate pictures - from a distance.

We also met the largest tree in the world, named General Sherman. Its approx 2200 years old. At the base you had to walk 33 meters(!) to make a circle around it.

You really feel like a midget when walking through a sequoia forest. They say that a human is to a sequoia as a mouse is to a human. It was weird and fun to see "normal" trees next to sequoias where they seemed like teeny-tiny trees. The time spent in this forest was truly magical. The person under the sequoia trees on the last picture on the left is me.

After seeing the Giant Sequoias we continued on to Las Vegas. We drove through Death Valley, but as it was night time we didn't see that much. Las Vegas is something else and hard to describe, you have to experience it. It has a main street called The Strip which has all the casinos (or the majority). The strip is very long and it is not really possible to visit all the cool places in 1 day. Las Vegas resembles to Dubai in the sense that they have copies of real buildings there, like the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triumph, different buildings from Paris and New York. But its all exterior - inside the casinos look mostly the same. What surprised me was the size of these casinos - they were gigantic. I think Las Vegas (or the state of Nevada, to be more precise) has become so famous because its the only place in the US (except for indian reservations) where gambling is legal. We spent there 2 nights, Thursday and Friday and got to see the night life. Casinos offer drinks for free, so many people just went there to get drunk and perhaps one or two per party were also playing a lot. The population increases a lot during the weekend which is also reflect in hotel prices - on the weekends its double price.

We gambled in different casinos, visited some of the most famous ones and I ended up losing 100$. Oh well. Who hasn't got luck in gambling has luck in love, as they say.

After Las Vegas we set our eyes on Grand Canyon. It was too far to make it in 1 day, so we stayed the night at some national park at a lake. The next day our air conditioning stopped working, so the next days were a bit sweaty. Before reaching Grand Canyon we passed through a city called Kingman where a man happened to pass us, glanced at our tires and said we should put on our spare as our tire had worn down to the core. Good thing he noticed as we sure didn't and so we replaced 2 tires.

I also had to spend some time in the local jail.

We reached Grand Canyon during the sunset and got to see an amazing view. It was getting dark fast and we needed to find a camping spot. We chose to drive to the furthest camp that was there hoping there are some free places. To our dismay after 40 min of driving we discovered it was full. As it was dark already and we weren't sure there was room at other camps, we decided to camp illegally. So we just grabbed our sleeping bags and wandered into some random bushes and slept there.

Grand Canyon is indescribable. It is so much larger than life, larger than anything. Just breathtaking. You can stare at it for days, it just mesmerizes you. When some of the things we saw where not as great as we had expected, Grand Canyon exceeded my expectations. We also went hiking on a trail that descended 800 meters (and what goes down has to come up). Now after hiking in all those parks I think we're in pretty good shape ;)

The park gets 5 million visitors per year, so it was really crowded, but that was okay. When you go hiking you don't see that many anyway as most people are lazy.


After seeing Grand Canyon we started driving back towards Austin, Texas. Other places worth mentioning were the Hopi and Navajo indian reservations and the city of Santa Fe. I am definitely curious to find out more about the native americans and the reservations - when you're in them you're like in another country. Maybe more about this in another blog post.

Santa Fe was a very cool artsy city, a haven for artists I imagine. Full of galleries, arts and crafts shops. The city seems to have strict building restrictions as most buildings were made of adobes.

As I mentioned earlier, United States has amazing natural beauty. On this trip we saw so many spectacular views and sightings that eventually when a view was a little less than absolutely breathtaking, it didn't seem so great anymore. We got spoiled. Some of the things we saw were not so amazing as I had expected (Golden Gate bridge, Hollywood blvd), most by far more magnificent than I had even thought of. During the first 2 weeks I said almost daily "this is the best view I've ever seen". I am so glad I got to go on this trip, it was nothing less than astounding. Another dream fulfilled.

On the road. Still in California!

California is cool, I could totally live here. We've been here now quite some time and still enjoying it very much. It's mostly sunny, warm and has a cool atmosphere. California is also very socially responsible and you can find so many cool fair trade cafes, shops and so on. A lot of organic products available and specialized stores. People are quite conscious of their impact on the environment and world. You can have a very cool lifestyle here.

We checked out Beverly Hills and saw all the big mansions. I have to admit - Beverly Hills is very beautiful and has pretty landscaping. Real estate prices are astronomical of course, but it is a statement to live there. The way the city and houses looked there would be Dubai's wet dream. A lot of houses have tall stone walls around them, so you can't really see most of it - but thats understandable. We also went to Rodeo Drive (probably one of the most famous high-end shopping districts in the world), bought a lot of stuff and dined in a spectacular Italian restaurant with Bruce Willis and Brittany Murphy.
LA is so damned spread out (I mean the greater LA) that even though we spent there 4 days, we couldn't see that much. So we prioritized and spent most our time in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Hollywood and a bit of downtown. Traffic is quite crazy and people drive recklessly on the city highways. I prayed a lot while driving those.
On the picture above you can see the view from the hills of Hollywood to the city of LA. The camera didn't capture it well, but it is so possible to have an amazing view. One side of LA is on the hills (you might have heard of the forest fire there recently) and the rich people live there to enjoy the view.
We did quite a few typical tourist things and went to Hollywood Boulevard to see the stars. I am not quite sure what I was expecting, but actually Hollywood Boulevard is just a street with shops, cafes, residential buildings.. and its not even a fancy street. So it was kind of cool that this normal street has those stars and people walk by without paying any attention (except for the tourists).
We spent a day in Malibu which is a posh small city just next to LA (you can still see LA across the bay). We hung out on the beach and drove into the mountains there to camp. I can understand how living there can be fun with all the spectacular views and small mountains.
Even though our map said we could camp up on the hills in Malibu, the signs there said we could not and we had to drive into a public park and pay 25$ in order to camp with a bunch of other people in a organized park. Some of these state parks look so lame and you have no privacy there, I wonder why anyone goes there in the first place.
The next day we went back to Hollywood to the Universal Studios to see how the movies are being made and to have some fun. Universal Studios is mostly a movie theme park with roller coasters and movie characters, but you can also take a 45-min tour in the area where they actually shoot the movies and even learn a few new things about the movie world.
Next stop was in Santa Barbara to see the soap opera people. Most of our time was actually spent next to Santa Barbaba where Sarah's sister Lily was in the organizing team of a hippy green music festival. It was definitely a worldview expanding experience. First of all I had never seen thousands of hippies all together and at first the event seemed like a freak show to me because of all the unorthodox clothing they wore. Everything there was socially resposible, beer cups were made out of corn, energy came from solar panels and so on. People were painting, playing music, there were green living workshops and lots of cool stuff.
Our next great destination was San Francisco and we drove on the famous highway 1, which goes along the coast of the Pacific and has amazing views. There were many places where you could see seals on the coast... really cool. There was also a whale watching point, but we didn't see any at the time.
The coast views were quite breathtaking. We camped 2 nights in the wilderness on our way, once we went quite some ways into the inland and the second time we noticed a trail going into the forest while driving. We stopped the car, packed our stuff and wandered into the forest. It happened to be a redwood grove (redwood is kind of a mix between a fir and a pine, one of the tallest trees in the world) and it was amazing. There was even a waterfall. We saw deer walking by our camp fire and in the night we heard many additional animal sounds. I have seen so many wild animals here its not even funny. Rabbits and squirrels are like everywhere.
The further we went from LA, the colder the weather got. Same with the ocean - it was so cold that after having out feet in the water for 3 minutes they went numb from the cold.
San Francisco - so far the coolest city we've visited. Arriving to San Francisco was also a re-union for me with a long lost pal. We were hosted by Tony, who was in the MC of AIESEC in Estonia long time ago. We hadn't seen each other for 4 years. Every night was full of cool and interesting conversations. San Francisco is extremely hilly - you can see how the road goes in the picture above. And its like that everywhere!
San Francisco has a working public transportation system with buses and cool trams. My favorite feature was the cute houses of San Francisco. I felt so much like in Europe. And the city was very tight and close together like European cities which I liked.
We hung out in Chinatown, downtown and many famous and cool parks. The city is just full of parks and has the largest man-made park in the world as well. It is also very liberal, very socially resposible. I was offered to buy weed 2 times, one of the sellers gave us their business card even. San Francisco has a large Asian community and a lot of Asian restaurants which we enjoyed. Some of our best food here we ate at Eritrean and Carribean restaurants. That much variety in food is something I like a lot.
This is the view to San Franciso over the bay (after crossing the Golden Gate bridge).
Golden Gate bridge was cool, we took a lot of pictures like real tourists, but... the aura surrounding it was greater than the bridge itself. I guess its like that most of the time, I have felt so many times before when visiting something that people speak a lot about (Taj Mahal, Burj Al Arab etc).

We both enjoyed San Francisco a lot, maybe I did a bit more as it was not so warm :) Mark Twain had once said that "the coldest time I've ever experienced was the summer in San Francisco" :)

Currently we are in a small town called Stockton, east from SF to visit Sarah's brother-in-law's brother's (Blake) family. Blake is a winemaker and we have already learned so much about wines and wine industry, its quite fascinating. In an hour or so we're off to see his winery and to taste some:)

After that we'll be going outdoors again and spending quite some time in the Yosemite park, see the Sequioa National Forest and then - Las Vegas.

On the road. Reporting from California

We have been on the road for quite some time now, and we're loving it. We're having so much fun and it has been a cool adventure so far.

After leaving Sarah's uncle's house we started to drive through the mountains towards Arizona with the aim to spend the night in the forest somewhere (in the mointains). We rarely (if ever) know where we're gonna spend the night before its a couple of hours until it becomes dark. All most all the time (except for one night) we have managed to set up our camp (or find a hotel) before it gets dark. In the cities it wouldn't matter, but it matters a lot in the outdoors.
New Mexico continued to greet us with magnificent views. Beautiful mountains we're almost always in sigtht.
In the city of Alamogordo we went to see a live auction - man that was cool. Just like you see it on TV, mumbling real real fast. I couldn't understand most of it. Picture above is taken right in front of the auction shack.
This is a picture we see often (above). Road, road, long road.

This is the kind of landscape that was prevailing in New Mexico. Mountains and hills, no forest, almost desert (and there was desert at times also), bushes here and there.
Finally we reached the mountains we wanted to go to. This area is called the Gila National Forest. It is very, very beautiful and from on top of mountains the view is just amazing (the picture above is taken from a top of a mountain). The mountain we chose for camping was about 3000 meters high, highest I've ever been. We parked the car on a vista that had a small car park and found a hiking trail. We packed the necessary and hiked into the forest. As it started to get dark, we didn't hike very far and started to set up our camp. We had a nice fire and cooked good food. It was quite cold - maybe 5..10 degrees Celsius. Boy were we in for a surprise in the morning.
In the night when we were sleeping in first started raining and then snowing also. We climbed into the same sleeping bag to keep ourselves warm and covered the entrance of the sleeping bag so it wouldn't snow inside. We do have a tent with us, but before entering the forest it seemed clear and we didn't want to carry it.
In the morning when we woke up we were totally covered in snow and ice, as was the forest. It kept on snowing. It was freezing. Climbing out of the sleeping bag took a lot of courage.
Finally we managed, packed our bags as quickly as we could and started to walk back towards our car.
The view to the snowy mountains was beautiful. When walking with all the hiking gear, it wasn't cold anymore either. Luckily neither of us got sick, so all is good and it was just a day to remember.

I have seen more wild animals here during my trip than in last 10 years of my life. Deer, elk, rabbits, jackrabbits, small desert mice and what not. This deer on the picture was maybe only 5 meters away from us. You also see quite many dead animals on the side of the roads, as I have learned road kill is common here.
This colorful mountain (and many other next to it) was initially (and still somewhat) a mystery to us. Did the nature paint the mountains? Later we discovered there was a silver mine in the middle of the mountains, so the colorful gravel is probably waste from digging into the mountains, so they pile the gravel on top of them. Looks cool.
When we entered Arizona, this was one of the first things we saw. The view was (once again) breathtaking. Check out the road. We drove on small curvy mountain roads a lot during this trip.
In Arizona we decided to spend the night in the Apache Indian Reservation territory. We didn't know exactly how the reservations work, but when entering it we saw a sign that said camping, fishing and hunting requires a permit. So we started to look for a place to get one, first found a police station, but no one was there. Then we found a wildlife recreation center or smth, but they were closed also (it was Sunday). As it was getting dark and we needed to find a camping spot, we decided to camp here anyway. There was a lake nearby and we decided to drive over there to camp.
The lakeside had an official camping site which we used. The weather was warm and the sky clear. We set up a fire (see above), made really good food and enjoyed the view. It was very beautiful, the Apache land. The night sky was also clear and I hadn't seen so many stars for a long time. In the morning we slowly started to pack our stuff, checked out the ducks swimming in the lake and were generally enjoying our time until a local ranger suddenly came. Of course we didn't have a camping permit, so we got into trouble. We explained that our intention was to get a permit, just everything was closed. He had to report us anyway so we told our story in detail, he checked our personal data and issued a ticket. The amount of the fine was to be determined by the tribal court. So we had to drive to the capital of this reservation, San Carlos, to go to the tribal court to get our punishment. In the tribal court we got both sentenced 160 dollars each at first, which was later reduced to 80 dollars per person after we explained story. We took it as a donation to build up the glorious Apache nation.

The reservation was very interesting. Naturally all people living there were Apaches. It was a rather poor community, small municipality buildings, shops with empty shelves (reminded me of Soviet Union), small residential houses. Everything seemed small and poor, but very interesting (we were talking about how we'd like to have a cultural exchange program with the reservations or smth). I was wondering which language do they speak; all pictures and signs at a school (made by children) were in English, so schools work in English. We heard many older people speak Apache language, so at least the older generation knows it. All the official business in the tribal court (even between the Apaches) was conducted in English.
Finally we said good-bye to the Apache people and drove on. Road sides had a lot of cacti like the one on the picture above. That one had holes in it and birds were living inside it.
Day before yesterday we reached California, stopped by the Joshua Tree National Park and yesterday arrived to Los Angeles. Boy we're loving it! We chose Santa Monica as our first destination here (I'm typing this from our hotel next to the beach of Pacific Ocean). It is so damn cool here and very beautiful. The energy is very different here. It's carefree, fun, happy and active. People here are generally beautiful and fit. I almost didn't see any fat people at all. There is a lot of eye candy for both sexes.
View to the Ocean Drive. Its very, very pretty.
This is the beach. After checking out of the hotel, we're going to hang out there.
Streets of downtown Santa Monica. Again, very cool and enjoyable. We had a lot of fun.

VIDEOS



During our trip I took some videos on some of the prettiest places. Here they'are:\