The B-Blog

Bottom line of the trip, 6 months later (this is the end of the section, so scroll down to begin)

They have been 6 unforgettable months. I had the opportunity to strongly grasp my life with my hand, feel it, live fully, and act just acconding to my will. This was the most fun important and fun thing I did. Not being just projected in the future, work and invest on myself, but enjoy and spend the present time. Even tough now I will have to start again working from a stage, I am conviced that i the future I will be grateful for what I did in these months. If I could come back, I would do it other 1000 times.
Lesson Learnt: The most important thing that I learnt and that I hope will always guide me in my life is: there is always a way out. I met people which live in very difficult situations in terms of money, relatives to take care of, job conditions, a welfare state which is not generaous as in Western countries... but still, life goes on and no one dies! And they live a happier and helathier life than many of us. Here is also what I learnt:

1. In the long run, even travelling becomes a routine. You keep on see amazing panoramas, temples, museums, cities, beaches, monuments, market, animales, eat new food... But after some time, as everything in life, the excitement fades and you start to miss your settle-down stable life. On the other hand, when you are doing home->work work->home, you start questioning what is wrong with your life and you just want to throw everything in the toilet and just go. The solution lays in the middle. Work, save money, go on with your career, and if you feel like doing something crazy, do it. Quit your job, take few months off or make a big holiday. Then, come back. Easier to say than doing, requires flexibility. But no one becomes homeless and sleep under bridges just becuase we decided to take some months off. So: travelling is not a sufficient condition for happiness.
2. Gap years is not a thing just for students. I met many people younger than me, but also many older.
3. When you are travelling, and if you are not a very extroverted person which is able to always talk with everybody about everything, relationships and coversations become shallow. You keep on meeting new people with which you spend 3/4 days and then you will never see again. The intial conversation is always quite standard because you have to start know each other. But after the #1243 person you meet you do not really care anymore where is he/she from, how old, how long has been staying here, which job has back home... So you find out that reading a book is much more enriching than socializing. But still, it depends on the personality of a person. What I can universally say is that you develop deep and satisfactory relationship only in a stable context. With all people that I met in the world I would never feel as fully excited as when I am with my univeristy friends.
4. becoming a digital nomad is not something that happen within few months, if you do not have a computer science degree. I failed this target for now, cause I understood is something you build step by step in the long run. So I will keep on trying while having a normal job.
5. staying with my friend in Milan in July, with moscquitos and crazy heat, preparing a very difficult exams, eating cartoon pizza in the library, is a much sweeter and happier memory than to making the limbo in PhiPhi Island parties or see spectacular sunsets.
   Considering instant happiness, I reach the peak in my life when I am about to start my 5-5 football match in the worst neighborhood of Milan with my friends who do not know how to play football. No NYC rooftop bar, Thailand party, Cadiz beach, Granada sunset, Sevilla neighborhood, will ever equal those moments. So: happiness is not about where. But who (and what of course).

Start: Why am I doing this trip?

Answer: to find myself... whatever that means... (what does it mean actually?).
I would start to explain you what I am escaping from, which can be well-summarized by this video:

Add this unhappiness to my way of reasoning typical of an engineer: maximise utility subject to limited resources: aka: enjoy you life as much as possible because the existance on this earth is unique, and time is quite a precious and limited resource, at it doesn't wait for you.

How many times did you tell youself "is not the right moment, I will do it later when I will be richer/have more time... Well. I am 26, I did my duties, I dont have any kind of resonsability such as a family, bills to pay, mortgages... (I consider myself very lucky form this point of view). Now is the moment.

Here I am then! Is been sice August that I am travelling around Spain to learn a new language (another "productive time" initiaive).

Pros and Cons of this choice

Just some o them, from my perspective:

The recepit

Let's go though some of these pros and cons. You can contact me if you want to talk about/add something. Hope you will found it inspiring.

Cons1) Money. Plata. Il cash. (Grazie a graziella e grazie al signor C). How to do it?
Here are the main CONCERETE strategies:

• Long-term travelling is cheaper than you think: you need to spend on 3 things: ACCOMODATION, FOOD, TRANSPORATION. Full stop. If you don't have much savings apart: forget eating outside, forget cocktails at the bars, forget new clothes (you don't need new shoes/tie/frac for the office and you can take out again your hippy clothes form high school), forget sushi. Which is fine! I forgot how cheap and healthy is to cook at home. When I was working was like: too tired to cook, get a pizza (min €5), get a readymade-sandich (min €4). A cheap gintonic costs €3.5 (Marchetta al miglior bar di Milano). At the end, you end up spending €20 per day for food. With attention, you can max spend €5 per day. Clothes expences: €0. You don't have space in the backpack for new thinks (how much you spend per month in shopping?).
• MOST IMPORTANT: accomodation. Answer: Worldpackers (or Workaway). Is called work-exchange. You go to hostels, houses, camps in the mountains helping out with some activities (cleaning, reception, bar,...plant bananas if you like them, and I know you like them), and in exchnage they give you a place to sleep, a kitchen for cook your food (see previous point), a washing machine. Cost for accomodation: €0. Sometime you also manage to eat for free (food problem solved). Well, of couse you have to WORK, but: is a fun job, that allows you to interract with many different people. And on averge you work 30h per week (amazing tip: go to work in hostel in low-season. I am right now in Cadiz, which is a sea-city, and it's november. I work 12h per week). So you have still A LOT OF FREE TIME.
• TRAVELLING: you have the big advnatage that you are FLEXIBLE. Forget asking for vacation to your boss on mid-august. You can decide so much in advance, and pay very few bucks for the airplane (remember that you have just a hand-luggage). For example, I manage to go to NYC round trip for €270 (don't go to nyc if you are on a budget). Or use blablacar. Travelling within Europe is cheap, and you do not need Visa (God Bless European Union). If you are travelling in exotic places like Asia or South America, living is cheap, and your long-distance flightcan be a little compensated by the cost of living. Anyway, you would spend around 1 month in a city, so travelling expences do not happen that often. You can spend a lifetime between Spain and Portugal. If you optimize and plan your trip you do not even have to take a plane. Ah! You do not need to spend money for the monthly ticket of your city-transportation.
  Example: imagine that, after months of working hard, is time for your well deserved holiday: 10 days in Dubai: let's make it very cheap: (flight 500€; hotel 10*50=500€; food 30*10=300€; others: 200€ =tot 1500€). Priciple: 1€ as backpackers is worth more than 1€ as normal worker. Put that into your mind. With 1500€ you can comfortable travelling for 3months, with A LOT OF FREE TIME.

Pros6) It means: if you are canalized in your routine, surrounded by similar people than you, the game is kinda done. Of course, you may have a promotion, have a successful idea, everything can happen. But the likelyhood of breakthough episodes are very unlikely (see the mouse video). For what it worth, I started coding cause I met this guy from Argentina in my hostel (a very Argentinian name: Luciano di Pasquale) which works online, never went to the university, and code for a heathcare startup. Amazing! I asked him if could give me an introdcory lesson on how to make a website, and here I am! If you work from Monday to Friday, you do not want to come back home at 9pm and start to learn how to code. Or, at least, I cannot. In Sevilla, one of the guest was a woman who is a middle manager for a company in Barcellona, and they are looking for people to hire. She asked me to send her my cv when I will be done with my trip (Look! People do not het offended if you have a "hole" on your CV).

Pros9) It is serious. Here is the point. If you did a marketing class, you heard something like "we do not sell a prodcut, we sell experience". See Starbucks for example. We are a generation who did not miss anything material. We ALL have cars, phones, etc... If you need to satisfy your need to feel cool with the others, having the iPhoneX or the BMW is not a big deal anymore, as it would have been for our parents for example. We want experience, we do not want stuff. We have differt means as well: make a nice selfie duck-faced and put it on instagram for example. 2000 likes are worth more than an iPhoneX for our ego. Or, my favourite: instagram stories! You can show others that your life at this moment is quite cool (then, hapiness in another thing). An instagram story on the beach with "sunset lover" in the background costs less than a BMW

Cons2)Relax, nothing is under control. I knew people who did not study at all at the university and graduated with bad grades, and are not even smart as the usual story may suggest, who have better jobs that the ones who work their ass off. Relax, nothing is under control. Do you best, but do not do it only for the money/prestige. It is very risky! What if it does not go how you expect? It is a pitty to think back how much time/effort you put for nothing.

Cons6)How does it looks like a hole of 3months/6months/12months on your CV? What the recriuters will think about it? Solution: with the right words, you can twist reality as you wish. One issue would be: why should I reward you that you were on holiday, and not a serious guy who worked 10 hours per day right after university in a serious company? In my opinion they should't. But I noticed that hard-competences are usually not rewarded as they should. Big corporation are filled with slogan "we need open-minded people, we want problem solvers, we want leaders"... it doesnt mean anything. That hole on your CV lays the foundation for building a great story full of nice words and nice BS, and who knows... Cons2) If you manage to get in, you are back in the race of normality (well, you would be a junior while your university friends are aready managers. But you had an awesome time and you have a lifetime to "catch up".

Pros2) Cons9)You can also work out a strategy to mitigate the risks coming from cons 6-2-3-4). You are gonna have so much time for yourself and do what you like. Fall in the spiral party-wake up at noon every day-watch netflix-eat-party can be very tempting, and increase the probability that 6-2-3-4 will materialize. The solution is to focus on something that you like and you can resell on the job market later. So: build a routine anyway, buy a grammar book for the language you are learning, learn how to code, study something that you like, make a Standford on-line classes on statistics/marketing/whatever... All things that maybe you cannot focus on while you are working full time. after 6months of vacation you can put on your CV: "languages spoken: +1" or "programming languages: SQL proficiency, or basic HTML CSS Javascript Python..." or "Standfor statistic and econometric course". Pretty cool! So, keep on going even thought you are on holday. Moreover, being 6m doing nothing I think is a miserable way of living, and all the porpuse of the trip fall down

Cons10)I did not find the solution yet. But if I do, I'll let you know.

What if we are all do it? Rethinking capitalism in the IT era

Quite provicative and exaggerated. But just some thoughts.
In the western world, we live in a oversupplied society. We do not have scarcity of basic needs. The economy is stagnating since 2008 because of the financial crisis, but also because of a lack of aggregate demand "aka, we dont need other cars, houses... aka oversupply "you find all kind of variety of products in the supermarket, ikea is filled with cheap fornitures, the car sector is in crisis cause there is not enough demand...". Add the fact that pushing for further hyperconsuminsm to increase the demand is not a good idea in a planet that is getting destroyed by humans. The problem is that wealth is not distributed, so much of this supply (see real estate) is unbalanced toward a few chuck of popuation. The IT and the "sharing economy" can facilitate a more efficient use of the resources which become more stautared. See Blablacar, Worldpacers, Couchsurfing. What I am saying is that, if you know how to move, you can exploit this oversupply (anyway, you do not build a family living with Wordpackers, so it is easier for solo-traveller). If everyone would do that, ther would be a severe lack of workforce in the corporations and they would be forces to increase the salary to retain their employees from leaving their work. (Marx would be proud of my statements).

On the other side, gettig the middle class bourgeois side, for which I symphatise the most (sorry Karl), this could be a scenario: you honestly work hard all your life, you accumulate a deserved stock of wealth stored in financial assets and real estate. Looking how things are going in the macroeconomy, more and more resources will have to be found to finance systems which are inefficient and unsustainable in the long term (pensions, healthcare, infrastucture...). Unfortunatelly, until now we saw the the extra-riches and they undecent wealth are difficut to reach (see big tech taxation and ultra-wealthy people moving to tax hevens). So, governments will have to address the middle-class, where the resources are available. You will find soon that your stock of wealth like the house on the beach or in the mountain that you rightly bought for your vacations, your bank and financial assets, will be more and more eroded by the system and the taxation (at the end, it is even fair to tax who has more to help who has less). The complexity and regulation will become unbearable, so that an ASSETS could easily turn into a LIABILITY. It is extreme and exaggerated of course, but it is just to imagine a possible direction. It is a pity to work hard all of your life to accumulate liabilities, or at most just a small amout of assets. This is very unfair. We can also add as a scenario a catastrofic financial crisis which could happen in the next 40 years from now right after you are ready for your pension. It almost happened in 2008, and nowayads there are a lot of dangerous distrotions in the economy (negative interest rates, quantitative easing, one currency for multi-states (European Union criticism here), inflation of financial and real estate assets and not real goods, public debt... How many time we are hearing the Italian president Mattarella saying "Protect the Italian savings" in a politics dominated by anti-euro and populist movements. So this could be a real thing..) that could really undermine your pensions, saving, and the system in general.

So:

1. Be part of a system where you do not even notice that you are living, and then find out that you are also a little fucked-up at the end.
2. Work for a system that produces things that we do not need, stressed by the competition of other company producing things that we do not need and push hard they cheap product to a saturared markert, while destroying the planet until what we really need (good food and decent weather) is gonna be riuned.
3. Be part of a system which generates a lot of entropy in the environment (generate platic because you eat packed readymade food) and in your life (earn money that you have to spend for a fancy suit cause you have an important meeting. Earn money to pay for the babysitter. Earn to pay accountats, lawyers, notaries, asset managers which can take care of your low-yieling and ulta-taxed wealth in order to avoid penalties coming from a very complicated system. Earn money to maintain people who chose not to honestly work as much as you. Wouln't be better to slow down and simplfy a little?
4. The solution will not come from the politics. It is just a system too difficult to manage, not enough political will (both from politican and form the people too). I think this is something that somehow will have to come from a complete emplosion of this system in few decades, or from the behavious of each of us. You will be the one who decides to slow down if this way of living does not make you happy. By "slowdown" I do not say go to the mountain, build a wooden house, and eat the tomato that you cultivate in the backyard. Labout will continue to be funamental for healthcare, research, maintainance of the existing building and infrastructure. But find something more humble to do, be happy with the money you earn and spend them in a smarter way.



Content cumulation enabled by IT

Take Youtube. You need billions of years to watch all the videos. Same with listening songs on Spotify. Same with EBooks and internet content in general. There is already very good content, and other will come. If the music, movie, publishing industry would stop creating new content? Would that be a drama? I am talking about fincitonal entertaining content, not newspapers. People will always listen to the Beatles, Blink 182, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran... How many more new singers/band can we assorb in our life? Whay I want to say is that: with this big stock of entertaining content, each of us could already spend a lifetime entertained at a very high level.

The future of the educational system

Another interesting sector impacted from the previous phenomenon is the educational sector. I studied in realitively good school and I was a relatively good student. But despite this position, when I think back about my studies at middle/high school, I can say that they were disapponing. Very few good teachers, very few important topics taught, a thousands and thousand of hours wasted. University was a different story. But even there, I start to think that the model we are used to is becoming rapidly obsolete. Think about on-line university. There is amazing material online about all the disciplines. If we can find online very good, optimized teaching material online, with video, interactive projects, notes... How the educational system will transform? Is it better to follow a statistic class on and average university in a remote region, or follow the online statistic classes from MIT/Standford? Esecially when a lot of student do not put many attention in class, and they study from slides or notes from their colleague. So: what about the role of the teacher in the future? It will be transformed more in a "coach" or a "life motivator" or a "controller of your study method", or a "psychologist". This becomes interesting. Tragic in term of emplyment, but imagine the saving for the public finances. You would have a standardise national educational system, with the best material, and you can put all the student in the same level. It becomes very cheap to study, widening its access for everybody. People can take classes in the evening while working in the day. Or study at home when they need to. 1 teacher from the MIT can donate to millions of students an entire class made of excellent lessons. This is extreamly powerful and and the gains for the system as a whole is huge. One good news!

It is too turstic!!

"I do not like it, is too touristic"... Well, what you want to see then? You want to get lost in the outskirts of the city or roaming around industrial areas with factories? Plus... Who are you? An archeologist? Long life to touristic places! (same principles applied to "commerical music". I love commercial music because is commercial. Is like Mac Donald, it is meant to be loved. Parapapapaaaaa.

You are not special

I have always been so scared about mediocrity. For me, in order to make my life meaningful and worth living, I had to accomplish great things. This was the driving force during my univeristy: study hard, get good grades, build competences -> get a prestigius job in a prestigiuos company ->make money, do a wonderful career, possibly afford to buy a penthouse in Manhattam. Which is not even that meaningful, but in this way you could demontrate people that you made it to the top. I did not care that much about the money itself, but rather the prestige. All my dreams and expectations started to shutter when I started working. I was in a office full of very very smart people. I had no reason to think that I could be smarter then them. Smart people working long hours, making international calls with law firms in London; people who worked for the biggest international banks... The idea of successful people that I wanted to emulate. I once had a conversation with one of them, and she said that she did not wake up early every day and come back home late in the night, seeing her kids half an hour per day, for the money. Not for the money, but because she liked her job. She told me "we can be smart, cultured, brillant, hard working team... but trust me... none of us will save the world". We are talking about people who have a very successful career. But still, even them, they are not special. It was wonderful to hear that. If they are not special, imagine how not-special are you. The earlier you realize it, the better. Spending a lifetime chasing money and success before realizing you are nobody, is quite miserble and sad. It is like wasting your existance.
On the other hand, once you are in peace with yourself and be conscious that no one cares if you are better than the average, then you can start to focus on what really matters to you.
In the same office, there were many senior people who were always COMPLAINING about everything: the traffic, the beginning of the week, the boss, the annoying wife, their suckers kids... Every conversation was around "which type of coffee are you going to dirnk today?" or "what did you do this weekend? I do not give a shit of couse, but at least is more interesting than which coffe capsule you prefer". I promise myself I would never and ever end up like them. Seriously. Is not good for your mental health. Why would someone end up like this? Maybe these are the people who did not realize they are not special, and keep on pursuing their illusory dream. Or maybe they simply have to maintain a family so they do not really care about my 26 years old guy philosophy (I dont know if I want to have kids now...). So, be honest with youself, you are nobody. And even if you are somebody, there is a high probability that things will not play out as you wish, and another sucker will take your place.

Dream Life

Im in Thaliand right now. I have seen many marvellous places, and I have realized something. Do you know those videos where couples, usually a hot chick and a hot chico, are hold theirs hands running towards the sea with Chainsmokers - Closer in the background? Where the hot chick turn her beautiful face in slow motion smiling at the camera. Thank kind of paradise-moment of life accessible only to the most priviledged. Well, the good news is that it is just unreal. Is not a big news you will tell me, but I ve always had the doubt. I verified in the first place. Everything is just constructed. You are in a beaufitul place, ok fine: but there are not Chainsmokers in the background, running toward the sea is not slow motion, your movement are real movements, you are clumsy, as long as you are not bip-bip-ballerina. You will not notice the girl0s smile at you slow-motion in the foreground, but it will get lost in a wider visual perspecitve. And most of all, what are these people in the video talking about? I always have talking-issue with people, with frequent moment of embarassment, even if you are in the Phi Phi Islands. I cannot belive that these perfect couples spend more than 2 week together, and still go to the beach dancing and laughing. It is just unreal... F**k them!