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Posts Tagged "International Adventurer Profile"
This week’s international adventurer profile is on Ella Xing Gao. What a woman! Ella is currently at École hôtelière de Lausanne completing a Bachelor of Science in International Hospitality Management. Translation: She’s a jet-setting, sommelier-ing, quadro-lingual superstar in the international hospitality industry. She has worked all over Europe and Asia with the Hyatt Group – most recently completing a whirlwind four month live-in stint at the Grand Hyatt in superglam Shanghai. As an adventurer, Ella knows no bounds. Weekends in Amsterdam or Thursdays in Rome; she is the epitome of glamour and wanderlust. Her event planning talents, moreover, do not end in hospitality. Ella is one of the founders of the Nightingale Charity Club – a grass roots organisation based in Beijing that has raised over 23,000 for children in need. In short, she’s a pretty big deal. Hi. My name is Ella. I like making people feel like a big deal. Which is why I’m in the hospitality industry. I have matching tattoos with my sister, and two poodles called Coco and Josh. I also like The Adventure School. You should too.
2. Food and drink you don’t want to live without? 3. The scariest thing you can think of? 4. Your favourite party supply? 5. Your favourite book of the moment? 6. Describe your dream party place? 7. What is the evil version of you like? 8. What gives your confidence? 9. Name four essential elements of a good party. 10. What do you appreciate most about a party host? 11. Favourite adventure supply? 12. Describe the best party you ever attended. 13. Hotel room or campsite? 14. Do you have a style icon? 15. Where is your next adventure destination? 16. If you could teach a class about anything in the world ever, what would you teach? 17. Your motto? 18. What is your spirit animal?
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For your vicarious adventuring pleasure, may I present Ms. Meghna Philip, brilliant, beautiful, brave, and a fellow Brown undergrad. She’s changing the world and I’m enormously proud; be inspired.
We arrived in Delhi in the middle of June. It has been my first time coming to India on my own, without my family. I was born in Kerala, and lived in Bangalore until age 5, before we moved to New Jersey. Every other summer we came back to visit, but always stuck to the Keralan backwaters, whose intricate byways of extended family filled up all of our limited vacation days. So I had never been to India on my own, and never seen anything of it outside of Kerala. It has, needless to say, been quite an interesting excavation of the dualities of my upbringing. I can think of no more apt word to describe this trip than “adventure”. An adventure of elephantineproportions, (we have made several friends of the pachyderm persuasion), from the hot, uncertain beginnings, to the rainy, monsoon-y middle, to this, the last, dizzying stretch. India is so big, vibrant, and diverse. We have experienced a broad swath of its architectural, climactic and cultural diversity. Going from the dry, hot dusty north, full of breathtaking and ancient Mughal architecture; to wet, coastal Mumbai, where commercial capital towers alongside decaying, gothic architecture from the British Raj; to Portuguese and French ports in Goa and Pondicherry, where the colors and foods and buildings again are varied, and seem transplanted straight from Europe into the heart of India. Traveling as a group of three girls has added its own flavor to our experience, along with all the curry, cumin and coriander… it is impossible to avoid the realities of frustrating gender dynamics, and the strong undercurrent of male voyeurism that seems to dominate every place we go. At the same time, intelligent young women seem to predominate the student populations we have been interacting with at various universities, and yesterday we arrived at Jawaharlal Nehru University in the middle of some sort of student demonstration and gave three cheers for a “Fight Patriarchy!” graffiti quite becomingly fashioned along the side of the Administrative Building. It has been a fantastically exciting and productive summer. Networks for Peace is slated to begin within the next two weeks, with six of the best public and private universities in India and Pakistan participating, and some of the leading political think tanks on either side of the border collaborating. (Keep your eye out for us!) Now writing from Darjeeling, where, outside of my window, the rain is falling heavily, and clouds are rolling around on the winding streets! It is full of tea estates and gompas (monasteries) and Himalayan mountain views… one final adventure before heading back to the States. So from one rainy city to another, namaste and happy adventuring!
Once upon a time, Amanda Belantara left the United States and never looked back. From the moment of her departure, Amanda’s life has been a series of amazing adventures. She fell in love in Bali, got a ring tattooed on her finger, married on top of a mountain, and plans to spend the rest of her days making riotous art while exploring the unknown. And the rest, my dears, is history.
I’m a visual artist and documentary filmmaker originally from Pueblo, Colorado. I met my husband Michael seven years ago in an airport on the way to study music in Bali. We lived together in a small village called Bangah for the summer and married five weeks later on a volcano at sunrise and we’ve been traveling and living abroad for the most part ever since. Travels and work in countries like Indonesia, Japan, France, Greece, and Italy have led us to where we’ve lived the past couple of years- Manchester, UK. But having not lived in any particular place for so long…I’m not sure where home is. I originally came Manchester to complete a masters in Visual Anthropology and have stayed here working with the art collective, Kinokophone and doing my own freelance work since then including creating documentaries, installations and sound projects, and developing other projects along the way like ArchitectSpiders. Earlier this year I had the fortune to be a resident artist in Yamaguchi, Japan at the Akiyoshidai International Art Village. There I created a collaborative and experimental film called 耳がきゅっとなる (Ears are Dazzled, touched by sound). I chose to create this form of non-narrative film because what I wish to achieve through my work is to not so much inform or explain but to create/present sensations and places for audiences to re-experience the everyday and reconsider places often taken for granted. But if I had to do something else, I might be creating pop up books, writing stories, or being a librarian. I feel very lucky to be having this experience; it’s always a little surreal, especially when I re-visit places that were once very new and unfamiliar. Now I arrive and know how to get by there. Living abroad has inspired us. We’ve picked up a few things in our travels and added to our lifestyles: not wearing shoes inside, house slippers, tea drinking, milk in tea, sambal, not using cars, making my own salad dressing.
 Athens near Omonia  Ueno Koen, Tokyo  New Year's Eve Fox Parade, Tokyo  Provence  Chester, UK  Beijing  Red Square, Moscow  Shuho Town, Japan  Akiyoshi Plain  Filming in Yamaguchi City with noise artist Ishii Eiichi  Arriving in Manchester, UK  Estonian Forest  Estonian Singing Ampitheatre  Danish Island  Romanian Pigs in Denmark  Along the river in Kyoto with artist Eisuke Yanagisawa  "Life Library" Still  "Nobu San" Still
Every time a new International Adventurer Profile comes down the pipes, I start feeling real itchy to get up and go have an international adventure of my own. But no one has inspired me more than Mike Lewis, the most adventure-y adventurer we’ve heard from yet. This guy is going EVERYWHERE and seeing it ALL. On a motorcycle. I’m in love with his lack of fear in the face of living large. Hopefully you’ll feel equally buoyed after you read Mike’s dispatch. But what really drives the point home are Mike’s magnificent photos. If you don’t feel some wanderlust after looking at these, I think you might be travel asexual. My name is Mike Lewis. In 2008 I sold my home, office, business, and virtually everything else I owned so I could travel around the world on my motorcycle. At this writing, I am in Medellin, Colombia, and happily confess that the trip, so far, has exceeded all expectations. I made my decision back in April 2007. Without any major life crises or traumas to act as impetus, I simply came to the conclusion that something had to change. I had created a good life in Seattle and had achieved some success, but things felt flat. I was comfortable, but bored by life. So, for the next 4-1/2 years I will experience the highs and lows of a more challenging life. Challenged not by paying my monthly bills on time, or making next quarter’s projections, but how I will handle adversity. I am 45-years old and want to see what I am capable of. To see what kind of a man I have become. I wanted to get out of my office and become a global citizen. I want to experience different people and their cultures, eat their food, breath their air, and live were they live. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, and that’s perfectly fine by me. I now feel alive and inspired by life.
Jerusalem: check. Shanghai: check. London. CHECK. Check it out! Ellen is in London doing very important things and traveling ecstatically around the continent by EuroRail. She’s got beer, sunshine, Brighton Beach, and a bunch of blokes with accents surrounding her. Clearly, this woman could not be happier.  Who are you?
An ex-Sacramentan-Seattlite-New Yorker, currently expat residing in London. My accent is getting really weird. What are you doing?
Working as an attorney at the London office of an American law firm. Exploring London, the rest of the UK, and going to France as often as possible.
Where are you doing it?
In the north west corner of the City of London for the most part (my office), and also in Islington. Friday I put a deposit on a new flat in Belsize Park, which I also close to Primrose Hill, my favorite place in London (besides Liberty, aka the most beautiful department store on earth).
Why you have to be there and not here to do it?
If “here” is the US – I had lived in NYC for 5 years but never lived abroad, and was looking for a change. In the process I also got a smaller office environment, more client contact, and more responsibility, which is also great. If “here” is Seattle – there aren’t law firms like the one I work for in Seattle, and for now, I like my job. Why are you doing what you’re doing?
My job is extremely interesting and challenging and never boring. Like I said, after living in NY for 5 years I wanted a change but I wasn’t ready to move back to Seattle, and I wasn’t ready to move to SF, and I couldn’t think of another American city I would want to live in. New York can do that to you. If you had to do something else, what would you do?
Ideas I have had/stolen: Open a yoga studio/bakery, open a wine bar that only serves one region’s wine (region protected to maintain secrecy of this idea), become a house wife, work for the government, work as an in-house attorney for a corporation in Seattle … The list goes on. But the truth is, even though the hours can be long and the pressure can be intense, I can’t think of something I want to do more right now. Or maybe I’m just scared. Strangest cross-cultural encounter?
I was really weirded out for a long time by the fact that people here say “Are you all right?” in the way that Americans say “How are you?” In America ”How are you” is properly answered with “How are you?” and no one ever reveals how they actually are. But to ask someone “Are you all right” is, I think, the question you are instructed to ask when giving first aid – it sounds like a real question, and possibly an insinuation that you don’t look all right. It took me about 8 months but I finally got over it and don’t really hear the question as strange any more. Best foreign custom/fashion statement/food preparation you want to adopt yourself?
I am definitely into the shorts over tights thing which is very big here, and little lace up shoes, maybe with a heel, maybe not. The beer here is pretty good too, but that’s about all the positive things I have to say about the food. The food here is pretty bad. People will tell you it’s gotten better in the last 10 years, and that is frightening to me. Anything else that you think we should know?
I love traveling (I’ve made it to 5 continents and I vow to make it to the last 2 within the next 5 years), but it’s also fun living in a foreign country/city. It’s also amazing that I can go to Paris - PARIS! – for the weekend on a train. You could actually go just for a day to, say, see an art exhibit or go shopping. That is truly unbelievable to me, especially having grown up in the vast spaces of California, where LA is a bit of a long weekend trip. It’s also interesting just how different it is here, even though this is probably the culture that America shares the most in common with. The news is different, food is different, sports are different. I also think that living in vastly different parts of the US can almost be like living in a different country. Between being 18 and 28, I moved 4 times – first to Seattle, and then once every 5 years after that. I think moving is amazing. Change keeps you young. Still, my heart seems to have realized in the last few months that I left it in NYC. I’ll be headed back there in a year and I really can’t wait.
We got another ‘un! This week, allow me to introduce my friend and university compatriot, Phil Kaye. As well as a very talented spoken word poet and Big Man On Campus, Phil is- wouldn’t you know it?- an adventurer. In this short description, Phil gives a compelling account of what he’s doing right now over seas in Shanghai. Not your average summer job, to be sure.
Hey Everyone! Somehow or another, I’ve found myself living in Shanghai, China, working on a Chinese spin-off of American Idol. I’ve been trying my best to write down what’s happening around me – some of it is too good to be true (a few days ago I accidentally asked the taxi driver to “please come home with me” instead of “please take me to my home”). Its been wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time – but fantastically bizarre all the way around. I’m happy to share with everyone back in the U.S. and especially Seattle (which I’m pretty convinced is one of the best cities in the whole wide world). Here’s a little update and a few pictures – hope you enjoy! … I’m standing in front of a colossal abandoned coal processing plant. In the last week, a team of 60 workers has been working non-stop to transform the building from an abandoned factory to a Hollywood-style sound stage. There is little time left. In just 6 days, the Global CEO’s of Pepsi and Polo will stand where I am standing. China’s major TV station will have their camera’s rolling on this abandoned coal factory. And 60 million Chinese citizens will be watching on their television sets.
The television show, roughly translated, is called “The Voice of a Generation”. It has taken the successful format of American Idol (and its wildly popular Chinese counterpart) and has applied it the next logical musical progression: bands. Tonight is the “final audition”. It is just as ominous as it sounds – over 1,000 bands have tried out in twenty cities across mainland China. Now these last 17 have flown to Shanghai for this final audition, and the producers will pick the final 10 to be on the show. The band members are mostly kids. Despite their talent, most of them have never played for more than 60 or 70 people, maybe a crowded smoky Beijing nightclub at best. They are incredibly kind – I watch kids from different bands share food with each other. A bass player and a guitarist grab another guitar player’s hand when he trips on the hardwood floor. Tonight, they all sit on the top floor of a restaurant we have rented nearby, playing cards or chain smoking, nervously waiting to be called. Then there is me. My job is to bring the bands from the restaurant to the backstage; about a 6 minute walk – just enough for their nerves to settle and strike up polite conversation. We have a relationship of tacit fictions. I ask the band where they are from; they tell me that my Chinese is very good. This is a lie. I ask them where they are from again, and they tell me the name of their province. I tell them I have heard it is quite beautiful. This is also a lie. Most of the bands have little idea what they are getting themselves into. I tell them that Quincy Jones is here to watch. “Is she famous?” they ask. After seven hours and seventeen auditions, the judges have chosen the final 10 bands that will officially be on the show. My favorite band, a group of 25-year old blues players, are not chosen. The lead singer, whose eyes lit up earlier that afternoon after finding out I was from California, has trouble making eye contact with me after the show. “Why this happening? What we do wrong?” Early tomorrow morning, he will travel 9 hours by car back to his town, a few pop hooks away from what could have been a major television break. I don’t know what to say, but I tell them that if it was my show, they would be first pick. This, I tell him, is not a lie.
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I have been in India for almost two months now. I have spent my summer here traveling with two of my best friends, from Delhi to Mumbai to Chennai, working on a project called Networks for Peace. Its aim is to use a combination of face-to-face dialogue, research collaboration and digital media connectivity to create a platform for collaborative, policy-oriented engagement between top university students from Pakistan and India. 
