clover

Hello 2011, pleased to meet you

2010 ended in a frantic rush around the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Two taxis were weaving through traffic, desperately trying to make it to a club before the stroke of midnight. After a frantic twenty or so minutes we made it inside. I then proceeded to drop a full bottle of Johnny Walker onto the tiled floor.

As luck would have it, it didn’t break. Since that moment I have embarked on what many people would likely consider to be, a lucky streak.

Back in 2006, I met a couple of drunken Germans at a bar in Shanghai. One of them told me about an awesome film he just watched called Matchpoint. I ended up finding it a few months later and watching it out of curiosity. It one of those movies that makes you think. Essentially, it is all about luck. How it changes, what effects it and how important it is in our lives.

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looking back

Looking back at 2010 – My best year ever

This time last year I looked back on 2009 and said to myself that it had been the best year of my life. The main reason was that I quit my day job to travel the world. I had a lot of fun those first few months but then decided I needed to find some way to make some money. From September 2009 to December 2009 I tried numerous internet based business ideas but nothing came to fruition. If I’m being honest the last week of 2009 was a bit of a downer for me as I had no clue what I was going to do.

2010 kicked off with a crazy new year party where, despite the average age being 40+, everyone seemed to end up in the pool. It was also the first “old people” party that I’ve been to with podium dancers and smoke machines!

Four days later I met up with Pete (Pedro/crazy Pete/yeah that guy) in Singapore and kicked off what would become an awesome few months. Pete is about as high energy as you can possibly get so whatever you are doing, it is always more fun with him around. We headed to Koh Tao in Thailand for some more diving and had a pretty awesome time. It was here that I learned a hell of a lot more about nutrition and fitness – something that 2011 will be all about for me. I learned about the job opportunities in Australia for temporary tractor drivers. I can still hardly believe that I can put “farmer” on my resume now, but it really was a great job.

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KL_HDR

Escaping the cold of winter of Europe

London -3°C, Budapest -15°C, Kuala Lumpur 32°C

It seems like I made it out of Europe at exactly the right time. In Budapest, we had a surprisingly warm November but as it moved into final month of 2010 things took a downward spiral. It got cold, very cold. Now was the time to fly East for the winter in search of warmer climates.

After what seemed like 5 minutes sleep, I awoke at 4am on Saturday morning and took a taxi to Budapest airport. KLM had decided it would be a good idea to move my flight forward so it was now even earlier – 06:30 in the morning. In what is completely abnormal for me, I did not go out partying the night before the flight. As such, I was there on time and without hangover. Not a bad start.

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ams1

Bitterballen in Amsterdam

At 1am on Saturday morning I finally feel asleep. At 4am my alarm goes off and it is time to get up. Despite feeling like I had a grand total of 5 minutes sleep, the adrenaline kicks in as I know it is time to travel once again. My destination is Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where I will be spending around 1 month before I return back to Budapest.

Christmas time of year always means high prices on flights. The two cheapest options to KL from Budapest are EgyptAir via Cairo or KLM via Amsterdam. Not having been to Cairo, I was tempted by this. However there cheap ticket meant that no stopover was possible. I therefore chose to go via Amsterdam and spend 12 hours there. Ok, so I had to get up at 4am to do this but I’m glad I chose to do this. It was a great day and I was so tired on the flight to KL that I slept for a good amount of time.

My parents used to live in Den Haag in the Netherlands and as a result I have visited Amsterdam quite a few times. This time, however, I had a local to show me around. I met my friend Linda and promptly hit Starbucks for some tea. I had made this smart decision not to bring a jacket, as I didn’t want to carry it around Asia. Fortunately, Amsterdam was a little warmer than Budapest today so I didn’t suffer too badly for this.

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My trip to Slovakia – The future of Europe?

My trip to Slovakia – The future of Europe?

Slovakia is a country I knew relatively little about until this weekend. All I knew was that it used to part of Czechoslovakia and the company I used to work for had a called center there once. I was meant to go to the capital, Bratislava (or Presburg for zee Germans) about 6 weeks ago but had to abort the trip due to hangover related illness.

Last week I was out at a bar with some friends when I was telling them the story about how I never made it to Bratislava. My friend Kati is actually from Slovakia. Well, she was born there, grew up there and has citizenship there but still considers herself Hungarian – more on this later in the post. She was going there at the weekend to visit her parents and invited me along. Being exceptionally impulsive when it comes to travel, as I am, I instantly said yes.

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borat

Entrepreneurial musings – I am a champion!

I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart and I have always known, unmistakably, that when I grew up I wanted to own my own business. The most common question people would ask me when I said that was “Doing what?”.

I never really knew how to answer this. While it’s true that I didn’t have a clue what kind of business I wanted to run, I didn’t really feel like it mattered. Judging from the various enterprising schemes I ran as a kid, I could have ended up doing just about anything. Fortunately, I haven’t ended up as a Pokemon card distributor or a DVD pirate.

For those who don’t know, I’ve been playing around a lot with internet marketing techniques as a way to make money from various websites I own (this being one of them). I’ve had a lot of failed attempt and thousands of hours or work have yielded little results. Until now that is.

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