The Three Magic Kings

Today is January 6th, or the Epiphany, a public holiday in many Western Christian countries. In Spain, we celebrate it by giving presents to the family members, emulating the visitation of the Magi or Three Magic Kings to Baby Jesus. Other countries have other traditions, such as the Befana in Italy, but all of them are related to the gifts received by Jesus from the Three Wise Men. Last year I already posted Christmas day for Dummies, so I won’t give further explanations. I will only say that today is actually the most familiar day of the holidays in Spain and that I wish I could be at my parents' house instead of working at my office 12,000+ kms away!

The real stuff

I hope someone can help me with a question that remains unanswered from last year’s post. Who the heck is Santa Claus and why does he live in Finland?

IDL, speaking of which…

The geography of the Pacific islands is not easy if you are not from there or have travelled the area extensively. Long story short, the Samoa archipelago is divided into the Eastern, 55k people strong, American Samoa (part of the US), and the Western, 179k populous Independent State of Samoa. So, the second one has just decided, along with New Zealand territory Tokelau, to jump into the future. I was going to explain the motivations and background of this move, but I think this video is self-explanatory. As a result of the jump, December 30, 2011 never existed in Samoan history.

Heck of a mess

Apparently, it is not the first innovation from Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sailele Malielegaoi, who already changed the country's road code, from driving on the right to driving on the left two years ago. Of course, a decision is rarely unanimous and after the last change, several of the 775 Samoans with birthdays on December 30 filled a complaint to Tuila'epa. Oh well, at least they got paid without having to actually work!

Crossing the (international date) line

For the first time in my life, I crossed the International Date Line or IDL last December 21st. For those not familiar with the term, the IDL is an imaginary line that separates one calendar day from the next, at around the 180° longitude of our planet. I crossed it eastbound flying from Hong Kong to New York on Dec 21st and crossed it westbound flying back home on Jan 1st. When you cross it eastbound, you earn a day, and you lose it when you do it the other way around. Or at least that was what my flight itinerary said.

Take the World. Put a drawing pin in Hong Kong. Another one in New York City. Now think about the shortest path to cover that flight. Eastbound? Westbound? Wrong. The shortest flight is actually through the North Pole! As we learned in school, our planet is flattened at the poles and the equatorial radius (6,378kms) is slightly larger than the polar radius (6,357kms). You have an idea of this when you do a MAD-SIN and the total flying time is shorter when going through LHR than when going via DXB, but the HKG-JFK (and JFK-HKG) is an extreme case.

A couple of screenshots from my last flight JFK-HKG – quite impressing

Another effect of such flights is obviously the time difference. HK is right now 13h ahead of NY, and the flying time is roughly 16h. This means that a HKG-JFK takes only 3 hours, but you need 29h for a JFK-HKG. Even funnier is to fly a 14h HKG-LAX (with a 16h difference between both cities), when you arrive two hours before you depart!

Post #100

I am happy to close year 2011 with my post number 100, barely 13 months after my sister convinced me to create a blog. I don't think I have many loyal followers, but it's more about random readers mainly coming from Facebook or LinkedIn links, i.e. people bored enough to read an article written by me from time to time. I have many people coming across the blog by chance from very different places around the world (some of them very weird) but I have not managed to make them recurrent yet. I am enjoying anyway the writing and will keep doing it in 2012. I have tried to fine-tune the tone and subject of the posts, which now focus on the relationship of politics, finance and globalization. Stats are quite confusing, and some tools say I have received 8k+ visits, others talk about barely 2.3k. I would say StatCounter is the most accurate (my IPs are blocked, so it does not include my visits) and according to them I have just reached 4,000 visits, i.e. 40 visits per entry on average. Not bad for an inexperienced writer and a non-native speaker.

Global coverage

Bye-bye 2011, and thanks!

So here we are, heading towards the end of year 2011. Christmas is a time to indulge oneself with expensive food and drinks, but also an occasion to make balance of the year, to think about what went right and wrong, and to plan the year ahead. As I mentioned in my 2010 balance, my planning has proven to be usually wrong and I won't do any projection for 2012, but I am still assessing how I have performed in 2011:

• Personal life – To be fair, I never adapted 100% to the life in the Gulf, and I was quite low at the beginning of the year. I fought to change this and I moved to a new city where I have finally found my place, at least for now. Living 12,000+ km. away from home doesn’t help when your parents are getting older and your nephew (soon to be nephews) cuter, but this is the price I have to pay for my ambitions. Sometimes moving this much means coming across a lot of people but not getting close to any; however I have met wonderful people this year and I am very grateful for this too. I have also tried to make my way back to sports and got the running bug, apart from some sporadic return to open-water swimming – this means that I am closing 2011 with more than 10kg less than I did 2010, and that I will be attempting a half and a full marathon early next year. Finally, I have carried on with this blog, trying to improve the tone and focus of my almost 100 articles – see next post.
• Professional life – As they say, crisis usually brings opportunities and I have received very different job offers this year. Your decisions at 30 years old are critical as they can change your whole life, so I have been very careful when assessing them. I know I could be making more money in another country or working for another firm, however I believe I am giving a strong projection to my career and I am happy to be where I am. For instance, I have had to renounce to a challenging academic project but it will hopefully be in lieu of a fulfilling professional development, related to the relationship Asia-LatAm. I still have not pursued that venture I have always wanted to, and I know I should before I get familiar responsibilities, so I will try to address this sooner rather than later. 
• Travels – This deserves to be a section apart as I still follow a ten-new-countries-per-year policy. Contrary to popular beliefs, I have no three months holidays, nor do I make tons of money. But I’m able to renounce to other pleasures such as expensive foods or clothes in order to travel this much. In 2010 I visited (and drove in) the five continents. In 2011 I have missed Africa, but I have still added 10 new countries to my traveller cv, now standing at 43 – still missing 150 out there. In 2012 I will still focus on Asia-Pacific, hopefully including a few island countries. 

Ten new countries per year

To sum up, let’s thank 2011 for the good things it has brought to us and let’s try to get even better in 2012. Forget about the financial crisis folks; your life is happening right now, so try to make the most of it!

Long-haul flights

Being from an island, fear of flying was never an option to me. However, my first flight of more than four hours non-stop happened only in 2007. One of my South African "boets" was getting married and I had to catch a ten-hours, very impressive at the time, flight from Madrid to Johannesburg (MAD-JNB). I managed it quite well (I have an easy and deep sleep), and since then these flights have been more the norm than the exception, e.g. LHR-HKG (11h approx.), MAD-EZE (13h approx.) or DOH-MEL (14h approx.). Next Wednesday morning, I will be doing my personal best with a HKG-JFK (15h35' scheduled) and 12 days later, with a JFK-HKG (16h05' scheduled), the 10th longest non-stop flight at the moment. So, out of curiosity, how farther could I go? What are the longest haul flights operated at present in the world? Here is the list:

As old wise Wikipedia mentions, "the longest non-stop flights currently running are not the longest city pairs theoretically possible. Flights on the Kangaroo route, if flown non-stop, would exceed 17,000 kilometres. The longest routes possible are between antipodes, i.e. a distance of 20,038 km at the equator."

Never say never - 5th Wonder climbed

Has it ever happened to you that you say you will never do something and months later you find yourself doing so willingly? When I left the Middle East months ago I thought I was not prepared to visit India and to immerse myself any further in the Indian culture. Yet, last weekend I visited Delhi and had the chance to climb my 5th world wonder. I remember I was very impressed by the Great Wall of China and by Petra, not so by the Colosseum or by the Giza Pyramids. I can say now that Taj Mahal is just breathtaking. Such a pity you don't get to see it in silence without people hassling and trying to scam you non-stop, but to the credit of India, this happens in every major tourist attraction of the world. 

Just missing the "Latin" ones now