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The endless summer
Work Your Way Around the World, $6 It’s many a graduate’s dream — pay your way as you travel around the world. I lived the dream myself when I was younger, so I know it is possible. Since then I’ve been tracking this subject faithfully, and have read through scores of books and websites offering how-to advice on the dream. They won’t hurt, but this fantastic book — now in its 14th edition! — is really the only one that will give you much help before you leave.
Most of these kind of books are a bunch of hand-waving generalities, or out of date particulars; this one is very specific and very current. It is massively researched, with tons of incoming gossip on where the easily-gotten jobs are this year, and what to do about paperwork and visas in that particular place, and how to land the job, and what you should expect, and letters from those who just did it. It’s all very helpful, practical and inspiring. But don’t get your hopes too high. There are really only two kinds of dependable quick jobs to be found “around the world”: 1) In the service industry in Europe — working at hotels, resorts, bars, camps for other tourists; and 2) teaching English in Asia. For most kids, that’ll be enough. There are hundreds of exceptions to these two, and this book will do its best to point you to them, but they are far fewer, and more dependent on chance. But even that skill — cultivating chance — is tackled with great intelligence in this meaty book, which I can’t recommend too much.
The author Susan Griffith is very prolific and at the center of a number of other related ongoing books, also recommended: Teaching English Abroad, Your Gap Year, and Summer Jobs Worldwide. – KK
How to sell your crafts
The Handmade Marketplace, $13 The giant crafts website Etsy makes it easy to list homemade stuff to a potential audience of millions. But the hard part is getting anyone to pay attention and actually buy it. That requires some basic business and online marketing skills, which are reviewed here, with the home crafter in mind. – KK
What best advice would you offer a crafter who is looking to gain national attention for their work? Invest in great product photography. Great work sells itself, so you need to do everything possible to make sure the beauty of your work comes through in a way that’s apparent to people reading about you online or in print because most people won’t see your work in person.
Are you getting some really great feedback about something in particular that you’ve made? Consider posting these compliments in the description of your item.
Keep these customer service practices in mind at all times: The customers may not always be right, but they do deserve your full attention and respect regarding the matter at hand. Apologize first. What if you didn’t do anything wrong? you may ask. Well, while that may be the case, that’s not really the point. You can, in fact, regret that your customer is upset in any regard. Simply recognizing that your buyer has a problem and has had to take the time out of a busy day to alert you to it is reason enough to apologize. Ask what will make the situation right. If what the customer wants is reasonable and you can do it, you should consider it. Taking a hit on a sale is a small price to pay when it comes to your overall reputation and the trust you are trying to build with your market.
Everyone is in sales
To Sell is Human, $16 Dan Pink argues that hard selling no longer works as it once did; what we need in this new information economy is soft selling. Soft sales are not just for sales people; everyone now is in the business of selling. Soft persuasion techniques are useful to anyone sending an email, writing a resume, doing a kickstart project, even twittering. A seller – either professional or citizen – can no longer rely on the old tactics such as “overcoming objections” and “closing an offer” but must shift to new skills such as improvisation, attunement, and service. Pink arrives at the radical idea that selling well makes us better humans, and better humans sell better. This book accomplished two things: it persuaded me that I am in sales, and it gave me some new tools for gently selling what I have to offer. – KK
Successful negotiators recommend that you should mimic the mannerisms of your negotiation partner to get a better deal. For example, when the other person rubs his/her face, you should, too. If he/she leans back or leans forward in the chair, you should, too. However, they say it is very important that you mimic subtly enough that the other person does not notice what you are doing, otherwise this technique completely backfires. Also, do not direct too much of your attention to the mimicking so you don’t lose focus on the outcome of the negotiation. Thus, you should find a happy medium of consistent but subtle mimicking that does not disrupt your focus.
After someone hears your pitch … 1. What do you want them to know? 2. What do you want them to feel? 3. What do you want them to do? If you’ve got strong answers to these three questions, the pitch will come together more easily.
One way to do better is with what I call “emotionally intelligent signage.” Most signs typically have two functions: They provide information to help people find their way or they announce rules. But emotionally intelligent signage goes deeper. It achieves those same ends by enlisting the principles of “make it personal” and “make it purposeful.” It tries to move others by expressing empathy with the person viewing the sign (that’s the personal part) or by triggering empathy in that person so she’ll understand the rationale behind the posted rule (that’s the purposeful part).
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A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
I love works that are renewed and improved. Carl Franz and Lorena Havens have been exploring the hinterlands of Mexico and reporting back their travel suggestions in amusing detail since their first edition of this book in 1972. For four decades this venerable guidebook has been the best manual for visiting Mexico, getting better with each edition. It has just been released in its 14th. Franz and Havens are not going to be much help in keeping you up to date with the best hotel in the usual tourist destinations (your standard Lonely Planet-ish guide will handle that). Where The People’s Guide transcends the usual guidebook is in its devotion to the blue highways and backlands, the off beat places and indigenous living.
This guide is best for those driving around Mexico in a vehicle, camping in its many parks, exploring its meandering dirt roads, hanging out on undeveloped beaches, sampling native foods and immersing yourself into the culture of our neighbor as much as possible. It’s chock full of all the advice you’d expect from a couple who have been noodling around Mexico every year for thirty five years: how to live off the land, keep on the right side of the law, shop for strange and exotic foods, survive, educate yourself in local customs, and remain healthy and sane. It’s a fat 700-page book with lots of great stories, and endless good counsel. (They run a supplementary website for updated tips.)
A lot of this lore is universal travel wisdom (the less money you spend the more fun you have). In fact The People’s Guide to Mexico is one of the best travel guides I’ve ever seen to anywhere in the world. You could easily transfer many of their tips to traveling in Asia or Africa, and the rest of Latin America. But the bulk of it is very particular to Mexico. Every page yields golden nuggets of fine advice for every part of a very large Mexico. I find myself reading whole chapters for the pure enjoyment of being in the presence of great, gifted guides teaching me useful stuff I didn’t know.
The Mexico/US borders is one the most abrupt borders in the world. There’s almost no where else on earth where you can travel so far in so few miles as crossing this imaginary line. This trip has the additional benefit of being guided by this amazing encyclopedia of practical tips and insights. You’d be a fool not to take it with you.
It’s the operating manual for people in Mexico. — KK
Building a palapa
I climbed over other passengers and cargo to the cab of the truck, determined to check our speed."Hey," I yelled back to Lorena, "It's really not so bad after all. We're only doing 90 to 100 kilometers an hour. That's fast but not so dangerous." I took another peek through the rear window; a curve was coming up and we were slowing to 70. i was just about to turn and work my way back when I noticed a small "MPH" beneath the speedometer needle.MPH! I felt the blood drain from my face and go roaring through my ears and down to my feet. Seventy into a curve! One hundred on the straightaway!"Let me off! Let me off!" I screamed, pounding the roof of the cab with my fists. I got a glimpse of the driver's startled face turned toward the rear of the truck.
Many common driving hazards and annoyances found in the U.S. are also in Mexico, though usually in a slightly altered form.In the U.S., the omnipresent teenager hunched birdlike behind the wheel of his 400-hp candy-colored, air-foiled Supercar, passes you dangerously close at 140 mph as he calmly munches a DoubleBurger and squeezes an annoying pimple.In Mexico, he's still the same basic teenager, apparently oblivious to other traffic and mesmerized by the blaring radio and the dangling ornaments that festoon mirrors and knobs. But there is one difference: He's behind the wheel of a hurtling semi-truckload of sugarcane. And he's passing you on a blind mountain curve. You glance over, afraid to imagine what is about to happen. He grins, flashes a peace sign and cuts you off as he swerves to miss an oncoming bus.Low-flying buzzards are a very real hazard, as are piles of drying corn, beans and chili peppers placed on the hot pavement by enterprising farmers who prefer the smooth road surface to the dusty shoulder.As you fly around a curve and find yourself unexpectedly in the middle of small village, it seems that everyone suddenly leaps up and crosses the street, forcing you to brake madly. Pigs that haven't moved from gooey wallows for a week lurch frantically to their feet and stumble in front of the car, followed by reckless children beating them with twigs.These are relatively minor hazards that you'll soon become used to. For really serious trouble, nothing compares to other drivers."They may be wild, but they're damn good!" is a comment you might hear, especially about Mexican truck drivers. If good driving involves good sense, however, they must surely be among the worst. Many truckers would be disqualified from a destruction derby on ground of excessive zeal and disregard for human life.The good news is that the average Mexican chofer (driver) is definitely getting better. Drivers are more courteous and less likely to indulge in macho grandstanding while behind the wheel of the family car. Bus drivers have also gotten the message about safety and many of them could give lessons to American drivers.Still, it is dangerously easy for tourists to fall into the same driving habits they see demonstrated by others. When you're breathing fumes behind a slow diesel truck in a steep mountain pass, the temptation to pass on a blind curve can be very strong. At this point, you should seriously consider what the consequences are if you don't make it.
Diarrhea and Dysentery Powdered scorpions, chia and 7Up, camomile and "dog tea," food enzymes, acidophilus, papaya seeds, dried apricot pits: When it comes to upset stomachs, nausea, diarrhea, and disenteria, I've tried almost everything. As a firm believer in the value of medical plants and folk remedies, I'm sorry to announce that a dose of bismuth solution (such as Pepto-Bismol) seems to beat them all. In fact, our experience clearly shows that taking the pink stuff in moderate doses before, during, and even after traveling can dramatically reduce stomach problems.Though it is effective, I'm no fan of bismuth's cloying pink taste and I don't like to pour it repeatedly into my stomach. I now take about half of an adults dosage (one tablespoon 3-4 times a day). I start my bismuth program a few days before leaving home and continue taking it once or twice a day for about a week. If my stomach shows no sign of rebellion in that time, I go to "standby" and keep the bismuth close at hand in the event of sudden turmoil.
In Mexico, "look before you leap" isn't just an expression, it's a survival tip. Forget about bandits; the greatest threat to your safety comes from slippery cobblestones, uneven sidewalks, knee-high curbs, head-knocking signs, eye-poking awnings, toe-stubbing thresholds, open trenches, unexpected drop-offs and discarded construction debris.
Keep track of your personal belongings. When Lorena and I lead tours or travel with friends, we continually pick up our companions' stray cameras, passports, purses and room keys. Tourists routinely walk away from their suitcases, leave their credit cards at souvenir shops and their only shoes at the beach, and can't recall which lavanderia (laundry) they left their clothes in.A fellow we traveled with in eastern Mexico left his binoculars hanging on a chair in the restaurant of a small hotel. By the time he realized his mistake, we were hundreds of miles away and couldn't go back. When I returned to the hotel two years later, the owner's first words were, "I have the binoculars your friend forgot. ... As a postscript, the fellow who lost and regained the binoculars returned to travel with us again. This time he left a very expensive Nikon camera in the washroom of a museum. In this case, however, the camera had vanished by the time we returned for it.
If you’re thinking of doing a road trip to Alaska, The Milepost is a must-have. This thick publication, revised annually, has mile-by-mile conditions of all the major highways in Alaska and other northern points, including Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and the Yukon.
It’s available in some brick and mortar bookstores, and online from their website.
-- Regis
"What is the best time of year to go?" is one of the most frequently asked questions about traveling to Alaska. During the summer, the weather in the North is as variable and unpredictable as anywhere else. Go prepared for both hot, sunny days and cold, rainy days. Regardless of weather, the Alaska Highway is open all year.May: fewer people on the road, can be fine weather. June: long days averaging 20 hours of daylight. July: busiest month on the highway, can also be the wettest. August: trees start to turn colors, nights get chilly. September: fall colors, first frost and snow possible in some areas, uncrowded ferries.
Is the Alaska Highway paved? All of the Alaska Highway is paved, although highway improvement projects- such as the Shakwak Project between Haines Junction and the AK-YT border-often mean motorists have to drive miles of gravel road through construction areas, bringing into question whether that statement is altogether accurate. But the Alaska Highway is much improved from what is was even 20 years ago. It was during the 1980s that many of the rerouting and paving projects were completed. By 1992, the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Highway, the last section of original gravel road had been rerouted and paved.
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
