My wife and I will be heading to Australia and Thailand in less than a month. Instead of looking forward to the vacation is excitement, I’ve found myself looking forward with worry. A flight across the United States is almost more than I can stand. I’m not sure how I’ll do on several hours of flights. I’m starting to think that if I had an Amazon Kindle, I could catch up on a lot of eBooks I have waiting for me. Unfortunately a real computer will probably run out of battery quickly. I would even be tempted to pick up a Kindle if I found a cheap one on Craigslist. No luck on the Sony eReader either.
The other thing that worries me is keeping up with Lazy Man and Money. I know that when you are on vacation, you should be on vacation. Still I would like to make sure that spammy comments are kept out, read the good comments that people are leaving behind, catch up with advertising, etc. I worry that there will be no Internet connection or that it will be an outrageous amount to use per minute. On top of that, I need to have a month’s worth of content ready for you guys to read. I’ve never had more than a week before. I have outlines on 10-15 stories – even a couple of sentences for each – but I may have to use those in the short term as well. Do I have the creative juice to do it all in advance? Do I risk not having it all ready and hope to fill in with some articles “on the road”?
While I’m checking my spam filter for cheap places to order Xanax online, enjoy these links.
Articles from The Money Writers that I liked this week:
- Looking for an unconventional Roth IRA strategy to lower tax bill? My Dollar Plan presents hers.
- Write it down is Million Dollar Journey’s tip of the week.
- Money Smart Life says make more money & be happy in your job using a work portfolio.
- What are the 5 signs that say your job sucks? Brip Blap knows and if they apply to your job then it’s pretty clear that you are in need of change.
- Do you know what the 10 hottest mutual funds in 2008 are? Not sure? Read the Sun’s Financial Times to find out.
- Ouch! Hackers steal 40 million credit and debit card numbers – has your number been stolen? Store List provided at Generation X Finance.
- Digerati Life asks, how would you grade your money management skills? What’s your answer?
From outside The Money Writers:
- Ten things teens should know about money over at 5 Cent Nickel followed by the state of financial education in the U.S. looks at financial education pretty critically. What aren’t your teens learning?
- Consumer Commentary says bottled water? What was I thinking? Read more for a look at how gas prices and food prices connect. Save on tap!
- Mighty Bargain Hunter writes there is NOTHING unpatriotic about retiring early. What do you think?
Internet in Thailand was easy & cheap in my experience–like $2/hour cheap. I’m a big fan of sleeping the whole way on flights that long (Benadryl!), but I know it doesn’t work for everyone.
Depending on your airline most international flights now have those personal TVs. They have lots of movies, TV, video games etc. It was plenty of entertainment for me! What sucks though is the time spent in airports.
We are trying to fly for free with the military. We will be quite lucky to get seats on the plane ;-).
The flight will suck – no way around it. I flew Toronto to Perth in 2003 and it was just awful – part of the problem was that the flight from T.O. left in the afternoon and had a long stopover in San Fran. I had time for quite a few beers and was ready for bed but had to do the big hop over to Sydney. The journey was so long that I was able to view 7 movies and one of them one repeated! The flight back was much better.
In Oz there were tons of internet cafes at that time 1-2 bucks/hr. Not sure if there will be as many now but I don’t think getting on the internet will be a problem for you.
Mike
Oh. Well maybe you’ll have to buy a lot of books then. :)
I travel all the time for work, all across the country and the world. If you want something that will keep you company on long flights I’d highly suggest the Archos 605 (http://www.archos.com/products/gen_5/index_605.html?country=us&lang=en). I’ve had the 160GB version for a long time, it’s awesome. I’ve got about 100 movies on it and about 60GBs of music. And if you buy a USB car charging kit, you’ll never run out of juice on flights.
As an alternative to a Kindle, I have a Palm T/X, (its about $300, but multi functional)which I have pre-loaded SD cards with txt files, pdf’s and ebook files. I like to carry it when I fly. I know people that do this with Ipods as well but the T/X has a larger screen.
There are free ebook readers for Palm available online, as well as lots of public domain ebooks. There are several publishers that offer free ebooks as well. I have wifi capability – in all honesty good for reading email, but not really that good for posting. I’m not sure how long the battery actually lasts, because flying and reading make me sleepy but I have read for 2-3 hours during flights with my t/x.
No worries mate, the flight is overnight so you can sleep most of the way. Infact take your laptop on board and you can spend 3-4 hrs writing articles (more if you have a second battery). I have done the US to Australia trip about 12 times….long but the reward at the end is worth it.