Traveling with a Purpose

How Millennials should travel

From a very young age, I’ve always had a dream to travel the world, make a positive global impact, and build an international lifestyle. I’ve always had an affinity for things such as a) international development, b) China’s diplomatic relationships, and c) the ability to build synergies across borders. It’s quite funny really that only a few months ago was I able to articulate something that was innate all along — my vision is to build a borderless world. And I believe it’s my destiny to do so because I hold strongly to the idea that there’s indeed a law of attraction that guides our lives. Whatever we naturally gravitate towards will come to light if we simply let it and push for it. That old saying — “it’s our light not our darkness that most fears us”. It’s dead simple really — we’re all born with a natural tendency towards things and it’s really up to us to let that inner nature free.

Anyway, enough esoteric sophistry, let’s get to the meat of the matter. But you see, the reason why it was important for me to talk about that vision of mine is because as I turn a new chapter and reach at least 1/4 of my entire lifespan (futuristically speaking, we should be able to live to 200 if all the life extension R&D pans out by those folks at Alphabet and whatnot), I look out into a new horizon that fits with that vision evermore. But I’ll go into this at the end of the article in more detail.

For now, let me talk about a philosophy I’ve always lived by and that is this whole concept of killing 2 or more birds with 1 stone. I’ve always subscribed to living life in this manner because it’s all about efficiency, effectiveness, and expediency. This is how I “carpe diem”, this is how I live my life to the fullest, and this is how I’ve always faced life. When it comes to travel, I’m only going to focus on my university years because all travels beforehand were dictated by others such as most of all, my parents. But, during my university years was when I finally had the independence to choose how I approached travel. And how pray-tell did I do it? Well it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? haha! I firmly don’t believe in traveling for the sake of traveling because that goes against my idea of killing multiple birds with one stone.

But you know what else? There’s this debate online about the differences between traveling and tourism that has made its rounds a while back. How the internet has defined it is basically this — “tourism is about cultural window shopping whereas traveling is about cultural immersion”. Or another way of looking at it is that tourism is bad because you’re only there to see the crème de la crème, whereas traveling is good because you’re there to experience the slices of life that make up that culture in its purest of forms. However, I would argue that both ways of travel are still too one-dimensional. Growing up in Winnipeg I’ve often heard of my Caucasian peers say this to me — “oh yeah, I’d love to go to China, but I’d only visit the countrysides” or “you’ve been to China? have you been to the countrysides?” but what they’re essentially saying is “if you want to experience another country, especially if it’s a developing country don’t go to the flashy places, just go to the impoverished places.” This is the wrong approach to travel. You’re glorifying one window into a culture over another either way. Glorifying the countrysides of China over the concrete jungles of Shanghai or Beijing is also insulting. One must take a balanced approach.

So, to “travel like a boss” is that approach, that attitude of I’ll respect your culture, but I’ll also respect my time, money, and resources enough to make the most of my time. It’s an attitude of what’s the best thing I can do, the most practical/pragmatic, and simply how can I give as well as receive from this trip to another land? Traveling like a boss isn’t about seeing the richest of the rich, the poorest of the poor, the plainest of the plain, the coolest of the cool, the hottest of the hot, or whatever, it’s about one thing and one thing only — to be a contributor, team-player, and productive member of that travel experience. To be “immersed” in another culture isn’t simply about sipping their drinks, eating their foods, dressing their clothing, speaking their language, and doing what they do. If that’s all you did, imitating their way of life you’re just as equally making a mockery of their way of life. Imitation can be a sign of flattery, but it can also be patronizing. Anyway…

To travel like a boss simply means to treat the experience as a way to benefit both yourself as well as the people there equally, to as I said before — be a team player. So what does that mean? How does that look like? How did I do it? How will I continue to do so? Well, let me get straight to the point — I’ve always traveled since the beginning of my university career in such a way that could kill at least 2 birds with 1 stone. I’ve since traveled always for a purpose such as a conference, competition, or community-event — ie. retreat and all related to entrepreneurship, leadership, social innovation, etc within some sort of high-impact fashion; all the while doing so in a frugal, cost-effective, and inexpensive way to boot!

And so, without further ado, let me list all the ways I’ve done so in no particular order:

1. Middle-East/Bahrain: AIESEC Global Community Development (unpaid) Internship where I taught entrepreneurship/leadership to university/high-school youth for 6 weeks during the summer.
2. New England — Pennsylvania: PennApps = my first ever hackathon, which ended up getting me hooked to the hackathon way of life
3. Las Vegas: Thiel Summit 2015 (U of T ended up paying for flight) where I was introduced to the “exponential/10x thinking” mindset and this amazing community of young innovators, disruptors, scientists, trailblazers, Top 30 Under 30 folks, Thiel Fellows, etc
4. Silicon Valley — 3X: Thiel Summit 2015 (a sequel to the above and the last of its kind sadly; the Thiel Foundation ended up reimbursing my flight ticket 100%), Hack the Planet (MLH’s first ever season-finale invite-only hackathon), and the Hive Fellowship where I developed that vision statement of mine
5. The Big Apple— 5X: Summer 2015, I had attended the Centre for Social Innovation NYC Branch 2nd Year Anniversary where I was able to partake in for $50 (roundtrip) as I had worked at the CSI Annex branch at the time with 21 Toys (a social venture / edtech company at the time). Spring 2015, I was able to attend TechCrunch Disrupt for free due to a part-time freelance work I was doing with an international nonprofit called “Hack for Big Choices”. Fall 2016, I applied and got accepted to attend the Start @ a Startup Conference 2016 — an all-expenses-paid startup career fair/conference. Summer 2018, I applied and got accepted to attend the Impact Summit. Fall 2018, I was awarded 2 VIP tickets to attend any upcoming Global Citizen Festival since I had participated in the IBM/Global-Citizen “Challenge Accepted” competition and so I chose to attend the one in NYC.
6. Ottawa = I had applied to and got accepted to this entrepreneurship summit organized by the Canadian government called Youth Can Do It!
7. Europe Part I — Munich, Germany = it was because of Hack the Planet, where our team won the sponsor prize presented by BMW Motorrad which allowed us to be flown to Munich for free for more than a week and during Oktoberfest too!
8. Europe Part II — Munich, Germany again = I had applied and got accepted to this 3-month experiential learning program called The Digital Product School.
9. The Caribbean — Bahamas = Starter Island, pretty self-explanatory: a Caribbean entrepreneurship competition.
10. Silicon Savannah = 1 = EWB Fellowship with Numida as a UX/UI Designer. Though I had tragically lost this opportunity to do so and you can learn all about why/how by reading this.

There are 3 takeways from this:

A. Don’t tour, don’t even travel, build bridges!

B. Always be opportunistic, always be on the lookout for opportunities such as these, always try to maximize/optimize your chances at work & pleasure. Remember that there are numerous doors out there for you to expand your horizons, become more, get more out of life, and give more. Know that there are more open doors out there than closed ones. As the old saying goes — “when one door closes, another opens”.

C. And last but not least — this one has a bit of a lead-up:

As I mentioned above how I feel like I’m finally on my way to living that dream I had ever since I was young, I truly feel like what I’m about to do is my calling. You see, my university years have come full circle — during my first year, I joined a nonprofit called Engineers without Borders and despite the fact that I love this nonprofit to bits and pieces I still left it. I left it for another organization about international development called AIESEC. Then I left that organization to pursue a career in tech, specifically UX/UI Design through numerous activities such as involving myself in tech-related nonprofits like the Nspire Innovation Network to the Thiel Foundation community all about that exponential thinking / 10x thinking way of life, to social entrepreneurship-related activities such as Starter Island, an entrepreneurship competition in the developing nation of The Bahamas. Also, there was that experience I had with “Hack for Big Choices” which primarily works in Africa and Silicon Savannah. I had embarked on a personal/professional journey of identity-building, skills-building, and values-building. From this, I somehow found my way back to Engineers without Borders and now it really seems as if everything that came before me has coalesced or simply put — has been amounting to this one thing now. The combination of international development, social entrepreneurship, tech & design with this EWB Fellowship in a fintech company in the heart of a developing nation to be a UX/UI Designer is truly breathtakingly something of a dream-come-true for me, but also a manifestation of everything that I am.

So all this is to say this — “your character defines your destiny”. Your character is based on many factors — values, skills, personality traits, passions, dreams, mission/vision, and many more. Or in other words, this is something I’ve always held onto — “it’s who you are that determines where you’ll end up”.

There’s this age-old debate about whether or not it’s destiny or free-will that reigns supreme, with this additional debate about whether they can either coexist or not. My take on the matter is the former and it’s manifest in how my life has shaped up. It’s who I am that has led me to where I’m going. Seek out your natural affinities and build them up / lean in to them.

PS — I’ve also developed a natural affinity towards the exponential technology known as “blockchain”, which will be that disruptive technology that can truly bring about that borderless world.