$10,000 and a trip to Bhutan. I'm so generous this week.
Getting Paid to Talk to Bourdain
I don't consider myself a foodie, but I've been thinking a lot lately about the question Tony Bourdain posed to his fellow food-lovers.
What does it mean to cook well?
Coming from a sustenance culinary tradition, I'm not used to always eating the most delectable dish or denying something less than favorable. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't shot my taste buds yet. I find this topic intriguing, and if you do too, you could very well win $10,000 just for documenting that opinion.
Not only do you get a big ol' pay day but a spot in the paperback edition of Medium Raw. To be published and rolling in the dough...what a surreal concept. Go for it!
And speaking of Tony, his post this week on the death of his good friend Michael Batterberry and his big break in writing is insightful and compelling.
Snap Your Shutter for Bhutan
This opportunity rolled around last year and got me salivating. A trip to Antarctica sounded fantastic, but the application seemed simplistic and, therefore, intimidating. Tell a story with 5 or less photographs...STRONG photographs. Should have gone for it; it's a trip to the last continent, by golly!
Bhutan Travel Scholarship
And now it's 2010, and a new travel scholarship from National Geographic and World Nomads has rolled into town. Tell a story with 5 or less photographs, and you could travel to Bhutan for a week alongside a NatGeo photographer, a truly once-in-a-lifetime learning experience for a budding shutter-snapper.
This year, the photographer is Jason Edwards, and he's got some words of advice for hopeful applicants:
The application deadline is October 17th (in Australia), so you've got some time to think about this opportunity and let your photographic story inspiration come to you.
Burma in Photos
Brave New Traveler sported a great photo essay on religious life in Burma. It's worth a look-see.
Burma Photo Essay
A Word from my Favorite Book
Rolf Potts quoted my favorite book this week at Vagablogging, and I believe the whole world would be enriched by a simple glance:
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest — in all its ardor and paradoxes — than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems — that is, issues requiring thought beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’. –Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel
Other Discoveries
Problogger has some great words of wisdom this week: Build your Blogs Voice, Monetization Ideas for the Little Guy, and the Content Producer's Copyright Checklist.
Join this discussion on Vagablogging: What pulls you back to the road?
Update on Nomadderwhere
August 8
I took a week off from Consume & Update due to a lack of compelling material on the net. It was weird. Normally there's always something worth sharing with others, but last week...dang, slim pickins. These weekly postings are for sharing good work, complimenting content producers, and contributing to the internet travel community. If you ever desire to be featured in these Sunday posts, feel free to contact me, so last week's debacle never happens again!
Anywho, guess who's back from the small town! I'm plunging head first into ProjectExplorer.org work and Nomadderwhere redesigning and content creating. I slapped May with a slew of work and left June starving. I need to get back to a regular schedule of good stuff. Your input is always encouraged.
And the future? Alexis Reller, my potluck roommate from Semester at Sea, is visiting next week, and I'm going to show her a gay ol' time in Indianapolis. We just may boast all of our fun times online!
And here's the work of the last two weeks:
As You Like (To See) It, A Traveler's Melancholy: Learning from Bill Shakespeare on the correlation between travel and happiness
The Art of Reinvention, Anonymity, and Self-Discovery in Travel: I certainly did some deep thinking while living out my Summer Seclusion Project
Journeys of a Lifetime in August: Offering you your monthly dose of travel inspiration, courtesy of National Geographic Traveler
Reviewing Dean Cycon's Javatrekker: Reflecting on a great compilation of travel stories from the coffee lands
