travels of bryan

This friday, the 9th, will be my last day at Six Apart. My wife, Laurie, and I will soon embark on a year long trip around the world. On Saturday we will fly to Atlanta for a few days to see my family, and then Charlotte to see hers. Then, on January 20th we will fly to Casablanca, Morroco to start the West Africa section of our trip. We'll be visiting Morroco, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, and Ghana. Then we'll head to the Middle East to see Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. Then East Africa to Ethiopia and Kenya. Finally, we'll end our trip in India and Nepal. Of course, this rough itinerary is subject to change due to weather, war, ticket prices, indigestion, and romantic spontaneity.

We're very excited to say the least, but we're also sad to leave San Francisco. We've had a lot of fun over the last few years, and we'll miss you all.

Naturally we'll be blogging about our trip. Being the photo nerds that we are, we'll be taking lots of pictures, too. You can find our trip blog at brainplug.org/worldtrip although it's a little empty right now.

A few years ago Laurie and I went to Southeast Asia for three months, so the idea of a year long trip is not entirely insane to us, but we've never done anything this long before, either. We wanted to do something like this before we "settle down" and have kids. We realized that we weren't ready to stop traveling after that trip, and so the idea of this upcoming trip started to grow and fester in our heads until we recently sat down and actually bought the plane tickets. We know that much of our journey will be amazing, but it will also be very challenging.

While in Asia, and on other trips to places like Central America, we saw first hand how a large part of the rest of the world lives. In America, we often take for granted how lucky we are to have been born into such wealth and prosperity. As Warren Buffet always says, "You won the ovarian lottery." Even if you don't take your way of life for granted, it's hard to imagine actually living on less than $2 per day as over three billion people do. I've seen it first hand up close, and yet I still can't fathom it.

After that trip, Laurie and I wanted to help raise awareness of various issues around the globe. In our spare time we started Collective Lens, a nonprofit organization that aims to bring attention to important causes and charities through the use of photography. Our goal is to help bring important yet overlooked stories to the forefront of popular media. Check it out at www.collectivelens.com and upload photos if you have any. Organizations can list their contact information so that anyone wanting to get involved with a particular issue can find out how. While on our trip, we plan to meet with various organizations that are doing important work. We'll be blogging about this over the next year on the Collective Lens blog.

So, thanks to all of you who have made our time here in San Francisco great. We won't forget you, and we'll be back eventually.

Ok people, I have a gripe. If you knew me in high school, and you want to be my friend on facebook, then you have got to follow some basic rules. After all, it's been so long that 1) I don't remember you and 2) You look very different now than you did then.

1. Make sure your facebook profile picture is of you and not your 3 year old kid. I don't recognize that kid. I could hardly recognize you anyway, especially now that you've had that kid.
   
2. Ladies, if you're married, put your maiden name as your middle name so that when your picture sucks, I can still try to figure out who you are.
3. If you do become my facebook friend, you are then obligated to send me a message or post on my wall saying something nice. A simple "hey it's been a long time!" will suffice. If you say nothing, that's pretty much how our relationship was in high school, and I'd like to think that we're beyond that now. Aren't you the one that initiated this internet relationship, anyway?
4. Stop spamming everyone with those stoooopid application invitations (especially if you didn't follow rule #3).
   

James Nacthwey, one of the greatest war and documentary photographers of our time, won the TED Prize in 2007. His wish was to bring awareness to an important cause which was kept a secret until today. Now Nachtwey has released his photos, and they are in support of XDRTB.org, an organization working to fight extremely drug-resistant TB around the world which affects millions.

I'm thinking about making a photo book on Chinatown (using something like Blurb.com's bookmaking service). I want to do this because 1) I'm a photography nerd and 2) I live really close to Chinatown and have been accumulating quite a few photos.

So to all of you out there familiar with Chinatown, what should I include in this book? What is your favorite spot? What is your favorite aspect of Chinatown? I have my own ideas, but I want to keep an open mind, too.

A few of my recent photos:

Man on the Street

Jealous?

2 comments

Chinatown Man

The recent ABC News-Washington Post election poll puts Obama and McCain in a dead heat, 48% to 48%.

But they didn't talk to me... because I only have a cell phone, and it's not listed in the phone book, and it's on the national do-not-call list (like many others!). The poll was conducted by telephone, and they won't call most cell phones so they mostly call home phones. This greatly skews the results. How many people under 30 these days have home phones? Not many. My wife and I both have cell phones, but not a home phone. Younger generations generally support the Democratic party, and younger generations these days are using everything but home phones to communicate. Also, people in urban areas generally have cell phones instead of land-lines, and people in urban areas statistically vote for the Democratic party.

At one point a few months ago I actually had someone call me to conduct a political poll. I was walking down the street at the time and was answering some questions when a loud car drove by. The guy asked if I was on a cell phone, and when I said yes, he said "Oh sorry," and hung up. He never called back.

Don't believe the polls.

Here are some links. Check out the fine print or the short descriptions of how the polls are conducted:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/08/campaign.wrap/index.html
http://www.gallup.com/poll/110143/Gallup-Daily-McCain-Maintains-5Point-Lead.aspx