In Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers, the conversation begins with the 10,000 hour rule, which is generally agreed upon to be the number of hours one must spend practicing something in order to achieve “expert” status. It’s not quite that simple, but that’s the idea of the thing. He cites early Silicon Valley folks, like Bill Gates and Bill Joy (founder of the internet), and talks about young Mozart and the Beatles in Hamburg, where they played 270 shows in an 18 month period. “By 1964 they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times. Do you know how extraordinary that is?” (Gladwell, page 50). …Read the rest »

We saw a great airfare deal so we decided to take it. The timing was perfect: we’d leave Chiang Mai, drop our bags at the hotel in Bangkok, fly to Bali with one suitcase for the week, and collect our bags in Bangkok on the way back to America. So from the beginning, we decided that we’d do Bali on a smaller budget. The original plan was to spend two nights in Ubud, and then hire a driver to show us the beaches, picking one at the end of the day, where’s we’d stay for the rest of the trip. Somehow, we never left Ubud. …Read the rest »

 

 Section 5 [8:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Dear listener/reader, here is section 5. Enjoy.

I’m in Sugar Land for three more weeks and every time I go for a walk or a jog, I see these old guys on their fancy road bikes. I’m really looking forward to getting back to my not-so-fancy road bike.

Bike-related (and the real purpose of this post) check these two products out:

LIGHTS!

Not stirrups, so much as STRAPS…hmm…

Laura and I are back in the United States now, experiencing the culture shock of wider roads, drinkable tap water, and fully understanding the local language again. …Read the rest »

Laura and I made it back to the USA with no major troubles. It’s nice to be able to drink tap water again.

Photo courtesy of Earl Wan.
…Read the rest »