Posts tagged meeting people

Join Couchsurfing.org.

1. Join some groups, add people you already know.
2. Get verified. You will have more people accept you AND, just as important, you’ll show up in more search results and get more people who want to stay with you.
3. Host people! Meet travelers, learn the pain and pleasure of being a host.
4. Join local groups when you start traveling. There are tons of meetups all over the world where you can meet other travelers and locals who want to socialize with you.

So yesterday, somehow waking up at 8 in the morning to go look at one apartment turned into a 14 hour adventure that started in a bulletproof SUV.

Arrived safely in Palawan. Uneventful flight. Delayed 1 hour only because of air traffic control, not because of the weather.

At the airport I met four people in a group together: one from Peoria/Pekin, one from Chicago, one from Champaign and one from Beardstown. Eight thousand miles and the first people I talk to in a strange place are all from Illinois and towns that I’m familiar with. Beardstown is about one hour away from Springfield, my hometown.

I won a prize on the plane! I was flying Cebu Pacific. They played a game near the end of the flight where they called out an object and whoever held up the object first won. I got the last of the three prizes for holding up my sandals which I had taken off at the beginning of the flight in order to stretch more easily in my seat.

We boarded the plane outdoors in the rain in Manila and outdoors in good weather in Palawan. Missed the typhoon. The airport here is surrounded by dense jungle. There are no taxis at the airport, only tricycles. It’s truly an island town; it reminds me of the Florida Keys. I’m in the wilderness already and I haven’t even left the city.

I’m writing from inside my hotel right now. $30 USD/night. Dinner was $2.80 USD

I LOL everytime somebody gasps, gawks, pauses or is otherwise astonished by the fact that I meet people in person who I’ve “only talked to on the internet”. I thought we got over this as a society long ago, but apparently not.

I met:
- one long term romantic partner (7 years)
- 3 girls I dated for long periods of time (several months)
- countless friends (ok, actually countable, but like.. 10+ that I regularly still talk to)
- the recruiter who got me my first big ‘career’ job
- a martial arts instructor
- many of the people I know from the film scene in Austin, TX
- Arbie, the first person I stayed with on my trip to the Philippines

…all on the internet.

My last post reminded me of some of the reactions I’ve encountered from people lately about meeting people “from the internet”. The asker, walkingbase, is couchsurfer and traveler who of course understands the value of such interactions. Many other people still don’t get it though.

I understand the need for caution. I understand that I’m now traveling in places that are not familiar to me and in countries where I am probably in greater danger than my home country.
Just play it smart.

Cool people that you want to talk to don’t sit in “premium” seats like the exit row. The middle seat is the least desirable seat, but gives you access to two people instead of one.

I used to travel for business. I did over 150,000 miles by airplane in two years. One of the perks of flying so much is that you acquire “status” on airlines and often get access to “premium” seating. This doesn’t mean you get first class or business class seating, but usually means access to aisle, window and exit row seating. About 90% of the time I got the best seat on the plane that wasn’t first class (an aisle or window seat in the exit row).

Recently, I went from Austin, TX to Long Beach, CA on Southwest airlines. Southwest doesn’t have any assigned seating - it’s first-come-first-served. During the time that I was flying for business, I was rarely on a path that Southwest took (I flew mostly in the north and the east coast of the US), so I didn’t fly with them. This was a personal trip though and I ended up in a middle seat. I had the most interesting in-flight conversations of my life on that trip… talked to a girl who was in Austin because of some health problems her father had and she ended up giving me some interesting insight into relationships after we started talking about polyamory. The guy on my other side told me about how he was a high voltage electrician, had many children and was going to visit some of them. At some point he brought up “The first time I went to prison…” hahaha. Something about bringing guns back across the border from Mexico. Both had a good amount of alcohol to drink on the way there and we all had a great conversation together the whole way.

Other people who do the same boring shit you do sit in the same “premium” seats as you. You’ll talk to business travelers only and most of the time they don’t want to talk. I look back to that 10% of the time I flew in non-premium seating and realize that those were the times I had interesting conversations. You won’t sit next to any cute, young girls sitting in premium seats either.

The only exception to this rule I can think of is a guy I met in the exit row who had flown over two million miles by air and had Lifetime AAdvantage Platinum status (American Airlines). I always think about him when I think of the movie Up in the Air.

The extension on this rule is simple: it applies to everything, everywhere. If you stay in hostels instead of hotels, you’ll meet other socially active young people instead of 30-something, closed-off, family-minded, suburban-dwelling business people. If you work in a tech startup instead of a government office, same deal. Sometimes you must avoid comfort even when it is handed to you.