GONE are the GOOD OLD DAYS

The way prices are rising, the good old days are last week- Les Dawson

If you are confused when you hear people talk about playing with marbles, Top’s, Tazo’s, , gaining grounds, or staying up all night playing sonic the hedgehog, defeating M.Bison on street fighter, then unfortunately you were not born in the early 90’s or you just have a bad memory.

There are countless studies that confirm that the 21^st century child is spending more time indoors than outdoors. There are so many, that we as a society do not know which one to believe, but one thing I can say, is that from my observation and ( at this time you can agree) that we hardly see children playing on the streets anymore.    

There may be many underlying causes for this. Personally I think it can be blamed on Globalisation, if fingers must be pointed. Please don’t get me wrong, I embraced Globalisation with both hands (without it, you wouldn’t be reading this).  As much as Globalisation has made the world a much better (arguable), easier and more connected place, it came with its problems. In my country (South Africa) a lot of the children from the early 90’s can agree with me when I say, we don’t see kids riding bikes to a friend’s house, playing a variety of games with the tennis ball, taking a walk to the local supermarket to just buy a couple of Chappies bubble gum  to read the “did you know inside”.

I remember growing up, being outside for the whole day on weekends and after school until sunset on week days. I remember tripping and colliding with the road face first playing gaining grounds (really painful!), to putting a plastic bottle on my bike tyre to make it sound like a motorbike when riding it. Gone are the good old days. As much as some of activities that I participated in hurt when looking back, I appreciate I had that childhood. It feels like yesterday I was playing Sega mega cast (a video game console which uses cartridges) playing into the night and having to switch it off to let the adapter cool down. Even with the introduction of the internet in my household, the internet was so slow that loading Google took so long on my 56k modem that I went outside to play anyway. I acknowledge that we all had different childhoods, and being brought up, but I just can’t imagine having the same smile saying remember in Grade 5 when we Facebook stalked that girl/guy.

I recently read an article that a 5 year old kid, is now seeing a psychologist after his Ipad was taken away. I was honestly speechless when I read that article. Another article revealed that if your child is awake, he/she is probably online. I generally have a problem young and old  people being on their phones if you are at the dinner table, whether at home or at a restaurant. Another matter of concern that has come to my attention is that generally people of today do activities so that they can post a status rather than their own self fulfillment  So before I get carried away on that topic, back to the children of today

In my recent trip to Brazil, I really appreciated the culture, sense of togetherness and the importance of family time in Brazil, something we hardly see in any country. Every weekend without fail, at the Lagoon, Botanical Garden or local parks, there are families playing with kites, canoeing or sitting having a picnic among many things.  I’m not sure if this is a 1^st world problem or the whole world entirely, but just seeing the family and kids spending time with each other brought so much peace and happiness to me, something I had not seen in my country. Hey maybe you totally disagree with me, maybe you’d rather spend time impressing your friends digitally, being on your phone typing LOL or LMAO when you didn’t even crack a smile,  then spending time with family and friends. You are after all entitled to your opinion, who am I to tell you what will make you happy.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining, and in a way it is very hard to revert back to those days, and most likely there’s nothing we could do either way. This brings me to my next point into why it’s changed.

Globalisation brought Facebook, smartphones, faster internet connection speeds, video games that do not need cooling down, HD viewing (which I’m in love with) and many other things. The reason I state that we cannot help ourselves, is that

·         It’s in our human nature to not fall behind and to know what’s trending or not, so we can stay relevant. We need to have email access in our pockets, as today time is money. What today is about is how many friends you have on Facebook to how many followers you have on twitter. The way technology is advancing it is becoming harder to invent something new, and if you blink you might just fall behind and not be relevant anymore.  We are so caught up into this digital age, that as we become more social we become more antisocial (My opinion).

·         Crime is on a whole new level with child kidnappings, basically the streets are not safe for our children to play on anymore

·         Children are generally online way more, so even if you wanted to play on the streets there would be no one to play with

There are many more other reasons as to why the world is what it is today, but before I end, just to put a spanner in the works. Is it really that important to know all the trends?  Is being on social networks really making us more social? Is cybercrime not an issue? There are many child kidnappings, but there is also child depression and teenage suicide because of social networks nowadays.

So, as much as the good old days are gone, the 21^st century has its many advantages and disadvantages as well, so as a society where do we find the balance. Do we need balance in the first place? these are the many questions that still remained to be answered.

Living in your 20's

Living your 20’s

Somewhere someone at this current time while you reading this, clicking your mouse to scroll down, someone has turned 20. From all of us in our 20’s we welcome you to possibly the best years of your life.

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us”

So the question that beckons, is how do I live the best years of my life? I am not some sort of Guru, or some life coach who can tell you how to live your life, but one thing I can advise is that one needs Travel on their bucket list.  I was fortunate it enough to travel to Europe in 2006 with my family to France, Belgium, Netherlands and England. At the time I thought that was the best experience of my life. That was true until I recently went on a trip to the beautiful city in Brazil called Rio De Janiero. 

There are no words in the Oxford dictionary that can describe my experience there of 7 weeks, but one thing I realised on my trip, is that it is something that has to be done by every young adult in their 20’s.

There seems to be a need to explore, sense of adventure, learning new languages and cultures in human beings which can be accomplished through travel. I am still yet to hear from a person or read an article of someone who learnt nothing from travel, whether it was good or bad. The point I am trying to make is that, in the end no matter your reasons for travel, it grows you as a person.

So at this point you might be saying that, I would love to travel but do not have money. You may be saying I make it sound so easy to travel, that you can just spin a little globe and wherever your finger lands you can just go there. I acknowledge that we come from different backgrounds, and therefore have different finances. That is the sad truth that we were all not born equal, that some have it easier than others. The only problem with that is we use it as an excuse to hold us back from doing what we really love and want to do.  In my opinion it’s a mindset us a humans have, and we should take something from what the great Bob Marley said that, “we need to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery”.  

My personal opinion is that if you struggle more than the person next to you to reach the same goal, you the person that struggled, will feel more satisfaction. The more satisfied we are, the better we feel about our accomplishments and the happier we become. After all we are in pursuit of happiness are we not? The struggle in this context is the ability to save enough to go on that trip you have been yearning to embark on.

So what are the solutions so that we can travel? SAVE! No matter who you are and where you are from, anyone can save. What I do is that every month my bank automatically takes a portion of my allowance and I cannot stop it for 12 months, it almost forces me to save.

I have done this for the past 3 years and I can safely say I can afford to buy a return ticket to more than 70% of cities in the world. Depending on your financial status it may take you months or years to save up for that dream trip but in the end it would have been worth it.

There are countless opportunities that can make you earn your travel money back, if you are worried about the opportunity cost of travelling. There are organisations like Chilli adventures that allow you to travel and work, and you may even end up earning more than you paid for. There is a great organisation called Aiesec that allows you to travel abroad and change the world one way or another while experiencing a different country, and the best part is that accommodation is usually free (which is the most expensive cost in terms of travel).

Now to the good stuff. What does travelling bring?

Amongst the countless experiences I can mention, depending on your personality, you have an opportunity to make new friends, see beautiful places, learn new cultures, indulge in delicious food or not!, adventure and excitement are one of the hundreds of reasons why you need to travel in your 20’s

Another reason to travel in your 20’s is that, in our late 20’s whether we about to graduate or are committed to either our work or girlfriends/boyfriends until death do you apart, it becomes much easier to make excuses not to travel ie. To not live your 20’s.

So as we arrive to the end of this Blog, think when you hit your 30’s, do you really want to look back and regret not at least travelling once somewhere, so you can at least tell your grand kids a story or two. Again I say, we travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.