Ace Radio：Theme - Viva la vida: How Travelling Transforms Your Life

收听地址：http://www.engbus.cn/aceradio/2011-06-01/110.html

M ： Many of our cyber friends love to travel abroad and relax themselves during the journey. Perhaps not everyone originally realized how much we would learn from our global adventures. And how insights gained would transform into re-defining our lives, re-shaping them in surprisingly new ways. Our guest Mr Xiao Sa will inspire you to learn from your travels, challenge yourself, and use your wanderings as positive springboards for change by sharing his own global travelling experiences with you guys. So welcome to our ace radio, Xiao Sa

XS ：Hello, Molly, hello everyone, this is Xiao Sa, it’s really happy to share my travelling experience with you guys. Thanks Ace English for invitation!

M ： Our pleasure! Actually, XS,I know you love one saying, “ Viva la vida”, also the title of one famous song, this really well defines the theme of our programme today: How Travelling Transforms Your Life ， so please explain a little about this--- viva la vida, what does it mean ,especially in travelling?

XS ：Viva la vida in Spanish means live the life, in French c’est la vie. It’s also a famous song sang by Coldplay. It is a lifestyle emphasizing fully involving oneself into the moment of NOW, as opposed the lifestyle that people constantly worry and stress about the future or the past.

M ： Great, Xiao Sa, you have taken time out of work and study to travel and explore. Your world trip ended up lasting 3 years, right ? Taking in countries as diverse as America , South America, Singapore , Middle east, Taiwan , Malaysia , Thailand etc. Now, whenever you get bogged down in life or the possessions you inevitably collect along the way, you may remember that travel bag still lying in the corner. Among all these marvelous countries, which country impressed you most?

XS ：During last three years, besides Singapore and those south east asia counties like Malaysia and Thailand, I’ve also visited, which also happened to be the most impressive places, Jordan/Israel for a business trip organized by school where my team tried to setup a Chinese language school in tel aviv. North-west of US where I joined work and travel program to work at a snow mountain called Mt. Rainier near Seattle, then I had a small trip to west coast of Taiwan(from Gaoxiong to Tainan, Mt.Ali, Taizhong, Riyue tan, all the way up to the north to Taibei, Danshui and Jiufeng), followed by a long journey to Chile & Bolivia(where I started learning Spanish in home-based language school called Puerto Montt in South Chile, then I volunteered to be a farmer at a eco-farm in the center of a forest, then I travelled to Easter island, Bolivia, fireisland and many other places at south America.

M ：Terrific! Why do you strongly value the importance of travelling? And what supports you to take the challenges and have interest to experience different cultures and lifestyle continuously?

XS ：Cos’ the first three years at college kind of freaking me out, I had meetings, writing reports, program coding everyday, suffered from countless stayed up. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who felt sad about the fact that we were seemingly busy every semester, but most of us can’t remember what we learnt last term, ok, maybe it was just me who can’t remember, but indeed most of us had no idea why we should lead that kind of life, everything seems like a task need to be done, to be examed and judged by others. This lead me to depression, and I feel lost. I mean why I have to finish this task then that, why I have to …(blablabla).

If I can visually the boring life after 10 years, there must be sth wrong, so I had to stop and think seriously instead of rushing my life into death.

Song:Boston (Augustana)

M ：Xiao Sa,you had many exciting adventures during these travels, right? Would you like to share some specific stories happened in a certain place? First ,how about Israel?

XS ：I like Israel cos the people there are very open-minded and friendly. The nation suffered from war since the first day of its establishment, but those jewish never gave up, always fight back, Jewish people from all over the world went back there to support their nation and now the country continues to thrive as one of the most developed countries in the world. People there encourage travel very much, many Israeli young people will travel abroad for a whole year after college or army service. They spend huge amount of money over education, nearly 30% of the nation’s GDP. So.. persistency, open-mind and to be hardcore are what I learnt from israel. Furthermore, it’s very safe from my experience, not dangerous at all as people may think. Actually most of places I’ve travelled to are not dangerous at all, I think media largely distorts truth about one place by exaggerating the negative information.

M:Yeah, in some sense . and how about the lifestyle of Americans.?

XS : When I was working at Mt. Rainier, there was this guy called Bill. He’s around 40 years old, a construction worker, went to the national park because of financial crisis. His future plan was to work for 6 month then go surfing at Mexico for anther half. See what I mean, most of people there when they consider what’s the next step, they usually don’t care much about how the other people’s opinion, they know what they want and they just go for it. I can gave lots of similar examples about how westerners’ lifestyle, pascal, a friend from Switzerland, never went to university, started working in airport immediately after high school, 2.5 years ago, he started travelling throughout south America and mastered Spanish along the way. Stewart from Australia, again, not bachelor degree, learn gardening on his own and became garden designer which seems to be perfect fine for him, he is very bright and happy when we met each other at Santiago, see, they all enjoy life by doing what they like and in their country people just don’t get judged by their job title as much as we get in our country.

It’s a fundamental mindset difference between the westerners and east Asian people, think about us, when we make decision we usually will consider the other’s opinion, like would parents agree, how friends will think if I this or that, we often tend to suppress our own feeling trying to create an illusion of harmony situation, but usually inevitably ended up with depression. I’m not asking people to be selfish or ego. Instead, to be a little bit more honest to ourselves, shouldn’t we? The most immoral thinking is to destroy ones own happiness for the sake of so-called the others’ feeling. And morality itself should lead to happiness.

M ：XS ,you really got the point, the way that travelling and living simply, meeting people from different cultures can be a reminder of the constant importance of upping sticks, getting out there, and hitting the road again with our strength. So, any particular memory about these special and remarkable people along the way?

XS: It was a night at the 2nd week when I was at Puerto Mont. The host, his name is Tom, his wife carried a new baby at that night. And we were celebrating, drinking, chatting to each other, the atmosphere was just perfect. Being half drunken, I asked those why questions to Tom, you know, why we have to do this, do that and so on and so on. He stopped, thought for a while and said one simple sentence which shocked me for a long time. He said: xiao, u know… there is no answer.

How come there is no answer? I got very confused, there has to be some answer right? Otherwise for what I’m living, there has to be some meanings. And again, there was no answer. I thought about what he said a lot thereafter.

Here is my explanation: there is answer in fact means there is no standard answer, no ultimate answer. And “what’s the meaning of life” actually is a wrong question, because of my wrong mindset that assumes there is correct answer for life which can explain everything, with that I will no longer feel lost. It is wrong to assume such answer exist! Even someone gives me a so-called “answer”, that doesn’t mean I won’t need to work hard, I still have to face different problems everyday, no escape!

Life is not a calculation like mathematic question in school’s test, where there’s always a correct answer in the end. Instead, life is more like a multiple-choices where every choice seems to be correct if only we enjoy it. For calculation question, all we need is intelligence and knowledge. But for multiple-choice question, we also need wisdom and courage to pick up the choice fit ourselves the most and start doing. There’s no answer until the moment of death, and how good the answer will be is all depends on what we choose to do today, how we do it. So, if anyone wants an answer, don’t waste your time, start making it now on your own!

That’s it about Tom.

M ：Brilliant Tom. Xiao Sa, from your experience, we know that delving into others way of life can lead to surprising insights and new directions for your own life. Travelling can really transform our lives. So what kind of great lifelong lessons you have gained through your travelling ? I believe our ace friends are also curious about this insight

XS ：Thx molly!First of all, travel is one of the best way to learn the world, it gives us the experience of dealing with different environment and people from different background in a very intense way, like on average i met three different people with totally different culture background everyday when I was in South America. And by chatting with them, listening to their life stories and their perspectives upon the world, I began to retrospect a lot, gradually I get to know myself much better and know which way of dealing my life would fit me better. In this sense, travel works like a magic mirror from which it reflects different parts of my true inside.

M:  Yeah, and does the place you’ve been matter ？

XS ：I don’t think it matters very much that what places i’ve been, what things I’ve done, instead it matters very much how I travel, how I learn from those people I met during traveling, and mostly importantly, how I began to start learning and practicing to enjoy every moment today.

I remembered someone said that “Life without retrospection is not worth living”. An Australian architect used to tell me about the natives in the desert of Australian, they never walk in a straight line.

M: Why?

XS Because they consider people walk in straight as rude and disrespectful since they simply ignore things around. I can’t remember since when I was used to walk in a rush, to overlook so many beautiful things around and lost my respect to the world. But only with enough respect, we’ll gain enough retrospection to get enough sense of living; otherwise, we live only like walking corpse.

M: So How do you define walking corpse:

XS ：people don’t ask why, people forget to appreciate and people bother too much the past & the future to enjoy here and now.

So, in conclusion, travel is an attitude, an attitude to respect enough, to retrospect enough, to learn and appreciate enough in order to have enough sense of living. Now, I don’t need to travel so many places, I don’t need to try so many different things, because once I equipped with the travel attitude, every day, every moment for me is traveling. And yet don’t forget the best way to travel is to enjoy here and now, the best place to travel is the endless higher and happier life achivements.

For those interesting experiences in the past, I call them trips.

M ：Thank you so much ,Xiao Sa, you shared so many valuable and precious stories and influences you’ve gained to all our ace friends on ace radio. apparently those significant moments will be engraved on your heart and also ours. Truly great

XS ：Thanks molly, honored to chat with you here. Thanks everyone, wish you all enjoyed our talk and enjoy today as a grateful journey! BTW, I’m now running a IT start-up at Chengdu for all kind of web development using python, if anyone wanna join us or do business with us. You can always find me through ace English. Thank you all!

M ： say bye

XS ： say bye