Two steps forward, three steps back

Turn 90 degrees and photograph whatever you see

How many different ways are there of seeing the place you live? Abandon all control of your destiny and find out.

Here’s what you’ll need: a friend or two, a camera, a bag, a watch and a sharp eye. Each of you should start in a different place in town and follow these instructions.

• Walk towards the sun for three minutes (try to stay in a straight line as much as possible). Note down where you are.
  
• Look around you: can you see something the color of the sky and small enough to pick up? Pick it up and put it in your bag, then keep walking in the direction you walked to get to it.
  
• Stop when you see a sign. Photograph the sign.
  
• Think of a number between one and 60. Pretend you’re standing in a clock and turn that many minutes, then start walking again.
  
• Keep walking until you see something beautiful. Photograph it. Then turn 90 degrees and photograph whatever you see.
  
• Walk straight ahead, counting your footsteps, until you have taken 143 of them. What song is in your head? Write it down.
  
• Look directly at your feet. What’s there? Pick it up if you can, or photograph or describe it if you can’t.
  
• Turn 45 degrees and walk for another three minutes in a straight line: then take the first path, street or alleyway on the left, then the next one on the right. Walk along that for one minute, or until it runs out. What is in front of you? Write a haiku about it (one line of five syllables, then one of seven, then one of five; they don’t have to rhyme).
  
• Now take a photograph of yourself and go home.

When you get home, compare experiences with everyone else who has done the exercise.

This is just a short version of a game that could run all day: feel free to write a set of instructions that would work well in your town.

Wish you were here (instead of me)

'Workers' lunchroom | Laverton'

Just because no one else makes postcards of your hometown is no reason you shouldn’t. Or maybe you live in a popular tourist town that’s flooded with postcards, but you think they’re all pretty stupid. Take your camera for a trip around town, photographing anything that you think really captures the spirit of your home.

Get 4x6" prints of the best ones and grab yourself some postcard backs (you can get these at craft stores or off the web), or make your own by gluing thin card to the back of your snaps. Give each postcard a caption (‘Drunks ogle female passersby, Blarney Stone, Yarraville’, 'Pile of discarded rubbish grows mouldy, Badwell Ash', 'Witty grafitti tells it like it is, Pierz') and send them to friends, telling them what a great time you’re having and expressing your wish that they were also here.

Something beginning with 'C'

Getting there is half the fun. Playing ‘I spy’ is 67% of the fun of getting there, thus making it 33.5% of the total fun. Why cut yourself off from so much pleasure just because you’re stuck at home?

Come on: when was the last time you had a ripping round of ‘I spy’ at the office? With so much to spy, why wait another day? If you feel like movement is integral to the game’s success, whip up a game on the train to work: that first response may take a while to come, but once your fellow commuters get started they won’t be able to stop.

If ‘I spy’ just isn’t your speed, perhaps you could get your work team, tutorial group or knitting circle into a feverish bout of ‘I went to market and I bought a…’. Shirkers might be brought into line with a stern warning that memory games are a proven (and fun!) way to ward off Alzheimer’s.

Cut off from culture

Language isn’t the only barrier when you’re visiting another country. Even when they speak English, the shared experience that a people has of local news, television shows, ads, childhood toys and favourite foods can make you feel terribly excluded. Imagine, for example, coming to America and trying to have a conversation with someone when you’ve never heard of Lucky Charms, Saturday Night Live, ‘Where’s the beef?’ or Mouse Trap?

You’ve probably never noticed just how often you refer to popular culture, especially in conversations with people you don’t know that well. While there’s no way to wipe every Monty Python sketch or Simpsons episode from your mind, you can experiment with cutting yourself off from culture. You’ll find it doesn’t take long to feel the effects.

Here’s what you do: for two weeks, don’t watch TV, read the paper or look at the internet. That’s it. OK, now try and have a conversation at the water cooler, with your car pool, at playgroup or waiting for class. Good luck!

Hungry for heritage

Going to Thailand without gorging on the country’s cuisine would be like going to India and not seeing the Taj Mahal; that is, it would be stupid. You’ve been hanging around your hometown for who-knows-how-long, but have you ever really tried the local food?

No, no: not Hungry Jacks! Not even the great fish and chips from the takeaway up the street. We’re talking about seriously local food, the food the locals used to eat back before everyone started eating all the same stuff. You know—paperbark-wrapped turtle steamed in a ground oven, goanna cooked in the coals of an open fire, or dry-roasted bogong moths. Aboriginal people had limited access to brie and spring rolls, so they had to work with whatever walked through or grew in their surrounding region. You might be surprised at what passed for ingredients before Coles hit town.

You can find some bush tucker recipes on the internet, though you might have to do some face-to-face research to find recipes for your own locality. Once you’ve tried out a few dishes, invite your friends around for a dinner party. If you need to fill out the menu a bit, have a look into what the first European settlers in your area ate too. And don’t forget, a dinner party is the ideal forum for boring people with the slideshow you made in ‘more photos than you’ve had hot dinners’.

(Thanks to Wombalano for the photo.)

Get lost

‘One of the great joys of Prague is finding yourself completely lost.’ ‘You don’t need to know where you’re going; wandering aimlessly is one of the best ways to see New York.’ ‘The winding alleys of Toledo will have you lost in minutes, and you’ll love it!’

Admit it. Every day you take the same bus to school or drive the same way to work. You see the same old things so often that you don’t even see them anymore. When was the last time you ditched the routine and risked getting lost?

It may cost you some time, you might have to get up a bit earlier, and it might sound like stating the bleeding obvious, but next Wednesday, you should go a different way. Walk a different way to the bottle shop, catch a different bus in the morning or get off at an earlier stop, get off the freeway and hit the city streets. It’ll get your brain moving. Go on, give it a try.

More photos than you’ve had hot dinners

Where do people get this idea that their photos are in any way interesting or important? Who decided that blurry pictures of drunken bridesmaids, dripping babies in long white frocks, fat cousins on beaches or off-kilter European churches should be shown to all and sundry? It’s a conspiracy, and it’s time it was stopped.

Your life is worthy of photographic documentation. Don’t be bullied by your vacationing, event-loving acquaintances: Just because you’re stuck at home with no plans to get married or born again, doesn’t mean you’re not special. You’re life is, in fact, endlessly fascinating. All you need are the photos to prove it.

What’s your favourite thing? Shoes? Dinner? Reading? Watching DVDs and TV? Your dog? Every day, for one month, photograph it. Photograph the shoes you wear each day. Photograph, every day, your dinner, or the last page you read before bed, or the screen of whatever you’re watching or your dog when he gets up in the morning. At the end of the month you’ll have 30 pictures of shoes (or dinner, or books, or…) that your workmates will be just dying to see. (If you’re really the vindictive type, host an old-fashioned slide show.)

And don’t forget: commentary is the most important part of any viewing. ‘Oh yes, I remember this dinner! Oh, it was fabulous! See that cheese sauce? Well, there was a part over near the left-hand corner of the dish that got quite coagulated during cooking, and I was worried for a while it wouldn’t come off in the dishwasher. So I said to Derek, ‘perhaps you should put your plate in the sink to soak for a while’ and he said…’

Speak to me

There are any number of frivolous ways to dabble in different cultures (see anything in this blog for example), but just for a minute, be serious. Please.

So much of traveling is about finding out how other people live: visiting tribes in the hills of Thailand, dancing with the locals in a bar in Nicaragua, renting an apartment for a couple of weeks in NYC. Knowing that things can be done differently gives us a fresh look at the way we do things. And sure, if you’re staying home you can have dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant or see a French film and get a little bit of that insight. Or you could become a volunteer English tutor for a recent migrant.

Do what now? Don’t you have to go to university for that?

You don’t. All over the country, community-based organisations train people to be volunteer English tutors: all it requires is a commitment of your time (try calling your local university, technical college, migrant centre or local government for more information). Even if there’s no such organization in your area or you don’t feel comfortable formally tutoring someone to speak English, lots of migrants really just want someone they can practise English with. All you have to do is have a little chat with them once a week or so. You can discuss football, cooking, weddings, what’s on TV or the country they’re from: whatever the two of you feel like talking about. Put up some notices around your local schools, shopping centres or cultural centres and see if anyone’s interested. Helping someone out with their English, seeing the way this improves their life, and at the same time finding out about a completely different way of living is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have.

Meet the locals, part 2

On a boring weekend, turn to the local newspaper’s community pages where organizations around town list the free or fund-raising activities they’re running this week. The chances of finding something you’d actually want to do are pretty slim, but try doing something you’d never have dreamed of doing.

Maybe the local hardware store is running an information session on how to fix a tap – not only will you gain a new skill, you’ll meet all those retired old guys who have nothing better to do than go to an information session on how to fix a tap. Maybe the local walking group is going for a hike out of town, giving you the chance to stretch your legs and have a chat with people who like wholewheat spaghetti and soy cheese. Or perhaps there’s a quilting show on at the town hall where you can adopt yourself a new grandma and get a few smocking tips.

There’s a good chance you’ll be bored out of your mind before half an hour has passed, but who knows: you might find that what your life has been missing all along is painting watercolors of dried flower arrangements. Either way, when your friends ask what you did on the weekend, you’ll have something to say.

Historical brain transplant

Maybe it’s not your home town you’re sick of. Maybe you’re sick of you. While the science of brain transplantation is not entirely perfected, there are other options for escaping the prison that is your skull (and no, we’re not talking about a ride on the peyote highway).

Instead of asking such vague questions as ‘What would Jesus do?’, try asking ‘What would Jesus do if he got to Kmart and the advertised special on fleece throw rugs was all sold out and the woman on the desk wouldn’t give him a raincheck and he was late for a meeting with his CEO?’. Or, for example, what would Genghis Khan do if he'd forgotten it was his four-year-old daughter's birthday this weekend and he had only two days to organise a children's party?

First, write the names of famous people on slips of paper. Second, write the names of places around town on other slips of paper. Randomly pull a slip from each bunch. What do you know: you’re Cleopatra, and you’re trying to buy a used car.

It might be pushing it to show up to the used car lot and pretend to be Cleopatra (but if you’re keen, hey, go for it!). But you might enjoy the exercise of doing everyday things while imagining you’re someone entirely different. For example, browse cupcake recipes online while imagining you’re Genghis Khan, then write up your experiences (as Genghis, of course) on your blog. Want more? Have all your friends choose a slip each from the ‘famous person’ pile, all visit the same spot from the ‘places in town’ pile, and each write up your experiences.

Show some civic pride

Yeah, yeah, you heart NY. Big deal. Everyone hearts NY.

But what if you heart Goulburn, Cockermouth or Yuba City? It’s not so easy to let everyone know. You can’t just stop by some unlicensed roadside souvenir seller to grab a t-shirt or pick up a stubbie holder for your beer. If you really love Goulburn,Cockermouth or Yuba City, you’re going to have to do a little work. But remember: love you’ve worked on is worth so much more than love you’ve bought.

What is it about Yuba City that really cranks your dial? What do the people who live in Cockermouth know about it that no one else knows about? Is there an in-joke about Goulburn that out-of-towners just won’t get?

Stick it on a t-shirt.

If you like a bit of glamour, pop into your local craft store and get yourself a Bedazzler and some puffy fabric paint. Or maybe you’d prefer iron-on varsity letters. If you have a printer, you can design a t-shirt on your computer and print it out onto iron-on transfer paper. If you don’t, go low-rent with a Sharpie and a white t-shirt.

You might be surprised how many people stop you and ask where you got the t-shirt (this is less likely to happen if you’ve scrawled on a white t-shirt with a Sharpie, of course). It feels pretty good to say, ‘Oh, I made it myself’. Alternatively, if the person is really desperate to get one of their own, you can claim to have bought it at some tiny shop about two hours’ drive away that’s only open on weekday mornings.

‘Note the physiognomy of the line, representative of an overarching symbolism…’

String these phrases together: ‘great historical significance’; ‘a sublime expression of the creator’s philosophy’; ‘archetypical, yet ahead of its time’. Got it? OK, you are now a tour guide.

Get a group of friends together and hit your town’s cultural hotspot: a museum, a gallery, a stately home, an architectural wonder, the seat of government. If you don’t have anything approaching a cultural hotspot, go to Safeway or a car yard instead. (In fact, that’s an even better idea…)

Take turns playing tour guide: use your imagination, speak loudly, and whatever you do don’t include a single accurate fact. Talk, talk, talk! Hold up an umbrella so no one gets lost. You know you’re really doing well when strangers start joining in (if you’re feeling very ambitious, you could advertise your free tour in the local paper). Points are awarded for style and plausibility.

Taking care of business

You’ve just flown in and already the deliverables you’re enhancing are hung on a skyhook or outright left in the parking lot. You’ve got to ramp this baby up! You’ve got to get these offerings on the freeway! You’ve got plenty to envisage going forward, and all you want is some takeup of the best-of-breed product set. Let’s call a meeting!

The only thing cooler than a guy in a suit, sitting in a hotel bar, yelling on a cell phone, is eight guys in suits, sitting in a hotel bar, all simultaneously yelling on cell phones. Don’t you want to be one of those guys who flies into town to give a PowerPoint presentation? Well, don’t you?

Synchronise watches. You and your friends are going to put on your best suits (don’t have one? Try an op shop) and hit some downtown hotel for a breakfast meeting. The more upscale the hotel, the better: a Hilton or a Hyatt is just the ticket. Don’t forget your props: laptops if you have them, some kind of portable whiteboard, and your cell phones (extra points if you have a Bluetooth headset). If your own importance isn’t inspiration enough to get you diagramming, scoping future directions and visioning, then try giving yourselves a few tasks. You could have a prize for the first person who uses a sentence including functionality, user-defined, straw man, leading provider, monetise, robust and scalable, or give an award for best use of a noun as a verb, or verb as a noun (‘how are we matrixing this, Jeff?’ 'Well, Leon, that depends on how you action the learnings you've been tasked with').

Whatever you do, don’t forget: you are a Master of the Universe.

Miro, Miro on the wall

You’ve probably played the old surrealist game where you fold a piece of paper and someone draws the head, folds it and passes it on to someone who draws the body, and they fold it and pass it on to someone who draws the legs, then you unfold it and have a laugh at the results. This is a travel version of that game.

You’ll need at least four people for this excursion, so bribe your friends. Get them all together and fold a piece of paper in four. On the first section, secretly write a destination you’re going to visit (this could be Afghanistan or the mall or the future, whatever takes your fancy, and depending on the kind of resources you and your friends have). Fold the paper over and pass it to one of your friends, who secretly writes an activity (street theatre, knitting, a running race, fishing...).

They fold the paper over and pass it to the next person, who secretly writes a dress code (black tie, dress as clowns, ballerina outfits, diapers...). They fold it over and pass to the fourth person, who chooses an item you all have to bring (a potted plant, a champagne glass, the complete works of Mark Twain...).

Unfold the paper, and there’s your expedition. Depending on how tricky it’s going to be to execute, give yourselves a set amount of time to get together the things you need, then meet up and have your surrealist experience.

If you have more friends willing to join in, you could add other items such as budget, a manner of speaking (only using thee and thou, no swearing, no first names...), a mode of transport (hop everywhere, go by bike, use public transport...), or make up some of your own.

Make sure you take lots of photos so you can embarrass yourself in front of anyone who wasn’t silly enough to come along.

Performance art

Everyone has some skill, some talent, that makes them stand out from the crowd. Even you. Perhaps you can really capture a likeness with charcoal. Maybe you play guitar like Slava Grigoryan. Perhaps you have an amazing way with kids. Whatever your talent is, it’s time you took to the street to do something completely different.

There are far too many street performers who are good at what they do. No one needs to hear another beautifully finger-picked cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish you were here’ or see their child lovingly rendered in cheeky pastel colors. What we need more of is inadequacy.

Get down to your local shopping strip and strut your stuff. Dress as a clown, blow up a couple of balloons and tout yourself as a master of the balloon animal (‘But Mr Clown, what is it?’ ‘It’s a jellyfish, poppet. Would you like a paramecium to go with that?’). Can’t even draw a stick figure? You need to set up an easel and churn out some caricatures. Won't mummy smile when she sees how you've drawn her little treasure? Borrow your brother’s guitar and make up some chords, loudly. Spray yourself silver and stand around fidgeting. Whatever you do, do it poorly, and do it with great enthusiasm. Then get out of town.

Snowed under

Snow domes, snow globes, snow shakers; call them what you like, these little beauties are a souvenir no package tourist can resist. Who doesn’t want a poorly rendered plastic representation of an over-exposed tourist spot stuck in a leaky plastic dome filled with anti-freeze and gummed-together glitter? Well, maybe you don’t, but the rest of the western world, apparently, does.

The Internet is awash with snow dome collectors, each of whom, it’s rumoured, owns two to three hundred of these overpriced dust collectors. But do they own a snow dome of your special little corner of the world? Unless you’re George W Bush, Queen Elizabeth or the Pope, the answer is probably no.

So if you want to make a packet on EBay (where ‘a packet’ equals about $12.99), make your own snow dome. You can do it the mass-produced way—pick up a snow dome kit from a craft store or the web, take a cheesy picture of your dog wearing a hat sitting under a sign that says ‘Welcome to [your town name here]’ and stick the two together—or you can make a truly unique expression of the individual charm of your home (‘Limited edition! Buy now! $13.99!’).

Here’s what you do.

1. Get a clean jar. If you can only find a dirty jar, clean it
2. Get some glitter
3. Get a cheesy photo of your dog wearing a hat sitting under a sign that says ‘Welcome to [your town name here]’ and laminate it
4. Get a lump of plasticine, stick it in the jar lid and stick your photo upright in the plasticine
5. Fill the jar with water
6. Pour in the glitter
7. Screw on the lid
8. Shake. Ooh and aah. Congratulate yourself.
9. Sell on EBay. When it fails to sell, give to Grandma for Christmas.

If you’re feeling super-creative, eliminate step 3 and instead make a model of your favourite local thing (the bar you go to when there's nothing else to do, the parking lot where you used to have shopping trolley races, the cute girl who works at Safeway) out of modelling clay or flour-and-water dough, paint it, spray it with clear lacquer and continue as above. Then give it to the girl at Safeway and really freak her out.

Hef you got a lassance fer theez minkey?

There’s nothing quite like getting off a plane (or a bus or a train) in a country where the only things you can say are ‘hello’, ‘thank you’ and—perhaps inadvertently—‘can I put my ferret in your handbag?’. The struggle to be understood makes babies of all of us, unable to get even something as simple as air conditioning that works or a caesar salad with the bacon on the side. It’s frustrating, disabling and infuriating; it somehow strips away our ability to be ourselves. So why not do it for fun?

It would be great if you could convince everyone in your town to speak a different language for a day so you could recreate that feeling, but, let’s face it, the chances are slim. Short of having your eardrums removed, you’re going to be able to understand your neighbours. As a compromise, why not make it so they can’t understand you?

Spend a day speaking in an impenetrable accent. If you’re a perfectionist, research your accent and try to get your Latvian or Ghanian pronunciation to the point where it would fool a Lithuanian or Senegalese. If you’re not a perfectionist, take some tips from Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau (of ‘Pink Panther’ fame) and just pretend you’re French. The main thing is that no one should understand a word you say.

‘Ken ee eff a zeesoor sawad weez zee barcon ern zee zoide?’
‘I’m sorry sir, I couldn’t quite hear you. You wanted a?’
‘Zeesoor sawad weez zee barcon ern zee zoide.’
‘I’m afraid we don’t sell wristwatches here sir. Have you tried Kmart?’

After a day of being hungry, lost and excluded, you’ll once again appreciate how good it is, sometimes, to be home.

Stop motion

So you reckon nothing ever happens here? Let’s see if science agrees with you.

Grab a camera; if you have a tripod for it, so much the better. Stand somewhere you visit frequently (outside your front door might be the ideal spot) at a time of day you usually have a couple of minutes spare. Note your position carefully, open the lens up wide, and fire that shutter. Well done.

Here’s where it gets hard. Next day, at the same time, come back to the exact same spot and take the exact same photo. Repeat, daily, until you can bear to repeat no more (if you think doing this every day will drive you to the brink of madness, how about coming back once a week instead). Twenty photos should give you a nice cross-section, but if you really want a statistical sample, perhaps you should spread your recording over all four seasons.

Once you’re done, print your photos. Have a look. What’s different from photo to photo? Anything? For added impact, you could staple your photos in date order into a little book; flipping the pages will give you a better idea when something moves or changes. Why stop there? This is exactly the kind of conceptual art that trendy cafes lap up: why not print the lot in reasonably large format and ask your local latte spot (or public library) if they’ll exhibit your work?

The conversation challenge

One of the great things about traveling is the way you find yourself talking to all kinds of people about all kinds of things. Once you hit the road it seems like no subject is too personal, especially if you’re talking to an attractive Scandinavian backpacker and have a mojito or two under your belt.

Don’t you wish you could really get to know people like you do when you’re on vacation? While it might be hard to track down a Scandinavian backpacker in your local bar, perhaps you’ll find that the light of kinship flares just as brightly in the eyes of a tractor mechanic or chartered accountant from your very own home town.

If you manage to get chatting in your local diner, congratulate yourself. But if you really want to take the conversation challenge, try this one. Here’s a list of five questions: if you can get your prattling partner to answer at least three of them (and try to work them into the thread of the conversation—don’t just blurt them out) you may just get that ‘I feel like I really know you even though we just met’ experience.

• What did you dream about last night?
• What was the best toy you ever owned?
• What’s the worst illness you’ve had?
• When did you last play sport?
• What’s something you’re particularly good at?

This man won’t ‘aggle!

What could be more evocative, exotic and downright entrancing than a market in a distant land? And what interaction is more treasured by the traveler than a bit of back-and-forth with a foreign merchant? There’s nothing quite as satisfying as bagging a bargain, particularly if you’ve had to fight damn hard for it. In fact, saving yourself a few pennies while depriving an artisan of a square meal may be the quintessential travel experience.

You bring home souvenirs from far-off lands; you bring home recipes, phrases and diseases. Why not bring home the art of haggling? Just imagine the excitement and variety you’ll bring into the life of your Safeway customer service attendant when you introduce this concept to your everyday shopping.

Of course, there are rules for haggling. Next time you see a fetching little sweater, an in-home theatre system or a McDonald's Happy Meal you just have to have, ask yourself, ‘what is this really worth to me?’, then take the item to the checkout and suggest something about 50% lower than that. Smile, keep your tone light-hearted, and never get angry or offended. If the checkout attendant offers you a cup of tea, take it! Sometimes it’s worth pretending you don’t really want the thing: turning around and walking away can bring an instant drop in price. And always remember, it’s as much about the interaction as it is about the final price.