The Wrong Book

It's amazing the type of people that Eton can attract. Tonight I went to a talk by Tony Wheeler who, along with his wife, founded Lonely Planet back in the 70s. The couple's worth about $190m, according to wikipedia, and he was giving a talk by himself to about 20 people. It's crazy.

Despite his wealth he was incredibly down to earth, I guess that's what backpacking to pretty much every corner of the globe does to you. He still travels constantly, which made me incredibly jealous.

The talk was themed around 'bad lands' i.e. places with a bad reputation for safety (NK, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.).

I asked him a couple of questions, one being where he loves so much he keeps going back to (Nepal, Burma) and also what he thinks of technological influences on travelling, such as the lonely planet thorn tree forum. He said he one of the reasons he sold Lonely Planet was because he couldn't keep up with that side but he loves the forum and seems to think it's all a good thing.

People were getting their guides signed and I almost ran back for mine, despite being out the library! I settled for a hand shake instead. When I got back to my room I realised I actually had a rough guide which would've been interesting.

Other than that I had a pretty boring day, just killing time at work mostly, which is depressing, so I'm glad I had a decent evening. Also set a concert recording before I went to the talk.

I've also just been doing a lot of backblipping. Now I'm back into it in a big way I figure I need to start filling in the blanks I have just never got round to doing. My favourite so far from today is probably a photo from Courtney's and my trip to Croatia: Hvar Sunset