At the western end of the Amazon river, where Peru, Brazil and Colombia meet, there is a conglomeration of strange little jungle towns. On the far south-eastern corner of Colombia, the city of Leticia borders directly with the Brazilian city of Tabatinga and together they make up a local hub for trade and tourism - even if they have no road connection to the outside world. From here I went on a boat ride into the many rivers that come together to make up the Amazon, finally ending up on a river bank technically located in Peru. It was there I met her. (more…)

Warning: This post contains pictures of a monster tearing to pieces a dead carcass. This is a long needed departure from nerdy search engines, weekend trips to the coastal towns and the German beer-vacations. This is a picture from a far more adventurous undertaking. Back in 2005 my friend Jon and I went to the little island of Rinca to see some of the most ferocious animals on the planet - the Rinca Dragons.

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The destination research tool is a quick little structured metasearch for looking up information on destinations in a really fast way. Just try it by typing in a destination above. It should be pretty self-explainatory, but it’s just a conceptual prototype/mashup now, so I’ll explain the intentions. I could even need some help to make it better. (more…)

This is from a really short weekend trip down the New South Wales coast of Australia. Seen with local eyes, this isn’t a very large outing, but for me most everything down under has something exotic or at least interesting to it. Actually, it might not be that everyday for the locals either: With every weekend trip I’ve done the last month, the Sydney Morning Herald has had someone create a so ecstatic tribute to the same location even the local tourist bureau would blush of shame. This trip was no different.

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Kookaburras - they’re about as Australian as the kangaroo. Pelicans may not be equally antipodean, but that doesn’t detract from their appeal - they just set off a lot of images of Hemingway in the Florida Keys for me. They’re the hallmark of deep sea fishing and slightly drunken adventures in the tropics. The following bird pictures are from a somewhat less adventurous trip down the south coast of New South Wales, from Sydney to Ulladulla and back. (more…)

You can check the culture of your own country against other countries online on Geert Hofstede’s own company website, where the scores on cultural dimensions discussed in this post are published. As mentioned earlier, this may be helpful in estimating expected culture shock when entering a new country - furterhmore, and this is what it is aimed at, it may be helpful in understanding how to manage branches in multinational corporations. 

Apparently my home country of Norway is so feminized we come out on the extreme lower end of the masculinity dimension, together with Sweden, with values of 8 and 5 respectively on a scale that goes to at least 110 (which is the score of the macho Slovakians). This IBM study can’t possibly have included measures on the ability to light bonfires in the snow, cross-country skiing in storms and fist-fighting polar bears..

The view expressed on the website may also present a fundament some people may object to:

“Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.”     Prof. Geert Hofstede, Emeritus Professor, Maastricht University

Read more about Geert Hofstede in his wikipedia write-up or his own website. There’s also some criticism of his work - not surprisingly. This paper takes a critical look at the application of the data and does a simple case of comparing Australia and Indonesia, but comes to the conclusion that there are more support for Hofstede’s approach than there are problems. There’s also a lengthy criticism here by Prof. Brendan McSweeney of the University of Essex.

Bremen, Germany, doesn’t stand out as a top destination, or even an alternative to consider in where to go for a vacation. The city is, however, a major destination for Ryanair in Europe. And that, in combination with probably not being particularly high on anyone’s list, makes it both a cheap and available place to kick back if you’re living in Europe. What to do there is another question - it’s the kind of place that makes your friends go “Bremen? Why? What’s to do in Bremen?”. Even my uncle the Germanophile, and source of knowledge of all things German, had only one thing to say: “It’s a typical German city”. So leaving the “Bremen?” and “Why?” for another article - what is there to do in Bremen?

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