Tips on Hunting for Cheap Flights

Original Photo by ArchDevil

The post on getting a free flight to Costa Rica received a lot of attention. It's clear to me that many readers of this blog are interested in cheap flights. Recently I was looking for cheap flights to Brazil and Europe. I learned a lot and want to share some of the observations. I know that those tips are very effective. How effective? A year ago I visited USA, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Ukraine for the cost of a direct flight from Toronto to Warsaw. This year I'll pay even much less for visiting Portugal, Spain, Poland,  France, and then going back to Canada. Convinced?

• Searching for flights takes time. This is the key requirement. If you want to find a flight in a great price, you'll have to do your homework and search multiple websites. Depending on how much $$$ you make per hour, it may be worth or not worth it. I'm a student so whenever I can save some money, I'm happy.
• Your location and destination matter. Check out local airlines and deals. For example, if you are in Europe, you can fly from Barcelona to Rome for $30 (final price) with low-cost airlines. Similar deals are probably possible in other parts of the world, but Europe is pretty much unbeatable. Having said that, if you fly to Europe, get the cheapest flight to anywhere in Europe and then travel by low-costs inside.
• Fly with low-cost airlines. Deals offered by low-cost airlines can be found only on their websites. You buy tickets directly from those airlines and there is no point in searching elsewhere. Find out where those airlines fly. I typically check airport information on Wikipedia to see what airlines go to places of my interest.
• Check out multiple websites. If you cannot fly with low-cost airlines, check out traditional airlines on search engines like Kayak, Cheapoair, Expedia, and others. Compare prices with those shown on airlines' websites. You'll see that each website offers different price. Search with flexible dates and check nearby airports. Recently I've been playing with Matrix Airfare Search that can search for flights to/from multiple airports at once!
• Take advantage of travel agents. These days people tell you to book flights online. Generally, it's a good idea but take a look at the deals offered by local travel agents. For example, Flight Centre has the Lowest Airfare Guarantee policy. It means that if you find a flight and their price is not lower, they'll match the price and will offer you a $20 voucher. You think that $20 is nothing. Sure, it's not much but it's enough to fly with low-costs in Europe! Also, if you make travel agents match the price several times, the $20 multiplies.
• Monitor prices. Did you know that the price of a ticket depends on when you book it? Monitor prices for a week or two to see when it's best time book a ticket. How important is it? Well, I was looking for a flight from Paris to Toronto. One day it was $417, while the other day it was almost $600!
• Sign up for crowdsourced deals. There are more people who look for deals and are glad to share them. A great example for Toronto area is the YYZ deals blog. Recently they found out how to fly to Europe for $338 (final price).
• Get an ISIC card. International Student Identity Card can help you save money on food, air, train tickets, etc. In Canada it is offered by Travel Cuts and they have nice discounts (> 10%) if you have the card.
• Travel off the season. This is probably the most common tip, but it totally makes sense. Find out when the season starts and ends for a given destination. For example, in Europe it is typically from June to August. In Caribbean it is from December to May. If you fly to Europe during the season, you are almost guaranteed to pay twice as much as off the season.
• Take advantage of different currencies. Generally, it is best to use the currency of your credit card (to avoid possible exchange fees). Sometimes, however, it pays off to switch the currency. A year ago I saved $30 on switching from Canadian dollar to Icelandic krona when booking transatlantic flights between Europe and USA.
• Find more websites with travel tips. This blog post is by no means complete. Google for more tips and share them with others!

Success Engineering

Original Photo by Marcel Bak

I think that one can be successful at anything they really want. Anything? Anything! I don't know what you do in life, but I know that you can become anyone you want and you can achieve anything you want. During the last several weeks I've been looking into the topic of success. I wanted to understand it to have a system in place for achieving success. I also talked to some people that I consider successful. Interested in my findings? Read on.

First of all, what is success? Success is achievement of a goal. Most people have some goals, such as finishing school, doing a project, making money, traveling, having a family. Also, most people fail to achieve their goals. They settle on whatever is readily available to them. Of course, I failed many times too. Now things are much better. I believe there is a general framework for being successful:

Goal. Find out what you want. Goal should be a result of strong desire for something. The stronger the desire, the more likely success. If there is no desire, there is no success. I think it is very important to be as specific about the desired outcome as possible. More specific goals allow for designing better plans. If necessary, divide the goal into smaller subgoals. Use Kanban to keep track of all the goals.

Plan. Think what you need to achieve the goal and how to do that. Set a final deadline that you will not miss. Make a very detailed plan of action. I typically first create a bullet list of actions, and then schedule them in calendar. Stick to the schedule and be committed. If you don't do that, you'll fail.

If necessary, acquire additional resources. Find out different sources of knowledge (websites, forums, publications, people) and meet like-minded people. Think about the skills that you need to learn and how to acquire them.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. You heard it many times. If you want to be successful at one thing, other things will suffer. Make a list of things that will suffer and be aware of them.

Action. Execute the plan. In many cases that's the hardest part because it requires you to move your ass and do something. Take action immediately, do not wait for "perfect moment". It does not exist. Whatever you do, you'll refine it later as you get better.

Of course, you'll be tempted to procrastinate and to find lame excuses. Stay focused and motivated. You have to be persistent. You'll meet many obstacles, but don't get discouraged. Never take things personally. Be guided by your goal and think of all the benefits of achieving it. Remember, you get as much as you fight for.

Being motivated is not always easy. Approach the whole process with the right attitude like Nick Vujcic. Be positive and have faith in success. It's the attitude that discriminates successful from unsuccessful people. It gives spark to all the action.

Taking action usually means working hard. Successful people are successful because they are devoted to their goals, not because they are naturally talented. They put all their resources into finishing the task. They work hard, but you also have to work smart. If you work smart, you save time and achieve your goals quicker. Be productive.

You might think that some people are successful because they are lucky. But, what is luck? I like the definition of Randy Pausch. According to him luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You can be lucky only when you are ready for it. Being ready usually means working for success.

Result. When you perform an action, you'll see some results. At the beginning the results will not be shocking. Maybe it'll take months or years to see big results, but do not quit. Most people fail because they quit too early.

Thoughts. Reflect on the results and the whole process. Learn and improve. Often you need to adjust the plan as the conditions change.

Controlling the Brain with Sounds?

You are going to read about something you have probably never heard of. It sounds totally wicked: brainwave synchronization. What the hell is that? Let me explain some things first. When your brain is in a certain state, it generates waves with frequencies that are characteristic to that state. For example, if you have a deep dreamless sleep, your brain generates waves below 4 Hz  (Delta waves). Now, think about doing the reverse: let's stimulate the brain with certain frequencies and see what happens. Will it switch to that state? For example, can you fall asleep just by listening to certain sounds? Well, it might be the case.

The goal of brainwave synchronization is to induce intended brain-state by feeding the brain with frequencies that correspond to the intended state. Let's say I want to sleep, I play certain sound. I want to study and focus, I play another sound. I want to meditate, I play yet another sound. Does this work? Guess what? I tested it on myself! How? I narrowed my experiment to binaural beats. These are audio files that can be played on any computer. All I needed was my laptop and headphones. It is best to listen to binaural beats on headphones to eliminate distractions.

Here is the experiment. Almost every day I go to the lab to do research. Around 1pm I'm back from lunch. The hour from 1 to 2pm is the most lazy hour of the whole day. After eating food most of the blood flows to the stomach. There is less blood (and thus oxygen) in the brain. That is the reason why we are sleepy after eating lunch or dinner. Many times I took a nap as I was too sleepy to read and focus (fortunately we've got a sofa in the lab :-) ).

I decided to give a try to brainwave synchronization by listening to binaural beats. For that, I used a program called Gnaural. I was listening to the beats while reading papers. Every time I tried it, I always stayed focused. It is a weird stuff but seemed to work for me. It is hard to say something definitive as it might have been just placebo effect. In any case, what matters is that I can be productive after lunch. All I care about are the results.

There is a lot of stuff on Wikipedia about that topic. Not only I found it fascinating, but it also delivered good results. Feel free to try and experiment yourself. I would be interested in reading about your experience.

Motivational Sticky Notes

Several weeks ago we had a Valentines party at my place. It was a very cool crowd and I invited some friends to my room. A number of them paid attention to something that I no longer found unusual: motivational sticky notes. Majority of the people said they really liked the idea. Some asked me to send the quotes around. The idea is indeed pretty good and maybe you'll find it useful too.

First of all, motivational sticky notes is an old idea. I read about it on the Internet and wanted to give it a try. Like most good ideas, it is very simple: take a bunch of sticky notes, write motivational/inspirational quotes on them, and put the notes all over your place. Why the hell would you do that? I believe they help you to keep on track. They help me, at least.

The quotes usually express obvious things. And that's the problem :-) Many things in life are so obvious that you don't even remember them. What happens if you forget? You start acting in a way that is far from "the obvious". Let me give you an example. One of the quotes says "If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?" The obvious thing here is to experiment, go out of the comfort zone and see what happens. It's a great mindset in practice, because allows you to pick up new things with open mind. I guess you agree with me. Now, what happens if you don't internalize the quote? You are less likely to try out new things. Is there any benefit of that? I doubt it.

People internalize things through repetition. A very easy way to repeat things is to surround yourself by them. You repeat just by glancing through the notes. If one catches your eye, think about it for a few seconds. Paper notes seem to be more effective than virtual notes. People often post motivational/inspirational quotes on Facebook. It is pretty much useless, because you forget the quote as soon as you post it :-)

Where to find good quotes and questions? I recommend being creative and tailoring the quotes to what matters to you. Try to come up with some sentences and quote yourself. It's pretty cool to quote yourself :-) Another source of quotes are books and websites. One particular website that I like is a blog entry: 50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind.

Focus!

(CC) Original Photo by Metaveld BV

"Controlled focus is like a laser beam that can cut through anything that seems to be stopping you."

Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

A month ago I wrote a post on how I get things done. Since then, I have been measuring time spent on daily activities. My goal was very simple: to find out how I waste time and why. That was the first step to be more time-efficient. Unexpectedly, I found a technique that helps me stay focused. If you need to improve your attention span (and I know you do :-) ), you might find it useful.

The technique is very simple. That's probably the reason why it works so well for me. The idea is to log time and activity that you perform. It is important that you force yourself to do that whenever you switch focus. Whenever you want to perform a new activity, add an entry. Be honest with yourself. Adding a new entry should make you think whether to perform that activity. My sample log looks as follows:

Date	Time	Activity
Sat 28-01-2012	15:01:10	food
Sat 28-01-2012	16:08:43	limoncello
Sat 28-01-2012	16:40:22	blog
Sat 28-01-2012	16:45:11	limoncello
Sat 28-01-2012	16:55:03	blog
Sat 28-01-2012	17:00:07	limoncello

According to the log, I made and ate food at first. Later I was interleaving two activities: making limoncello and writing blog content. Note that during writing the blog, I didn't check Facebook or email. If I had wanted to do that, I would have had to add an entry.

Why does this technique work? I believe it's related to pain and pleasure. Adding those log entries is pain in the ass. The pain associated with it overshadows a possible pleasure associated with Facebook.

How to log entries? You can start with a piece of paper. Alternatively, you can also write them in a text file or on a cell phone. I like to automate life, so I created a program that automatically timestamps log entries and saves them in a text file. It works on Linux, but maybe you'll be lucky enough to use it on Mac. This console program is easy to use. Type: log food, or log blog, or log myEntry to add a new entry to the file log.txt in home directory. If you have no idea how to download and use the program, don't bother with it. Piece of paper is your best friend!

Road Trip: God Bless America

The adventurous Gzowski crew is back: Tom, Mike, and myself. We are back to Canada after driving 4500km for 5 days! 4 days of driving for 1 night of partying. How ridiculous is that? As we started driving on Sunday, I could not believe that we would end up in New Orleans. It was the most random excursion I've ever been to. My thoughts are still as chaotic as the trip and the previous post. I'm writing this blog post to share the best highlights from our cultural exploration of USA.

Road Trip

• Car (our new home). It took us about 30 hours to get to New Orleans. Mike's car was the place to drink, eat, sleep, live. We spent our first night on a Pizza Hut parking lot somewhere in Kentucky.  Mike was sleeping on driver's sleep, Tom in the trunk/back seat, and myself on the passenger's seat. The car was so comfortable that we decided to sleep there for two more nights! Apparently there are more people who share our passion to cars. We spent the second night on McDonald's parking lot in New Orleans. When we woke up, we spot a car next to ours. A girl approached our car and said: "Looks like we've got neighbors!" :-)
• Living the life. When you go on vacations, you brain goes on vacations as well. Basically, we spent a lot of money on random things, like a baseball cap, fedora, ponchos, various decorations, unnecessary food. We also bought a kettle, which was one of the best investments. We boiled water to make tea/coffee at each stop: McDonald's, Wallmart, Burger King. Although we had drinking water, we didn't have many opportunities to take a shower. After one day without shower, you notice that you look different. After 2-3 days, you just don't care.

• McDonald's. We are loving it. Besides their delectable hash browns, they offer free access to the Internet. McDonald's strategically located their restaurants at highway exits. It made keeping in touch with our friends very convenient. Unexpectedly, one night when we were writing postcards, McDonald's donated to us fries. How nice of them?

God Bless America

• No KFC in Kentucky. We didn't see any Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant as we were passing by Kentucky. Too bad! We badly wanted to try the forbidden-in-Canada double down sandwich. The forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. We finally found the sandwich in Tennessee!

• Jack Daniels in a dry county. When we were driving through Tennessee, we noticed a sign saying "Jack Daniel's Distillery. A national historic site". Pretty cool! Although, I'm not a fan of whiskey, it was very interesting to see how they produce it. Apparently, it is a very slow and expensive process because alcohol is filtered drop by drop though charcoal. Nonetheless, the more interesting fact is that the distillery is located in a dry county. It is a county that forbids the sale of alcohol.
• Southern states. The trip was our first experience with southern states. They seemed like a totally different world to me. The states are very traditional (with lots of churches) and people are welcoming. I got the impression that the time slows down there and no one is in a rush. People speak with a distinctive accent that is initially hard to understand. Also, if you listen to the radio, you quickly notice that the only music they play is country :-)

Money-efficient Local Diet

• Greasy food. Together with Tom, we decided to think globally and act locally. We supported local economy by consuming tons of super-greasy food. No, I'm not talking about McDonald's and similar chains. Those are relatively healthy. I'm talking about food that contains 40-50% of saturated fat! There was so much fat that a paper bag was totally wet after keeping them for a while. We bought 2-3kg of super-greasy chicken legs to appreciate their unique taste for 2 days. On top of that, we had potatoes, or rather potato-butter. Unforgettable experience!

• 0% - 5% juice. What is the definition of juice? Who cares :-) We bought some liquid that resembled juice. When I think of it, it still tastes like a dish washing detergent.
• Law enforcement. To make sure that each of us appreciates the healthy food we made a law: You have to eat anything what is stereotypical American, greasy, unhealthy. Avoid fruits and vegetables. If someone offers the food to you, you have to eat it. You have the right to make the other person eat the same type of food.

New Orleans and Mardi Gras

• New Orleans. It is a very unique American city. It definitely has European flavor. It can be seen in the architecture, roads, and symbols.
• Mardi Gras. The festival is great party attended by thousands of tourists. They crowd the streets, wear beads, cheer, show their breasts, or shout "show us your tits!". In fact, it is a lot of fun and goes beyond what you can see in public places every day. Before going there, I had no idea what Mardi Gras is. It took us 4 days to drive there and back just to experience that one night. Was it worth it? Definitely! We also met a fair number of Canadians who were proudly singing O Canada. Among them, there was Tom's brother. We all celebrated the family reunion in New Orleans.

It is a long post but I must repeat a sentence that I heard hundreds of times: we are so fucking cool!

It Started with Breakfast...

I'm writing this blog post in the car. We have been driving for over 26 hours (with stops) from Kitchener to New Orleans. We are some 30km from Birmingham, Alabama.

Sunday
10:30am Wake-up. Tom is at my place. Last night we went to Mexican Fiesta - a Polish event in Cambridge; we also visited Guelph to check out what's going on there.

Tom: Good morning!
Kacper: Hey Tom!
Tom: I'm hungry, let's go for breakfast.
Kacper: Yeah, let's see who else wants to go... Looks like Mike is coming over.

Tom, Mike, and myself are members of Gzowski Club. We envisioned the club as a place for people who like to have a good time. We promote Polish culture among Canadian students in Ontario. We often hang out together and organize informal events.

Tom: What do you say about Phil's [club that hosts a retro night] tonight? Hmm, I'd like to do something exciting today...
Kacper: You know what? I've been thinking about doing something unusual for several days! I don't know what it is, but something that you don't do often... I just got a text message from Andrea. They also want to go to Phil's tonight.

Text from Mike: R u guys still hanging? Lets road trip somewhere!
Text from Kacper: We were just brainstorming. Come over now! Bring your passport, just in case.
Text from Mike: K ill be there in like 30-40mins. Dude niagra falls casino!!!!!

12:00pm We make a delectable breakfast: roasted salmon and fried bacon. I talk to my parents on Skype saying that Tom and Mike came over. We've got a car and we're looking for adventures. My parents seemed very happy to hear that! After the Skype call, together with Tom and Mike we are thinking about possible destinations. Oshawa? Ottawa? Montreal? New York? Chicago? Mexico?

Tom: Guys! My brother is in New Orleans. Mardi Gras festival is there. Let's go!
Kacper: Well, it's like 2 days of driving. Let's check flight tickets.

Tom and Mike are checking prices, while I'm packing my back pack. Flights to New Orleans are for $600-$700 per person. Unreasonable. We have no choice, we have to drive there. The trip is on.

Mike: Ok guys, I need to pack my stuff as well. Let's get into the car and drive to my place.

1:00pm We are at Mike's place. He packs his stuff and we decide to visit Kasia. In the meantime we message tens of other friends and update statuses on Facebook. Apparently, everybody is too busy to go for a trip of our lives. Mike's mom is a bit worried about him, but Mike decides to take things in his own hands :-)

2:00pm Tom packs his back pack. I upload some pictures on FB. Guys are singing the much-loved "Hangover" song.

Tom: One more thing. I've got a project deadline. I have to submit a project by 5pm. We need to go to Conestoga College to the computer lab.
Mike: Did you take your passport?
Tom: Oh, shit! My passport, thanks buddy!

3:00pm We are in the computer lab. Tom finishes the project, Mike checks directions from Kitchener to New Orleans, and I check hostels. According to Google Maps the route is 2023km long and it takes over 20 hours to get there. The road leads through the whole USA: Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississipi, Louisiana. Pretty cool!

4:00pm Just before departing from Conestoga we accidentally meet our friend Anna. Funny, cause we've been texting that day for a while. That was the last moment to say bye!

4:05pm We are heading towards the border with USA in Detroit! Although we can't believe it, the trip is seriously on!

It was one of the coolest days in my life! We all 3 woke up in the morning without planning anything particular. We just wanted to go for breakfast, maybe to the club later. None of us expected setting off for a 2000km roadtrip to New Orleans. How COOL does that sound on a scale 1-10? :-)

It's extremely hard to find that spontaneous people. Similarly to you, each and every one of us has projects, work, and other commitments. Money? We are all students, so we are far from being millionaires. Let's see what adventures await us on this trip!