• Where to Go in Havana

    Where to go in Havana Cuba (Where we went, and what we saw)

    As a brief background, we cubicle dwellers decided to make use of our President’s Day holiday weekend to go somewhere new. At the same time, we had a few JetBlue points to use, and they had a deal for Cuba – so that’s why we (Peter, me, and a friend named Anthony) decided to book our plane tickets to Cuba. In this post, we talk more about our trip to Havana, and specifically where to go in Havana, Cuba. Our trip was from February 18-21, 2017 – the 21st technically doesn’t count because we just used that to travel back to the US, so as a reference, we had been…

  • Welcome – Start Here

    If you are new to our website or just browsing around and want to know more about how this website works, here’s a sentence to sum it all up: Reaching Financial Independence & Experiencing the World You can read more about us on this link — but to sum it up: We both are working full-time jobs but want to become financially independent within the next 15 years. We are working because we are saving for our freedom from the cubicle, and also to fund other passions like travel. We are trying to invest what we earn in other things too – call it mini-businesses or side hustles, if you…

  • Things to do in Manila

    Things to do in Manila – Experiences from A Westerner

    We never know where we end up in life.  Sometimes you wander into a bar looking for a drink. Sometimes you stumble into a country on the other side of the world. The two events are different, but not unrelated. I grew up in Europe (Slovakia, to be more precise), lived most of my adult life in the United States, and, last year, married a Filipina.  That's not a trajectory that I could have predicted when I threw rocks into ditches as a 9-year old in Slovakia. I've visited the Philippines a few times now as a westernized adult, and it is quite an interesting place.  It is marketed as…

  • Three Faces of Canada: Toronto, Niagara Falls & Vancouver

    Three Faces of Canada: Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Vancouver

      Oh, Canada! The first thing I think of when I imagine Canada is the vastness of it.  It’s the second biggest country in the world by total area, behind only Russia.  If you wanted to drive across the whole of Canada, it would take you 2 full weeks!  I also think of hockey rinks, maple syrup, moose, Arcade Fire, and bears.  And also a weird accent which seems to hook words and twist them (how about becomes ah-boot). In truth, Canada is very urbanized, since more than 80% of people live in big cities.  We recently had a chance to visit two of the three biggest states in Canada: British…