The toilet times - Full time traveller

Nguồn audio: Trích đoạn trong tập podcast "Slow Travel is Cheap Travel, with Nomadic Matt Kepnes - Afford Anything Podcast (Audio)" của chương trình podcast thuộc bản quyền của Afford anything. Audio được chích ra và chia sẻ lại chỉ với mục đích giúp đỡ người học tiếng anh.

TRANSCRIPT: (Transcript chỉ chính xác tương đối, chủ yếu dùng để hiểu nội dung)

Paul: Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hey Paul. How's it going?

Paul: It's great. How are you doing?

Matt: Doing well in this fine evening in Paris

Paul: Oh fantastic I'm glad you're enjoying Paris, you've been travelling, speaking of Paris, you've been travelling for thirteen years, correct?

Matt: Yeah since July 2006, a long time

Paul: So I want to talk about spending 13 years as a full-time traveler but let's go back to the origin of all of that because in 2006, in July 2006 before you began traveling, you were working in Health Care in Boston. Tell me about how that began, how did you come to work in Health Care and then how did you come to quit and become a full time
traveler?

Matt: So I had graduated college in 2004 during that mild recession in around 2003 or so and nobody really wanted to hire history teachers, I went to school be history teacher so I needed a job, my mom knew somebody at a hospital, well, nepotism goes a long way, got a job, doing some basically admin stuff and sort of worked my way up a little bit as you could in a couple of years, during that time, you know, you're supposed to take a vacation, right, you got vacation time, you go take a vacation so I took a vacation to Costa Rica, 2004, fell in love with travel, 2005 taking Nullification to Thailand, I had never been a backpacker and they never studied abroad in Europe or stayed in hostels but they were fascinating, here were people who were just traveling and doing whatever they wanted, and meeting people from around the world and I just really loved their lifestyle and so I decided that I would quit my job to go travel. I was getting an MBA at the time and I knew Health Care wasn't gonna be my career for life so when the MBA was finished and I started looking for another job, I figured "why don't I use this as sort of a bookend, go travel for a bit then come back and you know, start my career

Paul: Uhm...and so that was when you quit your job in Health Care and went on what you thought would be just a one year sabbatical basically a one-year gap year...

Matt: Yeah, my goal was travel for a year and it all mapped out and leave in July 2006, come back around July August 2007 then start looking for a job, I didn't come back to the end of January 2008 which was not a good time to look for a job given the recession and all and I sat back down in cubicle and I was just not into it, I said I want to keep going, keep traveling. I'm not ready for this yet I would like to become a writer solely because travel writer sounds like a job that I could do. That would allow me to travel, I knew nothing about the field, it just seemed like, hey, you know, if you,..about a travel writer, you get to travel, started a website called "The mouse mat" and really was just there to be sort of an online resume where people could see my by-lines and hire me and then I,..in May June of 2008, I went away again and then here we are today...

Paul: So you came back to the United States in early 2008, did you get a job at that time?

Matt: Yeah, my cousin, nepotism again, on a temp agency and so while I sort of figured out my life, I got a temp job ironically back in the hospital covering this woman who was on maternity leave so they cut me down in her chair and said don't break anything, just answer the phones and direct calls and you know sort the mail so I had a little free time on my hands. I used that time to turn my website when I was back in this office again, you know, with five co-workers and I saw them every day, 9:00 to 5:00 and it's like this is exactly when I had left, like, you know, a month ago. I'm in Australia and now I'm getting ready to go to a cubicle and put on my tie again and it was just like, no, no I had grown as a person and I wasn't going back into the same life, I was going back into the matrix...

CHÚ THÍCH VÀ TỪ VỰNG:

Speaking of something: related to the subject being discussed (nói về cái gì đó)

Recession: a difficult time when there is less trade, business activity etc in a country than usual (thời kỳ khó khăn)

Nepotism: the act of using your power or influence to get good jobs or unfair advantages for members of your own family (chạy việc nhờ quan hệ của người thân có chức quyền trong công ty nào đó)

Go a long way: If you say that someone will go a long way, you mean that they will be very successful (thuận lợi, thành công)

Work your way up: to achieve a better position within the organization you work for (lên chức)

Fall in love with: to love (yêu thích)

Backpacker: Someone who is travelling for pleasure, usually with not very much money, and who walks or uses public transport and carries a backpack (người đang đi dụ lịch, thường là không có nhiều tiền)

MBA: Master of Business Administration (có thể hiểu là một loại bằng cấp)

Sabbatical: a period when someone, especially someone in a university job, stops doing their usual work in order to study or travel

Gap year: a year between leaving school and going to university, which some young people use as an opportunity to travel, earn money, or get experience of working (gap year)

Map out: to plan something in detail (lên kế hoạch đầy đủ, chi tiết)

Be into it: to interested in it (thích)

Temp: temporary (tạm thời)

Ironically: used when talking about a situation in which the opposite of what you expected happens or is true (chớ chêu thay)

Maternity leave: a period in which a woman is legally allowed to be absent from work in the weeks before and after she gives birth (kỳ nghỉ thai sản)