One of the reason I started writing hoboCEO, was because I wanted to give a real world example of a hobo CEO – someone living and working whilst traveling. So here’s a quick post on what I’ve been up to.

In these 4 months, I’ve been in Berlin, London, Edinburgh, Kuala Lumpur, Pengang, Tokyo, Hokkaido plus a few other spots, staying in posh hotels, a colonial villa, furnished apartments and friends houses. I’ve been from Winter to Summery Tropics, back to Winter, then Spring, back to Winter and then Summer. As well as beach time, snow boarding, kick boxing, mountain trekking, hot springs and hiking, and along the way I’ve started a new business Tokyo Cheapo, presented in front of a few hundred peeps and complete a redesign of ArtWeb.com.

All this I’ve done on much less than the budget I’d need for living in a one bedroom flat in London.

Explosions, and Winter Snow

The New Year started with a bang, thousands of them. I was in Berlin gate crashing parties and enjoying the general mayhem on the streets. On NYE Berlin is fog of gunpowder smoke with fireworks, rockets and machine guns going off every second and no notion of health and safety.

I spent most of January in Berlin, training with a champion kick boxer and artist friend, hanging out with some of the 4 hour work week Berlin people and working on ArtWeb with Berliner Nico Appel.

Back to Summer, 5 Star Hotels and Colonial Villas

relaxing on the roof top swimming pool area at our hotel in KL

After picking up my girlfriend in Tokyo, we jumped on a plane down to Malaysia. My first visit and on following the advice from wikitravel booked ourselves (at exceptional value) into mostly five-star hotels.

Next we flew of to the island Penang for some beach and luxury colonial villa action.

Winter again – Snow Boarding, Cafes and Presentations

Back to Japan and renting an apartment for a few months. My snow boarding gear is stored in Japan (a great country for winter sports) which I put to good use 🙂

When not in the mountains, I was working mostly from cafes. I find cafes (especially in non-english speaking countries) a great place to focus on work. They give me the best of both worlds, the hustle and bustle of people around, good atmosphere without the office politics or coworkers to interrupt me.

I also was invited to do a presentation at pehcakucha night in Tokyo.

And got my annual fix of ‘Hanami’, Cherry Blossom which is always a high point in Japan.

Hokkaido

Next up we went to Hokkaido the Northern most island of Japan and an area of delightful natural beauty. We stayed with old friend who lives in Hokkaido and is writing a book, visited a hot spring at 1300m altitude and naturally working from local cafes.

When we arrived at the airport we were greeted with 2 meter piles of snow, but after only 10 days the season changed, the snow melted and we were almost in our T-shirts.

Then Back down to Tokyo again in time to launch a new venture Tokyo Cheapo

Beach

One of my favourite mantras is “Go to the beach on Tuesdays”. The idea is simply to take time off at unusual times. There’s many good reasons for this, breaking routines, beach often being empty to name just a couple – more on this in another post.

Here I am during my last few weeks in Japan on a stretching on Summery Tuesday, Kamakura beach:

Where Next?

Well that’s just the last 4 months. I haven’t decided yet where I’ll be over the next 4, stay tuned to find out…

Beard and departure board at Narita airport, Tokyo, Japan

Financial Summary

All costs in GBP.

Yes, that’s just over 350 quid (about 430EUR, 550USD) a week for over 4 months of travel all in.

I said at the beginning “less than the cost of living in London”, and I suppose that’s not strictly true, I must apologise – it’s possible to live in London on that budget, perhaps living in an east London council estate and subsisting on a diet of oatmeal and pork pies.