Underwater Adventures
February 2016
I spent most of February living in the Philippines, running barefoot on the beach & working on the new Gyroscope iPhone app. Of course the whole journey was tracked & quantified, so here are some of the highlights:
- Countries: 2 (Philippines, Japan)
- Airports visited: 5 (NRT, MNL, MPH, SJI, TAG)
- Hours online: 143.5
- Total steps: 244,236 (average 8,421)
- Runs: 10 (23.8 miles)
- Time in airplanes: 10 hours
- Dives: 20
- Maximum depth: 40 meters
- Cellular data used: 30 gigs (GLOBE + Softbank)
- Average temperature: 88°F
Every day as I went to new places, I relied on the Gyroscope iPhone app to make sure I was getting enough work done, being active & staying on track. I’ll be sharing some of the weekly and monthly reports from the app, with some commentary about each place & what I found interesting.
It all started last year when the highrise in San Francisco that I lived in was sold. Some company bought the whole building and decided to kick everyone out and renovate. My roommate found a similar spot in the building next door, but it wasn’t going to be ready until April. We had to move out by February, so I needed to find a new place for a couple months.
I shopped on AirBnb for a while, but was appalled by how expensive all the places in SF were, especially since the Superbowl was coming up. Everything was going to be cold, crowded & expensive. I began to wonder whether I should go somewhere else for a while.
A few months earlier, we made the company a fully distributed team. No longer working from an office in South Park, I was enjoying the flexibility of working from my favorite coffee shops. With everything happening over Slack, I could theoretically work from anywhere.
I knew it was possible because I had done it before. The original April Zero was mostly built while traveling through Thailand & Japan and living out of a backpack. While building the 2015 Travel Report, I realized that was a long time ago and I had not left the country in more than a year. Most weeks I didn’t even leave a few block radius from my apartment.
My friend Dirk was diving in the Philippines, posting amazing photos every day and telling me how cheap it was there. It was starting to rain and I desperately needed some sunshine. I asked Dirk whether the coffee shops in the Philippines had good wifi.
Not having to pay rent for a couple months would give me a decent budget. If I spent less than 100 dollars a day, it would be cheaper than living in San Francisco. Some of the places in the Philippines seemed to cost only about 30 to 40 dollars a night. If only I could figure out a cheap way to get there…
Hacking International Travel
After spending some time on Kayak, United and a bunch of travel forums, I decided I would fly to Manila for a month, then return home with a stop in Tokyo. With some more research and experimentation, I ended up finding the flights for less than 100 dollars total, plus some points.
Who said international travel had to be expensive?
The points made it a great deal, since otherwise the same flights would’ve cost about $5,000—prohibitively expensive. Instead I used about 100,000 points to get them, which were quite easy to get for free. I had accumulated quite a few after using a Chase Sapphire credit card for a couple years.
Simply opening a new card and using it for a few months will get you most of the way there, since they offer pretty big bonuses of 50,000+ points to try to convince people to initially sign up.
There are hundreds of different tools and ways to search, but I ended up using the United website with the “search for award travel” checkmark. While not technically free, the cash price usually ends up just being the minimum taxes & fees.
I wish I had known about this a few years ago, instead of paying thousands of dollars in airfare! I highly recommend the Chase Sapphire card to get points & other free stuff. Most of my friends now have the same card, and when we go out to dinner there will be 5 or 6 identical blue cards. It’s also great to use while traveling, with no international fees.
You can sign up for it here to get a signup bonus of 50,000 points. The bonus offers are the most efficient way to get a lot of points, but requires a minimum spending within a few months so the timing is important.
11" MacBook
I had been using an 11" Air for the last couple years. It was great for travel but I was worried about having a single point of failure. I decided to get a second laptop just to be safe, with the same configuration and local dev environment. If one of them died, fell in a hot tub, or got misconfigured somehow, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
More importantly, I could also get twice as much done before needing to plug in and recharge. This would turn out to be really important, as power outlets turned out to be pretty rare — often only in the hotel rooms.
SFO ✈ NRT
By the end of January, all my stuff was packed and ready to go to storage. With a 20 dollar plane ticket to the Philippines and a couple laptops, I was ready to embark on a new adventure.
The first flight actually had great wifi and power, and I ended up getting a lot done. We had just released an early version of friends & groups on Gyroscope, and there were a bunch of improvements to be made now that people were actually using it and sending feedback.
It felt like just another day at work, except I happened to be on a plane. I stopped at Narita Airport for a short layover and to fill up on sushi, and then continued on to Manila. I heard from many people that Manila was not really a great place to be, so I just stayed in the airport until my flight the next morning, which would take me to Boracay.
Boracay
I hadn’t figured out where I was saying, so I also researched that on the way. My plan was to walk along the beach until I found a place that seemed nice, and then negotiate a price with them. Some friends had sent me their recommendations of places to check out, so I would start with those.
I ended up staying on a popular beach known as White Beach, named so because of the fine white sand. Having stayed on many beaches, I can attest that good sand is actually very hard to find. Most beaches are pretty coarse, and also not very flat—bad for barefoot running. Boracay was delightful.
I enjoyed waking up each morning around sunrise and going running. The beach faced West, so the evenings had delightful sunsets. I was working on a big update to the running app, and it was a great place to test it out regularly.
The new running update featured customizable avatars instead of the logo, new text overlays with Gyroscope branding, and some other growth experiments.
Every day there were things written in the sand in front of each of the major hotels, with messages and intricate artwork revolving around “Boracay.” I found the idea of timestamped artwork really intriguing. It made each one unique, rather than just something you could capture once.
Over the course of the week, we I added a bunch of improvements to the app and we finally submitted the new version to the app store (it is now available in the store as v2.0.2). It was fun to work from various places throughout the week — a Starbucks that looked over the beach, or sometimes the actual beach itself.
Our next big project was groups on Gyroscope. They would take it from a single-player experience to something where you can be motivated by all your friends. We recently added an improved Friends section, where people could find the people they know and add them as friends, getting access to view each other’s profiles. I added about 30 people I knew as friends and it was cool to see a screen with all of their latest step counts & locations.
Even though I was thousands of miles away from most of them, I felt like I had a sense of what everyone was up to—but in a very different way than a Twitter or Facebook feed. We ordered the friends list by steps, to give a feeling of how your daily activity compared.
Since going almost anywhere in Boracay required a long walk along the beach, I was getting plenty of steps. Running every morning helped push that step count even higher. With a new app update shipped, lots of sunshine, and consistently high steps, week 1 was off to a good start.
Perspective
For some people, traveling to other countries is a way to unplug and get away from work. That doesn’t really interest me—I don’t think I could stop building things even if I wanted to. The thing I love most about travel is the perspective it gives. Away from your apartment and your friends and your daily routine and your stuff, you are reminded of who you really are.
When you realize you are flying across the sky in a metal box, looking down at tiny cities far below, it is hard to not be inspired and believe that pretty much anything is possible.
The other thing I was looking forward to was interacting with people from other cultures, living totally different lives. After being in San Francisco for a while, you start to get the feeling that pretty much everyone is working for a startup and cares about the same things. I was quickly reminded that most people don’t even know what a startup is, let alone have one.
But it was interesting to see that almost all of them, even on the most remote islands, were intimately familiar with products created by startups—they played candy crush on their iPhones and were on Instagram constantly. They just had no idea how, why, or where they were created—which makes sense.
It was interesting to see that almost no one in Asia had a Fitbit or Apple Watch. Instead, most of them were smoking. Everyone seemed to have iPhones, but it may be years or decades before the culture of health and fitness makes its way there.
Most of our stuff so far was built for the desktop web, but as we prepared to release the new Gyroscope iPhone app I wanted to really get into the mobile mindset in order to make it as great as possible. I planned to make my phone my primary device and truly live from it like the rest of the world. Being on a slow 3G connection helped make the experience even more real.
I quickly realized some apps like Instagram and Twitter still worked great and have been optimized for that use case. Others like Slack were an absolute nightmare and clearly not optimized for people with slow connections. Our app was somewhere in between — decent in some parts and terrible in others (like the photo uploading process).
A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.
Steve Jobs, Wired, February 96
Ferry to Mindoro
After a week in Boracay, it was time to go to the next destination. This was the place I was most looking forward to, a resort called Apo Reef Club in a remote part of the Mindoro island. The resort seemed nice, but the main attraction was their 2-day boat trips to the nearby Apo Reef, a national park with supposedly beautiful reefs and fish.
The few dives I did in Boracay were not that amazing, but this place was supposed to be out of this world. I signed up for one of the dive trips, and planned to hang out at the resort and get some work done for the rest of the time.
Unlike Boracay, there was pretty much nothing else nearby. No restaurants, no city, no other people. Even the nearest village was miles away. Some days, I was the only person staying at the resort. It was a nice way to get away from everything for a while. They had hammocks and gardens and a pool, that all seemed like appealing places to sit and work on the new Gyroscope groups.
The wifi was pretty much nonexistent. I had purchased a Globe SIM card before coming, with 30 gigs of data. Each day I used about a gig. Every few hours, I would tether to my phone and push my changes to GitHub, check email and Slack, and then go back to work. Without any distractions from the internet, I actually became much more productive.
Having two laptops also turned out to be extremely helpful. One would be in the room charging while I worked. Then when I needed to switch, I would go swap them out and continue where I left off.
Every day at 9am, the Gyroscope app sends a push notification with a summary of the previous day. It’s very simple, but ends up being a powerful way to stay on track and plan your day.
If the previous day had low steps, I would make sure to go running and work out that day. On the other hand, if there was not enough time online, I would know I needed to catch up and would get my computer out to get started.
I have RescueTime installed on my computer, which integrates with Gyroscope and automatically provides really useful stats about my productivity. On my phone, Moves tracks the locations I go to and how I travel between them.
I’m also traveling with my Fitbit Charge HR, which tracks my heart rate and steps every day. I prefer it to the Apple Watch while traveling because I only need to charge it every 4 or 5 days, and the heart rate is a bit more detailed. While technically only “water resistant,” I’ve taken it about 10 feet underwater and it seems to work fine. My dive watch, however, is water-proof to 2000 feet—a limit I don’t plan to test.
A typical day at Apo Reef started around 5 or 6. I would wake up and catch up on emails and calls before everyone went to sleep back at home. Then off to breakfast around 7 for some coffee.
There was not much else to do on the island, so I would pretty much work all day, with a small break for lunch and an hour off around sunset for a run and dinner. In the evening I would relax and read a chapter or two from a book, and then go back to work for a few hours before falling asleep.
Over the month, I managed to get through quite a few books that had been on my reading list:
- High Output Management
- Business Adventures
- The Song Machine
- 50 Places to Dive before you Die
- The Circle
- Travels by Michael Crichton
- Japanese for Busy People (textbook)
Throughout the day, I would check the Gyroscope app to see how I was doing. I could see the numbers as they changed every few minutes and make sure they were on track.
It was basically a game of balancing time working on the computer with steps and exercise. Our running app made it fun to go out for a jog along the beach to catch up on my step and heart-rate goals.
Apo Reef Island
The boat trip I signed up for left on the 13th, stayed overnight and returned the following evening. We would do 5 dives the first day, sleep on the boat looking up at the stars, 5 more dives the next day, and then return. We had to wake up at 5am to leave on time. Around 9am we arrived at the first dive site—a shipwreck.
The Apo Reef turned out to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to, due to a combination of the great conditions (warm and crystal clear water), the magnificent species (turtles and sharks freely roaming about), and the lack of any other humans nearby.
I was paired with Ed, a 22-year old divemaster who grew up on a nearby island and had been diving since he was 14. We were on our own schedule, diving for as long as we could (usually about an hour), then coming up for a surface interval (about another hour) and then going back down.
Turtles
The first turtle we encountered I actually swam by. Someone grabbed my leg and pointed at it—and after a few seconds I realized what seemed like a rock was actually the shell of a big turtle. As I got a closer for a picture, it swam away. But, how exciting!
Many of the other fish, even sharks, were quite shy. You could see one, but getting close enough for a good photo was almost impossible.
Turtles, however, didn’t really seem to care about humans. Many times I was able to swim right up to them, and they continued what they were doing. It made for some great photos and videos.
Other times they would be casually moving along and I could swim alongside them. It was totally surreal. They are clearly at home here, barely using any energy while I needed all my fins to try and keep up.
Oftentimes, they would be accompanied by other fish at their underbelly. Sharks and other big fish can often be seen with these cleaner fish as their entourage. It is an interesting display of underwater symbiosis to consistently see these species together, like clownfish and anemone.
Deep Dive
Most dives are to a depth of about 20 to 30 meters (60–100 feet), gradually coming back up over the course of an hour — finally stopping for a safety decompression stop at 5 meters, and then surfacing. However, many sharks and other interesting species live much deeper.
My deepest dive was down to 40 meters, beating my previous record of around 32. At that depth, you are more than a hundred feet below the surface, and you can feel the weight of 5 earth atmospheres above.
My lips started to tingle a bit—either from the pressure or the cold—and I felt what is known as nitrogen narcosis, which feels slightly like being drunk, caused by changes to the air going to your brain. I gave Ed the thumbs up sign, and we started the (very) slow ascent back to 20 meters. Unfortunately we didn’t find any sharks down there, but there would be plenty to come.
In the excitement of going down, I had totally forgotten my camera was in my pocket! A refurbished Fujifilm camera, it was only rated to go 15 meters.
I didn’t want to spend a quarter of my travel budget on a brand new GoPro (my last one had flooded a couple years ago when diving in Santa Barbara), so I had bought the cheapest underwater camera on Amazon. Though it was rated for only 15 meters, I suspected it could tolerate more.
It turns out it survived up to 40, and I was quite impressed by the build and photo quality — arguably better than footage from a GoPro.
It’s hard to explain the magic of scuba diving to someone who hasn’t tried it. Each dive feels like you are on a Star Trek away team, exploring strange and foreign worlds to make contact with alien species. You never know what to expect, but something exciting usually ends up coming along.
I tried to take some photos & videos to help capture and explain some of the amazing things I saw. Here is a short video with some of the highlights…
An average dive in the US (like Hawaii or California) costs more than $100, while here they ended up being only $10–20, and also considerably warmer. I was really fortunate to be able to work somewhere where I could just hop on a boat and go for a nice afternoon dive. Instead of the usual lunch break or afternoon meeting, I was hanging out with sharks.
Sharks
Most people I talked to are scared of sharks and remind me of scenes from Jaws. The sharks in this area are not the famous great-whites, but just reef sharks — which are much smaller and not at all aggressive.
Usually they would swim away at the sight of us, making it hard to even get a good photo. The way they moved through the water was very graceful and elegant. The ones we encountered were white-tip and black-tip reef sharks. Hammerhead and Thresher sharks have also been seen there, but not when we went.
Barracuda
Besides swimming alongside the turtles, the most magical experience of the trip was when we encountered a school of barracuda. Some barracuda species—like the Great Barracuda—travel alone or in pairs. We encountered a few of those but they weren’t particularly exciting.
Other types of barracuda travel in schools of hundreds or thousands. At the end of a rather uneventful dive, as we were about to make a safety stop and come back up to the surface, we were surrounded by one such school.
Having encountered some barracuda before (at the aptly named Barracuda Rock in Thailand), I knew what to expect and wasn’t really scared, even though they were swimming just a few feet away from me. They made a turn and eventually there were circling us. With barracuda on all sides, the only thing to do was to stay calm and take some good pictures.
Unlike my previous encounter where they just swam by, these ones kept circling us for many minutes. After their third or fourth lap, I began to get a bit worried. Is this some sort of pre-lunchtime ritual? Did they enjoy Indian food? As they did their laps, it felt like every single one of them was looking right at me.
After a few minutes of hanging out, they presumably got bored of us humans and decided to go elsewhere. There were thousands of them, so it was very unclear who was in charge or how they collectively made decisions, but it was really fascinating to see them suddenly start to spiral away beneath us and all swim away just a few seconds later.
Small Stuff
Initially, the bigger the animals were, the more excited we got. A trip wasn’t truly great if you didn’t encounter some big shark or turtle. “See anything good?” — “Nah, just some small stuff.”
But after about the 10th turtle sighting, they started to look the same. I didn’t even bother turning on my camera unless it was doing something special. It was interesting, and slightly worrying, how quickly things went from being exotic to mundane, for pretty much everyone in the group. It seems like humans are strongly wired to value things by how rare they are, and quickly become accustomed to even the most magnificent sights.
But we were surrounded by beauty everywhere. It just took a while to calm down and truly notice it. One of my favorite things became finding nudibranch. They are tiny — about an inch or two at the most — but very brightly colored, possible to spot if you look closely.
Nudibranch
Even in a world of otherwise bright and dazzling colors, nudibranchs truly stand out with their vivid hues. It is like someone turned the saturation up to 110% for these little guys.
Photographing them poses some unique challenges. Since they are so small, you really need to get up close, which requires perfect control of your buoyancy. Hovering just an inch above, you need to get the perfect timing of the camera, current, breathing and creature.
Most of them have two little antennae on their head, like their land-based snail cousins. But many of them also have other sorts of plumage sticking out of various parts.
Alona Beach
After a couple weeks of diving & productive solitude at the Apo Reef Club, the final destination in the Philippines was an island called Panglao. I’d be staying at a resort on a strip of sand called Alona Beach. It felt similar to Boracay — with lots of restaurants and people walking along the beach — but much smaller and less crowded. The wifi there was supposed to be pretty good, which I was excited about.
The whole stretch of beach was less than a mile long, so running there meant doing several laps.
Every morning, I would go to the hotel breakfast at 7am and have a quick Skype call with Mahdi before he went to sleep in Canada.
Then I’d spend the rest of the day at various cafes and spots near the resort. The new groups page was almost ready and I was very excited to release the beta to some of our Pro users.
Foursquare led me to a nice cafe called Buzzz, with organic honey-flavored drinks. I went to go work from there on most days. They served the most delicious mango smoothies. The rest of the time was spent working the pool or hotel bar, which also served mango smoothies.
I tried going on a few dives with the local dive shop, but they were nothing spectacular. The visibility was not great, the boat had too many people and there weren’t even any sharks. In short, I had been spoiled by Apo Reef.
One morning I forgot to put on bug spray, and by the time I went for breakfast I was covered in a dozen bites of different varieties. Meanwhile, my sunglasses had literally melted apart. The slow internet and waiting for everything to load was starting to take its toll. After 25 days, I decided I was tired of the heat, the sand, the bugs everywhere. It was time to leave.
My plan had been to stay in the Philippines until I was tired of nature, then go to Tokyo until I was tired of great food, and then return to San Francisco.
Fortunately my flight to Narita was the next day. Perfect timing.
To be continued…
Further reading:
- Most of the graphics in the post are from the Gyroscope Pro app
- Check out Designing while Traveling to learn how to work & travel
- How to use the Moves app to track all the places you travel to
- If you use a computer, I recommend installing RescueTime
