10 Great Travel Tips_150

I have been to 80 cities in 30 countries. I'm not a travel expert by any means,Nike Jordan Fusion 8, but I do have some travel advice for the next guy. The biggest tip I can give is to do your research. Most of the tips I'm going to provide fall in this category and will be explained in greater detail.
Check travel Warnings and Alerts.
Make sure it is safe to travel where you're heading. Travel Warnings and Alerts are available at any of the regional passport agencies and U.S. embassies and consulates abroad. The information is also available online at the Department of State homepage. All information about travel warnings and alerts are updated constantly.
Register your trip. It is a free service provided by the State Department.
I don't want to deter you from traveling, but there is a good number of tourists that disappear each year. By registering your trip, they will at least have a starting place to look if you go missing.
When traveling abroad, make sure you have the address and phone number of your local U.S. Embassy.
In an emergency you want to have this information readily available.
Before traveling, find out if your health insurance company will cover you in an emergency abroad.
In the event of an emergency, cost is not your first concern, I know. It is however, a third or fourth concern. I had a friend who traveled to Thailand and had to have an emergency appendectomy. He spent four days in a hospital in Bangkok and when he got home he had a bill for $20,000 that wasn't covered by his U.S. provider. A travel insurance policy would have cut that cost to almost nothing.
Notify your credit card companies when traveling to unusual places or for long periods of time. The last thing you want to happen is to have your cards canceled by your credit card company because they believed the card had been stolen.
When checking your backpack at an airport, use a pack cover to prevent pockets opening and straps catching on conveyor belts. Now I can tell you from experience you don't want to be the person at the airport collecting their pack that is open and ripped to shreds. To add insult to injury, my journal was missing and everyone in baggage claim saw what type of boxers I wear.
Keep 20 bucks in your shoe. In an emergency, $20 can get you a ride, meal, and a phone call. It hasn't happened to me but I have met people with horror stories about being robbed abroad. With no money and no ID, they had to beg for a few bucks for a cab ride to the U.S. Embassy.
If your unsure about drinking the water where you're going, use a water bottle with a filter. You can get one at any camping store. When I was in Egypt and I was kicking myself for not having one of these. Remember different countries have different organisms in the water that the locals' bodies are used to. Forgieners might not have that same luck in drinking the water. When in doubt, drink bottled water with a name that you trust.
Go with the flow. Traveling, especially aboard is one of the best experiences you could possibly have. You'll meet tons of travelers who just want to see the world and have a good time doing it. Be respectful of others and their beliefs when abroad because they might be different from your own. Be open minded and friendly and I guarantee you'll have a great time.
Until my next article, cheers!
Again, I would like to mention that the focus of this article is not how to be a creative artist and express yourself through your music, but solely about how to make music that will eventually lead you to SIGNING A RECORD DEAL.One thing you have to remember when following this method is that "popular" trends change quite often in the music industry. What is popular today might not be popular tomorrow. So, you have to be able to determine when a trend is growing and when a trend is on the verge of extinction, because you don't want to spend 6-12 months creating an album worth of material only to find out that no-one is listening to that sound anymore. For example, if you are creating music in the Rap genre, you don't want to use rap music beats from the 90's, but you want to be sure you are using rap music beats that sound like they were produced in the year 2009!
While there are no hard and fast rules to determine how long a trend will exist, use your better judgment. For example, I will use the Hip-Hop industry and one of its most popular trends of the 2000's. Approximately five years after T-pain exploded onto the scene with his unique use of Auto-tune and the Vocoder, nearly every popular song in the Hip-Hop Genre today in 2009 is incorporating those elements. It has gotten to the point where popular rapper Jay-Z recently released a song titled "Death to Auto-tune." Now this should be a clear indicator to anyone in the Hip-Hop genre that this trend is on the verge of extinction, but soon a new trend will grow in popularity to replace the old and YOU WILL BE READY!