Killing Batteries

The good people at BootsnAll, this blog’s host, took pity on the dull and generic appearance of ‘Every Notable Patch of Grass in Romania’ and offered to spruce it up for me on the condition that I dismantle my shrine to Chris and stop pestering his mother about his shoe size and blood type.

That done, please allow me to re-introduce this blog: Killing Batteries (dot com). 

Check this out; I got a new banner courtesy of the Bootz Graphic Design Team, a domain name (my first) and sooner or later I’m gonna get my hands on some wicked blog publishing software that I intend to play with obnoxiously as soon as I finish cutting 6,000 words from a disastrously over-length guidebook manuscript, which shall remain nameless, but rhymes with ‘Bonley Janet’.

I’m more than a little excited about this and I’m sure there’s palpable relief on the BnA side of things as well.  I mean really, the old blog was more homely than a 16 year old Dacia.  I was too lazy and artistically incompetent to beautify it myself and besides, I was too busy to think about it while duly annihilating the word count on the aforementioned manuscript.

In fact, this is the second time the charitable Bootz Boyz (and Girl) have offered this service to me.  The first time I was pretty sure my blogging days were numbered and I didn’t want all the fuss over a blog I intended to abandon after only four months.  But this is just too fun to give up.  And I have nine die hard readers, three of which are actually outside of my immediate family, who might be heart-broken if I quit now. 

Thus, my current calling on this earth is clear; write about being a homeless, nascent travel writer, lugging a debilitating sack of battery-driven tech around the world, without which I’d be biblically screwed and instead be one of those eccentric weirdos street performing on the Ramblas in Barcelona.  Or something more succinct.  Editors?

Thank you for visiting and/or your continued readership.  I will do my best to not suck and provide insight into this low paying, exhausting, yet bizarrely fulfilling journey.

Some of you may have noticed that my spelling (and when I remember, my vocab) is not in God Blessed American English, but the Queen’s English.  This is not because I have privately decided to affect an English writing style (and accent, a la Madonna).  Indeed, I am under contract to write this way for LP, as are all authors for European countries.  Accordingly, I have switched my MS Word language setting to “U.K. English” and for the purposes of practise and continuity, I am trying to stay in character, as it were, in this blog.  Rest assured I am not one of those people that spends a few weeks in a foreign country and comes home talking like a native. I cling to my Minnesota accent with all due pride and don’t care what people think (except during this passing moment of self-awareness).

Mock me if you must, but I live and breathe the job people.  It’s dedication like this that will have my bringing in a whooping five-figure freelance writing income some day, living in a studio apartment in Romania to make ends meet.

This was the ‘About Me’ post for the former incarnation of this blog ‘Every Notable Patch of Grass in Romania’, which was retired when my Lonely Planet assignment wound down and I prepared to abandon my post in Romania for travel and the culinary delights of Italy

Well, in truth, I’m not traveling through and writing about all of Romania.  I have a co-author - actually a “coordinating author,” kind of like a senior author - who is in on the plot.  His name is Robert and he is doing that hell-hole Bucharest and all of Transylvania.  I’m doing everything else, that being the regions of Moldavia, Northern Dobrogea, Wallachia, Crisana, Banat, Maramures and the entire country of Moldova. 

Geographically, I’m doing the doughnut and he’s doing the hole.  But it’s quite a hole, as Transylvania is tourism ground-zero in Romania and every little grouping of houses has parlayed their resources to appeal to tourists in some fashion and all of that needs to be visited and written about.  So, even though my physical territory is much, much larger, in terms of word count, I am writing just under half the book.  Got that?

My work will go into three different LP books; “Europe on a Shoestring” (just a paltry few pages there), “Eastern Europe” (slightly more) and “Romania and Moldova” (the entire book, obviously).  The work on Shoestring and Eastern Europe are due at the beginning of June, the Rom and Moldova book, in September, though I hope to be done long before then.  The books will hit stores in January and June of 2007.

As this is my first time out for LP, I’ve got a massive learning curve to plod through.  I’ve only ever had to do one city at a time before this for magazine articles, able to lollygag around the area for five days, often staying gratis in five-star hotels, to leisurely gather my research and absorb the atmosphere.  Now I’m racing through several cities a day (visiting every notable patch of grass, per the title of this blog) and getting sparing sleep at whatever broken down hostel is nearest my location when it gets dark. 

LP has already flown me to a very productive new author seminar in London and between that and my limited experience, I’ll just have to wing it.  My sole advantage is that I am already a resident of Romania, meaning I can retreat to my apartment in Iasi to rest or break up the trip whenever I need to.  Usually, authors just bulldoze through their assigned countries, taking notes, thousands of digital photos and collecting a suitcase full brochures, maps and business cards, then sort it all out after they return home.  Sounds like a blast, eh?  Well, the upshot is the experience is invaluable and the pay is reasonably good.  I’d have to pitch my ass off to dozens of magazines and travel to three or four different cities each month to earn the same wage freelancing.  Both approaches have their pluses and minuses.  I already know I like magazine work.  I’ll let you know about this guidebook stuff in June, if I live to coherently tell the tale.

Here’s a bullet point list with random facts about me for you busy, information-byte-inclined people with precious little time to read about how neat I am:

• My full name is Leif Even Pettersen. ‘Leif’ sounds like the word ‘life’. ‘Even’ sounds like the name ‘Evan’. ‘Pettersen’ is with the ‘pet’ sound, not the ‘peet’ sound. It should go without saying that no one has ever spelled or pronounced my name correctly on the first try.

• Even though my family came over from Norway like six generations ago, I’ve been blessed with a just-off-the-boat, Norwegian name. Every time I meet someone new, I have to explain that ‘Leif’ is a traditional name that means ‘beloved son’ and that, no, my parent’s were not hippies. Well, actually they were big-time hippies, but that’s not why I’m named ‘Leif’. This speech is very well rehearsed now, with exquisitely timed throw-away jokes and pauses for the laughter to die down. During this speech, so that it doesn’t run too long (like this explanation), I have a tendency to just say ‘I’m Norwegian’, much to the exasperation of people actually born in Norway.

• I’m 38 years old.

• I look 25-28 depending on how hungover I am.

• I am originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

• I have been a struggling travel writer since June 2003.

• I’ve just finished my second assignment for Lonely Planet, coving large parts of Tuscany for Tuscany & Umbria 5 and Italy 8, in stores February 2008. The chapters I wrote on Romania and Moldova can be found in the current editions of Europe on a Shoestring, Eastern Europe and of course Romania and Moldova.

• I have recently re-settled in Minneapolis after over four years of homelessness, during which time I lived in temporary residences in Cadiz, Spain; Iasi, Romania; Torregrande (Oristano), Italy and Torricella, Italy (between extended periods of traveling like a bastard).

• I retired from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis at age 33, after nine years of semi-dedicated, fickle service in a variety of positions, eventually focusing on electronic payments systems.

• I have been a juggler of varying degrees of dedication since age 12, making me the most coordinated and dexterous person you’ll ever meet (unless you meet a better juggler).

• I have what I refer to as a Selective Photographic Memory. Examples:
o I can’t remember the name of my hostel, but I can repeat, verbatim, a conversation I had 15 years ago.
o I am terrible with names, but I never forget a face.
o I can’t remember the brand names of wines that I drink three times a week, but I can memorize lists of foreign words and phrases with very little effort.

• I like chocolate.

• I type with exactly four fingers: thumb, index and middle on the right hand, middle on the left.

• I can escape from a straitjacket in less than a minute.

• Yes, really.

• Don’t ask why I can escape from a straitjacket in less than a minute.

• On an unrelated note, I can never go back to Singapore.

• I am a bit of a language nut. I have studied German, Norwegian, sign language, Romanian, Italian and Spanish, only the latter three of which I can utilize with any effectiveness. Next on my list is French. Or possibly grammatically correct English, but I doubt it.

• I have never taken a writing class.

• I’m longwinded and I don’t care.

• I smell really good. My sweat has aphrodisiac properties so strong that it could make giant tortoises mate.

• I’ve worked as a juggler, actor, college radio DJ, wedding DJ, switchboard operator (twice), home office sales guy at a lamentable electronics store that rhymes with ‘Dest Duy’, ESL teacher, administrative assistant, electronic payments helpdesk agent, electronic payments application specialist, electronic payments business analyst, electronic payments high speed network analyst and bumbling, yet adorable travel writer.

• Still reading? Well, it only gets more obscure from here.

• I am the best parallel parker I have ever seen.

• I was born with a tracheal-esophageal fistula (my esophagus was damaged and I couldn’t eat). It was repaired that same day and now I have a gnarly scar on my back that I tell people is from a machete injury.

• Innie

• Will rap for food.

• An informal poll taken in Malaysia and Thailand revealed that nine out of 10 people think I look like David Beckham, which is good enough for me.

• If you’re still reading, you may be searching for my email address, so here you go:

Emails from groupies and people offering (paying!) work are given all due priority.