Getting a glimpse into a different world is always a treat to me. Whenever bloggers write posts along the lines of 24 hours in the life of a —-, I’m going to read it. dust tea, dingoes & dragons by R.F. Hemphill is definitely a look into a life that is very different from my own.

To begin with, Hemphill lives on a very different financial plane than I do. As one can imagine, a former energy magnate is going to have a higher salary than an Off-Broadway production manager, and this book definitely does reflect that sort of lifestyle. I’m also a little jealous of his endless jetsetting adventures, although it appears from this book that most of the time business men just eat a lot. They don’t exactly have a ton of free time to see the sights. I started the book thinking it would be interesting to learn how the other side lives and was repeatedly surprised by moments of kinship: 

• In one letter, we learn the interesting story of Chinese karaoke. During a heartfelt national song, the background pictures were pretty Chinese girls in bikinis. I could not stop laughing over this because Filipinos also really love karaoke. I spent many nights on a cruise ship sitting through some rough renditions of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and was endlessly amused by the weirdest freaking backgrounds you could ever put on a song. They got funnier and funnier as I drank more and more Jack Daniels.
• The fact that cultural differences become more and more amusing the more native liquor you drink is also not lost on Bob. Granted, some may think Jack Daniels is an American whiskey, but these people have never spent much time around Filipinos.
• There are many tales of eating different culture’s foods gone wrong (hint: the dust tea section of the title has something to do with this). One of the first ways I got the Filipinos on my crew to actually start listening to me was heading down to their mess and eating with them. They served me a fish with it’s head still on. “Do you eat the eyes?” I asked. Silly me… of course they were going to say yes (when actually they usually don’t). And let’s not even get started on balut.
• And, Bob, I totally felt for you regarding the story of the British washing machine. Been there. Done that. WHY DON’T ANY OF THEIR LABELS MAKE SENSE? I am slightly ashamed to admit that I lived there for a year and at no point in time did I ever figure out how to get my oven to work. On the plus side, I make a mean stir fry now.

This just further proves to me that travel is the great unifier. 

The most shocking thing is that, for a former power company executive turned entrepreneur, he can really turn a phrase. I was regularly laughing at his very honest takes on the assorted failures both culturally and business related. Personally, I’m just going to learn from his mistakes and never try to open a movie theater in Hungary myself.

Another interesting aspect for all my entrepreneur wanna-be’s out there is how he weaves together the stories of what he’s doing with his business with his travel tales. I know he didn’t intend dust tea, dingoes & dragons to be any sort of entrepreneurship primer, but there are still lots of interesting little lessons to be taken from his stories, especially if you’re approaching them with no knowledge of venture capital.

I mean, for pete’s sake, the book even mentions the Passion Play at Oberammergau – one of the things on my life bucket list. For that alone I’d call it a winner, but it’s wholly an excellent beach read, considerably more enlightening than any Janet Evanovich novels and just as delightful.

 

*Please note that I was provided with a copy of this book for free in order to provide this review, but all opinions are my own. And legit. It’s a good read.*