2015 is nearly over. The winter solstice has passed, the days are getting longer, and the New Year according to the Gregorian calendar is nigh. And what would the New Year be without some reflection on the past 52 weeks?

This was an interesting year for me in that it was filled with some pretty remarkable failures, yet looking back, the year feels like anything but a failure. I had excellent times with friends (old and new) and family, learned and grew an incredible amount, saw interesting parts of the world I'd never been to, and accomplished at least a few things I'm proud of.

The year started off inauspiciously as progress with Levate, mine and Ethan's young startup, was at a standstill. In the meantime I went on a disastrous three month trip across Europe. After that, I took a job in Bangladesh with a local company there that, to put it briefly, went horridly.

Yet eventually the startup got funded, I turned the disastrous Euro-adventure into a new creative project, and travelling to Bangladesh allowed me to meet and get to know people and places I'd not have had the opportunity to see otherwise. Call it New Year's optimism, but what seemed like failure was really just part learning experience, part waiting game, and all entertainment (if only to be able to laugh at my mistakes in hindsight).

And there was plenty more for me to be thankful for. So in no particular order, here are some of my favorite things about this past year.

• Saw my last sister get married in Omiya, Japan, to a great guy (and now my brother-in-law!). Now I'm the only one of my siblings still unmarried. Anyway, we spent a week travelling around Japan before the wedding, which was great, especially because I'm in love with Japanese food.
• Lived for five and a half months in Bangladesh, a part of the world I never imagined myself seeing anytime soon. I took the opportunity of being in the region to take a weeklong vacation to Thailand, where I went to the legendary Full Moon party on Koh Pangan.
• Bought, and crashed, a motorcycle in Europe; but got to see a lot of good friends in the process.
• Began learning French and got to the point of being able to have some conversations with my French roommates in Bangladesh. Also got the opportunities to practice my other languages, mostly during my trip across Europe.
• Found funding for Levate, the startup my partner Ethan and I founded! I know I mentioned this before, but I couldn't leave this out of the list of highlights. We were able to use the funding to begin work with a fantastic product design company that will finish the development for us and deliver an excellent final product that we can take to market.
• Wrote a book, which I'll hopefully self publish sometime early in 2016. It's about the disastrous trip across Europe I keep mentioning. I have already started a second book, about a completely different topic- higher education reform.
• Went snowboarding for the first time at a good friend's bachelor party in Breckenridge, Colorado. We'd been planning the weekend for months and it paid off, with the weekend being a huge success. His wedding on the 27th of December should be awesome, too.
• Vastly improved my swimming with the Total Immersion method. I'd never been a strong swimmer, so I'm excited about having gone from swimming 50 meters to swimming a kilometer or more.
• Taught Lean Startup and Digital Marketing courses in 4 continents
• Read some amazing books. Some of my favorites from the past year include (but aren't limited to!) The Last Lion trilogy, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Natural Born Heroes, The Etymologicon, Shogun, and Man's Search for Himself. 
• Since I mentioned books, I'll also mention the top three best movies that I saw in the past year (though none were released in 2015, I should say): La Grande Bellezza, Le Samourai, and finally Pierrot Le Fou.

Thanks also to all the friends and family who have vastly enriched my life. Ana, Jessie, Madison, Mom, Dad, Lisa, Katsuya, Justin, Zach, Ethan, Michael, Ryan, Matt, Andrew, Blanca, Tristan, Eva, Elena, Nail, Su, Milad, Adrien, Pierre, Maha, Susan, Margherita, Laura, Leonardo, Saideed, Rhiday, and all the rest I'm leaving off without meaning to.

It's saddening to see both how so many college friendships have faded since I graduated in 2013 and how difficult it is to find truly meaningful friendships when one no longer has social institutions like universities or work environments to help. One of my goals in 2016 is to show my appreciation more often and more meaningfully to the friends in my life and to more consciously seek out new friendships.

Beyond that, I want to really dive deep into my writing and make that a regular, central part of my day-to-day life and work. I'm hoping to go on one big adventure early next year, then come back to Oklahoma to move our startup forward with Ethan right around the time our product, the wheelchair lift, will be ready to bring to market.

I'm excited about 2016. I feel focused and motivated to see my current projects and plans through in a way that I've never felt before, as I've typically been one to bounce around from idea to idea without ever finishing much. It took a lot of experimenting, trial and error, and exploration but I've found inspiring work that I enjoy and, hopefully, the maturity and experience necessary to make the most of those opportunities.

To a most excellent New Year,
Dillon Dakota Carroll
Prague Oklahoma

​I came back about two weeks ago after spending a week and half in Japan with my family. One of my sisters lives in Chiba, and she got married on the 4th! It was a beautiful ceremony.

We spent a week before the wedding touring around some of Japan's most famous sights. Because there were 22 of us (a lot of the bride and grooms friends came from the US for the wedding, too!) we rented a charter bus to take us around for the week before the wedding. My sister and her fiancée planned the trip to a tee, so the whole thing went incredibly smoothly. And even though I'd been to visit my sister in Japan for Christmas 2012, it seemed like most of what we saw was completely new.

All in all, it was an awesome trip that we all had a blast on. So thanks to my sister and her new husband, and I wish them the best on their new life together! And in honor of the excellent trip they organized, here are my top five memories from the whole thing.

 A 600-year-old Shinto shrine a short drive away from Fuji-san itself. Of all the temples and shrines we visited on the trip, this was definitely my favorite. It's not crowded like the Meiji temple (located in the heart of Tokyo) or Toshogu (a world heritage site), so I could enjoy the tranquility of the space more. And is it tranquil! To get to it, you pass under the first Shinto gateway and onto a long, unpaved footpath through a forest of Japanese cedars, flanked by mossy stone lanterns. The walk there seems to quiet the mind and prepare the spirit for the shrine itself. At the end of the footpath, a bridge takes you gently over a brook that flows so smoothly that it whispers rather than babbles. It is the perfect transition into the shrine complex itself, which seems so much at ease and in rapport with the forest and the stream that it would be hard to imagine one without the other. By the time you reach it, you're now attuned to the spirituality and majesty designed into the shrine. I'd say it is hard to visit the shrine and not feel spiritually cleansed afterwards. Traditional Japanese architecture and landscaping was truly genius in this respect.

​About halfway through the trip we stayed for a night at an inn on the Kinugawa, or Angry Ogre, river. The place was both a traditional Japanese inn and a hot springs bath. It was an incredibly pleasant experience because, besides being relaxing, the whole thing was very immersive. The rooms don't have any Western-style furniture. Instead, guests sit on the floor on low tables and sleep on futons. They brought us Japanese-style robes to wear while we were at the inn . My sister told me what they were called, but I forgot to write down the names. Anyway, once we got checked in, we headed down to the hot springs baths. This being a Japanese hot springs, that meant segregated baths for men and women, as they can only be used while naked. Once you get used to it, it's pretty awesome- especially the views over the Angry Ogre river. When we arrived, it had just started to sprinkle, so we chose the outdoor bath over the indoor one. The softly cascading rain made a comfortable contrast to the hot springs.
After drying off and changing back into our robes, it was time for dinner, again in a very traditionally Japanese fashion. That meant again sitting on the floor as they brought out tray after tray of food: all kinds of raw fish, fermented vegetables, soups, and rice. Many in the group were turned off by how "weird" (to us) most of the food was, but this was easily my favorite meal because of the whole experience that went into it. All said, I could have easily spent a week at that place!

​This was the closest thing the groom got to a bachelor's party. Basically, all the guys went one night to sing Karaoke at an all-you-can-drink karaoke place. Unlike in the US, in Japan you rent a private room by the hour or half-hour for your party and they bring whatever snacks and drinks you order directly to you. And since it was all-you-can-drink, we kept the drinks coming. I lost count of how many rounds we ordered, but even without them we would have had a great time. The groom's friends visiting from the US, five guys in all, were old friends and had no problem letting go and just having a good time- one of the good things about having a private room! That set the mood for the whole night, and soon we were all dancing, crooning out lyrics, and laughing hysterically.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel around midnight, but somehow me and one of my brother-in-laws wound up at a late night Ramen restaurant just around the corner, where we had a surprisingly deep conversation about the meaning of life. I say that given how much we drank, to anyone who understood English at the restaurant we must have been pretty funny. He and I laughed about it the next morning (me with a horrendous hangover). But you know what? Our Ramen Shop Philosophizing was a great way to end the night.

Nikko Edo is a theme park made to look like a 17th century Japanese village. Though the park was aimed at kids, we still had a good time here! We went the day after the Inn & Hot Springs, and the weather was perfect: sunny, warm and breezy.
I liked it because of how interactive it was. We learned the basics of katana fighting, archery, shuriken-throwing, and even dueled with "samurai" in the streets. A couple of the girls in our party dressed up in Kimonos, and a few of us guys went on a ninja-training obstacle course that we failed miserably at.
It was also fun for me because I was finishing up Shogun, the book by James Clavell set in early 17th Century Japan. So I could actually walk through a "17th Century village"- in theme park form, granted, but fun and enjoyable nonetheless.
Since I mentioned Shogun- I started reading on the airplane to Japan and I'd say it made the whole trip more enjoyable. Besides being an excellent book in its own right, it also gave a lot of insight into the history of Japan and where modern Japanese culture evolved from. Highly recommended read, especially if you're planning on visiting Japan!

I'm running out of sisters to watch get married off. Plus, there's something about seeing a sister (or any loved one, for that matter) walking down the aisle that just makes the tears flow.
It was a Western-style wedding, which apparently are very popular in Japan, held at a place called Camelot Hills in Omiya. The place tries to be a replica of an old manor-house, which a decently large chapel inside for the actual wedding ceremony. I'm not sure how faithful of a replica it is, but it was a beautiful venue.
The wedding process, based on what my sister described, is very straightforward in Japan: you pay a lot of money to a place like Camelot Hills, and they basically take care of everything for you. For example, Camelot Hills took care of the catering, DJ and MC, photography and videography, the minister, set-up and clean-up, and more. They helped my sister find translators to interpret during the reception and after-party (the ceremony itself was only in English). It was the job of one staff member to follow my sister around the whole night and constantly fix her makeup, redo her hair, and adjust her dress for photos. They had shuttle buses going to-and-from Omiya, right near our hotel, to make it easy to get there.
All in all, I was impressed with how smooth the venue made the whole thing- Except for having a shuttle bus drive off at the end of the night with all my things on board! But to their credit, the venue was great about arranging to have the bus drop them back off to me.
One last thing worth mentioning that was fantastic about my sister's wedding- the desert bar they had at the afterparty. Besides having a station where guests could make smores (the bride and groom met at a bonfire in Oklahoma), they had a mouthwatering array of sweets that made me feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory- on top of the wedding cake, by the way.
My favorite? A chocolate mousse topped with strawberry sauce, covered in gold flakes (yes, real gold) with a stick of chocolate stuck in the top. The thought that I was eating real gold made the dish taste even more decadent.

Thanks again to my sister and her new husband for the amazing time we all had!

Dillon Dakota Carroll
Dhaka, Bangladesh

After my previous article on the ten craziest things that have happened to me so far in Bangladesh, I wanted to write a follow-on top ten list of the good things about Dhaka. I did have to think outside the box quite a bit to come up with ten, but here they are:

1. The street food in all its varieties. Costing anywhere from ten to fifty cents, it's both tasty and affordable. As long as you're not too squeamish about hygiene, that is. A big favorite here, especially among Bangladeshi girls, is a treat called Fujka. It's hard to describe it, but imagine a sweet and spicy filling inside a fried, tortilla chip like crust. I personally really like to get a snack (I don't know what it's called) made of an egg mashed up with onions, garlic, chilis, and other vegetables. They wrap it in an old flyer and give you a business card cut in half to use as a spoon. And while there are Western-style cafes where you can buy coffee for $3 a pop, the original Bangladeshi "cafes" are small roadside tea stalls. The tea costs six taka (about ten cents). There you can see Bangladeshis congregating, milling about, chatting, and relaxing.
2. Most people here are very kind. I've almost never had a problem stopping people to ask for help or for directions, and many times bystanders have helped me out spontaneously by translating when I was struggling to communicate with someone who didn't speak much English. People here can be so nice that I've literally been spoonfed by a complete stranger! And of course, there are the small acts of kindness, like when a restaurant worker gave me a free bottle of water when I was dehydrated after a workout, or when the tea stall workers take out a stool for you to sit on.
3. People here tend to be very optimistic, which I think is a good thing. They know their country has many problems, but they also recognize that those problems afford many opportunities, as well. Many times in conversation Bangladeshis have affirmed that now is the time to be in Bangladesh, when it is really starting to grow and take off. And they are always thinking about ways to take advantage of that opportunity to improve their situation! A staple conversation piece, at least with middle-class Bangladeshis, is about their plans to launch some kind of business or venture and made oodles of money. So far I've had Bangladeshis pitch me ideas like a paintball field, fish exporting, a garments industry middleman business, and a visa arranging service for Bangladeshis wanting to travel in the Americas.
4. Necessities are very inexpensive. At a street restaurants you can get a big lunch for anywhere from $1 to $3, and bottled water costs maybe 25 cents. Clothing is dirt cheap as well, mainly because Bangladesh makes so much of the world's garments. The factories routinely produce overruns or stock that doesn't quite meet the quality control standards of their clients. Usually, they are obligated by contract to destroy these, but most find their way into stalls on the street where you can buy them on the cheap. Good shirts can be had for less than $5, and pants rarely cost more than $10. Oh, and if you're a cell phone addict, the rates here are very affordable. I loaded my phone with $2.5 of credit about 3 weeks ago and I still have almost a dollar in credit left.
5. Dhaka pushes the expatriates together. I've met a few really cool people here from all over the world: New Zealand, Italy, Morocco, Hong Kong, etc. And perhaps because it can be so hard to meet new people in a small expat community in a place like Dhaka, you wind up getting to know your friends much better than you probably would at home. As an aside, one New Zealand woman I met works in one of the expat clubs as a hair stylist. She offered to cut my hair for free because she hated my haircut so much. She said it was worth it just so she wouldn't have to see it all the time!  This was right after I'd had my hair cut for $2 by a Bangladeshi barber who didn't understand my instructions very well, so I blame it on him. Teasing aside though, she did it free of charge because we'd become friends. I doubt I could have struck up a friendship with someone like her anywhere else but in Dhaka!
6. Western environmentalists could learn a thing or two about recycling from Bangladeshis. While Dhaka in particular has a major pollution problem, Bangladeshis are kings of recycling. Nothing here gets thrown away, but is rather passed around until it is falling apart. Then it is fixed until and used again and fixed until it is beyond repair, when it is dismembered and the pieces get reused to repair other second hand (or third, or fourth, or fifth) hand items. For example, I was chided by a colleague for throwing away an old hair trimmer that had stopped working. I had bought it for maybe $15 in Europe, and to me it was a cheap enough device that when it stopped working, I threw it away. My colleague rescued it and promptly tried selling it second-hand. This applies for anything: cars, fridges, air conditioners. Heck, the buses here get so much life squeezed out of them that they seem to be more rust than metal.
7. You can get away with a lot. In the US, we say death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. Unless you're in Bangladesh- then the only certainty is death. Seriously, it seems like there's very little that can't be accomplished with a bit of money to grease the grooves of the machine. Don't want to wait in line, or want to get an application fast-tracked? Cough up a little bit of money and the wait disappears. This corruption in general isn't a good thing, and I debated about including it in this list, but the option is there if you're willing to take advantage of it. Foreigners in particular seem to get a bit of a free pass. Again, not a good thing in general, but the discrimination definitely exists, and in this case, it can work in your favor. For example, when I flew into Dhaka I was the only foreigner on the flight. While everyone had to stand in line to get their bags checked, I was waved through security without so much as passing my bags through an x-ray machine.
8. While Dhaka is a huge city of many millions in a country of 160 million, it is easy to meet "important" people and move up the social ladder quickly. In the short time I've been here, I've been introduced (albeit briefly) to top level government ministers and some pretty successful business people in the country. Ultimately I think it's because the upper class and upper-middle class are such a small group, you've got to rub elbows with important people at some point just because everybody knows everyone else. This rule extends to other fields, too. For example, a musician I met here mentioned that because of how small and nascent the music scene is in Dhaka, it's easy to get gigs even as a mediocre musician.
9. The idea of exploring Bangladesh outside of Dhaka! In general, Dhaka is a difficult city to live in as a foreigner: it's noisy, polluted, hard to get around, and decently expensive. But I've routinely heard Bangladeshis say that Dhaka is the worst part of Bangladesh. That makes me eager and hopeful to explore the countryside, something I haven't yet been able to do because of the nature of my work here. But in the next month I'll have the opportunity to verify the veracity of this claim. Until then, it's comforting to think that Dhaka is not representative of Bangladesh as a whole.
10. If you can carve out a good life in Dhaka, then you can live a good life anywhere! Like #9, this one is a bit of a cop-out, because in a way I'm more making a statement about how Dhaka is such a difficult place to live in as a foreigner. Indeed, there's no sense pretending like it is a great city. But that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying my time here, or learning a lot. And that's exactly what I mean with this point. Yes, Dhaka is a difficult place to live in. But in spite of that, a good, enjoyable life can be made here. The city and its people have a lot to teach. At least, I am learning a lot about myself and the world. To me, these are empowering thoughts. If I can carve out a niche for myself and lead a fulfilling life in Dhaka, then I can probably do the same and make the most of my life anywhere else in the world. I suppose what I'm saying is that a good life (however you want to define that!) is location-agnostic.

Shesh- finished!

After a half-year long hiatus from posting on this blog, I'm back at it! Though, to be fair, I have been writing- and editing- a lot, just on a new project. Hopefully I will be able to share it soon.

Since I last wrote a blog post, a lot's happened. Chiefly, I moved to Bangladesh for a 2-year long position with an economic development company. The job didn't work out, but it did give me quite a few memorable experiences. Here are ten of the crazier things that have happened so far!

If the list seems slanted towards the bad things, it's only because I wanted to share the crazy anecdotes and hard-to-believe occurrences that come with living in a new place and culture, before everything becomes normal and mundane. 

1. Getting my smartphone stolen on my third day in Bangladesh. I was at a posh event at a swanky convention center, and I left my bag at our table with my colleagues for about five minutes. Unfortunately the lady sitting next to me (opposite my new colleagues) turned out to be a famous thief. We saw a post on Facebook a few days after she stole my phone. The post claimed she'd been doing this for years and had stolen quite a bit. I suppose I was lucky I didn't lose my wallet, too! The worst thing about losing my phone is that it was what I used to take pictures. So apologies if this post is lacking in imagery- now you know why!
2. Eating in street restaurants. And by street restaurants, I mean makeshift eateries set up in a muddy patch of land 10 feet from the dust and grime of a busy road, with a tarp for a roof and plastic tables and chairs covered in swarming flies. Giant vats of dahl, curry, biryani, and more simmer on gas stoves right in front of you. Once you sit down, the cloud of flies parts momentarily and the servers bring you plates of rice, curry, fish, eggs, vegetables, and more. You wash your hands right at your chair, with a jug of water they provide, and you'd better wash your hands, because you'll be eating with your right hand like an authentic Bangladeshi. You mix up your curry and rice into little balls with your fingers and then use your thumb like a lever to shovel it into your mouth.
   It's fun once you get the hang of it- it makes me feel like a little kid again.
3. Sharing food with Bangladeshis. One night, when I went to the street restaurant I almost always went to for dinner, I was invited to sit down at the same table as a stony-faced youth. As soon as I sat down, he offered me some of his chicken and rice. Being vegetarian, I declined. He insisted, so I gingerly picked up some of the rice with my right hand and ate it. "Please, have some more." I declined, as I had my own food on the way. I began chowing down on my dahl as soon as it arrived, and was promptly chided by my new friend for eating too fast.
4. That was nothing, though, compared to the very friendly guy on the street who spoon fed me puffed rice. In most places on the street there are tiny stalls where you can buy different treats for anywhere from 10 to 30 Taka (10 to 40 cents, more or less). Sometimes the sellers don't even have a stall, they just carry around the ingredients in a big bowl they carry on their head. Anyway, I stopped in front of a guy selling puffed rice mixed with lime, chili, and veggies. He would mix it all together, then put it into a little cup made of an old flyer stapled into a cone shape. To top it off, he stuck a business card, cut in half, into the top of it. That's your spoon.
   Anyway, someone who had just bought the puffed rice treat saw me eying the food. He offered me his paper cup full of food for me to try. Not wanting to offend, I scooped a bit off with the included business card spoon and handed it back. "Tasty!" I said. "Thanks!" "No, no. You didn't get enough!" And before I could even think about it, he'd scooped up some more. My jaw dropped- is he really going to spoon feed me? He deftly deposited the business card full of puffed rice into my newly opened mouth. All that was missing was the airplane sound effect.
5. Narrowly dodging motorcycle-riding thieves. One night I was going to the gym in a rickshaw. It's night out, and though we're on one of the main roads connecting Gulshan 2 to Gulshan 1, there isn't much traffic. I'm already in a bad mood from a bad day at work, so I have my head buried in my kindle to distract myself before my workout.
   I hear a motorcycle hit the accelerator beside me and as I look up, I see bike with passenger come veering at my rickshaw from my right side. I'm staring right into the greedy eyes of the passenger, rapidly approaching, with his arms spread wide to grab my kindle. Instinctively, I pull my body back, and I feel his fingers barely touch my e-reader before slipping off.
   The motorcycle speeds away like a coon chased by hounds, and all I can think to do is stand up in the rickshaw, triumphant, and shout obscenities at the would be thieves.
   Right after that, my rickshaw got hit by a car. Lovely night. (That was actually the second time a rickshaw I'd been riding in had been hit by a car).
6. Public Nudity. One day me and a colleague were coming back from Dhanmondi to our office in Gulshan 2. Now, without traffic, it's perhaps a thirty minute drive. Traffic was bad that day, so it was more like an hour and a half. To make matters worse, I was riding on the back of my colleagues motorcycle as a passenger. We were stopped in traffic for what seemed like ages, sweating terribly. An old man wandered by wearing nothing but a lunghi, or man-skirt. He stopped right next to me and my friend on our motorcycle, a blank expression on his face and his eyes vacant. Without warning, he dropped his man-skirt and stoodnaked in front of rush hour traffic. After about five minutes of airing out his private bits, he refastened his man-skirt and continued on his way.
7. Speaking of motorcycles, I've ridden three to a motorcycle now several times. That can be rather harrowing, especially given how small Bangladeshi motorcycles are! No big choppers here, only tiny 150cc bikes.
8. Having first hand experience with corruption. I had to come to Bangladesh on a thirty day arrival visa. Since I would be working in the country for potentially up to two years, I needed to get it extended. Part of that process involves a police interview to make sure that you are actually here to do what you say you're here to do- in my case, to do business. My colleagues, who were working with me through every step of this process, filled me in on how it works.
   The cop will come for the interview at your home, they told me. You'll offer him some tea, but he'll decline. "I'm hungry, I'm not thirsty. I'm hungry, bhai (brother)". You then take out half your bribe (500 Taka or about $6 in our case) and stick it in his shirt pocket, patting his shoulder and saying "here you go". He'll then say, "no, I'm still hungry." At which point you'd take out the other 500 Taka and hope he still wasn't hungry after that.
   Ultimately, we wound up having to go to the police station for the interview. The cop was initially very hostile and kept asking me the same question, "what are you doing here?" We kept giving the same answer- I'm here to explore partnership options with local startups- but it was obvious he wanted to cause problems. Until my colleague took him aside and stuck a couple 500 Taka notes in his shirt pocket. Then he was all smiles.
9. Being asked to falsify data for a report to a major NGO. I don't want to get into too many details on this one. I will say it was in a professional setting, and I was very taken aback. I replied that I wasn't going to falsify data of any kind. The person who proposed this then corrected himself- he would falsify the data for me, I would just have to put it in the report. Um, no thanks.
10. The many money-making schemes of my friends here. One thing about many Bangladeshis is that they're always dreaming about how to make more money. For example, my current roommate has ten different schemes he wants me to get involved in. The one that seemed the most promising?
    Writing invitation letters for Bangladeshis seeking American visas. Apparently you can charge 3,000 USD, if not more to help someone get an American visa. And Latin American visas are quite popular too.

I hope you enjoyed the list! I am having quite an interesting time here in Bangladesh- there are things both good and bad. More coming soon!