An Update on Past Articles, Future Travel Plans to Europe, and Other Developments
For those of you who have been following Scientist World Traveller since its launch on January 17, 2025, I’ve taken the opportunity to showcase a large variety of my travel experiences in different parts of the world, while also satisfying my professional interests in academia as a theoretical physicist. A fundamental objective of mine is to offer a unique perspective on what I’ve done over the years to achieve a state of “stress-free travel” whenever I travel, which I offer to readers as a public service. As well, I want to provide you with a glimpse of all the fascinating places to be found worldwide that make it worthwhile to commit time and money towards international travel as something that I hope everyone—regardless of economic or social status—may have a chance to enjoy for themselves.
I recently returned from a one-week trip on May 14-21 to the state of Louisiana in the southern United States as a first-time visitor, which proved to be an incredibly interesting and enjoyable experience for me on multiple levels. As a theoretical physicist, I also had the professional objective to network with academic colleagues from Louisiana State University (LSU) based in the capital city of Baton Rouge with the hope of pursuing some long-term collaborations with internationally-recognized researchers from this prestigious R1 academic institution.
The good news for me is that I was successful in achieving this objective, which means that I’ll have the opportunity to make return visits to LSU and elsewhere in Louisiana on a semi-regular basis. As such, I’ll also have the opportunity to further explore on a cultural level what this historically rich American state has to offer the world. For now, I plan to write a three-part series about my recent visit to Louisiana’s two biggest cities, namely New Orleans and Baton Rouge. As you’ll quickly discover once this series is available to read several weeks from now, there’s a lot of interesting and thought-provoking qualities to showcase about two fundamentally distinct cities in Louisiana that deserve to be experienced first-hand. I look forward to putting together my thoughts on this topic and sharing what I learned.
Two Updates on Past Articles in Scientist World Traveller
In the meantime, I have two updates to present about recent past articles I wrote for Scientist World Traveller that I wish to highlight. The first one is about my return to doing independent contract work for DoorDash as a short-haul food delivery driver to help cover my small-scale travel expenses, such as meals, ground transportation costs, event entrance fees, budget hotel expenses, and discount airfares.
Just two days prior to my visit to Louisiana, I discovered that my app was hacked after getting locked out of my account immediately following a delivery I made. On the Sunday morning following my return home, I was finally able to regain full access to my account with the much-appreciated assistance of the DoorDash support agent who facilitated the process of its reinstatement. Therefore, I’m now able to resume my objective to earn extra money via food delivery in the financing of my international travel expenses. Furthermore, I just got confirmation that whatever money was stolen from me that resulted from this hack will be deposited into my bank account by DoorDash within the next weekly pay cycle.
Unfortunately, based on my recent experience with DoorDash in my home city of Regina, Saskatchewan, I’ve come to realize that the opportunity to earn money in this market has decreased significantly. This is something that I can quantitatively verify because I’ve kept meticulous statistics on all of the deliveries I made since first starting out in May 2021 and I’ve noticed a measurable decline in the frequency of delivery offers I received following my two-year hiatus from driving for DoorDash in 2023 and 2024.
While I’m sure there are multiple factors for this decline, it’s reasonable to assume that the main source is due to a combination of having significantly more drivers in this market working for DoorDash coupled with a likely decline in demand for the service following the COVID-19 pandemic. Though I remain undeterred in my commitment to continue with DoorDash as a way to earn extra spending money in exchange for very simple work to do, the very low frequency of delivery offers I experienced so far means that I’ll need to scale back my overall earnings expectations for the level of time commitment I’m prepared to extend in this direction.
For my specific case, I’m still able to manage my ongoing travel expenses without necessarily needing to drive for several hours per day, so whatever I’m able to earn with DoorDash serves as strictly bonus income instead of being a financial necessity. At the same time, I decided to sign up as a driver for Uber Eats to develop a skill called “multi-apping” that will increase the frequency of offers received over a given time when I want to be on the road. As such, my strategy is to remain hyper-focused on only working specific hours when I’m most likely to make money without compromising on my need to have large blocks of free time to do other things, such as my physics research and writing for Scientist World Traveller.
The second update worth mentioning concerns the aftermath of a potential travel crisis I experienced in Charlotte, North Carolina during the tail-end of a three-week trip to Europe and the United States from late March to mid-April. At the time, I managed to find an alternative route to overcome this crisis that involved the kindness of strangers at critical moments throughout this experience.
The one outstanding issue that remains before me is to obtain financial compensation from American Airlines for my extra travel expenses incurred from this experience, since it was fully responsible for creating the situation that led to many travellers like me becoming temporarily stranded in Charlotte overnight. Since I was preoccupied with the final preparations of my then-future trip to Louisiana, I wasn’t able until just now to approach American Airlines in order to receive compensation for the travel delay in Charlotte when I needed to make use of an airport hotel for a few hours between flights.
More will follow from this thread as my ongoing negotiations with American Airlines unfolds over time.
Upcoming Travel Plans to the United Kingdom in July
As of early this week, I finalized all of my necessary travel expenses for a two-week trip to the United Kingdom in mid-July to attend two physics conferences in Glasgow, Scotland and Southampton, England, with brief side visits to London upon my arrival to the U.K., followed by a weekend in Newcastle immediately after visiting Glasgow.
Unfortunately, I won’t have any time on this trip to travel to Edinburgh or elsewhere while in Scotland, so aside from drawing upon my six-hour layover in the capital back in August 2024, Glasgow will be the first Scottish city for me to have a major in-depth visit and experience over the five-day period of this conference. I’m already looking forward to my arrival there.
As for Southampton on the extreme opposite end of the U.K. from Glasgow, this port city was instrumental in establishing the former British Empire as a sea-faring powerhouse during it prime and is currently known for serving as a major European port for international cruise liners. It was also the launch site for the RMS Titanic in 1912 on her maiden voyage that tragically ended in her sinking off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada after striking an iceberg. Besides my attending the physics conference, I’m particularly interested in exploring much more about this historical tragedy while in Southampton, whose story still resonates very strongly with the worldwide public today.
Upcoming Plans for Scientist World Traveller
Since embarking on this Substack page as a freelance travel writer, I continue to accumulate many experiences and perspectives on international travel that will eventually become future articles for Scientist World Traveller. Of course, writing about each of these articles takes time and effort to get completed, and so I already have a huge backlog of stories to compile and present to you that seems to grow by the day!
Right now, I’m working on my next feature article about Copenhagen, Denmark as a first-time visitor back in August 2024 to attend a physics conference on black holes. For the time I was there, I managed to gain a lot of insight on daily life there and I look forward to writing about it in detail to present in the near future. Besides my more recent trips to Europe and the United States this year, I also have plans to write a four-part series about my visit to Australia back in November 2024, along with a multi-part article series on both Newcastle, U.K. and Prague, Czech Republic, the latter of which I was fortunate to gain both a summer and winter perspective in 2024!
Aside from this mid-July visit to Glasgow and Southampton, I’m strongly considering the possibility to make a return visit to the Netherlands in September to attend a physics conference and also pursue collaborative research with my colleague in Nijmegen, subject to his availability. This means that I’ll potentially have a second opportunity to visit Amsterdam this year in order to put together another multi-part series on the Netherlands and its capital as a future contribution to Scientist World Traveller.
A Special Surprise to Come Soon?
Finally, there is something very special in the works that I’m keeping silent about as a surprise! I will eventually announce it publicly on Scientist World Traveller once all the details are finalized, so stay tuned!
Final Remarks
This concludes my update on past, present, and future endeavours concerning my international travel and Scientist World Traveller. I hope you will agree that this Substack page will remain a very active source of information and insight from my standpoint on efforts to promote “stress-free travel” as something worthwhile to pursue now and into the future. Please be sure to visit this page regularly to keep track of what I have in store from now on! Thank you and bye for now.
Postscript: An Invitation to Become a Paid Subscriber to Scientist World Traveller
For those of you who became my first free subscribers to Scientist World Traveller when I first launched this Substack page on January 17, 2025, I thank you very much for joining me on this journey to showcase my international travel experiences and promote understanding of other cultures worldwide. I also want to thank every other free subscriber who has agreed to join this page over the course of time.
My mission with Scientist World Traveller is to become a recognized resource for all people, regardless of their social or economic standing, to gain whatever benefits I’m able to offer those who support the concept of “stress-free travel” as a goal to aspire towards.
If you think that you’re in a position to financially support my writing in terms of a month-to-month subscription, an annual subscription with the benefit of getting a two-month discount, or a founders subscription as a preferred supporter of my writing, I hope that you will make that possible for as long as you’re financially able to do so.
This financial support will certainly help me to sustainably produce what I think are thoughtful articles about my travel experiences that are actionable for helping supporters like you to achieve personal fulfillment through international travel. This in turn will also indirectly help people in the travel and tourism sector worldwide who can receive financial support from me as a show of gratitude for the hard work that they do to make my travel experiences as enjoyable as they are.
Regardless of this appeal for financial support, I remain committed to ensuring that at least 75% of all my travel writing will be free for everyone to read and share as a public service, including my feature articles and some specific targeted articles about travel advice to aid the public in their own travel endeavours. My commitment is to have in your inbox a delivery of one article every Friday at 12:00 pm CST, with a variety of travel-related topics to enjoy, including restaurant and hotel reviews, show events, and interesting travel and transportation topics not often explored.
If you would like to share comments about my travel writing articles already written on Scientist World Traveller, please feel free to do so. Also feel free to make recommendations about interesting places in the world that you may like for me to visit and write about, along with any other constructive comments to share.
Finally, please encourage your friends and family to also become free subscribers to my Substack page and ask them to invite others they know to do the same. This is so that I may be of help to as many people as possible who see value in achieving a state of “stress-free travel” as a goal to attain. Thank you very much for your time and bye for now.
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