Around the World in 80 Girls: The Epic 3 Year Trip of a Backpacking Casanova Read Free

with a young platinum blond girl (actually a college student I met through a friend) during that time so technically I was cheating during that one night stand. The relationship only lasted four weeks anyway, more on that later in the book. Later on I met a girl during work and she became my girlfriend for the next 3.5 years.
    After a year I was pretty bored with the taxi driving and wanted more out of life. My contract had just been renewed and I stayed at home pretending to have back problems (which wasn’t a complete lie btw).  I wanted to get an office job and an uncle told me about me being a professional buyer just like him. It sounded pretty good to me.
    The only problem was the expensive course I had to follow. I couldn’t afford it so I managed to pretty much blackmail the taxi company to pay for half my education if I volunteered to quit my job. A trade which basically saved me about 1700 dollars at the time and the taxi company paying for an employee that didn’t work. Corporate laws are a bit different (read better) in Northern Europe and the employee is well protected from being fired.
    I took a job at a local bread factory/bakery and worked a three shift job packing all kinds of bakery products off the conveyer belt. In hindsight I can barely believe I worked there for nearly six months.  A truly depressing, dead end job but hell, it paid the bills and I had time to study and follow the course.
    After a while I got laid off and received unemployment money again (70% of your net salary per month). I sat at home for almost a year before I got a big break when a government recruitment office gave me an internship at a company that designed and manufactured machines. After six months they gave me a year contract. I became quite popular at the company for being able to do the job even though I didn’t have the academic education everyone thought was required for the job. I got into the strategic buying department and went about buying parts for machines from all over the world – though since I was an assistant, I never got to travel.
    It was the second time my social skills got a reasonable boost. The first of course being a blabbermouth taxi driver but that was mostly to score a bigger tip.
    Around then I was also a fanatic at trading stock options and spent a lot of time and money on that, dreaming of what a fantastic lifestyle I would have once I had some big money to spend. Instead of buying cool clothes, going to bars and socializing I was wasting my precious time and money on bad investments and a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere. It ended in a fight and her packing up her stuff and leaving. Never saw her again and good riddance. It was a 3.5 year mistake. 
    Well, at least my investments were going not all that bad. Like any half-assed investor I made some money and lo st some too. At one point, though, it looked like it might all have been worth it. For years I’d been anticipating the big crash in 2008, and bought lots of put options, that means you make money when the market goes down. Options are high risk/high reward investments.  But I didn’t realize just how bad it would be, so when the stock market had already bounced up and down a few times and I was becoming disappointed in the outcome and was afraid the market might even go up again and I would lose all my invested money, I sold everything, clearing a cool 10,000 Euros profit. It was a reasonable profit considering the original money I put in my account but then disaster struck and the Dutch stock market crashed in an all out panic. I could have made 150,000 Euros if I’d held on for just three or four weeks longer.
    I wasn’t cut out for this and my hopes and dreams of having an easy life went out the door and it depressed me for months. Of course I had to smile at work and couldn’t talk about it. It was this depressing time that planted a seed in my mind about wanting to leave everything behind. I just didn’t know how to