Living Free as a PT Read online

  A critically thinking ‘PT’ with a life of freedom, abundance and self preservation on his mind says ‘Uh-Uh’. The crowd is going this way? I’m going ‘that-a- way’. See ya!

  But of course, people who think like that are a miniscule fraction of society. The vast majority are followers. They need someone to tell them what to do as in; a boss, a religious leader, a doctor, a teacher, a social media guru, a ‘life coach’, a therapist…. Anybody! Please! Just don’t force me make my own decisions and be accountable or responsible!

  If that’s you, then this book is not for you unless perhaps you’re doing research for a university paper on: DERELICTS AND DELINQUENTS AND HOW THEY MUST BE PURGED FROM OUR ONE WORLD SOCIETY! Then I might be the perfect example for you to learn about. But aside from that, this book won’t help you at all.

  The Five Flag Strategy

  Did you ever notice that visitors always get the red carpet treatment? When you visit someone’s home they invite you in, offer something to drink, have a comfortable seat and you are always well attended for whatever you need. It’s true isn’t it?

  The same is true when you travel. You arrive in another country. They welcome their visitors, give them assistance and are typically very friendly and willing to help in any way they can. Of course! You’re likely a tourist or business visitor who is helping to support their economy. You have money to spend! What better reason to treat you with kid gloves?

  In Panama they have ‘Tourist Police’. No they’re not there to bust your head open and haul you to court to get money out of you (like they are in one country I know of). They exist for one purpose only… to make the visiting tourists’ stay as safe, secure and comfortable as possible. They are there to help you.

  I could go on with the examples but you get the point.

  Visitors from afar are welcomed with the red carpet, friendly smiles and any assistance or comfort they might need! So why wouldn’t you want to get this kind of treatment all the time wherever you go wherever you are, even if you never go anywhere and stay right at home?

  This is a no brainer right? A successful PT gets this treatment at home or wherever he might travel to. This, in addition to long term security are the primary objectives of the Five Flag Strategy.

  What is the Five Flag Strategy?

  You plant flag #1 in the country of your citizenship. This is represented by your passport.

  You plant flag #2 in another country where you get a legal residence.

  You plant flag #3 in another country where your business is domiciled (legally registered).

  You plant flag #4 where you do your banking which is apart from all the others, and

  You plant flag #5 in your playground where you like to spend most of your time and you have no ties whatsoever .

  So here is what it looks like;

  You carry an American/U.K./Australian or any other passport and show that for ID whenever you’re out of the country. This works well because these countries are highly respected abroad (or in the case of the US, ‘feared’) and when officials see that, they generally don’t want to mess with you and create an international incident. When you are in other countries, you are clearly a tourist when you show your passport.

  You get a ‘residence’ with supporting ID in the country where flag #2 is planted. This will get you a government issued ID card and drivers license which can be very handy when you’re in your home country or anywhere else dealing with roadside police stops or facing other types of liabilities which only apply to local residents. I’ll expand on this later. In your country of legal residence abroad, you show your passport when needed. You’re a tourist. When you’re at home you show your foreign resident card and drivers license. Again, you’re a tourist no matter where you are.

  The legal formation of the company you do business in, is in a third country. Why? You never want to do business in the country where you live or have your passport. Any issues or problems will haunt you and make your life potentially miserable if not outright dangerous. You will rarely go here, but when you do, you obviously appear as a ‘tourist’.

  The bank account for your company is in the fourth jurisdiction. Again, if your business ever gets attacked legally (and you don’t have to do anything wrong for this to happen), they can’t touch your bank account. Most banking is done via internet these days, unless it’s some serious business so you’ll rarely go here but when you do, you’re a tourist!

  You plant your fifth flag in the country where you like to spend most of your time. This is your playground. When you are here, all of your ties are elsewhere and you are clearly a ‘tourist’.

  End result: No matter where you are you appear to be a ‘visitor’, or foreigner. Remember that ‘red carpet treatment’ we talked about? You’re covered.

  At first blush this may appear to be quite expensive to set up. It’s not really. Yes, you do need to travel a bit and spend some time, but hopefully you’re doing that already anyway. If not, this gives you the perfect excuse to start taking some nice vacations! This is typically not something that is set up overnight. It’s a strategy which is developed over time. Much like building a medieval fortress built to resist sieges…one brick at a time.

  And you don’t have to be planning to be a long term international traveller either. You can set yourself up once and be done with it and plan to sit tight and spend the rest of your years right at the old homestead.

  Why would you do this? Why of course for a much higher level of privacy, protection and a certain level of immunity from the local ‘revenooers’

  What better situation could you ask for? You leave home to go on a few fun and interesting vacations and you come back a ‘foreigner’ in a teflon suit! Neat!

  “Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.”

  - Stephen Covey

  2

  The odyssey begins

  My love affair with foreign countries and cultures began in the fourth grade with my first French language class at St. Dominick’s grade school in Northfield, Minnesota. Northfield is famous for its annual festival, the “Jesse James Days” where they re-enact a successful bank robbery pulled off by ol’ Jesse and the James gang. You can still see some of the bullet holes in the bricks on the side of the old bank.

  At this time in history The Monkees were all the rage and I was a huge fan! This was also the spark which got me going on playing guitar in rock-n-roll bands which I did for years, but that’s off-point.

  I was fascinated with how other cultures, in this case the French, could speak so differently, eat so differently and well, it seemed as though they lived in a different world. In those days they did! Those were the days before globalization took over and made retail, restaurants and hotels all basically the same product from one country to the next. In those days the local culture and tradition were distinct and predominant which, in fact, did make it a ‘different world’.

  I didn’t have another chance to continue my French after 4th grade until I got into Junior High. I continued there from 7th grade all the way through senior year and then continued through several years of college with formal classes.

  As a junior in High School my teacher Miss Papic got a burr under her saddle and decided we should all (the class) go to France! Heck, why not? Field trip! It took a little cajoling to get my parents to cough up the money to go, but they did and we all recognized it as a great opportunity and before long I was on my way to a ‘foreign country’! Wow!

  Remember, this was 1975 when the only means of communication back home or anywhere else was either by postcard or transatlantic telephone cable. So when you travelled abroad, you were really ‘far away’ and pretty much on your own. This was much unlike today when you can do selfies and send messages on
WhatsApp anywhere in the world just like you do at home. It was a different time and I cherish having experienced that at that time.

  It seemed like a long trip from Minneapolis to New York’s JFK and then with a stopover in Iceland. We arrived in Paris tired and hungry. After checking in to the hotel a few of us decided to go out wandering the neighborhood to find something to eat. The hotel was in the neighborhood of the Notre Dame cathedral on Ile de La Cite´. We stopped in a local pizza place which looked friendly enough and the food seemed ‘safe’ enough. I mean, how can you go wrong with a pizza? The menu was filled with words I didn’t understand so I took a stab at it. “Je voudrais un pizza avec anchois” not having any idea what ‘anchois’ were. This was part of the adventure, right? I asked the waitress who tried to explain but it didn’t help and I still didn’t have a clue. It was my first meal in France and 7 years of French classes just went right out the window! But how can you go wrong with pizza, right? I went ahead with the order anyway.

  So she finally arrived with the orders and she placed my ‘pizza anchois’ in front of me. To my absolute horror, I learned on the spot that ‘anchois’ is ‘anchovies’! I was crestfallen. I was anticipating a wonderful pizza to satisfy my hunger after a long trip but NOT this! I can eat just about anything, but anchovies are definitely not on the list. I picked them off the pizza and suffered through the rest of the meal with the residual tainted flavor they left behind despite the fact that they were removed. It was a very anti-climatic start to my first French experience.

  The French eat all kinds of very weird things including some very strange sea creatures. I was invited to a family Christmas celebration some time later, and the primary festive family dish was brought out on a large platter. It was clear that the entire gathering was eagerly anticipating this rare delicacy which they were about to enjoy. The cook came out with a large platter. On It was some kind of white meat all coiled up serpentine like and I was truly scratching my head thinking, ‘what on God’s green earth could this possibly be?’

  They passed the platter around and everyone eagerly took their portion. It came to me and it was still a complete mystery what it was. I’m thinking, ‘When in Rome do as the Romans’, right? So I took my portion and found the courage to ask “what is this?”. It was ‘eel’. OohhKayyy then….

  Honestly, I had some very serious reservations but I succumbed to the cultural pressure and got past the mental block to try it. Honestly, once I tasted it, It was just like white fish and quite good really. I replaced the mental image with a Sea Bass, and everything was fine from that point on.

  But you commonly find restaurant menus offering organ meats like kidney and liver even headcheese or worse. I quickly learned to develop my personal preferred menu choices and until I had the French menu mastered, it was always an easy order of ‘Steak frites, bien cuit’ every time. Steak and fries well done was the old standby for many a meal. When in doubt, it’s ‘Steak frites, bien cuit!’

  Another similar event occurred as I recall going out with a group of friends for lunch when I was living in Aix-en-Provence in my college days. In France, lunch is not ‘lunch’ as we know it. It’s a grand affair which you should schedule about 2 hours to partake in and at least 2 hours after to recover from. The good restaurants have a ‘prix fixe’ or fixed price menu and the chef prepares one menu for everyone and you get what he has prepared for the day.

  First comes the bread and wine with a dish of balsamic vinegar and olive oil for the bread. Then maybe a little assortment of prosciutto or cold meats to snack on with canapes. Then comes a fantastic salad. After that comes a Vichyssoise cold leek soup followed by a hot salmon soufflé. I know you’re thinking, ‘Wow what a great meal!’. I said that once after about three courses and said, “That was great! I’m full!” People looked at me from under furrowed brows like I just arrived from another planet. “No. We’re not done yet!”

  Then comes a little ball of ‘sorbet’ to cleanse the pallet before the main course which could be Boeuf Bourguignon or Duck a l’Orange, or Coq-au-vin or a Seafood Paella, you get the idea.

  So after this fine culinary and cultural event (déjeuner) for us green eared kids, the waitress asks if we’d like anything else. I said ‘Mais oui’. I was thinking of an after dinner liqueur like a Courvoisier brandy or a Grand Marnier or Cointreau. I was going to be suave and debonair in front of all my friends. I had heard of (what I thought was) a Liqeuer which I had never tried before. So, feeling curious and bold, I ordered ‘Chantilly’. The waitress looked puzzled and asked, “Really? That’s all? Would you like it with anything else or just by itself?” And she was still looking very puzzled. I confidently replied without hesitation, ‘No. Just by itself of course!’, thinking to myself that aficionados with sensitive palates like myself only enjoy the finer things in their purest form! Naturally, you don’t want to pollute your senses when enjoying the unique and pristine, multi-sensual experience you get from a delicacy or any flavor by mixing it with any other substances. That’s sacrilege in France! You just don’t do that. To fully enjoy any cuisine, for example, you cannot mix the food. To do so is a huge insult to the chef. It shows that you are not taking the proper care to fully envelope your senses with the experience that the chef has meticulously prepared. Thus each plate is served separately and you cleanse the palate with sorbet before enjoying the final crowning main course achievement of the chef.

  So, moments later the waitress brought out my very special Chantilly. Strangely enough, it was not quite what I expected. What she brought out was a HUGE mixing bowl from the kitchen full of whipped cream all fluffy and fresh and she put it down on the table in front of me. The entire table just erupted in ferocious laughter that didn’t stop for 10 minutes I swear! We were in tears. So much for being ‘suave and debonair’!

  So the point is that you don’t have that kind of fun and adventure eating ‘lunch’ at the Olive Garden or Burger King!

  Exploring new cultures can be a bit intimidating especially if you don’t speak the language well. But it can give you memorable experiences you’d never get anywhere else.

  French Police: My First Win as a ‘PT’!

  I’m still on my first high school trip to France staying with a French family and I’m with Pierre, the son of the family who took me in for a few days and served me the eel for Christmas. Pierre is my age. They live just down the road from the Palace of Versailles. Versailles is a suburb of Paris. It was a dark, cold day of drizzle which is typical in the French winter.

  Pierre and I were getting cabin fever and so we each went out to grab a Mobylette (Moped scooter) from the garage and he’s taking me out on an adventure despite the weather.

  We head down a busy main street in Versailles to the gardens of the Palace of Versailles which are immense and almost endless. Mobylettes are prohibited from entering the gardens precisely to prevent the likes of us from entering and doing exactly what we were about to do, race around mindlessly tearing up the gardens. Neither the prohibition nor the signs slowed us down a bit. Pierre knew just where to get in unnoticed.

  The wet weather made it a perfect day to be spinning donuts and the dark drizzly day gave us perfect cover with limited visibility. Plus, the weather kept most tourists away on this day so we had the vast manicured gardens to ourselves.

  Pierre would take off and I’d do my best to catch him weaving in and out of terraced gardens, fountains and across manicured lawns. When I did catch up with him, he’d spin around and take off in another direction and the chase was on again. My dogs do this when they play with each other. It’s pretty much the same thing.

  After a couple of hours of Mobylette mayhem we were low on gas and up to our ears in mud and thought it best to get out while the ‘gettin’ was still good.

  So we exited the Palace gardens and headed back out on the streets for home. Pierre was ahead of me as I followed so he didn’t notice when I was pulled over by t
he French police for not having a light on such a dark and rainy day. The light didn’t work anyway we both found out, so that was a moot point which made it a perfect scenario for the police to get some quota points and issue me a ticket.

  He was adamant that he was not going to let me go until he got my ID to give me a ticket.

  Pierre finally turned around and saw what was going on and circled back. After he and I both made it abundantly clear to the policeman that I was not French, but a foreigner, he finally relented and let me off with a warning and away I went.

  This was my first victory over officialdom as a teenage, renegade ‘PT’ and at that time I had no clue as to what a ‘PT’ even was! It was accidental and not intentional (as later encounters would be) but it was real. I just had the experience and it left its mark.

  IBLAS & Aix-en-Provence

  So my high school trip to France opened my eyes to the big world of international language, culture and lifestyle opportunity. This experience pointed me in the direction of seeking a Bachelors degree in International Business and Language Area Studies (IBLAS) at St. Norbert College in DePere, Wisconsin (Green Bay area) which was one of only 2 or 3 such specialized International business degrees or curriculums available in the country at the time (1976). Today they are much more plentiful.

  During my four years in the program I continued my study of the French language and ended up spending six months living in France as I attended the Institute for American Universities (I.A.U.) there in Aix-en-Provence as a part of the program.

  Aside from being just an overall enchanting life experience living in the ‘city of fountains’ in southern France, one of the more notable experiences revolved around my involvement with the Le Baron family. Monsieur Francois Le Baron and his wife came to my university one day looking for someone to come out to his place on weekends to teach his young son English. It would be a cultural experience for the volunteer and a great learning opportunity for his son. Somehow, I happened to walk by the administrators office at just the right time and ended up as the volunteer.