Holiday Camp Flyer: Fill & Download for Free

I don’t.(Just kidding. Kind of.)I visited over 25 countries in the last year, even though my last job paid far below the average income in my city.Some recent places & experiences:Eating some of the best sushi in the world in Tokyo, Japan:Clubbing until 5am in Barcelona, Spain:Spending Christmas Eve at the central holiday market in Vienna, Austria:Camping in the Sahara desert (camel riding, sandboarding, and ATVs included!):Part of this trip was possible due to good ol’ fashioned saving up, but a large chunk of the expenses I never paid for.Instead, I booked most of the long-haul flights and a very expensive ($2000!) hotel stay by using points.The kicker: I wasn’t a frequent flyer before this, so there was no way for me to earn award flights by flying a lot. I actually earned all of these points “on the ground” before I left for the trip.Most of the points were earned by paying my bills, buying groceries, and doing other ordinary, day-to-day activities. My credit score also raised quite a bit!Travel can be a lot cheaper than people make it out to be.If you’ve never tried travel hacking (earning free flights), I created a beginner’s guide here that details how to get started!

As Paul Sheridan points out, there are a few businesses who are trying online booking for camps -- and ours (ActivityHero.com) is getting great traction.We've found that parents are actually quite eager to find summer camps, winter camps, school-break camps, and after-school classes online. A few reasons why:Google is ok for finding camps if you already know the name of the camp, but if you're just starting your research, it's not always great. Smaller camps, newer camps, and camps offering specialty programs don't necessarily rank well on Google. So until now, most parents have found camps by word of mouth from friends, flyers at school, or camp fairs. They're thrilled to have a marketplace where they can discover new options 24/7.True, camps are harder to compare on raw data -- there aren't variables like bed size as there are with hotels. But unlike hotels, you can learn a ton about a camp based on the activities they offer, the way they describe their business, and the specific details that parents mention in reviews. In short: parents do make booking decisions online, we see it working quite well.Some parents know a few camps that they like to go back to every year, but with 10–12 weeks of summer, winter break, spring break, and all the other school holidays, parents need more than a few day camps every year. A lot of parents are also interested in one-day workshops, date nights, etc. Further, parents want to find activities that are different/new -- whether it's lacrosse, coding, theater, robotics, LEGOs, etc. A marketplace makes it much easier to discover these hidden gems.One more key part of our model's success: You might be surprised how many camps and after school activities are using paper forms, PDFs, and checks. Those are all barriers to register and even if there is online registration for your camp or class, parents have to spend 10+ minutes typing in the names, phone numbers, allergy information for each program. Early on, ActivityHero made it possible for parents to register for multiple camps with one form. Camps can add their custom questions, but 90% of the information will already be in the standard form.So far, we've focused our growth in the SF Bay Area, but we do have national listings and are growing rapidly. And if you have a camp to review, help a fellow family and share your feedback on ActivityHero.

1986 - Club educationI am 16 and already a seasoned party goer, the town I live/grew up in is a midsize city on the Mediterranean, not far from huge sandy beaches, tons of camping sites and all the tourist entertainment that goes with it. Since we are 14y old, me and my buddies patrol the coast during the summer holidays with scooters and mopeds, chatting up girls on holidays and going out to the clubs. There is no age restriction for alcohol consumption and we know everyone who works at the bars and clubs, we are all either friends, family or friends of friends. We also hold various seasonal jobs (waiting, distributing flyers, etc..) or even for some of us get involved in petty criminal activity, like selling overpriced hashish to tourists. It finances our club forays. This takes place mostly during the summer holidays from July 1st to September 1st every year, the rest of the time I go back to the studious life of a regular high school student, in fact quite interested in school and with decent grades.1989 - The Summer of LoveThat summer I start to hang out with another kid my age whose dad is the owner of one of the biggest club on the coast, we become friends and now thanks to the connection, the partying is non-stop at his dad's club with free drinks on the house for us, I "pay him back" by providing him with free hashish, called "shit" in French. It was non-stop girls and party for a month, then his father summons us to his villa, this family is rich, richer than anyone I had ever seen, a butler (security guy?) opens the door when I get there and guides me through a maze of rooms and a garden to (one of the) pools where I find my buddy, we joke around that we are going to get an earful for sure but we don't really know why yet "Do you think we're not allowed to screw his barmaids?" "Hahaha"...Daddy was a scary character, I don't know how to put it any other way, this feeling you get with some people that they could just instantly go into a rage and rip you apart, if you've met someone like that you'll know what I mean. He tells us:"You kids are having a lot of fun but party's over, I need you guys to work for me now, it's a nice job: I have these clubs in Ibiza which seems to be running into trouble, we are empty in the week and half-full in weekends, that's very unusual for this place, the manager tells me its because there is this new music style out right now and he's lost, he doesn't really know how to solve this so your mission is simple. Go there, sort it out. Make sure my club is full by the end of season. You will not get paid but all expenses are on me, you can stay at my villa there, now fuck off!"High-fives all round - once daddy was out of sight though. I had to severely edit the story in order to get approval from my parents but I was over 18 already, there was not a lot they could do. We get to Ibiza which is just a few hundred kilometers from my hometown, and the club manager gets us at the airport and sorts out the logistics. We are over the moon, the place is beautiful and our first mission is to actually go out to ALL the clubs on the island, the beaches, the bars, check the atmosphere and mostly spot the music and the DJs who can sell out a club.It becomes quickly obvious; there is a sort of new music being played which is such a strange mixture of styles: there was a style which later became known as "Balearic" (Ibiza? duh!) but those English DJs were mixing it with Rare Grooves which was the dominant style at the time in London but quite boring and some Acid House music which was much more commercial and with those fat kick drums. The trick was that they beat mixed it, which the Spanish DJs would not do and literally created what became House Music, live on the decks. It blew our minds...and took over our lives.We quickly got to know most of the DJs, flew to London, came back with a few guys, launched a concept, promoted the hell out of it and soon enough the club was sold out every evening. We felt like kings of our island.1991 - The SetFast forward, I just graduated from my school (one of the best in France) I get a few offers from companies to work as a trainee. After some interviews I choose to work for Nestlé at their headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland. Blessed by youth, energy, health and casual drugs, its the epitome of "party hard, work harder". Still the scene in Lausanne is non-existent yet so I fly down to Ibiza on most weekends.There I meet this amazing girl from the UK, I end up visiting her a few times in Dorset, her older brother organizes small, private, illegal raves in the countryside. At the first party I go to, I realize there are two guys there who seem to be holding court, they are the KLF!!! Plenty of other side stories occur (ie making huge badass crop circles with Richard Long...) but let's stay on topic: the brother is a chemist and makes his own drug, a drug which just starts to be massively popular, it's better than any other drug known to me and it goes oh so well with this incredible new Rave Music which seems to take over the world (well at least my world at the time)...Ecstasy.My business mind quickly figures it out: at the raves in Dorset, the brother literally gives out the Ecstasy pills (the parties are free too, financed for the fun by The KLF maybe?) on Ibiza in 1991 getting quality Ecstasy is near impossible but everybody wants them; they go for £35 to £50 - bingo!1992 - The HeistSo the idea is to smuggle basically, the opportunity is that even for a low volume of pills the net profit could be sizeable but clearly the motivation was not pecuniary, it became obvious later that the thrill of danger (some might call it a death wish?) and the intellectual challenge of finding a foolproof way to do this...By this time I am employed by Nestlé, the headquarters are mostly all the executives and support staff, nothing "operation" as we call it (meaning Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing. etc..)...except for this one tiny little group which was in charge of "Duty Free" sales and marketing worldwide. Without getting into to much details it turns out they sell Nestlé products to duty free shops and an extra trick they use is they "assemble" the finished product in Switzerland in order to avoid even more taxes. What they in fact do is just package (mainly a foil wrap) products made in other countries and send it to their clients from a distribution room located in the headquarters. I befriend one the Marketing guys in that group and visit this facility with him, they have plenty of goodies there, especially sweets so it's quite common for people to drop by, joke around with the floor and pick up a few sweets from the not-sealed boxes lying around. The place is very laid-back and relax, I go there quite a lot and become a fixture, never picking up candy though so that the guys don't become wary of me.Suddenly it hits me, I will use a Quality Street tin of chocolates!Here is why:The "large" model was huge (I think 1.6kg)For Duty Free, they were wrapped in heavy plastic transparent foil with a knot on top, like a present, with a ribbon.Each chocolate was big and simply wrapped in twisted at the end, heavy foil and plastic.During a spare moment in the distro room I grab a few sheets of the plastic foil they use to wrap the duty free boxes and the ribbons that go with it. Separately I buy a few large boxes at the Nestlé employees shop.Then I fly to England, visit my girlfriend and her brother, get him to sell me a few hundred pills (for a family special 5 quid a pop!). While there, armed with rubber gloves and a professional scalpel, I meticulously open each wrapper, surgically open the chocolate parallel to the bottom side, empty a bit of the filling (mostly a toffee like structure), insert 2 Ecstasy pills tightly wrapped in microwave foil, seal back the chocolate together with a burner and wrap it back exactly like it was.I seal back the tin with clear tape, like it was previously and wrap it in my special transparent plastic foil and tie with a knot and ribbon.At Heathrow, I pass (pre-2001) security with the sealed Quality Street tin in my carry-on, head straight to the Duty Free shop, buy the exact same tin, carefully keep the receipt, go to the restrooms, re-use the price sticker, switch boxes, throw the new box away. I even write a Happy Birthday card to one of my close friends in Ibiza which I attach to the box using the ribbon.In Ibiza, I land safely and manage to stay calm all through the Arrival process where I was never even approached nor searched. Most of the time there weren't even any Customs officer, the trick was to arrive during siesta time.The scenario is simple, if I get stopped and searched I will show them my receipt from the Duty Free shop bought in the Transfer zone of Heathrow and explain this is for a present. They can check it's properly sealed and even open it if they want. I am pretty sure they will not open each chocolate and even if they do not all of them contain drugs.Well, drugs, thats not even sure yet either, since at the time it's not mainstream enough to be what we called it at the time a "Class A drug". But that's another story. They also have no dogs trained to the MDMA smell yet, if they ever had...Once in Ibiza I unwrap, extract everything privately, sell the whole lot of about 200 pills to a friend of the "Daddy" for the equivalent of £30 each.One trip, 5000 Pound Sterling. At the time, almost 50.000 French Francs, a huge sum for a twenty something for one day of work.Rinse and repeat all summer long for a few months. Part of the beauty of this plan was that I would operate completely alone, nobody knew about my heist, I never told anyone what and how I was doing it. At the source, I had an "almost" family member who loved me and respected me for being a cool boyfriend to his sister, at the destination I had the protection of "Daddy" who by now loved me like a son for having relaunched his clubs on Ibiza and the huge cash flow now streaming in. Very secure.After the summer, the success of this operation got me into bigger and better things with "Daddy" but that's a completely different ball game...