13 lessons I added

Thank you for the feedback and great interest in last week's post (13 lessons I take with me). I'm coming up with a new random set.

1. Before starting anything, consider an exit strategy. It's much harder to leave the room after putting a fresh coat of paint on the floor.
2. You can eat any dessert you want if you only take one bite.
3. This is your golden year. Good things will create golden memories; bad things will create golden lessons. Re-read this next year.
4. Unsure where to share a meal with someone? Ask them what they prefer, Mexican or Thai. These two cuisines offer the most options.
5. Speaking of music, Brazilians cracked the code—Bossa Nova for cocktails and dinner, samba for waking up, forró for fun. You'll get extra points if you learn to dance them.
6. Pick up a few magazines if you feel like reading something but have trouble finding out what it is. You will be impressed by how much it feels like you found a treasure trove.
7. Don't underestimate the benefits of having friends and deep conversations with people more than ten years younger or older than you.
8. You enter a room full of new faces and don't know what to do? Get on the longest queue. Look around until you observe something either funny or unexpected. Draw attention to that with a weird or funny question. Do this a few times, and you meet everybody.
9. I'm positive that the recipe could benefit from some chili pepper flakes or a squeeze of lemon juice.
10. You will usually find the frequent fliers to be the ones that board the plane last. It's okay not to go with your boarding group.
11. Being enthusiastic is worth 29 IQ points.
12. Often, the difference between amateurs and professionals is that one knows how to recover from his mistakes gracefully.
13. On vacation, go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You'll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later, you'll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back. Oh, and if you somehow find your favorite drink and some frozen pizza to microwave in your fridge at home, you might even unpack on the first night.

Thank you for reading. See you next time!