"No sweat" would be the American English "no worries, mate."

Donniedillon:"No sweat" would be the American English "no worries, mate."

Ah cheers mate
I need to watch more US TV

ceigered:what's your credit card pin number and other related bank account details?

What, no offer of a share in a missing $10 million in Africa? Amateurs!!

I think you should give your Bank Info to me, since I am dying of Cancer and I am a respected Barrister from the New Delhi Imports Co, willing to transfer you seventeen million Rupees. In exchange, you must send some of them to my family in Nebraska.

ceigered:
Ah cheers mate
I need to watch more US TV

You give enough to your language studies Christian. Please don't turn your brain to mush in this manner.

You give enough to your language studies Christian. Please don't turn your brain to mush in this manner.

I agree, he really should be watching Office Space. But that's on TV a lot, too.

There are some TV series I have enjoyed a lot which are appearing on DVD. I just got hold of the first season of The Paper Chase which I think is brilliant. I wonder how many people decided to become lawyers because of it.

Back to the actual topic of this forum - I do not use pasporta servo to meet up with people when I travel. I, too, frequently travel for work, and I try to meet up with local speakers when I go. I am staying in hotels (since it is paid by my work) so normally I only want to meet with the locals for a meal or an afternoon of tourism.

I usually do it all by e-mail, with perhaps a couple of weeks of notice.

My sequence of events is usually:
- Google around to see if the city has a club, and if so, contact the contact e-mail and ask if anyone wants to meet up with me.
- If no city club, contact that country's association and ask if anyone lives in your target city.
- Google the city's name and Esperanto to see if you can find references to specific Esperanto speakers living there. Sometimes you can find their e-mails. Recently, I did this and came across an online forum posting of a person in a city I was going to visit. I contacted him and it turned out that he didn't live there at all, he lived hours away (and had only been visiting the city when he made the posting). But he invited me to visit him in his city, which I did, for a few days after the business part of my trip ended.
- Search using lernu's user search tool and see if anyone with a reasonably high activity rate and language level comes from your target city.
- Use personal contacts. Perhaps you are going to visit the UK, and you don't know of anyone in the UK city you're going to visit. Contact another UK speaker that you know, and ask them if they know anyone in your target city.

If you're travelling to the Middle East or Africa, Renato Corsetti knows a lot of people. He has helped me out in the past when trying to make contacts in those regions (not for travel, but for other things).

I'm not a member of Pasporta Servo and I don't have a book, but it's my understanding that many people listed there have e-mail contact information, or a telephone number, so you can e-mail or call rather than using postal mail. If you do a lot of short-notice travelling, buying a Pasporta Servo book is probably a good way to get a worldwide summary of where people are. Be aware, though, that it isn't the be-all and end-all of Esperanto contacts; if you're clever and take advantage of the "small world, everyone knows everyone" aspects of the Esperanto community, you can definitely find people without it. Ask around to your Esperanto friends. "Anyone know an Esperanto speaker in Timbuktu?" You might be surprised.