In 2000, he visited North Korea and published an essay about his visit, essentially describing his tour around the country as being like a movie made by the North Korean authorities.
In his journalistic work, he reportedly ran into problems with the authorities of at least two countries. In 1998, he was denied entry to Myanmar after making contact with the National League for Democracy and taking photos of its leader Aung San Suu Kyi. And on 30 October 2002, he was reportedly detained and manhandled by Israeli authorities while crossing the Allenby Bridge.
Giuliano's writings have also included lighter topics. During his time in Kabul, for example, he wrote restaurant reviews for a local English-language magazine.
In the early 2000s, Giuliano was a consultant for the Italian Senate's Committee on Human Rights. At that time, at least some of his writings were also intended to influence the positions of the Italian Government on certain human rights issues, as was the case with material that he wrote on North Korea.
In 2004, Giuliano worked for the International Organization for Migration in the elections for Afghan refugees in Pakistan,
and in 2005 worked in Afghanistan for the United Nations Development Programme.
In both cases, he was working in the field of communications with the media.
Between 2006 and 2008, he served with the United Nations, again in the field of media relations, in the Central African Republic,
Sudan,
Chad,
and Cameroon following the refugee crisis caused by the battle of N'Djamena of February 2008.
According to the Guinness Book, through his work, he had travelled to every single sovereign country in the world (which totalled 193 according to the Guinness Book) by 20 February 2004, aged 28 years and 361 days. He claimed that he had visited a total of up to 238 territories (including the 193 sovereign countries recognized by Guinness), and stated that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) had been the hardest country to get into, after numerous attempts and long waits to get a visa.
He started travelling at age 14, and believes that, as of 2004, he had travelled at least two million miles, including on the Trans-Siberian Railway and through 11 round-the-world air journeys. Some of his earliest journeys were to Albania and Sierra Leone in 1991, aged 16, and to Mongolia in 1992 for their national festivities Naadam. Most of his later travels were related to his journalistic work.
On 20 February 2004 he visited Suriname, thereby completing his visit to all sovereign nations of the world. He held a press conference there on 24 February, where he stated that he had chosen Suriname to complete his record, as the country had always fascinated him due to its richness and variety in cultures and ethnicities.
He then travelled from Suriname to London, with 42 passports (of which 30 were Italian and 12 British) filled with immigration stamps, in order to prove his record to Guinness World Records.
He claimed that most of his travels were unrelated to the record, and that only since 2001, on the suggestion of friends, did he have the Guinness Record in mind when planning his travels. In explaining his record, however, he stated that he might have an "addiction to crossing borders".
Aang
Aang is a fictional character and the main hero in Nickelodeon's television series "". The character was made by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen. He has take part in all the episodes of "Avatar", except "Zuko Alone" (7th episode of ). Aang is also in the first episode, "The Boy In The Iceberg". Aang appears in other media, like trading cards (a card that is collected), video games, T-shirts, and web comics.
Aang is the last Airbender. They were the only race of people who could control the air. He is 112 years old. He has not become older because he had been frozen in an iceberg for 96 years, and is still like a 12 year old, because he used Avatar State to protect himself and his bison. In the second show, it is discovered that Aang is the living form of the Avatar. This is the spirit of the planet in human form. As the Avatar, Aang controls the elements and must keep the Four Nations at peace. The show follows Aang's journeys to do this.
Most of Aang's habits, such as vegetarianism, are based on Buddhist and Taoist tradition. Aang is the series' unwilling hero. He shows hesitation when joining his friends to save the world from the Fire Nation. His "lighthearted" personality has been praised by critics. The creators wanted Aang to "win enemies with his wits" and be a "trickster hero".
Aang's character was created by Bryan Konietzko. The sketch showed a middle-aged man with an arrow on his head. Konietzko changed the character into a picture of a child with a flying bison. At the same time, Michael Dante DiMartino was interested in a documentary about explorers trapped in the South Pole. The idea caused the pair to think:
The plot they described relates with the first and second episodes of the series, where the "water people" (Katara and Sokka) find the "air guy" (Aang) while "trapped in a snowy wasteland" (the Southern Water Tribe) with "some fire people [that] are pressing down on them" (Fire Navy and Zuko). The creators of the show made Aang to be frozen in an iceberg for 1000 years. He was to wake inside a futuristic world, where he would have a robot named Momo and a flying bison named Appa. The creators lost interest in the theme, and changed it to 100 years of suspended animation. The robotic Momo was changed to a flying lemur, and the herd of bison was reduced to one.
Aang's character has a well grown cultural belief. According to the show's creators, ""Avatar" based on the belief of Buddhism and Taoism." A important part of the character is his vegetarian diet, regular with Buddhism or Taoism. In the Brahmajala Sutra, a Buddhist code of ethics, vegetarianism is encouraged. In "The King of Omashu" (the 5th episode of first season), Aang shows his vegetarian beliefs by refusing to eat meat. Aang shows a reluctance to fight and an dislike of killing. In "The Spirit World (Winter Solstice, Part 1)", Aang gets into a fight with an angry spirit who is destroying a village because the people burned his home (one forest). Instead of fighting the spirit, Aang talks with it.
Airbending, the element that Aang mainly uses in the show, is based on Baguazhang, an "internal" Chinese martial art. This fighting style focuses on circular movements, and does not have many finishing moves. These characteristics were meant to show the unpredictability of air and the peaceful nature of Airbenders in the show.<ref name="avatar2/index.jhtml"></ref>
In the episode "Tales of Ba Sing Se" (the 15th episode of ), Aang’s name was written as (ān áng) in Chinese.
The creators of the show call each a "book" and each episode a "chapter"; each of these books was take the name of element that Aang must control, except the air. Flashbacks also reveal events that happened before the show opened. In a flashback during "The Storm", Aang remembered the day when elder monks told him that he was the Avatar. Monk Gyatso, Aang's teacher and father-figure, said that Aang must be raised as a normal child. Nearing the end, the monks began to believe that Gyatso interfered too much, so they decide to send Aang to the Eastern Air Temple. Aang refuses to be torn away from his mentor; he writes a note for Gyatso before flying away on his bison, Appa. It is revealed in the first episodes of the show that a violent storm catches Aang and sends him into the ocean during his escape. Aang then enters the Avatar State, unknowingly, for the first time to encase himself and Appa in a frozen air bubble. An image of this air bubble, resembling an iceberg, ends the flashback.