here I am...

Theme Song of the Day:

• The Luckiest, by Ben Folds
  

Has it really been six months since I've written here??
My, how time flies when one is.... well, flying....

Has it really been one year since I left Hawaii, in search of ...?
Am I a different person now, or am I simply more of me?


I feel as though I've stepped out of a costume, some kinda WheretheWildThingsAreWolfSuit maybe, or an AmericanPsycho-style corporate suite, or maybe some kinda AncientSuitOfArmour, dented and scratched and clawed but still intact, even if only just ...I've stepped out of those costumes and have stepped into my skin...


...and I'm not sure that I can remember any other time in my life when I've ever felt so... how can I say this... ME.


It's like I've met myself all over again, as if I was catching up with a good friend, the kind of friend that you've lost touch with though you don't ever forget about, as the paths of your lives have turned and twisted you both off in different directions, with all the triumphs, the falls, the joy, the sorrow, the tangents ....the GIFTS.... that come along the way.


And then, ten years later, your paths cross again and you smile and hug and sit down with a cold beer or maybe a hot cup of coffee and it's like you've never left, you just pick up the conversation and the friendship where you left off, except now the conversation is so much richer because there is ten whole years of stories to catch each other up on...


...imagine now, that this friend you're catching up with, that is sitting at the other side of the table, this friend is YOU. The you that you were 12 months ago, or 12 years ago, it just depends on when and where and how you are catching up with yourFriendyou.... though you've travelled thousands of miles and had countless experiences and been away for so long.... THERE YOU ARE.


That's where I'm at ....and it's a wonderful feeling... and I'm thankful for the teachers I've met along the way, those fellow souls [you know who you are!] who've reached out and touched me, over a cup of coffee or a shared journey or through cyberspace... I am thankful for each and every one of you, and for the gifts that we've shared along the way...


...this blog had become a promotional poster for me while I was in the thick of competing for the EntirelyWorldFamousNZ Blogger Competition, which was fun while it lasted, and was a very necessary part of my journey... though it took me away from the very reason I started this blog anyway: simply to write.


I started writing here for me.


It may sound selfish, perhaps even arrogant, though it is the simple truth.


I write to write, so that I can reach that point where I am no longer thinking of what to write next because my fingers are just blurring from the words pouring out of my heart through my fingers and onto the unblinking screen - my fingers have not given it enough time to rest, pausing only sporadically to allow the cursor to catch its breath...

I write for these moments, and when my heart is finished pouring itself out, then i can pause, take a deep breath, look back and read what my heart has written.


I write because a life worth LIVING is a life worth RECORDING... and that is the kind of life I want for me...



So often our inner journeys are reflected in our physical travels …or is it the other way around? The journey back to ourselves is deeply personal, yet universally human …and therefore a powerfully shared experience... so it is my absolute privellege to share these thoughts with you here... it's nice to be back!

"The Hero of my Tale,
Whom I love with all the power of my Soul,
Whom I have tried to portray in all his Beauty,
Who has Been,
Is,
and Will Be,
is TRUTH."
- Leo Tolstoy -

* * * * *

voyeur

THEME SONG FOR THE DAY:

1. "Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder, from the soundrack "Into the Wild"
   

ACLAND STREET ROOFTOP

Today I people-watched.

This afternoon the sun broke through they grey of this morning, and so I ventured down to Acland Street in St Kilda, the wonderful little corner of the world that my Dad affectionately calls "The Armpit of the World".

It is such a surreal little stretch of asphalt, the gaping maw of Luna Park welcoming you to an avenue lined with cakeshops and coffeeshops and bookstores and boutiques. Garish characters on rooftops leer at you and wander the street muttering to themselves, while artists and musicians and other denizens of bohemia sit and sip on flat white coffees, passionately discussing existentialism, politics, music and art.

This trip to Melbourne has so far been a wonderful whirlwind of reunions with family and friends, a blur of lattes and pints of beer and delicious meals shared with warm conversations and catchings-up. I feel like I could quite easily spend the whole of the next 12 months looking up old friends and acquaintances... It would be so easy, and so safe to just stay here...

As I wandered through the streets and gardens today, I observed myself observing others, a surreal feeling of watching a movie that is playing out in real time right before your eyes, except that you are participating, and watching, all at the same time; a lucid dream, except that I am wide-awake...

...a now-familiar feeling has been growing in my belly - it is the feeling that bubbles up to my conscious thought stream and whispers "I am no longer here". I am ready to move on.

Being a happy child surrounded by loving family in Hawaii is a blessing that I shall always treasure - all my childhood memories are full of joy and laughter. You don't truly appreciate the beauty of a place until you leave it.

As little people we all make decisions about ourselves, other people, and the world based upon our experiences, that shape our thinking, and therefore our words, actions, and habbits....and therefore our REALITY.

The despair, angst and sheer anger that I felt during my teen years served to drive much of the outward material successes I enjoyed in my 20s, though has long since faded. Anger, when focused to a point, can create positive results. The problem is that anger is a poor foundation upon which to build a legacy, and, when suppressed, will explode violently.

This stands in stark contrast to my current experience of Melbourne: peaceful, joyful, and connected. I have made my peace with this city, and with the experiences and emotions of the past.

Today I wandered and watched, enjoying the simplest details - snippets of conversations overheard in the street, the laughs of a young family tending to their plot in the community garden, the cacophony of screeching seagulls and cawing crows bathed in the soft, warm glow of the afternoon sun. The big, cold blue sky stretches far away above me, fading into deep indigos as the quiet drama of another Melbourne sunset slips away on the horizon.

"...A mind full of questions
And a teacher in my Soul..."
- "Guaranteed", from the soundtrack "Into The Wild"
by Eddie Vedder -

THE ARMPIT OF LUNA PARK

# # #

momentary lapses of reason

The days grow shorter, each passing moment is increasingly hyper-real ...as if etching itself in my memory banks to take on the road with me....

EVEN A DRIVE ON THE FREEWAY
IS BEAUTIFUL IN HONOLULU...

Colors are more vibrant, soundscapes more symphonic, the smallest details jump out at me and scream "AREN'T YOU GONNA MISS ME?!?!?"

I ran into some people over the weekend that I had not seen in a while, and the first words out of their mouths were: "You're still here?"

They have a point really, I haven't really been here for the last month or so; my adventures have already started and I am evolving into a traveler...content to live day-to-day, out of my backpack, in search of daily adventure...

My body is still in Hawaii, but my mind, my heart, my soul ...is on the road already.

Old friends that I have not seen in almost a year are startled when they run into me again - I am happy, I am tanned, I am wild, and hippy, and free!

WILD. HIPPY. FREE.

I am catching myself in moments of bliss, thinking to myself, " I LOVE my life!!" How many people can truly say that they are doing exactly what they want to be doing with their life right this moment??

It may not look pretty, with utility bills going unpaid and foreclosure notices being delivered and strange, vapidly hopeful realtor / investor types knocking on my door offering a surefire solution to my housing woes... clucking their tongues with a reproachful shake of their head, then swooping in to "rescue" me...

...I am HAPPY. In the midst of all the financial turmoil and doom and gloom we are bombarded with every day, I am blessed ad fortunate enough to be listening to my soul, following my heart, and striking out on a completely illogicial, unfunded journey around the world to seek ADVENTURE, and opportunities to be of SERVICE...

I've been presented with so many ways to make lots of money in this market, and some of these ideas are going to work, and going to make some people a lot of money. AND, I have found that I am simply not interested in money right now.

WHAT LIES AHEAD, I WONDER??

I am fascinated with PEOPLE. HUMANITY. CONNECTION.

Relationships, old and new, have become newly minted, each moment shared standing out in stark contrast to the rush of the last 10 years spent chasing dollars, each moment precious with the knowledge that we may never see each other again....

...Or at least, not for a long time...

# # #

**Denied**

"DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT $200.
YOU SUCK. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

Ummmm, so yeah. *Ouch.*

Access = Denied. Sigh.

I quote:

Sorry Matthew,

Your video application for Island Caretaker has been rejected.

Your application was rejected your video exceeded the maximum length of 60 seconds. [You Dummy.] (1 min 11 seconds).

Unfortunately applications have closed, but you can still be involved. Visit islandreefjob.com from March 2 to see the short-listed candidates and vote for your favourite.

Kind Regards [You Idiot],
The Tourism Queensland Team

So in all honesty, this email came to me within 48 hours of submitting the video...2 hours before the closing deadline.....after 2 months of "yeah I'm gonna go for this"....and I have only brought myself to write about it just now....

To quote another friend from the blogosphere who has inspired me:

"I procrastinate. More on this later."
-she-who-shall-remain-anonymous [you know who you are!]-

After putting my stomach back in its place and picking my bottom lip up off the ground and staring blankly at the wall for, oh, six hours or so [I jest...tho not really]...I pluck up the, ahem ?courage?, to watch the Short-Listed applicants that have made it for the wild-card voting...

Here's my shortlist of personal favorites:

Anjaan
because I love Bollywood accents...
Mieko
....gotta love Japanese Anime props.....did i mention I *heart* accents??
Yi
Austin Powers soundtrack + kungfu movie dub chinglish = WINNER.
George
...coz how fun would it be to watch a pale, beer-drinking, cigarette-smokin' Irishman livin' it up on the white sandy beaches of Queensland?!?
Manon
Once upon a time, we had a roomate who lived on our couch. He didn't move from the couch very much. At all. He became known as "Man-on-Couch"....his nickname when he was around became "Manon"....so my vote is Manon for Island Caretaker.
Kat
....hey, her video was over 1 minute too, how come she got on the short-list....oh yeah, she's HOT....shoulda busted out my bikini....
Felippe
this guy would rock!! seriously....vote for Change, vote for Felippe...not your average video application; pleasantly quirky!
Clarke
holy cow, this is talent...i want this guy's job....he really has been doing this stuff his whole life....


...which plants a seed in my newly fertilized creative mind....I had so much fun doing this....I am allergic to "jobs which entail working for others" anyways....so why not make up my own "job doing what I want to do when I want to do it" ...

...traveling and writing and blogging and making crazy videos and living and exploring and learning and meeting new people and having new adventures ....this blog was created to supplement my application for Queensland Tourism's brilliant "Greatest Job In The World" publicity stunt.....though that job it is not meant to be for me......

Which doesn't need to stop me from writing about my travels and adventures...

...I've always dreamt about being a freelance travel writer, sipping a latte in the kewlest cafes around the world as I tap out my latest story for Travel & Leisure or Esquire or Playboy...

....so here goes!

Prepare to be enthralled, amused, dumbfounded even by the shenanigans that shall ensue...[wow, spellcheck picked up "shenanigans"?!?]...flabbergasted, fixated, and frustrated....disgusted, demented, and debaucherous....ok maybe I am getting a little carried away....

Prepare to read about my upcoming journey and misadventures that will unwind along the way... and just come along to enjoy the ride...wherever it takes us....

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Later....I write to Supermom and tell her the news of my decision to create my very own Bestest Job In The World ....she promptly responds with an introduction to a family friend, who has been doing this stuff, quite successfully, for years.

And so the hunt is on for a cheap airfare that will get me back to Melbourne in time to grab a cup of coffee with her and pick her brains about what it takes to become a successful freelance travel adventure writer....before she heads up North for her next adventure on April 22nd!!

I am
...no longer
......here.

Matthew Lynch.
Freelance Travel Correspondent.
Wanderer.
Adventurer.
Photojournalist.
Explorer.
Filmaker.
Blogger.
Livin' Life...

LOVIN' LIFE!

Coming Soon to a blog near you:
"TheBestestJobInTheWorld".

Stay tuned.

Travelog Redux - backpacking New Zealand

STA TRAVEL CENTERS MEAN BACKPACKING TO ME!

Thought I'd post an entry from the Travelog I kept in 2003 while backpacking New Zealand. I booked my flight into Aukland, and nothing else, deciding to figure everything out once I got there..."spontaneous travel", I called it. One of the best trips I have ever done [so far] in my life! No pics, only some images from my sketchbook at the time....enjoy:

9pm, Janus Hall Backpacker's Lodge, Wet All Day

....Waitomo Caves Gloworm Adventure Tour was well worth it, what an adventure!!

30-meter abseil into a hole in the ground starts things off...the hole looks like, well, a hole about 1/2 meter wide an 2 meters down, then you squeeze into the opening and find yourself hanging in a limestone chimney 30m off the cave floor....

...then down a narrow path to a short flying fox run (in the dark), quick break for tea & a biscuit a.k.a. cave cookie a.k.a. NZ Granola Bar...we dangle our feet over the edge of a 10-foot drop and peer into the still, pitch-black water below...can't tell how dep it is (or isn't)....we jump off the cliff into the freezng water below and paddle our way upstream where our guide shows us a chamber full of gloworms & tells us of their lifecycles:

"They are acually maggots of a certain kind of fly, the only maggots known to catch their food by using a light on their arse...only maggots known to trap their food with snot-like fishing lines they dangle to entangle their prey...after living as larvae for many weeks, they pupate into flies which live for three days & shag until they die of exhaustion....they have very short life cycles, but very large penises...what a trade-off, aye?? "

Then, after paddling uptream for about half an hour, we sit on our inner tubes and form a human chain, shut the lights off on our helmets...and float down the stream in the darkness, with only the pale glow of the maggots to light our way.

It is a surreal feeling, drifting downstream in an underground river in total darkness, with 7 other people crazy enough to want to do it with you, and your guide....you lose all sense of space & it feels like you are drifting in the cold vacuum of space; the glow worms look like the stars of distant galaxies....then *SPLASH* our other guide scares the s*%t out of us by making a god-awful noise which breaks the spell and heralds our arrival back to our entry point, where we came in on the flying fox & jumped into the water.

We ditch the inner tubes, turn our lights back on, and follow our guide downstream into the icy black water towards the roar of what sounds like a huge waterfall...we twist & urn & stumble thru a series of rapids, not knowing what lies beneath or where your foot is stepping, just trusting to your numb feet that tey will find the way.

"Watch out for the big eels" they say, and we cannot tell if they are joking or not...although I wonder when they tell us to keep our fingers out of the water lest they be mistaken for earthworms or grubs. Down a slide, we turn a corner & continue downstream, sometimes ankle-deep in water, sometimes chest-deep, sometimes paddling to keep your head afloat as the river bed drops away beneath you.

We pause and our guide points out a few stallegmite formatioins that remind them of different things: T-Rex claw over here, fairy castle over there...then the crown jewell, a formation that looks like a sheep farmer having a little too much fun with his sheep, doggy-style if ya know what I mean...

We press on despite the fact that I can no longer feel my toes, and the cave gets smaller and smaller, pressing in around us. We are crawling our way thru some spaces now, our guides have given us directions and we are now leading the way, the blind leading the blind...

We duck under another low ceiling into another cold pool, and Ritchie, our Maori guide, runs forrward to a nook in the wall and exclaims, "Check this out, it's Cecil!!" "Cecil" turns out to be a 1.5 foot-long eel who resembles a catfish with no eyes, and who is, apparently, asleep.

I am immediately reminded of the "shrieking eels" in [the movie] "The Princess Bride", an also reminded of the earlier warning at our entry point into the caves...yech...10 feet long, they said, 6 inchess in diameter...my skin crawls at the thought of such a creature wrapping itself around my leg, and with a shudder, we move on. Bloody uncanny those creatures, seems like they could live anywhere....their grey skin is unnatural, reminding me of Gollum.

We turn another corner and are given a choice....the easy way out, or do we want our money's worth...nobody objects, so we take the right fork and crawl under a tiny gap in the wall...to emerge under a 10M waterfall. We climb up one at a time, and squeeze through a narrow passageway to come to another waterfall, and...daylight.

It is with mixed feelings that we greet the daylight; sad that our adventure is coming to an end, glad that we are out of the cold...and on our way to hot showers & soup & bagels...what an amazing experience!

Two hours underground with complete strangers, and we emerge with the strange bond a shared experience creates. We know each other pretty well now: there are the 3 Italian guys who don't speak much English but laugh at everything you say...the Smiling Swiss, Felix, who beamed at you every time you looked his way...the Aussie couple, Danielle and her hubbie The Plumber, true-blue Aussies with that "no worries" attitude that meant they were up for anything thrown their way...Sharon, the British girl who teaches English in japan and was petrified the whole way, but who made it thru, foggy glasses and all...and, of course, Bigi [my Austrian travelling companion at the time], who is just...well, Bigi, making friends with everybody, and loving every minute of it.

What a great day!
12/21/2003

WARM AGAIN:
THE VERANDAH GRILL BACK AT THE BACKPACKER'S LODGE

The Story Behind TheGreenBackpack...

EVENTS LEADING UP TO BIRTH OF "THEGREENBACKPACK"

The GreenBackpack was born out of a desire to create an underlying purpose to the world travel that I am planning.

This trip could simply be a romp throughout the world, drunken night after drunken night at hostel after hostel meeting new people, exploring new places, and creating new adventures....or, I can encompass these elements of travel [in sober moderation, of course], and direct my wanderlust so that my travels can be used as a vehicle to increase my own knowledge and value in an area that I have long been interested: sustainability.

Sustainability has become a buzz word in recent times, and it can be easy to think of "sustainability" simply as "environmentalism", or "eco-friendly". However, to me, sustainability encompasses so much more than "going green".....

Put the word "sustainable" in front of any of the following words, and you cast a renewed focus onto another aspect of the sustainability movement: capitalism, charitable work, entrepreneurship, environment, education, economy, philosophy, philanthropy, social responsibility, social ventures, even....wait for it....spirituality.

So, while this journey is about me diving into these things that interest me, and inviting you to come along and learn with me......it is also an outward expression of the journey I am taking within to explore myself:

What passions do I want to follow? What do I want to experience? Will I retreat into the wild? Will I come back? Who will I be when I come back?

Therefore the blog is a travelog, a spiritual diary, a research paper, and hopefully a forum where those of us who find ourselves asking these same questions can discuss and debate and collaborate and connect and explore together.

Here's the rough plan for 2009 thus far....of course, this is subject to change each day as the road is constantly changing and has already started to unfold and reveal its treasures and challenges before me:

1. Depart Honolulu April 20th, 2009 to Melbourne, Australia to celebrate my brother's 30th birthday and spend about a month with Mum, Dad and Sis. Road trips and re-connecting with family / friends.
   
2. June / July - road trip up to Sydney. Hope to spend a month training chi-kung and some kung-fu with my teachers who live there.
   
3. July / August - road trip up to QLD to visit family and friends. Explore the surrounding countryside, specifically want to learn more about aquaponics while in Australia. , camp on beaches that stretch to the horizon both ways, and do some WWOOFing.
4. August / September - travel through the Red Center to visit Ayers Rock. Sleep under the southern sky in the Australian outback. I wonder if I could work on a cattle ranch and learn to drove cattle on horseback?
5. September / October - meet my uncle in the Phillipines to explore my Filipino ancestry. Visit a friend's Eco-Resort that is under construction.
6. Oct / Nov - am looking into ways I can teach English in rural Japan for short stint, no longer than 2 months. I want to live on a small Japanese farm and experience the lifestyle.
7. Dec - spend Christmas season with family friends in Bali.

The rough plan for 2010? Travel through SE Asia to rural Thailand to teach English for a month, visit Bangledesh and learn more about Grameen Bank's microfinance projects, study meditation and yoga in India, then make my way to Europe which I have been longing to explore for quite some time.

It will be very interesting to see how European society is adapting to the changing world, and how a cap-and-trade economy has affected small business, especially since the Obama administration has listed implementing carbon cap-and-trade initiatives into the US Economy as a priority.

The final leg of my journey back to Hawaii will be through North and South America, on motorcycle, WWOOFing and Couchsurfing my way across the continent.

Along the way, I will seek out and explore people and projects that are making a positive difference in the world...which is the simple truth driving the entire sustainability movement:

"How do we love all the children of all species for all time?"
-William McDonough, author of "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we Make Things

Come along for the ride!


Sincerely,

Matthew K Lynch
thegreenbackpack.com

The GR8EST Job In The World - Application Complete!

I had so much fun shooting this over the last week....er, OK well mostly today...thought the deadline was next week and SUPERMOM came to the rescue again, texting me with the news that the application vid was actually due in TODAY.

So in true procrastination-drives-creative-genius form, I spent the day filming like a maniac with my Couchsurfing Buddy [and new best friend] Lucie Voelcker [THANK YOU Lucie!!]

We spent the day asking unsuspecting tourists and locals to say, "HE WAS BORN FOR THIS JOB!!" into a stranger's video camera....and everyone happily obliged!! I'll follow up with the blooper reel on another post; this was so much fun!!

Special thanks to: Mom & Dad, Lucie Voelcker, Laurens Laudowicz, Miles Burkhart, James Lynch, Jens Trumpa and his beautiful children, Pete Richards, Jim Schmit, Tom who we sail with every Friday [what the heck is ur last name??], Antoinella, Atlantis, Da Kalihi Boyz, that lovely couple from the west coast who we met on Diamond Head, and Morning Brew Cafe in Kailua.

I am no longer here

CONTEMPLATION NOW BEGINNING,
KEEP THE RYTHYM FLOWING...

I am no longer here. People see me and hug me and and converse with me, but it is clear to me that I am no longer here.

I am already on the road. The wind is in my face, my clothes are dusty, and I am in need of a bath and a place to sleep. I am happy.

My reading list grows: Anais Nin, Anthony DeMello, more Kerouac, Thoreau, Carlos Castaneda, the Gnostics....."Into the Wild", holy cow what a powerful movie.....and of course my dear old friend Coelho....the books, it seems, are finding me.

Financial reports that used to be my daily reading fill my InBox and are deleted with nary a second thought. Instead, I devour tales from the road of spiritual journeys and adventure. Paulo Coelho writes as though he is speaking directly to my soul; I am lost in his tales of magic and discovery...

Responsibilities and commitments that I have made are in danger of falling to the wayside, and it gets more difficult with each passing day to focus on those tasks. Let me wander in nature instead!

I fall into a conversation with a visiting fellow soul-searcher who is interested in learning about investing in real estate. That part of my brain launches into automatic dialogue with him about how I got started and succeeded, mistakes I've made that he doesn't have to, current market conditions, etc etc etc ....and I observe myself with a curious detachment and voyeuristic fascination at how a topic that was once so exciting to me has become so dull....in spite of the knowledge and familiarity that I have accumulated in that area.

Money no longer interests me. Life interests me. What is right in front of me, at any given moment, has become fascinating.

A butterfly fluttered its way into the shop I was watching yesterday, and I watched in simple amazement as he browsed all the antique furniture and buddha statues that fill the showroom.

I find myself looking forward to the next time I am riding my motorcycle, or sailing on the ocean with the salty breeze in my face, or breathing the cool mountain air on a hike somewhere, or diving into the azure waters below Diamond Head...

And cooking dinner! I forgot how much I enjoy creating something delicious, experimenting in my skillet to blend flavors and textures and cultures....

And sharing coffee and conversations with loved ones...loving and accepting them for who they are vs who you would like them to be...meeting new people who are on similar journeys of discovery, and sharing the awe in their eyes as the simple beauty of life unfolds around us...

My life looks so much different today than it did two years ago. Looking back at my writings, I realize that I began to explore creation vs consumption, contribution vs accumulation years ago, as I was building towards my first million...and now that I have let go and have nothing, I get to immerse myself in that exploration.

What would it be like to live without money? The question is not so much could I do it....more so, how can I do it? Since I've torn down my life to its bare foundations, I get to rebuild however I want to:

What passions do I want to follow? What do I want to experience? Will I retreat into the wild? Will I come back? Who will I be when I come back? I get to come up with answers to these every day!

"The less I have, the happier I am."
-"Ingrid", my 80-year old muse and monthly lunchdate

Indeed.

HONOLULU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,
ONE OF MY FAVORITE PLACES ON EARTH...

My First Couchsurfing Experience!

THIS IS HOW YOU PACK TO CYCLE ACROSS NORTH AMERICA

So I had my first Couchsurfing experience this week!!

Nico is from Belgium and is cycling solo across Canada, North America, and off to the Baja Coast of Mexico after a brief stopover in Hawaii to cycle around Oahu and hike Molokai.

Apparently, this is what Belgians do for fun.

Seriously though we Americans have it all wrong.....we live to work....Europeans work just enough so that they can live it up!

Nico has taken a leave of absence from work for 12 months to travel and recharge his batteries, and his job will still be there when he gets back. Apparently, he must take off at least 4 weeks / year to prevent burnout [he's a nurse], and can take up to 5 years of extended leave throughout his career....

Similarly, I backpacked New Zealand in 2003 with an Austrian nurse who was also on an extended 12 month leave of absence she had decided to spend travelling the world; with the knowledge that her job would be waiting when she returned. Come to think of it, I hung out with some German executives at a bar in San Francisco who were on their way to Tahoe, also on an extended leave....they even invited me to hang out with them on the slopes when I'm back in Europe!!

I wonder what the national health of developed European countries looks like....probably much lower stress-related diseases, which means that national health care costs should run lower....in my travels I've hardly ever met any fat Europeans; they always seem to be fit, healthy, and active. Not like the spongy fat Americans I am used to seeing flopped on Waikiki's beaches.

The recent movie WALL-E was a perfect parody of US society, which was probably lost on the vast majority of US audiences....the human passengers onboard the spaceship are whisked to and from their "cruise ship" activities on mobile entertainment capsules, devoid of any real human connection and interaction even though their fellow human beings are right there next to them. Kind of like the table at the bar where everyone is on their cell phones and no-one is talking to the people right next to them that they came to meet in the first place!!

Meanwhile, the endless array of mind-numbing and frivolous distractions from their true plight - the only survivors of the human race lost in deep space at the mercy of the supercomputer built to sustain their lives. What a potent metaphor for the decline of the American Empire that we are all witnessing this very moment. Caught up in our own indulgent need for more more more more more, we were blindsided by the white elephant in the room; What do you mean we can't spend our way out of trouble??

But I digress! back to the couchsurfing experience...we were to meet just for coffee and a chat, so that I could pick his brains about do's / dont's / insider tips from a real live actual person who has successfully couchsurfed... instead, we wind up sharing a few beers at The Dragon's Den, a local live jazz spot in Chinatown, which I had not yet been to in 12 years of living here!

I love the wandering lifestyle. It is as though simply meeting and hanging out with travellers gives you a new pair of eyes to see the world.....this trip may last longer than 12 months.....

THE DRAGON'S DEN IN CHINATOWN HONOLULU

Travelog Rediscovered...

TREE OF LIFE

Cleaning out 12 years of stuff I have accumulated living here, I came across an old travelog diary I kept when I backpacked New Zealand in 2003.

They say that we have the answers to all of the challenges we face already inside of us...we just need to ask the right questions. Interesting thing is, I'm still asking myself the same questions six years later...and am not entirely sure how I feel about that.

Had I become that comfortably numb? Am I just a lost soul swimming in a fishbowl - year after year [God Bless Pink Floyd] - living the same year over and over again, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day??

Early in my mortgage career I had often questioned if "10 years experience" on my competition's business card meant the same year over and over 10 times, or if my competition was taking the necessary steps to learn, grow, innovate, and remain at the leading edge of their field.

Now I cringe at the thought of how I have spent the last 12 years learning about real estate & finance, and building for the future...at the expense of what lay right before me. About how I created an "Instant Family" for myself at the tender age of 20, wanting so badly to provide more options for my family and stepson that I worked countless hours for the future I dreamed about at the expense of being present with what was right in front of me, what I cared about most...

....and that being said, I would take none of it back.