Cheeseburgers in Paradise Island, Bahamas
Karaoke Living
Daring to be different in a copycat world—and discovering that less can become more when the horizon gets wider.
Sell Cleverness. Buy Bewilderment.
I sell my cleverness and buy bewilderment. One is mere opinion; the other is intuition. Luck is quite predictable: when I want more luck, I take more chances.
Yet the paradox of choice can create more problems than solutions. Excessive generosity and voluntary simplicity become refreshing alternatives to a life spent collecting options.
The road of excess led to the palace of wisdom. The Japanese call part of it wabi-sabi: loving an imperfect situation perfectly and moving with the flow.
It means designing a full life without sacrificing what matters or wasting time, money, and energy. It is the law of least effort, the strength of weak ties, and the strange arithmetic of subtraction: 5 − 2 = 7. Removing what no longer serves you can become a value-add.
You cannot have everything. Where would you put it?
I haven’t been everywhere, but it is on my list.
At Sea, the Noise Goes Quiet
At sea, the always-on, 24/7, hyper-connected consumer culture disappears. Creativity spikes. Focus returns. Elegant ideas cut through the clutter of modern existence.
The distance can make you more generous, creative, content, and simple. I am not trying to become better than anyone else—only better than I used to be.
It starts with knowing more. Travel accelerates that knowing. Yet knowledge is not power. Applying knowledge is. Positive intent means expecting the best from people, removing opportunities for anger, and opening dialogue for re-creation and the exaltation of the possible.
Growing old is not optional. Growing up is. Because I never unlearned how to begin, venturing out still feels exquisite—even when I must consent to doing it alone.
The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare at the ocean. You have to get into your boat and row.
You spell time L-O-V-E. Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once. Love is our inheritance; fear is what we acquire. The journey of the spirit is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love back into the heart.
When my life flashes before me, I want to make sure it is worth watching. It might look like this fast-motion sequence.
Motion Creates Emotion
Between pessimism and optimism is alcoholism. But I do not do drugs. I am drugs. Tune in, turn on, drop out.
When I got older, I did not really want to change myself, so I changed my environment. Motion creates emotion. Environment creates mood.
The world was full of magical things patiently waiting for my brain to grow sharper. I had reached the point where I sold cars in Los Angeles—unfortunately, they were my own.
Los Angry Cars was the symptom. Restlessness was the diagnosis.
I had that feeling: I do not care what is on television. I only care what else is on television. Watching other people’s lives instead of living my own became the final broadcast signal to leave.
The god of restlessness made me eager to journey again. I hoped the Pacific was as big and blue as it was in my dreams.
It was.
Seven Cruises I Had to Take Before I Died
The original list contained seven essential voyages, followed by the ship that started everything as an honourable eighth. Destinations changed. The operating principle did not: experience over things.
Santorini, Greece
The white cliffs, blue domes, and Aegean horizon that became the visual thesis for Karaoke Living.
Open Cruise List
The Maldives
Consciousness becomes wireless where the horizon removes the usual signals.
Consciousness Is Wireless
Bora Bora
A stopover in paradise where time—not money—became the real measure of wealth.
Tahiti Stopover
The Fjords of Norway
Mother Nature and Father Time working together without asking permission.
Geirangerfjord
The Fjords of New Zealand
Milford Sound and the recurring question: are we there yet?
Milford Sound
The Full World Cruise
Los Angeles to London in 110 days: the map becoming a lived operating system.
L.A. to London
Oasis of the Seas
Go big or go home. The ship became the destination, and quantity became its own kind of quality.
Go Big or Go HomeHonourable Mention: The Hawaiian Islands
SS Constitution
A rust bucket. A glorified ferry. A ship with a great deal of heart.
American Hawaii Cruises was the beginning—the imperfect first vessel that taught me the sea did not need luxury to alter a life.
The Hawaiian Islands
Cheeseburgers in Paradise—and Other Island Contradictions
The Caribbean chapter was never only powder-white sand and cruise-ship blue. It was celebrity compounds viewed from the water, Hard Rock memorabilia, French breakfast in Martinique, rum arithmetic in Barbados, and the strange theatre of becoming an instant tourist for one day.
The original third-party image labelled Oprah’s Place no longer resolves reliably. This restored edition keeps the story but uses working images preserved in the EdReif.com Blogger archive.
Paradise Island, Bahamas
The harbour tour moved past enormous waterfront homes identified in the original notebook as Oprah’s place, Mick Jagger’s lair, and neighbouring celebrity compounds. Huge houses. Larger mythology.
Back on shore, Jimmy Cliff’s guitar was waiting at the Hard Rock Cafe. Cheeseburgers may have been in paradise, but I chose a Greek restaurant. Why pay less?
Cheeseburgers in Paradise
Sint Maarten
Bring in white sand, palm trees, colonial shops, and a cruise crowd. The copy can become more predictable than the original—but Philipsburg still carries a retro Caribbean pulse.
The Caribbean is not merely visited by tourists. For a few crowded hours, it is inhabited by them.
The Statue’s Not the Sint
Martinique
It looked like France, so breakfast became a bière Lorraine and a croissant—but church came first.
Fort-de-France offered baguette and reggae, cowboy sushi, a harbour run, and a crew moving through the island on cruise-ship time.
Dijon Vu
Barbados
Known as Little England, but moving with enough frenetic energy to resemble Little Saigon. Bridgetown did not sit still.
I rented a jet ski—ocean-style—and entered the questionable mathematics of rum, Coke, and a rice rocket. Got rum? Totally Barbados.
Got Rum?
Saint Kitts
A GR8 day in paradise. Basseterre, Sunset Cafe, and the long green sweep toward Christophe Harbour.
This time, I definitely did not miss the boat.
Saint KittsIsland time was not an escape from the world. It was a different clock for seeing it.
It Only Ends Once
Anything before that is progress. The point was never to collect ships or destinations. It was to replace spectatorship with participation—to stop watching other people’s lives and make my own worth watching.