Chasing The Blue Beyond

The Last Resort Rising from the deep blue of the Indian Ocean are more than a thousand islands and thousands more reefs that form the Maldives

ZAMM- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Holy Cow- Near Miss- My karma ran over your dogma, I mean Brahma cattle Wack-tose Intollerent Rules of the road when driving a motorcycle- The horn is your friend. Use it often, use it well. Lanes don’t exist. Do not pass. Wear a Helmet! Cows have the right of way. There seem to be cows around everywhere I go. I am not sure if they have a chamed life, the ppl don't seem to worship them. It is, however,  revered as the source of food and symbol of life and may never be killed.  They seem to be walking neglected around  Goa city streets, living on garbage from the gutters. Sacred cows may make the best hamburgers, but I don't eat my friends. As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists. As for milk and cheese- they are an utter delight.

Hippies, Hedonism and All Night Bollywood Booze Cruise Go Go G0a- On the Hippie Trail to India As Allan Watts, points out--Everyday you have to go out of your mind in order to come to your senses. John Lennon and The Who used to show up and give free concerts. Inspired by Kerouac, Ginsberg and the Beatles, any self- respecting hippie  headed overland for Goa, especially around Christmas when  full-moon parties, trance and psychedelic hell broke loose.  Now An enduring haven for global nomads, Goa has been welcoming dropouts to its shores who missed the 60's and 70's. Before the hippies, however,  there were the Portuguese — and it’s their long period from 1510 to 1961 of colonial influence, that makes Goa such an alluring place.  This rich -- if not always peaceful -- encounter between East and West gives it a  globalised-homogenised vibe enveloped by the land's pockets of  idyllic landscape.

 Signal and Noise  It's fast, crowded (in a good way), the people are friendly and it's full of  cars. My eyes started burning from the wood fires and incense, and pollution.  I had a good time hiring  a cab  for three hours ($5 bucks!) and buying some paint for one of my projects.

 I've heard about "the Elephant in the room" but  an elephant in the road- what are the issues here? Everything Coconut Coconuts-it’s not just for Pina Coladas- These folks manage to use every part of the tree- the husk for rope that they weave; the palm leaves for brooms and roofing material; the juice for kootay, a fermented drink; not to mention drinking the water- an anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal elixir.   "It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks."  At a certain level, buying a cell phone is more representative of day-to-day Indian life than buying Shiva statue or silk scarf (though, admittedly, a  cell phone  would not look as good in your living room).  I am so souvenired -out...the expereince, however, of going through these shops is better than the souvenirs themselves.    Is he a righty or Lefty?   Namaste

The science of stress-Live life in the present like these guys    Voyage 6 March 29th to April 17th. Me Tarzan. You Jane In our privileged lives,  we are uniquely smart enough to have invented  stress(ers), and uniquely foolish enough to have let them, too often, dominate our lives. Zebras don't suffer from the long-term side effects of cognitive stress. I had never planned to become a Zebra  when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a flying man with a loin cloth. That's the the trouble with testosterone.

Colombo · Sri Lanka · Cricket Shirt / No Cricket Knowledge Foreign Land Sticky Wicket, Proof of Life First class removes surprise. Colombo put it back: tuk-tuks, traffic, weak internet, geo-arbitrage, and the useful chaos outside the port gates. See Full Image Show Text Ordinary World The Call Answer the Call Foreign Land Trials The Elixir The Sticky Wicket Wearing the Shirt Without Knowing the Game I was wearing a cricket shirt and did not know the first thing about cricket. That made the outfit a sticky wicket before the day had even started. Travel does this constantly: it places you inside symbols whose rules you have not yet learned. Foreign land begins the moment your confidence arrives before your competence. Outside the Safe Port...

 People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive. ~ The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell This world cruise has been one   of the most rewarding forms of introspection. It is one stage of my “re-entry” in Hotel @nyware, continuing my extended break from Normal Life again to travel the world on board another cruise ship. I’m living my dream of PT-Permanent Travel, also known as "Mini Retirements".   I haven’t been everywhere, but it is on my list. As I document this adventure, this  a round-the-world travelogue, I say to myself "Roam Sweet Roam". Home is not where my heart is but where my computer is- I remain a digital nomad, where  Anywhere becomes @nyware, location neutral, as there is no such thing as a bad piece of real estate when you use technology and social media. As I make my way to Sri Lanka, in the middle of nowhere, b...

Myanmar · Silence, Simplicity & Sacred Space Foreign Land Digital Nomad Meets Analog Earth A traveler learning what disconnection means when airplane mode is not a setting but a way of life. Ordinary World The Call Answer the Call Foreign Land Trials The Elixir Field Note 01 · Yangon CNN vs. The Alphabet Yangon’s analog eyes don’t see our digital world. But does it matter? Internet or InterNOT? Traveling without electricity alongside TCNs—Third Country Nationals—feels less like discovery and more like ritual. As Bruce Springsteen said, “I was born in the USA.” With curiosity, vulnerability, and vocabulary, I will articulate the Myanmar sound bite. Field Note 02 · InterNOT How to Buy Nothing The Burmese people I met were gentle, generous, and digitally homeless. The biggest experiment in anarc...

What's cooking? The menu is not the meal In Burma, where  this is the season for electricity-well brown outs occur at 4 hour intervals, the family's menu consists of two choices:  take it or leave it. They curry things up because of their borders with India and spice things up because of their  trade with China, but Hunger is the best sauce in these parts, and ppl will eat just about anything with wings except airplanes and anything with legs except tables.  In Burmese, they we have a word for sushi:  bait. They like to heat things up- not only with spices but fire They cook with charcoal, but  here  I am "cooking with gas".  The food was fresh veggies, and prawns. . In the United States of Unconscious eating, we are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy. Graduation Day First there were the options, the three month monk, the three year monk, I took the three ...

    Buddha Boy:  We will need to make an offering. Ed: What kind of offering? Buddha Boy :That would depend on how much good karma you want for your next life. Ed: Hmm, I can't plan that far ahead. Buddha Boy :Then some fresh fruit from the market will do.  My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon ... luge lessons   Promises Promises.  How do these monks  pray?  They don't ask or talk to god, they listen to god inside themselves. That's taking your meditation , cultivating the witness, and Namaste, the god in me says hi to the god in you. Buddhists   are taught that suffering is one promise that life always keeps. So that when happiness comes we know it is a gift, and it is ours only for a brief time. The elephant  represents good luck, longevity and peace and  strength;  and mostly here in SE Asia, joy. A laughing Buddha riding an elephant with chiIdren on his lap is an excellent symbol for happiness and prosperity...

 As familiar as Jesus on the cross, ubiquity, though, has voided  Siddhartha, aka Buddha Boy  of mystery and meaning. Smile and the world is yours- For stylistic simplicity makes it all too easy to miss the refinements of expression that convey the essence of Buddhist cosmology.  no fairy tales of salvation or a paradisiacal afterlife, no cosmic drama,  no creation myths. No pomp, just circumstances. About to step on dry land, and slip not only into the 14th century but also the slip into the zero experience, an  awareness of the insignificance of our prosaic wants and passions, as I see first hand the locals recreate "The Human Condition"  like some backdrop to a movie set.

The Cruising Godfather · Declassified File CG-HRV-01 Veritas, Karaoke, and the University of the World The West Point of Capitalism Harvard taught one kind of authority. Boston taught another. Alaska taught a third. The deeper question was never which school had the strongest brand, but which education changed what I could actually see, decide, and do. Harvard Boston Credential Economy Nature's University Cruising Godfather See Full Image Harvard Yard Old Ironsides Boston: More Than a Feeling USA Tour Show Story Ordinary World The Call Answer the Call Foreign Land Trials The Elixir Veritas The old line was deliberately provocative: Harvard Business School is the West Point of capitalism; the rest is karaoke, cheap imitation. Beneath the joke was a serious obsession with authority. Who gets to certify knowledge? Who gets to deci...