Here’s a picture for the Daily Posts’ Photo Challenge.
I took this one at a temple in Bali. The people make figures out of rice and other grains. They represent gods and demons.
I saw these offerings all over the island (most were smaller). The amount of time and effort they put into art on that island is amazing. It’s a beautiful place!
Here’s a picture for the Daily Posts’ Photo Challenge.
I took it a few years ago on an Irish Beach. I thought the patterns the flowing water made through the sand were really interesting.
Yeah, I know I’m weird. 😉
I got off the ship Tuesday morning and finally made it home late Wednesday afternoon. What a looooong trip it seemed!
From the ship, we rode the crewboat in to Pointe Noire, Congo. It was a sweet little boat and the weather was nice. The only problem was that a 2 hour ride to shore turned into a much longer tour around the offshore lease.
Instead of taking us right in to the beach, like we all expected, we drove all over the field, picking up one guy from one rig to drop off at another. We all really just wanted to get to the beach! We wound up going to pretty much every facility out there. Tungsten Explorer, Hellespont Daring, Hellespont Defiance, Lewek Crusader, FPSO Alimo. I hate to think of what crew change will be like on a day it’s not flat calm!
1st stop Tungsten Explorer
After the rounds of the offshore field, we finally took off for the beach and it took only about an hour. Uncomfortable as hell with having to wear life jackets INSIDE the boat (which is NOT safe, in fact it’s dangerous!), and pretty piss poor air conditioner! I was feeling pretty miserable by the time we got there. I know I was not alone. I had only been up since 2200 the night before, some had been up since 1700. We all just wanted to get to the promised hotel so we could get a nap.
After climbing up the ladder to shore and finding our way to the customs and immigration, we carried our lifejackets along with our luggage down the long passageway to the main street. There was a bus waiting for us (with AC that worked!).
We were taken through the dusty chaos to a pretty nice hotel. I went for lunch with a couple of shipmates. The food was good and we could see the gardens and a nice swimming pool. I wish I had room in my luggage for a swimsuit (but since I’m still restricted to only 15kg, there’s no way).
All’s well that ends well 🙂
The agent took us to the airport at 1800. The (only) flight didn’t leave til 2105. The airport was not air conditioned either (except for the Air France lounge). What a scam they have going there! They’ll charge you $10 (or whatever they can get out of you) just to let you sit inside, knowing most people would be glad to pay just for the AC! I heard the drinks cost up to $20!! Since you are supposed to be able to use the lounge for free (including drinks) when you are a member, they are getting away with quite a rip-off there!
That’s not to mention the fact that every official in Congo wants to SEE how much money you have on you (and according to most people I’ve talked to going through there) will take some of it off your hands. I’m not sure how I got away with keeping mine. Maybe because I had so little of it and counted out every $1 bill in front of them (holding up traffic).
I was sure glad to get on that plane! Then only about 10 hours to Paris. I had about a 4 hour layover in Paris. I don’t remember much about it. I was dead tired by then and spent the time in the lounge. I paid for an upgrade to Houston (another 10+ hour flight) and so I actually got a few hours of sleep.
I’m still pretty whacked out on the sleep schedule. I haven’t done much since I got home but catch up on mail and phone calls (and sleep). I’m hoping soon I can manage to stop falling asleep by 1800!
I’ve got a couple of hours layover in Paris and access to the Air France lounge, so I decided to answer Cee’s Share Your World Challenge for Week 17, 2015. She always has interesting questions and I enjoy reading her answers and the answers that other bloggers come up with.
So, I’ll add my 2 cents and hope it will entertain some of you as well. 😉
What is your most favorite smell/scent? I’ve never really thought about it. Some I really like are: the scent of fresh snow on the air when it’s crisp and clear outside (we don’t get that much here in South Texas!), the fresh and salty sea breeze far out to sea, the smell of cinnamon rolls baking in the oven, I love to smell all of those things, they usually mean good things are coming my way! 🙂
Do you prefer long hair or short hair for yourself? Short! I used to have long hair when I was younger, but the last time I grew it long was when I went back to school a few years ago. I let it grow all the way down to my butt. It was beautiful (I’m a natural redhead). As soon as I went back to work, I found out that it was a mistake to have long hair. It was SO hard to keep it neat. It would constantly get in my face. I HATE it when my hair gets in my eyes! I’d have so much trouble with snarls. As soon as I got off that hitch I had it all whacked off. I’ve kept it pretty much shoulder length since then.
Do you plan out things usually or do you do them more spontaneous (for example if you are visiting a big city you don’t know?) I guess I’m kind of in between on this one. If I’m traveling to someplace new, I like to look through the guidebooks and the internet to get a good idea of what there is to see and do in a place. Then, I’ll make a (long) list in my head of all the things I REALLY want to see or do, along with all the things I find interesting and would check out if I have the time. I almost never stick to the plan when I arrive!
I do like to find a place to stay for the first night or two. I’ll go online and book a place, usually somewhere very easy to get to from the airport. I like to have a little time to get over the jet lag and find my bearings in a new place.
When I get out and start exploring, I find so many other things that I never found out about in my ‘research’. I meet people and they’ll tell me about all sorts of cool things: great local restaurants and bars, small museums, local hangouts, etc.
What is your favorite outdoor activity? My favorite thing to do is traveling, but not sure that counts as a strictly outdoor activity. After all, it includes a lot of eating, drinking, shopping, exploring museums and other tourist attractions, etc so I don’t want to count is as an ‘outdoor’ activity/
Hard to decide between hiking, sailing and SCUBA diving! I love hiking around and exploring beautiful country, but I’m fairly lazy and like to be comfortable. I don’t like carrying around anything more than a small fanny pack. I love to SCUBA dive, but it’s so hard for me to do now a days. I have to rent the gear and spend a few hours (minimum) going somewhere decent to dive. So, sailing beats out the other 2!
I joined a local meetup group called Sail La Vie a couple of years ago. Since I joined, I’m able to go sailing just about any weekend I want. I don’t need to have a boat or pay for any of the associated expenses. They go sailing out of Kemah, which is still a little over an hour away and it would be better if it was closer, but a couple of hours wasted on the road is a small price to pay for a nice long sail out on the bay!
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? I’m grateful that I was finally able to get off that ship (I worked an extra week!). I’m looking forward to some down time at home. I’m really looking forward for just a chance to spend some quiet time at home. Time to spend catching up with friends and projects around the house.
I have lots of projects to catch up on, things like finishing up my taxes (I got an extension), working on the garden (whacking down some of the overgrown weeds taking over my yard), working on my photography, going to another painting class or two, etc. I might even get around to cleaning the house! 😉
I’m really looking forward to getting home and some sleep! 🙂
I should be getting off the ship sometime this morning and then flying out tonight. It’s a long flight from Congo to Houston. I’ll have a layover in Paris (not long enough to leave the airport). I should be home by Wednesday evening.
I’m so ready! Four weeks out here is long enough. Five is too long!
I’ll be taking the crew boat in. One of the “Surfer” boats. I’m just hoping I don’t drop my luggage or fall in the drink myself when it comes alongside. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to transfer by boat. Been spoiled by the helicopters for too long. 🙂
Here’s a photo I took at the fair last year. I think it’s a good one for this challenge (Motion) from the Daily Post. I always try to go when I’m home from the ship. I don’t usually go on the rides anymore, but I love to see all the people wandering around, listen to the music, and pig out on the junk food! 😉
Here’s a photo I took in New Orleans. I think it’s a good one for this challenge (Motion) from the Daily Post. I loved watching this couple dance and listen to the band play in the street. New Orleans is really great for this kind of thing. 🙂
It’s not really blurry, but I hope you can get the idea of motion anyway. The couple was really dancing up a storm (swing, jitterbug, etc.), the musicians were all tapping their toes and swaying to the music and everyone was having a great time.
I didn’t think to buy a CD from this band, I wish I remembered their name. But I did get one from another one that was playing further up the street. Here’s a post I did about that one. Check it out, the music’s worth a listen. 😉
Here’s a sunrise for the Daily Posts Weekly Photography Challenge. This week, the challenge is to show a photo “taken in the early morning light”. Be an “early bird“.
I’m most definitely NOT an early bird! Last time I can remember really enjoying early morning was as a kid getting up for Saturday morning cartoons. 🙂
I was always a night owl. I used to stay up ’til 2-3 in the morning. I used to go out partying a lot. Or, I might stay at home reading a good book. Sometimes I just couldn’t put it down ’til I finished.
I’ve cut back a lot on keeping those kinds of hours now a days. Mostly because I have too much to do now. Things that have to be taken care of during normal business hours (9-5). Now I try to get to sleep by midnight (and it really isn’t too hard to do anymore). 😉
I only see the sunrise when I’m working the midnight to noon watch like I am now. I haven’t seen many good sunrises (or sunsets) this trip yet. Since we made arrival off Congo, it has been overcast. It clouded up a few days before we got here and hasn’t cleared up yet.
I took this photo while I was working on the tuna boat a couple of years ago. We were coming into the lagoon at Tarawa. The sunrise was just stunning. I had to run and get my camera.
This is one of my all time favorite ‘sun’ pictures. I keep one of my others as my header.
I saw this challenge from Sue over at her ‘A Word in Your Ear’ blog. The word of the week is: arid. I don’t have many photos that would fit this weeks word, since I spend most of my time at sea. But I did happen to have a couple on my computer.
I took these last summer, we hadn’t had any rain for a while and everything was drying up. I was on the way back home from Galveston. I always like to drive the beach road, especially when I’m not in a hurry. It’s a nice drive, right along the beach with some pretty scenery and some good places to stop and enjoy the day. 🙂
Isn’t it cool? I think it’s neat, that I can be at work thousands of miles away from home and meet someone who lives less than a mile from my house.
That’s one thing about being a sailor, it’s a small world out here. I almost always know someone onboard, or we might have worked with the same people in the past, or on the same ship at some point. It gives us a good starting point to talk about.
People we know, ships we’ve sailed, ports we’ve been to. It’s nice to have that commonality right from the start when you step aboard thousands of miles from home on a new ship with a new crew.
Here’s my entry for the Daily Posts’ Photo Challenge: Blur.
Normally, I wouldn’t have kept these pictures, they’re too blurred. They work great for this challenge tho. 😉
I took them at the ‘festival’ going on next door to our hotel in Mauritius. The belly dancer was very good. I never did get a decent picture of her while she was dancing. I was lucky, I saw her later and she posed for me. 🙂
I’ve been pretty busy for the last few days. We got on the ship and left pretty quickly. I really wish we could have stayed a little longer. It was a beautiful little island. Here’s a photo I took from the bridge so you can see what I mean.
Port Louis, Mauritius
I’ll post more pictures later, as soon as I can get caught up with everything here at work. I still gotta admit, no matter how much things have changed for the worse out here, there’s still nothing to compare to the view from my ‘office’ windows. 🙂
Here’s my take on the latest prompt from the Daily Post (Ephemeral).
I chose these photos for 2 reasons. The paper origami boats are themselves ephemeral, and I took the pictures earlier this evening in Port Louis, Mauritius.
Why does that make it ephemeral? Because I only got here yesterday afternoon after a looooooong flight (too tired to go out). Today I spent all day in a ‘workshop’ with the rest of my new crewmates. Tomorrow morning (early), we will be leaving to join the ship. So my time in Mauritius sped by and was very short-lived.
It looks very beautiful (I’ll post more pictures later). I hope I can come back again someday. 🙂
Seems like I’ve been home for such a short time! I guess that’s because I’ve only been home for a little over a week and the 1st couple of days were totally wasted just trying to catch up on sleep!! So I HAVE only been home for a short time!!
These long flights are really getting old. Especially when they make it so there’s no way to even TRY to upgrade! I started trying to upgrade as soon as I found out I would have a 15 HOUR flight! (And that’s only the FIRST leg to Dubai, I still have another 6 1/2 flight to Mauritius after that!) It would be nice to show up somewhere and not be completely exhausted for the 1st few days you get there.
I don’t have enough miles on this airline (Emirates). They don’t allow use of miles from another airline. I tried to BUY an upgrade, they wouldn’t even tell me how much it would cost!
All this because I’m on a ‘seamans’ fare’, not that it’s really any cheaper than I see online every day. What a rip-off! They USED to be good for a good rate for sailors that had to get to/from their ships on short notice. Not the same anymore, they’re more than the online tickets now.
I could possibly upgrade through my travel agent, IF I could contact them. Seems that is just not possible. I tried calling, emailing, and filling out their online form. Been trying for a WEEK now. STILL no response from them.
So, I guess I need to psyche myself up for a 15 hour long flight with no sleep. I WISH I was one of those so-lucky people that can sleep while sitting up!
I just hope there are no seat-back kicking kids or screaming babies nearby. 🙁
I’m still trying to participate in the Photography 101 Challenge. Today’s assignment is: glass.
I’m leaving for work tomorrow and pretty busy, so not able to get out to take any more photos. I took these when they sent me to Aberdeen (Scotland) for a lifeboat class. I had enough time after class each day to wander around town a bit.
I love the creativity of the little fisherman’s cottage in the top row. Tom, Dick and Harry 😉 and the model ships behind glass.
I got to try a glass of whiskey at the Glenfiddich distillery and the brew at the Moorings Bar.
I didn’t get to see the inside of the stained glass windows, they looked like they would be gorgeous with the light shining through. Maybe next time…
I’m almost gone! I’ll be leaving the ship today and heading home. That is, if the helicopter makes it out here. We’ve been haveing a lot of thunderstorms lately and they don’t like to fly through all that (I don’t blame them).
crew change by chopper
I’m due to fly out of Luanda at 2300 tonight. Will be due to arrive in Houston at 1500 tomorrow (Thursday) and should be home by 1800. I just hope everything goes smoothly and maybe I can catch a few zzz’s on the plane.
It takes 8 1/2 hours to fly from Luanda to Frankfurt and then another 11 hours to fly from Frankfurt to Houston. I hope the planes aren’t stuffed full so at least can have a little bit of space.
Will be home soon and able to start catching up with things on here once I get caught up on some sleep (MUCH needed). 🙂
Spring is coming! I’m looking forward to seeing the flowers in bloom while I’m at home this time. My garden is not the greatest, I don’t have many flowers (except on the weeds). I can’t really take care of it when I’m gone so much. But I do enjoy messing around out there in the yard, especially this time of year when the weather can be just gorgeous. 🙂
Here’re a few (googled) pictures of what Texas looks like in the Spring. People like to go leaf-peeping up north in the Fall. We like to go checking out the bluebonnets in the Spring down here. 🙂
Thanks to Ladybird Johnson for her efforts to promote Texas wildflowers. We’re all able to enjoy the beautiful scenery even more now. 🙂
I might be fired from my job because of the low price of oil, but at least the gas is cheap enough again now to go drive around looking for the best show in the fields. Maybe bring a couple of friends and have a picnic. It’s a great way to spend the day.
Jimmy Buffett is one of my all time favorite singer-songwriters. I grew up on the beach in Florida and his songs really captured the essence of the beach lifestyle. I loved his music then. I love it even more now, since it reminds me so much of all the things I miss so much. I can picture this ‘one particular harbor’ easily in my mind. Here’s another Song of the Sea…
One particular harbour
By: jimmy buffett, bobby holcomb 1983
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
I know I don’t get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It’s a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe
I used to rule my world from a pay phone
Ships out on the sea
But now times are rough
And I got too much stuff
Can’t explain likes of me
Chorus:
But there’s this one particular harbour
So far but yet so near
Where I see the days as they fade away
And finally disappear
But now I think about the good times
Down in the caribbean sunshine
In my younger days I was so bad
Laughin’ about all the fun we had
I seen enough to feel the world spin
Mixin’ different oceans meetin’ cousins
Listen to the drummers and the night sounds
Listen to the singers make the world go ’round
(pan solo)
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Lakes below the mountain
Flow into the sea
Like oils applied to canvas
They permeate through me
And there’s that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within
Most mysterious calling harbour
So far but yet so near
I can see the day when my hair’s full gray
And I finally disappear
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura (ua pau te maitai no te fenua)
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura (ua pau te maitai no te fenua)
E mea arofa teie ao nei, hey now, hey now, hey now
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ua pau te maitai no te fenua [bounty of the land is exhausted]
Te zai noa ra te ora o te mitie [but there’s still abundance in the sea]
Ua pau te maitai no te fenua
Te zai noa ra te ora o te mitie
I’m on my way back to work. Leaving Frankfurt now. Should arrive in Luanda around 10 hours from now. I should be on the ship for about a month, so don’t get too worried about me if you don’t see me posting quite as often. It’s hard to keep up with anything online when I’m offshore.
TSA Demands Internal Passport for Domestic Travel.
This is another great article from the Dollar Vigilante.
Yep, here we go, following in the footsteps of such wonderful places as NAZI Germany, Soviet Russia (USSR), and Apartheid South Africa. We absolutely MUST stop this! We do NOT need to “show our papers” everywhere we go!!!!! We are NOT slaves or animals that must be constantly tracked and under surveillance!!! Yes, ‘our leaders’ do think so, but why do so many ordinary people go along with them? WTF is WRONG with people, that they would even suggest this???
And, believe me, this will only be the beginning. 🙁
Better be prepared for some SERIOUS SHIT when they get this “law” into effect! I hope to hell I can get myself out of here before the shit hits the fan and I encourage anyone else here in the US to find some options too. The USA is NOT going to be a safe place to be for much longer. Get out while you can!
I was really hoping to make some serious progress in a couple of months when I was due to get my yearly bonus from work. Got news the other day that they’ve cancelled my bonus (not all of it, just stopped earning it from end of the month- it’s a HUGE pay cut). Not just me, everybody was cut! How can they do that? It was in the contract. I guess those are only for one side to obey, the side that doesn’t have the power and money to do whatever they want. 🙁
With the price of oil so low, I guess I should be happy to still have a job. I’m sure the company knows that and so that’s why they’ll do whatever they want regardless of any ‘contracts’.
One step forward and 2 steps back. That’s what it seems like around here. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I can see what’s coming and take steps to prepare for it. It sure as hell adds a lot of stress to life tho.
I’m trying even harder to find some way to get out of the USA. I haven’t been able to find anywhere else to go that will allow me to WORK to support myself. That’s the only holdup. A lot of nice places are OK if you want to just go there to live, or to retire, or if you want to start a business. But they won’t let you work and possibly take a job from a local. I don’t blame them for that, it’s just frustrating for me when I want to leave so badly and I can’t find a way to do it.
Lately, I’ve even looking at just saying screw working anymore. I’ll just get permanent residency somewhere. I MIGHT be able to scrounge up enough to live on til I die. IF I move somewhere cheaper (and I die young). Maybe I’ll get lucky and that country (wherever) won’t deport me to the US when it really gets bad. Just got hit with approx. $3000++ plumbing bill, that kind of thing sure doesn’t help!
Oh well, what can you do but keep trying.
I saw this challenge from Sue over at her ‘A Word in Your Ear’ blog. The word of the week is: mural. I have a few photos of murals. Actually some of mine are a little different, most people think of murals as paintings on a wall. I have some of those, but I also have some murals made in different mediums than just paint. This one is one of my favorites.
My photo doesn’t do it justice. This mural is just STUNNING. I took this a couple of years ago when I was at the Maritime Education and Training conference at Texas A&M University in Galveston (Texas). There is more to it than just the part I could get in this picture. It’s HUGE.
It’s actually a mosaic, made of millions of little ceramic tiles. The artist Dixie Friend Gay made it. I’m not sure how long it took. There’s a better picture of how it all looks in this link. And another one to more about her art.
I think her mosaics are just incredible. I wonder that her work isn’t more well known. I think it deserves to be. What do you think?
I saw this challenge from Sue over at her ‘A Word in Your Ear’ blog. The word of the week is: mural. I thought I should get into this one. I have a few photos of those. Actually some are a little different, but this one is one of my favorites.
I stumbled upon the “Where’s My Backpack?” blog and Travel Theme: Doorways challenge while I was checking my reader today. I figured I’d join in…
Those first couple (of neighbors, sitting in their doorways) were from Thailand, up in the hills North of Chiang Mai. The next bunch are from Aberdeen, Scotland. I had to go take the course for Freefall Lifeboat before they would let me go out on my new job.
And I just had to throw something nautical in the mix. 🙂 This is a photo of the interior of the boat we were practicing with all week.
door into freefall lifeboat
This weeks Word a Week Challenge from the Word in Your Ear Blog is: Rainbow.
Here is one of my rainbow pictures. I took this one a couple of years ago, when I was working on the tuna boat. We sometimes went in to Tarawa (Kiribati/Gilbert Islands) to unload. We would tie up to a reefer ship in the anchorage off Betio (the main town on the atoll) and have a couple of days to get ashore there.
For such a small place, in the middle of nowhere, Tarawa had some interesting history. Some of the biggest battles of WWII were fought over these islands. There are still a lot of military ruins/wrecks/artifacts from when the Americans were fighting the Japanese there (Battle of Tarawa).
I’m not really into military history or how wars are fought, but I do understand the strategy of having those island ‘stepping stones’ for the US during WWII. The US still keeps an eye on things there. When I was there once, I met up with a US ship doing some ‘PR’ work throughout the Pacific Islands. A group of military people were cleaning up the war memorial and sent a medical team to help out the locals.
At this point in time, Tarawa has gone back to it’s sleepy small town ways. I really enjoyed myself there. The people were friendly and a lot of fun. A couple of years after I stopped working over there, I read a book “Sex Lives of Cannibals” by J. Maarten Troost. I highly recommend it. I laughed SO hard. Yes, it really IS like that there. 🙂
Here’s my entry for the Word a Week Photography Challenge: Cross. I took this in the famous Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s funny, but I just used some other photos from the same place in a different photo challenge (WPC: Shadowed). 🙂
Here’s my entry for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadowed. These pictures show the shadowy stalls and the people who work (and live) in the “Bird Market” in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It was such a fascinating place. There were all kinds of things for sale there. Birds, bats, reptiles, rodents, etc. And pretty much anything else you could imagine. These pictures don’t really do it justice (but I only had a crappy little point and shoot with me).
Here’s my entry for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadowed. These pictures show the shadows in different ways: shadows on the ground, a person in the shadows, a shadowy place (graveyard). I took these pictures in the famous Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires. I really loved it there. I’d go back any day!
I mean Buenos Aires, not specifically the graveyard. 😉
I don’t watch all that many movies. But when I’ve got a long plane ride, I might watch one or two. I usually have a hard time finding one I think will be worth the time. Since I can never sleep unless I’m lying down (or I’ve been up for over 24 hours and just too exhausted to stay awake any longer), I’m apt to try out the in flight ‘entertainment system’ on the plane.
My flight home from Luanda to Frankfurt was 8 1/2 hours long. Then I had another 10 1/2 hour flight from Frankfurt to Houston. I didn’t really see ANYTHING worth watching at first glance. I flipped through the choices again and again, searching for something to keep my mind occupied (the book I was reading just wasn’t holding my interest).
I finally decided to try this film. It’s not something I usually would have watched. I usually prefer science fiction/fantasy, horror, or really silly comedy. (I also watched the ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ this trip home.)
I’m glad I did decide to watch the ‘Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’. It really was pretty funny. Not in an ‘in-your-face’ kind of way, but in a more subtle kind of way.
The idea behind it- of a fantastic retirement home in a faraway, exotic, cheap and affordable location- was very interesting to me. I’ve been looking for that myself in real life. I watched the movie to see how the characters dealt with the different things they’d come across in daily life in a foreign country.
I loved the movie. The actors, (Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton and Dev Patel), all did a great job. I especially loved the way Muriel (Maggie Smith) grew into her new life. The director (John Madden) found the perfect settings and put it all together in a wonderful way. I really enjoyed myself. I laughed a lot, I even cried a couple of times. I’ve always wanted to visit India and this film has given me even more reasons to go. 🙂
I have a couple of friends I really hope I can get to watch this movie. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes an adventure, travel, learning new things, new cultures, about life, about yourself. I thought it was very inspiring and worth sharing.
Let me know if you’ve seen it already and what you thought.
I just did a post on what I’ve been doing last year. Now I think I’ll write one on what I hope to be doing next year (other than ‘retiring’ from work and spending all my time in a hammock under the palms on some bright tropical beach with a couple of cute cabana boys fetching me umbrella drinks between our frolics in the clear blue ocean waves). 😉
My major project this year is to get myself located in some other place. I NEED to get out of the United States of America. Most people won’t understand why (it’s political), but it’s been a goal of mine for a long time now. The feeling that I’ve had that I need to leave is just getting stronger all the time.
I’ve put it off for a lot of reasons, #1 being the lack of available work visas (and a trust fund). If I didn’t still have to work to support myself and pay my bills, I would have already moved years ago. I recently found out that Panama has a new visa program and so I have been trying to find a way to get down there to check it out.
I had planned to take a trip down to Costa Rica for a blogging workshop last May and from there head over to Panama to get this whole process started. But I got a new job at the end of May and had to cancel that whole trip. 🙁
Since then, I’ve been trying to get to Panama and haven’t been able to. I had planned to go after I got off the ship this trip, but at the moment I have no idea when that will be or how long I’ll have off. All plans are on hold until I can make sure of my work schedule.
Other than going to Panama, to investigate moving there permanently, I hope to travel more this year. Last year I went to Las Vegas, Korea, and New Orleans for vacations. I wound up going to Aberdeen, Scotland and Luanda, Angola for work. I did get to look around Aberdeen a little bit while I was there, but I haven’t seen anything of Angola except the airport and the drive to/from the hotel.
Seoul Korea for the travel writing workshop
There are so many places I’d still like to explore. My #1 travel goal for this year is… Antarctica! It just looks so amazing and I love the fact that the animals are still unafraid of people. I want to get there soon since I’m afraid that the ‘authorities’ will be restricting access even more than they already have. I’d love to take a small ship cruise down there where you can get up close and personal with the landscape and the animals. I hear there are even opportunities to meet some of the people who work down there.
I’d also like to hike up Mt Kilamanjaro and do a safari while in Africa. I hear Botswana is really great for that. Kenya or Tanzania sound good too. The guys from South Africa on here tell me I should go visit their country. 🙂
I’d love to visit India. I’ve always been fascinated by the art and architecture from that region. I think the culture is very interesting and the landscape and wildlife look like it’s a place I really have to spend some time.
I’d love to cruise the Nile and see the Pyramids in Egypt. I love all the history there.
I doubt I’ll even get to go to all of those places I just mentioned, so I’ll leave off on the travel wishes for now. I also want to get a few other things done this year. 😉
I want to finish working on the house I’ve been replacing the rotten siding on for a couple of years now. 😉
I want to get out sailing more often this year. Maybe even get another little Sea Snark so I can go out by myself without having to go all the way up to Houston. I’m so glad I found Sail La Vie so I can go out sailing with them whenever I’m home and have the time, but they almost always go out sailing from Kemah onto Galveston Bay. I hate having to spend 2-3 hours driving just to get out of the house to do something different!
I want to learn at least basic Portuguese so I can communicate better with the people I work with now.
I want to find more time to work on my art. I like to draw, paint, etc. I’ve seen some classes I can take locally, but never seem to have the time to make it to any of them. Problem is, they’re usually for 4 weeks or more and I’m never home for that long. Maybe I can just go to 1-2 classes? Here’s a picture of a pastel drawing I did while I was out on the tuna boat.
I want to learn more about photography and find the time to work on my photos some more. I want to get signed on to (and accepted at), at least ONE stock agency.
I want to work more on my writing and improve my style. I really need to figure out how to describe things better. I have always been just a very straight-forward person, both in writing and in person. I don’t know how, but I need to learn how to “show, not tell” when I write. I want to get off my butt and at least ASK a few editors to take a look at my articles!
I want to do better with my blog. I’m still learning. I haven’t been able to stick to any kind of ‘editorial calendar’ like I was trying to. I’ve had a really hard time keeping up with other bloggers in the challenges or even keeping in touch at all.
At this point, I have no idea how much (if any) of all that I’ll be able to accomplish this year. My list of things to do this year will probably wind up just like my list of “things to do today”, or “this time home”. Never finished, but never ending. 😉
Do you have lists like that?
