This page contains longer, titled posts that I have made to my blog, so as to more easily separate them from other posts that I make here. If you would like to subscribe to the feed for this page, point your RSS reader here.
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
A little over two weeks ago The Wall that Heals, a touring replica of the Vietnam Wall Memorial hosted by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, arrived in Maui. It was here for five days, and I went to visit it the day before it left. I saw the actual Memorial in Washington DC almost forty years ago, and although then I knew no one connected with the war and indeed little about the war, I found the Wall very moving.
Thursday, February 22, 2024
A slide being projected onto a wall in a darkened room. When I set off on my travels in the mid 1980’s, I took a SLR camera with me. From my memory I had two lenses, a 35mm and a zoom lens the size of which I cannot remember. I believe that I also had a couple of filters with me. I did not know a lot about photography, though had been reading a little on the subject, and wanted to take the best photos that I could to remember and give me a flavour of my time away.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Road from Gaya to Bodhgaya from the roof of a bus Following my time in Patna, I continued my journey onto Bodhgaya by catching a train to the city of Gaya. I travelled to Gaya by train along with an American, Ray, whom I had met in Patna. I had an omelette for breakfast in my hotel room, settled up with the hotel owner and then caught a rickshaw along with Ray to the railway station.
Thursday, February 8, 2024
I’ve just left Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram situated just outside of the small town of Sevagram in almost the geographical center of India. I had spent a couple of night’s at the ashram as part of a pilgrimage around India that I had set out on, to visit places connected with the life of Gandhi. He has been a big influence on my life, and I have read a lot by and about him.
Monday, February 5, 2024
Photo of a slide projected onto a wall. It was mid November, 1989. I was four months into my journey through Central Asia. With my visa expiring, my time in Nepal was drawing to a close. Not feeling ready to go home, indeed a deeper sense of purpose and exploration beginning to arise from the trip thus far, I decided to travel down to India. I had left home with a few vague goals of things that I wanted to see or do, otherwise I was following my nose and seeing where the adventures would take me.
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
This is my first post and try out of Vincent Ritter’s new blogging platform, Scribbles. I’m not sure that I need another blog, but I love Vincent’s other offerings - Gluon, Tinylytics, and Shoutouts, and so couldn’t miss out on trying Scribbles. I was outside at dawn this morning and all of a sudden heard this deep swoosh sound somewhere above me. I looked around and could see nothing. And then to my right a flock of birds, maybe pigeons, flew low and fast on their way to an unknown destination.
Monday, January 22, 2024
The original of this image was a slide. I projected it onto a wall and took this photo. I initially posted this photo on September 3, 2023, but offered no context for it. Following the reception to my story about a photograph that I took of Mt.Everest at sunset and encouragement of Miraz and Maique, I have decided to revisit other photos that I have posted of my travels, as well as ones yet posted, and share their story.
Saturday, January 20, 2024
Towards the end of last year the iOS/Apple Watch app, Watch to 5K, was offered at a discount and it got me thinking. I wanted some easy accountability to get me exercising. This app essentially puts a Couch to 5K program onto an Apple Watch, with a companion iPhone app holding all the data from each run. What I found compelling about the app was that all I needed was my Apple Watch when I was out running.
Friday, January 19, 2024
Yesterday I posted a photograph showing the last rays of sunlight catching the summit of Mt Everest at the end of a day. After putting it up online, I was reflecting on the story behind the image, and thought that I would share it. The year was 1989, the month September. I found myself in Nepal at what turned out to be a little under halfway through a journey that would take me through Pakistan, China, Nepal and India.
Friday, January 12, 2024
Yesterday felt cold here, this evening there is a real icy blast…for a home only about 640 ft above sea level, in the Hawaiian islands. Of course it is not the sub-freezing temperatures that parts of the North American continent are facing, but the wind has a cold punch to it. Coming from England, I finding the colder weather strangely comforting, taking me back to dark winter nights, warm and comfortable at home or wrapped up against the cold as I go out for the evening.
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
Here are the books I finished reading in 2023. I’m a slow reader, not living in a family of readers (which slows me down more), but I love reading and am happy with this achievement.
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Almost twenty four hours after sitting down in the theater to watch The Boy And The Heron, the movie is still sitting with me. I chose to see the dubbed version so that I could concentrate on Miyazaki’s sumptuous drawings and the story. I still missed a few plot points and character connections, which I had to clear up with some background reading afterwards. I feel that the film can be read in so many different levels, and for me some of the movies that come out of Studio Ghibli have an elemental feeling about them, touching one subconsciously.
Monday, November 20, 2023
I’ve said this before on this website, for example here and here. So why again? As much as anything, I repeat myself because I need to remind myself. There is something unintuitive about meditation. Meditation is a method for reprogramming our heart into different ways of being. We are swimming up stream, going against the flow. It’s hard work, and as such we might want to try and make things happen, force change.
Friday, November 17, 2023
I had a dream last night in which a good friend, Maique Madeira, was sitting on the floor reading Harry Potter to his daughter, surrounded by a larger group of intent listeners. Not only that, but through the power of the internet, people were listening all over the world (I remember an Apple HomePod Mini positioned next to Maique, which I assume was doing the transmission?). I also assume that by the power of the internet Maique’s reading was being simultaneously translated into whichever language people around the world understood?
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
This piece started to take shape towards the end of the summer. It is now the last day of October. I was just coming out of recovering from pneumonia, which I had contracted in Portugal though at the time I did not know what I had, and wanted to document for myself what had happened to me over the space of a few months over the spring and summer. Why? Because the experience had been so…so many things to me…debilitating, frightening, humbling, helpless.
Friday, October 27, 2023
Some more images from last week’s visit to Estremoz Saturday market.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
I returned home yesterday from a couple of days in Lisbon with an unplanned cache - four books. Three of them came from a new discovery, a small bookshop that only carries books in English, Salted Books. The shop has only been open for a month, but apparently they are doing very well. Long may that continue. While I was looking through their selection of books, there was a clattering of bottles going on behind the counter.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
When to use a VPN and when not to, that is the question? So here I am, sitting in my hotel room in Lisbon. I am on the hotel’s WiFi network. I do not have a VPN fired up. In fact most of the time I do not use a VPN. When I do it is Mullvad. I did use Nord VPN but the longer contracts, it is possible to pay for Mullvad on a monthly basis, did not play well with my ambivalence towards using a VPN.
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Today I made a pilgrimage to Nazaré, the home in Portugal of big wave surfing, and where the biggest wave ever to be surfed was surfed. Even though I don’t surf, I am surrounded by family and friends who do. I live on Maui where surfers from all over the world come to practice their sport, and just down the road from us is Jaws, the home in Hawaii of big wave surfing.
Thursday, September 14, 2023
It’s Thursday evening. Time for the weekly ritual of putting the trash bins out for their collection on Friday morning. Tomorrow as I am waking up and making the first cup of coffee of the day, I will be greeted by the roar and grind of the truck carrying the trash collectors. It is a part of the weekly ritual marking the ticking of the weekly clock and the approaching week’s end.
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
There’s a quote from the book Danziger’s Travel that has sat with me since I returned from my travels in the early 1990s. Danziger’s words spoke to how I felt on returning to my home country, Britain. I was feeling lost and his words told me that I was not alone. Nick Danziger had returned from an extraordinary journey, traveling through Afghanistan during the war with Russia, crossing the Kunjerab Pass between Pakistan and China before it was open to foreigners, making his way into Tibet when that country as well was closed to foreigners, and after finally arriving in Beijing he found a boat to take him back to the UK.
Friday, September 8, 2023
Wednesday of last week I went back over to Lahaina to spend the day volunteering. It was hot, very hot, but rewarding. As I drove home I was reflecting on where I had been for the day. I had traveled across a good part of Maui in traveling from my home to Lahaina. Let me try and give some perspective… My home is on the north east shore of Maui.
Monday, September 4, 2023
I spent yesterday hiking Haleakalā Crater with a friend. The mountain sits at just over 10,000ft in altitude. The crater that is there today is not a classic volcanic crater, but rather a large erosional valley. It is believed that two valleys, Ko‘olau to the north and Kaupō to the south, expanded into the remains of a much larger volcano, possibly 12,000ft high, creating the crater that is there today.
Friday, September 1, 2023
August 2023 Well after a run of 14 newsletters, the last one being at the end of April this year, I have not sent a newsletter for three months now. April and May found my wife and I in Portugal, based in Alcácer do Sal where we have a town house. At some point during our two month stay I became unwell. Initially it appeared to be hay fever, allergies which I escape here in Hawai’i.
Monday, August 28, 2023
As the result of an email that I received late on Friday night, Saturday saw me out at Lahaina Gateway, volunteering with the relief effort for those effected by the wild fires almost three weeks ago. Volunteers met up in the town of Wailuku, on the north west side of the island, at 7:45am Saturday morning. A group of sixty two volunteers had shown up. About half had been over to Lahaina before, half had not.
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
As Maui cycles through the year, I can feel as the island breathes its way through the ebb and flow of visitors. There are deep intakes of breath as the island fills up during the seasonal holidays, and then exhales as visitors leave and Maui quietens down during those in between times when kids are back at school. Right now it feels as though the island has taken a huge exhale.
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Yesterday a conversation on Micro.blog brought back memories of an episode early in my travels in 1987. In the Micro.blog conversation I wrote, I remember hitchhiking out of Estes Park many moons ago when I was just starting my travels. From my memory the breaks weren’t working properly on the vehicle that picked me. The driver managed to slow down, but I had to run, throw my pack in and then jump in after it.
Saturday, May 20, 2023
There is a remote road on the far west side of the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales. Sealed but single tracked, with an occasional passing place. You are unlikely to see anyone there unless they are out hiking those barren hills. On a cold, wet day, the sort of day that I think about as I write this, isolation is the dominant feeling. And then you see a stone standing there, just off the road, but not of the road’s time.
Monday, May 1, 2023
April 2023 I write this at the end of April in a small church square, Largo de São Mamede, on the edge of the Príncipe Real area of Lisbon. Tomorrow will be the end of our forth week in Portugal, the longest period of time that I have spent in this country, and we still have five and a half weeks to go. This has been a busy month, time spent working on the house.
Monday, April 24, 2023
Today, 25th April, is Freedom Day here in Portugal. Last night Alcácer do Sal held a concert with Marisa Liz, a fireworks display at midnight, and then a DJ after that. We showed up for Marisa’s concert, but her music wasn’t to our taste and so we walked back home and got into bed (the concert had started about 10:30pm). Just before midnight, I went back out and waited by the river for the fireworks.