Where To Now?

I have been wondering how to take this blog in a direction that is not just a personal travelogue but instead somewhere that has a bit more value, lasting or intrinsic, and does some good other than purely a journal.

I don't really lead that exotic or exciting a life. My day to day life is mostly just about work, food, some play, and sleep. Occasionally I get to travel and that is what inspired some writing, and people tell me I do a fairly good job at it. If Paul Theroux or even Anthony Bourdain want an understudy, they can give me a call...but I won't lose sleep waiting for the phone to ring.

Anyway, it gets tedious to tell every friend who might show interest "how did your trip go?" in any degree of detail, so a blog is a fine way of sharing it. Pictures are easy to add for interest or context (worth a thousand words and all that), and writing while on the road is easy to do with a PDA or laptop or even sending messages to myself through email. There are often downtimes jet-lagged or otherwise when writing is easier than sleeping.

Heck I sometimes even can take notes with a pen and paper, but thankfully for you by the time you read this I have had to type it out so my sanskrit henscratch is decipherable. Ok, part of that illegiblity I will still blame on buses and airplane turbulence or even bad lighting in a tent, so I might not even transcribe it properly. Spell checkers can also only do so much. For example consider the potential ramifications of the spellchecker not replacing the perfectly acceptable word "fist" with the word it should have been "first",. also a perfectly good word but with a completely different meaning. Wired has a nice short article on the topic.

So essentially my blog is no big deal, just one of many ramblings on the web. Not that frequent (fortunately for you), not that inspiring, but hopefully providing the odd tidbit not easily found elsewhere or at leat propogating the ideas & perspectives I either have myself or have found and can appreciate. Now here is a big one for the day.

Please, please have a look at this site, TED.com subtitled Ideas Worth Spreading, I really hope you enjoy it and get some inspiration and maybe even enlightenment from it:

http://www.ted.com/

Another Trip Coming Up

As you might guess from the map below, there is another trip on the horizon. Not exactly exotic this time, but still out of the way, and a fairly long way away from Vancouver. At least I hope it is somewhat out of the way, as it will be high season, from the middle of July to early August.

The map shows, more or less, where we plan to go. The only certainties so far are that we have bought airfare from Vancouver to Montreal from July 13th to August 3rd, and that we plan to go to Halifax to visit the brothers and families, and must be in Moncton for the night of August 1st.

Moncton is what started this trip plan. Specifically Moncton High School.

I received an email from the class president of my graduation year, Norval, a few months ago. The topic was a potential reunion of the Grad class from that year (I won't give away the year just yet). I am quite interested in going but not without some trepidation I must admit.

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