Here's the thing...

Hey everyone,

Back home in the good ole US of A now. The trip to Malaysia was a blast. Sorry I couldn't write more about it in the blog - time and circumstance did not permit, and I'm WAY busy cleaning things up to write anything big about it now...

However, myself and Yian's brother James took a LOT of pictures, and I was able to upload them online so you can take a look (see links below). I've separated the galleries out by the person who took the pictures.

NOTE: In the links below, you'll see "Darroll" & Jeff. "Darroll" is Yian's English name, just so you know :-)

Enjoy!


James's Pictures:
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Chinese New Year Day 1
Chinese New Year Day 3
Chinese New Year Day 4
Chinese New Year Day 5
Darroll & Jeff


Jeff's Pictures
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Days 1 - 3
Days 4 - 8
Days 9 - 10
Days 11 - 17

Hey everyone!

Pictures from Days 1 - 3

So ok - its been like 1,000 years since I've updated my blog. But just so you know, I am currently traveling with Yian in his Hometown of Kuching, Malaysia. We're here for about 2 weeks and staying with his family. Unfortunately the days have been pretty busy and there are soo many people coming and going in the house that it's difficult to get computer time (I did not bring my laptop with me). So even though a few days have passed, I'll try to remember some highlights and write them down...

Fights to Kuching:
Wow that was the most traveling I've ever done in my life! It went by the following schedule:

Tampa (TPA) --> Charlotte (CLT): 2 1/2 hours
Charlotte (CLT) --> Los Angeles (LAX): 5 hours
Los Angeles (LAX) --> Taipei, Tawan (TPE): 14 hours
Taipei, Taiwan --> Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (KUL): 5 hours
Kulal Lumpur, Malaysia (KUL) --> Kuching, Malaysia (KCH): 2 hours

Grand total travel time (without layover delays!): 28 hours
With layover delays: ~35 hours

Things were mostly uneventful during the flights, which is a good thing. The craziness really started when we got to the Tom Bradley Intenational Terminal in LAX to check-in for our Malaysia Airlines flight. Holy cow - what a madhouse! Ten thousand people pushing and shoving, each carrying a cartful of enormous luggage, babies screaming, lines to Timbuktu - I really wanted to take pictures but I was afraid security wouldn't like it, so I did not. The Malaysia Airlines counter had like 20 people working the counter, speaking what sounded like dozens of different languages. The young lady who took care of us was very cordial and helpful, and answered all our questions thoroughly. When we got through the 10,000th security line and into the terminal departure gates, we waited for a couple of hours before boarding the Malaysian flight. It seems that most of the Asia-bound airlines fly first to Taiwan, then continue to their home country (I guess they get more business during the Chinese New Year timeframe). So there were about 5 different airlines all departing to Taipei within 30 minutes of each other! I don't know why I found that amusing, but I did...

Anyway, once we got on the flight, I think I have a new favorite airline (thus far, anyway). Malaysia Airlines rules! The plane was a gigormous 747-400, the food was pretty good, there were at least 20 - 25 (seriously) flight attendants to serve your every need, they come around with food and drink very frequently, they serve free alcohol, and their seatback video entertainment system is awesome. Usually Video on Demand (VOD) is reserved for first class type of passengers, but we had it all - a TON of movies, music, television shows from around the world, all starting when you want them to...

Once we got to Taipei, we took a breather and had some noodles (pictured in the gallery above near the beginning). We brushed teeth, freshened up a bit, and then got back on the plane to go to KL (Kuala Lumpur - the Malaysia people always call it KL for short). Then in KL, we transferred to the domestic terminal and boarded the flight to Kuching...

It is here that I really started to notice that I was no longer in Kansas (so to speak). I was the ONLY white male within the airport (it seems). They have a heavy population of Muslims - all in the traditional dress. They like to congregate on the floor wherever you see them. Yian told me that I would be stared at a lot during this trip (just b/c I am THE outsider), and it was in the KL airport that I first noticed that. Most people just stare at me and watch me as I go about my business - it was a little freaky at first, but now I'm used to it...

once in Kuching, we were earlier than we expected, so Yian's family was not there yet to pick us up. We waited outside for about 15 minutes and then saw his dad and nieces come to get us. It was gratifying to see Yian's face when he first saw them - he hasn't seen his family in a year or 2. We then drove home and I met his mother and later that evening additional brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. - 17 people in all (I think)..

I feel so warmly welcomed by his family - they really seem to embrace me as I try to learn various parts of customs and languages. His mom doesn't speak much English at all, but is very sweet and kind to me. I wish I could communicate with her more and get to know her, but I'm extremely limited with my vocabulary. She has a great sense of humor though :-)...

His father is a good storyteller and an interesting man with a lot of life experiences.

Each day we get up, shower, go out to breakfast, and do various errands and travels. Much of the days are spent in his parents car traveling around...

Ok I have to go running now, Yian says - so I can't finish writing this right now, nor can I upload the pictures until later. I'll write more later... :-)

Bear with me - it's hard to get computer time...

Gallery from Day 3

Gallery link above - more text to come later :-)

Gallery from Day 2

Here's another gallery from today - didn't really do much picture taking but I did get some awesome shots of downtown Portland early in the morning before going to Yoga ;-)

I'm really tired tonight and I don't feel like writing a lot. I just hung around and did stuff on my own. Went to Yoga and then ate breakfast ate the Blossoming Lotus Cafe. Then went home and crashed for like 2 hours! Then went off to Powell's Bookstore, then went back to the hotel and slept again.

Finally I went to the Nia class with Elisa, and then her mom and I went to the Swagat Indian Restaurant in the northwest district - really awesome Indian food!

Now I'm sitting here in the hotel lobby, as that is the only place that - for one day only - I could use their wifi for free and be able to upload the pictures. I don't understand why the hotel won't just give you free WiFi - it would make life much easier. Oh well...

Ok back to my room :-) Yay Portland!! :-D

Gallery from Day 1

In Portland again :-)

I do love this city - walking around it and hanging out with my friend Elisa again, I'm reminded of the cool vibes, the beautiful scenery, the awesome food and the fun culture of this place...

I'm still on Orlando time so I'm pretty tired - but a brief rundown of today:

I flew from Orlando, connected in Houston, landed in Portland around 11:15 am (PST). Don't have a car this time so I'm taking the Max everywhere - it's worked really well b/c one of the stops is adjacent to my hotel. Then I got cleaned up and met up with my friend Elisa for a late lunch, followed by just general hanging out around the city with her and her friend Jeanne Marie. We had martini's :-) It was fun...

So I came back to the hotel and I'm chilling for now. See pictures above for more - maybe I'll write more as I get the time / inspiration :-)

WOW! More than 3 months since my last update! It keeps getting longer and longer. I'm finding I go through these periods where one of 2 things happen in relation to this journal: 1) I don't have time to update 2) Nothing interesting is going on in my life, and if I wrote stuff it would just be me bitching or 3) I forget to write in it. I'm going with # 1 for the past 3 months - been really busy!...

Ok the highlights - Yian, of course :-) He and I are going along great in our relationship. A few weeks ago we decided to go a bit deeper to the "boyfriend" status :-). We see each other practically every weekend, and just last week we had our first long distance trip together - to see my best friend A.J. graduate with his M.D. in south Florida! It was great to see him, and it was great to introduce Yian to some of my past and childhood people / places. I feel really good about him - and it's such an awesome feeling to have that reciprocated back to me (finally)...

Also - one weekend in Februrary I got my power bill for my place and realized it was like $250. After I resuscitated myself from the heart-attack, I decided it was time to move. I know, the last time I DID move into the downtown place, I decided not to move again unless it was into a house that I owned, or it was out of state, or I absolutely had to for finances, etc. But I decided enough was enough, and I looked around all over Central Florida. I really wanted to stay downtown, however, as I like the location and being close to most everything. Lucky for me, one of the places behind me opened up - it's a lot cheaper in rent, a bit smaller, but I feel a lot better. So I grabbed it - moved in late March / early April, and I couldn't be happier with the place!...

As for travel, I'm going again to Portland in a few weeks! I will be out there for around 6 days, 2 - 3 of which will be mostly on my own. Sean joins me in the middle of the trip and leaves just before I do, so that should be really good. I'm looking forward to seeing him again and to checking out the city - I won't have a car this time so I'll have to depend solely on the Max :-)...

So basically that's it - work is work, of course - same ole same ole, nothing really new there. I got my travel coming up, Gay Days in June, and the whole summer to delve ever deeper into my relationship with Yian :-)

Good times...

Pictures from Miguel's Move

Wow - been a while since my last update. I guess I'm back into the swing of things, eh? :-) Actually, I feel like I am. For a while, just after coming back from Thailand, I didn't know where I was or what I was doing. My work started to slip, I was very unhappy, and things just didn't seem to go right. But, as often happens, time passed and allowed me to re-integrate myself back into society. Things aren't so bad now - actually they're pretty good :-) I'll explain...

Prior to Thailand and graduation, I had big plans for how I thought my life will go. Things would just "fall into place" - the confusion about moving to Portland, the lack of a relationship, whether I should buy a house or not - everything that was so uncertain I was expected to be solved. But it wasn't - in fact, it seemed exacerbated and I was even more confused about the direction my life was going. It's hard to write a lot about it now, since it was over a month ago, and I was very negative, and I'm not really feeling that way now. So let's just say that my outlook on things was very glum...

Somehow, things seemed to get better as the month went on. I realized (rather, re-affirmed again) that I don't HAVE to have it all figured out right now. If I rent again, so what? I rent again, save some money in the short term, and not have a huge mortgage over my head to carry all on my own. I can stay in Orlando longer too - I have it pretty good in this town, and there are a lot of benefits to me staying here. And maybe I'll change my mind again in the future and want to leave - and then change it again and want to stay - and again - and again... LOL you get the idea. It's all ok - I just need to be HERE, and be here NOW. The rest will work itself out...

And work itself out it has, so far anyway. I've been doing a lot of Mysore style yoga at the Ashtanga Yoga Shala Orlando - a new studio that opened up in College Park. I still go to Full Circle and I love it there too, but something about the Mysore style is particularly attractive to my life at this point. It's so personal, you can really delve deeper into your practice, go at your own pace, and get a lot more instruction / attention. Sometimes it's tough though - I get pushed a lot deeper and harder than I used to, but it was that way in Thailand as well. Though you always want to keep safety and mindfulness in your practice, there are also benefits to re-defining what you thought your limits were...

Speaking of new beginnings, Miguel has gotten one :-) He is now the proud owner of his very own home up in Sanford, FL! I helped him and his partner Michael move in last weekend (click on the link above for pictures / video). I LOVE his place! It's in a great community, near the lake / river, and it's perfect for him - I totally see it. I'm immensely happy for him and I want nothing but the best... :-)

And for me - I ALSO have some new beginnings. I recently met a guy :-) His name is Yian, he lives in Tampa, and he is awesome! Sweet, caring, cute, intelligent, active, funny, an all around great guy who I feel a good connection with. So far we're seeing each other only on the weekends - mostly him coming to visit me, but sometime soon I hope to go and visit with him. I really enjoy hanging out with him, and I'm excited to see where things lead...

So yeah - life is good! :-D

I just read a blog entry from a yoga teacher who lives in Jacksonville, a city near where I live in the States. Similar to me, she has recently come back from Thailand, only her tour of the country was for 6 months, doing yoga and massage training. Check out her blog here...

In this particular entry, she is asked various questions from friends and family concerning how she is feeling from the trip, but is finding it hard to verbally express the changes she's experienced. The closest expression would be "... I'm floating in a sea of abstraction right now... that I feel more like a palette of colors and less like a clear, easily identifiable rendering of something"...

I think that expresses my current feelings perfectly! Many people have been asking me how my trip was, and I of course tell them "it was amazing", "so many different people, cultures, and ways of life", "the yoga was awesome", etc. All of these are true, of course, but don't encompass the sum of my feelings quite as well as her quote. Big trips like these are life changing - you don't come back the same person, and it can, in fact, take months to fully integrate into your system...

I sit here, not really sure what's going on with my job. Other co-workers seem to have more clearly defined pictures. One is getting married, another just bought a new car, another is talking about home improvement projects... Is this what life turns into? Do we sit around and do bullshit work for the rest of our lives, never really wanting to stray too far outside our bubble of comfort? Do we not want more? I'm not talking about a bigger LCD television or a vacation in the Bahamas. Isn't life supposed to be larger than something? Than us? Don't people realize what they're missing???

That's not to say my canvas is completely blank! On the contrary - I have some big plans for 2007 and I intend to make the most of them. But they are simply plans right now - nothing is manifested, nothing is real (yet). It's like an impressionistic painting - blots of color that are jotted down as fast as possible so as to convey that single moment that is lost forever once it is realized.

I'm not sure this makes sense - it's just jotted down as it comes out. But that's ok - it needs to work that way sometimes....

Hey guys! Well just a quick note to let you all know I arrived home safe and sound. I got in late Saturday afternoon (1/6/2007), and am currently at work (so I can't write much as I have like 300 emails to go through). The JFK / Orlando flight was fine, and my sister was there to pick us up from the airport. I'm pretty jet lagged (better today but pretty bad yesterday - I kept waking up all hours of the night, even though I went to bed relatively early)...

Will try to post the last of the picture / video set as soon as I can. My internet has been down ever since I arrived home - the cable guy is supposed to come out tonight though and fix it...

The trip was - in short - AMAZING!! I'm so glad to have met all the wonderful people I did, and have the amazing experiences. World travel really broadens your perspective on things, so I intend to keep on doing it! Thinking about India soon - not sure when, or how yet, but it might happen...

Ok back to work. :-)

Namaste. :-)

Hey gang. Well - I'm like 80% home to Orlando as I write this :-). I'm sitting in my hotel room - it's a long story, I think I'll write more about it when I get back to Orlando and have some time to think. But here is what happened in short form:

--> We left Samui and headed over to Bangkok, where we stayed in the Shanti Lodge again (had our nice dinner as well :-) I love that place!)

--> We got up WAY early in the morning and headed back to the Bangkok Int'l Airport for our flight back to the States. We flew China Airlines, so that took us through Taipei, Taiwan, which then lead us over to Anchorage, AK (our first stop in the States) with continuing service into New York Kennedy Airport. I have NEVER had to go through so many security checkpoints in my life - starting with the flight from Taipei. Any flight in-bound to the U.S. has a LOT of security to go through (passport checks, re-checks, etc.)...

--> Once we got to JFK airport, we waited nearly an HOUR by the baggage turnstile waiting for our bags. It was kinda crazy how SLOW it was going, and our bags were among the last of the pack. But at least they made it - so I'm happy about that :-)

--> We took our bags, went through Customs (again - we did it already in Anchorage - see that's what I mean!), and then re-checked our bags to continue all the way to Orlando (China Airlines would do this on our behalf with our final Delta-operated flight).

--> Here's where the fun comes in. We were about 1 1/2 hours late arriving into JFK - so many, many people missed their connecting flights. As a result, lines were pretty long, and china Airlines decided to give most every disrupted passenger (they had a list that included Steve and I) a hotel voucher to spend the night in New York. So we checked our bags, and got our hotel voucher, and then I went to look for Nico, my friend who was to pick us up at the airport. However, after a number of text messages with no response back, and phone calls / voicemails, Nico did not answer. Nor did I find him at the airport - I assume he got tired of waiting for our combined 3 hour delay and just went home - I'm not sure though, as of this email he still has not gotten back to me. I'm pretty bummed that I did not get to see him - I really wanted to. But I guess that's the way it went - and at least we had a hotel near the airport for which to stay (paid for)...

--> So it's about midnight, we get to the hotel from the shuttle, and there is a HUGE, HUGE line wrapping around the lobby of affected air travelers waiting to get a room. The weather was pretty bad landing that night, so I imagine we weren't the only people affected (most were from our airline though). After about another hour of waiting, we finally get our rooms (Steve and I have our own, since we had our own ticket bookings), and then head down to eat something at around 1 am. The only thing open was a bar downstairs, and they didn't really have any food either, but decided to allow people to order turkey or ham sandwhiches, given that so many were affected by the flights. So Steve and I each had a $12 sandwhich with chips - welcome back to America, where price gouging is the norm :)...

--> Needless to say I didn't get to bed until 2:30 or so - and my internal clock is still pretty messed up. I did sleep some, but probably not enough. Hopefully it will resolve itself within the next day or so...

There is probably more I missed - but I'll write that later. AND - we have some neat pics / video we took on the last day, including a few when we were in the Taipei airport about to get on our 18 hour flight back to New York. Kinda funny :-)...

All in all - freggin AMAZING experience this Thailand trip has been! AMAZING - nothing short of it. I would do it all over again - in fact, someday soon I might :-D...

Happy Travels for now! Namaste... :-)