Travel Notes: My First Travel Blog, 8th November 2009

My Travel Map from travelblog.org as it was the last time I updated the blog

On 8th November 2009, I set up a travel blog using www.travelblog.org. Blogging was still rather new then. Here I will replicate my travel blog entries word for word. This is a much younger version of myself, but it it (was) me, so here it is as it was written on my travel blog.

Michael de Percy in 2009

8th November 2009

My Travel Map does not include Bahrain (it doesn't get a mention in the program) and my visit to China was really only Hong Kong. My visits to US were actually only Hawaii as lay-overs in airports, so these don't really count either! 

The date of this entry is the day before I first travelled overseas at the tender age of 36 (better late than never, I suppose). I flew to Canada (with Air Canada) via Hawaii to conduct the first phase of my PhD fieldwork. 

Since then, travel has fast become a natural part of life. Thank God.

At the time of setting up the Travel Blog, I was on sabbatical. I was learning to dive at Aqaba Adventure Divers in Aqaba, Jordan. I was diving in the mornings and the evenings, and working on my PhD when I wasn't conducting interviews. I also set up my Dive Record (which is not very impressive, and this is incomplete). We completed the PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses. So for someone who lived in Cairns from 1980 until 1992, I had my first dive in the Red Sea!  The Dive Record is below.

Dive Record as at 29 December 2009.

We've been back to Aqaba since and had a refresher dive, but that has been about it for diving. I am surprised that the websites I was using back in 2009 are still working today.

From this point forward, I intend to transfer some of my numerous travel journals to my blog. Reading Rolf Potts' Vagabonding tends to do that to me! I will use the label "Travel Notes" for all travel-related posts.

Book Notes: "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" by Rolf Potts

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the book I would carry with me if I had to sustain myself through misfortune. Frederick the Great carried the works of the Stoics in his saddlebags for the same purpose. I have read bits of this book for more than a decade and the words of Rolf Potts have inspired my blogging and my travel writing since I first left Old Girty's shores in 2006. There are so many quotes in this work, and so many pointers to other books to read, it is like a crystallisation of everything Potts ever read or learnt all jam-packed in a relatively quick read. For me, this book is nothing short of inspiring. Always has been, always will:

As Salvador Dali quipped, "I never took drugs because I am drugs." With this in mind, strive to be drugs as you travel, to patiently embrace the raw, personal sensation of unmediated reality - an experience far more affecting than any intoxicant can promise.

Potts has something special. He is the me I only hope I can be. I don't mean that I want to quit my job and become a vagabond. Far from it. Potts is a philosopher. Vagabonding is a 21st century philosophy book in the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, only better. Potts has what I want, and ever since reading bits of his work all those years ago, I have been inspired by his philosophy. For me, education and travel make us free. Not politicians or political systems. If I had the option of returning to my youth (which I do not want!), I might consider becoming a vagabond. But I am the sum of my experience and rather blessed for it. So for me, the philosophy is key. But a practical philosophy. Think of tending your own garden, like Candide. Then read this book.

View all my reviews

Book Notes: "The Barefoot Investor" by Scott Pape

The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need by Scott Pape

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wan't going to write anything about this book. It is written much like a blog, with no real paragraphs, corny humour, "literally", "totally", "like", Americanised adverbs, and sometimes corny drawings. But the central message is important, and after some hesitation I thought it right to record some of the highlights. In my journal, I wrote down this quote from Warren Buffet:

Stay away from debt. If you're smart, you don't need it. If you're dumb you got no business using it.

Pape writes about precisely what he does, including the companies he uses in implementing his financial strategy. There is a story about two alpacas that will bring a tear to your eye, and this adds moral impetus to Pape's purpose in writing. His personal story is an important part of the work. The only part that I was not comfortable with concerns earning additional income through side businesses or freelance work. I have worked more than one job since leaving the regular army in 1997 until 2012. Admittedly, I was doing so to maintain a self-constructed treadmill of stupid decisions, but these days I am content with my earnings and have no desire to increase these more than "natural increase" brings. That said, it would have made no difference to my 18 year old self if I had received this book back then. Fools must learn from their mistakes. But it may be helpful for a disciplined parent to develop themselves as a financial role model for their children or grandchildren, if one finds their time has come and gone. I have taken many of the steps mentioned in this book - indeed, some I took as I arrived at the precise location of the advice on the page. Much of the other advice has confirmed and given me confidence in the steps I have already taken, but I am too shy to reveal this side of my existence. I was sceptical about this book, but now I am glad I read it anyway.

View all my reviews