July 29th...2016

Accidental hugging is  kind of a strange way to put it, but that's what happened to me last weekend.  Jenny is married to Fred I think.  She was one of the first people I talked to about kiteboarding out here.  She wasn't too positive with me about it because I had told her about my old kites.  The original kites were a bit dangerous and she was protecting her "turf".  "Turf" protection on Kwaj means protecting the sport you love, because if someone gets hurt doing said sport, the entire sport gets penalized....ie shut down.  I've been kiteboarding with Jenny a bunch of times last windy season.  She came in a different boat with different friends than me but we still shared the same area, but not often enough the same immediate area.  Long term people out here, strangely, keep a bit of a distance from other long term people out here for whatever rude thing one side or the other did back in the day, or kept doing.  So we'll go out to a well known sand bar and anchor just far enough away from the others that we can clearly see them, but just barely not hear them.  Weird.  I don't know their history.  Of course the ones I'm with are super nice, but the ones just out of range when I've talked to them are very nice too at least to me.  I don't know the history here though. 

The accidental hug, was one of those things where Jenny tapped my on the back, and I turned around for some reason with my arms open, which of course, left nothing else to do but hug her.  She had to have thought it was strange, I did.

7-27-16

Here's a link to a great article about the diving out here by Brandi.  http://www.uw360.asia/most-exciting-place-never-heard-of/

July 19, 2016

The possibilities are endless.  I will never be grateful enough about the life that has been handed to me.  I'm sore from surfing. 

In some year after 2000 in a month before Christmas when I delivered packages for UPS in a little brown box truck, I had a "driver's helper". He was this completely enthusiastic young guy, that asked me a question, that I knew when he asked me, that I wasn't the first person he asked and wouldn't be the last.  He had this shiny smile when he asked me that is kind of hard to forget.  Being a better writer would help describe the energy this kid had.  Maybe the question he asked could explain him and his smile and energy.  He asked me "what's the meaning of life?".  I don't remember my answer , but I do remember that I would never not remember his questioning life.  Questioning life is being grateful.  I'm grateful to be sore from surfing.  I'm also grateful you might not be weirded out with me posting this little thought tree.