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Archive for 2016

Happy Last Year

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Yachta.Yachta.Yachta-Q Is For Qatar

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In  Doha, Qatar's capital, entire new neighborhoods have been built
 on land reclaimed from the sea. And the buildings have one thing in
common: Bling. We are lucky to be living HERE at The Pearl Quarter.

From A to Z


What a year it has been: -Annapolis, MD to Livingstone Zambia... We missed ONLY one letter Q, hence Qatar, a tiny, oil-rich country wedged between Saudi Arabia and Iran.



Doha's skyline looks like it was designed by architects who didn't talk to each other, didn't like each other, and engaged in experiments they could never get away with at home. And a Qatari can live anywhere without ever leaving home. A virtual Venice is around the corner. Rodeo Drive is down the block. And there are world-class restaurants in the ancient Arab souk, which was rebuilt as well.
Qatar's 250,000 citizens are, quite literally, the richest people in the world and very content with their lives in this oil-and-gas-rich speck of a nation. It's a great place to be as we close out this one lap, 365 days  around the sun.

This year 2016 has been fasinating- Let's remember with these blog posts:









Doha- The Pearl- Venice of Qatar

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The Pearl is an artifical island, creating over 32 kilometres of new coastline and  extensive canal system. It's Venice again.

 With the king of all birds, The Falcon

With 31 towers and over  42,000 apartments, villas, and townhouses, it's quite impressive.

Ferrari, Maserati and Rolls Royce have dealership but I'll take a Ducati bike anytime.

Talking Turkey At The Marriot for Thanksgiving 2016


Lawton, Ok-Where the Buffalo Roam

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Your mother said, "Bi-son".

Home on the range under an immaculate sky


An estimated 50-60 million buffalo freely roamed upon the Great Plains (PRE Civil War) American Indians hunted them for food and they were a sacred animal.

Their numbers dwindled when the wilderness was settled, and if not for the efforts of modern-day conservationists, the plight of the Bison would be one of extinction. It is nice to see them on private lands and in National Parks.The Buffalo is a symbol of life and love of this land.

Oklahoma City- EGAT

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In America's fiction--- Everyone gets a trophy, for just showing up. EGAT undermines the spirit of competition and breeds mediocrity.

That sense of just showing up for the longest time informed and infected my thinking- A thought virus or meme started by a Woody Allen quote " 80% of success in life is showing up.". I suppose I bought into making the world safe for hypocrisy. Now I am more cynical.

I am more interested in the other 20% these days-the difference between good and great, between winners and learners. Showing up isn't good enough. That's Trophy Communism. The wussifcation of America  and Generation Snowflake  makes us soft.  America has essentially got rid of losing and many are suffering for it, and that is: The Millennial truth.

"Hay look how fantastic I am. I'm here,
 at The US Olympic Rowing training facility. I participated.
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. And when you lose, you have something to strive for-first prize. For me, it is not an option- a socially acceptable self-deceit  designed to spare hurt feelings and puff up our self-esteem. In fact, when the truth finally shines through--that is the real downer.

How can you handle pressure, disappointment, or gain perspective in a world of manufactured triumphs?  Where is the resiliency?

I live and work with the British, so I don't inhabit a self-congratulatory society in which we constantly reassure each other how great we are doing. In fact, when I was standing at  a cross walk at a traffic light,  I got asked"Are you American?" and I said proudly "Yes, how did you know"..and The Englishman replied, "because you were smiling." It is still hard to shake off my malignant American optimism of just" being there" and "in it". Nevertheless, I don't deserve a trophy for doing something unconventional-living abroad.

To sum it up, trophies are best earned, not bestowed.


Rome Sweet Rome-Up On The Roof

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The cure for anything is salt-the sea, sweat or tears


Not many  folks realize it, but you can take the stairs to the top of the dome in St Peter's Basilica., which is exactly what I did.

It is the highlight of my trip so far in Italy. That is saying a lot since yesterday I was in  magical Venice.
Put this on your bucket list-ringing the bells in Vatican City



































My last trip to Rome was seven years ago. Here is that trip report:

Reprinted from Sept 18, 2009
I'm thinking of starting a Christian rock band. I got the perfect name-Heritic. You guys know any base players?

Broken Arrow
I spent this morning at the epicenter of Roman Catholicism, Saint Peter's Basilica.

PPL were queing up for Kodak moments. The only place were there were no lines were the confessionals.

CNN verses The Alphabet

Religion is so pre September 11th.
Of course, 20th century psychology has replaced sin with guilt.

The fusion of cyberspace and spirituality is a happy accident. a magical realm where all is possible . First there was the Pope of Software, Bill Gates. "He" has created an electric gaia, or gobal brain, a collective unconscious that makes what is deeply personal universal, the uncensored, distributed self, and cyberspace--the location of the virtual self/community on the web. Sartre said, "Hell is other ppl" Gates might as well say, "We are god...or at least made in his image".

Deus Ex Machina vs. Electric Gaia

Home isn't where your heart is, it's where your Blackberry is. Landlines are place; cellphones, people. The fundamental 'human-friendliness' of the Machine-God...It starts with e mail, E-mail, as a metaphor for networked, global, uncensored communication and continues with FB, YouTube, Flickr,Twitter and yours truely, kid blogger.

Furthermore, The Dali Lhama of Integration, Steve Jobs, has created a celestial jukebox on tap- itunes absolution for 99 cents-The GGD's, Better Days for instance handing out blessings-"Cuz everyone is forgiven now.Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again".

The blogerati voices coming to us from the frontier of human experience is the largest uncensored form of communication in history. Although I am physically traveling, I get to swim in a new geography of existence on the net, shattering time and space. Thus the moniker Hotel @nyware. Does it really matter where we are--because this kind of existence is location neutral.

Welcome to Infinite Smile
Putting the sin back into sincere, I decided to step into the English speaking Confessional to receive 'penance,' the place where sins are forgiven. The basic requirement for a good confession is to have the intention of returning to God like the "prodigal son" and to acknowledge our sins with true sorrow before the priest. At the very moment, the Monsignor, came out , and hung a sign saying closed. LOL.

There wouldn't be a second chance to make a first impression. The power of intention, however, was enough to provide salvation. As Woody Allan, once told me in 1980 at Stromboli's Pizzaria, in Greenwhich Village,"Showing up is 99%".


I figured it was 11AM; just in time for an Italian mass. Let me tell you, SOMETIMES THE MOVIE (King of Kings(1961) w/Jeffery Hunter as Christ) is better than THE (good) BOOK. I started to cough, and thought I better let these pious PPL pray in peace, and headed out.


Voice Inside My Head
Did you say your prayers today in Rome?
Me
No but I ate my lunch

I'm A Nobody

It was a Zencrafters moment--Instant enlightenment in less than an hour. You see Nobody's perfect, and little me in that big church felt like a nobody.

You gotta be a somebody first before you can be a nobody-- What is sin, after all. It is an old archery term. It means missing the mark.

Cut to song "Who else is gonna bring you a Broken Arrow... We got mountains to climb"

Mother Mary Comes To Me

So I am standing on line, listening to my ipod, before I set off the Swiss Guards metal detectors with Euros, my Google Phone and mp3 player.

Let It Be is the soundtrack to the waiting. Yet I can't help but have John Lennon's "Imagine, there's no religion" lyric creep in.

Putting the odd back into God

I'm feeling a lot better now that I know God is a white man with a grey beard. That Sistine Chapel is , as we alter boys say, " off the chain", mos def.

Stay away from the light. The light is dangerous. Don't go near it. Don't even look at the light.
Check Please!

Venice, Italy-Picturesque Floating City

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It is like I am walking through a painting
Going, Going, Gondola Back in 2014 and Today-Where
the Earth revolves around The Sea

Venice is  a city built on the water, a working, living city, and everybody gets around in boats. NO CARS!

All the traffic is waterborne- All the emergency services--water ambulance , police boats, fireman; garage collection boats, Fidelity armored cash couriers. All the delivery-boats that deliver goods of every sort; and all the postal service delivering packages and  letters. What a cool place. Put it on your Bucket list.


Vigo, Spain-Seas The Day

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Onboard The Britannia 



Cruisers, talk to each other, and influences each other. So progress gets amplified through WOM, Word of Mouth.. The more people who have ocean cruised, the more who will tell others, the more who will want to take an ocean cruise too. I am doing my part by blogging about my travels, with over a million page views.



A View with a room- The Gym  with Lisbon as the backdrop
Atrium of Britannia is impressive



Lisbon- Eat Pray And Fly

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After  debarking The QM2  in SOTON, took a train to LGW and flew to Lisbon via Porto in this puddle jumper, to join the newest and biggest ship in the P& O Fleet-Britannia.
We sailed directly to Vigo, Spain. Here is our arrival at 7AM yesterday




 We had a nice sailaway, two days ago with "Rule Britannia. Britannia rules the waves" as the soundtrack. Roll Video:

Channel Islands-Guernsey

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Victor Hugo was exiled here for 15 years and I had the good fortune of taking a tour today of the writer's home. It's as if each room was a chapter and the home was actually another book. I'll let a few of the pictures speak for themselves.
He is certainly quotable but thus one resonates-
"Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.'
It is here where the writer completed his masterpiece,  Les Miserables, using a stand up desk..Sitting was the new smoking back then too.




Hugo wrote Latin phrases into his furniture, honoring God and also his beloved writers Moliere and Shakespeare. HEReif@blueforceinc.com in his kitchen, the "H" in the wall tiles, we'll that stands for hisfamily's name obviously. 

Brooklyn, New York-Sail Away

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  Our smokestack just cleared the Verranzano Narrows Bridge by a few feet!

Mid Atlantic Ocean-At Sea

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Hat Trick- My 3rd time crossing The Atlantic SOTON to NYC onboard the world's greatest ocean liner-Cunard's QM 2

Around the world with @fernmallis---creator of Fashion Week (s) in NYC, LA, Miami,Berlin, Moscow, Sydney and Melbourne onboard The Queen Mary2

I love the wet look of the ship's teak deck with the morning light reflecting-it's cinematic.

Southampton, UK-QM2The English Channeler

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Sailing across The Pond - The Atlantic Ocean, on the shortest bridge between New York and Europe - The Queen Mary2. It is not a Cruise but a Voyage, nor a cruise ship, rather a liner, the last of the great ocean-going liners.


Putting the He in Hero, all action/adventure films have the same moral: Perseverance pays. Of all the things I am not very content at doing,living on land is the most outstanding. I was an armchair sea dog, growing up on LAWNGUYLAND(L.I.) New York, dreaming of going places, but I never stepped foot even in a motor boat, never started and therefore  I never failed.

 Those Who Do Not Move, Do Not Notice Their Chains

Considering how much inner "nomad" is in each of us, in adulthood I gave myself permission to LEAVE ASAP, and imaginatively re-create(d) my ID in line with my true allegiances of a place noted for second chances, Venice Beach, California.

Sea Change
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

Let The Orinoco Flow--There is no doubt about it, the exhilarating state of mind that travel can evoke, when everything seems suddenly fresh, vivid, intensely interesting, and memorable

My universe is made of stories, not atoms: land, air and sea travel and the power of now. If I wanted to be a multinational soul, I couldn't do it in cities where I taught English like New York or Los Angeles, Paris or Tokyo alone-I needed to get consecrated by sailing on the oceans. It's a wonderful thing to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know anyone; where, as Melville said,"God's one and only voice is Silence."

 Despite the undoubted camaraderie, the laughs, the jollies and the sense of tribalism that attends any cruising project, the profession remains a notoriously lonely one. Friendships are intense but brief; when the gig ends or the curtain runs down, you can soon find yourself back home staring at your cell phone and wondering if any of it really happened. Memories are short, time moves on, fame is transitory.

 Nothing fails like excess- 6 times around the world does build confidence- It's not real life but an alibi. It is like going out of your mind everyday- in order to come to your senses.  It is a blessing:
Rule of thumb is if I am not  embarrassed enough
 by who I was and what I did  last year,
 I  probably not learning enough!
The word “blessing” actually comes from the French blessure, which means “wound.” So, a blessing always has that other side to it, My cruising obsession (this invisible wound) is like a private religion. It’s where the bulk of my spirit is actually invested. Yet I have been divinely compensated.The wisdom of this excess is that We die to the present tense and are born again in future perfect---the heroes of our own lives.
Outdoors Is In Read more HERE.

 You can teach an old DOGma new tricks.  Neurons  that wire together fire together. I am not seeking a meaning to life, but the experience of being ALIVE. I am  longer hard-wired  per se for  cruise ships. My brain is plastic. The hunt for HAPPY is repetition. I enjoy the navel gazing concussions, the  Lakota-style sweat lodge ceremonies, the power of NEW and the power of NOW. That will never change.Life Extension: The "prescription" for  my happiness. I'm not going to the doctor or the mall, I'm  going on a trip.
Fade IN:  Leaving a ritual and habit of ordinary living,  I embarked  on an unplanned trip and became The  Accidental Sailor.  

For reasons of necessity rather than a sense of innate wanderlust, I am at sea because it gives  me something to do and a place to be. Magnetized and full of charisma, I always managed to stay on course, without realizing it. Sometimes I quip---Success at sea is continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure, because there are so many variables, but in the end, you don't quit jobs, you quit people. FunEmployment  has a limited lifespan. 

 Never heard of FunEmployment? It's the person who quits his job or takes advantage of being out of a "job" to have the time of their life. Instead of punching a clock, you head for the beach. In my case, the high seas. 
2012


2009

20,000 Leagues Into My Brain

Call it faith!  A passion for the possible. I am full of it, and shooting from the hip that is to say,  having an adventure is something more 

 but nothing less than bad planning.

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much I love being at sea. Maybe what matters is who I am when I’m  doing it. I’m my best self.   Character is doing what’s right when no one is looking. All of ones problems come from the inability to spend time quietly alone in ones "room".

cOPENhagen
As much as I detest   the travel (sometimes) —I love the writing and the introspection—the virtuous delights of organizing a disorganized country, itinerary or culture, and comparing it to my state of mind at that moment , stripping away the inessential and the second-rate, classifying all that remains in neat, terse blog posts, building a solid foundation with the bricks that these ports of call and at sea have thrown at me.

The winds of grace always blow for us  but you have to raise your sails and just go. 
Any port in a storm won't do. You need to be content with the weather of  the day-to-day-The whole secret  is to have NO FEAR. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Written on the gates of hell is abandon all hope" Written in the heart and mind of a Buddha " reject all help"  Only then  are you freed.
The cure for anything is salt water -
 sweat, tears, or the sea....

  Sure living at sea is hours of boredom tinged with moments of hysteria- sometimes the waters are so rough you get sea sick, but I never found these as excuses to remain ashore except for biking…and it’s lonely at times, but I call that solitude. Freedom is not free but it is not for sale and can't be purchased in a 7 day cruise. Sure it's fun- all the food and drink and music and noise; but pleasure is not  happiness. Happiness is balance and following your bliss, and connecting with the divine. The  sea is the place I house  my soul and access my higher self.

There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.
An I For An Island
Living Well Is The Best Revenge
Jean Paul Sartre, the French Existentialist said, 
Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you
 I would value-add that by saying ,Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you by your own thoughts, words and actions.  (See my blog post As Seen On TV).

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