theautumn

while we were anticipating the arrival of the Kusudas at Thanksgiving, Jill and i had to occupy our time with other activities. we had decided, as evidenced by our thrilling trip to Wendover, that we should try to get out and see as much of our hometown as we could, treating it as we had our foreign homes on our travels, like we were tourists. it seems as though you never really get out and see the sites when you are "home", even though you run around like a crazy person to cram every last thing into any vacation you're on. and there are plenty of things to see in Utah, and lots of awesome outdoors to discover, as i had done at Arches.


a very hazy view of downtown Salt Lake City, taken on a cool October day from Ensign Peak. the state capitol is fairly clear at the far left of the picture, and the silver domed roof of the Tabernacle is about the most prominently visible feature of Temple Square, approximately in the center of the picture.

we decided to start gently however, with the short and relatively easy hike up to Ensign Peak, above the Utah state capitol building in the hills north of downtown. the significance of the place historically, and especially to Latter-day Saints, may have best been described by Boyd K Packer:

On July 26, 1847, their third day in the valley (the second having been the Sabbath), Brigham Young, with members of the Twelve and some others, climbed a peak about one and a half miles from where I now stand. They thought it a good place to raise an ensign to the nations. Heber C. Kimball wore a yellow bandana. They tied it to Willard Richards’s walking stick and waved it aloft, an ensign to the nations. Brigham Young named it Ensign Peak.

Brigham Young was the second prophet and president of the church and was also the effective founder of the Salt Lake Valley and much of Utah.



the trailhead for Ensign Peak lies among a cluster of houses in the "Avenues" area of Salt Lake, and would be hard to find if it weren't for this bold entry marker. below, Jill and i stand in front of the monument atop the peak and prove that it's not just Chinese people who will cut off the tops of your photos for you.



the peak itself does boast a great view of the valley--when smog conditions permit, at least. it was a good introduction to some of the many other, probably more difficult hikes that we could undertake around here, though we wisely timed this one so winter would prevent us from having to do more for several months. but we did celebrate this small triumph with a good old fashioned Halloween party a couple of days later. Jill's class at school decided to celebrate that most wholesome of holidays with an evening of fancy dress, though for some reason they all showed up as pirates. Jill and i, on the other hand, threw together some costumes with the effects we had on hand and so went as Japanese people, or at least as people vaguely inspired by the Japanese.



Jill sticking out among the pirate girls in her class; here Lindsey, the hostess, Sharon, comprehensively failing to look as menacing as a pirate should, and Hailey, who may have been a little too creative with the boot polish. below, Jill and i look much more reasonable as dressed up people when there aren't any pirate types around. the facial hair was all me, by the way.



so the autumn of 2007 was a good time for us, if a touch slow. not that we weren't busy, however. i was studying hard for my licensing exams and Jill was going to to town trying to facialize everyone she could get her hands on. she's very good at her aesthetics, by the way, and i didn't do so badly on my tests, as it happened. and now that she's done with school and i'm all licensed and registered, we may just have the time and the weather to get out there a little bit more in thespring.

thevisitors

"are you dead?" was a question fairly recently posed me on these very pages, by our friends Katie and Billy. apparently it has been a while, because soon after that query was posted, another friend, Jenn left these remarks: "I second Billy and Katie, are you dead? It's been almost 5 months since you posted last. WHAT IS GOING ON?"

maybe not quite five months, but it's a bit difficult to answer since there has been quite a lot going on, but i'll give it my best shot over the next few posts. the first thing i want to cover was a pretty big deal for us, and i've been meaning to write about it ever since. now seems like a particularly good time to get to it and make my return to blogging. just after we went to the salt flats, we got the great news that we would be able to share Thanksgiving with our good friends from Japan, the Kusudas. Yuuto was my student in Japan, and a very precocious one at that: at six years old he reads and writes English better than many native speakers of the same age. through meeting them at various parent teacher conferences, i could tell that Yuuto's parents were responsible for developing and augmenting his natural gifts in the language arena; not only did they take a very keen interest an helping him progress, but they both speak very good English themselves. we had a great time getting to know them better than those conferences had allowed when they came to visit.



the Kusudas arrive at the Salt Lake airport on Thanksgiving: from left to right are Natsumi, Yuuto's cousin, Yumiko and Shigeaki, his parents, and in front the man himself, looking very amused because Mr Ball "spelled" Yokoso ("welcome" in Japanese) wrong on the sign. below, the same group basks in the fluorescent light of Mecca... er, Wal-Mart.



Yuuto's mother, Yumiko, his father, Shigeaki, and one of his cousins, Natsumi, all arrived with the big star himself in the evening of Thanksgiving day, having flown in from Los Angeles. Yuuto thought it was hilarious that i had left out a character from the Japanese word for "welcome" on the sign we made for their arrival, and after all the English spelling tests i had given him, was probably justified in not letting it drop all evening. we took them to a family gathering at my grandpa's house, where Yuuto and Natsumi played with the other kids and showed them how to do origami, while Shige and Yumiko very patiently answered lots of questions from curious relatives and doled out hordes of gifts to the hosts. they brought Jill and i some calligraphy scrolls and another amazing Kokeshi doll for the collection Jill started while we were still in Nagoya.

we managed to pack a lot into a fairly brief visit, and funnily enough the number one destination, first on our list the following morning, was a trip to Wal-Mart. apparently news of its fame and possibly its vastness has crossed the Pacific ocean, because Yumiko had specifically requested to go there, for souvenirs. unfortunately, Salt Lake City Wal-Marts don't tend to stock a lot of souvenir-type items, but there is a "Supercenter" not far from us, and we did at least get to make the trip a decent Kodak moment.



scenes of the city, clockwise from top left: Yuuto and Natsumi with the official Jospeh Smith Memorial Building Nutcracker; Natsumi and Shige help Yuuto along in his first ever ice skating outing; the chilly group in front of the Salt Lake LDS Temple, probably the defining landmark of the state of Utah; and then with the only slightly lesser-known R2-D2 mailbox. below, a little taste of our man Yu-chan as he busts out his favorite phrase for the camera:



the rest of that Friday was spent touring the bitterly cold downtown of Salt Lake City, including a very thorough visit to Temple Square, our town's best claim to fame. later on we watched Yuuto get into his first ever trip to the ice rink, this one outdoors on Gallivan Plaza. he made a really good go of it, but was often just content to hold a hand on either side and get dragged around on more or less locked legs. by the time the adults were getting wiped out from that he was starting to skate for several feet by himself, but then we had to go so we could indulge Natsumi's sporting pleasure. She is on a basketball team in Japan and Shige had been wanting to see some professional sports, so naturally we took them to the Jazz game. despite the altitude of our seats, it actually turned out to be a really enjoyable game, beginning with the Jazz trailing the New Orleans Hornets for most of the first half. just before halftime the Jazz came back in a big way to take the lead by just a point as the buzzer went. with all the excitement in the air, everyone in our party started gathering their coats before we realized there was still another half to go. this one wasn't quite as entertaining as the first had been, but the Jazz held on and extended their lead to comfortable margins by the time it really was all over.



the view from the top: is actually a lot better than the camera makes out, and at least you can see all the action. below, a little clandestine footage of Yuuto's reaction to the Jazz scoring:



the best part of the game may have been the reactions it got from our guests. we weren't sure how much of it Yuuto would understand, but he caught on very quickly and was soon cheering for the Jazz... as long as he thought nobody knew. Jill had to use her spy skills and handy camera to get some evidence of what would happen when the Jazz scored, at least when Yuuto didn't think we were watching him.

the next day was a pretty long one, but not as long as it could have been. we're used to large distances in the West, but sometimes it's so big out here it's almost unfathomable. the Kusudas had really wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, understandable given that it's a relatively close Wonder of the World. unfortunately, it's still more than a ten hour drive each way, so given our time constraints we all agreed to head for the famous Utah site of Arches National Park instead, far more reasonable at just four hours away. funnily enough, it was also my first time there.



Natsumi, Yuuto, Yumiko and Shige stretch their legs at Arches after many long hours in the car (during most of which Yuuto was saying things like "there's a wocket in my pocket, there's a lox in my box" or singing the first two lines of a Spice Girls song "Stop right now/Thank you very much/I need somebody/With a human touch"). below, scenes of the red rock park, clockwise from top left: Shige, Yumiko and Natsumi in front of Balanced Rock; Jill looking radiant in front of Turret Arch; Yuuto and i basking in that radiance underneath North Window Arch; and another example of Jill's stunning photography at Turret Arch.



we spent several hours in the park and could have spent more if the drive home hadn't been ahead of us. nevertheless, we did make it reasonably close to the most famous arch of them all: Delicate Arch. made so recently by being the focal point of Utah's centennial license plate design, we had to see it and try to get some photos, despite still being quite far from it. below, Jill and i were trying to add to our collection of portraits taken at iconic sites, when Yuuto jumped in front of the camera with the precision timing of a master comedian. we were all laughing for ages and the picture below is still one of my favorites. Yuuto was actually pretty comical throughout. as we were coming down the trail from the vantage point of Delicate Arch, a runner came jogging past us and Yuuto just yelled out "Where you going man?" really loudly. the other folks on the trail were busting up as i was filling with pride at having helped with the slang.



Yuuto livens up the scene with some split-second hi-jinks. below, a nice portrait of the whole group in front of the Christus statue at the visitor's center on Temple Square.



Jill and i were fortunate to make a lot of great friends in Japan and we are so glad the Kusudas came all the way to Utah to visit us. we had a great time and we're looking forward to the next meeting. until then, we'll miss you!

thesalt

having seen a fair bit of the world as tourists, Jill and i thought it might be high time to see a little of our own back yard in a similar way. so one rainy Saturday in late September we headed out west along I-80 to see one of Utah's most unusual sights: a concrete tree. properly known as Metaphor: The Tree of Utah, it was erected for no apparent reason many miles from anywhere on the side of the freeway. Karl Momen, the Swedish artist who designed the tree claimed he was moved to do so by the "vastness and relative emptiness" of the area, and also that the sculpture "brings space, nature, myth and technology together". these thoughts, along with those inscribed on the tree's base--"A hymn to our universe whose glory and dimension is beyond all myth and imagination"--hopefully help to make the tree more meaningful.


sometimes known as the Tree of Life, Metaphor's six orb-like boughs are encrusted with rock and minerals native to Utah.

not much farther down the road, just a few miles this side of the Nevada border, begins the huge expanse of the Bonneville Salt Flats. pretty much just what they sound like, they are enormous salt-encrusted plains which have been used pretty much since their modern discovery for about one thing and one thing only: the pursuit of speed. from bicycle racers in the early days to jet-powered cars in the late summer of each modern year, the Flats are somehow a speedster's dream. the salt is thick and will cake up on the soles of your shoes as you trek around, but altogether it provides a hard, and perhaps more importantly empty, surface.



the salt of the flats looks more like snow, and starts from nowhere, just emerging from the surrounding desert. below, the highway rest-stop marker at the Bonneville Salt Flats...


...and what that marker says:

WELCOME TO THE BONNEVILLE SALT FLATS

AND UTAH'S FAMED MEASURED MILE—SITE OF WORLD LAND-SPEED RECORD RUNS

Utah's famed measured mile is located approximately seven miles beyond this marker, well in front of the mountains you see on the horizon. The elevation along the course is approximately 4,218 feet above sea level. The total length of the course that includes the measured mile varies from year to year, but for recent runs it has been laid out in a path 80 feet wide and approximately ten miles long, with a black reference stripe down the middle. Due to the curvature of the earth, it is impossible to see from one end of the course to the other. Timing of world land-speed record runs is under the jurisdiction of the United States Automobile Club. World land-speed record times represent an electronically-timed average of two runs over the measured mile, within a one hour time period—one run in each direction. The first world land-speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats was set on September 3, 1935, by Sir Malcolm Campbell. His speed was 301.13 miles per hour. Craig Breedlove holds the honor of being the first man to go faster than 400, 500, and 600 miles per hour. His record of 600.601 miles per hour, set on November 15, 1965, was finally broken on October 23, 1970, by Gary Gabelich. Gabelich's new record is 622.407 miles per hour.
Both Gabelich's rocket engine 'Blue Flame' and Breedlove's jet-powered 'Spirit of America' were equipped with specially designed inflatable tires, pre-tested to speeds in excess of 800 miles per hour.

Erected by THE GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER COMPANY June 1972

we went on to that measured mile, but didn't really think a run on it would be good for the undercarriage of the car, so we settled for a bit of a run on the deserted but paved road out to the salt. sshhh, don't tell...



Jill and i on the thick crust of salt at the Bonneville Flats. below, the thriving metropolis of Wendover, Nevada, the place where Utah gambles.



finally that day we decided to go the remaining few miles to Wendover, mostly just because it was there. frankly the nothingness of the salt flats was more intriguing than this place, which is like a tiny Las Vegas with all the entertaining parts taken out. a handful of trashy casinos and more Utah-registered cars than you could shake a very big stick at, it's pretty much where Salt Lake people who think that Utah constrains them too much go to feel cosmopolitan. and the good folks of Wendover gladly take their money, hand over fist, and who could blame them? they did get to build that huge neon cowboy, after all. on our very brief stop to use the facilities in a casino, we were quickly reminded why certain of Utah's constraints can be a very nice thing. the state clean air lawsallow for no smoking in public buildings, so you not only get to breathe free, but you don't end up stinking after going out to eat (or indeed to the restroom). so despite the opinions of the folks who flock to Wendover, Utah isn't such a bad place, and i think we'll be doing a little more sightseeing here before we move on to our next world stop.

thepeninsula

not the hotel, the Malay (or Thai-Malay) Peninsula. though it's been a while you may remember that we left the story of the Southeast Asia trip when we left Thailand, in a train carriage. we thought going by rail would be a great way to see the countryside of old Siam, the region's only never-colonized country, as we rolled towards one of its most recently de-colonized: Malaysia. what we didn't count on however, was that shortly after chugging out of Bangkok's main station, the lights in the firmament would fade out and we would be left to appreciate the many miles of Thai wilderness in almost complete darkness.


a night on the tracks

you may also remember that we were fortunate to have secured sleeping berths in our train carriage, so all the nighttime hours weren't completely wasted. though i will say that it's awfully hard to sleep on a moving train--even with ear plugs--unless you're extremely tired. that being said, trying to sleep on a moving train will get you awfully tired for the next night of sleeping on a moving train, so with a two-day trip it all kind of works itself out. it was the time in the middle that was kind of difficult, starting with being woken, or at least roused, early on the morning after leaving Bangkok, just as we were approaching the Thai-Malay border. the train ground to a halt and we were directed to take our bags and make our way through the long platform-side building that served as a joint ingress/egress point for both the Thai and Malay customs and immigration services. shortly after getting through that mess and setting off again we began making stops at all kinds of little Malaysian towns whereon hordes of folks joined themselves to our happy rolling throng. only we were getting less happy the more they piled themselves into our car, encroaching ever so slowly but very surely into our personal--and paid for--space, eventually practically sitting on top of me. for some reason i had assumed Malaysia would be more civilized than Thailand, but i felt quickly disabused of that notion by my very uncouth seat mates.


the Georgetown Mosque on Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

soon enough we ground to final halt in the rather unsightly town of Butterworth in northern Malaysia. here we were unceremoniously booted from the train so it could head back up to Thailand, and we wait for our ride to Kuala Lumpur. only thing was, it was still morning and our ride wasn't coming until late that evening. in the blistering heat we did the only thing anyone could do: we took the ferry over to Pulau Pinang--Pinang Island. the breeze on the boat was nice but as we stepped off the ferry with laden backpacks and no good map of Georgetown, we quickly felt the misery of our situation. it's pretty hard to adequately describe how hot it felt just walking around the outskirts of a semi-urban area completely exposed to the sun and the 100+% humidity. heat doesn't really bother me that much, but Jill was probably the most unhappy i've ever seen her. at this time we weren't married and i remember thinking that this was likely to be her at her worst and that if i could get through that day with her then we'd probably have no major problems in life. strangely enough, that may have been the day i decided we should get married.

in any case, after interminable minutes of wandering, we finally stumbled upon a mall of sorts, where we availed ourselves of their Pizza Hut. or Pizza Hut's air conditioning, more exactly. by the time we finally left there, the worst of the heat had thankfully passed and we began a more considered exploration of the place. on our way to see Fort Cornwallis and the famous mid-roundabout clock tower, we came upon a large mosque and decided to see what we could. the thing with that was, we arrived at this mosque just a day or two after the July 7th bombings of the London Underground and buses (about which we had heard very little), so the folks in the visitor's center were a little on edge when a Brit and an American showed up. we had a nice conversation with a well-spoken and thoughtful fellow there, who repeatedly apologized for those and the September 11th bombings, despite my telling him i strongly doubted his involvement. in our theological discussions, we didn't really agree on many points of doctrine, though he was very respectful and quite well informed of our LDS beliefs, and we learned quite a lot about Islam from him. he had us don long robes so that we could be taken for a tour of the large and airy mosque itself, which we did with great interest. it's still the only mosque we've ever been in.


enjoying a cool Kickapoo Joy Juice in the fierce heat of a KL Sunday brings obvious joy to my face. note the sweet haircut, specially designed back in Taiwan for the sultry Southeast Asia weather.

but soon the time came to leave, both the mosque and the island of Pinang. late that evening we boarded another sleeper train, much more tired this time than we had been the previous night, to begin the journey to Kuala Lumpur. KL, as it's often known, was just about as hot as Pinang had been, but there was more shade to be found in the shadows of the tall buildings. tall buildings like the famous Petronas Towers, owned by the national oil company and still the tallest twin towers in the world. until Taiwan built its incredible 101 building in Taipei, they were the tallest buildings period, and they do look awfully cool. there's a skybridge that runs between the two towers at about the 42nd floor, but they only let a certain number of people up there per day, and we didn't get there early enough to get tickets for the one day we were in town. just like the Taipei 101, however, the Petronas Towers have a sprawling mall at their base, and we spent some time enjoying the air conditioning there while we ate yet more pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen.



the spectacular Petronas twin towers in the heart of KL, and below, another shot of the same taken from the observation deck of the Menara Kuala Lumpur, a telecommunications tower a couple of miles away.



though we had found the folks in the north to be pretty much uncivilized, it was nice to be in a country where pretty much everyone speaks English, and quite well for the most part. standards of living seem pretty high, at least in the city, and i understand this is largely attributable to the vast wealth that Petronas generates and throws around. one wonders what will happen to Malaysia's economy when their oil reserves run out and there is no longer such a sector to prop the whole thing up. not to say that they haven't tried diversifying; folks in Britain will remember the the flashy introduction of Malaysian-made Proton vehicles somewhere in the late 80s. trouble is, you no longer see many of them in the UK and even though more than half the cars in KL are Protons, we understand they're heavily subsidized domestically. add to this the continued pandering and wealth-shifting to ethnic Malays by governments since the well-liked Mahathir Mohammed's, and you get a place that probably won't be somewhere you want to be when it all comes crashing down amidst enormous civil unrest. i'm no Malaysia scholar, but these were the general thoughts i remember having as we were there.

in any case, the so-called Garden City of Lights is actually a fairly pretty town, and one of the best places to get a panoramic view of it is from the top of the Menara Kuala Lumpur. i don't really know what Menara means, but the tower is owned by the Telekom Malaysia group and is apparently the fifth-tallest telecoms tower in the world. its top is even a little higher in elevation than those of the Petronas towers, but only because the base is set on a pretty high hill; the structure itself is a good deal shorter. either way, it's a fun ride to the top and the views are spectacular. and after coming back down we got some souvenirs at the--you guessed it--mall at the bottom and had Indian food at a restaurant that overlooked a tree-filled garden with monkeys clambering about.



the terrifying heights of the Menara Kuala Lumpur, and below, the awesome lodge we shared with some new Korean friends at the Firefly Park in Kuala Selangor.



but possibly the best thing we did in all of Malaysia was to take a very crowded city bus on a two-plus hour drive out to the coastal "town" of Kuala Selangor to see the highly recommended fireflies on the river. just when we thought the bus couldn't go any further, it kept on and on until we were finally booted off in a small parking lot in the middle of nowhere. at least there were a couple of Korean girls standing there looking as confused as we felt, so we agreed to share a taxi with them the remaining few miles out to what may be the most remote tourist attraction i've ever been to. but it was well worth it, and was actually packed with Chinese tourists, so good thing we had a reservation. the same could not be said for our random new friends however, so we opportunistically halved our bill by agreeing to share our little watertop chalet with them. the Firefly Park sells you tickets not only to their accommodations, but to their electrically powered--and thus virtually silent--boats that make late-night trips along an inlet from the Strait of Malacca in the Indian Ocean, along which many millions of fireflies light up the night like a fantastically starry sky. it's a lot cooler than it probably sounds, and we were even able to catch a couple of the flies by hand despite not being able to capture them on film. partly because it was so good, partly because we had come so far, and partly because our first ride was punctuated throughout by the loud belching of an old Chinese woman, we decided to ride again, which worked out nicely as we got a boat all to ourselves and the pilot was happy to extend the ride. i seem to remember that guy getting a good tip.


the $1,000,000 chair, carved from a single piece of jade, that Dr Nick the travel guide took us to see (and sit in, obviously). it's a lot more comfortable than it seems like it would be.

one poor fellow who did not, however, was Dr Nick. not really a doctor, but a nice guy nonetheless, he was our tour guide on our last day in KL, and he took us to see the amazing chair pictured above, among other things. though i can't find his card i know we have, i think he was working for the Tourism Malaysia folks running tours that people like us called up to book at the very last minute. it turned out that we were the only people on this particular one, and we were cramming it in just before we got on another train for Singapore, but he was very gracious and showed us pretty much everything we wanted to see and more.



the Batu Caves, clockwise from top left: the 272 steps leading up to the caves, which if climbed, it is said, will net the faithful Hindu forgiveness of half his sins. beware indeed, for monkeys come in all shapes and sizes... as apparently, do Hindu deities. even the many macaques were a little confused by it all. below, the views from inside the cavernous vaults were pretty enlightening:



one of the big places we wanted to see was the Batu Caves just north of KL, which are a series of vast caves set high in a limestone cliff that house one of the largest Hindu shrines outside of India--i mentioned that there were a lot of different racial and ethnic groups in Malaysia, didn't i? every year there is a festival here known as Thaipusam, which sees somewhere around a million and a half Hindus gather at the complex, some of them marching all the way from the Sri Mahamariamman Temple in KL to do fun things like put meat hooks through their backs and use them to pull carts up all 272 stairs to the top as an act of devotion. these are the same folks who get themselves all worked up into "spiritual" frenzies and push swords through their cheeks and other such fun things--quite a spectacle to witness i imagine, if you're there on that day. here's a little taste of what we did witness up in the caves, for the curious:

and then we come back to Dr Nick. he didn't climb the steps with us, but kindly waited around for us to get back, after which he took us to a couple of duty free shops, but with the express understanding that we were seeing only native handicrafts and had no obligation to buy. there was one pretty cool place with a whole demonstration of the batik making process and then several pretty amazing examples all over the walls and for sale. Dr Nick had picked us up from our hotel and had kindly agreed to drop us off at KL Sentral, the largest train station in Southeast Asia. by that time we were hungry from our excellent tour, and we wanted to thank our guide for the extra mile he had seemed to put in. the problem was we were all out of Malaysian Ringgit for a tip, and had only large denominations of American bills. to our shame we slipped from Nick's van into the station and used a credit card to buy Halal (meaning "permissible" in Arabic, and used kind of like a Kosher designation for Muslims) burgers at McDonald's, vowing that we'd mail him his tip when we got home. i still feel bad about stiffing the doctor; now if i could only find his card...


Dr Nick; not a doctor, but a pretty good travel guide and rubber tree-tapper.

thebragbook

somewhere not too long ago thejayfather heard that blogs are often considered nothing but "brag books", places where people get to thumb their noses at the world and say "look at all the cool things that i've done and you haven't." despite the reports of our fun travels on these pages, the idea has never been to show off, only keep a record of a few of my doings. effectively, this blog is my personal journal, and only remains out here in the ether because i don't seem to be able to keep one any other way. for long, that is. i start them on January 1st every couple of years or so, but by the 4th or 5th the entries are already getting patchy. there have only been a couple of times that i've been able to keep up the momentum, times when the reason for keeping the record has stayed fresh in my mind.

for this blog the reason of course is you, Dear Reader, and you may well imagine that i kept a reasonably up-to-date diary at least for much of my time in Taiwan. but the first journal that stuck, the one that sparked all the others, was a record of the trip that pretty much ignited the international wanderlust you've been reading about here for the last two-and-a-half years. at that time Blogger was a mere twinkle in Google's eye--i hadn't heard of it anyway--and where i went there wasn't much in the way of broadband anyway. but i did take a small notebook and a trusty Parker pen, and the results of their mating are now available for the perusal of a select few in my recently published, fully online, thoroughly modern Samoan Jornal: My experiences in the tropical South Pacific paradise of Samoa.


thejayfather before he was even thejayfather, standing outside his beach fale on a remote corner of Savai'i island, Samoa. this picture was taken between Christmas and New Year's, 2003-2004.

where here i can ensure my thoughts are expressed appropriately, when writing my Samoan journal i never considered anyone but me would ever read it. for this reason, there is no link to to the hallowed pages containing a transcription of my uncensored thoughts; only those who are invited will be able to read. if you'd like to be one of those lucky souls, let me know who you are and what you're hoping to gain from the experience. and of course, come back and let me know what you thought.

please tell me who you are and why you'd like to be invited to view the Samoan Journal: