Right now I’m actually sitting on a _beach_ writing this blog entry in my laptop. Cool huh? Did you just hear the surf crash? It went pata-PaCHUMP-shhhhhhhhhh. Or something like that. To set the scene for you all even more - it’s night time, no moon in the sky, the crickets are cricketing, the waves are crashing with the kind of uncanny regularity that only waves can acheive and the sand is extremely soft while I scrunch it between my toes.

Tonight, there’s going to be a fireworks display - some marketing company is having a “team building” event here at the beachfront hotel I’m staying at. A “team building” event means that the company ships a bunch of their management people to a super swank hotel thousands of miles away from the office, pays for their food, pays for a live band to play music while they’re eating their food, pays for a substantial fireworks display, and then makes them go on treasure hunts together. That’s team building for managerial folk. Team building for us “doing the actual work” type of people consists of the managerial folk calling us into a meeting room and saying “c’mon guys, work harder! Do some overtime!” And we’re left wondering why those managerial folk look so tanned.... I want to be a management folk! But that would mean I’d have to sell my soul, and if I’m going to sell my soul it’ll be to become a superstar DJ or something... Then I can be flown thousands of miles away from my home to go into a dark, cavernous room full of dancing people and flashy lights (that looks just like a dark, cavernous room full of dancing people and flashy lights back at home) and play music for 2 hours. Then go back to my hotel and sleep with a groupie.

Where was I? Did I digress? Can one actually digress when one is on holidays? Isn’t the whole point of vacationing to ramble, let the mind wander and think crazy thoughts while sitting on a beach?

Hey, now the team building group is having a demonstration about how to do Thai boxing! Wow, they’re lucky. What fun.

(a little later)
Well, the Thai Boxing guy with the blue shorts won, though for a long time the guy with the red shorts looked like he was going to win. The guy with the red shorts even did a spinning kick. Seeing as it was a demonstration, the whole fight was rather staged - much like a WWF fight, only in this case the guys were kicking and punching each other, there was strange Thai music playing the whole time, and whenever the guys kicked, a bunch of sand would fly into the audience’s dinner plates (I forgot to mention that the management folk are all sitting behind me on the beach eating dinner before watching the fireworks). And now comes the “team building” part - all the management types got their own boxing gloves and are beating on each other. I really wish I had taken my camera down to the beach. It’s not every day that you get to see management folk punch and kick each other. It’s very gratifying.

Actually, seeing as I don’t have proof (in the form of pictures from the aformentioned camera), you might all think I’m making this up. You might all think that I’m actually sitting in a dingy $5/night hotel room that smells like mould typing up this email. Alas, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

(even later)
Well, those were some fireworks! These weren’t the fizzle-pop kind of fireworks that you light off on Halloween, these were bombs and rockets that pack a serious punch - like the kind they have at the Symphony of Fire, or at big holidays. And I was right beside the guys who were firing them off (and therefore right underneath the fireworks as they blew up in the sky - I could feel a shockwave from each explosion). Very very cool. Definitely worth waiting for.... In my case, “waiting” meant sitting on a beach watching “team building”.

Before I post this blog entry, I have some news to impart. Ubisoft has asked me to work for them in Shanghai for the summer, so I will be returning to Montreal about a week earlier than planned (on May 4th), staying only a week, and then heading off to China until September. This news will suck for 3 sets of people: 1. Those people who enjoy my presence in Montreal (all two of them) 2. Those people to whom I’ve mentioned I’d like to go to Burning Man this year (sorry, it’ll have to wait until next year) and 3. Anybody living in Shanghai. Others will not really be affected by this news, or may even be gladdened by it. But it’s official, I’m going to be working in Shanghai this summer. Hope it’ll be fun!

Asia! I am now able to add another continent to my list of places I've set foot on. In reality, I have set foot on Asian soil before (I was in Tokyo for 3 weeks in 1999), but Japan doesn't really feel like it counts because it's an island. Sorry to all the Japanese people reading this blog, I'm sure that there are many of you.

Yesterday I travelled for 18 hours on 4 different planes to finally arrive here - on Phuket, Thailand. In terms of time zones, it is exactly halfway around the world from Montreal, my starting point. So I'm halfway there! Fortunately, most of the rest of my trip will be at a much more leisurely pace, so I don't have to suffer through 18 hours in the air again to get back.

Yes, you read that right. 18 hours! But that's not really the worst of it. I also spent another 17 hours waiting for planes while transferring. The first, and longest, wait was in Honolulu, where I had to wait 12 hours between flying from Kauai to get on my plane to Taipei (transfer point #2). I thought I could do some neato stuff in Honolulu, but my plans were seriously hindered by the fact that I had to lug my bag around everywhere. Since 9/11, no American airport has lockers or luggage drop off. Very inconvenient, if you ask me, especially since they could just x-ray your luggage before they lock it up if they're that concerned about security. That's what they do in some European airports.

So I went to the largest mall in Honolulu, thinking they might have lockers or a bag storage of some kind there. And they did! Yay, I thought, only to notice that both banks of lockers were out of order because someone had tried to break into them recently. Poo! For a moment I though I could "lose" my bags, and then pick them up later at lost and found, but that plan felt a bit unrealistic. Instead I left my bags at the cashier of every store I went to.

Unfortunately, due to my continued bad luck with the weather, the one Honolulu activity that would have been a no brainer - going to the beach - was not possible. Once again it was cloudy and occasionally drizzling. So after killing 3 hours shopping (and if you know me, you know I don't like shopping (except for vinyl and cds) so 3 hours is alot) I decided to see a movie. V for Vendetta! Pretty good action flick, actually. It's pretty audacious these days to make a film where the hero is a terrorist who tries to bring the government down by blowing up buildings, but I guess you can get away with it if you hide it between gunfire, blatant 1984 references, Natalie Portman and lots of british people. The American thought police probably couldn't understand a thing anyway with all the accents, so maybe this film won't be all that controversial despite its subject matter.

Movies became the theme of the day for this long trip. As I flew to Phuket, I eventually saw 5 more movies - "Walk the Line" (Liked it), "Elisabethtown" (Liked it), "the Unfinished Life" (Liked it), "the Family Stone" (Okay) and "Good Night and Good Luck" (Okay). Don't take my movie reviews seriously, though. First of all, I was on a plane, so the sound was crappy, the screen was tiny and I was profoundly uncomfortable in my pretzle like position. Second, I was getting very tired, so my judgement could be off... Not like "Liked it" or "Okay" give you much of a review anyway. I think that's a record for me - 6 movies in a 24 hour period. Wow!

Well, enough about that. All this rambling is beside the point because now I'm in Phuket Thailand, and who really cares what movies I saw on the plane, right? What you might care to know about is that I'm _still_ having bad luck with the weather (today: cloudy with occasional rain), but I don't care because it's still very warm and I can go swim and eat real Thai food and try to decipher what people are telling me with their thick Thai accents. The fun never ceases! My stay here will be very short, however. Tomorrow I leave on my boat to sail off into the sunset. Literally. For those of you who don't know, I've included a picture of the boat and of the route I'll be taking on the top of this post (you may have already noticed...). I'm not sure I'll be able to post on this blog from the boat, so there might be one last entry tomorrow before there'll be a long silence. Or maybe this'll be the last entry. But this post is so long that it'll probably hold you over until I have internet again.

Okay, time to include my warmth sans sunshine! Hope everyone is doing well...

Helicopters Rock!

I've never been on a helicopter before in all my life. Even back in my Vietnam days. But I have to say that few experiences are as visceral as being several kilometers up in the air on an aircraft with no doors on it! Wow! I even got nervous at the beginning - with visions of myself slipping off the seat and falling falling falling.... But then I realized that I was pretty well strapped in and I stopped being so nervous.

The trip was an hour long and we did a tour of the whole island, going right into canyons, past countless waterfalls (of which one is the famous Jurassic Park waterfall where they landed at the beginning of the movie), along beautiful secluded beaches... What a dream! But it was actually reality, so it was even better.

I want to become a helicopter pilot. Don't tell Ubisoft!

By the way, I finally swam in the ocean today. I know you are all thrilled for me. :-)

And lastly, I've been asked to upload a photo of the wild chickens. I will take some tomorrow and upload them in the next post.

Hope everyone is doing well in their respective parts of the world!

Chickens live the good life here on Kauai.

Back in the early 90s, Kauai experienced something that most tropical islands try to avoid - a hurricane. Lots of damage was done, and people were generally upset about this, but the hurricane turned out to be a boon for the large number of chickens being held captive in farms around the island. Many of the near flightless birds were freed during the storm, and now they run around all over as if they own the place. Wild chickens my friends! Roosters are also rather numerous, because they get to live their entire lives, rather than being culled by the farmer because they don't lay eggs. today, I saw a rooster fly across the road... Very exciting to see such a less than magnificent bird in flight, mainly because I had always thought chickens and roosters were flightless. Boy am I ignorant!

Go nature, I say! I can't really see this sort of mass escape happening to any other domesticated animal - maybe goats, but cows and pigs can't run fast enough to avoid being herded up after a hurricane (especially since they've been bred to be super fat and lazy - literally meat producing machines). I, for one, am happy for the chickens, and seeing them look so free and healthy, leading their little chickies around, is a sight to behold.

The weather has finally turned into what one would expect from Hawaii - hot and sunny. Today I sat on the beach with my parents, but the water is still dangerous due to washout from the rain, so no swimming. There's some disease in there, and those sharks are scary, so I guess I'll have to wait for Thailand to dip into the ocean.

Tomorrow my father and I go on a helicopter tour of the island. Should be fun! It's my first time on a helicopter, and this one flies with its doors off (for a better view, you know?), so I'm very excited.

Occasionally, you go on a holiday and it doesn't turn out the way you planned it to.

Welcome to my world! I'm in Kauai right now, and I've timed it just perfectly to hit a monsoon. The largest amount of rain they have seen in recent memory. Yay! Well, I'm no stranger to rain, but it's a shame that it's 24 degrees here yet I can't go frolicking on the beach. Well, I can, but my feet will get muddy, which in retrospect isn't that big a deal. Maybe I shall laugh in the face of conventional thinking and frolick on the beach anyway, despite the monsoon!

Tune back soon to find out what happened. Who knows, I might have been eaten by a shark!

Prior to arriving here in Kauai, I spent two weeks in wonderful Vancouver with my friends and family. Though there was a bit of rain there as well (which is typical for Vancouver), the sun did come out occasionally, and best of all _it snowed_! Something that is rare for the city (and still a big thrill, despite the fact that I live in Montreal where snow is no big deal). The best part was that the day after it snowed, the sun came out and my good buddies Kelsey, Erin and I went skiing on Cypress Mountain. It was an epic day of skiing and boarding - fresh powder, nice soft bumps everywhere and wonderful views of the city and the mountains. My high performance skiis (that I rented) made me feel like a super hero. Hereafter I shall be known as Skiman! And I'll run around wearing tights and a cape and a big S on my chest. Well, maybe not an S, 'cause I think that's taken.

Obviously, many other wonderful things happened in Vancouver, but I won't put them all down here. For now I'm going to try to keep my musings in the present. Which happens to be rainy at the moment, but will hopefully turn sunny and adventurous in the near future.

Hope everyone who's reading this is doing well. I'll keep updating this page as often as possible, so check back every few days to see what Falko's up to. Cheers!