Almost There (Kampung Air Batang - "ABC", Pulau Tioman, Malaysia)

My goal on this trip is to find a place to live for $5 CAD a day. I want a room with acceptable cleanliness, 2 drinks, a half hour of Internet (which might not exist in this fabled land), 2 meals and to smoke a few cigarettes, drink some water, eat some street vendor snacks / etc. Its cheap here, but I'm going to have to get farther south to get where I want to go. It may not exist and I'll be happy with $10 mostly as a personal comparison, as this is what I used to spend on coffee each day while in Toronto (and I don't drink anything fancy). A day here costs: RM30 for a room (last couple nights I paid RM25 for no fan / screens / net, but needed to upgrade for a fan as it was oppressive). Beer during happy hour is RM6 for two, Internet is 4, plain rice with chili sauce and a coffee for lunch is 2.50 and a dinner treat of a BBQ'd squid, a stingray, hunk of barracuda, tuna or marlin with stir-fried vegetables and fresh chili peppers costs 13. Incidentals for the day run about 5. All told its about RM60 (20 CAD). You can get a decent curry here for RM4 ($1.30), but I haven't quite killed my addiction to seafood and I'm not willing to give up plentiful, high quality hunks of fishy goodness for the extra $2-3. [If you ever eat a stingray, pull perpendicular from the cartilage backbone. If not, you end up with firm "bones" that are soft enough to be edible, but makes the meat a little tougher than it should be. Not my favorite fish, but good enough to have again]. Its a lounge in a hammock and read a book kind of place, but I feel like I am only half way there somehow [and the substantial ant infestation on both of my beds so far isn't allowing me to get the beauty sleep that I so desperately need - this new place has a mosquito net and I have one of my own so I'm going to try and lie on one and put the other over me to see if I can make a Mike sandwich to get some peace. They are small and fast though - we shall see. I am writing this now and I can see about a dozen or so of them climbing all over me and my laptop]. Its good to not be in Singapore though.

Labour day is an anniversary of sorts for me and I am going to do something positive to mark the day. I used to be a big proponent of doing "stuff" but aside from a stint of recreational rock climbing, I haven't done anything good for my body in my adult life. As such, I'm going to spend another couple of days here and then go to Indonesia (through Kuala Lumpur) to see if I take to surfing. If that doesn't stick I'm going to check into a kickboxing camp for a month or so. I'll try and not write something every time my plans change, as it will get tedious for everyone involved, but the only for sure thing is that I am going to go surfing in Indo for a bit (gotta start talking hip :). I have this picture of me in a 30 foot reef break - can't wait to be snuggling to get my ass up on a 2 foot "monster" wave.

The book I'm reading (my book report will be following shortly, the dog ate it - I swear), is a call to recovering workaholics (or soon to be burnouts). He talks about how reality is negotiable, about the dangers of a "deferred-life plan", that the opposite of love is indifference and the opposite of happiness is boredom. I used to actually be a big fan of the "sacrifice today" and "live tomorrow" idea. Did you know thats a total bullshit way to live?

I realized that I have spent all this time being introspective on the past and the person that I wanted to become during this trip, but I wasn't spending any time on building tools to make sure that I don't slide into the abyss when I go back. I was in Toronto for 5 minutes before my mind was angling on how to make cash and potential opportunities. This is who I am I guess. I won't be lying on the beach for the rest of my life as much as I have the romantic vision that I should. SO, I better get my head around how I will balance it all out and be efficient and smart in how I work and create. The book was a first step of sorts. It wasn't all nuggets, but a lot of what he talks about applies to me and I have taken a silly amount of inspiration from it.

"After years of repetitive work, you will often have to dig hard to find your passions, redefine your dreams, and revive hobbies that you let atrophy to near extinction. The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world."

True. Sad but true.