Lord, thank you for words. But even then, there is so much inequality in the world; even when it comes to words. Some have the privilege to be able to learn words. Learn grammar. Become literate. Some don’t.

Us fortunate ones, we are so complacent. So content. Heads in the sand. Not willing to give up what we have to help those in need.

Injustice. Grain to feed the cows to feed the over-nourished rich people.

Why are the rich so discontent? Because they know that things don’t line up. Their excess consumption eats away at their souls.

If everyone could just keep to themselves, be void of choice, perhaps everyone would live peacefully. No confusion about how to live life.

But things have changed. Now we have choice in abundance. Choice to choose not to choose. Choosing to choose choice over no choice. Deep discontent in souls.

How are we to connect with you? How do we all connect with you without blood shed from the soul. Am I right? Are they right? How do we interact without searing, scarring friction?

Beauty. Fear of beauty. Beauty betrayed. Avoidance of aesthetic expression, lest the Devil tear our eyes from the pulpit.

Where have we gone wrong?

Creator of the Universe, answers please.

Could Micro Four Thirds cameras be the future of travel photography?

I was in Akihabara in Tokyo today, having a little browse through the massive array of electronics stores, when I came across these little beauties. Essentially SLR cameras which weigh half the weight of a full DSLR. About half the price too. And they even record HD video. How can these not be the absolute dead-pan favourite of cycle tourers and other human-powered travellers?

And with lenses like these being developed, the mind boggles as to the perfect suitability of these cameras for fast and light missions, when awesome depth of field, crisp optics, and versatility are called for. From video to stills, these look awesome.

So far it looks like Panasonic and Olympus are the only makers to forge the way ahead with these types of ‘Macro SLR’ camera, but you can be sure that I now have a new item to add to my wish-list!

Micro Four Thirds Camera body list: http://www.four-thirds.org/en/microft/body.html

Micro Four Thirds Lens list: http://www.four-thirds.org/en/microft/lense.html

Olympus E-P2 review: http://www.pocket-lint.com/review/4598/olympus-pen-e-p2-review

Panasonic Lumix GF-1 review: http://www.pocket-lint.com/review/4431/panasonic-lumix-gf1-camera-review

Hi there.

It has been a while.

And as you can see, for the first time in many months, I have started blogging again.

I hope you don’t mind.

You see, on the 2nd of April (12 days away), I will be moving to Japan with the intention of living there for at least three years.

Yeah.

Big move.

I’m not going alone, and I’m not going with a lack of plans. I’m going there with my wife Haidee, and I’m going there to study at Nagoya University towards a Masters degree in international development (more info on how all that happened later).

Anway, I just wanted to say that I’m pretty sure that the 14degrees blog is going to continue less as an around-the-world-human-powered-adventure blog, and more of an experiencing-Japan-life-in-Japan-study-in-Japan experience blog. The idea will be to share:

• Interesting news reports on what is happening in Japan and Japanese society (videos, article summaries etc).
• Little knooks and crannies of Nagoya City, including food, sightseeing, and general life info.
• Nagoya University happenings.
• General travel in Japan, with me as your guide-person.

As always, there will be plenty of photos and videos to gorge on.

I imagine that there will be a fairly big shake up in the way the blog looks and is organised, as the part about the 14degrees journey becomes more of an archived part of the site (of course it will still be totally accessable in its entirety).

In the mean time, I will be writing up blogs from the honeymoon, before I hit Japan in less than two weeks time. I hope you enjoy.

Oamaru is one of the most intriguing places in New Zealand, in my opinion. It is often over-looked as just a place to shoot through on your way south. But the place is teeming with life; just make sure you get off the main drag as soon as you can. The real action is towards the southern end of the main central township, in the Harbour and Tyne Historic Precinct.

This morning we begrudgingly checked out of our comfy motel right on 10am, and made our way down to the historic precinct. Walking around this area is like stepping back in time. Shop-keepers are totally into the spirit of things, most wearing antique Victorian outfits and sporting massive long curly moustaches.

The area is somewhat of a melting pot for a number of different artists, but the upstairs artists’ collective definitely has a unique flavour; lots of slightly disconcerting human-face sculptures stare at you as you peruse the gallery.

From Oamaru it was onwards to Kaka Point in the Catlins via Moeraki Boulders and Dunedin. I had stopped at Moeraki Boulders many times in the past. It never fails to entertain though…

 Lunch at the not-too-overly-priced Moeraki Boulders Cafe was a delicious musroom filo pastry, chicken filo pastry, and green tea. Dunedin was just a service stop, topping up on the groceries we had bought in Christchurch before leaving a few days ago. We did drop into the Evandale cheese factory after Dunedin, and succumed to buying some blue brie cheese. A little disappointing though; we prefer a good knock-your-socks-off type of creamy blue cheese, but this was a not particularly sharp mouldy brie.

We checked into the Kaka Point Motel at around 5pm. An old converted house, essentially divided into two to make two motel ‘units’ (half a house each). We had beautiful sea views from the kitchen, and cooked up a storm for tea. This was to be our ritual for most of the trip; cafe lunches and home-made dinners.

After dinner was a mission up to Nugget Point. Checked out the Yellow-eyed penguins (and even saw a few waddle up the beach), walked to the light house and saw masses of Fur Seals playing in smal water holes around the point. In bed early for an early start tomorrow.

On the 5th of February 2010, I was thrilled to be able to make a lifelong committment to my long-time friend Haidee Rich. In what was to be the biggest ritual - entirely centred around us - of my life, we got married and had a huge reception on a beautiful sunny Wellington summer’s day.

The whole experience was quite unlike anything I had ever experienced. Months of planning - planning for a huge party centered around ourselves - came to beautiful fruition as the day unfolded and unwravelled into such an awesome occassion. We were surrounded by friends and family, all looking absolutely stoked that us two 29-year olds had finally ‘tied the knot’.

I was kind of expecting some sort of euphoric state of…well…something as we walked out of the church, but all I felt was a deep sense of ‘this feels entirely natural and obvious that I should now be married to Haidee’. Quite nice indeed.

A quick low-down on the stunning Haidee: Raised in the Wellington area of New Zealand, she somehow developed a desire to head over seas. This she did in grand fashion after graduating from university with a tourism and international business degree; she headed over to Kyrgyzstan on her own for 6 months, lecturing tourism development at a school there. From there she moved to Japan and proceeded to spend the next 4 years in various jobs there. While in Japan, we met up a few times, each time leaving to follow our own paths, until eventually, after both spending close to 5 years over seas, we both arrived back to New Zealand at the end of 2008. We met up again soon after in New Zealand, and now, just over a year later, we are married. Lovely.

 It was an honour to have my younger brother, Chris, as one of my groomsmen. He has always been somewhat of an inspiration to me…I just wish I could grow as impressive a moustache as him!

I haven’t seen the book myself yet, but apparently I am on page 235 of the 2010 Ripley’s Believe it or Not Annual.

http://ripleybooks.com/annuals/2010/extras/235

I must find myself a copy…

Well guess who came to town the other week.

Markus Wagner from Cycling Without Borders fame. It was great to catch up with a fellow cyclist and swap stories from both of our long journeys on our own by bicycle. Markus cycled from his home near the Black Forest in Germany to Shanghai, China. Epic.

He was in Auckland as a guest lecturer at Auckland University and a university in Wellington.

Long distance human powered adventurer Rob Lilwall’s first book about his 30,000mile cycle journey is an absolute thriller. Each turn of the page left me shaking my head in disbelief at the fortunes and misfortunes of this rather unlikely epic adventurer. Some people just slide into the part of the ‘epic adventurer’ as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Not so for this English geography teacher. This is a story about a true learning adventure, with twists at every turn.

———————————————-
Have you ever been reading a book so compelling, fast-moving, and exciting, that you notice, after reaching the end of a particularly riveting chapter, that you’ve actually been holding your breath for almost the entire chapter?

That was my experience as I got to the end of chapter 63 of Rob Lilwall’s excellent book Cycling Home From Siberia. Chapters 61 to 65 see Rob recounting his frantic and risky 600 mile cycle through northern Afghanistan in late 2007. I finished the last chapter of that section and I found myself gasping for breath; they are an extremely tense few chapters.

I read the whole book in about a week of small sittings, absolutely loving the short chapters. And by short, I really do mean short. A long chapter might be five pages long. “Just one more chapter before turning out the light,” I would tell myself, and that one chapter would easily end up being another five or so. This helped to keep the sense of momentumn up and really gave me the sense of pedalling along with Lilwall on his epic 30,000 mile adventure by bicycle from Siberia to Australia to England. The short chapters, I think, would really appeal to people, like me, who read a lot of blogs, and enjoy getting good concetrated juicy shots of action rather than long, slow moving, drawn-out passages of text.

I bought the hot-off-the-press book (published only a month or so ago) because I had heard from Alistair Humphries that he had a “friend who travelled by bike for 3 years, and has also studied theology.” That friend was Rob Lilwall, and I was keen to read some insights from another hardcore human-powered traveller who may have also wrestled with the implications of his Christian faith. I also wanted to see how on earth someone would compact three years of travelling into one single 300 page book. Perhaps I could learn something, and even be inspired to put a book together myself?

After finishing the book yesterday, I am still amazed at how Lilwall has crammed so much of his experiences - in such colour and vibrancy - into the book. His use of short sentences makes it an extremely easy read, but he manages not to skimp on depth of meaning. You can tell, however, that buried beneath the characters and stories he does choose to tell, there are scores of details still yearning to be uncovered. I’m sure if Lilwall had attempted to unearth all of those juicy out-takes, the book would have been much longer than 300 pages. As it is, Lilwall has left much up to the imagination of the reader, but what a rich picture-in-the-mind his writing does facilitate!

I appreciated his spatterings of spiritual reflection throughout the book too. The depiction of his faith-journey was honest and frank; it was great to hear how he engaged honestly with other world religions (Lilwall is a keen Christian who has spent time studying theology). The open road is no place for the closed-minded, and Lilwall articulated well his interesting encounters with other travellers and locals.

I ordered the book as well as a DVD of the journey directly from his website here:

http://www.cyclinghomefromsiberia.com/wordpress/?page_id=367

The DVD is due to be released at the end of the year, so I am waiting with bated breath for that to arrive; should be a great watch.

So do another hard-working adventurer a favour and buy a copy of his book. I highly recommend it.

(click image for a closer look)

It is unsurprising that a journey such as the 14degrees Journey clarified what and who I want in life. Clarification of what is worth striving for, and clarification of who life is worth spending with. On both counts, this one year since the end of my skateboarding journey has been rather fruitful and worthwhile.

I am very pleased to announce (with a smile on my dial), that I am now engaged to the woman who is still, even after a full 7 years since we first met, the most engaging and beautiful woman I have ever met.

A challenger.

A clarifier.

A comforter.

Haidee is her name. More and more becoming the love of my life every day.

Stoked.

The wedding is set for the 5th of February 2010.

I was drinking some Jasmine tea at a cheap little Asian* restaurant the other day and it reminded me of western China. I felt the aromas of that aromatic tea and closed my eyes. I was taken back to Turpan. Xinjiang Province. Back to the heat. The unforced rhythms of life in a place where the heat dictates pace and schedule.

I recalled the precious cool hours of the morning. Rolling out of a sleepy town at dawn in the haze. Quiet. Free. Smooth.

I had my eyes closed for only a moment, but what seemed like a lifetime of images flashed before my eyes.

From the cool dawn I snapped over to an empty beef noodle shop. I am the only one there. A cool spring water fed air conditioning unit blows tepid air in my direction as I slurp up the salty broth. At once enjoying the saltiness, at once despising the hot liquid doing nothing for my already over-heated body.

I sip on the Jasmine tea.

In Hamilton.

I close my eyes once more.

In Turpan.

Near Shanghai. A great pile of noodles sits before me. Must eat. Can’t eat. Body too tired. To hang with the pain, I consume what my body craves. What my stomach will reject. What my mind despises.

I sip on the Jasmine tea. It soothes my stomach.

Near Shanghai.

In Hamilton.

I write this in a Starbucks café in Auckland, New Zealand. Beside me sits an empty Tall Tzuo Chai Latte. A paper cup with a plastic lid with my name scrawled on it.

Tastes nice. Sugar overload. Worlds away from Shanghai. From Turpan.

Peppermint walls, wooden trim, textured wallpaper, tiled floor. Round tables, stained chairs.

Paralyzing normality. Comforting conformity.

Everything is a commodity here. Even uniqueness is a commodity. It is normal to be unique. Give me necessity. Allow me the essentials. Nothing else. In my affluence I can afford the choice.

Given the choice, they would choose this. Anything to get out of that.

This is not how it has to be. Can we strike a balance between this and that? Can we have affluence and a down-to-earth necessity? Or must we always want more. Or must we know our place, never strive.

Contentment is a slippery creature to grasp.

Happy despite the circumstances: an elusive state of mind.

Thank you, Creator, for what I have.

Thank you, Creator, for where I am.

Give me perseverance.

Give me peace.

Grant us sight.

Let it be.

* By Asian I really do mean generic Southeast Asian restaurant. A mishmash of Thai, Indian, Eastern Chinese, Vietnamese. Locations were unimportant for this Asian restaurant. To the New Zealander it was just ‘Asian’, and that is fine.