G-OGRAPHY: a southeast asian lady travels...

Sitting on the grass with the earth beneath me I looked out to one of the most spectacular views I have ever witnessed...the ruins, the mountains, the river, the sky, the sun and the breeze. Perched up in the Andean Mountains is this mysterious and magnificent ancient city. I tried to imagine how it was like to have lived there. It had what mattered. I fancied that the Inca spirits were whispering to me. I tried to listen but by then a large group of tourists decided to stop on the spot above me. Oh well, I guess I may just have to come back...

This book randomly crossed my mind the other day. Aside from my brother's He-Man and GI Joe collections I would always raid his books. CYOA or choose your adventure was definitely one of the titles I would gravitate to. Something about the title just made me very excited ( I also loved the crazy hand drawn covers- notice the spaceship, hot air balloon and tribesmen behind the bronze robot...yeah coz that is exactly what everyone thinks of when you say supercomputer ). Also, as a kid you really don't get to choose anything so I guess that was the big time appeal.

Honestly though, I never did get to finish any of the books. I would always get impatient and instead of enjoying the story I was busy trying to get to the next part or at least guess what it would be. I, also, cheated *gasp*. Meaning, I would look at both choices and try to manipulate my page turns so I could only read the awesome ones.

So it got very frustrating. I actually ended up unsuccessfully finishing any of the books for fear of getting disappointed. Looking back, however, I think one of the things that made me lose interest is the realization that no matter what, you really don't get to choose your own adventure...more like you only get to choose an adventure that has already been preselected for you.

Yeah, I guess even as a kid my thought process has already been complicated like that...

I am always fascinated by people who have ideas that change our own ideas. They are change agents like Annie Leonard author of The Story of Stuff. The book basically tells you about how America's consumerist ways is affecting the whole world. Coming from a third world country, I am aware of how we export our natural resources not just for America's use but for other industrialized countries to take advantage of. Now that I live in the US, I feel so guilty for easily forgetting how finite natural resources are. After I watched the video I felt guilty on how much stuff I accumulate and trash without a care for possible repercussions. I feel so bad that I also forget to recycle my trash most of the time! There I said it. I thing the change really has to start with me first before I can encourage others to do the same. It's so easy to sit here and preach about it. I do want my children and children's children to enjoy the unadulterated world in the future.

I have been doing a lot of reflecting about what I want to do in the future and one of the things that I have always wanted to do was to live in an island. First travel the world then go back to the Philippines. I have actually been looking at island properties for sale. One of my closest friends back home actually just made the move to Palawan, which is in the Southern part of the archipelago, with his young family. I totally applaud him for that very smart decision. Simple, clean and sustainable living is awesome!

I totally see myself building a bed and breakfast by the sea complete with a small organic farm. I love it! I can make a home away from home for island travelers while working on my book and making music with my guitar. I just need to conquer the world first.

A lot of people think it sounds crazy to just go off and travel the world for a year or two. I have been doing preliminary research and it seems a lot of people have done it. It's not as crazy as we all think it is. It's just fear of the unknown that holds a lot of us back. It's also due to years of social conditioning. You know the school-work-marriage-work-kids-work-retirement formula. Then there is also our attachment to material possessions...clothes, cars, houses.

I think the best way to learn about yourself and life is to travel. Just think of all those adventures! Gobackpacking.com is one of the blogs that documents everything about doing round the world travel. It's completely fascinating and they even have a detailed excel sheet of costs involved.

I mean do you see yourselves just working in a cubicle your whole life? I like to be free and think that the we can all live the life that we want. When it comes to your life don't you think you should live by your own rules? I'm not saying you live selfishly without a care for other people but my point is that we all have a say...there is always an alternative path.

Slate.com is featuring a five part series on how the US military captured the Iraqi dictator which you can read here. Apparently it took a fat man, a resourceful soldier and Facebook to pull it all off. I know it sounds a bit oversimplified. But essentially with the leadership of Colonel Hickey (resourceful soldier) the military decided to shift their approach in searching for Saddam Hussein by taking into account his personal relationships, charting it out (ala Facebook) and then pinpointing a particular connection (the fat man) that eventually led them to him.

It seems that their previous approach of mapping out Saddam's connections were similar to that of an organizational chart. They were going after people who he worked with in the past like government allies or ranking officials. However, Iraq has a strong tribal structure such that most of Hussein's top men were those that had strong personal connections with him and most are even related to him.

Now here is where the social networking theory or...err...more of the metaphor of social networking sites like Facebook come in. You see much of them work in the same mechanics as tribes do. In fact, social networking on the internet is more or less a centralized platform for tribal behavior rendered into modern format. If you actually visualize your connections on Facebook you will find that commonalities between you and your friends are often derived from shared interests and groups that you belong too. (Read Write Web features a nice app for this called Nexus here) Of course, you also have connections that are little on the fringe and may not make a lot of sense to your other friends at first look. Nonetheless they are as meaningful to you for reasons that, well sometimes, may only be known to you (it's ok we all have our little secrets).

This just makes it so fascinating to examine how online tribes work. Think about how powerful and easy online sites can be for building and growing anything from your own little empire to a large global movement. Seth Godin, popular author talks about this concept at TED on this video:




On the other hand, it's also scary to think that this sort of information- your personal connections and the activities revolving around them or between them- can get so exposed. I mean it really isn't a coincidence when you see targeted ads appearing on the sidebars of your Facebook or Gmail account. These sites actually collect information on your profile or on your activities in order to serve you micro-targeted ads (Read Majority Uncomfortable with Websites Customizing Content Based Visitors Personal Profiles). As Chris Matyszczyk expresses:

"However, perhaps one other thought might already have crossed your mind. If U.S. soldiers could construct a Facebook-like page of Hussein's relationships three months before Facebook was even launched, what kind of information is now laid bare for much less sophisticated minds to enjoy? Information about you, I mean."