Surfed for the first time in 7 years! And only slightly broke my foot…
Thoughts on the place:
Ahangama in Sri Lanka is a lovely little town, especially if you stick to the restaurants and bars right by the sea. Food is not cheap at all here, surprisingly but the quality is solid thanks to the massive amount of decently wealthy expats that have set up restaurants here.
Tips:
Stay at George’s place if you want to war with snakes on Xmas day… It’s free entertainment
Uber doesn’t work in the small towns here, or Grab, or Bolt… Local Tuktuks love a negotiation, so you can save £1 per journey if you’re a miser
Ahangama is sick for surfing but nearby Welligama is probably the place to stay if you’re travelling
Seoul is kinda like if an English city was nice and insanely safe with a lot of very well dressed people. The DMZ is a little underwhelming as you can no longer go right to the border line after some American guy (I think) jumped it… Worth a visit and honestly probably a sick place to live!
The hotel was decent but comes at a premium…
Tips:
Uber does work well there despite what reddit may say
Google maps does not work there, download Kakao Map!
Pattaya often gets a rep as being pretty seedy. That’s not particularly fair. The Walking Street shouldn’t entirely define what is actually a very lovely city by the sea. If you want seedy, you’ll find it but in this place you can also find incredibly pretty beaches that aren’t rammed full of people.
The hotel was delightful with a great sea view and it’s own private beach. One of the best places I’ve stayed.
Tips:
Stay in South Pattaya near Jomtien or anywhere on the cliff for a genuinely beautiful view and phenomenal vibe
Spend your time away from the city centre to see what the city is really like
Picked eggs from chickens and even held the chickens (Who were possibly the softest chickens I’ve ever felt so you can tell they’re cared for)
Thoughts on the place:
If Khao Yai isn’t on your places to go when in Thailand, you’re missing out. This place is Thailand’s mountainous wine country and it is fucking lovely. So green, so lush, and just incredible to walk around. I love it here.
Also STAY AT THIS HOTEL. You get a mini villa, get to pick your own eggs + vegetables for breakfast on their working farm, and hang out with the neighbouring dogs!
Tips:
Stay at La Cocotte Villa & Farm (if you’re a couple).
Visit a vineyard here and try Thai wine, the white wine is lovely!
Whenever you’re a little tired of Bangkok (very rare for me, I fucking love it here), Chiang Mai can offer a kinda mini-city break where things are a bit more laid back and bit more old school. It’s nice. It’s kinda small, but it’s nice if that’s you like.
Shangri-La Chiang Mai however was immaculate. The view from the room was of the mountains and, damn, waking up to that was wonderful. Big fan, highly recommend.
Tips:
The food at the markets here is high quality, dig in! Get a Nutella banana roti!
Head to the Grand Canyon water park for a mint day out!
Zoe in Yellow is the place to begin any wild night here.
I don’t think I’ve ever given myself much credit for being creative.
In fact, I think I suppressed that side of myself so much that it practically disappeared and only occasionally did I notice a little glimmer of it here and there.
I accidentally built a mental comfort zone with logic as the walls because I was uncomfortable with exploring my own creativity, perhaps for the fear that I wouldn’t be good at being creative – creativity is tough to measure. But this year I’ve made a conscious effort to change that and break down those walls. See the video below for proof…
We are what we think, right? So I dropped this whole internal dialogue of “I’m so rational and analytical.. blah blah blah” and switched it to “I’m pretty creative… sometimes” [gotta add the “sometimes” just to satisfy the other side of the brain]. Anyway, I made this switch earlier in the year – maybe around February and then decided to lean in and give creativity a shot…
A girl told me if I played guitar it’d be pretty hot so I immediately picked up a cheap as fuck guitar and spent a few months getting to grips with it. Very fun to play but not totally my vibe, though I do love the feeling when you actually create a halfway decent lil riff. Will be picking this back up again soon 🙂
Much to the dismay of my high school art teacher [can’t remember her name but there is a special place in hell for unsupportive art teachers], I also started drawing things. Just little sketches of my environment and sometimes the odd animal or a little scene in my head. Most weren’t great but every now and then I’d hit on something that I loved! One of them I liked so much I got it tatted on my arm. How fucking cool. Never drawing anything to drawing my own tattoo. Nice. Go me! I even carry a notepad and pen in my bag at all times in case I wanna draw something.
And more recently, I spent the past few months trying to open up creatively with acting classes. Acting was something that, like many of you reading I guess, I’d been told I could probably do pretty well but like most people I declined to pursue it in any way and instead just kept that little idea in my mind that “yeah, I could do that“. Well, I realised recently that if you live with all these “yeah, i could do that” and then never actually do the things then you’re gonna spend your life unfulfilled and full of regret. You see, what happens if you go and try the thing and then realise “shit, this isn’t for me” – you might feel bad at first for wasting time thinking you were something you’re not, but then you’re liberated. You stop living this fantasy and then you can move on to the next thing, and keep looking for your ikigai [your purpose, the thing that gives you joy].
Well I decided that fuck it, I may as well see if this is for me or not. In 3hr+ long classes, I got to explore a LOT. The first few classes were borderline therapy where you expose yourself to a specific emotion and cultivate the stories in your mind that make you feel that way and it is particularly heavy. The next were on techniques and revolved around “playing the objective” which is where you consider what the character wants as opposed to playing what you think they feel and in doing this you’ll start to be able to really visualise your scenes and feel the emotion in reality.
This all culminated in a showcase last Sunday where I played a newbie lawyer desperately trying to prepare for work as he arrives at the dilapidated new apartment his just-married wife had chosen for them to live in… Video below.
The whole experience was something special. While coming back from the show, I was high on bliss thinking just how insanely cool it is to perform in front of people. I’m not saying I’m world class at this or that acting is my ikigai but…
I loved performing and I *think* I’ll keep doing it.
So, if you have an unexplored creative side like me, then as an experiment, embrace it! Venture outside your comfort zone. Sure, it’s uncomfortable and intimidating, but living a small life because you never took the leap would be a tragedy!
Now, wanna see me acting?
Quotes I’m vibing with rn:
Nothing seems as pretty as the past though – Arctic Monkeys
You set the standards for how you want to live – Me
I wrote in a previous post that I have these little phrases that help change my mind state and put me back to my usual curious, engaged, and generally happy self. My favourite of these is taken from a delightful book on Taoism.
I was gifted the Tao of Pooh years ago by my mum.
The book takes the concept of Taoism and explains it simply through Winnie The Pooh. This short book gradually altered how I viewed a lot of the world, so much so that I all but forced multiple friends to read it in the hopes that they’d also find the same value in it that I had.
So what’s the phrase?
Well, let me set the scene:
“Say, Pooh, why aren’t you busy?” I said. “Because it’s a nice day,” said Pooh. “Yes, but…” “Why ruin it?” he said. “But you could be doing something Important,” I said. “I am,” said Pooh. “Oh? Doing what?” “Listening,” to the birds. And that squirrel over there.” “What are they saying?” I asked. “That it’s a nice day,” said Pooh. “Well, you could be spending your time getting Educated by listening to the Radio, instead,” I said. “That thing?” “Certainly. How else will you know what’s going on in the world?” I said. “By going outside,” said Pooh, “Er . . . well. . . .” (Click.) “Now just listen to this, Pooh.” “Thirty thousand people were killed today when five jumbo airliners collided over downtown Los Angeles . . . ,” the Radio announced. “What does that tell you about the world?” asked Pooh. “Hmm. You’re right.” (Click.) “What are the birds saying now?” I asked. “That it’s a nice day,” said Pooh.
– The Tao Of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff
A while after reading this, I developed a kind of “call and response” with a very dear friend, George.
When one of us starts to get stressed or annoyed by something, the other says “What are the birds saying?” And the reply “That it’s a nice day” brings an unmatched level of calm.
It reminds the replier to return to the present moment, look around, and recognise that it truly is a nice day, and that is especially true when you’re with a good friend.
The utility of this phrase in bringing me internal calm is hard to understate.
This short little back and forth has pulled me down from a lot of bridges. So much so, that over time I’ve even learnt to say it to myself when I see my mind drifting down a darker path, particularly necessary considering the frequency that George changes location.
I was reminded to use phrase a few days back when I found myself focused on something that was entirely irrelevant and not making me happy.
Because of how wonderful things have been recently [*touch wood, long may it continue], the phrase had very nearly slipped out of my mind and I wanted to ensure this would never even *nearly* happen again… So I now have it tattooed on my arm.
My own crude handwriting, a couple of birds and little sunset drawn onto my forearm, reminding me that it’s a nice day.
Quotes I’m vibing with rn:
To do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen – Tim Ferriss
If you wish to be loved, love– Seneca
If you can change it, why worry? If you can’t change it why worry?. – Dalai Llama XIV (majorly paraphrased)
Since I was very young, I’ve had this terrible habit.
Put me in a near-perfect situation and there’s a high chance, you’d find me focusing on one tiny negative aspect of it or, even worse, I’d imagine some potential way this idyllic situation could become negative, and lose any enjoyment of the present. As Marlon Croft sang, “I could find something wrong in Heaven”
Seeing the bad in things and disregarding the good, is obviously not a healthy habit.
Despite this, I know why I adopted it. Being pessimistic allowed me to internally account for any negative situation that would arise – an emotional “prepare for the worst” tool. It was effective as I often expected the worse to happen, so when it didn’t happen I was pleasantly surprised though much of the happiness was diminished through the obsession with the potential negative outcome. Years wasted ignoring the beauty of the present and thinking about the bad thing that might happen.
When I was a little older, maybe 18 I found some justification for it.
A favourite author of mine took a few lines of a letter written by Seneca and converted this bad habit into a useful practice – fear setting – where you write down all of your fears about a situation and combat each one at a time and consider that IF they did happen, how could you return to baseline. The practice is exceedingly useful in certain situations but it ought not to be used for every possible thing, lest you spend all day thinking about each horrible possibility. Even if you strategise how to deal with each negative possibility, it‘s a tragedy to squander so much of your precious time considering terrible things.
More recently, I’ve been able to fight this habit of only seeing the bad (or the possible bad) and now do my absolute best to focus on the good.
One thing I learned in the past few years is that not every thought that comes into your head is your own, oftentimes these thoughts come from someone else – a friend, a parent, TV, whatever – and they’re akin to visitors in your home. You don’t have to agree with all your thoughts or even respond to them, you can just watch them appear, consider where they came from, and watch them drift away again.
So now, when I’m in one of those lovely situations when all is objectively going well and I see an insidious thought start to appear; I watch it come, question where it came from, and most importantly, I let it drift away.
And what I’ve found is that the less I engage with those thoughts, the less they visit. But sometimes the little fuckers can be persistent…
To deal with those ones, I have another strategy.
Some people will know that an unusual thing I do is keep a handful of phrases permanently burnt into my head to put me in a different state of mind or take me out of a less-than-useful thought process. I find it extremely useful to present myself with certain words that can instantly shift me back to my normal level headed self.
However, with this particular problem I was lacking an effective phrase to stop me from thinking negatively and complaining arbitrarily, that is, until I listened to “Something wrong in Heaven”.
I added to the title and now when I catch myself complaining I say to myself, often out loud, “you’re trying to find something wrong in Heaven” and it reminds me of how great my situation really is and makes me more grateful for what I have. I reply with “Oh yeah! Things are great, what the hell am I complaining for?”.
Right now I’m in a cafe in a gorgeous mall in Bangkok overlooking a mini waterfall, feeling a little breeze and watching the sunlight against the trees built into the sides of the building. And yet, at a table next to me is a huddle of old ladies one of whom has a dangerously screechy voice which seems to penetrate past the Action Bronson blasting in my ears.
You see, I could choose to be annoyed and allow a little thing like that to detract from this otherwise perfect time OR I could say “Max, you’re trying to find something wrong in heaven”, chuckle to myself and sip my coffee with a little smile.
I like to think I have the strength of mind to not let small annoyances ruin my limited time here, but alas, I’m not perfect and sometimes get swept up in rage at some incessant noise or someone’s mindless actions or get lost in considering everything bad that could happen, and forget entirely how great everything really is right now.
But that’s alright!
This is a daily practice and each moment I get lost, I pull my little phrase out of the bag and remind myself “You’re trying to find something wrong in Heaven”. And truly, I am in Heaven.
Quotes I’m vibing with rn:
To do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen – Tim Ferriss
All we can control is our choices and how we think– Ryan Holiday framing Stoic thinking
We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit. – Will Durant paraphrasing Aristotle
Opening up to people is hard. Being honest with your emotions is hard. Telling someone how you feel feels like one of the hardest things you can do, when in reality it’s a small discomfort and your life would probably be greatly improved if you were willing to overcome this hurdle and be more honest with people about your emotions. Would you really want to live life knowing you were afraid of being honest to yourself?
You need honesty and openness to develop real connection with people. They have to see you for who you are and you have to see them for who they are. Otherwise it’s just acting.
And yet so many people are so deeply, deeply uncomfortable and afraid of this.
The fear stems from vulnerability; to be intimate and real with someone you need to expose your soft belly and hope they don’t tear into it. But sometimes, they do. And the real difficulty is that if you are vulnerable with someone — if you reveal yourself to them — and then they decide you’re not right for them, there’s an immense feeling of rejection because they’ve seen who you are and don’t want you because of it.
Rationally, you could say that people disliking who you are isn’t a bad thing — it means that those people are not for you, and any further interaction wouldn’t be beneficial in the long run. It allows you to save a little time — now you can move on and keep up the search for someone where interest is mutual.
But still, occasionally you like a person for who they are, and you spend time opening up and being vulnerable and intimate — and they decide that who you are is not right for them.
I guess this is why so many people have a hard time opening up and being expressive with how they feel — they might be rejected for being themselves. Then they think that being vulnerable in any way is risky, and so they adopt a hard shell. And while the hard shell protects you from threats, the real risk is that it stops you from being seen at all.
There’s this clip of Jim Rohn where he says: “If you think trying is risky, wait until they hand you the bill for not trying.” Being vulnerable is risky, but it’s worth the risk — because what’s the alternative? An isolated life where you were never courageous enough to show yourself to someone else? A life where you were never really honest with how you feel about someone? What a tragedy!
Though there are times when being guarded can be helpful; you can often feel it in yourself when you know that you ought to be a little coy and not reveal your cards. But this useful instinct can go into overdrive, especially if ignoring it in the past has led to a negative situation. The ability to discern when to be vulnerable and when not to becomes ever more difficult.
You can end up viewing every situation from a guarded perspective, under the impression that you can’t be open or honest with how you feel at all — just in case it backfires and you get rejected for being you.
Sometimes when this fear takes hold, people feel the risk isn’t worth it at all, and that they can instead find contentment in solitude, which they assume puts them beyond the need to be open with other people.
This individualistic attitude, despite its affirmation that it isn’t lonely, is lonely. Really fucking lonely. You can be content alone for a short period, sure. But not for your whole life.
I was watching a movie about Chris McCandless recently (Into The Wild), where a young guy decides he wants to live alone in the wilderness. He takes his trip up to Alaska woefully underprepared and somehow manages to stick it out for a while… But in his solitary journey, he eventually starts to realise something — life is better when shared or, in his words, scrawled across his school bus tomb (spoiler, sorry): “Happiness is only real when shared.”
And if you really want to be happy, if you really want to fully experience this life and connect with people, then you need to be willing to open up and be vulnerable. You need to take the risk.
And the truth, that I’m gradually learning, is this: It’s worth it.
Quotes I’m vibing with rn:
“What are the birds saying now?” I asked. “That it’s a nice day.” – The Tao of Pooh
Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as though you chose it, then act – Marcus Aurelius
Stop playing it cool, just be passionate and intense and whoever sticks around is meant for you – Random Tweet
At takeoff during flights I used to listen to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and I’d time it so that the crescendo happens right at the moment we take off and start to gain altitude. Why? It added to the intensity of the experience that’s for sure but mainly I did it because I knew without a shadow of doubt that the plane would crash and I would die. I thought “if it’s going to crash and if this is it for me then at least I get to listen to a fucking good song while it happens”.
A lot of young people assume they’re going to die in plane crashes or freak car accidents or some other relatively unlikely event. I think it’s narcissistic of us. We assume we’re the one who this extremely rare event will befall, odds be damned. Personally I see newspaper headlines in my mind when planes get a little turbulent, they torment me with every specific bit of knowledge I can remember about the flight and then mention the number who died and I see my name on the page… And then once again I load up Sinatra and accept my unlikely fate, which is still yet to meet me.
It’s only recently that I’ve stopped this habit, however I will admit that “That’s life” was playing as the plane ascended today – not on purpose… Promise.
I’ve stopped because… Well I think it’s because I don’t think I’m going to die in some freak accident anymore. Maybe my narcissism is finally abating, though writing about this suggests otherwise.
Regardless, I don’t think I’m going to die anymore in one of these abstract and unlikely ways, in all likelihood I’ll probably go out the way most people do: meandering into a slower old age and gradually seeing my body slip into decline and eventually succumbing to my frailty. Boring but statistically pretty likely.
I wonder if age and experience caused me to change my perspective. I’ve taken a lot of flights and not died… Yet.
As far as I can tell, the people who’ve lived more than me, in years at least, don’t suffer this same anxiety that fate will target them with some rare life-ending event. Perhaps because they’ve lived for long enough to know that the unlikely to happen is even more unlikely to happen to them.
Anyway, my plane’s about to land and I have music to queue up so for now I’ll take a leaf out of their book and embrace this philosophy: the worst case is unlikely and things will, probably, be okay and if not, well, that’s life.
Quotes I’m vibing with rn:
Gifts of fortune are not to be regarded as your own. What fortune gives, it may also take away – Seneca
Sympathy for all is tyranny for thee, my good neighbour – Friedrich Nietzsche
He was bored, that’s all, bored, like most people; so he created from scratch a life of complications and drama for himself. Something’s got to happen that’s the explanation for most human undertakings. – Albert Camus
Sumb Luck 