Homeward Bound

It has been a pretty good trip. I am in the Tokyo airport right now, just doing a quick post. It was sad to say "goodbye" to my friends in Thailand, since I don't have any trips planned to go back. That may have been our last visit. I should treat every goodbye as possibly the last visit, since I actually do not have a guarantee that I will see them again. I don't think it would be appropriate to get all sentimental and such, but just not to take relationships for granted. They are a blessing, and I don't know how long they each will last.
I used to take friends for granted. I thought, "hey, I can always make new friends, no matter where I move." Well, life has proved me wrong. It is not that I can't make friends, it is just that I can't replace the old ones, they are special and can't be replaced.
I can't wait to see my family.
Off to gate 22.

Say "Cheese" or "Lunch"

I had a reminder today that I am back in Thailand. I went to the client’s office in Bangkok for a pre-meeting before heading offshore. I found out that we hadn’t exactly followed all the rules in my last four trips to the rig, so today we had to do some paperwork that I wasn’t prepared for. The logistics coordinator asked if I had my regulation-sized visa photos with me. I was fresh out of those believe it or not. So, she replied “no problem, we can get them done here, follow me.” So, I followed her. We went by all the office cubicles, out the office door, took the elevator down to the lobby, then out the front door, across two lanes of traffic, between several clusters of street vendors, and into…a tiny restaurant. I stood there and looked around a moment while the logistics coordinator spoke briefly with the waitress. I noticed that all the tables were prepared with place settings and food. They were just minutes away from serving lunch for a pre-planned party. The waitress quickly moved a table in the corner about two feet away from the wall. Removed one chair, then spun the other chair around with its back against the wall. I noticed that the walls, on one side were “decorated” with a white non-reflective cloth, which apparently served well for the visa/passport photo background. They quickly set me down, whipped out a tiny tripod-mounted camera, had a brief discussion between themselves about framing (I assume that was the point of discussion), then said “cheese.” Within about 2 minutes of the flash going off the waitress had the table and chairs back in place and was seating the guests that were now pouring into the restaurant. Two photos popped out of a printer. She plucked them out as she whisked by, handed them off to the logistics coordinator, and resumed seating guests. What can I say? Welcome to Thailand.

A Good Paddling

I’m on my way to Thailand, again. This will likely be the last trip, which is both good, and bad. Good in that I won’t have any disruptions from my routine at home, and should be able to spend more time with my family and catch up with the routine work that gets puts aside while I travel. Bad in that I won’t get to see the friends that I have made there. I had just gotten through the flurry of activity that followed Hurricane Ike, and that surrounded the final post-production and premiere of my movie “Spirits Among Us.” That flurry of activity, plus the effort of negotiating my first distribution contract had me feeling like I needed a little R&R (relaxation and restoration). What I really needed was a good paddling.

So, I loaded the birthday gift my wife bought me (a kayak) onto my car, and took off for an afternoon of kayaking. I used to kayak or canoe on a regular basis, but those types of activities, like many other recreational activities had been put aside over the last several years to make room for more important activities. It is interesting that I typically think of recreational activities as just something you do that has no fundamental value, just a frivolous luxury. But, it actually re-creation, a kind of restoration that lets you get back to “who you are.”

It was not until I went without almost all forms of recreation for several years that I started realizing the value of them. I’m just now starting to schedule-in recreation as part of my “to do” list. If you have been keeping up with my blog, you know that if I don’t schedule it, I don’t do it. While the kayak and I glided down the waterway I could see God all around me in His creation. Everything was quiet, even my mind. Anyway, here a few photos of a mighty fine paddling I had last Saturday.

Too Much Fun

I could not figure out what to title this post. The past two weekends have been quite “big” for me, and they followed just after the two-week recovery from Hurricane Ike. It has been an exhausting month, mostly fun, but definitely exhausting. I just had the premiere showing of my movie “Spirits Among Us.” It was my first feature-length film, and I just recently completed all the post-production, so the weeks leading up to the event were filled with preparation activity. In addition, on the prior weekend we had a guest, Rich Christiano, visit with us and show his movie “Time Changer” at our church. Getting his event prepared, promoting it, then helping run the event was great fun, but it consumed some energy. Of course, just two weeks prior, Hurricane Ike pummeled us. We had gotten our electricity back on just a few days prior to Rich’s arrival. I can’t say the Hurricane was fun, but some very good things came out of it. We thoroughly cleaned our refrigerators and freezes, the kids learned to do activities other than electronic games, we got to know our neighbors better, and we got to endure a little hardship together as a family-which is actually good for relationships in my opinion.

So, I’m exhausted and life is switching back to “normal” mode. After I get rested up I’m sure my brain will take off running again with new ideas for media projects. So I will probably switch back to “abnormal mode” in a few weeks, which for me is actually more “normal.”


The photos are of my car parked at our lake house with so many branches down that the driveway is blocked, a turtle that showed up in our yard after the storm, and a scene from the movie premiere. Visit my other blog SpiritsAmongUsMovie.blogspot.com to learn more about that.