Blog: Time Is Once Again Ticking For Tik Tok

If you’re not a frequent user of the clock app, also known as Tik Tok, you may have missed the news that the federal government is once again attempting to ban Tik Tok in The US. If you were already aware of this news then you’ve probably also heard that the reason behind the potential ban apparently relates to “national security” but that reasoning is demonstrably false & we’re going to go over why.

I’m not sure at what point I became a political pundit blog but it seems to be the field of writing I’ve found myself most frequently in of late. Maybe it’s because I, myself am often invested in the world of politics & am a very active advocate against a lot of the BS laws that have been coming out over the last few months. I feel like I’m in the middle of the Trump years again, sharing all the horrible things that I don’t feel are receiving enough attention from the general public, but that’s not why we’re here today. We’re here to talk about the threat that has once again presented against Tik Tok.

As I mentioned above, Tik Tok is on the line in a new bipartisan bill that would force the Chinese based company to sell the United States portion of the app to a US company or face shut down. Sound familiar? Well, it should, because the same thing happened back in 2019. As also aforementioned, the federal government’s reasoning falls under the mustachioed guise of “data mining.” The humorous part about that being that Tik Tok doesn’t collect any more or different data than groups like Meta or Twitter have done for years. We’ll get back to Meta in a minute. The real problem that the feds have with Tik Tok falls into two categories, neither of which should be reasons for the outright ban of the app.

The first of these problems arises from Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s monstrous baby, rigging public opinion one Russian funded post at a time. Zuckerberg is upset that Tik Tok is out performing his two platforms; Instagram & Facebook, the latter of which has seen a fairly consistent decline in users, especially amongst those who embrace Tik Tok, Get Z & Millennials. In an attempt to compete Meta added “Reels” to their platforms which are essentially just Tik Tok rip offs, most times, quite literally. Zuckerberg, in the spirit of free market capitalism, hired GOP targeted PR firm, Targeted Victory, to run a smear campaign against the clock app amongst primarily conservative voters, a base to which has struggled to find a foothold on unfiltered, unregulated Tik Tok. Zuckerberg’s tactics clearly worked as here we are again, looking down the barrel of the same legal gun that we did when Trump found he couldn’t regulate the content of the Tok.

The second part of this is what brings in the bipartisan support for the ban. You see Tik Tok has around one hundred million users. These users, on average, spend about 90 minutes a day using the app. The networks don’t like this. In their minds 90 minutes spent on Tik Tok is 90 minutes you spent not watching CNN, HBO, Fox News, MSNBC, you name a network, I’ll give you a corresponding corporate donor. Additionally these networks are no longer in control of the message being delivered directly to the people, they no longer get to filter or modify their stories to fit the narrative that they want to push. Two recent prime examples of this are the TN’s anti-LGBTQ policies, whose law makers were exposed using Tik Tok for their hypocritical ways (Gov Bill Lee dressed in drag & LT Gov Randy McNally commenting on suggestive photos of twinks) & the train derailment that happened in East Palestine, OH which was barely, if at all covered, by new sites & networks. Tik Tok has repeatedly drawn attention to problems being swept under the rug or misdealing of politicians & the people in charge have grown tired of the wool being removed from the general publics’ eyes.

I know some of you just read those two paragraphs & are immediately discounting what I’ve just told you as conspiracy but I’m reporting exactly what has been said & what is being done. Don’t believe me? Here’s an article about the meta things & here’s a clip of the quiet parts being said out loud at a press briefing regarding the bill (skip to 5:55).

This should be frightening. It should be frightening to all of us because the logic isn’t logicing. The reasons we’re being given for the ban don’t add up. The truth of the matter is that the powers that be don’t like that we can speak to each other unfiltered, they don’t like that we can see each other’s lives, have dialogues, share news that isn’t being covered openly without passing it through the muzzle of the already foreign owned media. I don’t see people, especially younger people, standing by & taking this. I know to a lot of you Tik Tok is just an app but in reality Tik Tok has become the new ultimate exchange of ideas & information. It is digging up parts of the narrative that others would rather have silenced & they don’t like that & the fact that they’re moving so quickly to silence this platform should be alarming to all of you.

As always I hope you all have a great weekend, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Censoring Myself As An Artist

I think I’ve reached a point as a songwriter where I’m actively censoring myself. It’s not something I intended to do or wanted to happen but alas, that is where I find myself. I don’t think that I was always this way nor do I think a lot of the songs of my past are vague on the details of my personal life but I’ve had events happen in my life where people I’m close to have hurt me deeply & I find myself incapable of putting pen to paper or note to track out of a fear of hurting their feelings.

This is a problem I developed a couple of years ago that I am waking up to. You see, there are times where those in your life who support & cheer you on do the most undeniable damage they can to you & all you feel like you can do is march on & hope that time heals the wound & it doesn’t happen again. A lot of times these people don’t even know that the'y’ve caused you pain or that the things they’ve said or left unsaid made it to your eyes or ears & dug a sharp gash in your heart. I had one of these & while I wrote several songs around the events in question I began to self limit because I felt they were songs I could never share or release because they would upset the people they are about. Here in lies the paradox for me.

The thing that sucks is that I know these are songs that need to see the light of day because the struggles that I went through are not unique to my person & in releasing them to a broader audience they stand a chance of helping someone else out there who is struggling. I also understand that I am doing myself a disservice by locking these songs behind the screen of my iPhone or the hard drive of my computer & that the greatest art often comes from the greatest pain. In all honesty I’m looking at myself going “wtf am I doing,” as I write all of this into a blog even though I’m not specifying anything.

But here’s the problem. Art is expression. It’s meant to evoke an emotion from the listener, viewer, taster, etc. & by cutting myself off from the art that hurts, the art within me that is real, I am censoring myself as an artist & producing blunted content that helps no one & limits my growth both as a human being & as an artist. In shying away into what is safe like a chastised dog I have placed a wall between myself & the true art that lies in wait within me & I’m not sure I know how to tear it down.

The easy answer to that, naturally, is share & release the songs, but they are songs that require difficult conversations & may cause further damage to a wound that has found some form of healing, even if It’s not how I would like. But what must be done to the bone that has been set improperly & healed crooked? It must be unmade to heal properly. It is a redemption that my heart yearns for but that I fear is nothing more than a fantasy, so I sit stuck in indecision & with a great filter hindering my art.

This is true for those of you reading this who may not be artists as well. I think that we often times allow our ache to be swept under the rug so that we can continue to have certain relationships where we feel the connection outweighs our suffering. It’s a hard road to tread & a hard decision to make, especially if the wound is old. But I feel that we limit ourselves entirely by doing so, not just in the artistic sense but in our development as human beings. It’s often said that you can tell when someone experienced unresolved trauma because they often stagnate in their personal growth. People harmed at 25 remain the same mentally emotionally as they move into their 30s because they would rather cover the wound than face it.

I know I am not alone in this &, if this resonates with you, I hope you know that you are not alone. Your reservations are just as valid as your pain but can you imagine just how joyous it will feel the day that pain is set free, the day the conflict that has been eating you up inside is resolved? Maybe it is worth it, maybe it’s not, but in the end, that’s up to you to decide, just as it is for me. I want so badly to lean into the freedom but I’d be lying if I said fear wasn’t holding me back. As my friend Stephen Lovegrove says, “the path that scares you the most is usually the correct one.” Maybe it’s time to take the scary path & step out of the pain that has become comfortable. Maybe it’s time to step on a few toes.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: How Long Before You Say “Tennessee Ya" To Tennessee?

Cheeky title aside this post does require a bit of a trigger warning. It’s also probably worth noting that all points & facts here within are valid & true especially regarding laws & events, that’s not to say they won’t include my own feelings about them.

Thanks.

Trigger Warning: Homophobic/Transphobic Language, Suicide, Fascism, & Racism

If you’re not a Tennessee resident you may have missed just how awful the last month & specifically the last 24 hours have been for marginalized groups here, especially where the LGBTQ & Black communities are concerned. Within the last 24 hours Tennessee’s drag ban has been signed, the bill that bans parents from supporting gender affirming care for their trans children was signed, a Republican house member advocated for the legalization of lynching, & a banner appeared off the highway over Chestnut Street in Nashville praising Bill Lee, our horrid governor, for “tirelessly working to fight trannies & fags” saying “we must secure the existence of our people & future for white children” with a massive picture of Tennessee brandishing a swastika. To say that yesterday was defeating for a lot of us would be an understatement.

A lot of this has been an ongoing fight for the last month or so, we all waited with bated breath to see if these bills would pass the Tennessee house & then the senate, & of course, they did despite the innumerable logical arguments put in place to oppose their existence. It also feels like the first in what will undoubtably be a long string of human rights violations aimed at those who fall within the LGBTQ community coming out of Tennessee. I want to break each of these down a little so that they’re understood & can be recognized for what they are; hateful, targeted, bigoted laws.

The TN Drag Ban, which goes into effect on July 1st, 2023, will make it a felony for anyone to be dressed for performance in the “clothing opposite their biological gender” within a public space. This includes, but is not limited to, drag, any performance containing gender swapped characters (Hairspray, Ms Doubtfire, Tootsie), trans performers, & cosplay. The law makes it so that any performance containing said features must be labeled as 18+ content & anyone caught performing outside of this regulation will receive a federal sex offender charge. The law also reclassifies the art of drag as burlesque & requires establishments that support it to reapply for their license under, essentially the same business blanket as a strip club. This will cause any bar, brunch, or other location who continues hosting drag brunches & the like to relinquish their liquor license in favor of creating inclusive spaces for all people. This bill also throws into question what is to be done for performances such as Shakespeare or, as aforementioned, Ms Doubtfire & Hairspray, both of which have tour stops at TPAC in 2024. Additionally it bars drag performers from pride events going forward & throws in questions regarding the safety & legality of those within the trans community. Additionally the wording in the bill itself is incredibly vague, which is no doubt intentional.

Let’s bounce one sentence back & let’s move into the gender affirming care ban.

The second law that was signed on the desk of the repugnant Bill Lee yesterday was that which prevents parents & medical providers from providing their children with gender affirming care. This means that if a child, teen, what have you comes to their parents & says ‘I believe in my heart of hearts that I was born the wrong gender,’ that their parents are now legally bound to do nothing. They can’t provide their child with counseling that would help them to understand & move forward in their desired identity, they can’t advocate for their child in a medical sense regarding anything around their desired gender, they are limited, essentially, in what they can now legally do as parents to support their child who is already going through probably one of the most difficult times in their life under the threat of felony charges. Medical personal can no longer take steps towards assisting trans youth in any regard that affirms their new identity. What this will result in is even more of what the south is facing post abortion bans where finding doctors & nurses is becoming fairly impossible. Additionally it will cause the suicide rates of those effected, trans youth, to sky rocket. Though I would assume that’s no skin off of these legislator’s backs.

I’m going to circle back to the capital punishment discussion within the TN house yesterday since I think the first two points & the last, the banner, are all within the same line of thought & the banner was in direct response to Bill signing the two bills into law.

This banner, which I explained the contents of above, is not the first neo-nazi sentiment we’ve had come out of this state in the last 24 hours, nor is it the only one pointed at the LGBTQ community. Additionally it was discovered that a neo-nazi group & local resident, Tonya Holley, who is also a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, have put together a “hit list” of members of the LGBTQ living within Pulaski, TN. Pulaski also happens to be the founding place of the KKK. These individuals & the associated list have already been reported to Homeland Security but that hasn’t stopped members of the local government from requesting “legitiment names” of LGBTQ city members so that they can run them through the registered sex offender list, in spite of several members of the city counsel being well established members of the offender list in question.

Another item on the docket of the current Tennessee Congress has been capital punishment & reimplementing it specifically using firing squads & hangings. One member of the house, Paul Sherrell, argued that lynching should also be amended into the bill & should be legalized within the state despite having recently been outlawed nationwide. This legislator is the same who openly submitted a bill to change the name of Representative John Lewis Way to Donald Trump Way & apparently has never been shy or coy about his feelings towards the black members of the state of Tennessee.

All of this happened in a day. One singular day. And while the laws may have been coming down the pipeline for a while, the implementation & aggressive response to their implementation has all happened within the span of 24 hours. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had people texting me asking if I need to move, to leave my home, which I am an owner of, & move to somewhere more progressive, While I don’t exactly think I’m there yet, I’m beginning to wonder what will be the straw that breaks the camels back for me? What will it take to dip out of this backwards ass state & its hateful legislators who have far more to be concerned about than stripping people of their rights. Maybe let’s focus on the 1/4th of all people living below the poverty line? Maybe let’s focus on how we’re in the 80th percentile for child & maternity mortality rates, or how we have one of the worst healthcare & education systems in the entire country. Maybe, just maybe, we should focus on the things that improve people’s lives instead of those that hinder them. Maybe we should figure out a way to get the 60+% of registered voters within the state who didn’t show up to vote for the midterms, the governor race, the state congressional race, to vote.

I don’t know what will be the last straw for me, truly I don’t, but I am so beyond sick & tired of hearing this “it’s just as bad on both sides” of the aisle argument when there is one clear group stripping rights, targeting marginalized groups, endangering Americans, destroying our futures & our planet, ostracizing people, flagrantly cheating to get ahead at the polls, damaging people’s lives, & encouraging hate groups while the other side of the aisle seeks to protect this nation & all of its people. These two things are not the same & never will be. For the 380+ bills introduced just these past three months that strip LGBTQ rights I would challenge anyone to find a single one that limits the rights of those on the opposite side of the fence. They don’t exist. This culture war is costing real human beings their lives over a completely fabricated enemy. We are not groomers. I am not a groomer, none of my LGBTQ friends are groomers nor have they ever been. What we are is uncles, aunts, siblings, sons, daughters, neighbors, coworkers, tax payers, employers, etc, etc, etc just trying to live our lives in peace. No one is taking the rights or the right away but they’re damn sure taking away the rights of those they’ve decided are “the enemy.”

I hope you have a great week or weekend, whenever you end up giving this a read.

And as always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: You'll Worry Yourself Sick

I think it’s no secret at this point in our society that our emotions & the things that we give “energy” to end up coming to fruition. Call it laws of attraction, quantum physics, etc, we now have fairly solid volumes of evidence to indicate that where we place our minds, especially where our health & wellness are concerned, ends up becoming our reality. I’m a very strong believer in this & so too are many people around the globe, whether they realize it or not.

I’m going to be using the term “energy” quite often in this blog. I don’t necessarily mean a physical voltage or anything of that nature, although that is also part of it to a degree. Instead I tend to mean more about your physical, mental, social, productive, & spiritual energy. The finite amount of internal processing power we have to give in the day to day or the moment to moment.

I want to circle back to something that I said in at the end of the first paragraph before we go any farther. I mentioned that a lot of people, globally, practice & believe in this philosophy, whether or not they realize it. I mean that simply in the context of prayer. Millions, or even billions, of people around the world pray daily, some more than daily. They put thought & energy towards a desired outcome, an aspiration, &/or a need. A lot of the time these come from a place of lack; Lord, keep me safe, heal my father, help me accomplish my goals, etc, etc, etc. & I think the laws of attraction would tell us this behavior only repels our desired outcome. Our prayers are not but energy put towards what we have each decided to call our own creator. I think there’s no denying that this all functions well outside of the religious or spiritual worlds as well.

So why make this the topic of today’s conversation? Why put energy towards it?

Well, it seems over the last week I’ve been running into synchronicities. This topic seems to be popping up left & right. It’s appeared in conversations I’ve had with at least three separate individuals, it’s appeared as one of the primary topics in one of the books that I’m reading, it’s been on the Tik Toks & Instagrams I’ve been receiving. Really the frequency of its occurrence has been startling!

I think it’s also worth mentioning that I’m not here advocating for toxic positivity, which is very much a real thing. I’ve just noticed that when you live believing the worst it tends to come to fruition.

So what is worry? Why do we as a species have it? The simple answer is that is was designed to keep us alive. Worry is what propelled us forwards as a social civilization, worry towards where our next meal is going to come from, whether our kids are safe, whether there’s a predator lurking in the brush that we can’t see, but I personally don’t think it serves us as much in our present society & way of living as it use to. Worry is how we kept ourselves safe & sustained but it can also very easily be debilitating.

Much like almost anything else, too much worry can be incredibly harmful. It locks us down, prevents us from taking risks, I’d even go as far to say that it prevents us from living altogether. But the worst part of worry is that it can literally cause you to worry yourself sick or even dead.

Worry is brought on by adrenaline, it’s a form of anxiety that saps your adrenals & can cause anything from chronic fatigue to anemia. When we force our body into constant survival states of fight or flight, a state we’re only supposed to be in in short bursts to keep us alive, it wears down the body pretty quickly. This, in addition to being bad for the heart, is bad for the immune system at large. There have even been studies of people who have worried themselves into organ failure, tumors, chronic sicknesses, autoimmune diseases, etc.

Again, not harping on exclusive positivity here, I think a little worry is good for you, but as the saying goes “worry is away present energy towards & unknown tomorrow.

What am I advising? How do I recommend you behave? How do you limit your worry?

I, for one, compartmentalize my worry into rational or irrational. Is what I’m afraid of a rational thought or likely to happen? If no, then I do my best to brush it off. If it continues to nag me I sit with it & try to find the reason behind its existence in my brain. Why am I worried about this? What caused me to worry about this? How can I show my body that this is not something worth worrying about?

In the context of prayer or manifestations how do we reframe our wants & navigate away from this place of lack? Always go from a place of gratitude & joy. Instead of “heal my father” think of how joyous the miraculous reparation would feel or how incredibly it would be to reach your goals! Instead of asking for safety be grateful that you have been kept safe thus far! The key to all of this is of course belief & not letting fear, doubt, worry, & suffering embed their hooks into you & literally drag you down into sickness.

I know all of this is easier said than done. I know, especially for those of you with anxiety it’s like you telling me to just be happy as someone with depression or to pay attention as someone with ADHD, but I promise, as someone who literally had shot adrenals, that there is a path forwards that leads to an easier, more worry-free future.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Go To Hell!…Wait, No! Not Like that!

I’m feeling a bit like “Last Week Tonight” as I write this. For those unfamiliar with the John Oliver led HBO Show, John covers news that occurred over the last week at the end of what HBO decided was the end of the week, in his case being when the show aired on Sundays. In place of John Oliver & HBO’s budget on a Sunday evening you now get me, on a tablet 40,000 feet above a fly over state on a Friday evening. I had three major talking points mulling around my brain today as I set out to begin this blog; one of them regarded J.K. Rowling & the release of Hogwarts Legacy, which I felt was a bit too polarizing even within the zeitgeist of the groups that I tend to meddle around in, the second & third both pertained to the Grammys. The first of which was around Harry Styles Album of the Year win & the discourse happening there, the second was where we find ourselves today.

As aforementioned, I feel a bit like John Oliver today because in a lot of circles, this is old news. I suppose to some degree it’s also old news simply because of the played out, droll, fetishized victimhood around it. In the sense of news cycles this story is old because it happened almost five days ago, hence the “Last Week Tonight” reference.

So what are we talking about today? What is our ‘not-so-current’ event in which we are currently focusing on? Well, that would be the exhausting narrative being perpetuated around the Sam Smith/Kim Petras performance of “Unholy” from Sunday evening’s events.

If you are among the multitude that do not partake of the Grammys I would invite you to watch the performance in the link below. Remember to come back here when you’re done so that we can discuss it though!

All caught up? Great, let’s chat.

It may come as no surprise to a lot of you that this performance is being demonized for being, well, “demonic.” “Satanic.” “Devil Worship.” Blah, di, blah, di blah. It also may be already abundantly clear how I feel about this rhetoric. Within the evangelical world & their partner site, Facebook, links & sermons & the dish & the spoon are all being passed around about Sam & Kim’s on stage “devil worship.” Not only that but I have had many friends in the music industry whose evangelical parents have reached out to them with their disgust demanding justification from people who weren’t even involved who may just be bunched in because they, like Sam & Kim, are part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Y’all, it’s exhausting. Let’s break this down shall we?

First & foremost, the song is called “Unholy.” It is literally in the title & while the song may not be about submitting to Beelzebub, it is about a man being unfaithful to his wife. The imagery from the performance, which we all should have taken the time to watch by know, is that of creepy “Ring-esque” spirits clad in red dancing around Sam while they are adorned in a large red coat & a red top hat complete with devil horns. Additionally, Kim’s part is done from the confines of a jail cell on the main stage. It’s far from inspired y’all.

The performance is fine, truly. They both sound good, it’s mixed well, it’s visually appealing but it’s nothing new. It’s not groundbreaking in the least. Aside from maybe the creepy dancers there is nothing about this performance that screams “devil worshiping coven” to me. Could I maybe understand some of the flack this is getting if, let’s say, they sacrificed a goat on stage & drew a pentagram with its blood? Sure. Could I even understand it if it depicted a reversed crucifixion or something? Maybe. But we are no where near that. I think the outrage has less to do with the imagery in the performance than it does with the performers themselves.

Let’s talk about those performers. Kim Petras is a trans woman who actually became the first trans woman to ever win a Grammy in the category in which she won. Sam Smith on the other hand is an outspoken, gay, non-binary individual who openly embraces body positivity & feeling sexy in their own skin. There’s nothing that rattles the evangelical world more than the combination of which these performers are & represent. As I mentioned above this type of performance isn’t new, nor is the backlash it has received specifically where queer artists are concerned.

It feels that throughout my life there has been artist after artist who is forced to take the ire of the evangelical many. From Lady Gaga to Lil Nas X, most of these individuals also happen to fall somewhere on the queer spectrum. I don’t think that’s coincidence. You see many artists, around the world, perform what the group in question would consider uplifting Lucifer but it seems only the artists who are themselves queer or have a mostly queer fan base experience the brunt of the fury.

The ironic thing about these type of performances is that they’re often doing exactly what the artists have heard for years & years from those who oppose their “lifestyle” or art, they’re going to Hell, but when they actually call attention to this condemnation all of the sudden they’ve gone too far. It’s exhausting.

Where am I going with all of this? Well, I suppose this is all in a way so summarize the fact that artists who operated in the LGBTQIA+ space are tired of the BS. You don’t get to have it both ways; you don’t get to damn someone & then get upset when they claim the insults that’ve been hurled at them for years because embracing it allows them to take control of the narrative. If you are one of the evangelicals who are scolding these performances behind your keyboards or behind the walls of your prejudice I would advise you to pause, take a look at those around you, & understand that you are doing the exact opposite of what is commanded of you by Jesus. I’d also advise you to maybe go out & get to know some people who are actually queer, see them as the people they are, & get to know their struggles & see the part you’ve played in perpetuity.

I’m going to leave you with one more thing. I shared this particular bit of pastoral wisdom on my Instagram the other day & I’ll need to go in & see who the pastor was post flight but he essentially said “God didn’t send Jesus to earth to persecute people, what makes you think he sent you?”

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Story: Let's Go Back, Back To The Beginning

Earlier this week I grabbed coffee, or rather tea because I’m trying to cut my caffeine intake, with a new friend. At one point in the conversation he brought up my blogs. You know, this thing you’re currently feasting your eyes upon. The first thing he asked me was “how & why did you get started doing blogs” & it occurs to me now that I’ve never formally had that conversation with you all who return week after week, drift in & out, or have randomly stumbled upon this here post. It was an interesting thing to talk about & kind of piece together along the way as I told him the story but the idea of recounting it here hadn’t occurred to me until today when I sat down to write, at which time I was met with a random passing “how did you get started, how far have you come?” question while pilfering through the internet.

My blog page started as a recommendation blog. I had a former manager who commented on the fact that I always have food & drink recommendations for people when they go anywhere & that I should compile a list so that people can access that information at any time without having to text or DM me. The first one, naturally, was Nashville. I compiled a list of restaurants on one blog post & bars on another & published it to actually fairly moderate success. In fact the blog still remains actively edited to this day when I remember to make edits & feel like adding in new restaurants/bars or when some of the ones on the list have closed. From there my recommendation blogs continued. I did an LA food one next, followed by LA drink, then came Kansas City, which I’m pretty sure is a combination blog, & Portland, which I know for a fact is.

Now around this time the mailing list craze was really kicking off & I went to a seminar about marketing for artists such as myself. Someone on one of the panels brought up that one artist they knew did a weekly blog where she detailed & documented her week & then sent it out as a newsletter before the weekend. This sparked the idea of these now weekly blogs.

I knew I didn’t think my day to day life was interesting or varied enough to entice readers to come back week after week so instead I opted for a different approach. My blogs would be varied. Sometimes they would be recommendation blogs, sometimes recipes since I cook quite often, sometimes they would actually be about an event I experienced if I found that event to be interesting enough for a retelling.

Around the time I started to write blogs happened to coincide with the events & civil rights travesties of the Trump Administration. As someone who found himself incredibly politically literate & in possession of a platform, I started writing blogs highlighting the damage that was being done to The USA at large. Additionally, within that same vein, I started to write think pieces directed towards those reading who I knew might fall on the conservative spectrum about more liberal policies & why they are beneficial. I tried to frame them from the perspective of someone who would be against them to mixed success. I continued on this track, using my blog to post my opinions as well as resources when natural or political disasters struck. It wasn’t until May of 2021 that I started doing travel blogs.

Evan & I ended up in Maui right around the time that the tourism industry reopened in Hawaii. I had gone to finish the open water side of my dive certification & had just invested in a GoPro to grab footage of our time there. I did it partially for content & also so the people I knew that cared to know about my adventures had a place to turn to & get the inside scoop of all the goings on of my travels. Additionally it allowed me to combine a lot of the elements of what I was doing; storytelling, recommendations, etc., into one single post in one single place. The thing I ended up underestimating was the time in which each of these travel blogs take.

So the travel blogs ate up a lot of time, most of them ended up being around a two to three week series that took me around the totality of the week to complete for each. I had to write the stories, link the places, go through edit & add the photos, place the photos aesthetically, etc. etc. etc. but I quickly found that these were my most popular submissions. That’s until I wrote a blog called “No Hate Like Christian Love.”

NHLCL was really a think piece for me, a plea for the evangelicals of the world to look at how they were asked to behave in the book they claim to cling to & compare that to the way they are actually perceived by the world & also understand why “the church” is dying. It remains my most popular blog to this day, out performing each of my weekly submissions during the week they’re posted. NHLCL still garners easily around one hundred individual views a week just from people either searching for something of the like or having stumbled upon it some other way. It has, aside from each of my travel blogs, been the biggest source of outreach & foot traffic to this, my website.

So where are we today? Well, this piece, I suppose, could be filed under “story.” The shape that my blog has taken over the years is very reflective of who I am as an individual, all encompassing. I think, if I were to choose a direction for it to go, it would mostly remain in the story telling world, specifically as a recounting of my travels & the highs & lows of my life. I like to think that my blog has a positive influence on the world, as small or large as that is, but I suppose that’s for you all to decide, not me. The hard part about getting travel content for you all is getting to travel, having the funds & time to scour the globe for my next adventure to bring back & share with you all. If that weren’t as much of an issue, I think this blog would definitely take that shape more often than not. I’m always down for feedback though! I’d love to know what you’ve liked & disliked about my blog over the years. I’d love to know what you’d like to see more of or less of. I’m always intrigued to know who is reading my posts, why, & what they got out of it.

As always,

Much love to you all & thank you for supporting this crazy weekly thing that I do!

-C

Blog: Charlie Rogers, Renaissance Man.

I don’t remember in which grade we discussed the renaissance in history class. I’m not even entirely sure whether or not I was in middle or high school. While I’m pretty sure it was the latter, I remember immediately becoming obsessed with the idea of being “a renaissance man.”

This is a term that I heard pop up recently, though I can’t for the life of me recall where. I remember someone saying they always strove towards being a renaissance man themselves & it immediately struck a chord of commonality in me. So what exactly is a renaissance man?

According to the Oxford dictionary a renaissance man is:

“a person of many talents or areas of knowledge.”

— Oxford Dictionary, Renaissance Man

Some famous examples of which include the likes of Leonardo DiVinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, & Nicolaus Copernicus, all who excelled in multiple fields of study. The moniker of “renaissance man” is not limited to men though, nor is it limited to the time of the renaissance, with there being quite a few “renaissance women” throughout history as well as “renaissance people,” if we are being all inclusive. Nor was the idea specific to the time, though I feel it is the most prominent within culture at large. Before the renaissance individual there was the Greek concept of a polymath, having learned many things. This list includes individuals throughout early history such as Archimedes, Hypatia, Ptolemy, Imhotep, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Zhang Heng, Al-Kindi, Shen Kuo, & Averroës. Farther into history we get Ben Franklin, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Issac Newton, etc. etc. etc. Catching on to the concept yet?

So why did this become a small obsession of mine? What was it about the renaissance polymaths that made me say “ooo, that!” Well, I’ve always wanted to be a jack-of-all trade, eliminating the “master of none” part of the saying. I never wanted to be someone who was exclusively known for one thing & that’s why finding a Capital C “Career” has been difficult for me. I never JUST wanted to be known as a singer or a songwriter, I wanted to be known as the multidimensional human that I am. That’s part of why I started writing these blogs, because I felt I had more to offer the world than just the songs I sang & the performances I gave. Can we chalk it up to ADHD & chasing the dopamine a little bit? Of course. But I highly doubt any of you out there ever lived your life wanting to be one note.

So where does that place me? Well, for starters it makes it very hard for me to play the long game in the Capital C Career world. All I’ve ever wanted is to have as many plates spinning in the air as possible & to make those plates as relatively self sufficient as possible so that I can return to them with my fancy. My brain stretches me in so many different directions that the clear path forward for any given career seems impossible to me. Let’s talk about just right now shall we? Where am I at right this minute.

Well, Charlie Rogers right now is a blogger, as I sit at this computer I am a blogger. Not just am I a blogger, I am a travel blogger, a food critic, an advice columnist, a humanitarian, a recipe creator, a motivational speaker, an encourager, & a pundit. That’s just within the digital walls of this section of my website. Swipe one page up & I am an artist, a musician, a songwriter. Click on my socials & I am an influencer, a bumbling comedian, an adventurer. Search me on YouTube & I am an actor, a singer. Meet me in person & I am a scholar, wildly spiritual, peacefully grounded, a zoologist, a marine biologist, a botanist, a foodie, a connoisseur, a collector, a chef, a mixologist, an explorer, a lover, a brother, a son, & a friend. Look inside my mind & you’ll find a stoic, a wanderer, an inventor, a well of ideas, a catalyst, an empath (even though I hate that word & it’s connotations), a free spirit. How do you sum all of that up at all times? How do you “market” all of that at once?

I think in a lot of ways we all fit the renaissance man mold, it’s just that some of us, like myself, wish to act upon it. I wish to be known for all of my aspects, not just the one or two that I can focus on at a time. I want to be the touring singer-songwriter, I want to be the inventor, I want to be the philanthropist, I want to be the actor, to be the influencer, to be the traveler, the humanitarian, to be the food critic, the revolutionary, & the jack-of-all trades, but I often find myself lost in the constant tug of war these concepts give biding for my time & my mental space.

For now I’ll just claim the moniker. Here I am, Charlie Rogers, Renaissance Man, what I shall be in the future has yet to be written, but I can’t wait to see where I end up!

Here’s wishing you all a fantastic week or weekend, whenever this blog has found you.

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: A Lesson In Stoicism

This was a blog requested & suggested by Evan, so if you take issue with it, take it up with him. Ha ha. Not that there’s anything controversial or spicy about it, I just mean in terms of enjoyment. If this is not a blog that you enjoy this week, take it up with Evan.

I make this sound like it’s going to be a dull topic, which in reality I think is entirely false. I noticed, at the beginning of the year, that many of my friends, specifically those in music, were all starting a book called The Daily Stoic. Naturally I became curious & ordered a copy of the book for myself. While not a novel or journal, Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman have put together what I can only describe as a daily devotional that revolves around stoicism.

Stoicism gets a bad name, something the authors point out themselves within the introduction of the book. Often when we, culturally, think of someone who is stoic, we think of them as being walled up, impenetrable, shut off, emotionless, or cold, when in reality that is a misnomer. The impression of the stoic that I was under boils down simply to contemplative, which is almost near exactly what it is. Someone who is stoic is in their head, yes, but they are so because they are processing & assessing the world around them, reserving most of their thoughts for themselves & often only sharing that which they’ve taken the time to digest internally. I would argue that the Oxford definition sits somewhere in the middle.

“Stoic
noun
1. a person who can endure pain & hardship without showing their feelings or complaining.”

— Quote Source

Holiday & Hanselman argue that stoicism is exactly as I put, a contemplation. It is looking at an emotion & saying “why do I feel that way?” “Is it justified?” “What is the role we play in society, in life, in nature, in culture?” “How does that effect the grand scheme of things?” Etc. Etc. Etc. They themselves lean into the three main disciplines of Stoicism.; Perception (how we see & perceive the world around us), Action (the decisions & actions we take & why), & Will (how we deal with the things we cannot change, clarify, justify, & understanding our place in the world around us). The book is then broken down into daily devotionals that you are asked to sit & contemplate throughout your day, starting with whatever calendar day you picked up the book in. The prompts are short, giving an overarching theme as the title, followed by a quote from a famous stoic, & then a reframing in modern context or clarification on what the authors perceived the original author was implying. I’ve carried these throughout my day just short of the last week & have also taken the time to write out my immediate thoughts with each as I finish going through the devotional in question. I’ve been asked to share the last three days here & expand upon some of my thoughts here.

Seeing The World Like A Poet & An Artist

One of the things I often remember fondly my mate, Ali Donowho, saying that he admires the way in which I noticed the little things in life & nature & then take the time to appreciate them as much as that which is grandiose.  So often we are distracted by this larger picture that those little bits tend to fall between the cracks. This segment talks specifically about turning the uglier parts of life into something beautiful like the spilts in the bread as it bakes, the thing that becomes alluring despite it not being a part of the baker’s (artist’s) plan.

The example used by Marcus Aurelius in the book is as follows:

“Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature & come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it & grateful to the tree that gave it growth.”

There is beauty in all things even if those beauties aren't always apparent. The more time goes by the more I find love & life to thrive in the mundane, not in the overtly boisterous; like a microcosm bursting with history, love, patience, & understanding. I have often found myself rewarded by the powers that be for the appreciation for the little thing & for taking the time simply to sit & absorb the tenacity of life. To see the world as a poet or an artist is to see the world in an ever shifting glorious eruption of expression. To find the beauty in all things, not just the conventionally beautiful.

Wherever You Go, There Your Choice Is

When life feels out of our control, when the world seems to be spiraling in on us, the one constant that remains, no matter your circumstance, is that you always have a choice in how you choose to act. It doesn't matter your station, your position, your financial or how opportunistically ready you are, at the end of the day your choice lies in on your choose to behave. As Epictetus writes:

“A podium & a prison is each a place, one high & one low, but in either place your freedom of choice can be maintained, if you wish.”

You are the master of yourself & are therefore responsible for only yourself. No one can dictate the words you say, the actions you take, the course you make except for you. How you behave in the darkest of depths will always come to light with you when you're raised to the highest heights. Be sure your choses remain in line with who you want to be as a person.

Reignite Your Thoughts

Today's meditation in stoicism is unintentionally based in grace & forgiveness, specifically for one’s self.  Its argument is that it's never too late to reignite something you enjoyed about yourself or your life. It can be a belief, a habit, a skill, whatever, just because you've fallen off of the wagon doesn't mean that it's gone too far ahead of you that you can't still hop back on.

“Your principles can’t be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them, for it’s continually in your power to reignite new ones… It’s possible to start living again! See things anew as you once did- that’s how to restart life.”

-Marcus Aurelius

This can extend to any direction. It can be about something you did yesterday or an hour ago that disappointed you or you felt led you in the wrong directon. It can be about something that happened fifteen years ago or a lifetime ago, the point is that you're introspective enough to recognize you've shifted away from a belief or a behavior that you viewed as a positive influence in your life & find yourself yearning for that “lost” yesteryear. It's okay to put your stuff down, go back & pick up the joy you lost ten miles back on the road. Your life is yours to live & that includes how you act, what you believe, what you like/love, & who or what you spend your time with, & what you do that makes you feel alive. Just because you got a little lost in the woods doesn't mean the path is gone.

Like I said, I just wanted to share some of my thoughts around the topic with you as I believe dialogue is what makes all of this insightful. Just like the stoics of old had their schools to pass around ideas within, so too should we in a manner that creates a discourse. Evan had me share my thoughts because he found them insightful & I hope you did as well. I would challenge you to take up this practice as well, that doesn’t mean you need to go out & buy the book, but I think we should all get to know the inner machinations of our own minds & understand why we feel the way we do about the thoughts that drive our actions & emotions. At the very least it installs a bit of wonder back into your life & helps you to see the world around you in a completely different light than you would before.

I hope you all have a great week or weekend, whenever you find yourself reading this.

And as always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Little Abundances

If you’re a follower of mine on my Instagram, today’s blog posting will not be entirely foreign to you. I posted the tiniest anecdote around the roots of this story on my story posts a few days ago & got incredible feedback simply regarding the short paragraph that I had written. So, naturally I though that I should expand upon it in this longer form setting.

Towards the turn of the year I had a TikTok creator, of whom I should give credit for this idea if their name hadn’t been alluding me for the last few weeks, come across my daily doom scroll. She works specifically in a spiritualist setting but has had a lot of clients talk about their manifestations & how they have trouble believing that the things they want are coming their way when they live in a state of lack. She went on to explain that it, to her, an impossibility to manifest from a mindset of lack & offered a quick tip on how to escape that cumbersome feeling. Her method was altogether simple & has, over the last week & some change, become a staple in my day to day thought process.

Her suggestion for escaping scarcity mindsets was incremental. She said that every day, at the end of her day, she writes down three things that happened that were little abundances. This teaches the brain to look out for things to be thankful for & recognize that even when things don’t seem to be going your way, there are always little things to latch onto that will shine even the slightest bit of light on darker situations. So what are little abundances? What does that look like in the mundane day to day?

A little abundance is simply something that went your way in the tiniest of ways, let’s come up with some examples shall we?

Maybe there was a 10% discount on something you needed from the grocer.

Maybe your fragrance of choice or someone else’s hit the olfactory just right & made you smile.

Maybe you woke up without feeling achy or sore.

Maybe you wore an outfit that made you feel alluring or sexy.

Maybe you made it through the day with less anxiety or depression than the day prior.

Maybe you came across a post that made you think of an old friend or helped you to learn something interesting you hadn’t known before.

Maybe you simply enjoyed being in someone’s presence.

Maybe the perfect stone caught your eye as you were walking & you gained a new pocket companion.

Maybe your pet showed you affection & love.

Maybe someone in your family or friend group did.

Maybe that last quarter mile of your run felt a little easier than normal.

Maybe you found time to read a book or watch a show or movie that makes you feel something.

Maybe you had a good hair day.

Maybe you noticed a new grey hair (again is a gift after all).

Maybe you felt a sense of wanderlust walking through nature.

Maybe you got in your car & it was the perfect temperature or the perfect song was playing.

Maybe all of the machines or weights at the gym were open when you needed them.

Maybe you enjoyed a cup of your favorite tea or coffee.

Maybe an animal graced you with its presence outside.

Maybe you found a $20 note in your coat pocket.

Maybe you finally beat that level in that game you’ve been playing.

Maybe you brightened someone else’s day.

Is this starting to make sense to you? There is no limit to how “small” these little abundances can be. The point is to start recognizing them as God, The Universe, Nature, whatever you believe in sets them in your path, accepting them, & being grateful for their enrichment of your life. You cannot expect to embrace & love the unknown that is life if you aren’t willing to, as the saying goes, stop & smell the roses.

Now my method of this looks a little different. I knew that if it came down to be writing out my little abundances list every night I wouldn’t do it, I’d forget to or view it as a chore. So my list is mental & isn’t restricted to the time in which I lay my head to rest at night, nor is it limited to three items.

I count my abundances as the day rolls on, why this works for me, I don’t know. How it ends up not being forgotten, again, don’t know, but thus far, every day throughout my day, I am reminded from something within to find my little abundances that I’ve experienced thus far & look on them with love, gratitude, & admiration. On my list today: I had a package arrive that I wasn’t expecting until next week, I woke up several times in the night to Max, on of our cats, snuggled into me purring loudly, I had enough time to complete all of the tasks I needed to get done today, I had a humorous dream last night, my dogs listened when they got in a tiff while playing & I didn’t have to break up a fight, I had ample leftovers in my fridge & didn’t have to cook in a day where my time was scarce, I was notified of a refill order for one of my scripts that now I don’t have to call my doctor to get filled, I lit & dispelled some Palo Santo, one of my favorite, most comforting scents, I noticed a few of my plants have new leaves despite it being winter & not a time for usual growth, I woke up today but did so feeling energized, well, & taken care of, my Irish Breakfast Tea that I’m sipping while writing this is brewed perfectly, I got a good picture of Harvey, my rapidly aging Golden, of whom I don’t know how many more pictures I’ll have the privilege of taking.

Your life is rich my dear readers, you just have to look for it. That’s not discounting your problems, your ailments, your struggles, but the beauty in life is found in the little things, in the little abundances that show us that somewhere out there something, someone, is on our side & that this beautifully tragic, lonely, simply complex life is worth living day by day.

I’d love if you all would adopt this philosophy as well or at the very least give the abundance lists a try. Do it in your own way, make it your own, however that looks. Talk about it openly & honestly, let people in to celebrate with you your tiny victories.

I hope this post hasn’t been too flowery for some of you, I know we’re all on different levels of our life journey & have different degrees of happiness, privilege, health, & prosperity. Just know this comes from a place of love & gratitude for all of you who take the time to read my thoughts each week. You all make my little abundances list every week!

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Grace?! She Passed Away Thirty Years Ago.

For someone who doesn't believe in New Year’s Resolutions I sure am writing an awful lot of blogs about them, this being my third I think. When I sat down today to try & figure out what I wanted to write about I kept coming back to the idea of “grace.” I have made my own set of adjustments going into the new year in an attempt to get ‘back on the horse’ & have already, six days in, found myself falling short. Resolutions aside, I think we are often too hard on our short comings & falterings & I believe that a little self inflicted grace would do us all a great bit of good. I know for some of you out there the idea of grace has religious connotation or even triggers a religious trauma response but I hope by the end of this I can help to shed new light on the idea of grace & being gracious.

Let’s start out with a definition shall we? According to Merriam-Webster grace takes many linguistic forms. The one I’ve already addressed is:

“1: a: unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification
b: a virtue coming from God
c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance”

— Webster's Dictionary

And I can already feel those of you on the other end of the internet recoiling from the fear of having that definition & need for repentance nailed into your head. Let’s explore further shall we? Let’s look at the next set of definitions from M-WD.

“2: a: approval, favor
b: mercy, pardon
c: a special favor, privilege
d: disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency
e: a temporary exemption: reprieve”

— The Dictionary

It’s interesting to me that the five of these definitions fall within the same subset of definitions. In what way is a favor akin to mercy? How is an act of clemency the same as a privilege?

Much as the various religious texts would indicate grace is not something afforded to all but that exists at the same time in abundance, available to those who seek it out. Whether you seek an act of grace, of mercy, from that which you deem almighty, a ruler, a supervisor, a friend, a family member, or what have you, it is not something guaranteed or afforded without the permission & intent of the party to whom you are at the mercy of. It is a privilege to be reprieved of your guilt, shame, penance, or punishment.

So how does this tie into ourselves? How do we exercise grace when the judge of our falterings is the same person as the one requiring forgiveness? How do we set aside the shame, the guilt, the should’ve, could’ve, would’ves, of it all & release the anguish we feel? How do we afford ourselves grace? Well, I think to answer that question we have to briefly shift our focus to shame. For this I’m going to turn to Brené Brown.

In Atlas Of The Heart Brown defines shame as the following:

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed & therefore unworthy of love, belonging, & connection.”

— Atlas Of The Heart By Brené Brown, Page 137.

According to Brown shame thrives on several things, one of the primary being judgement. What dispels shame? Empathy. Self-Compassion. These allow us to look at our perfectly imperfect selves & see the humanity that lives within us. It blows perfectionism, another type of shaming, out of the way & makes way for grace. It gives us the leeway to learn from our mistakes & grow instead of festering & derailing.

“Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.”

— Brené Brown

I’m trying to get back on the wagon after the holiday. After eating poorly, not exercising my mind, body, spirit enough, not flexing my creativity enough, & definitely not drinking enough water, I decided to push myself for twelve weeks of evening out the playing field. Will I fall off as I’ve done already? Of course! Does that mean I should give up now & return to a place of discomfort & unhappiness? Absolutely not. We are human, at the end of the day, at the end of your diet, your abandoned workout equipment or stacks of books that have gone unread, we are human. Perfection is an unattainable goal that striving for will ultimately leave you feeling empty & unfulfilled. Having the grace to recognize your humanity, dust yourself off, & try again will be your saving grace & the thing that makes your spirit soar.

I want to leave you with one last anecdote this evening before I sign off & let you all get back to giving yourself grace in your day to day life.

I was recently told of a practice that many of the Native American tribes of the southwest observe. It specifically revolves around art & the pursuit of the perfect. Anytime a native artist from one of these tribes goes to finish a piece they’ve been working on; be it a knit, an item of jewelry, a painting, etc. they intentionally leave a flaw. Why? Well, two reasons. The first reason is that it allows the trapped bits of the artist’s soul that they’ve poured into their art to have a place to escape from. The second reason is that it allows a reprieve, a grace, from perfectionism & the never ending quest for that which is unreachable for us. It find this sentiment beautiful. It adds levity, humanity, & yes, grace, into a piece of art & allows the artist to free themselves from the shackles of shame.

I hope, thus far, you’re having an awesome new year. I wish you all the greatest one imaginable going forward. I want to challenge you to find little moments of grace in your day to day, not just for yourself, but for others as well. These little moments will eventually snowball into medium moments which then become larger moments & I’d be intrigued to see where that snowball leads you.

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: #Goals! Wait, Scratch That, #VisionBoards!

I’ve never been much for goal setting, though I’ve never been entirely sure why. Whether it has something to do with the fleeting fancies of ADHD or the feeling that somehow, if I don’t complete everything on it, I’m some sort of a failure, I’ve never been able to stick out my goals & make actual steps towards their achievement. That’s not to say I never meet my goals, but for some reason there’s a sterile pressure around the idea & practice of goal setting; it feels oddly corporate or cheesy, like something you do in a quarterly review with a higher up who really doesn’t care whether or not your aspirations are met. I guess a part of me still attributes goal setting to the academic setting, a worksheet to hand in for trivial credit that never actually amounts to much.

If you’ve read my previous blogs that were written around the transition between the old & new year, you’ll see that I also am not an advocate for the new year’s resolution, nor for that matter is science. Simply stated, they don’t work, they fizzle out. To some degree I’d say I feel the same about goal setting. In all honesty, I’m sure, if you’re like me, that you saw the title of this blog about “goal setting” & probably didn’t even click the link. I guess we’ll never know though seeing as the simple window shopping didn't come in to investigate.

This past year both myself & my lovely friend, Kate Cosentino, came across the same TikTok around the same week. It was a woman talking about how she, like me, hated the traditional form of goal setting & why said past goal setting attempts didn't work for her. Her approach, instead, was that of a guest who had previously appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. If their segment they talked about vision boards & what to do with them/how to place & arrange them in a way that allows you to use them towards the aims you were after. Their method was quarterly, requiring a new vision board every three months, & asked you, not only, to visualize your board on the front, but also to write your visions & goals out on the back. In this way it was similar to the “Mind Movies” that Dr Joe Dispenza uses in his seminars to teach shifting perspective & mental energy in alignment with the things you desire. As aforementioned, the vision board you’ve created is meant to be revisited on a quarterly basis, the only difference from your first board being that you are meant to review & revise.

Let’s say you put on your vision board that you want to rekindle a relationship with your parents. If at the end of Q1 you’ve made attempts & gotten no where near where you want to be you write on the back of your Q2 vision board the same goal emphasizing the things that worked & writing & evaluating a new path forward. I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that you’re meant to write how you plan to go about your visions on the back of the Q1 board.

Another major component of the vision boarding is that you’re meant to do so with a group & share your vision board with said group when you are finished. The day Kate & I came across out vision board TikTok we both planned an evening with Kimi Most & Evan to create together & share. This outward expression of your desires helps to get the word out, it helps to solidify the things you want in the words you say. After all, how can it be known what you want if you won’t ask? In this way it gets you accustomed to speaking on your wants, your shortcomings, & your plans with those who will love & nurture you along the way. It also allows people the chance to help you if something comes up on your board that they feel they have insight on.

So how did my vision boarding go? How did it turn out. Well, much like I mentioned above with goal setting, we all fell off the wagon. We did the one evening of work & then never followed up with the next three quarterly reports. That’s not to say it was a failure though as yet another aspect of this vision board journey is that you place your board somewhere you see it daily & somewhere people who enter your home will see it & can ask you about it. Again, the goal is to talk about the things you want, to keep them at the forefront of your mind so that they become the magnetic north that guides your internal compass. Mine & Evan’s have been in the kitchen, right next to the place where we consume majority of our meals. Both boards are highly visible & both have been talked about openly amongst each other, friend, & the like. I’d say of the twenty-five things I have on my board, around seven of them came true in one form or another. That’s not bad for not following the program to the letter you’re supposed to.

So why do I draw attention to all of this? Why do I talk vision boards, goals, & the steps it takes to actualize them? Well, because I’d like to, if I may, use the last half of this blog as a digital vision board, so to speak. I’m sure in the type format it will come out looking more like a goals list but I promise you, on the other end of this I will be making a vision board to represent all of the things listed below & probably more. I’m doing this here as a form of accountability. We’re meant to share & talk about our dreams & that’s what I’m doing here. I’d also like, if you may, for you to remind me to revisit this quarterly, checking off & adjusting as we go along!

I wish you all the happiest of new years, filled to the brim with love & joy!

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Charlie’s 2023 Digital Vision Board

-Sign A Publishing Deal (Smack, Universal, Warner Chapel)

-Get At Least Five Outside Cuts

-Tour As An Opener For A Larger Act

-Sign With A Talent Agency (WME, CAA, ACA)

-Get Paid To Travel

-Get Paid To Promote The Products I Already Use

-Cross Two More Continents Off The Total Seven (Still Need South America, Australia, Africa, & Antarctica)

-Release A Minimum Of One Song Per Quarter

-Get Verified Across All Social Platforms

-Grow Creatively

-Help More People

-Get Social Numbers Up (Instagram 20K BYE, TIKTOK 10K BYE, ETC)

-Get 1K Spotify Followers

-Get On Editorial Playlists For Spotify & Apple Music

-Visit Japan

-See The Northern Lights (Preferably In Iceland)

-Become A Master Diver

-Have At Least One Song Trend

-Write More Honest Lyrics

-Cut Medicine Written By Harry Styles

-Do More Features

-Add At Least Five More Michelin Stars To My Belt

-Find Daily Moments Of Gratitude

-Get Back Into Eating In A Healthier Manner

-Hit The Gym At Least Four Times A Week

-Walk My Dogs More

-Spend More Time With The People Who Bring Me Joy & Less With Those Who Don’t

-Find A Consistent Form Of Financial Freedom That’s Not Soul Sucking

-Embrace The Unknown

Blog: If Jesus Is The Reason For The Season, Then Why Does It Feel So Cold?

Back in June I was inspired to write a blog call “No Hate Like Christian Love.” At the time I was hesitant to put out the blog simply because I have people near & dear to me that I thought would disapprove of scoff at the blog simply because of what I chose to title it. I was wrong. In fact, to this day, exactly seven months later, it still remains the most popular blog of mine that I have ever written averaging anywhere from 100-200 individual monthly readers. It’s the blog I’ve received the most feedback on as well, all of which has been set to the tune of agreement. These, for the most part, are people who have been burned or ostracized by the church & it breaks my heart to see the commonality that so many of them share.

When I sat down to write today my brain just kept drifting back to that blog & it got me thinking, have things improved since June, when I wrote & posted it, or are things the same or worse then they were then from the standpoint of Christians using their beliefs as a “moral’ superiority? Sadly, I think the answer is the latter.

Over Thanksgiving I had this discussion with several people in my life who I would consider to be or have at one point or another been right smack dab in the middle of the church Christian lifestyle. This group included my parents; life long church goers & believers who lead the worship team at their small American Baptist Church, my dear friend David; a “missions” worker around the world & lover of Jesus (I put missions in quotes simply because what he does, to me, doesn’t constitute classification under the same blanket as the traditional colonist mentality & practice of missions work), & Evan; a former worship leader & attendee of bible college. Naturally I was also a part of this group, not just the silent observer.

Our discussion began around the subject of Christmas & my often outright disdain for the holiday. I think for a lot of us, especially in my generation & younger, Christmas is not the shining beacon of hope & joy that it is for those living in the older generations. In addition, we, generationally, have more access to the global network of information & have seen behind the curtain where Christmas & its outright stolen traditions are concerned. We don’t buy into the commercialism of the holiday, partially because a lot of us can’t afford to, & thus it becomes one of the most stressful times of the year for us all. However, my mother offered the argument that at the end of the day, what we are celebrating, as christians, is the birth of Christ. The “reason for the season” & all that.

I’m not sure how we circled back to the whole “no hate like christian love thing” but I believe it stemmed from one of my parents asking why I no longer attend church if I, as I say, consider myself a believer. From there entered David, a literal missionary who refuses to find a church to call his “home.” We talked about how the church is driving people away in droves & trying desperately to blame it on the media, or the LGBTQIA+ population, or schools, or drag story time, but is refusing outright to look inward & see itself as the root cause.

We came back to how “young people just don’t want to believe” & I offered the argument of what is being missed. You see, much like I mentioned in NHLCL (No Hate Like Christian Love), we read the book, we were taught about Jesus. We attended the Sunday schools & the church services & the vacation bible school, but when we got to an age where critical thinking came into play, where identity started to form, we looked around at the “brood of vipers” (Matt 12:34) & saw not a scrape of the unconditional love of Christ. We saw people who claimed to love us as we are outwardly belittle & damn the very people that we are or the people that we love & said “enough of this, this is not what love looks like” & we left. As I said in NHLCL, as well as that evening, the problem isn’t that we weren’t taught about Jesus, the problem is that we were & we don’t see that reflected in the people or the values of the church.

I hope what I’ve said thus far hasn’t turned too many of you off. I’m sure there are many people who will read this & not even make it to this paragraph, but if we, as christians, are to overcome the stigmas wrapped around us & the church, then we have to listen & we have to apply critical thinking & we have to know our biblical history & understand when & where & why the bible was modified to fit certain political ideology & personal agendas because this is another huge thing turning people away from churches.

Did you know that christians are far more likely to believe conspiracy theories than any other religious affiliation? Did you know that the brains of those identifying as atheist have been proven to think far more analytically than those identifying as believers? Why do you think that is? As I mentioned in the previous blog, I am not here to lecture or demean, nor am I here to minimize your beliefs. I just want to pose questions that get people thinking. I want to bridge the gap between the, dare I say, secluded world of the church & the outside world. Christians, the stigma against you is that you are self absorbed, incapable of critical thought, & often downright heartless, which for a religion based supposedly all in love, doesn’t seem to align does it?

Something that I had to cope with & make peace with is the following statement:

If you need the threat of eternal damnation to evoke good behavior & kindness then it’s time to revaluate your moral standing & personal shortcomings.

We are called to love, unconditionally, to embrace humanity with open arms & without judgment WITHOUT the expectation of reward, but simply out of the kindness of your heart. That reward includes salvation.

I write all of this because I want you to see. If Jesus is truly, to you, the reason for the season, then celebrate that & celebrate that as Christ would. Christ wouldn’t yell at the cashier for saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” because they don’t know which of the six holidays that happen in December you celebrate. Christ would celebrate with an outpour of love, compassion, kindness, & empathy. Not commercialism, elitism, being exclusionary, & ‘holier than thou.’

There is a reason that NHLCL remains my top viewed post. It’s because it speaks to a universal ache felt by those on the receiving end of christianity. It speaks to the religious trauma, to the family issues, to the isolation that so many feel because of those operating out of the “love of Christ.”

If Jesus is the reason for the season, then why does it feel so cold to so many people when it should be filled with warmth, joy, community, & happiness?

Happy Holidays & Much Love To You All,

-C

Charlie's Guide To Holiday Drinks & Wine

I got the request for this blog from my mate Rhys Jones. In addition to having the most Welsh name on planet earth, Rhys & his lovely bride, & my dear friend Victoria, were Evan & I’s drinking buddies in London. Me being a food fiend & a cocktail connoisseur, I was always dragging the bunch around London, taking them to cocktail bars & speakeasies that they had never heard of. Additionally, during the 2020 lockdown, I stocked my bar & began learning the art of craft cocktail work, of which, much like food, I treat less as the refined practice it has become & more of an ever changing & evolving art form demanding different ingredients not only in diversified flavor profiles but also in quantities. All of that to say that the following recipes will not be precise & you should adjust them as you see fit!

In addition to the few cocktail recipes that I plan to list below I will also be listing my personal wine recommendations for where holiday dinners are concerned. You will note that I have a regional bias for the Willamette Valley where Pinots & Rieslings are concerned, but I just blame the Oregonian in me. Let’s start off there shall we, with the wine! My go to holiday dinner wines will follow below!

WINES:

REDS:

-A To Z Pinot Noir: My stand by, my go to. Readily available in markets around the US & pairs perfectly with majority of your holiday table staples. If you’re wanting to bump the price tag up a little bit look for anything by their parent label Rex Hill & you won’t be disappointed!

-Laurence et Rémi Dufaitre Beaujolais Villages Prèmices…Le Millèsime Rouge: I’ll be honest, that name took me a minute to type. Another red from the lighter side of the spectrum, Gamay can be a little on the soft red fruit side of things. A fine sipper in its own rite, this bottle disappears fast once it’s opened.

-Scaia Corvina: If you’re looking for something slightly bolder here’s a really nice staple as well. This wine always impresses simply because it has a very lavender taste to it. Leaning a little more into the “red meats & pasta” pairing of red wines, I think this bottle still compliments a full holiday spread in style.

WHITES:

A To Z Riesling: I warned you. They’re just such a solid brand that is incredibly accessible. This riesling is perfectly balanced, not too dry, not too sweet. It pleases anyone from Chard drinkers to the Moscato guzzlers. Truly a lovingly bright & complex bottle that is sure to please.

Weingut Berger Grüner Veltliner: A lovely little Austrian grape that is often overlooked for the more mainstream French varietals. Affordable, dependable, readily available. It definitely leans more on the dry side of the spectrum which makes it highly suitable for those gamut of holiday fare.

Argyle Brut: Let’s add something sparkling shall we & while we’re at it, let’s make it also from Oregon! This one is a bit of a cheat because it is primarily Chardonnay while featuring just a touch of Pinot Noir, both being grapes that pair exceptionally well with holiday dinners. Truly refreshing & balanced.

---

COCKTAILS:

As I said above, my cocktail making isn’t always an exact science, especially where the batched goods are concerned, nor are the often written out so I will do my utmost to remember them as they are & to the best of my ability. I am also going to include some cocktails that I love for the winter that are not my own. Their originators will be credited along with the beverages of their design.

CHARLIE’S MULLED WINE/GLUHWEIN:

-Jug Of Cheapish Medium-Bold Red Wine (Chianti, Merlot, etc)

-1 Cup Brandy or Cognac

-1/2 Cup Spiced Rum

-2 Cups Pomegranate Juice

-1.5 Cups of Cranberry Juice

-Sugar To Taste (Usually Ends Up 1-2 Cups)

-2 Blood Oranges Cut into Circles

-2 Lemons Cut into Circles

-1 Cup Pomegranate Arils

-2 Tablespoons Whole Cloves

-4-5 Cinnamon Sticks

-2-3 Star Anise

-1 Tablespoon Allspice

- 1 Sprig of Mint

(Optional):

-Rosemary Sprigs

-Cranberries

-Black Walnut Bitters

In a large sauce lidded pan bring all ingredients with the exception of the Brandy/Cognac to a light boil. Once the mixture starts to boil reduce it to a simmer & cook until spices & oils are thoroughly combined. Add Sugar to taste then when you’re satisfied with it add in the Cognac to replace any lost alcohol. Taste & adjust as needed & serve hot with a Cinnamon Stick or Orange Slice! Have fun with it, play with different ingredients & different combinations til you find something uniquely yours!

A (SLIGHTLY MODIFIED) DREARY DAY’S NIGHT:
Originally by Nic Hamilton

The modifications I’ve made to this drink are small but they, in my opinion, really can make or break it for me.

-4 Oz Brewed Peppermint & Lemongrass Tea (I recommend Steepologie’s Minty Kisses)

-2 Cinnamon Sticks

-.75 Oz Monkey Shoulder Scotch Whisky

-.75 Oz Jura 10 Year Scotch Whisky

.75 Oz Grade A Maple Syrup

.5 Oz Lemon Juice

.25 Oz Rosemary Simple Syrup (1 Part Sugar, 1 Part Water, 1 Sprig Rosemary. Cook in a Pan.)

Start by crushing up one of your cinnamon sticks. Make a little pile out of it & light that beotch on fire. Once it’s burning nicely cover it with a mug. After around 15-30 seconds your mug should be thoroughly smoked, flip it back over & assemble the rest of the cocktail. The last thing to go in should be your tea & it should go in boiling, & I mean boiling, hot. Garnish with your unburnt cinnamon stick.

Note A: I like to batch this in a hot coffee dispenser & put extra tea & a cinnamon stick or two in the coffee filter slot.

Note B: If you find this version of the drink to be too strong for you (please try first before you decide that) then I would half the amount of Whisky.

CHARLIE’S GROG:

-8 Oz. Hot Water

-3 Oz. Black Rum (I use Diplomático Reserva Exclusiva)

-.5 Oz Lime Juice

.25 Oz Pineapple Juice

-.25 Oz. POG Syrup (Monin’s Brand is “Hawaiian Island”)

-2 Teaspoons Brown Sugar

-1 Dash Angostura Bitters

-1 Dash Black Walnut Bitters

As above, mix your room temp/cool ingredients first in a mug, then add the Water. Stir til well combined then garnish with a lime wedge, cinnamon stick, dried pineapple ring, or any combination of the three!

CHARLIE’S ALMOND MEZCAL OLD FASHIONED:

-1 Oz. Mezcal ( I use Ilegal)

-.25 Oz Amaretto

-.25 Oz Agave Syrup

-2 Dashes Orange Bitters

Mix ingredients in a glass with ice. Stir for a good while, like you’re making a Negroni. Once slightly diluted strain over a large ice cube in a low ball glass & zest an Orange over the top!

Obliterated (Acoustic Mix) by Charlie Rogers-Official Music Video

Two years ago today I released the Obliterated (Acoustic Mix). Over those past two years you all have shown that song a great deal of love so as a way of saying “thank you” I wanted to gift you all the previously unreleased one shot video for Obliterated (Acoustic Mix) that Evan & I shot in September of 2020.

The video is rough & unpolished but that’s how I always imagined it, shaky cam & all. I hope you enjoy it & know just how much I appreciate all of the love you have given this song over its lifetime.

Thank you all & much love!

-C

Travel Blog: Indonesia: Part Three- Another Day, Another Nat Geo Experience

Welcome back world travelers! We’ve made it, this is the final entry in my Indonesia series revolving around the Lembeh Strait! I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey thus far & are ready to dive (see what I did there) into our final segment today! If you’re not all caught up on my escapades, no worries, I’ll link the other two installments right below this introductory paragraph! Enough of the pretext, shall we continue?

---

INDONESIA

PART THREE:

Day Five

Woke to another lovely day on Lembeh. The rain that rolled in over night had cooled the morning leisurely to somewhere in the low 80s. My breakfast consisted of my same morning staples; Jasmine Tea, Raspberry, Nutella Toast, Eggs, Bacon or Sausage, Fruit, & Fresh Juice. I think this is the morning I subbed one of the aforementioned items out for Granola topped in Yogurt, Honey, & Chopped Fruit, but that’s neither here nor there. No interesting creatures came out to play either while dinning or while making our way down the dock, however, that’s not to say the day wasn’t interesting. Far from it!

Remember in the last blog when I mentioned that I lost track of our dive sites at a certain point. Well folks, we’ve reached the pinnacle of it as, in my dive log, the next two days are full of sites that were already programed into the SSI app so I didn’t have to deal with the grueling entry process for each site. There are a few, especially the last couple days that I have written down, so we shall return to form when we get there!

Dive #1 of the day was a muck dive & deep one at that. Set at off the shore from Makawide, I remember descending the slope with Sam & Puri (if you don’t know who these people are at this point, you haven’t been paying attention) & feeling like we were fairly deep. The thing about muck diving is that most of the critters typically are fairly muted in their color pallet & if they aren’t, you’re usually using a flashlight to spot them anyway which restores their full color. This is much more noticeable on reefs where the many colored corals seem to all fade to shades of blues & blacks. All of that being a round about way of saying that I didn’t notice we’d dropped down to almost 107ft until I looked at my dive computer & was immediately aghast at what I saw. I even got Sam’s attention to show her & she gave me a “shocked eye” stare back at my readings. Was the depth worth it? Absolutely.

I’m going to sidebar again, sorry you’re dealing with an ADHD riddled writer here, but when I was in Fiji I got my deep water certification & remember telling my father later that I didn’t really have much of a desire to dive that deep again. It drastically cuts your dive time &, in Fiji at least, there wasn’t much to see & all the coloration was gone. Muck diving is truly a different animal I guess!

So what did we find at that depth? We found one of the rarer Lembeh creatures. Not only that, but we sat & watched it hunt.

At a depth of around 90 feet we found the highly sought after Rhinoceros Scorpionfish. The Rhinoceros is a marvelous creature that is uncharacteristically colorful compared to the rest of the Scorpion/Stonefish family. Having evolved to look like a dead leaf, they sway back & forth on modified pectoral fins as they inch across the substrate mimicking the movement of a leaf caught in the sway of the tides. Our Rhinoceros was bright orange & was in the process of hunting a cardinal fish. So, of course we had to sit & watch!

We sat, anchored to the bottom for around ten minutes just watching this fish play coy as it gained footing on its prey inchmeal. We gingerly made our way along with it, being sure to keep it in frame & in light so that we would catch the end of its successful hunt on camera, & that’s exactly what we did! Finally after coming within two inches of the cardinal the scorpion struck. It did so at a rate that my camera, running 120 frames per second, only managed to snag one or two frames of its extended jaws.

Funny enough, while we were pursuing the scorpionfish another ambush predator decided to wriggle its way between Sam & I. A massive Lionfish decided it had had enough of us scaring off any further perspective prey & made its complaints known as it grumpily swam between us.

This dive was a gold mine, in addition to the Scorpionfish we saw another Gurnard skidding across the bottom & two massive Titan Triggerfish, which we were sure to steer well clear of. They bite. Hard.

The most exciting find of the dive, especially for Puri, was the gigantic Sea Turtle we came across resting on the bottom around 40 feet. This turtle was one of the largest I’d seen in the wild & Puri was overjoyed as apparently they hadn’t seen any turtles in a good long while. We tried not to disturb it but it took off as soon as we got within 10-15 feet of it.

Farther up the slope, towards the beginning was a reef that sat just under the water line. Here we found the typical Anemones & Clowns, Damsels, Tangs, etc., but we also found another Sea Crete & several large Yellow Trumpetfish.

For the next dive we headed back towards the resort to a small archipelago of islands. Apparently their name in Indonesian roughly translated to something along the lines of “The Broken Islands” because they used to be a part of one singular mass of land, instead of their own separate entities. We loaded up on our typical rest food & drink items (tea, coffee, water, milo, cake, & fruit) & were just about to get back in the water when I was handed a guitar.

Apparently someone let it slip that I am a singer & the crew had brought a guitar to get me to perform for them. I reluctantly agreed & sat tuning the instrument for a minute before I played them one of my originals which they absolutely adored. I felt so honored & handed back the guitar before I got all of my gear on & was once again down in the blue.

Dive #2 was part reef & part rubble which meant high possibilities for octopus which we did in fact end up finding in the aptly named site, Critter Hunt! What’s our octopus count at this point? Three? Well, this was number four if that’s the case! It was also another unique species from the other three & another highly sought after Lembeh animal. We had stumbled upon a Wonderpus.

Yes, that’s its real name, the Wonderpus which happened to also be the name of our boat for the week. What makes the wonderpus so wonderful you ask? For that I want to divert to a short anecdote that Kim, the resort manager, told us. Kim is a Danish gent who has lived in the Lembeh area for well over 15-20 years. He said that the first time he saw a wonderpus he didn’t think anything of it, in fact, he thought it was a lion fish. How does one confuse an octopus with a lion fish? Well the wonderpus, similar to the mimic, another Lembeh favorite, can do exactly that. It can mimic. Only the wonderpus has the keen ability to alter the texture of its skin along with the length, shape, etc. of its arms & body. Our wonderpus presented to us as white & black striped with big arching brows.

I was, unfortunately, once again pulled away from my Garden Eels to come look at the octopus, but I think it was an acceptable replacement. They did let me sit & watch the garden eels afterwards for a few minutes, so I truly can’t be mad.

Additionally we came across some lovely clusters of Frogspawn Coral, some Snowflake Eels, Coral Gobies, Cowfish, Fingered Dragonettes, Panther Grouper, & I once again attempted to get a Cleaner Wrasse to clean my mouth. It didn’t work, sadly. One of these day, one of these days.

Back to shore we went where I grabbed another Pocari Sweat & sat editing til it was time for lunch & then until it was time to hit dive #3.

Dive #3 at Pintu Colada started at a sparse reef with some monumental mounds of coral. However, that’s not where we spent the majority of this dive. We spent the majority of this dive pestering Male Ribbon Eels.

For whatever reason Ribbon Eels seem to be very curious creatures. I noticed, as I was filming one of the electric blue males that he was very interested in my pointer that I had buried in the ground. I unmoored myself & passed the baton closer to the eel so that it could investigate. The eel would come pretty far out of its den to ‘smell’ the titanium stick I was using, I would get it close & then slowly inch it backwards to see just how far out they were wiling to chase the blue rod & the answer seemed pretty damn far!

Additionally this site had many Chocolate Chip Starfish, several rather aggressive Maroon Clownfish in their Bubbletip Anemones, & some type of buried Moray that I have scoured the internet for but come up blank on its identification.

Our afternoon, post dive, was fairly uneventful. I most likely spent the entirety of it, you guessed it, editing but that’s not to say the interesting parts of the day were over. Oh how wrong that assumption would be because folks, this was a four dive day. We still have the black water dive to talk about.

Now a black water dive comes in a variety of forms. Some where you’re out in the middle of the water attached to a line, letting the little critters come up to you, some where you are sat on the bottom around a light referred to as a “bonfire,” ours was a version of the latter. You see, typically the crew would go out before hand & plant the “bonfire” around 20-30 minutes in advance so that it has time to draw everything in. The problem with this is that it has the high tendency to lead to boredom. We hybridized our black water with just your standard night dive, deciding to plant & ignite the bonfire, the let it set for a while while we went around exploring & poking around in the dark.

We found ourselves some Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish, a Gorilla Crab or two, large quantities of Pipefish, a Blue Spotted Ray, an Orange Blotch Rabbitfish, some Porcupine Puffers, Banded Coral Shrimp, & a baby Barramundi (Sweet Lips). The real prize of the dive, however, were the squid.

We were back out at Aer Prang where we’d dove a few times before & done our previous night dive. Just off the clusters of Trumpet Coral Puri spotted them, two Squid suspended in the water. As we got closer their colors began to shift & change & each of the pigment cells along their body began to light up. One of the squid decided it best to try & gfto & inked, though it didn’t then attempt to flee. We swam around filming these two squid for a good 10-15 minutes before we decided it was best to leave them be & return to the bonfire. However, on the way we encountered a hand made fish trap teeming with captured fish. We all had the same thought in wanting to set the fish go, especially since the trap didn’t seem to have a line or anything attached to it, but we felt it best to leave it incase it was a local’s meal.

I mentioned briefly in the previous blog about night diving the tiny little plankton & organisms that you find while night diving. At one point, after returning to the bonfire, I held my flashlight straight upright & just watched the different varieties of life dancing in & out of the beam. We came across several free swimming crustaceans & Puri found some kind of mostly translucent organism that looked not dissimilar to the double helix of DNA.

We returned to the resort after another bulging day of diving, showered, scarfed down an incredible dinner, & were out before our heads hit the pillows.

End Of Day Five

---

Day Six

It was time to start winding down, after a full week of diving at this point our dives were starting to become a little more sparse on these our last two days. If you’re unaware, when diving, you need an 18-24 hour period between the time of your last dive & the time of your flight. This is to help prevent the bends. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I assume you know the drill at this point? Wake up, breakfast of eggs, fruit, bacon or sausage, toast, fresh juice, etc. I suppose I forgot to mention that earlier in the week the kitchen staff had found me a fresh Jackfruit, of which they continued to serve at any meal they knew I’d be at because I was one of the only few dining upon it. Most meals would end with a bowl full of jackfruit, covered in Calamansi Juice. After breakie & gathering the dive gear & camera I took with me off of the boat, it was once again time to dive. Today’s dock creature was a Spadefish, bobbing along the surface in-between the dock & the Wonderpus, our boat.

Our first dive of the day was a rubbly coral spot called Nudi Retread. It was home to many Blue-Spotted Stingrays, some beautiful Maze Corals, many Giant Clams, & even a few big ole Leopard Sea Cucumbers. It’s here where we found a pair of Tozeuma Shrimp but, you guessed it, my camera said “Tozeuma Shrimp who? I’m more interested in this plain old background behind them.”

The site also, of course, had its fair share of Bubble Coral, Anemones con Clowns, Sea Fans, & even a Miniatus Grouper with its bright blue spotted red body.

After we surfaced we headed off to dive #2, set off the island chain in the middle of Lembeh.

Dive two was a reef dive, Sarena Patah. Amongst the reef I once again tried my hand at getting Cleaner Wrasse to excavate my mouth to no avail, found many Tiger Jawfish popping their heads out of the sand, a mating pair of Singapore Angelfish, a school of Pajama Cardinal fish, some Moorish Idols & a Mosaic Pufferfish. After our time below the surface it was time to head back to NAD Lembeh for lunch & my daily ritual of editing over a Pocari Sweat.

Our third dive was at Tanjung Kusu-Kusu or Cape Kusu-Kusu as it would be in Ingles. It was another muck dive location with sparse reef near the two. Immediately upon our decent we discovered a pair of Spiny Tiger Shrimp hiding in a cup sponge. Puri was very excited at the find & wrote on his tablet “Tiger Shrimp” followed by “a very special shrimp.” The shrimp were about an inch in length & were covered in white spikes. The white body of the shrimp had orange spots on it surrounded by smaller black spots & while the resemblance to a tiger is iffy, I can understand why it was so named to a degree.

The dive was also full of many Lionfish & Scorpionfish though the coolest thing we discovered PSTS (Post Spiny Tiger Shrimp) was a rock covered in a microcosm of predator & prey.

All along this little portion of reef, about the size of a Fiat, were schools & schools of Cardinalfish. I’m talking hundreds if not thousands of them, all tucked in the rock & poking out just a tad. Below the school, patiently waiting was a Stonefish blending perfectly into the rock work where it perched, just waiting for one of the cardinals to dip a little bit too close. Just around the rock, under where the stonefish sat was a White Mouth Moray Eel, farther around on the other side of the rocks there was a Ribbon Eel, & amongst the rock there were assorted Dwarf Lionfish & Scorpions.

Though we didn’t end up doing a dive in the evening, that doesn’t mean I was done with aquatic life for the day. In fact, I got a glimpse of some aquatic wildlife on the shore during our leave. No, that’s not a typo, ‘on’ is the correct use here.

Along the beach of our little bay I started to notice little pricks of movement. My initial thought was that it was crabs or some other burrowing crustacean but I was wrong & was so excited to find what it actually was. All along the shore line, on the beach, were about ten Mudskippers. Mudskippers are a type of goby that has evolved to move, in a limited capacity, on land. They come out of the water to feed on the insects that congregate near the shoreline & can be out of water for around two days! Funny enough the Indonesian name for the mudskipper is ‘Ikan Tambio’ which means “prostitute fish” though I can’t for the life of me figure out why they are so named.

Darin, our trip guide & owner of Midwest Aquatics, the dive shop I went through for my certification, Fiji, & Indonesia, had asked previously if we could do a village excursion or something of the like on land. He & Simon came to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t for the best of the group & instead decided on a sunset cruise for the lot of us! The Wonderpus had been stripped of our gear, wiped down, dried out, & instead was packed with coolers with drinks & bowls of snacks

We went all the way up the strait to a village where the locals were farming pearls, the children rushed out into the water yelling any english phrases they could think of to get our attention & we affectionately waved back & yelled “hello” to them on the shore. Once we passed the lighthouse into the mouth of the strait it was revealed that it was Darin’s birthday & his lovely wife & incredibly talented photographer, Cari had requested a cake from the kitchen to bring aboard. We all sang “Happy Birthday” & slices of the cake were passed around before we turned back & headed towards the south end of the strait.

Along the way I was once again passed the guitar but I opted for soft covers & what I call “call to prayer” guitar just to fill the space with something atmospheric & not make it the “Charlie Rogers Show” on someone else’s day.

As we neared Bitung we began to hear & see the music festival that had been going on throughout the week. Spotlights scraped the clouds & music ricocheted across the water with thunderous bass that was soon replaced by actual thunder as a storm rolled in. We all ducked for shelter as if we hadn’t just spent the last week completely drenched & the boat made its way back to shore where showers, dinner, & beds awaited us all.

End Of Day Six

---

Day Seven

Well, we’re here, the last day of dives for this trip. Have we had fun? Have we enjoyed the ride? I promise you it’s not over yet! Like I said, we still have one more day of diving!

The morning started unceremoniously with the typical wake & break…fast, followed by the morning pack up, & walk down to the dock. There weren’t any dock critters of interest this morning, but we’ll get back to that in the afternoon! Our first dive was Hairy Larry, so named, apparently, because of the hairy diver guide that “discovered” & named it. One thing is for sure, Mr. Larry had found himself a gorgeous reef & wall dive.

The afternoon prior we’d been asked by the guides what we wanted our last day of diving to look like, the general consensus was something a little more reef forward but still balanced with muck & rubble, so that’s what the guides delivered!

We were dropped into the site at the top of the reef. Immediately we were greeted by Honeycomb Grouper, tons of Clowns & Anemones with Benggai Cardinalfish hovering near by, Squirrelfish, Bicolored Angelfish, & even another Day Octopus!

The wall portion of the dive was at around 60-70 feet. It was stacked corals overlooking a sandy forever with a multitude of fish, nudibranchs, & other invertebrates ducking in & out of their high rise hovels. The wall was home to hundreds of varieties of Torch Corals, a Blue Spiny Lobster, & large Granulated Seastars.

As we made our way from the wall, through the rubble downslope from the reef, Puri started picking through the dead coral in search of a very specific score. Puri was searching for Mosaic Boxer/Pompom Crabs. A boxer crab is a wee crustacean about the size of your thumb nail. Their name is derived from the itty bitty anemones they carry in their claws & use to sweep the water for microscopic food, which they then pilfer from the anemones. As Puri was scouting the rock a very interested, very large Sunset Wrasse came over to see if we kicked up anything edible for him. He didn’t seem at all afraid of us divers & in fact was very keen to hang out & remained very close to us the entirety of our search.

Puri eventually did find a boxer crab which he brought over to a large rock on the branch of deceased coral it had been occupying. We three gathered around the rock & Deb & her guide even joined us. We all sat watching the pompom swipe the water & feed. As we were watching it another of the guides cut through us & placed a second pompom crab on the rock with the one we were observing.

I’m still beyond amazed at the eyes on these Indonesian guides. All week they were able to find the smallest of creatures in often the dimmest of lighting. Each of them would point out things that it would often take my eyes thirty seconds to a minute to focus on. The crabs are a great example of this.

After we left the crustaceans to their filter feeding I ran into a Foxface, a few massive schools of Green Chromis, a Naso Tang, many more Bubbletip Anemones.

Once we were back on the reef we immediately noticed the innumerable Giant Clams that dotted the coralscape. Blues, browns, greens, any color, variety, & size you can think of, they were there. I found a Common Egg Cowry feeding on some Leather Coral, which if you remember from my Fiji blog was one of my favorite finds simply because of the striking nature of its deep, black pigment.

The reef was mostly stoney corals & leathers; Birds Nest, Antler Coral, Trumpet Coral, Maze Coral, etc. Amongst these I found a Scopas Tang, two big ole Lobsters, a brown Trumpetfish, Hawkfish, & a Triangle Butterflyfish. I had a really had time returning to the surface because I felt everywhere I turned there were new things to see.

Dive #2 took us back near the site of the previous to a site called Makawidey Pier. The other dive boat, the Mimic, joined us at the site where we sat side by side enjoying the surface interval. About halfway through it I was once again handed the guitar. This time the crew was asking that I perform a mini set for them of anywhere from 3-5 songs. It’s always funny to me how when you’re put on the spot your mind completely blanks on what songs you have available in your catalog, but I did manage to pull out a few more songs for the crew that had worked so hard on our behalf throughout the week.

Makawidey was half reef & half muck. Once we were down we immediately began to find incredible creatures!

We almost landed right on top of a Blue-Spotted Stingray when we entered. It hightailed it out of our vicinity, literally. We headed down father & found three separate Seahorses all within 100 ft of each other; one white & one a light grey, & one with red stripes. Additionally I spend a little more time pestering Ribbon Eels.

The muck eventually gave way to reef where we found a pair of Scissortail Gobies, a Golden Rabbitfish, Benggai Cardinals with babies in their mouthes, a White Mouth Moray Eel, a gigantic field of Pulsing Xenia, & Hammer Coral as far as the eye can see.

I mean that last bit literally, the hammer coral must have covered the length of a football field, it took my breath away. I kept thinking back to the aquarium hobbyists who would kill for just a single head of it. Typically a small head of hammer coral starts are $50 & that’s for something the size of a nickel.

After our second dive we were off to the resort for, what would be the rest of the time for a lot of people. There was no afternoon dive on this day but that didn’t stop me from feeding my saltwater soul a few more times before we left.

In lieu of a dive I took myself snorkeling/freediving. NAD Lembeh Resort has a lovely little house reef that I felt I needed to explore before we departed. I’d spent my week peering into the water & remarking at the wildlife from the dock so I decided to get a closer look.

I didn’t find much on the south end of the reef, but when I got closer to the dock my luck started to change. The dock itself was covered in Long Spine Sea Urchins. As I was (cautiously) passing through the legs of the pier I saw a Triggerfish that I still have yet to identify. The reef on the north end of the resort was flourishing; Clams, schools of Pipefish, Trumpetfish, & Anthias all dotted the rock work. When I got back towards the dock I found an Angelfish upside down picking at the floatation devices, a school of Batfish, & even a few little Boxfish. All just from hopping in the water 100 feet from where I’d been sleeping the last week. Around 4:30 we loaded up the dive boat one last time & headed out.

Yes, I said there was no afternoon dive BUT there was an early evening one! This was a dive I’d been looking forward to all week long. We were going on a Mandarin Goby dive!

Mandarin Gobies, Seahorses, Garden Eels, Cleaner Wrasse, all my obsession. I hadn’t seen a single mandarin the entirety of our trip & it was really starting to bum me out because they’re one of my all time favorite fish & there we were about to do a whole dive dedicated to them.

The mandarin dive takes place in a bay called Bianca, it’s named after the boat, The Bianca, that has been anchored there for a few decades now. The dive is a stationary dive, meaning that you sit on the bottom & wait for the things to come to you. So sit & wait we did.

The dive takes place at twilight, right when the sun has sunk below the horizon. We were all kneeling around a cluster of broken coral waiting. You aren’t allowed to use the full brightness of your torch & red light is mandatory.

So there we sat, waiting on mandarin gobies. Then, almost all at once, they started to pop out of the coral debris, they seemed to come from everywhere. The larger females would come out, flare up a little bit, & the smaller males would come pouring out in an attempt to gain her affections. Once she’d found one she liked they’d do a courtship dance where they rose up in the water, hooked together side by side. Then on cue they’d both release (& release) & depart from one another. The largest female in the area did this with around six different males.

As the light faded more & more fish began to emerge from the rubble including an assortment of Clown Gobies. They perched on the rock watching us watch the mandarins. There were green ones & black ones & one very large Citron one. I went to point them out to the people to my right but their guide had motioned for them to leave & they ended up decimating the rubble bed in their wake sending the clown gobies scattering in all directions.

Upon our return we were greeted by a barbecue, the staff had taken the tables & chairs from the dinning hall & arranged them in a line between the entrance & the bar. In the middle of the table were several plates of sashimi fresh caught that day & at the end were an arrangement of grills & griddles all boasting different assortments of meats & vegetables.

We enjoyed the food in mixed company, mingling with a group of snorkelers out of England who had come to the resort on a snorkel tour, something I was unaware was a thing. We all dined & exchanged stories, us at the end of our week, them just a few days into theirs. After we supped a cake was passed around the table.

With bursting bellies & smiling faces we adjourned to bed where we drifted off to sleep before the next day’s conquest home began.

End Of Day Seven

---

Day Eight

I debated on whether or not I wanted to include “day eight” as if was a travel day. Then upon reflection I found myself remembering many interesting things about the day. The odd part about writing this is that it will butt up into my Singapore Blog which I actually decided to publish in advance before going back to do the dive blogs. You can find a link to it at the very end of this blog.

We slept in a little on this day. Not having to beat the clock to get breakfast in before our dive time, we enjoyed a leisurely morning. After we had our fill of breakfast we all went back to our separate abodes to pack & make sure our electronics were charged for the return trip back. I was the only member of my group separating from the rest of them & the anxiety of 20+ hours of travel was palpable amongst my compatriots.

We left the resort begrudgingly, just short of noon. The tide was out at the time of our ferry across the strait so when we reached the cement dock on the other side we had to all climb onto the roof of The Wonderpus to get back on land. We all were escorted down the dock where locals came out in droves to observe the foreigners. The children yelled “hi” over & over at us & it was explained that it was probably the only english words they knew. We returned each “hi” in kind, accompanied by a smile of appreciation.

Our convoy to the Manado Airport was a series of minivans driven rambunctiously down the roads. We passed the festival grounds, several markets, & many curious locals who waved or peered into the windows at us. My car was the first to reach the terminal by a long shot & we sat for around 15-20 minutes waiting for the others to arrive with out gear so we could tip our driver.

The waiting game then began as our ticketing agents had not yet shown up. I went out in search of food, finding a Starbucks & a convenience store to satiate me. It was well over an hour & a half before someone showed up to check us in & we were all starting to get nervous that we were going to miss our flight.

Though I was the first in, I was the last out. I had to pay an extra baggage fee for my gear which took a while to process & I ended up being the last member of our group through security which didn’t end up mattering because our flight was delayed.

Ever the curious pallet I wandered into another convenience store while waiting to board & was met by many different Durian products. For the unaware, durian is a type of custardy fruit whose aroma is so pungent it’s often outlawed from Southeast Asian public transport. I was curious, as I always am, & opted for the durian ice cream with fresh durian in it. Y’all. No shame, truly. I regretted it. I kid you not, to my westernized pallet durian tasted like a mix between smelly feet (just assuming that flavor) & gasoline (that one too) with just the slightest banana & mango taste thrown in. The worst part of it was that it then spent the next several hours fighting me & I could not, for whatever reason, clear the taste of it out of my mouth.

Our flight finally departed & we were given a sealed cup of water & a literal entire package of cookies upon boarding.

When we got to Jakarta night had fallen & we all gathered our things before boarding the shuttle that had been arranged to take us to our hotel.

The hotel was around 15 minutes away from the airport & the journey there brought up a rather large discrepancy in the life of the people of Jakarta. From the terminal we were taken on highways, beautiful highways before turning into what I can only describe as shanty towns. We maneuvered around these shanty towns until we came to what had to be a seven or eight foot wall. We traced the wall, dotted with shacks, around to a gate where armed guards let us through two separate gates where the surroundings intently went from impoverished to glistening in excess. If I’m being honest it made me feel icky. We had arranged to stay at the FM7 Resort Hotel for the evening.

The resort was stunning. Modern artwork, pristine flora, exquisite lighting & cleanliness. It was a very sharp contrast to the world just outside of its massive walls. The resort was also a complex, an entire network of buildings & roads spread over a large number of acres. We all checked in & were given our room keys where we all went our separate ways to sleep for only a few hours before our flight from Jakarta departed to Singapore.

End Of Day Eight

---

END OF PART THREE

---

END OF BLOG

---

Travel Blog: Indonesia: Part Two- Why Do All Of The Good Stories Start Next To A Carpet Anemone?

Selamet Siang!

Welcome back curious reader! If you’re new here the class has officially moved on to part two of this specific adventure, but if you’d like to be caught up I’ll link part one just below this little bit of conversational pretext! Be sure to give that a read before continuing on here, context & establishment are important to storytelling after all!

---

INDONESIA

PART TWO:

Day Three

We start out this day in the usual way, rising early, grabbing brekkie, then going off to pack up for the full day of diving ahead. The only noticeable difference about this day’s breakfast was that I created my new obsession for the week; Toast with Raspberry Jam & Nutella, & I made a little Jumping Spider friend. I found her first climbing on my shoulder where I gently gathered her & set her aside on my chair, but no matter what I did she kept coming back to me in one form or another. Finally I just gave in & let her sit on my arm & watch me eat breakfast.

For all of you out there freaked out by this notion, Jumping Spiders are actually very personable creatures that have very interesting personalities about them. They will often even appear to look you in the eye & will, as witnessed above, watch people do things out of what seems like nothing more than curiosity. Though now that I’m thinking about it she may have been using me as a trap for the insects potentially drawn in by either my food or my blood. Either way, at the end of my meal, I set her on a leaf just off the dining pavilion & went about collecting my gear.

Our first dive site of the day was lovingly named “Hairball #2.” Why? Well, as it was explained to us, there are two separate explanations, the first is that the balls of netting/rope & the flora growing on the seabed resemble balls of hair, the second explanation was due to the abundance of Hairy Frogfish, of which we did see one, but apparently my camera did not. #MinimumFocalLength

This dive had an abundance, & I mean an abundance, of Mantis Shrimp of all sizes. Not only that, but you didn't really have to search for them, they were just kind of out, cruising along the sand or, in my case, attacking you. We’ll get there, we’ll get there.

I’m going to assume it was the scenery that lent itself to the plethora of decorators in the area as well, from Decorator Crabs & Hermits to Gorilla Crabs, it seemed every few feet near the top of our dive we’d find a new one. Additionally the Seahorse/Pipefish family came out to play as well.

Many of you know how much of a love for Seahorses I have, I used to raise them in my tank at home including, at one point, having an Erectus Male get pregnant & birth a clutch of fry in my tank! I’ve actually been flirting with the idea of setting up a specialty tank for them somewhere in my house as they don’t do well in big tanks with more aggressive eaters, but enough about my aquarium hobbies. All of that was a massively round about way of saying that I saw the. cutest. seahorse. I have ever seen. He had a bit of red macro algae growing just above his left pectoral fin which made it look like he had a flower in his hair. Simply adorable.

The site was truly a masterclass in what muck diving has to offer between the (in my personal opinion) horrifying Snake Eels with their heads popping out of the substrate, the pairs of Cardinal Waspfish, the numerous varieties of Shrimp Goby with their hovels in the sand, Lionfish, Trumpetfish, Carpet Anemones, & Snapper. But, let’s back up one step to one of those Carpet Anemones for a moment shall we?

Here is where I shall lay the chronicle of the viscous, subaquatic affront I received at the punchy mits of the afforementioned Peacock Mantis Shrimp:

So, I’m sitting there, filming a colony of Clownfish & Ghost Shrimp, doing my best to get the Porcelain Crabs as the current rolls up the sides of the anemone. I have my pointer buried around half a foot in the sand when all the sudden a hear a “thwack” & get a sharp pain in the hand holding onto my substrate anchor. I look over & there, puffed up in the sand, is about a three to four inch long Peacock Mantis Shrimp. It is presenting its antennal scales to me & keeps leaning in to go for another strike. What has gotten this Mantis so worked up over my presence? Well, I guess the fact that I’m a good meter+ from its burrow. It had come out a fairly long distance for an itty bitty shrimp from its defenses to smack my out of territorial spite. You can actually hear the smack, as well as my yelp, when it hit me on my GoPro footage. I was however fortunate with my Mantis encounter for two reasons. One, it was a little one, they can grown about a foot & a half in length. Two, it was a “punchy” variety, meaning that its raptorial appendages were blunted, not sharp like the alternatively “stabby” variety with their sharp appendages.

On our way back up we encountered a Male Ornate Ghost Pipefish, a Napoleon Snake Eel, several more Cardinal Wasps, & a Flamboyant Cuttlefish!

Our surface interval was once again supplemented by Tea, Coffee, Milo, Water, Papaya, Pineapple, & Cake. Dive spot number two was Jahir #1. I guess it’s worth noting at this point that a lot of the dive sites in Lembeh had numerical quantifiers as well. This is because a lot of them are the same towns, villages, islands, or locations, just different mooring sites & thus different entrance/exit points & therefore different dives.

Jahir was another muck dive that leans a little more on the sandy side. Here we found a whole host of Flamboyant Cuttlefish (including some eggs), Scorpionfish, Pillow Starfish, Blue Spotted Rays, Black Lionfish, Banded Pipefish, & the like. However there were two very distinct things that happened on this dive & I’m so excited to share them with you all!

The first made me absolutely geek out.

Maybe it’s the fish lover in me or my fascination with marine life in general, maybe you’ll also find this as cool as I did, please let me know if you do. Anyway, I was planted near yet another Carpet Anemone teeming with Clowns. Slightly above the anemone were a school of Cardinal Fish. Y’all I am literally geeking out typing this story simply because of the insinuations it carries. All of the sudden the largest of the clowns, the female, departs the anemone & makes for a piece of debris laying on the sand bed, It was just under a foot in size & looked kind of like a piece of cardboard or maybe a patch of dutch tape. Puri, our guide, immediately grabs my attention & motions to me to start filming, so I do. The clown drags the debris over to the anemone & stashes it right in the middle of it. She then proceeds to duck under it. After a few seconds she picks it up again & does the same, over & over. What was she doing? Y’all. This clownfish was fishing. It was upholding its portion of the symbiotic biological agreement between clowns & nems & trying to feed its home. It was using us, three big, scary, bubble making beings in the water next to the anemone as a tool implying she understands the basic nature of fish, specifically cardinal fish, & was trying to get them to swim under the debris & use it as “shelter” to hide from us, all the while luring them to their inevitable death. Wild. I guess it’s true what they say, the best stories happen around a carpet anemone.

The second thing that happened was actually something I’d discussed with Simon, the resort owner, the night prior. I had inquired as to what Simon’s favorite Lembeh creature was, to which he said something along the lines of “it’s always changing. However, this time of year the Fire Urchins make an appearance & I think they’re something truly spectacular.” That they are. Towards the end of our dive we came up the slope back towards the boat & were immediately met by about twenty or so massive Fire Urchins! I wish the photos & video I took did them justice but they unfortunately don’t. They’re iridescent, they genuinely look to be ablaze with their dark red spines & bright red & blue bodies so luminous they appear almost like LED strips. A breathtaking species of Urchin to say the least! The way their spines move across their bodies offsetting the view of the farther parts of their body makes them truly look aflame.

Following dive two it was time for lunch. We headed back to NAD Lembeh where we were met with a lovely spread once again provided by Tommy, the resort’s excellent chef. Following our exquisite sustenance it was time, once again, to head back out for another dive.

Dive three was Nudibranch Falls. For those of you dear readers that do not know what a Nudibranch is, they are a family or shell-less mollusks with exterior gills that often feed on corals & sponges. They are often poisonous & thus come rather brightly colored to ward off predators & blend into their lunch. As for the name of the site, Nudibranch Falls is a wall dive meaning you’re diving along side a wall, pretty self explanatory. It is named as such because the ascending bubbles from the divers often knock the Nudies from their place of munch & send them cascading to the depths below. Thus the nudibranch falls.

While exploring the first bits of this site it became extremely dark out of nowhere & I’m talking like ‘felt like we should be in a cave or passthrough’ dark, therefore a lot of the pictures that will accompany this section will probably make heavy use of my flashlight, as will the following, but we’ll get there when we get there.

Around Nudibranch Falls is primarily rubbly reef; waves, creatures, boats,…divers…, etc crash against the corals causing them to break & fall to the bottom below where they either expire or continue growing, hence the rubble. The venue had many of your typical reef fish as well as, yes, many a variety of Nudibranch & Flatworm. The coolest incision of the reef however where the Sea Fans that played host to Pygmy Seahorses.

You shan’t be seeing any picture of Pygmy Seahorses from me seeing how the are, as the name implies, Pygmy & my camera could not for the life of it figure out what the hell I was trying to film. When I say these boogers are small, I mean it. I would say the largest was no bigger than the nail of your little finger.

I’m going to throw Sam under the bus a little here just because I find the story to be a tad humorous & it comes back around later. Sorry Sam if you’re reading this.

After viewing the seahorses Sam, my dive buddy & roomie, set about exploring the rest of the reef wall. Little had we all notice but the current had started to pick up because, as we’d come to find out, it was pouring rain above us, hence the darkness. Sam, having been blown backwards by current & not entirely realizing, was mere inches away from running her fins right through the sea fan containing the entire colony of pygmy seahorses. We all motioned frantically to get her to stop moving, which she did & Gigs, another guide, & I came over & pulled her away from the coral wall manually all the while she remained posed like an astronaut freshly sucked into space. She later had to save me from a similar situation where I was blown into a bunch of coral & could not move for fear of damaging them. In either case there was no harm, no foul. No corals or sea life were harmed in the making of this blog…by us anyway.

Another cool discovery on this dive was a Lembeh Sea Dragon, which looked like a mess of hair until we got close to it. Yet another thing my camera said “Focus? Who’s she?” to, the Lembeh Sea Dragon was truly no larger than a bit of wire & about the length of the pad of your thumb. They are apparently rather rare, hadn’t been seen by Puri in a very long time, & are exclusive to the Lembeh Strait. Even Googling pictures of them they’re barely in focus in each instance.

We made our way back through the rain, which I’ve got to admit was kind of fun to dive in. I took a shower to warm up, started downloading my footage, & took a wee nap. Post nap I hit the coffee bar for what would be one of my only coffees the whole trip. I went the LA Australian Cafe route & made myself an Iced Milo Latte, basically an iced mocha sub chocolate sauce for Milo! I took my concoction back to the patio of my room & continued to edit.

While I sat there a squat little crab scuttled out of the burrow it had made under our neighbor’s steps & began picking through the dirt for food. Once it noticed me watching it immediately retreated though not all the way back into the burrow. I sat & watched it remoisten its eyes & trying to decide whether to continue its forage or hide for a good while.

This would be the first day in which we had four dives planned instead of the previous days of three. Well, our boat did anyway. I guess, I forgot to mention that our group was so large they’d split us in two, each boat containing eight people & four guides along with the captain & the deck hand. Our boat went back out to Aer Prang around 5:45 PM when the sun had begun to set. By the time we arrived a mere ten to fifteen minutes later the light was minimal at best & the sun was all but gone from our view. This was to be our first night dive.

Now I’d never been on a night dive before & if you recall from my pre-Fiji blog, in which I thought we were going to do a night dive, I was just as nervous about it as I was my shark dive. Now I’m craving both. I’m far from being a Thalassophobiak, but there’s something about the inky black of the ocean at night that I found rather off putting. My fears were misguided both in this instance & in my nervousness around sharks.

If you don’t know how a night dive works you’re basically plopped into a dive site in the pitch black. The lights on the boat are set to red as to not mess with the wild life below & each person brings along a torch to light their way. Additionally different methods of communication are used.

In normal light circumstances you give different hand signals to communicate with your fellow divers. In the blackness those signals are far from visible so they move from being off the body to being over your flashlight. Simple enough. Additionally when you want to get another diver’s attention in the light of day you make noise; bang your tank, carry a rattle, blow a whistle, click a carabiner, etc. Here when you hear a noise reverberation from the dark you have no idea what direction its coming from, who it’s coming from, or even if it’s a member of your party or another dive party. The solution? Wave your flashlight back & forth like a maniac in front of your fellow diver’s line of sight. I think this method often actually works better than the sound alternative.

So down we go, lights aglow searching for critters what dine on marine snow.

I’m once again going the throw Sam under the bus here, I promise this won’t be a trend in the remainder of this blog, nor part three to follow.

We get down to the bottom, I’m following Puri, Sam is following behind me, & I notice the light from her torch flash then disappear so naturally I think she’s trying to get our attention. I whirl around in search of her & she is no where to be found, lost to the darkened maw of the ocean.

I can hear some of you saying “check please, she got snatched” in your head, mine however didn’t go there until just now when I was typing this.

I continue searching for her, looking all around from the ocean floor to the water’s surface, no luck. Next thing I know I feel fingertips & a hand fiddling around the back of my neck trying to grasp the handle of my BCD (Buoyancy Compensator/Control Device). I look up from the arm now attached to me & there is Sam waving back at me extinguished light in hand.

So what happened? Well, Sam forgot to charge her dive light with full confidence in it & ironically it had decided to crap out at almost the exact moment we were all like “All ready? Okay, let’s go exploring.” Sam’s solution, which I’ve got to say was a smart one, was to grab ahold of my gear & basically hitch a ride with me the duration of the dive, which is the exact thing you’re supposed to do. Only I didn’t know that. So while I’m whirling around in search of her, she was whirling around trying to grab the back of my BCD to continue the dive. Fortunately the Eagle Scout in me came prepared & I had a second, smaller light, to give her so she didn’t have to play Remora with me the whole time.

Night diving is an interesting experience, it’s a completely different world. We’d dove the site during the day so I knew what to expect in terms of terrain & fauna but it truly is something to behold when the lights go out. A lot of the fish in the reef enter a form of sleep drastically reducing their metabolism while still technically staying awake to keep them alert from predators but during this state of stasis they basically go into a less reactive & mobile state. You find a lot of the fish that you would see during the day resting & they don’t stir or depart nearly as quickly at night. Sometimes you end up right up on them without them paying you much mind.

We stumbled upon many ‘sleeping’ Dwarf Lionfish, Pipefish, Crustaceans & Starfish that had come out to eat. We found our first Octopus of the trip, a long tentacle that would splay its arms out, following each divot of the sea bed, then retract them once it came up dry with nothing to grab onto & snack on. Additionally we ran into many snoozing Cuttlefish & a massive, meaty looking Blue Crab swimming about the shallows, hunting fish. You also get the microscopic critters that you miss during the day who are drawn to the light, darting in & out of the beam as you cruise along. (We’ll get more into them on the Black Water Dive in part three next week).

With our night dive concluded we made our way back to base where it was now dinner time. The groups who’d stay’d behind were already digging in by the time we returned but we were assured dinner would wait for us to return from our showering. The Tomato Soup & Indonesian Chicken Curry that were on the evening’s menu really helped to warm the bones as well & it wasn’t long before we were all sound asleep, zonked by the many adventures of the day, ready to face the next.

End Of Day Three

---

Day Four

Day four felt ripped right out of the archives of a nature documentary. There were so many observed happenings on this day that I don’t think for the entirety of the remainder of my days as a diver I will find another jam packed day such as this, at least where the circle of life is concerned. The day started out early, with breakfast. One thing I really appreciate about diving Lembeh is that you actually get to have the breakfast of your choosing because you’re not dealing with massive swells on the way to your dive site. I think, in this case, it was an egg sandwich day with bacon.

The first of the day’s animal encounters happened without even having to leave the shore. You see, each morning, on my way to the boat I’d stop to see which sea creatures had gathered around the dock over night. Day one it had been a Batfish just off the end of the pier, day two; schools of butterflyfish, but I think this morning took the case of coolest things spotted. Just off the main part of the dock there were a few schools of fish, that wasn’t the cool part. Amongst these shoals was a singular Cuttlefish, cool on its own, sure, only this Cuttlefish was hunting. It was pulsing dark & light colors over its body in an attempt to hypnotize the fish belonging to the schools. When it got closer it would extend out its two harpoon-like tentacles & snag one of fish. I watched it do this over & over until it had successfully snagged two or three fish & it was now time to depart from the shore to head out into the strait for the day’s dives. I promise you, this Nat Geo/Discovery Channel/Animal Plant-esque day was far from over as the remainder of this segment will surely show! Buckle up kids, it’s gonna get wild!

As the week moved on & my editing work began piling up more & more I began to get lazy with logging my dives. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to be using going forward for the fact that I lost track of some of the names of the dive sites going forward because the online log book required me to make a new entry with address (um…ocean?) & coordinates as well. So if I can’t give you the name of any of the dive sites on this here day we shall be referring to them here numerically.

Dive #1 popped off immediately & actually ended up being one of my favorite dives of the whole trip. This one, fortunately to us, dear reader, does have a name. It’s called Angel’s Window. Similar to the Cathedral of Lanai, Angel’s Window is the remnants of an old lava tube, supplying it with a number of pass throughs & caves. The “window” is a massive, 100 foot tall rock, that rests just below the surface of the water & is covered in beautiful reef. Where deep diving is concerned you always start the day off with your deepest dive & always start said dive off with the deepest depth, working your way back up.

Slowly we began our decent down the side of the rock, taking in the fish & corals before we reached the first cave. There a school of Squirrelfish had taken up residence & their reflective silver & red scales flashed the light of our torches back at us lighting up the cavern. Directly below us the rock had a vertical pass through that let out right at the entrance to the actual window of which an Angel, either by name or title, possess. I should mention, the above pass through is where Sam had to save me from bumping into the reef, so we’re square. On the other side of the window we came our to find sand bed waiting for us. Much to my joy, off in the distance I could see the ‘sway & snag’ of a colony of Garden Eels.

I love garden eels, I absolutely adore them. They burrow in the sand in clusters, popping their heads & a good portion of their bodies out, & collecting zooplankton as it drifts by. They’re very, very shy & this group of Spotted Garden Eels was no exception. I did my best to sneak up on them to no avail, but that still didn’t stop me from squealing at the glimpse of them that I had been fortunate enough to gather.

Back to the rock we went where we began to spiral our way up & around. I did glimpse another cluster of garden eels down on the other side of the rock but I ended up distracted by Octopus #2 of the trip.

This was a Day Octopus, a close relative to the GPO or Giant Pacific Octopus. You know, that octopus that comes to mind when we all think of them. Solving puzzles, squeezing through tiny spaces, tucked up by the glass in your local aquarium? Yeah, that one!

It was tucked & hiding away so we moved on quickly running into a rather large Moray Eel, several schools of Box Anthias whose colors seemed to glow neon at depth, & a rather aggressive Damselfish who came careening off the reef to attack my fins. Though after what happened next, I’m not surprised that it wasn’t a fan of divers.

On up the rock we found a rather large school of Klein’s Butterflyfish pecking at the rock. Puri pointed out that they were eating fish eggs, specifically the fish eggs of the Damsels on the reef. I was fascinated by them swarming the rocks but Puri urged me on. Noticing me watching them as we swam away he wrote on his pad “they will follow us.” A little lost I chose to trust & continued on after him. Sure enough here they came, the entirely of the school of Butterflyfish was now following us. The damsel below was just a precursor, a foreshadowing of events to come it you will because the butterflies had learned that the damsels would much rather defend their clutch from something large, more likely to wipe out the spawn, than a school of fish. They used our being there to draw the damsels off of the reef & would then swoop in & pick off the eggs left behind leaving the damsels to fight off the butterfly fish frenzy.

Don’t feel bad for the damselfish, please. The entirety of this trip I had probably a dozen or more damselfish try to pick fights with me just for swimming by. Even in my own home aquarium I had to evict my Staghorn Damsels because they were killing my corals to lay eggs in the middle of the tank & then would fight all of the other fish the came within feet of the nest. They’re a-holes.

The butterflies followed us for a good while, feeding along the way, taking the piss out of the damsels but departed from us when we swung around the north side of the rock & found the current.

I’ve always kind of enjoyed a slight current while diving, the sway back & forth reminds you just how small you are & its exhilarating to start in one spot, kick to ride the current where you want to go, & then sweep back just a little bit. I was distracted by the immaculately vivacious Sun Coral colonies to notice that Sam had completely disappeared. I signaled to Puri asking where our dive buddy was & he simply gave me the gesture of “the boat.'“ Turns out while I was reveling in the current, Sam was developing sea sickness. I scouted the reef for a few more minutes before returning to find Sam applying Dramamine patches behind her ears.

Angel’s Window sits near the top of Lembeh Strait, hence its oceanic influences. That meant we had a bit longer of a trek back south to get to our next dive site. Just off the shore from a small town, dive #2 was a full on muck dive, hard contrast to the morning dip. We sat & watched a small Indonesian girl & her father training their dog how to swim while we loaded up on warm beverages, water, fruit, & once more, cake. Once it was time to dive & Sam’s Dramamine (Samamine) had begun to kick it was time to dive once more.

We spent a good while doing simple observational tasks on this dive. We found a set of Sea Slugs ‘racing’ towards one another & sat to watch them & see what they’d do. Initially we were all taking votes on mating but it ended up being only coincidence & the slugs recoiled immediately when they finally made connection with one another.

I managed to film my second “feeding” of the day as we descended down farther when a Lionfish chased a Boxfish off the mooring line where it was perched & consumed it out in open water above me. Probably was that Lionfish’s last meal as Boxfish are poisonous.

Our dive into the muck included many Hi Hats, a massive school of Shrimpfish, Sand Divers (yes, they are as the name suggests), Porcupine Puffers, several types of Frogfish (Hairy & Painted), a Seahorse, several live Sand Dollars, & a Queen Conch. We even found another set of the same variety of Sea Slugs inching their way towards one another, only this time, they ended up mating! Post dive it was once again time to head back to the resort for lunch.

After lunch I sat editing, milking a Pacori Sweat while editing. All of the sudden I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. There, above me, pilfering through the rafters was a slender brown & grey snake. It was darting around looking for food amongst the roofing. I asked one of the staff what kind of snake it was & I was informed it was a Brown Coconut Snake, probably looking for geckos to eat up there, though normally they stick to the trees. I sat there editing & watching the snake for a good while before it was time, once again to go dive.

Our afternoon dive was at the Island just across the strait from the resort. In the water we went, ears adjusted, down through the muck where I excited discovered a large Crete, or Sea Snake below us. We all gathered around but found ourselves a bit puzzled as it wasn’t really moving. Our collective though seemed to be that maybe it was snoozing, resting, or trying to burrow after food, but upon closer inspection the snake was missing its head. 40 feet below the surface, a quarter mile off the coast of an unsettled island this discovery still perplexes me.

Abandoning the dearly departed we continued down the island’s slope til I came upon a Black Ribbon Eel. Many of you saw the moment I’m about to describe on my Instagram or TikTok but I’ll be more than happy to describe it to you all here! This Juvenile Eel was buried deep in the substrate, swaying patiently in the currents, passing the water through their specialized nostrils that act as antennae picking up the scent of any passing prey. P.S. I knew it was a juvenile because it was black. The adult males are blue, the females, yellow. In our passing we had startled a small cluster of Cardinal Fish close to the eel’s den. (Truly we are a terror to the safety & security of the cardinal fish). The eel immediately stopped its swaying & closed its mouth, looking now more like a blade of seagrass sticking out of the ground. Puri noticed this & motioned for me to lay low, stake down, & start filling, which I did. The group of cardinals, disoriented by us, had scattered a bit & were still paying much more attention to the three black clad monsters in the water with them than the seemingly innocuous blade of grass at their rear.

The fish population of Lembeh are clearly opportunists, many adapting to use human influence to their advantage, case in point. This eel used our presence to hone in one a singular cardinal that had drifted a little too far from the flock & had found itself very much in line for an easy lunch. However, the cardinal was not entirely unwise. It narrowly avoided the strike of the eel but, I guess stuck between a rock & a hard place of us or the eel it wrongly chose to stay in the proximity of the eel who creeped in for a second strike, landed it, & drug the wriggling fish back into its hovel.

Farther down the slope we encountered a pair of Chocolate Chip Starfish before Gigs, one of the other guides started banging his tank to get us to come over to see what he & his group had discovered. Enter octopus #3.

Gigs had found a Blue-Ringed Octopus, only about the size of your thumb, the Blue-Ring is one of the most venomous animals on the planet & it isn’t afraid to show you that it is not to be messed with. This blue-ring, in the typical fashion, was fairly mundane looking, that was until it decided we were a threat & it was in danger. These octopuses, as the name implies, are covered in a series of blue rings. What the name doesn’t tell you is that these blue rings aren’t always there but instead are used in mating & as a way to flash at predators, or in this case us, to back the eff off. The electric blue rings are extraordinary almost appearing to have a turquoise luminescence to them. Never one to waste its venom, the blue ring quickly slinked away to a hidey hole after it realized we weren't going to watch it & that we weren’t fooled by it pretending to be bubble algae or just another rock so we let it be & departed as well.

Farther up the slope was came across a reef with some of the most amazing Bubble-Tipped Anemones I’ve ever seen, massive mounds of Galaxia, huge Feather-Duster Worm colonies, Maze, Bird’s Nest, & Torch Corals. We found Juvenile Sweetlips squiggling around the bottom, a colony of Venomous Coral Catfish dive bombing the sand, & many a Filefish, Cleaner Wrasse, & Puffer tucked in the rock along with a Crete, only this one was alive.

The rest of the evening played out as usual; shower, editing, dinner, more editing, bed. I kept finding myself reminiscing about just how incredible the day had been & couldn’t fathom how Lembeh was going to out do herself, boy was I wrong.

See you all in part three! Have a great weekend!

Much Love Always,

-C

End Of Day Four

---

End Of Part Two

---

Travel Blog: Indonesia: Part One-A Plane, A Boat, A Truck, & Diving in the Muck

INDONESIA

PART ONE:

Prologue/Day One

Singapore

We’re starting day one off in the airport, specifically the Singapore Airport where my eighteen hour LA to Singapore leg had come to an end at 1:30 on Monday morning. Regrettable I was unable to get much sleep one the flight so I was dragging. I found an open street food stall in the airport & got a bowl of Wonton Noodle Soup with Veggies. Before finding a spot to crash I stopped at the in airport 7/11 for something to drink & some candy as well as the airport Butterfly Garden & Cactus Garden. I found a spot behind a row of seats to bunk down for a few hours before my flight to Jakarta was set to take off at 6 am. By the time I’d setting in for my nap the time was around 3 am.

It was, unfortunately, short lived. Apparently a section full of people napping is the perfect place to take a phone call & play with your toddler, as the woman who loudly sad beside me somehow discerned. Having slept only around 30-45 minutes I begrudgingly gathered my things & went in search of caffeine.

I’d switched from coffee to tea a few weeks prior so when I ordered a lemon black iced tea at what was now just short of 5 AM, the sleepy barista looked at me like I had three heads. It truly didn't cross my brain until I’d left the region entirely that I was smack in the center of part of the coffee world, literally about to board a flight to the island of Java. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say & next time I’ll be sure to scout coffee options.

The rest of my dive crew joined me just after I downed my tea & right around the time our gate & security opened to let us through to the gate waiting area. The Singapore Airport does this interesting thing where there is minimal security when simply entering the terminal, but each gate is glassed off with its own private security line that you can reserve a specific time to be in if you plan in advance. We all got through security, I paid Deb the $3 I owed her still from Fiji & we promptly boarded shortly there after.

Indonesia

I had managed to book a window seat into Jakarta though it was in the far back of the Singapore Airlines plane, the seats get more & more narrow the farther back you go. I slept majority of the hour long flight but woke in time for the in flight meal of Chicken Congee, which made me question why I don’t make Congee more often.

Once we began our decent into Jakarta I noticed something interesting, rows & rows of something out in the ocean just off shore. Later I would find out that those were pearl farms after boating by a few in Lembeh Strait.

We had a four hour layover in Jakarta & while we thought it would be a casual stroll through the airpark, we ended up needing every minute of it.

The first hurtle was immigration, we got in one line just to be told it was wrong once we got up to the front, then we went over to buy a 30-day visa for $30 USD, which then had the be taken back to the original line. Our baggage took a while to collect, coming out in spurts in ten minute intervals, though Joe & my dive partner/roomie, Sam’s, bags didn’t end up making it entirely. We waited while they filled out the missing bag reports, then we started to make our way through customs.

I don’t know why I found the immigration/customs process in Indonesia so intimidating, but it was. Everything was taken very seriously, each little form had to be filled out precisely or the officer viewing it would throw a fit, the only other similar customs experience I’ve had was entering The US at BNA from The UK.

Once we were all through customs we had to board a monorail to a different terminal, of which, the directions for use were very confusing, but we made it, though half of our group got separated trying to figure out the sky rail system.

The local terminal was overwhelming with, once again, little to no direction on where exactly you’re supposed to go. Have you ever seen the pictures of Kathmandu, Nepal where the streets are just wall to wall people, buggies, & vehicles? That’s what the local terminal at Jakarta International felt like. It was especially overwhelming trying to roll suitcases & bags through in addition to everyone basically being in the same attire from the soccer/football match the evening prior.

We finally found where we needed to be & stood in line to check in for Batik Airways. This took some time. The problem was that everyone in the group, with the exception of Sam & I were on a singular booking, so we had to assemble & check in each of those people as a group, paying the baggages fees individually as they went. The acceptable baggage weight fluctuated between 20 kg & 17 kg depending upon which ticketing agent you asked so some people ended up having to go halfway across the terminal to pay their baggage fee & others ended up getting off scot-free. Once we were all paid & bags were dropped we made our way to our gate.

The gate situation here was similar to Singapore with the gates being the security check point but had more in common with MCI where there were 5-10 gates behind each security check point. Our flight was slightly delayed so I went in search of food. I landed on a coffee stall that had Thai Tea Boba & Coconut Steam buns.

Once we were boarded I’d been resorted to a middle seat in the very back of the aircraft. For the two & a half-three hour flight I sat watching Shang-Chi & passively enjoying the Curried Chicken I’d been given.

Once we’d landed in Manado & gathered our belongings we were shown to cars where our stuff was packed in & two-three of us were shoved in & off we went.

I’ll say this about the Indonesian drivers as a whole, the lane markers seem to only be a suggestion. We cruised across the country side past Gunung Klabat to Bitung where we disembarked from the vans & we ushered through the village to a pier with a small overhead cover where we sat with our gear waiting for a boat, we’d finally made it to Lembeh Strait.

Our chariot was, ironically, one of the dive boats from the resort. We all got in, our bags were passed down & placed in the non-seated areas. The ride across the strait only took around ten minutes & we were greeted at the dock by Simon, the owner of NAD Lembeh Resort.

We were instructed to leave our bags on the boat & head into the bar area where we were meant to fill out the resort & dive paperwork. We were met there by some of the resort staff & a Calamansi beverage of the resort’s creation. While we filled out our paper work our bags were being brought to our rooms & we were briefed on the resort, its amenities, & our dives.

I retired back to my shared room with Sam & we got ourselves sorted before it was time to go back to the main part of the resort for dinner.

NAD has a resort chef named Tommy. Tommy’s job extends not only to evening meals but also includes lunch, breakfast is handled by several of the women on the resort staff. Each meal, no matter the maker, is served buffet style with dessert or fruit being brought out around twenty minutes into the designated meal time. Dinner was always a soup, a salad, several entree options & at least one veggie dish. Our first night Chicken in Yellow Curry was the main course.

Over dinner I remarked to Simon about the various species of “rare” plants scattered around the facilities; A Variegated Philodendron Burle Marks on the check-in desk, several species of rare Monstera, Hoyas, & Pothos & he explained that their gardener is world renowned for going out into the jungle of Indonesia & even discovering new species of plants! He even offered his contact info & told me to contact him about shipping some to The US!

After a delicious dinner we seemed to be reaching our individual points of expiration so we called it an early night, each of us heading off to bed by 8:30 at the latest. I took a rinse off shower in our room’s “shower room” (a literal room whose only purpose was to house the shower) & was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow.

End Of Day One

---

Day Two

Our boat call was 7:30 AM. Breakfast each morning began service at 6 which consisted of Toast with Jams, Cereal, Fruit, Yogurt, Eggs, Bacon or Sausage, Fresh Juice, & occasionally Nasi Goreng (Indonesia’s National Dish of Fried Rice) or Fried Noodles. I opted for Two Eggs Over Easy on Wheat Toast w/ Chicken Sausage, Fresh Papaya, & Pineapple, along with a Jasmine Tea.

After breakfast it was time to assemble the gear. The staff had come the night prior to retrieve our BCDs (Buoyancy Compensator Device), Dive Computers, Fins, Wetsuits, & Regulators, along with anything else we didn’t want to carry down ourselves the next day. That left me with my Mesh Scuba Bag filled with my Dive Socks, GoPro Kit, Bits & Bobs that I Dive with (Pointer, Torch, Etc.), & my out of suit Swimwear. I topped off my water & climbed into the boat where Sam & I were introduced to Puri, our would-be guide for the week ahead.

Now Puri is an Indonesian gent from just outside of Bitung that I’d place somewhere in his 30s. Whether through natural occurrence or corrective lenses he has dark blue eyes that sit cheerfully atop his stout, dark build. From what I gathered from Puri in the week’s time we spent together he can be a bit of a jokester which is fortunate because his laugh is both cacophonous & infectious.

NAD Lembeh has the benefit of being positioned almost smack dab in the middle of the Lembeh Strait, meaning that a lot of the dive sites were only around a 10-15 minute boat trip from the resort. Our first of which was Pantaic Parigi 1, which translates to Parigi Beach 1.

We started our week of dives off, appropriately, with a muck dive. For those unaware a muck dive differs from other dives by the substrate. A muck dive consists of a soft, muddy bottom & it requires one to have a true handle on their buoyancy because one false kick or move & you kick up the silt ruining the visibility. A lot of muck dives also take place on a slope as you’re on the banks of the strait & could easily swim all the way up on shore if you weren’t careful.

We were briefed & entered at around fifteen feet of water, we hung out there for a minute while we all got used to being submerged again then descended down the slope. I was immediately amazed that half the things Puri had begun pointing out to Sam & I were around the size of a finger nail; translucent Shrimp, little Nudibranchs, Shrimp Gobies buried in the sand. I suppose it’s worth noting, if you hadn’t picked up on it already, that we were diving in trios. Typically resort dives consist of one or two dive guides per group of eight-ish. NAD Lembeh does two per guide so that the small things aren’t missed, the commotion around the animals doesn’t stir up the bottom, & the guides aren’t fighting the visibility to keep their group together.

At one point we came upon a submerged fishing net that had long been abandoned to the bottom of the ocean. That didn’t stop the fish & corals from using it to the best of their abilities. One of the buoys for the net was still holding it aloft while the rest of it sat strewn across the sea bed. There were many corals that had taken root, clusters of Cuttlefish & Octopus eggs covered the netting, schools of Cardinal Fish hid amongst the low netting, Eels & Lionfish used the coverage & camouflage options for hunting, the net was teeming with life.

Farther down we found Medusa Worms hosting Emperor Shrimp, Anemones filled with Clowns, Pufferfish grazing in the muck, a beautifully puffed out Gurnard, & many a Filefish.

I, for once, was the air sucker of the group. I guess being at least a foot-foot & a half taller than the rest of your part will do that. I was getting low on air while Sam & Puri both still had just short of half a tank upon our resurface. This would be the trend for the rest of the trip where usually I am the one with all of their air left over.

Our surface interval was supplemented with Papaya, Pineapple, a Loaf Cake, & your choice of either Coffee, Tea, or Milo (Australian Nesquik). We rehydrated & disbursed the nitrogen from our bodies all while traveling over to Aer Prang 2 which I guess roughly translates to “Air Crash 2” though I don’t believe there’s a plane wreck below the surface, at least not that we saw. Aer Prang 2 sits right next to a water depot which really just looks like a cinderblock building with a thatched roof & a small aqueduct running down the dock to the water. Aer Prang would be a popular destination over the next week, as it is half coral reef/half muck. This was the site that really solidified it for me, this was the site that immediately made the 40+ hours of travel to Indonesia worth it for me. Allow me to explain why.

This is going to truly sound like first world diver problems & to some degree it is but I want to wind things back to Fiji for a second. When I was in Fiji, with the exception of the shark dive, all of the dives we were doing were amongst some of the most beautiful reefs I’ve ever seen. This is not to dissuade you from going to do Beqa because if you have the desire I highly recommend it. Hell, I’d love to go back myself! BUT when you’re diving 2-3 dives a day, all of them, as I mentioned, the most beautiful coral reefs you’ve ever seen, it begins to feel a tad redundant. Told ya, first world diver problems. Indonesia has the benefit of variety. You can go from wall dives to muck dives to massive sprawling reefs to giant rock cathedrals swarming with life, sometimes all within the same dive. I will say the thing that Fiji has over Indonesia is its large aquatic life, something I found myself actually missing in Indonesia from time to time.

At the start of Aer Prang you’re dropped, plop, right into a reef. Anemones, corals, fish, & life abound, then you start to head down another slope into the muck. The benefit of this miss mash is that you get kind of the in-between where the muck & the reef are concerned. You get the fish & invertebrates that live in both or are the reef outcasts. You get things like Cuttlefish & Octopuses, you get things like Seahorses (one of which was pregnant) & Frogfish, you get things like Flasher Dragonettes, Pipefish, & Sea Kraits all while experiencing amazing coral life along the way.

After our second dive we returned to home base where it was lunch time. I grabbed a Pocari Sweat which is a Japanese Sports drink & immediately went to download my footage from the day & start editing.

Lunch was usually a tad on the lighter side since most of us still planned to go out diving a third time in the afternoon & was served alongside a massive plate of fruit; mostly papaya, watermelon, & pineapple. I asked after Jackfruit seeing as it’s one of my favorites & was informed it was the end of the season for them, but they would try to find me one.

Our third dive departed at 2:30 PM each day. In this instance I’m not entirely sure the dive site we ended up at as I got lazy in my dive log & just claimed Aer Prang again instead of creating a whole new site for the SSI app like I’d done the previous two. I can tell you that this site was mostly muck but it featured fields & fields of Goniopora & by fields & fields, I mean as far as was visible in all directions. Amongst the Goniopora we found many resting Lionfish, some Blue Spotted Stingrays, Pipefish, Filefish, Clowns, Anemones, Puffers, etc. One of the coolest things we found in the somewhat faded light was a school of Shrimpfish that when you passed light through them looked like a fire blazing above a Gorgonian.

We returned to the resort & I set about editing once again. If you were unaware on my TikTok & Instagram I post clip videos of my trips as they happens, especially my dives!

The evening rolled around & it was once again time for Tommy’s delicacies & the day’s discussion of who saw what & where! I remember calling it an early night again, having rinsed off earlier & opting to finish up the day’s video in the morning I drifted off to sleep fairly easily.

End Of Day Two

---

END OF PART ONE

---

Travel Blog: Singapore-Day Drinking My Way Through A Two Day Layover

We’re gonna change this up a little bit. Normally I would post my blogs in chronological order of how they happened, meaning that this should technically be “Part One” of Indonesia. However, as I am currently still in the middle of editing all of my footage from Indonesia, including some things that would fit into the segment of “Part One,” we will instead begin with Singapore as I have all of my photos in order there & won’t have to rush to include them here. That means that next week will be Indonesia: Part One & we’ll return to our chronology from there. Sound good? Too bad. Let’s talk about my two day’s time spent in Singapore!

---

SINGAPORE

Day One:

If you read my blog regarding the 40+ hours of travel I had on the front half of my trip you’ll know that initially my plan was to arrive in Singapore two days before Indonesia & enjoy my time then. My plans for that order of events was thrown a wrench when I couldn’t for the life of me find a hotel that wasn’t $600 minimum a night & couldn't figure out why. Turns out that weekend was the Singapore Grand Prix. So instead Singapore moved its pretty little self to the back half of my trip & I proceeded accordingly from there.

I arrived in Singapore from Jakarta at around 8:30 AM, having only gotten around three hours of sleep the night before & another thirty minutes-ish on the plane my original plan was to head towards my hotel & see if they were willing to put me in my room early. By the time I cleared customs/immigration & gathered my things it was pushing 9:30. I pulled some cash out of an ATM & went to hail a cab. I initially tried to book something through “Grab” which is Singapore’s version of Uber but I couldn’t get the app to download so a standard cab ended up being the winner.

My driver was a Malaysian gentlemen whose name I never quite caught as his excitement about having me in his vehicle made it near impossible to distinguish about 60% of the stories he was trying to convey to me. I gentlemen in question was a Muslim missionary who, on many occasions, had come to The US to speak to local Muslim communities here on what it is to represent the faith in The States & how they should spread the message of The Quran amongst their friends & neighbors. He was overjoyed to have an American in his cab & during our near thirty minute ride he went through every story from every city in The US that he could think of at near break neck speed. He dropped me at my hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn- Little India, & I handed him a fifty note for his troubles & enthusiasm.

The Hilton was more than willing to accommodate my early arrival, of which I much appreciated, & put me in a corner room overlooking the city. I didn't realize, however, when the room was booked just how far Little India was from the Downtown Core of Singapore. Leaving the room completely untouched I went back down to the receptionist to see if I could cancel my stay & move closer in town. He was only able to cancel me the following evening as I’d already checked in which was fine by me.

Initially my plan was to get a nap in before going out adventuring but anytime I’m anywhere I haven’t been or am on vacation I always hear the echos of my sister when she was in her early teens telling me “you can sleep when you’re dead.” Probably during some time in which she was trying to get me to go out with her somewhere. So I got dressed from the clothes I’d wore on the plane & went out into the city.

I was desperately craving a workout as the only one I’d gotten in the last week of travel was that which involved hauling dive gear or hauling luggage around an airport, so I headed over to Barry’s Singapore: Raffles Place. Quite the departure from taking a nap, I know. I walked through the vibrant Little India over to the subway where I took the train over to the downtown block. The Barry’s class was difficult, especially having not worked out for a week & some change, but I celebrated its completion with a shake & a “Barry’s Singapore” shirt, along with a hooded tank top that was 40% off which I changed into to get out of my sweaty, post-workout clothing.

Back downstairs I made the decision that I was going to go get some lunch instead of my initial plan of going back to my hotel to change. I wasn’t stinky I promise, plus I brought deodorant. I made my way over to the Civic District but not before passing many incredible buildings in the downtown block, Yueh Hai Ching Temple (the oldest temple in Singapore, & Boat Quay (a river front restaurant district). I was making my way over to Sing Swee Kee to try Singapore Chicken & Rice! Along the trek I stopped at the Raffles City Shopping Centre just to walk about & gather some AC before continuing on to the restaurant.

I was greeted exuberantly when I walked in, by literally everyone working the restaurant. They all wanted to make sure I was in the right place & wasn’t just some lost tourist who had wandered into a random chicken shop. I was sat right by the kitchen & brought a cup of chilled Ginger/Pandan Tea & a cup of Clear Broth Soup. I asked the first waitress what to order, she had me get traditional Boiled Chicken & Veggies with Rice Balls, the second waitress added the insistence of Fish Maw Soup with Chicken Collagen so I agreed. The food was incredible, simple as can be but bursting with flavor. I didn’t realize it at the time but the stall has been operating out of the same location since the early 1970s. I even bought a jar of their chili sauce to bring home much to the owner’s surprise who was shocked I could even make it through eating it atop my lunch.

After lunch I made my way towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel because their bar, MO Bar, made the list of the Top 100 Bars in the World as well as the Top 10 Bars in all of Asia in addition to it being the only of the several in Singapore that made that list to be open on a Monday. Along the way I encountered the remnants of the Grand Prix that had jumbled up my trip & passed through yet another mall to take in the AC.

I arrived at the Mandarin Oriental where I asked the concierge for directions to the bar, I was instructed over to the elevator feeling far too underdressed to even be setting foot in the hotel, much less its award winning bar. I was greeted at MO Bar by a lovely hostess who sat me at an upright along the window overlooking the bay. I then received the spiel about the cocktails & the bar itself. Each of the drinks on MO’s incredible fun bar menu (even the online version is cool) is meant to pay homage to a specific country in Asia & the local ingredients found there. The physical bar menu is set up almost like a 3D constellation map with lighter drinks on one side & the more boozy on the other.

I was served some Wasabi Chips, a bowl of Chevda, & some sparkling water before I ordered a Full Moon, a drink with Rum, Wheatgrass, & Pear topped with a Sugar Film Moon based on South Korea. I will say, of the drinks I had during my time spent at MO Bar, I think this one was my least favorite. That’s not to say the drink was bad by any stretch of the imagination, in fact it was excellent, those that followed were just more so.

My next drink was a Honeybee; a Honey, Whiskey, Kumquat drink, at the bartender’s request. It was an excellent, heart warming, & frothy tribute to Penang that was served inside a black marble cup, of which I still would love a set for my home bar, along side the perfect accent of grapefruit which really brought an interesting quality to the beverage.

After I’d finished by second drink I struck up a conversation with the hostess/waitress who had sat me. We talked about everything from my travels to her life in Singapore & even delved into the Top 100 list they’re feature on, of which, I’ve been to several of the bars listed. I mentioned to her that while my first two drinks were exquisite, I really look for niche cocktails at bars, something that I wouldn’t find anywhere else that maybe imitates of food item or evokes specific feeling, as the cocktails I tend to remember in my travels & life are those that drew from very specific inspiration. Her recommendation was the Satay By The Bay, an homage to the street foods of Singapore, going so far as to include “chicken floss” in the list of ingredients for the cocktail. So I gave it a whirl.

Y’all, when I say this is one of the most fascinating cocktails I’ve ever had I’m not joking. Boasting a “nutty bitterness,” the Gin based twist on a Negroni tastes almost exactly like Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce, it’s truly incredible. It even has the smokey notes from the charcoal of the grill mixed into it! Additionally I was brought a “taster” of the Afterglow, a Ginger Gin Martini variant with cotton candy (candy floss) melted into it meant to be a tribute to Java. The curious thing about the Afterglow, besides how delicious it is even to a non-martini drinker, is that it really accents the floral notes of the ginger instead of bringing out the traditionally used root, even though the root was what was used.

If I’m being entirely honest, I’m not sure how long I spent at MO. I know when I got there I was at the tail end of afternoon tea & by the time I’d left dinner service had begun to roll out. That’s not to say I didn’t knock back a few more drinks before my departure.

My final drinks of the evening came as a duo as well. I had asked about two cocktails, the Ube & the Annona, both out of my love for the ingredients involved, but since I was preparing to close out my journey down craft cocktail lane I went with the dessert cocktail, the Ube.

The Ube was explained to me as an experimental cocktail, something of a milkshake without the milkshake texture. I’d probably qualify it as some form of a milk tea served with a warm chocolate spring roll. Before the Baguio inspired drink graced my lips however I was served another taster, this time of Annona. Meant to convey Koh Samui, the Annona is a Gimlet twist made from Gin, Soursop, & Pandan. The pandan really is the star of the show here bringing a grassy nuttiness to the understated citrus of the soursop. An excellently balanced cocktail.

My Ube was also served along side a plate of cookies & chocolates from the staff whom I had gotten relatively acquainted with over my several hour stay. I’d shared conversations with the majority of them, gotten their takes & recommendations, & found out a little about their lives in the process. I even informed the bartender, who plays a hand in the crafting of the menu, that I found their menu more enjoyable & more memorable than the vast majority of bars I’d checked off on the Top Bars list, including those ranked in the Top 10 of the world. He hugged me.

I am a massive fan of Jackfruit, as the members of my dive party in Indonesia can attest to, as well as the desserty nature of Ube, a root vegetable similar to Taro or Sweet Potato. The creamy whiskey drink had a lovely lulling quality to it, I almost would have liked to try it warm surrounded by snow.

I payed my tab & departed. I was thanked repeatedly by the staff whom I also returned my gratitude to & was given the sweetest post card, signed by each of the staff whom I’d interacted with over my incredible time at the MO Bar in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Singapore.

I was advised to go & see the Supertree light show at the Gardens By The Bay, I figured that since I was within reasonable walking distance & still required sustenance that I would kill two birds with one stone; see the show & get some satay! I crossed The Helix Bridge over the bay & skirted the gardens before cutting in towards the Supertree Grove.

I could hear the music from the outskirts of the park. There were runners everywhere & I was actually under the impression that I was going to be early for the show, turns out I arrived about halfway through it. Now I’ll be the first to admit that typically I find myself underwhelmed by light shows/firework shows/etc. but this was a spectacle to behold. Partially so because of the trees themselves & the hybrid technological marvel/plant housing that they are & partially because of the sense of community it offers. There are people camped out all over the park under the trees, each gazing up to the dazzling display above in wonder. Maybe it was the quantity of drinks or the lack of sleep but it was something undeniably heart warming.

After the light show ended I made my way over to Satay By The Bay…sound familiar?… where I got a fresh pressed Thai Guava Juice & naturally, some satay! The plate I ordered came with two prawns, two pork belly, & eighteen chicken satays along with rice. It was the smallest option. It was also served with a peanuty pineapple sauce that was the bomb! I only ended up being able to eat about half of the plate as I truly wasn’t that hungry, but I knew I needed something on my stomach other than alcohol & sugar to top off the evening.

I walked through the gardens on my way back to the train station which were beyond peaceful in the growing night. There was never a point in which I felt unsafe or nervous walking by myself in the well lit pathways.

My route to the train took me through the Marina Bay Sands where I passed way too many stories up for my fear of height’s liking through the middle of it. I finished my commute back to Little Italy where people where enjoying Chaat in the streets & carrying on amiably as I passed. It kind of make me wished I’d saved what little appetite I’d had for some Roti or something of the like.

I made it back to my hotel, took a much needed shower to wash off the day, & was out before my head hit the pillow, grateful for an incredible first day in Singapore!

End Of Day One

---

Day Two

I was awakened at 7:30 AM by the sounds of bells emanating from the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple adjacent to the hotel. After around thirty minutes straight of tolling, I gave up on sleep & immediately set to packing my things. If you recall from the previous day I was planning to move hotels to something a little closer to the Downtown Core but that wasn’t going to stop me from exploring Little India a bit first.

I’d been advised by multiple different parties that I needed to give Toastbox or Ya Kun a try & get some Kaya Toast. The staff at MO Bar the night before had been adamant about Ya Kun being the superior of the two so I made it may breakfast stop. I found a location just a six minute walk from where I was staying & made my way through the bustling streets of Little India, adorned in decor for Diwali, towards the restaurant.

The location for Ya Kun I found was a small stall set inside a petite mall right next to the Little India Arcade. The venue only had around six or seven small tables total & it was near to full by the time I arrived. I stood at the counter where an old Singaporean woman took my order. I got the Kaya French Toast combo which came with a Milk Coffee & Two Soft Boiled Eggs for around $5. While the woman was cracking my eggs onto a plate she spotted my painted nails.

“Why are your nails painted” she probed?

“Because I enjoy them” I replied with a smile.

She was silent for a moment.

“Someone did them for you?”

"No, I did them myself.”

Without a beat she said: “I can tell.”

I just laughed & she handed me my plate of eggs instructing me on the locations of the sauces before I sat.

My Kaya French Toast & drink didn’t take long to follow, all the while I was scouring the web for a new hotel. Y’all, when I tell you Southeast Asia has been hiding Kaya Butter from us, they have been HIDING KAYA BUTTER FROM US!!!!!

What is Kaya Butter? Well, to put it simply, Kaya Butter is a Coconut Jam. Similar in taste & texture to sweetened condensed milk, I wrapped my meal & immediately went back to the country to buy me a jar for home!

After breakfast I cut through the arcade, sampling snacks & perusing the stalls many of which selling gorgeous, fragrant malas & variant sized statuettes of the many Hindu deities. After circling around Little India one more time, popping in & out of shops & enjoying the wafting incense mixing in the street, I headed back to my room to gather my things & check out.

There’s an awkward time discrepancy in the hotel world. Check out always falls somewhere between 10AM & Noon but check in is never before 3 PM. That’s a long time to wander aimlessly with your bags. Luckily I’d my checkout time wasn’t til noon & I’d thought of a solution. I would return to Barry’s & burn an hour & a half-ish there!

Back to Barry’s I went where I got my ass kicked, literally. It was leg day. After class I got me a smoothy & a few items of 70% off merch I’d missed the day prior! After I hopped back onto the train & made my way towards the Civic District once again where my new hotel awaited me.

My new accommodations were at the Grand Park City Hall, a five star hotel that I’d found a solid deal on due to the renovations undergoing the facility. I entered around an hour early but fortunately the had a room available for me as well as a complimentary upgrade! The room was stunning & while the 6’4” gentlemen that I am may have been remiss about the twin beds, I thoroughly enjoyed the ambiance & little touches that went into my stay there. After getting situated I made my way upstairs to the roof top pool for some rays & a soak before returning to my room to shower & get ready for the evening.

Truthfully I was awaiting a call from Odette notifying me that my waitlist status had been bumped to a table so my dinner plans hinged on it. I made my way over to Chinatown in the interim where I planned to stop at Jigger & Pony, another of the Top 50 Bars, to get a drink & maybe a light bite to eat.

I’d been told by the Google that Jigger & Pony opened at four, so I’d gone just after in hopes of catching a seat sans reservation. Google was wrong, it didn’t open til six, so I returned to a stand I’d passed, Yomie’s Rice X Yogurt, for a refreshing beverage to cool off the heat of the day. I got a fresh Mango & Yogurt drink & sucked it down as I began to walk around Chinatown. I knew I was close to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum so I headed off in that direction.

I guess my luck or timing was off that day because I arrived at the temple right around five, at which time it closed apparently. So I took up a seat by the Chinatown Singapore: History & Culture Center, resting my feet that were still screaming at me from the 12+ miles I’d walked on concrete the day before.

After some time spent relaxing & watching the Xiangqi players in the courtyard I came to the realization that I was next to the Chinatown street market. I got up & flitted between the shops even finding an exotic plant stall that made me desperately wish I could bring plants home through customs.

When I’d finished perusing the hour was approaching six & I decided to make my way back towards Jigger & Pony but not before stopping at september coffee for an Iced Black Sesame Latte. Ya boi was crashing. What better solution for the crash than a dim lit bar & alcohol right?!

I was the first person at Jigger & Pony where I was sat at the bar right near the entrance. That’s not to say the bar did not quickly begin to fill with people who had clearly stumbled upon the same list I had & were looking to those “Top 50 in the World” quality cocktails.

At the bartender’s behest I ordered a Madame President, a deconstructed Negroni served with the Campari in lollipop form. The drink was not nearly as dry as I was anticipated with the Campari separated & the Vermouth being a dry instead of sweet variety, I think the orchid & melon liquors really balanced it out. You were meant to sip the cocktail, then take a lick of the lollipop, or whatever other way you wished to enjoy the drink. All I know is I could have had fifty of those Campari Lollipops!

Next I ordered a bit of food, not to over shadow the excellent Wasabi Chips (I see a trend here) that had been served, but I needed something more. So I ordered Deviled Blue Crab Dip served with Smoked Leeks, Sambal Belacan, & Potato Espuma. It smacked.

With the arrival of my dip I diverted course from Gin & found my way to Rum with a Corn Colada. Yes, you read that right, a Corn Colada. I don’t know who thought of it, whose brain said ‘try this out’ but power to them because it was incredibly refreshing. Served a little more like a fizz with egg white the colada swapped out the coconut for butter creating a surprisingly complex mix.

At this point exhaustion was really starting to set in & despite the intrigue the Jigger & Pony menu presented my intuition said it was time for me to call it, so I did, making my way back toward my hotel.

In all honesty I’m kind of glad Odette never called, I don’t think I’d have made it through, I was that tired. I literally went back to my room following my time at Jigger & Pony, packed my things, & fell asleep.

In my defense I had been woken up early & I also had an early flight to catch the next morning needing to be headed to the Singapore Airport around 6 AM.

End Of Day Two

---

END OF BLOG

Blog: Travel Blogs & Their Time Table

I know what you’re thinking, ‘um, this is not a travel blog, you just returned from travel, wtf?!’ & you’d be correct, this is not a travel blog though, I assure you, next week’s will be. Why is this not a travel blog? Well, that would be the entire point of this blog you are currently scanning into your brain through your eye holes. I felt it appropriate & incredible important to fill you in on my process & what exactly goes in to each of these travel blogs that you all so lovingly read, because the answer is no short sum.

Again, if you are a reader of my frequent travel blogs, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I started them back in May of 2021 with my three part Maui series & have since done everything from The UK (multiple times), Fiji, Disneyland, etc & am currently working on Indonesia & Singapore for your reading enjoyment. However, the thing that I don’t think a lot of people realize from the outside looking in is just how long each of these travel blogs take to formulate & publish.

On an average week I would say that a standard blog takes me around two-three hours to complete, the shorter ones maybe an hour & a half. The travel blogs on the other hand, & any other recommendation blog I do, ends up being around ten hours of work, minimum, outside of the travel itself. I’m sure many of you read that number & though ‘the hell is he spending ten plus hours on in a travel blog?’ & the answers may surprise you.

Aside from the stories themselves, the remembering key events & filing them into an order that makes a coherent & interesting story, I also have to go through & tag each of the locations involved. If you weren’t aware, each time that a location is mentioned in a travel blog of mine, be it a restaurant, bar, hotel, museum, or even just a landmark, the name is a clickable link that takes you to the site of that exact property. Additionally I have to go in & edit each of the photos posted to the blog & often find & pull the ones I forgot to save to my phone that I want to use. Furthermore, logistics with squarespace, the housing site for my site & blog, make it so I have to switch back & forth between my computer & phone to get things uploaded &/or where I want them to be in the blog itself & if in the process of all of this my work gets derailed & I end up having to shift work time to something else, it often leads to a delayed publishing.

That’s why so many of these travel blog entries come out at later dates instead of right on Friday, which I have designated blog days, because I fall behind, or life gets in the way & the blog doesn’t end up being written in time.

So where is my Indonesia blog? Well in all honesty I have been weighing with posting the two day blog of Singapore first before diving, pun intended, into the week’s worth of content I have for Indonesia. I also arrived home around midnight on Wednesday & have not had the time or bandwidth to hash out a ten plus hour blog to post today or for the weekend so instead you get this, my long, drawn out excuse.

Don’t worry, there will be a travel blog post out next week. Whether that ends up being about Indonesia or Singapore remains to be seen, but something will be out, I promise. The scheduling for the postings may end up being a bit wonky as I head into the next couple of weeks & the further travel I have there but I will get them out!

In the meantime I hope you’ve enjoyed this blurb of honesty regarding the life of the blog behind the scenes & if you are at all interested in the adventures I had, I will have TikToks & Reels posted over the next few days from the trip!

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Get Thee To A Pharmacy!

At the time in which this blog posts I should be about 10-15 hours into my 40-ish hours worth of travel to Indonesia. No, you didn’t read that wrong, it’s going to take me around 40 hours between flights & layovers to get to Indonesia. However, my flight & travel time is not the point of this here blog, the point of this here blog is meant as a discussion for other aspects of the pre-trip, immunizations.

If you’ve been following the chronicles of my last few weeks & the rush order of vaccinations I’ve had to burn through you may be slightly caught up, though I think I’ll end up going in further detail here than I did on my Instagram/Facebook stories or Twitter, naturally.

I woke up one morning around two & a half weeks ago with the peculiar thought, ‘huh, I wonder if I need certain immunizations for my upcoming trip to Indonesia.’ That out of the blue epiphany would turn out to be correct, I needed a butt load of them.

I immediately hopped out of bed & onto my laptop where I sent the trip leader a ‘hey, sooooo vaccines?’ email to which they responded with a CDC link, a WHO link, & an explanation that most of the other people going to Indonesia had already received the vaccinations required seeing as they had just gone to Tanzania at the beginning of the summer. I got to work at once.

The list is a doozy folks, I’m going to share it below & then as the story of this saga progresses we’ll go through them a little more in depth.

Charlie’s Vaccine List For Indonesia:

-Yellow Fever

-Japanese Encephalitis

-COVID-19

-Influenza

-Rabies

-Polio

-TDAP (Tetanis, Diphtheria, Pertussis)

-MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella)

-Chicken Pox

-Shingles

-Pneumonia

-Meningitis

-Hepatitis A&B

-Typhoid

-In Addition To Melaria Pills

A lot right? A pretty daunting list & even if you have previously had a lot of these they recommend getting boosters for them. Now, all of that list out of the way, let’s get into the saga…

The vaccine that kicks us off is COVID-19. I was due for the new booster & already had an appointment booked at this point. Additionally, when I went to book the other myriad of vaccinations listed above it asked me to consult my pharmacist about booking more than one vaccine at a time, so that’s exactly what I did. I talked it over with the pharmacist who explained the following to me: one, they would need to order a lot of the vaccines in question due to their “exotic” nature & the fact they weren’t widely given in the US. They recommended I contact the “Travel Center” Walgreens in Green Hills to see which of them they had in stock & which they needed to order. Two, they recommended getting no more than 2-4 at a time, really leaning more into the lower end of that range. So COVID shot acquired & vax card up to date, I had a call to make.

My call with the pharmacist at the Walgreens “travel center” was, dare I say, a tad hectic. The pharmacist was a tad overwhelmed with the vaccination list I’d given her but was more than willing to order them all & help me to get as many of them as possible before my trip. Here we ran into our first hurtle & it was something that I kick myself for not remembering.

A certain number of my list of vaccines were live vaccines. Live vaccines cannot be administered within a two week window of other vaccines, at least that’s how it was explained to me, so things like MMR, Yellow Fever, Typhoid, & a few others were out of the question.

Following my call with the pharmacist I gave my parents a rang. My parents work in hospice & my mother specifically has been a nurse her whole life & therefore has medical insight. Fortunately when I called they also happened to have a pharmacist in the car with them as well.

I was given over to their pharmacist who went through the list with me over the phone once again. He however had some opinions about which of them I should make a top priority & which I should either ignore or move farther down the list.

Naturally anything I received as an immunization when I was younger was on that list so off went Chicken Pox, MMR, Meningitis, Polio, Etc. Furthermore he recommended that I don’t put too much stock in the shingles vax or the pneumonia vax as they’re primarily recommended for people over the age of 65.

With my newly updated list of jabs I returned that evening to start crossing them off the list receiving the influenza jab as well as the TDAP booster, neither of which did me much harm or gave me many side effects.

Following the weekend I made my way to the Travel Center where my other vaccines were waiting. The pharmacist there was a different one than the one I’d talked to previously but he recommended that I waited until Thursday to get the shots since I’d gotten three on Friday & that while he was more than willing to give them all at once, he was a little less than comfortable doing so. Additionally, when he’d gone to ring up my vaccinations through my insurance they had decided they weren’t going to cover them. He then recommended I make an appointment with my primary to try to receive prior authorization & bypass the insurance paywall.

I partially heeded his shot warning & ended up with the combo Hep A & B vaccine before calling up my doctor who managed to squeeze me in at noon the next day.

Once again feeling no side effects from the vaccine I made my way to my primary care doctor to attain a script for the vaccines along with prior authorization & a script for malaria pills.

The malaria pills were covered, but no matter how hard we pushed or what work arounds we tried insurance still didn’t want to cover the Rabies vax & the Japanese Encephalitis one, you know, the two highly deadly diseases. So out of pocket they became. Shoutout to Cigna on that one.

I managed to finally get the injections for the both of the above on Thursday along with my malaria prevention pills…there were side effects for both of those, in fact they both knocked me out for the entirety of last weekend, hence why last week’s blog was delayed…apologies.

Needless to say this all was a lot & this is the abridged version of the story if you’d believe that. I’m grateful for all who helped me get the ones I got & for the ability to travel safely without the fear of catching life altering or potentially ending diseases. As for Yellow Fever & Typhoid, I wasn’t traveling from a place where Yellow Fever is prevalent & Typhoid is treatable with antibiotics if, God forbid, I were to contract it.

I’ll do my best to keep you updated on my travels over the next week or so but if you don’t hear from me until the week of the 12th know it’s because I’m in Indonesia. If you’d like to stay in the loop I do plan to post daily vlogs on both my Instagram & Tik Tok, I hope you’ll check them out!

As always, much love to you all,

See you on the other side!

-C