June 2018 I was last in Bahrain in 2015, three years ago now. I used to go often during the five years I lived in Saudi Arabia, since I had the good fortune to live in Dhahran, on the Gulf Coast only an hour's drive away across the King Fahad Causeway. For those expats like me who lived in the Dhahran/Khobar/Dammam conurbation, Bahrain was the Promised Land. Reasons for that assessment differed depending on [...]
July 2018 The Emperor's New Clothes. Hans Christian Andersen wrote an amusing tale for children, yes, but if we extrapolate a bit -- and it doesn't take much -- then we have a model for all sorts of things we adults get up to on a regrettably regular basis. The split between rhetoric and reality is the fundamental issue, and that split gapes wide in the ideology of our modern world like the maw of [...]
June 2018 Another Grumpy Old Man post ... maybe I should change the title of this blog to Senior Moments LOL. But you gotta work with what you got, so full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes :-) I'm a dinosaur now, so that's the topic of the moment. Obviously retirement is a major watershed point for everyone with regard to becoming a dinosaur, but I've been thinking about other ways I've seen that process take place [...]
June 2018 This post is for all you golden oldies out there at the point of retirement or over the edge and into the territory already, like I am and have been for the past three years. Can it really be three years already? Jeez, how time flies when you're trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up :-) Anyhoo, here we are in the year of our Lord 2018 [...]
June 2018 In 2012 I made my second trip to Chiang Mai and the tourist fever was still strong upon me. A friend of mine suggested a day trip to Chiang Dao, to which I readily agreed without even looking at the map. I heard talk of temples and caves and I was in, it didn't matter how far away. In point of fact, Chiang Dao lies 89 kilometers (55 miles) [...]
June 2018 In this post I want to celebrate the beauties of one of my favorite places in Chiang Mai, the Bhubing Palace Gardens that sit atop Doi Suthep mountain just to the west of the city. I've been there several times and now that my trips to Chiang Mai are fewer and farther between, I make a point of going up every time I visit. It's possible to get [...]
Wat Ched Yod is my favorite temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Chiang Mai fairly bristles with stunning temples, as anyone who has visited the city will know. There are so many you'd need months to see them all. Ched Yod is my favorite because it combines so many different environments and avenues of experience. There you can find history, beautiful architecture, lovely gardens, the full experience of Buddhist lay practice, [...]