the Malaysian Cowboy

(the main video)

(the epilogue, of sorts)

Today’s Flickr Gallery | August 2nd: Dallas to Houston-HOME!

Over the course of this trip, I’d gotten used to heading out on the road at progressively later times. While the first day started with me leaving home at the ripe hour of 5:30, I left yesterday for Dallas at only 11 am. Granted, not all drives were the same length, but, I’m pretty sure as the days wore on and I became progressively tired, I made up for that by getting just a little more shut eye when I could. Today was, however, a bit different: I was headed home!

Leaving Rebecca’s place at the ripe hour of 8:30, I made one stop for gas along the way, but otherwise pressed on. As such, I’m going to leave most of the explanation to the video above, and the epilogue below, which will end up doing most of the heavy lifting in this post.

All told, once home I snapped a shot of the GPS totals for the miles travelled, hours driven, and all the other fun stuff. 4,685 miles. It’s only four simple digits, but behind that number’s an awesome, truly memorable trip.

Emptying my bags later, I laid out all the tangible souvenirs I had accumulated over the course of the trip. A little bit of a mess, but it definitely tells part of the story. Much later, Keesh and I popped a bottle of champagne Mom had gotten for my return

In a way, it feels weird that I’m not going to be continuing with the onslaught of daily videos, photos and blog posts. For a long time I talked mightily of it but wasn’t quite sure myself whether I would actually follow through. Now that I’ve done it, what I can tell you, is that sometimes you just have to do something without thinking too much about it. I can hardly do justice to it all with just a few simple sentences, so rather than try, I’ll leave you with a massive thank you to everyone that made this trip possible, big and large: Mom, Dad, Keesh, my friends Rafaela, Julia and Rebecca, and everyone else that I’ve talked to about this trip either before, during, or after. It was a blast. Thanks for reading and keeping up with my blog, and if you ever do find yourself bored at random other points in the future, chances are I’ll be here blogging, so feel free to come back. For now, this cowboy’s signing off!

Hello long-overdue blog post! Today I finally began my long-awaited road trip. It’s been a while since my original post about the trip. In that time, I’ve been rather busy, spending close to two months in Malaysia (for which there are blog posts I still haven’t written, but do plan to), in addition to planning for this trip.

The final route for the trip has me headed from Houston to Amarillo, then on to Albquerque, Flagstaff, Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Green River (Utah), Denver, back to Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and finally, back to Houston! Also on the agenda are The Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Death Valley National Park, and perhaps a few other things.

Now, back to today: the Houston to Amarillo leg of the trip.

I left home around 5:45 in the morning, and finally arrived at my hotel in Amarillo around 5:30 in the evening. So, a little under 12 hours on the road. Not too bad, I think, considering the numerous short stops to take photos, lunch, and one more stop to stretch early on.

Below are a few photos from my phone, I’m uploading the ones taken with my proper camera at the moment, and the full gallery for today will be viewable at this link.

There were a ton of interesting sights along the way some of which I documented with photos, but I’m way too tired to go through everything right at the moment, so I’m going to let these three (short) videos do a little bit of the talking for now.

Random things worth noting:

• Saw a carnival being transported. Group of about six trucks with all sorts of games and contraptions
• Amarillo’s a little windy.
• Lotta dead bugs on the car. Watching the dragonflies hit the windscreen was quite sad.
• There’s a good amount of road work going on on highways 83 and 287. Mostly re-tarring from what I could tell.

I promise all further posts will be longer and more interesting than this brief status update; I doubt I’ll be nearly as tired! Otherwise, things are going swimmingly thus far!

For the past few years, talk of the US TV news media has been CNN’s decline in ratings even as MSNBC and Fox, while declining at some points, are doing considerably better. Much is made of CNN’s attempt at impartiality in an age where the other two main competitors are entirely upfront about their more opinionated anchors and biases, and the reality that what CNN is pushing clearly isn’t bringing in the ratings. While a good deal of time has been spent discussing these developments, I feel like spending a bit of time discussing why TV news has gone down this road, and what it means in a larger sense.

Prior to the internet age, news media consisted of print, radio, and television. With the advent of each format, different advantages were afforded: with print, no longer did one need to rely on word of mouth to hear of the latest happenings. Further, there was the “reliability” of institutions, rather than mere individuals, collaborating to give you the news. Radio brought us closer to real-time information dissemination, across vast swaths of land. And with TV, the fusion of both visual and auditory awesomeness, again with the relatively instantaneous form of communication, things seemed to have really hit big time. Yes, I’m simplifying a large amount of history here in these few sentences, but, again, my point is that each of these had particulars about them that drove their success.

Back to our brief history. With all this in the background, the internet came along. Though it began with websites based largely on text and a few images, today, thanks to improved connectivity and innovative projects, the internet is now a bustling world of media, disseminating information to the global masses at awesome speed, allowing said users to interact and give offer their own opinions and commentary.

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If I’m going to be honest, I have to admit that I’ve spent a good chunk of the past few years fighting off the notion that this high-stress, split-second age of the internet and ever-present connectivity has somehow acted in a detrimental manner with regards to my sanity. Countless times I’ve said to people that they were wrong about this information age being too damned complex for our minds to make it out unscathed.

Yesterday, I woke up to my alarms blaring. Yes, alarms: I set two to three each morning, and most of the time manage to sleep through them all, or hit the snooze button until I have just enough time to squeeze in all of my ever-so-important “priorities”.  As I walk to my first class, I’m incessantly checking my email, cycling through four accounts; often, forgetting the content of some of those messages, which ends up coming back to bite me sometime later. I check how the markets are doing at some point during lunch, and make it a point to read the first few top stories on the New York Times. After that, it’s either back to class or time to head over to the gym, both of which I view as crucial to my daily succes. Perhaps I’ll have a meeting or two to attend at some point in the evening or afternoon, after which I’ll then return to my room to try to finish the homework due the next day. Chances are pretty decent that I’ll do so in the company of the bountiful laughter and discussion that’s usually taking place, or, the sounds of gun shots and/or Star Trek, depending on the day—company which I’m entirely a fan of.

To be sure, I enjoy blaring my music at insanely high decibels—decibels I myself can only hear, thanks to my lovely in-ear headphones—as I make my way through the Tufts campus. I easily get lost in the sounds, even if the people around me aren’t. Similarly, I enjoy the calm and out-of-cycle nature I get from an hour or two at the gym. Most weekends, and even sometimes during the day, I find myself able to take a nap or two or just sit down and take some time to assess where my life is going (which, if my timing is right, allows me to author posts like these.)

But, at the same time, when I was sitting in on this week’s Snyder Lecture here at Tufts, delivered by Sherley Turkle of MIT, I began to take stock of all that I’ve listed above, and I came to realize that while I can certainly benefit from a lot in my present lifestyle, a part of me wants to experience a simpler, less involved lifestyle, if only for a week or two. One of the things that I really want to make sure I continue to do is try new things, and while I’ve had a good run with my tech-infused lifestyle these past few years, I’m eager for a break.

To that end, with a relatively empty summer in the way of plans, I’ve resolved to conduct a road trip sometime in late July. Depending on the final route, it’s set to involve at least 4,000 miles covered by car, and close to two days of just driving. It’ll take me through a number of states in the southwest, and give me the chance to make a number of interesting stops, in addition to visiting some cool people I happen to know in the area.

The key for me is making this trip alone. It’ll give me plenty of time to drive through vast, open expanses, pondering some of the more random things about life, but also learning to marvel at the simple things, as I make sure to stop whenever makes sense. Not to say that I’m out-and-out refusing company, mind you. But at the same time, there’s some part of me that feels like I need to do something a little out of the ordinary, and to that end, find a little solitude where I’m relatively disconnected from my modern life, and at the times when I am connected with people I know, I want to make sure they’re more than just through texts and liking their posts on Facebook. Oh, and I’m a cowboy, so it’s only natural that I’d want to go it my own way for a little while before I come back down to reality. Hah!

For now, the trip is in its relatively early planning stages, as I haven’t a clue as to how long I’ll end up being on the road, and where exactly I’ll stop, but rest assured I’ll be bringing my camera along with me to document the entire trip.

Plans

If the depth of your well
Is defined by the length of your thought,
Understand that it’s in the complacency of our days
That we often calculate our trajectories.

With anxious negotiation
That forgoes a level of reassurance,
It’s easy to confuse nascent attempts at progress
With deepening regress.

Indeed,
Of moments taken at face value,
We’re often astounded at the little which appears.
Drawn, instead, to our ever-present fears.

Surely the day will come
When your clarity is once again restored.

When clouds that were once barriers
to such lofty considerations,
Will find themselves porous,
Bringing water that will

surely ease
the journey to the top.

Oh, of plans, it must be said,
They are made to endure.

When I originally wrote this, I must confess I was mostly concerned with deriving some self-confidence, rather than making it any sort of commentary on life.

Having said that, the more I consider the events around me, I continue to find myself returning to those last two lines. As I look around this sprawling college campus, I see a sea of people: some know exactly what track they’re on, while others are barely hanging on, struggling for stability and direction. Regardless, what keeps everyone going, fundamentally speaking, is the notion that just as the past has come and done it’s bidding, the future—be it a minute from now, a year from tomorrow, or a decade from graduation—holds a significant amount of potential.

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