Where in the World is Polly Allen?

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 2 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 22 posts.

The busiest day of the year was May 7th with 53 views. The most popular post that day was One Year.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, thechiselgroup.org, thechiselgroup.com, search.conduit.com, and mail.yahoo.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for hard on, pulau langkawi, tokyo airport, polly allen, and life is hard.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

One Year May 2010
1 comment

January 14th, 2009: 2 months since I left! (Ko Lipe, Thailand) January 2009
1 comment

January 21, 2009 Ko Mook, Thailand: In Which Our Heroine Takes a Shortcut January 2009
4 comments

November 13, 2008: Tokyo Airport December 2008
5 comments

Help needed – Hypothetical Problem: What can I do? June 2010
3 comments

You are the most brilliant, creative person I know. (This is the real part, not the hypothetical part yet.) This is why I know you can help me.

Hypothetical part: Pretend there’s some company (pick any two random letters from the alphabet as the company name) and it has been drilling for oil in the ocean floor and there’s been an explosion and the well is now leaking over 100,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. That’s like the Exxon Valdez oil spill happening over and over again every 2-3 days. And it’s been doing it for over a month. So here is my question, oh brilliant one: What can I do? Today? I don’t accept that just because I am not a petrochemical engineer or Kevin Costner, I can’t do anything. Come on. You’re better than that.

Here, I’ll get you started. It’s all I’ve got so far. But keep in mind, if you feel your suggestion is silly – our hypothetical alphabetical company has set the bar pretty low by suggesting some ideas that first sounded stupid, and then didn’t work. So make it practical, or make it ridiculous.

WHAT I CAN DO:

I can donate. I can volunteer. I can reduce my dependence on fossil fuels.

I can threaten to eat a cat like that wacko Miley Cyrus Twitter chick. I can give a timeline – by next week, unless this company plugs the leak*, Fluffy will be an ex-feline. And in my belly.

(* or at least agrees to use some newer, more environmentally-sound solutions than dispersants – like  these.)

I can threaten to eat an oil-soaked bird! (This may kill me, which unfortunately might not lead to much of an impact outside my immediate family. And even that is a maybe. I will mark this one as a ‘backburner’ idea.) *BACKBURNER*

I can threaten to force an adorable child, to whom people might feel much more attachment that they do towards me, to eat an oil-soaked bird. (Possibly illegal.) *BACKBURNER*

I can act with my spending. I can boycott products from oil and gas companies that are irresponsible enough to go forward with projects like this without a non-sucky contingency plan. I can find out which companies have non-sucky contingency plans, and which ones don’t. If this information isn’t easy to find, I can post a website. I can give it some stupid name like www.kickBPinthejunk.com so that even incredibly busy and important people who like stupid websites, like you or I, will go there.

I can make sure any of my investments, like the buck ‘o five in my RRSP, are invested in responsible, non-sucky-plan companies. I can ask my investment advisor how mutual fund managers find this kind of thing out, if it’s hard to find out.

I can ask him why I only have a buck ‘o five. (unrelated to task at hand) *BACKBURNER*

Every time I fill up my car, I can kick a gas-station employee in the junk. (Irrational, mean, and again some whiners might complain this is illegal) *BACKBURNER*

I can vote. (Okay, perhaps this would have a limited effect TODAY.) But if I voted I can demand accountability from elected officials, and the regulatory bodies they oversee. I don’t know how to do this, but I can find out. I can post instructions for other people to do the same, to make it easier. Perhaps it could be a whole separate page on kickBPinthejunk.com!

If I didn’t vote to elect anyone, I can kick myself in the junk. I’d deserve it.

I can write a blog entry, and ask you for your ideas. (In case you hadn’t noticed, this is the one I have time for today.)

So – it’s a start, but as you can see, I don’t have to go very far down the list to get to some pretty bad  *BACKBURNER* ideas. So take 30 seconds, close your eyes (when you’re done reading this sentence) and give that big beautiful brain of yours a chance to churn out one idea – and give it to me. Like I said, make it practical or ridiculous – but make it something I can do, not something governments or capitalism or Kevin Costner should do.

Why? Well, hypothetically, it’s all up to you. Because only YOU can spare the world a whole lot of junk-kicking at this stage. And because it beats just watching this unfold and feeling as sick to your stomach as I do.

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”  –Albert Einstein

More ideas here! And here!

Legal Notice: No hypothetical cats, birds, children or gas station employees were kicked in the junk or harmed in the making of this blog entry

I don’t wanna!

Oh, it’s not that I don’t want to go home…but it’s not like I really want to go home either. I don’t want to throw out my raggedy, unflattering nightgown. My t-shirts that should be discarded because they’re overstretched and underpants with shot elastic, my precious tankini worn to see-through-dom; they are a part of me! They bear tales, they bear witness to my feats of being elsewhere than ‘normal’! When I get home I know their magic will be gone and they’ll be nothing but worn out rags.

At some points I know I looked forward to routine; to knowing what food I would eat for all foreseeable meals; to ‘getting on with it’, whatever ‘it’ is. But now on the cusp, all I can see is the trees instead of the forest…

–Polly’s journal, May 4th, 2009

I arrived home on May 6th, one year ago today. It’s interesting to have a vivid milestone in your memory, that you can use to measure a year in your life. I had no idea if I would find a job; I didn’t know some relationships would end and some would grow.  I didn’t know that some things that seemed like lucid clear epiphanies when I was traveling (“I should do my PhD!”) would seem diluted, not quite right when I got home. (“But I want to do something practical…I’d like to get more involved with business as well as technology…”) As a first step I am taking a project management course at Royal Roads university. I decided to do it partially out of interest, and partially out of frustration that after six months of traveling and thinking about future directions and ‘finding myself” (…um, turns out I was right there all along?) that I felt no closer to knowing what I wanted to do next. I have always had great admiration for friends and family who have a clear vision of what they would like to make of their lives. It’s something I’ve struggled with a long time, but I take comfort in knowing that the first step is looking for that vision – and not giving up if it is frustratingly elusive.

So what is now, and what is next? I love my job, working for Serials Solutions on Summon, an exciting new search platform that aims to bring researchers back into libraries. I am working from a home office, and was until recently working on contract, which I’ve always wanted to try. Though I am now a full-time employee I hope to keep doing some small contracts on the side. I’m enjoying the project management course, and have had a chance to put some of what I’m learning into practice at work as well.  We’re merging with a company in Amsterdam, and I was able to combine a work trip in March with a few extra days holiday over there. Though I could do my work from anywhere, my wanderlust seems (mostly, sometimes) in check these days. I feel so fortunate to enjoy the comforts of great friends nearby; of finding local adventures and exotic things in my own backyard. I am so blessed.

So maybe that is the source of my frustration; looking back at my first post, I still feel like I haven’t given back. This trip was my dream for so long; how many people actually get to accomplish their ‘big crazy audacious’ dreams? I think of Shirley, and I wonder what she would tell me these days. “Follow your heart”, yes, yes. But what if your heart has A.D.D.? I go through phases of concentrating on learning new technologies, either for my job or out of interest; of feeling a real yen to have my own company, whether it’s a contracting-based one or a more entrepreneurial venture; of chastising myself for not writing more, and more specifically making any effort to be published anywhere, ever. I could learn Spanish and set off for South America this winter, for at least a few months.   I am very intrigued by the MBA program at Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation, and the growing trend for micro-loans in developing countries and the combination of that with social computing, through platforms like Kiva. I just haven’t figured out how all these puzzle pieces fit together.

Yet.

Who knows what a year can bring?

The town was originally important as a source of medicinal herbs and plants; Ubud gets its name from the Balinese word ubad (medicine). – from Wikipedia entry for Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

It started with the flip flops. They were the first item of great personal worth that I’d lost on this trip so far, and I was very annoyed. Then I left my cell phone – also a prized possession – in Borneo. I was losing my touch! A week later I realized that in a space of a few days I’d lost:

• a plastic bag with about $40 worth of sunscreen & skin care products (fortunately returned)
• my mask & snorkel (left at a restaurant – also returned)
• my mask, again (lost of a dive trip, never found)
• my mesh bag used for dirty laundry
• my sunglasses

Something was definitely amiss – how had I managed to travel without atrophying goods for three and half months, only to fall to pieces so late in the game? It wasn’t just that I was losing things. An itchy rash around my eyes had developed while I was diving in Borneo, and despite all my best self-medication efforts, it was still around ten days later (tip: neither toothpaste nor tiger balm were good ideas.) I felt achy and tired and generally grumpy. I was spending too much time on facebook. But it wasn’t until I very nearly missed my flight to Bali, simply because I was careless about calculating how much time the airport shuttle bus would take, that I knew something had to be done.

Traveler’s fatigue: I’m sure most long-term travelers have experienced it. For most backpackers I’ve met, it seems to hit between the thee-to-four-month mark, so I was right on schedule. The grind of packing and unpacking your bag every day or every second day; of having to bargain for every item you need; of meeting new people, re-introducing and presenting your most-fun-smiling-self only to start building your social network all over again a few days later when you part company; it all starts to wear on you. I’m not expecting sympathy – it is part of the traveling experience, which I still love. But I had lost my traveling mojo.

I’d planned to rest up in the Perhentians, but spent most of my time there diving, so it was no surprise that I wasn’t ‘cured’ when I arrived in Bali. I enjoyed an extra day in Kuta, Bali’s throbbing nightlife pulse, just so I didn’t have to organize travel or pack my bag. But it wasn’t until I arrived in Ubud that I knew I’d found the place to really relax and rebuild. Ubud is a place meant for such things, and it crossed my path just when I needed it most.

Have you been to Saltspring Island market? Imagine that, but the size of a small village, built up on the ruins of ancient Hindu temples, overgrown with moss and flowers, and surrounded by rice paddies as far as the eye can see. This is Ubud – touristy but delightful. You can get crafts and batiks and paintings galore, and dine on raw food, vegan salads (real salads!) and mixed-juice health elixirs. Yes, it is the first time I have seen wheatgrass on a menu since leaving Victoria! Considering it has been practically impossible to find a salad in all the rest of southeast asia, I was quite impressed! It has all the crunchy-granola tree-huggy goodnesss of home, with an extra-mellow spiritual vibe and gorgeous serene scenery thrown in, all for a fraction of the price you’d pay at home.

I went to the medical clinic, and two days later, the cream they gave me had cleared up my eye rash nicely. A lovely ladyboy cut and dyed my hair, and I spent the rest of the day getting body massages, manicures, pedicures, the works. I stopped by the Yoga Barn, an old converted barn whose second-floor studio has huge wide open windows that let in the Bali breeze and let you gaze out over the ride fields as you contemplate your intention of this yoga practice. “Listen to your body”, our instructor says as I roll forward into a deep bend. I can hear my body clearly. It says, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you’.

I carefully planned my trip to the Perhentian Islands, off the coast of north-east Malaysia, to be after my three weeks in Borneo, specifically to avoid the monsoon rains that frequently run until the end of February in these parts. Ironically, it has poured rain just for the three days I am here. I don’t mind however; the islands are still an idyllic paradise, even in the rain, and it’s also been an opportunity to get some more diving in, since it’s nearly as wet above water as below! I did three dives over two days to become a certified wreck diver, which will be useful for wrecks in Bali and Australia, as well as for some of the excellent wreck dives we have at home in beautiful British Columbia!

It’s also been a chance to catch up on photo uploads, blog updates, and facebook mucking around; I’ve found a beach-side restaurant with excellent, cheap food, ridiculously decadent shakes (you don’t know what you’re missing in life until you’ve had a ‘Snickers’ shake, believe me!) and free wi-fi. So instead of a newsy update about what I’ve been up to (not much), I decided to write up some reflections about my trip so far. I present:

Top 10 Signs You Might Be a Budget Backpacker

1. You have, in a pinch, substituted eating a pack of mint Mentos for brushing your teeth

2. You know the exact price of a can of beer in the five nearest countries to your current location

3. You can fix absolutely anything with your sewing kit and dental floss:

   

   Polly is the MacGyver of Travel (red circle is fixed area)

4. You have eaten ramen noodles – raw.

5. You no longer value things based on what they cost you, only on the difficulty you’d have replacing them. For example:
   Acer Laptop: Cost $450, Value $450
   Feminine fashionable flipflops in size women’s 11: Cost $12, Value ONE MILLION DOLLARS

6. You actually cry when you lose something of great value (like when I left my flipflops on a dive boat in Sipidan and never saw them again – WAH!)

7. You have several new gradients for describing how dirty your clothes are between ‘clean’ and ‘has to be washed before worn again’ (i.e.: “no visible marks”, “doesn’t smell too bad”, etc.)

8. You have a shower and then think, “What’s that smell?” Then you realize the smell is you, NOT smelling.

9. Your most prized possessions include your universal electrical adapter, your bathroom bag with a hook on it so it can be hung on anything in bug-infested zones, your waterproof watch with an alarm, and your flipflops. (Yes, still pretty bitter about the flipflops.)

10. You get your clean laundry back from the cleaners and your first thought is, “Sweet! They gave me a free plastic bag!”

Sipidan Island is well-known in scuba diving circles; it is frequently rated as one of the top 10 dive sites in the world. Its claim to fame is “big stuff”: turtles, reef sharks, and most of all, the thousands of schooling barracuda at Barracuda Point. I saw all of these amazing creatures; too many to count of each, actually. Trying to swim out off the path of one sea turtle, I bumped into another swim turtle. I would not have been surprised to see a shark, with a turtle in its mouth, that had a baby shark it ITS mouth. I was lucky enough to catch a huge school of thousands of 3-4 foot barracuda at Barracuda Point (one dive master told me they often don’t find them) and they swirled around us in a barracuda hurricane that blotted out the sun. You can see why this is a world-class dive site.

I also did some diving at the nearby islands. Diving at Mantabuan was not that remarkable the day we went, but the island itself was. It is very beautiful, but also – EFFERVESCENT. As I walked along the beach, every step I took felt like stepping on a foam mattress, incredibly soft. And with every step, huge air bubbles would bubble up from underneath and around my feet! Oysters? Crabs? Even when I grabbed a handful of sand it seemed to bubble – but no creatures emerged. No one could provide an explanation. How about it, any marine biologists in the crowd? (I know you’re there, you know who you are!)

Mabul Island, about 15 minutes from Sipidan by speedboat, is also famous as one of the world’s best “muck diving” sites – “muck diving” meaning macro, or “little stuff”, like shrimp and nudibranches. There is a village of local native “sea people” on the island and I stayed at a longhouse there for a few nights. There’s not a lot to do besides snorkel (and catch the finale of Malaysian Idol on the TV at a little beach-side bar, but that’s another story…) but the people are very friendly! For some reason the children there seem to outnumber adults about 8 to 1? I asked some local Malays on the mainland and the only answer I got was that the people of Mabul “have no control” – followed by much giggling.   Uhh…okay.  Again, fabulous diving, both here and at nearby Kapalai Island. We saw everything from huge 200-pound groupers to tiny cleaner shrimp (if you open your mouth they will jump in and clean your teeth!)

Unfortunately none of my underwater escapades are documented in photographic form, but I have posted my above-water photos here, including some footage of the local Divemaster Trainees passing their final test to become certified DMs – the infamous “Snorkel Test”.

Quiz time! What is the BIGGEST indicator in the following photo that drinking this beverage is an extremely bad idea?

Golden Hammer

a) The price (less than $2 CDN)
b) The name
c) The 45% alcohol
d) The +/- signs indicating that this is an approximation
e) Other – please comment

Quiz time! What is the BIGGEST indicator in the following photo that drinking this beverage is an extremely bad idea?

Golden Hammer

a) The price (less than $2 CDN)
b) The name
c) The 45% alcohol
d) The +/- signs indicating that this is an approximation
e) Other – please comment

…but worth every step and every penny.

Sunrise from Mt Kinabalu Summit

Pictures from the trek

Well, it was worth every step UP. The trek down took me just as long as the trek up because I hyperextended one of my knees at the top and took 5 hours to hobble down the mountain like a little old lady. I am recovering in Semporna, gateway to the world-class diving at Sipidan Island!

At least I do post some pictures once in a while. Here are the highlights:

January 21-January 31: Various Islands in the Andaman Sea, Southern Thailand

From Ko Mook, the cheapest route to Ko Lanta was something called a “tour ferry” – which turned out to be a day-long snorkeling tour of the surrounding islands and reefs. It was an excellent way to check out which islands I wanted to come back to! I met Laura from Scotland on Ko Mook, and we traveled together throughout the islands, and laughed until our stomach muscles hurt on more than one occasion. I got to dive at Hin Daeng and Hin Muang, some of the best sites in the area, and saw a sea turtle!  We went to  Muai Thai match, and saw four-year-olds punch each other! (We also saw a guy from Sweden KO a guy from Thailand, he wasn’t very popular.) We did a day trip to Phi Phi island from Ko Lanta, and it was very depressing: mother nature is still there, being as splendid as can be, in the middle of human destruction and waste. The place smells like a latrine, it is strewn with garbage, and I was so glad we were only there for a day tour. I have since heard from other tourists if you get away from the main beach it is okay, though. The snorkeling WAS amazing, and I saw barracuda and giant pufferfish – both of which I’d only ever seen diving, not snorkeling.

Heading back down south from Ko Lanta, we somehow ended up ‘stranded’ on Ko Ngai at the pier where only one rather pricey accommodation offer existed; we managed to bargain them down to a reasonable price and bore our suffering at a swanky seaside resort with dignity, at the pool, cocktails in hand.

One of the islands was my favorite place on earth, ever. I say this with confidence: I will never find a place I love more.  There are colors that only exist in nature in this one place. Walking out through the impossibly clear, shallow waters about 100m from the beach, I found the most pristine reef I have seen, extending for kilometers in either direction along the beach. This is why I will refer to it only as Ko X: I can’t bear the thought of this paradise being destroyed, overrun, like Phi Phi.  It’s not an island that belongs on a blog. It still doesn’t even seem real.

Feb 1 – Feb 6: Cameron Highlands and Teman Negara

If I felt let down by the Cameron Highlands, it might not entirely be the Cameron Highlands’ fault. I had just left Ko X, and I wish I’d stayed at least one more day. Also, I didn’t know what to expect. I had read the guidebook blurbs, but what is a “hill station”? Something British, I suppose, since they apparently called it that. How cool is “refreshingly cool”?

I will list some characteristics of the Cameron Highlands. Where does this remind you of?

• Around 7-9 degrees Celsius
• Rainy and grey
• Lots of farmland, lots of corn
• Activities include: U-Pick Strawberries, having tea & scones, and visiting a butterfly garden

Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen! You can fly across the globe to the famous Cameron Highlands, OR you can take the short route and go to Brentwood Bay, BC! The corn AND the strawberries are better in BC, by the way. Harrumph.

Luckily Taman Negara National Park lived up to expectations much better. My expectations were: Jungle Jungle Jungle. We spent three days and two nights trekking through the oldest rain forest on earth: 130 million years old. There were leeches and we slept in a cave where we’d found lots of creepy crawly bugs and a giant toad and the next night we slept in a jungle hide to watch animals at a nearby salt lick and we visited two different Orang Asli villages, the indigenous nomadic people who hunt with blow darts made with poison from trees. It was COOL. And Jungly. Some people were disappointed that we didn’t see any big animals (there are tigers and elephants and tapirs in the park) but…I was completely satisfied with my Jungle experience.

Feb 6 – Feb 10: Kuala Lumpur

After all this time in the woods, I didn’t really feel like going to a big city, so I was surprised when I really, really liked “KL”. It is flashy and sexy with lots of money and clean, organized streets and public transportation options. It still retains lots of Asian flavor though, and there are great food options everywhere. The Aquarium in the famous Petronas twin towers was a highlight for me, with its moving walkway though a ‘living ocean’ full of sharks, rays and giant fish.

It just so happened that I was in KL for Thaipusam, a Hindu festival I had never heard of.  Other travelers had planned their entire trip around being in KL for this event. Devotees carry burdens called kavadi or pierce their skin with hooks or skewers during a pilgrimage from KL to the Batu caves about 15 km outside of town, in fulfillment of a vow. They are usually in a trance state, so they maintain they can’t feel any of the things they do to themselves – and also, they don’t bleed. There are 1.3 million people gathered at the caves. I went. I saw. There are no words.

I have some pictures and video posted. If you’re the kind of person who likes to see these things, click on the photo below!

My reaction to Thaipusam

For the record, I didn’t see anyone bleeding. The red color on some people’s tongues is betel nut juice, I think. – some kind of juice I saw people putting in their mouths.

I am now in Kota Kinabalu, setting out to hike Mount Kinabalu the day after tomorrow. Wish me luck!