Sad news

4 Jun

Dear Sir/Madam,

I regret to inform you that this will be the last blog post at hapworkingtheworld.com. It is with a heavy heart I tell you that Hap suffers from a rare problem or disease if you will. It is a disease that has come about in the new generation of technology and social networking users. It has come to our attention that Hap is what is known as a blogaholic. Hap has all the symptoms, he always carries his camera with him in case of a photo opportunity for his blog, at times he lays awake at night thinking about the “next post”, and he can’t even have an unexpected bowel movement in an awkward situation without telling the world about it. So it is in Hap’s best interest and his African Expedition that we will temporarily be pulling the life support unit from hapworkingtheworld.com. I hope you take this news well and support Hap in his time of need.

Yours sincerely

Dr Joe Blogs

Blogaholics anonymus’s Chairman.

Haha, that was all a bit dramatic, traumatic…………………..ummmm automatic (ummm no?). So the end aye? Or is the end merely the beginning?

 A good analogy is that of my first pet mice, Rangi and Sangi. One morning as an eager playful caring 7 year old I bounced out of bed to my mouse cage that I had just spent the day before cleaning. Chubby Sangi was running on his wheel trying to lose his mousy love handles and Rangi was sleeping in his cubby hole. I picked little sleeping Rangi (my favourite but don’t tell Sangi) up out of his bed of fresh crispy shredded paper only to notice that he was missing his tail and his insides were outside his furry little body! Yep, my detective work pointed to Sangi, he murdered his cage mate in cold blood.

But with the death (or murder) of something comes the birth of something else (very ying and yang of me). Dad helped me bury Rangi in the vegie garden, and I changed Sangi’s name to Lightening and Dad bought me a new mouse who I called Thunder. Now I think of it, this is a crap analogy because Lightening (originally Sangi) the cold hearted barstard ended up eating Thunder! 

The reason I am temporarily pulling the plug on the hapworkingtheworld life support systems is not because I’m a raging blogaholic (debatable), but because if I don’t do this I will never get around to creating my Africa expedition blog. The creation of the Africa expedition blog is the first major building block of my expedition, without it no one will take me seriously, well except you guys that followed me through my quest to get to Antarctica and know how determined, or maybe obsessive I am.

As I have written in previous blogs, Africa is consuming my thoughts, so the quicker I can get the blog up and blogging the quicker I can start sharing with you my thoughts. And I hope that you all jump onboard, it would be a shame to lose you guys that have come so far with me, and I truly believe that without your comments and support I wonder if I would have made it to Antarctica. It was super humbling when I had hit rock bottom in Paraguay after years of Antarctica rejection to have all the supportive comments and emails from you guys, you’re all awesome. Ok, I best stopping sprinkling ecstasy on my weet-bixs, I’m getting all emotional. (below is not me cycling, I have never written a touring bike in my life, although that is going to change very quickly. All these Africa photos were taken by Adventurer, Author, Speaker Alastair Humphreys who has kindly let me use them, go check out his inspirational website http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/, cheers Al).

But I will let you all know the new blog site address which I will have completed next month. You can come along for the ride and be a part of my Africa expedition, right from the idea generation, to my journeys completion on my 30th birthday next year, the 11/11/11 (Yep I’m turning thirty on the 11 of November, in the year 2011 and what makes is even weirder is that I was born in the 11th hour at 11:08am – yeah 3 minutes away from the 11th minute – good one mum! – you know I love ya). Oh, and in true hapworkingtheworld form I will also blog about any unexpected bowel movements in awkward situations that happen in Tassie or Melbourne before I leave for Africa.

Sorry, I think that ectasy is kicking in again, but it is a little crazy for me here writing my last hapworkingtheworld post. To think how far this has all come. I don’t know if you know how my blog came about. The only reason I started blogging was because while I was in NZ trying to sort out US immigration issues after being deported from the States I fell 5 metres from a rope swing in rugged mountainous bush, fracturing my spine that left me stranded in debt, not able to work, Mandy my girlfriend in the States finishing off her masters degree and her last year of teaching, not able to do anything physical, only wait and start the 3 month rehabilitation process. So I borrowed $5000 off my sister to kerb my credit card interest (before being deported I had just spent 6 awesome weeks backpacking with Mandy through Colombia thinking I was going back to a well paid construction job in the States) and bought this laptop. It’s the one I’m typing on now, although it has seen 2 new batteries and 4 new laptop chargers – bloody third world electricity supplies!

I started this blog to fill in my time while I lay flat on my bed recuperating from my accident. I started it to document my travels since I left New Zealand on my journey on April 7th 2003. And I started it so from February 2008 when I launched it, I would be able to stop writing in my tattered travel journal and start keeping an online journal, so not only do I have a record of my travels that can’t have beer spilt on it, or be forgotten on a bus, but my friends and family and can also keep up-to-date with my travels if they wanted to instead of getting one of my famous 2,000 word novel-like bulk emails that was unable to be read with only one cup of coffee and was riddled with punctuation mistakes for example this sentence you just read has 121 words in it!

So to think now that I have posted 214 blog posts, had over 60,000 people come and pay a visit to my blog with the biggest day seeing 1,907 hits (must have been a bloody boring day in the world), it’s rather……………….uummmmm I don’t really know how it feels, I suppose it’s hard not to feel proud, yep proud.

But like herpies, hapworkingtheworld.com isn’t going anywhere, it’s for life. If you type in www.hapworkingtheworld.com you will always come back here. Who knows maybe I come back to blogging here after Africa, maybe I’ll write a hapworkinghteworld book, who knows.

Don’t start crying just yet, there will be one last post following this informing you of the launch of my Africa expedition blog. I look forward to seeing you there and completing my working the world journey with you.

Nuthin but love Hap

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A post for mum

23 May

Ooooohhhh isn’t this sweet, a blog post for mum and it isn’t even mother’s day……………………………is it? When is Mothers day? I really have to start paying attention to the real world now that I’m living in it, well at least for a year.

Anyway, mum here is the video I promised you of our apartment in Melbourne that we moved into a month ago. It’s a bit of a mess, in a clean kind of way with washing hanging up etc.

 

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I think Mums in general love all this kind of house/apartment stuff, and I suppose when your son hasn’t really had a fixed address of his own to send his credit card statements, birthday presents (I’ll be expecting a big present this year now I have an address), and those bloody PADI (SCUBA diving company that bombards you with dive community stuff) newsletters she must get kind of excited. Especially when my address is an actual house and not the passenger seat of my car, or a coffin sized Antarctic crew cabin, or a couch, or an Indians basement, or a room with metal bars for a window or a 3 bedroom house with 12 people living in it (It was actually a 4 bedroom place if you count the wardrobe that Ferret slept in) etc.


It has been quite enjoyable buying furniture and scrounging kerbside and utilising milk crates and plywood and which by the way if you are looking for a coffee table two milk crates with a piece of plywood and a table cloth thrown over top is gold. I even purchased a printer, wow, a purchase that can’t fit in my backpack!


I keep talking about living in Melbourne but the reality is that I spend more time working in Tasmania. I actually experienced sunshine down here on the West Coast of Tasmania, it is bloody beautiful, check out the photos below of my neighbourhood. What’s my blog come to, photos of IKEA furniture and beautiful landscape shots, next thing you know I’m going to change my profile photo to my cat! (I don’t actually have a cat, but shit I’ve just bought a printer and a duvet, so who knows maybe a cats on the cards – maybe it could be the Africa expedition mascot, or is that “mascat”?

My home away from home away from home. The house I live in, Tullah, West Coast of Tasmania


 

View from the deck, blue skies do exist.


 

Our quiet street, well there are only 250 residents in Tullah so all the streets are quiet and not too mention friendly – when you actually see someone.


 

The shopping mega mall Tullah style – café, hair dresser, real estate, post office.


 

What is my blog coming to! A picture of a cow, anyway, this is taken from beside the shed where I work, and like a lot of the Tasmanian landscape it reminds me of home.


 

Not too sure what I’m up to here, or why I even put it in this post – and no I haven’t shat myself. Oh and if you think I’m looking buff, it is only because I’m wearing 6 merino wool layers underneath (I’m serious too), and what makes this even worse is when my Tasmanian work mate turns up to work in a t-shirt! Maybe in my next life I will come back as a sheep (and not because of what the NZ farmers do to them, but because they have a wool coat)


Somewhere near Tapachula

17 May

Last night I had tears in my eyes……………..well I suppose that’s called crying.

No it wasn’t because I finally realised that puberty has passed me by and I will never be able to grow side burns, it was because I was watching the documentary, “Somewhere near Tapachula”.

It’s a documentary on the orphanage I worked at in early 2007 in the town of Tapachula on the Mexican Guatemalan boarder. It tells the amazing story of Pam and Alan, a retired Australian couple that run the orphanage and how they now have 54 Mexican orphans that call them Mum and Dad. I won’t go into detail, but it’s inspirational and is a real tear jerker, even for Mandy who didn’t know the kids had tears in her eyes. It’s a movie for everyone, it focuses on the kids, and is categorised as a surf documentary as surfing is at the heart of the orphanage life. I remember going out there on the crazy Tapachula beach break with mad rips and having the 10 year old boys dropping into waves that had me adding to the brown colour of the Tapachula muddy water (not to mention getting absolutely smashed). But surfing acts as an escape for the kids from their harrowing and haunting pasts which are filled with abuse, neglect, drugs, torture etc, and the documentary goes into a few of the stories.

It was especially special for me, I have fallen out of contact with the kids, when I left I used to keep in contact with a couple of the older boys that had access to computer and who I was close to, but time slowly reduced the number of emails as with most travelling relationships. But I have kept up-to-date and always look forward to reading the monthly newsletter.

But watching the smiling faces that I used to spend every day with, seeing the little Sammy who I helped toilet train and little Ruben and Alex who I use to bath resembling children, Bruno who I use take to basketball leaving the orphanage, Merril who I gave my surfboard to ripping it up and wanting to be a pro surfer and the list goes on.

It was also a marker for me, to see what I have achieved and the path I have taken since my time there. When I turned up at the orphanage in Tapachula I was dirt broke, barefoot (someone had takenmy jandals whilst I slept on the beach) holding a battered surfboard wrapped in a mouldy dirty duvet that I used to sleep on, and I hadn’t showered for 5 weeks (I’m not that much of a hippy, I was in the ocean everyday surfing – trying to surf).

The reason I was in this state was because 5 weeks previously I had received the news that my Canadian sponsored work visa that I had come to Mexico to wait on had been denied due to the downturn in the Canadian Oil Industry. Therefore I wouldn’t be going back to my job on the Canadian Oil Rigs, therefore I was stuck in Mexico with a credit card debt and all my belongings in my Canadian room that I was still renting. I decided to make the most of a bad situation and live on the beach in paradise and learnt to surf. 

The one thing I learnt from the orphanage was that although I thought I had nothing, I actually had everything. I had a loving supportive family and came from a country where I have running water, a grassy field to play sport on, a first world health and education system, the ability to earn money and travel freely etc.

And to look back at my journey since the orphanage is rather amusing. At that time Mandy was the American girl I had met for 6 days during her Christmas holiday in Sayulita, Mexico who I was emailing on the Orphanage computer.  Lttle did I know at that time that I would move from the orphanage and go land live with her in her 1 bedroom apartment in Colorado, USA after only knowing her for only those 6 days and now we are living together in our own 1 bedroom apartment in Melbourne, Australia 3 years down the track.

And everything that has happened in between;travelling through Colombia, being put in Atlanta city jail and being deported from the states with a 10 year ban, having the scariest moment of my life falling 5 metres from the rope swing fracturing my spine and temporarily losing my vision, working in the Australian Outback with the flies and camels in mine exploration, being a dive master in Thailand, living in Argentina and Paraguay learning Spanish, hitting rock bottom in South America in my search for Antarctic work and then getting to the ice as a 6-star waiter and now settling down in Melbourne (working in Tasmania) for a year while planning my human powered expedition for Africa.

Anyway, enough of me, the orphanage is trying to raise $100,000, and all proceeds from the $25 DVD go to the orphanage, so do your part, buy this AMAZING documentary for $25 and support the orphanage. I can honestly tell you that what Pam and Alan are doing is nothing short of inspirational, they went from being retired to working 24/7 as parents to 54 kids, they get no help from the Mexican government; they have the constant battle of trying to look after the kids and trying to raise money. I have seen their lifestyle first hand and I do not envy them in the slightest, but I admire them to the mightiest (not sure if that is proper English but you get the picture), so if you are looking for a worthwhile cause, this is the one.

Visit the Somewhere Near Tapachula website, amptly named www.somewhereneartapachula.com and you can buy the documentary here www.surfindustries.com/snt (free shipping), and once again if you want you can check out the teaser by clicking here.

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I know I’m turning into a Melbourne city boy when…………

7 May

  • I’m standing around at a party talking about what kind of push-bike I ride instead of how big my Holden Commodore engine is!
  • I go to a used clothing store and buy an oldskool adidas woollen sweatshirt and pay $70 because apparently it’s not a used clothing store but a “vintage” clothing store!
  • Building something involves constructing my IKEA furniture (and yes when they say to put something under the metal bit your hammering it is because if you think you know better and don’t do it you end up cutting chunks out of your rental apartment carpet – at least I know I’m still man as I don’t follow instructions – photo taken after I cut the carpet)
  • I use a beard trimmer instead of a razor.
  • I wear a man bag instead of a back pack (guilty, I have been using a man bag for many years now, but it’s made in India so doesn’t that make it more of a spiritual accessory?)
  • I cross my legs when I’m sitting at the café drinking my skinny flat white (sorry I got that wrong, I’m the skinny flat white guy drinking my coffee). I think crossing my legs makes me feel profound and I need all the help I can get with that.

“Building” my own furniture with my $2 store hammer (and yes I am posing for the photo)

 

With my bi-polar lifestyle I also get my fix of man time as I spend 2 out of every 3 weeks working in Tasmania’s mining industry – you don’t get much more manly than that, maybe if I worked as a Holden mechanic in a dark greasy workshop with calendars of half naked ladies on the walls would be a bit more manlier. For my 2 weeks of work in Tassie I leave my beard trimmer at home in my IKEA bathroom rack, I enjoy the freedom of farting and burping with pride, ordering a big juicy steak with greasy chips and a pint of James Boags at the local pub (the only pub in my town of 400), driving a V6 pick-up truck and smashing rocks and carrying heavy things like the cave men of yesteryear.

 

I think I used this photo in a previous post, but hey it shows me earning major man points, using a power saw to cut rocks and most probably whilst burping and farting!

 

 

But I must say, I arrived in Melbourne a month ago (2 weeks of which spent in Tassie) and I love this city. My first bullet point I mentioned guys talking about their bikes, this is because Melbourne is riddled with interlinked bike paths which allows you to bike everywhere, it’s perfect training for my Africa expedition.

 

Me in the “used” bookstore (holding the cycling expedition book I’m currently reading) modelling my “vintage” sweatshirt with my spiritual Indian made man bag and freshly MANicured beard.

 

 

Melbourne is a city that has it’s finger (not it’s thumb as the thumb also has a pulse so you should always check the pulse using your index finger to get and accurate reading – I just completed my first aid refresher course last week) on the trendy arty, music scene. Heaps of cool chilled out cafes and bars where I can cross my legs and drink my coffee. Walking down the city street you aren’t overwhelmed by the suits and ties but rather a mixture of people, and a lot of people that my grandfather would of categorised as “weirdos or dickheads”. So far Melbourne is meeting all of my extremely high expectations I had for it and I’m looking forward to the following year of being here while I organise my Africa expedition and hopefully save money to fund it. Two thumbs up Melbourne!

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