Richie Sowa's Floating Island Near Cancun, Mexico

You may have said, like I have a couple of times…

“Wouldn’t it be nice to live on my own desserted deserted island?”

Hawaii seems like the natural place, there are thousands of islands, and yet I haven’t heard of anyone living on any by themselves – have you?

This guy went to Cancun, Mexico and decided to build his own island.  How do you build an island? You float it with plastic bottles you collected. His island is now as big as a tennis court. The government of Mexico wanted to bring tourists on it!

In 2005 he lost the island to a hurricane. In 2007 Richie started building a new “spiral island” in the waters of Isla Mujeres, the “Island of Women”, near Cancun Mexico and better protected from waves and winds. He opened it for tours in 8/2008.

From Wikipedia:

The new Spiral Island is about 20 meters (60 feet) in diameter, and plants and mangroves are already growing on it. It contains about 100,000 bottles. The new island has beaches, a house, 2 ponds, a solar-powered waterfall/river, and solar panels. Volunteers helped with the project. Rishi will continue to make improvements to the Island, so it will always be a work of art in progress.

Quite a resourceful guy. Watch the video – simple people with an idea do amazing things.

You won’t be able to stop watching this… as much as it hurts… and believe me, by 1:30, just when you thought you could hurt no more – he ups it a notch or two…

If you live in Hawaii or Florida, or some other spots – you’ve seen double rainbows before. They’re cool. They’re awesome. I’ve seen moonbows – night time rainbows in Maui that just boggled my mind…

But I never experienced rainbows like this guy does…

You must see this video… No, it’s not me.

Her grandma can make her go absolutely NUTSO. We have so many of these videos…

This is what my ancestors are doing over there in the Soviet Union that changed name to something else…

QUITE worth your time to check out!

Olamanu mountain range, Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii

Here are the 5 ultimate activities I do during my free time in Hawaii. These are things you can usually find me doing on the weekends mostly, but maybe anytime:

1. Bodyboarding / Surfing. I much prefer bodyboarding since I can ride big waves and it might be a few more years before I reach that level with surfing. Bodyboarding Hawaii waves is the ultimate fun for me – and I like it more than even breathing.

Bodysurfing can probably fit in here too. Bodysurfing at point panic or some other great spot is special in a way that defies words. There’s something cool about being able to slide down a wave using your body as a board. It’s the ideal minimalist activity.

2. Snorkeling / Free-diving. In Maui I do quite a bit of snorkeling and freediving. There are some primo spots on Maui’s west side – Kahana and more west, that are just picture perfect spots. Other than a guy beside me having his arm tore into by a small barracuda I’ve had no real nasty experiences with it.

3. Biking or Running either on the Ala Wai Canal at night – or around Diamondhead and Kapiolani Park in early evening and sometimes daytime. Two of the greatest places to run in Waikiki.

4. Hiking one of the amazing ridge trails from leeward side up to the peak of the Ko’olau mountain range and seeing the wide expanse of Kailua, the ocean, and the sleeping dragon (Olamana hills).

5. Camping out, barbeque, throwing frisbee, and swimming leisurely at Bellows Beach Park in Waimanalo. I’ve had some of the best times in my life right there. The ultimate spot for me. Can bodyboard there too – though the waves don’t get all that much more than 3-4 feet usually. When they do they don’t break very slowly and it’s a short ride. An idyllic spot though. Highly recommended!

What are your 5 favorite activities to do in Hawaii?

The other day when I was looking up hiking on Kauai, Hawaii this video popped into my field of view on Youtube. Initially I thought, yeah sure – scariest trail.

Then I watched it.

This hiking “trail” has got to be the most dangerous I’ve ever seen – and, most of it is concrete trail. That is, where the concrete hasn’t just fallen apart and down the side of the mountain leaving the metal bar framework to walk on!

In Hawaii we have some trails that are slippery and a bit hairy, I wouldn’t call them hairy scary though.

Don’t miss at 5:51 where he walks toe-to-heel over the beam.

A must-see video for anyone that hikes because as the hiker goes on, you’ll question yourself and whether you would keep going. I’d have to see it live before deciding if I’d do it.

Hairy Scary Hiking Video:

Would you hike this trail?

There are a lot of Buddhists in Hawaii – maybe more so per capita than in any other US State. I’ve mentioned many times on this site that I practiced Vipassana meditation for a number of months and over the years I can say I’ve gained a lot of happiness as a result. There are different lines of Buddhism – and here in Thailand they practice Theravada Buddhism which some say is the closest to what the Buddha originally taught.

Buddhist birthday amulet (Tuesday)

My wife sells Thai Buddhist amulets and other jewelry at her website. She has gold Buddha amulets, Good Luck amulets, protection amulets, and business prosperity amulets. Recently she bought some new types that I’m struggling to get up online but they include:

• Day of the Week Buddhist Birthday Amulets (Buddha in a diff. pose for each day)
• Good Luck Monk Amulets
• Kwan Yin (Goddess of Compassion) Amulets
• Gold Buddha Amulets
• Solid Silver Ajarn Jumnien (Good Luck Monk) Amulets
• Many types of bracelets and Buddhist yant cloths…

If you’re in the market for someone’s birthday gift and you want to give the person something they’ll not find anywhere in America or wherever you are – have a look at the Buddhist Birthday amulets. There is a separate one for each day of the week corresponding to the day when they were born.

There are even free bracelets and yant cloths if you pay the $9 shipping.

With every sale she donates 10% back to the temple where we buy all the Buddhist items we sell. Good karma for us you know!

Best of Life!

Vern

I don’t know where I first saw this, but it was really funny to me for some reason. It’s a Craigslist Ad placed in Hawaii for someone to do video editing aboard a yacht. Is it funny to you too or just me?

Surf Editor Final Cut HD

This is a live-aboard position on a Yacht. This will be a massive post production editing job done on-board while we travel & film.

You must know Final Cut & be experianced, you must surf, your comfertable being onboard in some huge swell, & your legal to travel.

if this is you please respond,

Aloha’

I guess I just can’t picture someone editing videos in Final Cut – a very precise video-editing software program that requires a lot of concentration and precisely accurate clicks of the mouse… all the while bouncing up and down on 20-30 foot surf probably over by Jaws break in Maui.

Then, the guy/gal says – You MUST SURF. lol – your job is not just to edit and not get sick all over their nice yaht, but, you’ve gotta surf whether you want to or not.

Here’s the original post at Craigslist >

People having picnic in Hawaii

If you’re not having fun where you work – make some, or leave.

You spend WAY too much time there to have a disappointing experience everyday. GET OUT and find a job or create one where you can enjoy it everyday. If I wasn’t working for myself I’d be in a job where I was able to make others happy and add to their life experience or I wouldn’t be there at all.

Before recently I’ve always had “jobs” or occupied myself while working for myself by doing so much that there was little time for any fun. I’d cram so many things into the day that it was fun just doing so much. I really enjoy working on a project for myself like this – and even today if I’m working for myself I pack it in and see how much I can accomplish everyday.

When working for someone else though – and not getting rewarded for it, I’d tend not to do so much. I’d focus on other things to do with my free time.

I know there are a lot of people just like that – you have jobs working for someone else and during the day you find yourself with a lot of free time on their hands. Government jobs tend to be cushy like that – and you find yourself bored out of your mind during parts of the day.

If I wasn’t working on my own and trying to juggle 16 website projects I think at this stage in my life I could be OK making only about $36K per year after taxes in the USA. I could take care of all bills and relax a little bit. Take a cushy job like that and skate through a portion of the day if it was possible. Any of you working in a job like that now?

I think most people relax at work with chat, email to friends, phone calls, watching YouTube, playing games or something like that. Recent technology has really separated us all and given those of us that prefer hibernation to interacting socially, an easy outlet in the form of computer, iPhone, PSP, and SMS chat.

What else could you be doing to help make theday go easier for someone else though? Doing things on your own is basically selfish and you accomplish something for yourself but not for anyone else.

Isn’t the point of life helping others get through it when you have some free time – and you have some time to relax?

I think it is. It’s part of what I feel like I need to be doing when I have free time.

How could you spice up your workplace and make it less drab?

• Plan a picnic – it’s warm enough you can plan a picnic at a park for everyone. Just suggest it to the management and get the approval to start planning it.
• Add ice-cream birthday cakes to birthdays. At a couple places I’ve worked we had Dairy Queen ice-cream cakes on staff members birthdays. It’s an easy way to recognize individuals and also bring hibernators out of their den to grab something sweet. DON’T bring it to their den.
• Employees teach lessons – give each employee a social media or internet marketing topic (or let them pick one randomly) to learn and teach the rest of the company how to use the tool for the benefit of the company. There’s a lot to learn about… Twitter, FriendFeed, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, FaceBook, PayPal, EBay, SEO, SEM, PPC, etc. There are hundreds of topics to learn about. This is a great way to introduce everyone to cutting edge topics they SHOULD know something about.
• Have weekly contests. Not sales contests, or marketing contests or who can generate the most leads – but contests that have little to do with work. These are contests you can take an hour off early for on Friday afternoons and everyone competes in one event to see who is the winner. You could do Putt Putt golf; spelling bee; trivial pursuit type questions; beer knowledge questions – anything where the entire company can take part in and blow off some steam before the weekend.
• See how many people you can make laugh each day. Keep a chart. I’m not joking. For me – I count it as a win when I make someone smile or laugh. I try hard to be funny so I can lighten people’s day that I interact with.

Any other ideas?

I was inspired to write something about this because I saw in the Honolulu Advertiser that there was a job opening in a Hawaii Credit Union for an IT person making about $17/hour. I thought – wow, that must be pretty boring working in a credit union… could I do that? Then I thought, no… not without creating some fun. A LOT of fun.

There must be a bunch of you working in credit unions, banks, libraries, sweatshops, or worse that just aren’t packing in the excitement at your work place and it’s become monotonous and boring.

What can you do to spice it up?

Or, what can you do to enable yourself to leave and start your own business?

It pays to watch Twitter and follow cool people. I follow Twitter user: Hawaii, Ryan Ozawa, a Hawaii resident with Hawaii Blog website, that always pumps out great stuff. He tweeted this video and I thought it was a great fit for my amazing people category.

Thanks Ryan!

This was taken with a Canon 5d digital camera. The singer, Riley, is 8 years old!

Riley sings “Don’t Stop Believing” from Ronnie Silos on Vimeo.

The original post is here >