up here in my tree

this is without doubt one of the coolest pictures i've seen in a while. sure, it's over exposed and blurry around the edges but that doesn't matter. in fact, it just adds to the surreal nature of the photo.

it's taken in sequoia national park, california. i love it. if i die without walking among the majesty of the giant sequoias then i will have missed out.

it's funny how things happen in life. these seemingly random events light up around you and you need to take action and connect them.

over summer i did quite a bit of tramping around new zealand with an american friend of mine from seattle. (hey, alan, how you going, bro?) i'm planning to go visit him at some point soon. i've got a real yearning for an american road trip, and the national parks on the west coast, like sequoia, look staggeringly beautiful.

i was watching one of my favourite movies, into the wild, just two nights ago, and there is a moving sequence when christopher mccandless is walking along the pacific crest trail in northern california. it touched me.

then, yesterday, i just felt compelled to start searching on google for the town of auckland in california. from the satellite view, it appears to be a tiny little outpost on the edges of sequoia national park. intrigued, i push sequoia national park into google image search and 'bam', this beautiful image is right there. i know i need to make that adventure happen.

i've always loved trees. i used to climb trees a lot when i was a kid. our backyard was blessed with what, at the time, seemed like giant sequoias that i would clamber up and summit; hugging tightly at the top, feeling an intoxicating mix of fear, joy and peace. there was also a big walnut tree in the middle of our yard, with a tree hut of mine tucked away up in the foliage.

my connection to nature and mother earth is really channeled through trees, and also landscapes - more so than the animal kingdom.

i can hear the giant sequoias and redwoods calling me, tapping into that innocent boyish spirit within me...

pearl jam: in my tree (no code)

what i did last summer

great news today! i'm officially on the copywriting books for blacksheepdesign.

blacksheepdesign needed to expand their stable of copywriters and posted an ad that asked me to share what i did over summer.

over the past six months, one of my main goals has been to unplug from the 9-5 matrix and create as much mobility and flexibility in my life as possible. gigs like this chip away at self-doubt and keep nudging me along in the right direction. gotta keep walkin...

ps: if you're not from new zealand, my summer won't mean a thing to you. it's just one of those things...

Shameless SEO plug part I

apologies straight up here - but i need to give a bit of an SEO push for a newly launched website of mine. there'll be a little bit of this, from time to time, on the kava bowl...

abu dhabi is a city with a diverse and delectable spread of cuisines from around the world, which is always one of the beautiful offshoots of immigration and a nomadic global community.

although abu dhabi is rich with culinary delights, the main problem is trying to find these restaurants. after all, abu dhabi is a city that works on landmarks rather than postal addresses, which can be more than a little frustrating when you're trying to find the restaurant that your work mate swears by.

eating abu dhabi is going to change all of that for the people who live in the capital city of the uae. eating abu dhabi is a website rich with abu dhabi restaurant reviews, listings and menus, simplifying the decision over where to go and making food easy and accessible.

it's the ultimate restaurant and dining out guide that will demystify dining out in abu dhabi.

there - job done... i'll shut up now!

two exercises to improve concentration and attention

i've been doing a fair bit of reading around meditation, lately.

there's a lot of really interesting stuff to be discovered, and it's a world littered with beautiful sounding words, phrases and definitions: alpha rhythm, pineal gland, transcendental etc etc

here's a couple of exercises that will:

- increase the intensity of your concentration
- increase the duration of your attention span

* for best results, cut and paste these images on to a blank word document.

exercise one:
stare at the black dot, resisting the temptation to look anywhere else. Stare at this for about five minutes to begin, then gradually increase the duration as you become more skilled.


exercise two:
Stare past the circles until you notice they each double for a total of four circles. Your goal is to overlap the middle two circles to form one circle with a white cross. Seeing the cross is the evidence that the left hemisphere of the brain (connected to the right eye) is communicating with the right hemisphere (connected to the left eye).

an hypnotic new york city trip

i love this clip. broken social scene (bandwitch) and new york city. what a beautiful pair they make...

new york city bike messengers = grace, bravado, balance, timing, vision, audacity, control, faith.

Dad, what did you just do?!

i came across this ad today, served to the guardian's website courtesy of google. it's a real beauty, if not rather alarming on a couple of different levels.

firstly, for a horrifying millisecond, imagine that this is your father. yes, try not to remember that vision.

secondly, it's a good example of how opting in to google's online ad model will leave your brand vulnerable to 3rd party advertisers who may have absolutely nothing in common with your own brand values.

the day that this ad runs in the print version of the guardian is never, unless rupert murdoch has gone and bought the paper. so why would the guardian want it on their website?

welcome to a world of augmented reality

this talk from TED 2010 is a fascinating glimpse at where augmented reality is quickly headed. incredible.

i find it really interesting to see how microsoft's bing maps are integrating crowdsourced imagery from yahoo's flickr to create software straight out of star trek.

on a week that google released its incredibly dour and uninspired buzz product to the market, microsoft notch up an easy (albeit rare) PR points victory over its online rival.