The airport in Hong Kong was amazing. It was like an environment teeming with information. Unfortunately for me, I encountered on my trip so many WIFI services that wanted me to pay to use them, I pretty much just assumed it to be the norm and stopped checking. At the last moment, before leaving Hong Kong, though, I decided to check, and sure enough, free WIFI was available. It was fast too. I could have put up this and the last post then if I had checked earlier.

Anyway, arriving in Hong Kong was interesting. It was cool to descend over the water with so many boats coming in approaching the island. I would have gotten pictures of that, but that was at the point when all electronics had to be shut off. Of course, some guy behind me was taking pictures anyway, but I chose to follow the rules. Still, it was something to see.



On a very interesting note, I walked into a rest lounge in the Hong Kong airport and there was a TV with CNN playing. The top story? Believe it or not, they were talking about SAG and how production was expected to shut down today. SAG and AFTRA, the other union who already signed a deal with the producers, have been negotiating together for ages. This time AFTRA went on their own and inked a deal, one that SAG is apparently not happy with. I could go into greater detail, but the point is I'm out of all that! I'm here now! It's not for me to concern myself with anymore.

What I do have to concern myself with though, is good internet speed. More on that later.


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So I'm on the plane as I write this. I got a window seat right by the wing. Thus, if that monster William Shatner saw were to land on it, I'd be the first to know. I have been flying almost ten hours. Luckily for me I slept through most of it. Now being awake I decided to really take a look at this plane. There are some very big differences between this tube and the flights I took in times past, especially concerning on-board entertainment. For example, I am listening to a J-pop station at this very moment through the in-flight entertainment system, which I will discuss at length in a moment.

I don't know much about plane models and numbers. I think everyone knows the Boeing 747 and some may know that there's a 777, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. I do believe, though, that this plane is smaller than the one I took to China in 2002, which was operated by China Eastern Airlines. The seats in this plane seem smaller too, then again, I was probably a bit thinner back then.



This plane is operated by Cathay Pacific, who I must admit I never heard of before buying my ticket. While spaces on board may be a bit tighter than flights I took in the past, the plane is considerably more advanced in other ways. For example, when I flew to China in 2002, a story I will relate in detail on this blog one day, the in-flight movie was on a large screen centered in our area of the plane just like it was a movie theatre. Basically everyone watched the same thing, and they watched it when the airline decided to play it. Things have changed quite a bit since then.

On this modern airline, in-flight entertainment and information rises to an entirely new level with the impressive system they have installed, including screens on the back of every seat. Upon activation, the user is given a great information screen which displays the time remaining to the destination, a simple map of the route, and a way to access the entertainment section of the system. Notice how it currently shows 4 hours and 46 minutes remaining. That's after 9 hours of flying already!

The entertainment section is even more impressive. Gone are the days of everyone watching the same movie when they say you watch it. This system gives each passenger an iTunes type of entertainment system where they can choose what they want to watch, and it's all on-demand. Even fairly recent movies are included. The lady next to me is watching Bucket List right now. It doesn't just stop with movies however, included are dozens of TV shows from America, China, Japan and other Asian locales. There is also an extensive music selection. There are individual CD music style choices across multiple genres and countries, and there are also radio station type selections. As mentioned earlier, I am listening to the J-Pop station right now. Makes me wonder who the target audience is, though, as a large number of the musical selections are from anime. Still, I brought my laptop, my iPhone, and even my Sony PSP to entertain myself on the long flight, and it turns out, they had plenty of entertainment prepared. Although I haven't tried them yet, they even have games on this system.

While they seem to be up on the latest movies and TV shows on this in-flight system, sometimes I think it would be nice if some slightly older movies were available. Now would be an ideal time to watch Snakes on a Plane!


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Life is too short to leave things undone. In this day and age, I can't even begin to imagine being that guy who grows up, works himself to old age and dies without ever leaving his home town. I've already done some traveling in the past, but I have always dreamed of bigger. That's why, when things started going bad in my town, I decided to become The Adventurer. So what exactly does an adventurer do? Well, an adventurer must travel, and I mean travel far and wide around this amazing planet. That's what I intend to do from now on, and that is what this site will chronicle.

So back to "things going bad in my town" as I mentioned earlier. For nearly fifteen years I have worked in some facet of the entertainment industry. I worked on video games in Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas before ending up in sunny, Southern California to work in the TV and film industry. Earlier this year, the industry was hit hard by the Writer's Guild of America going on strike. A lot of people lost their jobs and some even packed their bags and headed for the hills. Now, the Screen Actors Guild has a contract coming to an end. There is talk of another strike or, at least, intentionally extended negotiations. All this has made it very difficult to get work. I saw the inevitable, and decided it was time to make a move.



Now I've been working online for some months, but with the high rent and outrageous cost of living in La La Land, there's no way I could sustain myself. It seemed I had two choices. I could go down in flames, or take my chances out there in the wide, wide world. I chose to take my chances, hop on a plane and head to South East Asia. With few exceptions, many places in Asia have a cost of living as low as 20% of what it might cost to live in Southern California. There I could conceivably sustain myself on my internet endeavors and have some real adventure to boot. Since I am doing my work in the wired, it shouldn't matter where in the world I am at any given time, as long as there's access. It would appear as though I can't lose.

The reality is that I don't know what's going to happen. This may all work out or I may end up becoming a rice farmer in some unknown village. Whatever happens, you'll read about it here. One thing that really did it for me was looking into the future. I realized that if I stay here, I know exactly what is going to happen... nothing. Nothing will change. That's not how I want to live my life. That's really not living at all. Pass or fail, good or bad, I'd rather go out there and give dreams a try. I say let their be surprises. I mean, if I knew everything that was going to happen, life wouldn't be an adventure!


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