MandarinManMark

Hey Everyone!

I just got back from two years abroad - 1.5 years living and teaching games programming in New Zealand followed by a 4.5 month trip through the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, China, North Korea and Japan. What a wonderful experience! I feel like a completely changed person now, and am even more unsure of where home is anymore!

I'm settling back in San Francisco - there's a lot to set up, but hopefully I'll get back to "normal" life easily.

As for photos and travel stories, there are many - too much to post, but as I'm back in the land of unlimited Internet and ambitious self-expression again, I'll try to get back to it.

I've now visited something like 40 countries now, so hopefully I'll start putting up photos that gives a good representation of the various cultures and places. However, my laptop just died, so I need to figure out a way to get my photos off my hard drive - but after a short delay, hopefully I'll get back to putting up more photos and stories!

Looking forward to getting back into the online communities!
- Mark

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Check out my travelogue:

mandarinmanmark.blogspot.com

Thanks!

I've been mulling over making some large changes in my life, since I don't feel like I am progressing towards my goals. In fact, there are a lot of things to think about. What I want to accomplish, what makes me happy, my goals for a few years down the road...

I think I've come up with three things that are my priorities:
1) Be a self-sufficient creator. Having my own company or products that supports me, creating exciting new products, research, or cultural items.
2) Learn. Learn as much as I can about our world. Travel to see and experience as much as I can. Read to help me understand as much as I can.
3) Family and friends. Find a soul-mate that I will enjoy being with for the rest of my life. Spend more time with my parents, relatives, and close friends, most of whom I now only get to see once a year - at most!

Well, with that in mind, I feel like I'm stuck at my current stage in life. Trying to figure out how to achieve those goals are going to be difficult. What should I focus on? Is it even possible to achieve all of those goals? I feel like I have to pick, but which of my goals can I risk not accomplishing and sill be happy?

Decisions, decisions. I've been swinging rapidly between optimistic, hopeless, content, ecstatic, depressed, and all shades in between in the past week or two thinking about how to get un-stuck. I've been changing my mind regarding what I really want to do all the time too. Each time I am fully committed to an idea and think there is no way I will change my mind, the next day brings a new decision that is nearly the opposite from the previous.

I don't know what to do, and more importantly, what I want to do. I hope I will have a moment of clarity soon. But from what I hear, many, if not most, people go through life without this flash of clarity to bring purpose to their existence.

Any suggestions would be welcome...

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Check out my travelogue:

mandarinmanmark.blogspot.com

Thanks!

I just got back from China yesterday after a three week vacation. The return trip took me over 20 hours door-to-door! To get from my dad's flat in Suzhou to my flat in Auckland, I took a taxi, a train, a subway, a maglev(!), a three hour flight, an 11 hour flight, then a bus, all without any sleep! So I was exhausted when I got back, and slept for 12 hours, being awoken by my alarm clock for work.

I had a good vacation, although I was sick for two of the three weeks! I got bad food poisoning the first week, and as I was just about recovered, I ended up with a bad cold! Well, at least the last week was OK, although it had its share of problems!

I ended up visiting, in chronological order, Macau (UNESCO World Heritage Site), Zhuhai, Kaiping (UNESCO World Heritage Site), Hong Kong, Suzhou, Xidi and Hongcun (UNESCO World Heritage Site), Huangshan (UNESCO World Heritage Site), Hangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai. I had 5 flights (including a two-segment one), an overnight train ride, three long-distance bus rides, and 5 long ferry rides, making a total of 5 border crossings, not including a transfer in a different territory. All in all, a surprisingly busy trip!

Anyway, I will start processing the photos from this trip and writing about it in my travelogue at mandarinmanmark.blogspot.com, although it may take a while for me to start working on my China trip info.

See you guys around dA!
- Mark

Once again, I've been inactive for a long time... well, hopefully (again) I'll start uploading to dA again soon. I just settled into a new flat in Auckland, New Zealand! I'm pretty excited to be here as I really love outdoor activities, and I know New Zealand has a lot to offer in that department. Anyway, I've started work teaching games programming at Media Design School in downtown Auckland on Queen Street. It'll be a pretty challenging job, getting used to dealing with students, but I think it'll be fun. Besides, it'll be the first time I'll actually have a 9-5 job with no real expectation of overtime!

I haven't been around for a long time... I've been busy taking a series of vacations recently. Had a weekend camping and hiking adventure 8 weeks ago, spent a week in Australia 7 weeks ago, had a two-week adventure in Japan and South Korea 4 weeks ago, and visited my parents back home for a week last week as they are selling the house and moving as my dad lost his job in the economic downturn. I just got back this weekend, and now that I'm out of vacation time, I'll be around for a while.

I feel very out of touch for not really seeing my dA account or updating my travelogue for 8 weeks, but on the other hand, I got some really cool new photos and new experiences I can share with all of you (not that I don't already have thousands of photos to upload and weeks of adventures still to write about in my backlog).

Anyway, I hope I'll feel a bit more back in touch in the upcoming weeks. I already miss travelling and the amazing food I've been having (now that I have a job, I can afford to eat lots of delicious food while travelling instead of whatever is cheapest), but I'm also glad that I'll have some time to myself now... and I'm looking forward to my first real weekend in six weeks coming up in a few days!

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Check out my travelogue:

mandarinmanmarktravel.blogspot…

Thanks!

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