here's my life story in a nutshel:
born in calgary, lived here until I was five, a period of my life of which I remember absolutely nothing at all. Shortly before my fifth birthday, my dad got a job with an oil company named ARAMCO, and we headed off to live in a small compound in Saudi Arabia called Abqaiq. I spent my fifth birthday on the plane and in the airport. Abqaia was basically a fenced in compound established for ARAMCO employees and their families, with a rediculously strong military presence, mainly because it was the year the gulf war ended, and they wanted to make sure all the ex-pats and the surrounding oil fields safe. After two years, we re-located to another ARAMCO compound, Darhan, which was the same as abqaiq, only slightly larger and with a slightly high military presence. Four years after we moved there, the Kobar towers were bombed (an apartment complex housing american soldiers still there from the gulf war, about 15 minutes away from my house in a huge city called Al-Kobar). In the months following, several bomb threats were made on mine and my brothers schools, ten foot concrete barriers were errected around them to keep out truck bombs, guards eqquiped with AK47 assault rifles and bomb sniffing dogs were stationed around the entrances to our schools, and my parents decided it was time to move back to canada. In between that time, we travelled a lot (Italy, France, England, Austria, Bahamas, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain to name a few). Once I got back to canada, I got really into volleyball and it became my whole life, the last year I played my team made it to nationals, and then I decided I wanted my life back, quit, and started skiing to occupy all the free time that I suddenly found myself with. Now i'm an art student, getting ready to move to New Zealand for the summer, and have absolutely no plans for my life aside from doing a 2 year diploma program for photojournalism, and then doing freelance photography and journalism, and travelling the world with no steady job, and very rarely having a permanent address.
__________________
What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do -- especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
Your toughest competitor lives in your head. Some days his name is fear, or pain, or gravity. Stomp his ass.
HOOKED ON THE WHITE POWDER
|