BIG Update

I've been hopeless at writing on this blog for ages, so here's a biggie update!

I'm off to Asia on Tuesday at 2 AM. I'm going for 8 weeks!! One of my old high school galpals lives in Singapore, so I'm going to stay with her for a bit. Then she's connected me to her friend Terry who is currently living in Bangkok, so I've got a guide with a couch lined up in Bangkok! Then it's off to Nepal for 18 days of trekking. I've wanted to go trekking in the Himalaya for about 5 years, so I'm happy I'm finally doing that. I get back to Kathmandu in time for a 3 day festival of Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. Very cool. I love attending festivals as it is an amazing snapshot of local culture, and I am thrilled I will see this!


After Diwali in Kathmandu, I'll leave for 11 days in Bhutan, another mountain kingdom in the Himalaya. I have wanted to visit Bhutan for decades, literally, so this is HUGE for me. I had hoped to do some trekking there, as it is meant to be incredibly beautiful. But instead I'll be lucky enough to see a, you guessed it, FESTIVAL in eastern Bhutan. Bhutan is a very traditional country, unique and interesting, and not very open to the West, so I am so excited to see this place. Did you know that instead of tracking the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), they track the GDH (Gross Domestic Happiness)? How fantastic is that? Apparently the King noticed years ago that citizens of more economically successful countries were not necessarily happier, and he decided that happiness is more important than money. WOW. I cannot wait.

My friend Gary has just booked some of his trip, and will be joining me for part of the Nepal trek and for Bhutan. His friend worked with the Prince of Bhutan, so I am strongly angling for a meeting with the Prince!! hahaha, we shall see.

After Bhutan, I'll head back to Bangkok for another couple nights, and hopefully see Terry again.....if they have not yet moved away from Bangkok. (They have a great lifestyle where her husband works in internet something, so they just choose somewhere that sounds cool and live there for a few months.)

Then I've got a night planned in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I had the option of flying directly back to Singapore, but instead chose the "less good" connection to give me a night in a place I've never seen before. Fun, right?!

Then....back to Singapore. At that point, I'll have 2 1/2 weeks of holiday left, and I have made no plans so far. Maybe hang with Laura and her family? Hopefully we could do a trip to Cambodia to visit the orphanage she sponsors. Anyway, those plans will be made when the time is right.

And then I'll be back in Vancouver on Dec 8.


Update on my projects

I have 2 great projects in the works:
1. a book about the good things that come from the adversity of cancer
2. Getting Gold for Canada


The book project has been in the works for a while, but over the last couple months, I have done some wonderful and inspirational interviews. People have made gains and found things such as: more fulfilling meditation practise; the ability to love more deeply; financial freedom; improved personal relationships; changed careers; etc etc. It is great!

2. the project about Getting Gold Medals for Canada has me working with competitive and elite paralympic athletes who do nordic skiing. This started because I watched my friend Jamie guide a visually impaired skier in Whistler last spring. I watched at the categories of nordic skiing, and was fascinated watching those competitions. As usual, I met some engineers in a bar and got chatting about what I was excited about, so the idea came up that the athletes should have better equipment. And that I should find corporate sponsors to do this, AND that if these companies has engineers working there, they could have a perk of working with elite paranordic athetes. I saw it as a perfect match!
Then I sat down with Jamie and Tony, who run the local nordic ski club in Vancouver, which happens to have many of the Canadian National Paralympic Nordic team. I pitched them my idea, and they were super keen! But then it came out that most of the paranordic athletes had not accessed the research and academic resources available in the Lower Mainland. WOW, I just assumed that was something that would have already been done! So the first phase of my project is to link athletes with researchers and students in Vancouver.
I have now met a few athletes and made some incredible contacts at UBC and BCIT. I am really, really excited! I've met a gal who is doing her Ph.D. in Human Kinetics, so she has many grad students and undergrads to approach. And I got connected to the Head of the Prosthetics Dept at BCIT who was shocked to hear that our best standing athletes do not have a sport-specific prosthetic. (Fyi, standing athletes have issues with lower limbs, such as amputations.) He's going to talk with his lab, and I may also look to form a partnership with folks at UBC too. And I met another woman who is a resident in at UBC Med School in Physical Medicine (this is physiotherapy medicine, and sports med, and rehab med, and prosthetics. It's a broad field). She told me she has spoken to some of her contacts, and they are excited as it's tough to find research subjects. WHAT?!? So here I am, finding a gap in athletes' development and connecting it to a gap in related research! How great is this? I'm thrilled!

I spoke last night with Sean, who is in a wheelchair and brand new to nordic skiing, although keen to compete. He doesn't have equipment yet, or really know how to ski. But I told him he's great, as he's a raw talent. He used to play hockey at an elite level, so has the "right stuff" to be competitive. One of the other sit skiers has spent years on trial-and-error to get his sled set up, although he is now on my list to be analyzed for biomechanics, to see if he is in the most efficient position. (Seriously. This guy is the top ranked sit skier in Canada, but has NOT had analysis done to see if he is skiing as efficiently as possible.) Anyway, I'm thinking that perhaps Sean could be put into our program at an earlier stage, and maybe shorten the learning curve to become an efficient skier? He is excited about my idea!

I see HUGE potential for this project, and I am excited.
Have I mentioned I'm excited?!?!?!?    :-D


What else? Healthwise, I'm great. I have a recurrence, just a little one. Anyway, we've known about it for 2 years now, I guess. I had to meet with all sorts of specialists last year. Eventually, a treatment plan was recommended, so that I would have another blast of radioactive iodine. They did say I could take thyrogen to do this, so it wouldn't be nearly so horrible, but.... I have currently declined treatment. It's a little speck of a tumour, and we're just watching it. If it grows a bunch, or I get mets, or whatever, THEN I'll have some I131. But in the meantime, I'm healthy and happy.

Fitness wise, I've set a goal for myself of running a half marathon each month for a year! I have one coming up on Sunday, and that will be one a month for 6 months, so I'm halfway there. :) I'm surprised how tired I am, actually. But it's going fine.


So......that's my update. It's a long one, as I've been soooooo busy, my poor blog has been sadly neglected. Terrible.