Skip to main content

HOW NOT TO ESCAPE FROM YOUR LIFE

Last Sunday I posted on how films can make me appreciate or change my life.  Emily the Criminal was ideal for the former.  Here is how I started:

I watched two films last night, one on Netflix and another on Amazon Prime, that grabbed my attention regarding my life, but in totally different ways.  One was loved by Rotten Tomatoes reviewers, gaining a 94 rating, with audiences giving only 79.  The other was the opposite, with RT reviewers at 82 and audiences 95.  For me, both were excellent films.  So what I will do on Sundays devoted to spiritualism and my personal life, is to have a two-part series, featuring this contradistinction......  Next week will be bit edgy, but today I start with my wonderful life.  Secure, comfortable and happy. 

However, in the process of developing this two-part series, I made several mistakes.

  • The Prime movie was Complete Unknown, released in 2016, starring Rachel Weisz, and also included some noted actors like Danny Glover and Kathy Bates.  
    • On re-checking with Rotten Tomatoes, I saw scores only of 52/27.  I was confused because I remember going to Rotten Tomatoes before seeing that movie, and know there were very high numbers.   
  • So something was awry.  What happened was that when I first went to RT for Complete Unknown, I did not realize that I was sent to A Complete Unknown, a film I had already seen only a few months ago, but pretty much forgot about.  Good flick actually, for this one was on the life of Bob Dylan, and did get those high 82/95 RT scores.
  • I certainly would not have even bothered to watch Complete Unknown if I knew it was rated 52/27.
  • On the other hand, maybe the problem is me, for just a few days ago I went through this Rotten Tomatoes process for a film called Close.  Saw that it was made in 2022 and had high scores of 91/88.  These figures led to my watching it.  To make a longer story short, turns out that there is another film with the same title, Close, made in 2019.   Rotten Tomatoes scores of 35/35.  This is the one I actually saw.  Frankly, and this says something about how I can be influenced, for I thought this junk Close was not that bad.  Should I now go to see that higher rated Close?  Can't, because it is not on Prime nor Netflix.

So back to the reality of my watching a bad film, which forms the premise for today's posting.  Complete Unknown is about this person who chose to live a life of adventure in a manner very few of us would consider.  She spends perhaps a year or so just faking her life.  Moves internationally to take on a different lifestyle, doing odd, but sometimes scientific things based on her college education.  Nine times.  Her ninth pretend life was purposefully taken for her to re-meet a former close boyfriend, who was now married.  Towards the end, she asks him to join her on her next escape.  Although he was tempted, he chooses to stick with his wife, most likely a lot more closely.  The Complete Unknown leaves for the tenth time.

So the question is, whether you might have in you the will to just escape your current life, abandoning family and friends, to go elsewhere doing who knows what?   I've myself wondered about this possible adventure.  

Let's go back to a global journey I took in  2013, my posting titled AROUND THE WORLD IN 51 DAYS stimulated me to think about what I should be doing for the rest of my life.  I cited something I had read when I was traveling in Thailand almost twenty years earlier:

.......an article by Harold Stephens (to the left) in the Bangkok Post on 12July1994 entitled, "Is there something that's more beautiful than True Love and Money?," which influenced my retirement in 1999 and could well help determine the next step I take into the future.  Here is a summary:

Kung Chareon was a 60-year old rich businessman in Bangkok whose son was today returning with a law degree from Harvard and his wife was speaking to the International Women's Club.  He wondered if he could do it again, so with nothing more than a small canvas bag and a few Baht, took a bus to Chiang Rai (White Temple to right).  There he found a place to stay in a cheap hotel run by a woman and her son.  Leaving out some details, at the age of 70, now living with that lady, they had a chain of hotels, with that son returning from Harvard Law.  The challenge was everything to Chareon, and the final few words were:  ...he took down from the shelf his old canvas traveling bag.

Well, I'm at just that stage of my life, and My Ultimate Global Adventure resulted in a gift:   What I'll do for the rest of my life?

I've had many forks in the road in my life where I had an opportunity for adventure over good sense.  Always chose what I thought was right for me.  Can't complain.  I've had an incredible life.  However, I still wonder.

  • In 1958 I selected Stanford over Cal Tech.  Certainly, my professional life would have been hugely different if I went to the latter.
  • Then in 1962, most of my close friends at Stanford chose to join the first full year of the Peace Corps.  I compromised here in many ways.  First, I was interested in studying art at Sophia University in Tokyo.  Skipped that to instead return to Hawaii to help save the sugar industry.  Failed at that because sugar is now gone.
  • About graduate school, had a choice of New York University Law School or Louisiana State University Chemical Engineering.  The sugar industry paid my salary to go into the LSU sugar program in their chemical engineering department.  Lost my support from the company, but chose to stay on for a PhD in biochemical engineering.  Went on to join the University of Hawaii College of Engineering in 1972.
  • In the mid-70's seriously thought about staying at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to participate in their laser fusion program, but returned to the University of Hawaii because I thought the laser to accomplish this task was many too years into the future.  This is now 50 years later and that laser has yet to be invented.
  • Went to work for Senator Spark Matsunaga in DC in 1979, after which he offered me a really good salary to stay with him.  Instead, my wife Pearl worked for him in his Honolulu office, allowing me to return to the University of Hawaii.
  • At the age of 59 decided to take early retirement from the University of Hawaii, even though I had the best job in the world.  This was the one and only time I just did what I wanted to do.
  • So while I still maintain an office at the UH,  I've now been retired for 26 years, the best continuous 26 of my entire life.
  • Now 84, do I finally do something even more adventurous?  I don't think so. 
- 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These a...
Post a Comment
Read more

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that   Oktoberfest   in Germany is mostly in September?  The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3.  Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September?  The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich?  These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11.  Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town.  It was drizzling a bit.  We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served.  We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall.  So no one came to serve us beer.  After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine.  Thus, we might have been the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE FIRST 84 YEARS OF MY LIFE

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years.  This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with  Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition.  I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts.  The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an  8-iron cover.  That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday.  I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84.  As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....
Post a Comment
Read more