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This blog is a father's message to his son. An older, conservative, some would say cantankerous father's message.

I often think "I'll tell Jack about that when he's older."

My father sat down in his chair and died. My neighbour, younger than me, sat down in his van and died. Cancer has tried twice to take those I love and luckily failed. It dawned on me eventually that I might not be here to tell Jack.

So this blog is for Jack in case I'm not here to say it personally. I'll capture those messages, organise them, and hopefully share them when the time comes. That time is teenage: the target of this blog is advice to teenage boys.

Here you will find no political correctness; new age, mystical claptrap; post-modernist spineless relativism; or Californian everbody-gets-a-hug inclusiveness. Digging implements get called spades: the focus is on equipping a boy to be a man in a harsh and ruthless world that may just get a lot uglier by the time he's adult.

About me:

  • worked in many jobs including labourer, painter, bartender, crop picker, building site worker, science researcher, tax assessor, software sales tech, manager, and consultant
  • trained in electrical engineering (failed), adult education (unfinished) and operations research (Batchelor's degree)
  • read many hundreds of good books; trained several times by Art Jacobs (very few of you will know who that is but trust me: it was life changing); studied welding, yoga, bush survival, acting, African dance, ballroom dance, German, French, Spanish, Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese, shooting, First Aid, mathematics, Sri Chinmoy meditation, ITIL, vegetarian cookery, database normalisation, and decorative painting; and heard speeches by Henry Kissinger and the Dalai Llama (twice)
  • lived with four women ending with my wife who lights my life
  • slept in to 25 countries (35 if you count US states as countries), lived in three, and seen the underbelly of most
  • tried skiing, windsurfing, sailing, waterskiing, snorkelling, free-diving, bodysurfing, gliding, quad-biking, steam-locomotive-driving, bushwalking, hitch-hiking, bicycle touring, caving, abseiling, canoeing, kayaking, whitewater rafting (on bamboo, no lifejackets or helmets), and kart racing, and rode on horse, camel, elephant, and truck roof
  • fired crossbow, air rifle, .22, .303 and Bren gun; best shot in my Army Cadets platoon but I've never killed anything with a gun
  • tried nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, meths, marijuana, hashish, hash oil, opium (inadvertently), coca, betel, nitrous oxide, mescaline, LSD and amyl nitrate, and abused a few of them (though nowadays all I touch is tea every morning, Diet Coke every day, chocolate always and red wine sometimes)
  • written five books, fifteen websites and seventy articles and papers
  • slept on a luxury yacht and a cruise liner; eaten and drank in the best restaurants around the world; partied with the rich and famous; stayed in luxury hotels in eight countries (Ayers Rock, Hayman Island, Calcutta, Jakarta, Seoul and Singapore come to mind); had housemaids and personal drivers; flown first class across the Pacific; slept in a breadvan, under hedges, on a bus roof, in a Tibetan Buddhist monastry, and a Thai brothel; been broke, arrested, on the dole
  • been entertained by Billy Joel in the front bar of the Richmond pub, a Bollywood movie in Kashmir, Louisiana trailer-trash strippers, the World Highland Pipe Band Championships, David Bowie's greatest concert (according to David) and again at his wettest concert, pingpong balls and razor blades in Patpong Rd, A Midsummer Night's Dream performed in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, cabaret in a spiegeltent, the Paraplegic Olympics, jazz festivals including the wondrous Montsalvat, rock festivals, three-course waitered dinner for 3400 people in a tent, the Makati Club in Wan Chai, an indoor rodeo, an Indian street-dentist, and a thousand more sensational sights and sounds from Amsterdam to Invercargill
  • seen the great sights like Taj Mahal (that's #1), Iguazu Falls, the Amazon (from the air), the Mekong, the Ganges, the Murray, the Mississippi, the Waimakariri, the Bosphorus, the Thames, Sancta Sophia, Rotorua, Big Ben, Venice Beach, Ayers Rock, Annapurna, Copan, the Parthenon, Macchu Pichu, Guanaja, DFW and Chek Lap Kok airports, the Royal Palaces of Leh London Beijing and Bangkok, the New York Metropolitan Museum, MOMA and the NY Guggenheim, the Great Wall of China, the Smithsonian (bits of it), Kew Gardens, the Ice Cave of Zongo and the ice phallus of Amarnath, Kashgar, Ephesus and Zanskar
  • and the awful sights like Bangkok klongs, Indian shit, American food, Indian beggars, British thugs, Manila slums, Jakarta corruption, Seoul smog, Mt Pinatubo's destruction, Communist architecture and Pakistani buses
  • brawled with off-duty cops in Atlanta Georgia, punks in Christchurch New Zealand, katois in Ko Samui, and sailors in San Diego
  • been robbed, pickpocketed, burgled, beaten up, stoned (both meanings of the word), stabbed, arrested, detained by Customs and by Immigration, jilted, cheated, cuckolded, drugged, fired, crashed into, shot at and just about every other form of abuse I can think of except shot
  • seen people die from disease, car smashes, crushed by a bus
  • nearly died from drowning (three times), hypothermia (twice), falling, a car smash, two bike crashes, three electric shocks, dysentry, and alcohol poisoning
  • rode jeeps alone with armed Pakistani tribesmen and hashish smugglers in remote Hindustan; smoked ganja alone with Thai boatmen at night in the jungle of Ko Phi Phi; slept rolled in a mattress with a Muslim truckdriver in Drass; slipped into rebel Burma in a longtail boat and slept to the sound of shelling; strolled the streets of Srinagar amongst armed soldiers and burning buildings during 24hour curfew; crossed at least five passes over 5000m, all but one on foot; walked alone down Basin Street N'Orlins at night; waded down flooded streets in Old Delhi; travelled deep into the Australian desert in a 1968 Holden; crossed central Tasmania alone; went shopping in Belize City alone and unarmed; walked through the border crossing of Ciudad Del Este into Paraguay; rode the roofs of trucks over the infamous Zoji La into Ladakh; frozen alone in the the Southern Alps; shat my guts out for three days alone in a camp full of Nigerian heroin addicts

...and I'm still here. So if I have a few views on life and a bit of an attitude I hope you'll understand.

My father was a good strong man, but he never said much. I plan to provide more guidance to my son.

I share these thoughts with the world in the hope that other sons may find it useful, and other parents too.

If you disagree with the views expressed here, feel free to say so... nicely. People who want to enter into civilised discussion and debate are welcome. Those who want to argue and abuse wll be edited or deleted mercilessly: this blog is not a democracy. [Actually you can't any more - I blocked comments. Too many weird folk out there. If you want to discuss, you can still contact me]. Better still, if you don't like it read something else. There are one or two other blogs on the internet.