My Life Story... under construction!!

Regardless of your life story, regardless of setbacks, keep going forward. There are adventures ahead if you open your thought to trying new things, developing talents and interests you've always had, and always take advantage of opportunities to meet new people and try new things.

I've been through divorce. I lost my second wife to cancer. I've been broke and between jobs. And I know many out there have faced similar situations. It's no fun and it can cause you to have low self esteem and lose hope.

But out of negative situations you can learn new things about life and yourself. Sometimes it can force you to change or move on to something else, something new.

I took up hiking after my wife died. It got me out of the house. It was a healthy activity, both physically and mentally. And from joining a meetup.com group, I started to make new friends. I even had a few instances that could be called dating. Having not dated in about 20 years, it can be difficult to tell!. My new friends would introduce me to their friends. Of course we all know, you don't date every person you meet and you don't marry every person you date. But just learning to be sociable again was a good thing.

Eight years have passed since my wife died. I've had a couple or three of short term relationships. As a mature person, you both figure out pretty soon what probably will have compatibility issues. It's best to walk away before you go too far down the road.

COVID came and frankly I was happy to have the excuse not to be sociable. Facebook was all the socializing I needed! One day I received a FB message from someone who referenced that she was a friend of a hiking friend of mine-- a Thai woman who lived in L.A. for 30 years and decided to move back to Thailand. She said she wanted to be my FB friend. Over the prior years a couple of other Thai women who were friends with my old hiking friend had friended me on FB, but they mostly just wanted to follow my life in America and never really communicated other than liking pictures. So I didn't expect much of the new FB friend.

My new friend would post pictures of her activities, such as doing the traditional Thai dancing in holiday festivals, or spending time along the Mekong River or the provincial capital. So I would ask her about her activities and where the pictures were taken. At one point I asked her about the Mekong River scene and said that I'd like to see that some day. She said she would be happy to be my tour guide. After a couple of months of back and forth messages she commented that she never had a man take a real interest in her activities in the way that I did.

After six months of messaging, with her sharing her activities, I made the remark that I was grateful that she included me in her circle of friends. To which she replied, "I don't want to be your friend. I want to be your girlfriend." It was surprising... but a nice surprise. I will give her this-- she is very direct in telling you things.

What's really funny is that about three months before I first communicated with my Thai girlfriend, another friend of mine who grew up in Thailand told me I should consider retiring to Thailand because it was so affordable and the healthcare was actually quite good and way less expensive than in the United States.

Anyhow, I'm definitely working towards that retirement idea. I've visited my girlfriend twice in the past year. I've experienced 100 degree weather and 50 degree weather. I've met pretty much all her family and many of her friends. She even introduced me to the local village chiefs. Unfortunately I haven't learned Thai yet and they didn't know English... but we had friendly smiles and shaking of hands and nodding of heads..

So, THAT'S MY STORY.

Now, concerning this web site, I'm going to share with you things about Los Angeles, Thailand and probably a few other places. I will talk about food. I will talk about hiking. I will talk about photography. I will talk about gadgets and technology. I will also talk business, based on my experience with industrial sales, real estate, insurance and nonprofit management. I will try to help refer you to good sources of products, services... and places to eat!

I may share some things I've learned about life. And one thing I'm not interested in is negativity, trash talk or hate speech. Even when my hometown team is underperforming!

Stay tuned. You can visit my Instagram sites for snippets.

https://www.instagram.com/burvirmoca/

https://www.instagram.com/toastedravioli/

Nam Som is a little town in Udon Thani province, Thailand. It's about an hour's drive to the Udon Thani airport on two-lane roads. It has a beautiful little Buddhist shrine in the downtown area and across the street from the shrine is an outdoor stage for music and dance productions. There is also a night market there.

The famous Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. This was used as a scene in one of the Terminator movies.

This video was "quickly" produced using the Fast Flicks feature of Corel Video Studio. It is preformatted with sections and transition effects.

Chiang Khan

Nam Som

Wat Pa Phukon

International Flights:

22 to 24 hours of flight time, plus 1 stop and time between flights.

Udon Thani City, known for its rubber ducks!

They say Buddhism is all about enlightenment. Sometimes that requires someone banging a gong.

Wat Pa Phukon