Looking at our earliest inclinations - fascinating stuff

babs, I was never a good student in school, and there was nobody to encourage me to study or direct my interests, because my father died when I was 2 years old. I hated history in high school; memorizing dates, places, and people. I did poorly, and barely graduated with a diploma.

I volunteered into the US Air Force in 1955, and was transferred to Morocco for one year. I had the opportunity to travel to London, Paris, and Madrid during my one year in Morocco, and the seed of the travel bug bit my veins.

Move forward about six years after I got my discharge from the air force, and I earned my degree in accounting, was married, and had our first son.

I picked up my traveling, and have now visited over 100 countries; some are repeats, but its an accomplishment that I wouldn't have dreamt as even possible in my youth. I now love history, and read up about the history of each country I visit.

I just returned from my second trip to Russia last month, and was amazed at the accomplishments in their economic growth in six years.
The other benefit of world travel is the friendships I have established with many around the world.

When we had a a2k gathering in London last year, Serso (from Moscow) was supposed to meet with us, but with his busy schedule, we missed him.
He and his wife met me at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; we had lunch, and Serso spent the rest of the day with me.

I'm now 71 years old, and I'm trying to keep active with about eight trips a year. It's a wonderful world out there!

Re: Looking at our earliest inclinations - fascinating stuff


my late mother and i went to the same temple many years ago. except for the carp--which is not standard in temples by any means--it's something of a standard, Japanese buddhist temple. i know, because i've visited many in Japan. the bell has a special use on new year's eve; it's rung 108 times at midnight. (i cheated, i had to google that. it's been ages since i spent new year's eve there) don't know if they observe the custom in Oahu. for that matter, i don't know for a fact that every buddhist temple in japan does this, i always assumed they did.

The buddhist temple in Hawaii is the Byodo-in, a replica of one in Japan. My wife and I have visited both.

Thanks for your replies and it is amazing that you know of or have been there - small world...... but what I'm looking for are some of your early life experiences, or preferences, or for example; a friend of mine used to beg her mom for gum when she was a little girl (as in under 5 or 6 years old) and she called it by some odd name which her mother assumed she had simply made up. BUT, as she found out many years later while talking with a friend who had visited China, and they were talking about all the little kids who beg for "bleep bleep"(whatever that word was that she used as a little kid for gum) so, as it turns out; this was the chinese word for chewing gum. My friend when she was only a very young child was consistently using the Chinese word for chewing gum and she didn't even know it herself until she was around 35 - 40 years of age. It may be anything that appealed to you immensely, really caught your fancy, something that
you were obsessed with, etc etc. You don't have to be a scholar or
a student of anything; I only used my example of reading Pearl Buck's books because for a kid at my age, these were rather unusual choices for reading. But they didn't SEEM unusual to me until about a month or so
ago when I was watching a movie called "Pavillion of Women" on TV, based on one of Pearl Buck's novels - when I was reminded of her books and since I'm far, far older today; I realized how odd a choice that
really was for a child of my age to be reading Pearl Buck. Just take a leisurely stroll down memory lane - the kind of things I'm talking about will appear as normal as apple pie to you at first because you've known about them all your life, but you've never actually scrutinized them from an adult point of view.

babs, As a younster of ten years old, I was fascinated by those .01c gum ball machines, and would ask our mother for pennies almost daily. I don't remember how long that lasted, but I can still picture in my minds-eye the place that gumball machine was located, and that was over 60 years ago.

At about the same time, I went to the Y with my older brother to go swimming, and when I came out of the buiilding, walked the wrong way for hours on end. I was lost and scared, and started crying. A gentleman stopped and asked me why I was crying, and I told him I was lost. I didn't know the address where we lived, but he eventually got me home.

That experience has remained with me for the rest of my life; the lesson that there are good people all around us.

When I was in the US Air Force and based at Travis AFB in California, I used to hitchhike to San Francisco and the bay area on many weekends.
I remember on one trip, I had two Cadillacs pick me up for rides, and one was a pilot who worked from San Francisco International Airport. He told me he had a very good life with a good income, and that's when I learned people with money may also be nice people.