Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Blogging is about observing, life is about participating. Keep them in balance: Don't let logging-in for blogging satiate your desire for adventure; instead, let it stimulate your desire to find a corner of the world that's always had you curious.
-Jim Griffin

A blog is a slate and chalk -- a drawing board for sharing irony, stories, and great works of human imagination and truly weird pieces of history such as the story of Omai, the first Tahitian to visit England in 1774, five years after Captain Cook’s initial voyage to the Pacific.
Savages being à la mode, Omai was welcomed with great enthusiasm by the Royal Family and London’s high society—he was dressed up in western clothes and taught table manners and dancing by hostesses of the fashionable elite so that he was a perfectly presentable specimen at balls and parties thrown in his honor. After almost two years of tourism in the UK, Omai got a ride home from Captain Cook. Omai didn’t learn how to read and write so there is no diary on his legendary adventures and unfortunately he died soon after reaching Tahiti, carrying a container full of souvenirs from England and his English friends.
· Omai [Pacificislandtravel]