J.R. Manawa's Blog, page 5

My prayer is this…

A jumble of thoughts I’ve had whilst travelling over the last few months, centring around my love affair with the idea of intelligent design, that we are made for a purpose, and what I pray is my daily need to live that – like there is no tomorrow and, what if, today is all I have?

[in which case we shan’t point out that I’m resting today while Bangkok is passing me by thanks to some sexy AF food poisoning. And to think, I’ve been in Asia for over a month already with no problems Thanks Thailand

Episodes 2 & 3 of New Zealand Travel!

So I’ve been a bit behind on the various facets of social media

A new story is on its way! And I’m looking for your help!

Hey everyone! Beautiful people all of you! I’m currently on the hunt for the next 31 ‘topics’ for my next novel to accompany Emmeline! If you didn’t meet Emmeline, here story is still here for you to take a peek at – if you haven’t read it message me and I may just pass you back an eBook copy

The back alleys of Ho Chi Minh City…

Well, here I am, lost down a little alley somewhere in Old Saigon. I took a wrong turn somewhere. Okay, well, maybe not a “wrong turn”, it just wasn’t the right one, and now I’m here. Sitting at a little metal table on the side of a narrow alley with a bottle of Saigon Export Bier to keep me company before the food arrives. I don’t like beer in all honesty, but the day has been hot and humid, and beer is the perfect opposite of that. A welcome antidote.

Granny across the way is watching tv, sitting on the floor of her small apartment that opens right out onto the footpath. It doesn’t matter, she owns a 40” LCD, and that says something. She’s looked up and noticed me, the Tay, sitting across from her. She stares for a good long while, I supposed even for a Tay (from the west) I may look fairly interesting, then she grunts and goes back to her soap opera.

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My food comes quicker than you would have thought, flat noodles and veg with a fried egg, lathered in hot sauce. It’s good, and hot, and then gone. I didn’t really need to eat but it felt nice to sit and drink and absorb the world around me. It’s a mad world, a busy world. But it’s good. It’s the first time in weeks that I’ve been truly quiet, and truly at peace in the midst of the storms around me.

Nowhere is that anecdote more true than at eleven pm, alone, on the streets of Old Saigon…

(Okay. Now for a bit of a fun interlude, a video on what happened during Halloween in Ho Chi Minh the night after

The first episode of our New Zealand backpacking story

As I believe I mentioned before, I was super excited to have four friends join me on my long homeward journey. I loved being able to see New Zealand through their eyes and enjoy even more about the country I was born in ☺️

Tagged: adventure, aroundtheworld, backpacker, explorer, getaway, hotel, ilovetravel, intrepid, journeys, kardashian, New Zealand, passportready, postcardsfromtheworld, Roadtrip, tourism, Tourist, travel, travel advice, travel advice asia, travel advice new zealand, travel blog, travel bloggers, travel stories, travel video, traveldeeper, traveler, traveller, travelling, travelphoto, travels, traveltheworld, travelwriter, trip, vacation, visiting, wanderer, wanderlust, webseries

Why I’ve been quiet? New Zealand has been busy…!

So it’s been a while (yeah, that’s my favourite opening phrase isn’t it?).

New Zealand has been so beautiful. It’s been so so so many years since I’ve been home and had a proper, deep breath, long pause moment to appreciate the insane beauty of this God-created country.

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I’m almost as passionate about travelling the world and absorbing life as I am about telling stories and creating “things” in general. I think there is a crazy balance in life for inhaling creation and exhaling as a creator, seeing things that have been made, and making things yourself.

All stories come from somewhere. Everything we learn in life we learn from others just as much as we learn from our own mistakes. I learn more each day about how imperfect I am as a human being in this skin of mine. Not only my flesh, but my habits are imperfect, my emotions are imperfect, my story is imperfect, but a perfect story would never be a thing, because nothing is perfect, right? No day is perfect, no person…no love? It’s a thought worth pausing on, for me anyway.

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And so I came home, and I paused, inhaled, and found stories. I got to live the adventure of the beautiful land I call home for the first time in over 10 years. And I had the privilege of seeing it through the eyes of the friends I bought with me too. And while life doesn’t stop even though you yourself may have for a moment, and crappy things still happen, it’s worth taking the time to stop, shut it all out, and be still.

I’m so grateful I have.

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And I’m excited that I’ll get to share it with you through video. Because we filmed some of that journey. Country, friends, family, journey, experience. It’s not a perfect story, or a perfect film, but it was never meant to be.

Here’s a sneak peak from me…..⬇️

I’ll do my best to keep more up to date, but the travel combined with so many family surprises has taken it out of me a bit!

Tomorrow we’ll share the first episode of our travels, I’ll make sure to post it here, but you can check out the trailer below, and link to subscribe on our YouTube (or Facebook!). Thank you so much!

I appreciate you taking the moment to read this loads (and loads and loads) ☺️☺️☺️

Tagged: adventure, aroundtheworld, backpacker, explorer, getaway, hotel, ilovetravel, intrepid, journeys, kardashian, New Zealand, passportready, postcardsfromtheworld, Roadtrip, tourism, Tourist, travel, travel advice, travel advice asia, travel advice new zealand, travel blog, travel bloggers, travel stories, travel video, traveldeeper, traveler, traveller, travelling, travelphoto, travels, traveltheworld, travelwriter, trip, vacation, visiting, wanderer, wanderlust, webseries

Morocco for a Goth Girl

Leg 1 of my travels, 10 days in Marrakech, relaxing and preparing for the big one – done! I love Morocco so much. Here are my thoughts on it. I hope they help you too!

On Goth, Makeup / Clothing, and the attention you get

I didn’t wear shitloads of makeup (still enough to be ‘me as I choose to be’ though), I did wear all black and most of the things I normally would wear (a little less on the cleavage and arms side though! But that’s Muslim countries for dummies stuff really). The first time I came to Marrakech in 2010 I didn’t wear any makeup because I was afraid of the attention, and I didn’t wear much black because I thought it would cause the heat to be a bigger problem. Honestly, having now come many times over many years, I get the same attention if I wear makeup and if I don’t, and my body temperature is not affected by my black clothing, unless I lie out flat in direct sunlight, clothed in black from head to toe.

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(Chilling in my friend’s shop. One of my favourite quiet spots in Marrakech, thanks Morad

Marrakech. The wandering begins.

Today, Marrakech is my home

I wrote you – A tale of lost love and catharsis

Another oldish one. I’m sharing the emotional poems at the moment, but then I guess that’s one of the best things about poetry; making words do pretty and clever things to help us deal with the experience of being human. I hope you enjoy this one. A tale of my favourite way to deal with heartbreak…

I wrote you. J R Manawa.

I wrote you a letter the other day.

A not-so-typical girl-letter.

It was romantic, funny, sad,

And then tragic.

I scribbled out my tears into ink,

And onto the page.

I told the story I wanted to share.

Making sure every line detailed the cut you left on my heart,

In perfect form.

Infinite beauty and striking pain.

Brutality, realism, life itself.

I know how to paint a story with words,

To show it was real to all who read.

And I know how to edit.

It was clear and concise,

It delivered with the eb and flow of truth.

Hooked you in, line and sinker.

I polished the tale some more.

Cut needless words, smoothed out each sentence.

When it was ready,

I deleted it.

And I wrote you out of existence.

Tagged: alternative, altgirl, fangs, freak, girls with piercings, girlswithfangs, girlswithtattoos, goth, gothgirl, gothic, London, London fantasy, magic realism, Storyteller, teen romance, twilight, Urban Fantasy, vamp, vampgirl, vampire, vampireprincess, writer

Airbourne — guns, boys, and fast planes ✈️

So my sister and I have a thing for fast planes, guns, and boys in uniform. These are all mild forms of amusement, nothing seriously obsessive, except maybe for the guns. I realise all this sounds slightly geeky and has nothing at all to do with the meaning of life, the darker side of alternative subcultures, changing the world, or writing a good book, but I’m going to share it all with you anyway.

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Because we had an aircraft-hanger full of fun this weekend at the Airbourne International Airshow. As one of my friends said on the day [and I paraphrase] there is something weirdly sexy about watching a plane fly upside down. Insert laughing/crying emoji here, but it is true. Especially when they make a lot of noise doing it, which makes the RAF Typhoon and the Belgian F-16 my easy favs for spectacle + noise.

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The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, or the Red Arrows, opened the show on both days I was there, and let’s face it, they are a show all by themselves. You cannot not love them. To see 9 BAE Hawk T1A jets flying in what seems like stupidly close unison, is something pretty exhilarating. My sister loves their final move, called Infinity, where they pretty much do a giant loop through the air while one loops the symbol for infinity around them in red smoke. It’s badass cool. We learned from one of the lads there all about how they have to wear anti-G trousers which appear to work like giant blood pressure bands to regulate how your blood flows through your body, therefore preventing you from passing out when they “pull-G” during their routines. Considering I despise those blood pressure bands, I can’t even imagine what wearing one on your entire lower half would feel like (ugh). However, it’s a considerably less horrible option than passing out at the joystick of a fighter jet, mid loop.

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As mentioned earlier, we also got to meet lots of boys in uniform and play with some pretty big guns (get your mind out of the gutter). My sister is an expert in firepower and knew what all the guns were, and even knew that the first one I got to hold had been modified with a rocket launcher attachment — she plays way too much Battlefield! All I knew was that it bloody well weighed about 12kg, and holding it steady long enough to see anything through the scope was farcical.

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Last year, and this year too, I was waiting to see the Chinook. I can’t explain how exciting a giant helicopter is, but it’s probably linked to childhood and an out-of-the-ordinary hot summer’s day when I experienced one flying low over my home town. I remember the whomp-whomp sound it made as it literally shook the earth beneath my feet so clearly. Nothing. More. Awesome.

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Except, last year the Chinook didn’t show. And we’ve spent the last year moaning about it like broken records. On Saturday, the Chinook also did not show. On Sunday, however, the airshow finally deserve a medal — the Chinook came (I will note here that I’m sure every time they didn’t show, it was probably because they were saving someone’s life or doing something ridiculously honourable somewhere else). Anyway, I’m not super technical on any of my aircraft knowledge, so all I can say is that a giant helicopter looks super cool when it does ridiculous manoeuvres in the air. We also queued to sit in the display Chinook like a bunch of five-year olds. We took selfies, and we tried on some uniforms and helmets.

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The Breitling Wing Walkers were also pretty damn cool, and the Fireflies, who performed in the evening with fireworks spouting from their LED light lit bodies like Catherine Wheels of the sky. The Blades are also up there with my favs, along side the BAC Strikemaster and Team Raven. Actually there are so many unique and fascinating aircraft in the Eastbourne show, you really can’t say that anything isn’t cool, it’s just my personal preference that the bigger, louder, and faster they are, the better. The whole programme is worth your viewing attention.

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When the planes weren’t flying, we were chatting to the support teams, and the Air Force and Army boys, or braving it out, rain, wind and sunshine, in our premium viewing spots and having the best time, cider in hand. Eastbourne is one of the friendliest and funnest places to be on this particular weekend of the year.

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And now I’m on the train on my way home for work tomorrow. All I can say is I should have stayed and gotten a late train after 10pm so I could have seen the fireworks.

Because, obviously, I’m also a pyromaniac.

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Tagged: air show, Airbourne, airforce, army, bae, breitling, british, British seaside, chinook, Eastbourne, f-16, navy, red arrows, seaside, typhoon, wing walkers