Day 11: To Manado, Coral Triangle Initiative

The day began at 9am after breakfast. We rode our boat back to Manado and back to the Aryaduts hotel where we had left the rest of the luggage. I was still feeling nauseous and a bit ill, but I took it in stride.

At 1pm, we left for the Coral Triangle Initiative. The presentation was a bit dry, and when we left the 2-hour presentation, we were still confused about what CTI does.

By this time, I was starving because I hadn't had lunch and I had not eaten most of my breakfast. We went to a local restaurant close to the hotel, which Zack recommended we try the grilled fish. It was a decent meal, and I left still confused about how big the fish was. It was almost snake-like, with muscle and a lot of flesh.

Later, we returned to the hotel to prepare for the following day and catch up on my journal.

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How well-meaning parents ruined us

Growing up, it was common for our parents to encourage us and tell us how we could be anything we wanted in life. "You can do anything you set your mind to do!" They would cheer us on. "Even the president?" We'd ask unconvinced. "Yes, you could even become the richest man in the world!" All this fascinated us. We vowed to ourselves that we'd in fact become people of substance who would be recognized in the entire world for our achievements. We'd ride in super-yachts like Abramovich and the rest of the mega-rich. We would produce life changing inventions, innovating our way to stardom. We'd become the next prodigy in music and sports. All this is well and good, meant to lift our spirits. Assessing our lives however, no matter how much effort we have put in to realize our dreams and visions, they have eluded us. We have become adept at doing other things though: commenting on FB posts, retweets, identifying the hottest political issue...

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Munene, the journey...

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