« When I’ll grow up, I’ll go to the tropics ». Little biologist’s dream aiming for wonderland, where everything living will instillate the Nectar. Your drug, your wonderdrug, your everafter wonder shot. All things tropical, topical, top call calling long distance to keep you awake in a joyful & truthful fantasy err reality.
If you’re like yours truly, you’ve been fed from birth almost with all these voodoo teevee documentaries, with all extraordinary life, all from the garden of Eden (that is, a biological eden). That or water beyond the oceans. But water is only a drink to me. Too many barking sharks, nefarious squids or giant mysterious monsters around. I kept keen on a deep green dream.
Chances are you were your way to become a biologist. Not a naturalist* kidding anymore, an actual biologist, a serious people with years digging into Academia and diploma sheets maybe even a pee-heigh-shhh-dee ladadeeda. When everybody will ask you for medical advice when they learn you got a doctorate thingie and don’t understand when you tell them you’re a plant scientist, a doctor that is not really a doctor. Not the kind they are thinking to.
Then the years old song turns into « when I’ll find a job, I’ll go to the tropics ». You learn that growing up is not enough (of course it is), you may actually need to make a living. There might be hard times and too few biologists to hire. You might be unemployed too many times, or then busy working and filling these unpaid depressing gaps. You might forget that dreams are not only nightly ghosts. Until they scream up so loud that you ear voices shooting and joking in your head. (seriously when you reach this step, you really need to do something like I did).
Until you remember no one ever really gets over an addiction. Some people still feel the need for tobaco induced nicotine waves ten years after they left smoking. Eventually you understand it’s no use to wait for something that doesn’t seem to ever happen (e.g. getting a dream job). You need a basic reminder that life is short already, that you’re no kid anymore, and you’d better do what you really want to before it’s too late. Maybe you already have a wonderful living partner, kids that share pieces of their own dreams with you, and maybe your family will agree that you go to wonderlands and that’ll be really cool for you, even if that means keeping the dire diet and diary. What’s for a change anyway. You readers, yes I’m this odd oddly guy with old dreams, but today, these dreams come true.
I’ll share bits and bites with you (provided I stay connected). But before, I leave you finding out where I was heading to these late weeks. It all begins in an oversea part of France, please guess which one. (if you really can’t find out, FlickR will tell you anyway). Once you found out, try to guess where I am now (part of the game is to be as precise as possible). Because, I’m already there. It took me about a week but that’s because I gave a talk in a remote French lab. And there wasn’t good ways to be connected all way long.
To help with the first step, a picture below.
To help with the second step, that’s a small town folks! In the deep green queen.
Does this help?
*No offense intended here, I still consider myself a naturalist, only this was a word used to qualify the nature addict kid from back then, and I use the word in this way.
Oh WONDERFUL!
what, what, do I understand that I had ?
It will be great !
I phone you !
c’est c que j’avais pensé à cause qu’en english, j’ai beaucoup perdu…
Mais c’est hyper cool !
Carrément classe !