Who the *&$! is Ricardo?Who the *&$! is Ricardo?
Ricardo The Myth
Yeah, yeah. I know what they say: "Ricardo doesn't really exist—it's just in his freekin' head!" Fair enough. "Ricardo" is just a pseudonym I use while traveling, but its my pseudonym! And, no, it's not just because Asians can say "Ri-car-do" a lot easier than "Ree-cherd" but because once I began my new life, I thought "Why can't I have a new name?" (Alright, "Ricardo" isn't a big leap from "Richard" but it's a start, right?) So, the locals here know me as Ricardo: traveler, webmaster, laptop hobo—or, simply, as "You." In short, Ricardo is just another beaten-down former activist, a gentle-soul who has left Southern California behind for a world with fewer shopping malls and far cheaper sea-side housing.
Ricardo the Man
For five years now I've taken my addiction for new-and-interesting places to new highs. With my backpack as my home, and carry-on/laptop bag as my office, I'm able to live the life of Hemingway and Miller—but without having to be a drunk or published writer (or having to teach English to survive for that matter.) As a webmaster for the righteous (various nonprofit groups), I'm taking the practice of "work-at-home" to new extremes. No place is too beautiful (Sweden) or remote (New Zealand) or intense (Morocco, India, North Sumatra, Cambodia...) for this laptop hobo. No sir. Just give me a little food, a blanket, a good book, and a roof over my head (preferably attached to a room with electricity and telephone line) and I'm as happy as a Thai teenager with a cell-phone.
The "Why" Question
"You've ditched cozy Southern California and your cool graphics company for a shack in Thailand. Dude, are you mental?"
At the risk of sounding as if I've seen one-too-many Michael Moore "documentaries," I'll say that living in a society where competition and fear is the primal instinct, where a man like GW can be President, can drive any intelligent human being to the question: "Is that all there is to life?" I shall quote Herman Hesse from Narcissus and Goldmund:
“…A man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul.”
Need I say more?
Where Ricardo Lives
Although my permanent address is in Santa Ana, California, I spend the majority of my time in a wooden loft-like house in a town called "Lanta Old Town" on the east side of Koh Lanta Yai, which is an island in Southern Thailand. Lanta Old Town itself is more than 100 years old, and with the exception of the five or so expats that live here with their laptops, the town of about 250 hasn't changed much since Chinese traders inhabited this wild-west looking place back in the Roosevelt (Teddy) administration. Most of my immediate neighbors are of Chinese descent (the Chinese temple sits across from my home) and are either old shop-keepers or first-time mamas. (Who knows where the fathers went.) To the south (about 500 meters) of Lanta Old Town resides the so-called "Sea Gypsy Villagers" which are clusters of fisher families that live (not unlike myself) in raised wooden shacks over the Andaman sea. They're a matriarchal society that live as simply as the "hill tribe" people of northern Thailand (but who have better seafood for sale.) To the north (about 500 meters) are Thai Muslims (which are denoted as such since Thai culture is so rooted in Buddhism.) Muslims are by far the majority group of Koh Lanta. Though most are so moderate that they live undistinguishable from the Buddhist Thais, a sizable portion follow a more fundamentalist sect. (Yes, fully veiled women in black seems quite odd in a community of swim wear and 95 degree temperatures.) On the other side of the island (the west side) is where all the tourist resorts are: bungalows on white sandy beaches, rum with coconut drinks, women (though not Thais) in bikinis. Not a bad place to spend time at.
What Ricardo Does
As I had mentioned above, I'm a webmaster. It's not a profession that I'd learned in university—which I didn't attend (I was pre-occupied with the Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation at that time)—but something I learned to do a few years ago so I could continue to work with American nonprofit organizations—but on the other side of the world. Anyway, that's my "day job." I'm also a yet-to-be-published writer. This I do for fun, just like cooking (Thai food these days), reading, playing volleyball, or cruising the island on my motorbike taking in the incredible views.
Well, that's me. And though there's more to my story than that, you'll just have to wait for the book (comic book.) Oh, wait, here's one last thing...
The Ricardo Personal Profile
And, there you have it.