Having made it to the 500th post, I feel a few self-indulgent reflections are in order.

My blog claims to be about travel and food.

If we take the Travellers' Century Club list as the gold standard (and I do have this sneaking ambition to be eligible to join, even if I'm never likely to actually fork out the subscription...), then we have lived in five residences in four "countries or territories" during the almost seven years since I began writing this blog (Singapore, Australia, peninsular Malaysia, and Java). None of these is the land of my birth, or the country where I have to date lived the longest, or the country of my passport.









In that same space of time, I have revisited a further nine countries-and-territories, and visited for the first time 21 others. All have left their mark on these pages.

So I feel I can rest my case with respect to the travel element.









There's fairly obviously a lot about food, too, although I'm not nearly thorough or consistent enough to describe myself as a food blogger. Those guys are dedicated!

Occasionally we remember to snap a fine-looking dish, in recognition of its visual qualities. But more often than not we forget, because we have hurled ourselves upon the tucker as soon as it's arrived on the table...







I'm pretty broad in what I see as "travel and food". As far as I'm concerned, books, performances, movies, art, spiritual experiences, and language-learning constitute travel for the mind and food for the soul. So they figure in a number of posts as well.

For the entire life-time of the blog, I've been working and/or studying full time. So I'm definitely a hobby blogger. I've never attempted to make money from my blog, or become an "influencer". I simply don't have the talent for that. And I'm not remotely committed or energetic enough.

But my dilettante status has perhaps helped to ensure that my enthusiasm for blogging has not wavered. Many of the professionals, good though they are, do falter. Output slows, or they get disillusioned. HAVING to do something is a sure way to turn an experience sour...

There have been some changes since I started. I moved from all text to a single signature picture in June 2013 (here's the first one). The picture count started to rise a few months later. Subsequently, as more is always better when it comes to graphics, I started incorporating cascades of pictures. Maybe I overdo it sometimes.

I've experimented with a couple of series. Not all have stood the test of time. The "Vintage" series never really got off the ground, although its first episode is one of my better posts, I think. I'd actually still like to develop that vintage idea, as I have lots of old travel writing that I'd like to digitize. The "Links I like" series started to feel too "work-like" and onerous, and was abandoned. This is a "play blog", after all. I don't want to feel constrained by anything. The "Three books" series is doing OK so far, although I suspect those are somewhat indigestible posts. "Little trips round Yogya" was an obvious series while we lived there. Its present-day (albeit more eclectic) counterpart is "KL diary".



I suppose all this brings us back to a very early question: Why do it? I know that family and friends drop by occasionally. But I can be pretty confident that my audience is very, very small. So... Why do it?

Is it because I think I'm good at it? Not at all.

But do I want to continue? Most definitely.

And that's an intriguing element in the answer to the "why" question. There are very, very few areas in my life where I could answer those two questions in that way. Usually if I don't think I'm good at something, I absolutely DON'T want to carry on. If at first you don't succeed, give up... That's been my motto since childhood. So there must be something therapeutic in blogging that makes me want to continue on my relatively mediocre way.

But if therapy is one angle, then agency is definitely another, as I wrote way back in 2010. This very public form of diary is a way of taking charge; of working out what you want your life to be and what you don't; of consciously, proactively, and overtly defining and underlining an identity.

And it's clear that a large part of my identity is tied up with this quest for "travel and food" (in the broad sense I described above). I'm seeking to record input, as it were. I don't see this as a place to record output (my teaching or my writing, for example), because -- beyond always trying to do a good job, which I do -- I have very little control over the fate of those things. This, I suspect, is one of the reasons my "serious" blog did not last that long. The only thing I can control, through the way I process it, is input.

So the blog is a spur to keep on with that quest -- the quest for new input to process -- as long as possible.

Narcissistic? I guess so.

Frothy? Undoubtedly. In the context of the mountains of unadulterated shit that are currently piling up in various corners of the globe, Travel and Food is froth on speed. But I do my best to make it harmless.

I guess it's a small attempt to stake a claim on the future. When I can no longer physically search for "travel and food", I hope the underlying quest mentality will have become such a habit that I'll be able to maintain it, even with very little wherewithal. At the end of the day, the "travel and food" quest can be undertaken anywhere -- even from an armchair in a resthome. The essence lies in the quest. It's all about the journey.







I recently discovered C. P. Cavafy, and his thoughts on Ithaca say it all really. (Click here for a version involving Sean Connery and Vangelis.)

As you set out for Ithaca
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery...

May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time...

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

My blog is the humble journal of my voyage; it's the delighted record of harbours seen for the first time; it's my grateful testimony to the intangible wealth I have gained along the way.

Here's to the next 500...