"Aloha! My name is Earl. (Actually, Earl is my middle name, but that’s what everyone calls me. Derek is my first name.)" On December 25th, 1999, he left the USA for a three-month, post-graduation trip to Southeast Asia. It’s now been over twelve years and that trip has yet to finish. The adventure has involved over 70+ countries (view the list here) on 6 continents, work as a Tour Manager on board cruise ships, two years in India, experiments with meditation, muse-creation, mountain-climbing and movie acting, volunteer work, an inappropriate amount of time on tropical islands and eating inappropriate amounts of street food, a two-day kidnapping, being placed on the US ‘terror watch list’, teaching English in Asia and a fruitless search for a pair of sandals with sufficient arch-support for my flat feet, among many other things.
