buddha helps us pack our bags...

THIS IS HOW WE PACKED THE NIGHT I LEFT HAWAII

...never a dull moment with the Lynch Bros. ..!

letter to the Editor from Melbourne

EVENTS LEADING UP TO BIRTH OF "THEGREENBACKPACK"

Aloha from Melbourne,

After having spent the last 12 years building my career in real estate and finance in my hometown of Honolulu, it is good to be back in my 2nd home of Melbourne, Australia writing this introspection and introduction.

Interesting how I have done more exploring of Oahu's trails, beaches, and hidden treasures in the last three months than I have done in the last 12 years! Once I had made up my mind to leave the islands, my appreciation for even the smallest details about my island home grew daily and exponentially. Sometimes you don't know what you've got until you don't have it any more.


Background.
I started my career at Bank of America and was lucky enough to have a very talented mentor teach me the ropes of the mortgage business in my early 20s. When BofA finally shut their doors on their mortgage operations in Hawaii, by flying in our regional director unexpectedly to give the entire office its two weeks notice, I made the decision not to work for a large soul-less corporation ever again.

I went to work for a smaller regional mortgage bank based in the East Coast, yet run as an independent operation with deep pocketed mainland backing in Hawaii. This company specialized in government lending: FHA, VA and first-time homebuyer friendly loans, and I consistently achieved top-producer status while working here, winning expensive awards trips to Mexico and the Bahamas along the way. It was also here that I got my first taste of the satisfaction gained from volunteering in the non-profit arena by teaching at the Hawaii Homeownership Center.

The best thing about teaching is that in order to do it well, you must know your subject matter intimately. When it comes to building a strong real estate portfolio, this means that you must be able to do it yourself in order to teach others how to do it successfully. Hence, by age 24 I had bought the first investment property in what was to grow into a modestly respectable portfolio of properties, and by age 28 I was living in the shadow of Diamond Head, driving my dream car, and teaching real estate finance classes across the state.

I can still remember the day when my then-financial advisor called to inform me that I was worth over $1 million dollars on paper. It sure didn't feel like I was a millionaire, especially seeing as I was only in my mid-20s and far from having seven figures in the bank; nevertheless it sure felt good to hear that number and my name in the same sentence!

Four years ago, I started my own mortgage firm, with an emphasis on educating our clients about how to use the mortgage as a financial tool to help achieve short, mid and long-term goals more effectively. We planned for a downturn in the credit markets last year, however were blindsided by the ferocity with which it hit, and the extent to which it affected us. We kept our doors open literally until our phones were shut off and we were unable to conduct business.

Before I left Hawaii last week, I had dinner with some clients of ours whom we helped to build a modest portfolio of rental properties with. Their portfolio is performing well despite the downturn, and they are optimistic and feeling good about the future, in part because of how we helped structure their real estate financing and acquisitions. I am most proud of the fact that in over 9 years of being in business and over $90 million dollars worth of loans funded during that career, to the best of my knowledge not one of my customers has lost their home to foreclosure.

Except, well perhaps....me. This remains to be seen. As I fought to keep my business open, I sold off performing real estate assets, and attempted to raise funds privately before eventually being forced to shut down my business and become another victim of the credit crunch and global financial crises. Right now I am working against the clock to dispose of my last property and avoid foreclosure; the only material possession I am keeping is my 1980 Honda motorcycle so that I have something to get around on when I eventually do return to Hawaii to rebuild.


One door closes, another door opens.
I've watched all the material things that I worked so hard for be stripped away from me over the last 18 months, have flirted with depression, and have had plenty of opportunity to do some serious soul-searching to confront questions like:

• "What am I passionate about?"
• "What do I want my life to be about?"

As painful as the experience off loss has been, on the other side of my fall I have discovered hope, and a renewed passion for life. I have discovered the true meaning of the word "friend", and the true meaning of the word "family", and experienced how there is not really a whole lot of difference between the two.

Although my financial assets have been wiped out, the relationships and heartfelt connections that I have made over the years are priceless. These are the true assets that I have been able to create over the course of the last 12 years, along with the invaluable experience of building [and losing!] a business in financial services. Broke is temporary; poor is forever.

I am truly blessed with the opportunity to explore, question, and discover myself such that I can completely re-invent myself and blossom into the person I have always wanted to be.

Instead of looking for things in my profession to be passionate about, I now have the opportunity to pursue my passions and explore ways to create a new profession based around these passions.

Instead of getting up each morning and thinking about what must be done on my to-do list today, I get to wake up each morning and answer the question, "What do I want to do today?"

Each time I have the opportunity to share my story with someone who is interested, the reaction is almost always the same:

• "I am sooo jealous!"
• "That is something I have always wanted to do!"
• "You are doing what all of us want to, an so few actually do - follow your dreams!"

And, I am once again reminded of how lucky I am to be in a position where I can actually do this... with no children, no significant other, no responsibilities except to take care of me, myself and I...

I am on a mission to travel the world seeking out ADVENTURE and opportunities to be of SERVICE. Why? Because these are two things that feed my soul. Two things that when I am engaged in them, I lose track of time and space and am living completely in the moment. Two things that I simply LOVE to do...


What's Next?
I've never been one who learns easily from lectures and ciricullum; instead I am born of stubborn Irish, Scottish and Filipino bloodlines that prefer to learn by fire, or perhaps more accurately, by jumping into the fire and learning through experience. I don't recommend my path to anyone else; it has been a long and winding road [which is how I like it] and is likely how the rest of my journey will continue to be.

I am specifically interested in these areas:

• Arts & Architecture
• Building Community
• Culture
• Design
• Economics & Microfinance
• Sustainability
  

I guess you could call it the ABC's of the madness of my travels... these could all probably be lumped under one word:


Sustainability.
Sustainability has become a buzz word in recent times, and it can be easy to think of "sustainability" simply as "environmentalism", or "eco-friendly". However, to me, sustainability encompasses so much more than "going green".....

Put the word "sustainable" in front of any of the following words, and you cast a renewed focus onto another aspect of the sustainability movement: arts, capitalism, charitable work, culture, entrepreneurship, environment, education, economy, philosophy, philanthropy, social responsibility, social ventures, even....wait for it....spirituality.

So, while this journey is about me diving into these things that interest me, and inviting you to come along and learn with me......it is also an outward expression of the journey I am taking within to explore myself:

What passions do I want to follow? What do I want to experience? Will I retreat into the wild? Will I come back? Who will I be when I come back?

I am interested in meeting passionate, outward focussed people who are taking action and making a positive difference in the world. This gives me such a broad pallet to paint my explorations across, as there are an unlimited number of ways that we can contribute to humanity. I want to give myself a first-hand education about changing the world.

Therefore the blog is a travelog, an soul-searching diary, a research paper, a news column, and hopefully, a forum where those of us who find ourselves asking these same questions can discuss and debate and collaborate and connect and explore together. Don't be surprised to find me writing about an organic farm in one post, and about an artist I've met on the road in the next. My hope is that the blog is as diverse and rich as my travels will be!

I'd like to invite you to come along for the ride and explore this pale blue dot in space we call home together. Laugh with me. Question with me. Question me! Question each other. Discover together. And in doing so, perhaps we can discover something new in ourselves that we did not recognize before.


Sincerely,




Matthew Kamakani Lynch
theGreenBackpack.blogspot.com

Stunts during "The Making of...Gr8est Job Application"

THE GR8EST STUNTMEN IN THE WORLD!

Quick video post here...wanted to give a special shout out and thank "Da Kalihi Boyz" for helping out with the filming of the Greatest Job In The World Application. These kids were having so much fun with us and got such a thrill seeing themselves on camera...and were awesome Stuntmen!!

I promised that I would post it on YouTube for them to see, I hope that they find it and contact me so that I can keep in touch with them....it's kinda hard to exchange email addresses when you are jumping of a 12-foot wall into the Pacific Ocean....!

Travelog Redux - backpacking New Zealand

STA TRAVEL CENTERS MEAN BACKPACKING TO ME!

Thought I'd post an entry from the Travelog I kept in 2003 while backpacking New Zealand. I booked my flight into Aukland, and nothing else, deciding to figure everything out once I got there..."spontaneous travel", I called it. One of the best trips I have ever done [so far] in my life! No pics, only some images from my sketchbook at the time....enjoy:

9pm, Janus Hall Backpacker's Lodge, Wet All Day

....Waitomo Caves Gloworm Adventure Tour was well worth it, what an adventure!!

30-meter abseil into a hole in the ground starts things off...the hole looks like, well, a hole about 1/2 meter wide an 2 meters down, then you squeeze into the opening and find yourself hanging in a limestone chimney 30m off the cave floor....

...then down a narrow path to a short flying fox run (in the dark), quick break for tea & a biscuit a.k.a. cave cookie a.k.a. NZ Granola Bar...we dangle our feet over the edge of a 10-foot drop and peer into the still, pitch-black water below...can't tell how dep it is (or isn't)....we jump off the cliff into the freezng water below and paddle our way upstream where our guide shows us a chamber full of gloworms & tells us of their lifecycles:

"They are acually maggots of a certain kind of fly, the only maggots known to catch their food by using a light on their arse...only maggots known to trap their food with snot-like fishing lines they dangle to entangle their prey...after living as larvae for many weeks, they pupate into flies which live for three days & shag until they die of exhaustion....they have very short life cycles, but very large penises...what a trade-off, aye?? "

Then, after paddling uptream for about half an hour, we sit on our inner tubes and form a human chain, shut the lights off on our helmets...and float down the stream in the darkness, with only the pale glow of the maggots to light our way.

It is a surreal feeling, drifting downstream in an underground river in total darkness, with 7 other people crazy enough to want to do it with you, and your guide....you lose all sense of space & it feels like you are drifting in the cold vacuum of space; the glow worms look like the stars of distant galaxies....then *SPLASH* our other guide scares the s*%t out of us by making a god-awful noise which breaks the spell and heralds our arrival back to our entry point, where we came in on the flying fox & jumped into the water.

We ditch the inner tubes, turn our lights back on, and follow our guide downstream into the icy black water towards the roar of what sounds like a huge waterfall...we twist & urn & stumble thru a series of rapids, not knowing what lies beneath or where your foot is stepping, just trusting to your numb feet that tey will find the way.

"Watch out for the big eels" they say, and we cannot tell if they are joking or not...although I wonder when they tell us to keep our fingers out of the water lest they be mistaken for earthworms or grubs. Down a slide, we turn a corner & continue downstream, sometimes ankle-deep in water, sometimes chest-deep, sometimes paddling to keep your head afloat as the river bed drops away beneath you.

We pause and our guide points out a few stallegmite formatioins that remind them of different things: T-Rex claw over here, fairy castle over there...then the crown jewell, a formation that looks like a sheep farmer having a little too much fun with his sheep, doggy-style if ya know what I mean...

We press on despite the fact that I can no longer feel my toes, and the cave gets smaller and smaller, pressing in around us. We are crawling our way thru some spaces now, our guides have given us directions and we are now leading the way, the blind leading the blind...

We duck under another low ceiling into another cold pool, and Ritchie, our Maori guide, runs forrward to a nook in the wall and exclaims, "Check this out, it's Cecil!!" "Cecil" turns out to be a 1.5 foot-long eel who resembles a catfish with no eyes, and who is, apparently, asleep.

I am immediately reminded of the "shrieking eels" in [the movie] "The Princess Bride", an also reminded of the earlier warning at our entry point into the caves...yech...10 feet long, they said, 6 inchess in diameter...my skin crawls at the thought of such a creature wrapping itself around my leg, and with a shudder, we move on. Bloody uncanny those creatures, seems like they could live anywhere....their grey skin is unnatural, reminding me of Gollum.

We turn another corner and are given a choice....the easy way out, or do we want our money's worth...nobody objects, so we take the right fork and crawl under a tiny gap in the wall...to emerge under a 10M waterfall. We climb up one at a time, and squeeze through a narrow passageway to come to another waterfall, and...daylight.

It is with mixed feelings that we greet the daylight; sad that our adventure is coming to an end, glad that we are out of the cold...and on our way to hot showers & soup & bagels...what an amazing experience!

Two hours underground with complete strangers, and we emerge with the strange bond a shared experience creates. We know each other pretty well now: there are the 3 Italian guys who don't speak much English but laugh at everything you say...the Smiling Swiss, Felix, who beamed at you every time you looked his way...the Aussie couple, Danielle and her hubbie The Plumber, true-blue Aussies with that "no worries" attitude that meant they were up for anything thrown their way...Sharon, the British girl who teaches English in japan and was petrified the whole way, but who made it thru, foggy glasses and all...and, of course, Bigi [my Austrian travelling companion at the time], who is just...well, Bigi, making friends with everybody, and loving every minute of it.

What a great day!
12/21/2003

WARM AGAIN:
THE VERANDAH GRILL BACK AT THE BACKPACKER'S LODGE

The GR8EST Job In The World - Application Complete!

I had so much fun shooting this over the last week....er, OK well mostly today...thought the deadline was next week and SUPERMOM came to the rescue again, texting me with the news that the application vid was actually due in TODAY.

So in true procrastination-drives-creative-genius form, I spent the day filming like a maniac with my Couchsurfing Buddy [and new best friend] Lucie Voelcker [THANK YOU Lucie!!]

We spent the day asking unsuspecting tourists and locals to say, "HE WAS BORN FOR THIS JOB!!" into a stranger's video camera....and everyone happily obliged!! I'll follow up with the blooper reel on another post; this was so much fun!!

Special thanks to: Mom & Dad, Lucie Voelcker, Laurens Laudowicz, Miles Burkhart, James Lynch, Jens Trumpa and his beautiful children, Pete Richards, Jim Schmit, Tom who we sail with every Friday [what the heck is ur last name??], Antoinella, Atlantis, Da Kalihi Boyz, that lovely couple from the west coast who we met on Diamond Head, and Morning Brew Cafe in Kailua.

Friday Night Beer Races

FRIDAY NIGHT IS SAILING NIGHT

For 30 years, Pete Richards and Jim Schmit have been sailing in the Friday night races from Honolulu Yacht Club. They've been nice enough to let me tag along for the last few races, and have even invited me to keep coming back to learn more [God help them!].....

Our motley crew assembles at the dock by 5 o'clock every Friday, emerging from the craziness of week's-end-Waikiki traffic to see who has shown up to sail with us this week and get the boat out of harbor to jostle for the best starting position when the race-start horn blows at 5:30. This week Antoinella [from Italy], Jenny [Local/California girl], and Chad'n'Eric [two North Carolina boys who've never sailed before] are sailing with us.

I'm still stuck in traffic at 5:05 and get a call from Jim: "How long?" ...so, I'm running and jumping into the boat as it pulls away from the dock; it's racing time.

Pete and Jim both own their own boats, and have been sailing for a long time. We're on Pete's boat, Harvey today, and the engine cuts out as we enter the channel. Jim jumps up and starts hoisting the mainsail, it's my job to make sure the sail doesn't jam on its way up - old boats have lots of character...

There is a good wind blowing and we are under way quickly, skipping along the subsiding southerly swell. The easy banter between the two skippers soon starts, and I chuckle and marvel at the artful way they trade insults while navigating, and debating race tactics. This is one of my favorite things about sailing on Fridays.

We time the start perfectly, counting down and crossing the Committee Boat right as they blow the starting horn, and the streaming debate is now interspersed with yacht club gossip as Jenny joins the conversation. Our arch-rivals, Addiction, are in a dispute with Pete about a minor altercation a few races back [we t-boned them], and are threatening legal action. Pete shrugs it off: "We were' racin'."

We spot Addiction ahead of us and start chasing. They are flying their spinnaker, which we do not have, yet we are slowly gaining ground. The banter gets more focussed, and we make a couple strategic tacks as we near the bouy.

The sun is setting as we round the mark, and if there was a green flash we've missed it in all the action... Addiction has fouled her spinnaker as she rounded the mark, and we hear shouts coming from her deck. We all grin broadly as we recognize our opportunity to take the race, set our jaws, trim the sails, and start bearing down on her.

Pete takes us above our rival and pins her on the outside, taking away her good wind and slingshotting past her. We are flying now, slicing through the swells and coming home to the finish marker with the afterglow of the sunset behind us. We've been on the water for an hour now and it feels like the party is just getting started as we leave them in the dust and cross the line.

Back at the club, Pete buys us a round and there are smiles all around.

Good race.

1. ADDICTION OF PORT BOW

2. GOT 'EM PINNED

3. BYE BYE!