Blogging - a vent, a process, a development

Blogging - a vent, a process, a development
Cheryl and I on a tandem bike we rented on Cat Ba Island, Vietnam during our wonderful honeymoon

Hello, and welcome to our adventures, misadventures, and general musings

Cheryl and I are now living in our little house on the prairie and are enjoying the non-stresses of small-town life. We miss our friends and family and love it when they are in touch.

Friday, December 4, 2009

An Ode to an Old Friend

I wrote this song for my late friend Peter. I think of him often and wish he were still here to appreciate life and have a good jam. Wherever you are, God bless you brother.



Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

More Music for the Masses

Hello all friends, family, and perhaps the occasional interweb-wierdo.

I have spent my afternoon doing nothing but recording music. I have recently been inspired by the song "Mad World" that Gary Jules covered around 10 years ago. This recording is a cover of a cover. I hope you like it.

Keep in mind these recording are on the fly. Otherwise, please scrutinize it and let me know how to improve. Enjoy...




P.S. I am adoring this Gary Jules guy. He has been my latest musical love affair. Check him out at garyjules.com

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Back in the Saddle


I realize it has been some time since my last written blog post and I thought there may be some family members out there that could use some posting. Cheryl and I have been very busy for the last few months and our adventures have been grand. We have engaged in new endeavours, enjoyed the summer, and even travelled to the farthest reaches of planet Earth.

Our teaching year wrapped up well. I thought Cheryl and I were rather organized in closing our first year of teaching. Once everything was wrapped up with a nice little bow we immediately busied ourselves with our summer business selling jewelry and accessories.

We had a huge sale on Canada Day in Osborne Village. We were attempting to liquidate most of our remaining stock from last year and Winnipeg, being as cheap as it is, responded voraciously to our reduced prices. This set us up well for the next step in our summer plan; our first business trip overseas.

Once more we were packing our things to fly over the Pacific to walk amongst the Buddhists. It was refreshing to return to Thailand. Our first experience upon arrival was classically Thailand in that it required an immediate Mai Pen Lai attitude. Apparently the door to the luggage bay on the airplane was stuck. The voice on the airport intercom claimed we would receive our luggage inside of 30 min., but we knew otherwise; after all, we lived there once you know. Of course, after 30 min., the intercom once more intruded upon us to indicate further delays. This event repeated itself until about 2 hours later when we received our luggage. Mai pen lai.

Thailand was beautiful just as we remembered. We worried very little and enjoyed a lot. We even went to our old neighbourhood to check things out. It was such an interesting sense of nostalgia to return to our former Thai nesting area. We visited the Thai massage place that we loved. We ate at our favourite restaurant. We saw other falangs that were just getting their Thai legs in their new neighbourhood. It was fascinating!

Revisiting our old business contacts was a lark. They all recognized us and invited us into their shops to ply us with Thai goodies and generous hospitality. It was like visiting old friends. And we felt much more climatized to the massive market situation than when we first visited in 2007. We approached the sprawling market with a "can-do" attitude. We went in, shopped, bartered, bought, made deals, and still got out with our heads intact (a feat not easily attained amidst a market of thronging thousands).

We made sure to spend a few weeks on Koh Chang (my favourite place in the world). Although the rainy season ensured a lot of precipitation we enjoyed swinging in hammocks, reading books, swimming, motorcycles, and way too much delicious food.
When we returned to Bangkok it was a flurry of business; buying, packing, weighing, and then back to the airport. I still can`t believe how much we got away with packing in our luggage!

Upon our return home we took off to Saskatoon to try to sell our newly acquired goods. The festival was good and we enjoyed ourselves. Unfortunately, we didn`t get to see much of my folks whilst we were there as they were at the lake.
Ever since that time we have been adjusting to returning to our little house on the Prairie. Cheryl has begun her first year teaching Grade 5-6 and is enjoying it whilst I am substitute teaching and otherwise fill my days farming the garden and creating some websites for us to begin doing business online. I`ve already launched a pre-website on Etsy.com. If you go there and type in "Walk About" or "jayewert". You can see our first online products for sale. I`ll keep you posted in the following weeks about the official launch of Walk About Jewelry online.

Life goes on and we are back in the saddle. We are happy, healthy, and grateful for what we have. Between that and the fact that we have each other, I would say we`re doing pretty well. Feel free to leave a comment to tell us how you are because we always miss our friends and family.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Music is for Everyone

I found myself sitting with my guitar this morning and writing a song. Then i realized that it has been way too long since I have done that sort of thing. So I took the time to slap a recording together of my newly born song.

Please click the link to listen and offer some advice...
example: put a bridge after the second verse that sums up the premise of the song.
example 2: try to suck less and rock more!
example 3: make the lyrics more universal.



I am hoping for feedback via "songwriter's circle" here so please let me know what you think of this track and I'll be sure to follow.

cheers

Jay

Friday, September 18, 2009


Hello all. I know it has been sometime since I have posted but there is good reason why; I went all the way to the other side of the world and back! I'll tell you more about that later because right now I want you to know about what kept me busy this week. Please go to this link and find out.

Walk About Jewelry on Etsy

I hope you like what you see. I will now begin on a much larger project of creating a massive site for your imports. I'll keep you posted.

cheers

Jay Ewert