Tank of carp...

New pedicurists have arrived in town. The latest in the spa treatment is dunking your feet into an aquarium where fish (Yes, fish!) eat away your dead skin.

Believe it or not, it is here. Fish are now cleaning our toes and legs and ankles. I saw it on travel channel and I saw it on news. Cambodia has spas where you can immerse your feet into a fish tank and they come out buffed and free of dead skin. Fish, mainly carp, work away on your tootsies and give you a tickling pedicure. And it is not some exotic thing; it is available in north Virginia as well.

As strange as it sounds it is a genius case of win-win IMO. Fish get food and you get clean feet. For anyone who has a fetish for tickles – it is a match made in heaven. Experiments are under way to see if fishies could help with psoriasis and other skin ailments. Who knew?!

However, the first thing I thought of when I looked at this - let us not use Piranhas!

Transitioning from posses to access

Transition is on the horizon. It is literally in the cloud!

Soon our music, our books, our entertainment – basically a lot that we use to possess (or aspired to possess) with be accessed for use as and when needed and however much desired.

We will have clouds of information, games, comics and novels, opinions and jazz pieces that we can use. As needed ‘stuff’ can be plucked or accessed. No more cluttered computers, minds and spaces. Next exit is ACCESS.

I grew up in an era where everything was basically done to possess more. The more you have the more convenient your life becomes (not necessarily happy but definitely convenient). The only way to consume was to possess. And with everything that was good or wanted the package it came in grew bigger, as in with a good song you wanted came the six useless tracks you paid for. For that one article you wanted to refer, came a magazine with 60 pages you would never look at. Essentially everything we wanted came in a BoC (Bag of crap) that we paid for.

With clouds, you can hand-pick what you want, how you want and most important how much you want. When done with it, stow it away in the cloud. Awesome…you think, not so fast I say.

There’s a joy in surprise of discovering something you were not looking for. Essentially, we are eliminating a lot of exploration. We don’t know what we don’t know so, looking through stuff has a purpose!

On the other hand, imagine the zen like lifestyle of not having to run after possessions. You need it, you get it and then do away with it. Like a library, the books are there – get it when you want to read it, no need to buy in anticipation of that need to read.

It is not happening tomorrow, but it is happening. The butterfly is emerging. Like everything, it won’t be perfect and like everything it will become the way of life.

Let’s hope that chapters instead of books don’t stifle the art of storytelling. Let’s hope that tracks instead of albums don’t smother creativity. Let’s hope that it is just device agnostic, pay-as-you-go, get-when-you-need thing…basically - no muss-no fuss.

Let’s hope the butterfly is beautiful and the transition worth it.

Land’s end…

My trip to cabo was all about this – the land’s end. Land just suddenly ends and you can see right to the last rock…the very last stone where the never-ending pacific begins and spins around the earth.

Baja California is a beautiful place but a bit strange. Anytime you think of ocean you think humid and/or green. Most of Baja, albeit the mighty pacific and the sea, is very dry and dessert-like. Rough coast, calm bays, warm water, rich sea-life on one end and right across are cacti, acrid landscape with acute lack of vegetation. Other than the few palms there’s hardly any tree for miles. If no one told you of the big sea on the other side of sand-hill, you’d think you are in dessert. And you are, just that it neighbors the mighty Pacific.

Land’s end is a beautiful rock formation with rich reefs, magical rock formations, pirate caves, amazing and tidal beaches. It is really a site and it is hard to get use to it. The sea is much calmer than the ocean. Rich reefs attract sea-lions, pelicans, dolphins and even whales – you can even see schools of fish (including sting ray) from glass bottom of boats. When calm, the visibility in sea is near perfect for 20-25 feet.

My favorite part of the trip was sitting beside the beach, watching stars and fire-works across sea and hearing massive crashes of wave on shore. The rumble sounds louder in dark and waves look monstrous as darkness changes the reference frame. The coast was rough due to a distant storm and the waves did come right up to the ‘hotel beach’. And it was cold!

My not so favorite part was the cold (freezing) water of the sea. Cabo is not supposed to be cold! The storm doused all hope of snorkel as visibility got to zero in cold water. But, the catamaran ride to the bays, around the coast-line was amazing. Open bar, good music and wind…it was an awesome feeling to sit on the boat crashing through sea of cortez. Life couldn’t get better than that. Wind-water-sun-music-tequila!

Sea of cortez is so rich in sea-life that it has been called Aquarium of the world! You can swim with whales, sea-lions and schools of beautiful fish. The magical tip where sea meets the ocean is even more magical when you are under water. And although I couldn’t see that, the beauty of the land (and land’s end) is pretty awesome.