Your September 2016 Postcard From Norm

I want to do a better job keeping in touch with all of my friends, new and old, far and near, but email newsletters are too formal and I want to keep it more fun and personal.

So I decided to share this digital "postcard" every month, highlighting a few things that were going on.

I hope you like it - and I'd love to hear from you, too! 
​
-Norm  :-)

Why I don't live life to the fullest

It’s trendy these days to publically proclaim how much you’re loving your life and really living it up.
 
“I live life to the fullest” is a saying often repeated.
 
It’s usually attached to a photo of the person hiking or at a nice beach, celebrating with friends in Vegas, or while posing in front of their shiny new Range Rover.
 
“I live my life to the fullest” is also a recurring mantra for Facebook posts, hashtags on Instagram, and profiles on dating sites like Tinder, JustCuddling.com and TheAmishNeedLoveToo.net
 
No one really knows from whence the “I life my life to the fullest” slogan sprung, but it’s so damn ubiquitous now that it’s even too cliché for a t-shirt. And they’ll put anything on those!

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Views from the front porch

Coming home to Connecticut once a year gives me a chance to see my family, spend time with my fast-growing niece and nephews, and generally take a break from the rigors of travel and living in developing countries. In fact, the 90-degree heat of Connecticut summer feels cool to me and is a great respite from tropical Asia.

But this is no eight week vacation, as I’m still working as hard (or harder) as I always do. But one of the things I enjoy most is sitting out on my mom’s front porch to work. With my laptop balanced on my knees, iced coffee, headphones to listen to sports radio, and a portable fan I plug in, I don’t have a single complaint about putting in long hours at the “office.”
 
Decades form now when I remember my mother’s house, I’ll always think of that front porch and how nice life looked when I was sitting there.

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The Young Lions book  is out!

​The last ten months I’ve been co-authoring a book about my friend Judd Reid's life in Kyokushin karate. The Young Lions follows Judd as a karate-obsessed youth from a broken home in Australia to being hand-selected to train under a living karate legend, Mas Sosai Oyama, in Japan.
 
Judd went to Tokyo in 1990 without knowing anyone or speaking the language and was immediately immersed as an uchi deshi, or live-in student, in Sosai Oyama’s Young Lions program. For 1,000 days they trained intensively, working out three times a day under the most spartan conditions. The book is filled with Judd's stories of superhuman athletic and physical feats, impenetrable mental toughness, and the ups and downs of these young karate disciples as they sacrificed everything to chase their dreams. Judd went on to a professional fighting career and championship before undertaking the penultimate challenge,  the legendary 100-man Kumite.

​If you like marital arts, the fight game, or just inspiration biographies you'll love this book!  You can catch it on Amazon or share with this link: ​
TinyURL.com/TheYoungLions

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The first hamburger in the world

​My hometown and state is world famous for its pizza, but the first hamburger was actually invented right here in New Haven, Connecticut at the venerable Louis Lunch.  

The buns are toasted bread and they don’t even have ketchup or mustard.

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In fact, you’re likely to get thrown out on the street if you ask for them! Run by the great grandson of the founder, they still use the same cast-iron grills and cooking method as they did when the hamburger was first invented in 1900 when one of their customers wanted a steak sandwich that they could eat on the go. It’s an interesting place! 

What else? 

I still volunteer for great small non-profits overseas and at home, like the The Connecting Hands Café in Cambodia, the Childrens' Improvement Center orphanage in that same country, and Willow Tree Roots.org in California.
With your help, the children at the CIO orphanage were able to secure their own land and are building a permanent new home! Contact me if you'd like to help.

To keep sane when visiting my hometown, I work out at a great local martial arts gym,  SoulCraft BJJ.  Muay Thai or Krav Maga class is always thoroughly humbling but a blast. My workout partners were even nice enough to give me a souvenir recently - a huge gash on my chin from a headbutt! Instead of going to the ER and getting stitches, I patched it up myself. You can't even notice it, right? 

In a couple weeks, I’ll head ‘cross-country to California for a couple months before I take the lonnnggg flight back to Asia some time in November. I’m really looking forward to seeing all of my friends in Cali, from Sactown to the Bay and even LA and hopefully San Diego this time.

​Hit me up if you want to say hi and catch up!