So it was a week ago that my father asked if I wanted to go watch a jazz concert at gold reef city with him. Gold reef city also happens to be a casino, no need to describe the casino just yet, let me start off the story with the Jazz. My father all excited that he got tickets for this concert, he really hyped up the musicians and put them onto the top reaches of this pedestal he created. In all honesty the first 2 acts I kept asking my dad what was going on, this noise they were playing didn’t sound like the Jazz I know. Eventually I couldn’t take much more of this noise and walked out leaving my dad to lie to himself and enjoy the so called Jazz that was going on. As I walk out I had to leave a comment with my father I managed muster up in my frustration. I told my dad you should have told me that this concert had an age restriction of 60!

As grumpy as I was, I walked out of the theater into the sounds of people losing money. I guess this is where the story really takes shape and I will describe what my eyes saw and what my ears heard, by all means it wasn’t the bright lights or the sounds coming from the machines. In actual fact there was no color, there were just sad and confused faces focused on the task at hand and that was to win back what they just lost. Not paying attention to their children that they brought into this environment and just feeding them money so that the can go and spend it in the games room and win a toy that was made in china.

You could see the evolution of these people progress from each age group. I saw a young man walking into the one section of the casino. He must have been 19, but with his structure of his body and the way he carried himself he was just focused on one thing and that was to find a machine that will change his life around. The clocks don’t tick in the casino nor are they seen. Years go by and the little white ball does its round on the roulette table never landing on your number you picked. Your life flashes past you a dozen times and your relationship is developed around a machine that takes more from you than it gives out. There is no such thing as love in a casino or even hate.  The color isn't even black or white, its black and red. Black being the rings under ones eyes from the nights and days spent in the casino. Red being the metaphor of don’t stop because if you stop you won’t win. At the end of the day the kids would rather be in their beds sleeping and dreaming of the bright lights and sounds of a carnival. 

I’ll try paint the mood I am in right now. I guess you can say it’s like the weather outside. It’s dark, gloomy with rain. Today was a day that I had my first voice coaching session and I have come to terms  with the fact that I have allot to work on. I always knew some of my weaknesses, but I never thought that speaking could be one of them. I have never felt this down over something before and it’s strange.

Speaking is something I have been doing my whole life, I have taught myself the way I speak. It has made me friends it has made me foes. The way I am with words, tends to outline the emotions I go through from my day to day life. But now I have to change all that. My everyday speaking is not good enough for the show, and now I have to change the last 25years of my vocab. Yes I'm blowing it out of proportion, I'm not that bad. But it still comes as a shock that something I have been doing for so long, now I have to go back and work on. You think speaking is simple, but what I learnt today is that speaking is far from simple. It’s something one will never perfect. So I strive for excellence rather than perfection. The worst critic is yourself, especially on something like this.I'm being really hard on myself, but it has to be done.

So I guess I have to say FUCK it, Man up and put my head down and work on this speaking thing. Its only a few sessions and I’ll be ready to go. I look at it as prep before we start shooting the show again, so the sooner I finish these voice sessions the sooner we start shooting. In fact I better get my act together, because we are starting to shoot again really soon, I happened to look at my calendar in my diary, the pressure is on. The rain has stopped and now whats seems to appear in the sky is a double rainbow. That’s got to be a positive sign of whats to come…       

So I have to find what defines me, having a slogan like play outside the ordinary and being part of something like that makes me think. Do I really live my life out of the ordinary? When my manager called me up and told me that Play energy drink wants to make me their brand ambassador I was thinking why on earth do they want me to represent them. She then added they have come back with a new look and a new slogan. I was like “so what does that have to do with anything”; she then went onto read out their new slogan to me… For a brief moment my life flashed before me and I then came to realize that’s why they want me to represent them. My life is not ordinary; in my eyes its ordinary but to most people it is completely the opposite and I stand out like a burnt rice crispy in my cereal box. Well not physically just by the way I live my life.

Some people are given a path to take in life where others have to create their own. Some have to live up to the expectations that are put on ones shoulders at a young age and not having the freedom to put your hand on a hot stove and feel the burn yourself. What defines humanity and the system that people are stuck in? One feels trapped and finds it hard to escape since they know of nothing else but it’s only due to the reason of growing up in a path that was not made for them. Do I dare step out of the path and step into an unbeaten track, will I be judged, and will I be an outcast. The point in the matter it doesn’t matter what other people think. Humans have set rules and laws in life that can make one trapped, yet you allowed freedom of speech but one only speaks out if someone is there to support them. But we grow up idealizing super hero’s that define the laws gravity and humanity yet we are afraid to be different so really those cartoons as a child is a lost cause. One does drugs to escape or blend in, drinks to get drunk so that they can have the confidence to chat to humanity, follow trends and fashion so they won’t be judged.

There is no right or wrong way of how one should live their life. All the above is just something I dare to question, yet I can’t answer nor can anyone. I guess what I have said above only comes from what I think life is like growing up now days. The paths in one’s life are mimicking each other’s, instead of thinking for themselves, but it all starts at a young age. I play outside the ordinary because I’m not afraid any more to step out of the system; there is no outcome that’s the beauty of it, just the freedom to be myself and live for me. In actual fact there is an outcome, Pride and Happiness… I’m proud to be a part of Play’s new campaign, its more than a slogan; it’s a lifestyle you have the choice to make. I have been living this slogan when I decided to step and make my own path in life and that was a long time ago and I’m never going to look back that I can promise.

   

Have you ever been in a place where you find yourself in a gaze? It tends to happen to me while having a hot shower from time to time. I guess the sound of the hot water pulsing onto my skin makes me go into a state of mind that day dreaming takes effect. I guess I find myself reminiscing about the past or thinking of the future, but I never find myself thinking of the present. The what If question comes to play during this time and I question some of my choices I made yet I never doubt myself. This is my alone time where I can get lost in thought and where everything makes sense, but if you try play it out in reality it might just take a different course that was unexpected but with no surprises that you come to your resolution as life plans out.

This particular shower I found myself thinking of the future, and if I play it out correctly everything will work out as planned in my chain of thought. My producer gave me a task to do every day to get ready for the adventure we about to go on. Basically I have to work on my speaking and pronunciation of words and sentences. Word on the street is I tend to mumble from time to time, it happens and I don’t question it. I don’t have the queen’s tongue nor do I wish to speak like that, I don’t even drink tea it just doesn’t feel right. But I hear where my producer is coming from.

I’m not a mute nor do I speak like a person who screams at pigeons. I would like to think I have a functional brain that tends to day dream allot. But this assignment is basically just getting me ready to get more out of my words than just a 2 dimensional picture. The saying goes, read between the lines... So if I have to describe something, it has to be a witty description that the girl next door to the world champion chess player to the grown man and women who are green peace hippies can relate to. I guess its called the universal tongue and I have to train myself to get with the program.

How do I go about doing this? Watching TV isn’t nearly enough insight of how to prepare myself, have you seen the amount of rubbish on TV now days, I’m better off screaming at pigeons. Would reading the newspaper or a book help… I can just picture what I might just be reading, “Man gets killed by his wife for cheating on her with her sister who stole the next door neighbors’ cat that ate her goldfish… I don’t know why she swallowed the fly perhaps she’ll die…” Basically my point is that none of the above will be that helpful, I might just get a bit lost in translation since there are so many different variations of language and reading between the lines needs more heart and action in the in the pronunciation of my words. Im Stephen Friedman and this is The Blueprint Travel Show “action: just smile and wave at the camera while saying my line” That might just work. I’ll make my producer proud! I left my bags in china because the plane was full… Don’t go off the topic Stephen grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

So I don’t really know how to start this. My manager said I should write something about the episode we just shot and in all honesty Im pretty lost for words due to the fact that the shooting of the episode went by so quick. One minute I was trying to remember my lines to the next minute I’m ending off the episode with my closing line. Everything happened so quickly, from the public transport we had to get on and spending hours and hours on the road to the accommodation we had to stay in. On the bright side we met some very interesting people along the way. Some were just day dreamers; others were the most talented Individuals I have ever met. It’s not every day you can get lost for words at someone’s gift that really can open your eyes and inspire.

I guess Im starting to find words of how to describe my experience. But its more of a realization of what makes me live my life out of the ordinary. Everyone is chasing their dreams and their goals. Some more than others, It’s the paths they choose to take. Do you follow in your parents footsteps or do you turn a blind eye and create your own path and all the obstacles that lay down in front of you, big or small makes accomplishing what you set out to do worth getting out of bed for. Being spoon feed frustrates me, I don’t want life to be easy in the sense of everything being planned out. Standing on the edge of one of the highest bungee jumps in the world, I had no fear, no expectations all I had to do was jump. For a brief moment I was thinking to myself, doing this right now is it challenging me as a person. For someone else they could be accomplishing their greatest fear, but for me it felt like everyday life. Fear is all a mindset that you corner yourself with. I looked at the camera and said my line, I’m Stephen Friedman and this is The Blueprint Travel Show and what felt natural for me I jumped.

Im sitting on a plane in flight to Johannesburg, there’s a father and his young son sitting next to me staring out the window. I bet the father as a path that he wants his son to take; meanwhile his son is just staring out the window gazing at the clouds creating his own path in life that he wants to take. But time will tell on his story and it will be his story alone.

If you want to know what we got up to on this episode, I guess you will just have to wait until its on TV. It was one crazy trip that I promise you. You will be able to see some pictures in Heat magazine of these challenges they set for me to do. I guess Im just living my life out of the ordinary and Its not going to change that’s for sure. Africa here we come!!!
Have a look at this link....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCvuGzoidu8

    

It’s hard to describe what I am feeling at this point in time. I have all these emotions going through me that it’s making those butterflies in my belly go wild. I will start this story with my alarm going off at 7am to wake me up. It wasn’t going to be one of those ordinary days; this day was going to start off with a rush on all accounts. I still had to pack, since packing comes very easy for me I managed to pack my bags in 20min, you might say I’m talking on the thing I sit on, but in all honesty I have learnt how to pack, it’s pretty simple, no need to complicate it. I got side tracked, my guitar was staring at me and I couldn’t help myself but to strum a few songs, not really paying attention on the time a few songs later my mobile phone made a noise and it was a message from my producer saying have you done this have you done that, I’m on my way…  So what I thought 10minutes of playing the guitar, it ended up being close to an hour. This would explain why I have missed so many flights in my life, 19 to be precise. I get side tracked, I’m just a big kid, don’t judge.

The strange thing about all this, and the reason why my producer was picking me up, was that we had a meeting with the channel manager for the TV channel that’s going to be broadcasting the show. It was a very important meeting and I should have been nervous but I was as calm as a skydiver jumping out of a plane. I knew that the meeting was going to go well, I just knew it, so I wasn’t worried, In fact it went better than I thought. After the meeting my Producer was taking me to the train station to catch a train to the airport. During the drive he was lecturing me and advising me for what I need to achieve on this episode I’m about to shoot. I told him not to worry and just relax; I have been working on this for 2 years and as ready as I can be.

So during the drive, I got an email from my manager saying that Heat magazine will be doing an article on me and they have set me 5 tasks to achieve. So I will have a Photographer following me around for the first day of the shoot. Some of the tasks were strange; it was find a girl who can’t be taller than 5’5ft in height with curly hair and get a picture with her and make sure she’s wearing granny panties or something on those lines.  It had nothing to do with what we shooting we shooting a travel show, and I was like am I really reading this. So I must get a picture with a midget with curly hair that’s wearing granny panties, wouldn’t a thong be the same as granny panties for a midget. So I called my manager and said really…. My manager was in a grumpy mood, and she wasn’t happy with my dry sense of humor this morning. But I’m a good sport and will set out and achieve these tasks, guess it will be something funny for the viewers to see. My producer wasn’t too happy with the email; I convinced him it will be fine and a good laugh. Chances of me completing Task 4, find curly haired midget with granny panties that will be pretty hard, I don’t see myself asking ladies what panties they wearing. I have my Production manager to do that.   

So I arrived at the train station, and was greeted by a very happy gay man who wanted to asset me with purchasing my ticket. Some very random questions were asked with a polite answer from me saying that I have surfboards in that bag; sorry I can’t take you with me, but my surfboards are my ladies and they take good care of me. When a grown man flirts we me, especially a very happy man that works at train station, just let me say it’s not my cup of tea, but life is life, it happens I’m use to it, it hasn’t been a first time and It won’t be the last… I don’t need to speak about the train ride; I was just thinking happy thoughts.

So I arrived at the airport and checked in, having some hassles with the check in lady but if I go in to detail it will just get me grumpy again. I’m busy writing this while sitting by my window seat glancing out at the clouds from time to time. My headphones are singing out one of my all time bands INXS. I can tell you what I’m felling right now, I’m excited and my adventure is about to begin. Sometimes day dreaming becomes a reality. I’m never going to stop day dreaming…