My Bucket List

In no particular order:

1) Swim with Great Whites in South Africa – No, this isn’t a death wish, and no, I don’t mean swimming free with the giant carnivores. Obviously I’ll be in a shark cage with my underwater camera gear. I don’t know if I’ll actually get in the water with them or I’ll run and scream like a 2-year-old girl once I see that large fin cutting the water’s surface the way its white pearly teeth would cut into my flesh if ever it got ahold of me. The bright side: I’m in the ocean, so no one will know if I pee in my wetsuit the moment I see that maneater swimming towards me.

2) Publish a novel in New York – Bragging aside (okay fine, I’m bragging), I actually had a book published in New York already, but it was about Asian Myths. What I’d REALLY want is to publish a great novel, a work of stunning fiction, with brilliant storytelling, and earning truckloads of money so I could party all night in the bars and clubs and wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy. Okay fine, I don’t want to seem superfluous. Just to earn enough money to buy a private jet.

3) Buy property in Santorini, Greece – I’d love to buy a small house or cottage in their trademark white and blue paint, and for maybe for a month each year, I’d do nothing but chill in the shores of the Aegean Sea. Each morning, I’d take a light breakfast of cheese and crackers, brush my teeth, comb my chest hair, then step out wearing only flipflops, a spritz of Axe, and white board shorts that highlight my golden tan, and watch hordes of my adoring public fall all over my oozing sex appeal.

4) Go on safari in the Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya – I want to see Africa’s big 5 ( lion, African elephant, cape buffalo, leopard, rhinoceros) in their natural habitat. That would make one heck of a great set of luggage. JOKE. Being an animal lover, I would love to take great pictures of these animals from a safe distance and have them published in National Geographic or something. Plus, I bet I could rock that ranger uniform, eliciting oohs and aahs wherever I  drive my jeep.

5) Dive in Tubbataha Reef – This is the most immediately achievable in my list. I can actually do this any time soon, in the general May-June season (the best time to go), but it’s a bit expensive. You have to do live aboard, which means you stay on a boat for an entire week, 3-4 dives a day, and slather lotion in spades because you’d be shriveled by then like a salty prune. I want to see manta rays more than anything.

6) Take the LOTR tour in New Zealand – Being a HUGE fan of the LOTR series, I’d love to visit the Shire, the mountains, the rolling hills, and all those wonderful vistas we saw in the trilogy, all films in New Zealand. I wouldn’t mind role-playing in each site, maybe dressing up as Aragorn in one area, then Gandalf in another, then Legolas in the next. And maybe hook up with a hot elf or two.

7) Watch the Northern Lights in the North Pole – One of my ultimate photography must do’s is to photograph the Aurora Borealis. I hate the cold, but I’d risk it just to be under that magnificent light show, Mother Nature at her best, showing off. Then if I’m feeling extra brave, I’d strip down to my skivvies and swim in the icy waters as some sort of spartan initiation into manhood, and hope I don’t become orca lunch.

8) Get my own STAR in the Hollywood Walk of Fame along Hollywood Boulevard – Nuff said.