Morten Strange

what i am trying to do with this

Mission

I registered this website long ago to secure the URL, and during 2020 - when I was between assignments and while the Covid-19 situation slowed everything down - I started filling in some content. After some three years, the site now acts as my memoirs of some sort, I guess.

Goal

I want to entertain, with a good story based on real events. If you dare to go out there, out of your comfort zone, and if you have the courage to take on a bit of risk, life can be full of adventure. Then you don't really have to make anything up.

So this way I aim to share some of my experiences with others. Don't worry, I won't tell you what to do, that is up to you. But maybe you can learn a bit from what worked for me - and what didn't!

In September 2022 - to celebrate my 70 year birthday - my son Simon made this creative video of

Clint Eastwood and me

check it out! I would not go as far as equal my modest achievements to that famous storyteller's, but you might have fun watching it all the same.

Method

The content is structured into 29 chapters that my service provider, GoDaddy, calls 'pages', plus the Home and Contact Me pages. The pages are arranged roughly in chronological order, from Birth to Death: Pending; but with some themes featuring significant places and people in between.

Within each page, there are usually multiple 'sections' to make navigation easier, 108 in all; some are just a few visuals and text, the longest (188 photos) is the e-book illustrations in Alaska 1974. My Wife also turned into a pretty long single-section page with 122 images, so in 2023 I added a new section (Post 2023...).

Last time I counted, there were all-in-all a total of 3,605 JPG photos and scans here, plus a few PDF files, so there should be plenty for the reader to enjoy!?

So, there you have it: I hope you will enjoy my life story. Maybe it will entertain you some, and possibly it might inspire you to go out there and do stuff!

Last updated 19 April 2025

My books

This is my 'Own Works' shelf in our home study room. I contributed to all this one way or another: Many of these books and magazines I just provided a few photos or an article to; others I wrote and illustrated from scratch.

I had my first photo published in 1968, so obviously most of all this stuff is long out of print. However, if you are interested, try to check on the books below and see if they are still available from the publisher. Other titles that I mention in the pages below can usually be found second hand online as collector's items.

· Culture Shock! Denmark (1996). Available from Marshall Cavendish, 5th revised edition, 2009.

· A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Southeast Asia (Tuttle Publishing, 2000).

· A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Indonesia (Tuttle Publishing, 2001; Second Edition, 2012; Updated Second Edition, 2024).

· Birds of Taman Negara (Nature’s Niche, 2006).

· Colugo: The Flying Lemur of South-east Asia (edited, 2007).

Be Financially Free: How to become salary independent in today’s economy (Marshall Cavendish, 2016; reprinted 2017, 2018).

· Be Financially Free, Complex Chinese (Domain Publishing Company, 2017).

The Ethical Investor’s Handbook: How to grow your money without wrecking the Earth (Marshall Cavendish, 2018).

Are You Sustainable? Future-proofing your finances in the new economy of work (Marshall Cavendish, 2023).

My latest book

The last in a trilogy of financial/environmental books.

Are you Sustainable? came out on Marshal Cavendish end of September 2023. You can find out more about the book here. I expect it to be my last book and my final say on these topics. Ask for it at your favorite book dealer, if they don't have it, feel free to contact me for a copy. There is more info about how the book came about if you scroll down to "Singapore 2013 ...onwards". Also, I have a short summary of some of the main points I make in this article of mine. Let us see if we together can find a sustainable way forward; but I will warn you: My analysis and views don't always fit into the mainstream narrative!?

And the hardest to do!

A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Indonesia (2001/2012/2024)

544 pages, 34 of those are a complete checklist to all 1,634 birds of the country. 912 species are illustrated (223 of those found only in Indonesia); 40+ photographers helped me with images. After 23 years, the book is still in print, in fact we did an Updated Second Edition that year; Chien Lee provided the stunning new cover photograph. The book has its own Wikipedia page. You can find out more if you go below to the '1999-2013' page and find 'The Tale of Two Bird Books'.