About the author – Verne Maree is a journalist, health biohacker and blogger, born in Durban, South Africa and currently living with her British husband Roy in Perth, WA.
Roy tends to gets annoyed when she tells the world what he’s up to – sometimes in intimate detail. Luckily, he soon gets over it.
They met in Durban in 1992, got married four years later, and moved briefly to London in 2000 and then to Singapore a year later. After 15 or 16 years on that amazing island, Roy retired in May 2016 from a long career in shipping.
Globetrotters
Over the years, we’ve had the good fortune to do a lot of travelling. Roy’s career took him to all five continents, and I grabbed the opportunity to tag along whenever possible.
Likewise, my editor/writer role with Singapore’s gorgeous Expat Living magazine – still going strong! – took me as a travel journalist to dozens of enviable destinations, from Mozambique to the Maldives, from Kerala to Kyoto, from New York to New Zealand and many more.
The Grand Plan
So, instead of settling down and waiting to get old in just one place, we devised a plan that includes summers exploring the waterways of France on our bespoke replica Dutch barge, Karanja. For the rest of the year, we move between Singapore, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand – and whatever other interesting places beckon.
My other blog – Travels with Verne and Roy – has been going since Roy retired in Singapore, in June 2016, and we took up the travelling lifestyle.
So far, so good, until the global pandemic struck in March 2020.
Plan B – Perth, Western Australia
It was amazingly good fortune that we found ourselves in Perth, WA – surrounded by two of our three children and their families – when our globe-trotting lifestyle was suddenly put on hold, who knew for how long.
And with no trips to plan, no flights to catch and no canals to navigate, the time was ripe for a brand new project: getting our – and particularly Roy’s – health and wellness on track.
That project involved my devising what turned out to be a spectacularly successful weight-loss for Roy, while I embraced the opportunity to indulge my longstanding passion for health, wellness and longevity by exploring the fascinating world of biohacking.
That’s how Living Long and Strong with Verne and Roy was born. Enjoy the blog, and Santé! – cheers to your good health.