Blogjet

This is to test some software called “Blogjet” just wanted to see if it would make posting any eaiser (I hope it works offline)

Khmer Recycling

Khmer Recycling
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

I had an old pack (which i am now missing a bit) and bought a new pack in Phnom Penh (which i am not liking its whimpy zipper so much). Well i wanted to make sure that my old pack was put to good use, kinda recycled Khmer style so we put it outside by the trash and waited. It wasn't 10 minutes before one of the people that usually dig in trash for recyclables comes by and takes it, here is step by step photos of it.

Kiss off?!

Yes, today has been a pretty crappy day but the thing that caught me at a particularly bad moment was "American Slamming". It doesn't matter if you are Asian, Black, or "stereotypical white", if you say you are American then don't be surprised if someone starts to slam the US. Most of the world, especially Europe, associates Americans with Bush. If you read this at all I think you will notice that I don't particularly like Bush but I get pretty damn tired of hearing people lump all Americans together as "Bush supporters" who support overthrowing regimes, bully politics, and general asinine type practices. He won by like 51% people, so there is about 49% that didn't support him. If you really want to make people do something you don't like then start critisizing them, seems to work. The more the US is criticizing the more defensive Americans (and Bush) are going to get, doesn't matter if they support Bush or not, almost no one likes having their country repeatedly slammed. To rub it in our faces is not going to do anyone any good, Bush is the big bully is town that no one (and in many cases no group) is going to be able to beat up, but if you give the bully sh*t then he is going to deliberately try and piss you off, and probably get away with it. I am sorry Bush is president but get off our (the people that didn't vote for him) asses. Don't slam America, slam Bush.

Idea for Google/Yahoo news

Heres and idea, when doing news searches on google or yahoo news (or any other news site for that matter) how about having the option to give weight to different terms? Something like this:

You want to find articles about how aquaculture has affected the coastline on Indonesia so to *try* and cover all your bases you use a string like this:

aquaculture (coastal OR mangroves OR environment OR coast) (damage OR destruction OR catastrophe OR contamination OR deterioration OR devastation OR marring OR pollution OR ravage OR ruin OR ruining OR wrecking) Indonesia

Its long clunky and still hardly gives me what I am looking for. Now there are probably boolean/database geeks out there that could find this no problem, but I am not one of those geeks and at the moment don't have access to the greatest databases right now. With the above
string I get mostly general stuff that refers mostly to the Tsunami disaster and only mentions Indonesia in passing. What if i could tell the search engine to give more weight to aquaculture and Indonesia? I guess I already have saying the returned article must have Indonesia and aquaculture in it but perhaps the search engine could go a bit further and say measure the number of times the words i wanted weighted are mentioned or if those words are in the titles etc; I kinda thought it already does this but in looking at the results i get back I am kinda doubting that is the case. Google/Yahoo guys, if you are listening know that there is at least one person out there who would like this area improved!

Finally, "fair trade" for developing countries

I just saw a piece about the EU is taking measures (or so they say) towards giving developing countries preferential treatment; that is lowering tariffs etc against the developing countries commodities. I think there are fewer "aid" type things that can help a country along than to encourage its industry, aid is spoon feeding in many cases.

Many government (especially the EU, USA, and Japan) are unforgivably notorious about protecting their own (comparatively expensive) industries from the lower cost products from the developing countries WHILE telling the developing countries that they should reduce their
own tariffs.

Really, its just the big economic powers leveling the playing field, they are just making their own industries compete *fairly* with the industries of the developing countries.

That said other things need to be done as well. Allowing fair entry into these large markets is a *huge* step but they also need to help these countries fight corruption and improve environmental friendly technologies both being things that can get out of control in unchecked capitalism.

The World Getting More Conservative?

I don't think of myself as particularly conservative or liberal, if either i think Jesse Ventura (no I would not vote for him) said it best "Socially Liberal, Fiscally Conservative" thats as close as i come to either side. Anyway, I look around and think that many parts of the world are becoming more conservative, yeah I could be wrong but look at some examples. The obvious one, Bush; while I am sure he would label himself as "fiscally conservative" i think he is the antithesis of money wise, though few would argue his right wing social stance. What about Russia? Putin just seems to be getting more and more popular (with a very few exceptions [senior benefits and golfing while the sub sank]) and he is pretty heavy handed to say the least. Most recently Thailand's re-elected prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. If "shoot drug suspects first, ask questions later" isn't right wing extremism i am not sure what is (like supporting the death penalty w/o a trial). How about France? Yeah I know I would probably be shot if there was a French national around but their immigration policies seem to be less and less social, and what about Le Penn? There are tons of other examples as well as exceptions, but for many large influential nations i think it is the trend.

She-men!!!

Ever doubt your masculinity? or feel a bit cheated? If not and you are a masochist, then come on over to Thailand. That is not to say that I hate Thailand (its got plenty of stuff I enjoy) but this has got to be the "she-man" capital of the world.

To clear things up:

1. I am a straight guy, what can I say I like women
2. I have nothing against gays, I know a few gay/bis that I can call friends

Now that my sexual orientation is in know, I will say that when I first got here I was fooled numerous times. From the back they walk like a female, the are shaped like females, and are dressed like a female, but beware! Sometimes even from the front you can't really tell, but quite often as soon as they open their mouths all your manly senses reel and you try hard not to look shocked, "My god! She's a he?!"

You might feel a bit cheated but its ok, you learn to see it a mile away. In truth I have had few encounters and non of them have been with "shemen of the night". The most recent was at a flower shop, caught me off guard, I walk in say "sawadee khrap" (hello) and all the women (shemen) reply back with feminine looking and manly sounding "swatdee Kha" (female hello). Whoa. Thailand is apparently the most gay-tolerant society I have ever seen, I'm not sure why but I really hadn't thought it would be (actually I hadn't thought of it at all). So, if hot looking women that are actually guys does it for ya then come on over!

Adventures in Cambodia

Hello again! I thought I would chronicle another one of my adventures especially after all the ego inflation I received from the last email I wrote (quite a few of you said “you are such a good writer”, it was a first and I’m sure the last, so I am treasuring those few emails [and yes, flattery will get you everywhere]).

So you know, I have posted some pictures on my Yahoo Photos account. Just so you know, not all of those pictures are mine., in fact the better they look the less likely they are to be mine. If you want to get an idea of who took what head over to Mama Mera's "Adventures in Phnom Penh" and see the ones she took. She also added alot of details that i neglected to mention (actually it should be known that without her networking savvy I probably wouldn't have seen many of the places that i mentioned/photographed).

Anywho, for those that don’t know, I recently got back from Cambodia; part of my cross country (literally) jaunt was for fun (when isn’t it at least partly for fun?) and part for work. There is quite a bit to say but the amount I write is entirely dependant upon my will to write, we shall see.

I spent about half of my time around Phnom Penh (PP) and the other half around Siem Reap (SR). While in PP I visited the “Russian Market”, I had heard about it before, apparently it is a more touristy version of the regular market but I saw many locals there as well. I couldn’t find anyone that knew why it was called the Russian Market, and didn’t think it was much like any Eastern European market I had ever been to, it was actually more like a bazaar in Turkey, but it was neat all the same.

We also tagged along with a documentary producer/filmer (is that a word?) who wanted to get some footage of local hand made textiles. We went to a little known (by foreigners) place called “Silk Island” and island in the middle of the Mekong river where most people there made a living weaving. A side note, in Phnom Penh I saw tons of foreigners more in one day than I have seen in a month in my area of Bangkok; I didn’t see one foreigner on silk island and the kids there swarmed around us and didn’t ask for a cent (in the areas with more foreigners kids/people are usually begging for money or business). It was kinda fun, at first they were enamored with the producer’s camera which was really making filming really difficult for her but we soon discovered that “Tic Tac Toe” on my PDA was more than enough to keep them occupied.

The “business” part of my trip was to track down some fish farms or at least places that were raising fish. I originally referred to a gentleman in the Cambodian ministry of Agriculture and fisheries but alas he wanted nothing to do with me and came up with every weak-ass excuse to avoid me, grrr. With some help and a bit of luck I did manage to see some caged fish (fish that are raised in cages floating in lakes or rivers) in a floating village. Yes it was actually a whole village of floating houses on a really large lake, truly unlike anything I have seen before. Next I found out our tour guide (in SR) raised crocodiles and fed them fish, so off to the croc farm. It was a small setup (30 head of crocs) but it was interesting none the less with the pond split into two sections, one section to raise the reptiles and the other to raise the fish (tilapia) to feed to the crocs. The last place was RDIC Cambodia, they had trials involving fertilizing with goat and green manures, feeding with duck weed, and dredging/liming the ponds, all quite interesting (to me at least).

We took a bus to get to Siem Reap, a grand $4 for those that know where to go (some places would over charge you others won’t). On the way there the bus made many stops, too many in my opinion but hey. On one of the stops I saw a vendor vending something and some whole (minus the feathers of course) cooked chicks. Upon closer examination I saw that the “something” was a bowl of fried spiders, big juicy tarantula sized ones. Yep folks finger lick’n arachnids Khmer style. I had heard about this before and have heard that they taste kinda like fried soft shell crab but sorry, I didn’t try one (I ate very little “native” food in Cambodia since everyone said that there are too many health problems there, even compared to Laos).

Ankor Wat, before I came to South East Asia I am not even sure I had heard of Ankor Wat (I am not the most cultured person out there) but now that I have been there I don’t think I will ever forget it. For those that don’t know, it is actually one temple but most people just refer to the whole collection of temples in the area as “Ankor Wat”. The history is amazing and long, the sheer age involved is amazing enough but to see the architecture takes the “amazingness” to a whole new level. Our tour guide, Mr. Ouk, was the brother of a friend and apparently was a Jack-of-many-trades (including raising crocodiles, which I had the privilege of seeing later). His English was not great (but most of the guides I heard weren’t particularly well versed in spoken English either [and I was told that the guides leading the Japanese tours were even worse]) but what he lacked in English he more than made up for in knowledge. Time after time we (the 2 of us) would come in before or after other guides and Mr. Ouk would tell us all the other guides did plus much more, I only managed to stump him a very few times and usually the questions weren’t necessarily directly related to the tour. We rode in his air conditioned car and he took us to places during times that were prime for photographing (I have learned that morning and dusk provide the best lighting for taking pictures) and took us to areas where the crowds weren’t; he took us to a family that made “palm candy” as well. There were many places along side the road that sold the candy but he knew where a family that showed the whole process was. We bought some, not bad; the collection, processing and even the taste was similar to tapping maples, pretty interesting. If you ever think about coming to Cambodia and seeing Ankor Wat please consider using Mr. Ouk (a “grand” $20/day). Anyway, we saw many monks and nuns in and around the temples; it was a bit twisted to me but most of the monks stood around and practiced English with the tourist while all the nuns I saw were either tending shrines or cleaning…

At lunch time he asked us where we wanted to eat and we told him our only requirements was that it was relatively clean and Khmer. He took us to some very tasty places but the first time he and his son (his son drove) headed to another section of the restaurant until we chased them down and asked them to sit with us. We later noticed that all the drivers/guides sat in a dowdy part of the restaurants away from the tourist. I still do not know if this was because they chose to sit somewhere else or to keep them out of sight. Thinking back to a situation in Moldova I would guess that it is probably the later. Really you can’t compare Moldova to Cambodia, Moldovans are rich and doing well by comparison but there was one situation in Moldova where it became clear that foreigners (especially westerners) were treated differently than locals (though not always in a positive way). A Moldovan friend of mine that was trying to start a children’s NGO and needed to meet with another organization, he begged me to come with him but I couldn’t understand why because I had *no* background dealing with children. He said he had tried to see the head of the organization 4 times before with no luck so he had me go with him, make an appointment as myself and viola! the organization official had some time. When we saw the person my friend would ask questions and the official would respond to the questions as if I had asked them, amazing. Anyway some interesting tidbits, Cambodia once encompassed a large part of South East Asia stretching from Thailand to Vietnam. The Cambodian kingdom was invaded by Indians which introduced Hinduism to SE Asia whose influence can be seen in many parts of Cambodia (and might possibly explain why many Khmer are darker than many other SE Asians). I found that many SE Asian alphabets are based on Sanskrit. I *think* the Khmer Rouge control was about 5 years (I had thought it was a lot longer).

I believe I started my last email, or my last comment about Laos was something like “…this was the poorest country I have ever been to…”, but I can now say that Laos is not the poorest country I have ever been to. Cambodia is inexplicably poor, and in some ways makes Laos seem like a “nice place to live”. Here are a few short things I saw/heard/observed that lead me to think this:

• Revenge is quite common there. One of the more graphic examples I can remember hearing is how wives have been known to throw acid on mistresses to disfigure them.
  

• Almost all sewage goes directly into the lakes, rivers, and creeks; the example that really struck me was seeing a person pee in one of the creeks while a few yards down stream another person was bathing.
  

• Khmer don’t like to see trash around the table or in the house (so I have been told), and on more than one occasion I saw people throw trash (like chicken bones, cans, paper, etc) on the floor or out the door/window while eating.
  

• After having lived in one or two poorer countries in a large city and small village I can truthfully say that I have heard about more violent crimes (mostly against women [foreign and Khmer]) in Cambodia than anywhere else so far.
  

• At least 1/4^th of the streets I saw in the capital city were dirt, and littered with trash (Vientiane had its fair share of dirt roads but was much cleaner)

• Almost all non-locals are extra weary of the food (unless people they trust say otherwise). I was in Laos for over a week, eating “native” at least once a day, no problems. I eat “native” almost every meal in Bangkok and at worst have gotten a case of the trots lasting a day. In Cambodia I hardly ate native and but still got sick for over 4 days.
  

• Instead of political opposition merely being incarcerated they are routinely threatened with death and assassinated. A (non government owned) newspaper reported that an opposition leader said that the prime minister had threatened to have the Khmer Rouge go after him; when asked the prime minister emphatically denied that he had said such things and said “If he keeps spreading such lies I *will* have the Khmer Rouge go after him..”
  

• And a few more things that aren’t coming to mind…

Of course it is not all “bad”…

I have been told and saw that Khmer value customer relationships quite a bit. While people we didn’t know seemed to have no problems with trying to take us for all we were worth (not hard when one is a student), the people we knew seemed to go out of their way to be helpful. The cost of many things is quite cheap there. I think the cost of living (for a foreigner) is still higher than Bangkok (One of the things I love about Bangkok is it is cheaper to live than anywhere else I have been before, yet has more amenities than many other places) but other things such as DVDs ($2.50/DVD but the vendor my friend frequents gave me a discount so $2.10/DVD), cloth, clothing (I had a nice summer sports coat made for $30; and bought some Columbia pants [they have a manufacturing facility here so yeah they are real] for $4.50 a pair), and trinkets.

But then again, the “bad” is what people tend to remember…

I saw the genocide museum in Phnom Penh, which was rather sobering. I overheard one tourist, who apparently was familiar with Holocaust atrocities, say that it was like the Khmer Rouge had taken notes from (and built upon) what the Nazis had done. The Holocaust can not be down played and I do not know the numbers involved but to me the idea of individuals willingly commit unspeakable crimes against their own people just boggles the mind. There were pictures and stories of people being fed to crocodiles, mines being planted that were specifically designed not to kill but to blow off limbs, all to people that were too educated/spoke of love/sang songs, any “acts of inspiration”. An insane but less gruesome example was the Khmer cutting down fruit orchards because the songs of the birds that the fruit attracted would inspire thoughts that were “unpatriotic”.

I met numerous people who had one or multiple family members killed by the Khmer Rouge (our tour guide had lost at least one family member, and a 30 year old guy I met had lost his father. Constantly seeing people that were missing limbs due to land mines ensured that I would not have the luxury of turning a blind eye to the underlying horrors that are still lingering.

In Siem Reap (the town beside where Ankor Wat is located) I visited a “mine museum”, whose maintainer had been repeatedly imprisoned by the government for “various reasons” but it is widely believed that the real reason is because they think it “competes” with the government museum, one of the many many examples of government corruption (worse than just about any other I have seen thus far). Admission was free because the museum was not allowed to charge admission lest it be shut down again, so there was a donations box. They had defused mines, grenades, air drop bombs, that were made in places like China, Russia, Czech Republic, and a few from the USA (though “at least” not a fraction as many as from China and Russia). The maintainer is a Khmer who de-mines un-detonated explosives and simultaneously runs an orphanage for orphans that have lost limbs due to mine blasts. Their houses are made of woven grass walls and roofs, some of the floors were dirt, and no one was particularly well dressed; while I saw *many* privileged orphans in well funded orphanages in Cambodia (“Cambodian orphans” is somewhat of a fad right now, kind of like “AIDS” or “Tsunami” at the moment) this was not one of them. A friend of mine (while in Moldova) once said that “Altruism is a luxury of the rich”, that phrase has stayed with me, and I find that it holds true quite often so the sacrifice like what this guy does should be enough to humble even the most righteous “developed-country-person”.

I heard that many Khmer are tired of the past, especially tired of all the emphasis foreigners put on their past, they seem to want to move on; I guess this could be a good thing. The only problem is that the combination of the museums, pictures, and people that have obviously been affected being at every turn, are about rawest things I have ever experienced, and I am not convinced that the acts committed can truly be forgotten anytime soon.

Searching RSS feeds

Well I am doing some work for an aquaculture organization here in Bangkok, pretty interesting work at times. On of the things I am to do is find and summarize articles relating to aquaculture and the Tsunami. This is not as boring/arduous for me as it might be for some, in my free time I spend quite a bit of time searching for and reading about topics (usually Ag or Tech related) so this is not much different except I must do it now and I have to find new information every day, I am finding out that this is somewhat of a challenge. The other day (when I was given the assignment) I started off using Yahoo news XML Search results (and Google News Alerts but not nearly as helpful as RSS) using the following string

Tsunami aquaculture OR fishermen OR fishing OR coral OR fish OR shrimp OR export OR "seafood trade" OR prawn

, damn that was nice (Though it would be *much* nicer if I could use some regular expressions). I was flooded with stuff, and used Thunderbird to sift through them. I had a bunch of results tailored to my topic of interest and it gave me quick summaries of each, I could plow through all that info really fast... but two problems have since occurred. One, copyrights; they think there might be copyright problems with posting summaries of news from other news sources. I would think that there wouldn't be a problem so long as we don't post the whole article and do put the source and the URL. The other, and related problem, is they want me to use Lexis Nexis; that really isn't a problem other than I get the impression (I could be wrong) that the processes wouldn't be as streamlined as the RSS method I have come up with, no biggie though (plus I haven't tried it yet so perhaps it will be easier).

Why not Anon P2P?

I recently heard a NPR broadcast that Kazaa and some other P2P apps have been decreasing in popularity… and things like bittorrent have become really popular. That doesn’t make sense to me, well yes it does in the sense that people are moving away from a popular medium that the RIAA and MPAA are watching to a less popular medium, problem is it is as easy or easier (from what I hear) to identify uploaders and downloaders using bittorrent! Now, I think bitorrent is a killer app, lots and lots of uses having nothing to do with RIAA or MPAA *but* anonymous it is not. Which leads me into my original thought, anonymous P2P apps like (never heard of Mute but apparently it has a bit of a following)and freenet. I guess the use of bittorrent over anon p2p apps is probably due to ease of use and speed, but still.

First, nothing is totally anonymous, like nothing is hackproof, but these applications make it reasonable hard to identify people and given sufficient volume (of users) it could really fusterate the MPAA and RIAA.

Then there is Ants, it seems to be pretty much dead, but then apps like freenet are overlooked as if they were dead, which (while not the vibrant community that bittorrent is, or Kazaa was) is not the case. There is also an in depth comparison of two semi-anonymous p2p programs ant and mute and a File Sharing without Fear article.

Bush going down in history for famous fabricated crises

Well there is a Washington Post article about how Bush manipulated the public (well at least 50% of us) into believing there were crises, here mainly Iraq and Social Security. Now I agree, and think they might have actually gone soft on him about Iraq but I don’t agree with SS.

As a tax payer paying for a benefit I will probably never recive I tend to hate SS and I *do* think it needs to be overhauled, if Bush does it then he has my support (not very often you will here that, I assure you) however two things:

#1 I hope people see the total irony of his sounding off about the perils of SS and our inevitable financial destruction because of it when he is spending us into oblivion with the Iraq war and cutting back taxes (especially for those that can afford it) so we have nothing to pay for the war with. The finical woes he has created are starting to fester in among other forms of a weak dollar (which kicked my school loaned ass all over the place while interning in Europe).

#2 His idea of privatization of SS is, in theory, great (and contrary to the article I cited earlier I do think it is in trouble). For me, a person whose parents and grand parents held off on buying Star Wars and Transformer action figures and instead set me up with bonds, IRAs, and stocks (I am [very] thankful now but trust me, that made for a really frustrating childhood sometimes) it will work nicely; I was happy when he raised (doubled?) the yearly contribution limit on Roth IRAs but again, I think I might be the minority. I am now imbued (brainwashed?) with the mentality of saving, investing, and semi-thrifty spending but I am the minority. I have worked in some pretty blue collar areas (farming, construction, call centers [ok that’s border line]) where educations were lower and MBAs pretty rare, the mindset is different there. There is no way for me to say this without seeming self-righteous and elitist but not everyone handles their money very well. I never got over the irony of working in the call center (of a bank) where I would say over 75% of the people didn’t use their 401k plan; and construction listening to guys say “yeah, I figure right before I retire I’ll put my money in an IRA account and then live off that” (well at least he had heard of an IRA).

Bush needs (and never will) understand that the majority of people will mismanage their money, they do not have daddy to help them along with investments. What he wants to do is privatize SS and give people the choice of how to save their money. Granted, the system we have now is defunct at best, but giving the average Joe the option to handle that little bit of savings (which too many people rely way to heavily upon) isn’t going to help the majority, but of course all the well to do steeped-in-the-arts-of-savings-and-investment will profit handsomely from this I am sure.

Perhaps I am wrong, maybe bush does understand about the little guys, but just doesn’t care.

Guard your Room!

Room Defender is a $33 tripod-mounted, foam disc-shooting weapon that has a motion sensor that you can set to clobber anyone that crosses its path, sweet!

God I was a kid at the totally wrong time… I thought the Star Wars X-wing (which just made little beeping sounds, had a flashing LED, and I could put action figures in it, was the shit but now they have this!

News Maps?

I think I mentioned something about "News Maps" earlier but am too lazy to find it (tried search but apparently I didn't use the words "news maps" [or maybe its just too early in the morning]). Anywho, I have been on a mission to find as much many sites like Yahoo News that offer their search results as RSS feeds (more on that later) but while I was looking I re-came across NewsIsFree. I found them a year or two ago, wasn't thrilled about having to log in etc to get my feeds, I just wanted a simple online news aggregator (which I found at my beloved kinja.com). This time I looked they had some new features, like News Maps. The idea of news maps was pretty neat but while (I think) they are supposed to help you follow the popularity of news, I find them pretty confusing and not as helpful as I would like, my guess is thought that I am using them incorrectly. If you know about them, find them useful by all means please leave a comment or email me, I would love to learn more about them from those that use them.

Adventures in Bangkok

Well life in Bangkok is getting along, I just met with a guy who is probably the biggest name (its all relative) in manure fed aquaculture (if you are in aquaculture then you have probably heard of him). Anyway really nice guy I shelled out about 600 baht and took him to a restaurant he suggested, freakn nice place, read s-w-a-n-k, and if 600 baht sounds expensive keep in mind its about 40baht to the dollar, so it ran me about $15 for something that would easily cost me $60 in the
US or Europe… GBTB (God Bless The Baht). The upside was he was really interesting and had tons to tell me, the down side is he ended up telling me kinda what I already knew; my study is purely academic and has no real world application. The more I look into this subject the more I find that the really big organizations are kinda like universities, they aren't as firmly rooted in the real world, their work is really interesting but not exactly applicable… Yeah, the more I study fish feed sanitation and think about what I have seen in developing/developed countries the more I think "this won't work in the real world", but its too late for that and I doubt there are many professors in my school program that would disagree with my paper (they are mostly academics). In truth, all of it is quite possible but the labor, economics, and 3rd world mentality involved just make it unrealistic… yeah time to go drown my depression in some Chai yen (in the US known as "Thai Tea") and cheap DVDs.

Speaking of cheap DVDs and drowning sorrow I just recently went to the "Fortune IT Mall", and it kicks a*s. What is it you ask? A mall (of sorts) with the 1st floor of misc stuff, fast food, sunglasses etc, second floor cell phones, billions of them (except for the specific smartphones I was looking for, mainly the Motorola MPx, and the Treo 650 [everyone said they could order the HTC, and there were lots of Treo600s]). I did (on another trip) find the HTC Blue Angel, man, the reviews looks sweet, the feature set it almost second to none and well, the keyboard sucks goat hooves. Plus the sliding out of the keyboard wasn't as easy as I would like... sigh, guess I will continue to lust after the MPx but its feature set is not quite a nice.

On the 3-4th floor, computer stuff, computer stuff everywhere, games, movies, the most extensive collections of software I have *ever* seen, even applications for SYMBIAN, PalmOS, and MS Mobile operating systems (PDA and smartphone operating systems) …wow. Yes, I did look for some games for my brother (I have his wish list in my PDA) but at the shop I looked in they didn't have the stuff, and I was pretty burned out by the time I remembered to look for your stuff (will go looking again). I did however get my hands on a very nice copy (actually too nice, it cost me about 4 dollars, I think I will stick to my less variety, but cheaper $3.50/DVD place [hey, we have rented blockbuster movies for more than that so nothing too big right?]) of Resident Evil 2, and if you haven't seen it I would say its even better than the first.

They have DVDs of software, want almost everything Microsoft? Get a MS office DVD, has XP all service packs and the pro versions of *all* the MS stuff, same for Adobe, impressive. I will probably get the MS and Adobe DVDs later for consolidation purposes (there was enough junk that I think the software DVDs were probably dual layer, it seemed like more than you could fit on a 4.7gig single layer disk). Speaking of double layer lots of the movies had "Dual Layer" stickers on them, like it was a big deal (most movie DVDs in the US are dual layer), I also wonder how many people even know what it means (in English or Thai)?

Other news? I haven't been practicing Thai, I really should get some more basics though, the counting is coming in handy as I keep mentioning but it doesn't make up for my really bad pronunciation, or lack of vocab. Trying to speak a tonal language totally makes Romanian and Russian seem like cake, and in truth I kinda miss those good ole' European languages every time I try to say something in Thai. But stiff upper lip and all, must keep trying (to my Thai friends that was a subtle cry for help if you didn't catch it)

The mobile phone I got in Italy works fine here, the people at work set me up with (at my request) roaming service, meaning I can use it just about anywhere in SE Asia, not bad. I used it about three times while in Laos but I was told that it is mad expensive so those occasions were urgent.

The differences in prices are even more stark here than Moldova, I guess because you can live crazy kind of extravagant or live "native". I had my first non-native food the other day (while at the IT Mall), KFC; what can I say? I needed some finger lick'n good American fried poultry flesh goodness, but d*mn did it cost me. I sank 89baht (about $2.10) on fries, 4 drumsticks, and a Pepsi, yeah it was good but I can get the same amount of food (soup or Pad Thai) for about $.75 (yes, I was figuring a drink with that price), actually as I think I mentioned in my other email I rarely spend more than $3/day on food, it is usually *more* expensive for me to go to the grocery store! But of course I need some comfort foods so I splurge, even so I have never spent more than $15 at the grocery (usually closer to $10) and I usually go about 1.5 times a week. Yeah eating at the markets #1 is funny for a foreigner because most of them are eating more upscale etc #2 semi-risky, I've gotten mild trots but could be a lot worse (plus I've had shots for hepatitis A/B etc so some of the biggest worries are no more), #3, well no #3 yet but I'll let you know if it comes up.

While on the topic of food, I was having lunch the other day with the guys at the office and they were sitting with a guy, I believe he was Thai. I never got his name but we started talking, he was quite nice and apparently the organization his daughter works for is affiliated with NC State university (though apparently not Ag). He saw me eating Pad Thai (one of the booths has this old lady who speaks some English [it still confounds me considering her age and the number of people that don't speak English here, though it is I who should be learning Thai] and the whole family is quite nice so I tend to buy from them) and mentioned that he heard that Pad Thai is quite popular in the US (by the way, another just-for-my-buddies-fact my stomach isn't treating me well at the moment so I have decided that instead of reading magazines while sitting on the commode I would type on my computer, lets here it for mobility!) I replied that "yeah the first thing most Americans think of when they think of Thai food is #1 Hot and #2 Pad Thai". Later I was eating KFC at the IT Mall place and broke a bit of a sweat, it was the spicy wings and it occurred to me that this doesn't happen to me nearly as much as I thought it would here. That is, the food is not as uniformly hot as I thought it would be, they almost always have hot sauces there and quite often Thais make generous use of the sauces but it isn't scald-your-taste-buds spicy initially, so much for stereo types eh?

I'm living in a dorm, I think it is for foreigners but darn if they don't all look Thai to me (actually I think all but about 5 are Thai, one westerner [other than me], and the rest Vietnamese). Its about 2 blocks away from work and for a two person room (with only me in it), my own bathroom, and AC it costs me about $200/month, and all that for about 1/3rd of what living in Rome/Boston cost me, amazing; and I just recently found out that my co workers are living in half of a house that is 3 times as nice for the same price… geeze.

Dogs are everywhere, like Moldova, but here there are like 2-3 that hang out near where I walk sometimes, they always try to surprise me and scare me by jumping out from underneath a car or from behind a sign, I don't play that, and have chased them down sufficiently calling their bluff but it really makes the ole veins in the neck swell when they threaten me like that, I have been tempted to beat them but they haven't touched me so I won't touch them (yeah sounds harsh but put you in the same position time after time and you too will turn to the dark side). Actually as of late they have taken to just lying there until I pass, they wait until they are out of range then they start barking at me so when I run after them they can get away… grrrrrr. I need a taser or something.

(Ok, off the toilet now). Now that I think about it (again), my close to perfect computer setup would be a moderate speed, huge storage server to hold files (video/audio for streaming) and do all the P2P and DVD conversion/panoramic processing, a huge work station super fast, shit loads of mem, to do whatever on, a kicka*s smarthphone, and a ultraportable notebook. The notebook is what I am thinking about now, the monster I have now lives up to its branding as a "desk top replacement" its *heavy*, too heavy to just carry around, the idea of being able to walk around the house and surf the web (assuming Wi-Fi of course), or sitting on the john typing, or using it as an uber remote for whatever (controlling say winamp or power DVD that is running on my workstation [that has a big screen and the big speakers of course]) appeals to me more and more as I use this goliath. Of course a small "ultraportable" (yeah that's what they are called) wouldn't be able to crunch its way through hefty processing jobs like FlaskMPEG, and even photoshop would be difficult (they are rarely faster than say a gighz) but it wouldn't be for that kind of thing (and in truth, there is kind of a way around that, using say my workstation remotely [maybe with something like VNC], not as difficult as it sounds). Ok enough about that.

I have a semi-bar kind of thing on one side of the dorm, and two little café kinda things on the other side, on the other side of the building next to my dorm is a market with all sorts of stalls with soups, dry fish, and my favorite fried bananas. Yes, that fried fruit has really grown on me, and its somewhat of a chore to *not* buy them considering they cost about $.20 for a meals worth. Anyway, on the other side of my organizations building is a food court of sorts, more native food,
and dirt cheap, a Pad Thai in the US costs like $4 and its ok, here it costs like $.50 and its better. Then there are the main streets that run beside the university, all sorts of food, saw what looked like fried coach roaches but didn't take a picture, yeah I'm kicking myself now. I try to stay away from most of the non-cooked stuff (that includes most fruits etc) but the meats are usually cooked fried and if you eat on the street they do it in front of you so you can see its is cooked and for how long.

Other stuff happening? Not really, or not that I can think of. There is another IT place, its supposed to be bigger but more hectic so I might go there and look for your games, or just go back to this other place (especially if I can figure out how to get there by bus, a *ton* cheaper than taxi [even though taxi only cost me about $2.50 one way])

Tsunami relief, big bucks

Its incredible what a huge death toll (149,540) and lots of pictures will do for funding. Working in and around international development you see lots of things. At the moment, the main problem I see is this tsunami relief thing becoming like AIDS funding around here, a money grab.

I know sys admins who make $80k/year (not including the benefits such as maids, fully paid for rent for a house, yearly trips home, insurance, etc) for a job that is worth (gross) $40k/year in the US, and more power to them… but this is for an AIDS related projects (you can imagine what the higher ups are making). I find that this is neither the exception or the norm, but its not uncommon. People working in relief benefiting more than the ones that are supposed to be helped.

I can totally understand the draw, and the temptation (and too, lets face it, you can’t work for a “native salary” and save up anything, you have to have enough so you can someday go back home) but number approaching 8 billion dollars is going to attract (already has) a lot of people who don’t give a rats ass about helping others, or even about the job they do, it’s the dough. Ah, the world we live in.

Do you encrypt your email?

Well I hope that all the people making a fuss about Gmail privacy are; email is not the private communication we would like to think it is. Yes, it is a bit unsettling that they (gmail) scan your email but do people actually look at it? is the information being archived?(that’s a maybe not sure), do you have real information with them (full name address, ss, etc). While you must start somewhere I am inclined to think that this energy would be better spent on entities in which I trust much less like Wal-Mart or Lexmark

I say this having looked at Google’s past record, which has been (comparatively speaking) squeaky clean.

Thailand Censors?

Apparently thailand does censor stuff, among other things all things microsoft, mozilla, gmail (talking about opposite ends of the spectrum). It really makes web surfing suck ass, well I have been trying to learn about proxies etc but its not so easy when all the proxy sites are also blocked... MF! But the (inconvenient) workaround is using "google cache"... ugh

Whoa! video search for Yahoo?!

I just came across a new (beta) feature for yahoo, a video search option, kinda like google images but for video, i tried searching for smartphone videos. As far as I know google doesn't have this yet, if yahoo made RSS feeds of the more recent search results kind of like feedseter has then they might really have something!

Usefulness of GPS on-board navigation (and automotive modding)

Walking in Rome/Bangkok/travelling. I remember when I got my nifty little treo90 and thought “Finally colour and more speed” and got a few city maps using different Palm software apps, it was neat enough, I could put in an address and have it find the location on the map, pretty nice. About that time I started hearing about the iPaq and GPS, sounded neat but not so useful. Now with maps of cities/countries/continents getting cheaper, and PDA memory increasing, it is starting to seem more useful (for average Joes like myself).

I also started hearing about built-in GPS for Autos, at the time it was for either custom or top of the line cars (some Mercedes, BMWs, etc). But now, that too is coming down to the reach of regular cars (as an option) and almost standard in many nicer cars. Its perfectly suited for autos too; automotive built-in GPS, tends to be better than aftermarket (because I believe it is integrated and can take wheel rotation/movement into account instead of only relying on satellite) but the dashboard DVD/radios (many times the GPS systems rely on maps that are on DVDs) are just too sweet (not only that but being able to put in a DVD of MP3s is nice as well).

Car computerization in general. While I think it is sad that M$ is now in some cars I do think that things like video games (which I don’t condone kids playing them 8 hours a day), movies etc, I had some seriously traumatic road trips with tha family listening to novels on tape (got into them occasionally but a video game or movie would have kept me much quieter).

Wanna be depressed?

There is another radio show that I enjoy listening to, its called “This American Life”. No it is not nearly as idealized as it sounds, actually it has pretty liberal helpings of reality in each show; though I suppose you would have to listen to it to know what I mean. Not being in the US I have to record the shows and then listen to them as I have time. One of the ones I just finished listening to (I think it was a rebroadcast, but I recorded it 2004-12-03) talks about a lot of things but of course that which stuck in my memory was about “the middle of nowhere”, it was a sobering reminder of how civilizations can implode and of government insensitivities. If you wan to hear it go here.

Cult of speed

I actually like that phrase, Cult of Speed; I heard it on The Diane Rehm show (2004-11-25); she was interviewing a guy who wrote about the disadvantages of “living fast”. People always seem to think of living fast as bad, they don’t seem to consider that living fast can enable you to squeeze more of what you enjoy doing into a given amount of time.

Mind you, I am not anti-slow living, I am more for living a manual-shift lifestyle. I love slow food but only when I have time to enjoy it, and in such instances I make time and just chill, other times though taking it slow is a waste of good “life-time”, like walking to work, that can be new/interesting only so many times, after awhile it feels like I am wasting time and I want to either instantly teleport myself to work/home (which isn’t an option yet) or make proper use of it (like listening to podcast/newscasts, thus squeezing more in, which some might say is analogous to living fast).

A few thoughts that I took away from that program were:

• “If you don’t have time to do something slowly/right, you don’t have time to do it twice” I think I misquoted it but you get the idea right? I kinda liked that idea.
• Will the slow people be left behind?
• "Time is money" – Ben Franklin

über Shopping!

I heard on Slashdot (actually via slashdotreview) that Amazon Japan is soon going to work with barcodes sent to them via cameraphone pix and will automatically show their price on a product.

How cool is that?!?!

Power to the Consumers! But just think of the possibilities, if some price comparison search engine (I’d even be willing to pay a small yearly fee for a service like this, if it was good enough) did this with anything from electronics to groceries, do you know how much dough you could save!? (god I would love to go to best buy, CompUSA, or Sams Club and have instant access to Froogle, pricewatch, etc and see how much the brick n mortar places are trying to take me for [or how much I am saving with the rebates]). I have tried to write down prices etc of products while at the store and see what they are at other places (sometimes works with gadgets but with groceries I always get lazy) but this would make it worlds easier, they could even give you stats on what you scan the stores as a whole (does Wal-Mart really have all “everyday low prices”? Doubtful) or where you could save the most etc, and all by snapping a quick picture of a product! God that’s sweet. For a business model they (price search engines) could even keep track of what you scan and advertise accordingly (which I would have no problem with so long as it was anonymous)

I am not sure why it hasn’t caught on but why isn’t there like a combination of a Sams Club and Amazon Grocery service? Yeah the perishables would be a problem but you could order buckets and buckets of non-perishables and have it delivered, all for less than it would could at a regular grocery; and if you figured in time, gas, stress (well for me anyway), you might be saving even more! Oh the possibilities…

This is not nearly as cool but it is a start (in for in the US) google is beta testing "Froogle Wireless" which would just allow you to search froogle a bit easier via your net enabled mobile device.

I have also heard that there is rumor going around that google is looking into making a price comparison tool that would say let you put in something like "cheetos" and then have it give you back all the places near by that have cheetos for cheaper, Whoa!!!!

Nice Google Groups but...

So Google just revamped their Google groups, its nice, I’m a fan of GG (tons of helpful people out there) but there is a problem with the upgrade, whats up with the no upgraded search?

Google has said they are not a portal right? They are first and foremost a search engine. I find that assertion ironic when looking at the limited ability of their Usenet search. Options like being able to search within sites that have XX amount of activity, or sort by activity; speaking of sort, whats up with the sorting by relevance default? (yeah I know I can specify in the advanced search but if I do an author search (either it matches or it doesn’t relevance doesn’t work there) it gives it back to me in some sort of mysterious relevance order, of course I can click on sort by date but still. And there are other little things… oh well, its all good I suppose, its just that the changes made are fine but there are still short comings (that I would have made higher priority)

Ok, one more thing I noticed (a *really* good thing), posts go up *much* quicker than before. Before it took like hours (about half a day I think) for a post to show, this morning I posted and before 12 I had like 6 responses, now that is a big improvement.

Defrag my life?

"A few years ago, I came across an odd statistic that stayed with me, even though I'd forgotten the source. The researchers measured the amount of stuff people do, in terms of different, discrete activities. It turns out that we do more stuff in one month than people a century ago do in an entire year. And that study was nearly a decade ago. I'm sure it's worse today."

That was an article I read a while back, and it made me think of the accelerated lifestyle, something I have been thinking about quite a bit recently, the "cult of speed" as it is sometimes called. It also makes me think about all the nagging stats about how kids don't do anything but gaming, but I bet they do a ton more than they did 100 years ago (no that was not a gaming endorsement, I play games less than once a month if that)

Quick impressions of SE Asia

On the bus: Damn I'm tall
On the school campus where I am Living: Damn I look old
Eating at street vendors: Flagrent sanitations violations?!
Eating at street vendors: This costs me 1/5th of what it would in the US (and tastes twice as good?!)
After Eating at street vendors (fortunately only once so far): Should'a gotten more TP while I was out.
Walking around in this Neighborhood: Am I really that amusing to stare at?

and the list goes on... more later