1-Year Lockdown

Swimming in the Philippines

This post was going to be about how disorganized the Philippines is and how I never want to move to Manila. I had so much to say, and then I turned on the TV. What I saw made me immediately call my brother (his work responsibilities at Turner include Cartoon Network).

Cartoon Network in the Philippines has Adult Swim.

According to him, it's not even on the UK yet, but they have it here. This, after all my griping for the last two years. So I get this email from him this morning:

Subject: A message from Adult Swim

UP YOURS, TAIWAN!

I like Cold Beverage

I like cold beverage, yeah
'Cuz I'm feelin' kinda thirsty

Like G. Love, they love their cold beverage here in Asia. Fair enough too, because it gets wicked hot in the summer. But it gets taken too far. We went out for Italian a few weeks ago (to a fairly decent restaurant) and the red wine was, well, cold. Not a little cold, either. The bottle was sweating. Then looking around, we noticed they had a large wine "cellar" that was essentially a walk-in cooler.

Stick it in the fridge, stick it in the fridge
Stick it in the fridge, stick it in the fridge

'Cuz it's not right to put ice in my beer when you don't. Unless you go somewhere that typically serves Westerners, you get your beer in a glass with ice. If the place is really fancy, it's served with an ice bucket.

Before you serve me a drink
Please stick it in the fridge

I like cold beverage yeah

The iGallop

This year's must-have fitness item for Christmas - the iGallop. I don't know how to describe this thing, other than you must see the commercial. Fitness device or sex toy?

News

OK, I'm back in Taiwan. Two pieces of news:
Andrew Hayden Miller arrived at 10:44am Nov 2nd, 2006 via C-section.  He is 20 inches and 7lbs 3oz and doing perfectly fine. Once again, the day after I leave the US.

HiNet, our local internet provider associated with former telecom monopoly ChungHwa, is offering 10Mbps FTTB (fiber to the building) for the same price I'm now paying for my much slower 768/128 aDSL. Maybe I'm overly excited about this but it's still hella cool.

Oh, and Vegas was great. I guess that is three.

Poland - Part 1

I'm going to skip right past Berlin and Poznan. I caught a mild flu or something on the plane and it had me pretty laid up for the first couple of days I was in Europe. Luckily, the hotel had a soft bed and a nice bathroom. I did get out and do the sights, but I was working on three-hour bursts with long naps in between. I left Berlin for Poznan on Wednesday morning, and that trip took significantly longer than anticipated due to road construction. Luckily, the last renter of my diesel Fiat Croma failed to return it with the GPS navigation CD so I was able to enjoy the countryside at a leisurely pace.

GPS aside, the Croma is a sweet ride. It's surprisingly quick, good on fuel, and diesel is about %15 cheaper than unleaded. If it had an Aux jack for my iPod it would be complete. As it is, my radio adapter works fine.

Poznan is a nice city - not fantastic - but it has a nice town center and churches. It also has a totally adequate brewpub called Brovaria that makes a decent Wheat and Helles. However, one night was going to be enough. Due to my early night, jet lag, and room that faced the tram line, I was up early and on my way. I decided to take the scenic route through the country towards Katowice, figuring that with the traffic and what not it would take me the better part of the day. I actually made it there in time for a late lunch, and that was with stops to look around some of the smaller towns. Only one construction delay for a total of 10 minutes.

This was fortunate for me, because during my lunch I decided I really didn't want to stay in Katowice - it was heavily industrial and there wasn't much to see. I figured since it was early I'd take the scenic road towards Krakow and find a place along the way. Apparently taking a wrong turn I found myself 5km from Oswiecim. I had planned to come here to do the Auschwitz and Berkenau tours, but decided to stop now while the weather was so accommodating. Enough has been said about both these places, and while Auschwitz is tragic in its brutality, the shear scope of the extermination camp at Berkenau is shocking. Even when you know exactly what you are going to see, until you walk down the road from the rail entrance to the gas chambers you can't get a sense of its scale. It takes at least twenty minutes to walk there from the front gates, past the rows of barracks and guard towers - down the wide gravel road where the SS selected which out of the arriving trainloads of Jews would work in the camp and which would march straight to the gas chambers (about 70%).

After all that, I figured I'd just head to Krakow since I didn't have a reason to go back out to Oswiecim. Old town Krakow is beautiful. While it's got its share of people hawking cheap crap, it's not annoying to the level of taking something away, like Prague. So, to sum up: This morning I walked around and did some of the castle, this afternoon I did an organized walking tour. Saw many churches and Miss Universe contestants, which I guess is here soon because they are having events all around town.

More to come.

This Post Goes Nowhere

I just arrived in Bangkok, which will be my last flight ever into the old Don Muang airport. Normally, I wouldn't be so happy about this but since I arrived here from Hong Kong, it's a big deal.

Hong Kong by itself is a really great city, and if it's famous for two things that would be food and shopping. Most of the Chinese food you get in the U.S. is Shizhuan or Cantonese style, and it's a good thing too - no one would eat Chinese food if it was Taiwanese style. I had some good sweet-and-sour meat (maybe beef), and then hit the markets. I was looking at a Nikon digital SLR (the D70s) which I could have for $200 less than in the US. The problem is that any camera I buy needs an underwater housing, and for the D70s those start at $750. I got a bitchin' pair of shades to replace the three I managed to lose at Green Island recently at a night market, even if it did cost me $2 more than in Cambodia.

Oh, right - so why I'm glad to be gone... Even though it rained the whole time I was there, breathing hurt. I mean, you take a deep breath and it burns. I understand this is from the factories in Shenzhen, but no matter, it sucks. I thought I was sick - even buying vitamin C - until I got off the plane in Bangkok as was better by the time I got to the hotel. God forbid I ever get assigned to Guangzhou or Shenyang.

Anyway, so as I'm talking to some friends from Taiwan that are discussing ABCs (American-born Chinese), one of them calls them bananas, just like black people call others who grow up in the 'burbs Oreos. I kept laughing at that the whole night, although I had to explain the Oreos connection for it to be funny for them. Then they tried to claim it wasn't derogatory because bananas were natural while Oreos are not. Whatever.

Oh, I fly to Berlin on Monday.

Morning Flights

So I'm on my way back tomorrow, but not directly. I plan on spending about two weeks in Europe - mostly Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Or so the plan goes. I fly into Berlin via Hong Kong and Bangkok (thankfully the last time at the old airport), then I'm renting a car and taking it to Munich for Oktoberfest. Sorry I've been so bad on updates, but it's been all work leading up to this. I'll try to have regular updates from the road.

For tomorrow, I plan to meet Oliver and Darlene for lunch in Hong Kong. Oliver is a German expat who lives in Taiwan, and his mother found me my hotel in Munich. 

..and anyone up for Vegoose, drop me a line. I'm staying at the MGM Grand.

Diving Army Camp

That's how Laurie described it. He and his family were there for 2 weeks so they should know. I only wish I had the chance to stay that long. Regimented? Yes, but for a purpose. If you weren't diving you would have gone to 100 other resorts around Borneo that were easier to get to and offered activities for non-divers. There are certainly plenty of them around Kota Kinabalu, which would have cut our travel time by more than half. But we took another flight to Tawau, a bus, and finally a short speedboat trip out to Mabul. Yes, Julian would have made it there for less than $15, but we didn't have time to hitchhike on palm oil trucks.

There are no dive resorts on Sipadan anymore. In April 2000, Abu Sayyaf kidnapped 20 people from the island. Afterwards, the government of Malaysia decided to make the island a park and keep the tourists at the closer and more defensible Mabul and Kalapai. They also capped the number of divers that could go each day. Mabul has a reputation as a place for seeing small stuff while the big creatures are out at Sipadan. That may be so, but we enjoyed our dives on Mabul as much as those on the world famous Sipadan.

But that is the reason for the structure: to fit in as many dives as you can safely do in a day. It means getting up early and grabbing a snack before the first boats leave at 7:00, coming back for lunch and a short break, and going back out in the afternoon. Then, the optional sunset and night dives. We chose to do additional dives before dinner and have our evenings free. The night dive groups seemed pretty large, and the Japanese divers can be pretty aggressive with the cameras.

Murder the Green Toe

Dialogue-driven films, especially comedies, are difficult for non-native speakers. We took Gene out last weekend and at some point the subject turned to movies. Gene spent the last year in Khartoum so he had a lot of time to sit at home and watch them. Anyway, the films that tend to make it over here are the big-budget type that are all action and plot so dialogue is not really necessary. Case and point: The newest from the Fast and the Furious franchise.

Luckily the Internet is there to help. We were able to find copies of two movies we wanted to show; the Princess Bride and Murder the Green Toe (Chinese name). You might ask why the Princess Bride needs subtitles. Well, the dialogue moves fast and the actors have British, Spanish, and Andre the Giant accents - all of which confuse the Chinese. Anyway, I'll let you know if the comedy translates with good subtitles.

As for Murder the Green Toe, I guess The Big Lebowski just doesn't translate.

Sipadan

Pictures are up, details will follow. I need to label all the pictures before it makes sense. In the meantime, read this.