I'm Back in China

At the supermarket I saw rolls of toilet paper for sale, the brand name is “Face”.   A popular brand of Chinese condom is called "Jissbon".  There's a brand of Chinese made cars with the name of "Riich". I know not whether those are unforced errors, cultural misunderstandings on my part or marketing genius for a unique market.

The more I come here the more I realize that I don't really understand the place. To me some of the food is strange, a distant echo to some of the Chinese food that I enjoy in the States.  The Chinese really seem to like fast food and have Chinese fast food chains, we tried several and they're dreck. Drivers are arrogant, pedestrians are determined but stupid and beat and traffic cops are either blind or don't care so I've seen some interesting near misses along with one entirely avoidable accident (hint: don't make a right turn from the center lane).  Or, as Wikitravel rightly warns about traffic safety where I am now in Chengdu, Sichuan:

Traffic can be insanely hectic and motorists as well as cyclists and other pedestrians often have a complete disregard of you, the pedestrian. Beware when crossing streets; even when the WALK sign is green, (this means nothing to them or to the Police), traffic taking a right or left turn even when they are not permitted to turn will try to run you over or honk at you to make way for them. Accidents are commonplace as are deaths. Look every direction but up. Watch out for taxi drivers, bus drivers and private car drivers who have absolutely no regard for your life. Also watch out for motorists, they are all unlicensed riding silent electric motorbikes coming at you from the left, from the right, from behind and from the front. To stay safe, it is best to walk with a crowd, preferably in the middle.

In Chengdu I watched an old lady slowly cross 6 lanes of traffic lane by lane in a pedestrian crosswalk against a red don't walk sign while pushing an even older lady in a wheelchair.  Cars, trucks and scooters whizzed by blaring their horns, each old lady didn't seem to notice, it was probably just another mundane trip to the store for them.  Those same cars, trucks and scooters would've thought nothing of whizzing by if the old ladies were crossing those 6 lanes with  green walk signal.

Everyone, especially in style conscious Beijing, seems to have an expensive cell phone China is the home office of counterfeit everything so all of the iphones I've been seeing could be knock offs, same with the fancy Samsungs.  I've seen knockoff Birkenstocks for sale here, I call them Knockinstocks. We took the Beijing and Chengdu metros all over and I kept thinking of the term, "Chinese firedrill". Everyone's packed tightly backside to navel and bellowing at each other or into their cellphones.

In Beijing I noticed much less of the the nasty Chinese habit of spitting in public than on past trips. But in Chengdu I hear that regrettably loud throat clearing followed by loud expectoration, or as I've heard it called, the Chinese national anthem, all too frequently and watch out so that my feet don't get splashed.

Eleanor has been indispensable on this trip.  The average pet dog in China understands more Mandarin than I do and I know from past solo trips here that getting anything accomplished when you can't read, write or speak is next to impossible.  Eleanor can't read but she does speak 4th grade Mandarin and that really is making the grade for us.

I had read that the central government in Beijing had a nationwide campaign to rid the country of Chinglish for the 2008 Olympics but they seem to have forgotten about Chengdu, examples such as these are everywhere.  

We'll be in China for another few weeks with more destinations in Asia to come.

Welcome to Airport Free WIFI

Many world airports have free WiFi and Capital Airport in Beijing is no exception.  But don't expect to just attach to the free wifi and start surfing.  WiFi in China has to be traceable so the airport in Beijing has machines that will scan your passport and issue a pass like the one I got below.  I'll say this for the free WiFi at the Beijing airport, it worked much better than the free WiFi at SeaTac airport in Seattle. The last time I tried to use the free WiFi at SeaTac it was unusable.

How to Make Greek Yogurt

Retirement has brought me more time to do things that I always thought that I'd never have the time for.  I've always wanted to try my hand at making Greek yogurt.  It turns out that it's fairly easy, so easy that even I can do it. The first thing you need to make Greek yogurt is yogurt.  You can either buy plain yogurt or make your own. Not only making yogurt at home cheaper than store bought but read the label on the stuff from the store and depending on the brand you'll find sugar, thickeners (because starch is cheaper than milk) and a science fair full of chemicals. Homemade yogurt contains milk and some special bacteria and that's about it.

To make yogurt from scratch take the store bought milk of your choice (skim, 2%, full or even goat milk).  The higher the fat content the smoother and creamier your finished yogurt will be) and slowly heat in pan, pot or microwave until the temperature of the milk reaches 183F.  Keep stirring as you heat or the milk will burn onto the bottom of your vessel.  I use an electronic thermometer with a probe.  Heating the milk kills off any bacteria in the milk and makes it an ideal growth medium for the yogurt bacteria that you'll stir in later.

I've read that there are lots of variations on this theme and they all work.  The milk can be heated in a microwave oven and yogurt can be made in a crock pot and even in a rice cooker, anything that will hold the constant temperature that the yogurt bacteria requires to prosper in your milk.

Once the milk reaches the desired temperature let it cool until it reaches 110F, then stir in a dollop of yogurt.  The yogurt bacteria is alive and you're going to introduce it to the warm milk to let it grow in and colonize the milk.

Next to the yogurt I make I favor Fage

Stir in and dissolve some store bought yogurt into your now cooled to 110F milk and then move to plastic containers.  For the next 10 hours or so the idea will be to keep the milk warm so that the stirred in store bought yogurt can colonize it.  Too hot and the yogurt bacteria dies, too cool and the yogurt bacteria goes to sleep and either way you'll just wind up with spoiled milk.  110F is just right but that temperature has to be maintained.  I put my budding yogurt crop into the oven to incubate.

2 containers of yogurt to be

Why the oven?  The oven is insulated so it'll hold heat.  I preheat the oven to around 110F and keep my eye on the temperature during the day thanks to a laser thermometer.  The brown rectangle on the bottom of the oven in the picture above is a pizza stone, it'll hold on to some of that heat.  Bonus yogurt making points if you have an older oven with a pilot light.  You also swaddle the plastic containers in a blanket or a towel to hold in the heat.  After 10 hours of incubation remove the yogurt from the oven and refrigerate overnight and prepare to be Greeked.  

The next morning......

It's yogurt!

Time to put the Greek into the yogurt.  In order to Greek the yogurt you have to strain out the whey.   I use a fine mesh strainer sitting over a small pot to catch the drained whey.

Before yogurt

Add yogurt and wait for the whey to strain out.

Draining a-whey

I also use several permanent #4 coffee filters (Gold Tone) to drain yogurt.

Empty Gold Tone filter

Gold Tone filters getting the whey out of my way

Cover the straining yogurt and refrigerate.  The longer the yogurt drains the thicker the Greeked yogurt left behind in the strainer or filter, 5 hours usually gives me the thickness I like.

Optional: add fruit, flavorings and sweetening to taste.  Enjoy!

How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation

When I decided to retire I made sure to do it in the summer, as far as I'm concerned that's the very best time to be in the Pacific Northwest.  The other 3 seasons are in varying degrees wet, damp, gray, dark and depressing.  Maybe it's because of the other 3 seasons but summer in Seattle is special, summer in Seattle is just glorious.  The days are long, the sky is blue and cloud free and I love feeling the warm sunshine on my skin.  When it rained for a few days last week I stayed home and experienced life through the Internet which doesn't bode well for me during those other 3 seasons.

But since this is my first summer vacation since I was 15 I'm spending it exploring the Seattle area as I would explore a foreign city.  I pack my camera, I put on my walking shoes and I take public transit.

One of the first things I discovered was just 2 blocks from my house.  A marijuana store is preparing to open for business in an old State liquor store.

Oddly enough the store seems to be named "Grass"

Washington state has legalized recreational marijuana but you can't use the stuff recreationally if you can't get it and as of this writing there's one open pot shop for nearly 700,000 people and when they're not out of product to sell the line to buy snakes around the building, across two parking lots to Lander St and then all the way down the street, perhaps 3 blocks in all.  Seeing that line made me recall things I've read about buying bread in the Soviet Union or shoes in North Korea.  More pot stores should mean better selection and lower prices and I won't have to bus it down to Lander street again to look at the lines to buy a legal product.

I attempted to explore Ballard but Market Street seems to have changed into an area of tiny expensive condos and trendy coffee bars, wine bars, pet grooming salons and yoga studios.  I hopped back onto the #44 bus and made my way to Wallingford.  There I stopped for ice cream at Molly Moon but when I sat down to eat my treat the place was suddenly descended upon by perhaps 40 Asian tourists who I had passed earlier as they gathered in front of and inside Archie McPhee.  The clogged the ice cream store and took pictures of each other.

Let's take pictures of each other and eat ice cream!

I walked back to the University District, boarded the #343 bus for home.  Explorations will continue until the weather changes.  As long as the sun shines I'm taking active retirement seriously but I know that by Labor Day change in the form or rain, clouds and falling temperatures will be in the air.

Retirement: The Fountain of Youth?

Today is the first weekday of my new life.  The weather is normal for summer in Seattle, which is to say absolutely fantastic.  I feel energized.  The world just opened and I want to take advantage of everything.  It's the fountain of youth.  

This is my first summer vacation since I was 15.  In a way I want to spend this time the way I would in Bangkok or Taipei.  What I usually do in a cities like those is to purchase a transit pass and find a different neighborhood to explore every day.  The transit pass that I've carried for the last 20 years of employment is good until the end of September so I'm good to go.  But first a new life needs new clothes so it's off to Cabelas to score new touring threads.   I  also took a daytime run through Costco so I could rub slouched shoulders with the rest of the old retired codgers who seem to haunt Costco on weekdays.

The Freeway Stop at 145th st & I-5 South

The stress of work has left behind a few layers and some extra belt notches and they need to go.  Bus pass plus lots of summertime walking = sweat and expended calories so I walked down to I-5 and took Sound Transit's 512 bus to to 45th street in Wallingford. 

Meat Activists?

I lived in Wallingford for my first few years in Seattle and I haven't crawled 45th street in 20 years.  My how it's changed.  Nearly everything seems to have changed, much shinier, grander and more upscale. More gourmet ice cream, gelato shops and coffee shops trying not to be Starbucks than I remember.  Until today I'd never seen a shop run by "meat activists" before.

From 45th street I walked into Greenlake and briskly walked to the Starbucks at the top of the lake so I could drink something, catch some A/C and plot my next destination.  I whipped out my bus pass and hopped a bus heading toward Ballard and got off at 85th and Aurora to take the "E" line downtown so that I could catch and express bus home.  

Gosh the park was pretty today:

I'm not sure whether it's the sudden freedom or the magnificent weather and I'm just one day into this but so far it's great.  I keep wondering how this would be if it was 45 degrees, overcast, wet and damp, and the sun was going down at 5PM; in other words just like 9 months of the year in this part of the world.

Onesuite Pre-Paid Long Distance - How to Lose a Customer

Poor customer service will kill any company.  Onesuite is a pre-paid long distance provider who I have relied on for at least 10 years, probably more.  I urged friends and family to open accounts with them and many of them did, among them my Mother and brother.

November 18:  Onesuite also has a VOIP service which I used when I was in Malaysia to call my credit union in Anchorage, Alaska.  I understand that Onesuite charges a higher rate for calls to Alaska than they do on calls that terminate in the continental US.  I called my credit union to inform them that I'd be using my ATM card in the Philippines and hung up.  This call took no more than 5 minutes, most likely less.

For this Onesuite completely drained the money in my account, more than $7 for a call they said lasted 136 minutes.  That's over 2 hours to tell my credit union that I've added a country to my vacation itinerary.  Since they had drained my account I was unable to call Onesuite to point out their error or to call anyone else.  Onesuite left me high and dry overseas.

November 19:  But I could send them an email to explain what happened and I did.  On November 19th I got a robo-reply which said, "Dear Customer, We received your message. We will reply to your e-mail in 24 to 48 hours."  24-48 hours took 5 days.

November 24:  Onesuite finally got back to me and asked for the details of the call, which they already had since I had already told them and they processed the call so they certainly had a record of it.  I replied on November 24th with all of the details that they had requested.  Meanwhile, I was still overseas without the phone service that I had already paid for.

November 25: Onesuite sent me an email stating that my balance was $0 and urged me to add money.  Fat chance.

November 27: Onesuite responded to my email from November 24th, "We do apologize for any inconvenience. We have forwarded your connection problem to our Technical Department. The reference number is XXXXX.  Kindly give us 24 to 48 hours to have the problem fixed. We truly appreciate your patience and understanding.  There's that 24 to 48 hours promise again.  It's now 10 days and counting that I am without the service that I have already paid for due to their error compounded by Onesuite's poor customer service.

December 4:  I'm back home in the USA.  24-48 hours had finally elapsed from November 24th and I heard from Onsuite again with a result that I could sense was coming all along,

"Our Technical Department already checked on the exact duration of the call you have made on 11/18/2013 15:59:00. They have confirmed that it lasted for 136minutes".

Holiday weekend delay? Not likely, Onesuite's customer service people are in the Philippines and after visiting Manila for myself recently I assure you that there is no American Thanksgiving holiday in the Philippines and unfortunately very little to be thankful for there.

This is outright theft but hey, I only lost $7 and change.  But if I had more money in my account I am sure that Onesuite would've run the clock out to drain whatever I had given them.  In a world of GoogleVoice and cell phones there is little need for a company like Onesuite and I'm sure that their business has suffered.

I retained them for calls from overseas but the joke was on me.  Onesuite cannot be depended upon.  Even if their customer service people kept their own promises (24-48 hour turn around) Onesuite certainly can't be depended upon when I'm out of the country.  When I'm overseas I have many alternatives and I certainly wouldn't advance Onesuite another penny for such incompetent, awful service.

Poor service compounded by poor customer service, a company I have long depended upon and recommended to friends and family has crashed and burned.  I'm sorry to see Onesuite go this way.  Let the buyer of pre-paid telephone service beware.

A Few Words About Freedom

Freedom is euphoric. This has been a great trip, even considering the crowded and late flights, the questionable hotel, the dehydration and jet lagged lack of sleep. Manila was absolute anarchy marinated in diesel exhaust and feral children in squatter camps but the people we met in Manila had hearts of gold. In Manila we were treated like family, maybe better.

I loved the freedom of the experience and the open ended nature of this trip, how the this trip was planned out through Dubai and Kuala Lumpur with the rest of the time to be made up as we went along through research and inspiration. I loved the breakfasts of simple drip coffee in the hotel room or Nescafe instant, cheese roti, laksa, kwey teow, breakfast at a Pakistani restaurant where I couldn't read the menu or tell you what we ate (but it was good) even Camelicious camel milk. This time we ate tiger prawns, next time I will attempt to find and eat the pissing shrimp.

Have a Camel!

I don't know what I'm eating...

Without freedom none of this would be possible, being off the leash for 3 weeks makes me want more. But first we need to put our leashes back on and slide the rings through our noses. We have a 16 hour time change to slowly digest, to wade though and pay bills and to back to our jobs which makes all of the above and the previous dispatches which you can read below possible.

To some extent my age is making a trip of this nature less possible, it was harder this time to deal with the jet lag and the tropical heat. I didn't sleep much for 5 days and allowed myself to get dehydrated resulting in one day on the DL in the hotel.  I wanted more time to kick back but maybe it's not such a bad idea to stop pushing myself so hard and to act my age.

The Philippines

Partially written at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila:

Awaiting our flight out of Manila to Kuala Lumpur.  The hospitality here in Manila has been wonderful, we haven't been able to buy a meal and it hasn't been for lack of trying.   Eleanor's friends opened their hearts to us and in at least one case, their homes.  They showed us the city and even some of the countryside.  But as wonderful as the Filipino people have been the Philippines itself is heart breakingly broken.

Take the airport in Manila.  Most Asian capital cities have wonderful new airports speeding arrivals to their downtowns by modern high speed rail lines.  NAIA is not one of those Asian airports.  It looks and smells like an American Greyhound bus station from the 1970's.  Light fixtures are dark with missing or blown out bulbs, the ceiling is stained by roof leaks.  The 2 guards who were supposed to inspect our boarding passes were too busy taking cell phone selfies to bother with us.   Except for the liquor store the shops at the airport are few, dimly lit and poorly stocked.  This airport doesn't need a makeover, it needs a wrecking ball.

But it's not out of character with the city that it serves.  Manila traffic is absolute chaos.  I saw many stop signs in Manila but I never saw a car stop for one.  When we were being taken around Manila kids would approach the SUV at a red light and get right up to the windows attempting to sell home made feather dusters, brooms, plastic Santa Clauses or sunglasses with built in LED's.  This is the kind of place that I've read about where if you stop for a traffic light and dangle your arm out of the car window street urchins could steal your watch in a flash.  I was cautioned by locals to not ride the rapid transit rail lines, they were tightly packed and unsafe due to violence, groping and pickpocketing.  A friend of Eleanor's told me that the rail rapid transit lines have no escalators because the money to buy and install them when the lines were originally built had been pilfered because the government in the Philippines is a kleptocracy.

Before I came to Manila I had read about the jeepneys, the icon of the Manila streets.  When I got here I saw them, they're banged up homemade minibus/trucks that carry people or sometimes cargo, a sort of home made ragtag private rapid transit substitute for the buses that the government doesn't seem to provide. Passengers and barefoot feral children hang off the backs of the jeepneys in traffic.  When the jeepneys move they belch coal black diesel exhaust onto everything and everybody so Manila lives under a brown cloud.  The spare tires on a jeepney are often bald, sometimes so bald that the tire cord shows.

Worse yet are the tricycles, sort of a local tuk-tuk.  A tricycle in the Philippines is a motorcycle lashed to a sidecar.  I saw tricycles carrying 7 people at once with 4 crammed into the sidecar and 2 people sitting behind the driver. With such a load the tricycle can't move very fast and for safety's sake that's probably a good thing.  But that slows down the cars, trucks and jeepneys to the speed of the tricycles which gums up everything.  Because of the insane traffic entry into Manila is restricted by licence plate number.  The well to do get around this by simply buying and licensing a 2nd car.

Or take the cell phone system.  Locals tell me that it's necessary to have several cell phones or a phone that accepts multiple SIM's because while the local competing cell phone carriers do interconnect with each other they charge more to connect calls to their rivals so many people have service with all of the companies because it's cheaper to do that then to pay their higher charges to call people who use competing companies. Businesses often list several phone numbers, one for each carrier.

So if the government is a screwed up bribe and kickback machine why not vote them out?   Corruption is rampant but the electorate votes the same folks back in with majorities that would make Saddam Hussein proud.  When we were were in Batangas province, I saw incredible poverty with spots of very conspicuous wealth.  I checked, in recent elections the governor was reelected with almost 94% of the vote.  But it's worse than that, read a few paragraphs here about the governor  That kind of comic nonsense is the norm in the Philippines, the people get the government that they deserve.  I broached this subject with several people I met in the Philippines, all were aware how sad and desperate it made the country seem.

So the Philippines makes due economically by exporting workers to more prosperous economies and exists financially by remittances sent home by these OFW's or Overseas Philippine Workers.  The rich families that control the Philippines make money every time an OFW deposits their earnings into one of their banks or calls home to friends of relatives via the phone companies that they own at toll rates that are kept artificially high.

When we were in Dubai we had dinner with Eleanor's niece Rachel, she's been an OFW in Dubai for 10 years.  Exporting workers means that the motivated best and brightest of the Philippines are working and benefiting someone else.  Some of the money comes back but the talents and skills that the country needs do not.  There's an separate OFW entrance and lounge at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.  I asked Rachel if there were any advantages to being an OFW at the airport.  She replied that the only one she would think of was that OFW's were exempt from having to pay the exit fee of $12.70 US.

Why I'll Never Fly Malaysia Airlines Again

I've flown Malaysia airlines before, this year we flew them from Kuala Lumpur to Manila and back.  The flight to Manila was 90 minutes late, the flight back to Kuala Lumpur was 2 hours late.  Airlines have scheduling problems and things happen that aren't within their control, it happens to all airlines.

But my recent flight from Manila to KL was perhaps the worst flight I've ever been on.  Stuck on the tarmac, screaming children directly behind me, the person behind me had long legs and we all had confining seats so he kicked me in the ass for a half hour.  A dirty look made that stop.  Eleanor had a talk about proper mothering with the fat Filipina with the screaming child, that worked for only a few minutes

The 737-800 was in poor shape.  My seat pocket was bent out of shape, broken and ripped.  The carpeting on the main aisle down the airplane was worn and unraveling.  My seat belt was worn out.  It was so old and worn out that I could stick my finger through the webbing and that's a safety hazard (see below).  If the seat belt in my car was this worn out I would've replaced it before it got as bad as I saw tonight.  I've flown Air Asia before and while the terminals was bargain basement the flights were better than Malaysia Airlines and the planes in better shape.

I showed the holey seat belt to the steward when he asked me to buckle up.  He thanked me to bringing it to his attention, assured me that the seat belt was absolutely safe and said that he'd let someone know about it just as soon as we got to Kuala Lumpur.  Assuming that he did that it'll be great for the next butt to sit in that seat but it only convinced me that Malaysia Airlines is either too poor to fly safely (they've been losing money) or they don't care about their customers and employees.  Either way I won't fly them again, a blatant safety problem such as the seat belt below makes me suspect that the safety neglect could be deeper and I'd rather not fly such an airline.

Buckle up for safety on Malaysia Airlines!

Kuching: Beware of Extreme Weather

Kuching is the largest city in East Malaysia, the capital of Sarawak state and is on the island of Borneo, a large island that Malaysia shares with Indonesia and Brunei.  Sometimes parachuting into a foreign city clicks and sometimes it clunks.  Kuching has been partly clunk.

For one thing I picked the wrong hotel.  We stayed at the Citadines, they're a Singaporean chain that I've had good luck with in the past in Bangkok and Tokyo.  But the Citadines Upland Kuching is in a terrible location for anything downtown, one that I should have noticed from a map.  The Citadines Upland Kuching is located on a 4 lane divided boulevard halfway between the airport and downtown and is central to nearly nothing except an under rented mall across the boulevard.  There are no sidewalks.  Although on the 10th floor we awake daily to the sounds of chickens and especially roosters.  The hotel staff told us that there was no bus to town.  "Taxi only, we call for you!" said the check-in clerk.

But there is a bus.  From our 10th floor window I saw a beat up green bus taking on passengers at a covered bus stop right outside the hotel.  We gave it a try and it worked, sort of.  The K-8 bus meandered through the city and took us to a downtown street that doubles as the local bus station.

Last stop, everybody out!

From there we jumped into the city to be exposed to the weather, which seems to alternate between a searing, punishing, will sapping equatorial sun and steamy humidity and the tropical downpours and violent thunder and lightening storms that roll in from the interior jungles.  The buses stop running at 6PM, or sometimes 5:30 PM or whenever they want to pack it in for the day.  We were marooned at a bus stop in the afternoon watching others wander away after they had given up any hope of the bus.

The next morning we were waiting for the bus to take us into Kuching when a small beaten up beige Toyota van stopped and the others waiting with us at the bus stop scampered aboard so we did too.  It took us downtown to the same street as the bus, we paid our fare of 1.50RM and scampered out for our morning broiling.

There were 9 of us in this tiny van.  The driver is the one wearing the Islamic headgear

We got a one hour respite from the searing sun by taking a river cruise. The boatman seated us in the boat, prepared for the journey by taking a leak against a wall before we headed down river.  The boat was so tiny that shifting my body for a comfortable position or a better camera angle caused the boat to list.

But the shade and the breeze as the boat headed up and then down river was so refreshing in the stifling afternoon heat that we took the river cruise twice.  The second time we had run into a semi retired tour guide while we waited for one of those city buses that never come.  Richard Yeo gave us a river tour seemingly just out of personal pleasure.  He seemed to be an all round great guy who answered all of our questions about Kuching and helped to turn our trip here around.  That's him with Eleanor below.

Hi Richard!

Questionable hotel location in a city with great food but weather extremes. Our next destination will still be tropical but I've already secured a reputable hotel in the best part of town.  Stay tuned.

Back From the Dead

It took a while for the will to live to return to my food poisoned body. Between hurried trips to the bathroom I spent most of a day in the hotel curled up on the bed in a shivering ball waiting to either get better or die. Eleanor kept waking me to feed me ibuprofen and insist that I take a long pull on a bottle of water. The next morning the shivering gradually subsided, the fever ebbed and I felt like pressing on for another day.

So we went to the Kuala Lumpur Auto Show at the Putra World Trade Center.  There's nothing special on the car market in Malaysia but I wanted to take in the whole experience.  They were displaying Chinese semi trucks, Volkswagens assembled in India and locally made Peroduas.  But in some ways it was like the car shows I remember as a kid growing up in New York.  Back then cars were displayed at shows with the aid of provocatively dressed women but we're enlightened now and no longer do that in the US.  The official state religion of Malaysia might be Islam and many local women wouldn't dream of walking outside without their hair covered.  Female police officers here keep their hair tucked up inside of a sort of canvas helmet but they still do cars shows here the old school way, with provocatively dressed women posing for men holding fancy cameras with long lenses.  How refreshing.  How sad that such displays are against our state religion but an Islamic country seems to have no problem tolerating this.  As for how women are seen by the Malaysian car industry check out Perodua's Female Empowerment Movement, FEM for short.

Kuala Lumpur: Sick

5 days without sleeping and pushing myself hard has finally caught up to me.  Chills, shivering, dehydration, fever, runs, headache with a touch of delirium.  Food poisoning?  Parasites?  Several big thunderstorms swept through during the night and in my delirium I couldn't tell whether the thunder and lightening was outside the hotel or inside my stomach.  The answer: both.  Eleanor is fine, it's just me.  Right now I can't be away from the can, it's at times like this that I'd rather be in my own home.

We ate at a banana leaf restaurant in KL's Little India the other day, a strange experience.  That night I bought some prepackaged cut yellow watermelon at the Cold Storage supermarket and Eleanor didn't eat that.  I once ate at an Indian restaurant in Seattle with friends from NY and I was the only one who got food poisoning.  Am waiting for my body to expel the poisons before we decide what to do next. 

Hello Dubai

We flew to Dubai nonstop from Seattle on Emirates Airlines.  After I purchased the ticket I wondered how Emirates keeps their daily nonstops on this route full.  Now I know.  Our 777 to Dubai was packed but when we landed in Dubai and got to passport control and the luggage carousel we were pretty much alone, no crowds, no lines. Where did everybody go?  The answer is that most of the people on our flight were transferring  to connecting flights to India.  For anyone going from Seattle to India this seems to be the way to go.  The flight goes over the North Pole via Canada and comes down south to the Middle East over Norway, Sweden, Russia and Iran.

During the flight an Indian woman in the row ahead of us discovered to her horror that her vegetarian meal was actually sacred cow and she ran sobbing to the bathroom and would only leave the bathroom after being consoled by her husband. The rest of the flight for her and those of us around her consisted of an apology tour of stewardesses and pursers. The flight itself was was tight and approaching the 12 hour mark of the 14.5 hour flight I was thinking that prisoners on death row in an American prison confined to such a tight space would be contacting their jailhouse lawyers citing cruel and unusual punishment.  Of course at the conclusion of the lawsuit the prisoners would still be in prison but at the end of our flight we were in Dubai.

Camel milk in my morning coffee, 250 ml's sells for around .68 US and as the label says, it's Camelicious!

Canon S100 Camera - "Lens Error"

Last year I purchased a Canon Powershot S100 camera for a trip to the Far East.  The S100 is a compact, lightweight, pocket camera with a 12 megapixel sensor, a wide open F2.0 lens and a 5X zoom.  I carry it in a small belt pouch, it whispers tourist but it never shouts it.  I've taken some wonderful pictures with my Canon S100 but that's over, at least for now.

Today I got the dreaded, "Lens Error - Will Shut Down Automatically - Restart Camera" error that the Canon S100 (and the Canon S95) is infamous for.  The lens is stuck in the extended position and for all intent and purpose my $400 camera is now a crippled brick.

The good news is that Canon USA acknowledges the problem, an embarrassment that according to the many user complaints that I've read in researching the problem has sometimes greeted customers at the new purchase unboxing or left the unfortunate customer high and dry while on an vacation.

So in a way I was lucky, my S100 stroked out while I was trying to take a picture of a sleeping wallaby at my local zoo.  I was left to walk around the zoo with my Canon S100 in my hand with the bulging lens in flagrante delicto.  We're planning an Asian vacation in a few months, at least the error didn't reveal itself 14 time zones from home.

My father was a Minolta guy and so was I.  My Dad shot my baby pictures with a Minolta Autocord.  I have purchased several film based Minolta SLR's but Minolta is now kaput, done in by a lawsuit by Honeywell, the camera division was purchased by Sony.  I had purchased a Panasonic Lumix digital camera 10 years ago and a Nikon before that and liked them both but wanted something more compact than anything that Canon's competition was offering when I decided to upgrade.  Last year the Canon S100 seemed like a good bet by a long established camera manufacturer but I had been warned by a coworker, a lifetime Canon guy, to stay away from Canon. He had purchased a Canon SLR for a European vacation.  Upon arrival in Germany the camera wouldn't work and when he returned home Canon immediately dismissed his warranty request claiming that he had gotten his new camera wet.  He's a happy owner of a Sony camera now.  I'm sure I'm in for a good old, "I told ya so", when he hears about this.

For now I'll give Canon USA the benefit of the doubt, they've owned up to the lens error problem with a "Product Advisory" and I've contacted Canon USA.

I'll update this blog when I either hear from Canon or when my S100 is functional again.  In the meantime, if you've had this happen to you I'd be interested to hear from you no matter what the outcome.  Please feel free to leave a comment regarding your experiences with the S100 or with Canon's warranty service.

Update 9/7/2013:
Canon replied in an email and after I had submitted the S100's serial number to them they emailed back with a prepaid UPS label and a tracking number.  My camera is now on its way to Newport News, VA for repair, hopefully at Canon's expense.  I've read that other S100 owners with the same stuck lens problem had 1 week turn around but UPS says that it'll take one week for my camera to even arrive in Newport News.  Assuming at least a few days at Canon's repair facility and then another week to mosey on back to the west coast it'll be the better part of a month that I'll be without my Canon S100.  Not a good ownership experience with my first Canon camera.  

Update 9/21/2013:
My S100 is back!  Canon repaired it at their cost and shipped it back to me from Newport News by 2-day Fed-ex.  It seems to work just as before and I'm happy with the way that Canon has handled this. Unfortunately I've been reading about S100 owners who have had to send their cameras back to Canon for the same stuck lens problem up to 4 times.  But the next time I travel I the Achilles heel of the Canon Powershot  S100 will be lurking in the back of my mind, as well as the next time I shop for a camera.

Playing the Old Man Card

I was riding home from work on my regular King County Metro bus, seated near the driver on a side facing bench that had textured lines dividing the seating area for three passengers.  I occupied the right seat area, a woman occupied the left with a space between us.  The bus made a stop to pick up more passengers and a young Asian woman perhaps in her 20's took the available seat but then scooted over to her left leaving half a cushion for her plump, unattractive friend who plopped down into the available half space with her left butt cheek and put her right butt cheek on my left thigh.  She forced herself to slide into the available half space and off of my left lap and compressed me into the wheel well of the bus on my right with her fat ass.  

I shoved hard to my left in an attempt to give myself some lebensraum and convey that this was unacceptably tight but she ignored me and went on yacking with her friend.  I stood up and without looking the fat woman slid over to occupy the space that she sensed that I had vacated.  There were no more open seats on the bus.  I glared at the 2 Asian women, they ignored me.  A young woman sitting across from the Asian women  said, "Sir, would you like my seat?".  I told her no, that wouldn't be necessary.  Other passengers looked at me, one shook her head in mild disgust as if to say, "Kids today, what are you gonna do?"

The bus continued north on I-5 and got off the freeway at the Seattle City line in Shoreline when the woman occupying the 3rd bench space toward the back of the bus got off, the two Asian women scooted to their left without missing a word.  I took my now open seat next to the fat interloper.  I drew her attention and said, "These seats are made for three people, not four".  She replied, "I didn't know that", in a monotone.  I continued, "You have absolutely no manners forcing an old man like me out of his seat to stand all the way home so that you can sit next to your friend".  She gave me a look of mild displeasure and the two resumed their conversation as if I had never been there.  

I'm nearly 61 now, at work I'm the oldest in my group and some of my coworkers joking refer to me as "Grandpa" and 'Papa", which I really don't mind.  My thinning gray hair and lined face tell the truth and at 61 I don't qualify for any senior citizen discounts at restaurants or airlines and I don't try to con my way into any.  But time marches on, I am thinking about retirement and this is the first time I've ever played the age card.  I don't think I'll do it again soon but I felt strangely empowered, like I had something new to help me press this case against these two rude women.  

DIY: How to Resole Your Birkenstocks

I started wearing Birkenstocks back in the 1970’s and I’ve been wearing them ever since.  I bought my first pair in a health food store in Venice, CA.  When I wore the soles down the same health food store sold me a pair of precut soles in my size and a 2oz tube of Barge cement and pretty soon I was back on the road.

Today Birkenstocks have some fashion cachet and I’ve found precut soles impossible to find.  But it is possible to purchase the sole material by the sheet.  These days the accepted way of replacing a worn sole is to take them back to where you bought them.  An Internet search will show a number of authorized Birkenstock repair businesses around the US, your local cobbler can also help. 

I recently returned from a trip to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur and the combination of aggressive sightseeing and tropical heat wore the soles down to the point where they were not as comfortable as they used to be.  I hadn't replaced soles in years so I searched the Internet high and low but no instructions could I find, only advertising for Authorized Birkenstock Resoling.

How to do an Unauthorized Birkenstock Resoling

The first step is to remove the old worn out soles.  I did this by putting my Birks in a 200F degree oven for 10 minutes.  The old sole will shrink and cleanly pull away from the cork bottom.  Don't force it, if you try to tear the old sole off like a strong man ripping a phone book in half you risk pulling away some of the jute and cork from the shoe with the sole.


Once the old shrunken sole is off of the Birk bottom rough up both the new sole surface that's going to adhere to the bottom of the shoe and bottom of the Birk.  I used a Dremel tool.  Then clean both surfaces, any schmutz left behind will weaken the bond between the new sole and the shoe.  As you can see above I've cut 2 sections of sole from my large sole sheet.

Coat the new sole bottom and the bottom of the shoe with rubber cement specifically made for shoe repair, I used Barge cement.  Follow the instructions on the container of your chosen adhesive. Barge says to coat both surfaces and let them dry.

Once the glue has dried for the recommended amount of time carefully join the 2 surfaces together and make sure that there are no gaps in the bond between the sole material and the Birk bottom.  It doesn't look like a shoe yet so it's time to trim off the excess sole material.

I used a utility knife and a pair of snips.

The new sole material is tough, be careful and don't cut too closely to the cork.

I ground the rubber sole edge near flush with a Dremel tool and voila!  After allowing 24 hours for the bond to cure my resoled Birkenstock padded footbed Milanos are once again ready for pavement.

UPDATE 3/31/2013 - I've noticed at least one seller of Birkenstock sole material on eBay referring potential purchasers to my page for DIY instructions.  He's selling two rectangles of sole material for slightly less than you can purchase pre-cut soles in your exact size.  Personally I'd pay a few bucks extra for the precise fit and to avoid the rubber dust mess that the Dremel tool makes.  The problem of course is where to get the resoling material in the quantities you may want and at a decent price.  

It used to be available in large sheets or pre-cut from the same store that sold you the paid a Birkenstocks.  To make a long story short my Father asked me to purchase a sheet of Birkenstock sole material for him 15 years ago.  He didn't use much of the sheet and when he passed away what was left of the sole sheet came back to me.  By then the original formulation of Barge Cement was seen as an environmental hazard but if you search it's still available in quart or bigger sizes.  But the sole sheets are even harder to come by.  I get it, the resoling business is probably a cash cow for the stores that sell the shoes so the importer carefully doles out the soles to not undercut business and relations with the retailers of their product and to keep the price of soles and resoling high.  

Me, I'm in no hurry to get more.  I just resoled 2 more pair of Birks from my Father's sheet and have enough material left over to resole at least one more pair.  Where I live Birkenstocks are seasonal and I can only wear one pair of shoes at a time so I have lots of time to find more soling material, by the time I'm ready good quality knock off soles may be available.  But just in case, if anybody knows of a good and reasonable source of Birkenstock sole sheets please let me know in the comments or by email, thanks.

Tokyo Transport

Fresh from the high humidity and temperatures of the tropics Tokyo greeted us with cold, pelting rain and confusion. What fell wasn't a 3 month long annoying Seattle drizzle mist, it was a cold, heavy penetrating, soaking downpour that sopped through my shoes, socks, pants and sweatshirt. After spending time in Thailand and Malaysia what I know that rain in the tropics is that it announces itself with a darkening sky and if that doesn't make you take heed it's followed by thunder and lightning. Then it'll rain like a sonofabitch for perhaps an hour and then all is forgiven and the day resumes a few degrees cooler. The Tokyo rain lasted all day and then it was spent, the next morning the sky turned blue and the temperature eventually jumped to a summer like 80F.

Japanese stores hand out free umbrella condoms for all customers and/or have communal umbrella stands. Some urinals in public men's rooms in Tokyo have small metal hooks alongside to hang your umbrella allowing you to conduct your personal business with both hands and to help you to keep your aim true. The sinks in Japanese men's rooms often have 2 spigots and both are motion sensitive. The one on the left squirts a generous helping of soap into your hand like an excited 16 year old boy on a hot date and the one on the right dispenses water. Everything I saw was clean, clean, clean, very little of the stink of a pay toilet squat house typical all over China. In Tokyo public rest rooms seemed to be plentiful free and unabused. 

We got around Tokyo by train. Tokyo has an amazing network of trains running with great frequency. Miss one and there's another right behind it. I never figured out who or what was in charge of which trains. Some lines are the Tokyo Metro, some are JR trains and still others belong to different railways private like Tokyu. Most of the lines intersect and some transfers are free, some are discounted and some transfers are full price. The system is massive so nothing is simple, there's organized chaos down there. Sometimes we bucked never ending rivers of salarymen to find the path to the next train or to the surface but we managed without getting too waylayed.

There seems to be a code of conduct that nearly all passengers adhere to.  There are signs in the train cars in English and Japanese requesting that people refrain from talking on their cells phones.  The only time I heard anyone on a call phone on a train the offender was speaking Mandarin.  Locals certainly don't ignore their phones, everyone is preoccupied with game playing and texting but there's no cell phone talking.  Very few people hold face to face conversations, it's all manners and decorum packed into a very large can.


The trains have a common payments card called Suica. Foreigners get a break on a special foreigner only Suica at the airport upon presentation of a passport and purchase of a ticket to and/or from Narita airport and I imagine the tourist authorities get data on where foreign tourists like to go in return. Recharge machines can also check on the amount of funds left on the card and upon request will deliver an accounting of all of your trips for the week, that's mine to the right.  Suica payment is good on trains, buses, some 7/11 stores and many other convenience stores and fast food restaurants.  Not much is cheap in Tokyo, our Suica cards arrived with 1500 yen installed and we quickly chewed that down and had to add funds twice. Recharges are performed by machines that have an English menu upon request and take cash and plastic.  Station announcements are often in English and signage is almost always bilingual.

As a result of the March 2011 tsunami and meltdown of a nuclear power plant north of Tokyo in Sendai all of the nuclear power stations in Japan have been pulled from the grid and shut down. The result is an electricity shortage. Stores are warm inside and so is the Tokyo Metro since air conditioning draws lots of juice that the Japanese grid can't provide. A new train, the Tokyo Metro 100 series, has just been put into service on the Ginza line that has LED lighting inside and out and flat panel displays for advertisements and station announcements.

In Asia How Do You Know When is Tap Water Safe to Drink?

That's easy, 7/11's are everywhere so just drop in and price a liter of water.  If it works out to .30 then use tap water for bathing and stick to drinking bottled water.  At a 7/11 here in Tokyo I saw 1.5 liters of water for sale for nearly $4.  In Bangkok bottled water is cheap and there are lots of things to do in Bangkok but drinking water from the tap isn't one of them.  In Tokyo I drink water straight from the tap, it's delicious.

This method had also guided me to drink tap water in Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore.

Wat Arun

I turned 60 on the flight to Bangkok and now I have a feeling of what the future might bring. Wat Arun is one of the grandest and most distinctive of Bangkok's many Wats.
 
See this?  Big, isn't it? It's Wat Arun, also known as the Temple of Dawn and if you're inclined to climb it you're supposed to do it at dawn. It's on the western side of the Chao Phrya river and is accessable from central Bangkok by ferry.

We took several ferries to get to it and thought that everything else on the grounds and the structure itself were best appreciated at ground level. Eleanor doesn't climb, she balked at the Great Wall in Beijing so there was no way she was taking on Wat Arun.  I took lots of pictures on the grounds at Wat Arun and we ferried out of there to continue our ride up the Chao Phrya river to Nonthaburi and later to some well deserved hotel air conditioning

But the next day I returned to Wat Arun on my own. The grounds are free to roam and there's plenty to see but access to the structure cost me 150 baht (around $4.50). And I was free to climb in spite of the fact that it was late morning, it was 100 degrees and the sun was just rocking down out of the mid day tropical sky. As I contemplated my climb I waited for a small Japanese woman to descend the upper steep stairway. She was slow and deliberate and when she finally got down off of the stairs she was shaking and looked petrified. Hey, how bad could it be?

I went up. You can go up about half way to the top but the stairs are slippery from years of people climbing, narrow and steep. I had no trouble getting up although the metal handrails that I assume were added after the Thai ancients built this sky phallus were burning hot. How steep is the staircase?  Look to the left, see the stairs above the decending monks?  That steep. 

The view up there is tremendous. I took lots of pictures and started going down the steep stairs.  But I couldn't do it. It was steep and I wanted to treat the decent as I would coming down a ladder.  I turned my back to the river and my face to the steps but there were no rungs and the stone steps were hot.  I retreated to take more pictures and to contemplate my next move.  I'm afraid of heights and it's all stone so if I fell down the stairs I'd be lucky to survive.

I made it. I did it slowly, deliberately and with the constant thought that one slip could be life altering/ending. I burned my hands death gripping the hot metal railing. I used every ounce of strength to get this done and  my thighs still ache. 

But here's the point: when I got down to the ground my first thought was that this what old age is like and that I had just crossed the boundary between the days when I could do such a strenuous task and now I'll never be able to do this again. That stage of my life is over. A man's got to know his limitations and now at 60 I'll be knowing some new ones.