Adventure!

Spectacular drive failures

Inspiration for this post comes from Gizmodo's hard drive failure song contest.  Jess sent me the link a little while back and I've been following it.  Winner's have been announced as you can see. 

WTF am I talking about, you ask?  Hitachi posted several sound files of failing hard drives to their support site.  The idea was that you could diagnose your hardware failure by matching the noise. 

My personal fave is this.  Nice breaks.  You could easily play this out in town and people would groove to it.  Though this one, the winner, is pretty excellent in its stripped down simplicity and the fact that you're exclusively hearing the sound of bits dying.  Add some creepy German accented vocals and you have Kraftwerk's first album.  And how can you miss this one, featuring music so awful...its well...awful, but it's kinda funny.

This all reminds me of the first time I set computer equipment on fire.  Back in 1995, I was the chief geek at my University library.  It was really a pretty excellent student job as these things go.  I got free reign to set things up how I liked and got to do all of the forward looking new projects.  We were deploying a new electronic journal archive and I was getting the server all ready.  For storage we had just bought a big external enclosure tower into which we wanted to put 4 new $1500 1.5gig drives in it.  This gave us 6 gigabytes of storage, which my boss thought was overkill, but I had convinced him that we needed it.  Anyway, today was the day to put it all together and I was psyched!

The first part was to mount each drive into the enclosure and get everything hooked up right.  Then plug the tower into the server, boot the thing, and then try to convince SCO UNIX to recognize this puppy.  None of this was supposed to be hard.  So off I went, tools in hand and got it all set up and plugged in.  Time to flip the power switch.  No drama at this step, right?  Gosh, Andy, why is smoke pouring out of the new enclosure? Moment of hesitation, as I worry for the filesystem and then realize that my drives are on fire and therefore a “graceful shutdown” isn’t the top priority.  Kill the power.  Deep breath.  Fuck, it really really smells like burning plastic in here.  I hope the smoke alarm doesn’t go off.  Let me open the door (to one of the main floors of the library) and air the place out. 

A few minutes pass while I sort myself out.  I start to realize that the intense aroma of broiled electronics that had been centered in my office has now permeated my entire floor and is working it’s way to other ones.  People are apparently complaining to circulation.  My boss, Roger, was out at lunch, so now the library staff is calling me to see if everything is ok.  I try to assure them that yes it’s ok and that no they don’t need to call any facilities people.  I watch through the door as a couple of students pack their books up to presumably move to a lower emissions area. 

Time to find out went wrong and how bad it is.  I take the enclosure apart and pull out the drives.  They’re on the floor when Roger walks in.  “ANDY, what’s going on in here?” <he sees the drives> “THAT’S $6000 of BRAND NEW GEAR, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”.  “Roger, can you give me a little while?  I don’t really know.”  He’s nice and leaves me alone for a bit.  I should probably go outside, because frankly I’m feeling dizzy now, but instead I investigate the drives.  A touch of context here, in this tower enclosure the drives all sit on one another in a neat stack.  My neat stack now had one with it’s control board in a state best described as charred, complete with ashy black residue and a nice array of melted components.  Clearly this was the source of the fire.  The unit just above this one might have worked, but it was sticky and gooey just outside where the platters should be.  I wasn’t hopeful.   

Looking back more closely at the strike-anywhere drive, I can spot the problem.  It seems somehow the rail mounting screw I used was too long and managed to short something so important that it actually started a fire.  It’s sort of funny, because when you’re doing computer shit, after having to deal with so many brutal-to-debug intermittent problems, it’s almost kind of satisfying to have a problem so easy to spot like this.  But anyway, look at that, Roger’s back and I get to explain what happened.  I was a good boy and took the blame.  He decided to be a good boy as well and announced that the problem wasn’t that I used the wrong screw (which of course, I had), but that the drive was poorly designed and he was fighting mad to kick some ass with this hardware vendor.  So I got angry with him (augmented a bit I’m sure by my nice plastic fume carcinogen high) and we psyched him up to “show them a piece of his mind”. 

Bafflingly the vendor did take the blame and replaced both drives.  And I got invited to Roger’s house for dinner.  We played ping pong in his garage.  It was fun. 

Yes, time for a post

So I've been thinking to myself that I'm really long overdue for a post. Theoretically I'm going to strive for smaller posts more often. I guess we'll see what happens. Anyway, I'm going to start with some links that somehow connect to me:

1.
http://www.bravia-advert.com/commercial/braviaextcommhigh.html

So not only is the video a brilliantly heartfelt view of SF, the backing track is simply fantastic. I have to learn more about who conceived of this.

2.
http://www.lizhickok.com/assets/portfolio/pages/01city.html

San Francisco rendered in Jello. Click around, the other picks are excellent. There's even a video of a shaking jello city - earthquake?

3.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/international/asia/14burma.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fInternational%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fMyanmar

Only after travelling in Myanmar can you realize how strange, but not strange this is.

(Reprinted below because the NYT charges for older articles)
Looking for the Burmese Junta? Sorry, It's Gone Into Hiding
By SETH MYDANS
Published: November 14, 2005
BANGKOK, Nov. 13 - At precisely 6:37 a.m. last Sunday, according to one account - with a shout of "Let's go!" - a convoy of trucks began a huge, expensive and baffling transfer of the government of Myanmar from the capital to a secret mountain compound 200 miles to the north.

Diplomats and foreign analysts were left groping a week later for an explanation of the unannounced move. In a country as secretive and eccentric as Myanmar, it is a full-time job to try to tease the truth from the swirl of rumors and guesswork, relying on few facts and many theories. The leading theories now have to do with astrological predictions and fears of invasion by the United States. The relocation, which the government announced to reporters and foreign diplomats a day after it began, but not yet to the public through the state-controlled media, had been rumored for years.

A Burmese truck convoy hauling office furniture last week to the mysterious mountain hideaway.
But according to reports from the capital, Yangon, officials and civil servants were given only a day or two to pack and say goodbye to their families.

When they arrived at the new site, called Pyinmanaa, it was still under construction, and there were shortages of water, telephone lines and even sleeping quarters and food, according to family members quoted by news agencies and exile groups that monitor Myanmar.

Foreign diplomats said they were told that if they had urgent business with the relocated government, they could send a fax but that no number was yet available.

According to diplomats and other unofficial sources inside Myanmar, the vast, fortified compound is to contain military headquarters, government ministries, huge meeting halls, residences, hotels, a hospital, an airport, underground bunkers and, not surprisingly in this golf-mad region, a golf course.

The minister of information, U Kyaw Hsan, told reporters in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, that the transfer of the government had begun with 9 of the 32 ministries. He gave no date for completing the move.

The military junta that runs the former Burma offered little explanation for its mystery move. "Due to changed circumstances, where Myanmar is trying to develop a modern nation, a more centrally located government seat has become a necessity," it said in a statement.

That left plenty of room for theories, and it was difficult to find one that seemed rational. Astrology seemed to make as much sense as anything.

Myanmar is a deeply superstitious nation that scheduled its ceremony marking independence from the British to follow astrological dictates, at exactly 4:20 a.m. on Jan. 4, 1948.

The 6:37 a.m. departure was reported by U Aung Zaw, the editor of Irrawaddy Magazine, an émigré publication based in neighboring Thailand with a network of contacts inside Myanmar. He said this strangely precise departure time might well have been dictated by astrologers.

Astrological timing may also have been behind the abruptness of the move to a site that was not yet complete.

One theory is that the move was prompted by astrologers who several years ago warned the ruling generals that the dilapidated capital on the Bay of Bengal would become a dangerous place for them.

Seen from their perspective, the notion of an American invasion might not seem far-fetched. They are a ruling clique of soldiers whose background is jungle warfare and who know little of the outside world.

For years they have been squeezed by economic sanctions and battered by relentless criticism from the West over their abuses of human rights, and they have responded by pulling further into their shells.

In January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice included Myanmar in a list of "outposts of tyranny," along with North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe and Belarus.

Officials in Myanmar sometimes offer visitors a list of their own: Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq - places where the United States has sent armed forces.

Not long ago, according to one story making the rounds in Myanmar, a military officer was asked the purpose of obligatory civil defense training for civilian men. "You are the holding action against the Americans until the Chinese come to our aid," the officer said, according to David I. Steinberg, a professor at Georgetown University who is a leading expert on Myanmar.

Mr. Steinberg said rumors of an American "rescue" circulate among opponents of the government - a current of wishful thinking that is as extravagant as the fears of the ruling generals.

"The joke going around is, 'After diamonds, gold,' " he said. In the Burmese language, "sein" - as in Saddam Hussein - means diamonds. "Shwe" - as in Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of the military junta - means gold.

There was no way to know whether there was a connection earlier this month when authorities in the capital reopened a road that passes by the entrance to the United States Embassy.

Barbed wire and concrete security barriers were removed for the first time since they were put in place after the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Obviously, we are reviewing our security arrangements," an unidentified United States Embassy official told Reuters. "We felt a lot safer with them in place."

For now, there appear to be no schools and little housing for families at Pyinmanaa. The move is likely to separate civil servants from their families, as well as from the second jobs that many found necessary to make ends meet in the country's minimal economy.

The junta's physical move into a fortified retreat reflects what many experts on Myanmar say is a bunker mentality in the face of what it may see as a bewildering and antagonistic world.

"I keep hearing the same thing all the time," Mr. Steinberg said of the junta. "Look, we don't need you guys. We can go it alone. We've done it before, and so what's new."

Transit

I’ve been pondering mass transit here and how it compares to other places I’ve been. The NYC subway certainly has more character than any other system I’ve seen. In addition, it’s cheap, vast, and comprehensive and of course it runs all night. I especially love the announcements that periodically come over the speakers alerting riders to upcoming stops or train changes, -they all get delivered in the dialect that people all over the world think of as the New York City accent. Subways in other places have the disembodied voices of professional voice talent that evoke a sense of generic friendlyness. The only big complaint I have with the NYC subway is the lack of signs telling you when the next train is coming.

Now that we’re on the subject of subways it gives me an opportunity connect this back to the trip, a topic surely more interesting then my thoughts on how NYC charges passengers unfairly (the other idea that’s in my head). Of the places I’ve been to on this trip, who has the best mass transit? Best is so vauge, let’s invent some categories shall we:
• Best overall subway system – Seoul. It’s gigantic with something like 15 lines, it’s hard to not be within 5 minute walk of a station. It’s also cheap and very well marked in Korean, English, and Chinese. On top of that you’ve got the super friendly Soeulites(?) who mostly speak English and are comically eager to help confused tourists.
• Best reason why Tokyo’s subway isn’t the best – for me it comes down to the multiple companies. For some reason the tokyo subway is operated by multiple companies that do not let you transfer for free. This sucks bigtime, as it takes forever to figure out that this is even going on. On top of that, whoever designed the signs needs to be beaten with a stick. They seem to follow the “put a sign if it’s blindingly obvious, leave it unmarked if it’s potentially confusing” school of thought. Ugh. Though I could cause a Japanese head to explode ala Scanners just by saying this: Japan could learn something from Korea.
• Best train for straightup coolness– Japan wants this one so badly, but they lose. The coolest train is surely Shanghai’s maglev train which floats above its track and goes 270mph alhough it’s really a gimmick with two stops.
• Best new transit system provided you don’t want to go to that place where you probably need to end up going – Surely this is the relatively new (5 years?) skytrain system in Bangkok. It’s clean and nice and easy to navigate. Unfortunately it doesn’t go to the Grand Palace/Khao San Road area, which try as you might, you cannot avoid needing to go to these places.
• Best display of awful subway manners – Beijing. You know that “let them get out first thing” they do everywhere else? Well they don’t do that here. Welcome to chaos. It’s quite a thrill to be body checked out of the way by Grandma as she tries to enter the train before you. The total contrast is Tokyo where they form 2 perfect lines in front of every door and though it may be quite busy, it’s the picture of order.
• Best bus system if you only consider cost and how cool 1950-60’s busses really are – Yangon. Ride all day for $.02. And if you’re on it’s a party. Everyone on the bus will be talking about you anjd looking at you, so you might as well try to talk with them! Great place to use the “I can’t understand what you’re saying, so I just repeat back what you just told me” trick. No matter how badly you butcher it, you’ve just said something in Burmese! Everyone will laugh.
• Best bus system if by best you mean terrifyingly dangerous and full of livestock – anything in Laos not geared to tourists.
• Best train ride for oppulance – The special express train from Fukoka to Nagasaki – big black leather seats, hardwood floors, recessed lighting, private compartments for cell phone use. And this is in coach class.

Howdy

Well it’s been some time since I’ve posted, but I haven’t disappeared off the earth, indeed if I look down I can say, “Wow, there’s earth, just below me”. Yes, it’s a thrilling life I lead.

So I got back to the US and got to spend a couple days seeing friends in LA, before spending a couple weeks in San Francisco. I’ve been in New York ever since visiting friends and family. Next week I’ll be in Boston, then back in NY, then home to SF. As promissed, I will be back home by Halloween.

If I thought anjyone would get the joke I’d come as a “generic backpacker” – aussie accent, natch (though I may mix thiings up by periodically claim kiwi); dirty tshirt, dirty pants with way to many pockets and zip off shorts, flipflops. Then I’ll restrict my conversation to the quality of the local beer and how superior I feel to the following people:
1. People who are so soft and wimpy that they have to carry a change of clothing or worse, more than one.
2. Anyone who attempts to tell me about some cool thing they’ve seen along the way – of course it’s not nearly as cool as what I just saw in Nepal, Peru, or Cambodia.
3. Any fellow tourist who suggests that maybe the act of travel alone doesn’t confirm one as a higher order of human.
Or something. Shit, I even get the joke and it’s a lot more sad than funny. Yeah. Clearly more brainstorming needs to happen.

Since I’ve been here on the East Coast, I’ve been trying to do the mental excerise where instead of thinking of myself as unemployed, I think of myself as having a job and that job is finding a job. To that end I’ve been making progress, my resume feels to be in very good shape and I feel like I’ve assembled a pretty good plan of attack. Of course, as jobs go, this has ups and downs: the freedom and hours are great, but the pay (rather, the lack thereof) sucks and its easy to let yourself get directionless. So I guess the next steps are to start attacking on that plan. Yar. Now is the time to harness my inner Hun.

It’s been fun to be in New York. Many of the people I love most in the world live here, so it’s been so wonderful to spend time with them. I got a chance to walk a lot in Queens (around Jackson Heights and Astoria). These are veryintriguing places to me, I feel like I can walk a small number of blocks and make it to neighborhoods that feel pretty close to other countries. And it’s all so different from Asia, where homogeneity reigns, but here the next group is just a short walk away and all the pedestrians are a hugely diverse mix. To my eyes, this is the strength of America. And tt’s like travelling on the cheap and easy. This is so cool. I must do more spelunking in Queens.

Los Angeles

Well, I'm back here in the USA. I head to San Francisco on Saturday, but I'll spend a couple days here hanging out with Vikki and maybe Kestrin.

I'm almost delusional from the compounded lack of sleep, but I'll be ok tomorrow. The only signs of reverse culture shock have been dealing with the convenience store and restaurant guys where I found myself a bit surprised when they both addressed me in flawless English. And I had mexican food. And it was good. And I'lll be having it again soon.

Fish market

I haven't really been updating much from Japan as you've noticed, this due to internet being expensive (like basically everything in Japan) and me moving around at a much greater pace.  With my trip ending soon I've been much less interested in online stuff.  With that said, onto today's report.

This morning, I managed to get up at 4:30am to make in to Tokyo's big fish market in time for the action.  Wow, this was most assuredly worth it.  It's the biggest fish market in the world and vastly larger than anything similar that I've ever seen (thinking back to a high school trip to the South Street Seaport).

The highlight was being there in time to see the tuna auctions.  Imagine a massive warehouse filled with frozen tuna as big as or bigger than people.  Then add hordes of Japanese fishermen-types poking at the fish with big sharp hooks to test for quality.  Then give the floor and eerie fog-of-death like aspect as the fish slowly thaw.  Then add little motorized vehicles of all types whizzing about at frightening speeds while Diana and I in our sleepy dazes try not to get hit by any of them.  And finally if all that wasn't enough chaos (and truly this is all happening in very confined spaces), there's actually an auction going on.  So you've got people screaming and dancing (yes, they did appear to be dancing) and a few people in the center on raised platforms frantically ringing bells in a pseudo conductor like fashion.  Whoa.

Quick quiz: how do you cut up frozen tuna into smaller pieces?  If you were thinking bandsaw, then you win the prize.  Also these long sharp tools that one can only describe as swords (and frankly the guys swinging these things basically looked like samurai anyway, so perhaps they were).  The whole cutting and gutting process seemed to be something of a marriage between wood shop and the kitchen.

Besides the tuna, you could find pretty much any other seafood you could think of.  Who knew a freshly killed eel could bleed that much.  Wow, I can't believe how large that octopus is!  Surely that man isn't going to reach into that huge tank of live prawn with his bare hands (he did).  Yeah, that's pretty much the tenor of the place.

So after all that, what do you do?  Eat sashimi of course!  And it really does taste different when its only been on land for a few hours.

Tonight I'm off to an island south of Tokyo bay, then back to Tokyo, and then off to home.

fish?

I had raw fish for the first time today.  Can you believe it, I made it 3 days before I gave in?  Well, I hunted around for some place someone told me to go, a Noah's ark-like rain started and I ran to the nearest restaurant.  The waitress giggled a lot when I walked in looking like a wet dog.  Japanese women love to giggle, as near as I can tell this isn't age dependent.  But, really this doesn't phase me.  I mean sure perhaps me being drenched is weird, but the entire restaurant looking at me or the waitress triple confirming that I'm at party of 1, yes that's right 1, no longer makes an entry on the andy-should-be-embarrassed scale.  Fuck it, I can transcend the lot of you.

Ok, back to our culinary adventure.  So I get the menu, quel surprise, it's in Japanese.  No pictures of food.  No plastic replicas of food (said plastic food models are super ultra popular in Japan).  Just me and the giggling waitress (shit lady, get over it.  What do I have food on my face or something?  Oh god, do I have food on my face?  I go to the bathroom, other than the shave I needed say 2 days ago, no obvious reason for this extended club mix version of the giggles. Ok back to the table.) .  Anyway, time to order.  As it turns out I know the Japanese words for most common sushi fishes.  I didn't even remember this at the time, but they started to spill out of my mouth and she got so excited that the giggles returned and the she waved another waitress over to tag in and take over.  Still, I was seemingly doing ok, Japanese nicely doesn't have tones, so I had a fighting shot of being understood.  She kept writing, I kept spouting.  At some point I attempted to discern how much money I was about to spend.  HA!  Silly andy.  It's Japan, just guess how much it could possibly be at most and then double it!  Whee! 

Anyway, the food came and it was all quite wonderful (fresh wasabi no less, not that pasty green shit), but I feel compelled to soliloquy about the mackerel.  This fish, a perennial favorite was so unbelievably fresh and super mega delightful I had to order more.  3 times.  Wow.  I'd never had anything like this and even the telltale lemon was missing.  The sushi chef came over and also commented how good it was that day (ok in reality I have no idea what he said, but he did come over point at the mackerel and talk and smile for a couple minute while he periodically bowed and said saba alot, so if I were force to write the subtitles, I'd have him  say "what an expert palate you have, yes indeed the mackerel is fresh today and very very good. Further I'd like to comment that all the waitresses are in love with you and that the manager would like you to know that dinner is on him and perhaps he could throw in some ice cream".  Hmm, it's possible that I've rendered an optimistic translation).

[Momentary aside, Japanese keyboards are driving me insane.  The letters are all qwerty, but everything else is in the wrong spot.  Notably I have to find shift-7 to get an apostrophe.  Ok, I dunno when I just told you that.][

Anyway, I just got to Hiroshima today.  Tomorrow I'll do all the sites and get to see what nuclear weapons do to civilians.  Can't wait.  :-(  Actually, i've already been to Nagasaki, but I'm told the cities take a really different tact in how they handle it, so its worth seeing both. 

Tuesday I'm off to Tokyo to meet Diana, who's flying in from Bangkok.  This gives me another chance to ride the amazing Japanese rail network.  The long distance trains go ridiculously fast and feel akin to business class airplane accommodation (big leather seats, hardwood floors, smooth comfy ride). 

Cheers.

31

First a little bit of logistics.  I'm in Busan, Korea's second largest city and it's my last day here.  I spent my morning at the Lotte department store which really wasn't very exciting, but I managed to eat breakfast for free with all of the free samples at the supermarket.  These big stores are everywhere, so I felt compelled to go look around in one.  The sheer number of employees working on the floor was pretty impressive.  It looked to be about 20:1 ration of them to customers during my stroll about.  After that I meandered over to the Woo Jang Chun memorial site.  All I'm sure you all remember from reading the name, Woo invented the seedless watermelon.  Yes, I am sick of normal museums and temples.  After internetting I'm off to go see Asia's biggest bathhouse.  I leave for Japan tomorrow morning.

Happy birthday to me (the 17th; remember I'm 13-16 hours ahead of you), so that's the theme of the post.

I'm feeling a little reflective this afternoon, so I suppose I'll just roll with that.  Wow, quite a year the number thirty was, it's pretty hard for me not to view it as transitional.  I'm proud of myself that I actually summoned up the guts to do it.  And here I am feeling like the seasoned traveler after months and months on the road.  In these last couple weeks I've been thinking about home more and I what things will be like when I return (more on this later).

• I've spent more time alone this year than I ever have before.  I'm certainly better at occupying myself and have found I can actually enjoy or prefer it at times.  Still, I'm still a very social animal and if someone's around it is most likely that I'll try to engage them.  Spending lots of time alone gives you the opportunity to plan and reflect, but also reinforces the reality that you can't think your way around emotions.
• Was is worth it?  The trip I mean.  This is so clearly a yes for me.  I've gotten to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but kept putting off.  Also, it's given me a chance to leave my job where I think I had gotten into a rut.  And I'm left feeling excited about all the life and career possibilities that await me when I return home.
• Has it changed me?  Well, undoubtedly yes, but I suspect it'll only be in fairly small ways.  I'm expecting a bit of reverse culture shock when I get home, but I hope to fit back into the flow of things pretty quickly.  Part of me is hoping for the comforts associated with going back to old routines, but the rest of me wants new routines.
• Traveling solo is the way to go.  I loved getting travel with Ben, Scott, Jaclyn, Joe, and Maricar - all friends from home, all with me for a short time, all fun to travel with.  In the end, though, I've come to relish the feeling of freedom that comes with solo travel.  No job, no relationship, no timelines.  Not aimlessness at all (not for me at least), but adventure and freedom.  I heartily recommend it to everyone.  You get past the scariness of it in only a couple days.  And fear of the unknown is real, but shouldn't stop you as ultimately the unknown is the adventure part.  Besides, you meet people along the way, so you're often not alone at all, but you get to control how much of that you want.
• Looking for a book on travel to read, get this one: The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton   A friend gave this to me years ago and I never read it until this trip.  I've read and traded/given away many books and this is the only one I'm eager to re-acquire at home.  I did give my copy to a very good home, though.
• Have you been wondering about the international perceptions of the US foray into Iraq?  Well, I've probably had the conversation with a couple hundred people while traveling.  Backpacker types in general are likely to be more left that US average (which is itself far to the right of the rest of the developed world).  Still I've had this same conversation with many locals as well.  I met two people who offered support for the war 1) a Kurd from Iran who thought it was a great thing for his people, but then proceeded to describe it as part of the US's Global War on Islam which he didn't like.  2) a British guy who gave it tepid support.  It's also been interesting to me that while I didn't support the war either, my reasons are almost always different than the ones I hear stated.  Further, most people can't offer even a token defense of their view if I start to challenge them.  Further still, most people think that Michael Moore represents a sober policy discussion.  I love talking politics, but I much less likely to really engage unless I sense that you're going to give me a thoughtful viewpoint.

And finally:

I decided to end my trip after Japan.  I've been thinking about this for a couple weeks and I've concluded that it's time.  And I think Japan will make an excellent coda to a long trip.  My itinerary (subject to change) has me flying to the US (west coast) sometime in the early second week of September.  Then I'm off to the east coast for 2-4 weeks before the end of the month.  I'll post more details when I have them.

Leaving Deagu

I've spent the last day in Deagu, Korea's third largest city.  My intention for being here was to trek over to Haeinsa, home to an entire 2000+ volume Buddhist corpus carved by hand onto wood blocks for easy reproduction.  Somehow the idea 0f a 13th century multibuilding mass-storage solution appealed so much I had to be there.  I guess even in historical things, I'm a geek.  I'm not sure if the site itself was worth the effort to get there, but it was pretty cool.  Too bad none of the monks I tried to talk could speak English (which seemed weird seeing how I'm in Korea).

Last night I got sent this link: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/08/09/game.death.reut/

I read it sitting in an internet cafe (btw - Taegu is the old transliteration for Daegu).  Looking around I didn't see anyone in imminent danger of dying.  In general Korean cyber cafes are pretty empty and there aren't hordes of hard core gamers packing the place.  I assume this is because they have computers and big fat net connections at home.  This again contrasts dramatically with Chinese cyber cafes where I often think I'm the only one there who's seen the sun that week and who's system isn't running solely on nicotine and caffeine.

So I did indeed take that DMZ tour and it was really quite cool.  The morning started with us meeting at a US army camp in Seoul.  We pile onto tour buses and I realize that I'm now on one of those big tour buses with the people that like to take tours on big tour buses.  Clearly when people make fun of big fat stupid American tourists, these are the people they're referring to.  It's amazing how many of the questions asked reveal a prejudice on the part of the asker that the Korean soldiers are inherently inferior to the American ones or that Korean people are kind of stupid and/or helpless in the first place.  Of course it's the only way to see this stuff, so I grin and bear it.   

As the bus leaves from Seoul I make friends with the American helicopter pilot behind me and he starts running his own tour, by pointing out all of these defensive features of the city that you'd never notice (like billboards that aren't really billboards so much as tank barricades, or helicopter pads all over the city for civilian evacuation, etc.).  We're still in the city when these things become viewable to the naked eye with guard towers and razor wire along the highway.  The further north we go, the more we see.

What makes this tour more interesting than others is that instead of stopping at the DMZ line (2k south of the actual border), it goes up the the actual line where this special area for meetings exists (the JSA in military lingo).  We stop pretty far south, get searched, and then see this briefing presentation on the current situation.  Then we switch buses and head up to the JSA.  The JSA is basically a bunch of buildings from each side and a bunch of guards from each side all right next to each other.

We got to go into the meeting room where the armistice talks were held.  This building straddles the line, half in and half out of SK.  So, I've now technically been in North Korea (maybe 6 feet over the border).  As tempting as it sounded, I opted not to defect; though that would have given me an opportunity to hire Kim Jong Il's hairdresser.  All silliness aside, it was really quite macabre to watch armed troops staring at the border and to see North Koreans staring back.  Or to watch some guy on their side with a big ass camera take pictures of all the tourists including me.  And the South Koreans soldiers in this part wear big black helmets, dark aviator-like sunglasses, and stand in this taekwondo stance with the hands held at their sides in recoiled fists.  Freaky.  Apparently this is supposed to be intimidating.  It worked on me.

After this we got a chance to look at several different views over the border.  There's a really nice looking town just on the NK side, but it's unoccupied and exists only as propaganda.  Apparently it used to broadcast announcements at deafening volume all night long until last year when they agreed to stop.  I was a little disappointed.  I wanted to hear yankee go home in Korean. 

All in all a fun time.

Thoughts on Korea

I'm not exactly sure where this post is going, so I'll just see where it ends up.

Oh and for the record there should be more Laos pictures, but the source CD has crapped out on me.  When I'm home and have more tools and time, I'll see what I can rescue. 

*) Koreans seem to be health drink crazy, so when I go into the quik-e-mart to buy a drink I'm always tempted to buy one.  I think I'm starting to realize that it's not so much that these are really health drinks, but your standard sugar-based vaguely fruity thing with marketing that makes healthy claims.  Of course it's all hard to tell, since I can't read Korean, so I can generally read about %5 of the label (at least the name is usually in latin characters).  My current favorite is called DBH 2% which promises to drench your body and health, with what it's not at all clear.  The runner up would have to be Amino Up which has the straightforward goal of getting your aminos up, as we all know it's a terribly sorry state when your aminos are down.

*) Almost all the cars you see on the roads are Korean made, the only exception being a very small number of luxury German cars.  Oh and I've once seen a Dodge Caravan.

*) Kimchi is the core of the Korean diet.  No really, it is.  And any fermented item augmented with chilis, ginger, and garlic is kimchi; the cabbage variety is merely the most popular.  If you don't like kimchi don't come to Korea.  I've had only one meal in the 6 days I've been here that hasn't had at least 1 kind of kimchi and that was at the bus station.  I just came back from 2 days in Seoraksan National Park, where I did a two day hike up into the mountains.  There are some basic huts there where you can stay and a woman who sells instant noodles.  Even in this sort of place, the noodles came with 2 different kinds of kimchi.  So far I think I like the turnip kimchi the best.

*) Last night I flipped around on the TV and discovered that Korean TV has a wide range of English language programming.  Ok, not thrilling to you, but I also found a channel that televises video games as if they were sports.  So last night I watched a Starcraft match with live commentary.  The Protoss player won.

*) Public bathrooms in Korea are remarkably clean.  And they all have toilet paper.  How nice is that?  But, this isn't about that or about the bathroom I was in today that had fishtanks above the urinals to amuse the pissers, this is about the soap shaft.  Remember soap on a rope?  This is soap on a shaft.  Perhaps they had some problem with people stealing the bar of soap so they've shifted to this model where it's mounted on a pole next to the sink.  I'm not sure, but either way in order to use the soap you have to sort of...ummm...manipulate the soap until a thick enough lather has been built up.  Korean men can do this without giggling. 

*) My newest favorite snack item can be bought any convenience store here.  It's a triangular, hockey puck sized thing (if you can picture a hockey puck with a triangle shape) with seaweed on the outside and rice on the inside.  Along with the rice will be some sort of topping like spicy pork, sliced squid, or this weird egg salad.  The coolest part is the packaging which has this very clever design that keeps the seaweed from touching the rice until the moment you open it.  It's genius and most tasty.  All this for $.70.  2 is enough for a meal, 3 if you're starved.

*) Korea is so much more expensive that China it's shocking.  My daily budget has doubled.  When hiking the mountain I got into a conversation about how these mountain huts get supplied.  I was sure they had teams of hikers carrying cartons of stuff up and down.  My trekking friend didn't buy it, he figured it had to be helicopters.  I said that would have to be too expensive, after all in China they have teams of people going up and down all day for these kind of places.  A couple hours later, the unmistakable sound of helicopters started coming from the sky.  Labor ain't so cheap here.

*) Signs telling you to do or not do things have the stylized Sanrio-esqe characters on them.  "Don't jump off the cliff" commands the little bunny.  "Museum is now closed" says the wacky astronaut frog.  "This is the police station" informs this little cartoon cop.  I think I'm not a favor of cartoons icons for the police.