Religious Extremism in the Philippines

Philippines Handbook by Carl Parkes

Great post today by Torn and Frayed in Manila, about the rise of religious extremism in the Philippines, and the near complete failure of the government to take action against the religious cults which infect the country.

Philippine Religious Cults: No End in Sight

Today’s Inquirer profile of Jesus Christ Followers, a small but apparently violent cult, brings some of the wackier fringes of Philippine religious life into focus. I’d love to attend the forthcoming court hearing where six children aged 11 to 19 intend to show their “brilliance” by defending themselves. They are in custody following a pitched battle with police, who had been asked by the parents of a 16-year-old to rescue their daughter from the cult.

Wielding steel pipes, sticks, rocks and human excrement wrapped in plastic, JCF members fought policemen on Jan. 28, leaving three officers injured. Twenty-two JCF members, many of whom suffered injuries, were arrested.

I think we are going to see more and more stories like this. The declining influence of the Catholic Church, the poverty of the official education system, the absence of balikbayan parents, a corrupt political process, and a lack of moral leadership--in short, the collapsing centre of Philippine life--leave acres of space for quacks and charlatans like Emilinda Tionco, founder of Jesus Christ Followers, to tout their wares to gullible people with nothing much to lose.

The big daddy of recent cult leaders is of course Ruben Ecleo. Even a passing familiarity with his story is enough to demonstrate that the Philippines is no ordinary country. Bald, gun toting, shabu taking, harem having, and, it appears, wife murdering Ecleo was headline news in 2002. In January of that year, his wife was found inside a garbage bag in a ravine near Cebu. An autopsy showed that she had been strangled.

On the run, Ecleo holed up in Dingat, his private island off Surigao, with members of his cult. Five months later he was arrested after a Waco-like invasion left 20 cult members dead.

At the height of the standoff, a member of Ecleo's cult did some tidying up in Cebu and massacred Ecleo’s dead wife’s parents and two other members of the family. The assassin was then shot dead by the police (making it difficult to establish Ecleo's role in the multiple homicide, if any).

Astonishingly, despite the serious of the crimes of which he was accused, Ecleo was granted bail in March last year. More deaths followed. In October, one of the main prosecution lawyers in his trial was murdered. In December, a member of Ecleo’s cult was charged with her murder. More than two years after the murder of Ecleo’s wife, I can see no evidence of the case against him proceeding.

Ecleo’s dark tale is written in blood, by an author heavily influenced by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the film Apocalypse Now. The fact that the so-called strong republic is unable to protect its citizens from such a fantastic Kurtz-like figure and his murderous followers is testament to the Philippine state's illusory qualities; despite the president's tough statements, it appears incapable of performing even the most basic functions.

Torn and Frayed in Manila

Sweet Deal to Bangkok

Sweet Deal to Bangkok

A tour operator has just posted some fairly decent prices to Bangkok from LAX and other American cities, but be careful about hotels offered at the bottom end of the scale. I mean, did anyone bother to have a look at the Manhattan or the Ambassador? If you intend to spend your week hanging out at the infamous Nana Entertainment Plaza, then these hotels might be acceptable, but otherwise spend something extra and move up a few notches.

Bargains to Bangkok

Thais Help Thais

Thai Beauty Queen Helps Others

This is just a wonderful story, about a beauty queen in Thailand who runs a foundation to help other Thais, and has just made a substantial contribution to those devastasted by the tsunami.

Porntip: Wants to help long term

Former Miss Universe Porntip Narkhirunkanok will contribute 20 million baht from her Angels Wings Foundation International to the tsunami victims in the six Andaman coastal provinces.

The donations will go towards the construction of 50 new homes for tsunami-hit families, building new boats, schools, and orphanages for children who lost their parents in the Dec 26 tragedy.

Ms Porntip donated the first six million baht through the Royal Thai Police office yesterday for the house construction project that would be carried out by the border patrol police.

In her special interview with the Bangkok Post, Ms Porntip described the news about the killer waves as a bad dream she had never expected. "I sat glued to the television for information. My heart sank and I cried helplessly for the dead victims and those who lost their loved ones. I thought about the lives stolen, children left behind and the families torn apart," said Ms Porntip.

Since then, she had been thinking of ways to contribute to the victims for the long-term to make the greatest positive impact on their shattered lives.

Building shelters was the first thing that came to mind, as it was the most urgent and basic need of victims.

The next thing she thought of was giving them boats to get people's livelihoods in fishing communities back on track. Tomorrow , she will travel with her mother to Phuket and tambon Khao Lak in Phangnga's Takua Pa District to see what happened for herself and to determine what she can do to help the people.

She would also bring with her some food and playground equipment she bought from Bangkok for children there. "I want to give them a playground because I want something to represent my long-term support for them. It's my commitment to bring them support, joy and hope," said Ms Porntip.

Bangkok Post Link

Anarchy: Philippines

Sassy Raids the Frig

I really love the Philippines. Thousands of islands and the self-proclaimed "Wonder of Asia." They deserve the title. Superb diving, deserted pure white sand beaches, and almost limitless wonders of northern Palawan -- this is a tropical paradise, the world's friendliest people, all smiles.

But something has gone wrong.

At 5.00 a.m., my husband woke me up. Our water meter had been stolen. It had been forcibly wrenched from the main water line. That was why there was no water. Instead of flowing from the main line onto the pipe leading to the house, the water was flowing freely out on the street. My husband cut about a foot off our garden hose and connected the main line to the pipe leading to the house--a temporary solution until he could go to the subdivision developer’s office, report the theft and have a new water meter installed.

Manila News: Somebody Stole my Water Meter

Island of Bali by Covarrubias

The Wonders of Bali

Nick in Seminyak, at Bali Blog, has discovered the seminal work of mid 20th century writings and histography of Bali, and is amazed by the works and emotions of what is certainly the most curious intersection of Mexican folklore and segue into Balinese culture. Island of Bali by Miguel Covarrubias remains the great introduction to Balinese culture, and Nick will love this paean to the world's most exotic and sophisticated island.

There are many books written about Bali ranging from guidebooks, to those about home decorations and traditional dress and customs, but few stand as compelling as Island Of Bali by Miguel Covarrubias. First published in 1937, and now reprinted by Periplus in Singapore, Island of Bali provides a fascinating insight for visitors to Bali.

Read the Post

Hemlock Hong Kong on Asia

Bauhaus Ad for Clothing

Hemlock is a Hong Kong blogger known and revered for his British wit and always entertaining spin on everything having to do with Asia, and any Asiaphobe with sense reads his weekly update. Do Bookmark his site.

The Filipino elves arrive while I am still in the shower, eager to transform my corner of Perpetual Opulence mansions from mild post-weekend disarray to sparkling wholesome order. After I dress and emerge, I see they have brought two mysterious companions with them. One is the Virgin Mary who glows in the dark and whose eyes flash when she is plugged in. She has been here before. The other is a mutant, silken-haired, alien life form, some eight inches tall, from the planet Zarg. It sits in the kitchen, eyeing me malevolently while I eat my banana and yoghurt and check my email.

I am bombarded with complaints from expat academics past and present, incensed at my callous treatment of their fallen comrades. Apparently, the insanity they exhibit in their writings is a result of their torment at the hands of bosses and colleagues, not the cause. This puts a new slant on this Uriel character’s 93-chapter output. Had he written two more, he would have matched Martin Luther – whose revolt against authority was considered the act of a madman, and whose persecution by the evil Catholics led to excommunication. And how did Luther publish his 95 theses?

By nailing them to the door in the church in… Wittenberg. Cosmic or what? Turning to the newspaper, I read that George W Bush admitted using marijuana in conversations taped by a man called Wead. Or did he admit to using weed in conversations taped by a man called Marijuana? It is too early in the morning.

Hemlock on Asia

WorldHum Gets Emotional

WorldHum Changes Everything

I don't really know the folks at WorldHum, but have long admired their allegiance to superior travel writing and their quest to promote great travel websites, including the blogs of my friends such as Rolf Potts, Jen Leo, Nick at Bali Blog, and others supported by the efforts of Boots N All. WorldHum consistently finds the freshest travel news and should be included in your RSS Bloglines subscription, but if not, Jim Benning has just posted a message about hope and grief, sadness and remembrance.

R.I.P. ULI DERICKSON

It’s not often that a newspaper’s obituaries page takes notice of the death of a flight attendant, but Uli Derickson had one extraordinary journey aboard a TWA flight that sealed her place in history. In 1985, Derickson was among the crew flying from Athens to Rome on Flight 847 when two Lebanese men hijacked the plane, leading all on board on a terror-filled journey across the Middle East.

Through it all, Derickson worked to protect the passengers, shouting “Enough” until the hijackers stopped beating one man, and finding ways to protect the identity of Jewish passengers. Astonishingly, according to Jon Thurber’s excellent obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Derickson was targeted for her efforts long after the hijacking. “She returned to her New Jersey home with her husband, Russell, a retired TWA pilot, and her son, Matthew,” the article states.

“But unfounded reports, including some in the mainstream news media, that she had given the hijackers names of Jewish passengers on the flight brought threats from extremist groups. When the truth about her efforts to shield Jewish passengers was verified, she received threats from others. The family relocated to Arizona.”

In the late-1980s, Lindsay Wagner played Derickson in a TV movie about the ordeal, "The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story." Derickson had been fighting cancer. She died last Friday at the age of 60.

Jim Benning at WorldHum Remembers

Big Laughs in China

Chinese Consulate Website

OK, let's say you are China and want to put up a website to tell the world about your country and provide visa services. But you're short on budget, and can't afford to hire a native English speaker to look at your site. Hey! How many mistakes can you spot?

China Website

Henry Blodget Goes to China

China the Future?

Henry Blodget, former stock market guy (Yes, I have a Series 7, thank you Dean Witter), now writes for Slate, and his ongoing series about China is just about the best writing you will find in cyberworld.

Every paragraph starts with a bang. Bored? Just move on.

This man can write.

Fear and Loathing at the Chinese Consulate
By Henry Blodget
Feb. 24, 2005

This was administrative week—a welcome relief, given the bruising I took last week for suggesting that the migration of low-end manufacturing jobs to China was not only inevitable, but, in many ways, good. This week I studied quietly, bought my plane tickets, and applied for a visa.

Even these activities, it turned out, led to an embarrassing confrontation with my ignorance. First, I wasn't sure whether I even needed a visa—no country I've visited in the last decade has required one. (I do.) Second, I wasn't sure what else I'd need. Slate readers have taught me that China is essentially two countries, one First World, one Third World, the equivalent of Frankfurt plopped into Guatemala. This observation, combined with a recent New York Times article about an epidemic of "snail fever" (aka schistosomiasis) made me wonder whether I had to get shots.

Then there was the transportation question. I had this romantic idea that I'd take the train from Shanghai to Beijing—me and my business suit in a car full of farmers and chickens. Then, I learned from the Internet that the trip would take some 13 hours, too long for my cover-China-in-two-weeks itinerary. So I called a travel agent and opted for air—Dragon Air. Despite my decade as a Wall Street road warrior, I've never been big on jet travel, even First World jet travel, and Third World jet travel is another thing altogether. The travel agent hadn't heard of Dragon Air, either, which didn't set me at ease. His Sinologist colleague assured him (and me) that it was fine, but I couldn't shake the image of Cultural Revolution-era Aeroflots and Communist maintenance practices.

Henry Blodget Goes to China

Korea. Sex. English Language Teachers

English Teacher in Korea Loves Students



Jenna Jameson Sells IRiver Music Players in Korea



North Korea Drops the Bomb

Sex? In Korea? Apparently a few English teachers in Seoul have been doing the thing with their students, and having some parties around town, and the Korean press is up in arms. White guys having sex with Korean maidens? Save our virgins! Details at the expertise of Marmot's Hole.

Read the Post at Marmot's Hole

Prime Minister Malaysia Website

Prime Minister of Malaysia Website

Let's imagine that you are the prime minister of a fairly important nation in Southeast Asia, and you have an official website to spread your wisdom around the world, and your webmasters make a complete fool of you and your nation. Wonder what you would do? Jeff Ooi, as always, has the details.

The fact is, the website is half-baked. The English and Arabic versions are not ready but the navigation buttons are there, pointing to inactive, dead links.

Even if you go to the Bahasa Melayu version, the flashpage - which runs on Macromedia Flash - does not function properly on Firefox to give you multimedia audio audio.

Click on other pages, and you are greeted with "Under Construction".

Jeff Ooi Screenshots on the Website of the Prime Minister of Malaysia

Singapore and Freedom of the Press

Nick Leeson Loved Boat Quay

What country in the world has the world's most repressive laws against freedom of the press? Communist China? Putin's Russia? South Africa? No, it's Singapore, bastion of free enterprise and home to the world's most repressed media, especially now that the Straits Times will withdraw their website and open it only to paying customers. This is old news, but worth repeating.

1. STATE CONTROL OF THE MEDIA IN SINGAPORE IS SO COMPLETE that few dare challenge the system and there is no longer much need for the ruling party to arrest or harass journalists. Even foreign correspondents have learned to be cautious when reporting on Singapore, since the government has frequently hauled the international press into court to face lengthy and expensive libel suits.

2. The ruling People's Action Party (PAP) controls most local media, through its close ties with Singapore Press Holdings, whose newspaper monopoly ended only in 2000, and through state ownership of most broadcast media. Strict press licensing requirements make it impossible for independent newspapers to emerge, and journalists have been taught to think of themselves not as critics but as partners of the state in "nation-building."

3. Satellite television dishes are banned for all but a handful of users, and cable television is a state monopoly. While the Internet has been censored onlyhalf-heartedly, the government has been aggressive in promoting its own sites to disseminate information about state policies and procedures. "Alternative New Groups" like Singapore Review, The Optical etc are often victimised and subject to harassment and persecution under local laws.

4. In response to calls for more diverse media voices in the country, a handful of new free tabloid newspapers were launched (TODAY, STREATS, NEWPAPER to name a few). These publications, which look but do not read like free alternative newspapers in the United,States, were are controlled by corporations affiliated with the government. Singapore Press Holdings (in which Temasek Holdings retains a stake) owns and manages all the local newspapers circulated in Singapore (including the chinese and tamil editions).

5. In an apparent effort to create the illusion of free competition, Singapore
Press Holdings received permission to run TV and radio stations. This was hardly a risky move for the government, since the company's chief executive used to head the Singapore internal security agency, and its board chairman was an ex-cabinet minister and close confidant of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew. Meanwhile, the state-owned broadcasting giant Media Corporation of Singapore, was awarded a license to publish one of the free newspapers, Today. In August, The Straits Times, Singapore's leading daily, described this shuffling of a stacked deck as a "newspaper war."

6. Previously, public speaking without a license was banned everywhere in the country. In September, authorities allowed a Hyde Park-style Speaker's Corner to open in a local park. There seemed to be little public interest in the handful of eager speakers at the new venue, however. In fact, it is a revelation that it is still illegal to assemble in groups of more then 5 in apublic place without a permit.

7. Singapore is a country which has adoted the FORM of a written constitution, but has not applied the actual spirit of a the written constitution into daily practise in the course of state administration. Mere lip service is given to public policies which are meant to showcase to the world the existence of a free press/free speech social-political environment in Singapore.

8. Singapore also has the dubious honour of being on the black list of several free-speech/free press organisations like CPJ (Committee To Protect Journalists) as well as Amnesty International. Please feel free to visit their websites below.

http://www.cpj.org/index.html

http://www.amnesty.org/

9. Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of what many critics have called Singapore's "nanny state," remained the object of fawning praise in local media. In a volume of memoirs published in October, Lee argued that the authoritarian system he created, which closed independent newspapers and jailed some journalists after independence in 1959, was more responsive to the needs of his people than the flawed democracies in other Asian countries.

"I said I did not accept that a newspaper owner had the right to print whatever he liked," Lee wrote of a 1971 appearance at the International Press Institute's annual assembly in Helsinki. "Unlike Singapore's ministers, he and his journalists were not elected. My final words to the conference were: 'Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.'"

In 2003, this unfortunate view continued to guide Singapore's media
policy. Strict censorship and a tame press continue to characterize the press freedom climate in the city-state, which promulgated regulations designed to keep a range of prohibited information from reaching its citizens by the Internet. Using the threat of costly lawsuits, harsh national security legislation, and decades of indoctrination, Singapore's ruling People's Action Party, which has been in power since independence in 1959, has fashioned a predictably bland media culture.

Singapore Press Holdings Ltd., a private corporation with close ties to the government, controls all general-circulation newspapers. The government-linked Singapore International Media PTE Ltd. has a virtual monopoly on broadcasting. Satellite dishes are banned with few exceptions. The government has successfully prosecuted numerous domestic and foreign journalists in the past, and as a result of previous run-ins with the government, many foreign publications have their circulation strictly controlled by the government. Such is the case with The Asian Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and Asia Week, the three leading regional news publications.

The Internet regulations allow unhindered access for commercial users while preventing private users from having access to a wide range of sites. The Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA) requires Internet service providers to block sites the government identifies as taboo because of their political or sexual content. The SBA also requires political and religious societies to register their Singapore-based websites. Singapore's government has set a goal of becoming a regional center for both on-line commerce and Internet-control technology. The government considers its Internet controls to be a success and an example to other nations in the region, but the tightly regulated environment for the press at all levels in Singapore is anathema to the promise of unhindered information flow promised by the Internet.

Perhaps you may care to shed further light on the above. My final word is that the government's stand on free press issues (which is echoed by your respective papers) is reflected by the fact that this letter will never see publication in any SPH paper in its original unedited form.

Yours faithfully

Mellanie Hewlitt
Editor
Singapore Review

Singapore and Freedom of the Press

Eight Megs at Bargain Prices

Olympus Evolt E300

Great article today in the New York Times about the rise of mid-priced eight megapixel cameras, which bridge the gap between those inexpensive consumer digitals and the very expensive professional models that cost $1400-2500. Mid-priced digitals cost $450-600 and come with wonderful 8-10x zoom and other features long standard in the analog world.

Nikon gets slammed in the review, but I'm happy to report that my old favorite, Olympus, wins the contest with its simple, direct approach to digital photography that puts the photographer back in control rather than leaving the craft to high-tech gadgetry.

In life's final exam, the section intended to gauge your maturity and wisdom will probably look like this. "Mark each statement true or false: More money always makes you happier. A larger strawberry always tastes better. More megahertz always means a faster computer."

Too easy? All right, then, answer this: Why are so many people convinced that more megapixels means a better digital camera?

Within three years, camera companies rolled out four-megapixel cameras, then five, then six and seven. Now, if you can believe it, eight-megapixel consumer cameras are available for under $600.

Let's get one thing straight: the number of megapixels is a measure of how many dots make up a digital photo, not its quality. An eight-megapixel photo can look just as bad as a three-megapixel one - just much, much bigger.

The problem with this digicam arms race is that more megapixels mean bigger files. You need a much bigger memory card, you'll pay more for the camera (for its faster processing circuitry) and you'll have to wait a lot longer for those giant files to download to your computer. Once there, they also take longer to transfer, open and edit.

Read the Rest

The Final Moments

The Seattle Times



The Wave Approaches



And Crashes



The Final Photo



John and Jackie Knill

An amazing story of tragedy and discovery is told today at The Seattle Times, about a missionary volunteer at Khao Lak who finds an abandoned digital camera in the tsunami wreckage and downloads the chilling images back in his hotel room.

Seattle Times
Couple's final photos
"An Echo from the Grave"
By Lornet Turnbull
Feb 24, 2005

It was like a puzzle — these images from a broken digital camera washed up on a deserted beach in Thailand.

Christian Pilet of North Bend could not have known the power of his discovery: the last photos taken by a couple who lost their lives in the Dec. 26 tsunami and the closure the photo diary would bring to a grieving family half a world away in British Columbia.

Taken in sequence, the photographs tell a gripping story: John and Jackie Knill arriving at a Khao Lak resort, happily enjoying Christmas dinner with a large group of friends and then basking in a brilliant tropical sunset.

8:26 a.m. Tourists stroll unaware of an ominous dark line — the tsunami — rolling toward them from the horizon.

The next day, the couple is seen hugging, smiling — radiant on the beach. Then the story turns ominous: people stroll the beach under a clear blue sky, apparently oblivious to the large wave that has formed a line across the horizon.

The wave gets closer, its power more evident as it kicks up sand and mud and finally crashes onto the beach.

"We were stunned — just out of the blue, an echo from the grave," Pilet said. "What we saw in these pictures were the last five minutes of these people's lives."

Read the Rest

The Final Horror. A Short Slide Show by the BBC

Khao Lak Website

Khao Lak Website

German travelers to Thailand often bring along the German language guide by Stefan Loose and Richard Doring, who have been producing Thailand Handbuch for almost 20 years. Doring moved to Khao Lak about a decade ago to operate his homestyle beach resort known as Dream Beach Villas. His small collection of chalets were destroyed in the tsunami, but he intends to rebuild and hopes for another successful season next winter. In the meantime, he is looking for some volunteer help and has organized the remaining bungalow owners into a loose collective to help each other get their voices heard with the central government in Bangkok.

Khao Lak Website by Richard Doring

Google Maps

Google Maps Finds Friskodude

Just type in your home address, the address of your ex-wife, your current lover, and voila! Google has the map!

Google Maps

Singapore Straits Times Newspaper

Old Sign Posted at Saxophone Club on Orchard Road

I just received this curious email from the good folks at the highly repressed, highly censored, totally boring Singapore Straits Times, that they now want me to pay them big bucks to read their censored and government controlled rag. Even the dictators in Burma don't have the nerve to want money for their propaganda. Why do the media slaves in Singapore think anyone will actually pay to read their drivel?

Dear STi Reader,

You are getting this email from the ST Interactive team as you are among the more than 280,000 of our registered users. We thank you for your interest in the website and would like to inform you about a major change coming to STI in March: After 10 years of giving ST news reports out for free online, STI will begin charging readers to access it.

A subscription will cost S$72 for six months (S$12 a month), or S$120 for a year (S$10 a month). A one-month subscription will cost S$15. Why are we doing this?

Dear Publishers of Straits Times: Take your government controlled propaganda rag sheet and peddle it to your confined customers in your country. Everybody needs something to line their birdcage.

Don't believe that this strategy by the Straits Times is doomed to failure? Just look at the Wall Street Journal, which has long limited internet access to only paid subscribers. Even the WSJ has failed, as shown today in an article at Wired:

Nevertheless, the Journal faces an intractable problem. Because you have to subscribe to access both current news articles and the archive, the Journal is leaving only a faint footprint in cyberspace. As with The New York Times, which insists that readers register to view news and pay $3 per article in the archive, the Journal barely shows up on Google or any other search engine. I googled "Enron" -- an issue the Journal covered exhaustively, and which two of its reporters even wrote a book about -- and not one article appeared within the first 25 pages (250 results.)

Then I rigged the test by plugging in "Wall Street Journal" and "Enron" and still struck out (although I did pull up a couple of Journal stories specially edited for high school classes.) If you can input the name of your publication into a search engine and not come up with any stories, you must be digitally tone-deaf.

And in the rare event a Wall Street Journal article does pop up and you click on the link, you will likely encounter a message that informs you, "The page you requested is available only to subscribers." To access the article would cost you $79 a year, or $7 a month ($39 a year if you also subscribe to the print edition).

Since most people refuse to pay for WSJ stories, most bloggers are reluctant to link to them. It also has an impact on anyone who uses the web for research -- and there are a lot of us. As importantly, the next generation of readers is growing up by accessing news over the internet, and one place they are not surfing to is WSJ.com. With their habits being formed now, there is little chance the Journal will become part of their lives, either now or in the future.

Read the Wired Article

Bob Bone Remembers Hunter

Bob Bone and Hunter, Rio, 1963



Hunter, Bob Bone, Sean Penn, Honolulu 2001

Bob Bone is a newspaper journalist, magazine columnist, and guidebook author who lives in Hawaii and is a fellow member of the Society of American Travel Writers. He's also an old friend of Hunter S. Thompson, and today he posted a most heartfelt and revealing profile of his early days with Hunter, which I have posted here with his permission.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman. -- Boris Pasternak

I was shocked -- but not surprised -- to hear of Hunter's death. It was completely consistent with his approach to life.

During the 1960s, when Thompson and I were first trying to make an indelible mark on the world at large, if I had said to him, "Hunter, you're going to kill yourself some day," I'll bet he would have puffed on his pipe, nodded and thoughtfully agreed that it was indeed not outside the realm of possibility.

When we first met, in 1958 while we were on the staff of the Middletown, (N.Y.) Daily Record (now the Times-Herald Record), Hunter revered and frequently quoted Ernest Hemingway. If his life were to have any parallels to that of the great author, he would certainly have approved. Hemingway, of course, was obsessed with death and subsequently took his own life with a gun in 1961.

But Hunter, who pretended much of the time to be angry or incensed at the effronteries and absurdities with which he was frequently confronted, was also fun-loving in his own way. He set up amusing situations -- usually ones which embarrassed those of lesser intellect, but fascinated and delighted others. He often related stories of his conflicts with his superiors in the air force. One later account, which involved himself and a friend getting in a fight in a New York bar, had as its central theme the fact that they both just happened to be carrying bags of flour or cement (I forget which). Of course the bags eventually broke causing havoc on the premises, at the same time that it obscured their escape.

In those days of his relative obscurity, he was often a character of apparent annoyance, but enjoyable enough to be suffered by his friends in spite of it. He was usually broke, but he carried printed personalized checks from an expired bank account in his pocket. If you asked him if could now pay back the 20 bucks you lent him last week, he would reply with a sardonic smile and say, "Of course. I can give you a check!"

I always turned down those worthless checks, but I wish now I had not.

Hunter didn't last long at the Middletown Record. He was already skating on thin ice since he refused to wear shoes while in the news room. But one day, he had an argument with a candy machine. When Hunter lost his two nickels without receiving his due reward, he beat the machine savagely until it disgorged all of its contents. Hunter strolled away carrying only the candy bar that he had paid for. But management soon discovered that everyone in the newsroom and the back shop all were eating candy bars, and so Hunter was discharged. It was certainly just the outcome that he wanted.

Hunter followed me to Puerto Rico. I worked on the first staff of the San Juan Star, a new English-language daily. Hunter worked briefly for an ill-fated local sports magazine. The Star knew better than to hire him, but its managing editor, William Kennedy, and Hunter began a life-long friendship. Kennedy later went on to fame as the author of Ironweed and other novels. In Puerto Rico, Hunter lived in a small community which he claimed was the haunt of witch doctors and other practitioners of voodoo. There he wrote his first novel, the Rum Diary, which ironically was not published until 1998 -- long after his later successes.

The early-60s found us both in Manhattan. Many of our small group of wannabes were at various times resident of a single modest tenement apartment in Greenwich Village. The official tenant was Sandy Conklin, who later became Hunter's first wife. We made beer in the kitchen, and most of us tried to write, with greater or lesser degrees of success. I still have tape recordings of some of our conversations. In 1961, Hunter left for South America. His letters to me contained words and terms which are now famous -- his "gonzo" approach to journalism and to life.

In 1962, I left my job at Popular Photography to edit a small business magazine in Brazil. A few months later, Hunter showed up on Copacabana Beach. I spotted him while riding in a convertible with a friend, and we stopped to let him in the car. He had a drunk monkey in his jacket pocket. His explanation was that he met someone in a bar who would buy him a drink only if he could buy the monkey a drink at the same time. The monkey eventually committed suicide, leaping into the air from the balcony of my tenth-floor apartment -- we presumed a victim of the DTs.

Back in his hotel room Hunter also had a coatamundi, a small furry animal that he said he had rescued from some who were mistreating it in Bolivia. The coatimundi distinguished itself by eventually becoming toilet trained. It also liked to play with soap, thus apparently washing its hands. Hunter named it "Ace."

We had several adventures together in Brazil before we both left within a few months of each other in 1963, Hunter to California and I back to the same traditional Village apartment in New York, and I began working for the New York Post and then for Time-Life. We had considerable correspondence during that period, and occasional meetings on both the West and East coasts. We sought advice from each other on the crises that young men have, but I suppose we seldom followed any of our words of wisdom. I still have many of these letters, whose acerbic terminology presaged those of his later public persona. I even have a Hunter Thompson cartoon which he drew. It's still pinned on the wall above my computer in Hawaii. Not many knew that Hunter could draw a little, too.

After Hunter's first major literary success, his saga on the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, we seldom saw each other again. I married, had a child, and moved to Spain. He promised to follow me, but never did. Hunter married Sandy, and he also had a child, and he moved to Woody Creek, Colorado. He began moving in circles vastly different than my own, although we never completely lost touch. My family and I moved here to Hawaii in 1971, where I began writing a series of travel guidebooks. But if my phone rang in the middle of the night over the past 34 years, it was most likely Hunter.

Every now and then, a mutual acquaintance would mention my name to Hunter. He almost invariably mumbled something like, "Ah, yes. Bone. A good man, Bone." Actually, he regarded me as somewhat intellectually challenged in comparison to himself, and I'm sure he was right.

We last met in person when he came in 2001 to cover the Honolulu Marathon for ESPN.com. It was not entirely a satisfactory meeting. He seemed not much more than a shell of the vigorous and vital friend that I knew nearly a half-century ago. Hunter's body had been taking a beating from his lifestyle for a long time, and I asked him if he realized that he could hardly sit down without slightly rocking back and forth for several minutes afterward. Nevertheless, I felt encouraged by the fact that he still seemed to be hanging in there in spite of it all.

I was never one of Hunter's legions of fans, but I was proud to be one of his good friends, blessed with shared and very fond memories of some of the best days of our lives. I will miss him and his 3 a.m. phone calls.

Robert Bone Travel Writer

Oakland Mayor and Former Governor Jerry Brown on Hunter with Comments

Yet Another Cynical Travel Writer

Marcos Bust near Baguio

Some very funny and very cynical travel writing has been posted by a freelance writer in London, who has spent a great deal of time in Southeast Asia, wandering from the Philippines to Cambodia to New Guinea. By comparison, Paul Theroux seems like a ray of loving sunshine.

Tour de farce.

Welcome to my world of self-indulgent drivel. Yes, that's right - it's another screed of twaddle written by someone who spent a year twitting around the world, all the time imagining that they're doing something clever and original. Still, for all the quotidian wonderment, there's the odd morsel worth savouring. Hanging with the penis gourd men of Papua, crunching crispy spiders in Cambodia, and enjoying big jars in Laos and great heads on Easter Island. Nonetheless as soon becomes evident, going to interesting places doesn't actually make one interesting. Thus, much of this is the literary equivalent of sipping a day old cup of milky tea.

Rhymer Travels Around Asia and the World.....with Attitude

Hunter S. Thompson Remembered

Hunter S. Thompson

I've been trying to get Hunter out of my mind, and resist the urge to open up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas just to re-experience the joys and tragedies of what will now be called one of the great American classics. Try to forget, and then Torn and Frayed in Manila posts an astounding memorial to the man from Woody Creek:

Thompson wasn’t just a “druggy writer” though -- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is in the great American tradition of literary journeys. Thompson may have moved the destination from the orange fields of California to a drugged frenzy at a police convention in Vegas, but there is plenty in his work that ties him to Steinbeck, as well of course to Kerouac, one of his major influences. At his best Thompson was a great stylist, often imitated but seldom bettered.

Thompson’s book on the 1972 election, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, is another great work – a chaotic but astute dissection of a country in crisis. The scene where Nixon’s handlers somewhat arbitrarily select Rolling Stone’s man to accompany the candidate on a drive to Washington is one of the highlights (they talk about American football the whole way--“whatever else you might say about Nixon—and there is serious doubt in my mind that he could pass for human—he is a goddam stone fanatic on every aspect of pro ball”).

I also liked Hell’s Angels. The claims of journalists like Thompson and Wolfe that their subjective experience is superior to the relentless striving for objectivity of “traditional” journalism were a bit dubious, but Thompson’s sojourn with the Angels resulted in an essential and revealing piece of investigative journalism that really did deserve the overworked description “cutting edge”. Although Thompson was criticized for presenting too sympathetic a picture of the Angels, his description of the muddled logic behind their violent lifestyles was fair. Just condemning these people is not enough -- unless you make some attempt to get close enough to smell ‘em, as Thompson did, you are just dealing in cardboard imagery.

Torn and Frayed Remembers Hunter S. Thompson

The Bottom of the Sea

Manila Collapse

Somebody, please send me something positive about the Philippines. This is getting really depressing, all the bad news about the economy, corruption, lax government, Islamic terrorists in Sulu and Makati, deepening poverty, more sin taxes, dead coral reefs, actors as politicans........it gets too much.

Sassy covers all the gory details and it's the best blog ever from the Philippines, a country that after WWII was considered the shining light of Asia and second only to Japan for economic and political prosperity.

A comment posted at Sassy Lawyer in the Philippines:

bugsybee commented on 02-23-05 at 12:36 AM :

Actually Bayi, there are two sides here. You're right, the government encourages Filipinos to go - our overseas worker are touted to be our "best export product" and the dollars they send back feed our economy.

But if you are in the province, like I am, people don't care about government policies. All they know is that they must leave. If they stay, everybody gets hungry. The thinking is like this: we're all in a sinking boat. If nobody leaves (to eventually send back dollars), nobody's gonna be saved - we'll all just sink to the bottom of the sea.

Read the Post and Comments

Steven McDermott Raises Hell

Sarong Party Girl?

Steven McDermott now lives in Scotland, but in a previous life he lived in Singapore where he was a lecturer at a university, while maintaining a blog which was surprisingly critical of the Lion City. I always expected him to be rounded up like a caged animal and sent away to solitary confinement on Sentosa, but he managed to escape and now continues his questioning of the Singapore republic.

His blog, just six months ago, was largely ignored by the public, but after his move to Scotland and his greater freedom to make political commentary, his visitors and their comments have soared. Today, Steven talks about the rise of Singaporean females versus their male counterparts, but the real juice is in the Comments. Great stuff.

A comment:

I tend to side with 2vamp and argue that it takes two to cause the breakdown of a relationship. Men seem to have been left in the dust. The old traditional values no longer apply to the contemporary setting and structure of male-female relationships. It is no longer a question of male dominating the female, something a lot of men don't see, but a partnership between two equals. Requiring negotiation and open communication. Women have taken on their half of the 'goal orientated' breadwinner role', the men need to take on their half of the 'emotional care-giver role'

Steven McDermott and His Blog at Singabloodypore

Singapore Bloggers Help Iranian Bloggers

Singapore Blogger IZ Reloaded

I'm often critical of the Singapore government (search "Singapore" in this blog), but I'm also happy to report on Singaporeans who are making a difference in the world, such as the individuals who have gone to Sumatra to aid in the reconstruction of the devastated province. Today, Iz Reloaded, a blogger in Singapore, has publicized the need for all bloggers to protect freedom of speech.........in........get this.....Iran.

Iran.

Lately, we have been reading about bloggers who have been made jobless because they blogged about their jobs. In Iran, blogging may put you in jail. A little extreme? Yes.

Free Mojtaba and Arash Day is a day set up by the Committee to Protect Bloggers to create awareness for two Iranian bloggers who are imprisoned in their country. Read the BBC news report here. I had a chance to speak to Curt Hopkins, the Director of the Committee to Protect Bloggers earlier this morning.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers was created a month ago by Curt, Ellen Simonetti, Bill Crawford, Andrew Nachison and Rebecca MacKinnon. Curt explained why he formed it, "I saw a New York Times article on reformist cleric Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a prominent blogger, and his work for imprisoned bloggers. I realized bloggers are sort of without official status, so I thought we bloggers could work together." According to Curt, the committee consists of every blogger in the world, theoretically. But they are three staff and four advisors. "We have Texans, Oregonians, Canadian-Iranians, Syrian people. We even heard from people from Brazil to Japan to Malaysia to France," said Curt.

Read the Post

Jeff Jarvis has More Notes and Links

Salman Rushdie on Freedom of Speech

Singapore Political Prisoner

Should freedom of speech be once again allowed in Singapore? As it is now, freedom of speech is a concept unfamiliar to many residents of Singapore, who are constrained to newspapers, radio, television, and internet all tightly controlled by the government. After all, they know best. And they constantly warn that freedom of speech would destroy the republic and bring on racial wars.

What? Some Indian complains that the Chinese are nothing but money grubbing, souless merchants? Some Chinese complains that Indians are a lazy lot and sleep too long in the afternoons? Some Malay complains that they were there first, and all the Chinese and Indians should pack their bags and go back home? Revolution? Anarchy? Well, those are the feeble reasons why the Singapore government owns or in other ways controls ALL media in the country.

Fear of anarchy.

And the people of Singapore accept these conditions?

A short quote from Salman Rushdie, courtesy of the blog of Mr. Brown:

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted. A fundamental decision needs to be made: do we want to live in a free society or not? Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other’s positions. (But they don’t shoot.)

At Cambridge University I was taught a laudable method of argument: you never personalise, but you have absolutely no respect for people’s opinions. You are never rude to the person, but you can be savagely rude about what the person thinks. That seems to me a crucial distinction: people must be protected from discrimination by virtue of their race, but you cannot ring-fence their ideas. The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

Mr. Brown on Salman Rushdie

Blogger Ego Boost

Nicole Blog Rocks!

Feeling tired and lonely, and just need a boost to inspire your next post? Thanks to Jakartass and his intimate connection with J-Walk Blog (sorry you weren't hotlinked yesterday in the SF Chron), I was able to stroke my ego....and so can you.

This is the professional analysis of my website/blog:

"I just saw your website and I'm simply in awe. The URL has 25 characters. Just the perfect length. It must have taken many years to craft the page. Also, Flickr put up a link to your page, which totally rocks.

What an awesome page! If only my aunt would have an awesome page like that. The page contains 2 links, a very reasonable amount. Yes, I expected the creator to do this well. The HTML is highly accessible.

There are 506 characters in the code, which is a fantastic length for power users. Thumbs up. The color scheme is minimalist, pure feng shui. So fresh and new. What a wonderful, wonderful web page."

-- Julian Sutherland, How to Design for the Web

Click Here to Check Your Website/Blog

Thanks Jakartass!

Racist News from Taiwan

The White Menace

SinoSplice has just posted a note about new signs going up in Taipei, warning young Taiwanese ladies to beware of big-nosed foreigners lurking around ATMs, waiting to mug and steal withdrawals. Is this a major problem in Taipei? Are foreigners often robbing customers at ATMs?

Racism, pure and simple.

Taiwan Warns about Foreigners

Radio Free Nepal

Radio Free Nepal

Excellent news, photos, and links coming out daily from Radio Free Nepal. If you care about the struggle for democracy in Nepal, then you should be checking this blog daily. Outstanding.

Radio Free Nepal

Islamic Terrorism in Thailand

Tak Bai

While I don't support the heavy-handed policies used by Prime Minister Taksin Shinawatra to quell the Islamic revolt in southern Thailand, most Thais support his decision to use whatever force necessary to stop the senseless killing, which has plagued the south for over a year. And just when you start to feel a sense of regret over the slaughter at Tak Bai, a message from the Islamic terrorists surfaces and you lose any sympathy for the radical separatists. As translated by the always amazing Ron Morris at 2Bangkok.

2Bangkok
Translation of a leaflet left by 'bandits' in the deep South
February 22, 2005

[Our sources in the South provided this leaflet (right) being circulated in the South by a separatist group.]

Warn the mind/consciousness with peace

According to the unrest of daily killings in 4 provinces in the south, this has made people apprehensive. The people who are killed are the enemy of the National Regaining Movement of Pattani state such as the government officials in many levels--military, police, teachers, Kamnan [chief of district], head of villagers, chairman of tambon administrative organization, provincial administrative organizations, volunteers for protecting land, civil protecting voluntary officers, protecting village officers, etc. or village police who are rising up like mushrooms. Whoever cooperates and repays an obligation to the government declares to make war with the National Regaining Movement of Pattani state. Just acknowledge that those are always in our eyes. Don’t be arrogant and assertive because this means your lives and your assets will not safe. Stop making problem for yourselves.

Ideal of founding the Pattani state will never die in the four provinces in the South. We beg the ones who are not direct enemies with the movement such as Kamnan, chief of villagers, chairman of Tambon administrative organizations, tambon administrative organizations, provincial administrative organizations, volunteers for protecting land, civil protecting voluntary officers, protecting village officers, village police etc. These people should be careful and start thinking for a better life, because the true enemy of the movement is the government, government officials, military, and police whose people our movement declares war on.

Events of daily killing will be in crisis and continue. The government supports many budgets such as risky money, allowances, and adjusting the salary for the lower level units. This is just to make you to bear the burnt [stand in the gap] as armor to protect the upper units without considering the depressed heart and the safety of lives and assets of the lower level units.

We solicit those people mentioned above to stop cooperating with the government, because when the problem takes place in the area you responsible for and the problem will not unravel. Who will be the target? Who will be the victim of the government? When you are useless, you will be kicked out like a pig or a shabby dog. It is not too late to change your mind for a better life that is happy always. Love and concern.

Link to 2Bangkok

Cruising in Asia

Cruise Ship at Philippines Trench

I've lectured on a half-dozen cruise ships in Southeast Asia and really don't enjoy the cruise experience, but I know that older folks often appreciate the simplicity and care provided by ships, so I'll post a link below that leads to a handful of companies offering cruises around Asia within the following year.

Cruise Ships Around Asia

Hersh Investigative Reporter

Fallujah

Seymour Hersh is an investigative reporter who uncovered the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam and now writes for the New Yorker, and has produced an ongoing series about the war in Iraq, including ground breaking coverage of the abuses in Abu Ghraib. Remember the photos? Sy was the guy who revealed them to the world. Today, Sy received another accolade and will certainly win more in the future.

NEW YORK (AP) - Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker won his fifth George Polk Award for his accounts of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, making him the most-honored individual in the history of the awards. Reporters from The New York Times took three of the 2004 awards, and The Associated Press was a double winner.

Hersh won the magazine reporting prize for his Abu Ghraib stories 35 years after winning the Polk award for coverage of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

The Career Award went to Bill Moyers, who retired last year after more than three decades in public television. He won a Polk Award in 1980 for political reporting.

The 13 awards were to be announced Tuesday by Long Island University, which was to present the prizes April 21. They were created in 1949 in honor of the CBS reporter killed while covering the Greek civil war.

Hersh

Vagabonding Matt Around the World

Where's Matt?

Matt is an Ozzie from Brisbane who quit his job over two years ago and hit the road, not really sure of purpose or reason, and his website blurbs has been largely ignored until this week after it was plugged at Boing Boing and other aggregators and group-driven blogs. Matt is generally noted for his videos of his two-step dances to the joys of life, filmed all over Asia, but they are very large files, so unless you are on a T-1 line, forget about seeing Matt dancing.

I found his journal very well written, honest, and a great look into the perils and challenges of hitting the road for a few years, after quitting your job and giving up all the securities of a safe lifestyle. So, instead of the enormous videos, I'll post a link to his home and let you go find out something about Matt. Start from his first day, then visit his most recent entry, and see if you want more. You probably will be drawn into the adventures of Matt -- an Ozzie on the road.

2/1/05 Seattle, Washington
February 01, 2005

The other question I get asked is, of course, how did I afford all the travel. Am I a trust fund baby? IPO jackass? International jewel thief? The simple answer is that I invented the Ab Roller. But while simple, it is sadly untrue.

I saved up a fair amount while living in Australia due to a favorable exchange rate and some tax weirdness that turned out in my favor. It wasn't a fortune by any means, and I should stress that if you avoid Europe, the US, and a few other places, you're really not spending all that much once you get where you're going.

I couldn't even guess at how much I spent wandering around over the last two years, and I certainly wouldn't want to. But it's not something that bothers me. If you regret the money you spend on travel, then you're doing it wrong.

Some people want to know where I'm planning to go next. It won't be for a while, as I have no money coming in right now, but when I do get things sorted out I'd like to take an extended trip to South America -- one of the two continents I haven't yet visited and by far the more manageable journey. I'm terrified of spiders, so I'm staying out of the Amazon and anywhere else where large furry arachnids tend to hang out. Patagonia seems beautiful and fairly spider-free, so it may be the focus of the trip.

I'd really like to go to Bhutan. The places I pine for most are generally the ones I know least about, and pretty much all I know about Bhutan is how to spell it and where to find it on a map. It seems like a mysterious place, so it's near the top of my list.

As landforms go, you can't beat islands. Islands are a great thing. I've never met one I didn't like. My favorites are often the ones where you go "Who knew there was a freaking island there? How can that be?!" I have that reaction to the Azores and I'd like to find out what the hell the deal is with that place. I'd like to go to the Isle of Man, mostly because of the name. There are a lot of Monkey Islands around Asia and I'd like to visit all of them. Speaking of which, there's a place called Skull Island a few thousand miles southwest of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. It's surrounded by a rock atoll that hides it from passing ships and would have acted as a breakwater for the tsunami, so it should still be in good shape. I would like to go there and search for dinosaurs and oversized deified primates.

If anyone is interested in funding such an expedition, you know how to reach me.

Where the Hell is Matt?

My Neighbor in Woody Creek

Hunter S. Thompson

Many years ago I spent a winter in Aspen as a ski bum with a season pass at Aspen Highlands, and lived in a ranch house on Woody Creek Road, a few miles down from the canyon where Hunter had lived for over a decade. Although I never saw him on the slopes, I often wandered over to the Jerome Hotel after a day of skiing, and spotted Hunter either at the bar alone or at a table with a group of friends. I never had the nerve to introduce myself, but never forgot Rolling Stone issue #100 which featured his story Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That issue is still buried away somewhere in my closet.

This was also the same winter that cokehead Claudine Longet shot her boyfriend/skier Spider Savitch and Dodge introduced their Aspen atrosity, which was promotly trashed while on display in the downtown Aspen mall. And Aspen, the novel, by Alex Haley. What a winter.

In memory, a column by Hunter on the death of Richard Nixon.

Rolling Stone
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
'He was a crook'
Jun 16, 1994

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK
DATE: MAY 1, 1994
FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON:

NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER....HE WAS A LIAR ND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA. ...BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON:

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is becoming the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."--REVELATION 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing--a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that I know Iwill go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said. "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive--and he was, all the way to the end--we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by thehead with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style--and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

............

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern--but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him--except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

.............

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Story with Links

500 Memorial Comments on MetaFilter

Paris Hilton's Sidekick Hacked

Paris

In my neverending quest to provide the latest news on Southeast Asia, here's some late-breaking events about the Queen of Asia: Paris Hilton.

Paris Hilton's ever-present T-Mobile Sidekick II has been hacked, with pictures and contact information from the mobile device showing up in various places on the web (only to be quickly expunged). Since the Sidekick II stores copies of all its data on T-Mobile's servers, this means that it's more than likely that everyone who uses the Sidekick (which is only available from T-Mobile), is at risk of having their private pictures exposed to the world. There is a rumor going around that her password was conned out of her, though, which would be lovely to hear (since it would mean the servers are theoretically intact).

Because remember, we care about privacy, unless it's the privacy of someone famous. Also, there are exposed human breasts after the jump, if that sort of thing scares or frightens you.

Engadget Covers Paris

Gizmodo Also Covers Paris

Original Philippines Flag Discovered in San Francisco

Philippines Flag

Faded banner in San Francisco could be first Filipino flag
TERENCE CHEA
Associated Press Writer
February 20, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Tacked inside a wooden display case in a rarely visited corner of the San Francisco War Memorial could be the answer to one of the great mysteries of Philippine history: What happened to the first Filipino flag?

The Philippines' founding president, Emilio Aguinaldo, famously unfurled the original "Stars and Sun" flag when he declared his nation's independence from Spain in 1898, but the banner disappeared during the Philippine-American War that followed.

"It is a mystery in the Philippines that historians have been trying to answer for a long time," said Rudy Asercion, a member of the American Legion's War Memorial Commission.

Hanging by two thumbtacks in the building's trophy room is a faded red, white and blue banner that just might be that missing icon - a banner Filipinos compare to the "Stars and Stripes" flag Betsy Ross made for Gen. George Washington during the U.S. war of independence.

Asercion said he noticed the artifact while rummaging through the usually locked trophy room last year. He now believes U.S. Gen. Frederick Funston captured the flag during the Philippine-American War and brought it back to San Francisco when he was assigned to the Presidio in 1902.

"My research simply points out that this is the flag," said Asercion, 63, a third-generation Filipino American who was raised in San Francisco. "It's too much of a coincidence."

The National Historical Institute in Manila dispatched a representative to inspect the flag, and later sent a letter to the commission saying the banner was "most likely authentic." Two prominent Filipino politicians - Sens. Franklin Dilon and Dick Gordon - have visited the War Memorial to see it for themselves, as has Ed Malaya, consul at the nation's San Francisco consulate.

"I am excited about the prospect that this flag may be the original Philippine flag," said Malaya, who has written a book about Filipino presidential history. "This is a valuable link to our past. People thought that we had lost this history. It is definitely exciting that the flag may still be intact."

If it proves to be authentic, the Philippine government would very much like to see the flag returned, and there appear to be few objectors in San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution this month urging the American Legion to investigate its history.

That resolution should provide Asercion and other commissioners easier access to archival records they hope will provide enough historical evidence for Philippine historical authorities to certify the flag's authenticity.

Aguinaldo, who led the Filipino insurgency against Spain, designed the flag when he was living in exile in Hong Kong in the late 1890's. Aguinaldo asked fellow exile Marcella Agoncilla to assemble the flag, which was made from fine satin - an unusual material for flags at the time.

Inspired by other flags flown during the Philippine uprising, the Aguinaldo flag featured a hand-painted sun to symbolize the dawn of Philippine sovereignty, three stars to represent the country's three regions and eight rays to honor the provinces that first rose up against three centuries of Spanish rule.

"The flag is a work of art," Asercion said.

Spain had declared a truce with Filipino insurgents and was fighting the United States when Aguinaldo returned to the Philippines in 1898. In a scene re-enacted throughout the Philippines each June 12, the country's independence day, Aguinaldo appeared on his balcony and unveiled the flag while the Filipino national anthem was played for the first time.

"In a sense, this flag saw the birth of the Philippine nation," Malaya said. "This is the single moment in our history that the Philippine people felt that they were independent and free. The whole country was united, and there was a growing consciousness that we were one people."

But the country's independence was short lived. Later that year, the United States won the Spanish-American War and Spain ceded the Philippines to the Americans. The following year, Aguinaldo became the Philippines' first president and declared war on the United States, organizing a guerilla campaign against the new colonizers.

No one knows for sure what happened to the flag during Aguinaldo's brief rule, but Asercion believes that U.S. troops led by Gen. Funston confiscated it when they captured Aguinaldo in 1901 and put an end to the insurgency. The Philippines would not regain sovereignty until after World War II, following more than 40 years of American colonization and Japanese occupation.

Asercion stumbled upon the 2-by-4-foot flag in the War Memorial Building last summer when he was gathering artifacts for an exhibit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the 1944 arrival of U.S. forces in the Philippines.

He found the stained satin banner tacked into the side of a dusty cabinet filled with antique swords donated to the American Legion decades ago. A catalogue contained only this sparse description: hand-made, torn, No. 35.

Asercion didn't think much about the worn-out flag until his friend Yolanda Ortega Stern noticed that it was made from satin - shiny on one side and dull on the other.

"When Yolanda told me that the flag was made of satin, it triggered my memory," Asercion said. "I said, 'This could be the flag that Aguinaldo made."

Asercion is now convinced that the San Francisco flag is the original, but he hopes that archival records will help him prove it beyond a doubt. He believes it was donated, along with other war memorabilia, to the American Legion more than 70 years ago, after Funston and his wife died.

A committee co-chaired by Ortega Stern has been formed to restore the flag, which has not been moved because of its brittle condition.

Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval said he hopes the flag will help open up a dialogue about what the United States did in the Philippines a century ago, and the "special relationship" that exists between the two countries.

"It doesn't take a Ph.D. to realize that this flag is of astounding historical significance," said Sandoval, whose district includes a large Filipino American population. "It's just crying out to be recognized, properly displayed and used as a tool for educating people about a conflict that happened 100 years ago that most people don't know much about."

Sacramento Bee Story about Philippines Flag Discovery

Stickman on Teeruks

Stickman in Bangkok

Stickman in Bangkok puts out a new column every Sunday with his insider tips on life in the Land of Smiles, and contributions from his readers about nearly everything imaginable. Then there's a few updates on nightlife in the capital, followed by a Q&A section geared towards farangs puzzled about Thai ways. Today's column is quite entertaining. Here's a couple of snippets, followed by the link.

I"ll come straight out and say it. I truly believe that the average Thai woman is much less trustworthy than the average farang woman. I really do. This is based on many things ranging from personal observations, to personal experience to reading all of the stories that readers submit to his website, both those for publication and those not.

With this in mind, I have always recommended that for anyone involved in a relationship with a Thai woman, that they pay a bit more attention than perhaps they would if she was farang. That doesn't mean that one should go spying on her, but do pay attention, notice the little things.

But just what do you do if you notice that there are a few things that don't seem right. What happens if you think she really is up to no good? What options exist?

And later, a reader writes in with his experiences as a social volunteer at Thai Immigration in Bangkok, and a warning for all visitors.

I do a lot of work at the Immigration Detention Center, on Soi Suan Phlu off Sathorn Road. I think any person interested in pursuing the nightlife of Bangkok, Pattaya, etc. should go check out some of the wayward souls down at the IDC, maybe during visitors hours when they go to the Immigration Bureau to renew their passport. In addition to the many people from Laos, Cambodia and Burma, there are many from Germany, US, UK, Australia as well as places further afield in IDC.

These are people who have lost their money, their minds and their health, and often their lives to AIDS. Their families back home do not know how to contact them, the embassies often do not return their calls. No one comes to visit them, save for me and a few social workers, in our attempts to help them be released. They have no one. Keep in mind that unlike in the US and most of Europe, once you are in the IDC, be it for an overstay or commission of a crime of which you have served the sentence in another prison, there is no deportation. You stay there until you can pay for your own ticket home.

I've worked in detention centres around the world and doing a stint in the Bangkok IDC is some of the hardest time I can imagine. I know that Bangkok can be a lot of fun and there are many stories to tell the mates back home, or here, for that matter. But behind most every funny story is a risk you are taking. I do not want to sound like anyone's mother, but please be careful.

Read Stickman in Bangkok

Vagabonding at its Finest

Balinese Children by Carl Parkes

Ever wanted to quit your job and hit the road for a few years, but also do something worthwhile to satisfy your soul and help improve the world's situation? Looks like this young lady from Silicon Valley has found the perfect combination of travel and good deeds.

After I completed and received my degree from Santa Clara University in the Silicon Valley, I moved to San Diego, found a job in an office tower and put nothing less than every drop of my passion into it. I worked 80-hour weeks, slept under my desk on weekends, and quickly became one of the highest paid employees in the company. But after two years of this life, I sat up from my computer one day and realized this; I had a successful job with prestige, an apartment by the beach, a nice car, a pretty boyfriend, and an income greater than that of my parents combined…and it wasn’t enough. Or rather it was enough. It was too much. I was grasping at the wrong dream, desperately clenching onto the airy and materialistic notions of a magazine dream, instead of picking myself up and pursuing my own.

And that’s how I learned that sometimes we spend a lot of lives learning not what we want to do, but what we do not want to do. And that’s okay. It’s not important how many mistakes we make, only that we learn from those we do.

So where was I to go? I had no idea. But on an intuitive whim, I caught a clue as to where I could go to find MY dream. So I sold everything I owned, strapped on a backpack and left the country...

I spent the next four years travelling over six continents and through forty-something countries: working with the children living in the squatter community in the dumpster of Guatemala, building houses for Habitat for Humanity in Fijian villages, strolling the beaches of Costa Rica at midnight keeping the eggs of Leatherback turtles safe from poachers, fighting off Lantana from overtaking the native plant species of Eastern Australia, giving daily massages to the crippled limbs of those left at the Mother Teresa House of the Destitute, preparing the gardens for feeding an orphanage in India, teaching English to refugee monks who escaped from Tibet, and, most recently, planting trees in a reforestation effort in Coastal Ecuador.

Over the course of those years, attending the prestigious "University of Life," I found my path and my passion in "service learning" and in what Dragons calls in its mission statement, "experiential education," which simply means -- using the world as our living classroom and our real experiences and interactions within it as the lesson plan.

So having found my own life-driving inspiration abroad, I quickly realized that the only thing that matched my excitement in making my own reality-quaking revelations was watching, guiding, and sharing that process of "travel-induced-enlightenments" with others -- specifically, with young, enthusiastic and inspired people like you!

Read Her Blog

Miss McDonald in the Philippines

Posing in Makati



Hanging the Laundry



Sunset in Boracay



Happy with Ronald



Raiding the Fridge

This is just too much. Some wacky Filipina in Manila dresses up as "Miss McDonald" and has photos taken of herself in town and elsewhere in the country. Her site suffers from bandwidth overload, and all the remaining photo links are broken, but in the meantime, let's all give it up for the latest fetish icon from the Philippines.

Miss McDonald!

Report from Meulaboh

Flickr Photos by Terz

Terz is a Singaporean photographer who has left his home for Meulaboh, to help with the tsunami survivors and post his impressions at his blog, which can be located via his Profile at Flickr. He's submitted about a dozen posts of his impressions, and used Flickr as the hosting service for his insightful black-and-white images of the disaster zone. Do visit both his Flickr account are read his reflections at his blog.

I'm back on the Endeavour and waiting for the camera batteries to be recharged (and to complete downloading the images to the laptop). While the others have their dinner, I'm sitting in the corner nearest the power points for all the electronic equipment I have that needs recharging and thinking about the day that has just gone by. It's the end of Day 2 and I've shot almost 950 images.

I haven't been eating dinners at all since we've been in Meulaboh. The strange thing is, I don't feel the need. I'm focused on downloading all the images, formatting both CF cards and recharging my batteries for the next day's shooting. I can't sleep either. My sleep has been restless since we arrived. I sleep no more than two hours per night, but every morning, I feel energetic enough to face another day on shore. It's a strange thing.

Terz Flickr Photos from Meuloboh

Terz Blog from Meuloboh

Cosmetic Surgery Magazine Malaysia

Cosmetic Surgery Magazine

Why in the world the lovely ladies of Malaysia would feel the need to go under the knife is beyond me, but apparently there's a monthly tabloid about such a subject. I don't know whether to laugh or cry....

Jon says, "I found another plastic surgery magazine at the super market here in Kuala Lumpur. It's called Cosmetic Surgery & Beauty and it's tagline -- Because Nobody is Perfect - is pretty awesome. The contents, however, are pretty trashy; lots of huge, plastic breasts and what-not."

Boing Boing Link

Singapore Silliness

Old Singapore

Mr. Brown seems to have the uncanny knack to find what's most funny and weird about Singapore, including a recent post about the relentless promotional screeds of the Striats Times. The newspaper of record for the island republic loves to remind its readers of the intellectual superiorty of local universites, over those sadly failed educational institutions in the west like......uh.........Princeton and Cornell.

Sure, whatever. Here's a snippet from something called a Sammyboy Forum, and do be sure to click the link and read all the hilarious responses. Great stuff!

I think it is a sparkling testament to NUS and the country.

It is no surprise as we have repeatedly achieved high accolades in the various disciplines that have been unanimously identified as Singaporean in nature and in form.

Singapore remarkable credits include the nobel prize in a number of fields. Our Patent applications flood the Patent office around the world. We discovered the cure for aids, sent women to the moon, changed iron to gold and found the holy grail. We invented the tissue paper, the condom and the printing press. Our latest invention is Newater and the product name won the award for most innovative branding name in the history of marketing.

Our automobiles ply the O'Bahns, the expressways and the turnpikes of the every city in the developed world. Our trademark highrise apartments caricatured by lift lendings on every 5th floor is the bedrock of modern town planning and found in many parts of the world.

We taught the Chinese in PRC how to develop their econmomy, their townships and their superannuation for their old age. Our deeds are now adopted as part of the English Language by the entry of the word "Suzhoued" in the Oxford Dictionary meaning "screwed by peasants"

We changed the face of aviation by developing the the world's first Vertical Takeoff aircraft called the Harry Jet. We sell submarines to Sweden, we teach US pilots to fly supersonic jets at Luke Air force base. Our Shipyards launch the largest ocean going passenger vessels and our naval architects designed the hovercraft.

Read the Rest

Planet Bangkok on Farangs in Thailand

Planet Bangkok

Planet Bangkok is a consortium of expat bloggers in Bangkok, who take turns posting articles about anythinf of interest, and so the quality varies from fairly mundane to highly hilarious. The newest member of the club, Rick Salasar, just posted a very funny take on the various types of farang which haunt the Land of Smiles. Also, some great images to go along with the personality categories. Way to go Rick!

2. Farangutan.

We've all made mistakes at one time or another and spent too much time in the sun. Everybody does that, sooner or later, but these beauties seem to revel in roasting themselves half to death. I hate a job half-done, don't you?

The Farangutan can be spotted at most of the UK's popular destinations in the sun and, with the booming economy in the UK and the increased awareness of Thailand, they are massing on these shores.

Usually back in Bangkok for three painful nights before returning to Europe. A very overweight Farangutan is a Lobstrocity.

3. The old addled gay.

One can see some particularly unattractive OAGs all over Thailand, but especially around Silom Soi 4. Normally hobbling along with a "partner" not even half his age, the OAG (sounds like, but not the same as, OAP) often looks about eighty. He is likely to be around forty.

The OAG is a prime target of the Thai money boy who will help him spend his money wisely, or throw a serious hissy-fit in the process of trying. The OAG often demonstrates his "ownership" of the money boy by having his arm around the money boy's shoulders as much as possible. In public. On the street. The OAG and "partner" can be a great source of late-night entertainment, especially if the OAG is running low on funds, while they bicker in 7-11 over how many small beers to buy.

4. The Farang Female of Awesome and Terrifying Dimensions.

The FFATD is rarely suitably-attired, either for the cultural mores of Thailand, or let's face it, just for the emotional state of young children. These behemoths seem always to be making tracks (as in train, you know?), normally in twos or threes, leaving little room for passing Thais, tuk tuks, taxis, trucks, buses.

It never fails to shock me that my girlfriend is roughly the same size as a single leg on one of these monsters. Helpful hint, ladies: STOP EATING. ESPECIALLY AT MCDONALDS AND BURGER KING. WHO KNOWS, EATING LOCAL THAI FOOD MIGHT GIVE YOU THE DYSENTRY AND PARASITES YOU NEED. THERE'S ALWAYS HOPE.

Read and Laugh

Islamic Cops in Kuala Lumpur

Malaya

Malaysia has been an Islamic country since its separation from Singapore, and Islam is the nations official religion, though other faiths are allowed to practice. Islamic legal code, known as Shariah, has long been only accepted in conservative northeastern districts such as Kota Baru and Kuala Trengannau. That changed a few years ago when Islamic law was instituted in the western states and found home in Kuala Lumpur, which is now morally ruled by Islamic groups, which demand total submission to Koranic law: cutting off legs and fingers, women covered from head to toe.

Think Taliban Malaysia.

A very famous and popular nightclub in Kuala Lumpur was raided last month, and some 100 Muslims were hauled off to jail and subjected to horrible and embarassing interrogations. Very few people have protested. The nation is silent. And the government does nothing.

JAWI actions split Malays and Muslims?

Syed Nadzri is one of the few columnists in NST that I always look forward to reading. His comments today seem to confirm my hunch that recent actions by JAWI (Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department) has split Malays - urban Malays at least - and Muslims in the country into two divides. Quote:

As debate rages over the basis of that swoop and the manner it was conducted on Zouk disco in Kuala Lumpur on Jan 20 when more than 100 Muslims were hauled up for alleged "indecent behaviour", one thing is quite clear:

The episode has unwittingly split Malays and Muslims in the country right down the middle.

This is quite obvious from opinions expressed publicly in coffeeshops, from news reports, through letters in newspapers or through postings on the Internet.

In fact, taking an outsider's perspective, I saw divergent views even among Muslim members of the government and those from the Establishment.
First and foremost, NGO Sisters-in-Islam has made a stand on Jan 23. It said action taken by JAWI officers - notably on the eve of Hari Raya Haji - "cannot be seen as 'Islamic'".

Here are other examples of opinion from those who dissent JAWI's actions:

• Marina Mahathir: She states in her column in The Star (Feb 16) that there should be an end to this kind of raid because they smack of hypocrisy.



• The Cabinet: According to news report, the Cabinet at its Jan 26 meeting had expressed concern over the raid and felt that Malaysia had no need for morality police.



• Dr Rais Yatim, Culture Arts and Heritage Minister: He said the Cabinet felt that the country’s needs would be best served if the police looked after crime and matters of morality were handled by the family.



• Johan Jaaffar, NST columnist and former Utusan Group EIC: He asked why some Malaysians didn't focus their thoughts on working towards a resurgence of Islamic civilisation but would rather plan a raid on another nightclub.



• Noraini Ahmad, Puteri Umno head: She was quoted Jan 23 as saying that "the youngsters can have fun and should not be penalised for doing so. If the religious department officers find them to have gone overboard in their dressing, then they should tell the youths that, but in a mature manner."



• Hishammuddin Hussein, Umno Youth chief: He was quoted Jan 30 as saying that the authority and powers of JAWI must be examined. "No one should be victimised and no party should abuse the authority given to them," he said.

And here are snapshots of those who defended JAWI's actions:

• Dr Abdullah Mohamed Zin, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department: He was quoted as saying Feb 4 that JAWI was right in its actions as the raid was done according to procedure and that Muslims in the disco were said to be having a 'pesta arak' (booze fest). He reiterated his stand on Feb 7.



• Shamsul Najmi Shamsuddin, Umno Youth religious bureau chairman: He was quoted Jan 29 as saying that "it is wrong for Muslims to be in a place that serves liquor or is involved in gambling", but comment on JAWI's action was vague.



• PAS Federal Territory Youth Wing: It applauded JAWI for its 'bold effort' in cracking down on errant Muslims and commended JAWI officers for executing their duty 'sincerely and with utmost dedication'.

Meanwhile, Ismail Ibrahim, the chairman of the National Fatwa Council -- 'the council that rules on what is allowed in Islam and what is not' -- took the middle path by saying that the JAWI officials should have acted with some restraint. Subsequently, it said some form of standard enforcement procedures are needed.

Another middle-path advocate is the Muslim Professionals Forum Bhd (MPF) which expressed its grave concerns over reports of unprofessional behaviour of some JAWI enforcement officers who mistreated and took advantage of youths detained in the discotheque raid. It said JAWI should come forward and clear the air over this issue, conduct a thorough investigation, and discipline its errant officers if the allegations are found to be true.

On the other hand, satirist blogger TV Smith has this observation about the whole JAWI debacle from a non-partisan Malaysian perspective:

When a bunch of well-connected Malay scotch and bourbon aficionados got busted recently for close proximity with Jack & Johnny, they screamed bloody murder. What about the thousands of non-Malay partygoers who get herded into trucks and made to squat en-masse routinely? I like the fact that there are now more boozing Malays in town than any other race. The city's safer with less of those Samurai sword-swinging Chinese clubbers and bottle-throwing Indian patrons.

There are now over 100 related items captured in Google News. Media reports said Feb 3 that Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail has been given two weeks to compile a report on the raid, and the deadline should end by now.

So where do we move from here?

Syed Nadzri, in his column, pointed to a barrage of public responses carried on the JAWI website itself: They were equally divided.

The columnist says all this reflects a sad state of affairs in our society: ( 1 ) Religion is always a sticky issue; ( 2 ) Instead of fault-finding, he urges Malaysians to work towards bringing back the glory of Islamic civilisation.

He doesn't say how, though.



NOTE: Commentary function to this blog entry is disabled. Please email me in private if you have anything to say, as I am mindful that inflammatory remark is the least that we need for now. Forgive me if you think I have been judgmental by closing commentaries to this particular blog entry.

More Links Here

Moon Handbooks Scandal

Tennessee Handbook

The mindless and senseless slaughter of the very best writers at Moon Publications continues, orchestrated by publisher Bill Newlin, who seems to hate writers with vision and opinion. Only the owners of Avalon Travel Publishing can stop this carnage.

Are you listening, Charlie?

Read the Post by Tennessee Handbook Author

San Francisco by Washington Post

Trieste Italian Style

It's always great fun when some important newspaper such as the Washington Post sends a reporter to do an "inside" story of what's happening in your town, only to screw things up and then not clue in the cartographers who blissfully scatter their nonsense over the grid. Way to go, WaPo, but perhaps you should have actually had a SF citizen look at the copy and the interactive maps.

I love it.

CAFFEE TRISTE

When I first moved to San Francisco in 1975, I found an apartment in North Beach (Jones Street near the Art Institute) and shared the place with a fellow who was the book review editor at Rolling Stone magazine, which was then located south of Market before its move to New York. He also introduced me to jazz at Keystone Corner, copy editing, and giant double espressos at Cafe Trieste. He now works with Mother Jones and continues his orchestra gig over in Berkeley. Thanks Richard!

Comical Insiders Look at San Francisco

Message from Kathmandu

Durbar Square

I just got a message from a friend in Kathmandu and it sounds like things are not as bad as I imagined after the recent political problems. She's a member of Nepal Images at Flickr, so do drop by and see her photos (I admin that group). Even more amazing, she's a member of the Kathmandu Enfield motorcycle club, and they've got a rally scheduled for next month, heading west from Kathmandu to Pokhara then the famous tiger sanctuary and national park at Chitwan. I'm begging her to take along her digital camera and post some pics in the group!

Hi Carl,

The news is depressing here but to tell you about Kathmandu, life is actually going quite normal. We have had people coming out and actually supporting the move of the King. But people are still a little hesitant to express their views fully. I have actually lost track about the new development in our country as the newspapers don't give that much of info, if you know what i mean.

But as I told you earlier, people are willing to give the King a chance to prove that he can handle the country. Since then we have had not bandits, etc., so that is good for the people. So I just hope that this turns into something good for the country in terms of stability.

Regards to human rights organizations, a lot of them are pulling out. And some UN aided organizations as well as some others. So think that we might have a lot of unemployed people in here as Human Rights issues and people working, they are being watched.

Coming back to the site, something next week will definitely put in something on the site. Will try to see what could catch but here life is just as unchanged as before....heeemmm lemme see.

I might have much insight to the situation, but will definitely try to get some info for you or actually can ask some friends to put in their views, the Human Rights people. As for some news sites, think you could catch something at:

www.nepalitimes.com

www.nepalnews.com

www.gorkhapatra.org.np.

Hope that will be helpful.

Still looking for a job, have applied but still need to get some reply. :) still life is good, no complaints.

Ah another thing, the Enfielder are planning their annual "Ride Nepal" which usually takes place during the festival of colours 'holi". you definitely must know it. So as am free, am helping them to plan it. This will take place from 24-27th March. We plan to go to Pokhara, celebrate Holi there on 25, Leave for Sauraha (Chitwan) and celebrate the "terai" holi there on 26 and then ride all the way to Daman and then to Kathmandu. Hope all stays well, this is an awersome trip and fun too. We all go on bikes. Will let you know how the progress is going.

See we still have time to party. lol.

Tina

Indian Saddhus Use RSS Readers

Saddhu by Carl Parkes

Do you? It's about time to find out what you're missing. A message from the Blog about Incredible Blogs:

Yes, I knew someone could do it. Jonathan Dube with CyberJournalist tackles RSS and feeds us a really simple explanation of its benefits. He also points the reader to a good article about RSS by CNet. And a real big thank you to Jon: When he mentions XML, he tells the reader what it means. When explaining RSS, I can end my exhaustive search for a really simple solution (RSS).

Wow, Jon even shares his Blogline feeds. And, as I'm reviewing them, I see Blogging about Incredible Blogs listed. Wonders will never cease.

Finally, here's another interesting take on RSS.

Brunei Bans Keanu Reeves Flick

Brunei Mosque

It's always great sport to watch the nations of Asia ban Hollywood films for all sorts of reasons. Malaysia bans anything remotely critical of Islam or the government, including a Sean Connery epic which was actually filmed in Kuala Lumpur and featured shots in Petronas Towers. Indonesia bans anything with sex or is critical of Islam. Thailand bans any film critical of the monarchy, including the recent version of The King and I with Jodi Foster.

No matter that the present Thai queen once attended a Broadway production of the King and I, the version starring Yul Brynner.

Singapore, well, they ban most everything since they don't trust their citizens to make up their own minds.

And today, in a first, Brunei has banned the new hot film starring Keanu Reeves, though nobody seems to know the reason. An offense against Islam? Hardly likely, since this is yet another of those silly Christian films about all those strange Christian beliefs. Anyone have a clue?

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- The Islamic sultanate of Brunei has banned Keanu Reeves's new film Constantine, an apocalyptic thriller that depicts demon possessions, visions of hell and a renegade angel, an official said Wednesday.

The movie has been deemed unsuitable for public viewing, Ahmad Kadir, the secretary of the Brunei government's Censor Board, said by telephone from the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.

However, he declined to reveal the reasons for the board's decision.

Brunei has some of Southeast Asia's strictest censorship guidelines for movies and songs, especially involving material that might be considered offensive to Islam.

Constantine, which opens in the United States on Friday, is steeped in Roman Catholic mythology and features Reeves as a chain-smoking exorcist who dispatches demons back to the underworld in hopes of erasing a mortal sin he once committed.

In one scene, Reeves' character lashes out at heaven, calling God "a kid with an ant farm." Satan also shows up in the movie's climactic moments, dressed in crisp white apparel and licking his lips as Reeves' character battles to stop a supernatural evil from taking over the world.

The film opened last week in Brunei's closest neighbour, Malaysia, which is also mostly Muslim. Malaysian censors edited out several curse words and rated the movie as having "non-excessive violent and horrifying scenes," but did not object to the religious material.

Keanu is the Devil

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- The Islamic sultanate of Brunei has banned Keanu Reeves' new film "Constantine," an apocalyptic thriller that depicts demon possessions, visions of hell and a renegade angel, an official has said.

The movie has been deemed unsuitable for public viewing, Ahmad Kadir, the secretary of the Brunei government's Censor Board, said by telephone from the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan. However, he declined to reveal the reasons for the board's decision.

Brunei has some of Southeast Asia's strictest censorship guidelines for movies and songs, especially involving material that might be considered offensive to Islam.

"Constantine," which opens in the United States on Friday, is steeped in Roman Catholic mythology and features Reeves as a chain-smoking exorcist who dispatches demons back to the underworld in hopes of erasing a mortal sin he once committed.

Keanu is the Devil, Part 2

Employment? In Afghanistan?

Bamiyan Afghanistan

I'm sure there are more than a few readers of this blog wondering what the hell they are doing with their lives, teaching English at some dead-end job in the slums of Bangkok or Jakarta. Today, help has been offered via a post at Gridskipper, who somehow found the message at the Lonely Planet website. Either some kind soul mailed it in, or there's a RSS feed to Thorn Tree. Anyway, it's funny enough to pass along.

When teaching English in Bratislava simply won’t do it, Lonely Planet Online’s Thorn Tree bulletin board is a great source of “alternative” jobs. Take this one, for instance: Any tradesmen looking for work in Afghanistan contact me…The security at the moment is good so there are no worries about safety and if there’s the slightest doubt you get guards…If you want to carry plasterboard in London or pick fruit in Australia then go for it, but if you want to use your trade and travel a bit more adventurously the send me an email to afghan_jobs@yahoo.com.

Afghanistan is crying out for westerners with experience who can show them how its done properly and know that unreliable electricity, mountain passes at 3000m, ridiculously long friendly Afghan greetings, mad traffic and French ISAF soldiers pushing shopping trolleys with their rifles poking out of the basket through the local supermarket picking up their imported wine is all a part of the experience.” [Neal Ungerleider]

Ed.-Thanks, it’s under serious consideration.

Work In Afghanistan [Thorn Tree]

GridSkipper Link

Blog Popularity Contests

Animusic Drums

As most of you know, Simon at Simon World recently organized a blog popularity contest designed to bring more attention to bloggers within Asia, and bloggers elsewhere in the world who mostly concentrate on the region. It was a great success, although I'm sure even Simon would admit that it wasn't strictly a contest about quality, but rather about the popularity and promotion abilities of individual bloggers. But a noble and worthwhile effort, and I'm looking forward to another contest next year, if Simon didn't tear out all of his hair over the recent ordeal.

The following article discusses the nature of blog contests and comes to some obvious conclusions, but it's still worth a read for several thought provoking comments about the dominance of conservative over liberal blogs, and hints at a few ways bloggers have tried to get around the system and win their divisions.

Reboot your computer? Clear the cache? Cookie cooking anyone?

In the space of a few years, Weblogs have gone from the province of chatty geeks into mainstream culture and political thought. But the way awards are bestowed on the best blogs remains a strange brew of popularity contests, online campaigning and secretive judging. And that's not far off from the chaotic nature of blogging itself, eschewing academies of voters, esteemed panels and award hardware.

Read the Rest

Turning AK-47s Into Art

Go World Travel Newsletter

I receive several monthly email travel newsletters, and most aren't worth the cyberspace they were written on, aside from Go World, which is not only an attractive website but also offers some decent travel stories and commentary. The latest issue includes a profile about an individual's attempt to make a difference in Cambodia.

Sasha’s love affair with Asia began in 1989 before she began a degree course in sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art in London. “I went out to meet a friend in Thailand, who was traveling on a gap year. I spent three months there and really enjoyed it. During the last seven or eight years I’ve returned to Asia many times, in particular Cambodia,” she says. The stone carvings, the sculptures and the culture appealed to her. “I gained inspiration and ideas while traveling, came home and produced a body of work. I would then sell enough pieces to buy a flight back and do the same thing again.” She has exhibited her work, both sculpture and prints, in over 40 exhibitions and held four solo shows.

Sasha has been based in Cambodia since November 2000 when she was appointed Artist in Residence by the World Monuments Fund, a non-profit organization that preserves historic buildings worldwide. This gave her the opportunity to study the Cambodian Temples. “They are amazing, awesome buildings. I never get bored with them, I can still spend whole days out there,” she says, smiling at the recollection.

Read More

Tsunami Coral Reef Recovery Project

Deborah Brosnan

Coral reef recovery expert Deborah Brosnan has left her home and workplace in Portland to provide assistance to the damaged underwater habitats of Thailand, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. She also promises photos, so this might be a good place to see what has happened to the marine wonders of South Asia.

Today I fly to Thailand, to begin a journey to SE Asia and to return a kindness. When the tsunami tore at the coast of Asia, it pulled away at the economic and ecological life of the communities. They depended on their marine resources for food, income, and revenue from dive tourism. The abundant coral reefs were the lifeblood of many fishermen and divers. These reefs, the old growth forests of the sea, took a beating. Already I am getting messages from colleagues telling me that some of those same reefs lie scattered on the beaches. The fishermen and villagers look at the pile of rubble in amazement- the broken corals, mounds of shells, damaged starfish and decaying sponges.

Read More

Radio Free Nepal Blog

Kathmandu by Carl Parkes

I once spent two months in the Kingdom of Nepal, flying from Calcutta to the capital and exploring many of the atmospheric villages in the valley. After a long and scenic bus ride west, it was a week at Pokhara, trying to organize a trekking journey around the Anapurna range. But it was the dead of winter, and freezing cold, so I packed up my bags and headed south into India for another three months in the vast subcontinent.

Someone has created a new blog called Radio Free Nepal, with almost a dozen daily news links to the ongoing, disturbing events in this once peaceful nation. Looks like a great place to keep up with the news and certainly worth a bookmark.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Nepal in the News - Feb. 16, 2005
Press Conference on Amnesty International's Findings
Nepal Shrugs Off Foreign Critics
200 Activists Flee Nepal for India as Crackdown Intensifies
Nepal : Two Journalists Arrested
Help us: Nepal Journalists to World Media
posted by Kathmandu at 2/16/2005 08:00:00 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Nepal in the News - Feb. 15, 2005
Royal Crackdown on Dissent in Nepal
Nepal King Turns Back Clock by Appointing Father's Loyalists as Aides
12 Rebels Killed in Nepal as Maoist Blockade Enters Day 4
India Seals Borders with Nepal
UK Recalls Ambassador from Nepal
US Recalls Envoy from Nepal
EU, India Call Envoys Home for Consultations
Nepal's Tourist Arrivals Slide in January
posted by Kathmandu at 2/15/2005 08:00:00 AM 0 comments

Monday, February 14, 2005
Nepal in the News - Feb. 14, 2005
Amnesty International Secretary General arrives in Nepal
Amnesty International Requests Urgent Audience with King
Strike Paralyses Life in Nepal
posted by Kathmandu at 2/14/2005 08:00:00 AM 0 comments

Radio Free Nepal Blog

Land Politics in Bali

Bali Discovery Tours

Two stories were published today about that perenially popular topic, land ownership in Bali. The first post is from Bali Discovery Tours, which sends out a very information email newsletter about once weekly, and isn't afraid to step into this controversial issue. After that, it's a few thoughts from Nick in Seminyak, who recently married his girlfriend and will probably be looking to settle down for the long haul on the island.

Editorial: Stopping the Land Grab
Bali Post Editorial Sounds Warning to the Balinese to Start Controlling their Precious Land Resources.

(2/13/2005) The February 9, 2005, editorial in the Indonesian-language Bali Post published an urgent appeal to the people of Bali to take steps to preserve their quickly diminishing ancestral lands.

Outside Investors Controlling Bali's Land

Written under the headline "Stopping Outside Investors From Controlling Bali's Land Resources," the editorial laments that 85% of the estimated Rp.150 trillion (approximately US$1.63 billion) already invested in the Island's tourism industry is in the control of investors hailing from outside Bali. This leaves the remaining 15% in the hands of Balinese who, the editorial claims, receive an equally meager share of the tourism income pie.

Strongly suggesting that Bali has become something of a "waste bin" where substantial tourism transactions take place only to see profits quickly repatriated offshore, the editorial insists that the lack of Balinese representation in the control and ownership of tourism assets results in a number of negative lead-on effects, including denying the Balinese both a proper share of the benefits of tourism and meaningful senior manager job creation within that sector of the economy.

Echoing comments made recently at a number of high profile seminars in Bali, the Bali Post editorial maintains that the escalating growth in foreign exchange earnings produced each year by Bali's tourism industry is meaningless unless such advances result in real improvements in the welfare of the people of Bali.

The Land Grab

Year after year, the editorial goes on, valuable tracts of agricultrual land change hands in Bali only to be transformed into tourism projects, owned and controlled by non-Balinese.

The editorial admits that while many tourism operators make efforts to recruit local staff and pay government-mandated bonuses and wage benefits, the inevitable fact remains that the long term effects of these investments are taking a damaging toll on the Island's environment and traditional social structure, diminishing both the harmony and cultural integrity of Bali.

The editorial estimates that more than 1,000 hectare (more than 10 million square meters) of land disappears from the island's agricultural land bank each year in order to accommodate the voracious demand of hotel sites, strip malls, villas projects and other tourism projects – all largely owned and controlled by non-Balinese.

Bali Discovery Tours on Land Issues -- Read the Rest

Land issues becoming a talking point in Bali
BaliBlog
Nick

Buying land and building a house or a business is a dream for many people in Bali especially outsiders. The reality is that owning land and living a stress free life is harder than you think and the process is filled with pitfalls.

One of the problems westerners have is they cannot legally own land in Bali and have to put the land in the name of a local, which has its own risks. I have talked to many people who own apartments and guest houses about how they handle the situation. Here in Bali the expat scene is a bit like southern California where you get people from all over world moving to a desirable place to start a new life and do not want to leave, often being prepared to do things they would not do at home in order to stay.

Telling lies is part of the deal and I find that if I ask the same person the same question one week apart I often get a different answer. One week they own land, next week they lease land, one week they own a guesthouse, next week someone else owns it and they are the manager.

The British Consul told me there are examples galore of people trying to buy land in East Bali and getting taken for a ride, largely because there is no official record of land and its the Brooklyn Bridge scenario of someone selling you land and a while later the real owner wanting it back.

That does not mean it is impossible but that you have to exercise caution when slapping down hard cash. An older Balinese gentleman once told me the way it goes. A farmer sells land to a westerner, builds himself a house on his remaining land, buys and car, a couple of motorbikes and after 5 years the money is gone. Okay he thinks, now I want my land back. As a westerner who are you going to go to? You hold a piece of paper that has no record and the police are all local.

I know an American guy who owns a couple of blocks of apartments. He has a 20 year lease and after that is up he will lose the apartments. Maybe he does no care and if he manages to rent them out continously will get back much more than he put in, allowing him to live in Bali and make a profit.

Bali Blog on Land Issues

Bangkok Architecture: Fantasies and Failures

Howard Roark Fantasy

Proposed New Architecture in Bangkok

More Proposed Highrises

Failed "Ghost Buildings"

Thanks Ron!

Stickman Bangkok Interviews Boss Hogg

Four Kinds of Farangs

The is certainly the most honest, open, and informative interview I've ever read with a bar owner in Bangkok. Have you ever wanted to go this route? I'd suggest printing out the entire interview and then memorize the wisdom before you sink your fortune into that Nana bar.

Here is the big difference. If you run a gogo, your bottom line profit should be between 34 and 38% if you run it right and know what you are doing. If you ran a bar beer right and you do a good amount of business the profit is 52 - 58%. So when you look at bottom line comparison, there it is. Lucky Luke's makes good profit, 4 million baht last year, but it still does just 20% of Big Dogs. Lucky Luke's only has 4 staff, 4 paid employees. The rest are lady drink girls. In America we fight for 10% profit and if we stumble we do not even make 10%. 10% is a success story! Here, 55% is a success. Lucky Luke's looks dead and it is, comparatively speaking, but it adds up at the end of the day.

It is the same with the gogos. Look at Fantasia. The rent is only 45,000 baht a month, 1,500 a night. A bar can look dead and easily do that! Put a whole load of dead bars together and what do you get? Having said that I do not apologize for making money, it is a very risky and volatile business. The investment has become substantial to be a bar owner. The reputation of investors and partners having been taken advantage of in bar business has not helped. Having been the largest single investor in the plaza, I always warn potential bar owners to do due diligence and buyer beware.

Nana Plaza could have been Las Vegas. There could have been so much made. A lot has been made, but it could have been so much more. The various bar owners not working together have kept the plaza from reaching its full potential. The majorities of them have made money in spite of themselves and were at the right place at the right time. You sure do not see any new great ideas. To reach potential the place needs an overhaul both physical and in attitude.

What about Soi Cowboy?

Read the Whole Thing

AniMusic Rocks

Animusic

Have you ever seen the short computer-generated music clips created by a company called AniMusic? I live here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and with cable can tune into four PBS stations (SF, San Jose, San Mateo, Marin County) and the good folks at KCSM often run these music videos when they have a few minutes to kill.

AniMusic is difficult to describe, but it's computer animation so realistic that I wasn't sure if it was real life or just something invented with code. The music scores are usually some variation of New Age, and the computer orchestras are both realistic and surrealistic. It's just hypnotic stuff. DVDs are available.

If you've got broadband, you might want to sample some tracks.

AniMusic Website

Flickr Friends

New Flickr Graph

I'm sure you are all getting sick and tired of me constantly talking about Flickr, and urging you to join with a FREE account, then post some of your lovely pictures of Asia in the dozen Groups I admin. Groups? Just look over the right on this page. That's my sidebar and scroll down a ways, then you will miraculously discover direct links to all the Flickr groups I started and admin.

Yes, do sign up.

When you wander around Flickr and look at all those marvelous images, you'll find plenty of talented people and you'd like to stay in contact and see what they post in the future. So you can add them as a contact, and select a category. I just list all my 100 contacts as general contacts, but you could also list them as "friends" or "family." Now that I know some of these people in my contacts list, I should go back and recatogorize them as "friends" rather than general.

Anyway, if you've been listed by anybody at Flickr as a "friend" then you can use the software tool below to discover those relationships, and probably wonder why-in-the-world-that-person-listed-me-as-a-friend. But thanks all.

Flickr Graph on Relationships

Filipino Blogger from Angeles

Marcos Statue on Baguio Highway

So I'm wandering around blogs and find a great discussion at Sassy Lawyer, with wonderful commentary from a Filipino blogger now living in Oz, who dukes it out in fine fashion with the opinionated Lawyer. Who is this guy? I click his link and he's got a wild and wicked blog about being a Filipino abroad, and what's right and wrong about his mother country.

It's one of those strange blogs: no personal history, no blogroll, no RSS feed. Just talk. But if you're interested in the Philippines, this one looks good.

Predictions for 2005

It's the start of the year so it's most appropriate to do my predictions for Ow Five. I'll make this a yearly tradition on my blog (if it lasts that long). Anyway, here are my predictions for 2005

1. FLOODS!

A no-brainer I know. They say death and taxes are the only certain things in life. In the Philippines, it's death, taxes, and floods. It's funny, for a country that experiences rain half the year, we have a drainage system like we're a Middle East country.

Here's what's gonna happen: we throw our garbage haphazardly as usual, not upgrade the drainage system, come rainy season we'll have waist-high floods. Then it's gonna be all over ABS-CBN and politicians do the finger-pointing. There'll be an outcry for garbage discipline, upgrade of infrastructure, etc. etc. But come November, when the rains stop, everyone would've forgotten about it.

2. A SHIP WILL CAPSIZE!

And it will be blamed on "human error". Every fucking year, a superferry burns or collides with another MV. Or burns after colliding with another superferry. There'll be an investigation. Well, there's always a fucking investigation which doesn't lead to a conviction or someone getting jailed. Fined maybe. Who cares about maritime laws when you can bribe and PR your way out of public safety?

We all know who's guilty: it's the greedy management who pack in as much people in ferries dangerously well over the maximum load and dispatch them out to sea without a thorough inspection. Hundreds die in the process.
Life is cheap. Profits good. Safety regulations bad.

3. THE PESO WILL DEPRECIATE!

I'm thinking 75 pesos to the dollar. Here's hoping the Aus dollar does too. But then again inflation will go up, given the proposed draconian taxes, so the benefits would be marginal. Either way my financial life is fucked.

4. CONGRESS WON'T ENACT BUDGET!

They'll end up using the one from last year, which was a repeat of the one from the year before. Hehehe. No actually they already passed it. It's already in the Senate.
It'll be cool though if the Senate throws the budget back to Congress and say "we're not approving this because you took out the budget for Mentos Mints in the Senate conference rooms". Congress is adamant and reasons that it's a part of Arroyo's fiscal tightening measures. The whole thing goes to the Supreme Court, which decides that Mentos Mints are a "contitutional right" of Senators. In 2015.

5. ERAP WILL DIE!

I'm not the type to wish people ill, even if they're bad people, but I figure since FPJ has made his appointment with the worms, looks like Erap's gonna be next. Look at him: his knees are going bad, he gains and loses stones, he doesn't live in a mansion... all that stress could not be good for you. There's only so much Johnny Walker Blue your system can take before it decides to shut down. But then again I could be wrong you know. As the tagalog saying goes: "Mahirap mamatay and masamang damo" (Bad grass doesn't die easily).

6. FINGERS WILL GET BLOWN OFF!

Ding Rants and Raves and Puts Out Some Great Commentary

Expat on Expats in Karon

Expat on Expats

Expat at Large may live in Singapore, but when there's a vacation in the schedule, he knows exactly where to head for some action and pizza.

Thailand.

I can't seem to get registered to make comments, and I don't see a Permalink, but he only updates his blog a couple times weekly, so it really doesn't matter. Expat is one of those wonderful, quirky, weird bloggers who puts out some great stuff in his spare time.

An older guy in a leather jacket with no shirt underneath and a soft leather cap roared up on a pseudo-Harley. E@L quickly got the impression that B had been out in the tropics a bit too long. He had a wealth of tattoos (Butterfly had a tattoo parlour at the back) and a pet rabbit, which he danced with as the night got older. He was intense and yet not with you at the same. You had the feeling that his sociability could turn to hostility in a flash. A mild case of chronic excema on his chest had made him consider seeing one of the local healers, a female Buddhist priest, for her to lay some healing hands on his skin. “You know sometimes they work, man. I’m not saying I believe it but I know if you DO believe, it’s more likely to work.” Dr M just nodded as B explained the logic of the placebo effect his way. Definitely way too many drugs back in the hippy days for B.

Back in the hippy days? You mean they’ve finished?

Order a Pizza and Read the Rest

Bali Peace Park

Kuta Beach by Carl Parkes

An Australian chap has been working on a Bali Peace Park to be constructed on the sites bombed by the Islamic terrorists in Kuta Beach, Bali. Today, Nick at BaliBlog posted an interview about the slow but hopeful progress of this memorial to the 200 victims.

Interview with Bali Peace Park sponsor Dallas Finn
Bali Blog by Nick
Feb 12, 2005

Bali Peace Park front-man Dallas Finn has lived in Bali for the last year and a half and spends his time campaigning for his project, which is to develop the sites of the Sari Club and Paddys for a memorial site. Dallas has recently returned from Australia and Jakarta. Here is the latest on his projects.

Baliblog: Dallas since we last met tell us about some of the things that have been happening.

Dallas: Actually we are moving forward and just before Christmas I went to Perth and approached the now Australian of the Year, Dr Fiona Wood, to be our patron of our foundation. She will represent the Australian side so to speak and we have also got General Made Pastika and he will be the patron for the foundation here in Indonesia.

Baliblog: He is the Balinese police guy?

Dallas: Yes. He caught the terrorists, he is the #1 police here and he is very well respected not only by the Indonesian authorities but by the Australian authorities. I have had a couple of meetings with the Australian consulate letting them know where we are at. Basically we are moving forward and everything should be in place within the next month or 2, but as you know here in Indonesia anything can happen. As I said we will be going to the public to ask for the money.

A non-government organization based in Kuta will be managing the foundation as well as a lot of other environmental work around the island.

Read the Rest

Bangkok Highrises

Bangkok Jan 2005

Bangkok is certainly one of the most architecturally intriguing cities in the world, though this phenomena is rarely mentioned aside from a handful of websites and blogs which cover the City of Angels. Ron Morris of 2Bangkok fame often checks in with stories about architecture along with his other fetish, old trains and streetcars, but he just reminded me of a wonderful website about all things architecture Bangkok.

So, for your reading pleasure:

Bangkok Highrises

New Guinea Images at Flickr

Gadling Photo of the Day



New Guinea Man Dressed for Sing Sing



New Guinea by Carl Parkes



New Guinea Kids by Carl

A few years ago, I managed to make my way over to Papua New Guinea and spent three weeks exploring the country, from the dangerously anarchic capital to the interior highlands and up the Sepik River into the virtual heart of darkness. And last year, I joined Flickr with their FREE 100-image account and started over a dozen groups centered around photography in Asia. One of those groups was New Guinea Images.

Nobody joined. Well, it's got three members.

My Japan Images and Thailand Images have proven very popular with almost 100 members each, and loads of great images added daily. Best of all, India Images is absolutely superb and the quality of photographs is nothing short of astounding. I go over all my groups daily and delete the turkeys, but I rarely need to do anything with India Images (thank god).

But New Guinea just limps along. However, Erik at Gadling just gave a mention, so perhaps a few folks will join Flickr and post new stuff at New Guinea Images.

Really, I'm begging. Help me out with this group.

New Guinea is one of those few great last places where it sometimes seems time has stood still. Our old favorite Friskodude (aka Carl Parkes) has posted some of his stellar pics on Flickr, and we’re calling out this one as our POTD today.

Erik at Gadling

New Guinea Images at Flickr

Juiced by Jose Canseco

Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Canseco said that he believed that Oakland traded him to the Texas Rangers in 1992 because of his well-known reputation for using steroids, but once a Ranger, he said, he became a performance-enhancing mentor to Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro and Ivan Rodriguez.

"Soon I was injecting all three of them," he wrote. "I personally injected each of those three guys, many times." The results on those three Rangers stars led more players to seek his advice, Canseco wrote.

Upon his return to the A's in 1997, he said, McGwire and Giambi would use the men's room in the Oakland clubhouse to inject each other with steroids and human growth hormone, while Canseco shot himself up.

Giambi's body, Canseco said, came to resemble a professional wrestler's because "he was overdosing testosterone."

Sounding like a cross between a pharmacist and Victor Conte Jr., the founder of Balco, Canseco wrote that Giambi should have taken a lower dose of testosterone, then balanced it with steroids like Winstrol or Deca or Equipoise.

New York Times on Conseco and Steroids

Travel Writers Wanted

Perhaps You?

Are you an established travel writer about to embark on an interesting, intriguing adventure in the next few months? Are you also an engaging and entertaining blogger? Looking for candidates to blog on commission for MSN/MSNBC for about a month, starting in the spring, on adventurous travel. Please, established bloggers only need send me their pitch to james.eng@msnbc.com

New Flickr Group

Getting Social with Flickr

Flickr New Groups Announcement

Evangelical Christian Priest Pens Cambodia Sex Story

The Beard

Hah!

Catblogging on Travel Writer Issues

Baby Blue

This is really absurd. A wonderful review about travel books and the art and craft of great travel writing found in the Yemen Observer?

Thanks, WorldHum, but what in the world is happening to the world of travel writing when some of the most intelligent commentary is found in the Yemen Observer? Look, last night I met some guy at the San Francisco Chronicle who claims to write for their travel section, and maybe I could put in a good word and get this outstanding piece published in an American rag.

Theo, just let me know.

I got connections.

In 1977, Paul Theroux gave up being a novelist for a few months to take a rail trip across the Russian steppes and back. He needed money and his editor thought a quick travel book would be just the thing. Yet the result, The Great Railway Bazaar, was more than anybody might have expected: it was caustic, funny, informative, and had the inestimable value of saving you the hassle of taking the trip yourself. Plus, Theroux revived the bright idea of giving a travel book weird characters (including himself) dialogue, and something like a plot. The book was a huge success.

Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, published at the same time in England, raised standards significantly higher and now seems like a tipping point for the contemporary travel book. It was stranger than any novel published that year, better written, more breathtaking and much truer. In turns out now that some of the details in the text were invented but the book was good enough to supercede the reality it described and when it appeared, readers everywhere were reminded of how exotic travel narratives might be, how capacious, strange, and authentic.

That’s why it’s lasted. That’s why all the worthwhile travel books, throughout history, have lasted. Because they seem to tell us something not just about a faraway place or an intrepid voyager but about life itself. The best travel writers have almost always been aware of this, of the possibility that lives in the heart of a literary adventure, and have written their books in such a way as to play, sometimes humorously, sometimes profoundly, with the parallels: life is a journey, a journey is life.

Yemen Observer Publishes the Travel Review of the Year and Wins the Pulitzer

Erik Olsen Panoramic Wonders

Carl Parkes at Taj Mahal

Yeah, that's the world famous backpacker posing at dawn at the marble homage to love, before the crowds invaded and completely ruined the atmosphere. The Taj may be lovely and striking from a distance, but when you get up close, all the cracks are filled with dirt and most of the marble filigree inlay is coming apart and obviously being stolen by the Indian visitors.

On a brighter note (hey! I'm a travel writer!), visit the wonderful panoramic site of another traveling dude, Erik Olsen, who has posted over a dozen pano shots on his website.

He also does a website about travel and stuff. Check his resume. Erik might not be god, but he's doing a good imitation.

Alice Falls Down the Rabbit Hole

Movie Memories

Movie of the Week

Do you remember when you first saw Deep Throat? I do.

It was the summer of 1974 and I was living up at Lake Tahoe and working at "Del Webb's Fabulous Sierra Tahoe Bonanza Buffet." Wow. I waited on Elvis' manager who tipped me a buck for a party of eight. Cheap bastard.

And I was living at a fabulous place called Lakeland Village, on the shores of South Lake Tahoe, with my girlfriend from Nebraska, Karen. Deep Throat had opened down in San Francisco and, like most horny young men, I just had to see it. So we jumped in my Volkswagen and blazed down to the city and took in a matinee in a gigantic theater that now hosts Broadway musicals.

I hope I never see a cock that big again in my whole life.

Here's a review of a new documentary about the making of the movie.

Things get fresher, funnier and, inevitably, more poignant when we meet the people involved in the making of the movie: Lovelace's co-star, Harry Reems, who sank into drink and drugs before becoming a Christian and retiring to work in real estate in Utah; and the plain-spoken, genial Damiano, who, now in his 70s, seems a happy man despite the fact that he never made any serious money off Deep Throat. Corroborating Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, Damiano claims that many of the porn filmmakers of the 1970s, before video and the invasion of Mafia distributors lowered the tone, thought of themselves as independent artists on a mission to reunite America with sexual pleasure. I believe he believes it, but that doesn't make it so.

More

Muslims to Indonesia: Drop Dead

Banda Aceh Mosque

I'm no fan of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, or Paul Wolfowitz, but Wolfy came through today with some straight talk about the dismal failure of the Islamic world to help Indonesia -- the world's most populous Islamic nation.

Parts of the Islamic world were "big on talking about jihad" but fell short in coming to the rescue of Muslim victims of the tsunami, according to the US Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz.

Speaking to a Senate hearing about the international response to the disaster, Mr Wolfowitz also said Europe's military response could have been greater.

His remarks on Thursday came a day after the White House announced it was nearly tripling its tsunami aid to $US950 million ($A1.2 billion), just larger than the $1 billion in aid and interest-free loans pledged to Indonesia by the Howard Government.

"There's been very little generosity so far from parts of the Muslim world that are big on talking about jihad and other things, but when 200,000 people - all of them Muslim in the case of Indonesia - died in this catastrophe, there's not much help forthcoming," Mr Wolfowitz said.

While he said he did not want to diminish European efforts, he noted that France had sent an aircraft carrier to the Indian Ocean, but "it was three or four weeks after we got there".

Mr Wolfowitz, a former US ambassador to Indonesia who visited the disaster zone in January, praised Canada, Germany, Britain and unspecified countries in the region for their aid efforts.

Read More

Tsunami Good News

Trivandrum by Carl Parkes

Many years ago as a young backpacker intent on seeing every nook and cranny of Asia, I spent a full six months exploring the Indian subcontinent, from Calcutta to the southern tip of Tamil Nadu. During my three weeks in the state of Tamil Nadu, I visited many of the magnificent temples and also admired the world-famous wall carvings at a beach resort called Mahabalipuram, about an hour south of Madras.

The stone carvings were magnificent, but it was a sleepy little village without much interest, so I spent the evening in a simple cafe slurping up some curry and rice. Across the room was a stunning women decked out in the finest Hippie apparel, and it was obvious we were like-minded souls. So I went over and introduced myself and she told me a bit about herself -- longtime resident of Bolinas near my home in San Francisco, serious traveler, on the road for over a year, and her name was Suzanne.

I know another Suzanne in Bolinas, but that's a long story.

Anyway, after I got back home I visitied Suzanne in Bolinas at the local bar and met some of her friends who filled me in on her background.

First wife of Neil Young.

She's got her picture on the inside cover of his first album; do check it out.

Amazing the people you meet on the road in some god-forsaken village.

And so on to other news........and a clever segue from the previous story to the following story about, what I like to call, the Miracle of Mahabalipuram.

Tsunamis reveals ancient sculptures on southern Indian shores

MAHABALIPURAM, India (AFP) - The deadly tsunamis that crashed into southern India have unearthed priceless relics, including two granite lions, buried under sand for centuries, archaeologists say.

The towering waves that killed over 285,000 people throughout Asia also appear to have swept a bronze Buddha to Indian shores from Thailand in a basket attached to a bamboo raft, they say.

Archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have descended on the ancient seaport of Mahabalipuram, famed for its rock carvings dating back to the great Pallava dynasty, to see the objects. "The sea has thrown up evidence of the grandeur of the Pallava dynasty. These have been buried for centuries," the archaeologal body's superintending archaeologist, T. Sathiamoorthy, told AFP late Thursday.

The Hindu dynasty dominated much of South India from as early as the first century BC to eighth century AD and Mahabalipuram is now recognized as the site of some of the greatest architectural and sculptural achievements in India. Among the tsunami "gifts" found in Mahabalipuram, 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Madras, are the remnants of a stone house and a half-completed rock elephant, archaeologists say.

There are also two giant granite lions, one seated and another poised to charge. The statues are each carved out of a single piece of granite stone, testifying to the carver's skill. The objects were uncovered when the towering waves withdrew from the beach, carrying huge amounts of sand with them.

Miracle in Mahabalipuram

Mai Pen Rai

Experts in English on Khao San Road

Thailand has a big problem with the English language, and the situation never seems to improve. While it's a humorous look into the complexities of the language, it's also pitiful that none of the government institutions will hire a native English speaker to proofread their copy. This includes the Tourism Authority of Thailand, Bangkok Tourism, Thai Immigration, etc.

Today, in the Bangkok Post Letters to the Editor (Postbag):

I have been teaching English in Bangkok for three years now. I have taught at all levels, from kindergarten to university students and adults in business. In the schools I have taught in, it is clear that the vast majority of Thai English teachers cannot put together even the most basic of English sentences.

How can the students possibly learn proficient English when their teachers aren't proficient? The class sizes are usually much too big. In one school, I was expected to teach kindergarten classes of 80-90 pupils; other classes of older children had 40-50 pupils.

Seeking to improve its standards, one school brought in test papers produced by one of Bangkok's top schools. The papers came complete with elementary English mistakes, because clearly no native English speaker had been involved in preparing or checking them.

Due to pride or face, teachers and educators seem unprepared to involve fluent, proficient or native speakers in checking or correcting mistakes. Indeed, correcting English mistakes is probably the quickest way to lose one's job. The problem extends to all levels of society.

At the Immigration Department, a large notice advising of documents required for a visa is incorrectly translated. The notice in Thai saying "Documents A and B are required" is translated in English as "Documents A or B are required", causing problems and confusion.

Going to Pattaya on the elevated highway, the signs read "Phatthaya". Must be confusing for tourists wondering if this is the same place.

Thai culture makes it almost impossible to correct mistakes, as someone then loses face, but it's when we make mistakes that we learn; that is, if people are prepared to accept that we and others can improve.

There are many Thai people who can speak, read and write good English, but they won't be teachers, because the pay is too low. I fear if the above issues are not addressed, then there will never be any significant improvement in the system.

I Smythe

From Mao to Walmart

Little Red Book

Henry may not be everybody's idea of a brilliant stock analyst, but he's really tearing it up at Slate with his ongoing series about the stunning economic rise of communist China.

The domestic strategy, selling to Chinese consumers, is challenging but often successful. Most of the country is still locked in unfathomable poverty—25 years of economic progress in rural Xiaogang, Fishman reports, have increased annual per capita income from $2.50 to $313—but China's population is so huge that even a fraction of it represents an enormous market. For example, according to the Harvard Business Review, China is now adding 4 million to 6 million new cell phone subscribers per month. This statistic is mind-boggling. It means that, every year, China adds a new cell phone market about the size of Germany's—and Germany is the third-largest cell phone market in the world. (No wonder handset manufacturers like Motorola are so jazzed about China.) Other products that foreign companies are selling include cars, soap, sneakers, shampoo, watches, soda, beer, noodles, hot water heaters, televisions, clothes, VCRs, film, coffee, courier services, cameras, and motorcycles.

Still, the most common foreign-business strategy in China is export. China's manufacturing costs are so low that factories can undercut not only operations in the United States and Europe, but previous low-cost export platforms like the Philippines and Mexico. Because so many companies have now pitched camp in China, today's manufacturers usually have two choices: follow or quit. As China's economy has developed, moreover, its manufacturing capabilities have become increasingly sophisticated, allowing factories to climb the complexity ladder. In 1990, according to the Harvard Business Review, China led the world in the production only of textiles and televisions. By 2002, this dominance had extended to refrigerators, PCs, motorbikes, cigarette lighters, and cell phone handsets. What's more, so many of China's impoverished farmers and unemployed state workers need jobs that China's production costs are likely to stay low for decades. Ted Fishman says that between 90 million and 300 million Chinese farmers have migrated to cities in recent years—a labor pool that, even at the midpoint of that range, exceeds the total workforce of the United States. Fishman also observes that, between 1998 and 2001, China's state-run companies fired 21 million people, more workers than are employed by the entire U.S. manufacturing industry.

Read the Rest

On Free Speech and Tenure for Professors

Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller R.I.P.

Tsunami Update: 9.3 and 300K?

Tsunami Sonar Image

The horrors will just not stop.

A final analysis of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami is likely to create a death toll in 2004 greater than any caused by ground shaking in more than four centuries.

While the total deaths from the Dec. 26, 2004 disaster remains uncertain, it stands at 275,950, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) statement released Thursday. A comparatively small number of other earthquake-related fatalities for the year brings the total to 276,856, the agency reported.

However, other disaster officials put the known deaths at between 162,000 and 178,000, with a list of missing between 26,000 to 142,000. Those figures add up to a possible death toll range of between 188,000 and 320,000.

It remains to be seen whether the final tally will exceed 1976, when a magnitude 7.5 temblor killed roughly 255,000 people in and around Tangshan, China. On Jan. 23, 1556, a magnitude 8 quake killed 830,000 people in Shansi, China.

Historically, most earthquake deaths are caused directly by the shaking. But tsunamis and fires have contributed to combined catastrophes before. In 1755, an earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal triggered a tsunami and fires that combined to kill more than 60,000 people.

The Dec. 26, 2004 earthquake was put at magnitude 9.0 initially. One group of scientists said earlier this week it was actually 9.3. As of Thursday, however, the USGS was still using the 9.0 figure. Depending on what number geologists ultimately settle on, it will go down in history as the second or third strongest event ever measured.

Tsunami Update

Newsletter from Jakarta

Pool Hustlers in Blok M

So last night there was a media reception south of market on Brannan Street at some fancy restaurant called Bacar's, down in the dreary basement, but the appetizers were excellent and the attendees included the usual collection of folks from Bay Area Travel Writers (BATW) and crashers from the San Francisco Chronicle. Well, they bought the Savignon Blanc, so we were all so friendly. Outstanding oysters, and yours truly managed to keep the shuckers busy for a few hours. And the largest cooked shelled prawns I've ever seen.

Good food: Eat at Bacar's.

Another SATW member brought along his young daughter and it was a real treat to meet her, along with the travel writer with the Chron and a black lady I know who has attempted for many years to produce books about the African American travel experience. Didn't work out, but she's also a lawyer, so she can always fall back on her trade.

In other news, here's a snippet from a Jakarta newsletter that always amuses with gossip and scandal. Do subscribe.

Over the years I met a number of Americans who claimed they worked for CIA, but that they preferred to be low key during their visit to Indonesian and kindly asked me not to tell anybody else. If they really were CIA they probably would never be so stupid to tell it to a half drunk bar manager / newsletter distributor! (or could they be that stupid..?)

Anyway, I had again an ex-CIA employee in my bar two weeks ago. When I asked him why he left the service he responded that he had married this beautiful Indonesian girl and he didn't want her to go her trough all the screening tests or back ground checks. Why? Could he be afraid of the outcome? An innocent Indonesian girl like her could never be a threat to the American society (or could she..?). Anyway, the man and his wife were nice and I had a few beers with them.

Read the Rest

When Expats Go Wrong

E & O Express to Sukhothai

Anyone who has traveled around Asia for any amount of time has met this guy. He made a great deal of money back home and cleaned out his bank account to move to some remote corner of Asia to hang out, rediscover his inner youth, and probably get involved in some sort of business. He never bothers to learn the language or the customs, but assumes an air of invincibility that soon gets him and his business in serious trouble.

His motorcycle or car is stolen or vandalized. The business is repeatedly robbed or burned to the ground. All his employees steal from him and hate his guts. Most of his time is spent at local beer bars wasting the remainder of his rapidly fading fortune. And when he's broke and probably under a death threat, he flees back home without a clue what happened to him in Asia.

I assume the following story is based on a true character. Anyone got any guesses?

Risky Business
A Story Phuket, Thailand
by Steve Rosse
January 2005

Saul retired to Phuket from New York City in 1991. At the age of 40 he already had under his belt a Master's Degree in Business Administration from New York University, three years of therapy with a strict Freudian psychiatrist, an amicable divorce from his wife Amy and a small fortune from the sale of his father's business.

Saul's father had run a factory in New Jersey that made rawhide chew-toys for dogs. Saul took over the firm upon his graduation from NYU and profits tripled in the first fiscal year. Most of this increase came from the fact that Saul discovered that the dried beef hides necessary to produce the chew-toys could be had in Bangkok for a third of what his father had traditionally paid for them in Argentina. The rest of the increased profits were a result of Saul's widely acknowledged gift for business.

In the eighteen years that Saul helmed Happy Bonz, Inc., he proved himself to be a consummate man of commerce. He introduced new lines of toys, as well as a variety of canine health-care and grooming products. He kept the unions out of his factories and by the time he sold the company to an international dog food conglomerate there were 141 Happy Bonz Boutique franchises spread across America and they were doing over ten million dollars per year in mail-order sales.

Saul divided the money he got for the factory between his parents, six brothers and sisters, and a variety of minor dependents. He took his cut and moved to Thailand.
Saul came to Phuket and bought a house on Kata Noi Bay. He bought a big motorcycle and a flashy red sports car. He bought the best TV, satellite dish and stereo system available. He took diving lessons and shooting lessons and equestrian lessons. He took trips to Singapore and Hong Kong. He sat on the beach for hours at a time. He got bored.

Saul decided to open a business. Business was what he was good at, and it would be more fun than falling off of horses. He looked around and saw that the highest profit margins in retail seemed to be in the boutiques in the five star hotels. He examined their stock and decided that there was a lack of quality leather goods available. He contacted a lawyer and set up The Chao Fah Leather Importers, Ltd.

Read the Rest

An American in Sumbawa

Beyond Bali

Here's a very colorful and reflective story from an American expat who has wandered around Asia for many years, traveling from Japan to Bali and onward to Sumbawa. After you've read the story, go to the home page of Escape from America and sign up for their monthly newsletter -- one of the best adventure reads to arrive in your mailbox.

Reflections On An Expatriate Life
Escaping To Asia
Bruce E. Pohlmann
January 2005

My wife asks where I would like to drink my coffee. I take it on the veranda of our new house on the island of Sumbawa in eastern Indonesia. Feathery clouds float in an azure sky; a soothing westerly breeze ruffles the palm leaves in the front yard. It’s another day in paradise.

Paul Theroux, the travel writer, commented in the beginning of Dark Star Safari that when he left on his trip through Africa he wanted to disappear. When I left the United States after 40 years of life there, I cradled the same thought. The American story of male middle-age crisis is the man who leaves the house to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returns. Where do they go? Texas? California? Florida? Bali? Some place warm probably and with a seeming surplus of young, available women. When my entering middle age crisis hit, I had just finished up a long delayed Ph.D., separated from my wife of seven years, saw my son move off to live with his mother after spending most of his life with me, and realized that what I was doing was not making me happy or sane.

One day I was planning for the new school year in my middle class school in Marin Country, the next day I had a job offer in the mountain jungles of Irian Jaya, one of the more remote places on the planet.

What is it that makes a person leave their life, family, friends, and country for someplace unknown?

The coming weeks bring up two somewhat significant anniversaries – my 15th year of living in Asia and my 55th birthday. Now generally I prefer to let the birthdays come and go and usually don’t give them much thought other than how much closer I am to retirement, but this one has some weight in that people start to retire around this time and you get to where you can see an end appearing on the horizon. My last birthday, where I became perhaps overly nostalgic or overly analytical, was 12 years ago during the 92 Olympics. My wife, daughter and I were living most of the year in Irian Jaya in a three-bedroom townhouse in a mining community within site of the glacier-packed Puncak Jaya mountain, but during the vacation we were living in two rooms that my wife had built onto her parent’s house. We had a windowless bedroom that served as storage space and a living room just big enough to accommodate a couch and TV.
At night I slept on a mattress on the floor in the living room. During the day the mattress was stashed outside the house on top of our bicycles in the courtyard. One night I was lying on the floor watching the Olympics thinking what my father would have thought about me at 43 sleeping on the floor of a tiny house in the middle of a poor Muslim neighborhood on the north coast of Bali. The next day I took some tourists out fishing with a Balinese friend and ended up in the hospital that night with amoebic dysentery. As soon as I got out of the hospital my wife and I started building our first house together. We are now finishing up our third house.

It’s been said of Nabokov that he was obsessed with the past; that could probably be said of me as well. The past has been like a computer program running in the background over the last 15 years – sometimes the focus is on people from the past that I have lost track of; sometimes places that I lived and things that I did there; other times just events that still have enough cathartic charge to pop out at odd times demanding to be replayed (for what purpose?). My memory is probably as selective as most – a blue angora sweater that a girlfriend gave me one Christmas, a runaway kid that I met in Chicago and took to a church that sheltered runaways; throwing up before giving my first big speech as a radical in the 60s; closing the car door on my son’s fingers when he was three; tracing out all the places that I had been to when I was 16 and still living with my parents; reading a WWII novel about an American pilot who ditched his plane over New Guinea; gazing in an apartment window on a winter evening in Lincoln Park wondering what the people inside were doing; wandering down Jalan Legian in Bali looking for some action after five months of living in the jungle like an ascetic.

Escape to Asia

J-Walk Rips 1275 CDs to 94Gb

Chipmonk Ripping CDs

So what's the guy behind J-Walk Blog been doing the last few weeks. Oh, just ripping his CD and album collection into MP3s. You've got to read this to believe it. And he still had time to find all those funny and informative links for his blog. Amazing.

J-Walk The Ripper

Mission accomplished. Today at 5:00 pm I finished my CD ripping project, which I started on 19 January. It took only 20 days, much less time than I had originally thought.

The final tally on my digital music collection:

CDs ripped = 1,123 (average = 56 per day)
Downloaded albums = 152
Total albums = 1,275
Total songs = 15,238
Hours of music = 1,090
Storage used = 94Gb

For the past three weeks, I've just been shuffling CDs in and out of my CD drive whenever I was home and awake. Pamn pitched in towards the stretch. At times, we had three computers ripping away.

For the file format, I chose MP3, with a variable bitrate (192-320 kpbs). That gives me reasonably good quality (good enough for my old ears), with an average file size of about 6 Mb.

The toughest part of this task was assigning each album to a genre. I decided on 24 genres, and I created a subdirectory for each. Then, within each genre, there's an artist directory. Within each artist directory, there's one or more album directories. The song files are stored in the album directories. This makes it very easy to create on-the-fly playlists (e.g., let's hear some 'Country Female' combined with 'Folk Female' tonight). It's likely that I'll be tweaking the genre assignments as we listen to the music.

Perhaps the best part of this project is rediscovering old music that I've either forgotten about, or just never play. We normally just play a genre in random order, and it's amazing how much good music we have that never gets played.

A Man and His Toys

ESWN Reports from Siem Reap

Sihanouk and Khieu Samphan

EastSouthWestNorth (ESWN) recently made a quick trip to Cambodia and has been posting some of his photos with both original and third-person commentary. The page below is heavy with graphics and loads slowly on my 56K modem, but the images are decent and his opinions are always worth consideration.

There may be many other interesting things in the city of Siem Reap in which Angkor Wat is located, but I will only tell you about this small, obscure War Musuem. This place does not have the massive funding from UNESCO or some such.

The first half of this post will be about guns and ammunition. These pertain to the war between the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese-backed regime. The first two photos are for a Russian troop transport helicopter and a MIG jet fighter. Neither figured significantly in what was primarily a land war.

ESWN Visits the War Museum in Siem Reap

Amazing Tsunami Sonar Images

Tsunami Sonar 01



Tsunami Sonar 02



Tsunami Sonar 03



Tsunami Sonar 04

Several remarkable sonar images of the aftermath of the tsunami and earthquake of last year have just been released by the UK Royal Navy, clearly showing the paths of destruction thoughout the Indian Ocean and on to the coast of northern Sumatra.

The scientists estimate some of the ridges are up to 1500m high Some of the ridges have collapsed to produce huge landslides of mud and rock several kilometres long. Seismologists have calculated that the epicentre of the earthquake was some 40km below the sea floor.

They initially registered it as 9.0 on the Richter scale. But, seismologists from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois have recalculated the earthquake as 9.3, which would make it three times larger - because the scale is logarithmic - and the second-largest recorded earthquake.

Seth Stein, who reanalysed the seismograms, said: "The rupture zone was much larger than previously thought. The initial calculations that it was a 9.0 earthquake did not take into account what we call slow slip, where the fault, delineated by aftershocks, shifted more slowly."

It was the forces generated by the quake that lifted huge volumes of water to generate the tsunami, Dr Stein said.

"The additional energy released by the slow slip along the 745-mile (1200km) long fault played a key role in generating the tsunami."

BBC Reports on Tsunami Images

Sydney Morning Herald on the Rumpled Carpet

The Glasgow Herald

Cyber Diver News Network

The Telegraph

The New Zealand Herald

Oarfish Invasion in Australia

Oarfish Lovers Pose for Posterity

Creature from the Deep
Sydney Morning Herald
Feb 7, 2005

A rare - and dead - oarfish washed up at City Beach in Perth yesterday, proving more than a handful for Troy Coward, Andy Mole and Axel Strauss (pictured).

The serpent-like animal was found six metres offshore, bringing to at least six the number of oarfish that have washed up on the West Australian coast in recent months. Prefering to live in the depths of the ocean they have only been known to come to the surface when sick or dying and have rarely been seen alive.

Living in the world's warmer oceans, it feeds on plankton and is harmless to humans. The longest bony fish in the sea, it grows up to nine metres long with a bright red crest that runs the entire length of its body. It is probably the creature that sparked "sea serpent" legends following sightings by ancient mariners.

Last year a woman in Cleveland on the north-east coast of England caught a 63.5kg, 3.5m-long oarfish while fishing for cod, using a squid bait. Scientists were disappointed when the woman, who weighed 13kg less than the fish, sliced it up and put it in her freezer.

Read the Rest

Fictional Guide to Which Asian Country?

New Guidebook to Phaic Tan

Today's quiz for all you experts on Asia is about a new humorous guide to a non-existent country in Asia, but where exactly is this place? Have a look at a few of the sample pages and make your best guess. It looks like a fanciful assemblage of several countries including the nightlife section cribbed from Patpong (including the photo), beach descriptions from Indonesia, and a royal family that seems to combine members of Thailand with old Indonesia. But mostly it's all about Cambodia.

Where in the World are You?

Nightlife in Hua Hin?

Nightlife in Hua Hin

Hua Hin is a sleepy little beach town some three hours south of Bangkok, known throughout the country for its longtime association with the King who keeps a royal palace in the region. The beach itself is nothing special and the construction of the gigantic Hilton a decade ago pretty much wiped out the existing beach in a shameless land grab. But in Thailand, if you've got the money, you can probably do anything you want.

The town itself has little of interest but the slow pace makes it a favorite of families who appreciate the lack of raunchy nightlife found in Phuket and Pattaya. I've stayed here a few times and tried to amuse myself in the evenings, but it was boring aside from a handful of expat-owned bars and friendly guesthouse owners. Perhaps things have changed in recent years, if the following website is at all accurate.

Hua Hin After Dark

MediaBistro Sells Out

MediaBistro Sells Out

This is really disgusting. MediaBistro is an otherwise decent website with useful information for media folks, and they have in the past sponsored or advertised many seminars geared at aspiring writers. Good for them. But they are now promoting one of the sickest scams in the world of journalism -- the "how to be a Hollywood writer and get free parties" schtick. This is almost as bad as the "how to be a sucessful travel writer and score free trips" hype that has plagued the travel writing industry for decades.

Shame on MediaBistro.

Sip Moet all night, feast on filet mignon, chat with movie stars, and get paid? Doesn’t sound like a bad gig, right? On almost any given night in Hollywood, one or more chic venue is throwing some gloriously opulent celebrity-filled bash – and among the lucky invitees are an army of reporters who come not only to consume, but also to cover. And one of them could be you.

With so much access to so many celebrities – a valuable commodity in the entertainment reporting industry – the party circuit offers more than just a taste of La Dolce Vita. It is an income-generating machine. And for the L.A.-based writer who knows how to work it, it can be a freelance goldmine or a ticket to a career at a hot front-of-the-newsstand title.

In this 3-hour seminar can expect to learn about:

The elements of a Hollywood party (from the tip sheet to the goodie bag)

Understanding the party machine: why the parties exist, who they invite, and how you learn about them beforehand

The entertainment reporting market: which publications need party material and what are they looking for?

Breaking in: why it’s not as difficult as you think

The process of getting invited/credentialed

Life on the red carpet (aka “Beginner’s Row”)

Recognizing the rich and famous – and faking it when you don’t

The celebrity approach rigamarole: managing a world of over-managed talent

MediaBistro Sells Out

Slate Gets It Right

Slate does Celebration

Like you, I've looked at dozens of so-called "slide shows" on the internet over the years and have been mostly bored and disappointed. First you wait for the flash program to load and then you click through a series of photos, which rarely have any connection or flow, and almost never provide any useful commentary. It's just pictures passing in the night, and rarely worth the bother.

Today, Slate has posted a slide show about a small town in Florida called Celebration, and they did it right. The photos are tightly linked to the text which provides some real insight and opinion into this controversial community. While the images slowly load, you can read the text on the left and consider the commentary. This is a slide show for the thinking man, and miles beyond all those old, boring flash presentations I've suffered through in the past. New York Times, are you listening?

I agree and disagree with some of the architectural opinions, but that's a sure sign of success for Slate.

Slate Slide Show on Celebration

India Images at Flickr

India Images at Flickr

After I joined Flickr a few months ago with their FREE account with 100 photos, I created and am now the admin for over dozen groups centered around great photos of Asia, and nothing has pleased me more than the submissions from poeple who love India, certainly the most amazing, bewildering, totally nutcase and wonderful nation in the world.

The Slide Show of India:

India Slide Show

Views from Tokyo Tower

On a Clear Day.......

When I was a young kid, I lived in Japan at Yokota Air Force Base for three years, and was allowed on weekends to take the train into Tokyo and just walk around. Just 10 years old, but there never seemed to be any problem since the friendly and helpful Japanese always seemed to look after me and help me find the train station to return to Fussa.

I remember visiting the newly constructed Tokyo Tower and taking the elevator up to the observation deck, but I also remember the overwhelming stench of the public toilets. But then I also remember the smell of Japanese chewing gum and my collection of walking, flashing robots.

Here's a website from the Tokyo Tower with views in all four directions, but only on a clear day.......

Panoramic Views from Tokyo Tower

Architectural Monstrosities in Korea

Proposed Lotte Tower Seoul (left) Busan (right)

The race to construct the tallest building in the world has moved around Asia over the last decade from Kuala Lumpur (Petronas Towers) to Taipei (Taipei 101), and is now headed towards Dubai (Burj Dubai), Shanghai (World Trade Centre) or perhaps even Seoul, where the Lotte company has proposed a building of such architectural monstrosity that the mind boggles. The Marmot's Hole from Korea has all the bloody details including links to the other construction projects around the world.

Now, the Chosun ran an illustration of the planned skyscraper, which literally made me sick the first time I saw it. That’s right, it’s a 112-story, 555-meter version of the Eiffel Tower, the kind of monstrosity only Lotte could build. The original Eiffel Tower is nice. Japan’s Tokyo Tower is simply tacky, but Lotte’s planned abomination, if I didn’t know any better, would seem to be designed with the goal of challenging Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel as the world’s most disconcerting structure.

Luckily, if it does go up as scheduled, it would hold on to the title of the world’s tallest building only for a short period, because Korea’s Samsung Corporation has won a contract to build the 160-story, 700-meter Burj Dubai Tower in the UAE. Unlike the Lotte structure, however, the Burj Dubai Tower design should really be spectacular, as the illustration would indicate. Shame Samsung had to build it in Dubai while Korea gets stuck with a 112-story monument to Lotte’s lack of good taste.

Interestingly enough, Lotte is putting up a 107-story building in Busan as well. Unlike its Seoul structure, Lotte’s Busan project won’t be such a bad looking building. The plan did run into controversy, however, because it called for the removal of the nearby Yeongdo Bridge. The bridge, built by the Japanese in 1934, was the first bridge to link Yeongdo Island and downtown Busan, and Korea’s only drawbridge until 1966, when the the bridge was redesigned. In addition, the bridge was famous as a meeting place for refugees fleeing as Seoul fell to Communist forces on Jan. 4, 1951, so it was of historical and emotional significance.
Back to big buildings, Lotte won’t be the only company putting up skyscrapers in Seoul. Seoul City is looking to build a 130-story International Business Center as part of its Digital Media City project (nice website, BTW). Meanwhile, American International Group will be putting up the Seoul International Finance Center, featuring two towers of 80-stories and 50-stories, in lovely Yeouido.

The Marmot's Hole on the Horrors of Future Architecture

Wannabe Lawyer on The Singapore Dilemma

Wannabe Lawyer in Singapore

Excellent post by the Wannabe Lawyer on freedom of speech in Singapore and the controversy over the blog of Steven McDermott.

Read the Post

Our Man in China

Chris Myrick Flees Singapore for Shanghai

Chris Myrick has just left the safe and warm world of Singapore for the horrors and terrors of Shanghai, to join a handful of other bloggers in the world's most fascinating city. We can all look forward to some wonderful posts with unique insights into the social and political scene, plus his other obsession: beer blogging.

Chris Myrick in Shanghai

Electric Lamb Mission -- Sumatra Tsunami Photos

The Electric Lamb Mission



Destroyed Mosque



20 Km North of Meulaboh



Meulaboh Coastline



Beauty in the Horror



Thumbs Up for Aid



School Kids with Apples



Remembering the Deluge



A Moment in Time

Perhaps the most unique organization helping the victims of the Sumatran tsunami is the Padang-based Electric Lamb Mission, a charitable offshoot of a tour and surfing company which specializes in organized expeditions to the Mentawi Islands.

Do visit their website and be sure to click the link to their tour company for more information on surf vacations to these fascinating islands. And read the interview with the founder of the company as published in a surfing magazine a few years ago. Fascinating stuff.

The Electric Lamb Mission

Win a Trip to Fiji

Air Pacific to Fiji

The good folks at Air Pacific are giving away a free trip to Fiji, but you'll need to enter quickly since the drawing is this Sunday.

Win a Trip to Fiji!

Best Spyware Killer Yet

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware

I've been using both Spybot Search and Destroy, and AdAware for almost a year and have been mostly pleased with the results and, of course, the cost -- zero. Last month I downloaded the beta version of a new spyware blaster from our good friends up in Washington, and it really rocks, catching three very serious pieces of spyware missed by my other programs. And the cost?

Free.

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware Free Beta

Google Maps

Google Maps

Cool New Map Tool from Google

Original Philippines Flag Discovered in San Francisco

Original Philippines Flag?

This amazing story appeared today in my local newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, about the recent discovery of what could possibly be the original flag of the Philippines. This flag has apparently been displayed at the War Memorial Building (just a few blocks from my house) for decades without anyone realizing it's significance, until a Filipino-American did some research on the neglected item. To his amazement, the hand-stitchced flag appears to be the original, sewn in Hong Kong and used by Aguinaldo during his struggles against the Spanish colonialists for the independence of his country.

Nobody knows from where the red, white and blue flag that hangs anonymously in a corner of a display case in San Francisco's War Memorial Building came. The weathered satin banner can be easily missed among the swords, rifles and medals of various wars that surround it.

But the flag, with its hand-painted yellow sun surrounded by three stars, may very well be the first Filipino "Stars and Sun" flag, which was believed to have been captured by U.S. troops more than a century ago during the Philippine-American War.

"Every indication points that this is the flag," said American Legion War Memorial Commissioner Rudy Asercion.

Asercion's investigation leads him to believe that Gen. Frederick Funston captured the flag during the war, which ran from 1899 to 1902, and brought it to San Francisco when he was assigned to the Presidio in 1902.

Philippine officials, contacted by Asercion, have taken notice of the flag, which hangs by a single white thumbtack in a wooden case in the museum's Trophy Room that displays war-related artifacts. Philippine Sens. Dick Gordon and Franklin Drilon and a representative of the country's National Historical Institute in Manila have even visited San Francisco to take a look for themselves.

Philippines Original Flag Discovered in San Francisco

Flickr Visits Beijing Art Colony

Factory 798

Factory 798 is an expansive art colony and gallery in Beijing which has garnered international attention and reviews in many publications over the last year, and been featured in TV programs such as 20/20 and Dateline. Roy, a member of Flickr, has uploaded almost two dozen images of both the exteriors and interiors of this unique experiment; his collection of photos is best seen via the slide show link below.

There are exciting things happening in Beijing, like Factory 798, a relatively new artist colony smack-bang in what used to be a defense industry complex. Originally purpose-built in the 50s to supply the Chinese military with electronics, this area of the city now finds itself blossoming into an arts district that might just become China's answer to SOHO....

Roy has created a gorgeous slideshow to give us a glimpse inside.

Flickr Link to Factory 798 in Beijing

Ski Jackets to Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka after the Tsunami

I suppose it would be inevitable that after the tsunami, the people of South Asia would be afflicted with scams, con artists, political manuverings, ineptitude, and the almost comical arrival of ski jackets and Artic-winter gear for the tsunami victims of Sri Lanka.

I'd also like to point out that a RSS feed is available to this blog, with almost a dozen daily updates for anyone concerned with the ongoing situation in the region.

The grateful people of Sri Lanka would like to make a humble request to all those who have offered succor to its devastated tsunami victims: Please, no more ski jackets, moisturizing gel or Viagra.

The recent outpouring of support, while helpful on the whole, has brought with it a mountain of unusable stuff from the Western world. That includes cozy winter hats, Arctic-weather tents, colognes and thong underwear.

Dubbed "frustrated cargo" by aid workers because it often has nowhere to go, these misfit items are gathering dust in warehouses and creating major headaches for relief workers in the field.

Making matters worse, many aid workers don't know where all the useless handouts are coming from or for whom they are intended. Although most aid that arrives is earmarked for specific relief agencies, such as the Red Cross, some shipments are addressed simply to "The People of Sri Lanka" and have no return address.

Unwanted medicines pose a more serious problem. Doctors and private citizens appear to have unloaded their sample bins and medicine cabinets and shipped the items. Shipments included useful antibiotics as well as drugs that aren't common in many villages and can easily be abused, such as antidepressants.

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog

Memoirs of a Geisha

Ziyi Zhang as the Geisha

Hollywood is currently filming the cinematic version of the famous novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, which will star three very famous Chinese actors as Japanese characters. I'm sure this is going to upset most everyone in the Asian world who believes that Japanese should play all Japanese characters, while all Chinese should only be played by Chinese, etc. This is an unrealistic assumption, since Hollywood has always been about image over reality and there's no moral reason why a Chinese actor should be prohibited from playing a Japanese.

Jews play Italians, Italians play Jews, straights play gays and vice versa, Japanese act as Korean soldiers, and Michael Keaton has the nerve to work his Batman schtick. None of this really matters, but I expect this burning issue to be around until the movie is finally released near the end of the year.

If the coming story in film is globalization, "Memoirs of a Geisha," set for a Christmas release by Sony Pictures, may one day be seen as a movie at the tipping point. Based on an American novel about a hidden aspect of Japanese life, it relies heavily on three stars of Chinese cinema and has no white stars. The San Francisco Bay doubled for the Sea of Japan, while Ventura in Southern California housed an entire Japanese town for the shoot last fall, and the Yamashiro Restaurant in Hollywood served as a Kyoto teahouse.

Perhaps the greatest oddity in Mr. Marshall's enterprise is that his lead geishas are played by Chinese actresses: Ziyi Zhang ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), Gong Li ("Farewell My Concubine") and Michelle Yeoh ("Tomorrow Never Dies"). "There were no female Japanese actors of the right age remotely comparable to Zhang or Gong whose English was good enough," Ms. Fisher said. "Some wouldn't even audition."

New York Times on Memoirs

A Tsunami Volunteer Looks Back

Tsunami Over Fuji

Paul Lark is an expat in Bangkok who volunteered to help out soon after the horrific events of December 2004. He flew down to Phuket and did daily two-hour drives up to Khao Lak to work at a Buddhist temple which served as the make-shift morgue, until political machinations and a final SMS message ended his days as a volunteer. His report offers some unique insight into his experiences, but also tells of a disappointing reality.

It’s been just over a month now since my Phuket experience. It seems like a lifetime ago. To be honest, were it not for these blogs and for the radio interview, it would be nothing more than a faded memory on the fringes of my consciousness. I spent my first few days back in a depressive lull, compounded with the sense of guilt and inadequacy I felt after learning that not only were volunteers permitted to enter the temple grounds, but also that superstar forensics scientist Dr. Pornthip was desperate for every able-bodied volunteer willing to work with corpses.

It was depressing to see her continue to fight the turf wars that plagued her work over the next few weeks, to see the Prime Minister’s ridiculous media posturing (e.g. turning away financial aid while villagers struggle to reassemble their lives, or Thailand jockeying for the prestige associated with being a regional tsunami warning center), to see a childishly indignant U.S. self-promote it’s “look at me” brand of charitable giving, to see has-been celebrities such as Ricky Martin make ridiculous headline-grabbing goodwill tours to disaster regions in an attempt to revive flagging careers. “We Are the World” was a god-awful song the first time around, and now the world will be subjected to it a second time around for tsunami relief by a group of pop stars half of whom probably couldn’t point out Asia on a globe.

MTV’s Asia music awards shrouds itself in the noble sheen of disaster aid, performed in front of a throng of screaming teenybopper fans who could give a rat’s ass about a bunch (i.e. few hundred thousand) dead people they don’t know. Nowadays, you’d be lucky to find more than one tsunami-related story (if that many) from major news websites such as CNN and BBC. With the Thai general elections, the U.S. State of the Union Address, and the Superbowl, how can something like the largest natural catastrophe in modern history compete?

Paul Looks Back

Bill Dalton on Tsunamis and Sri

Sri Dalton by Carl Parkes

Death unites us:
Former Chicoan reports on tsunami
By BILL DALTON
Chico Enterprise Record

EDITOR'S NOTE: Bill Dalton is a former Chico resident, founder of Moon Publications and the author of the travel guide, "Indonesia Handbook." He moved to Indonesia full time in 1998, where we tracked him down and solicited his observations about the tragedy that has changed his adopted country.

BALI, Indonesia When news of the tsunamis first broke, I was idly watching an Indonesian news program while sipping morning tea.

The newscaster was reporting what I thought at the time was a curious geologic phenomenon giant waves in northern Sumatra had carried out to sea "100 or 200" people. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are routine throughout the Indonesian archipelago, one of the most volatile geophysical regions on earth.

Read the Rest

Hank in China Blows a Gasket

Great Leap Forward

Hank is an American in China making his living by teaching English and working on his relationship with his new Chinese wife. I've mentioned Hank's writings before, and linked to his hilarious "Waving Mr. Happy" post about a month ago. Hank is a very talented writer and takes full advantage of his wit, humor, and sarcasm to look at life in China.

As part of the marriage deal, Hank and his wife need to visit her parents in a nearby province a few times a year, and today Hank blogs about his experiences. It's a hilarious rant against almost everything Chinese, but it's also pretty obvious that Hank needs to get out of the country before he loses his mind.

Here's a sample:

After that little fit, my blood was flowing, and goddamn, I felt warm for once. We boarded the train, and along we went to Hefei where we would change trains to Taihu. Folks, let me tell you staight, and I especially am sending this little comment to the sweet little foreign dweebs in Beijing and Shanghai, who like to write nice little spritely articles about travelling in China. The Anhui Province is nothing short and nothing less than a goddamn landfill filled with open sewers and cesspools and a heap of misery and poverty and if you feel upon your grassy knoll you want to call me on this, well you son of a bitch, you just get the fuck out of your starbucks and get your sorry wussy ass out to Anhui Province.

Hank Takes a Trip in China

Friskodude RSS Reader Links

FriskoDude Does Elvis in Vegas

Don't be a schmuck. Get a RSS reader and enjoy the world, and have some extra time to go outside and smell the roses. Take a walk. It's lovely outside. People smile at you, and you feel fine. And your friendly RSS reader is busy back at home, trolling the internet every thirty minutes, checking on your favorite websites and blogs. So return back to your easy chair, pop open a brewski, and check your RSS reader for what's NEW since you left your BarcaLounger a few hours ago.

Life is good. Life can be so simple with a RSS reader and a RSS subscription to Friskodude.

FriskoDude RSS Link

Mahathir and Proton Cars

Mahathir and Proton Cars

Mohamed Mahathir served as the prime minister of Malaysia for over twenty years, but he retired a few clicks ago and turned the reigns of power over to other members of his political party, now headed by smiling Abdullah Badawi. During his years in office, Mahathir started dozens of industrial projects designed to bring Malaysia into the 20th century and beyond, but most of them failed and left behind trails of deceit and corruption. But many people got rich. Rich beyond imagination.

One venture limps along, almost without oxygen, the state sponsored car called the Proton. It's a Japanese car, sent to Malaysia, then assembled by Malaysians who stick on the Malaysian star. Economic servitude at its finest.

The Proton project has been bleeding buckets of red ink for many, many years, but for the reasons of Bumiputra pride over the economic superiority of the Chinese, it has never been allowed a dignified funeral. And Mahathir is still involved in this living corpse.

Please, somebody ask Dr. M about his intentions in his book many years ago "The Malay Dilemma." Supporting a dead, economically unviable investment in car production isn't really what will benefit the Malays of Malaysia, or anyone else for that matter.

Wall Street Journal Article about Mahathir and Proton

Note: Somebody asked me about the word Bumiputra. It means "Sons of the Earth" and refers to the original inhabitants of the Malaysian peninsula. That region (Thailand to Singapore) was first populated by people who lived a stone age existence, and still survive in some fashion in remote mountain towns between Kuala Lumpur and Kota Baru. They are a prehistoric people who lived throughout Southeast Asia before the migrations of Oceanic seafarers from Micronesia and Chinese from Yunnan.

The Malay people from Oceania arrived many millennia later, but they now claim the title of Bumiputra. What about those natives? The Malay race also populated the present nations of the Philippines and Indonesia, but they don't claim to be the "original" inhabitants.

Who were the "original" inhabitants of Southeast Asia? It's those fuzzy haired, poor, despised, and government ignored miscreants you sometimes see on the side of the road.

Go figure.

Gambling? In Singapore?

Singapore Commentator

Most of the fine folks in Singapore are Chinese, and they love to gamble on just about anything: state controlled lottery tickets, state controlled horse races, state controlled bingo parlors. But the state doesn't control one major form of gambling: cruise ships. Almost every day, a large cruise ship leaves Singapore and sails around the ocean in a circular fashion, never making landfall to see the wondrous sights of Sumatra or Penang.

Why? It's all about gambling. And who owns these ships? A Malaysian company called Star Cruises. So all those hard earned Singapore Dollars are being off loaded to Malaysian companies (with local interests), and the Singapore government isn't very happy about the situation.

The solution? Legalize gambling casinos in Singapore over at lovely Sentosa Island, most likely managed by professionals from Las Vegas. It's now up for bids and the government's decision will come at the end of this month. Of course, gambling is simply a transfer of wealth from gamblers to governments, Indian tribes, casino owners, and really has no economic value, but the Singapore government wants their part of the action.

Asian values anyone?

Singapore Commentator on Casinos in Sentosa

Steven McDermott Raises Hell in Singapore

Stevie Raising Hell

You've just got to love this guy. A British citizen goes to Singapore to teach at a university, then returns home and continues to post his thoughts and impressions about his time in the country, including an essay about the lack of intellectual curiosity of some students. Then hell breaks out and Steve is attacked from all quarters for his opinions. What? Singapore students don't learn to think but rather just to memorize in order to pass the exams and get the good jobs? No, that can't be real. Also see Mr. Brown

Singabloodypore

New Blogger from Java

The King and I

New Blogger from Java

via Jakartass

Need a Job in Bali?

Bali Advertiser

Bali Advertiser for Jobs in Bali

Henry Blodget on Slate about China

Henry at Slate on China

God only knows how former Wall Street securities analyst Henry Blodget has reinvented himself as a blogger at Slate about Asian matters, but his ongoing series about China is really a hoot. Great stuff, and I'm looking forward to more of his posts.

Henry Blodget Looks at China on Slate

Pretty Pictures from EastSouthWestNorth

EastSouthWestNorth

EastSouthWestNorth
Global Culture & Politics
Feb 4, 2005

The Smiling, Happy Children of Iraq

Holiday in Cambodia (Dead Kennedys)

Hilarious: MTV Asia Awards Show in Bangkok

MTV Awards Show in Bangkok

Bangkok MetroBlog
MTV Asia Awards/Aid
Feb 3, 2005

i went to mtv asia awards tonight. actually they renamed in it "mtv asia aid" because of recent events, they were trying to raise money to help the tsunami victims.

i hope they achieved their goal of trying to raise x amount of money, because i left half way through it. so did half the people at the show. by 10pm everybody was outside smoking or sitting in the beer garden, probably hoping that if they were drunk the show might be better.

i don't know if it was the mtv people's fault, or bec tero (organisers) or impact arena's fault that the show wasn't running smoothly. when tata young came on to the stage the microphone wasn't working. it might have been a blessing in disguise, poor girl, did her set right after american idol kelly clarkson. as my friend put it, tata and her new titties automatically became a third world show.

and ashlee simpson won the best new comer / breakthrough award. ashlee simpson? yes. i told my friend this is because nobody watches saturday night live in asia. come on!

it was an interesting experience though. being there. and then looking at the monitor, at what was shown to the viewers at home. yeah. live broadcast. in the monitor it looked like it was packed, and people were having fun. hah. not true. i had front row tickets. standing. right up to the stage. people sat down on the floor around me between songs.

they played one song... and then a sponsor commercial plays, then a short cnn documentary for mtv portraying the tsunami disaster comes on while the next band sets up. then another artist comes to sing another song. and thus begins the cycle of bore.

the most awful part was when they were showing this montage of deaths and coffins and cemetary site, taiwan senssation jay chou's piano was being wheeled out. and every brainless girl nearby starting screaming for jay chou. yeah. while they were showing dead bodies and orphans and cemetaries on the screen.

sick.

Bangkok MetroBlog Report on the MTV Asia Awards Show in Bangkok

Drive Around the World

Drive Around the World

Do you have a relative or friend who has suffered or died from Parkinsons? I do. My grandfather on my mother's side died in Utah after many years with the affliction, and I'll never forget the image of him hobbling around the darkened house in his rural home. And so I have a good feeling about the folks who have been running the "Drive Around the World" marathon to raise research funds and bring more attention to this tragic condition.

The Drive team started last year in the San Francisco Bay Area and headed south in a contingent of five Range Rovers, which cruised down through Mexico, Central America, and South America to the very southernmost tip of the continent. Rolf Potts tagged along and provided a week of clips for Slate, giving some great coverage to the expedition.

The Range Rovers were then shipped to Australia, and driven around the Outback before being shipped up to Singapore in Southeast Asia. Then it was Malaysia and Thailand, followed by India, China and Russia. Everyone went home for a break, but the gang has regrouped in Alaska and resumed their journey. For some strange reason, they have decided to head north to Fairbanks and then the Artic Circle, but then will regain their sanity to drive down the Alaskan Highway through Canada and back to the Bay Area.

It's a great trip for a great cause, and you can RSS subscribe and get daily updates with photos. So sign up and follow along, and make a donation for their cause.

Drive Around the World

J-Walk Blog Rules

J-Walk Blog

Are you a fan of esoteric and weird blogs with strange content such as Boing Boing and Snopes? Do you love unusual photos about the oddities of life? Getting bored with Jeff Jarvis and his self promotion of why blogs will soon destroy the world of the main stream media (MSM)? Then it's time to relax with J-Walk, a great find I must thank to Jakartass in Jakarta.

J-Walk Blog