I had a wonderful day today visiting with my "old" friend, or should that be "old friend," JR. It had been years since we had last seen each other. He was here in California speaking at a conference.
I had forgotten how much we laugh when we're together, and I mean belly laughs! We had a great day remembering our crazy Atlanta days and making new memories. Suffice it to say: Venice Beach will never be quite the same.
My favorite ftp client for many years has been Panic's Transmit. However, over time Transmit 3 developed some really hideous issues. I threatened a divorce (and meant it!). Well, Panic released Transmit 4 this week.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!
I speak a lot about making a difference, about making the world a better place because you live in it. I say this mostly to educators. The work of the educator is a calling more than a job, and our mission is to empower human potential. For some reason, about this I have always been passionate.
I have generally tried to live to this goal. But, perhaps in the business of living, I hadn't really stopped to consider where I measure up on this personal mantra. And today I was rather stricken with the realization. I've been actually doing it I think.
A very dear friend of mine said to me, years ago, "Tyson, you have no idea how strongly you impact people. You're just totally oblivious, aren't you." At the time I wasn't sure that was a compliment.
And today I got an email to my work address with the subject: "Dr. Tyson?"
The email was from a student from 30 years ago. I've received several of this type of unexpected email lately. As I read and memories come flooding back, these former students, sometimes former employees, speak in rather sobering terms of my impact in their lives. Yet, at the time, I had no idea.
Completely unaware, I've even had children named after me by former students. My kindergarten teacher from many, many years ago now, even named her son, "Tim." Maybe I've had an affect on people all my life. Again, I've never stopped to really consider any of this until, unexpectedly, today, it just sort of hit me with Yo Yo Ma playing while I was working away–bit of an emotional moment.
You just never know.
As with any first generation product, the iPad is not without its issues. One issue that I find immensely frustrating: the lack of keyboard shortcuts. I use them. I use them a lot! (Admittedly, most users probably don't.)
To have to take my hand off of Apple's iPad hardware keyboard to reach up and touch something is distracting to the workflow. I could cut a little bit of slack for third party developers, but none at all for Apple. When I want to reply to an email, I want to use [command] + R. When I want to send the email, I want to use [command] + D.
In this WordPress app, using the [tab] key to jump from one field to another crashes the application.
Clearly, lots of work needs to be done on this platform.
Perhaps because one of my high school music teachers is retiring at the end of this year (after many years of service) or because of what I saw at the beach yesterday, or maybe both, but this song from my high school music days in the Singers came back to me.
Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.
Listen with your eyes,
Listen with your ears,
and sing everything you see,
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing along with me.
Yesterday I was surprised to see that the lifeguard stations along the Pacific all have had their banisters painted one of five different colors. I'm not sure if the remainder of each station will be painted the same color it currently is, the color of the banister, or a completely different color. Time will tell.
Tim likes!
(To hear the song, click here.)
In Town
Well, I'll be home all week this week. Wonderful! I have so much catching up to do.
Eating Out
We went out to eat in Culver City tonight, a place called Eat Your Greens. I've been there before and really like their food. Afterward I splurged and had a chocolate ice cream from Cold Stone. While sitting outside eating the ice cream in the totally perfect late afternoon weather, some group was shooting a movie--directly in front of us! If I had talked loudly, I would be in their audio!
Chiropractor
My regular doctor said I have severe arthritis in my shoulder, a tear, two muscles significantly inflamed, and fluid buildup. She wants me to go get a shot of steroids in my shoulder. O god! She also prescribed physical therapy.
I called the rhuematologist and got voicemail. I was glad to leave a message and haven't heard back from the doctor yet. I also returned to my chiropractor who I used over a year ago.
Now, I'll be the first to say that I don't believe in a lot of the chiropractic mumbo jumbo the chiropractors of America blather on about. However, after 4 visits (every day but today as they are closed on Sundays) I am absolutely noticeably, significantly better! The range of motion has improved significantly and both the sharp and constant pains have been significantly reduced. I can assure everyone, this is not imagined. My shoulder issue had grown to be an increasing problem that has even significantly affected my ability to get dressed and shower.
According to the chiropractor, my neck is not to a point that the degeneration is irreversible. My head is constantly held forward, which is probably the result of my continuous use of the computer. As a result, my upper back and neck alignment is a train wreck. In the past I've even had some serious tingling and partial numbness in my arm as a result of pinching nerves in my neck.
My shoulder still has some very significant issues, and I'm not sure if it will ever return to "normal," but it is improving a lot. I hope this continues.
Weather
I still profess to living in paradise! The weather today was flawless.
Have you paid your War Bills yet? You have until midnight! Maybe this will help you put things in better perspective:
Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion.That figure includes the Pentagon budget request of $708 billion, plus an estimated $200 billion in supplemental funding, called "overseas contingency funding" in euphemistic White House-speak), to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some $40 billion or more in "black box" intelligence agency funding, $94 billion in non-DoD military spending, $100 billion in veterans benefits and health care spending, and $400 billion in interest on debt raised to pay for prior wars and the standing military.
The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out military footing.
Military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53.3 percent of total US federal spending.
If you ask me, and because you've visited my blog–you have, Sarah Palin is nothing more than a cheesy opportunist. She quits public service because she can make money, lots of it. Well, the people of Alaska are probably better off. Now Sarah plays the role of the court jester on the national stage, and she's getting rich doing it. I don't begrudge her the money. I do disdain her hypocrisy and outright lying.
(CNN) -- First-class commercial air travel for two or a private jet -- "must be a Lear 60 or larger" -- from Alaska to California and back. A deluxe hotel suite "registered under an alias." And two unopened bottles of still water with "bendable straws."That's what former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin wanted from a California state college foundation as part of her speaking agreement, according to a draft of a confidential contract allegedly lifted from a Dumpster by two students.
Source: CNN
Yesterday she was babbling on about the Obama deficits. Idiot. George W. Bush created these! George W. Bush spent the $1 trillion dollars on the completely unjustified wars based on his lies and deciet. George W. Bush turned a budget surplus into a global financial crisis.
I was just in Canada. They marvel at our financial mess. They are stupified about what we wasted the money on that put us into this financial mess—war! They just don't understand why we supposedly think their national healthcare plan is such a mess. Admitting it isn't perfect, they are proud of the fact that they spend their tax dollars helping people and not killing them.
Sarah needs to shut up and go away. She's like the nation's roach—always showing up when you never want to see her again.
I never cease to be amazed at how powerful fear is. Today, going through security from Canada to the US was the most astoundingly absurd security process I've ever experienced. It took an entire hour just for security, not including immigration.
Each individual person went through the metal detector. But why? They were going to screen each individual person with a handheld metal detector wand anyway? They checked each person's boarding pass a total of three times. Why? Are their inspectors that incompetent?
Then, after the wand detector was waved over every part of each person's body, they had each person empty all pockets, be patted down over every part of your body, pulled around on your pants at your belt buckle and your shirt collar, and then everything that was in your pockets was inspected piece by piece in detail--looking at every single page of my passport, for example.
They had females working with women and males working with men. Each worker did nothing until all of the workers working on that side, man or woman, had finished inspecting the person in the que. This was without doubt the slowest and most dysfunctional screening process I've ever experienced in my life. The number of TSA workers was huge, and most of the time they were just standing there waiting for the one person being inspected to go through the line before they did their small part of the inspection process for the next person.
And here's what made me madder that hell itself: they did this to all of the children in the security line as well. These kids today do not know a world of travel and exploration without fear and invasive scrutiny that treats decent human beings as if they are all terror suspects. This is despicable!
In just a few more years people will have completely forgotten what living in a free society really is. It has been redefined by fear. It has been repurposed by governments wanting to control their masses. If we must live our lives this way, at least we should call it what it is: tyranny. The bad guy won. They will always defeat the tyranny of our ever increasingly invasive security measures that have killed freedom of travel, probably forever.
And we tolerate this as if this is how life should be in a "free" society. If I could never travel again, I would stop today.
-- Posted From My iPad
Location:Los Angeles,United States
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Justice John Paul Stevens' service to this nation has been substantive. I am fearful of what the court will become as he retires.
Justice John Paul Stevens’s departure from the Supreme Court represents the end of an era. Just not the one you are probably thinking of. Stevens’s unblinking devotion to human rights, civil rights, and the rights of the little guy have led him to be widely seen as the Last Great Liberal Justice, the end of a lineage that included William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and William O. Douglas. But Stevens is something else entirely. He is actually the last of the Moderate Republican Justices.
Source: Dan Froomkin
Frankly, I'm with those who believe that Justice John Paul Stevens didn't become more and more liberal. Rather, the court became radicalized in its extreme conservatism. Justice Stevens never changed.
Reflecting back about my recent trip to south Asia...
As I've mentioned before, Bangkok especially and central and south Vietnam were terribly hot and humid. Shorts and short sleeved shirts were always in order.
I was, however, astonished to see so many of the local people in those areas wearing long sleeved shirts, sweaters, and jackets. How could they possibly be cool?!
Most of the women also wore masks around their faces. I was a bit shocked to learn why this was so customary: these people, with gorgeous olive complexions, want to avoid tanning their skin at all costs. The women even purchase expensive skin whitening creams from Japan. The lighter the skin, the more beautiful you are considered.
Here in the US, white people are just the opposite.
Why are we humans never content with what we have? Sometimes I guess this compels us to achieve better things. Sometimes it is not in our best interest.
This trip, unlike any of my other travels around the world, was not without some rather anxious moments. I'm glad to be home. I think.
I read in CNN this morning that Thailand has declared a state of emergency after the protesters stormed parliament yesterday. While I was in Bangkok, the protests were peaceful. I really have no idea what their internal politics are all about and wasn't even aware of the current political unrest when I went to Thailand.
I left Bangkok on March 31st to spend about a week in Vietnam. (I still haven't had time to post pictures from my time in Bangkok. I was busy working. But I found the people in Bangkok to be so incredibly gracious and friendly.)
While in Vietnam, the mood of the people there was also hospitable. However, I felt the people were a little bit more rigid—not at all in the way they treated me, but just in their general approach to life. Life in Vietnam seemed more difficult for common people.
Their food is amazing. They smile easily. They have very, very different customs and culture. Their driving is frightening. Maybe I was infusing some of my own guilt for what the United States did in Vietnam into my perceptions of my time there. Maybe it was just the constant horn honking...
When I began to leave Da Nang to return home via Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok and Narita, I was stopped by a woman working for the airport. She said my carry on bag was too large if it didn't fit in this little "size thing." When it did fit, as I knew it would, she then said it was too heavy. It was. It contains my expensive camera equipment. She insisted I check it. I refused.*
Vietnam Airlines is in the process of becoming a member of the SkyTeam Alliance. With my being a charter member of the Diamond Club with SkyTeam, which means I travel way too much, Delta allows free oversized and overweight bags. Not Vietnam Airlines--yet, anyway. After some ridiculous wrangling I got my stuff on board without having to check it.
So the return already was getting off to a bad start. Upon arriving in Bangkok, I was staying at Novatel, the very nice hotel at the airport. A shuttle picks everyone up and takes you to the hotel as it is not easily accessed by walking, and Bangkok is hotter than hell anyway.
We had to go through a security check point to enter the hotel property. The Mercedes in front of us was thoroughly inspected for explosives. I could immediately tell things were much more serious. In my room in this modern, gorgeous hotel, the air conditioning wasn't working well! I didn't sleep well.
When we were all boarding the airplane in Narita, the gate agent told us that everyone had to be weighed by order of the United States Federal Aviation Administration. They brought out 5 scales or so and everyone had to be weighed and our weights recorded. What I weigh is none of the US governments damned business!
I don't sleep well on planes either. After spending virtually two days on airplanes, I was dead dog tired and very irritable. I was glad to land at LAX. So I thought. US Immigration asked me an unusual number of questions. What was that all about?! I was soon to find out.
Apparently I am now, like millions of other law abiding Americans I've read about in the news, being confused with some idiot from another state who must be in some kind of trouble with the government. I had to go through additional screening. I was so irritated. To make matters worse, their is no due process. They will not tell you anything about why this is being done. This is the American way?!
I must say that the customs agent was very professional, even cordial. Thank God! My shoulder was hurting terribly; I hadn't slept for two days; I was in a really bad mood. I won't go into any details about the extra screening so I won't be arrested, as was the journalist (or photographer, I don't recall now) who blogged about a similar experience with Immigration through Seattle a few months ago.
I was given a web site to use to redress this issue, but, according to the news, this rarely even works. I have to travel out of the country again next week. Will I be able to get out? Will I be able to get back in? This is so absurd.
Our world is getting uglier and uglier. Freedom in the US died with the Patriot Act. We sold our national birthright for fear. Soon, our children will never have know the US I was born in as it will never have existed in their lifetime. Weird how things change.
I worry that, as the divide between the super wealthy and the poor widens and the number of poor continue to grow, we will see very bad times ahead. I guess this is nothing new. What will be new is how technology will be wielded in this conflict of interests.
At any rate, I hate traveling now. It's just so terribly unpleasant: badly behaving children, cramming too many people into too little space, and now airlines want to start charging to use the overhead storage and to use the bathrooms?! One airline will be reducing the number of toilets on board so they can cram even more seats on the plane. What the hell?!!!
* I've had international "security" go through and steal things from my checked luggage in the past and, since we can't lock our checked bags, will not allow my expensive items to be checked ever again.
Today the long journey home begins—in about 45 minutes. Amazingly, the couple in the bungalow next door here at the Palm Garden Resort in Hoi An are from Atlanta, Georgia! In fact, they live in Morningside.
Can we say: small world!
Every morning in Manhattan Beach, a large truck pulls a huge raking mechanism along the beach to pick up all of the trash* the tide and beach goers left behind. In the past I've actually posted a picture of what that looks like.
This morning I got up early to photograph the sunrise. The thick layer of fog over the water precluded that endeavor, but I was greeted with a water buffalo and his owner raking the beach front here in front of the bungalow. He really is more flattening the beach than raking it as their is no trash in the sand, only sea shells.
The water buffalo would dutifully follow his owner back and forth pulling this weighted log behind him. At one point the owner left the water buffalo along the beach while he went to the boathouse for a moment.
Then, the fishermen started working along the beachfront. Next the sun began to appear above the fog layer and horizon. I snapped several pictures, but in my rush I bumped he camera settings and didn't realize it. All of the sunrise pictures were almost completely overexposed. I'll have to hope for a repeat or even better tomorrow.
I'm now sitting outside for a little while, blogging. The humidity is probably 100%. Photographing the morning events was a challenge as the camera had been inside the room for most of the night and the lenses immediately fogged up. I realized I would face this dilemma and placed the camera and lenses in the outdoor garden to adjust to the temperature and humidity difference for about 3 hours, but that didn't prove adequate. Even my computer screen is completely fogged up as I type this!
* I've shown the trash that washes up from the ocean: massive amounts of styrofoam and plastic that somehow manage to find their way out to sea only to be washed in from the tides. The amount of non-biodegradable trash is revolting!
Today is a chill out day before the long trek home begins tomorrow via Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok. Nothing specific is planned. I do hope to catch up on all of the blogging and post some pictures. Even now the computer is importing photos from the camera's flash card. I've probably shot over 10,000 photos this trip, but 7,000 - 8,000 of those are from the time lapse experiments in Bangkok.
The grounds here at the Palm Garden Resort in Hoi An are very beautiful. Before breakfast, I went on a flower shooting spree. The Hibuscus flowers here are vivid, large, and in colors I've never seen before.
I tried using my macro lens extension tube for the first time with some of these shots. Shooting flowers in the wild is more difficult than one would think. Pulling focus is the devil itself when zooming way in to the parts of the flower. Then, add a gentle breeze to the formula. Impossible!
The water lilies in the pond at the entry area of the hotel are also gorgeous.
Mien, the guide for the day, is from Da Nang, a city just a few miles from Hoi An—which was founded about 400 years ago as a major trading post from East to West. I'm staying on the outskirts of Hoi An in a unique oceanside bungalow about 50 feet from the ocean. Nothing else is here at the water as far as you can see in either direction. This is amazing.
The room itself is really unique. The bathroom is attached to the sleeping quarters but is basically outside in a private garden. The shower, toilet, and sink area have a roof over them; however, the tub resides as a central feature of the private garden. It's beautiful but exceedingly hot and humid.
Here are some pictures from around the ancient city of Hoi An during the day and then again at night.
Night time in the ancient city.
Driving in Vietnam is just dangerous, absolutely very, very dangerous! Today I drove from Dalong Bay to the Hanoi airport (about 3 hours). Flew from Hanoi to Da Nang, and drove from Da Nang to Hoi An (about 30 minutes).
Before leaving the US, my doctor told me I would more likely be injured in a car accident or hit by a car than get malaria from a mosquito bite (though she insisted I take a medication to help prevent contracting the drug-resistant strains that thrive in this part of the world). She told me to always sit where the seat belt is in a car or taxi no matter what and never even use the water for brushing my teeth!
Aside: I was seeing my doctor for a bad shoulder. I can no longer even lift my luggage to place it in the overhead storage on the planes. I have an MRI scheduled when I return. She wanted to schedule the MRI that week, and I told her why I couldn't—my trip. We then had a marvelous conversation about South Asia. (I may have to have surgery if the problem is what she thinks it may be—a torn something or the other.)
She loves this part of the world. She talked about the traffic, the lovely people, the customs. She was right! She also said I would be foolish not to have medical evacuation insurance in case of unexpected illness or injury. It was cheap. I really like her. Aside from being amazingly sharp and sociable, she's on top of things!
I've been told that the number one cause of accidents in this country is driving under the influence of alcohol (about 60% of all accidents). The second greatest cause of accidents is driving on the wrong side of the road! They do! All over the place. They pull out directly in front of you without any hesitation. People on side streets never stop. They just go. Go, go, go!! Pedestrians literally just walk right out into 4 and 5 lanes of rush hour traffic. I have never!! Crazy. Insane! And the vietnamese honk their horns constantly—all the time! It's their way of saying "I'm here."
Today, on the way from Dalong Bay to Hoi An, making a left turn to pull in to the hotel, we almost killed two people on a scooter. Their driver was driving on the wrong side of an impassible highway divider going in the same direction we were traveling!! In other words, they were traveling against the traffic on a one way portion of the road with no chance of getting to the correct side of the road. Who ever would have thought they would even be there--traveling the wrong direction! Horns blew (more than usual). Brakes slammed. Drivers veered sharply. In a heartbeat, an accident was averted by inches at most!
A couple, from Australia, on the Halong Bay junk said they witnessed a terrible accident in Hanoi with multiple fatalities.
Never drive in South Asia.
Today I drove from Hanoi to Halong Bay. The drive was interesting. You can see a picture of the person riding the water buffalo we saw along the side of the road in the rice patties. Apparently this road was frequently heavily bombed by the US during the Vietnam war as it was used to transport munitions within the country.
Why the hell were we ever in this place, killing these people?!
Interestingly, Nam said the Vietnamese hold less of a grudge against the US or France for their war efforts. However, the Vietnamese, to this day, still dislike the Chinese, who were the first to dominate their country many years ago. The US dollar or the dong is commonly accepted for payment here.
Perhaps one reason so many of the Vietnamese have been willing to forgive and forget is that about 60% of the country was born after 1975—their version of a baby boom.
We stopped at a "factory" where the workers are handicapped children (mostly deaf or blind) and people who have suffered horrific war injury from agent orange. They make some spectacular embroidery work. A gorgeous large piece of it will be hanging on the living room wall when I return home.
I'm in a world I never knew existed. I'm currently sitting on the balcony of a wooden junk (boat) someplace in Halong Bay, Vietnam, looking at the view you see pictured in this post. This place is magical, unlike anything I've ever seen before, the land formations are peculiar other-worldly protrusions of limestone, covered with lush jungle foliage, from a placid, emerald-green sea. The thick cloud cover adds a special sense of mystery, almost a dream-like state.
Yesterday, those of us aboard the junk disembarked and walked through a large cave on one of the 2,000 islands. Only 900 of them have been named. But the end of the day was most spectacular. Everyone boarded tiny little boats and had teenagers paddle us through a fishing village floating in the sea. These people live here.
In my wildest imaginations, I would never have envisioned that people live like this: fishermen living in tiny houseboats floating in Halong Bay. We saw many, many young children. Even at age 2 and 3 they were adept at climbing up boat masts and running along the edges of very small bobbing boats with, of necessity, a flawless sense of balance.
My greatest shock was seeing a floating school in Halong Bay and realizing that I had seen a picture of this very school in 2008 and even posted it to my professional blog on May 8th, 2008, never imagining that just under 2 years later I would actually see the very thing with my own eyes.
Part of the World Heritage, Halong Bay is spectacular beyond belief!
Back in July of 2006, I escaped the craziness of the hustle, bustle, and heat of Atlanta, Georgia, to head for the Arctic Circle, to walk on a glacier in Trømso, Norway. During my first meal that far north on our planet, I heard Ray Charles singing, "Georgia On My Mind." I was horrified. I had travelled thousands of miles to get Georgia off of my mind.
In March, 2008, I traveled to Ykaterinberg—the third largest city in Russia. At 4:00AM, when the bar across the street was closing its doors, with those doors wide open to push the patrons out on to the street, I heard Cher bellowing, "Do You Believe in Life After Love?" blaring night after night. I guess it was their theme song at closing time.
And here in April, 2010, in the park in central Hanoi, Vietnam, directly across from Lake Hoan Kiem, thousands of Vietnamese are beginning their day with their routine Tai Chi exercises with the speakers blaring "It Was an Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."
Is nothing sacred?!
As this phenomenon seems to only happen once on even numbered years, perhaps I'm safe for another two years!
The bustle of this city goes beyond that of NYC and Paris. In many ways, it exceeds Rome. I've simply never seen so many scooters flitting about, so many people on bicycles, so many cars and pedestrians scrunching into such cramped quarters. The horns blow nonstop, not in a rude, NYC sort of way, but in a "Don't squash me. I'm here!" sort of way.
Nam, my young guide, and the driver took me all over Hanoi today. I'm exhausted. I walked almost all of the 36 streets in the old French Quarter, toured the historic Hanoi Hilton prison, walked a "typical neighborhood," and walked through the Ho Chi Minh memorial area. The sights, the sounds, the smells were unlike anything I've experienced anywhere else in the world. I even shot a movie of a house being built. Totally unique!
Nam speaks English very well. He's from here. He seems to know the people and has shared several interesting stories about the area.
I'm including in this post a few shots of the magnificent Sofitel Metropole by Lake Hoan Kiem where I'm staying in the French Quarter as well as some from around the city.
And the pictures of the crazy busy city...
I believe we need to return government to "of the people, by the people, and for the people"—not a radically new idea, really.
I invite you to explore Larry Lessig's Change Congress initiative.
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