Japan 2019 day 1

Day1:

We took a bus from NGO to Hatamatsu.  Then went by car from the bus station to a suburb.  I noticed that the foliage in the median and side walks are overgrown throughout the region, something u rarely see in the USA.  The grass is about w ft high and protrudes through bushes.

They use drive on the left.side of the road, like most of the world. There are traffic signals that have a green arrow left, forward.  At the same time there is a red light in the same lane.  Which of the 3 lights does one obey?  It was later explained to me that this means yield to crossing traffic.

Bidets are popular here. The Japanese versions are electronic, very fancy, with many buttons...all in Japanese. There is also a sin on top of the toliet.  I assume the water that goes to the sink fills the toliet replenishes the toilet.

At the train station we got to experience the noise and force of a bullet train. Standing on the platform one gets a greater appreciation of the term hit by a train when he experiences the shock wave from a 200 mph train.

Charity

Yesterday I started organizing my most largest charity effort ever. I hear that people do charity for the psychological feedback. 76 pages of legal documents later, I don't I'll be getting that feedback any time soon.

Fortune Magazine Online

Today I made it into Fortune Magazine Online: http://fortune.com/2014/06/02/500-cool-jobs/ Quoc Tra had four job prospects when he graduated with a food science and technology degree: one in seafood, a gig in poultry, another in nutritional beverages (think Slimfast), and one in ice cream. He made the obvious choice. Now at supermarket giant Kroger, which has 16 dairies and two ice cream plants, Tra figures out how to make the marketing team’s dream ice cream flavors a reality. His creations end up getting sold exclusively in Kroger’s supermarket aisles. Since the base dairy mixes aren’t tinkered with that often, most of Tra’s work is around the ingredients that go into making flavors. This year he developed a huckleberry product, especially challenging since there’s not much of the fruit out there. Look for a pineapple coconut frozen yogurt he worked on that’s launching soon. Clearly the best part of his job is the spoonsful of ice cream he’s required to eat every day. “It’s all about portion control,” he says.

Delayed realization

Today I realized that I had surpassed a soft life goal. Strange that when achieve something without even realizing it until months afterwards. It is even worse when you really when there is no one around when you realize it.

Europe Cruise 6/23/12 - 7/6/12

6/23/12 Days 1-2 Barcelona: We saw a bunch of Gaudi structures including the Sacred Family Cathedral. That is quite a cathedral and worth seeing while in Barcelona. It will be decades before it is finished but still is more impressive than all the other cathedrals that I have seen to date. The pictures below do not do the cathedral justice, it is even more impressive in real life.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sacred+family+barcelona&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=RHf5T7KmHorH6gGatKHmBg&sqi=2&ved=0CG8QsAQ&biw=1680&bih=965

At Olympic Park we found a fantastic contraption. It worked like a 4 way seesaw that spins. That was probably the most fun thing I did during the trip. I want to build one.

Day 3 Monte Carlo, Monaco: There's not much of a reason to visit Monaco unless you want to go to a casino. We took the train to Nice, France. It is difficult for Americans to fathom why Europeans go to the middle east and other far off places for the beach until you see firsthand. Nice is supposed to be one of the nicer beach areas. There "beach" is an area that has rocks the size of your fist. Most of the rocks are smooth. You get to walk/sit/lie on top of fist size rocks instead of sand. It gets worse when you go into the water because now you have gravel sized rocks mixed in with the fist sized rocks. Later in the trip I came to understand why this was considered one of the nice beach spots. In other places there aren't even rocks, there are boulders. People sunbath on top of the boulders and jump into the water from these areas.

We stumbled into a Triathlon. While walking along the course we got to overhear a competitor explain how much time one could save by not taking bathroom breaks, 17 minutes. Presumably if she unloaded her biological wastes on the course. Yummy, you got to really want to win.

Day 4 Livorno, Italy: We decided to skip Florence and Pisa. This was a great decision since we would seen many leaning towers in Venice that are never advertised. Instead we took a train to Cinque Terra (translates to: 5 towns). We took a spectacular/grueling hike through mountain paths that flanked the splendid views of coastal areas. We made it back to the ship with 15 minutes before it departed.

Day 5 (Train riding in Civitavecchia): We set out at 7 AM to take a ride into Rome. After waking up from two hour ride on the train we realized we were in Livorno, Italy. So we just canceled all the traveling we did last night by going two hours in the wrong direction. Instead of trying to make it to Rome (~3.5 hours away) we decided to head to Florence (~1 hours away). When we got Florence we noticed that there were no direct trains back to Civitavecchia. After calculating time vs. cost we decided to head straight back to Civitavecchia.

Day 6 Rome, Italy [Naples, Italy (Napoli)]: Naples is a very dirty city. It almost approaches the filth level of a third world country. We decided skip Pompeii and find a train to Rome. We did get to see Mt. Vesuvius in the distance though.

In the subway we had a wonderful illustration of the Italian bureaucracy as we tried to take a picture of the subway map to navigate:

Subway personnel: No photo! No photo!
Tourist: How do I know which station to get to?
SP: You buy map.
T: Where do I buy a map?
SP: You buy from us.
T: May I buy a map?
SP: We don't have any more.


This is when Allie discovered that you should break in shoes before traveling. Her new flip flops tore the skin off her foot. We taped up her foot until we could find some socks for her. We found a dog that would fetch anything you threw. It's owner was throwing a 3 lb rock and the dog was bringing it back.

We made it to the tourist sites before heading back. The forum looks like a pile of rocks. The library is in good shape and there is enough of the coliseum to warrant a look. The cathedral and Vatican are worth taking a look at just to say you were there. We didn't think it was worth the wait to stand in 95F weather for 4 hours to actually go in though. We cut this trip really close, boarding the ship about 6 minutes before it departed.

Day 7 Sea day. Day 8 Mykonos, Greece: There was already another ship in port so we had to Tender (take a smaller boat) onto the island. There were a couple of pelicans on the island that were clearly not concerned about the human population. I never realized how big those things were. All the structures are white washed and rounded. We found a dog that decided that it was going to follow us around until we went into an ATV shop (no door). The proprietor was obviously not a dog lover as he chased it away. We rented 4 ATV's and puttered around the island. We had a spectacle when one of the ATV's feel off the side of the road, rolled over a fence and into a field. Luckily neither of the riders were severely hurt and just had to decide how to get it back up the 4 foot drop.

Day 9 Istanbul, Turkey: Before I came here I was told how great and beautiful this city was. My expectations for a place that used to be the center of the western world were pretty high. Sadly it did not live up to the hype.

Day 10 Kusadasi, Turkey: We took a mini bus out to Ephesus then a horse drawn carriage out to the ruins. These ruins were in better shape than most of the stuff I had seen in Greece in my past trips.

Day 11 Athens, Greece: It's still a hole, just like last time I was there. At least there was not as much smoking as last time. No riot or general strikes, so I count myself fortunate. We rode the subway out to the Acropolis and spend the morning up there.

Day 12 Sea day. Day 13 Venice Italy: Riding into the harbor in a 5000 passenger ship gives a great elevated view of this city. The architect is spectacular despite the numerous towers that are leaning. Venice sits on a swamp and I guess some of these towers are not on stable foundations. They don't advertise this the way Pisa advertises its defective tower. There are numerous palaces and homes left over from the merchant kings of old. Each with a splendid front containing highly ornate doors, marble walls and carvings.

San Marcos has the largest palace and the cathedral. The square is still used for various events. We walked through while there was a graduation going on.

Transportation in Venice is either water taxi (water bus) or walking. The paths and bridges are not made for motor vehicles. The gondolas are for rich tourist who enjoy riding around on highly congested and polluted sewage. We took trips to two of the smaller islands too. On Murano we got to see a glass blower make a horse. That was pretty neat.

They are all grown up

In the past few years my role as the youngest person in the room has reversed. In many of the circles that I frequent, I am now the oldest person. I have come to learn from experience that many things cannot be taught, and in turn now understand the wisdom of words from my elders. In the past three years I have associated with more people who are just graduated from school or were still in school than I have since actually being in college. I tried to share some of my wisdom with them, sometimes they listen sometimes they just politely nod. This year two of my younger friends recall different conversations I had with them when we first met and laugh at their earlier thought of “What’s wrong with him?” It is so rewarding when I finally see the light bulb go off and they get it; even when it takes years for that light bulb to go off. Today I saw a Facebook posting from another younger friend of mine that now understands some of the realities of the world. It is great to see that she finally gets it; I am seeing her grow up before my eyes. Unfortunately ignorance is often bliss, remove the ignorance and you remove the only shield protecting certain forms of joy.

We don’t get older everyone around us gets younger.

This past month, for the first time I was told that the relationship would not work out because of the age difference. I have always categorized people’s situation into life stages and now I have created a new classification. It used to be school age, work age, married, with kids etc. Now the work age needs to be split into newly graduated and seasoned workers. I have noticed that I have more in common with the 50-60 year olds than I do the college kids. How depressing.

Big Brother and Big Sister

I have always been good with kids. Somehow I still believe that even though my younger cousins hide from me when I visit their house. In my adult life I have taken opportunities to volunteer with special events. Last year I participated in a long term (a whole school year) group mentoring program. There were 3 male and like 15 female mentor volunteers. Towards the end of the program I was asked to become a one-on-one mentor. When I read the website information it said that I had to have weekly contact with the kid. I though wow there are very few things I do every week, not even the things I find mildly enjoyable like grocery shopping.

This fall I decided to that I was getting bored finding women do date, reading books, playing sports, staying up late, traveling the world etc. So I figured I would give the whole one-on-one mentoring thing a try and do something good for an under privileged kid. At the United Way fair I got info about the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program. Later in the week I applied online. Eventually we setup a time to have some come to my home and interview me a month later. In that month I get calls from my references asking what I wanted them to put on the form about me. There are so few males that volunteer, and even less that volunteer for nurturing type activities (like mentoring). I figured as long as I did not eat the children I would be ok. So I told one person to put that I have a chainsaw hang up in my house. This is actually a true statement; there was one hanging in my garage. Every downtown resident needs to have a chainsaw, how else would you be able to go through your townhouse wall and visit your neighbor?

So the day of the interview comes and two women show up at my house. That is a surprise since they said one person was coming and I even got a name. Even though it was a surprise, it made sense it would be a female entering a strange man’s house. They told me they had done a background check on me to make sure that I was not a psycho. Then they handed me a stack of papers to fill out which for the most part duplicated the stuff I filled out online. The forms were asking for my permission to have a background check and reference check. That is when my fascination started, they were asking permission for things they had already done…
They continued to befuddle me the rest of the evening. While sitting inside my house they ask me to "Describe your home environment." I looked at them, then around my house, then at them again. I let about 30 seconds pass and the silence made it clear that they were serious about wanting an answer to the question. So I said “efficient”. They sat there for another 15 seconds waiting and finally figure out that I truly am efficient with my one word answer so she wrote that down. The whole interview went like that.

1 in 26 chance/potato salad/parking lot greeter

One in 26 chance:
Often people measure the cost of education in the amount of time and money they have to pay to a vocational school or university. Usually it is the young and foolish that choose to get no certification at all. Here is another way to measure the cost of not having some form of certification saying that you have a specialized skill. We have 127 administrative positions that have opened up. There have been about 3400 applications. That means 1 in 26 may get a job from us. If you are that person that does not have certification, a more horrible way to think of it is that you may be one of the over 3200 people will not get jobs. In my department an admin support position opened up, we had 400 applicants for it. When I apply for a job there are usually 8 or less qualified people who apply. When I fly in for the interview it is usually 4 or less left. I used to think 1 in 8 were not great odds. My interview with Big Brothers and Big Sisters for another mentoring program is next week. I plan to work this into the conversation with the mentee someday.

Potato salad:
I had this misconception that potato salad and macaroni salad and those types of “staples” that always show up with meals were good for you. Surely they would have to be because they were complex carbohydrates that every kid is supposed to have. I look at a lot of labels these days to bless them before they go out to the public. It turns out those items often have a lot more fat than ice cream. Ice cream tastes a lot better, please pass another serving of ice cream it’s healthy compared to the other stuff I have been eating.

Parking lot greeter:
For months I have been walking by a parking lot where there would be a guy in the parking lot many of the mornings. We would greet each other in the morning as I passed. I figured he was there to help manage the parking lot during the high traffic time and just kept on walking to work. Recently signs have been posted saying not to hand the parking fees to anyone and to insert the money into the box or else the car would be towed. At the same time, the friendly greeter has no longer been seen.

Gold Metal/White Eyebrows/WW2

I was playing with a new formulation of ice cream. The factory was so impressed with the product that they sent them into the Kentucky State Fair with some of the normally produced products. The judges could not get enough of the stuff. So we won the gold metal (first place). How cool is that? One of my colleagues did try to give me a guilt trip of saying that it didn’t seem fair because I was out taking candy away from some 4 H kid. That is a bit over simplified; there were plenty of other big players in the competition. It is not my problem if they are not as good, the rules were clearly defined.

I have had white hairs on my head since 7th grade so I have told people that was wisdom. A couple days before my birthday I notice that I have white hairs on my eyebrow. Now that’s sad because that means I won’t be able to pass as a college kid much longer. A pretty young lady offered to teach me how to pluck my eyebrows without making them hurt.

Microsoft is always patching their software because it never comes out right the first 20 times. The latest patch made my Microsoft Word 97 unusable. The suggestion from MS when it crashes is that the program is not longer supported and I should look into upgrading it. Brilliant business strategy, send out a patch that forces consumers to buy your new product.

Over the Labor Day weekend I was in Warrington Virginia and we got to fly in a WW2 recon plane. There was no door on the plane so you just climbed in and hoped that when the plan turned the 70 year old lap belt would hold you in the plane.

Jumping to another box

Being Asian I have the gift of a youthful appearance. Taking care of myself by keeping my weight down, staying out of the sun, and avoiding drugs etc helps me maintain this gift. Even though I have been out of college for 10 years not I still can pass a college kid as long as I do not talk too much. It is summer time, so the dance studio where I swing dance has doubled in population by the college kids on summer break. The students are fun to dance with and also to look at. I have a birthday coming up and realized that in a couple years I will be twice the age of a college freshman. There is a bar where some of the more experienced dancers go. Some people do not understand when I say experienced I am saying older people in a nice way, so I will spell it out O-L-D. I am starting to think that I have more in common with these more experienced people than an 18-year-old right out of high school. As a HR colleague of mine said I have jumped up box (from the 20 something box to the 30-35 etc box).

Did you know that broccoli is quite bitter? I have been eating it for 30 years and never realized that because it is usually in one of my dishes. We were doing a special shelf-life test (eating old product) and had broccoli as one of the items.

Healing/Humor/Mental Institute/Free Beer/Nagging/Premium Texts

Healing:
For the first two months after the eyeball extraction I continued to have high sensitivity to light and maintained my divine vision at night. It concerned me because someone told me his experience even 8 months after his surgery is that he is still seeing halos. My optometrist was concerned because he thought that I might be regressing. My eyes still showed damage from the surgery. It was however hard to argue that with the results from the eye chart test showing that vision in both eyes were 20/20. In this past month (month 3) I have noticed that I am not as sensitive to light and the halos are better. In the visit to the optometrist the results the consistent with my observations, the damage finally seems to be healing.


Humor:
I walked into the middle of a conversation where an older guy (late 40’s) was saying to another colleague that he had been a member since 1983.
With my usual smirk I asked “A member of AARP?
The room got a good laugh out of that.
He responded “If you keep talking you won’t make it.”


The mental institute:
I have been dating a young lady for 3 months now and after meeting me she has ended up at the mental institution. She gets locked up with psychotics, homicidal and suicidal people. She ended up there the day after our first date. I bet you never knew I powerful an influence on people? Since she is not too dangerous they do let her out though.

She came to my house and I told her I wanted to make sure she treated it like her home. The next time she came by I asked if she remember that I told her that I wanted her to act like it as it were her home. She replied “Yes.”
I said “You clean your home every week right? So you’re welcome to clean here, just to make yourself comfortable.”
She laughed and has yet to clean anything beyond helping to clean up after a meal. Well it was worth a try anyway, and I got her to laugh too.


Free beer!
I went on two canoe trips this past month. On the river were kayaks, canoes and rafts. One of the rafts with about 8 people on it had run out of beer. So they hailed a kayak. Two of the women yelled to a raft “Boobs for beer?” The guys on the canoe accepted and threw 3 beers over to the two women that raise their bikini tops. That is even better than Mardi Gras, we don’t even have to fight the crowds to have people showing off breasts.


Nagging:
I was reading You just Don’t Understand by Deborah Tannen. In it she explains the psychology of nagging. I had never put together that nagging is an attribute that only females are accused of and that she says it is because these females think that people would actually want to do what she want if they could only hear her. She also says that men do not like to be told what to do, especially by women. So it is a vicious cycle where he hears her just fine and does not like to be do it on her terms. She thinks he would love to make her happy if he could only hear her. I think the book was appropriately titled, I just don’t understand why someone would want to repeat herself constantly. Why would you put up with that?


Premium Text Messages:
My phone bill is usually $25 plus another $4 in taxes and outer unfathomable charges. This past month I got a $62 bill and found out that I got 3 “premium text messages” at about $10 a piece. I’m going holy cow that some pretty serious information that comes across at less than 160 characters. The phone company can put a “premium text message” block on your phone. You may want to look into it before getting a $10 text message.

The Electronic Revolution

I have always lagged behind in adopting technology in my home. It is a strange personality trait since I do embrace tools and gadgets that are useful. I did not own a CD until the mid ‘90’s, then again I did not own a CD player until this millenium so I had a CD that I could not play in very many places for like 7 years. I did not have a cell phone until about 7 years ago when I missed a dates because of miscommunication on a meeting location. Women are a great influence for justifying purchases.

I have been thinking about getting a new computer, HDTV, and car for years now but always come back to the same conclusion my 7 year old computer, 10 year old TV, 11 year old car work just fine for most of the stuff I do. The car is a biggie because I did go through my quarter life crisis. For someone that does not drive very much since I walk to work it become extremely difficult to rationalize such an expensive depreciating toy when I have a vehicle that is good for another 120,000 miles (about 20 more years at my annual driving mileage).

Last week after replacing the battery in the remote of my cheap DVD player the remote still does not work, but the DVD player works. Yes there are universal remotes out there but is it really worth it for a $30 DVD player? I should just get a new DVD player, and if I am going to do that I should get a Blue-Ray one. Since Blue-Ray’s are $300 I should just get a $400 or $600 Playstation 3. If I get a Blue-Ray or PS3 then I should get a HDTV to take advantage of the higher picture quality.

A couple days later I get a call encourage me to purchase a new computer so that I could join in on some high-powered Internet games. That got me started thinking about all the possibilities. I love to design figure out strategies. I started with the computer that of course I would have to get a high powered one because it is my favorite toy. Then I figured I should make it wireless capable so that I could get my Wii, my work computer and my girlfriend’s computer online too. If I put the computer downstairs in the main living room I could make it my Blue-Ray DVD player if I got a wireless keyboard and mouse and wouldn’t need the PS3. When I bought the 40” HDTV I could use that as the computer monitor.

Then I started to figure out how I would going to put all this stuff downstairs and what to do with the old TV and DVD. I saw a nice design for an entertainment center at The Container Store. It was pretty much a wall mounted shelving system, something I would never have considered an “entertainment center”. It was so simple that it was exactly what fit my minimalist personality. The price tag was $1700; I rolled my eyes at that. How expensive could it be to buy 4 metal supports, some anchors, screws and pretty boards? I may try to build that even though I only have one saw, which probably is the wrong type of saw for the job.

$1700 Entertainment center
$55 Router
$1000 Computer
$800 HDTV 40”
$120 Wireless mouse and keyboard
$100 Tray top for remote seating

$3775 Subtotal
$245.38 Tax
$4020.38 Total just to play some high powered video games.

So far I just settled for router and a GPS unit. It is just a matter of time before I get a HDTV; just not today. When I bought the GPS unit was programming the home position and it defaulted in Taiwan. I was wondering why the unit has Taiwan as the home position when the only maps that are loaded are the USA maps. I wonder how it intended to tell me to drive from North America to Taiwan.

The Thunderclaps of Little Feet

Spring is the season so be cranking out little ones and everyone seems to adore the thought of having the pitter-patter of little feet running around. Living by myself for the past 10 years with only adult visitors in my home has made me forget how very loud children can be. I had 4 kids visit ages 5-9 with the adult chaperones shows up at my house for a pizza dinner in preparation for baseball game. I loaded up my Disney music for the kids and cranked up speakers very loud so that it could be heard throughout the house. When the kids arrive, they easily drowned out the music so that we could not hear it, one occasion a kid said it was the phone ringing and I knew the phone not the phone because none of them were lit up. The kid did not realize that they were just a moment of slightly less noise and she could actually hear the Disney music in that brief moment which she had mistaken for a phone. The kids were quite entertaining for the evening as most novelties are. I just wonder how many days of deafening noise I could get use to.

I was at a professional baseball game and watched as 12 guys came out onto the field to rake the dirt. I looked in awe as wondered why they needed 12 guys when they could have done it with 9 easily just as quickly because 3 of them were just duplicating work. My mind started wandering and wondered what the future of career advancement there for a professional dirt raker. What would you tell a lady in a bar that you did for a living? We brainstormed and for a bit to see how well we could spin it. We settled for Landscape Sculptor, MLB. We thought that was almost good enough to print business cards with MLB credentials.

Divine Vision

Driving into the Optometrist office on Day 5 after the eyeball extraction, I experienced a new sensation. It was early in the morning so still dark enough to have headlights and lamp posts. Around each ball of light was a large glow that was twice the size of the source of light. I told my coworkers that I have divine vision because I can see halos. One of them commented that only I could put such a positive verbal spin on such a misfortune. At the optometrist’s office he attempted to remove the medical contact in my right eye. He had me set my chin and forehead in position. Peering through his equipment he used a q-tip the came at my eyeball. Unconsciously as the q-tip came forward my head moved backwards to avoid being poked in the eye. He told me that my head was moving back as he was coming forward. At that time I noticed that my head was 4 inches from the starting position and did not even realize it. Fortifying my position I managed to hold still the next time. It is interesting because they surgeon’s office keeps asking me if I have dry eyes. How am I to know if they are dry? They are the only eyes I have ever had and do not know if they wet compared to anyone else’s eyeball.

I could see incremental improvement in my vision each day for the first week. It was much easier to tell in my right eye since I was practically blind at day 2 and my left eye started somewhere around 20/60 on that day 2. By Day 7 my vision was 20/20 in my left eye and 20/15 in the right. It is strange that the one that required the contact actually did better. Now I am extremely sensitive to sunlight and see halos at night.

For the first two weeks I was still looking for my glasses to put on before I did things like look at a computer monitor. As I passed into the third week I stopped looking for glasses but then for a few days I was trying to take off my glasses after I stopped looking at the computer monitor.

Eyeball Extraction

The majority of the people who I talked to before having my eyeball poked and burned claimed that I would be fine the next day, ready to bounce off the walls with my new found sight. Most of them said how much I would absolutely love opening my eyes and being able to see!

The adventure starts with $250 worth of prescriptions eye drops that I start taking two weeks before surgery. I end up absorbing the costs because that is what you do when you have a Health Savings Account. I asked the nurse if I really needed to have those eye drops because she had hinted that they were optional. She asked what my age was. I asked her what that had to do with the answer. She said that after the age of 30 your tear ducts don’t work as well. I said “I get it you’re saying I’m old”. She said “Sorry, but yes I am.” I learn that my tear ducts are connected to my mucus membranes that end up in my mouth. So all the wonderfully bitter antibiotics, steroids, and 3 other interesting eye drops I take throughout this episode would end up in my mouth.

At the surgery center after all the money and CYA documentation have been taken care of they put me in a chair where they drop one numbing drop in each eye and offer me an oral pain killer\relaxer with a shot of carrot juice to wash it down. After a few minutes they give me a second numbing drop in each eye. I am prepped by a pretty assistant and think well at least if I went blind she would be one of the last things I saw.

They lay me down and use a device to keep my eyelids from shutting. My reflexive muscles start firing to close the lids to protect my eyes. I find this mildly uncomfortable but am able to control my muscles from firing after a few seconds. The doctor starts poking at my eye with a tool. After about the fourth poke the assistant asks if I can feel it. I respond with a very definite yes. She then floods my eye with about 8 numbing drops. I lay there wondering why they didn’t do that in the first place. After a few more pokes they place a ring around my eyeball. I still have feeling in my eye at this time. Luckily my eye would finally lose feeling shortly after this because it is quite uncomfortable to have a ring put around your eyeball and have it poked. Just about when I lose sensory in my eye the whole world goes dark. I had been warned that at a certain point in the procedure everything would go dark. This is very valuable information because you can imagine the reaction of some people when her eyes are open but everything goes pitch black while someone is working on her eye. One really understands how serious of a decision he has made to have surgery when his whole world goes dark. As I start regaining light in my eye I can hear the laser going and smell the scorching of my eyeball.

Strangely the second eye was even more uncomfortable for me. My reflexive flinching was much more sever. My reflexes are causing my eye to close against the suppressor tools while my active mind is trying to keep them open. This causes me to shake and I try to alert the doctor that my head is shaking. He misunderstands it as me being fearful and tells me to take deep breaths…I would have rolled my eyes at him except I knew that would have been a very bad thing to do during eye surgery. The way I saw it was that even though my eyes weren’t closing the reflexive muscles were still causing my head to move. Apparently they were not moving my head enough to bother the doctor though and he continues poking at the eyeball. Again after the assistant asks if I can feel it and again I respond with a very definite yes. Again she floods my eyeball with numbing drops. I would have thought she would have figured out the first time that two drops were not enough for me. The numbing drops do help stop the reflexive eyelid flinching.

The doctor puts a heavily weighted medical contact on my right eye because it is supposed to help it heal better. They give me sunglasses to put on as I go out the door to keep anything from flying into my eye.
I go into the surgery center for LASIK to improve my vision. Ironically I leave with worse vision, a medical contact lens in one eye AND glasses.

The second day my left eye is working fairly well (but definitely not 20/20 yet). My right eye (with the contact) cannot see very well at all. My right eye can’t read, see middle or long distances. The doctor decides to leave the medical contact in for another three days. Day three I see improvement in my right eye. Day four more improvement in the right eye, it is good enough that I can read now. Tomorrow is day 5, hopefully they can take the medical contact lens out. My eyes are still very gruesomely bloodshot.

Vietnam-Introduction

I have decided to take a departure from my previous writing style for this series of entries because this trip was a departure from my standard travels. I set out on a cultural adventure that would help me understand more about where I came from, and who I would have been if life took a different turn. A vacation was the secondary goal and understanding was the primary goal. In telling these stories it would be incredibly cumbersome for me to use ambiguous pronouns. Also because this will also serve as a family history the 5 people that I know read this blog on a regular basis may benefit from the greater detail.

The style will also change in that it will not be a chronological recall of events. This is because my level of understanding continued to evolve, often from first impressions to a different level of awareness. Many things I would not stretch as far as to say that I understand because my initial impression were usually correct, it is more that I see how a significant group of people may reach these behaviors.

So now the disclaimers: Of course being politically correct I could not generalize. Not all people in any group can generalized. To save myself the ambiguity of framing every entry politically correctly I will state that the observations were of as many data points as I deemed available. I know that I will get comments from family and Vietnamese friends. I welcome these comments to continue expanding my understanding.

Vietnam-Time Table

This will provide a backbone for the timing of when all the events happened:

Day 1 (Sat)- Fly to Saigon

Day 2 (Sun)- Arrive at "Hotel" that cost $200/month

Day 3 (Mon)- Historic walk thru Saigon with Dad.
-Learned where he met mom.
-Saw grandpa's shop
-Grandma's last condo
-Sat on plastic stools at resturant, just like my house!
-Lots of exotic fruits
-Dinner with Ba

Day 4 (Tu)
-Suoi Tein Amusement Park
-Hall of monsters (deformed mutations preserved or stuffed)
-Grandma's last apartment; 12" rat, this could be home
-Cit-go negotations with dad

Day 5 (Wed) Trip to Nang Trang
-Stuck in the back of the bus with the luggage and exhaust
-Met Tham
-Met Amy, Xien (seen) and QUOC (not a mispelling)

Day 6 (Th) Nang Trang
-Beach
-Fish Market
-Met Packer
-Vinpearl Amusement park, rode an electric bull with one hand and didn't fall off.

Day 7 (Fr) Nang Trang - Da Lat
-Mud Bath
-Ghost House
-Went shopping for roses with Than
-Met Mohawk

Day 8 (Sat) - Da Lat
-De Marie Church - bought sweater for Tham
-Botanical Gardens "Yellow Flower Valley"
-Luge down Mountain
-Embroidery shop
-Traditional Dance
-Monk with Chainsaw
-Bar/Club that served watermelon, pineapple, strawberries and no napkins for the drink condensation. 3 year old child was in the club at 10:30 at night.

Day 9 (Sun) Back to Saigon

Day 10 (Mon)
-Downtown Saigon with Dad, family history chapter 2.
-Airport overlook with Packer, Mohawk, Tham and wives.

Day 11 (Tues) Ben Tre
-Motorbikes to Cu Chi Tunnels
-M16 and M60 firing range
-Met Uncle, aunt and cousins
-Uncle's farm house residency
-6 hours on motorbikes

Day 12 (Wed) Ben Tre
-Poverty of rural community

Day 13 (Th) Saigon
-Fine arts Museum
-Dinner with Linda's son

Day 14
-Shop 5 slacks for $23
-Hair cut for $1.15, straigh razor shave on forehead

Day 15
-Presidential Palace

Vietnam- Cast of Characters

Linda: Dad's long time girlfriend that still has family in Vietnam. She has a moderate English mastery.

Ba: Elderly lady that my dad says has many similarities with my grandmother. She has no English comprehension and lives in Los Angeles. I do not know her real name and dad says don't bother trying to learn it because I can never use it anyway. I address here as Chao Ba (respectfully hello elderly woman), thus the name Ba. Within a few minutes of meeting her she is showing me pictures of her grand daughters. Later she invites me to visit here in CA. It is not hard to guess her motives since she and I can not communicate. The next day she would tell my father that she thinks I have a kinder aura than my brother. I guess she can tell all this from the way I carry myself because I am sure it is not something I said.

Packer: This is the nickname I gave the Cantonese speaker I met on the 2nd day of the tour. I helped him with a user-generated problem with his camera, thus winning his friendship. From that point on he and his wife actually spoke to me. He speaks Cantonese and his wife moderately speaks English.

Mohawk: I would interact with him and his wife more on the 3rd day of the tour onward. His wife has a moderate mastery of English and he has a weak comprehension of it.

Amy: She is the mother of QUOC and the aunt of Xien. The whole family present speaks Cantonese and she has a mild command of English. At the start of the tour I would start off literally in the back of the bus with the luggage. The seal back there is poor so the exhaust enters the bus from the back corners, one of which I would be sitting at. An hour and a half into the trip I move up to sit next to Amy. When I figure out that they speak Cantonese this is a great relief because going 3 days without understanding anything other than what my Dad chooses to translate for me gets old. She invites me to visit her boutique in Chinatown, LA. After 5 days of speaking Cantonese with the people on the bus I can tell that I have vastly improved and pretty much gotten up to a plateau point. This practice would greatly help me when I got to Ben Tre to see Uncle. I had been worried that because of my lack of use of the language it was deteriorating very rapidly, it appears it had not quite deteriorated as much as I thought.

QUOC: The eldest son of Amy, is an Engineer and if fluent in English. He is about 6 foot tall and laughs about his cousin Xien, saying that she "can't drink". He ends up paying for it the next day. Karma is a wonderful thing when it happens to other people.

Xien (seen): Niece? of Amy? She is a local Vietnamese lady whose primary language is Cantonese and also is fluent in Vietnamese and a number of other languages that I can not translate. She speaks no English. My first interaction with her was after I sat down next to Amy on the bus. Xien offers me a piece of fruit she had just cored. I believe in the saying that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. You know it is going to be a good relationship when the first thing a pretty girl does is feed you. One of the few occasions I spoke with QUOC in English Xien berates us and says that we are in Vietnam so we are not allowed to speak English. I tell her that my Grandmother says that when we speak English around her that we are yelling at her. Therefore Xien sounds like my grandmother, an old lady. She does not appreciate this comment but her cousin and aunt gets a chuckle out of it. She has an interesting complex about being not pretty she seems to think that she was hit by a bus and truck at the same time. Of course I refute this many times, but she does not know how to take a compliment. She questions why I am not courting an American woman and says that's what she would be doing if she were as good-looking as me. She thinks I am too picky. I would later that I find out there is a rumor floating around the bus that I came to Vietnam to find a wife. I can guess where that rumor started. Xien makes two references to having light colored skin is better. Think about it, all the Asian models and superstars are very pale. This makes sense because the Western world went through the same mentality when we had more agricultural influence. The second time was when I ask why she had put on her jacket in the scorching heat and she said it was to keep the sun off. I tell her that in the US people pay to get a tan, ask your cousin. She doesn't appreciate this comment and demands to know why I must always turn everything around on her. Her cousin and I get a chuckle out of it when the bus opens up and she huffs and states that she is getting on the bus and the people who are not afraid of tanning can stay outside. After lunch one day she playfully says that she is jealous that I can just go upstairs and rest while she has to ride the bus back to her [better] hotel. I offer to let her rest in my room on the pillows. She huffs and exclaims in an exasperated tone “Pillows!” I say that if she wants to sleep in the bed that can be arranged too.

Tham: The tour guide. He command of English is weak. My first significant interaction with her is at the mud baths. While we are in the sun waiting for the mud to dry we are the only ones in the immediate vicinity. She explains to me that my skin will be very soft after this mud treatment. She says that all the girls will want to kiss me. I turn my cheek toward her and to allow her to prove her claim. She gets a real chuckle out of this and the story would be retold a number of times throughout the trip. I can tell when the story is being told in Vietnamese because she would point at me and eventually turn her cheek and everyone would laugh.

Uncle/Cousins/Aunt: Interactions between this group will all be observations except with Uncle since none of them speak Cantonese or English except him. He has a mastery of Cantonese. They live in Ben Tre many of them work in the coconut industry as laborers. Uncle commented that I blew through in about 10 minutes the amount of money he makes in 40 hours of shucking 8000 coconuts. That small fortune I burn through was about $30 USD. There is no trash pickup or disposal in the rural areas so the residents get to figure our what they are going to do about it. Many of them choose to leave it lying around, especially if it cannot be burned.

Vietnam-Other Observations

We went to a nightclub in the Nha Trang and instead of bringing peanuts for munchies they brought fresh fruits like watermelon, strawberries and pineapple. They also brought salt to dip the fruit it to help wet our appetites for hydration.

In Nha Trang there was a seafood market next to a private beach. The customer selects the items by the kg and they cook it up and deliver it to your at the beach. The vendors are very good at tracking the customers. They spotted us 30 yards in the water. Dad and I of course were not wearing glasses in the water and were topless, yet they still found and recognized us. This was the first time I had ever has scallops in the shell. After we were done we left all the trash in bags by the gazebos for little local boys. The little boys took the bags. The boys separated the recyclable for money and then took the bags to some adults. They sorted through the trash and ate the leftovers. At the same time they looked like they were collecting the shells. I can only guess as resourceful as they were they were going to use the shells to make something that they could sell like tourist trinkets.

Relative to the large population I saw very few beggars. Most of the people try to be industrious and provide a good or service. Some of the efforts were not very logical from my limited perspective. There were quite a few people providing shoe shining. They were obviously not targeting locals because the locals were flip-flops. In my time there I really did not see very many foreigners with dress shoes that would need shining either although the vendors were persistent about offering to shine our running shoes.

I think the massive amount of people in the country has led to many of the people to pushing, shoving and a disregard for lines. By the 4th day in Vietnam, I had been shoved from behind four different times by someone trying to get past me in a line. One large group decided to try to shove past us in a line starting with a lady, that bugged me a bit. Then I got shoved again by her friend, and I turned this time it was her male friend and cronies. Very few things gets the alpha male testerone going more than a smaller male trying to shove him aside for position. With their behavior to get a few inches further on the platform when the transport car wasn’t even there, I recognized that there were going to try to bully their way past me once the car was there. So as the car approached I let the first of them push and shove past us then braced myself for the impact of the rest of them without ever changing my stride. I calmly sat down in the transport and effectively separated their group. One person of their groups could not fit on the transport and had to wait to catch the next transport, how unfortunate.

When I saw the monk wielding the chainsaw it was a bit of a disconnect. Since Buddhist monks are mostly poor it strange to think of them using technology because technology is usually expensive. I almost associate them with Amish, which I know is a very poor way to categorize them in. Seeing the monk with the chainsaw did help reset the association that they have not lost an appreciation for technology during their spiritual journeys. Sorry Lewis he appeared to be behind a private area of temple. While I did consider snapping a picture, I thought it might have been a bit disrespectful to be taking pictures of them in their private areas and I could not ask them if it was ok since I do not speak Vietnamese.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are the underground bunkers that the Viet Cong used to attack Saigon. There was about 150 km of tunnels with everything from kitchen to meeting rooms. They allow tourist to purchase bullets to use on the firing range. The heavy machine guns ammo would cost more than the pistols. All of the weapons were mounted with a little play for aiming but not enough to be dangerous. After firing the M60 light machine gun I realized that they were mounted so that you could not possibly hit the target. They are locked high. It dawned on me that if the foolish tourist could not hit the targets then they never had to replace them. I fired the M16 assault rifle anyway with this understanding just for the experience, but stopped after that because it takes a lot of fun out of it if you can’t ever hit the target.

Vietnam-Haircut and Luge Ride

I got a haircut for 20,000 dongs ($1.15 USD). They gave me a straight razor shave with that. What was unexpected was that she started shaving my forehead. I never knew that my forehead needed a shave. She asked me if I wanted to have it waxed. I thought that was a bit overboard and declined. I handed her a 50,000 bill and she gave me back a 20,000 and a 10,000. After consulting with dad about what was a normal tip he said 10,000 was very generous (remember that’s 50% tip). I gave her a 100% tip and made her really happy.

In Da Lat there was a gravity-tracked ride similar to a roller coaster down the mountain. Being completely gravity there were no gears to slow you down. Dad sat in front of the two-person car so I was in the back with control of the break. The car reminded me of the cars that you go down some water slides in, not much more to it than a tray with a brake. We picked a time when there was no one in front of us and took off. I took off under the philosophy of “I don’t need no stinkin breaks!”. So off we go flying down the mountain and swing around the turns at full speed. They have people seated on benches along the way. I hear one of them shout at us, dad hears it too but can’t understand him because we are zipping by. We zip by another one of them that is shouting at us and again dad can’t understand him. We use the context to assume that they are yelling for us to slow down. Those guys on the bench wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop us at those speeds. At this time it dawns on me that we are in Vietnam and they probably do not idiot proof their rides. So I decide to yank the brake slightly before the next turn. I don’t think I actually yanked it hard enough slow us down, I think I just kept us from accelerating. I did notice that this turn had netting around it, I assume that is for those fools that flew off the track because they were going too fast. The netting looks pretty feeble and I wonder if it would actually have stopped a full speed car. I continue this responsible course of action for the rest of the turns down the mountain, never really slowing down just not picking up more speed before a turn. After the ride dad said he was concerned about how fast we were going.

Vietnam-Family history

The whole city of Saigon is a market. So I found it humorous when dad would say that someone was going to the market. Every available inch of street property is a shop in front and living quarters behind it. Even in the alleys and back roads there are carts set up selling wares. The only exceptions were religious structures, and the government properties like the parks and museums. The areas that were not streets were a cross between sidewalks, parking lots (for motorbikes), and vendor store front. So the pedestrians were just as likely to be walking in the streets as the “sidewalks”.

It was well into the dark hours of the night when we walk through the closing street market leading to grandma’s first apartment. Debris from the market completely littered the street. As we left the alley there was a 12 inch rat (8” body, 4” tail) that scurried across the path. This could have been home.

In the daylight dad showed me where grandma’s last condo was. In the same day he showed me where grandpa’s stamp store was and the place where he met mom. He answered the question of how they met each other. He showed me where he proved that wood was stronger than his ribs and the hospital that grandma took him to afterwards. This was how he got all the stitches in his abdomen.

Dad shared with me stories about how he and his father bonded working the stamp shop and his errands to the post office. He told me about what he had heard about his only uncle that lived outside of Shanghai, where grandpa was originally from. He also shared what he knew about his only cousin. We also covered mom’s side of the family and why there was some bad blood with parts of that side of the family.

Spending time with dad in Vietnam provided an opportunity to see and hear things that I would never have experienced otherwise.

Propaganda and War

In the places I visited in Vietnam the monuments and most prominent displays were of the war with America. There is very little mention of the wars preceding and following the Vietnam War. Meaning little is said about the war with the French (before) and about the war in Cambodia (after) and with the Chinese that followed the Vietnam War. Some of the translations were pretty comical, and clearly not done by fluent English speakers. The translations were much harsher than what one would find in a historical monument in the US. Instead of referring to the Southern Forces in a governmental term the translations often referred to them as the “Americans and their Lackeys” or something else derogatory.

Having a chance to interact with Draftees of the Vietnam War it is not surprising to get the sense that they were not really interested in the political side of the war, meaning they only fought because they had to. Spending time in the countryside brings the understanding that wars are conducted by the rich for the interests of the rich and usually fought by the poor. A rice farmer who is happy to makes enough to have 3 meals a day. His free time is spent socializing with his neighbors and family over a cup of tea. He doesn’t have the money for other options. Why would he care whom he pays his taxes to? Why would any government care what is doing out in his rice patty as long as he was not being disruptive? Yet it is the poor rice farmer who was drafted into the wars. It was the draftee rice farmers that were hit by the 500,000 bombs in the front lines, the victims of environmentally destructive chemicals. What happens when that farmer’s family is slaughtered or mistreated because soldiers are incapable of distinguishing the enemy? This sounds like certain elements of Abu Ghraib doesn’t it?

There are always two sides to every story. Somewhere between the two stories lies that truth. The truth may not be a single absolute point but rather a fuzzy region that resides with elements of both perspectives. As American children in the US educational system during the eighties we were brainwashed to be terrified of the communist specter. We were told that democracy is the best form of government and that almost everything else was evil. Does that kind of remind you of Bush Junior’s “Axis of Evil”? We were told how we were so heavily oppressed by the British so we had this glorious revolution leading us to believe that everyone in the colonies were furious with the tyranny. I got straight A’s in history, so I was pretty good at absorbing the propaganda and repeating it back to the educators what they wanted to hear even being classified as “Gifted and Talented” in that subject. If one has and interest he can find out that the majority of American’s did not actually actively participate in the revolution. The various historical accounts put the Patriot support at less than half of the population. About 20% of the population were Loyalist and actively supported the British. The victors write history.

Communism was the specter that every American kid was taught to fear in the 80’s. In my time traveling through Vietnam and China there really were no immediately visible effects of Communism, of course I wasn’t trying to find any censored websites or have political discussions or anything as aggressively foolish like that. My ex-girlfriend and I went around China without anything that hindered out movement or activities. Like wise in Vietnam. So is it really the end of the world if not every country is a Democracy?

The collapse of every democracy has been decay from within. The majority population feels apathy for the system and when the remaining figure out that they can vote themselves rich. Consider the voter participation rate and the socialistic actions like Social Security. A bunch of 50+ year old legislators vote into effect a policy that says that they pay in for a few years and then collect money for the rest of their lives. A stroke of genius if you were category to benefit, was it an altruistic policy to benefit society?

Vietnam - Living Conditions

I was pleasantly surprised and not so wonderfully surprised by the living arrangements throughout my stay in Vietnam. My home base consisted of a single room about 12’x10’ including the bathroom. I was very pleasantly surprised that a place costing $200/mo had air conditioning, cable TV, foam bed (no springs), and a refrigerator. The exterior door leading into the complex was a sliding door. The lock on this sliding door would not work from the inside. The bathroom had a sink, toilet and removable showerhead in a 5’x3’ area. The drain hose from the sink deposited onto the floor 2.5’ away from the drain. When the toilet flushed an unexplainable effluent went to a different hose onto the floor and rolled across the floor for 2.5’ before reaching the drain. The effluent was not colored, but was also not a coincidence that it came out only when the toilet was flushed. I tried not to think about why the two events happened at the same time.

At the two hotels we stayed at the night shift slept at the hotel. You could see them sleeping on a mattress or cot either in front or behind the desk. That means a request for a wake up call is useless because the night staff is asleep while customers are sleeping. The first hotel was located inside a 6-story structure, the first story being a large appliance store. You had to walk to the back of the store to get to the stairs leading to the hotel. In the late evenings the store closes and the metal roll-down door prevents anyone from entering. If you are out for a late night you have to open the mail slot and yell\bang hoping that the night staff that is sleeping on the second floor in front of the hotel desk can hear you to open the door.

Uncle’s farmhouse was located in Ben Tre. There is a small, well-maintained road that leads back his home. The road is large enough for two motor scooters to simultaneously travel. The area is lush with foliage, fruit and coconut trees. The area is by the river. There are also lots of ponds of standing water around, perfect for breeding mosquitoes. Being so close to sea level I wonder what happens when the monsoon season comes. The structure is fairly large for the area, about 50’x20’ with one bedroom, a bathroom and a covered kitchen annex. It has three-inch exterior walls and a sheet metal roof. Other than being covered by a grate to prevent intruders the windows are completely open to the exterior environment. The kitchen annex is best described as a covered patio with a large iron stove that burn anything you put into it as fuel. The bathroom had a toilet and a floor drain (no sink). Water is boiled on the stove so that warm water is available in one bucket to mix with the cold water from the other bucket. So each pitcher of water used for the “shower” is a different temperature depending on how good you are at mixing the two solutions. Brushing your teeth works the same way; you just fire away at the floor drain and rinse it afterwards. At night mosquito nets are set up around the sleeping areas.

Cousin’s place was significantly smaller and much poorer construction. The front room’s walls are made of 1”x6” boards with many inches between them exposing the exterior environment. The roof is sheet metal. The entire place is smaller than my one car garage. I have seen barns and sheds in the US of better construction, it is sad to know that hard working members of the family live in such poverty. My guess is the difference is between Uncle’s house and Cousin’s house is having foreign money sponsoring the construction versus all local earnings.

Vietnam-Silence is golden

The streets are a constant roar of from the motorbikes and other traffic. There is a primitive form of advertisement that occurs in this constant roar. In Nha Trang I heard a car coming from many blocks away. By the time it was two blocks away it was already deafening, clearly above the 90 db required to cause hearing damage. I retreated into the store and covered my ears as it continued to approach. The car was mounted with two huge 5’ bullhorns that it was using to spew out the deafening message. After it passed by the second time I realized why I had not seen anything like it in the US. It is highly ineffective advertisement and they would have been fined for disturbing the peace or something.

In the places speakers are installed such as theme parks they like to use one large speaker and blast the noise instead of separating the delivering into multiple locations of smaller volume.

Vietnam-Pollution, Trash

When I arrived at about 11 PM I was taken to a restaurant. There were paper napkins, vegetable, bottle caps, cans and all other sorts of rubbish on the floor. I have seen two or three places like it the US and have turned around and walked out the door. I even dare to say most, of the restaurants in here are like this. In one place I even saw a pet bird about 2 feet from (and above) the food. Birds are infamous Salmonella (food borne infection) carriers.

I would see not only the customers but the shop employees dumping trash on the floor. Servers would pop the cap off a drink straight onto the floor. Cooks would drop finished beverage containers onto the floor.

When one leaves the city you will see trash all over the roadside, from my observations this is the fault of both the travelers and the residents. They even throw it into their water supply.

My initial impression was that the people had to know what was going on and the long term effect, but they simply didn't care. In my quest towards understanding then was more focused to determine if it was a sense of resignation or if it was something else. As I watched overall behaviors I start to think that for many people this is how it has always been, perhaps that they do not even understand that there could be something better if the environment was cleaner.

Vietnam - Pollution, Air

Vietnam - Pollution, Air
One of the first things that will hit you when you come here from the US is the exhaust fumes and other air pollution. While it is very similar to what I have experienced in the other 6 Asian cities I have been to the difference for me was that there was escape in this situation. My initial reaction has been that these are poor countries that can not afford the expenses of pollution control on their vehicles, factories and other habits. I also figured that people may get used to it too. I still think both of those points are still pieces of the puzzle and have expanded beyond that during my time here.

I spend about 6 hours on the back of a motorbike during my trip to the Cu Chi tunnels and then down to Ben Tre. To add to that the driver was also a smoker so I got a bonus dose of pollution. There were many fires burning near the roadside, I believe that these are because there is no trash disposal. At the farmhouse in Ben Tre they had an annex kitchen that used an iron stove that burned any fuel available. That fuel may have been coconut leaves, husks, stems, various vegetation or possibly even trash. The problem was that the design was poor and did not provide enough venues for the smoke and gases so a good portion of it went back into the house. The next day we went around on motor bikes again and finally returned in private car that a cousin arranged for us. Unfortunately the car was not properly sealed so the exhaust was coming in the back of the car for all 3 hours. When I got back to Saigon there was a heavy smoker in the room next door, 3 feet away. We were separated by a sliding door in each room. So the whole room smelled like smoke.

By this time my senses were fried, I could not smell or taste anything except pollution. I think this validates my initial impression that people especially smokers do not even really notice the pollution. These 3 days of severe air pollution exposure would also mark the start of my health failure, which I never recovered from while in the country.

Vietnam- Traffic

Navigating traffic here can best be described as continuously playing a slow motion game of chicken. There are thousands of motor scooters at any intersection, mixed with cars and trucks. The motor scooters pay very little attention the stop lights, the cars sometimes stop for them and trucks usually obey them. They have crosswalks painted but no one pays attentions to those either so the pedestrians enter the fray at their peril. I wonder why they waste the money on the paint (the labor is really cheap so they probably don't care about that). Put that amalgamation together and you will end up with a real mess when a couple of cars or trucks get caught in the middle between lights.

About 1% of the vehicles drive on the "wrong side of the road" meaning they are driving counter traffic on the same side that the traffic is traveling in the other direction. When one attempts to turn in a vehicle or cross the street on foot it is a matter of slowly continuously moving across the street. The hope is that people will go around you because it is very rare to actually find an opening in the traffic to cross the street. A few people will use the hand like a policeman's stop sign meaning that they have no intention of stopping, please don't run into them.

What saves them is that the traffic only moves at 30 km/h here. That is slow enough for people to stop. On the highways is that the max speed is 50-80 km/h depending on the size of the vehicle. Ironically the larger the vehicle is the faster it is allowed to go. This makes road trips very slow.

Vietnam-Homecoming

A few minutes into the flight from Saigon I can feel the effects that the air processing systems are having on the air. My sinuses start to dry up and clear out the congestion that the wet polluted air that had inflicted on me. I could breath again! They say that smokers start to repair lung tissue as soon as they stop smoking. It may have been partially psychological but I think that the drier cleaner air really did help. I am usually a healthy creature but that environment completely wrecked my system.

24 hours after leaving tropical Saigon I arrive at the CVG airport to be greeted by flurries, no luggage (which I won't get before tomorrow), and no taxies even after I call for one. We soar home at the wonderfully not congested highway as speeds the awesome highway speeds of the Cincy. I live in the northwest of downtown (technically I don't live downtown). As we roll into the outskirts of downtown there are only a handful of cars and no pedestrians roaming around in the cold. This is a drastic contrast from the extremely noisy 30 km/hr bustle of Saigon.

There have been times when I had thought that a few more people\shops right by my house. I am now very happy that the revitalization of downtown is happening half a mile from my house. I appreciate more than ever that there are relatively few people and noise in my area of town. Sure that revitalization could easily spread over to my area but that will be a few years, by then who know I might have a need to become a surbanite.

I arrive home to a 45 degree house and can see my breath. That is the maximum temperature you should have a refrigerator at, it is also a fairly safe temperature to make sure you pipes don't freeze in the basment. It's good to be home.

Disappearing guest

In the freshly fallen snow this morning I saw a set of paw prints leading up to my front door. The last paw print ended about 3 inches from my front door. No other tracks could be seen on my staircase, surrounding bushes, flower pots etc. They did not look like bird prints so I ruled out flight. I wonder where that animal went and how it got away without leaving any prints.

Atlanta Perks

In Atlanta I get upgraded to a full size Dodge Charger, because I am a member of National’s Emerald Club. I quickly learn that it has a lot more power than my little Carolla and takes more effort to keep in the lane because of the size and power difference.

When I travel I try to do things that I can not do at home. I arrived late and started seeking out Vietnamese food, that is something that Cincy really does not have. The GPS was able to find a restaurant but it doesn’t know if it is open or not. Since it is 9PM on Sunday Lunar New Year’s Eve the restaurant was closed. There is a Latino pool hall next door and I end up having an authentic Mexican sandwich for Lunar New Year’s Eve dinner. I arrive at the Factory at 10:30 PM and wander around the parking lot in the dark. Both security shacks are vacant so I end up calling into the factory to get someone to let me in, thank goodness for cell phones and good planning on my part. The boilers are not functioning properly so I setup a mobile office and do computer work while I am waiting. As the it hits midnight, the turn of the new year all the e-mail messages are shifted from the “today” box to the “last week” box. It is strange to be cranking away and everything you have been working on for the past hour happened “last week” because it became Monday. At about 3 AM I give up and decide that the boilers are not going to work anytime soon so I go to the hotel to sleep. At 6 AM I receive a call and let it go into voicemail as I slowly roll toward the other side of the room. The voicemail says that the boilers and they expect me to be at the factory at 6:30. I smirk because it is a 15-minute drive into the factory and I have to get checked out and dress in 15 minutes. When I arrive at the factory I am told that I get to wait for our product to make it to the front of the queue. At about 10 AM we get started. I am glad that they expected me there at 6:30, surely I would have gotten sluggish if I didn’t have that 3.5 hours to get warmed up to help them with the new product. This may be a bit extreme for the people reading from outside the industry. Unfortunately this happens very often, in all of the various organizations I have worked for\with. The one redeeming thing is that my presence there made a difference.

I leave the factory to go to another hotel that is much closer to the airport so that I don’t have to get up as early in the morning. At the front desk they give me a cookie and a box of chocolates because I am a Hilton Honors member. Thing is I didn’t even realize that Doubletree was part of Hilton, but who was I to argue with a warm cookie and chocolates. My room is by the elevator and I get a knock on the door with someone saying it is room service. I tell them through the door that I didn’t order room service and they say that they have a gift for me. In my younger day I would have opened the door, before hearing another traveler’s tale. I heard a story where the guest was stabbed; robbed and bound by an intruder that forced his way in when the door was opened. So I looked through the peephole, which does not give enough visibility to really tell anything other than that it was a black dude that was probably bigger than I was. I asked him to leave it outside the door. As I watched him leave and heard him knock on the next door saying “Room service!” I unbolted my door and stopped. My sense of caution said that it could still be a rouse he could just be pretending to have gone away and awaiting the door to open. So I called the front desk and asked them if they had anyone delivering “gifts” to guests under the call of “room service”. The front desk knows nothing about it and the manager comes up to investigate. The delivery person sounds like he is a few doors down now so I crack the door grab the bag. It turns out to be a tin with Doubletree cookies. The note inside says it is a thank you for being a Hilton Honors member. How about that a box of chocolates, a cookie at check in and a tin of cookies delivered to your room just for being a Hilton Honors member? I think they could have not freaked out the guests by either giving the tin of cookies at the front desk or giving us warning that someone was coming.

I go and sleep for a couple hours awaken by call from California from a person who keeps a bit of an unusual schedule. I look on the internet and find a place to go swing dancing that night and then leave the hotel in search of some Vietnamese food for Lunar New Year’s day. Again after a half-hour of driving I show up to another restaurant that is closed next to another pool hall. So no Asian food for me New Year’s Eve or Day. When I make it out to the Swing dance I realize that I am far too tired to really even be interesting in expending the energy to dance with the ladies.

Standard of living

A key point of fiscal management is living beneath one’s means. Thus having a cushion for emergencies, investments and savings. I think my ability to do this exceptionally well stemmed from being an immigrant that had two extremely hard working parents. They worked multiple jobs simultaneously and were able to do things for four hungry kids that I would never have been able to do nearly as well. Seeing them work 16 hours a days so that we could eat made helped me understand why I could not have a lot of things that I wanted as a child. I think that cleaning other people’s houses for money at the age of 6 also helped me with this appreciation. As I got slightly older into my mid elementary school years I stopped asking for things because usually the answer was no and I understood why. It was simpler to not desire things I did not need.

My good friend in college called me the king of owning nothing. I left college with 8 boxes that I shipped and a carload of stuff. In retrospect many of those boxes were books from college that I probably did not need. When I left St. Louis I had 2000 # of stuff in my one bedroom apartment. The mover asked if I was a bachelor, I asked if it was that obvious. He said that the average one bedroom apartment has 5000# of stuff. I left my 3 bedroom house in California with 2500# of stuff. Now I have a chainsaw and other interesting lawn tools, saws and other stuff that I have very little use for in a townhouse. Alas, I am amassing more and more junk.

In California my ex-girlfriend had bought me 2 folding chairs with cushions because she thought I was too Spartan (though she did not say so). Apparently the uncushioned folding chairs I had were not good enough.

I know used to I have a very high tolerance for not having comforts or pretty things. These are things that many would consider necessities, the same people may never have lived a Spartan lifestyle though. My life seems to be transitioning to one that requires more…luxuries. As I travel more and more of the world I have seen a lot of hostels with a vast range of lack of amenities. The ones that are heavily lacking bother me much more than they used to.

When I got to Cincinnati I lived in a very bad part of town in a dump for a few weeks. I was forced into this situation because I was waiting on a real estate deal and did not want to pay $2000 a month for temporary housing, this was one of the few places that would allow me to go month to month. I cut and ran before the month was over accepting the loss as sunk costs. The bathroom with the ceiling falling on me while I was in the shower and the banging pipes that woke me up every night were too much for even me to deal with.

This weekend I bought a $40 leather chair and I really like it. A few years ago I would not have done this unless a girlfriend asked me to. A few years ago my butt would not have gotten stiff from sitting on the cushioned folding chair. I started wondering what has brought about these changes. Am I getting soft? Perhaps I am just getting old.

Set in my ways

I have been warned not to wait too long in life to find a partner because I may get set in my ways. The concern is that I may no longer be tolerant to different quirks.

My cell is next to a more experienced lady that recently joined the organization. I am the age of her children. Because of our proximity many of the questions and training fall to me by default. I like to tell her that there are many ways to do things, and mine is the only right way. She gets a chuckle out of this.

This weekend I had two experienced visitors come visit me and stay for the weekend. They drove the whole 11-hour trip. The first night offered to give them a walking tour or a drive of downtown to Newport. I warned them that it would be a 2.5-mile walk through each way and also noted that since it was 68 F that it was the nicest weather they would have during this visit. They elected to walk. We saw a lot of downtown as I shared a wealth of historical information on the regions and structures with them. We saw the largest mobile model train set in the world. This display had been set up every year for over 60 years. We finished the tour at Newport on the Levee at a seafood restaurant and had the best view in the place of downtown Cincy. The guests elected to take a cab home.

The next day the guests rolled out of bed at 11 and we went to Krohn’s Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. We spent part of the afternoon there looking at the flowers, fruit trees, bonsai trees and finally a Christmas performance. Next we went to a pond-side view that overlooked the Ohio River and enjoyed the view of Newport before strolling around the pond. Next we went to Union Terminal, a magnificent train station build in the 1930’s. Inside we observed the structure and murals on the ceiling. It is still an active train station for Amtrak and also houses a number of museums plus an IMAX that we did not enter. We went to my grocery store to pick up groceries and show them the wonderful inventions and items that I had influenced. Returning home I cooked up a gourmet 2-course meal.

The third and final day of the visit started with a tour of City Hall, then a cathedral. Next we walked over to my organization where I showed them my cell and lab. In the lab I provided them with awesome samples of new inventions that are not even available on the market yet. We spent the late afternoon looking at pictures before going to dinner at an Irish Pub.

I continually condition myself to become a good leader. I believe of part of being a good leader is to identify behavior that need to be changed and immediately implement corrective actions so that the feedback is timely and relevant. This is not always the best choice of actions for a home environment, especially with guests that one has known for 30 years. During these 3 days of guests I noticed that there were certain activities in the house, which were not done the way I would like them to have been done. It was a real mental exercise for me to remind myself that it really was not that important and that it was ok.

Maybe I am getting old; at least I still have the discipline to keep my eye on what is important.

Texas the land of spice and everything nice

I land in the 70 degree Texas weather saying ah what and good place to be in the winter. I had check the weather and it was 70ish all of the previous week too so I came prepared for this balmy weather. I am greeted at the airport by my lovely hostess airport that chauffeurs me to their castle. Within the castle I am greeted by a 13.9863-year-old young lady who I had never met before but is pretty much my niece. Throughout the evening she would make sure that we all knew that someone was having a birthday next Thursday. After the 6th reference to it that evening I get the point. This continues throughout my weekend stay, sadly when Thursday rolls around I have moved through a couple more cities and end up in a different state and time zone. So I end up forgetting so that I can’t even tease her about it properly. I’m such a bad uncle, I think I need to convince my siblings to have more kids so that I get more practice.

My first meal in the castle starts with a salad that my niece prepared. A hungry person had gotten to all the pickles in the salads and ate them all before they were served; the family has an affinity for pickles. Next came homemade bread with olive oil and pepper as we awaited the spiced carcass to be prepared. The dead organic flesh is spiced to provide a bit of heat. I had practically forgotten that other people serve spicy food because spicy food is pretty much nonexistent in the Cincy. So the surprise was took a second to get used to. Throughout the rest of the trip in Texas I would seek out food with spice, even the food that I did not expect to have heat was spiced. I was one happy camper and started to wonder what I was doing in the bland Midwest.

I left Austin and got out of the car in Dallas where the temperature was 28 F! Holy cow it’s colder in Texas than it was in Cincy! The next morning I am still in denial that is so cold so I only wear a collared shirt and my coat. The offices are not well heated and the production floor is intentionally kept cold for quality reasons. The second day in Dallas I get over my denials and put on the little warm clothing I have. Remember I packed for 70 F weather. It is too late because I started to get sick in Monday’s weather and incubate it until Friday afternoon when I succumb to the illness.

On Tuesday night found an opportunity to go swing dancing. There was a great turnout with lots of lovely college ladies included in the mix. They thought I was also a college kid. It must have been my stunningly fit body that keeps maintains my youthful appearance. On the flight to Cincy the stewardess also thought I was a college kid.

I have always liked Texas and still do, good food, pretty ladies, warm weather (sometimes), and a nice southern accent.

Two things that don't mix

When a person is coughing, sometimes it is a good idea to drink cough medicine. Especially if he has a date in a couple of hours. Vitamin C is also supposed to be good for ill people. Orange juice is a good source of vitamin C and cough syrup taste awful. When the bottle of cough syrup is citrus flavored one would think that if you mix the cough syrup with the orange juice then it would be a palatable. It does not quite work out that way instead of having a 3 gulps of nasty cough syrup, you now have 16 fl oz of nasty orange juice.

I did find that if you chase the cough syrup with skim milk that gets rid of the taste pretty well.

Am I fat?

One of the questions a guy can never win is when a woman asks him if she is fat. No matter what the answer is he will end up in the dog house. So it becomes a matter of selecting an answer that does the least amount of damage.

According to WebMD and the bio mass index (BMI), I have crossed the threshold are reached to point of being “overweight”. I ponder this and the implications to the statistics. Am I living in denial or do I really need to change my life style to fit into a one-size-fit all ranking system? I still can meet the government standards for physical fitness standard for a high school senior. Knowing that I am in better shape than many of my peers does not prove anything because one could be physically fit and fat at the same time I guess. WebMD they does say that a huge portion of my peer group is “obese”, the next category that I can strive to fall into after successfully achieving “overweight” status.

So can we depend on the government to set proper standards for us? The government also tells my industry that 29.573 times 8 is 240. They dictate that this will be the number that will be recognized by the government. Well yes if you round it off by quite a bit it is 240. They government also states that you are not supposed to label something with more product that you deliver. So they contradict themselves. Is one supposed to put the additional material in the container because the government cannot do multiplication properly? In an industry where 1% profit is doing well, what happens when the different regulators interpret that differently?

Since the goverenment likes to contradict itself perhaps I am both fat and out of shape.

Gifted

Since Thanksgiving just passed I thought the subject of being gifted was appropriate. It is human nature to want to be important. Being significant is defined differently by each person but the need is always there after the basic needs are fulfilled (air, water, food, shelter etc).

As hard as it is to believe life does have a way of beating me down to thinking I am merely normal and like everyone else. After trudging through life I start to think that merely average. It is what happens when I live in my head for too long and think that the world is, as I perceive it. Then something happens that reminds me that I am special, gifted and blessed. The first time I was reminded this year was by a random front line worker that I was helping in a factory. She came to me with a mathematical question and I worked the question out loud for her. She did not respond to my multiple inquires if my logic was correct, during the tutorial. After we had completed the math problem she said that she had no idea how I could do that math so quickly and was amazed. I tend to take silence as acceptance and move on. It is one of my weakness that I have identified and continue working on improving. The improvement is very noticeable but not complete because there are still times when I forget to slow down for the people around me.

Even though many would consider me beyond confidant to the level of cocky, I like to believe that I treat most people as equals. I also have a deep respect for those who have abilities that I do not (music, art etc). In my head part of respect is treating people like they are my equals until they prove otherwise. Unfortunately this leaves a lot of people behind in discussions.

The second reinforcement of my abilities this year was when lunch buddy of mine noted that I was like “Quocapedia”. Every time he would go look up a reference that I had made during lunch to some fact, he would find my statement was validated. So he actually started believing me. The same lunch buddy likes to talk and would later in the year he made a statement that I disagree with every one of his positions. In retrospect I should have said: “I do not!” That would have been funny. I actually recall one instance that he swayed my opinion. It was something I never even knew existed before the discussion so does that really count?

The most important reminder of how blessed I am would be when I hear about two people much less fortunate than I. The first is a person that I have met who takes 40 medications and gets her blood treated on a weekly basis. That is someone that is deathly ill and not that old. The second person was run over by a drunken kid in a truck. The 24 year old victim had his face shattered, body disfigured, limbs crippled and in extreme pain. He has no job skills and no spouse. I will be very difficult for him to get that education that he did not value before the attack, because he is constantly in pain or on pain medication. His options for unskilled labor are very limited since he is crippled. Despite the laws about discrimination against people with disabilities, in the real world it still happens. This is especially true if the person is severely disfigured.

I am grateful that I can eat as much as I want, do not live in fear, I can stay warm. I am blessed to be very intelligent, healthy and have a family that loves me.

Mentoring

I started mentoring about 4 months ago. I thought that I would be signing up for a program where have a one-on-one relationship and can help guide a kid through life. The program I signed up for is so short of male volunteers that I got 4 mentees. I have to figure out what to do with 4 high school kids now. I had these grand dreams of grooming and instilling my wisdom on one child with a lot of one-on-one time. Well that just won’t work out for 4 kids because I don’t have that much free time. Even after finding out the large ratio I decided to commit to the one year program.

I am to spend a minimum of one session a month with the kids and help them with the Capstone project.
The program is supposed to teach the kids a variety of life skills including money management (saving) and career selection. The first session was just to see who would actually showed up. I got 3 random kids that would not end up being my mentees. We talked about hopes, dreams and what they wanted to do with their lives. It was fascinating talking to them because I could hear an echo of my thoughts through these kids. I could hear myself thinking the exact same thoughts when I was their age. Then life beat many of those thoughts out of my head. I asked all of them how many hours they wanted to work each day; all three of them said 14-16 hours a day. You get the idea of what kind of answers I would get the rest of the evening.

The third session was on Election Day November 4th. The mentees asked me whom I voted for and I explained to them that it is a secret ballot and choose not to tell them. Not wanting to cut off the lines of communication I did explain to them how I selected my candidate. I explained to them that it was the selection of the lesser of two evils. All candidates are trying to get votes at election time, so the promises are always to make people happy and upset as few people as possible. The two presidential candidates had huge spending plans and did not do a sufficient job of explaining where the money was coming from. I explained that it is a zero sum game, the money has to come from somewhere and that would upset some group of voters so candidates spent very little time identifying the funding. The mentees are 10 graders studying civics in school and heavily supportive of Obama. One of them sits up proudly and says he knows where Obama will be getting the money. I encourage him to tell the group. He says that Obama will tax big business. So I ask him “Is this a good idea?” I can tell by the body language of the mentees that they seemed to be very eager to agree with this source of funding. The surface level thinking is “Sure it doesn’t come out of my pocket”. I tell them that big business is not a bottomless pit and that companies must make a profit. I ask them what happens if the company can no longer make a profit? Are there other countries that have lower taxes? I asked them what happens if a company decides that they should no longer be based in the US? I noticed a definitely deflated body language. I asked “Do you think it is a good idea to increase taxes on business?” Not expecting an answer I help them understand that we can not spend more than we make or else we end up in very heavy debt, like the country is in right now.

Even though I am not able to mold one disciple into thinking the way I do, perhaps I still can do some good to a larger group. The effect may not be quite as deep on any one child, but maybe it will be enough to guide them through life.

Are you smarter than a 4th grader?

Today I recalled an elementary school contest/assignment, as I was considering how fast dry ice disappears out of our Styrofoam coolers at work.

Essentially there were no other instructions for the class contest other than the objective. The contest was to see who could build the best design to slow the melting of an ice cube. I am pretty sure the word build was in the assignment. The teacher had not told us how the designs would be judged.

If you are like me take some extra time and have some fun designing it in your head. I would like you to stop and take two minutes to think about how you would do it before you continue reading.

My 4th grade design was to take polystyrene foam (normal people would call it Styrofoam) and create an insulated box. Bind the box with glue to make the seals. Take that box and wrap it with insulating film and tape that up. Before the final preparations water was put in the container and then seal it. The whole thing went in the freezer and became an ice cube in the freezer.

The teacher took the designs out of the freezer that morning and gave us the results later in the day. The teacher said that the way the winners were judged was by the size of the ice remaining when she saw it later in the day. The second and third prizes went to two people that just used a store bought cooler. That irritated me a lot because the assignment specifically said to build something. Depending on how you looked at it either they cheated, were really lazy did nothing and grabbed the cooler at the last moment. The alternative way of looking at it was that they were brilliant and managed to get away without doing the assignment and got a really good grade and prizes for doing nothing!

So that brings me to the first place. Guess who came in first place? Everyone had started with whatever sized and shaped ice cube they put in the design. The teacher was so excited that my ice cube was almost the same size as when it started. I pondered this skeptically, thinking wow I am better than I thought. When I got given back my design realized that there was definitely a difference in perception. The cube inside my design was about the size of an ice cube coming out of a tray. The glue did not hold up to the melting process well and fell apart, letting the melt water leak out of the container. Since the teacher had not specified on the size of the ice cube I had broken no rules and felt no need to inform her of this. She never asked what size it started as. Mine just happened to be a bit bigger. I was definitely not willing to be beaten by the cheaters that put no effort into the project. What the teacher did not understand was that originally the ice cube would have been 3 times that size.

The moral of story is to be very precise with your specifications.

Drafted!

Tis the season to be jolly! A time to celebrate. So what happens when no one want to organize the festivities? Conventional wisdom would say that you let the people that are willing to do the work have the fun and everyone else can reap what they sow. An admin had a different take on this. By gosh we are going to make them celebrate whether they want to or not! So the solution was to encourage people to work on the planning committee. So what do you say to an admin when he pulls you aside and personally encourages you to do something? Well I guess that would depend on how painful it would be and how interested you are in the organization. It did not even take more than 3 or 4 sentences for me to understand the situation and for me to complete his thoughts. So I was ready to enlist as soon as he popped the question. I figured it could not be that painful and I would much rather spend my political capital on the important issues I have a habit of bringing up all the time.

Although no threat was ever needed to be made an intelligent person always knows that these invitations have the implied connotation of you know what’s good for you. I accepted so enthusiastically that I practically jumped up and down (almost). Those that have heard my some of my more floral speech patterns know I can make quite a show. In hindsight I have thought up a few more colorful statements that would have made the speech quite fluffy and impressive, but what was presented was not bad for being conjured up in an impromptu moment.

Being the rational critical thinker I immediately start asking the specifications as soon as I am done stating how energized about being able to volunteer for such a fantastic opportunity. I am told we have no funding for this task. While it is similar to how I will be elected to the HOA board, the difference is there will me no money to execute this task. Life is always simple when you have no options; conversely this task will be easy. The choices are do not spend any money or do not do anything. Wait it gets better. We are not supposed to ask for donations either. So do not spend any money and make sure you do not let anyone help you.

The admin that had encouraged me to be on this committee has decided that he will not be on the committee. The number one practice from "The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership" is “Model the way”.

Don't push that button!

Do you remember all the cartoons where the character is specifically told not to push the red button? In my quest to make my computer do things it has never done with networking before I was going through various folders that I really should not have been messing with. I found one that looked like a pretty globe and executable in a folder marked relating to networking. I knew it would do something…of course I really did not know what it would do. Knowing a button will do something creates an almost irresistible urge to press it. So of course the hero of the story pushes the little button that the little voices in his head whisper that he might not want to push it. After about 15 second a nasty error box pops up and says something to the effect that whatever our hero was trying to do did not work. A few moments later another program does not respond as our hero is working on something else. So the solution to many-stalled program is to hit the control-alt-delete and invoke the powers of the task master. Another big nasty error message pops up and says that the Administrator has revoked the task master. I own the computer. There is no Administrator; the closest thing to one is the owner of the computer. I didn’t tell it to revoke my override powers…what the xxxx? In an age of phishing, viruses and other malicious software my thought between error message, stalling programs and modifications of my admin powers our hero starts to feel a bit of anxiety. Our hero almost never panics and has survived at least 3 life threatening situations because of this personality. Luckily this was not a life threatening issue although it was a bit stressful.  His ability to think critically and rationally in the time of stress allows him to discover that his regedit (the soul of Windows) has been modified and manages to fix that portion of the problem without completely destroying his system.  

So the take away message is that if you put something that looks interesting in front of our hero and do not tell him what it does he will play with until it works or it breaks.