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.