1. John Burdett (Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo and Bangkok Haunts) – Enjoyable although less so with each subsequent novel. Burdett starts from gritty to weird to supernatural. I don't know about Thais but if I were one, I'd be insulted by his portrayal of Thai society – all cops are corrupt with the Army being worse than the police and all women in Bangkok are either prostitutes or are downtrodden maids. Men are either drug addicts or pimps and all farang are johns or of dubious character. Do Thai detectives really use regular and motorcycle taxis to get around? Burdett is either an astute observer of Thai society or has an inside track (probably the latter) – Thai society is extremely hierarchical though to the Western observer it is not entirely obvious. How long one wais to another signifies their rank in society, likewise in the way one person addresses another. One of the first things that Thais do when they meet each other is to try to determine who has seniority, theyby earning the honorific 'Pi'. Sometimes they try to do this discreetly by asking a friend of a friend or when all else fails, the direct method is used.
2. Mai Pen Rai means Never Mind by Carol Hollinger. Almost 50 years old, this book was still extremely enjoyable. Self-effacing and humorous, I get the impression that Carol Hollinger is not as helpless as she makes herself out to be – and this is true because as a farang in Bangkok who does not speak the language, she somehow manages to get a teaching job at Chulalongkorn University, drives herself all over Bangkok as well as goes on trips outside Bangkok without her husband while enjoying parties almost every weekend. She only devotes one chapter to raising her 7-year old daughter who was put into a British school and it almost seemed like her daughter spent more time in the company of maids and nannies than with her. I suppose this was what a liberated woman in the 60s was supposed to do.
3. Bangkok Days by Lawrence Osbourne. It's hard to tell how much of this dark travel writing is true but this book was more enjoyable than I had expected. It opened up a whole new view of Bangkok - drug addicts (ya ba), the seamier side of Klong Toey by the river where the slaughterhouses for poultry is, the relationship between Bangkok hi-so and their maids, Sukhumvit Road in a way that I would never have seen it.
4. Christopher Moore's Minor Wife. I picked this up on one of our trips and have only just gotten to it. Unlike Burdett, Moore's characters seem more real and gritty and depicts a harder, more scrabbled life of ordinary Thais (albeit from a farang view) than Burdett does. Burdett's characters and scenes seemed more air-brushed while Moore's are somewhat darker. His farang detective is more Sam Spade and at least the Thai police (while political and fight over jurisdiction), are not all corrupt or dishonest – just regular folks trying to do their jobs.
5. A Malaysian Journey by Rehman Rashid. This book brought back a lot of memories growing up although the author preceded me by 10 years. It also made me realized how sheltered and naïve I was growing up. Not surprisingly, a large chunk of the book deals with race relations and the New Economic Policy and the bumiputras. I am less optimistic than he is about race relations in Malaysia. This book cries for a sequel but does not appear to be in the offing.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
What I hate most about Penang
I came upon this realization rather suddenly – the kiasu (literally "afraid to lose" or roughly, "mine is bigger than yours") attitude in Penang is just as prevalent and pervasive in Washington. And the traffic in Penang is worse than Washington. Egads!
Penang
After Phuket, we were in Penang from July 30 – Aug 7. Stayed at a condominium on Gurney Drive found via Holiday Lettings. It turned out to be a very well stocked place with a lot of movies to watch (I only got to see 3) and close to the Cold Storage in Gurney Plaza which was essential for groceries. In a spurt of environmental activism that surprised me – the shops in Gurney Plaza do not use plastic bags from Mondays through Thursdays so we either had to bring our own bags or carry our purchases. One could argue that this was no skin off their backs since these are the least busy days in the mall but it was the awareness and the desire to do something about it that surprised me. (We won't see this in Bangkok malls!)
The touristy things we did: Kek Lok Si, butterfly farm and batik factory up in Teluk Bahang. The butterfly farm was impressive – probably on par with the collection we sometimes see in Wheaton. The weather was very mild and it only rained one or two days while we were there. It was even cooler than in Washington. There was too much eating on this leg of the trip (as expected) – it has probably undone a year's worth of exercise and diet. (And the reason I started on exercise and diet was because of last year's trip!)
One meal we had was at the Hollywood Restaurant at Tanjung Bungah next to the another defunct restaurant (Sin Hai Keng? I forget the name now but the food there was much better than at Hollywood.) Sad to say, the beach fronting the restaurant has not gotten any cleaner. We used to play at a beach where the Spring Tide restaurant was and there used to be a large pipe that discharged effluents straight into the ocean. (The site is now a high rise condominium!) We used to think it was so cool to see a river of 'water' come into the beach and would stand near the pipe and let the 'water' wash over our feet!
The memory that I will probably have of this trip is sitting out on the balcony of the rental apartment and enjoying the view of the hills in Penang and the coastline of Tanjung Tokong with the cool breeze on my face – while brushing my teeth or having coffee.
One thing of note was that at McDonald's I saw three women – a Chinese, an Indian, and a Malay together – who seemed to be friends and I thought of Rehman Rashid's A Malaysian Journey.
The touristy things we did: Kek Lok Si, butterfly farm and batik factory up in Teluk Bahang. The butterfly farm was impressive – probably on par with the collection we sometimes see in Wheaton. The weather was very mild and it only rained one or two days while we were there. It was even cooler than in Washington. There was too much eating on this leg of the trip (as expected) – it has probably undone a year's worth of exercise and diet. (And the reason I started on exercise and diet was because of last year's trip!)
One meal we had was at the Hollywood Restaurant at Tanjung Bungah next to the another defunct restaurant (Sin Hai Keng? I forget the name now but the food there was much better than at Hollywood.) Sad to say, the beach fronting the restaurant has not gotten any cleaner. We used to play at a beach where the Spring Tide restaurant was and there used to be a large pipe that discharged effluents straight into the ocean. (The site is now a high rise condominium!) We used to think it was so cool to see a river of 'water' come into the beach and would stand near the pipe and let the 'water' wash over our feet!
The memory that I will probably have of this trip is sitting out on the balcony of the rental apartment and enjoying the view of the hills in Penang and the coastline of Tanjung Tokong with the cool breeze on my face – while brushing my teeth or having coffee.
One thing of note was that at McDonald's I saw three women – a Chinese, an Indian, and a Malay together – who seemed to be friends and I thought of Rehman Rashid's A Malaysian Journey.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Meanwhile in Washington
While we were in Phuket, Washington was in the midst of another power outage caused by thunderstorms. Need I say more?
By coincidence, one night when we were day, we lost power at the hotel, albeit for only about an hour. Apparently, a transformer down the road blew. According to M, when she was at the front desk asking about the power, a lady came by and said 'I heard an almighty bang and then the lights went out!'
Update:
As I wrote this I read that Washington has been beset by three more thunderstorms accompanied by widespread power outages. (See here for the storm the day after we left, here for the second storm, and here for the storm after. Or here for a roundup.)
It's great that I have been in 3rd world countries with no power interruptions! Looks like we left DC just in the nick of time. While this is may be an indicator of poor investment in the power grid, it is by no means the only infrastructure suffering from lack of maintenance – the Metro is having problems and water mains need to be fixed instead of the water authorities waiting for them to break before attending to them.
The usual things will happen – Pepco will be called to account for its handling of the power outages. After some apologies and how this summer has been 'unprecedented' and the county officials have had their outbursts and photo-ops things will go back to the way they were before. The problem lies in our willingness to accept things as they are before. This attitude can result in catastrophes such as poor responses to Katrina and the Gulf oil spill. We call these events unprecedented and excuse ourselves because we cannot perform any better. To say that we will try to perform better is not enough (nor is it enough to just learn from the past and hope the mistakes do not repeat.)
Deming calls this effort continuous quality improvement. (Note that Lexus calls it a relentless pursuit of perfection but did nothing much about it which accounts for the recalls this summer.) Yet, it is hard to get companies to continually invest in maintenance, repairs and upgrades. Economists will call this an incentive problem. One way to solve this would be to allow maintenance and repairs to be tax deductible, say 10 cents for every dollar and for upgrades say 50 cents for every dollar.
Deming would be against this however, if I read his philosophy correctly. Pick an area to improve on – for instance, for every storm the number of outages have to be lower and lower every year until it falls to zero. His philosophy would imply that the costs of fixing power lines from storms would in the long run more than pay for itself.
So is the problem short-termism (especially of the stock market) and long term? More on this in another post.
By coincidence, one night when we were day, we lost power at the hotel, albeit for only about an hour. Apparently, a transformer down the road blew. According to M, when she was at the front desk asking about the power, a lady came by and said 'I heard an almighty bang and then the lights went out!'
Update:
As I wrote this I read that Washington has been beset by three more thunderstorms accompanied by widespread power outages. (See here for the storm the day after we left, here for the second storm, and here for the storm after. Or here for a roundup.)
It's great that I have been in 3rd world countries with no power interruptions! Looks like we left DC just in the nick of time. While this is may be an indicator of poor investment in the power grid, it is by no means the only infrastructure suffering from lack of maintenance – the Metro is having problems and water mains need to be fixed instead of the water authorities waiting for them to break before attending to them.
The usual things will happen – Pepco will be called to account for its handling of the power outages. After some apologies and how this summer has been 'unprecedented' and the county officials have had their outbursts and photo-ops things will go back to the way they were before. The problem lies in our willingness to accept things as they are before. This attitude can result in catastrophes such as poor responses to Katrina and the Gulf oil spill. We call these events unprecedented and excuse ourselves because we cannot perform any better. To say that we will try to perform better is not enough (nor is it enough to just learn from the past and hope the mistakes do not repeat.)
Deming calls this effort continuous quality improvement. (Note that Lexus calls it a relentless pursuit of perfection but did nothing much about it which accounts for the recalls this summer.) Yet, it is hard to get companies to continually invest in maintenance, repairs and upgrades. Economists will call this an incentive problem. One way to solve this would be to allow maintenance and repairs to be tax deductible, say 10 cents for every dollar and for upgrades say 50 cents for every dollar.
Deming would be against this however, if I read his philosophy correctly. Pick an area to improve on – for instance, for every storm the number of outages have to be lower and lower every year until it falls to zero. His philosophy would imply that the costs of fixing power lines from storms would in the long run more than pay for itself.
So is the problem short-termism (especially of the stock market) and long term? More on this in another post.
Phuket
We were in Phuket July 26 – July 30 and stayed at the Pacific Club. I had expected Phuket to be fairly developed with high rise condos dotting the coast but was pleasantly surprised that it was not. Like M says, the atmosphere is very saabai saabai. Most of the time, we spent trying to overcome jet lag which was part of the plan. The hotel was not able to provide the 2-bedroom unit we wanted saying that the AC was broken but it turned out fine since we didn't really need all that space and it saved us some money. They also threw in one airport transfer for free which saved us an additional 1000 Thb.
We drove up to the Big Buddha and went to Nai Harn beach. The waves were bigger than I was accustomed to (perhaps because of the monsoon season) and it was great to see most of the farang tourists thrown themselves with abandon with each coming wave. The beaches were also extremely clean – apparently the Thais have learned something that Penangites have not.
We also managed to squeeze in a show – Fantasea which was part Vegas and part Circque du Soleil with animals (elephants, hens, pigeons, sheep, water buffalo) thrown in for good measure. K1 and K2 enjoyed this and the place was teeming with tourists – busloads (us included) were being disgorged prior to show time. Skip the buffet – to say that it was average would be generous. The best part were the baby elephants standing in the grand entryway ready to be stroked and touched as we file into the auditorium. After the show, they were also outside for photo-ops.
This being the monsoon season, it was no surprise to us that it rained daily and was incredibly humid even though it did clear up enough for us to venture out to the beach and the show. We also managed a walk into Karon town from the hotel. The town is small and caters mainly to tourists – laundry services, various food & drink establishments (which we did not try), and other smaller hotels. We mostly ate at the hotel – the breakfast was good (go for the Thai food) and also a restaurant up on one of Phuket's many hills as well as lunch by the beach
We drove up to the Big Buddha and went to Nai Harn beach. The waves were bigger than I was accustomed to (perhaps because of the monsoon season) and it was great to see most of the farang tourists thrown themselves with abandon with each coming wave. The beaches were also extremely clean – apparently the Thais have learned something that Penangites have not.
We also managed to squeeze in a show – Fantasea which was part Vegas and part Circque du Soleil with animals (elephants, hens, pigeons, sheep, water buffalo) thrown in for good measure. K1 and K2 enjoyed this and the place was teeming with tourists – busloads (us included) were being disgorged prior to show time. Skip the buffet – to say that it was average would be generous. The best part were the baby elephants standing in the grand entryway ready to be stroked and touched as we file into the auditorium. After the show, they were also outside for photo-ops.
This being the monsoon season, it was no surprise to us that it rained daily and was incredibly humid even though it did clear up enough for us to venture out to the beach and the show. We also managed a walk into Karon town from the hotel. The town is small and caters mainly to tourists – laundry services, various food & drink establishments (which we did not try), and other smaller hotels. We mostly ate at the hotel – the breakfast was good (go for the Thai food) and also a restaurant up on one of Phuket's many hills as well as lunch by the beach
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Spontaneous order
This post on spontaneous order impressed MR:
Here's a video of a small town in Britain that turned its traffic lights off. Order ensued.
The major qualification here is small town. I'd like to see the lights turned off and order ensuing on Dupont Circle and Ward Circle before being impressed.
Here's a video of a small town in Britain that turned its traffic lights off. Order ensued.
The major qualification here is small town. I'd like to see the lights turned off and order ensuing on Dupont Circle and Ward Circle before being impressed.
Why I'm (not) blogging
Left for three weeks to Thailand and Malaysia - with intermittent and slow Internet connections all throughout and then back with incredible jet lag. Thought I had devised a way by writing off line and then copying and pasting when I got a reliable connection but I just got lazy. The blogging was supposed to be a disciplining device to get me to write every day but it has not worked well and worked even worse while we were away.
I'll be posting the drafts that I half-wrote up while away but they need some clean up first.
I'll be posting the drafts that I half-wrote up while away but they need some clean up first.
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