ocwfoto phlog

Foxconn to bring on 5 million robots

2011-08-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, Foxconn is going automated. Of course this was inevitable and is what all manufacturing eventually goes to once the labor cost goes up enough that it is cheaper to buy robots. That means that this is the start of the end of affordable manufacturing in China.
Time to find country with labor that is cheaper…

source: 9to5mac.com

http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/31/foxconn-will-bring-on-1-million-robots-in-3-years-to-replace-workers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+9To5Mac-MacAllDay+%289+to+5+Mac+-+Apple+Intelligence%29

back in china, eatin' innards

2011-06-07T06:25:00.000-07:00

Delicious cow tongue at a Japanese Shabu Shabu restaurant

Our Wedding - Ocie and Loni get Official!

2011-05-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

Loni and I had a small and simply wonderful wedding at Marin Civic Center with some of our close family and then we had a fantastic little reception at Victor and Kerstin's house for family and neighbors. We will have a house party in a month or two after we finish varnishing the floor for all of our friends. That means you!

From 110527 Loncie Wedding

Back to the Future - China: Episode 02, The Food Report

2010-11-14T06:27:00.000-08:00

OK, since I know that most of my much-loved but paltry audience reads my blog for only two things - photos and food - I will hurry up and get to both of them.

My first night in Shenzhen ended the same way as every one of my first nights end here - gorging on deliciously spicy Sichuan cuisine. Roger, Lee, Jack and I went to our favorite Sichuan restaurant in the world (so far) and ordered the usual: Kung Pao Chicken, Sichuan Beef, Garlic Long Beans, Dan Dan Mein, and lots and lots of Tsing Tao beer. As always the beef was succulent and juicy - melting in your mouth while it melts your mouth. The Kung Pao chicken was spicy and a little sweet, crunchy from the peanuts, and delightfully numbing from the mouth-tingling Sichuan peppercorns. This time we added a couple of new dishes to our table - Chicken With Numerous Peppers and "The Special". The chicken dish was fantastic, having been sautéed with dried assorted peppers that were very light and crunchy and were, yes, exceedingly numerous. So numerous were the peppers that we immediately understood the local slang term for this dish - "sorting chicken", since you have to sort through all the peppers to find the chicken.
The last dish we had, "The Special", was in fact so special that I have just started a new paragraph. CUIDADO, PELIGRO, ACHTUNG, and BEWARE those with simple tastes and weak stomachs - the following dish may not improve your mood. The special was a large bowl of pepper broth similar to that of the more pedestrian and less disturbing Sichuan Beef, hot and shimmering with a floating sheen of essential pepper oil spicy enough to melt through a lesser bowl and continue on through the wooden table and possibly the granite floor like alien’s blood. Swimming in this broth was a jigsaw puzzle autopsy on the scale of Noah's Ark.
The most mundane of the ingredients was eel, which many people like and is generally considered to be pretty normal in the western world now that Japanese sushi has become so commonplace. Following the eel was something that is not that exotic, but that I had never seen before in China and that I generally only eat when camping - SPAM.
The next animal up for slaughter was the venerable cow, which donated not just its stomach, but also its throat. Yes, I said cow's throat. Cow's stomach, most often referred to by its less anatomically identifiable nickname “tripe” is actually very common in Mexican food and therefore in California and the southwestern US, but that doesn't mean I don't avoid it whenever possible. I know many of you will want to remind me that menudo, the spicy Mexican soup made with tripe, is the world's best hangover cure, but so is water and ibuprofen and that doesn't taste like the inside of a farm animal. This offal was just as chewy and grey as the Mexican varietal and is likewise made “only from the first three chambers of the cow’s stomach” (thank you, Wikipedia). Pass. OK, on to the cow throat, a new “cut” of meat for me and frankly not too bad. It was very smooth, soft, and creamy – very similar to silken tofu but more solid due to the fact that it was once living tissue. It had no flavor of its own, but soaked up a delicate hint of the peppery heat of the broth.
Apparently, the devilish chef that invented this dish felt that the prime cuts of bovine stomach and throat were not quite enough for this witches’ brew and browsed on through the farmyard until they stumbled upon the humble piggy. That little piggy went to market as a pork chop in a western restaurant, but this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way to Shenzhen. Since this bowl of fiery bowels wasn’t rich enough, the humble piggy contributed both his skin and his blood to the mix. Don’t worry, the blood is not fluid, because that would just be gross – instead the pig’s blood is properly congealed like it was meant to be consumed. The clotted pig’s blood tasted mostly like the hot broth but with a not surprising overtone of iron. You may think the pig skin is not that exotic, after all fried pig skin is actually a very common snack around the world. I am not a big fan of these pork rinds (chicharrones) mostly because of the fat content, but also because I don’t cherish the idea of eating an animal’s skin. Well gentle reader, rest assured, these chunks of pig skin were not the crispy snacks that you may be used to. These hunks were not fried. They were put in the soup close to the end of its cooking time, because they were pretty well raw. They were like little cross sections of pig from the external surface to about three quarters of an inch into the fat layer. The fat was a bit translucent and the skin was white. The worst part was that I could see the pores on the skin and the follicles where I could imagine hair having been. I did not eat the pig crust.

A few nights later we ate at a Korean BBQ restaurant. The cook the meat right at your table and it was delicious. Two cuts of meat on the menu that we didn’t order: Top Chuck Tail Flap and Grilled Whitebait. I imagine the first cut was “the last thing that crosses the fence” and the second cut sounds a little too close to home ;)

Tonight we ate at a Thai restaurant and ordered “Boiled Arumpet with Chili and Citronella”. Google doesn’t seem to know what arumpet is so I’ll fill you in – snails. We were attracted to them because of the picture that showed very colorful shells and a nice shiny glaze. What did they taste like? Low tide.

Bon appetite!

Next episode: Torturous traffic, back door shopping, squat toilets, and I at my most distinguished…

//ocie

Sichuan Beef:

From 101110 Back to the Future - China

Chicken with Numerous Peppers, AKA "Sorting Chicken"

From 101110 Back to the Future - China

"The Special": "The Special" - Clotted Pig Blood, Undercooked Pig Skin, Cow Stomach, Cow Throat, Eel, and SPAM

From 101110 Back to the Future - China

The Kingway of Beers:

From 101110 Back to the Future - China

lunch

From 101110 Back to the Future - China

don't let it crawl away

From 101110 Back to the Future - China

PHOTO ALBUM:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/101110BackToTheFutureChina?feat=directlink

Back to the Future - China: Episode 01

2010-11-09T16:37:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am back from whence I came, on the side of the left side of the pacific - the side that speaks funny and likes spicy food. I arrived in Shenzhen, China via Hong Kong last night. The flight was uneventful, which is just about the best thing you can say about a 15 hour flight. I flew Cathay Pacific again and I highly recommend it. The seats are as good as you will ever find in economy class, with sliding panels to accomplish reclining instead of the whole seat frame. That means that when Andre the Giant in front of you tries to get supine in his chair, you don't have to eat your dinner off of his forehead.
I watched four movies on the flight. Here are the reviews:

Dinner for Schmucks: Dude gets promotion but must become a douche to fit in. Alienates hot girlfriend with douchiness. Pays for douchiness through a comedy of errors caused by Steve Carrell's character. First half kinda blah. Second half really funny. The taxidermied mice were awesome. Zach Galifianakis and Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) were awesome. Definately worth seeing on DVD.

The Tournament: Every 7 years, the world's best assassins decend on a small town and have 24 hrs to try and kill all the other assassins to win lots of money and the title of world's best assassin. Orchestrated by super rich douchbags. All the action watched through the town's CCTV feed. Some great fight scenes (wire supported, Hong Kong Kung Fu style) and some interesting characters. Ving Rames as the baddest mofo in the world. Extra points awarded for writing in an amazing parkour assassin that is flying through the city. Worth watching if you are into stylized fighting and killing and don't have a better movie to watch.

Killers: Katherine Heigl is a slightly dopey but sweet girl that falls for Ashton Kutcher on a trip to Nice, France with her parents. Ashton, the black bear hunter, is a government assassin who get's out of the biz to be with the blonde. They move back to Suburban Anywhere, USA and live happily for 3 years until it turns out every single person they know are actually inbedded sleeper assassins and are activated to kill The Kutcher. Maybe it was the canned air in the plane that i'd been sucking down for the last twelve hours, but this movie was actually pretty funny. Get it in DVD and recreate my open mind by limiting your breathing area to the region no more than one half inch from your armpit.

The Twilight Saga - Eclipse: I saw the first film, just called Twilight. I thought it was overacted with undertalent, but it was still entertaining. I did not see the second one (Twilight Saga - New Moon), and so I essentially did not know any of the background that this third installment is based upon. The first ten minutes were a touch confusing, but guess what, I figured it all out. This movie is not Gorky Park or War and Peace. You want to know what this "film" is about? Bingo - "Will Bella choose Edward or Jacob?" Here's what I think: Bella is a stupid bitch and she is going to choose Edward, despite the fact that he is a giant douche. Jacob is a totally cool guy and hot enough to make my loins tingle a little, but she'll never choose him becasue this is a VAMPIRE movie and not a WEREWOLF movie. Sorry to ruin it for you, but by all means go see all the future craptastic movies in this series, becasue she is not going to choose Edward over Jacob until the last one minute in the last movie. When will the last movie be? When the drooling tween fans stop enjoying sappy overacted crappy crap like this. In other words, never.

Well, that's it for anything interesting to say about my trip over here. I gotta run to work now. Today is my birthday (36) and I believe this is the third year in a row that I have been in China for my birthday. Whatever. This year, Loni and I celebrated our birthdays at the same time around the time of her birthday (Oct 17), so i have had a very fully birthday experience this year :)

Next episode: Ahhhh, reunited with my Kung Pao Chicken, but who ordered this Cow's Throat?

//ocie

From 101110 Back to the Future - China

THE DISORIENT EXPRESS: EPISODE 4, “MACAU TIPPING”

2010-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

Macau was a very interesting country. The culture is a very unique mix of Asian and Portuguese. On the surface it looks similar to any other Asian metropolis like Hong Kong or Taipei, but as you walk around you notice that all the older buildings and foundations are clearly European looking. It was very strange to walk down an alley and feel like I was in Rome and then looking up and seeing all the clotheslines, rusty tin sunshades, and dripping moldy air conditioners hanging off balconies, reminding me I was in Asia. Standing in front of the ruins of St. Paul's and looking down the long steps into the cobblestone street below, it was unreal how much it looked like Piazza Di Spagna. The cherry on top of the disorientation was all of the neon Chinese signs clogging the street below. This is what Rome will look like in one hundred years.

Portuguese traders settled in this peninsula in the 16th century and slowly increased their presence until the Opium War of 1839, during which time they overtly occupied the southern islands of Taipa and Coloane. When a treaty was signed years later, the Chinese government agreed to allow Macau to be officially governed by Portugal under the conditions that but that the government could never be ceded to another nation and that the customs taxes on the illegal opium trade flowing through Macau and Hong Kong would find their way to the Chinese government. When Portugal had problems at home with the Carnation Revolution in 1974 they decided to divest their overseas holdings and the process of granting Macau back to China began. In December of 1999, the sovereignty of Macau was transferred back to the People’s Republic of China and the prosperity of the region has re-bloomed primarily due to the creation of a gambling mecca.

What happens in Macau stays in Macau, unless of course you empty your bank account, then the debt follows you home - just like Vegas. We went into the Royal Lisbon casino and it was unbelievably posh. The lobby looked like an Asian history museum with many, many beautiful artifacts under glass - impossibly intricate carvings made in impossibly massive ivory tusks, brilliantly glistening carvings of flowers made from 300 pound chunks of jade, lavishly gold plated statues of horses and heros, and a 12 foot long model of a 16th century Portuguese trading ship that was accurate enough to set sail in the South China Sea with a cargo hold full of opium. In front of all these antiquities was a statue of Dr. Stanley Ho, the wealthiest person in Macau and a major benefactor of modern Macau. He is one of the most prominent figures in the Macau gambling industry. I found it extremely ironic that one of his biggest donations to the people of Macau was a bronze sculpture of a horse's head (if you haven't seen "The Godfather" please do not ask me why the horse head was ironic).

We weren't in the mood to spend big bucks to eat with a bunch of high rollers, so we blew back out into the hot wet night and hit the street to find some Portuguese cuisine. It turns out that we were not in a good area for restaurants that were not Cantonese (which we had already had far too much of – no more snout please), so we resigned ourselves to jumping back into another casino and found a Japanese restaurant that looked quite good. I have always considered ordering sushi in China to be the gastrointestinal equivalent of Russian roulette, so it was with some hesitation that I ordered a couple pieces of nigiri to go with my hand-made udon noodle soup. The joint looked very upscale, so I decided to spin the cylinder and take my chances. The sushi turned out to be fresh and fantastic and the smooth and tender noodles in my soup may damage my ability to enjoy machine-made udon in the future. We also ordered shabu shabu, which is essentially Japanese fondue (broth not cheese) with Kobe beef. The best part is the platter of condiments that they bring you to dip your meat in. There is usually a creamy Ginger sauce, to which you add sliced chilies, chopped garlic, and soy sauce. I don't think your brain can comprehend the unbelievable bud-busting tastesplosion created by this magical mixture. If you enjoy a creamy horseradish sauce on your beef, you better book your flight to Japan right now. Ok, so that description is of the authentic shabu shabu found inside Japan, and this meal was sort of what happens to it when it is outsourced to China - it was still good, but it didn't quite met the specs of the designers. The garlic was sliced instead of chopped, the Ginger sauce was a little watered down, and most importantly the beef was not Kobe. It was still delicious, but my socks did stay on.

We were not sad about not finding a native Portuguese restaurant, however, because we had in fact had lunch earlier in the day at Fernando's, down on the southern tip of Taipa Island. Fernando's is the most famous Portuguese restaurant in Macau and has fed many celebrities and heads of state. It was totally down home and not ritzy or shiny in any way. We showed up before they opened at noon, so we grabbed some beers at the open front shop next door and drank them on the beach across the street. When they opened up we were glad to have gotten there early because the entire restaurant filled up in minutes. The atmosphere was laid-back and very casual and the food was awesome. Spicy African chicken that was as moist as it was freaking delicious, super tender pepper sauce beef, spicy prawns the size of my palm, and amazing fresh bread they make in their own bakery. We washed it all down with a couple bottles of Vino Verde – a light Portuguese white wine, chilled just right. By the way, if you go there, you are going to need a cold drink because there is no air conditioning in the place and it got pretty hot and sticky in there.

That is about it for my report on Macau – it was fun, the food was great, the architecture is unexpected, and the culture is singular among Asian countries. I thumb it up.

Macau General Post Office:

From 100823 China Trippin

The "piazza" below St. Paul's. The Royal Lisbon Casino in the distance:

From 100823 China Trippin

Macau's unique version of Street Meat:

From 100823 China Trippin

This could be any asian metropolis, but this one is Macau:

From 100823 China Trippin

Spicy prawns @ Fernando's:

From 100823 China Trippin

European architecture with Asian residents:

From 100823 China Trippin

This is modern Macau. We did not spend much time in this world:

From 100823 China Trippin

This waiter taught us to use the abacus:

From 100823 China Trippin

THE DISORIENT EXPRESS: EPISODE 3, “SIMON SEZ”

2010-08-29T03:14:00.000-07:00

On my second full day in Shenzhen, I went to visit with our design house and factory. This is the main purpose of my trip and I will be there almost every day until I leave next Thursday. Actually, at the time of writing this I have already been there for the last 4 days. For reasons of confidentiality (as well as mind numbing boredom on behalf of any non-technical readers), there isn’t a lot to talk about regarding my daily work there - so I will leave it at "things are going pretty well".

This morning we visited a battery manufacturing factory that we are considering qualifying for our products. The factory campus was large but old and quite grungy looking. Inside on the factory floor though was actually quite modern and it looked like they had good quality control practices. We are very critical of battery quality issues, so there will be many long discussions and multiple audits before we decide whether or not to use this factory.

On a cultural note, yesterday was the 30 anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Just three decades ago, Shenzhen was a rural fishing village with a population of 30,000 (a tiny village by Chinese standards ;) Now Shenzhen is one of the world’s most prosperous technology manufacturing centers and has a population of 14 million. That represents a greater than 46,000% increase in population! In comparison, in the last 30 years, Petaluma has grown from 30,000 to 60,000 people. Then again, Petaluma is not having outbreaks of melamine-tainted milk or 60 mile long traffic jams that last for 10 days*. I think I will stick with Petaluma ;)

The Shenzhen SEZ was China's experiment to test out a market economy without "polluting" infecting the rest of the country. Shenzhen sits right at the border with Hong Kong, so it is perfectly placed to both trade with the outside world and insulate the rest of China from the cancer of capitalism. Needless to say this cancer has been extremely virulent and has metastasized into many other regions of China, much to the benefit of the Chinese government. The experiment and success of Shenzhen has been an integral part of China becoming the world's second largest economy (I wonder if they are number one if you include our debt to them).

This trip has been a busy one, so we only have one day off in the two weeks or traveling. We need to visit a vendor on Zhuhai on Monday morning, so we decided to spend our day off in Macau. It takes four hours to drive from Shenzhen to Zhuhai, so we took the ferry to Macau on Saturday evening and will cross the border on the other side over to Zhuhai on Monday morning. Macau is the Las Vegas of Asia, with casinos larger and grander than Vegas itself. I am expecting gaudiness on a level that thine eyes have never seen. I am not planning on spending any time in the casinos, since I have more sense than money.

I am now in Macau for my day off and it is very cool over here. It has a really interesting blend of the Asian and Portuguese cultures. I’ll report my findings in the next episode…

*Have you heard about this 60 mile long traffic jam? Freaking unbelievable. Cars and trucks were stuck for 10 days on the highway between Beijing and Inner Mongolia. The traffic has been increasing on this road because of new mining in the region and has apparently reached the saturation point. They started some new construction along the highway and it set off this 100km long traffic jam with cars moving a half mile per DAY. Locals rode their bikes up and down the roadway selling ramen noodles and water for inflated prices. After 10 days, the traffic broke up but nobody is sure why.

**New update – the monster jam is BACK! Just four days after the 10 day clog dispersed, it is on again with an estimated 2000 cars locked back up again in the same location. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how long this one lasts…

gotta love that cantonese food:

From 100823 China Trippin

150,000 lithium ion batteries being cycle tested:

From 100823 China Trippin

nobody does rural in the middle of a metropolis better than the chinese:

From 100823 China Trippin

this night hedge would have looked a lot better with my real camera:

From 100823 China Trippin

"uh, could i get mine with a little less squid juice?":

From 100823 China Trippin

100km traffic jam, credit AP Photo:

From 100823 China Trippin

another view of the jam on day 10, AP Photo:

From 100823 China Trippin

THE DISORIENT EXPRESS: EPISODE 2, “SICHUAN AND SHEETMETAL”

2010-08-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

When I landed in Hong Kong I went through customs, got my suitcase, and met Roger and Elise out in the transfer lobby (they had landed about an hour before me). We decided to hire a car to take us to our hotel across the border in Shenzhen, China rather than taking the ferry or train. The cost was about the same and it is convenient not to have to catch a taxi at the train or ferry terminus. This sounded great in theory, but in practice the immigration station we had to go through on the car route was significantly older, fetid, and clogged with humanity. There was one guy (white of course) in front of us in line that could not have weighed less than 400 pounds. I felt sorry for the guy, as he looked about as uncomfortable in the heat as an Eskimo in a sweat lodge. Of course, even though I empathized with him, I also thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t had to sit next to (and undoubtedly partially under) him on the airplane. My cologne soaked journey was looking better in retrospect.
We finally got to the hotel and I sloughed off my dank clothes like a wet snakeskin and poured myself into the most amazing shower of my life. Words cannot capture the rapture of the soul-cleansing I received from the warm enveloping embrace of the shower. It was a full-on double rainbow across my face. So intense. Hmm, “capture the rapture” sounds like a great caption for a motivational poster involving kittens and unicorns. After my bathtism I fell into my single bed (except for my feet sticking out the bottom) and slept like a logarithm.
I had to get up a scant 6 hours later and have a breakfast meeting with the team (there are five of us over here right now). After breakfast we visited a sheet metal factory that is about to start making the cases for one of our receivers so we could see their facility and audit their processes. The last vendor we were using had some bad workflow practices because the yield on the parts was very low. Our assembly factory was rejecting more than half of the incoming parts because they didn’t meet our cosmetic standards. We never put out any of our products with any problems, but it was slowing our production because the vendor had to keep re-making parts. Now we are switching vendors and hoping to get a much higher percentage of good parts (hopefully 100%). The new vendor was very impressive and had a very large and well organized factory. Their design department was very large and the business office was very nice. I have no qualms about working with them. Good start to the trip.
After lunch with our colleagues from our Sister Company’s (Oticon) Shenzhen Office we headed to a meeting on the other side of town with our assembly factory. Nothing terribly interesting to talk about here, so I’ll fast forward to dinner at my favorite Sichuan Restaurant in Shenzhen: I don’t know the name, but it is just south of Coco Park mall, which is blissfully walking distance from our hotel. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I like staying at this hotel ;) Sichuan beef, Kung Pao Chicken, Spicy long beans, oh my. This is one of the restaurants that makes my taste buds sad when I go home…

Shenzhen Sunset

From 100823 China Trippin

Typical Shenzhen Towerblocks

From 100823 China Trippin

Marco Polo Hotel

From 100823 China Trippin

My favorite Sichuan Beef (you can tell how spicy it is just by the photo)

From 100823 China Trippin

Cantonese Shrimp

From 100823 China Trippin

The Disorient Express: Episode 1, “Eastbound and Down”

2010-08-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

Well friends, the time has come once again for me to climb on board the winged chariot and soar across the deep blue sea. I am currently flying due east at 553mph at 30,000ft with a headwind of 32mph and an outside air temperature of -35degrees F with 6,265 miles to go. Loni and Dudley dropped me off at San Francisco International Airport and it was very hard to say goodbye. This is my first trip to Asia since the three of us have started our lives together and I already deeply miss Loni’s sweet smile and Dudley's floppy ears. It is a strange feeling to be on the other side of the world from your friends and family. There is a real feeling of isolation and the distance is truly tangible. Luckily we live in a world of wired and wireless communication, where the long fingers of Skype, Google Talk, and Facebook reach out and “coochie coo” our chins from infinite distances. Of course if this global network didn't exist, I wouldn't be off to the Orient for a design review in Shenzhen, China in the first place. That is the dark side of the ability to globalize - the inability to avoid it.
But I digress - this is my first installment of this travelogue and I'm not going to get too deep. Back to my story - when I bent to take off my shoes in the security line at SFO I noticed that I forgot to change into my black work shoes and was still wearing my Crocs house-shoes. Crap. I guess I'll be buying some black “Roqueports” at the night market (the silent Q helps in the black market).
When I got to my seat back in steerage (61A) I was horrified to find my seat buddy had apparently christened himself before this voyage by breaking a bottle of Cologne across his bow. You may not know this about me, but I am quite sensitive to perfume, cologne, and new car smell. They irritate my nose similar to pollen and if they are strong it starts to churn my stomach a bit. So there I was, eyes starting to water and nostrils starting to burn, my brain starting to froth about the prospect of steeping in this Drakkar Noir gas chamber for fourteen and a half hours. I mean I might as well be snuzzling my face into this guy's neck for all of the olfactory raping I was getting. Fortunately, I vowed not to judge him based soley upon his stench and we struck up a conversation. Low and behold, he was possibly the most interesting person I HAVE EVER MET ON AN AIRPLANE. His name was Obii (can you believe it, “OC and “OB” sitting right next to each other) and he is from Nigeria. He was a professional soccer player who has competed in the World Cup and has lived in India, Switzerland, and Hong Kong while playing on their teams. Now he is a soccer agent and represents professional players all over the world. All of that would have been interesting enough, but then we got talking about gay marriage, rebuilding the economy, terrorism, the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, The Six Days War and Anwar Sadat, The Vietnam War, and Democrats vs. Republicans. Obii had some of the most creative and forward looking political ideas that I have ever heard. Needless to say, I decided to disregard his nasal bombardment – shoot, maybe I should start drenching myself in the stink if it is going to sharpen my mind like that…

After talking with Obii for two hours, I “feasted” on “chicken”, had a glass or two of red “wine” and settled to find out if Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland was as bad as Loni said it was. It was.

Sorry no pictures in this episode, but some in the next, I promise.

Before I sign off for the night, let me pose a question: Can anyone explain the logic behind the way that airplane bathroom sinks are designed? The drain is stoppered by default and they only drain the water in the basin when you push on a lever. Why on earth would this be the case? I have wondered about this one for years…

Sunrise Paddle

2010-05-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

Loni and I went for a nice sunrise paddle down the Petaluma River for Memorial Day.

From 100531 morning kayaks

Tales from the Flipside - Part 4 – Sawas Di Kraup, Bangkok

2009-12-13T23:16:00.000-08:00

We got in pretty late Friday night, so we got off to a late start on Saturday. Bangkok is an enormous megapolis of 12 million people, and yet it is surprisingly easy to get around via the excellent BTS Skytrain. Built just ten years ago, it is elevated two or three stories above street level. The trains are fast, clean, frequent, and cheap. Every morning we bought an all-day-pass for 120 baht (less than $4). We chose our hotel partially based on its proximity to one of the Skytrain stations, so we only ended up needing a cab once (and it was horribly, horribly slow through the traffic). In addition to being convenient, the train doubles down on its awesomeness by affording a great view of the city from its lofty rail. In fact, it is said that when the train was finished, lifetime residents of the city reported that they "hadn't realized their city was so beautiful". Of course, beauty is relative - I happen prefer rolling hills and native trees to concrete tower blocks and urban sprawl, but as far as dense metropoli go, Bangkok is a good'n. Many of the Jengaesque tower blocks have lush garden patios on the roof, although most of them have odd metal cages around them as if interlopers must be prevented from scaling the tower and stealing a fern.

OK, back on track - Roger and I took the Skytrain to the north end of town and dove into the Chatuchak Weekend market. I always partake of the street markets that flourish in every asian urban center. An evolution of the ancient barter towns along the trade routes, the present day street markets are some of the best places to experience local culture. Sure, you can get a great deal on cut-rate fake Gucci bags, but you can also get local handicrafts and authentic foods. The Chatuchak Market is by far the largest street market that I have visited in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. The shops cover 35 acres and claim more than 200,000 visitors every day. We wandered for hours through its tight and winding warrens that were filled to overflowing with vendors selling everything from hunting knives to thai silk scarves to US military surplus to litters of beagles. There were vendors hawking fruit popsicles that they were making on-the-fly in refrigerated carts and butchers selling street meat of such varied fauna it would make Noah's Arc look boring. Hot and damp, we pushed our way past bins of pigs for pets and chickens for dinner. We did not dwell near the porcine or avian conglomerations so as to avoid any possibility of becoming known as "patient zero" of the next global pandemic. When we finally emerged from the labyrinth my curiosity was sated and i gulped in the fresh air like a catfish in heat.

Chatuchak Market

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

on-demand popsicles

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

thai coffee mixer

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

street meat

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

street feet

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

Tales from the Flipside - Part 3 – Exodus Persisting

2009-12-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

Alright, when we last spoke we were hurtling toward the ferry station so we could hop a flight to Bangkok, only to veer off at the last minute after learning that we could not take the ferry without already having a plane ticket, which we did not. Abrupt detour to the New Shenzhen Port, where our benefactor assured us we could take a bus to the Hong Kong airport. Forty five more minutes of driving, thirty more in Customs, and we find that there are in fact no buses from that port that go to the airport. OK, taxi it is – unfortunately now that we are technically inside the Hong Kong New Territories the taxis only take Hong Kong Dollars. We had no HKD and we had seen no money changers during our mad dash through the port terminal so we had no alternative but to attempt to negotiate a ride in US dollars with a cabbie that spoke no English. As I have advised in the past, never get in an unmetered cab without first agreeing to a price, unless you enjoy being extorted and fiscally raped. We worked out a fee that was surprisingly fair and hit the road. Forty minutes later we arrived at Terminal 1 of the Hong Kong Airport, unsure of what terminal Thai Air Asia calls home. Cue frenetic sprint to terminal 2.

When we found the Air Asia ticket counters we breathed a sigh of relief and were pleasantly surprised to see a very short line. The very friendly ticket agent very kindly booked us on the flight but informed us that we had to get in an adjacent line to pay for the tickets. This other line was deceptively short in stature but soul suckingly slow in pace. The line was presided over by the floor manager pecking out transactions on a netbook. Yes, a netbook. Here we were in one of the world’s most advanced airports, the gateway to modern Asia, and this guy had pushed aside his network console and had jacked in with his $300 toy computer. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that the regular computer was broken, but every other station had a working computer with a full size keyboard and screen. Yet for whatever reason, the boss was doing all of the airline’s financial transactions on this tiny computer, pecking away at the tiny keys like a pigeon eating a smashed cracker. Still, our wait not have been so long had it not been for the three Finns and a Spaniard in front of us. This foursome Gen-Xers were 30 hours deep into their poorly executed vacation to Phuket, Thailand. They missed their flight to Bangkok the night before because they were drinking beers in the lobby bar of the Helsinki Airport. Without any other flights to Thailand that day, they took a flight to Hong Kong and were now in the process of increasing the global supply of entropy through indecision and monopolization of the only guy that could collect money for Thai Asia Airlines. We waited in this queue clot for no less than one hour. When we finally got to the front we found that the boss was actually a good humored and friendly guy. Unfortunately, just as I started to see the light at the end of our tunnel of fecundity, boss-man informed me that my credit card was declined. Second card also declined. “Uh, Roger? Thanks, I’ll pay you back ASAP!”

Luckily there was no line in security and we got to our gate with plenty of time to board. While waiting to hop on the bird, I called my credit card company and was told that they did not, in fact, deny any charges or show any record of a bad transaction. Methinks the problem may have been related to a keyboard that so closely resembled the aforementioned smashed cracker. Finally onboard our craft I was less than ecstatic to find the smallest seats and shortest legroom of any airplane I have ever been on. My knees were making sweet love to the seat in front of me and I could not extend my feet forward at all because my shins could not achieve anything resembling an obtuse angle. But guess what? I forgot all about my induced paraplegia when I saw the four smiling, breathtakingly beautiful flight attendants. Forget Singapore Airlines, my new favorite airline is Thai Asia Air. Would I like to pay three dollars for a tiny bottle of water? Yes ma’am, anything you say ;) Welcome to Thailand!

Our first view of Thailand - colorful taxis outside the Bangkok Airport. Damn it's humid out here!

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

View from my hotel room on Sukhumvit Soi 19:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

Bangkok from the Skytrain:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

My first Singha in-country. Possibly the coldest and most excellently timed quaff i have ever had:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

Tales from the Flipside - Part 2 - Exodus

2009-12-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

After a week at the factory in Dongguan we successfully finished our work, but the fate of our weekend was still up in the air. Our choice of weekend destination teetered on the precipice between Hong Kong and Bangkok. The keystone in this gossamer bridge between myself and my first wonderful visit to Thailand was the question of how long it would take to make the tooling changes that I had requested. The case parts for our new product actually looked really nice on the first pass, but I made some changes to improve the alignment between parts and general fit and finish. If the revised parts could be ready Friday (unlikely) then we could go to Thailand, but if they were ready on Monday or Tuesday we would have to stay in Hong Kong for the weekend and return to China to check the new parts. We didn’t get the verdict until 6:30 on Thursday night. Wait for it… 10 day lead time. That meant that I simply could not see the parts on this trip. Bad for the project timeline but good for me – I’m goin’ to Thailand!
That night after dinner we hopped online to book our flight. At least 10 minutes of jumping through website hoops later, a friendly little pop-up informed us that we could not book the flight less than 24 hours before departure. It was 23.5 hours before departure. Oh man, if we had only had one less beer at dinner we would have made it, and if we had known at the time how much time and stress those 30 little minutes would cause, we would have skipped dinner altogether. Blissfully ignorant of our fate, we would have to buy our tickets at the airport.
Fast forward to Friday, a very busy day tying up all the loose ends of the week while trying to get out by two so that we could go visit another vendor before catching the ferry to the airport. We said our goodbyes and made it to the vendor’s factory, albeit a bit behind schedule due to Friday afternoon traffic (apparently a universal blight). A short meeting later we were on our way to the ferry station on our vendor’s incredibly smooth Audi A8L. Dodging and squirting through the tangles glut of cars, our pilot informed us that the ferry to the airport would not let us board without a valid flight ticket. Of course as soon as he said this we knew it to be the truth – you see, you go through immigration at the ferry station and arrive at the HK airport inside the secure area. If you are starting to sense trouble, you get a gold star.
OK, it’s 3am and I need to get some sleep. To be continued…

That's a static smock i am wearing on the factory floor:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

This is what a Chinese electronics factory looks like on the inside:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

The proud parents:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

Apparently, we set the bar in bathroom odors:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

Tales from The Flipside - End of Year 2009 Edition

2009-11-30T05:23:00.000-08:00

EPISODE 1

Well, here I am again, poppin’ Peptos and dodgin’ traffic in the womb of The Product. I am headed north out of Shenzhen, bound for the factory frontlines of Dongguan, China. For the past three months I have been working on a case design for new project and the first parts will be off the tools tomorrow and I am here to do my FAI (First Article Inspection). I will review the parts, check their fit and finish, review the packaging, and perform some drop testing. If all goes according to plan, I can make any necessary revisions and get second samples to review on Friday. My colleague Roger is here with me to do essentially the same thing with the electrical side of the product. We will assist with the first assemblies and tweak the design to improve the factory workflow.
In general, this is more or less what I always do when I come to China and Taiwan. Now you know. We could wait for the parts to be delivered to our office in the US and go back and forth with the factory through emails and pictures, but it would take about 5 weeks to do what we get done in one week over here. Project timelines can rarely afford an extra month in the schedule, so once again I find myself drinking Tsingtao and craving a bean burrito.
Hopefully we can finish up at the factory by Friday and Roger and I can go to Thailand for the weekend. If not, I’ll cry myself to sleep on Friday and drink the weekend away. Just kidding, sort of.
OK, that’s it for now. Stay tuned for more of strange foods, ancient culture, almost-witty commentary, and hopefully some nice photos…

view from my hotel window:

From Tales from the Flipside 2009

The Salton Sea

2009-11-08T19:35:00.000-08:00

On my way to Phish Festival 8 on Halloween weekend, I took a small detour over to the Salton Sea to take a couple of photos.
The Salton Sea is in the desert valley of Riverside County southeast of LA. It was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through a levee and flooded the valley for two years until the levee was repaired. The Sea is the largest lake in California, measured by surface area. Similarly to the great lakes, you cannot see the other side of the lake from the shoreline.
In the 1920s, the Salton Sea became a popular warm water getaway for LA's movers and shakers. The past few decades has seen an abandonment of the infrastructure there as the lake has continued to evaporate, leaving the water more and more concentrated with salts and pesticide runoff.
I didn't spend too much time there before I started feeling antsy to get a spot and set up my camp before dark, but i did manage to get a couple of shots.

From 091029 Salton Sea

Phish Festival 8

2009-11-08T19:21:00.000-08:00

I recently trekked down to the Palm Desert for 4 Day Phish Phest for Halloween 2009. This was the only multi-day festival of this summer's tour, as well as the first Halloween multi-day festival in Phish history. Of course, Phish has been on a break for the past 5 years, so all of us west coasters were exceptionally lucky that the festival was held out here in California instead of over in Vermont. It was held at the Indio Polo field (same venue as Cochella).

From 091031 Phish Festival 8 blog

My Costume: Ignignok, a mooninite from Aqua Teen Hunger Force

From 091031 Phish Festival 8 blog

It was all we could do to stay out of the sun

From 091031 Phish Festival 8 blog

Berkeley Kite Festival

2009-07-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we attended the Berkeley Kite Festival in Caesar Chavez Park on the bay. This year was the 22nd annual event but it was my first time visiting. From the freeway we could already see the huge octopus kites swimming in the deep blue sky amongst hundreds of plankton. The plankton turned out to be smaller kites flown by attendees to the festival. It seems anyone is welcome to bring their kites and fly them in the strong and steady wind. The festival is apparently very popular and we had to park across the highway underneath University Ave (a touch on the shady side) and walk about a mile to get into the park out on the jetty.

When we finally walked into the park we were greeted with an awesome sight. Hundreds of kites of all shapes and sizes vying for a piece of sky and slice of wind to call its own. The sky was crisscrossed with miles and miles of string, resembling a gigantic cat’s cradle. Kites were making and breaking entanglements like a caffeine-fueled swinger’s party. The random death spirals were pinpoints of action within the overall matrix of serenely floating color. One could lie on the grass for hours meditating on the gracefully flowing tableau above you.

That is, if you could maintain your meditation with the constant olfactory barrage of deliciously sweet teriyaki chicken kebobs. There were many food vendors in attendance, all doing a brisk business, but I opted to make my taste buds match my nostrils and descended upon the chicken kebobs like a raptor on its prey. Wonderfully sated, I finally pulled out my camera and began my scan for subjects. As I had feared, getting a good photo of the kite action was difficult. Without good foreground elements, most of my photos of the kites ended up as little more than snapshots. I tried standard and telephoto, but didn’t strike gold until I mounted my wide angle lens and caught both sun flare and shadow.

Aside from the relative difficulty of capturing quality photographs, the festival was a fun time. The scene was definitely skewed towards families with children. Kites are fun and colorful and a staple of childhood and this festival is definitely a great place to bring your kids every year. If you have a yute under the age of 11, put next year’s festival on your schedule now.

The high point of the day for the kids was the infamous Candy Drop. Here’s the recipe: The Berkeley Kite Wranglers officiate the event and fill up a bag with candy before hoisting it forty feet in the air on the string of a large kite. A gaggle of kids are herded into formation and then released as the candy is dropped from the booty bag. Chaos ensues. Repeat.

The best part of the festival for me was the Octopile. This is a formation of six to ten octopus kites staked to the ground and left to their own devices all day. Each one of the kites is at least twenty feet long and sports a dozen tentacles. The constantly shifting and undulating tentacles were mesmerizing to say the least - hypnotically lulling me into a state of slack-jawed wonder. Awesome.

Link to the BKF website: http://www.highlinekites.com/Berkeley_Kite_Festival/

From 090726 Berkeley Kite Festival

//ocie

2009 World's Ugliest Dog Contest

2009-06-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

The Sonoma-Marin Fair is in full swing this week and yesterday's highlight was the annual World's Ugliest Dog Contest. This event is in its 21st year and has really become popular with the international media. This year there was a sign-in booth for media and there were expensive cameras all around. The event is now sponsored by Animal Planet Television and this year's celebrity judge was none other than Jon Provost, who played "Timmy" on the television show "Lassie".
As usual, the competition's most well represented breed is the Chinese Crested. These dogs have characteristic spotty and spiky hair, mottled skin, and lolling tongue. They have been selectively bred for centuries to achieve this level ugliness - truly approaching the Socratic form of "Ugly". Unfortunately, this breeding has also rendered them as fairly short-lived animals, and in fact two of last years top three dogs have passed away in the last year.
This year the contest's winner was NOT a Chinese Crested, but was instead a Boxer Mix with a serious underbite named Pabst. Named for his "Bitter Beer Face", Pabst's winning personality is what swayed the audience to cheer the loudest, which in turn influenced the judges and eventually led to his win...

Pabst - WINNER!

From 096026 Ugly Dog Contest

Kake and Jellie's Wedding

2009-05-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

The weekend before last, Laura and I whisked off to Ft. Bragg, on the Mendocino coast of Northern California. Our dear friends Jake and Kellie had their wedding on Kellie's parent's beautiful piece of land in Ft. Bragg. We camped out in our favorite spot in MacKerricher State Park campground, the ultimate site, #... Yeah right, like I'm going to post that on my blog!
Anyway, Kellie's parent's land is right next to MacKerricker SP, so the whole weekend was very convenient and supergreat. My beloved aunts Marie and Faith officiated the ceremony and it was fabulous to spend some quality time with some of our North Coast Friends.
Congratulations, Kake and Jellie!

From 090509 Jake and Kellies Wedding blog

SLIDESHOW:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090509JakeAndKelliesWeddingBlog#slideshow/5338114807276912610

PHOTO ALBUM:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090509JakeAndKelliesWeddingBlog#

Episode 05 [4-21-09] – Wet Lens in Hong Kong

2009-04-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

I wasted my last night in Taiwan travelling to a crappy hotel in Taoyuan so that I could be close to the airport in the morning for my 8am flight to Hong Kong. I checked in around eleven and filled the sheets with my lifeless form. I woke up at the posterior-crack of dawn to catch my prearranged 6:30 am taxi. Taoyuan is completely developed and not really a vacation designation, but nevertheless I found a pretty nice sunrise tableau outside my window – that was the last photo in my last blog entry.
This time I took my colleague’s advice and booked a hotel in Central on Hong Kong Island. On all of my previous trips I have stayed in Kowloon due to the convenience of the very close MTR station for getting to and from the HK airport. Let me assure you – HK Island is WAY better! You still only have to a 5 minute walk to Central station if you need to take the MTR over to Kowloon and the rest of the peninsula, but why would you want to? Walking around Hong Kong proper was a delight due to the lack of Indians hawking tailoring on every corner. I hate to be stereotypical, but these guys (who really do seem to always be Eastern Indian) are on EVERY corner in Kowloon and really are one of the major turn-offs for me about HK. Well that is all in the past, over on the island I never once felt accosted or gawked at. The hotel I stayed at was near Queen’s Road, so it was really easy to walk anywhere. I found a great bakery and went back a second time the next day for another one of those delicious snacky breads. I ran out of time before I got a chance to try a pretty good looking Pho noodle soup joint – next time for sure.
Here is a really important tip for your next trip to Asia – Laundry. I have always just had my laundry done at the hotel because it was pretty cheap and super convenient. On my last trip in October, I got totally raped by the laundry fees at my hotel in Shenzhen. This time, I saved up all my laundry for my week in Taiwan and had it cleaned when I was in HK for the weekend. At the suggestion of a different colleague, I found a branch of HK’s Sunshine Laundry less than a km from my hotel (Google Maps be praised! Sorry Navteq ;) and just walked my clothes down there. They charge for washing and folding by the kilo. Five days worth of clothes (28 lbs) and less than a day later and I was only out $50 HK. For comparison, that is less than $7 US and less than my hotel would have charged for ONE shirt! Damn, I wish I could do that in Petaluma!
Clean undies installed on my bottom, I was ready to settle in for an early evening in my hotel watching Discover, AXN, and the BBC (those of you used to travelling in Asia know these are pretty much the only channels you ever watch over here) and typing up a new blog entry. It was raining outside and I was tired – cut me some slack. Well, eight o’clock rolled around and the neon started coming to life. I looked out my window and fought an internal battle between inertia and photographic opportunity. Luckily, the call of composition and exposure won out and I grabbed my camera, umbrella, and a washcloth and dove into the deluge. It wasn’t actually raining that hard, but it doesn’t take much to make photography difficult – especially when you are trying to point your camera up at the towering neon goliaths. FYI, it is impossible to photograph a building above you, in the rain, with a wide angle lens, while still keeping an umbrella above your camera - well, when you decide that it is too much trouble to bring a tripod with you, that is. I will never go to Hong Kong again without a tripod. As I walked around the wet streets, I would see a possible shot, frame it in my mind, and then figure out if I there was anything around that I could lean my lens against. I brought a wash cloth from the room and had to wipe down my lens after every shot. In the end I got some nice shots, and the photo walkabout was definitely worthwhile.

street meat

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

getting to the heart of the matter

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

chiaroscuro alley shopkeeper

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

Hong Kong skyline from below

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

the girl with the rainbow umbrella

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

street crossing

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

night fishing

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

electrifying the night

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

after closing

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

SLIDESHOW:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#slideshow/5329199382537760514

PHOTO ALBUM:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#5329199382537760514

Episode 04 [4-20-09] – The Great Taiwan Tie-One-On

2009-04-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

I met with one of our long term vendors in Chiayi, Taiwan. I have visited this vendor before, so we have a good relationship. I arrived via the high speed rail in the afternoon and later went to dinner with the entire R&D department. We went to a nice Taiwanese restaurant with private rooms and a river running through it. The entire interior of the restaurant was done up like an Asian garden villa, with tables in pagodas and ponds full of koi fish. The restaurant provided us with a couple little bags of fish food and it was clear that the fish are well tuned to the procedure – just standing at the railing over the water is enough to incite the fish to gather at the surface with big gasping motions. Toss some fish food into the knot of floppers and the action really gets going! I am talking about a writhing, frothing, gulping, tumult of slippery scales and floundering flippers. There was easily one hundred of these plump koi in the fray, most averaging 12 inches in length. It was awesome – in the traditional sense of the word.
Dinner was rather typical for a Taiwanese vendor with a visiting customer in good standing – a dozen people at a large round table in a private dining room with a glut of varying dishes on a turntable and plenty of pijiu (Taiwanese for beer - pretty aptly named if you think about it). Fabulous. Dinner started with a round of introductions and re-introductions, each one accompanied by a “Gan Bei” (“Bottom’s Up” in Mandarin). The first dish had not even hit the table and I was two big (600ml) Taiwan Beers deep already. Thank Gawd these Asian Lagers are only about 4.5% alcohol.
We dined on sweet beef ribs, traditional Taiwanese chicken rice, pork soup, rice pancakes, sea snails, dried squid, and octopus mouth. The squid was a special kind that is dried on the boat by the fisherman immediately after being caught. The sea snails were flavorless and had the exact same color and texture as vulcanized rubber. The octopus mouths were half inch diameter sautéed balls of meat that you dip in a pepper salt before eating. They were no different in taste or texture from the more commonly consumed portions of the octopus, which was actually a relief since I expected some sort of beak to be involved.
Throughout dinner the Gan Bei onslaught continued and I soon noticed that it was only myself and a couple of the other guys that were maintaining the unending assembly line of opening, emptying, and replacing the big beer bottles. By the time we had all put our glasses face down and switched to tea, we had accumulated 20 empty bottles. That is 12 liters, if you’re counting, which I was not. I lost count, but figure I was responsible for 5 of 6 of those bottles – a feat that I neither recommend nor plan to repeat. We all agreed to postpone our morning meeting until 10 and get some sleep. Karaoke? Not a chance. To be honest, I truly barely even felt drunk and felt fine in the morning – gotta love those mild Asian Lagers!

P.S. Apparently, the Taiwanese also play Rock, Paper, Scissors! I was tickled to see it happen several times at dinner. They call it “Jian Dou Hsi Tou Bu”, which translates as Scissors, Stone, and Paper. They use it the same way we do - to solve lighthearted disputes, but they don’t count to 3, they just declare Jian Dou Hsi Tou Bu and throw down…

koitastrophy

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

12 liters of pijiu

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

sunrise on my last morning in Taiwan

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

SLIDESHOW:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#slideshow/5326799858585347634

PHOTO ALBUM:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#5326799858585347634

Episode 03 [4-19-09] – Chinese hairy facial moles

2009-04-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I don’t want to be rude here, but what is the deal with older Chinese men and hairy facial moles? I did a little research and found that locations and shapes of moles on a person’s face are important in the art of Classic Chinese Face Reading. It seems that some moles signify good luck or other positive attributes about a person. What I cannot find is any reference to why someone would refrain from trimming the hairs that grow from the mole. Now, many people all over the world have moles with hair growing from them, but in my experience none can compare to the inch long bristles that sprout from huge moles on the faces of some Southeast Asian men. Like a carefully tended bonsai barnacle or the head of an atrophied conjoined twin yearning to be free, these cultured hair pearls seem to be a highly prized feature of their facial landscape. It seems that every straggly hair spewing from those big ol’ moles is almost manicured.
I am sure that I am simply ingnorant of the cultural significance, but to me, those bush babies are far more Confusing than Confucius.

I didn't dare take a photo, so I made this dramatization for you...

source photo by Bert Henning

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

Episode 02 – Kaohsiung by night

2009-04-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

I arrived at the high speed rail station and took a taxi to my hotel in Kaohsiung. Catching a taxi from an airport or train station in Asia is a little bit of a trial. There are many drivers of ill repute that will drive you around in circles on the way to your destination, or worse yet will take you somewhere remote and demand more money to take you back to civilization. This is more common in the “wild west” style factory towns of China than it is in Taiwan or even Shenzhen, but it is still a good idea to be vigilant. Obviously, their bread and butter are the idiot westerners stumbling around, gazing wide-eyed in every direction, and drooling from their slack mandibles. One of my co-workers – a seasoned traveler who shall remain nameless – fell victim to one of these schemes on a recent trip to Dongguan, China. Ever since then, I try to keep from looking all around and attempt to keep all of my drool internal as I hail a taxi. As long as you appear confident and “hip to the scene”, they will not view you as a mark and you should be fine. It is a good idea to get a taxi from the official taxi stand at the station so that the attendant will be there. The chances of getting hood-winked are much greater if you get in the car of one of the shady characters that loiter right at the exit of the terminal. Of course, sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between them, as even the legitimate drivers don’t appear to fall far from the shady character tree, so stick with the taxi-stand rule. Another good idea is to call your hotel (or other destination) ahead of time and ask how much a fair fare should be. Oh, and make sure they turn on their meters – you may be able to negotiate a good price, but I guarantee you it won’t be less than what the meter would read.
Once I got to my hotel and checked in, I took a shower and reluctantly switched on my computer. I subsequently spent the next four hours answering emails and arranging my local connections (work connections, you chuckling slackers!). Close to sunset I grabbed my camera and hit the streets. I first went to the Taiwan Mobile store to sort out the SIM card I picked up at the airport. Thirty minutes of very broken English and several calls to “supervisors” later, I was told “I am sorry, Blakbury are not supported by our prepaid SIM cards. Would you like start a monthly contract account?” Uh, no thanks – I’ll just have my money back. “Sorry sir, the SIM it is activate so not can refund.” Beautiful. Best $11 ever spent. Before anyone 6500 miles away thinks they know the problem and leaves me a comment – Yes, my phone was unlocked by AT&T (all you gotta do is sweet talk them) and I have verified that it works with other SIM cards.
Worthless “smart” phone pocket-weight in hand, I started walking towards the Love River on Wufu Rd. I saw a few interesting sights on my two mile walk, not least of which was a pet shop dedicated to snakes, beetles, and hairy spiders. As I started to walk by, I decided that I could not just keep walking – I had to see what kind of pets they sold in Southern Taiwan. Well, it turns out they sell creepies and crawlies – big ones! I saw a beetle the size of a hamster and a tarantula the size of a kitten – both of which were decidedly less cuddly than their western counterparts.
I moved on when I started getting the heebee jeebees and made my way down to the Love Riverfront. This inlet is right at the southern end of Taiwan ans used to be a large shipping corridor. Nowadays the port has been moved, the river cleaned up, and the low bridges limit the river traffic to local pleasure craft and the aforementioned drooling tourists on neon ferry boats. The hotels along the waterfront are beautiful sparkling jewels on the gently flowing waterway, and I got a couple of great photos that made the whole walk worthwhile.
Tired, hungry, and leery of eating unknown fried pet shop rejects, I opted for the closest restaurant to the riverside – Outback Steakhouse. I do feel guilty for eating at a Western restaurant, but what the hell. Now it is 9:30pm and I have finished my meal and my Taiwan Beer and have just finished this installment of Ocie’s Asian Chronicles. I am definitely taking a taxi back to my hotel. Now if I can just remember what I said about slack jaws…

Love River by night

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

just like your childhood hamster...

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

City Lights Park

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

SLIDESHOW:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#slideshow/5324934823146084002

PHOTO ALBUM:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#5324934823146084002

Taiwan and China 2009: Episode 01 – Migration begins… now.

2009-04-13T22:42:00.000-07:00

Howdy y’all. Here I am again hittin’ the road and taking the slow boat to China. This time I am spending a week in Taiwan and a bit less than a week in China. Overall, a short trip for me but the first week in Taiwan will be especially tiring because I will be rollin’ nomad style. I am visiting a different vendor in a different city each day - four nights in Taiwan and four different hotels. Good thing I am an engineer so everyone expects my shirts to be wrinkled anyway. I will spend the weekend in Hong Kong, but will head over to Dongguan, China on Sunday night so that I don’t have to fight with the heavy border-crossing commute Monday morning. Four days in Dongguan (all in one location, thank you) and I will hop another bird headed home – just in time for Laura’s 30th birthday party. Her actual birthday is this Thursday, which is par for the course, since various business trips have put us in different cities on both our birthdays for the past two years.
This trip was very short-notice, so I was not able to book a flight on my beloved Singapore Air. I could have taken United, but opted for EVA Air for the main benefit of the Asian airlines flight schedules. You see the Asian airlines all leave SFO at 1am and land the next day at 7 am, where the Western airlines leave around 1pm and land at 7 pm. I can’t bear the thought of landing at night, taking a 2 hr train ride to my hotel, and then going to work the next day. Plus, leaving at 1am primes you for sleeping on the plane and getting half of your time zone shift over with en route. I was happy to see EVA Air is using all new 777 aircraft for the SFO-TPE route and was looking forward to having my own TV with movies on demand (something that is very elusive on United). You can imagine my horror upon arriving at SFO and being told that the 777 had mechanical problems and that the only plane they could “find” was one of their “older” 747-Combis. Those words in quote are the actual words the EVA agent used. I did not like the thought that I’d be hurtling through the stratosphere on some rust bucket clunker that they weren’t using for any other purpose, but my mother taught me not to be a p#ssy, so I hopped on that sh!tbird and prayed for sweet fate to be on my side. Well, I am writing from Taiwan, so that crate had at least one flight left in her. The flight was actually quite uneventful and easy, except for the 1970’s entertainment system forcing me to crane my neck to the side to see the distant 8” screen and keep switching ears to keep from blowing out my drum with the decidedly low-fi mono audio. I watched “Role Models”, because that was what was playing – it was actually not bad – formulaic but pretty funny and with a sweet message of acceptance for socially inept medieval role playing dorks. Dorks are people too. After the film I took some pills and slept for 9 hours – in 40 minute increments.
When I got to Taiwan TPE (the airport formally known as Chang Kai Shek) I was pleasantly surprised to find it completely empty. No line at immigration or customs. Shiny. I needed to find the bus to the High Speed Train, but first I needed money. It was just then that I remembered that I had forgotten to call my bank to inform them that I would be travelling overseas and not to put the Denver Boot on my debit card. Actually, I HAD called them earlier in the day before I left, but their goram system was down for maintenance, so I was supposed to call back right before I left (but forgot). OK, so four long-distance pay phone credit card calls (I had informed my other cc company about being overseas) later, I was finally able to connect with someone (I guess the Taiwanese payphone button tones are not exactly the same as back home, so the “punch in your number” tap dance was not working). Anyway, so I finally talked to a guy who was asking me to confirm my personal data when we got disconnected. They probably think I stole the card and panicked and hung up when they got to the security questions. Interpol is probably already at that payphone, dusting it for prints. At that point I gave up and went to the ATM anyway and it gave up the goods, so I guess I’ll just call them later.
I went up to the departures floor to get a Taiwan SIM card for my phone and found all the people that I had expected to find in the arrivals hall. Wow, that place was packed! Note to self – get here early for my departing flight. OK, so I picked up a Taiwan Mobile SIM card and was surprised to find that calls to the US are actually cheaper than domestic calls to Taiwan phone numbers. WTF^^! Oh well, I plugged the bastard in and grabbed a bus to the High Speed Rail station. While on the bus I tried to make a call and found that my damn phone doesn’t work. W.T.F. Arrived at the HSR and got my ticket. Went down to the platform and used the payphone to call Taiwan Mobile customer service. “Sir, your SIM is activated and should work. Is your phone Motorola or Nokia? I am sorry, what is ‘BlackBerry’? Please go back to the store and ask them to try to make it work with your ‘DurianBerry’ phone.” OK, so she didn’t say ‘DurianBerry’ – cut me some slack, it’s called poetic license, alright. Well, I wasn’t at the airport anymore and I had already entered the train platform area, so I was committed to taking the train. I guess I will have to try and find a Taiwan Mobile store in Kaohsiung today.
Well, that brings us up to the present. I am currently hurling south at 200 mph on the Taiwan High Speed Rail towards Kaohsiung on the southern tip of the island of Taiwan. I am nursing my Mr. Brown canned Taiwanese coffee and eating my Mos Burger breakfast sandwich. For those unfamiliar, Mos Burger is an Asian fast food joint that sells uh, interesting variations on the western burger. The menus are pictorial, so I pointed to the ham and egg on a bun and mimed out “to go”, charades-style. Imagine my surprise when I unwrapped the thing to find that the main condiment on this otherwise western-standard breakfast sandwich was… wait for it… peanut butter! Uh, I was under the impression that Asians didn’t even eat peanut butter, let alone use it as an inappropriate condiment. Consider me schooled. BTW, it was good :)
OK, I am going to sign off for now as my train glides to a stop. I am very excited to check into my hotel and take a shower, for I have that not-so-fresh feeling that one inevitably absorbs from marinating for 13 and a half hours in the primordial soup that is a trans-pacific airline flight. Also, the screen in the train says the weather is 85 deg F and 100% humidity. Yes, I said 100%.

punch drunk after 18 hrs of travel

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

reunited with my good friend, Mr. Brown

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

peanut butter????

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

view from my hotel in Kaohsiung

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

one of many abandoned factories at the edge of town

From 090414 Taiwan China 2009

SLIDESHOW:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#slideshow/5324410863204910946

PHOTO ALBUM:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090414TaiwanChina2009#

2009 Wiener Dog Races

2009-04-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to the wiener dog races with our friends Dave and Katrina.
Every year, Golden Gate Fields hosts the Dachshund Derby. These are highly trained, fine-tuned thoroughbred racing wieners. They shot from the gate like greased lightning and were very difficult to capture on film. Well, at least a few of them - the rest wandered out of the gate and moseyed around in random circles. Oh, did I mention dollar hot dogs and beers? Best day ever.
I rented a professional sports telephoto lens for the day so i could get decent photos of the doggies. Apparently, a big ol' lens on your camera is as good as a press pass, becasue nobody even questioned me when I walked right down on the track with the dog owners ;)

From 090405 Dachshund Derby blog

SLIDESHOW:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090405DachshundDerbyBlog#slideshow/5323902381912374162

PHOTO ALBUM:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090405DachshundDerbyBlog#

Pinewood Derby 2009 - Here come da Judge!

2009-03-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

My friend and coworker Roger asked me to take photos of the Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby this year and I asked if I could enter a car. The Pinewood Derby is held every year by the Cub Scouts. Every scout gets the same block of wood, four plastic wheels , and four nails for axels. The Cub's cars are limited to 5 oz weight and a few other size restrictions. They have to use the official wheels and axels. Since I am not a Scout, I competed in the "Unlimited" class which allows 8 oz for weight, but still must use the same wheels and axels (although modification of the wheels is allowable).

Of course, since Roger is the resident Electrical Engineer at work and I am the Mechanical Engineer, I had to pull out all the stops. If I made a half-assed car I was never going to hear the end of it. So I ended up spending way too much time on this thing, but it turned out pretty sweet, if I do say so for myself...

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

The engine is an 0.09 diesel enginer from an RC aeroplane. It is obviously just used as ballast (weight) since these cars must be powered by gravity alone. I thought it had a whole lot more flair than a handfull of lead fishing weights. The red button on the top of the cylinder head activates the sound effects...

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

The other half of my full attach on the senses is the integrated circuit board and speaker that produce a engine revving and tire squealing sound. The recording is long enough to make it all the way down the racetrack.

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

Note the official BSA molded plastic wheels that I turned down to knife edge discs to reduce rolling resistance and even more importantly, rotational inertia.

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

You can't tell in the photo, bu thtat left front wheel is off the ground by a millimeter so that it never touches the track. 25% reduction in rolling resistance and rotational inertia, baby!

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

This is the starting gate. THe pegs all drop at the same time and the cars trigger a series of infrared detectors to record the race time to 1/1000 of a second.

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

On your marks, get set, go!

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

Not quote a photo finish - I placed second. Fiddlesticks!

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

Hey, second place still gets a prize!

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

This was the car that beat me. When I saw the box shape I knew I was in for a race because he knew that wind resistance was negligible (which is true), so he likely spent his time on friction and mass placement (the real winning variables). THat box shape is actually completely hollow and very lightweight, so he could focus all of his allowable weight right over the rear wheels. This is important because that location will net you more potential energy change becasue the track is angled at the start and flat at the end.

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

Some of the kids had very creative cars. This one was my favorite...

From 090311 Pinewood Derby for blog

Petaluma Turning Basin Photos

2009-02-24T23:40:00.000-08:00

I noticed a beautiful sunset on the way home from work today, so I raced home for my camera and hit up the Petaluma Turning Basin.

From 090224 Petaluma Sunset

SLIDESHOW:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090224PetalumaSunset#5306638667974341330

PHOTO ALBUM:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ocie.ward/090224PetalumaSunset#

Costa Rica Photo Especial

2009-02-07T16:22:00.000-08:00

OK, so I kinda lost interest in writing the Costa Rica travelogue and I think you also got tired waiting for more entries. So I figured I would just go ahead and give you what you really want - the photos :]

All my photos can be found at the links below...

A pair of Collared Aracaris

ocwfoto phlog

Foxconn to bring on 5 million robots

back in china, eatin' innards

Our Wedding - Ocie and Loni get Official!

Back to the Future - China: Episode 02, The Food Report

Back to the Future - China: Episode 01

THE DISORIENT EXPRESS: EPISODE 4, “MACAU TIPPING”

THE DISORIENT EXPRESS: EPISODE 3, “SIMON SEZ”

THE DISORIENT EXPRESS: EPISODE 2, “SICHUAN AND SHEETMETAL”

The Disorient Express: Episode 1, “Eastbound and Down”

Sunrise Paddle

Tales from the Flipside - Part 4 – Sawas Di Kraup, Bangkok

Tales from the Flipside - Part 3 – Exodus Persisting

Tales from the Flipside - Part 2 - Exodus

Tales from The Flipside - End of Year 2009 Edition

The Salton Sea

Phish Festival 8

Berkeley Kite Festival

2009 World's Ugliest Dog Contest

Kake and Jellie's Wedding

Episode 05 [4-21-09] – Wet Lens in Hong Kong

Episode 04 [4-20-09] – The Great Taiwan Tie-One-On

Episode 03 [4-19-09] – Chinese hairy facial moles

Episode 02 – Kaohsiung by night

Taiwan and China 2009: Episode 01 – Migration begins… now.

2009 Wiener Dog Races

Pinewood Derby 2009 - Here come da Judge!

Petaluma Turning Basin Photos

Costa Rica Photo Especial

Hot Buttered Rum @ The Mystic

Winner! Argus Courier Holiday Photo Contest

¡Pura Vida! Novela Dos: ¡Aye, Escandaloso!

¡Pura Vida! Novela Uno: Arrival and Migration

Light up a Life 2008

Petaluma's Holiday Lighted Boat Parade

Thanksgiving Turkey Fry

Halloween at Ocie and Laura's 2008

150 Trees for 150 Years

Birdmonster @ Popscene 10/16/08

Our new Desk

Ninjas on rollerskates attack microcar

Party at the Mail Depot!

Olompali Oaks

David and Grace's Wedding

Ryan and Athena's Wedding

Tales from the Flipside - Episode 10

Home on the Range

Typhoon is History - I am comin' home!

Tales from The Flipside - TYPHOON WARNING

Tales from the Flipside - Episode 09

Tales from the Flipside - Episode 08

Tales from the Flipside - Episode 07A

Tales from the Flipside - Episode 07

Tales from the Flipside - Episode 06

Tales from the Flipside - Episode 05

Tales from The Flipside - Cuban Headrush

Tales from the Flipside, Episode 04

Tales from the Flipside, Episode 03

Tales from the Flipside, Episode 02

Tales from the Flipside, Episode 01 - China Syndrome 2008

Frontrow NCLB Party 2008

Birdmonster Show - Lyman Park, St. Helena

New Birdmonster Album released!

twitter

Bette's Birthday

Lunch with Breese and Brendel

Ryan's Batchlor Party

Stomprocket @ P-Town Farmer's market

Cat Island Bahamas

World's Ugliest Dog Contest 2008

BAY TO BREAKERS 2008

Petaluma Turning Basin Sunset