Asia - May, 1997

5/2 - Off again

I don't ordinarily start a travel diary this early in a trip, but I felt kind of compelled to write while still in US airspace. I'm on the first leg of a flight that takes me to Singapore via Tokyo, but what's interesting is we've been flying north up the California coast for 20 minutes. Great aerial tour of Marin, Sonoma & Mendocino counties. We are just flying over Mendocino now & finally heading out to sea. A few minutes ago we went right over the beautiful Buddist temple located in the Sonoma coast range. Kind of interesting that one of the last images of the US I have on the way to bastions of Buddism is temple at home. Any way, it's a beautiful afternoon & the water off the coast is a lovely aqua blue (what else would it be?).

Anyway, I will be out for 3 weeks & some details of the trip are still tentative. More later...

5/10 - Another week in Singapore

Wow! A whole week slipped by without me writing to you all. It was pretty uneventful & I've been here so many times there isn't that much new to tell you about.

I arrived at the hotel at 2 AM last Sunday, sort of slept, then pretty much spent the day hanging around here. Got a game of tennis in with a Japanese guy who lives in India & was visiting here. I enjoyed the match because he was good enough to make it interesting, but not good enough to beat me. Since I routinely get trounced by my partner at home, it did my ego good to win handily.

Things have gone reasonably well at work. It is kind of different this time since I am working with a brand new product that they really want to use here. Unfortunately, it is so new that it hasn't been formally released yet & still has bugs. So I am really acting as a test site for the developers. I talk to the lead programmer for the product (in Boston) at 9 AM & 9 PM every day. Since the clocks there are exactly 12 hours behind ours here, it works out well for both of us. They appreciate getting the immediate feedback & I benefit by getting intimately familiar with the software. But since it is still not problem free, I will now be staying here at least another week & cutting out some or all of the other locations I had planned to visit on this tour. Very likely I will be back in June to go to the other spots.

Visited Little India here the other night with an Indian native I am working with. He gave me an insider tour including his Hindu temple. Little India is definitely different from the rest of Singapore & I suppose similar in many respects to Big India. Saw/heard a large group of Indian followers of Satya Saya Baba singing chants. Of course we had an Indian dinner too.

I haven't had much Chinese food since I've been here.. just not in the mood I guess. At the plant they have a huge cafeteria ; unfortunately the Chinese food I had there wan't very good. But they have a McDonalds right in the cafeteria, so I had McLunches 3 times last week.

Tomorrow I am taking a day tour to Malacca in Malaysia, so I will have some more stuff to write about next time. It is an all day bus tour to the north.

5/13 - Orchid Heaven

I'm kind of getting used to the heat & humidity here. It doesn't seem as debilitating as it was the first few days. I titled this one orchid heaven in honor of the climate though. It is a steady 92 degrees every day & the humidity is probably 99.9% except when it rains; then its 100%. I've gotten into kind of a routine on work days. Come back to the hotel around 6 or so, either work out on the tennis court or in the fitness center for a while, then take a quick hot soak followed by a cool down in the pool. Then I try to decide what to do about din. Today I went to the Japanese place & had tempura.

The trip to Malacca (or Melaka as it is spelled in Malaysia) was kind of interesting. Actually the trip was boring as hell, 4 hour bus ride each way through endless oil palm plantations. But Melaka was kind of interesting. It was founded about 500 years ago by the Malays as a trade center, then taken over by the Portugese in the 16th century. They had it for about 150 years, then the Dutch kicked them out and ran it for another 150. Finally the Brits took it over & ran it for about 150 years. So it is really a cultural hodge podge. Besides those 4 heritages, there is a major Chinese influence, as well as Indian. And to top it off, the primary religion is now Islam from the influence of Arab traders.

So after the bus ride & lunch we had a walking tour thru the city. It was really hot & I was drenched by the time we finished. Went thru the Chinese section, then the Dutch colonial part & thru the Portugese fortress. In Chinatown we went thru a Buddist temple & the guide explained how they send prayers to the spirit world by burning incense. They believe they can send their dearly departed material objects to use in the spirit world by burning paper images. So next to the temple there was a shop where you could buy almost anything made of paper that some spirit might need, including refrigerators, cigarettes, travel documents, you name it. I just had to buy a travel package that included a ticket and passport to Hell among other stuff. Great souvenier.

One other thing that is kind of interesting about Malaysia is their adoption of a lot of English words, but they decided not to adopt English spelling. It's actually quite logical. They use the Roman alphabet, but somewhere along the line dispensed with letters like C, Q & X that have equivalents (hominyms?). So service is spelled servis, cleaning is kleanik, quatlity is kwality & express is ekspres.

Well, it looks now like I will stay here next week & forgo the other stops on this trip. So I will have a weekend to kill here. I'm thinking about taking an overnight to a nearby resort island. The thought crossed my mind to go to Bali, but I'll have to check the air fare & decide if I can afford it.

5/17 - Poolside

Another weekend in Singapore. We have extended my stay here thru next week to keep this project rolling, but I have told them that I will not stay past that. So there is a strong chance that I will be back in this part of the world next month. As of now I will be stopping over for a day in Tokyo on the way home, but that may change if we decide we need one more day here to make sure things are on the right track while I'm home.

So I'm spending today at the hotel catching up on correspondence. I thought about going to Bali for the weekend, but the air fare would have been around $400... too much for just a weekend. [screen fades to black...]

NOT Poolside

So I was merrily typing away, enjoying the hazy shunshine, relaxing on a lounge chair by the pool when the display on this laptop faded away. I think it has a heat problem. Seems to do OK in the air conditioned hotel room & office. I had it fixed for this problem once already. I could write a book about all the laptop failures I have had in the last year. I have 2 of these machines and it's a struggle to keep one functioning so I can keep in touch while travelling.

Break for tennis

Went down to practice tennis & found a British Airways pilot practicing, so we smacked yellow balls around for about an hour. Chatted a couple of times while catching our breath about our respective areas of specialty (high tech & high flying) & then about British politics. I don't know how much attention you folks paid to the Brit elections just completed, but it was fairly historic. I was over there in the weeks leading up to the election when Major and the Tories were blowing it every way possible & then I have been here where Brit interest is high for the post election period. (BTW, don't ask me why a member of the Conservative party is called a Tory). If you have any interest at all in international affairs, pay attention to what is going on over there. We had dinner in Ireland with a couple of Brits from a conservative area who had voted Tory their whole lives & they said they were voting Liberal: England needed a change. This pilot was from the same area & he also talked about the need for change. Anyway, Blair, the new Liberal PM has a clear mandate for change and there are a couple of very important ways that that will affect world politics as it plays out over the next several years. One is Northern Ireland. Major had a tenuous grasp on his position as PM & needed the votes of the Unionists in NI to keep his job; so he couldn't afford to piss them off & that's why there was no progress in talks with the IRA, etc, leading eventually to renewal of hostilities. The other is the European Union (EU) that is supposed to continue gathering steam over the next several years. The Conservatives were in an absolute snit about the EU and the planned common currency (no more francs, guilders, pounds & marks after 1998). The old line Brits equate the pound with British sovereignty & just don't buy the argument that the EU & common currency is needed for the region to prosper economically in the 21st century. But with Blair and the Labor party there is now a great sense of optimism & promise for the future. Almost like the feeling we had in the early 60's before the end of the Kennedy dream.

So enough world affairs for now. I'll have to give you a little look at Singapore politics sometime too.

5/21 - Home stretch

Two more days & I'm outta here. It's been fun & I've enjoyed being in one place for a period of time instead of flitting from stop to stop. But I still miss home & will be glad to get on a plane Saturday morning.

I met up with an Aussie tennis partner, so have been playing quite a bit. Have another match with him planned for tomorrow night. He's an interesting guy, probably a bit older than me. I think fairly wealthy. He has a big cattle ranch a ways out from Brisbane, several thousand acres, but he is also a kind of high powered specialist in marine engineering, including stuff like salvage and even treasure hunting. His specialty in that area is Chinese porcelain. Says he has recovered ships with $40 or $50 million worth. He says he recently did a bit with National Geographic, so if you happen to see a show about an Aussie seaman named Mike, that's my partner. He plays tennis nearly every day he's not on ship & so far has beat me, but I've been competitive & it's been fun.

My project has been kind of dragging, since the last few new versions of the software I'm working with haven't really worked well & I can't put out software with problems. But today was a good day. Got version 44 & it worked really well, so I may end my stay on a high. It was a Buddist holiday here today, but I went in & worked a half day anyway. With so many religions here, they get lots of holidays.

Had an interesting experience Sunday night. Went to dinner with 3 of the top guys in the Seagate telecommunications field, one of whom is my customer for this project. We ate at an outdoor Chinese eatery along the Singapore river. It's kind of a promenade with a whole street of various restaurants all along the river. Anyway, an Indian lady came to the table & offered to read our palms for $10 ea (Sing money). So she did the first guy & he was nodding, yes, yes... Guess she got it reasonably right, at least generally. So then she did me & what she said about my younger days was pretty much right on, although it was general enough that it probably applies to at least half the American business men in Singapore. And she said I will live to be 90 have a good life. So... OK. So then the next guy (Ron) says "No way" & the last guy passes. After she leaves Ron tells us a story. Turns out he used to be a cop, a homicide detective in Fremont. I never knew that.

The Case of the 500 lb Man & the Heebie Jeebie Woman.

So Ron is investigating a brutal assault case (he got this case because the guy was beaten & left for dead, but pulled through). But the victim had no memory of the crime & there were no witnesses. They follow a trail of blood from the guy's house out the back, over broken down fence (hence the 500 lb man theory), into the neighbor's yard where it peters out. Interview neighbors: they didn't hear anything. So they have bloody finger prints but no leads. Victim's mother brings in a psychic woman & Ron talks to her at the station. She says enough things to make it interesting so he takes her to the victim's home. She has never been there before. As they drive up the street, she points out the neighbor's house (where the blood trail led) & says the bad guys live there & there are 3 of them. At the house she tells them stuff that is not public knowledge, but is right on. She tells them stuff they don't know yet, but turns out to be true when they check it out. She tells them it was a cult crime & the guy was sodomized with a broomstick which they later find. Back at the station she works with a police artist to produce likenesses of the bad guys. When Ron goes back to the neighbor's house, they guy that answers the door matches one drawing perfectly. So does the 2nd guy who lives there. One wears a German cross medallion that he never takes off, just as she predicted. One matches the fingerprints too, so he is hauled in. Only there's no 3rd guy. Then they find out these guys have a buddy & when the track him down, he matches the 3rd drawing. So anyway, they never get enough hard evidence on the 2 guys (courts don't accept psychic evidence) & the finger printed guy jumps bail. So the case is never really closed. It never made the papers because the chief in Fremont didn't want any publicity about psychics. And in case you haven't put it together, the psychic is the "Heebie Jeebie" woman; cop talk I guess.

But wait, there's more. Ron says as he & his partner are driving the psychic home at the end of the case, they ask her if she sees the future. She says yes, but people don't understand how to deal with it so she doesn't do fortune telling. They say "Aw, come on"... So she tells the partner that he will get a promotion & do well as a cop (he does, still is) & she tells Ron he will soon leave police work & be in a different career. He says "No way. I love police work. I will be a chief some day." Some months later he gets involved in some kind of traumatic shootout, has a breakdown & after a couple years retires. Now he is Director of Global Telecom for Seagate. And he says he won't have anything to do with fortune tellers now... The Heebie Jeebie woman made a believer out of him.

Good story, no?

5/24 - Last Leg

I still am kind of in awe of 747's. These things just seem kind of improbable. How can a crate this big fly so well. Anyway, home in another couple hours.

This trip was really different in a couple ways. First, 3 weeks in one place allowed me to kind of define a lifestyle & then the work was much different too, instead of evangelizing I was primarily engaged in product testing, really an extension of the development team in Boston. I talked about how I was getting into a routine a couple of letters back & by this last week, it really was. Breakfast at 7, at the plant by about 8, check how our test system did overnight, talk to Boston at 9, reporting results & catching up with what they did while I was asleep, get latest version & install it working with local guys, various tests thru the day, call home after lunch, write up & email results, back at the hotel about 6, tennis followed by hot soak in the spa and cool down in the pool, dinner at hotel where I listenened to a local singing group, call Boston again at 9 to review days results, catch up with email & check out CNN. In some ways I hated to see it come to an end because after 3 weeks, I had really established a strong bond with the guys in Boston & I enjoyed the element of teamwork. It's a real contrast to my normal role as kind of an outsider coming in to spend a couple of days working kind of intensely with a group and then moving on.

It got to the point at the place I was having dinner that I was running out of menu selections. It's kind of odd maybe that I would keep going to the same place each night (actually I did vary it some), but I probably ate at the one place at least a dozen times. It was enough that the singers on stage came to recognize me & acknowledge my in the audience. I really enjoyed their performances; it was more fun than sitting alone in a restaurant watching people eat. The group was all Asian, 3 gals & a guy, with a really wide ranging repertoire, new wave to Sound of Music.

Well I think I'm done for this time around...