howeird | Entries tagged with peace corps

I am not patriotic. I will cheer when my country does the right thing, and jeer when my country does wrong.

On Memorial Day I am not posting any memes or graphics or sayings praising all veterans for "keeping me safe" or for their "sacrifice".

In my heart I have three memorial days:

1. I praise anyone who fought and died actually protecting America's freedom:
The American Revolution
The War of 1812
The Civil War union side. Confederates can suck it.
Philippine-American War
WWI
WWII

2. There is a spot in my heart for those who were conscripted, then forced to fight and die for bad foreign policy decisions:
Mexican-American War
Indian Wars
Spanish-American War
Korean Police Action
Vietnam War

3.After 1973, we have had an all-volunteer military. And none of the actions the government has committed troops to have safeguarded my freedom. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, just the opposite. I don't mourn the soldiers who volunteered to blindly follow orders and were killed in the process.

Emotionally, though, I am an American. Let me tell you a short story.

In 1977, I had been working in southern Thailand for about a year, at a Thai agricultural research center in the middle of a forest of rubber trees. For the first couple of months there was a group of scientists and administrators from the UN, but no Americans other than myself. I lived on campus, ate and partied with my co-workers, and had almost no contact with anything Officially American. I had some business at the US consulate in Songkhla, a few miles from the research center, and the bus only went as far as the center of town. There was a hill between me and the consulate. As I walked up the road and started to crest the hill, I saw the huge American flag flying above the consulate. In that moment, it felt like I was home.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Location: Home

Slept really well, possibly because I shut the cats out of the bedroom, punishment for pooping in the livingroom. and partly to have a door between me and the Drama. Kaan has been trying very hard lately to be friends with Domino, Domino is being a total grouch about it, growling and hissing and taking swipes. Kaan is 3x her size, but backs off instead of fighting. But 20 seconds later he's back trying to get close to Domino.

Anyway, I didn't wake up till 9:30, which meant my plan to bring the car to the installer at 10 was going to be pushed back. Got there at 11:30, they needed an hour or 2 to pull out the radio, check the camera connections, and figure out why the camera was only showing 2 views instead of 4. They pointed me at a very nice coffee shop, lots of eye candy both sides of the counter - the woman at the cash register is about 5' tall, and has a cleavage big enough to host a Westercon. She suggested an iced vanilla latte, which tasted great. I also had an apple turnover. After an hour, I ordered a refill and a banana nutella crepe. Hood crepe, but I would rather have had the mushroom/fancycheese which they were out of.

12:30, tech called, stumped about the radio controls not working, so he offered to install the aux switch, I said go ahead. Another 15 minutes and I walked back there, he was finishing up, I waited in the air conditioned 2-person waiting area. The bad news is it's a software issue with the main unit, which he did not sell me (Toyota sourced it) and he will contact them to see what they suggest. Good news is the aux switch gives all 4 views, one of them is very useful - it shows what's coming from the left and right corners behind the vehicle. It was very handy when I was trying to pull out of a very busy parking lot later. The other good news is at my request he checked the radio antenna connections, and discovered they were wrong and fixed them. Now I have a ton of AM, FM and HD stations coming in. Yay!

From there to UPS, picked up a package long-awaited from ScanCafe. I had sent 45 rolls of B&W negatives to them February 17. They received them the 19th. They said they would have the scans done and on DVD for me by April 22. More than two months is a long wait, but it was a lot of work. Finally getting them back June 8 with no real updates on their handydandy web site, not acceptable. The quality of the work was okay, but not worth the 69 cents a frame they charged. So I won't be linking to them here, and can't recommend them.

Got home, 88° outside, and OCD fool that I am, I sat in the car and programmed the radio. 6 AM and 18 FM stations. I started with the HD stations.

Went inside long enough to drop the box from ScanCafe onto a table, then grab my rental renewal form and took it to the office. Which was closed, with three people waiting. I went back home and faxed it in, including a nastygram about how I would move out at the end of the current lease except the company hasn't decided if we're moving. And probably won't for 6 months. Craigslist has many apartments in Sunnyvale for $500/mo less rent. But I don't want to move again so soon, and I don't want to move to Someplace else in Sunnyvale if the company moves to Redwood City. :-(

Programmed the new internet radio, was disappointed to find that it does not sync with the other two, or use the same android app. Probably will sell it on eBay and order another squeezebox from overstock.com. Or not. I mostly program them from the radio, and don't sync my bedroom one with the kitchen one anyway.

Opened the UPS box, and was attacked by Styrofoam peanuts. FAIL. The object was supposed to be to keep the negatives flat, and away from static electricity. Pulled out the DVD, popped it into the PC drive and at least they did something right - the images are in folders which have the same labeling as the negative holders: year-month-roll# except they used underscores instead of dashes, which makes it harder to use a 10-key pad to type them.

I transferred all the folders to the hard drive, and then to the backup drive, and started to upload them to Flickr, when I saw that instead of naming the photos with my system, they had their own 40-character order code ending in the cumulative number of scans. So by the time I got to the 3rd roll we were up to 00107_bn_13ajwmyu9h0107_z.jpg. So I killed the ones on Flickr, and went through the tedious process of renaming every photo in every folder. If you ever have to do something like this, here's the process I used (Windows 7):
( cut for techie boring )
This took me from 5:30-9:30 pm, with an hour break for dinner.

NOW I was ready to upload to Flickr, one folder at a time, as its own set. another 90 minutes or so. And finally, open each set, arrange alphabetically, and d&d a meaningful thumbnail to the title column.

And then post on FB.

Here are some samples
( Read more... )

Plans for tomorrow:
Redwood City, see the final reading of Sexbot 2600
Maybe go across the street and see a movie. It's probably going to be another scorcher.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Home
Current Music: Follow Your Arrow

It took till 10, but when I finally opened the blinds the sun was very bright and it was 75° on the patio. In the sun. Out of the sun it was 59.

Kaan had wanted me to play fetch, but I didn't find this out till I made the bed and his toy was there. I slept through it. He's also not sneezing much, which is good. Meanwhile, Domino is being more affectionate.

Lots of targeted errands. Dropped the phone off at Click Away, did the math and it would be much less to repair than replace. Then to Penny's for a quilt and a wallet. The place is coming to the end of a vast remodeling project, the object of which seems to have been to hide the cashier stations, remove all useful signage (including all the directories by the escalators), and create long lines of angry customers. And make pricing a guessing game.

After a long hunt I found the quilts, most of them on clearance. Yay. I found three identical ones with a retail price of $100 , one was marked down to $80, one to $60 and one to $50. I took the $50 one. Waited in line for 10 minutes at the "customer service" counter (all the cashier stations are called this) watching two staffers in a 4-register setup try to handle President's Day Weekend sales crowds. When I got to the cash register, the cashier couldn't make the new remote control scanner work, she finally picked up the hard-wired one which worked fine. She said the quilt had been marked down further to $36. Excellent. When I got home and looked at the receipt it said $30. Even better.

Went upstairs, found the same style wallet I have been using (mine got torn and needed replacing). Was in line for 15 minutes, this time three staffers with only 2 registers, one of which was tied up by a lady whose receipt had not printed, and none of the three cashiers had the sense to call a manager right away and clear the transaction so it didn't hold up the line. The man behind her timed it at 17 minutes to get a receipt. :-(

Was not feeling 100%, so dropped the stuff off in the car, found a restroom and then went to the food court for a diet Coke. It didn't help much.

On the way home, stopped at the produce store for bananas and limes and celery. Also got tangelos. Backtracked to Safeway for kitty crack and ice cream, and on the way out bought some Girls Scout crack aka Thin Mints.

Home, finished the Brigadoon site, emailed the cast & crew.

Dinner was celery with home made onion dip (I used light sour cream, but there used to be something called Imo which was non-dairy I wanted to use but have not seen it in the stores. Must research that) and the last 8 pieces of frozen dim sum. And ice cream. And 3 thin mints.

Unpacking the groceries, there were only 9 Fancy Feast cans. I had put 10 on the conveyor belt. The receipt says I only paid for 9. I wonder where the 10th went...

Seeing lots of tweets and FB posts from friends who are at Gallifrey 1, the LA Dr. Who convention. I used to love that show, but then they brought on below-par companions and the final straw was Matt Smith whose face looks like he used it to break out of prison, and his skin is unnaturally pale. And I don't like what he has done to The Doctor. I ditched Torchwood when they traded intelligence for blood and gore. So that's not a con I'd enjoy overly much.

Put the last 600 Thailand slides back in their binders. Gathered up the B&W negatives from the same time period, estimated 1800 frames (but that's at 36 frames per roll for 50 rolls and it's going to be somewhat fewer). Found a place relatively nearby, Burlingame, which charges too much, but at least they do them. Costco doesn't. Boxed them up, went online and placed an order, which included UPS shipping labels and a 50% deposit. Ouch. Will send them off tomorrow.

Plans for tomorrow:
Up early, 9 am team meeting
Ship the negatives
Brigadoon rehearsal

Current Mood: productive
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

This morning was the "shake-out", which was amusing. My company did it up royally, starting with an announcement to duck & cover at 10:18 am, a few minutes later my boss came around to check on us (he's one of the first responders). After a few minutes I got back up into my chair, because after two quakes I know that anything that was going to fall on my in that place would have done so. Then the Person With A Clipboard came by, and just as she was telling me the drill wasn't over, the announcement came that the drill was over. Bwahaha.

Then my cell phone rang, and it was the company's automaton violating my privacy by asking if my family had an emergency plan. They should not be calling my personal phone, and that question is none of their business. It is clear the company does not have a viable emergency plan beyond duck & cover. And that's not a good thing to do if you're in the lab.

Spent an hour watching a video loop, to confirm that it is defective at the loop point, which means some tests I had marked as failed had actually passed. We didn't have the equipment to really know for sure until yesterday.

Lunchtime I went home for packages. Two at the office - a box of seltzer cartridges (which did not need to be sent needing delivery confirmation) and a HUGE box from my little sister which turned out to be 95% packing peanuts and 5% bubble-wrapped old framed family photos. UPS could have used a box 1/4 the size, and just bubble wrap. At the apartment door was another package, a new seltzer siphon. Twice the capacity of the old one, but still only uses one gas cartridge.

Went top Togo's for lunch, then back to work and got a wee bit farther with the automation project. It was very warm this afternoon, 80's.

Home, tuned in the 49er-Seahawks game and found myself rooting for Seattle. It was one of those frustrating defensive battles, neither QB had shown up for work and they both mostly relied on their runners. Boring. Seattle should have won, but they shot themselves in the foot two times too many. I flipped to the baseball game a couple of times, but it was already 1-6, the Not-Giants, so I stopped doing that after a while.

Dinner was hot dogs and corn on the cob. Domino sat on the floor in front of me, staring at me the whole time, even though there was nothing I usually would give her. Well, I do know she loves corn, but there wasn't enough, and on the cob is too messy.

Fired up the PC and attacked a long-delayed project. I had already made a first Photoshop batch pass of the 200 slides I had Costco scan for me back before I moved. Tonight I put them into subject folders (there were a lot of pictures from Tel Aviv beach which didn't belong in the set), did some more work on the ones which needed it, then burned a DVD for one of my Peace Corps buddies whose wedding photos were on it.

In the mail was my sample ballot, I knew they had received my change of address which I faxed from work when someone from that county department looked me up on LinkedIn.

Plans for tomorrow:
Fasting blood test @ Kaiser
Work
MRI @ Kaiser 9 pm
Figure out what to wear for weekend trip to San Diego. I don't plan on taking anything except the camera, 2 lenses, 2 batteries and a folding backpack. The phone will be my internet connection.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Home

But now I'm starting to feel like it is past my bedtime.

This morning I was so sleep deprived I emailed in that I would be late, stayed in bed with my eyes mostly closed while I called Comcast for the 4th time (plus two trips to their office) to get the second Tivo's cable card fully authorized. This card did have actual Comcast data on it, so I was able to provide a host ID and card ID to the nice man, and in about 45 seconds ESPN showed up on the TV. He was surprised it was there so soon. That was after 10 minutes of punching digits on the phone and waiting on hold. Hint: each time you enter another menu level, they try to sell you something. Hit 0 and it will abort the marketing crap and move to the next prompt.

So now I have the lovely Tivo GUI and all my Comcast digital channels. Yay.

Got dressed and drugged and out by a little before 10, went for a haircut, then to Costco where I picked up the first DVD and the 200 slides which were scanned onto it. Looked at them at work while other things were rebooting, and was very surprised to see a couple of ct photos and a handful from Tel Aviv beach in 1978. Or maybe it was still 1977. They did a goo job of cleaning the slides, and they all are in focus. They did not do any color correction, so before I post these they will need some serious photoshopping.

Yesterday I received surprise email from Ed Jilek, who was in the Peace Corps with me. We were nextdoor neighbors my second year - he taught and lived at Prince of Songkhla U which was at the south end of the Rubber Research Center's plantation. I photographed his wedding, which was at the local US consulate, and he had found one of the photos on my Flickr page during a web search for himself (now that he is retired he has time to play online). Coincidentally, the whole set of pix is on the DVD, so I'll make up a special disk to send to him & his wife Noi, whom I knew as Umaporn. Because she was a department head, and they are not called by their nicknames, especially on formal occasions. Soooooooo excellent to hear from Ed!

Work PC is now fully configured, and I was able to tweak an encoder to send the right audio signal, which let me record a couple of scrambled videos which our latest box can unscramble. And I did some other neat stuff. It's a very fast machine, 64-bit Win7, I don't know how much RAM but probably a lot since it's the company's standard engineer's model.

Found the latest updates for the Clarion in-dash unit. It needs two micro-SD cards and a USB drive. Tomorrow, I hope.

Preview performance, once again they ran the whole year-long big dance number. I expect they will do this every night. It HATEHATEHATEHATEHATE that. It effs up my prep for the show. It effs up everyone's prep for the show.

This was out first time with an audience. When I peeked through the gap in the curtain and saw only about 1/3 of a house, randomly scattered, I was disappointed. But they were LOUDly appreciative from the get-go, and the applause and shouts at the end of the big numbers hit me like a wall of sound. It felt like a Seahawks game.

They absolutely loved the show. Okay, so it helps that these are all friends of the cast who got in for free, but still. Looking online, there are only 3 center section seats left for the gala grand opening, and maybe a dozen on the left and right edges of the side sections. Walk-ups ought to sell out the house. This will also be a friendly audience. The big test will be the Sunday matinee - mostly retired folks who know their musical theater, have seen this show a few times before, and won't be yelling and clapping just to support their friends.

After the show they made us stay so they could give awards. All the cast members I would have given the Gypsy Robe to had already won it once (I guess this theater won't let anyone repeat) so it went to someone who didn't really deserve it. They gave the tech award to the stage manager, who mostly phoned it in this time. There were two others on tech staff who were more deserving, IMHO. Newbie award went to a great guy - come to think of it, I would have given him the robe as well.

Then there were photos. Taken from the booth. Cast, then cast&staff then add the crew & band.

Went on Safeway run, the GPS sent me to a mall which used to have one, but now it's an REI or something. Next choice was the one closest to work. Bagger has never payed Tetris. There's a Lucky's much closer, but they don't have the mint chip Klondike bars. Main reason was to buy some baby wipes. I bought a big bag of Huggies brand, which looked like it had two or three containers inside. Got it home, and it was a FAIL. One big pile of wipes, fan folded into a 1-foot-high stack. And they did a lousy job of removing makeup.

Oddball dinner. Rice pudding + cinnamon, sourdough baguette slices with cheese-n-bacon squirts, corn nibblets on the cob. Klondike bars.

Plans for tomorrow:
Change the litterboxes
Update the Clarion
Bake some cookies, and freeze them for next week's shows
U-haul, buy boxes. I have lots of tape and markers from the last move
CVS, buy better baby wipes
Spend some Starbucks time with the laptop
6:30 call for the show.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Home of the Weird

Went back to the PO to pick up the second box from Thailand. This one contained a bunch of beautiful silk screened T-shirts, and stuff I had not worn my first week in Bangkok: jeans, a bathrobe, a windbreaker.

Work was more fun than usual, they delivered my new laptop (which is always docked and acts as a desktop machine) and as usual, were half-assed about it. They imaged the box with the bare minimum of required software, and left it up to me to transfer the files from my old XP laptop. The desktop support clown did not even know about Easy File Transfer. I set that up at around 4, and left early because it was going to tie up both machines for 5 hours. I still need to install a dozen tools for video testing which IT should do, but doesn't.

I'd been hoping to read a book at lunchtime, but as I was going out to the car, automation guy was returning from the team's afternoon walk, and decided to go with me. We went to Barn Thai again. Good food, fast service, and both waitresses now speak Thai to me automatically.

He was asking about green coffee extract. My answer was anything being touted by Dr Oz has to be a scam. I'd looked into it for him and the only tests which have been published were not double-blind, and had tiny sample groups (like 16 or 22 people). I told him not to waste his money. Maybe in a year they will have actual data. Maybe.

My legs and thighs have been very sore from all the standing I've been doing at the incredibly unplanned and time-wasting rehearsals, and the lack of places to sit backstage. There's a nice green room, but it's in a trailer behind the theater and takes a while to get there and back. So as soon as I got home, I checked to see if the hot tub was warm (it was), changed and went for a 15-minute soak and bubble massage. Then I took a 2-hour nap. I feel much better now. Domino joined me, she parked her head against the headboard and draped her tail over my arm.

At the door was a large UPS package, I did not recognize the sender's name. It didn't match anything on my expected packages list. Turns out it was my photos from Chicon7. It included a bid sheet, and I actually sold two photos, not just one. Bamboo Cat as well as Raven. Those were two retreads, I like them a lot. So with 10% commission, I made $90. It cost about $300 to participate. I'm thinking maybe I will enter Loscon after all, using some of these prints, since they are already printed, mounted and labeled. There's also an Art Ark show I want to apply for, but probably with poster-framed prints instead of mounted ones. In both cases I'll set the sale prices low (like $25) which will pay for printing and mounting. And maybe at that price people will bid up. Maybe. We'll see. I still have a lot of other stuff to take care of.

The person who won the in-dash unit on eBay finally paid. It's a toy store in North Carolina. Odd but true, 3 out of 4 of the things I sold this week went to NC.

Got a bizarre email message from PayPal that the idiot I sold my HTC Vivid phone to wants a $60 refund (on a $200 sale) because he can't figure out how to make it vibrate when he gets a text message. I sent a message back that I didn't mention such a feature in the auction, and he needs to take it to an AT&T store - if they say it is defective he can send it back to me for a full refund. I'm not giving a partial refund for a perfectly functioning phone in the hands of a dysfunctional customer. I can sell it for the same price or higher to someone else.

After my nap I tried swapping the cable card from my working Tivo to the bedroom one. It worked. Swapped the non-working card to the working Tivo and got an error message. Basically, Comcast gave me a blank card. It's supposed to be programmed before they hand it to me, and it wasn't.

In other news, IMHO it's time to leave 9/11 in the past. It has been 11 years, and we have killed more than a million people in response. Mostly the wrong million people.

The attack on the embassy in Libya touched me personally a little bit. Chris was a Peace Corps Volunteer from the Bay Area, and returned while I was on the board of the Norcal Peace Corps alumni group. He served in Morocco, which meant he spoke Arabic, and was one of many PCVs from "hardship" countries who joined the state department to continue to use their language and cultural skills. I am hugely upset that the US Marines who are supposed to guard the embassy staff did not. I'm not too surprised that the Libyan government, which pretends to be our ally, did nothing to protect the embassy on the second day of riots.

Romney was out of line in the way he commented on the event, but he was right about the underlying issues.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
PO to ship eBay item
Comcast to trade in the defective cable card
Rehearsal

Current Mood: moody
Current Location: New Furball Hall

Up early three taxis refused to go to the place we were meeting for the grand palace tour, so I walked to the JW Marriott, chatted up an tipped one of the valets and in about 10 minutes a cab finally arrived which was okay with the trip. I don't know what the problem was, it's tourist central, they would have no problem getting a fare back.

It was a long ride, almost an hour, lots of being stuck in traffic, but the meter only said 86 Baht. And I was there just in time, except only a handful of others were there, and the tour organizer didn't show for another hour. After beating us up previously about being on time.

But it was gangbusters from then on. We were driven in posh vans by Army guys, to the privy council chambers, where we were greeted by three high-renking officials including the King's personal secretary and one fellow whom I think was a former ambassador to the US. Very posh room, they serve a variety of juice - I had the green one.

Then the vans took us right onto the grand palace grounds, through at least 3 "no entry" signs, with the guards saluting us as we went through. 15 minutes to hang around the main plaza and take pictures, then we were met by our personal guide, an army officer, whose English and sense of humor were pretty good. He was only about 30 or less, and when we left the main plaza a very elderly officer with a chestful of service ribbons tactfully added himself to the tour. We were let into places which few people get to see, including at least three throne rooms, and each time the younger guide was cautious about how far into a room we could go, the older man quietly made sure we were given first class treatment. It was awesome.

I took about 300 pictures, will upload those some other time.

Back into the vans at about 12:30, a 20-minute drive the the Bangkok Royal Sports Club, which is the clubhouse for the race track which also includes a golf course. Buffet lunch was amazing, western and Thai food, lots of desserts, very nice view.

It was tempting to stay forever in the freezing air conditioning, but I bailed at about 2:30, mostly to get back to the hotel and become horizontal for a while.

Got the photos onto the laptop, packed about 90% of the way, took a nap, then at 5 headed for the skytrain, took the water taxi to the conference hotel, and attended the final dinner. Again a great buffet. Listed to a lot of conversations, did not take any photos because I already had everyone's, and many others were snapping pictures. The organizer had put together a very nice slide show DVD wrapping up the week's activities both formal and ad hoc.

After, she passed the mike around, with the suggestion that everyone say a few words. Unfortunately, the first person was the formed PC country director, who had been a volunteer 47 years ago, and he went on for 15 minutes, which set the tone for everyone else. I had to bail by 9 to get a cab back to the hotel. By that time maybe half the room had spoken.

Back at the hotel I booked a 9 am cab to the airport for way too many baht, but it's hard to get one on the street which has a license for the airport, and the skytrain/airport express train thing with luggage is not any fun.

So, plans for tomorrow:
9 am to the airport
noon flight to Phuket
cab to Karon Beach and settle in for the duration

Current Mood: lazy
Current Location: Nana Hotel, Bangkok

Last posting was Thursday's events. Friday was the event I ostensibly came for, to meet the princess, and attend an official thank you at the Thai foreign ministry for 50 years of Peace Corps in Thailand. But they decided to hold it at 8 am, and require a suit and tie. One night in a long sleeved shirt and tie the night before cured me of wanting to do that again in Bangkok's heat. And i don't do mornings. And the whole thing changed because the protocol people got their knickers in a twist and decided only 30 people couold be in the group photo, and I was not one of them. And those 30 people needed to rehearse.

So I had a late dinner Thursday night, went bar hopping (drinking Pepsi or club soda) and watching the show. And processed photos till 2 am. Slept in Friday, then took the skytrain to Victory Monument with plenty of time to walk to the Peace Corps office for their open house. I had never been there before, the PC office was much closer to where I am staying when I lived here. It turned out to be a long walk. It took two hours. And my T-shirt was soaked by the time I got there.

It' a very beautiful building, word is it was a royal residence 100 years ago. Much much classier than when i was in PC. The staff and a bunch of current volunteers had all kinds of things going. Several things to sign, photos to be taken, displays on the walls which showed every decade's main programs except the biggest one (TEFL) my group was part of. Kind of a major fail there. No food or drink to speak of, either. Very odd for a Thai gathering.

Red & blue chairs on the lawn (what, no white ones? ) and a wireless mike which worked like a champ until you touched it. Short speeches from the country director, several RPCVs and current volunteers, all fun and interesting and inspiring. Two people I knew spoke, Nancie who was in my group and is now a world famous cookbook author, and Pete who was our training director.

The new volunteers introduced me to a new concept, called Thai-napping. Apparently this is Thai tradition I had never heard of where one gets kidnapped and taken on a tip or to an event, sometimes in costume, always by surprise or with minimal advanced notice. I had similar trips, but there was always some notice, and it was always consensual.

During the talks I took a few close-up portraits with the 200mm zoom. My favorite kind of shots. Fell in love three or four times. Amazed at how much energy the new volunteers have. Way more than I ever did. Part of it is they had to compete like mad to get accepted by PC, I was chosen without even applying.

I had my picture taken with one of them, Julia, who has startlingly vivid blue-grey eyes, dreds, and so intense that any day I expect her to achieve earth orbit by sheer will alone. Also had someone take photos with my camera of me & Faith, but all 4 were out of focus. The current generation doesn't know about focus, or viewfinders, they are used to using the LCD screen and the phone camera will automatically focus on faces. Very disappointed.

Minutes after the party was over, we had the traditional evening downpour. Two nights in a row the monsoon waited till the event was over.

Took an air conditioned bus back to the monument, and skytrain back to the hotel. Hit the bars again, restocked at 7-11, processed photos and went to bed early.
Photos ( behind the cut )

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Nana Hotel, Bangkok

With the torrential morning rains and what I expected to be flooding and traffic snarls, at 5 pm I paid the exorbitant 300 Baht ($9.50) fare to go to the US Ambassador's residence, expecting it to take an hour. We were there in 18 minutes. A couple of others had miscalculated the same way, but with our printed invitations and passports and being on The List, the half dozen embassy people at the gate let us in - doors were not supposed to open till 6. At the house, a very classy woman who was in charge of protocol for the event suggested it would be better to go back to the road, cross the street and park myself in an air conditioned coffee shop (there were several to choose from) until 6. So I headed back up the long driveway, and as I reached the gate an elderly American lady was coming in, who introduced herself as Emily. "Ketudat?" I asked. Yes indeed, this is the woman from Peace Corps Group 1 who worked at my first PC posting in Bangkok in 1975. She had married a Thai man, and was in charge of all things materiele for the place I was assigned to. I thanked her profusely for all her help back then. She said it was a long time ago.

When I told her I'd been turned away temporarily, she decided to take the same advice, but she was going to walk way down the block to the pedestrian overpass instead of trusting the crosswalk. Unfortunately, I did not see her again that evening.

There were already a few people at the coffee shop I chose, it turned out they are all current volunteers. And after a while the place was filled with them. Absolutely wonderful people, all ages but mostly fresh out of college. They have mostly been assigned to community development work "here's a list of 12,654 projects which your village may have a need for, pick one and go for it" is how one of them described it.

A little after 6 someone noticed what time it was and we all headed over. I got waved through, since I was already checked in. Same classy woman met me at the entrance and pointed me to the coat rack. No need to actually wear the suit jacket I'd had made special.

There were lots of servers with (non-iced) drinks, canapes, tiny munchy items, and they were everywhere. From the entrance we passed through a large covered terrace, and then to a lawn with a "just in case it rains" tent. There was also one small air conditioned room set up as a small art gallery, which had a poster board with a lot of old Peace corps photos.

I talked a lot. Too much. Listened a lot too, took a few photos. The US ambassador to Thailand is a hot redhead. There were a couple of other power redheads there - very interesting. She had been a volunteer in Thailand (funny, her bio on the embassy site does not even hint at that) and when the short session of formalities began she greeted us in Thai. More than just "welcome". Then we heard a fairly dull welcome talk from an assistant PC director. I think they are between directors at the moment. And a couple of the new volunteers (a clean cut young couple right out of the 1961 yearbook) MC'ed for three musical acts. First up was a FOB young man with a crew cut in a light salmon shirt and matching tie, who was going to sing something completely in Thai. which he did, but he not only sang in Thai lyrics, he sang in the Thai falsetto and chose a song with a 100 mph patter at the bridge. Twice. Lots of applause and cat calls. By now, though, most of the 300+ people had gone back to their conversations, so the woman who sang something simpler in halting Thai who could not be heard even with the microphone, and the woman who sang Moon River in Thai could not be heard 3 feet away. Very sad.

Back to mixing, talked to someone who was retired and living in Bangkok, who was stolen from me by the ambassador after she introduced him as a former ambassador to Thailand and close personal friend. Wow.

And another person was from DC, a former volunteer, she now runs an organization which matches engineers and scientists with policy makers. Of course they are only interested in PhDs.

Some of the art work on the walls was quite beautiful, especially two oils on canvas by a Seattle painter. Jose something.

As promised, they started kicking us out enough before 8:30 to have the place cleared by then. It took a while to find my jacket, there are no labels on it and there wasn't much light. But the material is unique and it it. By the time only one jacket was left, it was clear that one RPCV was leaving without his jacket. Welcome to Thailand.

I joined the small mob heading for the Skytrain station. No need to wait for a taxi, it was only 2 blocks and 345 stair steps to the station, and only one stop from mine. Virtually free because i still have 15 trips left on my pass card. The train was totally packed, but for one stop it was bearable.

On the way back to the hotel I bought 2 more kilos of longans. I could eat those all day. Ate some while I processed the photos and uploaded them to Flickr.

I was hungry and not too tired, so i changed (my shirt was soaked) and went across the street for some noodle soup, took a tour around a few bars (soda water for me - booze just puts me to sleep), bought a package of sliced mango and went back to the hotel. It was about 2 am. I had decided wearing the shirt and tie once was enough, and was not going to get up for the 8 am Big Event, which was going to be the classic Asian panoply of speeches in a crowded, hot, humid hall. I'll be dressed casually for the 4 pm Peace Corps office open house instead. I really want to talk to those volunteers and staff some more.

I woke up at 4 am feeling woozy and disoriented. Checked my Hgl - it was 68. Way too low. Not enough food, too much exercise. Good thing I'd bought those longans. Watched bad late night TV and chomped about 2/3 kilo of that very sweet fruit. By 4:30 I was well enough to go back to sleep. My phone rang at 8 am, I ignored it. Rang again, I looked, unknown number. It was probably someone wanting to know why I wasn't at the Big event. Voicemail failed, probably because I never set it up, and tex essage failed saying I was out of memory. Cleared lot of crap out of the phone and went back to sleep till 9:30. Got up, did my morning stuff, went downstairs for breakfast and read some more Hugo nominees on the Kindle.

Bought some more wi-fi time ($3/hr) and back to the room to catch up on FB & email. Apparently my big sister in Israel phone my 2nd sister in Baltimore asking why I had not returned her email messages. Probably because she hasn't written any in months.

( pictures )

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Nana Hotel, Bangkok

Taking the taxi to the opening dinner of the Friends of Thailand 50 Year of peace Corps in Thailand may not have been the best way to get there. It took an hour, and until we were in sight of the hotel from across the river, it was bumper to bumper crawl all the way. This at 6 pm in a city where most people work 8-4. The problem would be solved pretty easily by training and installing traffic cops at the hundred or so key intersections, and synchronizing the traffic lights. Part of the problem is years ago the city took outn all the suicide rondabouts and replaced them with exactly the same traffic pattern, but in a traffic light controlled format. So imagine traffic coming from 5 directions trying to cross and merge.

Tonight's event is not at that hard to reach hotel, it's a reception at the residence of the US ambassador to Thailand, not very far from my hotel. Which is why I am amazed they picked such an isolated hotel for the reunion. More on that later.

I allowed an hour and a half, and we got there in 1:03. Had a great conversation with the driver, more Thai practice. He had refused to use the meter, but the price he asked for was reasonable for that much traffic, so he got a tip.

Entering the ballroom lobby next to the dinner place, the first people I saw were my dearest friend (the only other on fro my PC group) Nancie, and the head of our training, 6'8" Pete. He's tough to miss in a crowd. The biggest changes with him are his formerly bright red hair is now salt and pepper, and he is built more like a basketball guard than a track star. Still charming and handsome. Nancie always looks beautiful and glowing. The reason they were out in the lobby (with 28 other PCVs) is they had won the golden ticket to be in th group photo with the princess on Friday, and one of the royal protocol people was there to pose them and practice the bowing and scraping which goes along with a royal visitation. I would have liked to be in the photo, but not at that "cost". I expect to be able to take photos of th princess if I go to the event Friday morning at th foreign ministry.

After they were done, we went in to dinner, it was a buffet of all kinds of yummy Thai food. Nancie and I sat together with one fellow from Group 2 (1963, I think) and several from Group 47 (I was in 51) who overlapped us th first year. We had met them briefly during one of thee combined language brush-up camps, probably at our half-way mark. I remembered their names, but not them. Two of those folks have been living in Bangkok, one man who recently retired here, and a woman who is married to someone whose company sends him to live in far off lands for a few years at a time. They have a house in Half Moon Bay which she is not sure they will ever get to live in.

There was a lot of table hopping, especially to the PC staff table, where someone who had been in the PC office when we were there (she was about 20 at the time) was sitting. she has just retired from PC. She looks like she is in her 30s, and her daughter looks about 15, but is probably 25. Nancie is a world-famous cookbook writer, her first three being brilliant books on Thai food and culture with recipes not just listed, but also explained. She has kept in touch much better than me.

The formalities were cut to a minimum because of all the late arrivals from the bad traffic (normally it takes 30 minutes to taxi there from anywhere in the city) but what they had was great - a slide show with a sample of photos from every group from the past 50 years, set to classical Thai music. She used a bunch of photos I took, including a classic one of Nancie and her pal Chaz mugging for the camera during a lunch break at language training. Chaz had just found me on FB last weekend. Paul, one of th group 47 people, said he knew Chaz a little, they had served in the same small town in a small province way up on the Lao border.

Lots of stuff to talk about. As things were wrapping up, I saw a great photo op - at the current PC staff table behind ours, two Thai women were huddled around a tablet being held by the very first Thai-American to serve on the Thailand PV staff (he's very tall and looks like a cross between Tiger Woods and Barak Obama). I told them in Thai that in my day we didn't have this technology, and that started a conversation, mostly in Thai, of about 10 minutes. They said I spoke Thai so well they thought I would be "an inspiration" for the volunteers when I go to the PC office open house later this week. I asked if they still used the "Silent Way" teaching method, they said no. hich pretty much explains why volunteers are having trouble learning Thai.

Later, Paul, his wife, Nancie and I went to the 24 hour cafe downstairs and chatted will almost midnight, when I had to grab a cab back to my hotel. The trip back took 20 minutes, another interesting conversation. Another big tip. He used the meter when I asked him to, which makes big points with me. Except for the airport trip, the meter price barely covers the cost of the ride. Most taxi drivers insist on negotiating a fare, or just surprising the unwary tourist with some large number. In this case the meter showed 95 Baht (about $3) for a trip the hotel taxi charges $20 for, and the on-the-street negotiated price is between $5 and $7. The trip is about equal to a drive from San Francisco's Pacific Heights to the Oakland hills.

Back at the hotel, dropped off the camera & knapsack, then went across the street and hd an excellent bowl of "sen-yai" wide noodle soup with won ton, unidentified meat balls, scallions and assorted Thai spices. Nom nom. Took a quick tour of the bars, decided what I really needed was a banana split, so back to the hotel cafe for that, and then to bed.

This morning I copied yesterday's photos to the PC, will upload most of them (only about 50) to Flickr.

Right now it is pouring rain so hard I can't see more than a block away, and just heard some thunder. Time to get dressed, and go downstairs to take photos. My windows are all rained on.

Current Mood: up too early
Current Location: Nana Hotel, Bangkok

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Writing Wrongs

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Entries tagged with peace corps

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