Trien's Baby Bump

Here's Trien five months pregnant, and showing off her "baby bump". This picture was taken in the Lake Gardens right outside our apartment, while we were watching for the church van to pick us up.

Give a Hundred Monkeys a Hundred Typewriters and What Will Happen?

You know the old saying, give a hundred monkeys a hundred typewriters, and eventually they will type all the works of Shakespeare. OK, for those of you wondering what would really happen, they actually did a scientific study on this in England, using six macaques. What happened was this:

The alpha male bashed hell out of the computer with a stone and the other monkeys did little else but urinate and defecate on the keyboard. Nevertheless, the monkeys did produce the equivalent of five pages of type with a predilection for the letter S. One researcher said that proved the monkeys were not hitting the keyboard at random, so were part of the way towards literacy. Defending the expenditure, a lecturer said the filmed experiment made very stimulating and fascinating viewing and was cheaper to produce than reality TV, but there was no sign of Shakespeare.

Maybe I find this so funny because I live surrounded by monkeys, and no, you silly person, I don't mean my students. I mean real monkeys, long tailed macaques and dusky leaf monkeys. After having watched them in action, I am surprised they didn't start ripping the computer apart, and trying to eat the components!

For those optimistic types, you have a better chance of winning the lottery a hundred times in a row, than the monkeys typing even one line of Shakespeare. So start buying your tickets now!

My Hair

(My haircare idols)

Ok, so I am now 45, and will be 46 next month. There is not as much hair on my head as there used to be, but I am not looking like my dad yet. He was gray haired and bald by the time he was my age, but then again, he was married to my Mom. That was enough to make the poor man look like he was 80 when he was only half that age.

My wife, however, is sweet, kind, and patient, and likes to play with my hair. I love it when she does that. Thank God I still have most of my hair, although it is thinning in a couple of spots.

I tend to let it get a bit longish and unkempt. I don't own a comb, and the few times that I have, I either never used it, or lost it very quickly. Basically, I subscribe to the Kurt Vonnegut/Albert Einstein/Ludwig van Beethoven school of hair care. It knows how to grow, so leave it alone.

Lately, I have been using this cheap shampoo I got from the Guardian Pharmacy here in Taiping. It was one of those cheap 6 Ringgit specials in a generic bottle. It says "Hair Regrowth Treatment", or something like that on the label. I figured, what the hell, give it a try. It's only six Ringgit ($1.74). The list of ingredients has stuff like horse nettle and other plants and herbs listed, and it seems to come from some lab in Germany. I figured it was something that didn't sell in Europe or North America, so they are trying to dump it on the market here in Malaysia.

Ahh, so why not? It was just some cheap shampoo. That's all I wanted. It probably wasn't going to work anyway.

Well, guess what? The other day my wife was running her fingers through my hair, and she says:
"Honey, your hair is thicker. Look, you didn't have hair there before! And is this the color your hair was before? It's changed!"

My hair was a grayish brown, sort of a transition color before it went all gray. Now? It's back to brown, with only a few spots of gray left. And there does seem to be more of it. Not bad for some 6 Ringgit shampoo!

When I finish here, I am going to run over to Guardian and buy a lifetime supply. Lord knows, I'll probably need it, what with a baby due in four months!

Bagels in Beijing

In 2003 I was working at the New Day Creations Foster Home and Community Center in Qingyundian, in the Beijing district of the PRC. I wrote a little about that experience in a previous post.

One day Byron and Karen Brenneman, the American half of the operation, and Danny and Eileen Rubirosa, (he is the great-nephew of the famous Latin lover Porfirio Rubirosa, which is actually Danny's real name), who help run the community center and the orphanage, respectively, got an urge for some real New York style bagels. So we piled into the van with their kids, and drove to the outskirts of Beijing, near the airport. We ended up in what turned out to be a light industrial park. When we got there, we were surprised to see a neatly kept, fresh looking bagel shop.


It had the Irish sounding name of Mrs. Shanen's Bagels.

Well, Mrs. Shanen was not Irish, but Chen Lejen, a Taiwan born, Brooklyn raised Chinese-American.

Framed up on the wall was a New York Times article from 1998, that told her story. I would have linked to it here, except that the Times wants you to subscribe to Times Select, or to purchase the article for $4.95. So instead, I will link to the next best article I found.

We went in, but they were getting ready to close. Mrs. Shanen was very kind, and showed us around, and shared her story with us.

She used to work for National Geographic, and did freelance tv production work. While on assignment in the PRC, she met her husband. after a couple of years, they got married, and she moved to Beijing.

Growing up in Brooklyn, she developed a taste for bagels. After moving to China, she missed having those good Brooklyn bagels, so she started experimenting, to see if she could make them on her own.

Eventually, she found the proper recipe and way to make them, and opened up a small factory. At first, she employed impoverished unskilled men and women in the factory. That was, until she found out that the men thought that working meant sitting around all day drinking tea, reading the newspaper, smoking anywhere, and spitting on the floor. When it became obvious that no amount of talk or threats would change their behavior, she fired all the men, and replaced them with women. She found that women were much easier to train, and kept to accepted standards of hygiene.

Her husband had his own little factory, but eventually, her bagel business became so successful, that he sold his business to help her out. That allowed them to open up a couple of different businesses right next door to the bagel shop and restaurant.

After that, even though it was late and they were getting ready to close, we had a couple of their pizzas, which were great.

Mrs. Shanen's Bagels has developed a relationship with the New Day Foster Home, and has helped them out with donations of food for the kids.

So if you're ever in Beijing, and have a craving for bagels, pizza, or good food, go see Mrs. Chen Lejen and her husband at Mrs. Shanen's Bagels. It's worth it, if for nothing else than to talk to Mrs. Chen!

Hornbills in Our Backyard

Trien and I were relaxing on the futon when we heard a strange sort of "laughing" sound coming from behind our apartment. It sounded like some sort of bird. So I got up and opened the louvered window, and there was a pair of hornbills sitting in one of the trees. She yelled,"Quick, Honey, get the camera! Hurry! You run, run run!"

It wasn't hard to grab the camera out of the wardrobe. I tried taking a picture of the pair through the louvers, but it came out all dark and fuzzy.

So I decided the best thing to do was to try to take some shots from the balcony. The only problem was that I wasn't wearing any pants, just a pair of briefs. But Trien kept yelling to run out there before they flew away, and not to worry about wearing pants.

Well, I didn't want our new neighbors to wonder why this strange American guy was running around the balcony all excited, with a camera and no pants on. So I fumbled around trying to put on my pants, with Trien excitedly urging me on. Putting my pants on wasn't as easy as it would seem, because one, I am very clumsy, and two, my back is still hurting me. I did the best I could, but by the time I made it to the balcony, the first hornbill had flown away.

I did manage to get this picture of the remaining one. If you click on the picture, it will enlarge and you can see it in the tree. I managed to get another shot off as it was flying away, probably because my wife was yelling so much.

It flew towards the Lake Gardens, where a few days before I saw a hornbill crashing through the trees. I took a picture then, but had to delete it because the camera was on automatic, and it screwed up the focus and the lighting, showing a dark blurry object in the middle of some medium dark leaves.

They must have a nest close by. That's where I will keep my camera, so hopefully I can get some better shots soon.

Hamster Powered Paper Shredder

I just thought that this was just too cool, a perfect fit of form, function, and economy. This paper shredder is run by the hamster running in the wheel, and the shredded paper can be used as its bedding.

I know if I had a hamster, I'd be running out to get one of these babies! Even if I didn't have hamster, I'd buy it, and get a hamster, just to see how it worked. Even if I didn't have any paper to shred.

But then, you know, the animal rights activists would find out what I was doing, and say that I was exploiting the poor little hamster. Then I'd have a bunch of cretins from PETA protesting outside my door, demanding I free the poor innocent little slave from his misery.

Meanwhile, how many people right here in Asia are slowly starving to death, in bondage, or otherwise living an unbearable existence, with nobody to speak out for them?

I just don't know about people sometimes. They will get all worked up about some stupid animal being exploited somewhere far across the world, yet not give a crap about some poor human suffering down the street.

Who speaks for them?

English Class Student Pics

The pictures above are of my students in the lowest set in Form 1. They are the ones with the worst English skills. I teach them three times a week.

Last year, the school didn't put the students into sets. The excuse was that there weren't enough teachers to do that. That meant the classes were all mixed levels, with more advanced students mixed in with ones that were barely beyond the beginner stage. As you can imagine, it can be a real challenge to teach mixed level classes. If you tailor your lessons toward the better students, the lower students can't understand what is going on. You end up with a bunch of students looking back at you with blank stares. After that, they will either turn off, or act up. If you tailor the lesson toward the worst students, the better students will finish early, get bored, and will act up. You can give them extra things to do if they finish early, but then they will wonder why they are being given more work to do. If you try for a happy medium, then they all hate it! In any case, you have to spend most of your time with the lower level students, helping them or explaining things to them over and over. That means the more advanced students don't end up getting the attention they might need. Basically, in a mixed level class, everyone loses- the teacher and the students.

This year, after pressure from the Ministry of Education, and CfBT, the NGO I work for, the Form 1 students were given diagnostic tests, and put into sets. I was given the ones who did the worst.

Worst means worst. One of the boys ended up getting a 3 out of 100! someone else got a 13- well, you get the idea.

These kids are definitely more comfortable speaking Malay, and will try to do it all the time if I let them. Of course, I don't let them. I will say in my fake angry voice:

"Is that English?"

And give them my fake one-raised-eyebrow-mean-scowl.

My students even wanted to know how much Malay I understood, to see if they could communicate with me, and forget about speaking English all together. My reply?

"I've been living here for over two years. What do you think?"

Their reaction? The usual:

"Huh?"

Sometimes I think "Huh" is their favorite English word.

Even worse than my students speaking Malay is their speaking Manglish, which is Malaysian pidgin English. That is because when they are speaking Manglish, they feel that they are speaking real English, and not some bowdlerized version of it. It doesn't matter that their word order is all wrong, their grammar horrible, and they are using a bunch of words which no native speaker would ever recognize. To them they are speaking real English! The real challenge of my job is trying to break them out of those bad habits they have from speaking Manglish. Hopefully, I can get them to recognize that there is a difference between what they speak, and what the rest of the world recognizes as standard English. If I can do that, then half the battle is already won.

The Singing Filipinas and the PIKOM PC Fair

Well, we've made it to the 5 month mark in the pregnancy, and everything is going well. My wife's tummy is getting bigger, but she hasn't put on much weight- only a kilo over the past month. Physically, she is doing ok. Other than some slight nausea and diarrhea the other day, which was probably caused by some bad chicken she ate, everything is ok.

She went swimming with the other Filipinas from Taiping Saturday, at the Coronation Pool near the entrance to Bukit Larut. She said that the baby really enjoyed it. The baby wasn't the only one who enjoyed it- she didn't get home until almost midnight. I was on the phone talking to my Mom when her and her friends came in and started singing Mother's Day songs.

That's ok- I wasn't sitting around the house waiting for her all day. Nope. I was out doing my own thing too. Mr. Wong and I went out to the PIKOM computer show in Penang.

Not that I didn't want to spend time with my wife and her friends, but I really wanted to go to the computer fair. I missed it last year because we were on our trip to Phuket after our second pregnancy misfire. This year I didn't want to miss it, because the one in Penang was supposed to be the biggest one that they are having this year.

Mr. Wong had to drive a student to Penang to take part in the Public Speaking competition at KDU College. At least that was what he told his wife so he could go. It wasn't a lie either- we did have one student who wanted to try to win the trip to London. Originally there were three of them, but the others chickened out, and decided that being part of the school wind orchestra was much more important than potentially embarrassing themselves in front of an audience.

So at 7:30 am Mr. Wong showed up at our place with the student. We went over to the roti channai place at the circus grounds hawker stalls, and had some breakfast first. Anytime I've been anywhere with Mr. Wong, he usually pays because he gets to the proprietor first. This time I made sure that I paid, trying not to seem rude or impolite, or not appreciating Mr. Wong's normal generosity.

After that it was off to Penang, and everything went smoothly. We found KDU with no problem, although we were about 45 minutes late. We dropped off the student, and told him we'd be back later. How much later, we didn't know, because the computer show started at 11, and it wasn't even 10 yet.

To kill some time, we went to the Chowrasta Market, and Mr. Wong showed me where the used bookstores are on the second floor. They are almost literally piled floor to ceiling with books. If you are looking for a certain type of book, just ask the owner and he can find it for you somewhere amongst the piles. If you're an inveterate browser like I am, you could probably spend most of the day looking around there. We spent about an hour there. I came out with two books- one a book about the Holy Spirit, by Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho, whose church in Seoul has 850,000 members. I figured it would make a nice gift for our Pastor for Easter. The other was an ESL book from Cambridge University Press, "All Kinds of Writing", which seemed well worth the 8 Rm I paid for it.

Then it was off to the Penang International Sports Arena for the show. We got there a little after 11, and the place was already packed. Mr. Wong knew right where to go, and we easily found a parking space under the arena.

So we started looking around to see what kind of things they had. I was in the market for another pendrive, as the 1GB one I already have is almost full. When Trien and I were in KL running around between ministries and embassies, I saw a 4GB pendrive that had compression software that would allow you to get 5 times as much space, for about 100Rm. I didn't buy it then, and was hoping I could find it there.

The first thing that caught my eye was the little MP4 music and video players. They looked cool, but turned out to be little more than fancy toys. Sure, you can download songs and videos onto them, but you can't play them on anything else. You can't hook them up to a computer to play the video, or anything else to play or download the music, so what use are they?After learning that, my initial interest passed quickly.

There were plenty of pen drives for sale there of all capacities and prices, but what really caught my eye and my interest were the portable hard drives. The ones being sold in the mezzanine around the outside of the arena were about 270 RM for 80 GB. We were both interested, but instead of buying right away, we decided to look around some more, and see if we could get it cheaper.

Sure enough, when we entered the arena itself and started looking around, we found the prices for the portable hard drives getting cheaper and cheaper the more we looked. The cheapest we found was 178RM for the 80 GB model.

We didn't buy the cheapest one, even though it was made by a well known company. The company is one that is well known for its electronics, and not its computer components. Plus, the guys selling them were selling them already inside of the case, so you couldn't be sure what you were really getting. My New York Scam Radar was going off big time. After talking to Mr. Wong, we both decided to go to the booth selling Seagate brand portable hard drives for 189 Rm without the case. At least then, you could see what you were getting. The case was 13 Rm extra, and they put the hard drive in it for you. After a little soft bargaining, we got the complete package for 199Rm.

After that, it was time to pick up the student. We were late, but not too late. We would have been there sooner, but for some unknown reason, we couldn't find it. It was as if we were stuck in the Bermuda Triangle of Penang. Nothing seemed to make any sense, nothing seemed familiar, and we were running low on fuel. So we stopped for gas, made a bunch of wrong turns, and drove around aimlessly until things looked vaguely familiar enough to get us back to where we should be.

Our student didn't do too well. He only scored 17 out of a possible 40. He didn't seem too happy to have to sit around and watch the semifinals. So we went to the mezzanine and snagged some tea and whatever snacks were left.

After that, it was off to the hawker stalls along Gurney Drive for something to eat. I had the char kuay teow, while Mr. Wong bought a huge plate of tofu and fried food covered with a sweet and hot sauce for us all. The best part about it was watching the student, who was a Malay, trying to use chopsticks for the first time in his life, and failing miserably. Mr. Wong had mercy on him, and asked the hawker for a fork.

After that, it was back to Taiping. We dropped the student at SERATAS, where a few parents were visiting the form 1 students, and having dinner al fresco.

Then it was home for me. I made a quick call to my wife. It was so noisy in the background that I could barely hear her. This time they weren't singing songs, which for a group of Filipinos is very unusual. They were all chattering away happily, and there was laughter in Trien's voice. That was cool, and I was happy she was having such a great time.

I went off to the Internet cafe to surf the 'Net, and waste some time until she got home.

If you want to know, yeah, I did miss her. It's just not the same coming home to an empty house anymore. It never used to bother me before, but now it just seems so empty without her there. Not just empty in the apartment, but empty in my soul, too.

The Lake Gardens at Sunset

Taiping Lake Gardens View Toward the Bridge Hosted on Zooomr

A picture that I fired off at a moments notice without thinking about it. Like many artistic things that I do without thinking, it came out much better than I could have thought. This photo is now one of my favorites.

The Road

This is the road leading to our new apartment, at dusk. The apartment complex we live in is visible through the trees on the left. The road that circles the Lake Gardens is lined with old Rain Trees, whose branches reach across the road to form a natural green arch, the tips of which dip into the lake.

I had just finished running drama practice, and was sitting near the boathouse, waiting for my wife. She is the figure in black you can see in the picture if you enlarge it. We are going to walk into town to the hawker stalls, and get something to eat. Since it is Qing Ming, the day that the Chinese go to tend their ancestors graves and leave offerings, most of the Chinese hawker stalls will be closed.

Afterwards, we will go home, and love each other, and fall asleep in each others arms.

Monitor Lizard and Monkeys in Motion

My teaching day was over, but I was walking back to school to run drama practice. There was a big monitor lizard eating the garbage the monkeys had pulled from the trash along the side of the road. When I went to take a picture of the monitor lizard, it slowly headed down the embankment to the river (the Sungai Buloh). I went to the edge of the trees, and snapped off the photo you see here. What I didn't know at the time, was that the camera was on automatic, and for some unknown reason, set an eight second shutter speed!



Then I noticed I was getting wet. There were a couple of juvenile long tailed macaques jumping up and down and shaking the trees to try to scare me off. So I took the next photo of them. This time the camera set a six second shutter time. These are the results- blurry surreal shots of the riverbank, and monkeys in motion in the trees!

This Car Gets 100 Miles per Gallon- at 100 Miles per Hour!

Now this is cool. Who wouldn't want a car that can go 100 miles per hour, and get 100 miles per gallon? I know that would be my dream car. Well, that is after a sky blue 1965 Ford Mustang with a 289 V-8 engine. My old 1980 Honda Civic used to get around 45-50 mpg on the highway, but could do 100 mph only if the brakes had failed and I was going off the side of a mountain. but anyway . . .

The Venture is a three wheeled hybrid vehicle. Because it only has three wheels, it can't officially be called a car. Instead, it is classified as a motorcycle. Whatever! The body tilts while the wheels stay on the ground, which means it must be fun taking corners at high speed.

It has safety features like an airbag, side impact beams, etc. The engine is located in the rear, and while it is designed for two passengers, there's not much room to carry alot of gear or take the kids to soccer practice.

I like to see innovative designs like this. I hope this car gets off the ground. We need transport like this to help fight global warming and pollution. If I could get one of these babies now, me and the wife would be flying around the Lake Gardens in style!

More information on the Venture One cars is available at the Venture Vehicles website, or you can get the breaking news at their Blog.

The Chinese Grandfathers on the Bridge

This is the little Chinese style bridge near the boathouse in the Lake Gardens. Usually there are Chinese grandfathers hanging around there whiling away the time. They usually don't do or say anything, just sit there and look at each other, day after day after day. It's like a Chinese version of "Waiting for Godot", except that the Vladimir's and Estragon's seem to change everyday. Maybe that's the whole point . . . and the grandfathers are actually part of some sort of nihilistic existential presentation. Maybe they are actually trying to "out-Beckett", Samuel Beckett. Or maybe they are just lonely old men with nothing else to do. I prefer the former to the latter, because if the latter is true, then it's one of the saddest things I've seen in a while . . .

My Photos

If you can't tell by now, I like taking photos. I carry our digital camera with me everywhere. I take my cue from my great grandfather, who started out as a crewman on a German submarine in World War One, and ended up as a master chef on luxury liners. Wherever he went, his camera was close by. He got great shots of the submarine rescuing crewman from a fishing boat they accidentally rammed, and what the sub looked like afterwards, the sinking of the Graf Spee, and shots from his travels all over the world. I hope to leave a similar record for others.

I have photos on two different websites. The photos on our Webshots site are of Trien and me, and my travels around the world.

The photos on Zooomr.com are of life here in Taiping, and the local area.

I keep adding photos all the time, mostly to the Zooomr.com site, because hopefully they won't delete my account like webshots once did, because I didn't sign up for a paid account when they changed their service in 2000. Plus, Zooomr has given me almost unlimited space for putting one of the pictures they host on my Blog. Not a bad deal, and hopefully they will grow and prosper!

Kristopher Tate, the guy behind Zooomr, is only 18. He's got some radical ideas on what the site will be about. From the article previously linked:

One of the key features will be the ability for users to monetise their photos as stock photography.

"We feel our users are creating some great photos and not just for sake of consuming this media but also showing what is going on all round the world.

Upload photos

"We want to allow our users to make money and revenue off their work and only share 10% of the sales ourselves."

Tate and Hawk believe the stock photography business is a $2bn (£1.01bn) market. They also see it as a way for Zooomr to break even; the site does not charge users to upload photos and there are no limits on how many pictures can be hosted.

You have to pull for the little guy.

Viva La Zooomr!

Sunset Over the Lake Gardens

I really like this picture I took the other day walking home from school. It's the sunset over the Taiping Lake Gardens, located right across the street from our new apartment. Click on the picture to get an enlarged view.

My Student's Rugby Haka Youtube Video

This is a video I made of two of the students at my school, SERATAS (Sekolah Menengah Sains Raja Tun Azlan Shah), in Taiping Perak, Malaysia. I am the Project English Teacher there. They are members of the debate team, who were bored and didn't have anything else to do. So they decided to do their version of the New Zealand rugby team Haka. I guess they are practicing it so that they can do it before the debate, and scare the hell out of the other teams, or make them helpless with laughter!

I told them I would put them on Youtube, but I don't think they believed me. They will crack up when they see this!!!



The next video I made by accident. These are some of my form 2 students. They were in class waiting for the parent-teacher meeting to end, and are dressed in the batik uniform shirts they have to wear when they leave the school. You can see the school name in the design of the shirt. When the meeting is over, their parents will meet with the teacher in charge of the class, pick up their test scores, and then the students will go home for the weekend. Our school is a boarding school, and the students, except for emergencies or special occasions, only get to go home once every couple of months or so. So these guys are excited to be going home, and anxious for the meeting to end.

In the clip, they see me and come out of class to have their picture taken. I forgot I had the camera on movie mode instead of picture mode, and took a couple of seconds of video instead. There's not much there, I know, but since they always watch Youtube, I figured I would put it on there, and see if they find it.




This is how the picture came out:



The kid on the left of the front row, I can't remember his name, is a real wiseass with a smart mouth. I've had to throw him out of class a couple times and make him stand outside against the wall. Meor, the chubby kid in the middle of the front row who looks so serious, is actually one of the jolliest and most easy going kids around. He always has a smile on his face, except for this picture. The one on the right of the front row, well, seems to be in a permanent narcoleptic state. According to the kids, he even falls asleep at the mosque during prayer time.

The kid on the back row left, is a quiet, easygoing joker. The other two next to him, they are too quiet. It's hard to get them to say two words in English total between the two of them.

So yeah, these are my students, some of the top students in Malaysia. They are under a really rigid schedule that leaves them no free time, and lots of pressure to perform well by their families. That's why I'm not a real hardass in class, unless I have to be. I never give them homework, because they already have more than they can handle from their regular teachers. They already have it tough enough, without me making it worse.

Monkeys on Motorbikes

A couple of pictures of the local long tailed macaques on motorbikes I took during my walk home from school. Don't mess with another monkey when they are about to get a handout!

Another from Wellington Grey

This one is cute, and all too true. It's kind of how I feel about my wife. No matter what, I'll always love her.

What Would George W Bush Do? (WWGWBD?)

It's been a while since my last anti_Bush post. So here goes, courtesy of wellingtongrey.net:

Our New Apartment

Trien and I have just moved into our new apartment here inTaiping, located right across from the Lake Gardens. You walk out of the building, and in less than 100 meters you are there. I can walk to my job, and be there in fifteen minutes. Plus it is very close to town. We don't need a car to get around.

Our Apartment is on the back corner of the complex away from the road, so it is quiet. It is also nice and cool, being on the third floor to catch the breeze, and with windows on three sides. Plus there are three balconies for us to relax on. It is very large. Almost everything we have fits in the master bedroom.

(This is the view from our back balcony)

The first day we were there, Trien called me up at work. She never does that unless it is really important.

She said, "Hi honey, are you busy?"
"No baby, I'm not."
"Honey, I just took a walk around the Lake Gardens, and now I am eating roti canai with Jesse and Mei Ling at the hawker stalls. Later on I will walk to the store and pick up a few things."

Being a Filipina, she is not going to come out and say directly what she thinks. You have to read between the lines. It's not hard to see that what she really said was:
"Wowee! This is a really great place. I love it here honey!"



(This is our apartment complex, as taken from the Lake Gardens.)