With all of the recent natural disasters, and the implications to the airline industry, I've had several conversations in the past few weeks regarding what I consider irrational fears: death from flying, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Statistics showing that more people die of traffic accidents, lightning strikes, and even bad potato salad are unable to dissuade people of these fears.
The discussion inevitably leads to the question: "What are you afraid of?" Snakes, if they are physically capable of touching me. Other than snakes, I'm not really scared of anything....but the following items freak me out!
1) Asteroids. I know NASA has the NEO program to look for, identify, and chart the path and trajectory of Near Earth Objects and that they have identified no imminent threat. That's great. They've identified nothing that will hit Earth in my lifetime. Is anyone looking to see if something will hit the moon? A 10km asteroid colliding with Earth would destroy all human life. A 10km asteroid that hits the moon, and nudges it enough that Earth's gravitational pull is irresistible would be worse. The moon colliding with Earth would destroy the planet, not just the life on it. Same question for colliding with Mars or Venus. What would be the fallout of those collisions? At least Obama has decided that we should focus on landing on an asteroid, instead of Mars or the moon. That is somewhat comforting.
2) Social Media. Seems a bit hypocritical that someone who is active on Facebook, LinkedIn and has a blog would fear social media, but I have a reason for it. Social media is allowing us to connect in ways we've never connected before. Which means we connect with the goat herder in Kandahar who shares our interest in weaving wool baskets, but we don't know the name of our neighbor. We use Skype to talk to people across the world, and use our HOA to complain about the weeds in our neighbors yard. We also speak anonymously, and the venom and vitriol anonymity permits has made people angry, spiteful, and hateful. I fear social media will destroy the fabric of humanity...anathema to its goal.
3) The lowest common denominator. In the quest for equality, we have grown closer to "sameness". Smart people are mixed with struggling people, and then the teachers teach to the stragglers. Rich people are taxed at rates that try to equalize income with people who have neither the capacity nor the work ethic to earn extreme wealth. We lower standards so under-represented classes can gain access to jobs and academic institutions for which their natural abilities do not qualify. We've decided the way to make people "equal", is to homogenize. Homogeneity is what you get through inbreeding, not by treating people equally.
4) Global Public Debt. Not so much the size of the debt, or the fact that governments seem to perpetually spend more than they earn, but who owns it. China has the capacity, through its strong debt ownership position, to destroy the US economy. More than anything else, watching China take over the world is what scares me. Talk about homogeneity. China is the current manifestation of Star Trek's Borg.
Of course, like earthquakes, volcanos, and flying, I have no control over any of the above, so I just don't worry about it. I only worry about the things I can control.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Another week gone
We've rounded the half way point of our assignment. The next 50 weeks will very likely fly by since we are spending more than 10% of them on vacation. As for now, we're following our routine:
Sunday: Stay at home and do things around the house. Sometimes, I'll go to the driving range in the early AM.
Monday: I have my piano lessons. Yep, after 25 years of not playing, I'm taking lessons again.
Tuesday: My daughter has ballet and swimming lessons. My wife does Pilates.
Wednesday: My wife does yoga, my daughter has tennis lessons. It is also our date night, and we endeavor to try a new restaurant each week, but often visit a favorite instead.
Thursday: Tennis for my wife, dance class for my daughter.
Friday: Family movie night. We watch a new, family friendly movie none of us has seen (or at leas most of us haven't seen) and order dinner from Toscana's. This week we watched E.T.
Saturday: Day trip with the family.
Last week, for our date night, we saw the movie "Frozen", which was a much better movie than I thought it would be. Might be a little too much gore for some, and plot was very similar to the love-it-or-hate-it "Open Water
". For me, it passed the test of a good movie - my wife and I were talking about it the rest of the night.
Our Saturday trips are quite the event at our house. We are prepared to have a great time, and we all need to look the part. Even our son gets into the act.
This week our Saturday day trip was Gelanggan Samudera an animal park in the Ancol entertainment complex I've written about before. If you add Gelangan Samudera and the Ancol Sea World, which we visited in June of last year, it is a close approximation of the Sea World we all know in Orlando and San Diego.
At Samudera, we saw a 4-D movie about sea turtles with the obligatory environmental message. We then saw a Miami Vice-like "Scorpion Pirates" show that featured jet skis and acting like you see on Mexican Soap Operas.
Next to the pirate show was an animal variety show that surprised us with the animal participants. It really was quite amazing. I have seen video of bears riding bicycles, but never seen it in person. More amazing was the tame hippopotamus.
After the animal show, we were all soaked to the skin with sweat from sitting outside, and needed to cool off. We took the opportunity to visit the indoor fresh water aquarium near the sea lion and dolphin show. Half of the aquariums had fish that I had in my aquarium back in Arizona - neon tetras, bala sharks, ciclids, tiger barbs, knife loach, catfish.
We finished with the aquarium just in time for the start of the dolphin show. Good, but nothing spectacular. I guess I've seen enough dolphins jump through hoops and do flips in the air that it isn't exciting anymore. It is always amazing to see these animals move with such power and grace through the water, though. That will never get old.
The dolphin show wrapped our day. We'd seen everything at that point and weren't interested in any of the rides. Four hours after arriving, we left...and had dinner at Hacienda.
Sunday: Stay at home and do things around the house. Sometimes, I'll go to the driving range in the early AM.
Monday: I have my piano lessons. Yep, after 25 years of not playing, I'm taking lessons again.
Tuesday: My daughter has ballet and swimming lessons. My wife does Pilates.
Wednesday: My wife does yoga, my daughter has tennis lessons. It is also our date night, and we endeavor to try a new restaurant each week, but often visit a favorite instead.
Thursday: Tennis for my wife, dance class for my daughter.
Friday: Family movie night. We watch a new, family friendly movie none of us has seen (or at leas most of us haven't seen) and order dinner from Toscana's. This week we watched E.T.
Saturday: Day trip with the family.
Last week, for our date night, we saw the movie "Frozen", which was a much better movie than I thought it would be. Might be a little too much gore for some, and plot was very similar to the love-it-or-hate-it "Open Water
". For me, it passed the test of a good movie - my wife and I were talking about it the rest of the night.Our Saturday trips are quite the event at our house. We are prepared to have a great time, and we all need to look the part. Even our son gets into the act.
This week our Saturday day trip was Gelanggan Samudera an animal park in the Ancol entertainment complex I've written about before. If you add Gelangan Samudera and the Ancol Sea World, which we visited in June of last year, it is a close approximation of the Sea World we all know in Orlando and San Diego.
At Samudera, we saw a 4-D movie about sea turtles with the obligatory environmental message. We then saw a Miami Vice-like "Scorpion Pirates" show that featured jet skis and acting like you see on Mexican Soap Operas.
Next to the pirate show was an animal variety show that surprised us with the animal participants. It really was quite amazing. I have seen video of bears riding bicycles, but never seen it in person. More amazing was the tame hippopotamus.
After the animal show, we were all soaked to the skin with sweat from sitting outside, and needed to cool off. We took the opportunity to visit the indoor fresh water aquarium near the sea lion and dolphin show. Half of the aquariums had fish that I had in my aquarium back in Arizona - neon tetras, bala sharks, ciclids, tiger barbs, knife loach, catfish.
We finished with the aquarium just in time for the start of the dolphin show. Good, but nothing spectacular. I guess I've seen enough dolphins jump through hoops and do flips in the air that it isn't exciting anymore. It is always amazing to see these animals move with such power and grace through the water, though. That will never get old.
The dolphin show wrapped our day. We'd seen everything at that point and weren't interested in any of the rides. Four hours after arriving, we left...and had dinner at Hacienda.
Odd and Interesting Jakarta (Indonesia)
After a year of living in Indonesia, I've learned a few interesting stories, facts, and characteristics about the world's fourth most populous nation (behind only China, India and the United States) that most people don't know.
1) If you see yellow flags, someone has died. When driving around the city, you'll often see yellow flags tied to electrical poles, posted on stakes at intersections, and hanging from trees. The flags are to help the departed's soul find its way home. The flags start at the place of death (hopefully a hospital) and end at the person's home. I have not asked what they do if the person dies in another country or on a different island.
2) Coconuts kill. A common, though infrequent, cause of death in Indonesia is coconuts falling from the palm trees and landing on someone's head. Palm trees can grow to a height of 70 feet, and coconuts can weigh up to 20 pounds. The velocity from gravity alone is enough to kill. A few months back, the paper relayed a tragicomedic story concerning falling coconuts. In Bali, on a Saturday morning, a man dies from a coconut landing on his head while he slept underneath a palm tree. The next day, his brother goes to the spot to hang the yellow flag...and is killed by another falling coconut. The two-fer is rare, but death by coconut, is not.
3) Lots of lightning. Do you know the place on Earth attributed with the most lightning activity in the world? It's about an hour from my house. Though hotly debated (a city in Malaysia would like to claim the honor), a neighborhood of Bogor, Indonesia, has 320 "thunderstorm days" (days when meteorologists hear thunder proving, in theory, the existence of lightning) each year, on average. This reconciles with my less-than-scientific observations of the clouds to our southwest every evening over the last year.
4) Touching the ground is a big deal. I've mentioned this before, but many Indonesian children, especially in Bali, are always in someone's arms until they reach six months of age. At six months, the Balinese will host a ceremony where the child's feet will touch the ground for the first time.
5) Wet means clean. This is probably the hardest thing we've had to adapt to. When you walk into a bathroom in the US, if the floor is soaking wet, you walk out. In Indonesia, if the floors, walls, sinks and toilets are all wet, it means they were just cleaned.
6) Safety? What's that? Since living here, I've heard, read, and witnessed several activities that left me scratching my head. From road construction workers laying hot tar and using jackhammers while wearing open foot sandals, to the families of seven - including the toddler sleeping on the handlebars - all piled on a motorcycle for a ride into the city, safety just doesn't seem the top of everyone's mind. On my way home from work recently, we came upon an accident scene. A 9 or 10 year old boy was LEGALLY driving his motorcycle and cut in front of a car he should not have. Luckily, he was uninjured - but boy was he mad! His bike did not appear to be as lucky as he was. The men who thought using an active runway for a shortcut were not so lucky. A news blurb recently reported that two men were hit by a landing airplane at a flight training academy as they tried to use their usual shortcut.
1) If you see yellow flags, someone has died. When driving around the city, you'll often see yellow flags tied to electrical poles, posted on stakes at intersections, and hanging from trees. The flags are to help the departed's soul find its way home. The flags start at the place of death (hopefully a hospital) and end at the person's home. I have not asked what they do if the person dies in another country or on a different island.
2) Coconuts kill. A common, though infrequent, cause of death in Indonesia is coconuts falling from the palm trees and landing on someone's head. Palm trees can grow to a height of 70 feet, and coconuts can weigh up to 20 pounds. The velocity from gravity alone is enough to kill. A few months back, the paper relayed a tragicomedic story concerning falling coconuts. In Bali, on a Saturday morning, a man dies from a coconut landing on his head while he slept underneath a palm tree. The next day, his brother goes to the spot to hang the yellow flag...and is killed by another falling coconut. The two-fer is rare, but death by coconut, is not.
3) Lots of lightning. Do you know the place on Earth attributed with the most lightning activity in the world? It's about an hour from my house. Though hotly debated (a city in Malaysia would like to claim the honor), a neighborhood of Bogor, Indonesia, has 320 "thunderstorm days" (days when meteorologists hear thunder proving, in theory, the existence of lightning) each year, on average. This reconciles with my less-than-scientific observations of the clouds to our southwest every evening over the last year.
4) Touching the ground is a big deal. I've mentioned this before, but many Indonesian children, especially in Bali, are always in someone's arms until they reach six months of age. At six months, the Balinese will host a ceremony where the child's feet will touch the ground for the first time.
5) Wet means clean. This is probably the hardest thing we've had to adapt to. When you walk into a bathroom in the US, if the floor is soaking wet, you walk out. In Indonesia, if the floors, walls, sinks and toilets are all wet, it means they were just cleaned.
6) Safety? What's that? Since living here, I've heard, read, and witnessed several activities that left me scratching my head. From road construction workers laying hot tar and using jackhammers while wearing open foot sandals, to the families of seven - including the toddler sleeping on the handlebars - all piled on a motorcycle for a ride into the city, safety just doesn't seem the top of everyone's mind. On my way home from work recently, we came upon an accident scene. A 9 or 10 year old boy was LEGALLY driving his motorcycle and cut in front of a car he should not have. Luckily, he was uninjured - but boy was he mad! His bike did not appear to be as lucky as he was. The men who thought using an active runway for a shortcut were not so lucky. A news blurb recently reported that two men were hit by a landing airplane at a flight training academy as they tried to use their usual shortcut.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Bunny visits and Dog House Construction
Sunday has become our day to relax. I typically will go to the driving range in the early AM, and then we spend the rest of the day at home. We usually send our driver home after just a few hours of work. They alternate who works Saturday and who works Sunday because the Sunday shift is so light.
This Sunday, we had a visit from the Easter Bunny. As we explained it to our daughter, we were in Singapore when the Easter Bunny made his annual rounds, so we missed him. Mommy and daddy sent him an email asking him to come back this weekend.
Our daughter loves to hunt for and find things. She started doing this around 18 months old at the birthday party for the son of one of my colleagues. On Sunday morning, when she awoke, there was a small egg in her doorway, another one at the base of the stairs leading up to our bedroom, and one on the stairs. We wanted her to come and wake us up before she found all the others....it worked....at 6:30 AM. She had a blast searching for all the eggs and finding the candy and barrettes inside. Our son even got into the act, though he wasn't quite sure what to make of all the activity.
After the Easter morning, and my visit to the driving range where I learned my 7-iron has a hook, and my 3 iron has a cement block tied to it, my daughter and I built a dog house using a cardboard box. I saw her using the box earlier in the week as a house, and it gave me an idea. Construction was pretty easy:
Step 1: Close one end of the box, and cut out the top two flaps, leaving the bottom two flaps as the floor.
Step 2: Fold two flaps on the top of the box towards each other, using one of the flaps you cut from the bottom as a roof.
Step 3: Tape everything together
Step 4: Cut a hole in one side to act as the door.
Step 5: Paper mache everything so it has a solid, smooth structure.
Step 6: Paint it.
We had a blast doing it.
This Sunday, we had a visit from the Easter Bunny. As we explained it to our daughter, we were in Singapore when the Easter Bunny made his annual rounds, so we missed him. Mommy and daddy sent him an email asking him to come back this weekend.
Our daughter loves to hunt for and find things. She started doing this around 18 months old at the birthday party for the son of one of my colleagues. On Sunday morning, when she awoke, there was a small egg in her doorway, another one at the base of the stairs leading up to our bedroom, and one on the stairs. We wanted her to come and wake us up before she found all the others....it worked....at 6:30 AM. She had a blast searching for all the eggs and finding the candy and barrettes inside. Our son even got into the act, though he wasn't quite sure what to make of all the activity.
After the Easter morning, and my visit to the driving range where I learned my 7-iron has a hook, and my 3 iron has a cement block tied to it, my daughter and I built a dog house using a cardboard box. I saw her using the box earlier in the week as a house, and it gave me an idea. Construction was pretty easy:
Step 1: Close one end of the box, and cut out the top two flaps, leaving the bottom two flaps as the floor.
Step 2: Fold two flaps on the top of the box towards each other, using one of the flaps you cut from the bottom as a roof.
Step 3: Tape everything together
Step 4: Cut a hole in one side to act as the door.
Step 5: Paper mache everything so it has a solid, smooth structure.
Step 6: Paint it.
We had a blast doing it.
An Easter Event
Friday, 15 April, our community held an Easter event for the children. They didn't have to do anything, so I won't begrudge them the two weeks tardiness. I think all the kids were on Spring Break and likely out of town if they had tried to hold it on Good Friday, so this worked out better. The events started at 3:30, and I left work at 3:00 to try to be home in time to see everything. I missed the egg painting, but not much else.
The event started with the egg painting. Then they had an MC who lead the children through a variety of activities like making chicken noises, making funny hats with straws (my daughter wasn't quite sure what to make of that), popping balloons with their legs, and the limbo. A magician followed these festivities, and a clown that made balloon animals completed the set. After the entertainment concluded, it was off for the egg hunt. The older kids found all the eggs, so my daughter found none. They were nice enough to share what they found with her, though.
The event started with the egg painting. Then they had an MC who lead the children through a variety of activities like making chicken noises, making funny hats with straws (my daughter wasn't quite sure what to make of that), popping balloons with their legs, and the limbo. A magician followed these festivities, and a clown that made balloon animals completed the set. After the entertainment concluded, it was off for the egg hunt. The older kids found all the eggs, so my daughter found none. They were nice enough to share what they found with her, though.
Waterbom
Our Saturday event this week was a visit to Waterbom. There are several water parks in Jakarta that go by this name, so I asked around. Everyone, including my driver, said the one by the airport was the best one. At $16 per person, versus $5 at the other parks, it was also the most expensive. Because of the price, and, probably, the time of year, we had the park mostly to ourselves. There was no waiting at any of the rides.
We rented a cabana by one of the pools at the back of the park so our nanny had a shaded area and a bed for our son while my wife, daughter and I ran around to the various slides. The highlight of the park, for us, was the five storey tall inner tube ride. Similar to "the Loop" in Singapore, only this one was mostly a vertical drop. My daughter was too small for the ride (she's 104cm and the ride required 107cm), but no one stopped us or even measured.
We climb the five flights of stairs to the top of the slide. My wife, daughter and I climb into the inner tube raft and the ride attendant pushes us into the tunnel. For the first few seconds of the ride we are doing turns in a pitch black tunnel. We emerge into the light to begin our descent down a roller-coast size drop. We take the first of two drops and my daughter's face goes white with fear. We take the second drop and she's not sure what to think.
When we hit the water, it slams over the side of the raft and knocks my daughter off her seat and on to my wife's feet. As the raft comes to a stop at the end of the shallow pool, my daughter gets up and says: "Let's do that again!!"
So we did. She wasn't as scared the second time.
When we returned to the cabana, our nanny told us that the woman in the cabana next to ours is a famous Indonesian TV star - one of the daytime soap operas. No one was chasing her for autographs. Our nanny said Indonesians don't really do that.
Below are some pictures from the pool by our cabana. As you can see, my son was able to join in the action.
We rented a cabana by one of the pools at the back of the park so our nanny had a shaded area and a bed for our son while my wife, daughter and I ran around to the various slides. The highlight of the park, for us, was the five storey tall inner tube ride. Similar to "the Loop" in Singapore, only this one was mostly a vertical drop. My daughter was too small for the ride (she's 104cm and the ride required 107cm), but no one stopped us or even measured.
We climb the five flights of stairs to the top of the slide. My wife, daughter and I climb into the inner tube raft and the ride attendant pushes us into the tunnel. For the first few seconds of the ride we are doing turns in a pitch black tunnel. We emerge into the light to begin our descent down a roller-coast size drop. We take the first of two drops and my daughter's face goes white with fear. We take the second drop and she's not sure what to think.
When we hit the water, it slams over the side of the raft and knocks my daughter off her seat and on to my wife's feet. As the raft comes to a stop at the end of the shallow pool, my daughter gets up and says: "Let's do that again!!"
So we did. She wasn't as scared the second time.
When we returned to the cabana, our nanny told us that the woman in the cabana next to ours is a famous Indonesian TV star - one of the daytime soap operas. No one was chasing her for autographs. Our nanny said Indonesians don't really do that.
Below are some pictures from the pool by our cabana. As you can see, my son was able to join in the action.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Disney on Ice
Saturday is the day we do something fun with our daughter. This Saturday, we took her to Disney on Ice. The show is here for 10 days and we went to the first showing, and we experienced some first show challenges. First, shortly before the schedule intermission, the building lost power and they had to restart the show from where it died. Second, only about 40% of the seats were filled, though that could be more about the ticket prices starting at $37 each in a country where that is 40% of the monthly minimum wage. Finally, there were at least three wipeouts from the performers.
As I'm watching the show, I also realized just how ingenious is the marketing team at Disney. The show was an advertisement not only for their theme parks, but for some of their animated features "The Incredibles
", "Lilo and Stitch
", "Sleeping Beauty
", and "Toy Story
", and everyone in the audience had just paid good money to listen to their advertisement.
The show was good for kids, rather dull for adults - but that's the case for most things in children's entertainment. Our daughter really enjoyed it.
As I'm watching the show, I also realized just how ingenious is the marketing team at Disney. The show was an advertisement not only for their theme parks, but for some of their animated features "The Incredibles
", "Lilo and Stitch", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Toy Story", and everyone in the audience had just paid good money to listen to their advertisement.The show was good for kids, rather dull for adults - but that's the case for most things in children's entertainment. Our daughter really enjoyed it.
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