Cairns, Great Barrier Reef and Mission Beach

I've managed to cover 5 cities in the span of just 2 weeks and attended a whole slew of activities. Traveling is hard (and fun) work and at the same time, I am sad to say that I only have less than 3 weeks before ending this trip and making it back to Japan. I still have yet to cover what I've been doing since leaving Airlie beach; and I have a lot to cover after going through my photos. After sitting down for the last 2 hours writing and realizing that I still have to cover my trip to Adeliade, Sydney and touching down in New Zealand, I will have to wait for another time as this post will get ridiculusly long!

Australia – Cairns

I hopped on a late night bus from Airly Beach to Cairns to arrive in the morning. I had no idea what to expect out of this city at first, but all I knew was that this was a great place to catch a boat to dive the great barrier reefs.

Cairns is a cosy town, situated right by the waterfront with an assortment of palm trees and nice parks near by. A botanical garden is situated just out of the town cetner and a few zoos are near by but I didn't have the time to catch a bus to make it all the way out there.

I came in and got a place for $19/night at a backpacker's hostel and booked myself on a 1 night 2 day diving trip to the great barrier reef the next day. The trip set me back $270, a little on the pricy side but it's just one of those things that I've have to do while in Australia.

While killing time in town, I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow backpacker by the name of Franz, a guy in his mid 30's from Switzerland that just recently quit his job working at an oil company to do some traveling. A very interesting guy as he can play the digeridoo and knows some poi. A really friendly guy. He has also been in town for the last few days and was really nice to show me around town. Especially to the grocery store.


Franz, the Swiss digeridoo player!

In the afternoon, while walking around the lagoon, I stunbled upon an Australian guy by the name of Boyd, practicing poi and is currently an aspiring fire spinning professional. As I approached him he was quick to greet me. I really like friendly people. At the time there were also some young Japanese people around practicing juggling, poi, the digeridoo and the african drum as well. I knew that this was a really cool crowd of people so I naturally dropped my stuff, pulled out my poi set from my bag and started practicing with them.

I ran into Franz by the lagoon and naturally invited him into join the fun, and so he did as he brought out his digeridoo and came to join up with us. We hung out outside until the evening and had a great time practicing. I took a photo to commemorate the event. I really enjoy the gathering of random people doing something they enjoy doing together. I do believe that sharing and helping is what brings people together. As the evening drew to night, we eventually packe up our stuff and headed home in preparation for tomorrow. For me, my adventure would take me out to dive the great barrier reefs.


An afternoon of african drums, digeridoos and more!

The Great Barrier Reefs

I made a booking on boat going by the name of the Rum Runner. It looks like a sailing boat but it's powered by a motor. The mast and sails were there mainly for asthetic purposes. There were 16 people on the trip including myself. The boat was run by 2 deckhands and one divemaster. I got to meet all sorts of people on board, joining from the UK, Germany, Columbia, Switzerland and more. A very international group of people and I had a great time hanging out with them. The food on board was pretty good too. The ocean was clear and it was a bright sunny day. the sun was exceptionally hot and I kept on applying sunscreen to prevent myself from getting burned.

On the first day, we did 3 dives, 2 during the day and one more night dive. The great barriers reef were very beautiful and there was plenty of aquatic life to be seen. I caught sight of cray fish, a hermit crab, an assortment of clown fish and more. My best description of diving would be like swimming in a very large aquarium. Personally speaking though, I thought that the dive sites of Sipidan in Malaysia, where I got certified, had nicer corals, but still the great barrier reefs was something to see.


Top: Jumping off the boat, BottomHanging out



Left: Dinner time! Right: Roast beef, it's what's for dinner!

The great barrier reefs can also be easily enjoyed while snorkeling. Just that diving lets one go a little deeper into the waters, the experience is pretty much the same (and even a little cheaper). For those that have a chance to make it out to the Cairns, I would highly recommend having some fun on a boating trip out.

Of an interesting note, I was thinking about how much money these diving boats were making. The dive boat I was on took 16 people onboard at about $200 gross a person. The hostels that book these tours seemed to take about a $30-$40 cut and then there is a $10/day reef tax to pay for people going out to the great barrier reefs. Doing the math, a boat like this brings in $3200 over a 2 day period, operated by 3 people and the boat is owned by someone else that manages the business.

Doing the math, I let's assume that the deckhands might get $200/day and the divemaster might get $350/day. For the 2 days, we are looking at about $800 total for the 2 deckhands, and day $700 for the divemaster, or about $1500 in costs for manning the ship. Say that food for 16 people over 2 days costs about $200 extra so the that would bring the total expenses up to $1700, leaving about $1500 for the 2 days for the owner of the boat. I don't think that's too bad of a deal to be running an operation like this.

I did some research into prices for boats while in Australia (after passing by a marina for the boats) and used small live aboard boats go for about $40,000 ish or even cheaper. I would guess for a boat of this size might run into the $120,000 to $160,000 range and estimating at about $750/day for the owner and a $160,000/day price tag on the boat, I believe that the boat would pay for itself in about 7 months. I did not include mooring fees and maintenance into the equation but I would guess that a boat like this would end up paying for itself within 2 years (assuming that business is good during the high season and business might be slow during the slow season). Sounds like a good and fun business to run to me!

Mission Beach

Mission beach was introduced to me by Franz before leaving on my diving trip. I did some reading into it and learned that it was a beautiful 3 km stretch of beach about 2 hours by bus out of Cairns. It's a sleepy little area and not many people go out there, but I decided to go there, just to be off the beaten path.


Mission beach, 3 km of beach. It just keeps going and going
I arrived at the bus stop at Mission Beach after a morning bus ride and got picked up at the bus station by a car taking people back to a backpacker's lodge called “Scotty's”. The place ran at $24/night but it was a really nice place, complete with a pool, lounge, kitchen and more. The city around the area is a little quiet but a really great place to get away from it all. I walked the beach and along the streets back to find all sorts of resort houses in the area. I found out that there were a few companies in the area offering skydiving packages where people got to skydive onto the beach. Sounded like a lot of fun, but I didn't have the time to participate.


For $24/night, it's like staying at a resort!

I did meet up with Franz at the backpacker's lodge to find him doing some part time work, a night shift job just watching over the place in the evenings and then he changed over to cleaning the pool and doing some odds and ends for free accomodation and an extra $40/day. Not bad if you just wanted a place to hang out and relax. I also found some other people working at the local bar, getting paid $20/hour in the evenings and working for about 5 hours.

It's not bad working here and I think it is a great way of funding a trip through Australia. Doing something like this in Japan, unfortunately, is simply impossible as bar work pays about $7~8/hour. It's a different world.

I walked the beach and hung out at the backpaker's lodge before catching a bus back to Cairns as I would be catching my flight to Adeliade and a fire show. But this is all I'll write for now. Will have to catch up on my writing another time!

Australia – Airlie Beach

Airlie beach is a backpaker's haven, where nearly all backpackers traveling along the East coast of Australia to make a stop, as this place is the jumping point via boat to the Whitsundays Island, known for the whitest and finiest sands in the world. Word has it that the sand is so fine on the Whitsundays, the sand was used to polish the lenses on the hubble telescope before sending it off to space. Naturally, upon heading such a story, I had to make my way up there to see the sands for myself.

Taking the plane from Brisbane to the Porsipine airport, I covered 600 km in an hour to arrive at Airlie Beach. I checked into the Youth Hostel by about 5 pm and grabbed some groceries to whip up some food. The nice thing about the youth hostels in Australia is that many of them are equipped with kitchens, making cooking your own meals a viable option. As I noted before, a decent meal will run into the $10 range, now with a kitchen available, the cost of eating drops down to $3 a meal or up to $8 if you're on a splurge (excellent for whipping up a nice dinner after a long day of trekking).

I had the fourtunte of meeting a fun variety of people at the hostel I was at. There were a bunch of people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan I met up with and had dinner with them. The included picture is a group shot of us enjoying a beer outside trading stories of our adventures.

The interesting thing I learned from them is that finding work while traveling in Australia is very easy. Actually, the jobs they have out here are very interesting and I'd consider them fun! Work for travelers as a deck hand or diving assistant (with training up to dive master) on a sailing ship / tour boat is readily available. Fruit picking, hostel work and restaurant work is also available but I would consider the jobs on the boats to be the most fun. The pay isn't that bad either with wages starting at $16.30/hour, way better than the minimum wage in Canada or Japan. Working while traveling in Australia is very feasible to earn cash while traveling and a chance to meet other interesting travelers.

Of another interesting note, if one were to look up the bulletin boards in Airlie beach, there are plenty of messeges to be found for people running boats looking for some crew to help out while they travel up and down the Australian coast. All you need to do it help out with running the ship and you'd have a free ride on a boat (with some chances to stop by some interesting islands, go snorkeling or diving). The options for traveling through Australia is nearly endless. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to take advantage of these offers since most people are heading South to Brisbane or Sydney for Christmas or the New Years.

Over the weekend, I took a 1 day tour to the Whitsunday islands, which included some snorkeling, hiking to a view point and a visit to the beach with the incredibly white and fine sand. The Whitsunday island is very beautiful, with surrounding ocean having a clear blue hue, surrounded by shining white sand. When I made it out to the Beach to play with the sand, I found it very fine, like playing with powder. The sand dissapears after just taking a handful and throwing it into the air. As a cautionary note, people have had problems with the sand getting into their cameras, gumming up the gears that move the lens around. I kept my camera on the boat for most of the time and brought it out for a little bit to take a few pictures; and even then, I still got a little sand in the camera. Fortunately after some use, the sand seems to have fallen out.

For those that are making a trip out to Australia, I recommend making Airlie Beach one of your stops!

Oh, and I ran into Santa in Australia. :)

The news and Freedom; some comments about Malaysia

I have for the most part stopped paying too much attention to what that the news says. There are problems with it in the US and even other parts of the world. Election coverage of the US election is biased, where even the news pundits themselves are going out of the way in dubious manners to to defame certain politicians.

I have traveled to Malaysia where I have had the opportunity to stay at guesthouses run by local people living the country to learn that similar things happen here. One of the guesthouse I stayed at is partially managed by a journalist and I have heard from him that he is limited in the kinds of articles that they can publish. Especially ones that are critical of the government.

He would tell me that should the newspaper publish a critical article of the government, they would be called up by a member of the government and have “tea” with them where they are reminded that their charter to operate could be nullified. Also, to keep the officials happy, newspaper would be encouraged to let go of the reporter to show their sincerity. It would seem to me that Malaysia too, lacks a completely free and open press.

In Kuala Lumpur, I had an interesting experience with a Indian taxi driver while being transported away from the batu caves (a very large cave near the city). he would get a phone call from one of his buddies letting him know not to use certain roads back to the city as they are blocked off in anticipation for an upcoming protest. The protest is about the marginalization of rights of the Indian ethnic groups. I am not entirely sure about the details, but the one things that was certain was that the ethnic Indians were not happy with the way the government treats them.

I would read the local English newspaper (the Star) days after the protest. The newspaper paints an obviously biased picture for the government, calling the protest “illegal” and that the government found it unfortunate that the Indians could not use the system to voice their concerns. My opinion is that the system is likely broken.

The Chinese in Malaysia

I have read from one of the SE Asia Lonely Planet guide book that though the Malays run the government, it is the ethnic Chinese that runs the economy here. I have traveled through several cities in Malaysia and have had the opportunity to meet many Chinese Malaysians (technically, the Chinese born in Malaysia refer themselves as Malaysians and the Muslim population is regarded as the Malays). What I would learn about the co-existence between the Chinese and the Malays was quite fascinating.

Malaysia is a country that has not signed the Charter of Human Rights and that officially means that the government does not have to guarantee the equal rights or treatment of it's citizens. The laws in Malaysia prevent ethnic minorities from running for positions in the government, barring both the Chinese and the Indians from cabinet positions.

Though the ethnic Chinese do not have a say in the government, they more or less have a strong voice because should the government treat them poorly, Malaysia's economy would be sure to suffer.

The Chinese Malaysians I met are 3rd generation Chinese and they are caught in an interesting and yet odd predicament-- they would consider themselves foreigners in both Malaysia and China, a people without a homeland. But I would find this fascinating because they harbour little anger for the government so long as they are able to go about their business and make a living for themselves. Should things turn for the worse in Malaysia for them, some of the people I've met would simply consider leaving.

I find this mindset fascinating because in other places in the world, I believe that there are ethnic groups that would fight a bitter and often fruitless battle with the government to attain these rights-- if the game is rigged against them, it is simply just better to not to play it and look for a house with better rules.

I believe that if more people played by these rules, the government might become more responsive instead of the typical elections held approximately every 4 years, because ordinary people can vote with their feet at anytime.

Singapore

Since starting off my journey in developing countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, landing into the metropolis that is Singapore was an incredible shock to me. Getting out of the airport and onto their rapid transit system, the first thing that struck me was how developed and clean the city was. The buildings, roads and and was exceptionally well kept. I would even say that Singapore is cleaner than Japan.

The skyline in Singapore is scattered with all sorts of incredibly nice skyscrapers and had the look of a cutting edge city. The first question I had to ask myself was, “how was a metropolitan city built in the middle of south east Asia on such a tiny island?”

Shipping and Finance in Singapore

Though an engineer in training, I have a strong interest in economics. The key factor for the development of any city, is that there must be an economic value a city produces that allows it to thrive for the population to grow and the development of infrastructure. What Singapore thrives on is the shipping and banking industry.

What is fascinating about Singapore compared to it's neighbor Malaysia is that Singapore has a port which does not charge tariffs on goods passing through the area. The location of Singapore position at the tip of Malaysia allows for easy access of ships to deliver their goods to Oceania and Asia. From what I have been able to learn from the people I've met there is that Singapore is also able to easily acquire a wide variety of goods from the ships that passes through her ports.

Though I am not entirely sure how the financial industry developed in Singapore, I am very curious as to how it developed.

Multi Culturalism and Breaking the Language Barrier

It is interesting to hear that Singapore isn't all that interesting from many other travelers. What these travelers may mean by this is that Singapore just seems to be another modern city to them. Fortunately to me, there is a whole slew of interesting beneath the surface of Singapore that fascinates me.

As a person that has lived in Japan for the last 2.5 years, one of the largest challenges that Japan faces is the English language barrier. No matter the number of years students in Japan have learned English Japan, their proficiency is generally rudimentary at best. The general Singaporian can probably speak 3-4 languages. Those of the Chinese descendants will speak Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Malay. The Indian descendants will speak several Indian dialects in addition to English. The the diversity in languages spoken in Singapore makes it perfect as a base for international trade. Many multinational companies operating on the Pacific Rim prefer hiring people from Singapore instead of Hong Kong because of their language proficiency, and they don't speak with a thick Chinese accent.

It is oft quoted by the Japanese that it is hard for the Japanese to learn English because it is an isolated island country, though Japan is also heavily involved in international trade in a similar way to Singapore. What I believe that needs to be pointed out to the Japanese is should they want to become proficient in English as a nation, it is crucial to create an environment where English can be used in a common and daily situation.

During my travels to Denmark in September, I learned from the students that it was only recently that some classes were being taught in English at school and University. As a result of this, there is an interesting language gap between the current and older generation, with the younger generation being very proficient in English and the older generation (ie. grandparent generation) with limited English skills.

My Experience

I had a particularly great time in Singapore. The Singapore doller is about 0.7 to 1 Canadian dollar, making things in Singapore 30% cheaper than buying things in Canada or Japan. The interesting things is that Singapore is touted as one of the most expensive countries to travel to in SE Asia. Though this is true, when we are talking about meals going for $1 or less in Vietnam or Thailand, traveling through Singapore is still entirely affordable.

I was able to afford a guest house for about $17/night for a dorm room in the city. Meals were in the ball park of $3-4 and still very reasonable. Transportation using the rapid transit or taxi was also very cheap. I was able to have a great time sampling the food in Little India, shopping in China town and going through the more expensive shopping district on Orchard Street. In the evenings, the nice restaurants and watering holes along Clarke Quay were usually fairly busy.

I wasn't able to experience the wild night life however, since I was traveling light and had no dressy clothes to get into the fancier party places. But from what I saw from the outside was that the Singaporeans definitely knew how to party it up.

I had a great time hitting the national library, which held plenty of interesting events, that included a a drama performance by young children, an evening aerobics session held outside, an art show and more. I even found some massage chairs that operated for free in some of the lesser traveled areas in the library that I used for a good 30 minutes to relax. Who would have known that I'd have so much fun checking out a library.

Of another interesting note, I stumbled upon an Indian rock group singing in Punjabi. I had a hilarious time listening to them call out to the crowd in a thick Indian accent. I never would have thought that I'd be listening to a Indian rock performance in Singapore.

I ended up staying about 4 days in Singapore before moving on to Malaysia. In the future though, I would consider moving to Singapore for a while for fun. It seems like a pretty nice place to live. Though the only thing that might irk me about the place is how some of the people I've met there are somewhat money driven, but I guess it is to be expected for the financial capital of SE Asia.

Back Online

So it's been a while since the last time I posted to this blog. The bad reason for this is that internet access is sometime hard to come by and if I do want to some writing, my writing often occurs when I have nothing better to do (usually at night, after I am pooped from traveling around). This problem has now been rectified as I have invested myself into a ultra-portable laptop. Running in the $350 range with only 4 GB of hard drive space.

I am now operating off the Eee PC computer developed by ASUS. We are now on the way to ubiquitous portable computing as I have mentioned before. I am now working off the wifi network at the guest house I am staying at writing this post from the comfort of the dining table.

A shot of the Eee PC is depicted here for reference and a quick outline of the specs are as follows:

4 GB flash memory
7" size
1 kg in weight
512 MB ram
Xandros Linux
3 USB ports
approx 4 hours battery life
External monitor connector
Memory card reader
Wireless internet
Web camera


This ultra-portable computer is perfect for a traveling person like me with minimalized size and a rich set of features. I am now able to easily fit this computer into a hand bag and pull it out whenever I have a free moment. Though one of the limitations of this computer is the small HD size, (approx only 1 GB of free space to use), I am currently hooking the 60 GB external HD to this computer for all my storage needs (ie my pictures and loading new sets of music into my iPod mini).

As a result of my experiences with this computer, I am very confident that ultra-portable computing will be the next big thing to hit. The next big thing to happen in the coming years is the development of an extensive wifi wireless network to supplement internet connectivity to these mobile devices. What me will see in the future is the development of a roaming wifi network, allowing computers to connect between different routers seamlessly. I believe that these networks will eventually either supplement or replace cellphone networks in the future.

Commercialization of these wifi networks will likely happen and if the cellular carriers are on the ball, they will eventually transition to equip themselves to develop a high speed cellular internet system to keep up with ultra mobile networking devices. Interestingly, if a large wireless internet platform were to be developed, I believe that such a network will be very cheap as wireless routers only cost in the $100 range. What we may find is a wifi network consisting of open routers allowing for either free or very cheap internet access.

Deployment of wireless networks is significantly cheaper and easier than deploying ground lines and these networks will piggy back off these ground lines. The wireless ultra-portable revolution will likely have been started by Apple's iPhone but it is the computer makers of ASUS, Intel and the OLPC initiative that will drive the creation of these networks.

Watch out for companies developing full coverage of wireless internet networks and applications them. This will be the next multi-billion dollar market.

Oh.. and I forgot to mention that postings will be more frequent from here on in :)

Mastercard Secure Code!?

For the last 3 hours, I have been trying to book an airline ticket out of Thailand to Vietnam. The problem is that the company I am booking though (Air asia) requires a secure code for my card before accepting payment.

Well the problem is that I had never heard of it before and the website they kept on redirecting me to is something called www.securesite.com which is mighty suspicious by my standards. After aborting the transaction several times, it appears that my credit card is now locked and in accessible. Fortunately I carry a second credit card which is not on me at the moment and I am going to have to go back to the hotel to fish it out and do the transaction again.

I have called mastercard and it seems that the site is legit. When it comes to putting financial details online, I tend to be very cautious. It seems in this case, it has bitten me in the rear. Today is a Sunday so I am going to have to wait till the offices open up to make an international call via skype to sort things out. Grrr

Planning my Next Leg

Still in Thailand at the moment. I am here much longer than expected, nearly 2 weeks into my trip and currently planning my next leg of my trip.

Right now, I am hanging out at the resort island of Koh Phangan, famous for the Full Moon Party that happens every week. I saw about 5000 people on the beach dancing to a variety of tunes. I've also tried my hand at fire poi, something that I've been working on in Japan. Suffice to say, I got through 2 sets of fire poi without getting burned. Will be looking to buy a fire poi set for myself before leaving Thailand (very cheap, at about $10 for a set!)

I am planning my next leg of the trip and it is probably going to be Vietnam. My original plans were to take a bus to Cambodia and spend some time there, realizing that I am going to be spending about 2 weeks in Thailand, I will be spending something of that magnitude in Cambodia and probably Vietnam where I had initially budgeted about 24-28 days in total for Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

My main goal for Cambodia is to visit the Angkor Wat temples. The problem is that there aren't many cheap flights that I can find from Thailand to Saem Riep. I can find cheap flights from Bangkok to Hanoi for about $90 and will take that because I have a 1 month visa starting on Oct 28th for one month and decided that it would be prudent that I get to Vietnam first. I can make it into Cambodia later on with some cheap flights from Singapore or Malaysia, about $90 one way.

It seems a little pricey to just head in to Cambodia for just the temples in Saem Riep, costing me at least $200 there and back. I have heard from the parents that Cambodia is a little dangerous in the capital of Phenom Penh. I have run into some other travelers that have been there that have told me that it is rather run down and fairly dingy, but there is something to be said about being able to walk and observe all plains of human existence. If I have some time to spare, I will make a trip out there.

Pictures to follow later on!

Thailand so far

It ha been 5 days since leaving Japan and arriving to Thailand. I spent the first 4 in Bangkok and decided to get out to the countryside to for a while to see something different. The countryside is very nice and I am glad that I made the move out, though I can only spend a few days out here.

In a few days, I will be heading south of Thailand to the Phuket area to relax and sample some of the very nice beaches over there. Though I have been uploading my pictures to the intenet daily, I haven't had the time to write any indepth article as of yet since I am at an internet cafe and it does take a good while for me to write my posts, though I am keeping a travel log.

For the time being, the photo albums I have been making will have to suffice for now and I've provided links to them below:

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5

I am very happy that I made it out here. The country is very fascinating and I had the chance to make some friends that were willing to show me around and teach me the culture. I will go into detail, but that will have to wait for another time (ie. when I am not too busy having fun, then coming home late to download pictures and have to get to bed early for an early start the next day!)

Denmark Pictures

I have finally had the chance to upload the Denmark pictures to my Picasa account online. Denmark was a really nice place to visit. The buildings had plenty of character, though I did find them somewhat boxy and rectangular.

The conference I attended in Denmark was the Micro-Nano Engineering 2007 Conference to present some results I had on a electron beam emission device I have been working on and had some good results with (ie. current leader in published literature with lowest field emission voltage and novel fabrication of carbon nanotubes). I had the opportunity to meet researchers from around the world and got mistaken for a PhD student quite often!

The conference experience was great and I was no less honored to be selected to do an oral presentation, which only about 20%~25% of all the accepted applicants are selected to do and that I would stand on the same stage to talk about my work with other world class researchers, as a masters student. I had done my thesis defense without even getting nervous or breaking a sweat, but to stand among these people, I definately got a few jitters. The unfortunate thing was that I spoke exceptionally quick and ended my 15 minute presentation in 10 minutes, leaving plenty of time for questions. In the end, I didn't do too badly as the chairman of talk series (fro Cambridge University) took time out after the talk session ended to congratulate and compliment me on my work. In short, I was pretty happy about how things turned out.

At the end of one of the evenings, we were invited out to a wonderful dinner show that would easily cost $200, but was supplied as part of the conference package. We ate a wonderful 4 course meal and treated to a series of 6~7 performances on stage. The show was nothing short of amazing and those pictures will be posted online.

I should make some comments about Denmark however, their cost of living is exceptionally expensive. A bag of peanuts (100g) will run you over $3, same with a small bag of chips. A steak dinner (with steak not that incredibly good!) ran me $40. It's incredible how expensive things are over there, even more than places in the UK. Of an interesting note, Denmark has a 180% tax on cars (waived for commercial vehicles, though) to encourage people to take public transit or ride bicycles. There are even lanes with traffic lights for bicycles, which I thought were pretty interesting.

I also had the chance to say hello to my friends in Switzerland after taking a quick jump-skip-and-a-hop via a 2 hour flight to Geneva and traveled by train to Neauchatel. Switzerland is an incredibly beautiful place with nice lakes and friendly people. The Swiss are particularly interesting as most of them speak either French or German due to it's proximity to the respective countries. I have to say that the Swiss cheese is pretty good!

Anyways, with out further adieu. I present my pictures from Denmark. Click on the town hall to check out the album. I hope you enjoy it.

Stuck in Switzerland for the Day

Well I was planning on heading back to Japan today, but it seems that plans was thwarted as a result of some technical difficulties of the plane that was supposed to get me out of Switzerland. On the upside of things is that I did get a free stay in the hotel near by the airport in Geneva for an extra day and went into town for some shopping and got some free meals. Yum.

I did learn something though, and that is when getting off the plane from a cancelled flight, it is critical that you get to the rerouting counters quickly, the thing being is that the waits for these lines are long and it is critical that you try and get rerouted as soon as possible. As the day wears onwards, the problem is that there are less and less flights available for you to get rerouted.

Well, I will be looking forward to getting back in to Japan tomorrow to unwind and upload some photos later on of Denmark and Sweden.

On a side note, there is this hot girl beisde me that is sort of competing against me in terms of typing speed. We are totally hammering on the keyboard to see who can type the fastest. It's hilarious!

Well Played: How I got Scammed

It's not often that I get scammed. The only time I lose money is by doing something stupid and perhaps getting scammed is one of those things. But still, it was an incredibly good lesson to learn and I have no qualms about it.

There is a saying in poker: "If you can't tell who the sucker is, then you're it" and that was exactly what happened.. all in the span of about 5 minutes.

So what exactly did happen? I'll get into that right now.

Walking along the streets of Copenhagen, there was a crowd surrounding this one man on the street. A small cloth covered there street where he had 3 little boxes, no bigger than size of a credit card. A ball a placed under one box, he moved the boxes around and then you have to guess which box has the ball. It's a classic "cups and balls" game that you see in movies set in New York. But still, the presentation was brilliant.

I walked by the crowd and watched for a little while. The table host moved the ball around underneath the little boxes. One guy guesses at the wrong box and loses and another person guesses at the right box and wins. I stop and watch for a while longer and the pattern continues.

Looked easy and obvious enough to me. But it gets even better and I learned a great lesson.

During the play, one guy flips over one of the obviously wrong boxes and loses. The host takes the guy's 500 DKK and shoves it at me and in a sort of a Russian sounding accent

"which box has the ball?"
I point at the box.
"Okay, show me the money."
"Naah"
"Come on, show me the money and it's yours"

I watched the game meticulously from the start and it was obvious that I knew. So I figured, what harm? I pulled out the cash, flipped over the box and found *nothing* and disbelief, he flips over the other box and there the ball was. The guy cracks a smile takes the cash and goes back to the game.

The crowd standing there tells me, "no no no" you gotta put your foot on it next time so he can't change it on you. They go through another set and I watch. The host stops, one guy walks up, gives him some cash, flips over a box and gets the cash.

A second set gets played, one guy plays and flips over the wrong box. The guy looks over at me again, which one is it? Reactively, I flip out a little more cash, put my foot on the 'right' box and lose. Even I was surprised at how fast I reacted.

I immediately walk from the game and started thinking, "how the hell did I lose!?" I was astounded and part irritated. I walked through the street a little more and found a few more of these guys playing the same game along the street but I ignore them and walk past.

Then the whole gravity of the situation made perfect sense!

I walked back to the other guys playing the same game and there was a crowd at each and everyone of them. Each of them playing the game in the same way. The host stops, one guy gives him cash and flips over a box and loses. Another player gives him cash and flips over the obviously right box and wins. The game keeps going and going. There are at least 3~4 people surrounding this guy and they keep playing they don't leave. Then some outside person joins and he plays a few rounds and loses all the while one person in the group "takes a loss" and the table guy gives the new face an "easy chance" to win... and yet he loses.

Its a scam! Beautifully played scam!

I pull out my camera to take a photo of the setup. One guy, walk out of nowhere at me and says "I'll give you some money if you take a photo of them." It sounds absurd and too good of a deal but I refuse, I got the picture I wanted and started walking. The guy chases me, briskly walking beside me, "wanna go 50/50?" I tell him "nah, I don't have any cash."

I caught you guys! It's obvious, the whole thing is a setup! All the people that got caught in these traps simply walked away after playing not giving it a second thought. But I did and figured out the whole scheme.

But still, the scam was brilliant and yet somehow I still respected them for it in some way. Compared to other ways of stealing money, they picked the best method-- a technique with not violence, they used their brains and were creative. The losers just packed up and left with the scammers keeping the money. Tricked, playing a fair game; a beautiful irony, isn't it?

I also was incredibly amazed at how they made a great appeal to my logic. Every single time that someone won, the ball was in the obviously right spot. Then when it came to my turn to play, the ball wasn't there! But still, how could it not be there!? Slight of hand? Magic? Something was obviously going on that I didn't get... but the beauty of it is that they managed to trick me on something that looked blatantly obvious. I was amazed at how they fooled me.

This experience has rocked my foundations on what I can take for granted. The way that he could move the ball around to trick me was unimaginable to me. I learned something new and there will always be unimaginable ways for a person to get caught.

I got played, perfectly. They made an appeal to logic, made me confident and tricked me at the end. This was an awesome lesson in human psychology.

It sounds so obvious when I write this out and perhaps some of you will laugh at me for getting caught. But you have to live in the moment to fully understand the impact of how your thoughts and feelings get manipulated leading to making this terrible decision. You never really understand the true art of a scam until you feel it and most of us never do.

I lost $200 without realizing it. Dealing with exchange rates is messy to which also caught me of guard.

But I'm glad about this experience. I'd rather screw up for $200 than get scammed for $1000. Now if I was truly evil. I'd come back the next day with some extra cash and flip over the box that they weren't expecting. I might lose the first round, but I always strive to win the second.

I think that everyone in their life should experience getting scammed at least once. There is much more to it than words can explain.

When you travel, you will be exposed to things that might never be able to imagine. Amazing isn't it?

Copenhagen: First Impressions

I landed in Denmark, Copenhagen yesterday. The roads here are incredibly wide, the buildings are made out of bricks and look fairly sturdy, many of the buildings might even be mistaken as warehouses at first glance. I've milled about the city core for a few hours after getting in and I have to say that the interior design and decor of the apartments here are pretty slick from what I saw-- marbled walls in some buildings, nice lighting and beautiful furniture.

The city is beautiful. Though most of the buildings have a sort of rectangular shape to them. The buildings are adorned with sorts of character giving embellishments; designs on windows, artistic metal gratings and more.

Big

Other things that struck me was the sheer size of the people, huge, gigantic, but in a tall kind of way. Me, being fairly tall guy for Vancouver (and Japan), I felt like a midget when it came to the towering height of Danes. The women here are my height! The men are at least another head taller than I! Even the buildings here are big. I arrived at the train station for central Copenhagen last night and looked up to see a vast open space leading up towards the arched ceiling of their train terminal.

Tough

The people here look hardy, perhaps even gruff. Even their food tells you that they're tough. I had dinner here yesterday night and the portions were pretty big. A big chunk of meat, somewhat tough, with a salad topped with a kind of mayonnaise. I had breakfast this morning and the salami, ham turkey meat slices and cheese slices were big. I cut through some bread buns that screamed "tough." I could feel my jaw muscles straining as I ripped through every bite of the bun and every time I chewed. It almost feels like that you could simply become tougher just by living here. But that is not to say that the Danes aren't friendly. Actually, they're pretty damn lively.

Lively

These people laugh, a lot. Not just your usual, "ha ha" laugh, but a kind of hearty loud laugh that would echo through the street. I walked through the streets at night, it was nearly all that I could hear, either that or the sounds of lively conversation. Even as I write this entry in my hotel room, I can see the Danes sitting outside, perhaps 30 of them all enjoying breakfast (if you call it that now that it is about 11 am) smiling and eating. Even last night, there were fireworks *in the city* going off at midnight from an amusement park with a loud "crackle and boom." What an interesting place, I like it already.

US Interest Rate Cuts and the Falling US Dollar

Back in July, I made a prediction that the US dollar will continue to devalue against other currencies. 2 months later to today, with the collapsing home lending market and the cut in the Federal Reserve interest rates by 0.5% to 4.75%. It seems that my predictions are coming to fruition (sorry, Sacha) with the USD coming to historical 30 year low against the CAD, which will likely bring the CAD to USD parity in the coming months. The USD is also at a historic low against the Euro and things do not look bright for the US economy.

With the easing of interest rates and the hopes of preventing drying liquidity in the markets, the Federal Reserve has opted to reduce interest rates to ease the pressure of businesses operating on loans. This may make it easier for the general public to borrow money which might stimulate the economy.

Tactics such as this is incredibly dangerous, as increasing the money supply leads to inflation and further devaluation of the US currency when the fundamentals of the economy have not changed, especially when it comes to looking at the US trade deficit. What I believe the Federal Reserve is doing, is reducing interest rates to keep the financial institutions that borrowed money for sub-prime loans afloat. This, may in turn slightly reduce the interest rates people further down the borrowing chain (ie. the mortgage borrowers) pay.

My opinion on this matter is that rate cuts will only buy time for the US economy from a recession unless something incredibly good happens within the economy. The primary problem the US faces is the number of people that took on mortgages, adjustable rate mortgage loans (ARM loans) in particular, while were not in the position to manage the repayment of these loans. The contracts these people signed, included a significant interest rate increase after a grace period of a few years, which drastically increased their monthly payments to unmanageable levels.

The Federal Reserve rate cut will allow these financial institutions that made these bad loans in the hopes of big profits to hang on for a while longer while they reorganize and find other markets to invest in. Unfortunately, I believe that the largest damage done is to the sub-prime mortgage borrowers that have or will be financially ruined, resulting in a tightening money supply of disposable spending leading to reduced business for other companies.

Though I cannot substantiate my arguments more concretely with statistical loan data, my opinion is that the US dollar will continue to fall and we have not seen it's value bottom out yet. I believe that the US economy will continue to deteriorate until US local manufacturing and production improves to reduce their trade deficit. I would continue to advise that people with US denominated portfolios look towards investment markets denominated in the CAD, EURO or other currencies to prevent loss financial loss from USD erosion. For stability, I would look to Europe, for growth I would look to Asia and the emerging markets.

A follow up to the IQ Test

As a follow up top my previous post on IQ testing, I have decided to answer as many questions as possible incorrectly to see if these tests inflates IQ scores. I have taken and found the test at IQPE inflates the posted IQ score which yielded a score of 98 after answering all of their questions incorrectly which indicates to me that their test is complete garbage. The test posted at iqtest.dk yielded a score below 79 after answering all of their questions incorrectly. Suffice to say, one should be weary of the IQ tests provided online and a legitimate offline test administered by a respectable organization should be done instead.

Mensa has a few sample questions of their tests posted online for people to try. I have found their questions to be significantly harder and different compared to the online tests I have tried thus far. I have no interest in attempting to join the Mensa organization as I am quite happy with the company of people I keep, whom are incredibly fascinating, though might not be meet the qualifications of Mensa.

My Displeasure with Acer

For a rising star in the laptop industry, currently ranked 3rd in the world in terms of market share, Acer could stand to make laptops with less defects and better robustness from the experiences I have had.

I am currently on my second Acer laptop, after the catastrophic failure of my Acer first laptop after 1.5 years of use by December of 2006. The problem with my last laptop was the result of a hardware failure while streaming data from an external hard drive. The failure occurred several times occurring in several system crashes which could finally end with my laptop not being able to boot up.

A 1 year warranty on the system had made the laptop ineligible for any free servicing. Repairs would have cost $800, when a new laptop costs $1100. I decided to purchase a new laptop instead, which turned out to be another Acer laptop for about $1100 with fairly decent specs. The other laptops on sale at the computer store with similar specs ran for an additional $100.

Unfortunately, the new laptop I got was not without problems of its own. The LCD monitor flickers somewhat when I open and close the laptop and just recently, one of the mouse buttons on the touch pad has come loose and now sits with a tilt on my laptop making it awkward to use.

Hardware problems occurring twice over a span of 2 years is unacceptable, especially when a computer is quite important for many of my daily life routines. I have contacted Acer about the problem and they have informed me that it will take at least a week for them to have the problem fixed. In addition, I would have to pay for shipping costs of my computer to the repair center. I have since sent them an e-mail asking if this cost could be waived since it the computer is still under warranty, but I have had no response from the maker since. I find that to be a little bit offensive for a company to not respond. I have found in the online documents that Acer stipulates that the customer is responsible for shipping costs of the laptop or computer to the repair center, but still, simply ignoring my e-mail is unacceptable for a company.

As of this point, I have learned a few things about owning a laptop and the first would be to make sure that you have a secondary computer (preferably a desktop) in addition to having a laptop, as laptops are prone to hardware failure. In my lab, several of my friends (3 of them) over their 2 years of work here have had their laptops fail on them and repair times have
ranged from 2 to 3 weeks. As computers have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, living without one for such a long period of time is incredibly inconvenient. My reasoning for having a secondary desktop computer prevents a person from going without a computer should their laptop have hardware problems and desktops are far easier to maintain compared to laptops.

Should the problems I have faced with all of my laptops occurred on a desktop, I would have had them rectified in no sooner than a day or two by simply replacing parts on my own. A bad monitor connection could be easily fixed and a defective mouse could have been quickly swapped for a new one, both which are extremely hard tasks to accomplish for a laptop.

IQ test

Moving on from the previous post in terms of character type, I decided to do an IQ test which I ran into online. The IQ test website is based in Denmark, which supposedly tests a person's general IQ (are there other kinds of IQ's? I'll have to look into this). Anyways, I decided to take it for fun and I scored a 122 with a ranking in the 92.8%th percentile. I also took a second test with a score of 126, ranking in the 95.8%th percentile. The results of these tests seem fairly consistent.

I also should note that IQ tests are also supposed to be correlated by age (which these tests ignore), and some people have argued that with out this information, the test is meaningless. I would argue this is true for young children scoring very well, however for people above the age of 20, the age factor effecting the results of these tests should be less prominent.

Of course, I should note that these tests only measure the relative intelligence between myself and my peers based on the distribution of results. These tests posted online, use only 30-40 questions to calculate your IQ score and I am somewhat skeptical on how well (and with what resolution) these tests are able to calculate one's IQ. Of course, I am not certain about the significance of these tests without further data, in particular the average score and the final score distribution.

For example, if the average score was 20/40 and 99% of people scored +/- 3 of the average, then the variance would not be very large and just answering 1 question over the average would significantly bump your IQ score up, but the overall intelligence of the surveyed population could possibly have a small variance.

Given the results of the 2 tests taken, for the time being, I might be confident to say that my IQ is approximately in the 122-126 range. Note, if you score above 130, only about 2.3% of the population might be more intelligent than you (that is, 2.3 people out of 100).

I should also note that having a high IQ is not the "end-all be-all of everything," but it does help for situations for logical reasoning and there are also other kinds of "intelligences" which may include aesthetic and kinesthetic components, which are not easily measured (it would analogous to assigning a score to something abstract like "creativity").

In light of these ideas, the pressing questions which I would like to think about are:

1. What are the kinds of possible "intelligences"?
2. How can they be measured?
3. How can they be improved?

Personality Review

The last time I did a personality test was about 3 years ago. The results have been logged on an older blog which I used to run on my own server, a long time ago. The exact date of that posting was on March 28th, 2004. I did 2 personality tests, one at humanmetrics.com and at socionics.com which both resulted in an ENTP result.

For those that aren't well versed in the Meyer-Briggs personality tests. A person's personality is categorized into 4 traits that are dichotomized. The category break down is performed in the following manner:

Extroversion vs Introversion (E vs I)
Sensing vs Intuition (S vs N)
Thinking vs Feeling (T vs F)
Perceiving vs Judging (P vs J)

For detailed information about these categories, I suggest looking at the wikipedia article on these categories, but I will cover them in passing during this post. I will be discussing my result further in this post.

Fast forward 3 years later after my arrival into Japan and living here for nearly 2 years now, I have begun to notice some personality changes since the leaving Canada. I attribute these changes from my living environment changes which has resulted in me adapting my lifestyle and the way I do things.

The interesting result of this change in environment is that I have come to realize that my ability to rationalize has improved and the ideas I generally come up with tend to be more complete in the sense that I am more able to pursue pending questions or thoughts arising from a single train of thought until it is comprehensively concluded. Also, since writing has become my main mode of thinking (as opposed to talking with people, due to some limitations of my language skills), I am far better at refining my train of thought to make it more logically consistent (something very hard to do verbally, due to memory constraints).

This is quite different from people that, say, tend to think through talking and bouncing ideas off of other people. The problem with continually bouncing ideas is that a single train of thought is generally never concluded as much of the verbal thinking progression is based on unsubstantiated information which can be cursory agreed or disagreed upon while following through some kind of argument. In addition to this problem, the original conversation is often lost while exploring some tangential discussion following a different objective.

As a result of this, what I have found is that I generally like to think on my own as opposed to asking other people questions (unless of course, the person I am talking to is a good source of definitive information). This has led me to wonder if I have become more introverted since coming to Japan, leading me to wonder if some of my personality traits have changed in any measurable way.

As mentioned before, the last time I took this test, 3 years before, yielded an ENTP result. The breakdown is that I was extroverted, intuitive, thinking and perceiving. The parts of this result that might not immediately be understandable are the remaining 3 ( intuitive, thinking and perceiving) parameters. I will discuss these in detail next.

Extroverted - Social and outgoing (obviously... in the sense of the meaning and myself as a character)

Intuitive - Means that I tend to use theoretical/abstract thinking with ideas that show a consistency or connection between each other.

Thinking - My decision making skills tend to be governed by rational thought as opposed to a gut feeling

Perceiving - My actions tend to be open ended and less fit to a rigid plan or a framework, but rather evaluating along the way and flexible to change.

I have since revisited these tests to see if my personality traits have changed in the last 3 years, in particular my extroversion qualities, which has not changed. What I have come to realize that I tend to be introverted when dealing with complex thought but still enjoy the company of people.

Further testing, especially at socionics (which I think is fairly comprehensive) indicated that I am strongly extroverted and intuitive, which I think is very true of myself. The remaining characteristics from these tests are less pronounced as the results indicate that I don't have a strong affinity to either "thinking vs feeling" or "judging vs perceiving."

Unfortunately, what these personality test neglects is that mode of thought and action depends on the situation. Meaning that the questions I answered, say, regarding empathy vs logic will conflict against each other, thus canceling them out. For example, when it comes to the emotional needs to a person, I generally say that I am quite empathetic, but when it comes to my inclination to using logic to optimize benefits in situations, my affinity to say yes to both questions will cancel out biases to either sides.

The same unpronounced results occurs for the "judging vs perceiving" characteristics as it depends on the situation. For example when I am quite knowledgeable in a field of knowledge, I tend to be very judging and decisive with my actions. In the reverse case, I will be perceiving and update my decisions on the fly while I gather information while doing something.

These results thus indicates to me that I am a combination of ENTJ (The Executive), ENTP (The Visionary), ENFP (The Inspirer) and ENFJ (The Giver) characters. After reading these character traits, I do believe that a combination of these 4 characters is a good representation of myself (with a slight affinity to ENTP).

Dropped the Ball -$200

At the beginning of last month I registered for a conference for Denmark and at the same time put down a deposit on for a hotel, recommended through a company that is coordinating the conference. I vaguely remember checking the prices and doing the conversion from the Denmark kroner to Yen to find that it was about $100/night to stay and left it at that.

I would come back to check on the price again a month later to find out that the hotel I booked and came to realize that just today that the price per night was $200 and I would be staying there for 5 nights... ouch! Fortunately the lab is covering hotel costs, however only up to $100 per night meaning that I would be in the hole for $500 should I have gone that route.

I quickly sent off an e-mail to the coordinators to have my reservation changed to another hotel on their list that was in the $100 range. The problem, however, is that changing the hotel would cost me my $200 deposit and I would have to pay a new deposit on the next hotel I reserve! I was aghast! More over, they told me that the $100 room that I wanted was not available and they told me that a next class up room was available for $120.

Figuring that I had enough of this, I did a search through the net looking for a phone number directly to the hotel I wanted to stay at and gave them a ring. They told me that the room I wanted was available for $100. I told them yes and took the room; no deposit or anything required. The coordination company would have swindled me out of an extra $100 over 5 days had I left it up to them.

Yes, they had a policy that I would lose the deposit on their website if I canceled my reservation and they would charge if I had it changed. I dropped the ball on this one on making a bad reservation, but caught them in the act of trying to swindle me out of more cash when I tried to change my reservation.

So just as a note, don't let some organization take a deposit from you for a hotel booking. The key thing is that hotels don't generally take deposits, and even if it is a no show, you just lose the reservation. Also, it is always wise to call the hotel directly to make sure you aren't paying some kind of markup fee for some organization making a phone call and doing the reservation for you.

This, unfortunately, is my $200 lesson.

It is Beautiful Outside the Grasp of the Recording Industry

Earlier this year, I made a short post about a performer by the name of Kate Walsh, an independent musician who setup her own label and took top spot on Apple's iTunes service having the most downloaded song in April. Who would have known that an independent musician could do something like this without the recording industry's marketing and distribution machine.

A few months after posting my last article about this topic, I would stumble upon an essay from the Seminal about a man's 8 hour US cross country move in a rented truck with nothing but a radio for entertainment. His take on music on the radio is similar to how I felt during my morning drives to university while listening to the radio-- the same popular songs played in "heavy rotation" as the essay puts it, with tons of commercials.

I heartfeltfuly agreed with what this man had to say as I went through the same thing. Back in Vancouver we have atleast 4 - 6 main radio stations (3 of which I avidly listened to) and I would always station surf when the station went off through a long set of commercials. It was so hard to find a solid block of music, let alone good music.

This problem, which the above essay notes is the consolidation of the radio broadcasting industry, to which I have found a report published by an organization by the Future of Music Coalition, where they site that the top 10 radio station owners have 2/3's of all listeners. We are talking about owners here, where the same people own most of all the radio stations. This is a problem when it comes to musical variety because it is these few companies that decide what goes on air and it would be pretty obvious that that the easiest route to success would be to play what they think are the most popular songs in respective genres across all stations. The problem with this is diminished musical variety and the growing boredom of current "pop music."

Before the advent of radio broadcasting conglomerates, radio stations were run independently by DJs spinning their own tunes on air--whatever they liked. Lots of independent and orginal material was put on air (though not all great), but there were definately gems to be found. With the invention of radio and music broadcasts, we ushered in the equivalent of a music renaissance. But now, we face a hypothetical dark age with bland radio music, filled with unwanted commercials.

This would all change with the internet, with a resurgence of independent broadcasting coming to life by webcasters, like the DJs of the old, who ran their virtual radio stations over the internet, out of a personal passion to share the music they liked. The earliest webcasters did all of this with no financial incentives, often shelling out their own money to finance their own ideal radio station, something with little or no commercials. The listeners who truly loved the station donated small sums of money to help these stations going.

Eventually, webcasting took off in an incredible way with automated recommendation sites like Pandora and last.fm with software that tailer made music playlists and played songs to their listeners depending on their musical taste. Just tell the site what songs or artists you liked and they'd come back and played a bunch of songs that you might like, sites like these became immensely popular and thrived.

The recording industry took notice by threatening these online sites with copyright infringement and lawsuits for damages. Why? Because they never thought of creating webcasting software and song recommendation services that played music to users with truly little or no commercials? The recording industry flexed their legal muscles and sought out lawsuits to force webcasters to pay royalties everytime as song was played so that the artists (whom they usually ripped off) got paid appropriately.

Right now, many webcasting stations stand to go out of business after the courts ruled in the recording industry's favor, with the recording industry opting to charge exorbitant royalty fees for online broadcasters. Whatever they cannot control, they try to stifle but in the process, variety and creativity take a serious hit and us as the audience, unknowingly suffer because of it. What the radio stations play, are groups of signed artists by the recording labels. And what these large recording labels chose to sign were what they think will be a hit and turn a profit. What you end up with is "more of the same," because recording labels don't like taking risks and end up sticking with the kind of music that works for them.

Just today, I came across a youTube video of a violinist stringing to a DJ playing hip-hop music. The compilation was nothing short of awesome and many people whom have seen the video left comments of high praise and a view count pushing 220,000 views as of this publishing. Would you have ever heard or seen this on the radio or MTV? There is even an immensely popular beat-boxing flutist with incredible skill. None of these people would have ever made it to any mainstream media outlets. YouTube, like webcasters, is wonderful just because anyone can post anything; things that you might never be able to imagine, things that will broaden your horizons and yet YouTube faces a similar fight the webcasters have on their hand-- a battle for media control and money. As you can see this argument doesn't just apply for music, but even to the diversity of media in general.

I cannot fathom why these media companies are so intent on controlling access and distribution of their material to the world. In their minds, it is a privilege to broadcast their material and they realize it by charing the broadcasters for it. Yet I would beg to differ that it is the other way around-- without these broadcasters, the media they control would never have such wide exposure. Like a double-edged sword, the blade cuts in both ways.

I believe that we would be better off without these media conglomerates because we stand to lose exposure to a huge breadth of human creativity which we would never be exposed to, all in the namesake of these companies sticking to their tested formulas to turn a profit. But there is hope, I do believe that these media companies will disappear, because the fundamentals that brought them to life is crumbling away-- as mixing and mastering equipment becomes cheaper with every passing year and the CD manufacturing process, inaccessible to normal people, will soon be obsolete compared to the cheapness and ease of online distribution.

But in the mean time, I would implore you to turn off your radios and shut off your TVs and look elsewhere for music and entertainment, somewhere beyond the control of large conglomerates. I assure you, that the new things you will find, will amaze you.

We, The Institutionalized People

The entire western world, from the age of 5 is indoctrinated into the institutionalized society which is the education system. From there, a child will spend the next 13 years in grade school, jumping academic hoops and pleasing their teachers by doing what they want to get good grades. From institution from institution these children progress through, but yet, it is still more of the same-- children are told what to do and are graded on how well they execute their commands. Children, in this light might look like glorified biological computers.

We are told in that point of our lives that we need to get good grades so we can get a good job to live a prosperous and happy life. Such is the dream that we are told and we believe it throughout the majority of our lives. We hear the same comment from everyone, from teachers, parents, adults and friends. It becomes a universal truth, almost like a fundamental one like 1+1=2-- irrefutable, because we know no better. And so, we carry on through grade school, jumping through the hoops, like a circus act, where our biggest performance is a test for entry in to a much larger and extravagant institution otherwise known as University.

We finally get into university and realize a sense of freedom-- we choose our own departments, our own courses and even when to take them from a scheduled list. What incredible freedom, nothing like we had before in our grade school years. But still, it is still more of the same-- marching orders from our professors and academic hoop jumping.

"But this time," as most of us think, "we are going to be free. Freedom, finally."

Anxiety sets in, the year before graduating. "I'm going to graduate! What next!?" We wonder. Obviously our next problem to deal with is getting a job and making money out of the necessity to survive. With little a thought, resumes and cover letters are fired off left right and center to whatever company with an opening. Sooner or later, we find ourselves with a job, following orders and getting evaluated by our bosses.

From cradle to grave, this is how most of us will live, everyday being told what to do and being evaluated. Most of us will probably not realize it because we are probably comfortable with it because it is the only life we know. Most of us will end up taking up a few hobbies along the way and perhaps do some traveling from time to time.

And from time to time you will be asked by new friends, "what do you like doing?" For which most of us will stumble through looking for something to say to make ourselves not look entirely lame; it becomes like a traditional greeting, something that everyone does and not think twice about.

And that is what I think is the biggest travesty of our time.

Wasted Time

It is unimaginable, the amount of time that is squandered in a day doing useless things. Time is often spent watching TV, reading useless things on the internet and just bumming around doing nothing. Sometimes I wonder on the magnitude of time just spent, "killing time." I do believe that in a single day, that amount could easily be in the ball park of 3~4 hours, or perhaps at least 1/4 of your waking hours (if you spend 8 hours sleeping per day).

There ought to be better ways of spending time instead blowing it away like this. Sometimes I think of this of a terrible waste considering the number of things a person could be doing or learning using this time. I never did say that you had to spend this time for work or anything, but just for something productive and life would be much more enriching.

Over the course of the last 2 years, I have prided myself on my ability to work effectively, sometimes operating at double the efficiency of my peers, just because of good management or finding some new tricks to fit more work into the same amount of time. Sometimes I come up with a neat little computer program that get things done nice and faster and while I am writing these little programs or whatever, I end up learning a little more about programming at the same time!

I do believe that there are enriching ways of living instead of just finding ways of simply killing time. It would be a terrible waste to do so. There are so many people out there working boring jobs, like at a till, a code (programming) monkey, quality assurance testers and such. I am pretty sure that that there are many that work these jobs just do it to get by. To me, a monotonous existence like that is terribly boring and people should be striving to have a far more interesting existence instead.

In the case for me, I am quite confident that I will not be doing boring things for a job in the future. Sometimes, I have these ideas that take me from something boring to something more interesting. "How can I do this better?" is quite a common question that I ask myself (technically it's "Oh my god! This is so stupid!", but it's the equivalent) then I go on a tirade trying to find a better way of doing it (whatever that is) or start fishing for interesting problems to solve.

Now that is the interesting thing, however. I am quite happy that I can be innovative sometimes and my ideas take me to interesting places, making me want to extend my knowledge and skill as I face different challenges as I dream them up and it is often that success is a result of a person flowing from one problem to another, solving them each step along the way. Once you start of like this, finding success seems like a natural progression. But the real interesting problem is where does a person get started?

That is the interesting problem isn't it?

For most people that spend most of their time just killing time, I it would be hard for them to get started. What I have found out so far is that in order for people to be inspired to do something, they need to be introduced to an interesting problem and start from there. It is only then, when people start looking at all sorts of practical problems that they themselves face and realize that others might be facing them too, it is then that people start understanding the bigger picture of how things work and what are the interesting problems that people face.

In terms of children, which many people refer to as "our future," I believe that the most important resource is squandered because we don't introduce them to real life problems. The mathematics, language, history, science and art is all taught without context, because without context, either the idea becomes confused or we lose it's meaning.

It's a terrible shame to have children all the way to university students insulated from the real workings of the world. Mainly, the reason why it probably ends up this way is that we worry about them screwing things up if people gave them real responsibility, but still, it is a very important process of learning which most of our youths are robbed of during their years of education.

Perhaps now, I would much rather be playing with a computer program, an electronic circuit or something instead of a video game. Either one of which I would consider as entertainment, but only one is actually nurturing. Perhaps instead of finding ways of killing time, a more interesting problem is finding ways of "playing productively."

Further Minaturization of Computers

Computers and even laptops right now are still pretty large and bulky compared to what they could actually be in the future. I have been following Apple's iPhone for the last while and I do believe that Apple is going in the right direction when it comes to the future of computing.

Though Apple has been able to create a music player, phone and internet communications device, the real beauty of the device is that they are able to incorporate a PC level operating system, a stripped down version of the one used in the Mac computers to operate these devices. The interesting thing here about the iPhone is that we are starting to see the emergence of hand held computing devices. Complete with memory, video display, data storage and networking capabilities. In the future I expect to see far more powerful hand held devices that may one day change the way we think of portable computers.

The main hold up of computer miniaturization is the integration of discrete integrated chips. Integrated chips are a made of thin silicon wafers with patterns of transistors and logic circuits which are currently being fabricated on the nano-scale level; for example Intel is currently able to fabricate feature sizes of about 65 nm with is on the order of 1/200th of the diameter of your hair. On chips, less than 1 cm square, they are able to fit in 200-300 million transistors. That is an incredible number for such a small chip.

Though the semi-conducting industry is able to accomplish such feats of miniaturization, the biggest problem (in more ways than one) outstanding is the integration of these chips to create a single computing system. Computers are manufactured out of a considerable number integrated circuit parts including a CPU, memory controller, I/O controller, BIOS chip, video chips, sound chips and etc. Though these integrated circuits, comprised of nano-sized circuitry are incredibly small for the functionality they provide, the problem remains that these chips require external circuitry and signals to operate properly. Some of these chips use external parts like resistors and capacitors to configure how they operate or just need external parts to ensure that they work properly. The problem is that these additional resistors and capacitors are quite large compared to these chips which take up a considerable amount of space, resulting in very large circuit boards to interface and operate these chips.


A picture of a small part of the inside of my laptop

Looking at the picture above, the black blocks are the integrated circuit chips and the much smaller bumps seen on the circuit board are the external components such as capacitors, resistors and diodes. which are used to run these chips. The green region on the circuit board consists of tracks of metal that connect each chip together and these tracks also take up a considerable amount of space.

What is needed in the future to reduce the amount of space to assemble a computer is to reduce the number of external components and reduce the amount of wiring needed to connect these chips together. The black chips you see in the picture contain a silicon wafer with circuity encased with an outer shell to protect it from dust particles and contaminants that might prevent the chip from operating properly.

What I would propose to further miniaturize computer, is to do away with the circuit board and find a way to integrate the silicon chips directly, probably on a silicon backed wafer where these chips can be mounted onto directly and closer together. The components that are needed to run these chips could possibly be fabricated directly onto the silicon wafter and can be inherently smaller than the discrete parts used. Finally with the silicon wafers assembled together the whole wafer with mounted chips can be packaged. The biggest challenge with integration like this is quality control as the silicon wafers are vulnerable to failure during the integration process and since the parts are small and fragile and susceptible to shorting and defects just from dust particles in air, even in a high level clean room.

Main board manufacturers are moving towards miniaturizing circuit boards by better design and parts integration. Taiwanese computer motherboard manufacturer has demonstrated that they are able to make a computer system smaller than a 3" hard drive.


Motherboard with integrated memory, CPU, hard drive I/O and video

If this is the direction that computers are going in the future, expect to find even more portable computers in the future. Eventually, we will deal away with the hard drive to make way for solid state memory (think flash memory) and CDs will go the way of the dinosaur, leaving your computer being more compact and all you may need is a touch screen to interact with your computing device on the go and hook it up to a large monitor, mouse and keyboard when you get to a desk somewhere.

If there is something that is going to get big in the future, I believe that it is going to be portable computing.

Average IQ of people that voted

I came across this interesting chart just today which tabulates the average IQ of the states that voted for either Bush or Kerry in the 2004 election. The results are rather telling as seen below:


Click for a larger view.

As seen from this chart here, states with lower IQs favored Bush while states with higher IQs favored Kerry. To put it bluntly, a good democracy only works when the general public is well educated... else you get what have you now in the US.

Been busy...

Been busy and a little out of it. After handing in my thesis and taking some time off to pursue other projects, I have obviously left this blog in neglect. I have had some interesting ideas in the past and I am currently working on them.

FYI, my predictions of a US stock market slump are on the ball and have resulted in a drop in the stock market in all sectors. I would have never believed that I would be on the ball on this one... the only problem was that I didn't have the guts to make the right moves before all of this tumbling occurred, but I will have to learn to trust myself a little more.

In other news, the Sy's have come to Japan and I had the honor of hosting them for a few days in Sendai and then traveling with them to Aomori to attend to the Nebuta festival. Pictures and details are to follow later on.

Finally, I have been doing some reading on the net and came across this quote which I found interesting:

"Why, of course, the people don't want war, why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars." "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." --Herman Georing,

For those not in the know, Herman Goering was a military leader and a politician in the Nazi Party. The interview was taken during the trials at Nuremberg after being captured. He brings up a very good point on how countries are dragged into conflicts by their leaders. In the case of the US, we see that history repeats itself with rhetoric that "you're with us or against us" mentality.

Why would a person want to risk their life to join an army? You're risking your life to fight someone else's battle. If you're going to pick a fight, fight it yourself. Only cowards send goons to fight in their place. If a politician chooses to go to war, they should have the obligation to serve on the front lines, perhaps only then might they act responsibly.

Bringing Web 2.0 to the Government

Governance of Online Communities

Internet communities are a fascinating thing. They are born in all sorts of online environments, whether they be bulletin boards, IRC, newsgroups, virtual worlds and more. All of these communities are self governed. Rules of the medium usually written out by some benevolent person expressing the sentiments of those that frequent the medium, for example how to conduct one's self and treat the medium, whether it be the chat room or some online forum.

The leaders of these communities are not elected, they just are simply recognized and followed by those who see them as fit. You will know who the leaders are in an online community, they are the ones doing the charitable acts of good deeds for the community to help it flourish. They are the ones posting up FAQ lists or selflessly taking the responsibility to manage the community.

We see this everywhere, whether it be in an online virtual world like World of Warcraft with a guild leader and members or even an online photo sharing site like flickr where people share wonderful photos and tips on how to take great shots. We see the same thing even in software where the likes of Linus Trovalds is the undisputed leader of the Linux project, though he was never elected into that position.

You can't declare yourself a leader

As much as many people would like to become a leader, you just can't declare that you are a leader and expect people to follow you. Leadership doesn't work like that. Image a person that waltzes into some community, declaring that he wants to be the new administrator and institute all sorts of "improvements" and that everyone should support him. A scenario like that will usually end up with everyone flaming (which is internet speak for "insulting") him and finally ignoring him. To have someone simply walk in and declare themself a leader is absurd as a random person declaring himself as the King of France. How would you know that this person will do their best for the community? It would be like some politician deciding to run against Linus Trovalds to manage the Linux operating system project. Linus pretty much embodies the Linux project.

Quite the contrary to the above process, determination of leadership is done in exactly the opposite manner-- it is the people that choose to follow you. The most common reasons for people to follow someone's leadership is a combination of vision, ability and altruism that defines the best leaders. I am quite certain that nobody that would want to follow a leader that is visionless, incompetent and selfish. The simple act of trying to declare yourself a leader is already selfish, if not egotistical.

The best leaders of online communities have and always been the people that spent their time helping others and the community at large. If you can think of online games with virtual worlds and clans, the people that are at the top of such an organization are the ones that helps the community the most, whether it be though player training, game play coordination, developing a webpage for the team or whatever. The same can be said for online discussion forums, where the most recognized people are the ones that provide the most insightful discussions and those that do their best to answer or direct people with questions to sources where they can find the answers they seek. You don't have to be elected into some position of power to do acts of good will, every person has the tools to do so. Yet, when in terms of our offline communities, our reality is quite the opposite.

Tyrants and the Governance of Offline Communities

When it comes to leadership in real world communities, things take a very different turn, especially when it comes to governance of largest community of all, the country. I have always found it strange that most politicians are usually well off individuals with the financial capital to run an election campaign to collect votes to become leader and represent a community in a governmental position. Yet they lack evidence in what they have done in the past to the benefit of the community before running for this position.

If you were simply to listen to the advertisements of these people, all that you will hear are the things that they want to do for you; their promises, agendas and vision. Perhaps the only characteristic of a leader these people have is vision. But a person that has vision but lacks ability in only a dreamer, a person with both vision and ability but lacks altruism may end up being a tyrant. And unfortunately, the history of politics has been often dominated by tyrants.

The Openness of Web 2.0: The Collaborative Effort

The defining difference between online communities and real world communities is the openness in which the online communities operate. Projects such as wikipedia operate on this basis where the entire database of encyclopedic information is open to public edits and additions which has allowed the online encyclopedia to flourish and be one of the first stops on the internet for people wanting to get a good summary of nearly any topic.

It would be impossible for Wikipedia to be as successful as it is today as an encyclopedic source without its open collaborative nature. It was at first proposed that people submit articles to Wikipedia and the contents would be reviewed by designated experts. Wikipedia never did start to take off until it was a fully open system, generally governed by the users that add content to the encyclopedia.

Such an open system is, of course, open to abuse. But the beauty of such a self-governing system is self-correcting, with the users of the wikipedia taking the responsibility to keep the entries as truthful as possible. Wikipedia users have found US politicians editing their own and the profiles of others for politically motivated reasons by tracking the editor IP addresses to government institutions. At first edit wars occurred trying to prevent malicious users from corrupting the entries (these entries usually have to cite sources to be credible). Finally, the Wikipedia community and administrators responded by restricting edits of political entries to more credible members that have contributed to the project over a longer period of time, after much discussion on the message boards. Without this kind of openness such behavior could not be caught, nor could the community be as well organized to come up with a viable solution.

Bringing the Collaborative Effort to Government

Democracy has origins dating back to 500 BC in Greece and possibly earlier to 2500 BC in Mesopotamia. The selection of representatives in a Democratic government was done because it was too impractical to have the general public involved in policy decision. It was more efficient to have a smaller number of people involved to set policies with checks on representatives to prevent abuse of executive powers for personal gain. Instead of having everyone vote on every issue, you now have a smaller number of representatives voting on issues for the people they represent. Interestingly, this is the same collaborative efforts that Web 2.0 strives to attain in a more primitive form.

But now with the internet and our ability to quickly communicate, the limitations of a traditional democratic government by elected representatives can now be alleviated. Instead of representatives acting on our behalf, the general public can now be involved in a collaborative effort to set policies and enact laws. The expertise of everyone can be leveraged in a wider variety of fields, compared to the limited knowledge base of a single politician. For example, public domain government funding and statistical data could be quickly analyzed and leveraged by experts through prudent open review with important discussions held in online forums. The discussions can also be referenced back to in the future. Finally, a policy can be set and a person or an organization can be selected to carry out the task.

Having everyone active in every aspect of government management is not necessary as seen in the Wikipedia example. Participation should be optional. We will find that altruistic people with sufficient knowledge and expertise will be the ones making the best decisions for the public at large. Decision making related information and analysis can all be posted online and referenced, giving people a far better understanding of a whole issue. Should a person have an interest in a specific bill, they have the option of voting on it, else abstaining from the vote, as voting on every bill would be very tedious.

A web 2.0 style of collaborative government management by the general public would be beneficial in increasing government efficiency, transparency, and accountability. Most importantly of all, the system is even more democratic by allowing everyone direct input into the governing process.

Of course, by allowing everyone to participate in the governing process, the amount of white noise ideas from the sheer number of people involved could be cumbersome, however, techniques of filtering white noise from good ideas/information is already well developed as seen on the internet. Google as one example being able to sift through billions of webpages to return relevant search results in a fraction of a second and information aggregate sites such as Digg and Reddit, where submitted links are ranked by users voting up or down on these links. The most interesting links will generally filter up to the top of the list.

With the current state of technology as it is now, implementing a form of government like this is a very feasible concept. I do believe that this concept could mark a new era of governance, the concept of a collaborative government.