Pilchinsky's World

Time for a break

2008-08-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine that I met on my travels told me that there are periods in life when you are learning a lot and accumulating knowledge and then after a while you feel the need to share it, to do something with this knowledge: a period of sharing and creativity. I fully agree with her.

In my 10 months of traveling I have learned a lot, I have experienced a lot too. When you get away from western society for so long, you get too see things clearly, more objectively; about what's going on, the tensions in society and the psychological games played at all levels. Things that used to be very important, now at clear site, seem not to be so important anymore. At the same time I got to see the developing world and it's obvious link to nature and a completely different approach to society and values in humanity. I have learned some local customs and practices that we often turn a blind eye on and dismiss them as imaginary; though perhaps not surprisingly many of these customs that are rooted in tradition and not in science are making large inroads, with wider adoption every year, in Western society. These adoptions are directly related to the tensions that exist in Western society today.

More importantly, I have discovered a lot about myself, about the people in this world and the universe itself; though a lot of questions still seem unanswered. I have also met some amazing people on my path. People who have helped me a lot along the way in my growth and understanding. These people are very special to me and have left a strong impression on me; they are around and you can find them if you open your eyes and take the time to listen. I have learned to trust myself; but, nobody is perfect and I too still sometimes succumb to fear and go against my inner being: unconditional trust can be difficult.

I have learned a lot and I was feeling it was time for a break. It was time to share some of the knowledge: in whatever form that may come. So, I have come back and will continue my life in Switzerland in the next little while. I will try to share my experience through pictures, stories, lessons, cooking and through my actions. Already, I have rearranged parts of the apartment for better energy and it brought a bit more life to my home; so far the results have been wonderful. I am starting cooking Thai food and soon Indonesian and other Asian dishes for family and friends. The stories and lessons will continue rolling as long as I have people to share them with, but I also hope I will have the strength to write a book about my journey.

I live now in a period of sharing though parts of me desire deeply for further knowledge in certain areas of life, but I am sure I will begin a new period of learning when the feeling is right.

The Jewish Casba

2008-05-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

Morocco is a place full of old Jewish settlements. You can find a jewish quarter in Marrakech, a sinagogue there has a guard watching over it and a big cemetery as well. In Casablanca, many jewish people still live in the jewish quarter. In Tamrir, a small town, there are remains of an old Jewish casba (castle) and a cemetery on the edge of town. Now days, the casba is inhabited by the local Barber people, who once lived and worked side by side with the jews that lived here. The jews have left in 1956 when Morocco fought and won it's independence against the French; during the time of war, the people here have migrated to Israel. From what I'm told, many of the jewish people from Israel that used to live here and their families return here to visit the cemitary and their close Berber friends that live here. The owner of my hotel even picked up a bit of hebrew through cotact with the visiting jews from Israel.

Much of the jewish casba is now in ruins. There is little of the jewish writing remaining on the buildings as they were removed; From what I'm told, some parts of the sinagogue that remains still contains a bit of the writing. The jewish people had a large influence of the society here; having created and introduced many of the processes and tools used by the Barber people today; for intance, making shoes, the blower, work on silver, and the flower sifter are just a few.

The Berber people that live here are very warm and welcoming. And life in this quiet town is very relaxing. I have spent only a couple of days here, but have already made several friends and had interesting conversations about life here and the people that lived here.

Creating Music

2008-05-12T15:53:00.000-07:00

I have not studied music or how to play a guitar. But a few days ago, I have purchased a small 6 string guitar. I'm not even sure it can produce the full range of sounds of a normal guitar, but that doesn't matter ... I am happy with what it gives me! :)

I decided to try a different approach than usually taken; instead of learning the process of playing guitar (ie. the coords), I would try to learn and create music on my own, using my own observations and methods. The idea being that if you use the same process, you will end up with following the same system as others and therefore, there could be less room for creating something more original.

In my try to discover good combinations and harmonic souds, I found that I was applying similar ides from other fields; For example, I found that nearby strings and opposite strings can go well together; just like in colour matching theory. I learned that repetition was important and a very useful tool. I've also come to realise that just like in writing, you can use common sounds in music to connect two seperate peaces (ie. transition between them). In writing you often use a common link to connect two paragraphs.

Whether or not I'm creating something brand new, or even end up w/ the same process in the end, it is not important; because, I'm discovering music on my own and creating my own music rather than starting by playing the music of others ... and so, it's a very liberating experience!

My first track to appear in my own encoding soon :)

A walk to remember

2008-04-11T10:53:00.001-07:00

After a few failed attempts to find cheap guesthouses, I am greeted by a friendly group of tourists, one guy and two girls; they are heading to dinner. I stop and ask them for a cheap guesthouse in the area. One of the girls catches my eye and we have a moment of eye contact; it's strange and something feels unusual about it. They direct me to a great guesthouse, where they too are staying; to my surprise, there is still room available there.

I leave my bags at the guesthouse, it is late in the evening, but I feel energized by the moment and decided to go for a walk to checkout the town.

I walk on the quiet streets, the road along the river is full of little street vendors offering some really fast food (hot dogs, fried chicken) and as I pass one of them, we exchange a warm hello: "sabaidii". I continue my walk and pass by a group of teenage kids, who greet me and attempt to engage in a conversation; I can't understand what they are saying, but I manager to get some quick information from them on how to find the closest Internet place; I leave with a smile and they are left with one as well. Next, I decide to head to a local French restaurant, Little Paris it is called, it was recommended to me by an enthusiastic group of travellers.

At the restaurant, I order hot Lao tea, which has an unusual taste that is different from other teas I've tasted from around the world. I get a mushroom soup with chicken and a curry w/ squid on rice; all of this for $2.00. After a brief chat with a Belgian guy and a bit of watching of the English Premier league, I enjoy my meal and leave in a nick of time as a group of Americans arrive and start a discussion on business and politics: something about the quality of silk.

I then proceed to an Internet shop, where after about 30 minutes I end up paying something like $0.3, it comes as a surprise to me given that I was recently on the islands in the south and the prices there were 4 times more expensive. Unfortunately they didn't have a voip phone here, so I go searching for it in order to make an overseas call. On my way, I come across what seems like a huge party at a banquet hall, live music is playing very loud, there are many tables covered with a lot of great food and many people with their families sitting and dancing. Turns out it is an early city wide Chinese New Years dinner and it is completely free: sponsored by the local companies.
One of the guys there sees me looking in curiously and comes up to invite me in order to come in and sit down. We have a brief chat, but I have to tell him that I need to make a call first and I'll come back in a bit.

Once again, I'm off in the wrong direction, but I get some enthusiastic help from a local lady working in a food store. The Internet store is in my sight when I pass a group of of little kids, who say hello, shake my hand and start running around me and saying a few English words they know, "What's your name?", a common questions from kids looking to practice a bit of English. I joke around with them by pretending to run away, they chase right after me. I make a call, but there is no answer.

I walk back to the social party; on the way I see a fresh fruit store, I don't hesitate for a minute to get some papaya and mango here: I certainly love the tropical food in the region. Back at the party, many of the people have left by now and the food has been eaten, but the smaller group of older people are dancing their socks off and I'm amused to watch them.

I leave the party and walk along the Mekong river past the hot pot restaurants with seating right on the group; it strikes me as an interesting place that I'd like to try another day. The people eating there are mostly students and are wonderfully friendly and great me with a smile. Further on, along the river, I see a group of teenagers sitting around, drinking and playing guitar. I join them for a few minutes, they offer me Lao Lao, local rice wine w/ no less than 40% alcohol, I drink it and they are impressed. We try to chat, but I don't understand them very well ... luckily they understand my signs and gestures; I ask one of them to play the guitar. The others joke around and make fun of the guitar player, who is shy to play at first. I keep walking around enjoying the night and exchanging greetings with people; what a friendly town!

As I walk on some dark streets, I hear dogs barking at me, some even come close and seem very angry, not an uncommon pattern in this region. It's getting late and I have to return back to the guesthouse by the 11pm curfew. I find my way with a bit of help and as I approach the guesthouse, the owner is already waiting for me outside by the gate. I'm the last to come back and it's only 10:50. He is quite strict and asks me to be quiet as I walk on the wooden floor upstairs. I walk in and walk to the washroom, feeling the mosquito bites. When I come out, I realise that I forgot to pick up a towel from the owner before he went to sleep; but no worries, I see one hanging on my door.

This took place on the day I arrived to Savannakhet, Laos around January 27.

Trecking in Luang Namtha Protected Area - Part 2

2008-02-26T06:50:00.000-08:00

I carry the net to the river. A new friend, I met a day before, decides to try it first; he is from China and his name is Fong. When I arrive to the river, the others are either swimming or have already finished. I watch intently as our guide teaches Fong the technique. It turns out to be not too difficult; you first fold the middle of the net a few times, put a peace of it over your shoulder; then you gather a part of it, about half, in your right hand and finally grab the rest with your left. Next comes the throw; you gather your strength and push it as far up in the air, targeting your spot on the river. The net rises gently, as if it had wings of its own, it moves through the air swiftly and lands on the river covering a rectangular area. I would be lucky to catch a fish with this thing; in fact it may take a miracle!

While Fong plays with the net, the kids from the school rush into the water like a herd of wildebeests. They just in and splash each other with big smiles on their faces; and more and more of them keep coming it. I suppose it is that time of the day for a shower after school and they seem to enjoy it and don't mind the cameras that we all have pulled out, even posing for them at times. It's been some 30 minutes since Fong started, and by now he is tired and with no success he decides to quit. I quickly jump at the opportunity and change for the fishing trial.

I give it a try, it is not as easy as it looks, but I figure it out and I walk the river to find a good spot where fish may lie. I make my throws as best I can to hit the area; I reach out to pick up the net and I find nothing but leaves and stones. At this point, I no longer care for proper placing, I just enjoy playing with this fishing net, practicing the technique and throwing it. It's quite amazing to me that the locals catch anything on that thing. While I play around with the rope, our guide is in the water with a mask and an arrow shooting device. Amazingly enough, he has caught some 5 fish in a span of 15 minutes; what is more amazing is that he caught one with his bare hands!!!

As the evening approaches, we get a chance to do another tour of the village and also chat with the head of the village. I ask him some serious questions about how the village has changes since the arrival of the tourists and whether the people here like to have the tourists around. He replied saying that they did like to have the tourists and that the villages changed in terms of what the materials they are now able to afford compared to before and a little store that they opened, selling bear, mostly for tourists. I ask if we can see his house; he invites us over and as we sit down, he asks us some questions about where we are from and what we do in life. I later as him about the religion of the people in this village; they are animistic and belief in spirits (spirit of the house, village, ancestors, etc). There is a sacrificial alter just outside of the village, where they sacrifice an animal for the spirits every year.

There are many women in this village smoking tobacco that they grow themselves; they use pipes, and it is not uncommon to see old women smoking in the company of others. As I walk through the village, I see all the little kids, now playing marbles; we stop to observe them and try to figure out the rules. The girls are quite good at this and it is happening so fast that at times they seem like the animals in the village running around everywhere. I decide to join them. It is fun to participate and I'm lucky to win one of the games.

The animals of the village are free to wonder the grounds and so there is dynamic chaos everywhere with chickens, pigs and piglets, ducks and dogs running around everywhere trying to get food or resting by the fire somewhere; it is beautiful, yet somewhat hard to follow with all the commotion. We have tremendous dinner with some pumpkin dish as the main course; it is delicious and the local hostess pushes us all to drink the Lao Lao (rice wine); we go in circle and everyone has at least 3 shots of this terrible drink.

At night, we sit and chat by the fire as it becomes colder outside. It is after 10pm and at a moments notice, our guide decides to go fishing in the river. At first we think it is all a joke, but he goes off with a flashlight and his mask; we can see the flashlight shine underwater at a distance. He is back perhaps 45 minutes later with a bag full of fish. We waste no time and BBQ them on the fire; with a touch of salt, they are a delicious snack at night. Once we finish the fish, it is time for bed.

The next morning I wake up early with the intention to go watch our breakfast hostess prepare our meal. The morning mist fills the river, like a cloud hovering in the sky, as I wash my face in it. The trees in the jungle accross the river are consumed by the Myst as well; I enjoy the morning beauty with every splash I take from the river. At our host's, once again, at my request, they are making pumpkin today; I watch intently and learn all the details. I look forward to cooking it myself one day.

After breakfast, we are off to our next destination. We walk on the banks of the river through the bamboo forests, crossing custom made bridges and observe as the water flow down stream. In a couple of hours, we've reached our next village; here the Lulu people live. They are all dressed traditionally and are descendants of Chinese people: it is very evident from their writing, as the characters are the same, but the meaning is not. We stop over here for lunch and relax a bit with a little nap afterward. Before we move on, the local people make a little market for us to buy traditional, hand made, goods.

We continue on our path, which takes us deep into the forest, up and down hills, following a stream that flows at the bottom into the river. We hike for several hours; it is not an easy hike like the others, but it is rewarding. We pass trees covered in monkey vines, with roots reaching from the sky into the ground, curling up like a snake in the air. We pass palm trees that have gathered in an area with big leaves reaching for the stars. We pass large trees that could hide some 10 people behind it; they are full of little spiders that go up and down the tree, always moving with a goal unknown to me. I stand amazed by this beauty of the forest and try to observe their behaviour. We walk on the water, through the stream. We walk up the mountains, outside of the forest and into the cotton fields. We climb up to catch a glimpse of a beautiful view of the land in the distance; it is Luang Nam Tha.

This took place in North of Laos

Treck in Luang Nam Tha National Protected Area

2008-02-26T05:08:00.001-08:00

We leave in the morning, as the clouds fill every inch of the sky and I wonder to myself, whether it was a good idea to go: given my yet unrecovered cold. After a ride in a tuk tuk (mini truck), I come out into the sunshine and completely blue sky; the sun has broken through as it did every day here since I've arrived.

I walk trough a village full of local Lantel tribe ... a few women here are making parts of the roof for a new house; they string a bunch of leaves together from a specific tree in the forest. We continue through the fields and into the forest. After an hour of hiking, my nostrils seem to clear up ... the exercise is helping me.
As I walk through the forest, I feel the ever slightest wind on my hands: it feels soft as it passes me by and I enjoy the moment.
As I walk along the path, I hear the birds singing ... and as I listen in closer, their singing becomes louder and louder with more and more birds joining in: they sing beautiful songs and I enjoy the moment.
As I walk through the forest, I smell many wonderful plants and flowers, I sense the moisture and I enjoy this moment.
As I walk through the woods, I see little lizards camouflaged in the leaves and spiders hiding in their nicely nit webs; I enjoy these moments.
As I walk through the forest, I live and enjoy every moment.

Not long after, we enter the deep forest; in a blink of an eye, everything turns larger ... the trees become massive, like sky scrapers, they hide away the blue sky. The plants become more wilder and the cliffs become more steep, the colours become darker and we pause to take it all in, as our senses jump out of control. We walk along a narrow paths along the cliffs and enjoy the beauty of this majestic forest. As we walk through the deep forest, our guide finds us and informs us of the many plants and their uses for consumption or medication. We pause by what is called an "elephant plant", whose roots, we are informed, are used to treat malaria: typically 1 week is enough to cure it.

We walk up and down the mountains, as magnificent views present themselves to us, like blossoming flowers in the spring; we enjoy every one. We pause every once in a while and during the breaks our guide distributes some "Dynamite" candy; and I ponder to myself why he keeps offering those to us ... my best guess is for a little energy boost with a finishing touch of some chocolate inside them. It is now mid-afternoon and we have arrived in local tribe village, hidden well inside the park and conveniently situated by a river. This will be our stop for the night.

I waste no time, I leave my bags and go for a walk around the village. The people here have well adapted to tourists and all welcome me to take their picture, as I ask for permission every time. Life for the living is very dynamic in this village; I see chickens and running around randomly with their chicks; I see roosters walking around and announcing their presence. I observe pigs of all sizes wonder around and shy away from me. I observes dogs relax freely in the sun, a few little puppies chance the chickens and some angry dogs barking as I approach; I pity the angry ones, for they have been mistreated and now live an angry life. I stop to observe a woman and a child crushing rice with long and powerful pieces of wood, as they interchange their movement, fisting the stick up and down into the stone container for the rice. I observe a little girl, practicing being a mother as she carries a little kid on her back around the village ... I stop them for a picture; they look into the camera with their big eyes as I snap the picture. I say hello to everyone I pass by, and they reply not bothered by my presence. I avoid the barking dogs and go to the only school in the village.

At the school, there are 3 classrooms and about 5 grades; only Lao language and math are being taught here; there is a special class for self study: here you choose to study what you like from the small selection of material available to me. I leave a couple of books for learning English with the teacher. As I peak into the classroom, the brave kids wave and say hello; as I reply, a few more are glad to join in. They smile and some even joke around, I also joke with them in an international language of sounds and facial expressions. One brave kid, perhaps the popular kid in the class, smirks at me and makes gestures that I interpret as unfriendly. In a neighbouring classroom girls are singing ... I am told they are singing a song about the end of school day. And sure enough, somebody hits the metal drum and school is over. Out of nowhere they appear, they run out screaming and joyful from all possible exits. As they rush home, I walk back to our guesthouse on the river; on my mind, I look forward to learning fishing with a net: traditional way.

(To Be Continued)

A ride through Luang Nam Tha countryside

2008-02-24T06:32:00.000-08:00

I ride my bycicle through the long dry streets full of shelter,
This is not new to me, so I don't stop for even one second.
I ride my bycicle passed the local villages with people going about their life,
I try to observe them the best I can, as I pass them by.
I ride my bycicle passed a group of people killing a dog for food,
They see me and hesitate for only but a second, I then see a rooster being put in a pot.
I ride my bycicle passed women and children carrying heavy peaces of wood or rice bags on their back.
They are heavy I know, and I wonder how far and how hard it would be for me to carry them.
I ride my bycicle passed the teenage kids having fun on their motorbikes in the country side,
They say "hello" to me as well, as I pass them by; only to have them steam by me a minute later.
I ride surrounded by rice fields and little huts everywhere,
The view and the colours brings great joy and peace to me.
I ride passed the women dressed in traditional clothes: weaving, creating in traditional ways,
I pause to observe out of curiousity.
I ride passed women chewing tabacoo, now with black teeth or no teeth,
I wonder why they would do that.
I ride passed little kids running and screaming "Hello" with joy and waving at me,
I wave back and enthusiastically answer with "Hello" in their language,
I ride through dirt roads and through villages, having a peak into village life,
They notice me and scream "Farang, Farang"
I ride passed the rivers with men, women and children bathing in them,
This is common here, by tradition.
I ride my mountain bike once more and I am rewarded with once again.
I ride back to the city; this remind me, I need to return my bike!!!

What if?

2008-02-24T05:59:00.000-08:00

What is it all about? A thought with some imagination.

What if, it was all just a show or a game played?
What if the people you met were not random, they had a role and they couldn't go outside of this role, no matter how much you wanted them to, or maybe even tried to convince them to. For instance, if someone you met had the purpose of giving you information and no matter what happened, and how many times you met, they would always just give you information ... you could never have an experience with them of doing anything else; you meet, you chat ... you say goodbye. I have met 2 couples like this in my travels and I kept meeting them over and over; I kept meeting the first all the while I was going south and then the other couple as I was always heading north. It amuses me to think of it all in this way.

What if you thought of something and the next thing you knew, it appeared in front of you as an existing thing ...
What if your ideas had wings and became real, but not by you? What if your thoughts kept being echoed by others w/o you speaking?
What if in the most needed moment, a friend appeared out of nowhere to help you?
An event that has happened to me countless number of times in my travels.
What if you were completely dynamic and followed life where it takes you? What if you found that things just happen and people just appear in the most opportune time to give you direction and new purpose.
What if it wasn't all real? What if the books/movies that remind you and push you to think of the world as not real, were in fact other people trying to communicate this very same view for them to you ... or somehow a clue/hint left to make you realize?
What if the moments that seem to leave you disappointed and sad, have taken you to another direction that turned out, much later, to be the better and more important course of action? What if you met the right people at the right time to make sure you went to the right place?
What if you thought to yourself I haven't had a cold in a while and I don't think I will get one and the next day you realize that you got a cold?
What if people wanted to be in your play ... but never showing you that they do? They would act and look in a certain way, but never going outside their role.
What if you had many paths you could follow and certain people would come along to push you towards a given path?
What if reality could change, based on what you were thinking or what you did?
What if you kept running to the same people you've met before time and again?
What if living things knew what you were thinking when you were near, and acted before you could act according to your thoughts?
What if you could connect to people and before they met you, based on their actions, they would seem like they already knew whether or not they would like to spend time with you?
What if it was all a play and someone out there was enjoying it?
Or What if it was a game with fixed set of characters that were put into action to effect you/each other in some way?
What if? :)

Hong Kong the pinacle of industrialization

2008-01-15T04:13:00.000-08:00

I have arrived to Hong Kong to find a booming city full of noise and traffic beyond what I have seen elsewhere. You have to be on your toes all the time and enjoy drinking many cups of coffee a day or entertain a daily red bull addiction in order to live in this city. The streets are busy, the people are in a rush going through their routine and shopping is everywhere. This is the prime spot to entertain your shopping addictions; you have all possible choices of overpriced brands here. People are crazy about shopping here as well, as attested by the late store hours: closing is around midnight. I for one prefer the slower pace life, but it is often amusing and educational to see the bees at work. Ask someone for directions here, as I did, and they would first rush by you and then if they think they can help they might slow down and point, but you would be lucky if they stop for you at all: only a slight exaggeration. Hong Kong island is densely packed with loads of high rise buildings in a pretty small area; the most stunning view can be obtained from the top of the hill at Victoria Peak; it is indeed a nice view from here. And the city is very modern: not unlike Shanghai.

I met up with Vasya and we ended up staying in Backpackers Hostel, the most horrible place in town; the sign outside said the hostel was in fact illegal and I'm amazed it passed any inspection tests (there was one taking place while I was there): given how many problems with the water and bathroom stalls it had. The owner was so rude and unfriendly, something unusual in the hostel scene; these complains have been echoed by several other travellers as well.

On our second day there, we met Amanda and Xavier. We went out for drinks together to a Russian bar, known for drinking vodka shots in a freezer; a tradition surely inspired by nostalgia for the cold weather back in Russia :) Amanda, a spoiled kid (high class food standards et al) that we knew from back in Waterloo, invited us for a hike the next day.

The next day was the best! We made plans with Vasya, Amanda and Xavier to go hiking to Stanely on the other side of the hill. It was a refreshing hike that took us away from the noise and into a completely peaceful spot, it was hard to believe that such a place existed out here. I think every fast pace city needs a spot like this for the people to relax and unwind; no wonder central park is so popular in New York city! We hiked through the hills, past a sanctuary, and past the forbidden fruit that Vasya couldn't resist. He was a man on a mission and who can blame him; of course it could've been poisonous but Vasya knew better. Anyways, big props to Amanda and Xavier for choosing this hiking spot and to Vasya for obtaining the forbidden fruit.

By the end of the day we ended up in Stanley, a quiet spot filled with hotels and a nearby beaches. We were all starving, but luckily for us there was a nice Spanish restaurant with great food and a view to die for, for us to indulge in. We stayed there for hours, well beyond our expectations, chatting and enjoying the nice setting. In a typical Canadian fashion we ordered a buffet, which arrived full of tapas and many delicacies: other than the growing number of sardines the selection was wonderful. It was the anniversary of the couple across from me and Vasya and they were kind enough to celebrate it with us; and we did so in style.

We went to the beach, got some champagne and sat in the sand, the entire beach all to ourselves, enjoying the bubbly and the background tunes of psy trance courtesy of Vasya: he managed to hook up his cell phone to the speakers at a restaurant nearby. It was truly an awesome day! By night fall, we were left without a hostel, but luckily for us Amanda and Xavier were kind enough to let us crash on their couch.

The next day we all went for breakfast, which was quite filling and I was no longer hungry, when we met again for brunch, just about an hour later. The brunch was in what I could only imagine is one of the highest class restaurants in town; We were dining on a pea sized main course, the kind you see in the movies and until that day I was not entirely sure it could be so real. The food was good and me and Vasya have tried Foie gras, a French delicacy, for the first time, but it did not warrant the relative price tag, nor was it all that. I have had better food on street markets ... no joking! I was recently reading in a book, Bink, how a product is also about presentation; there seems to be research suggesting that you taste the same product differently if it is presented differently; I think this might be partially the case with high class dinning. Anyways, it was nice meeting Amanda's family and observing what is dinning in class.

The next day we spent walking around the city: on the Kowloon island and as soon as I got my Vietnam visa we were on our way back to the mainland.

By the end of my stay, I was more than happy to go back to the mainland, where many adventures, friendly people, beautiful scenery and great food awaited us.

The journey to Hong Kong

2008-01-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

I got up late at the village I was staying at. Today I had to make a dash to Hong Kong to meet Vasya there, for his arrival the following day: or so I thought.

I took a 2hr bus that got me back into Wyunan; from here I had to find a way to get to Nanchang, a 5hr bus ride, and catch a 12 hr train that went through half the country to get to Shenzhen; there I was due to cross the border into Hong Kong. When I arrived to Nanchang, I found out that Vasya was in fact arriving that same day rather than the next; so I would miss my promised pickup at the airport. I sent him an email and boarded the train to Shenzhen.

The train to Shenzhen was pretty empty. There was only one more person in my cart and it was a young girl who had already gone to bed. After a very brief attempt at communication through my phrasebook, I was more eager to try out the new green tea that my Chinese friend gave me as a present. I used my newly obtained bamboo water container and filled it with the hot water, readily available on all Chinese trains ... so bring your water container and tea! :) The tea was great!

As I walked back to my cabin, out of a corner in my eye, I saw a couple of men playing Chinese chess; I slowed down and looked at them play as I passed by, one of the men noticed me looking. Later I would walk a couple more times back and forth to refill on the tea, each time looking to see if they were still playing; but they weren't. However the elder of the two men remembered me and asked me if I was looking to play chess; I swiftly accepted. We played 2 games and they were brutal ... I got destroyed both times; I did better in the second than in the first. Our game was attracting quite a crown though ... people gathered asking me where I was from and offering their help, but non of that helped my cause. Nonetheless it was fun and I have improved my game in the process. The conductor was eagerly watching and telling me to rush, as she needed to turn off the lights, but she patiently waited for us to finish. When it was over, I went to bed.

In the morning, when I woke up, many of the passengers have already left and so I was one of few passengers in the cart; I was also probably the only tourist on the train. The conductor in my cart, a friendly woman that I met the night before, came over and sat across from me to chat. We spoke a bit, mostly using my phrasebook. Not long after a few more conductors joined in and before you knew it, there were four of them. We spoke about many things; mostly about me, my trip and where they were from, etc. It was a pleasant way to spend the morning before the train arrived in Schenzhen. They were all so friendly and had a friendly look on their face; the kind that said these were really good people ... sometimes you can tell.

When the train arrived, I rushed on a bus and then walked to the border, before boarding a train on the other side that took me to Hong Kong island.

Village hop in China (part 2)

2007-12-28T04:56:00.000-08:00

Please see part 1 for description of my first day in the village.

The next day, I woke up late again: being lazy seemed to fit well the setting, and the fact that it was raining didn't help. I ate a nice brunch and watched the host yet again loose money in some sort of Chinese gambling game with domino like figures. He didn't seem to mind it though, he always wore a smile on his face and was very kind. I decided that I would spend the day just walking around my village to see how the farmers lived and see the surrounding area.

On my walk through the houses and the farms, I saw many farmers; I noticed that many of them were very short, maybe 4-5 feet, and all of them had very big hands with large, thick and strong fingers; men and women included. I saw some of them working on the small fields, while others sat idle outside or played Chinese gambling games during their winter off season. I came to the main square, where I found many farmers, wearing old suits, sitting and talking. I sat down beside them, they were very curious and were asking my friend from China about me. I did the best I could to chat with them; my Chinese friend was helping me. They told me that I looked like a Canadian doctor, famous in China, who came to the country to help and save many Chinese people during the war with Japan. They also told us that here too most people end up living well into their 80s and 90s. One farmer told me that most farmers in the village grow food only to sustain themselves. We were told that the day we arrived was the first day it rained in many months; so the farmers thought we brought luck to them.

The village was beautiful, it was surrounded by hills and had a river flowing through it ... a beautiful and clean river. Many of the local women used the river to wash their clothes and it was also a big hangout area during the day. The building in the village were old and beautiful and the streets were narrow, which gave great character to the village. In this village dogs and cats could be friends ... really! There were several times I saw dogs playing with cats; in fact at the house I stayed in the owner used to have a dog and a cat that were always together and protected each other; I saw pictures of them together and I was told some beautiful stories about them as well. I walked along the river enjoying the surrounding views and observing the locals sitting by the river and noticing their large hands that told stories of hard work. At all times we felt welcome; I felt at peace here. This is a place I can stay at for a long time enjoying the peaceful nature of the village.

In the evening, I enjoyed the food that the hostess cooked for us and first time learned how to play Chinese chess; I also won my first game, but not the next three :)

This village stay was my most memorable experience in China.

Village hop in China (part 1)

2007-12-22T06:28:00.001-08:00

This may be my most memorable experience of my stay in China.
I arrived to Wuyuan by bus and after a brief price negotiation I hired a car to take me to a small village in the country side. When I arrived there, it was night and we had to find our way to my shelter for the night and ask them to let us stay there; luckily they accepted. The house was large and very old, going back to the Qing dynasty; it once belonged to some important official in the Qing dynasty. The room I stayed in had an antique wooden bed: the kind I've seen in several Museums in China. The people living in this house were very nice and friendly; I ate all my meals there for the next 3 days; they were delicious and very cheap.
That night I walked the narrow streets in the village with a flashlight showing me the way; the village was very dark with few lights. I saw shadows of animals and people rarely passing me by and dogs barking in the shadows; It felt like I was in a mystery movie, taking place in 1800s London.
I woke up late in the morning, it was raining; I was lazy getting out of bed, but I had a great meal awaiting me. The village looked great in the rain, the colours of the rice fields, green vegetables growing on little farms, the surrounding hills, mystical forests nearby and the river flowing through town were all very vivid. The village was quiet and serene; one could enjoy the peacefulness of a place like that for many weeks and months. Despite the rain, I was on a mission to go on a long hike to visit a couple of nearby villages; I had an umbrella, rain jacket and a flashlight for the darkness on the way back. There were two villages I wanted to visit; one was a picturesque village similar to this one, the other was a smaller and lesser known village: but it was the home of a rare fruit that we waned to have a look at.

I hiked with a local friend through nearby villages, at times following directions on walls and otherwise asking local villagers for help; the villagers are very helpful here and often want to make sure you get to where you are going, they keep following you and giving you directions :). The rain was drizzling ever so slightly and the country side scenery was gorgeous, beyond what my words can explain or pictures can show(pictures coming soon). We walked through the farms along narrow paths, we walked by the river and after several hours we reached our first village; the village was known for the beautiful ancient wooden bridge and an old tree that grows upside down (ie. you plant it with it's roots up). I took a break on the bridge, with a roof over me, and looked over the flowing river, the surrounding farms and the hills nearby: it was the perfect place for a break. We were very determined to get to the other village, so we didn't stay long in this one. We passed quickly through the streets saying hello to the locals of the village.
The path to the little village went on for another hour; it went through farm fields, along some small hills and land covered with red soil. As we approached the village, we saw a farmer going to get his Water Buffalo, used as cow in China; he greeted us warmly. We inquired about the rare fruits that seem to only grow in that region. He took us to his house and showed us some wine that he made from those fruits and brought out some dried ones for us to try. We ended up buying a little bottle of wine from him. Soon after a woman came in and took us to her house to show us the ones she had; we sat sipping tea at a table in her home surrounded by her family and neighbours looking curiously at us. We purchased another bottle of the wine from them and not a minute later, we were shown some other delicacies that they had at the house. They let us try some fresh honey that was still inside the honeycomb; it was delicious! My friend ended up buying a bunch of it. We were later shown some huge chunks of home made tofu, which my friend also purchased in order to cook that night, but it turned out to be quite bitter and not very eatable.

We sat chatting with the farmers; they were all dressed in old rags, some had holes in their pants with visible patches as well, others wore old suits that had shown the signs of age ... but all wore a smile that was very welcoming. They told us about the village and the people living there; we were told that most people live there make enough food for them to survive and most go on to live long lives into into their 80s and 90s. In the room we were sitting, there were two small kids playing together with the help of their parents. One of the woman walking with her child caught my eye; based on her clothes she seemed very poor, but also had a very kind look on her; I inquired about the woman. We were told that she was a neighbour and was indeed a very good person, but couldn't speak. I felt very sad hearing this about the woman; we had to get going as it was getting dark, but before we left, I wanted to give her something ... but I didn't have many things ... so I decided to give her a Canadian coin. She seemed very happy.

We left their home first going into the bamboo forest that was growing up the hill. It was getting quite dark and there were no real paths we could follow, but we pressed on. The forest was misty but very vibrant. We walked enjoying every step. Along our path we saw the water deliver system used by the people at the village; it consisted of bamboo trees tied to gather to let the water flow through them from nearby streams in the mountain. We also saw a pulley system used by the villagers to transport heavy objects, like wood, from the top of the mountain to the bottom. As darkness came, we proceeded back to the village.

We walked in the night with an occasional rain drizzling. We proceeded based on memory of the path. There were sounds coming from the bushes and we could see the reflection of onlooking eyes from a distance at night. Although, at times uneasy, the walk was quite pleasant. Once we reached the first village, we got lost for a few minutes, but the help of a local, we found our way again. We walked along the river for another hour, looking at the silhouettes of nearby mountains surrounding us. I was very happy to reach our village after a tiring day. When we arrived, some warm tea and a warm meal awaited us.

And thus ended my first day in the village. It all seamed like a ferry tale to me.

Away from the cities and into villages

2007-12-22T05:49:00.000-08:00

After Shanghai, I realized I was tired of visiting big cities, since they tend to have a lot of similarity and often lack on the traditional Chinese culture. As a fellow traveler put it; developing countries seem to have a tendency of making their cities more western to show that they are developed, but that's not why we travel here ... it's his theory anyways and I think he has something there based on what I've seen in the past.

So I traveled first to Hongcun, a beautiful village in Anhui province that has preserved a lot of it's traditions. I was accompanied by Lion, a Chinese friend that I met earlier on my trip. We arrived to the village by a series of buses early in the morning. We were hungry and so we jumped at some quick food outside the village, believing it would be cheaper: we had ballz (dim sum) and a bowl of soup. We then proceeded on to the village and followed a tour when it was nearby.

The village was beautiful; it was full of narrow alleys and traditional houses that went back to the Qing and Ming dynasty. There was a stream flowing through the village which was engineered to go by all of the houses in the village. This stream is used for drinking water in the morning (during certain hours) and for washing and other duties afterwards. The stream flows in to a river that has a beautiful little bridge and many old trees that together produced a mystical feeling to the village. The people in this village produce some unique bamboo crafts that I have not seen elsewhere; you can find traditional Chinese paintings on bamboo and crafts made out of bamboo here. In the middle of the village there is a half moon pond surrounded by some old houses; it is an inspiring scenery that is commonly found on Chinese stamps.

I learned many things walking through this village, especially about various patters used for decoration in the houses and their significance: most of which are there for superstitious beliefs.

After a few hours in the village and a nice tour around, I ate some sugar canes while overlooking the river surrounding the village and the perfect reflection of a bridge and nearby buildings in it. I then headed further south to Wuyuan in Jiangxi province; there I would see China's true country side and a beautiful experience of living in the traditional village and many adventures.

In Shanghai and out

2007-12-19T08:58:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Shanghai; it's a beautiful modern city with a blend of the old and the new; it can give New York a run for it's money in terms of sky scrapers and shopping districts. There are many high rise buildings here, with twists and curves and angles and neon lights at night that I have not see anywhere until then. Shanghai is the heart of capitalism in China and you can feel the difference in the air, in the people, in the system as it moves dynamically.

The people that walk many of these streets are alone, they walk to get the next great shopping fad, the rush somewhere perhaps often without knowing why; it feels different, the warmness of the other cities I've visited in China is not here for me. As you walk some of the bigger streets, especially in shopping areas, you get approached non stop for things offered to you; ranging from DVDs and fake watches to massage and sex of your choice. There are many beggars here and pretend beggars often with their children; everyone is looking to take advantage of the tourists that travel here.

Once I got away from the modern streets, shops and buildings, I have landed in the beauty of the older and more rundown areas; I could feel the life of the people here once more. They live together as a community, spending a lot of time outside: socializing and helping one another; perhaps this is the necessary adaptation of the less fortunate to survive. The food is cheap here but very tasty, the people are friendly and kind to you, they are curious and they will make you feel welcome. This is the my little corner of Shanghai.

I enjoyed the views of the modern architecture at night and the museums on offer, the fancy bars on 87th floor and being reunited with old travellers here ... but in the end, I was happy to leave this city as it is not for me.

A haircut in Shanghai

2007-12-07T22:34:00.000-08:00

The other day I was walking around the neighbourhoods of Shanghai. As I was passing a hair salon, a young guy, maybe 20, saw me looking in; he came out and convinced me to come in. I definitely needed a haircut at this point ... so I said to myself "why not?".

The hair salon was run by a few kids around 20; all were sporting wild Asian haircuts that I did not particularly found tasty. But they were all thrilled to have me there and offered to cut my hair for $5; I could've probably bargained that down to something much lower, but why bother. All I wanted was to shorten it to my usual style.

From there on, I got the royal treatment. One of them washed my hair with some nice shampoo. After that, the other started cutting it to the tune of Backstreet Boys in the background :) The young barber seemed to really enjoy himself; he was holding the scissors in reverse from what I've seen in the past, this instantly reminded me of the Asian ping pong raquette grip, and cutting my hair in a fancy way that I cannot easily describe. The other guy was on hand to watch and give pointers. It was taking him a long time and the music was not doing wonders to keep me awake. In the end it took him more than an hour, what would normally have taken 15 minutes back home; still it was fun to watch. They finished the haircut by shortening my side burns with a razor, but not before arguing over who would do it :) After the haircut, they washed my hair once more dried it.

It was quite the spectacle and I'm not entire convinced they wouldn't have done it for free :) In the end though, I ended up very happy with my haircut.

Interesting Social events on the streets and parks of China

2007-11-30T07:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I have take quite a few random walks here in China and on occasion I find myself in a place or situation that is quite unlike anything I've seen before.

I was walking in Beijing after watching a traditional Chinese opera. It was a long walk back to my hostel, and I encountered many things; most memorable was the culturally rich Hutong area, but that's another story. As I walked on the streets at night, it was about 10pm, I heard music playing at a large area on a major street. As I approached closer, I could see people, couples, dancing on the streets to the tune of their boom box ... there were literally something like 40 couples dancing there ... it was amazing and not something you see everyday back home.

A few days ago, me and a couple of Brits were walking on another random walk by the Xian train station, we ended up venturing into a park. Soon after we noticed a bunch of people gathered around, watching what looked like a dance ... but was not particularly beautiful, but more humourous to us ... there was a guy dressed in tights, wearing a matador costume; he had the most priceless expression of his face and enjoyed himself very much dancing in front of the crowd. Many people gathered to watch him and did not leave ... I guess he was captivating for some ... to us this was quite an unusual spectacle.

We continued to wonder around the park ... and not far away from the matador, we bumped into a large social gathering. There were papers hanging on the trees everywhere, they were in Chinese, but I could still make out some numbers that seemed like height and weight to me. We then realized what this was ... it was a gathering of parents looking to share descriptions of their children in order to match make. It was quite interesting ... there were so many people there ... one could find a wife/husband based on a piece of paper if they so desired :)

We continued to walk through the park passed people playing on flute and Opera singers with a backup band ... it was all quite amusing. There were also many badminton nets around and people playing badminton in 7 C weather.

On one evening in Xian we were coming back from the biggest fountain show in Asia ... it was very nice. We got off the bus and walked towards our hostel. On the way we heard some drums playing and saw what looked like a mini rave from the distance. We approached closer ... there were hundreds of people dancing in a ritualistic march at a large square. It was cool ... there was a pattern to their movements and we watched to figure it out. At some point I decided to join in ... it was beautiful, people responded to the drum beats speed and the sound ... we moved about the square like a uniform unit, a snake of 100s of people, in patters. I really had a good time, as did several other foreigners that joined in.

I think these types of social gatherings are what's missing in the West, people here really enjoy being outside and spending the time together with others: most of whom they probably don't know ... it is also what makes the scene in some of these parks interesting. Although these things would seem quite weird to us, they are quite normal here ... as well they should be.

quite

Panda Bears Tour in Xian

2007-11-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

Today me and group of others at the hostel in Xian went on an organize tour to see the panda bears at the local animal reserve called the Shaanxi Wildlife Rescuing and Breeding Research Center.

As we walked in, right away we were hit with a big wave ... we saw some men in white trying to calm a panda locked up in a cell, pretty much the kind I imagine being used for prisoners; clearly the panda was not happy and were rushed from the site to another location where there were panda bears; we were told the day before that we could see them up close and even pet them.

Once we got to the other area where they had the panda bears, the were released from their cages and after a few minutes, they were happy to walk outside and eat some of those tasty bamboo leaves ... yummy! Really! I had some bamboo the other day. They were fun and amazing to look at ... at first we had to contend with one, but later another 2 year old bear came out. Sure enough, the Panda bears were playful and let us pet them on the head as they sat right by the cage fence. However, after enough time, you could see that the pandas were not at all happy there.

I was told that the 4 year old bear tried to escape some time before and managed to get passed the walls to get the joy of climbing the tree, but soon enough it was caught and brought back. At one point I was left alone with one of the bears, by then my initial craziness for taking pictures has elapsed and I was just there in the moment. One of the panda bears came right to where I was standing near the fence, got up on the back legs and held the bars, looking straight at me in the eye for what seemed like 20 seconds ... I overcame with emotion and said "I'm so sorry" ... it was so heart breaking ... I wish there was something I could do for them. Later, they older one would just go right up to the door and stand on it's feet and try to put her mouth as far out as she could as she held the bars ... they want to leave! They are in prison and they've done nothing wrong; how could this happen?

Once the feeding began ... it was crazy, they were fed a couple of apples, a few carrots ... and they loved it, but of course it was not enough for them and they were asking for more ... I would too. I felt sad leaving those pandas. We walked around the are a bit more to see some of the other animals there ... it was crazy the kind of stuff I've seen. There were two black bears locked up in a cage and one of them has just gone mad!!! ... he was walking up to the fence, brushing his face on it as he walked around in a circle, on and on and on ... 30 minutes later, he was still doing it. There were maybe 10 wild dog cubs locked up in a cage the size of my backpack ... they were screaming for help when we got to see them; but what could we do?

As, I was exiting, I saw the original panda that was causing trouble as we walked in; it was lying on it's stomach near the side wall of it's cell as it tried to get back the apple that got away into the side cage ... it was so sad. The panda's mouth was full of saliva ... it would try and then rest and try again and again; at one point a little rat came in approaching slowly, but with a purpose ... it would run a bit back as soon as a little noise was made, but then come back closer and closer as it tried to get to the apple ... in the end I had to leave to find out what happened.

We were told that the government has allocated a lot of money for the reserve, which was to be moved closer to the mountain and would have better conditions. There was certainly lots of breeding going on in the facility and we were proudly presented with some big numbers, but what was the purpose? I was told that if some of these animals were to be released, they would be shot by hunters ... but if I were them, I would've taken my chances outside with the hunters but also with my freedom.

Overall, I think it was a tremendous experience and well worth it, both for visual education and for actually seeing and petting the panda bears.

How can you travel alone? Doesn't it get borring?

2007-11-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

Before I left, I would often get this question asked by my friends. Well the truth is I am traveling alone, but so far this entire trip, about 24 days, I have not spent an entire day on my own; everyday I've been hanging out with some people I've met. After 24 days, I can say that this trip has not seen a dull moment yet ... hope it stays that way. Many of the people I've met so far have been interesting and have often had much in common with me or a connection through an interest that I was looking to potentially explore. They have all helped me in some way on my way and with my understanding of things. A

Here is a quick summary of the people I've met so far; I only include a few of those I've spent long enough time together to get to know them, but there are a few others I will include later in an update to this post (An and Alexandra) as it is too much work to include them all.

Max
A Canadian guy from Quebec, graduated in micro-biology, looking to avoid going to the industry and wants to go to grad school. Like me he is traveling around the same route with the only exception being Japan, which I've visited in the past. We talked a lot about Korean life and some characteristics of Korean people. Among many recommendations he made, he told me about Temple stay, one of my best experiences on the trip so far.

Petru
A Romanian Canadian friend from university of Waterloo, currently teaching English in Seoul. We had a lot of good outings together in Seoul and traveled to Daigu together. Through him I met many local Koreans and learned about their way of life, their troubles and what makes them happy. He also showed me how one can live on a decent salary and enjoy a relaxing lifestyle.

June
A Korean guy operating a hostel in Busan. We had a very strong connection, and it was weird for me how it all happened. I arrived and was the only guy staying at the hostel the first night. We talked a lot about many things. Just like me he used to work for a big company, Nike, and quit to travel; he realized corporate life was not for him, so after his travels he opened up a hostel in Busan. The connection is he graduated in Environmental Eng and I am considering doing this for grad school, but I know nothing of this field, so I had questions - we talked quite a bit about this. He is studying Traditional Medicine and acupuncture and I have interest in this area for reasons that shall remain unnamed. I have interest in getting answers to some questions that relate to Buddhism, etc ... so he has also explored this in the past and present and really admires Osho, whom he told me about. At the time of my arrival, I was thinking of fortune telling for a couple of days, cause it's everywhere in Korea and I've talked about it with some locals ... so I felt a bit afraid of doing a reading, it turned out that June was learning advanced fortune telling, so we talked about that and he helped me get a better idea of how it works according to the ancient Korean tradition, which comes from China.

Popil
The Israeli monk that I spent a lot of time talking to on my temple stay experience. We talked about a lot of things and he helped me get a deeper understanding of the philosophy involved, the advantages of practice and much more about the world of Buddhism and gave me some guidance for the future and a glimpse into peaceful living with nature. He answered many of the questions that I had when I arrived in Asia, but also many more have now appeared.

Alana
She was one of my couch surfing experiences, I stayed 3 days with her. It was also weird how I ended up staying with her, but I will make this story a separate post. Alana is an English teacher, teaching in Seoul ... it's her first trip out of North America and she jumping right in to the culture. Our connection was both through writing, she is an editor and I started enjoying writing and maybe thinking of pursuing it further: encourages by another voice, you know who you are :) but also our Canadian experiences, desire to travel, photography, electronic music and others. We hanged out a lot during my stay, went out drinking, dancing, eating and lots of chatting ... it was all very easy and very fun experience.

Sergio
He is a traveler from Sicily, traveling through Asia, approximately the same route as me but he is doing it on his BICYCLE! Our connection, was our trip, the desire to live in Spain later and in particular Barcelona. We were both traveling on a ferry to Beijing, where we met and ended up going to a hostel together with a few others ( a funny story for later). We traveled together the entire time in Beijing, it was lots of fun ... perhaps we'll meet again down the road. He taught me how far you can get traveling on a very frugal budget and more importantly, how possible the impossible can be if you believe it can be done!

Ms. Lee
She is a Korean traveler in her 40s, she quit her job as a Phd (she has been a student for a very long time), sold her house and is now traveling. She is a free spirit and likes to talk a lot ... it's amazing how easily she can meet people. She can show anyone that with the right attitude one can easily make friends and have a great time, no matter where you are or who you are. She has taught me a bit more about Korean people and how one can pursue studies for a long time if they wished so and just how one can live the life they choose to.

The train to Pingyao and new friends on the train

2007-11-24T05:34:00.000-08:00

I hopped the train today at noon from Taiyuan to Pingyao, a historic town with mostly preserved buildings from 1000 years ago. When I arrived to the train station at my surprise I found that not only were all the train carts full, but there was also no standing room in the halls between the carts and in the doorways. I literally squeezed in there with my big bag. I sat on my bag, and slept with my head on my knees, at my feet lay a huge bag of potatoes. I slept for the first hour of my journey, with people standing all around me packed like sardines in a can. I was feeling that this might be what it was like back in the day in some countries ... it was a fun experience.

After, I woke up, I saw many Chinese men, some of them were farmers with big bags, staring at me and smiling ... at that moment I felt like conversing ... so, I took out my trusty phrase book ... I was ready to use it once more ... but before I could muster a question, a young guy came up to me and asked me some question in English ... we continued from there with the others watching. I would use my phrasebook for the usual set of questions and then a few extra ones that I could formulate based on a small list of words that are listed there as well. Turned out his name was An, he was 20 and from Pingyao, the place I was going to, but was studying English at a university in another town. I asked him if he knew any cheap hostels in Pingyao and he said that he will take me to one ... it all went from there, we talked about my trip so far and my route with the others watching observantly as I showed pictures and locations on maps. Before we got off the train, An asked me if I want to hang out with him and I was more than happy to do so.

When we got off the train, we walked to the hotel, where he negotiated a good deal for me and from there we spent the entire day together some 8hrs walking around. His English was not great, but we were able to communicate none the less through gestures and a combination of my phrasebook and his knowledge of English. He told me that he really liked the show Prison Break and I showed him my favourite show Lost. He took me out for some really cheap food at a very small outdoor restaurant; where I tried some new local dishes; I loved it, we had a soup and what is known as "Chinese sweet heart" ... he refused to accept my money and insisted on paying, no matter what I said. Eventually I insisted that I pay for him at a local tea place and so we went there.

The woman operating the tea house spoke English well, so we had a conversation with her as well. She told us how she had many tea shops now and imported her tea from her husband's town. She also shared with us some anecdotes from her encounters with foreigners; one day a Frenchman came into the shop and over tea he joked with her that the reason China was becoming strong is because everyone in China drinks tea :) An, told me that sometimes the prices are different for foreigners compared to locals, I was not surprised; the woman at the tea shop insisted that her prices were the same for both ... but I'm not sure, as we paid $5 for tea and I've paid 8 times less for the same quality in the past.

We kept walking around town and looking at many of the magnificent old buildings as I imagined life here long time ago on the same streets with these same buildings; you could even see the carvings in the ground from the wheels of the carriages from the past; it's amazing this old city managed to be preserved for such a long time. Me and An wandered around town and talked about Japan and other sensitive issues and his university and his class; which has 57 students learning English, but only 6 of them were men ... I told him that he was a lucky guy :) Eventually, night came and it was time for him to go back home to his parents.

Another day went by and yet again, I was amazed at how friendly people are in China and how he was willing to spend all this time with me, even though he was coming home for only 1 day to visit his parents.

Bring your Phrasebook!!!

2007-11-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

I was out in Taiyuan tonight, walking the streets looking for food and Internet. I saw some dim sum steaming in a wooden basket outside and I was suckered into trying them :) ... so I went in. I'm a big fan of the local small restaurants and street food ... this is where I've found so far some amazing food and for very cheap. This was no different the dim sum was on offer for $0.40
Nothing could've prepared me for what happened next.

I was eating my dimsum and drinking some green tea; behind me was a local Chinese guy eating and drinking ... all of a sudden the hostess brings me a glass of some local hard liquor from the guy behind me ... so I drank it, expecting it to be mild like in Korea or Japan ... NO WAY!!! ... this shit was freaking strong! ... it tasted like I would imagine pure alcohol would ... I looked at the bottle, it was some 52% liquor that looked like Chinese vodka, damn it was bad! After that, me and Wu Min, that was his name, began to exchange a few words with the help of my phrasebook and others at the restaurant/bar helping out where possible :) ... it was soo much fun and a good atmosphere, everyone was smiling and giving their try at the English language ;). Wu Min was a married manufacturing manager from just outside of Shanghai, he enjoyed his Shanghai made cigarettes and on occasion kept offering me one: I continued to refuse.

As the night went on, he kept pouring the drinks and I reluctantly kept drinking ... he would not cheer me unless I had the same amount in my glass. We finished a bottle he had and he got another one! I am not a heavy drinker, in fact I hate hard liquor, but somehow I felt obligated to go on :) ... and I did. After some 6 big shots, the entire small restaurant was participating. The daughter of the hostess would come by and offer to help with the translation, but with little luck as she too did not know English very well. It turned out that the family owning the restaurant was from the Sichuan province. They kept offering me to sleep at their place for a cheap fee of $4 and I would've, but unfortunately I already booked a place at a more expensive hotel in the city.

I took a bunch of pictures and Wu Min took one of me on his phone. After hours of discussion and finishing the 2nd bottle, I had to get going ... he offered to walk me home, as he was worried that I had too much; surprisingly to myself as well, I didn't feel too bad and told him that I will go on on my own. As it happens, I write this just an hour after it happened :) ... before I got going, I promised Wu Min that I will go to Shanghai in a couple of weeks and I will give him a call when I arrive there to go out for drinks ... i hope to keep my promise.

This was one amazing night ... an experience I live for and I travel for!
What can I say; ever since I bought my phrasebook 3 days ago, I have had 3 very cool conversations; one with a tea merchant in Qingdao, the couple on the train and now Wu Min at the bar/restaurant in Taiyuan :) ... I feel very lucky to have met these people and felt their generously.

A show for the ages

2007-11-23T06:41:00.000-08:00

The other day I went to an Opera in Beijing and it was alright ... lots of acrobatics and pretend martial arts ... but that was NOTHING compared to the show I got last night.

I was running late for a train ... I left my hostel with 50 minutes left to catch my train to Taiyuan from Qingdao; the train station was about 1hr away on the bus and in addition to everything, it was high traffic everywhere!

I managed to catch a taxi, the driver gave me some ridiculously high prices by local standards of $6 ... I didn't bargain with him too much as I was in a hurry. He started driving; I quickly looked up in my phrasebook how to say "please hurry" and told him ... he asked me to show him my train ticket ... and I did. After that, the road show began! This driver was breaking one rule after another ... honking the horn non stop; this is how you know in China if a driver is doing a good job as they like to honk a lot. He was swerving, cutting cars left and right and quite frequently going on the apposing lane on big streets to pass cars!!! ... I was at the edge of my seat the entire time and cheering him on silently :) At times, I thought "oh my god there are no seat belts in this thing :)", I was sitting in the back". It was some amazing display, he managed to cut a bunch of other taxi cabs, now that's something you don't see too often. In the end we arrived in 30 minutes! ... he was sooo proud of himself, as was I :) ... he demanded that I pay him $7 instead of $6 and I obliged. I was rushed on the train and didn't have time to buy any food ... I was worried that I'll be hungry for the rest of the night.

On the train, I met a very nice Chinese couple from Taiyuan, who out of their good will gave me food and lots of advice on where I should travel in Shanxi province. We ate shrimp, crabs and spicy veggies together with bread; it was great! ... the took great care of me and my phrasebook once again was a big hit! Don't leave your home without one! After we got off the train, they showed me the way to the bus I was to take ... I was so happy that things worked out so well. Especially since for me, these interactions are priceless!

Sometimes things just work out

2007-11-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

I was taking the train to Qingdao last night from Beijing; it was a night train, so I enjoyed the idea of transporting while sleeping again. While on the train, I met a woman who spoke English, we had a few conversations and during one of them I happened to mention that I was looking to go to downtown of Qingdao. She told me that the train station is far outside the city and that I will have to take a bus or a taxi; I opted for the bus.

Later, in the morning she brought it up again and asked another guy staying in our compartment about it. He was quite nice and offered to show me where my bus was, a bit of a walk from the station, and even tell the driver where to go. So they both brought me to my bus and I took it ... it was packed. I was supposed to get off on the 2nd last stop, but naturally I missed it. At the last stop I told the bus driver where I was going, she miraculously understood, at least she appeared to, and told me to wait for her to go the other way.

While I was waiting, an elderly Chinese guy walked in at the first stop. He spoke English well; we chatted a little bit, then he asked me where I was going and helped me locate my hostel. After a brief argument on where I should get off with the bus driver, he told me to wait 3 stops. I did and when I exited, another friendly Chinese guy came over and asked if he could take me to where I was going ... it was all bizarre; I accepted and he took me to the hostel.

Sometimes things just line up to work out, almost like destiny.

Mania for Beijing Olympics

2007-11-19T07:30:00.000-08:00

It would be hard for me not to notice how important the Olympics are to China and the Chinese people ... it's everywhere in your face; certainly in Beijing.

They have a countdown just on the side of Tienanmen square and another one in Qingdao, that today read 260 days. Every historical site you visit, you will find people on the streets trying to sell you the Olympics merchendise, the mascots in all forms; at one point I looked for some regular souvenirs in the Forbidden City and couldn't find anything outside the walls. Of course, it's not only in the historical sights, it's everywhere ... mania for the Olympics. We met here a few Chinese people, some giving us a tour of historical sights in Beijing that have come from various parts of China to work here to stay for the Olympics. There are commercials playing on the subway and around the city non stop for the Olympics as well: Something like "One world, one dream ...".

When I get the chance to talk to some locals, I often get asked if I will come back for the Olympics. From what I'm told, the amount of construction that has been done for and around the Olympics is unbelievable ... new things are springing up around the clock. Some locals believed that prices will jump significantly after the Olympics, so I was told that I should enjoy the low prices right now :)

Olympics are very important to China, I wonder how different things will be for the Vancouver olympics in Canada.

Protecting Tiananmen Square

2007-11-19T07:25:00.001-08:00

I was walking back to the hotel tonight and my route happened to pass by Tiananmen Square. I found it curious to see that all entries to the square were blocked at night and were protected by a soldier at each entrance ... so no entry is possible. It's quite a massive operation to do something like that given that it's the largest square in the world!

I suppose that's one way of keeping it clean and prevent vandalism ... can't really think of any other reasons why they do it, but I will try to find out from some people here.

Chicken Soup For The Soul In Beijing

2007-11-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

I was wondering the streets of Beijing along with Sergio and Ms. Lee; we were looking for a park Hee, a local Korean girl, has recommended us a day before. After walking for quite a while and visiting the park, which was not as great as expected, we were hungry.

There were a few restaurants around in the non touristy district we found ourselves in. We decided to go into one of them despite the fact there was no English menu anywhere to be found. After looking around the restaurant and using our unhelpful phrasebooks, we decided to pick a few dishes.

The first dish we picked was a lamb dish; it was the only one we managed to translate with the help of Ms. Lee who is Korean and knew how to read some of the Chinese characters. I selected the second dish after looking around the restaurant and seeing an old couple eating a soup off a portable oven; I ordered that soup. When the soup arrived, it turned out to be a chicken soup. However, you could literally find a chicken head and chicken feet in the soup!!! ... we were surprised, but amused at the same time. Sergio gave it a try to taste the chicken feet, but couldn't get far with it. Surprisingly though, our soup was quite good.

Weird meat at the night Market

2007-11-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

It was a chilly night and I was out with Sergio on a walk at the night marken near my hostel. This market was not like any other ... the murchants were selling only variety of meet products on a stick, a shishkabab of your choice was for the taking. Some of the stuff you would see there was quite bezar; you could pretty much find there anything you imagined. There were scorpions, grasshoppers, snakes, silk warms, see hourses, star fish, deer meet and ostridge for you to try. I braved to try the ostridge meet, whereas Sergio went one step further to try the snake as well; I have had snake meet before in Thailand and was unwilling to eat it again. Of course you could bargain your way to reduce the price and we did. The ostridge ended up tasting like lamb, so we were left wondering whether it was really ostridge or just lamb in fact.

There were many tourists around and some willing to try the craziest dishes they had at the market. It was quite a shock and an interesting experience that will not escape my memory any time soon.

The unexpected Beijing

2007-11-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

After a full day ferry ride from Korea and 3hr bus ride, I found myself in Beijing. It was everything but what I expected. I have heard about all of the pollution in China and have met people who have been there before, claiming that in some cities you could feel the oil on your skin after only 15 minute walk outside. I also remember hearing many stories of protesters fighting to get their country to boycott the Beijing Olympics due to reasons of pollution, human rights, etc. At the same time, I was expecting a lot of the communist remaining architecture and a place of some poverty and infrastructure that was falling apart. So what I expected was a lot of pollution, not very green and infrastructure that was quite bad ... what did I find?

Beijing is a city like any other western city, in fact, I'd say better than most I've seen. In terms of pollution; the skies are blue, the city is full of trees and the air feels to me as clean as any big city in North America; Toronto, Seattle, etc included. Regarding the buildings and infrastructure ... well, so much of it is modern and new; large apartment buildings/condos, shopping malls, large streets with various neon lights, pretty much all of the western brand names you can think of, can be found here on the mass, large dance clubs can also be found here. In fact, if it weren't for the historic monuments and the occasional soldier protecting some embassy or an important monument, I would not be able to tell you that I was in China. Unlike in Japan and Korea, you can find a slew of foreigners here ... on my first day here, I've seen more foreigners at a university restaurant than I did in my entire stay in Korea.

There are many crazy, odd and funny things happening in the city. When it comes to driving, there are no rules, cars go on red lights, people cross on red lights too. People approach you and ask to take a picture with you, others approach to sell you something. Everything is dirt cheap ... you can bargain your way all the way to a penny. The food is oh, so dilicious everywhere and not at all like the Chinese restaurants found in North America ... for one, the markets are quite good for food; On the first night that I arrived here, we went to a Tibettan restaurant ... oh man, that was one of the most delicious dishes I have had in my life.

With all the random stuff that is going on and all of the attractions to see, it's quite an amazing city ... and I love it.

My stay at a Zen Temple - Day 2

2007-11-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

Day 2

The day started for me early ... I woke up at 3am, Popil, the Israeli monk, knocked on my door. I didn't sleep much, but I wasn't too tired despite the fact that the chanting was going on at a floor below the entire night. I had only a few minutes to get ready ... the day activities began at about 3:15. The first thing on the agenda was the 108 bows; now as I woke I was thinking to myself that I did not want to bow to some statue ... but in the end I caved in and did it anyways; as it turned out later, my interpretations of the purpose of bowing was all wrong ... it's not a thing of worship, it is though a form of meditation. Doing the bows felt like gliding in the monk uniform I had on ... it was soft and the time flew by quickly.

Next was the 2 hr meditation session, each hour was seperated by a walk around the room for a while. The meditation felt just like the day before, much of the discumfort was due to my inability to sit in the proper position for long and having my mind wonder of into various places erratically. Once the meditation was over, Musan Saneem, the head monk, asked me to help out a bit with the cleaning in the kitchen and cutting of food. Soon after we went downstairs for breakfast around 6am. There was not much talking going on at the tables, people just ate their rice, beans, peanuts, veggies and sea weed silently.

Afterwards I went back upstairs and joined the monks for some tea and fruit (the ones we've cut earlier). I sat next to Musan Saneem, Popil was also in the room. I finally had my chance to ask Musan Saneem some questions that I needed answers to ... so I didn't waste much time. As I took a breath of the wonderful tea we were drinking, I asked:
1) Does Budhism Beleive in God? He answered: Essential part of Buddhism does not speak of any god. Buddha was a man that took hold of his life and changed things ... even if he didn't exist, it wouldn't matter as only the idea matters. There are some non essential teachings that speak of gods and demons, but not of any supreme being.
2) The 108 bows are a form of meditation, NOT a form of worship.
3) What's the role of the master/teacher, what does he provide. Answer: He provides guidance and discipline, doing things properly. In Musan Saneem's opinion, even if you have discipline and time to practice, you will still need a master.
4) What does it mean to be awake? As I was asking him this question, we were eating the persimmons. He responded ... "When I eat this persimmon, I don't think of any other persimmons from Thailand or anywhere else, etc .... Anyone looking to find something more, will not find it. "
5) About Buddhism and connection to nature: He said that Buddhist don't eat meet, they can't kill any living creatures and live in harmony with nature. He believes that man has abandoned nature and is moving as a massive entity in the wrong direction ... it is very hard to stop and change things now.

Musan Saneem has practiced for a long time in Asia; he was a monk in Thailand, India and Sri Linka before he came to Korea. He told me that it was typically very hard for foreigners to be properly accepted/integrated.

It was 7am, time was up and we had to go for some sweeping activity. I dressed a bit warmer and went outside. It was a nice morning and the streets around the temple were filled with leaves of all colours. I was asked to pick up a broom, it was the kind I remember street sweepers using in Russia, it was made of branches gathered together. Our task was to sweep the streets of the leaves. It was surprisingly enjoyable activity and we all participated. We gathered the laves into piles and other monks would come and pick them up, storing them into boxes. This lasted for about an hour; once we finished I felt good looking back at the large are we swept and seeing leafless streets.

After finishing, I went upstairs back into the kitchen for more tea and conversation with the monks. This time there were many more of us ... the other temple visitors have also joined us and another Israeli monk with his friend were also there. We were sitting in the kitchen area and drinking the tea ... refilling the cups as they became empty ... it was truly a wonderful and peaceful experience. The monks joked around and talked about many regular things ... we all shared our experiences with each other. We would end up staying for hours and hours chatting away. We asked the two Israeli monks why they decided to become monks; they answered that it was to practice (meditation, etc) ... my impression was that they really enjoyed the peaceful life and just wanted to practice and perhaps were not strict followers of Buddhism. Popil for one has been practicing for 7 years. He told me of many westerners that go to the temples with the goal of becoming a monk; life is not easy for them and once they do they leave; as he was telling me this, I was remembering my conversation with the American hinja from the day before. Popil continued, "this life is not for everyone, you have to do it for the right reasons". You could tell that they were very happy and pure, the smiled and made jokes as we drank our tea.

Popil is a traveling monk, one without a temple of his own. He allocates seasons (summer and winter) for serious meditation and practices continuously during that time. He gets a bit of money to travel around temples during the off season (spring/fall). He has studied Korean and visited many temples in Korea. Typically Koreans don't know what to do with foreign monks, but once you know the language things are different.

I went out around noon and came back for the Dharma talk at 3pm. There was a visiting monk, Ven. Hyon Gak Sunim, to the temple who gave a Dharma talk on Sunday afternoon. His talk was great, filled with a lot of useful information, great anecdotes - the kind you hear from rabbis and he answered many of the remaining questions that I had by that time. I will write a transcript of what was said in follow up post.

After the talk, Musan Saneem, Popil and others left for dinner outside the temple grounds. They drove off on a temple shared car - Popil was driving as Musan Saneem didn't have licence. I informed the others that I was leaving the temple that evening and said goodbye in case they came back late. Soon after I went for my second nap that day.

I woke up in time to take a quick walk around the area and got back for the 7pm meditation. Just before the meditation and for quite a bit after, I was sitting with Popil in the kitchen, drinking tea and chatting. He told me part of his story; he was first introduced to the Buddhist practice during his travels in Sri Lanka many many years ago. A monk invited him to stay at the temple there ... and he did for a couple of days, after which he said goodbye and continued on his travels. One day much later, he decided to go back to practice and has been ever since; he truly enjoys this peaceful life. Back in the day, he used to be an animator doing art and animation in flash ... but now, he has forgot much of that stuff he knew and almost never uses email now. We talked about Osho, a well known spiritual leader about whom many books have been written; he warned me to be careful with him as his writing sounds very sweet to the ear.

Popil gave me advice for my travels. He said that once I arrive in India, I should give it two weeks to absorb all that is going on there and not to react to things during that time; there is just too much happening. I expect a huge culture shock when I get there. He also recommended that I go to Sri Lanka as in his opinion it's a smaller and more contained version of India.

It was time for me to leave, I said goodbye to Musan Saneem, who encouraged me to stay through the night, but I really couldn't as a couch surfing experience awaited me. I said my goodbye to Popil; I felt so grateful for whole experience and I told him so. We were both smiling and wished each other well. I left the temple very relaxed and marched on with my journey.

My stay at a Zen Temple - Day 1

2007-11-11T21:55:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I stayed at a the Zen Center - Hwa Gye Sah Temple in Seoul. The temple hosts anyone for free with optional donations. It was a wonderful and complete experience and perhaps a life changing one ... only time will tell.

Day 1

I arrived at the temple in the evening ... I was given the monk clothes and a room in the temple attic to stay. There were many foreign monks at this temple; the ones I met were from Israel, Serbia and USA; the head monk was from Serbia. It felt really easy and pleasant to talk to the monks at the temple ... I had many questions and later we would have many chats. Not long after I arrived, I went to observe an ongoing chanting meditation going on in the main room at the temple ... as it turned out later the chanting would continue non stop for my entire stay there! After a few minutes of trying to observer and imitate, I left for a brief walk around. Soon after I came back an hour long meditation session began.

The meditation session went by a lot quicker than I anticipated, but for much of the time, I had difficulty sitting properly with my knees touching the ground and my back straight ... my body is not yet adapted to that. My mind was also wondering off to different directions from time to time. The basic premise of the meditation I was doing was to concentrate on my breath and not let any other thoughts in ... to clean my mind. The meditation practiced at the temple involves having your eyes half open and concentrating on some spot a meter or so away.

Once the meditation finished everyone left for bed ... I decided to go walk around some more outside and inside before heading to bed around 9pm. While walking around the temple I noticed that people that would see me would bow with their hands together at their chest ... it was a sign of respect designated to monks and others in training ... I would return the bow as is customary. On my walk outside, a hinja (monk in training) stopped me and said hello ... I stopped to chat with him for a bit ... he was from USA. He told me about what it meant to be a hinja; apparently before you are a monk you have to go through hard labour training for about 6 months or up to 1 year. He live at a Korean temple in the mountains and was introduced to Buddhism by a monk that saved him in USA. He was 26 when he was introduced to Buddhism, I told him that I am 26 now. He was in Korea to become a monk. We talked a bit about the training and what kind of things one has to overcome ... he mentioned an example of him being 46 years old and one of his masters who was ordering him around was 23 years old ... so one has to overcome desires and anger, etc to deal with such situations. He told me about some of the frustration he had ... he had taken the test for admission to become a monk twice now and failed both times ... he said that the reason was due to his lack of knowledge of Korean and so, he was at this Temple in Seoul to learn Korean. I asked him many of the questions that I wanted to get answers to;

Does Buddhism believe in god(s)?
What does Buddhism say about our place and connection to nature and all living beings.
What is the expected role of a master and what kind of teaching they provide for a student that one cannot attain on their own studies?

I didn't like his answers; he told me that he was not sure, but in his opinion he thought Buddha is believed to be a supreme god ... this was not correct. The had trouble answering my other questions, he would stutter and had trouble formulating sentences. I left to bed a bit unhappy with the answers I got and very sceptical ... luckily things would clear up for me the next day.

On my way to my room, I met an Israeli monk, who was there visiting the temple where he became a monk ... we had a brief but nice interactions; he was always smiling and spoke in a soft and calm voice. As I was leaving, he offered to wake me up the next morning ... I said that I would be grateful.

To be continued ...

Interesting encounters in Busan

2007-11-05T05:58:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago I was in Busan, which is the 2nd largest city in Korea. It's massive with lots of tall buildings and bussy streets; it's located on the East Sea; parts of it remind me a lot of Toronto.

I stayed at a new hostel, Zen Backpackers, which is in a cando appartment on the 29th floor ... the view and conditions here are awesome. June, the guy that owns this place is pretty cool ... very laid back. He used to work for Nike, but quit cause he didn't feel comfortable working for a company; so he travelled for a while and then came back recently to open this hostel.

For a couple of nights that I was there, there were few other travellers, so we hanged out a lot ... watching Korean movies at night and chatting beforehand. Turns out that June has been studyng some Korean traditional cultural things; he has been learning Fortune telling through a famous master in Busan, Acupuncture as part of Korean traditional medicine - turns out this is free to learn in class, one just needs to buy the books, and several other things.

Turns out all of those traditional things are based on the Yin and Yang philosophy, from Wikipedia; Yin is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night ... whereas Yang is active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the daytime.

As he told me, even the food that is served in Korea has a balance that has come through the ages, even though most people today don't realize it (eg. chicken and kimchi is Yang, water and some vegetables are Yin). The fortune telling that he is learning is similarly based on those principles, not at all like the western psychics you may find in North America. Fortune telling is hugely popular in Korea ... you can see many tents and places offering Tarot card reading, and more sophisticated stuff.

June taught me about Chi, which is also based on Yin/Yang. I was able to push away a cigarette without touching it and make it roll on the table. It takes a little bit of practice, but after a couple of minutes I was able to do it more and more regularly; here is a video on someone potentially more advances (hopefully it's real :) )

He also showed me some Korean acupuncture; according to which, apparently, it was shown that points on your body correspond to points in your palm and thus you can apply accupuncture to areas of your palm and make some basic pain (eg. headache, stomach ache, soar throat, etc) go away. He has used it many times before with great success; fortunately for me, but unfortunately for my learning I didn't have any significant pain at the time.

He offered to read my fortune, but I refused as I'm quite sceptical and also a bit affraid of this at the moment.

I really like Korean movies, so watched a couple of movies with June; Memories of Murder - which I highly recommend and Secret Sunshine - which was OK and won some awards, but was not as interesting for me.

Impressions of South Korea

2007-11-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

So, I've been in Korea for 5 days now and thus far I've been lucky to meet quite a few locals but mostly it has been through my past university acquaintances who are living here now.

Friendly Nature
I find the people here are very friendly and welcoming. I was walking along the market the other day, and decided to stop at a food stalls to eat this onion pancake ... so I sat down, there was only one spot next to a middle aged man. He was so friendly, he wanted to chat with me, but he didn't know any English, and despite me telling him that I didn't understand his Korean, he kept trying ... eventually we found some basic language with the use of signs :) ... he let me try a traditional alcoholic beverage called makgeolli. The people across the table were also very curiously looking at me, eventually one of them picked up a glass and said "cheers" ... at the end I was sooo full and I also couldn't finish the bottle of makgeolli, so I gave the remains to a group that was sitting across me ... they were very pleased and shook my hand on my way out.

A friend of Petru's, an acquittance from university, that I met today told me that if she knew that I, a new visitor, was in town she wouldn't have made plans with a friend later on, in order to show me around ... and on no notice, she joined us for a hike to the mountain ... I was amazed.

Safety and Trust
I have to say that I feel incredibly safe here; this might be the safest place I visited. The people are also very trusting ... the merchants at the food-stalls don't keep track of what you ate, you just tell them after you are done. Also, there were times where I went in the wrong direction in the subway and had to come out to change sides, but instead of the operator coming to question me to check if I had a ticket and asking me to explain, he just opened a door for me w/o asking anything. With so many people out drinking late at night, it's amazing that there is no observed damage or danger ... young people of all ages are out late.

Group Culture
Got to love the group culture! People here don't operate so much as individuals as they do in groups ... they study in groups, play online games as groups, go out in groups ... it's wonderful!

Memory of the past
Today, I was remembering how weirdly I used to look at Korean and Japanese food before I first tried it only 3 years ago ... I remember my Korean roomate in 2nd year university used to keep large jars of kimchi in the fridge ... to me that stuff looked scary; it was always red like blood and always left a big trail on the plates. It's strange, how my perspective has changed in such a short time. Today, I love both Korean and Japanese food ... and look forward to eating kimchi!

And so my explorations continue ... more impressions to come.

Arrived In Seoul

2007-10-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

I made it to Seoul, but I'm running on practically no sleep in the last 36hrs.

Some quick observations

Korean Air on the plane gives you disposable socks :), it's cool but I think right away you can tell the importance of foot hygiene in the culture?
There were literally 7 Caucasian people on the plane and I ended up sitting next to one of them, what are the odds?
I haven't seen many non Asian foreigners in the city yet, but it's still too early.
The city reminds me a lot of Japan; Lots of little food shops, bright lights and accommodations with similar setup, leave your shoes outside.

Time for some zzzzz's for the little bee

The story of the little bee

2007-10-25T00:50:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a little bee. The little bee grew up in a large forest among many other bees. From the outside, there was little that seemed different about this little bee as compared to the other bees; it appeared like any other. But this little bee was different than the others. However, only a special bee would be able to see this difference.

The bees in the forest worked hard and always striven to improve their methods of honey collection and building better bee hives. For a while the little bee did the same ... it studied hard the latest techniques and eventually went to work with the other bees in the forest of the three seas. This little bee showed promise and new ideas. But inside the little bee always felt like something wasn't quite right, like there might be something else outside of the forest to see and something else it was meant to do.

One day the little bee met Lasbee a very smart bee that was passing through the forest of the three seas. Lasbee and the little bee spent some time together and became good friends. But eventually Lasbee had to leave the land of the three seas to go back home to the land of many bumps. But before Lasbee left, it managed to tell the little bee many stories about the land of many bumps; about the beautiful scenery, the many wise bees and about bee life there.

The little bee became curious, it stared thinking about the land of many bumps and about all other lands that are outside the forest of the three seas. Eventually the little bee ventured outside the forest, across the seas in search of the land of many bumps and of Lasbee ...

Dynamo and SOSP Conference

2007-10-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

Last week, I attended the 2007 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP) conference. At the conference, we presented our paper Dynamo:Amazon's Highly Available Key-value Store.

Peter did a fantastic job presenting the paper and answering questions. We also seem to have attracted a lot of interest from those attending. I would often overhear people in the halls and on the bus talk about Dynamo.

Today, I was thrilled to find out that we won the Attendees Choice Best Paper award!

For me, it was particularly rewarding to reunite with many of my former team members and friends who worked on this project. It was especially great to do so in an academic setting.

I am very proud to have worked on this project, but for me, the most important part was the great people, atmosphere and the good times we had together ... therefore, it was especially meaningful to see some of these people again!
When I joined Amazon and the project, for the most part, we were all fairly new to the company, young and found it very easy to interact with each other ... so, there are many fun stories to speak of both at work and outside. To this day, I feel very lucky to have been part of this unique team and experience in the industry.

The conference itself was quite enjoyable, especially due to opportunities to interact with some of the big names in systems community.

A needle in a haystack in Barcelona

2007-10-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

It was beautiful day in Barcelona. I had already spent the afternoon at the beach swimming in the sea and enjoying the sun, and now I was due to take part in a salsa tour organized by my hostel. There was a large group of people, 28 of us, most of whom were a few years younger than me. As it turned out, the entire group of people consisted of English speaking nations with the only exception of our tour guide who was a local.

We first went to a well hidden bar where we got a dance lesson. Throughout the night I spent a bit of time interacting with many of the people in the group and it didn't take long for me to realize that there was no one special there with whom one can have a meaningful conversation or enjoy sharing the experience. Many of the Aussies in the group, seemed to be concerned with the quality of the beaches in Barcelona; I for one, found no such problems. Some of the Brits were just looking to get hammered, while a group of others was looking to celebrate a birthday and not open to interacting with outsiders. Finally there were a couple of American rugby players who did not produce a lasting impression. There was a couple from England that was cool, but in the end I decided to spend more time interacting with our tour guide.

When we eventually made it to the dance club, this was well after the lesson, there was a live salsa band playing there. After dancing with one of the Australian girls, I decided it was time to separate from the group and enjoy my time with the locals. So I did ... I enjoyed the music and observed some really good local dancers in the hope of learning something. There was one Brazilian guy who had style, he would gently guide the girls and you could really tell that they were enjoying the dance. For the most part I got the impression that many of the girls at the club were not open to dancing with strangers.

During one of the songs, I caught a glimpse of one of the girls; she smiled at me. She was about 5'2 with dark skin and dark hair curled around like an umbrella up to her cheeks. She had a beautiful smile and you could tell right away that there was something special about her. A few minutes later I asked her to dance and we did; she was much better than me. Right away, she spotted that I've taken salsa lessons in the past and so we laughed about it; she said that she didn't care what salsa style to dance and that I just had to find my own. She was from Brazil. When I told her that I was from Canada, she replied with a smile "Americas unite" :) ... I thought to myself: yes, two worlds unite in Europe. You could tell by the way she interacted with people, how she looked and how she smiled that she really knew how to enjoy life. She was truly a needle in a haystack.

When I was leaving the club I found her standing outside with some sleazy guy in a suit; I decided to be more expressive this time. I came over and told her that she was wonderful and to take good care of herself. She smiled and asked to give me a Brazilian hug, then told me to take a really good care of myself as she squeezed my hand. After departing, I understood that sometimes it's important to communicate your feelings, especially with people who are open, as it makes for a stronger connection.

A trip to University of Barcelona

2007-10-03T01:25:00.000-07:00

Given how much I love Spain and Barcelona, I decided it would be worth wile for me to explore potential opportunities as a Phd student while I'm here. So, my mission was to get to the university and talk to some professor about the research they do here ... previously I couldn't find much information online.

I went to the university, past the security guard and into the campus ... I landed right into the math department area ... I felt right at home. There was a big square with the buildings connected on all sides. I went into the math department office and asked for help to find the computer science department. I was told to go to the next floor. I did. I walked into what was an Algebra department and asked to talk to a computer science professor; luckily a woman spoke English and walked me to the first available professor. I had no problem, a professor was available and had free time. By this time, I felt things have been moving very smoothly given that I am a tourist, who doesn't speak Spanish and just randomly popped in without telling anyone why I was there for!

The professor I was talking to was very friendly. We talked a bit about the research they do at the university there and about my past experience and interests. As it turned out they were doing research using AI to study human behavior, a topic I have quite a bit of interest in and have previously mentioned in my blog post Why Performance tuning is like Behavioral Psychology. The conversation was very positive and we agreed in the end that I should apply and that if there is a match I might qualify for projects that they will have soon.

I asked about other universities in Spain and got a nice list of universities for me to look into.

There are times I get the feeling like things go my way and a task that may seem difficult just flows naturally, this was one of those times.

Pedro the Hang drum player in Barcelona

2007-10-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

Another sunny day in Barcelona and so I was out on a random walk through the city ... this has recently been my way of sight seeing. On my walk I encountered many interesting things and stories, but I will tell just one right now.

I was walking near cathedral Barcelona when I heard a really neat musical sound ... it instantly reminded me of a track I love in the movie Constant Gardner ... so I walked towards it. It was coming from a small square in a narrow alley. I walked in and sat down listening intently ... the music was beautiful, the instrument looked strangely unfamiliar.

I listened and exchanged a few words with the musician during his breaks. He was Brazilian from Rio and he obtained this weird instrument from Bern, Switzerland. I wanted to have a conversations with him, but his breaks were too short ... luckily in a nice coincidence, a group of tourists walked in with a guide who asked the guy to stop playing at his next break. This was perfect, it gave me an opportunity to talk with him.

His name was Pedro. It turned out that this instrument was new and that there are two masters in Bern that made it. Pedro was one of 5 Hang drum artists in town; later I would see another one. He told me artists needed license to play in Barcelona and got a time slot at a specific location. We talked about his music and his album and the instruments used in different tracks, as well as, his band with another unusual instrument from India. Turned out Pedro went on a 4 month tour of India in the south. He told me about some sights he'd seen there, like the continuous body burning fire and the oldest living city. We agreed that I would email him and he'll make some suggestions about places I should go there. In the end we shook hands and I told him to keep playing the beautiful music for the world to hear.

In the video above, it's Pedro playing on the Hang drum at the same place in Barcelona where I met him. He also has a blog

I was thinking about it, this is an awesome instrument that may not be too difficult to learn but sounds amazing. This is the perfect instrument for the march!

The Zombie generation

2007-09-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

Earlier on, I was chilling with my computer in the chill out room at the hostel central in Barcelona. Checking email, chatting with friends, booking tickets ... these were my activities.
Across from me were sitting two guys with a computer ... they were very attentively doing something ... I wonder what could it be ... no emotion, just human computer interaction ... the room was a bit dark on that side and all that was lighting it was the light from the computer. Watching this, I felt that I was observing the new and real zombie generation and worst of all, I was part of it!

I just returned from a nice dinner, where I had tappas and a bottle of sangria. I am back at the chillout room, which is a big bar, and everyone is quiet, no one is speaking ... they are all watching the television set where they are showing the F1 race.

Let the zombie generation awake!

Last day in Lugano

2007-09-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

The day started with some chores, but soon enough I was watching Ratatouille the movie with Ratatouille and his charmed, but ailing companion.

I continued on my journey to the other side of the river, where I met my good friend Lasaro at his home; he is the man who inspired me to come to Lugano. We had great conversations about things of value and interest as we walked on the streets. I was challenged on many occasions and enjoyed the power of thought. The weather continued to get better and I was very happy to be able to spend the time together with my friend. We went for a cappuccino during the afternoon, a forsaken thing in Italian parts. Perhaps it was my last cappuccino this time around in Lugano.

In the evening, I had a very nice dinner at Cedric's place along with Cristina and Vova. The food was fantastic ... I'm not sure of the recipe, but I would have it again any day. The hosts were very gracious, so it was difficult not to enjoy the caring treatment. I spent much of the time listening; there are times I enjoy just to hear the words flow ... they were flowing tonight, sometimes good, sometimes bad ... I've learned, but I'm not sure I've taught this night. At one point we were interrupted by a marching band.

They marched for Teressa ... it was some sight ... guided by a voice on tape and pleasant music, they seemed possessed as they marched through the night ... I feel this was important for me to see ... many years have past, but perhaps the world stayed the same!

On my way back to my place, for the last time this trip I saw the beautiful silhouette of Mt. Bolia under the moonlight and the sleeping sheep in the background.

Why Performance Tunning is like Behavioural Psychology

2007-09-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

Having been working non stop on a systems paper recently, I came to this realization ... Software Performance Tunning is like Behavioral Psychology.

For a long time I've been interested in observing and analyzing people's behavior, like an armature behavioral psychologist might. As part of our research paper, I had to spend loads of time on getting MySQL database running with Berkeley DB storage engine and more importantly to get it to perform well. At my disposal was a bunch of configuration parameters to play with. So I pushed on with tunned parameters, observed the behavior of the database and making some conclusions about the change and how it effects the system.

After a while and lots of frustration, I came to realize that this was not unlike what a behavioral psychologist might do; basically change some variable, whether intentionally or find it changed naturally, and observe the organism's behavior in order to progress some theory about living entities.

Perhaps there is something to learn for us from the behavioral psychologists when it comes to performance tunning of software.

In search of meaning ...

2007-09-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

In search of meaning, we first come to abstract the process!
To me, the process of life is about connecting, adapting, understanding, and being attracted to.

Adaptation
We adapt all the time to environments we are in and to people. We do so to be able to maintain and form better connections and to survive. Friends adopt to each other to maintain and form a stronger connection; this is visible sometimes through their similar way of talking. People adopt to cultures and work environments by dressing and acting according to the norm. To live is to adapt!

Connection
We connect to everything around us: people, places, cultures, thoughts, ideas ... everything! Love is a type of strong connection. Sometimes you can feel the connection and it's especially beautiful when you are aware of its existence. To live is to connect!

Understanding
Understanding comes through meaning; it can be conscious as in "this is interesting: I'd like to understand what this means" or unconscious as in "I identify with this, but I'm not sure why". In order to connect, you need to reach understanding at some level. To live is to understand!

Attraction
We are consciously and unconsciously attracted to people, situations, ideas, objects, places ... This may be based on past experiences or genetic wiring. In order to understand we first need to be attracted by that we seek to understand. To live is to be attracted!

Some Meaningful Question:

What is Love? It is a strong connection that comes through understanding and adaptation to each other.
What is falling in love? It can be described in terms of attraction, understanding, connection and adaptation.
What's the perfect couple? Ones that are in love and are able to live and adapt to each other.

The Vehicle to Asia

2007-08-31T06:09:00.001-07:00

For any good march, you need a way to get to your starting point ... so I have a couple of recommended airline companies that are super cheap and fly to Asia.

To Asia from Europe: http://www.gulfairco.com/index/index.asp

To Asia from North America: http://www.oasishongkong.com/ca/en/home.aspx

And so let the March to Asia begin!

A very tentative Itenerary

2007-08-29T01:02:00.000-07:00

Korea, South Sun, October 28 (6 days)

China Fri, November 2 (31 days)

Vietnam Sun, December 2 (16 days)

Laos Wed, December 12 (5 days)

Cambodia Mon, December 17 (14 days)

Thailand Sun, December 30 (14 days)

Burma Sat, January 12 (19 days)

India Thu, February 7 (31 days)

At the moment, I'm considering also going to Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Tibet.

My Long March to Asia

2007-08-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about this for a long time now ...

Ever since I departed from Amazon, it has always been my goal to go on a long journey to explore parts of the world that fascinate me. In part because I feel age and responsibility creeping up on me, I've decided that this might be one of a few chances in my life to do this. After traveling in Asia on two separate trips now, I've been touched by the cultural experiences there and have decided that I should go back; but this time, I will give it proper time to dive deep into the great cultural scene and the rich history of the region.

So my current plans are to depart towards the end of October.
I would fly into Seoul, Korea and then move to Beijing, China. I would then slowly move south through Shanghai, Hong Kong and many of the places in between, taking side trips further inland. Eventually, I should arrive in Vietnam and move south through Vietnam and Laos towards Cambodia. The plan then is to go through Cambodia and south of Thailand, possibly going through Malaysia and Singapore. After that, I plan to move north going through northern Thailand and possibly to Myanmar and Bangladesh or back through China towards India. I would then circle India along the coasts starting from the east, going through Sri Lanka and into the west.
Eventually, the plan is to end up in New Delphi, and perhaps at that point it would be the end of my trip.

I would love to hear comments and suggestions of any sort: from places to go to travel experiences in any of these locations.

Also, I welcome any of those interested in joining me at any part of this trip to come forward :)

Open Architecture for housing the needy

2007-05-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

This is an awesome talk about an organization based on open source principles that designs, architects and builds housing for those who need it around the world.

Many examples of the stuff they done for disaster control, mobile hospitals, schools and shelters.

They focus on sustainable design and try to engage the global community as well as the local communities.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/54

Football craziness in Lugano

2007-05-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

Ciao amici,

The Champion's League football final just ended with AC Milan winning!
Now people are going crazy on the streets of Lugano; they are honking cars everywhere ... screaming for hours now ... ché mondo! It must be the proximity to Italy and Milan.

I was out walking on the streets tonight wearing my AC Milan jersey and cars passing me by wouldn't stop honking and people pumping their fists in the air.

It's beautiful to be in a place that cares for this great sport!

Buona notte!

Learning from History and application of those lessons in corporate world

2007-04-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

I've recently been reading this great book called "Guns, Germs and Steel", and it got me thinking about a lot of things; especially in terms of technological evolution and factors contributing to the balance of power for civilizations. It seems a lot of these and similar ideas can be extended and applied to countries and corporations of today.

For instance, to sustain specialists in any civilization, someone needs to produce an excess of food to feed them, so that they can concentrate on the task they specialize in. Similarly, an important factor is the transportation system, it is vital to have the means to transport goods and people to their destination fast.

Jump to modern age, you have many specialists (eg. computer scientists) that roam the corporate world. What's more precious to any given corporation than to maintain an employee's concentration on the task of his specialty and to get as much of his time as possible? Not much, therefore, it's not surprising that many of the companies of today provide incentives for employees to stay longer at work and try to keep them concentrating on their tasks. Such incentives as free quality food, on campus gyms and classes popularized by Google, and cash incentives designed to influence you to live closer to work, provided by companies like Facebook, are there to do just that: minimize the transportation hassle and the time and pain of producing/finding food. Removing such obstacles from the daily life can also lead to happier people and consequently more loyal and committed employees to the given corporation. I wouldn't find it surprising at all if companies that provided such services would tend to hang on to their talent better than companies that didn't .

Another major factor is communication. In ancient civilization conflicts, possession of writing often proved to be a major advantage. It seems to me that speed of access to information and the quality of information available can be a huge factor in decision making, and quality and speed of the work produced. Therefore I feel it's essential to the success of a company to provide optimal communication channels and a good way to organize information. Not surprisingly, many corporations tend to try various management hierarchies to achieve just that, although sometimes those hierarchies are just imposed or grow from the given setup w/ little thought to optimizing for communication. What is surprising is that sometimes companies don't take the necessary steps to organize information efficiently and don't bother improving the internal information retrieval.

Imagine what could be achieved if we took these factors seriously when we designed the system in question and the advantage one would have over someone who didn't.

Visual Essays (Awesome Videos)

2007-02-18T15:52:00.000-08:00

A visual essay about digital text, Web, Web2.0 and how they are revolutionizing our lives.
The Machine is Us/ing Us

Sarah McLachlan - World On Fire
Another Visual essay, this one about money, hardships in various parts of the world, etc
World On Fire

Wikipedia To The Rescue

2006-04-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently wrote a short article about the greatness of Wikipedia, to further motivate his point I wanted to share an experience I had in the last few days that illustrates the importance of this great site.

The other day I was intensely focused on planning my trip to Europe. As such, it was important to plan out cheap flights through a few cities of my choosing :)
What I discovered was that it was difficult to find the various small European charter plane companies on normal search engines like Google. Sure enough there were the better known bunch like Ryan air and Easy Jet, but for whatever reason the smaller airlines that I came across all operated from Britain; this was not good at all since I was not planning on going there.

Luckily I had a chat with a friend of mine that pointed me to a wikipedia article discount airlines in Europe ... what a life saver!

I was surprised to find out that wikipedia had this information listed there and in such thorough detail, but I guess it should not have been that unexpected. In the end I was able to find the right combination of airlines to get me where I wanted to go; Berlin Palma de Mallorca Valencia

In the process I found the following airlines most useful for me; Air Berlin, Vergin Airlines and Easy Jet

Wikipedia is a great resource of all kinds of information, so don't forget to use it.

Videos from New Years party

2006-01-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

Finally the videos have been approved and I can now share them. These videos were taken during our weekend, New Year, trip to the cottage in Ontario, Canada. To go to a download page, click on the links below!

Early start to celebrations

Dancing to boomer song

First dance of 2006

Jumping to the boomer dance

Dancing Russians one more time

Two crippled dancers - Performance 1

Three drunk Break Dancers - Performance 2

Pictures from New Years Cottage Getaway

2006-01-16T21:13:00.000-08:00

Once again this year I went on a trip to a cottage to celebrate the New Year with 29 others. There were many friends and a few new faces in attendance. The party lasted for 4 days but it never really died down. It turned out to be a great New Years trip! Checkout the photos from the party.

A little bit of Russian music courtesy of Danila and Sergey

Hockey Players of the year

A game of hockey on the local ice rink

Big New Years celebration outside

Masha celebrating the New Year

Tourkovich and Ira celebrating outside

Crazy friends dressing up after a swim in the snow right after New Years

Mr VDM, thrilled with arrival of 2006, yet he seems to have misplaced his pants!

The old three stooges - Leva, me and Timur

Chatting with old friends

Opening the presents

Big Igor with da moves!

Do the Boomer dance!

A little bit of nargila

Danila having a puff

Outside in the snow - sledding, skiing and snowboarding -

Last night of partying

Waterloo Reunion and Kwanza celebration

2006-01-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays I had the chance to meet up with some of my old friends from
Waterloo University. On a special reunion party at Vasya's place we went for something different ... we decided to celebrate Kwanza!

Here are the pictures and videos from that party!
NOTE: You can now play videos right from the blog ... this is Awesome!

The fun drive to the party - Me, Sanyok, Timur and Bill in the car

People at the party

In the car on the drive to Waterloo

The hosts, Vasya and Marina

Bill and Sanyok's excellent adventures

Timmy and Flo looking confused

Steve and Juliet, the kids from LA

Trip to Whistler in December

2006-01-07T00:12:00.000-08:00

Just before I left to Toronto for the holidays, I went on a trip to Whislter with some of Amazon's interns. The conditions and the weather were very nice and the trip turned out to be a lot of fun. All of the pictures from the trip can be found here

View of nearby mountains from Blackomb

Me on top of the glacier on Blackomb

Whislter village

Me with Kelving and Ian near Squamish

Eating sushi in Vancouver with Olya and some of the interns

Drinking Tusker, Kenyan beer, with Olya ... reminds me of the good times back in Africa :)

The flicks from California

2005-12-02T21:53:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics with comments from my trip to Cali ... the rest of them can be found here

Updated: You can now view the videoes we took on the trip!!!

Venice beach LA, California (video)

Japanese Tea Garden - San Francisco (video)

Partying it up at Ruby Sky in San Francisco

Walking around the streets of San Fran

Ilyia got lost, ended up in Japan! :) ... actually he didn't make it beyond the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate park.

A pack of Sea lions moaning at night near the infamous Pier 39 in San Francisco

A view of Alcatraz prison island of the shore of San Francisco

Welcome to heaven ... I mean the pacific coast drive to LA

This is some of the most amazing scenery I've ever seen!

The drive along the pacific coast highway goes along the shore and through the mountains and has some of the most amazing scenery imaginable! I hightly recommend this rout to LA.

The beautiful Santa Barbara; also famous for the clasic tv show entitled "Santa Barbara" 8)

Arrived to LA

View of LA from the Getty museum building.

Chilling with Ilyia, Steve and Juliet in Santa Monica

IMO this is the nicest house (from outside) on Rodeo drive in Beverly Hills

A rizing star director in Hollywood!

Hollywood sign and the walk of fame. Hollywood was a major disapointment, it reminds me a lot of the Niagara city downtown near the Niagra falls.

I've arrived at Venice beach! This is one of the nicest beaches in LA.

More views of Venice beach.

The weirdest car I've ever seen! Taken on highway 405 in LA.

The drive back to San Francisco

Trip to California

2005-12-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

This past thanksgiving I went on a trip to California. It was a great opportunity to visit my friend Ilyia and to explore the life and scenery of California. All of the pictures from that trip can be found here

I flew in to San Francisco on Wednesday night and chilled with Ilyia in San Fran for a day and a half; While there, we checked out some of the San Fancisco night life and explored a few interesting parts of the city. We then took a road trip down the coastal highway towards LA. That coastal highway goes right on the coast and has some astonishing views.

On the way to LA we stopped in Santa Barbara and took the opportunity to explore the night life there, as well as various parts of this beautiful city. My impression is that the city is very beautiful but in many ways kind of fake.

We then proceeded to LA and met up there with Steve, our friend from University. Steve showed us around the lively Santa Monica and after going bar hopping with Steve and some of his friends, we ended up crashing at his place.

In the morning we went to explore various sites in LA, including UCLA, Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Venice beach. In the evening we drove off back to San Fran, where I hopped an early flight the next morning.

I have to admit that I was very impressed with California and I really liked the weather there and the scenery for the most part. It was an awesome trip and already seems kind of unreal, having returned to a completely different climate in Seattle.

Stay tuned for more selected pictures coming up in the next post ;)

Skiing trip to Mt. Baker

2005-11-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

Well folks, I have kicked off my skiing season just over a week ago with a trip to Mt. Baker. It took us 3 hrs to get there from Seattle and I had to get up at 6:30 am for it, but it was well worth it in the end. The day turned out to be gorgeous and warm as well.

All of the pictures from the trip can be found here There is some amazing scenery up there.

The ride to Mt. Baker

Me on the slopes with an amazing view of the mountains

Beautiful view of the mountains

Getting ready to head back

Back on the Blogosphere! :)

2005-11-19T17:25:00.000-08:00

After a prolonged absence due to a rare condition diagnosed as blogophobia, I am now back and shall slowly start posting again @_@

What's been going on - in chronological order
I've moved to Seattle into temporary corporate housing; where I've stayed for a month.

I've started work on an interesting projects and was lucky to have a fun group of people to work with in my team. In the short time span, I began working on more and more interesting and challenging pieces of the project.

I started exploring some of the natural surroundings in Washington state; Ended up going on a couple of hiking trips and a few times kayaking.

Cascade mountains

Mount Renier

Shortly after, I've moved into my new apartment in Queen Anne(pictures coming sometime soon) ... since then, I've been getting furniture at an amazingly slow pace :) I also got a visit from Ilyia, living now in San Francisco. I ended up exploring more of Seattle with Ilyia here than I had done so before.

More pics from Ilyia's visit here

I've started reading lots of research papers in Distributed Systems to learn about current ideas and technologies in the field and look for ways to apply them in various projects.

The fall here was/is very colorful ... but I've neglected to take pictures thus far.

There are a lot of surrounding mountains in the area and recently there have been big snow falls over there ... this means the skiing season has started! :) ... I have therefore went on great conquest to obtain all the needed equipment and now plan to begin my skiing season here tomorrow ;)

Stay tune for more to come and in more detail!

Moving away to Seattle

2005-09-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

And so in a blink of an eye the summer is nearly over and the time has come for me to move away to Seattle to start my full time work with Amazon.

I leave with mixed feelings;
One of sad thing about leaving Toronto is leaving behind my family and many good friends; over the years, we have shared many wonderful memories and I can only hope that there will be many more to come. I will do my best to keep in touch with everyone and come visit as often as I can.

On the other hand I leave for the west coast where the weather is nicer, people are more laid back and nature offers some fantastic views and opportunities for exploration. At the same time I join the Distributed Systems team with an opportunity to keep learning and produce creative work, challenge myself and to work with the latest technology and techniques, but most of all it is an opportunity to do what I truly love doing.

And so, my new life begins.

Tags
moving away Seattle Amazon

Going away dinner at Jack Astor's

2005-09-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, I am moving away to Seattle to start a full time job with Amazon. For my last big outing in Toronto I organized a going away dinner for my friends. I would like to thank everyone who made it ... it was really great seeing all of you.

You can find all of the pictures from the evening over here towards the bottom of the page.

The kids from Moosonee; Danila, Vadim, Masha and me, a regular outdoors crew :)

The guys from University of Waterloo; Santars, Karyakin, Me, Timur and Olya

View of my friends on both sides of the table.

Me with my brother on the left. Shlomi and I on the right.

The three Sanyoks :)

Eric, Timur and I (on left). Igor and Yana (on the right)

Tourkovich and I (on the left). Vadimovich and I (on the right).

Tags
Jack Astors Toronto dinner friends restaurant pictures moving away

Short trips around Ontario

2005-08-31T15:22:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the two trips below can be found here

Pictures from a weekend camping trip to Algonquin park.

Day trip to Wasaga beach with a good friend from university.

Tags
Ontario Wasaga pictures outdoors Canadian outdoors Canada Wasaga beach Algonquin Algonquin Park camping sunset

Canoeing trip to James Bay in North Ontario

2005-08-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

Just over a week ago me and 3 friends departed on a 7 day trip to North Ontario. We drove to Cochrane and took a train to Moose river from there. We then proceeded down the river on our canoes; paddling for 5 days, sometimes for 30 km/day and at times carrying the canoes through some very shallow waters. We canoed past Moosonee till James Bay, a bay to Hudson Bay, which in turn is the bay to the Arctic Ocean, where we braved a quick swim in the bay in some extremely cold waters. Afterwards we took the tide coming in back to Moosonee, where we took the train back to Cochrane.

Overall we paddled for nearly 120 kms, camped out in remote areas, had black bears visiting our campsites, slept in a baggage train cart and technically swam in the Arctic Ocean; in conclusion the trip was awesome.

All of the pictures from the trip can be found here

Me and Vadim on a train from Cochrane to Moose river.

View of the sunset over Moose river.

Canoeing teams; me with Masha and Vadim with Danila

A campsite with a view not far from Moosonee

Moon over Moose river

Camping in a swampy grass field 10 kms from James Bay.

Swimming technically in the Arctic Ocean, in reality though in James Bay.

Spending the night in a cargo cart of a train in Moosonee.

Tags
Ontario North Ontario pictures outdoors Canadian outdoors Canada moose river canoeing sunset train moon
James Bay camping trip

Various nights out around Toronto

2005-08-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the nights out below can be found here

A night out at Panorama, 51st floor lounge w/ a nice view of downtown Toronto

Sanya Karyakin's birthday.

Igor's BBQ.

Tags
Toronto nightout pictures Panorama

Niagara Winery tour and Moon river camping

2005-08-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

Pictures from a tour of the wineries on Niagara on the Lake.
Click here to view all the pictures from the trip.

Pictures from a camping trip to Moon river. Click here to view all the pictures from the trip.

Tags
Canada trip Niagara Moon river camping winery winery tour

World Expo 2005

2005-08-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

While I was in Japan I found out by coincidence about the World Expo that was going on at the time I was there. I was told about all the technology that was being presented there and so I felt compelled to pursue the unique opportunity to experience this event.

What was amazing about the expo was that they built an entire city just for the expo! The expo is located in Aichi and basically consists of countries presenting about themselves and in relation to the theme of the event which was on the Environement. In addition to their pavilions, each country also had a restaurant displaying the cuisine for that country.

There were also several corporations presenting at the expo, including Toyota, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Japan Rail, etc.

The expo was so interesting that we stayed there for the entire day: about 13 hrs. The only trouble was that the lineups to many places were soooo long! Unfortunately we were also prohibited from taking pictures inside some shows :( ... so there aren't as many pictures as I would've liked.

Toyota had a really good showing at the event with the futuristic personal vehicles, a performing Robot symphony and a Robot rapper, along with displays of some other technology they are working on.

Japan Railways showcased their new revolutionary train that is based on Maglev superconducting technology. We were shown a 3D movie on it. This train is in the testing phase and has already set the worlds fastest record of over 580 km/hr. This technology is supposed to be really safe despite the fact that the train levitates above ground at all times.

There were also some wonderful artistic presentations. This one was designed by Mamoru Oshi - director of Ghost in the Shell - and had some spectacular music with amazing visual effects.

The country exhibits were really interesting, however I didn't get a chance to visit too many of them because I spent most of my time on the corporate exhibits; at hindsight I really wish I had.

Canada had a really good presentation in their pavilion. It was an artistic multimedia showcase with some very nice visual displays and music; it was so impressive that I was telling myself 'I want to go there' even though I'm already from Canada :)

China, the site of the next World Expo in 2010, had a nice interior design in its pavilion and some videos informing about the country, however, it was rather empty and unfortunately didn't display the rich Chinese culture and traditions.

India on the other hand had a really wonderful pavilion that portrayed its rich culture and was very informative.

The expo city was really beautiful at night.

Other random photos from the expo.

Tags
Japan trip Travel expo world expo expo 2005 Aichi Toyota pavilion JR pavilion Maglev JR
Canada pavilion China pavilion
India pavilion Mountain of Dreams
Mamoru Oshi Toyota robots
robots future vehicle

Impression and experiences of Japan

2005-08-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

After arriving in Japan we quickly felt welcome: w/ people nodding to us on occasion on the streets. At the same time I found that the Japanese people often went out of their way to help us find the places we were looking for; this was especially useful since the street system is rather difficult to follow and therefore finding a particular house can be very difficult.
Also the Japanese people are very polite and although bowing may seem silly at first, I quickly got into it and found that this atmosphere and these customs made interacting with other people more pleasant.

It was interesting to see how popular manga (Japanese comics) are in Japan. They are sold at every convenience store and book store. I found that a lot of people read them on the trains and in the subways. They have manga of all kinds: kids manga, violent manga, manga for adults, romance manga, porn manga and even gay manga.

There is some great food in Japan and not surprisingly a lot of restaurants; since the country is small for its large population, there is a high concentration of restaurants in many parts of the country. Some of the most common restaurants are ramen shops: they usually have a good selection of ramen soups, which are pretty cheap. There are lots of restaurants and shops which sell sushi, soba noodles, takoyaki (fried octopus balls) and a few restaurants with Okonomiaki. In Okonomiaki restaurants you get a mixture of eggs and other things like shrimp, meats and vegetables which you then cook yourself; the end product is something that looks like a big, thick omelet with a lot of stuff mixed in it and tastes pretty good.

One of the things that Japanese love are the onsen (hot bath places); these places usually have hot water pools, saunas, cold water pools and a jjacuzzi. An onsen fits a lot of people, the largest can fit about 200 or so, and the place is often busy. In the onsen itself men and women are separated and people are always naked inside. It is really relaxing at an onsen, which is probably why it is so popular.

There are a lot of internet/manga cafes in Japan, where you can surf on the internet, read manga and watch DVDs. What you may not know is that some of these manga cafes are open 24 hrs and come with private cubicles, a public shower and enough room for you to sleep and all at a cheap price. We have stayed twice at such a cafe: once sleeping on a mattress in a cubicle and another time sleeping on large comfy business chairs. These cafes come w/ a large choice of free drinks, videos, internet access, manga books and magazines ... therefore a night at such a manga cafe is a really good experience.

Japan is located in an active earthquake zone and earthquakes there have not been uncommon. In fact, we were told that the reason that there aren't so many sky scrapers in Japanese cities is because of all the earthquakes. Towards the end of the trip, I actually experienced my first earthquake in Tokyo. We were walking on the street and the ground started shaking underneath us and the street signs and traffic lights were shaking as well. It was a weird experience and rather unexpected.

Tags
Japan trip Travel japanese food manga cafe internet cafe japanese cuisine onsen manga japanese people Okonomiaki

Photos from Japan - Part 3

2005-08-07T17:07:00.000-07:00

Below are selected pictures from the 3rd week in Japan. Some of my other photographs can also be found atAlex Pilchin Photography

Plastic food on display outside of many Japanese restaurant. This is an ingenious method to allow you to see the selection of food dishes available at the restaurant; it is also useful when you don't know Japanese: just take a photo and point out the plate to the waitress.

Himeji Castle, largest castle in Japan. Its amazing how they took into consideration so many things when they built this castle.

Manga library in Hiroshima; it is full of manga (Japanese comics).

Checkout this miniature truck. There are a lot of miniature cars in Japan: sometime its hard to believe they are not toys.

Me in a male kimono at a ryokan in Hiroshima.

The hospital building over which the worlds first atomic bomb explode in Hiroshima.

In Hiroshima at the Peace Memorial Park; At this site every year there is a memorial held for the victims of the atomic bomb.

Japanese rice fields outside Kumamoto. There are tons of rice fields all around the country. One distinguishing character of the rice fields is that they tend to be flooded w/ water around 2 feet deep.

View of the capsules in the Capsule Hotel in Fukuoka. There nearly 500 of them in one room! but they come with a TV, radio, alarm clock, light control and air condition control. Also the actual hotels can be pretty fancy.

Ramen stands on the streets of Fukuoka. People also met to drink alcohol there.

Me and my brother in our complementary traditional Japanese summer wear (Yukata?)at a capsule hotel in Fukuoka.

Someone playing the Super Mario 1 arcade game :)

Dinner at a restaurant in Osaka w/ Mike and his local friends.

Singing at a Karaoke in Osaka with Mike and his friends.

Me on my way to the world's largest ferris wheel, located in Osaka.

View of Osaka from the ferris wheel.

A float in the Gion Matsuri festival, one of the most renowned of Japanese festivals, in Kyoto.

An old merchant district in Takayama.

Inside Takayama-jinya the oldest government building in Japan that remains from the days of the Tokugawa Shogunate (military rule) and was an operational governance building past mid 1900s.

A tea room in Takayama-jinya.

Tags
Japan trip Travel Hiroshima A-Bomb Dome Peace Memorial Park Himeji Osaka karaoke jinya Takayama
castle Mario arcade
capsule capsule hotel
manga library manga Kyoto
miniature cars ferris wheel Japanese tea room rice field Fukuoka kimono plastic food ramen stand Gion Matsuri

Atomic bomb on Hiroshima

2005-08-04T18:05:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post contains some disturbing images so proceed at your own caution.

I write this post to inform you about Hiroshima, a city on which the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945 destroying it and eventually killing an estimated 160,000 people: directly or through radiation.

The pictures and the information I present comes from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum; to support this information the museum had actual letters, telegraphs, etc that were communicated between the US president, his supporting staff, scientists and other allies.

Ironically enough, if you are in Canada you can still catch a documentary playing now about Hiroshima on Sunday August 7 and Saturday 13 at 10pm ET on CBC.

American propaganda leaflets dropped on Japanese cities during WW2. The leaflets states that there would be warnings given to people before bombing campaigns ... there was no warning giver before the atomic bomb was dropped.

Potsdam Conference where the Soviet Union, US and British leaders met on July 25, 2005 the day of completion of the Atomic bomb. At this conference, an ultimatum was issues to Japan for its unconditional surrender. This ultimatum was rejected by Japan because they wanted to keep their emperor system governance.

Why did the US decide to develop the bomb?
Some scientists/community leaders fearing Germany was close to developing this bomb convinced Albert Einstein to write a letter to the US president urging him to develop this bomb; the US president approved and thus the Manhattan Project was born.

Why did the US decide to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan?
1) They wanted to test the full effect of the bomb. For that reason certain cities were specifically left untouched by regular bombings.
2) They needed to justify to the American people the price of $2 billion spent on research to develop this bomb. Hence they felt a quick end to the war with the A-bomb would do it.
3) They wanted to minimize Soviet influence in Japan after the war. Therefore, they needed to end the war before the Soviets would invade Japan as agreed between Stalin and Truman in Feb. 1945 at the Yalta conference.

Hiroshima after the bombing. Everything was destroyed. The bomb exploded 600m above the hospital building seen in the center of the picture.

People after the bombing scrambled to survive. There was shortage of water and the dripping rains that came down were black.

Recreation of the survivors at a bank after the bombing.

A victim with severe burns being treated at the hospital. Many people died from radiation at the hospitals not long after the bombing; doctors at first thought that the burns were from the explosion, but later realized that their condition was caused by something else.

Images and stories of people after the bombing.

Click on the picture to read the story of a 15 year old school girl that died from the burns after the bombing.

Click on the picture to read an emotional story about a little kid, age 3, that died from severe burns shortly after the bombing.

The remaining clothes of school kids that died from the Atomic bomb.

A permanently burned stain (shadow) into stone from a vaporized man that was sitting outside of the bank waiting for it to open at the time of the A-bomb.

Another victim with severe burns.

Pictures and artifacts showing the effect of the bombing and the radiation on the objects.

Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945 when the emperor announced it on the radio to the Japanese people. Soon after the reconstruction efforts began.

People worked around the clock in their efforts to restore the city. Their efforts were courageous and clearly paid off as the city is now thriving and a wonderful ambassador for peace and advocate for elimination of the Atomic weapons from the world.

American forces occupied Japan till 1951. It was forbidden to discuss about the A-bomb and all letters sent out were opened and checked by the Americans; because of this people in other parts of the country were not aware of the extent of the damage and suffering brought on Hiroshima. Soon after the Americans left there was a flood of books written and stories told of the bombing.

The atomic bomb, an incredibly deadly weapon unleashed upon the human race in 1945.

This is a list of Atomic weapon accidents; indicating how disturbing it is to have such a weapon in existence.

Tags
Japan Hiroshima Abomb Atomic bomb Story Potsdam WW2 war museum Peace Memorial Museum radiation US

Japan compared to the West

2005-08-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

I will try to point out here some of the differences between Japan and the West, both bad and good, that I've noticed during my travels in Japan.

For starters, much of the Japanese TV programming is incredibly cheesy, even compared to our unspectacular programming here. Much of their local programming consists of cheesy game shows, poorly made TV shows that often seem like soap operas shot on a digital camera, discussion shows and pop idle like shows.

What's really amazing about Japanese people is the self-motivation and the unmatchable quality of service they provide. Just like here, many people in Japan work hard and long hours, but from what I'm told, the most amazing thing is that they are NOT forced by their managers to work harder/longer hours as employees are here; they are self-motivated to succeed and try to be as good as they can be at their job; hence, they choose to work long hours!
In addition, the quality of service you get at a Japanese restaurant, convenience store, etc is quite amazing and unlike in North America people are sincere when they thank you and seem to truly enjoy their job; even in a fast food restaurant like McDonalds the employees are incredibly friendly and kind. Imagine for a second that you come to a convenience store or a supper market to ask for directions and the servant leaves his store and walks for a 1km to show you the place you are looking for, that just doesn't happen here! But in Japan this happened to us on several occasions.

Despite this, there are also a lot of inefficiencies. There are a lot of people who just stand around sometimes looking pretty and sometimes just doing unnecessary jobs; the good thing about this is that in a highly populated country a lot more people are employed. I was told a joke about this: "How many Japanese people does it take to screw a lightbulb? ... 5 people ... 2 to hold the latter, 1 to screw the light bulb and 2 to stand and make sure that no one disturbs the others".

I got the impression that it is extremely safe in Japan and I felt safe there day or night no matter where we were, which is a lot more than I can say for most places in North America. Even when walking among the many drunk businessmen or in sketchy areas like the red light districts, etc you feel very safe. The impression I got is that the modern day Japanese are very nonviolent, nonconfrontational and self-controlled people.

Some of the technology there is much more advanced than ours; they have in-car navigation systems (even in cheaper cars) and a TV that comes in the car w/ basic channels. The mobile phones are extremely advanced; you can watch TV on them, find out where a product in a supermarket was made, and not to mention an extensive train system so precise and so advanced that you won't believe your eyes.

The vending machines in Japan are amazing; there are vending machines w/ drinks practically every 10m and there is an enormous amount of choices unequal anywhere else I've seen before. In addition to that they have specialty vending machines where you can buy hot food (fries, etc), hot drinks, ice cream, underwear, toilet paper, noodles, etc.

It seems that Japan has a really poor banking system. I was astonished to find that it is extremely difficult to find an ATM in Japan to accept foreign cards! The entire time there, we were using the specially designated Post Office ATMs and foreign bank ATM machines. In addition I was told that the local banks don't even have a communication network between each other; so a person w/ a bank card from bank A will not be able to withdraw money from bank B! If I remember correctly from my Econ class, the Japanese banking system was cited as one of the main reasons for Japan's economical problems in the 90s and now I see why.

Tags
Japan West Travel the West Bank System Self motivation Vending Machines technology service cellphones safety
Inefficiencies train system
TV

Photos from Japan - Part 2

2005-08-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

In another installment of images from Japan, I've included the next chronological selection of pictures w/ some brief descriptions. You can also view all Japan pictures here

A samurai house in Kakunodate. This samurai house belonged to a middle class sammurai and was transported here from another location to attract tourist to the city; more on 'creating tourism' in another post.

Staying at a ryokan (traditional Japanese style place), where we slept on a futon mattress.

My brother on a tram up the mountain in Hakone

A Buddhist temple up on a misty mountain in Hakone.

A shinkansen (bullet train). We used this very fast train to get around Japan with our JR Rail pass: a must for anyone going to Japan with a plan to cover a lot of ground.

A lost tourist on a bike in the rain in Kyoto. In Japan a lot of people ride these kinds of bicycles around the cities.

Ancient temple grounds of Nanzen-ji in Kyoto

Beautiful and colorful temples in Kyoto

Pachinko mania! Extremely common and popular, pachinko places are the way Japanese people gamble their money.

The shopping arcades in Osaka.

Parked bicycles on a street of Osaka; Bicycles are a very common way of transportation in the cities.

The busy streets of Osaka: the 3rd largest city in Japan and known for one of the best night lives.

Having dinner with Mike, a friend from Toronto who was working in Japan on the JET program this past year.

A geisha district in Kyoto with 17th century restaurants and tea houses.

A geisha walking away quickly, trying to avoid other tourists chasing after her to take a picture. A geisha traditionaly entertains men, wealthy enough to pay for her company.

A girl in Kimono advertising a restaurant on the streets of Kyoto; there are several women walking around the city in wearing Kimonos.

Drinking Asahi bear at a pub in Kyoto.

Sitting inside a small temple in Nara

Surrounded by the sacred deer at a park near the many large temples of Nara.

A beautiful pond in Nara

A 10m statues, called Neo guardians, carved from wood and located on the way to the Todai Ji temple.

Todai-ji temple is the largest wooden structure in the world. Located in Nara, it houses some enormous Buddha statues.

Me coming out of a hole in the wooden pole in Todai-ji; it is believed that if you can go through this hole you will be enlightened.

Me enjoying the beautiful view just outside the Todai-ji temple in Nara.

A temple on top of a hill with sacred deer lurking on the temple grounds in Nara.

Tags
Japan trip Travel temples kimono Nara Kyoto Osaka geisha Todaiji Asahi
Neoguardians wood carving
sacret deer pachinko
ryokan Hakone shinkansen
samurai house arcade Japanese restaurant bicycles

Photos from Japan - Part 1

2005-08-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've finally uploaded the photos from my trip to Japan; so you can now view them all here

As usual, I've included some pictures below with a bit of commentary to explain the scene. You can now click on the photo to view the original image.

Me and my brother arriving to the Narita airport in Japan

Entrance to the arcade and temples in Asakusa, Tokyo

A Buddhist temple in Asakusa: the more traditional part of Tokyo

A fashion show in central Tokyo

The imperial gardens in central Tokyo

Me enjoying the imperial gardens in Tokyo

Near the imperial palace area in central Tokyo

Streets of central Tokyo in the evening.

Japanese market in Ueno, Tokyo.

Sushi restaurant, where the sushi plates rotate around, at a market in Ueno.

Me near a lily pond in Ueno park, Tokyo

School kids in their uniforms at Ueno park in Tokyo

Shibuya the world's busiest intersection located in Tokyo.

The streets on an evening in Shibuya, Tokyo.

My brother with a view of the mountains and a river in the baground: near the temples of Nikko.

A girl (Buddhist monk) from the largest temple in Nikko; the temple has one of the largest Buddha statues in Japan.

Temples of Nikko. Nikko used to be a capital of Japan and has a high concentration of Buddhist temples.

A beautiful path through the woods between temples in Nikko.

At a youth hostel in Sendai that comes with traditional Japanese bedrooms.

Drinking traditional Japanese tea, served to us in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony in Matsushima.

A neat site with ancient budha statues and alters amids the tall cedar trees in Matsushima with small caved rooms and wall carvings.

At Jigokudani (Hell Valley) in Noboribetsu, Hokaido with steam coming out of the rocks.

Oyu-numa (Boiling Water Swamp), this sulphuric pond in Noboribetsu has a weird colour and a surface temperature of 130 C.

An amazing manga cafe in Sapporo, Hokaido. This cafe looked really fancy; you get nearly 30 choices of free drinks for something like $4/hr. You can watch free dvds on a flat screen TV, surf the internet on a nice computer or relax reading manga (comics) or magazines chosen from a large selection.

Sitting at the traditionaly low tables at a restaurant in Sapporo, Hokaido (Northern Japan).

Tags
Japan trip Travel Tokyo temple Nikko Shibuya intersection manga manga cafe Sendai
North Japan Hokaido
Sapporo Noboribetsu
volcanic garden Asakusa
Ueno shrines Japanese restaurant Japanese traditions

Back from Japan

2005-07-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

I have returned from my journey to Japan.
Its been an exciting month for me, getting to experience much of what Japan has to offer; we even experienced an earthquake, probably my first, in Tokyo at the end of the trip 8)

During the trip, we covered a lot of ground visiting Tokyo and area, Nikko, Sendai, Sapporo, Noboribetsu, Kakunodate, Matsushima, Takayama, Matsumoto, Nagoya, Mt. Fuji area, Hakone, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Kumamoto, Fukuoka, Osaka, Kyoto, Himeji and Nara.

In the next little while I plan to post the pictures from the trip, tell a few little stories, share my impressions of the country and observations I made during the trip.

At mid point of my journey to Japan

2005-07-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I've now been in Japan for nearly 20 days now and I have to say its been a really interesting experience.

Its feels a bit weird traveling in Japan, a very industrial nation, after traveling in Africa, but its a good experience nonetheless.

Since I don't have much time, I'll just give a taste of some of my impressions here and I'll elaborate further when I get back.

There are lots of interesting things about Japan;
The train system here is wonderful, I wish we had one like it in Canada, it is very comfortable, fast and efficient.
I'm amazed by some of the miniature cars that drive on the streets, some of them look like almost toys; they have miniature trucks, mini-vans and some of the smallest cars I've seen - even smaller than the 'Smart' cars.
There are lots of inefficiencies here, lots of people standing around being pretty and on occasion point somewhere or something -- and that is basically their job :)
The food here is amazing; some of the interesting, and new for me, dishes that I've had here are takoyaki, okonomiyaki, udon, onigiri, etc.
Lots of towns/cities here have a castle, many of which were rebuild after they were destroyed in the various wars.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial museum is amazing and very emotional; I will write a whole post on this. But it covers the destruction of the city by the atomic bomb, how and why it was built, why Japan was selected as the target, various information about the city before/after the bombing, photographs and recovered artifacts from the bombing.
People are crazy for Manga (comics) here, you can see them in convenience stores, book stores, libraries, etc ... I've even visited a library dedicated only to Manga.
The building architecture is nice here, and there are lots of lights at night in the modern cities w/ advertisements, etc ... very busy w/ lots of stuff going on.
For the most part, the Japanese don't speak English here ... so, I've been relying on my brother and some sign language to get around. However, they are very helpful and sometimes go out of their way to help you.

I have met up with Mike, a friend, who is working on the JET program; teaching English here.

Its been raining a lot here, but I guess this is to be expected during the rainy season.

Thus far we've covered much of Japan from North to South. One thing that I still really want to see here is the World Expo, going on at the moment, somewhere near Nagoya ... from what I'm told there is some amazing new futuristic technology being displayed there (eg. Toyota's dancing robot, a robot playing guitar, etc). Many countries are presenting there as well, including Canada and Japan.

Finally, it is my b-day today! 8)

Tags
Japan experience Travel impressions
trip Hiroshima cars
train manga

Journey to Japan

2005-06-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow me and my brother are starting our journey to Japan.
Japan is a place of great culture and tradition; so it should be an interesting experience to observe the Japanese society first hand.

Prior to my trip there, most of my knowledge about Japan and its culture has come from Hollywood and anime (Japanese animation), therefore, this is an excellent opportunity to actually learn and explore Japan and its culture.

This is also my first trip overseas with my brother, so that in itself presents an interesting experience.

Hopefully I'll have great pictures and stories to share with everyone when I get back.

Tags
Japan Trip Travel exploration

Waterloo Convocation pictures

2005-06-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday me and many of my classmates attented our convocation ceremony at University of Waterloo. At the ceremony we were officially awarded our degrees; mine reads 'Bachelor of Mathematics - Honours Computer Science Co-operative Program'.

You can find the photograps from the convocation here

Alex, Kravchenko, Punit, Diego and me in our convocation robes.

Me and Dario with our diplomas.

Me with MC - the math building in the background

Tags
convocation University Waterloo math bachelor computer science ceremony Canada Ontario photos images

Panoramic Views of African Scenery

2005-06-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

I've recently became a fan of making panoramic views on my camera. Ever since I did, I haven't often been disappointed with the results. A panoramic image provides the capability to describe visually some of the most amazing scenery that can't be described as well with just one image.

Without further ado, here are the panoramic images I took in Africa. They are actually some of the very best images and scenery I've seen, so sorry I held them back from my previous posts.

View overlooking a lake in Amboseli National Park in Kenya

View of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya

View of Lake Nakuru with millions of flamingos at Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya

View overlooking Lake Nakuru and surroundings from a hilltop

The most magnificent view of a hippo pond at the bottom of Ngorogoro Crater, Tanzania

View of a salty lake with flamingos in Ngorogoro Crater, Tanzania

Tags
Africa Tanzania Panoramic Ngorogoro Travel African photos Nakuru wildlife crater lake Amboseli park hippo pond safari images

Images of Tanzania

2005-06-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

View of the shoreline of Lake Victoria, the 2nd largest lake in the world.

The market in Tanzania

Interesting houses and scenery in rural Tanzania.

A Running Massai giraffes in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

Lions in Serengeti National Park.

Curious zebras in Serengeti

Zebra and a Gnu drinking from the river in Serengeti.

On the shores with the hippos in Serengeti National Park.

A pool of hippos, the picture is taken from the river shores at Serengeti.

Four members of the original Kenya tour, on the way out of the Serengeti and into the Ngorogoro Crater

Overlooking the Olduvai (actually its now Oldupai) Gorge, home of the earliest man. Many important anthropological discoveries were made here by Mary and Louis Leakey

Astonishing view of the Ngorogoro Crater from above.

Gorgeous sunset on the rim of the Ngorogoro crater

Amazing view of the rim of the crater from below.

Close up of a couple of Gnus in Ngorogoro Crater.

View of the Ngorogoro Crater from the road on the rim of the crater.

Us in the 4x4 Jeep that we used for viewing the Ngorogoro Crater.

A large Baobab Tree (up to 300 years old) in Tanzania

For more images of Tanzania start here and proceed forward in the album.

Tags
Africa Guerba Tanzania Ngorogoro Travel African tour organized wildlife crater olduvai gorge Massai giraffe zebra sunset safari lion gnu serengeti park images

Review of a Guerba tour to Africa

2005-06-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

Before going on a tour of Kenya and Tanzania with Guerba, I've notices there were very few, if at all, reviews and feedback from past travelers about such an organized tour. Therefore I try to describe here some of my experiences, observations and what to expect from a Guerba tour to Africa.

Our 'Faces of Kenya and Tanzania' tour lasted for 21 days and in fact was two separate tours, one for Kenya and a different one for Tanzania.

What to expect
For us, each day of the tour was somehow different and so it was always fun and never boring.
Expect to see a lot of wildlife up close and probably meet the Massai people in one of their villages. Otherwise, we had very few encounters with the locals, except for our guides and a few hours spent walking through towns; thus there is hardly any opportunity to experience the local culture.
If your tour either goes across several countries or starts in one country but is actually a tour of another country, then expect to spend a good portion of your tour traveling on the road between places.
Expect to wake up early in the morning every day and mostly sleep in the tents.
Also, you will have to do some small chores each day (eg. cleaning the truck, cooking, dishes, etc)

General info
We traveled around the country along with a cook and two guides in a big safari truck. For the Kenya tour we had 6 people plus the staff and for the Tanzania we had 16 + staff and a smaller truck: go figure. Personally, I thought on the Tanzania tour the truck was a bit crowded and probably wouldn't recommend going on a tour with more than 15 people. You will have to travel a lot in the truck and if it is too crowded, there is not space to lie down and rest.

Guerba usually tries to hire local guides, and our guides were friendly and knowledgeable about anything we wanted to know.

Camping and Campsites
Pretty much every night we camped outside in our tents. We were given air mattresses and some really good tents. Whenever we were in game parks, we usually stayed in campsites inside the park or just on the outskirts; this meant there was usually no fence between the animals and us. Nonetheless, I think it is still very safe and actually a significant advantage over staying in lodges and hotels. The surrounding animals provided some interesting moments and entertainment.

The conditions in campsites vary significantly. Most of the toilets in game parks were not sitdown and were basically just a hole in the ground, things improved outside the parks. Also it was rare to get hot water in a shower; most places had only cold water and in some parks there were no showers.

Food and Cooking
As I mentioned, we had a cook traveling with us and he was doing most of the cooking for us with some minor help from a different group of us each day. The food was amazing! It seriously felt like it was restaurant quality food! Every day we had 3 meals.

Also, Guerba has pretty high standard for hygiene and there are processes in place to wash your hands and dishes properly: this was rather impressive. Having said that, a couple of people still managed to get an upset stomach.

Every day a different group helps to wash the dishes and everyone participates in the drying -flapping- ritual :)

Wildlife Viewing
We were lucky enough to see pretty much all of the animals we wanted to see and in abundance. Leopard was the hardest to spot, but we managed to see a couple of them.
On our tour we visited the following national parks; Amboseli, Samburu, Lake Nakuru, Hell's Gate, Massai Mara, Serengeti and the Ngorogoro Crater. All of these have a different landscape and some of the animals vary as well in type and quantities.

Optional Activities and Money Withdrawal
I have to warn you that usually on a tour lasting more than 1 week there are lots of optional activities and they all cost extra money, as the result many of us ran out of cash. Another problem is that the prices for these activities are not provided in the brochures; If possible, I suggest you find out the cost of the activities of interest to you well ahead of time.

We also encountered lots of problems withdrawing money from the bank. First of all, we were rarely near a bank and when you are the following should be taken under advisement
1) If you have a credit card, it better be a Visa, since MasterCard is not accepted almost anywhere.
2) Withdrawing money from a credit card outside of a bank will cost you a fortune!
3) You better know your pin number.
4) Under no circumstances should you bring Travelers cheques with you!
It would be best not to rely on your credit card and have a lot of cash instead. In small-town banks, especially in Tanzania, they don't accept any credit cards.

Other Advises
If you want to buy souvenirs, the best thing to do is wait, don't jump on the first thing you see; a lot of the souvenirs are the same everywhere in the country. Most importantly thought is Always Bargain!
Our guides has a lot of interesting stories to tell about their encounters with animals in the parks, so don't forget to ask them about that :)
Also, here are the pictures from the trip.

Tags
Africa Guerba Kenya Tanzania Travel African tour organized wildlife review East Africa Expectations advice issues expect safari

Images of Kenya - Part 2

2005-06-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

View of white rhinos at Lake Nakuru National Park.

Beautiful view of Lake Nakuru and surrounding landscape.

Walking with flamingos and pelicans on Lake Nakuru.

Black rhino in Lake Nakuru National Park.

Grazing Hippo on the shores of Lake Nakuru.

Our Guerba truck parked on the shores of Lake Nakuru while we are walking and observing the flamingo and pelicans.

Walking Buffalo at Lake Nakuru National Park.

Rothschild giraffe in Lake Nakuru National Park.

Magnificent view of Lake Nakuru from a hill top .

A large group of female impalas and one male organizing them at Lake Nakuru National Park.

Bike safari at Hell's Gate National Park.

Me in Hell's Gate National Park.

Climbing walls of the gorge in Hell's Gate National Park.

View of the Gorge. The walls are weathered by constant rainfall.

Walking in the gorge at Hell's Gate National Park. The layered walls were weathered by water from constant rainfall.

A fallen tree at the bottom of the gorge.

Amazing view of the gorge and surrounding area from a hill above.

Encounter with the Massai tribe.

A night in the Massai home. They invited us to spend a night in their traditional home, which we accepted.

A beautiful view of the sunset from Massai village in the heart of Massai land in Kenya, near Massai Mara National Park.

Sunset over Massai Mara, Kenya's largest and most famous National Park.

View of the savanna in Massai Mara National Park

Mara river in Massai Mara. It is famous for its crocodiles and hippo images and often shown on Discovery channel. If you look closely you can see a dead zebra at the bottom right of the river. Its a bit more difficult to see a lizard eating it.

Wolchers near a dead carcass of a hyena. One of them is eating it.

Hippos swimming in the waters of Mara river. This was taken from the walking safari on the shores of the river. We had armed guards accompanying us on the walk.

Male lion walking the terrain of Massai Mara.

For more photographs from Kenya go here

Tags
Africa Guerba Kenya Pictures Travel African nakuru Lake Nakuru National Park Massai Mara Massai Village Hells Gate Rothschild Giraffe Impala Lion Warrier View Wildlife Photo
Mara River
Hippo Crocodile
Gorge Safari
Rhino
buffalo

Images of Kenya - Part 1

2005-06-16T08:36:00.000-07:00

View of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, from Amboseli National Park.

Our group on the tour of Kenya in Amboseli National Park.

Sun shining on a walking elephant in Amboseli National Park.

busy streets of Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya.

Preparing for rain at our campsite in Mt. Kenya, 2000m above sea level.

Waterfall in Mau Mau caves on the slopes of Mt. Kenya.

Heard of elephants in Samburu National Park.

Me observing giraffes from our safari truck in Samburu National Park.

Spot the crocodile on the other side of Samburu River in Samburu National Park.

Reticulated giraffe in Samburu National Park.

cheetah, the fastest animal on the planet, in Samburu National Park.

Kids in Kenya always greeted us with smiles and curiosity and consistantly waved to us as we drove by.

Me and Ilyia standing on the Equator line where we were shown the coriolis effect.

Me near Thomson's Falls.

Playing with a chameleon near Thomson's Waterfalls.

Me and Ilyia overlooking The Great Rift Valley.

For more photographs from Kenya go here

Tags
Africa Guerba Kenya Pictures Travel African children Nairobi National Park Amboseli Samburu Mt. Kenya Mau Mau Reticulated Giraffe Elephant Cheetah Thomson's Falls Chameleon Wildlife Photo

Back from Africa

2005-06-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

I have returned from my trip to Africa.

The trip was fantastic!
For the past three weeks, me and my friend Ilyia were on an organized camping trip with Guerba to Kenya and Tanzania.

The trip was a huge success! We managed to break through the stereotypes about Africa and experience the culture, encounter the people and learn about/from them, observe the wildlife and live among the animals and surround ourselves with some of the most astonishing landscape imaginable.

I've spent the past few days uploading and organizing the pictures and in the next little while I plan to present them to you and tell you more about my journey to Africa!

Stay tuned.

Tags
Africa Guerba African Culture African Wildlife Travel

Embarking on a journey to Africa

2005-05-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

The time is very near, in fact in less than 24 hrs, me and my friend Ilyia will be on our way to Nairobi, Kenya. We are going on an organized tour for 3 weeks through Kenya and Tanzania ... should be awesome! Through most of the jorney we will be camping out and making our way on a large truck. Hopefully we'll get to see the culture, meet some locals and enjoy the beautiful natural scenery and the animals we are bound to see on the safari.

Our last minute preparations were hectic ... we had to obtain two visas in a span of less than two weeks and to do that we had to send our passports to the respective embassies in Ottawa; luckily we made it on time. We also obtained several vaccination shots and other medication. Lastly we went on a shopping spree to buy everything that could be useful on the trip ... we stopped just short of obtaining water purifying pills :)

I'll try to post more about the trip when I get back and hopefully I'll have a few interesting pictures to share.

Tags
Africa preparations Personal

Memoirs from University of Waterloo

2005-05-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

Its been nearly a month since my last exam and I recently received an invitation to the official convocation ceremoniy ... so I'm guessing I've officially graduated 8)

My official degree will be Bachelor of Math with Honors Computer Science Coop major.

It has been five great years at University of Waterloo and it is all over now :(. I guess, I was in a state of disbelief this past month and didn't know what to say on this topic. At the moment, however, I am both sad and happy; happy that I have accomplished what I set out to do, but sad that things will never be the same again. After all, when again will one be in a surrounding of peers pursuing knowledge (some pursuing a degree), with no hidden agenda, loads of interaction, and having fun along the way at such a massive scale?

I remember how in the first few years most people I know would do their coding assignments in the labs at university. There were tons of hard working hours spent there, several all-nighters as well, but it was still fun and exciting because you were there coding with your friends and acquaintances close by; therefore making it a great atmosphere with tons of interaction, discussion, meal breaks together, etc.
In fact, till the end of University the labs remained THE meeting place; if you were at University and wanted to take a break or socialize, if you wanted to go eat and wanted some company ... you would go to the lab! The reason is that chances were high that you would find someone you know in the lab ... and so it became a common occurrence for me and many of my friends to circle around the labs after/before class, to see who was there. Often enough it was an important social time in a day of studying. This social aspect of university, all the people and the atmosphere, is probably what I'll miss most.

When time would permit, we 'd get together with friends to hang out. The main destination of choice was the Bomber, a local pub on campus. Over the years the Bomber has become a larger than life establishment to us, that to an outsider would seem just like another pub, but to many of the students it was much more. It was full of UW students and a great place to socialize and hang out. Bomber night was discussed days ahead and many students usually looked forward to them. Another scene was an on campus club, Fed Hall, but interest in it for my friends and I has died down after first year for one reason or another .

In between the social events, and believe me the time in between was usually long, we worked hard on our assignments. My place of choice was initially DC library, but after a year and a half I've discovered the hidden secret of Dana Porter (DP) library and I never went back to DC :) ... DP was a quiet, one may say elegant, place compared to DC, which was noisier and at times seemed like a fashion show (:P since lots of people would walk and look around. Over the years, DP became the place of some intensive exam preparation for me. During my time there, it was often difficult to resist reading the graffiti on the wooden cubicles; it was a source of some soap operas, as well as some ridiculously stupid remarks, but often conveyed some general feelings and issues of the students.

I loved my time at University of Waterloo and much will be missed.

Tags
Waterloo University Student Graduated Memories
Bachelor Degree Computer Science

Interview with Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel

2005-05-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

There is a very interesting interview with Terry Semel over at Globes. It is quite detailed about Yahoo's current position, overall business model and future direction of the company.

One of the most important points in the article:
Yahoo! rests on four basic pages: personalization, large communities of people, content, and search

More on Personalization

2005-05-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

This time in the media.

Here is an excerpt from an informative article Gates vs. Google (which was finally made publicly available w/o subscription)

Another advantage for Gates & Co. is that search engines are still technologically primitive. They can't understand context, for example; if you type "chip," they can't tell whether you are looking for a snack food or high-tech equipment. As a result all three big search engines are scrambling to find ways to make search more personalized. The thinking is that the more a search engine knows about who is searching, the more accurate the results will be.

I wonder how far Yahoo and Google are in terms of processing and extracting useful data from this personalized information at the moment and is Microsoft keeping the pace? Thus far I haven't seen anything to suggest that MS is able to do this at the moment.

Each company has the foundations of such a product in its desktop-search software, which can tell what you have on your hard drive. Perhaps Microsoft, because it understands Windows better than any other company, will be able to offer faster, more accurate searches.

The problem is that the issue is not about the speed of the Desktop search, the issue is which company will be able to extract, process and use peronsonalized information better. The speed problem pales in comparison with the later problem.

Tags
Personalization Gates Technology Google

Google's Web Accelerator - Another Way to Get Personalization Info!

2005-05-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Today Google has released a new application called the Web Accelerator
It is designed to accelerate your browser's page loading.

A few weeks ago I wrote an entry about gathering personalization data in order to provide personalized services and the different ways that companies can achieve it. In the comments there is a discussion of one such way: mining the web pages the user visits. Although something like that would probably be unacceptable to the public if done by a Browser, it could be totally acceptable if done in the backend, on Google servers, through the Web Accelerator.

There is a lot of information you can gather about the user from the websites he/she visits. So in principle the Web Accelerator is a clever idea and possibly a neat way to obtaining such information! Whether Google is planning to do this or not, I do not know, but the option is there for them and I wouldn't be surprised if they use it. After all, just recently there have been signs of a push towards personalization from Google with Search History and from Yahoo with MyWeb.

Tags
Personalization Web Accelerator Technology Google

Pay Per Call Advertising ... Interesting Idea!

2005-04-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

An interesting idea has recently popped up in online advertising. It is called Pay Per Call. AOL is the first of the big companies to experiment with this.

At the moment a company called Ingenio provides that service and infrastructure for AOL to do this. You can find out more about Pay Per Call advertising here

Pay Per Call works similarly to click-based advertising, except that it drives phone leads to your business, rather than clicks to an eCommerce website. It works like this: Consumers search for merchants or service providers in a designated geographic area. Then, relevant Pay Per Call ads appear in search results. When your business's ads appear in search results, consumers can reach you via the toll-free numbers that Ingenio provides in your Pay Per Call ads. These toll-free numbers forward calls directly to your business number as well as track calls for billing and reporting purposes. For each call that comes to your business this way, you pay the price per call that you bid in advance.

What's interesting about this is that something like this could work together with Pay-Per-Click advertising and appeal to those users that want to just make a phone call right away, instead of going to the website and search for the phone number there.

Additionally, this aproach doesn't seem to suffer from the problem of 'Click Fraud' unless someone decides to make fake calls: which is more time consuming.

Tags
Online Ads
Per Call
Ingenio
Technology

End of term pictures

2005-04-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

The last days of my Bachelor degree are coming promptly to a close :)
Me and my roomates went around campus and took some end of school pictures ... they start at the bottom of that page.

Personalized Ads, Grouping Personalized Services and State Of the Industry

2005-04-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

I think the future of advertisement is Personalized Advertising: where the advertisements are dynamic and are user specific ... kinda like in the movie Minority Report. This advertising can be realized by extracting personalized information in ways I've described in my previous blog posting.

You can already see numerous companies grouping many of the personal services (ie. blogs, messenger, photos, interests, subscriptions, etc) together and in many case under the same login/passport. I think the latter is very important, if you are to have a complete picture about the user and personal information relating to him/her; at the very least you need to be able to somehow tie the information gathered from these different services, for a particular user, together.

Done properly, such information can then be used to effect advertising in Search Engines, in email (ie like Gmail), on blogs, etc. However in these mediums it will not be the only factor, since relevance of data/searches must still apply. But there may be new and existing mediums (eg. online shopping) where such personalized advertisement will be the dominating factor.

When I look at the industry, it seems to me that Yahoo is in the best position for this: with Yahoo 360, email, My Yahoo, Shopping, Travel, Photos, Games, etc all connected under one login and therefore can potentially extract enormous amount of user specific data and use this data for personalized advertising. What also helps is that Yahoo has a lot of services (ie. Shopping, Travel ...) to actually sell stuff to you unlike many of their competitors.

I have to say Microsoft also seems to be in a good position for this, since they too have things connected under one passport, but they may lack the infrastructure for this: since they are late comers to some of this space.

On the other hand, Google has many of the services Yahoo has (ie. Gmail, Orkut, Search Engine, Groups, Froogle) but in it seems a lot of them are not connected directly with one passport. Therefore, I think it would be more difficult for them to get a complete picture of user specific information at this time, but that could change in the future or if they found other ways already.

All I can say, its going to be very interesting in the coming months and years!

Tags
Personalization Ads Personalized Services Technology Yahoo Google

On importance of A9 and why Amazon should get into blogging/social networks

2005-04-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

We've all seen how user information, interests and habits can translate into better and more direct product offerings. To see this, you have to go no further than the "People who bought this, also bought that" feature on Amazon.com.

By having a personalized search engine, A9, Amazon can potentially access and gather an unlimited source of user specific information. For instance, you can tell a lot about one's interests by the things he searches for, the results he clicks on and what things he bookmarks. Also, based on the vertical search (ie. columns in A9) the user sets up for himself, you can infer that these are things that the user is really interested in and wants to be updated about.

This information can then be processed to find patterns and then used to offer personalized products/services. At the same time users can be grouped based on, say, similar interests and incrementally the offering system can be improved by monitoring what products/services other users in the same grouping showed interest in and offering similar products to the user in question.

Why Amazon should get into blogging/social networks

I think they should do this because blogs and social networks provide direct access to information that is of most interest to the user, such as hobbies, kind of music and movies they like, etc. You can learn a lot about a person based on what he likes to talk about; usually its things of high interest to him/her. Therefore by keeping track of such conversations and blog entries, you can gather more direct information and better offer personalized products and services. In many ways, such data is not directly available through the use of A9.

Ideally this blog/social network (eg. simular to Yahoo 360) site would be integrated as one of the Home page columns on A9. And search, blog and Amazon user information would then be combined into one, dynamic, personal profile.

Tags
Personalization Technology Amazon

I officially switched from Google search to Yahoo!

2005-04-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have to say, recently I've been very disappointed with the results from Google search!

I used to be able to find at least a couple of relevant results when I searched for my name in Google. One of the most important ones was this blog. However recently I discovered that Google has lost many of those results and now my blog does not appear among the results. I was obviously disappointed ... so I tried Yahoo search. Surely, I thought, Yahoo would do no better ...

Not only did it do a lot better, it found pretty much ALL of the relevant results that I can think of! Not only this blog, but all of the other blogs I have.

I realize one example is not an indicator but there were others. In any case, this one has a sentimental value and I think its unfair that just because a search is not very common it is ok for Google to ignore its results and especially remove previously indexed results.

So I've decided to change my home page from Google back to Yahoo.

My Visit To California

2005-04-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

So I went to the Bay area in California this past weekend.
It was an awesome trip! I got to see a bit of everything and got to visit Alexi a buddy of mine from university.

I have to say that I really like the lifestyle there, the people, the atmosphere and of course the weather: it was warm and sunny there all weekend :) ... this is an awesome place to be!

For most of the weekend I stayed at Alexi's house on top of a hill and with an amazing view. I got to go checkout San Jose, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and San Francisco. During my time there, I went to a few local restaurants to try Japanese, Mexican and Brazilian food.

I also, saw the silicon valley with many of the company buildings there; Nvidia, Yahoo, Sun, Cisco ... it seems every big company is there!

Alexi was very nice to show me around San Francisco and take me to a couple of parties and restaurants in the area. At a house party we attended I got to meet the first real hippies I've ever seen 8) They were genuine and acted accordingly ... it was pretty interesting to see. Overall it was an interesting party w/ a jacuzzi, music improvisation, etc ... very different from what I am used to.

Two unfortunate events happened while I was there. First I caught a bad cold and lost my voice :( and second I missed my flight back ... because of which, I had to spend an entire day at the airport in San Franciso and the morning at the Dallas airport. If that wasn't enough; because I missed my flight, I also missed a test in one of my classes 8( ... which I made up for this morning ^_^

On Google X. What was Apple thinking?

2005-03-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

Recently, Google released a neat little interface, Google X, as an alternative Google homepage. This interface contained image links to Google products accessible in a Mac OS X style. It was really cool! Especially for the web!

However, soon after it went down and hasn't come up since.
Its been speculated that Apple contacted Google and forced them to take it down.

Why would they do that? It seems to make little sense; After all, with this interface Google is indirectly promoting Mac OS X, which certainly helps Apple in the long run.

The two companies do not compete directly; possibly with the only exception being how cool they are or appear to be in various magazines, etc. Certainly Google X will not make that big a difference here: Google will be considered cool either way and so will Apple.

I fail to see the rational behind this move from Apple; if, that is, Apple actually forced them to take it down. But then again, its not uncommon to see irrational behavior from different companies.

The little Apple would have retained in coolness is not even comparable to the negative attention they will receive from these actions. Companies should learn to foresee consequences for their actions! The media and the blogging community can ruin your reputation in a matter of minutes; a reputation that could have taken years to build, with millions of dollars in marketing campaigns. Unbelievable!

Final Score - You decide

Apple with Google X:

Promotes Mac OS X and apple computers indirectly
Google's coolness slightly rises and takes Apple's up with it just a tiny bit as well.
Apple retains their positive reputation and maybe even increase it since they may get more spotlight on their cool Mac OS X indirectly.
Make a friend with Google.

Apple without Google X:

Significant negative publicity. Will definitely effect their products indirectly.
But, they get to retain the levels of coolness. How childish!
Ruin relations with Google slightly?

Pictures from Vancouver Island trip

2005-03-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to posting the pictures from my trip to Vancouver Island back in September.

Here is the link
http://public.fotki.com/apilchin/vancouver_island/

Fusion of subjects and ideas to solve problems

2005-03-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

I always suspected that a lot of the fields/subjects in Computer Science and Math could be related to each other in some way, as well as, compliment each other on ideas.

Unfortunately a lot of the times this is not made explicit in the University courses. For some reason it is rare to see courses present applications of the ideas and make it clear that these applications use ideas/theories from other fields in CS/Math, to construct a global picture, instead they tend to isolate the subject on its own and leave the combination or fusion of subjects for each person individually.

In my last semester at university, I was lucky enough to take courses that were related in some way and allowed me to see how ideas from one field could be used to build solutions to problems in another field.

For instance,

Cryptography is useful for security in Distributed Systems, as well as in Database Systems: all three of the courses I'm taking right now.
Computer Architecture, another course I'm taking, presents many great ideas (eg. caching techniques/optimizations, distributed memory, pipeline, bypass pathos, etc) all of which can be used in some way in solutions to distributed systems problems.
Methods from database system implementations (eg. concurrency solutions, transaction handling, indexing, external sorting, etc) all have applications in distributes systems: especially in distributed file systems.
I've realized that Graph Theory can be used to analyze and construct fault-tolerant distributed systems, for instance: message propagation can be guaranteed in face of faulty nodes in k-connected graph networks, a k-connected network can be dynamically constructed with little or no configuration, etc.
Some ideas from AI and its subfields can also be used in distributed systems.
There is of course a strong notion of Computer Networks and Operating Systems present in distributed systems as well.
...

I believe it is useful to be able to connect more and more of these fields together to form a set of tools that can be used to solve problems in different fields: especially distributed systems.