Why I Love My D70, part 1 - 4:45 pm Kolkata time, 8/25/2005

Taking pictures during a monsoon is a good way to get one's camera body a little bit wet. I'm pleased to report that the D70 body is water-resistant enough to take out in a rainstorm for a few minutes, provided one dries it off afterwards. Monsoons actually are good times for photgraphy, because the ambient temperature is lowered by five or ten degrees. This helps keep the camera's lens from fogging up. Of course, the heavy dark cloud cover reduces the light enough to require a higher-than-usual ISO sensitivity setting.

A Fun New Acquaintance, and Why I Love My Mac, part 2 - 10:17 am Kolkata time, 8/24/2005

OSX has the standard UNIX tools for dealing with file systems and devices, and can mount just about any sort of disk, file system, etc. It also deals extremely well with network self-configuration and discovery— i.e., you can plug it into just about any ethernet anywhere, and reasonably expect to be able to do computer-to-computer file transfers quickly and without any pain. These attributes in handy when a Yugoslavian airline pilot wants help copying his collection of bootlegged Yugoslavian classic films off of the damaged DVD-ROM they're burned to.

Before you ask, yes, this situation came up last night. As I was writing the previous post— in fact, just as I was typing the bit about not seeing very many Europeans in the hotel, and how most of the ones we saw were somehow affiliated with an airline— I heard a voice asking me, in a heavy Eastern-European accent, "Excuse me, your laptop is also havink Combo Drive?".

The voice turned out to belong to Aleksandar, a friendly Yugoslavian somewhere between forty and sixty years old. He's an airline pilot, and is on a one-year contract flying for a domestic Indian airline. When he's not flying, they put him up at the Kolkata Hyatt. The last time he was in Yugoslavia, he had a friend burn him DVD-ROMs containing bootleg DivX transfers of one or two dozen classic Yugoslavian films from the 1970's and 1980's. Something had gone awry with about half of the discs, and the discs were unreadable on his Windows XP laptop. They show up in Nero's "Disc Info" screen as having a track and session recorded, but they are unmountable. On my Mac, however, they appeared almost entirely without complaint (one of the discs required a little bit of finangling with the Disk Utility).

Once we verified that the files were intact, it was just a matter of copying them over. Neither of us had a crossover cable, so we had to use the hotel's "Business Center". A simple matter of plugging in our laptops to the hotel LAN, setting up "Windows File Sharing" in my System Preferences, and we were off like a shot. Of course, it took a long time to copy, so we were up until about two in the morning. I got to hear all about what it's like flying for an Indian airline. Apparently, the industry is in very good shape, so the fleets are relatively new. The only problem, he said, was that they didn't have any kind of automated scheduling system for deciding who got which flights, so the pilots had to spend a good bit of time sweet-talking the gal who handled the scheduling in order to get the flights they wanted.

Once we were done copying the files, Aleksandar was so grateful that he tried to drag me down to the hotel bar— at two in the morning, mind you— for some beers. I told him that I would have to take a rain check, as I had to work the next day. He then suggested that I head out to the airport with him the next day, as he was taking a new pilot up for some flight training and he could take me along, too. Even more reluctantly, I had to take another rain check— as much as I would have loved to take the day off and go flying, our time here is limited enough that I'm not reallly able to randomly and spontaneously take the time off.

Notes on Relative Incomes and Standards of Living - 10:23 PM Kolkata Time, 8/23/2005

For reference, the Indian Rupee is currently exchanging at something like 42 to the dollar. This means that if somebody is making, say, RS 6000 per month, that works out to about just under $150 per month.

I bring this figure up because, apparently, it is what an entry-level computer programmer with no other work experience can expect to earn at a medium-sized IT consulting firm in Kolkata. It is also, at least according to the owner of the company that we're working with, about the lower boundary of the income bracket that constitutes the middle class here. His definition of the middle class lifestyle is actually pretty similar to what we might have in the US: by his definition, if you're a middle class resident of Kolkata, you probably have a computer with a high-speed connection to the Internet of some sort. You almost certainly have a mobile telephone¹. You might have a motorscooter or a small car. Food and rent are not an issue, and neither is clothing. Basically, you are more than just "getting by" and are well into the "comfortable" range.

After three to five years of experience, if you're good at your job, and have risen to a team-leader-level role, you can expect to be pulling in around RS 20,000 per month. This is still under $500 per month, but puts you near the upper edge of the middle-class income bracket. You'll be pulling in enough to go on periodic trekking vacations to the Himalayas², and will have a very flashy mobile phone.

Of course, at other companies, the pay can be much higher— apparently, the pay at Infosys or Wipro (two of the biggest IT consulting firms) starts around RS 20,000/mo. However, it's not a 1:1 comparison: working for one of those companies would involve living somewhere with a higher cost of living; also, the competition for jobs at those firms is extremely intense, and very few people are able to get in. In addition to those two considerations, the owner of the company we're working with here had a few other points that I thought were extremely salient. He pointed out that working for one of those companies is not very much fun. The typical programmer is given very strict specifications and instructions, and has to follow them to the letter. There is not much room for creativity, and the atmosphere can become very stifling. Many people, he said, prefer to work for a smaller firm where they can be more creative, and enjoy a more relaxed work environment. Also, it seems as though the opportunities for further learning and career growth can be greater at smaller firms as well. The owner of this firm also mentioned that since they are unable to compete with the big guys in salary, they try and compensate for it by having better health insurance and also by having lunch and tea brought into the office every day for the employees. Throughout our entire discussion today, I felt as though I could have been talking to the owner of any small-to-medium-sized software house in the US. If it hadn't been for the chain-smoking, intense humidity, unmistakable traffic sounds, and intermittent power supply (the power cut out twice during our meeting), I might have forgotten where I was.

On a slightly off-topic note, I had a bizarre morning today. I'd gone into the owner of the company's office to pick up a book on Indian art that he'd brought in for me to borrow, and ended up staying and chatting for almost two hours. While I was in there, unbeknownst to me, one of the co-workers I'd come with was having some severe technical problems, and could have used my help. So, after two hours of shooting the breeze with this guy and a couple of the other programmers on a whole variety of hard-core software topics (they have Knuth here, too!³), as well as various approaches to outsourcing, Indian art, history, wildlife, etc., I came out feeling like Thomas-freakin'-Friedman, and I find poor Dan tearing his hair out. He'd thought that that the owner and I had been having, oh, I don't know, some sort of discussion that was actually work-related or something, and hadn't wanted to interrupt. Doh. It all worked out, though. He had been able to figure things out on his own, and now he knows that it's okay to interrupt. I still felt bad, though. Trying to work while coping with severe culture and gastronomic shock has been more stressful than any of us had predicted. We're doing pretty well at dealing with it, but from time to time the increased stress manifests itself and something that would ordinarily not be a problem becomes one for a few minutes. Then we just remind ourselves of where we are and what we're doing, and it's all good. :-)

Back to the topic of income, though: I'm definitely having trouble with the fact that I'm staying in a hotel that, while not not very expensive at all by American standards, costs more per night than most people in Kolkata make in a month. My boss wanted to make sure that we had a comfortable, familiar-feeling place to come back to every night. So, the decision was made that we would stay at a Western-style business hotel. I'd initially scoffed at this idea, but have since come to appreciate it a bit. If I were here on my own as a tourist, I'd stay in a local hotel— in fact, I will be doing just that in a week or two. Since the first few weeks of my trip are work-related, though, I definitely think it was the right idea, at least in principle. In practice, however, I think it may have worked a little bit too well.

The hotel is a Hyatt, and as such is about a thousand times nicer than any hotel that I've ever stayed in in the US. It's actually being double-culture-shock: on the one hand, outside the hotel is India, with all of the usual shock awaiting the first-time visitor. Inside the hotel, though, is this whole other world that I also have never really lived in for any length of time: feather beds, people pulling chairs out for you, an entire staff of people to open doors for you, a whole other staff dedicated to not letting you carry your own bags, etc. It really heightens the contrast between the way that we live in the US and the way that the overwhelming majority of Indians, even well-off ones, live. What really makes me feel like a shit is that the company we're working with has provided us with a full-time driver. So far, his only job has been to drive us from the hotel to the office in the morning, wait outside for ten hours, and then drive us back to the hotel in the evening. I have no idea how much they're paying him per day, but I would bet my spare camera battery that it's less than I just dropped on a sandwich and a beer at the hotel restaurant.

I initially was unsure of how I felt about this contrast, but after a few days, I can conclusively say that it does not feel good. On the one hand, I'm glad to be helping to employ him. Dog knows he needs the job— one need only look at the vast⁴ number of people living on the sidewalks here to see what the alternative to employment looks like. On the other hand, I can't shake the feeling that I'm somehow being exploitive, and the gross imbalance in our financial situations makes me somewhat uncomfortable. It's not a feeling I'm used to... in the US, I'd say that I'm pretty solidly in what I'd call the middle class, but the difference in financial situation between myself and somebody working at, say, Taco Bell or somewhere is almost insignificant compared to what's going on between myself and everybody else here. For example, I clocked twelve hours yesterday. Not counting overtime, that means that I made more (before taxes) in one day than some of the people I was working with made in the entire month⁵. Even our hypothetical Taco Bell worker would have no problem earning more in a day or two than a well-paid Kolkatan software engineer makes in a month.

The hotel's more casual restaurant is, by Kolkata standards, staggeringly expensive. It would perhaps be analogous to eating at the Heathman in Portland. By American standards, it is pretty normally priced: entrees are mostly in the $5-10 range. We're pretty much the only Westerners staying here. There are a few groups of tourists from somewhere in Asia, and lots of Indians, but we've only seen one or two other Westerners. Most of them seem to work for an airline; there are lots of pilot and steward/ess uniforms running around amidst the sarees.

¹: Mobile phones are far cheaper here than they are in the US. For a monthly CDMA plan (In an odd reversal from the US, CDMA seems to be the system with the best phones, whereas GSM seems to be lagging in that regard and as such is less popular and cheaper) you're looking at well under $10 per month, which, even by the lower salary standards, is still definitely affordable for many people. Yesterday, we were offered a pre-paid GSM plan for about $5. This included several hundred minutes as well as a phone. There was no contract. According to an article in yesterday's paper about the upcoming celebrations for the 10th anniversary of mobile phone access in India, the government is not subsidizing phone prices or usage rates. I have no idea why it's so cheap here, and neither does anybody else, as near as I can tell. The only thing I can think of is that there are so many freaking people that the economies of scale make it work.

²: One of our programmers, upon seeing the pictures from my recent trip to Alaska, exclaimed at how closely some of the mountains resembled the Himalayas. Today, he brought in pictures of his last trip up there, and, sure enough, the glacial murrain pictured therein looked very similar to that seen in Alaska.

³: The owner's comment when I exclaimed over his set of "TAoCP": "Oh yes, these are like the Koran, or Bible, or the Vedas of software. I used these as textbooks in the courses I taught at the university." It's nice to know how much is universal in the world.

⁴: And I do mean "vast". Portland has, for an American city, a significant homeless population. I don't mean to be callous, but it is nothing compared to what is going on here. Imagine walking down Yamhill St. in Portland, and seeing every single square foot— literally, every single one— occupied by somebody. People sitting, standing, lying down, running around, playing cards, reading, and doing yoga. Eating, selling stuff, etc. One after another, foot after foot, for the entire length of the street. Now multiply this by every street in Portland. Now, take every window, and hang some laundry out of it. Also, fill the gutters with a little sewage and a lot of garbage. You now have a very vague approximation of what the nicer parts of Kolkata look like.

⁵: This says far more about the income levels in Kolkata than it does about my job, FYI.

Driving, part 1 - 3:58 pm 8/21/2005

"Don't worry, sirs, they're not required in the back. You're in India!" This is our driver's only comment regarding seatbelts in the back of his carefully-tricked-out Toyota SUV¹. Apparently, they're only required up in the front of the car... and even then, he only seems to worry about it during the day. At night, he explains, there are fewer policement out watching traffic, so at night, "they're not required". This is really the only thing he has to say on the matter of seatbelts in general: "Don't worry, sir, it's not required".

Driving in general is pretty chaotic here. No, wait, scratch that— it's completely chaotic. There are a lot of people on the roads. I mean, a lot of people. Bicycles, cows, rickshaws, scooters, buses, animal-driven carts, taxis, trucks, pedestrians, all dodging around each other at high speeds and honking as loudly and as frequently as possible. Our driver, whose name is Clint, actually has installed some sort of auxiliary honking unit in his car. It produces perhaps ten or fifteen different tones and patterns, and has lots of interesting flashing LEDs. So, whenever Clint doesn't think his car's main horn will do the trick, he hits a small switch he's installed on the dashboard, and suddently his horn starts playing a sort of two-tone klaxon, or some sort of musical scale, or whatever he has it set to at that moment. Also, it changes how the horn button works: in the normal operating mode, one has to hold down the button on the steering column in order to cause sound to come from the horn. When in the auxiliary mode, however, the simple act of tapping the horn button causes the horn to automatically honk for about five to ten seconds. It's sort of like one-touch dialing for a car horn. I've decided that I need one of these things for my Acura— hours of fun for everybody.

The city buses are all a brilliant combination of robin's-egg blue and yellow— very hard to miss. They also have "Danger" painted on the back, frequently with a set of crossed Indian flags and the message "My India Is Great" as well. Also, some of them (and also many trucks) say "Obey Traffic Laws". This is funny for a number of reasons, but primarily, I think it's funny because, as near as we can tell, and from what others have told us, there are no traffic laws. The only ones that anybody seems to follow with any consistency are that one drives on the left, and that when a light is red, you probably shouldn't go through the intersection. Unless, of course, you see a good opening— then you should try and go for it.

I fully expect to return to Oregon and be honking my horn like crazy, and cutting people off left and right. And maybe drive on the wrong side of the road. Apparently, it is very common for Indians who go to the US to get massive traffic tickets the first few times they drive. Here, if you are driving the wrong way down the street, and a traffic cop happens upon you, you might need to pay a three or four dollar bribe in order to keep going. In the US, I'm not sure what the going rate for looking the other way to driving down the wrong side of the road is, but I imagine it's a hair higher than that. :-)

¹: Ways in which Clint's car is customized: Uncountable Toyota stickers and badges; not less than three Audi badges (no, we don't know why); customized Toyota door handles (yes, door handles); stickers for about twelve different providers of high-end car audio, security, lighting, etc.; extra-bright headlights (multiple sets); auxiliary horn system; religious icons from what are, as near as we can tell, three or four different religions; six or seven tassel-type things hanging down in front of the windscreen; seatbelts removed from the backseat; etc. The end result of all of this customization is that the vehicle has a certain... personality, very different from any car I've ever ridden in the US. Much like the everything else in India, the car seems to be brimming over with activity and personality, going in every possible direction at the same time. Its general affect is one of complete, barely contained, and slightly desperate chaos.

Bengali Television

Bengali Television - 9:27 pm 8/20/2005

Sitting in the hotel room, watching "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", Bengali-edition. The set, lights, and music are exactly like the American version, and the questions are mostly in Bengali except for words like "Computer, would you please", "Right answer", "Phone-A-Friend", etc. The questions appear on the screen in English, however, and the answers are read by the announcer in English. Typical question: "Which of the following forts is not in Rajasthan? A. Mehrangar, B. Bandavgarh, C. Chittorgarh, D. Kumbhalgarh" (B, FYI).

Tonight's contestant used up his 50/50, Phone-A-Friend, and "Ask the Audience" early on- around RS 3,000 (around $70USD), so we thought he was done for. He's been doing quite well since that, though— seems to have hit a stride.

Oh, just now, the question is about what the "W" is Dubya's name stands for. The contestant gets it right.

It's odd- the current question ("Which is the largest mammal to build a nest, every day?") was read in English. Very strange... the contestant answered incorrectly (Kangaroo, the right answer was Gorilla), and his shot was over. He walked away with RS 20,000 (about $476 USD). Considering the average income around here, I'm guessing that this was not as disappointing a showing as it would have been in the US.

Oh, and the weirdest thing— the stated goal in the show's title is not to be a millionaire, but rather to have "2 Crorepati". "Crorepati" is not in my phrasebook's list of quantities, so I'm guessing that its use here is idiomatic for something else.

OK, an ad for cement just came on. Yes, you read correctly— cement. As in the heavy stuff that comes in bags that you mix to build stuff with. It was sandwiched between an ad for a Nokia cell phone that is so hoopty that we don't even have it in the US yet, and one for what appeared to be some sort of financial services company (guessing on that one— clean-cut, responsible guys in suits striding purposefuly around skyscrapers, the occasional word like "endowment" in the midst of the Bengali, the same color schemes, fonts, and logo styles as in similar ads). It's amazing how much of an ad's information comes from things other than the spoken script and the written content of the titles.

Also of note was an ad for motorscooters. A full discussion of the place that motorscooters play on Kolkata's streets will have to wait, but suffice it to say that the scooter serves a similar purpose here as a minivan or station wagon does back in the US: an all-purpose family vehicle, complete with lots of seating¹ and plenty of storage room². Now, there were two main things that stuck out as notable about this ad. First, the scenes of the scooter being driven bore little-to-no resemblance to anything we've seen thus far in India: Very few other cars on the road; no cows, buses, taxis, or autorickshaws going the wrong way down the street; no pedestrians walking out in front of the driver and his companion, etc. The second thing that struck me was that, at one point in the ad, the driver was in front, while in the back sitting sideways on the scooter was a woman who was presumably his wife, holding a small baby in her lap. Neither the mother nor the child were wearing helmets. Now, this sort of thing happens all over the place here. In the fifteen-minute drive from the hotel to the office, we easily saw at least two dozen such families on scooters. Stop for a second, though, and imagine the uproar that would ensue if such an ad ran in the states. Driver and passenger with no helmets, child riding in lap, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Imagine Harley-Davidson airing a commercial essentially advising its customers to ride helmetless with their young children held in their laps. Somebody would actually try and do this, get themselves, their spouse, or their offspring killed, and sue the company back into the Bronze Age. Here, it's a regular ad for what appears to be a relatively upscale scooter company. The central gist of the campaign was strkingly similar to that one a few years back, by either Toyota or Chevrolet, about how many miles various people had put on their cars— sort of a double-barreled cocktail of "reliable, faithful, durable, etc." and "our vehicles are more than just modes of transportation, they're parts of your life".

[Update: 2 Crorepati is RS 20,000,000, which is about $476,000 USD.]

¹: Lots of seating, if you don't mind having your kids placed precariously on your and your passenger's lap.
²: Lots of storage, if you don't mind liberal use of twine, laps, etc. Also, it helps to not mind having large things like ladders, spools of wire, jugs of water, and so forth hanging off the side of the scooter.

Notes on Travel, Part 6

12:55 AM 9/20/2005 Kolkata (Calcutta) Time

Woah. At long last (something like 36 hours of travel), we finally made it to India. Stepping off the plane, the first thing that hits is the humidity— not quite as stifling as Singapore was, but almost. The second thing that hits is just how many people there are running around here. At 11:30 at night, the drive to our hotel was a death-defying high-speed chase down narrow roads while dodging around pedestrians, taxies, bicycles, buses, and the occasional cow. The sidewalks were packed, shops were still open, there were apartment buildings of all sorts, sizes, and states of repair everywhere we looked. There were at least five specific instances where we came within two inches of other cars. There was no evidence of painted lane markers, traffic signs or lights, etc. Oh yeah— they drive on the left hand side of the road here. All in all, it was a ton of fun, if a bit harrowing. What was really weird was when we got to our hotel, which is a new-ish Hyatt. Inside, except for the Hindi and Bengali television channels, and odd electrical outlets, you'd never guess you were in a foreign country. All in all, my body and mind are both very confused about what's going on right now, so now that I've had a nice hot shower to clean off several days worth of airport, I think I'm going to bed.

Notes on Travel, Part 5

Singapore, 1:00 PM Local Time 8/19/2005

The Singapore airport is one of the swankiest airports I think I've ever seen. It feels like a very high-end mall— think Denver's Cherry Creek— and is simply huge. From the immigration paperwork ("Death For Drug Traffickers is Singapore's Law") I'd been expecting something much less... comfortable-feeling. Instead, we were greeted by a massive indoor fern garden and more free internet kiosks than you can shake a stick at (the connection speed is fast enough to use Skype quite effectively). There are plants everywhere, and all of them are real. Heck, there's even a koi pond. In the airport. A giant freaking koi pond. There's a roof-top sunflower garden, as well. Oh, and I almost forgot- there's a free movie theater, constantly showing a variety of American films (both classic and more recent).

We found some lunch... I got some sort of seafood-noodle-curry thing. It had all sorts of interesting marine wildlife in it... prawns, some unidentifiable fish-type thing, and who-knows-what-all-else, all in a slightly spicy fishy curry sauce. It was a tough call, as there are a ton of amazing-looking restaurants here. So far, I can report that what passes for Indian food in the US is very similar to what passes for Indian food in the Singapore airport.

The icing on the cake, though, is the free tour system. If your layover is more than a couple of hours long (ours is about nine hours), you can register for a free two- or four-hour sightseeing tour of the city. We're still about forty minutes early for ours, so I'm killing some time in a part of the airport that Panasonic has furnished with several dozen flat-panel televisions, each of which is set to a different sporting event somewhere in the world. They also have the largest touch-screen that I've ever seen, running something vaguely like Google Earth, only it only covers a few major world cities.

Basically, the Singapore airport is probably the single best airport that I've ever been in. Killing hours here is amazingly easy.

[Update: The free sightseeing tour was an excellent use of a couple of hours. It basically got us out of the airport, into the town, around a little bit, on a water-taxi ride around the harbor, and back to the airport. More airports ought to have similar things. Imagine how much better a six-hour layover at Chicago O'Hare would be if you could go on a tour of downtown.]

Notes on Travel Part 4

Friday, 8/19/2005, 6:10 am Taipei local time

The Taipei airport looks just about like every other airport I've ever seen, except that all of the destinations are either in Asia or on the west coast of the US, and all of the signs are in English as well as some variation of Chinese. Actually, that's just a best guess— I've been embarrassed to discover how little I know about Taiwan. I'm assuming that the language spoken here is some form of Chinese, but I could be very, very wrong. If I'd known I was going to be coming here, I would have done some reading...

At any rate, the flight from LAX to Taipei is about twelve hours long. By careful sleep planning, I think I've managed to begin to get my time-sense onto something vaguely resembling local time. When we landed here, everybody had to de-plane and the passengers continuing onto Singapore had to go through security again. There was an excellent and entertainingly-named device in the Taipei security checkpoint: a large, clear box, marked "Unforced Disposal of Dangerous Goods", full of lighters, knives, etc. I tried to get a picture, but the security guards were not happy about seeing my camera out of its case. After a short but somewhat confusing conversation (in which I feel confident that the other parties involved were just as confused as I was), I decided to forego a photograph and made my way through the rest of the checkpoint without incident.

Now we're waiting to re-board our flight. There appears to be wi-fi in the airport, but, alas, it is not free. Furthermore, the instructions on how to purchase time on it are in a language that is most definitely not English— my co-worker's PC was reduced to an endless series of "Please install the xxxxx language pack to view this page" dialog boxes... my PowerBook happily rendered a very long and complex page full of foreign characters. What is very strange about all of this is that the network's initial landing page has an excellent English-language version, which very politely informs the viewer that internet access can be obtained using a pre-paid card, and that said cards can be bought online at a particular URL. The linked-to URL, however, is the one without any English option. So, no wi-fi for us. I'm afraid that PDX and its bountiful, fast, and free wi-fi has spoiled me something awful— I now seem to expect public areas to have some sort of freely-avaliable wi-fi.

My PowerBook's AC adapter has had its first taste of forgeign electricity, and is behaving admirably. At least, I think it is— there are neither sparks nor flames, and my computer seems to think that it is charging. It turns out that Singapore Air's much-vaunted laptop-related amenities are for first- and business-class only, so its batteries are still low from last night's wi-fi adventures.

Why I Love My Mac

Sitting in LAX, we discovered that there is no public wi-fi in the International terminal. We had one of those Verizon broadband PC-card thingies, so one of our laptops could get internet access, but no love for the other two. The solution initially seemed simple— set up interface sharing between the Verizon card and its computer's 802.11 card, create an ad-hoc network, and join through that. Sadly, though, after about ten minutes of futzing around, we were forced to determine that the Windows XP wireless network setup wasn't going to let us do it. The solution? Use my powerbook.

It took a few very minor modifications to the relevent drivers' Info.plist files to get the card working with OSX, and about three clicks in the "Sharing" control panel, and boom— wifi for the whole gate.

Life is good, and so's my mac. I love how rarely I have to mess around with the Unix underpinnings, but I even more than that I love the fact that when I want to, I can.

Notes on Travel, Part 3 - 10:25 PM PDT 8/17/2005

The first leg of our trip was uneventful- PDX to LAX. My co-workers somehow ended up in "Economy Plus", whereas I was in the very last row. You know, those seats that don't recline and are extra-narrow. I was actually managing to fit my 6'n" frame into the seat rather comfortably until the person in front of me decided to recline their seat. Grrr. Actually, it wasn't so bad, especially since I found myself sitting next to a nice Kiwi family making their way back to Auckland after a few weeks of circumnavigating the globe.

Upon arriving at LAX, I was quickly reminded of exactly why I like Portland's airport so much. To go from terminal to terminal at LAX requires a shuttle bus. This is, in and of itself, not especially strange. What's strange is that catching the shuttle involves exiting the airport, going through the baggage claim area, out to the curb, past all of the rental car shuttle-bus pickups, to a special pick-up area. Once the bus eventually shows up, there's much dodging through traffic, with people and cars running every which-where. It's about the least-organized way of handling this problem that I can think of. And the real killer is this: there's almost no signage. When you get off of the plane, there's no sign saying "Airline Transfers - Take Shuttle Outside" or anything like that. Everybody on the shuttle did nothing but talk about how poorly-signed the whole process was.

So, for the record, in the spirit of "Stupid things I've figured out so that you don't have to", here's how to catch an international connection at LAX:

• Follow the signs for "Ground Transportation" until you're out on the curb.


• Then, look for the airport bus pickup areas.


• Once you find that, wait for the "A" bus. This will go from terminal to terminal. Note: there are several different international terminals you might need to go to, so it's worth paying attention to which airlines are listed at which terminals. For Singapore Air, the "Tom Bradley International Terminal" is the one you want.


• Get off at the appropriate terminal, re-check in, ask about your bags, mess around with frequent flier numbers, go through security, etc.

At the moment, I'm sitting in the aforementioned T.B. Int'l Term., waiting for my connecting flight to Singapore to board. I've got about two more hours to go. One interesting note— my itinerary says that this leg of the journy (LAX to Singapore) has a total elapsed time of 19 hours and 30 minutes, and is a direct flight. What it does not say is that the flight stops in Taipei for an hour. This caused some confusion, as the big reader-board in the main terminal just said "Singapore Air fl. 29 - Taipei", whereas our tickets said "Singapore Air fl. 29 - LAX-SIN". According to the ticket agent, all of the other passengers were just as much in the dark as we were. Hey, as long as I get to Singapore in time to make my connection to Kolkata, I don't really care where we go. And it's nice to know that they won't be trying to fly at 777 for more than 19 hours without refueling. :-)

Actually, it's quite a pleasant surprise— when I woke up this morning, I had no idea that I'd be going to Taiwan before the day was out. Now there's a sentence that can't come up too often! (With full apologies to Patrick)

Notes on Travel, part 2 - 8/15/2005

Before traveling to India, there are a variety of vaccinations and medications that one is supposed to take. The travel-mages at Kaiser saw fit to shoot me up with a vaccine against Hepatitis A, as well as boosters for polio, measles, tetanus, mumps, etc. I'd thought that I'd seen the last of those guys years ago, but apparently they're suggesting a second round of boosters for folks after their early twenties. Besides the injections, they gave me an oral vaccine for Typhoid, anti-malarial pills, some sort of nuclear-strength antibiotic, and stern warnings about drinking anything but bottled water.

The oral typhoid vaccine was kind of a pain— it contained live attenuated typhoid culture, and as such had to be kept refrigerated (but could not be frozen). This wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that I was leaving for Wyoming smack-dab in the middle of its course of treatment. How were we to keep the vaccine cold while on an airplane? After consulting with our friend who works for the TSA, my clever s/o rigged up a solution involving an insulated lunch bag and several soft ice packs. This, our friend assured us, would make it through security without any problems.

I wasn't so sure- what could possibly look more suspicious on an x-ray than several small capsules elaborately packed in ice? My concern, however, was un-necessary— we made it through without incident¹. Everything was fine, and we made it to Wyoming as planned. Once I finished the typhoid vaccine, it was time to start the anti-malarials— you're supposed to start them a week before you leave.

I took the first pill Wednesday morning, and felt fine... until Wednesday night. I had some of the strangest dreams I can remember having in years. The same thing happened on Thursday and Friday nights as well. Also, I found myself feeling progressively more anxious and tense. This was noteworthy as I am, by nature, generally a very calm, relaxed person. At first I thought I was just fretting about my upcoming trip, or perhaps about how I was going to pay for some significant car repair that had been done while I was out of town. As the tension got worse day by day, though, and became less and less about anything in particular, I began to question my initial hypothesis, and finally remembered that the number-one listed side-effect of Mefloquine is sudden feelings of anxiety, paranoia, tension, etc.

Bingo.

A quick call to the pharmacy confirmed that my sudden pronounced anxiety and strange dreams were almost certainly the result of the drug, and that they'd go away as soon as I stopped taking it. The problem, of course, is that I was looking at two more months of this. Obviously, it's better than malaria... but if there's an alternative to spending the next couple of months worrying myself sick, I'd like to take it. So, they're switching me to a daily antibiotic, which, in addition to fighting off plasmodium-borne disease, will also help keep my digestive tract free of any bacteria that might find there way there whilst I'm in India. Ordinarily, I'd be against taking an antibiotic for that long... but in this case, it might be okay.

The whole episode leaves me with two main questions:

1. Why would an antimalarial be screwing with my brain chemistry enough to cause significant mood/affect changes? What is going on there, biochemically?


2. Why would an antibiotic— which is designed for use against bacteria and other prokaryotes— work against malaria (which is caused by a protozoan?)
   

[Update 10:15 pm PDT 8/17/2005: Upon returning to Portland, I did some digging and found out that the best-guess explanation for the first question involved some stereochemistry- apparently, the mefloquine molecule is chiral, and only one of the enantiomers (I forget which) is effective against malaria— the other seems to mess with some adenosine-uptake pathway. Apparently, this is why there are so many strange psychological side effects. Still no answer w.r.t. the second question]

¹ Un-needed, perhaps, but not necessarily unfounded. It's very odd— pre-September-11th, I used to get no end of hassle at every airport security checkpoint I went through. I was always the guy who got to be padded down and wanded while watching an entire team of agents dissect his carry-on baggage. It had always been this way, and when I learned about the tighter security measures that were to come in the wake of September 11, I was sure that "now I was really in for it". However, ever since then, for whatever reason, I've had next to no trouble with security. But I digress.)

Notes on Travel, part 1 - 8/15/2005

So, recent weeks have seen much travel, and the weeks to come will see more. I started off in the middle of July with a two-week trip up to Alaska, and almost immediately left for a week or so in Wyoming and Colorado. As I write this, I'm on a plane back to Portland. On Wednesday, I leave for Calcutta by way of Singapore. All in all, I will have spent about five days out of the entire month of August at home. I wish there were a way to pro-rate auto insurance, so that I only had to pay for the five days that my car was on the road and not for the twenty-six days when it will have been parked out front of my house. Ditto for my cell phone— it will be of no use in India, so why should I have to pay for the whole month of August?

The seat-back screen informs me that I am currently traveling at 486 m.p.h., am at 37,577 ft, and am just on the Idaho-Oregon border. If memory serves, the flight path in from Denver swings just to the north of Mount Hood and provides a spectacular view. As such, I made sure to get us seats on the left side of the plane.

[Update: The view was, indeed, spectacular.]

Photographic Lesson #1 from Alaska

Always, always, always keep a spare battery charged & handy.

Hell is being on a gorgeous cruise around Resurrection Bay, with wildlife everywhere, and a friendly photographer willing to let you use his $1,400 VR lens... and being forced to heavily ration your shots because your battery is on its way out.

What I've Done To Keep This From Ever Happening Again: Picked up a spare battery for my D70, and will be keeping it charged every second of my upcoming trip to India.

Things You Don't Want To Hear Whilst On Vacation, Vol 1

Me, on the cell-phone with my parents: So, were they able to get my car to pass emissions?
Mom: Oh yeah, it passed just fine after they worked on it.
Me: Great! And were they able to figure out why it hadn't been starting?
Mom: Oh sure, yeah, he got all that fixed up.
Me: Cool! Any idea how much it ended up costing?
Mom: ...
Me: Mom?
Mom: Umm, well, we'll talk about it when you get home, I don't want to ruin the rest of your vacation.
Me: Huh?
Mom: Don't worry about it, you can pay us back a little at a time.

[Update: It didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought it might. Still more than I would have liked, though... on the other hand, my car now startst and passes DEQ, which are both good and important things, not to mention two things they wouldn't do before spending a ton of money.]

Notes

A bunch of posts are about to go live, and most of them were written over the last week or so. I'm just posting them in batch for convenience sake.