Dangling from the face of Cthulhu
(Okay, so “Rai Leh” isn’t “R’lyeh”, but I think it’s a cute title.)
Back when I was in high school (perhaps), my brother Jerry once took me out to nearby Berkeley to climb a big boulder. I’m not sure what prompted him to do so, but there I was, clutching at the rock face when I could have been playing with the computer. I climbed up a bit, then decided that my sneakers were no good for climbing, so I ditched them and went up barefoot. Jerry went on ahead after checking that I was making progress.
I made it up maybe 10 feet and got stuck. I just couldn’t see how to proceed, and I couldn’t see how to get back down, so I stayed in place, slowly cramping up. I remember a kid walking by on the path below, pointing me out to his dad and saying, “Wow, he’s barefoot. He must be good!”
HA!
Jerry eventually re-appeared on the path, saw that I was stuck, and talked me down.
I haven’t touched another rock face in the twenty years since then.
Until Rai Leh.
Taking drugs in paradise
…to be more precise, penicillin.
I’d already been feeling lethargic and achy in my back and legs back in Hong Kong, but the lethargy passed after I arrived in Thailand, so I didn’t think much of it.
Dividing by 33
It’s a bit hard to believe that I was freezing my butt off up until a couple of weeks ago. Even Hong Kong was starting to turn a little chilly. Now I’m happily sweating out all the toxins that have accumulated in my body from China (except for the heavy metals — I guess I’m stuck with those).
No photos from Phuket just yet; I’m still uploading photos at about 50KB/s. The wireless here costs 50B for two hours.
Speaking of Baht (Thai currency)…
After five months in China, I’ve gotten okay at dividing by 7, which is about how many RMB and HK$ I got for each US$. Now I have to get used to dividing by 33. That’s how many Baht I get for each US$. The last time I was in Thailand, the exchange rate was around 35B to US$1, so the dollar’s gotten weaker. In fact, the dollar’s weaker overall, except in places like China and Hong Kong, where the exchange rate is pegged by the other country for reasons I could but don’t want to understand.
I even found a leftover 1000B bill from last time in my backpack, along with some small change from Singapore and Malaysia. I’ve already spent that bill, so 35B:US$1 is now dead to me. Dead, I say!
I can use the ATM here, so my stash of emergency cash is still untouched. I was shocked to see the ATM warn me that it would charge 150B (that’s almost $4.50) per withdrawal. I checked with multiple establishments, and they all told me the same thing.
Fortunately, E*Trade seems to be refunding me this fee, which I think is super-nice of them. Still, I will try to minimize my ATM transactions, by withdrawing large sums at once. Then I will walk alone on the beach at night and into dark alleys, waving the bills around while weaving drunkenly. (Kidding!)
Getting off my butt
For a while now, I’d been anticipating some sort of diving vacation after the (a little over) five months in China. I vaguely recall something about originally giving myself two months in China. Funny how it turned out…
I’ve had my eye on the Phuket region of Thailand, as the diving is supposed to be quite nice, with lively waters and numerous competitive dive shops. For the last week, I’ve been keeping watch on Phuket weather forecasts. If the reports are to believed, thunderstorms, cloudy skies, etc. These are not things that help water clarity.
I finally booked a one-way flight from Hong Kong to Phuket, with AirAsia. The direct flight departs Saturday evening. The airfare is decent (around US$150), although if I waited until Monday, the fare would drop by $20. If I waited until Tuesday, there would have been another US$20 drop! But the forecasts indicate that the Phuket weather may be clearing up from Monday or so, and I would rather do something new in Phuket while I wait for the weather than continue to aimlessly putter around Hong Kong like I have been lately.
I should arrive in Phuket around 23:00. After a couple of days getting my bearings in Phuket Town, I may relocate to Ko Phi Phi (one of the islands that fell victim to the December 2004 tsunami) and/or Koh Tao for some diving. I will probably also book some dives in the Similans, northwest of Phuket. Regardless, I have a lot of research left to do, and a room still to book!
The Phuket trip doesn’t rule out a visit back home for the winter holidays. I would first fly back to Hong Kong, as the airfare from there (even including the airfare from Thailand to Hong Kong) to San Francisco is less than flying from Thailand.
Things that go “bump”, part 2
[Sōngpān, Sìchuān, China, November 11, 2009]
I swear, my left leg must have done something evil in its past life, because most mishaps happen to it. So there I was in one of the natural parks in Sōngpān (around two hours by bus from Jiǔzhàigōu), walking around in my Vibram FiveFingers. I was hurrying along with my travel buddy, a young guy from Běijīng, whom I’d met after the bus let out at Sōngpān. We were hurrying because our taxi driver was expecting us back half an hour ago.
BAM. I slammed the middle toe of my left foot (of course) against an upraised slab on the path. Since I wasn’t alone, I held back my girly tears with only a grimace and a slight whimper and gamely trudged on.
Had I broken my poor toe? Would I have to fly back to California and sit in bed playing video games while my toe healed? (Please?)
I wouldn’t know until I had a look at the little squealing piggy.
Fun with scripting
It’s been a while since I’ve done any programming. There used to be a time when many problems I encountered could be solved by the judicious and creative application of software engineering.
Nowadays, I just slap a bandage on what’s ailing me and hope it doesn’t end up rotting and falling off.
To follow up on my clean-up of my Flickr uploads, I finally got around to writing a Python script to take the Spotlight comments of the original images on my external backup drive and set them as the description of corresponding images that were uploaded to Flickr. This was nothing like the heavy lifting from my previous life, but it was entertaining getting back into logical thought patterns for a bit, instead of using a map and a lost-looking smile to solve problems. I’ll probably look into making some more scripts to help automate some of the remaining Flickr clean-up.
I’m currently using the flickr.py library from James Clarke and contributors. My new script is still chugging away, adding descriptions to a good number of the 31,461 (uploaded) images I’ve taken since switching to Mac OS X. As with many things, taking one step at a time can eventually lead to one’s goal.
Getting what I paid for
Or, perhaps, “Getting that for which I paid”? Bleah.
I’ve been pretty happy with the replacement A/C adapter for my Dell Mini 9. I mean, it just works.
Unfortunately, somewhere on the way over from Chéngdū, one of the cable ends snapped. More specifically, the rubber casing snapped clean off the rubber plug. The wiring was still intact, but it was a potential fire hazard. I had to get this fixed.
Ah, Hong Kong
This is my fourth visit to Hong Kong on this trip. I first flew in from SFO in late June, hopped out to the mainland for three months, then came back when I couldn’t extend that visa a third time. The second time, I got a new China visa, and quickly jumped back. Almost a month later, I was back again to reset my visa clock, then rushed over to Jiǔzhàigōu. The cold weather finally beat me down, and I scurried back to Hong Kong, frozen tail between my legs.
There’s something comfortable and relaxing* about Hong Kong. And by “Hong Kong”, I mainly mean “Kowloon”, which is lower-rent than the island, but also fun. And by “Kowloon”, I mainly mean “Tsim Sha Tsui”, which is the district where I’ve been spending most of my time. It’s convenient to the Star Ferry, has a number of restaurants, and, really, who cares since the bus and MTR get you most places quickly and inexpensively enough, and walking covers the rest?
* Really, click the link! I do find something soothing about that.
But I first visited back in the late 1980’s on a family vacation. I don’t remember much from that time, but I was probably a big smart-ass brat.
61,598
That’s how many items I’ve uploaded to my Flickr Pro account, as of November 25, 2009. (I’m fully caught up now.)
Yikes!
Granted, there are a lot of crappy photos, redundant photos, unusable video, silly shots, etc. that I’ll never make public, but the dross can still trigger memories. They also leave a trail of development and trial and error that’s interesting on its own.
They’re mainly there in case something catastrophic happens to my external USB hard disk while traveling or after I send it back home for safekeeping (when it gets full). I’ve also been linking to them for recent posts to this blog.
