A quick note

Hello from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan! This is the first time I’ve had Internet access in the week I’ve been in Central Asia. Unfortunately, this computer doesn’t have a working USB port, so I can’t upload the blog entries I’ve been typing on my Windows Mobile phone. I’ll do that when I get a working USB port.

But very quickly, I arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan safe and sound (after being bumped up to business class on Uzbekistan airways. Its really nothing fantastic, wider seats but food is terrible). Spent a day in hot Tashkent weather visiting the bazaar. It was a very interesting experience as not many tourists go there. As such, we always drew curious attention, especially from the store keepers. They were all very friendly and its unfortunate that we couldn’t speak any Uzbek or Russian or carry a conversation.

From Tashkent, we flew to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. At customs leaving Uzbek, I had my run-in with the infamous crooked customs official looking for a bribe. That’s a story I’ll tell another time.

From Bishkek, we took an exciting car ride (again, another story for another time), to Kochkor where we went for 5 days of horse riding up in the mountains. We stayed in traditional normadic yurts and ate their food. It was a great experience overall.

So far, I’ve had 2 quintessential Central Asian experiences… the hassling for a bribe at the Uzbek airport and Kyrgyzstan pit toilets (worth a full entry on my blog by itself). I hope to get a good USB connection soon so I can upload what I’ve written so far.

Backpacking in Central Asia

In 6 hours I’ll be flying to Uzbekistan via Bangkok for the trip I’ve been planning for the last 8 months. This would be a 22 day long trip and will see me and 3 other friends backpack through this fairly unheard of region. We’ll horse ride up spectacular mountains and staying in traditional nomadic yurts in Kyrgyzstan and will visit ancient Silk Road cities in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

I’ve been asked many times over the last couple of months why I chose Central Asia. “Isn’t it dangerous/old/hard to get to/never heard of?”. Yep… that’s why I’m going Windows Live Writer, which I’m using to write this blog entry, doesn’t even have the word “Kyrgyzstan” in its dictionary. Its registering as a spelling mistake.

The idea came from a way-out-there plan to backpack the length of the Silk Road from China to Europe. However, that would have taken more than a couple of months to complete and not compatible with societal expectations of how young Singaporean professionals should be spending the formative years of their career. So, the compromise was to travel just a section for now. Central Asia was finally chosen as it was exotic and difficult to travel, something we all felt we should do while we’re still young and energetic.

For me personally, the lure of Central Asia is that its steeped in rich history, being at the crossroads of European and Far East trade. It has been conquered numerous times by factions from both sides, with each conquest leaving a unique mark on the culture of the region. Even more interesting is the fact that it used to belong to the former USSR and is just now emerging from decades of communist rule. I always find ex-Soviet block countries mystical and fascinating (hence, my trip across Russia and Mongolia 3 years ago). I really hope that I will get some great opportunities to talk with locals. The human stories often trump the scenery and spectacle of ancient architecture. That’s one aspect of travel which, unfortunately, many travelers overlook and miss out on.

My intention is to update this blog as I go along on this trip. However, Internet access will probably be infrequent, and judging by my track record of updating this site, you shouldn’t expect too much from me

Narita International Airport

For the last 6 years, I’ve transited at Narita International Airport in Tokyo every time I fly between the US and Singapore.

One thing I’ve always looked forward to for my time in transit at Narita is the Japanese food. The Japanese restaurant in the United Airlines terminal serves sushi and has probably one of the best sushi I’ve ever had. The price is slightly on the high side, but that’s to be expected for prices in Tokyo. They always serve the best cuts of the fish and the raw fish is always fresh and tasty. Either that, or Japanese fish tastes better than American and Singaporean fish.

 

This is the Chirashi I had on this trip back. I decided to go for the “super fine” grade which comes with abalone, sea urchin and premium cuts of fish (basically the fatty parts).

On this most recent trip back to Singapore, someone told me about the availability showers in the terminal. I’ve never used this facility before, so I decided to give it a try this time. 5USD gives the use of a reasonably sized shower room for 30 mins. Towels, soap and shampoo are provided. The facility is clean (typical Japanese standard) but isn’t luxurious by any means. What I really liked about the shower is the ability to clean up from the clamminess that builds up on a 10 hour plane ride. I don’t know why I never used the showers before in my last 6 years of flying through Narita, but this would definitely be something I’ll do from now on. That fresh feeling is well worth the 5USD.

China Shakes the World

I just finished reading China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future – and the Challenge for America, a book by James Kynge, the Financial Times’s former Beijing bureau chief. 

This book focuses on China’s economic development since the cultural revolution and Kynge taps on his vast experience and network in China to bring us one of the most insightful stories of the rise of this nation.

He illustrates his points using interesting examples on how the growth of China affects both itself internally and also how it affects others on a global scale. One interesting example was how a Chinese steel company bought a German steel mill, dismantled it, shipped it halfway around the world and reassembled it at the banks of the Yangtze river.

Every example is backed by human stories and interviews reflecting the impact of China on the lives of people around the world, from the German steel mill worker who has now lost his job, to the mom and pop store owner in the American mid-west who is losing business to mega wholesalers like Wal-Mart, whose rise was made possible by the low cost of manufacturing in China. Besides profiling those negatively affected, Kynge also tells the rags to riches stories of many of China’s eentrepreneurs, including the story of the CEO of Lenovo, who started off as a salesman for the computer manufacturing division of IBM but ending up buying that very division for his own company.In the first half of the book, Kynge explains the basis behind the phenomenal rise of China over the last few years – how the communist government started opening China up to capitalism, the presence of a near infinite amount of cheap manpower, the ingenuity of the Chinese with how they managed to catch up on decades of lost time in technological advancement and how the Chinese acquired the resources they needed for their unprecedented rate of development. Kynge then turns his focus on the challenges China will face and how those challenges might hinder the future development of China. These challenges include the almost irreversible damage done to the environment, the lack of intellectual property protection and the inherent distrust of “outsiders” by the Chinese people.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in China. Even if you are not, you might still want to put this on your reading list. As Napoleon said, “Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.”

Its over. Life has lost all meaning…

Its over. I’m done. There nothing more to look forward to. I’ve completed watching every episode of The Office on DVD up to season 3, many episodes twice (with the episode commentary turned on). I’ve also watched all the deleted scenes, episode bloopers, cast extras and all the bonus materials. That has taken most evenings of the last 2 months of my life.

Now that its over, I feel an emptiness when I come home every evening. Evenings are not the same without the cringe-worthy antics of the clueless Michael, or the delicate love dance between Jim and Pam, or the ??? of Dwight Schrute (I can’t find a word to describe him. You really need to watch the show to understand).

Life has lost its meaning. There’s nothing to look forward to anymore… maybe I should start collecting stamps…

Memorial Day Weekend

I had a great Memorial Day long weekend. A bunch of us managed to rent a 5 bedroom beachfront house in Seaside, OR for cheap (ok, it was really really cheap, considering we squeezed 16 people in there… and since the house was so big is really wasn’t much of a squeeze anyway).

Seaside, OR is just 10 miles from the famous Canon Beach, OR and is along the Pacific Ocean (facing west), so we were supposed to get great ocean views and spectacular sunsets. I use “supposed to” as it was rainy all weekend, so going to the beach wasn’t all that fun and sunset was just a splattering of color behind some dense clouds. I think I’m jinxed. Clouds and rain follow me everywhere I go. It had also rained when I was in New York City two weeks ago (I’ll write more about that when I have the time).

Anyway, we made a quick stop at the Pearl District in Portland on the way to the beach house. It turned out to be a very pleasant area with a nice mix of specialty shops, bars and bistros. Kinda like Capitol Hill in Seattle but newer, with less people and no bums. We also made a stop at the famous Powell Books. I never really appreciated a trip to a bookstore until I stepped into that one. They had a huge selection of new and used books with personal recommendations posted on the shelves. I walked out of the store with a long list of books I’d be interested in reading sometime in the future.

Anyhow, I have had a rough past couple of weeks and this trip was a really good break from it all. I turned off email syncing on my phone and tried not take phone calls. That’s my excuse for missing calls this past weekend (sorry JY and Kevin). This was one of those rare vacations where I managed to forget about all that was going on in life and just relax. I need more of these .

Here are some photos…

Canon Beach, OR.

One of the rare photos of me.

Trying to take a “cool” photo but failing miserably.

How to make sweet peanut soup

Step 0:
Have a craving for sweat peanut soup.

Step 1:
Open new pressure cooker that has been sitting unused since Thanksgiving last year.

 

Step 2:
Read the instructions and try to take note of how not to accidentally cook myself while using this thing.

Step 3:
Wash peanuts.

Step 4:
Put peanuts into pressure cooker.

Step 5:
Add some water.

Step 6:
Cook for some time.

Step 7:
Eat salad. (Fine. This isn’t part of making sweet peanut soup. But I was hungry ok?)

Step 8:
Peanuts are cooked!

Step 9:
Add some water and some sugar (if you haven’t realized by now, cooking sweet peanut soup requires great precision in time and quantity of ingredients).

Step 10:
Enjoy sweat peanut soup while thinking of what to eat next.

Take this Mac fanatics!

This is a hilarious spoof of the ad for the new MacBook Air (which shows the MacBook fitting into a manila envelope, giving the impression that all you need fits into that one thin envelope).

For the not-so-technically-inclined, the MacBook Air is the thinnest laptop ever. In order to achieve this feat, it does not include a CD/DVD drive and only has 1(!) USB port. If you need to do anything more than basic with it, like rip music from a CD or hook up an external mouse and camera, you need to carry around a lot more of accessories as well – all of which would definitely not fit into a Manila envelope =P

Original MacBook Ad:

The spoof:

A collaborative dinner

This insane amount of food (for 2 persons) was a collaborative effort by me and my roommate. Ok, it isn’t truly collaborative… we each made different parts of this dinner separately and put everything together in the end.

Clockwise from the top left:
Butter and garlic clams (this was the only dish that we cheated on… its a microwave pack bought from Costco)
Grilled marinated chicken thighs
Pasta dish (bottom two plates) consisting of – spaghetti in a clam tomato sauce (stewed tomatoes, garlic and white wine), long beans in a vinaigrette sauce and spring green salad in a vinaigrette dressing.

Another day of good weather

Saturday was another day of nearly perfect weather (this was promptly followed by a gloomy and rainy Sunday – Seattle likes to taunt us like that). 70F/21C and sunny most of the day. The breeze was slightly chilly and it was cold in the shade (hence, the nearly perfect weather). Hopefully we don’t have to payback with snow and hail again next week. =P

So what do you do with such great weather? Play tennis. Lots of it.

I really like playing tennis here, or do any sort of outdoor activity for that matter. The temperature here usually stays under 86F/30C, and the humidity within a very comfortable range such that I don’t sweat unnecessarily. Back in Singapore, I would just start sweating profusely just walking from the train station back to my home (a 7 min walk at a slight incline). I hope to be able to get in more of the outside this year.

Sorry, no photos… was too busy enjoying the weather that I forgot to take any. =)