Back in PNH

Well I am back in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I guess I am a strange bird but I went to a relatively expensive place. When I was there I had fusion dish of Cambodian pork and pene pasta while reading a book about Warren Buffet. On my way out I saw three Khmer ladies I met on my last trip and talked a little bit before coming back to my hotel.

Then when I got back to the hotel there is a "Prohibition" sheet posted that contains this: "Do not abuse, or have child sex in the Hotel's rooms," and "Our rooms are much more comfortable than the local prison. We seek your cooperation."

Point taken.

Typhoon Update

In a post below, I talked about the damage from Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan. I will mention again because of the seriousness of the topic. It is THE story now in Taiwan. In fact, more and more stories about the typhoon are emerging.

The shocker to me was the amount of rain in some areas. Between August 7-9 on A-li Mountain there was 2.77 meters (over 9 feet) of rain! Think about that. 9 feet in a few days. For me, that amount of rain is beyond imagination for such a short period--and I'm from Oregon.

This is even worse for a few reasons. There are mountains that run along the spine of Taiwan and when there is a lot of rain there is always the potential for landslides. Combine this with the amount of rain in already landslide prone areas and there was disaster. Now I think the government should have seen this coming--they didn't. To be fair, even if they did many of the hardest hit areas were already outside the reach of most communication so an evacuation would have been very hard. Still, the order should have been issued.

One of the many problems now is that due to amount of rain and sheer volume of mud a large number of roads and bridges are simply gone--just ripped away. So this severely hampers rescue efforts in these remote areas.

Many of the worst hit areas, in case you cannot already tell, are very poor. There are a lot of Taiwanese aborigines in these rural areas. The aborigines tend to be the poorest and least well off of all Taiwanese. This has been exacerbated by the slow government response.

In many, ways this is reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina in the US in that despite a predicted storm there was still an unorganized and (at-first) haphazard government response. When the full extent of the damage began to come to light the government then rushed more troops to the area and the president visited the disaster area and tried to skirt taking responsibility for all the short-comings. After initially turning down foreign aid it was instead requested. Both are true of Katrina and Morakot. We shall see if the political fallout is the same here in Taiwan.

Also realize when you read stories about storm that Taiwan is a modern and developed nation. It is a first world country. But the storm sent many areas back to dark ages.

I personally do not want to even imagine the plight of many down there. I don't know what I would do in Taipei (northern Taiwan) without AC, but the south (where the real damage is) is much much hotter and more humid than Taipei. So not having AC, much less a house would not be fun.

Check out some links about Morakot:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2009/08/17/2003451343
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8197012.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8205447.stm
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/typhoon_morakot.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8197012.stm

Am I Gulliver?

First, I need to add a disclaimer. This post is a little more introspective than I would otherwise intend but I am going ahead with it anyway. In many ways, this post is an extension of the post below.

Before I go too deep let me explain a little about my situation here. When I came to Taiwan I agreed to stay at my company for 2 years. My boss always wanted me to stay for 3. Then he found out I am capable and can handle myself just fine—so now he most definitely wants me to stay at least 3 years.

The thing is I haven’t made my decision. I know I want to go to law school (I've also thought about an MBA or a dual JD-MBA degree too) in the future and that means I need to take the LSAT. So the first consideration is when do I give myself time to study for that?

Whenever I opt out I will have a crazy ton of experience. The thing that makes me a little nervous about opting out after 2 years is the economy. If I jump into a private law school for 3 years I am looking at minimum tuition of 30,000 a year without a cent of extra costs added in. If I decide to do a JD-MBA then I have 4 years of tuition. That is some serious debt that I will be taking on. If I cannot find a job that can help me make a dent in that debt after I get out then I will not be in a good situation.

So maybe I can spend 3 years here. The trade off with that is the longer I stay here the harder it is to leave. What I mean is I get more and more established, build ties, make more friends, etc. All of that makes it harder to leave. Basically, I worry I could end up being like Gulliver and being tied down and unable to leave (there are plenty of Westerners in Taiwan who end up this way)

Back to my timetable for Taiwan, my boss had something interesting to tell me. He suggested that I join the high end social club here in Taiwan (the American Club: http://www.americanclub.org.tw/, even though it is mainly Taiwanese who join). His suggestion was that if I do then I am set up long term and if I want to join then he and the company can give me some recommendations to get me in without a hitch.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for joining. But I worry my boss will interpret that as a commitment to stay long term in Taiwan, which I do not want right now. At the same time, my boss has been dropping these hints in a much less direct way the past few weeks (telling me, “We could make a lot of money together (if I stay on).”). What I did not except was when he mentioned staying on long term he also mentioned having a family here. Whoa there! Not going to happen anytime soon—this I am 100% sure of (this is also funny since this is the same guy who when I first arrived to Taiwan warned me that all Taiwanese women were devils and to avoid dating them—he honestly figures no lady for me means I can work all the harder).

The thing is that before I went home for vacation I got the feeling Asia will be my Hotel California. Say I graduate with a JD and I have some great work experience here and I speak some Chinese. Anyone who hires me would be crazy not to send me back here.

You see, a lot of companies and firms are dying to get Westerners with real experience in Asia to come over. A major reason I came here was to get that experience and show that I can handle living here (and not end up like a lot of the younger Westerners who come over and drink themselves out of a job in a few months—hence most young Westerners teach English which is apparently conducive to heavy drinking). Basically, I can hit the ground running if I am sent over. Anyone hiring me will be able to see that, and I think they would tell me to pack my bags and get on the next plane to Asia. To be sure, my dad thinks that it is just as likely that I will be placed in the US. I am not so sure. If I am in the US and deal with Asia, there will be travel involved and at some point it comes cheaper and more convenient to just live here.

The thing is when I was younger I always envisioned working in the US and being able to raise a family—you know the deal with the dog, 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence in the suburbs. But if I live in Asia then what happens to that vision?

The Future is...

I remember when I was in grade school thinking. Crap! I have the rest of grade school, then middle school, then high school, and then college to go before I can bust out of this school thing. It felt so long. So maybe I am thinking the same sort of thing now. I think, crap! I am going to go to grad school at some point then work my butt off until I am at least 60.
That timetable is nothing new. What I realized was instead what comes along with that. In the past, all of my vacations had periods of down time. This most recent one had the barest minimum of downtime possible. Most of my time was scheduled with people to meet, friends to see, places to go, etc. There was not much time to just do nothing (then again I am not someone who does nothing well).

Essentially, I realized that from here on out my time is not my own. Even in Taiwan my days and weeks are scheduled pretty solid and since my vacation is limited I have to plan things out to do all that I want too.

The realization here is that the days of summer are long gone for me. For the rest of my life things will be on the clock, I will have a tight schedule. I have no choice but to accept that and I am not sure that I like it.

Typhoon Morakot

This weekend there was a typhoon that struck Taiwan. The main part hit me in Taipei. For me, it wasn't all that bad, there was a small leak in my house. Other than that, it was more or less an inconvenience for me. I had to stay inside since everything was closed (I did try to go out to a bookstore but that was shuttered up). There was some strong winds and some rain as Taipei was close to the center of the storm. For me the worst thing was a case of cabin fever.

So from my limited perspective it wasn't all that bad of a storm. But that is indeed a limited perspective. When I watched the local news (I don't watch tv in my apartment) I realized how serious the storm was.

Southern Taiwan got pounded by the typhoon (some places got over 1m of rain!). The southern part of the country and the mountainous spine that runs the length of Taiwan are vulnerable to floods and landslides in this sort of weather.

The mountainous areas had it especially rough it since they are dotted with tiny villages. Many times these villages clear areas to plant the betel palm. This palm produces a nut that is mildly addictive and used as a stimulant (think chewing tobacco) by many Taiwanese. The problem is that to grow betel palm you clear a lot of natural foliage and because the roots of the palm do not go deep they are prone to being washed away in landslides. However, for these rural areas this is the best source of income that they can find.

I have no idea if betel palms were a cause but there was a major landslide in a small village called Xiao Lin (Little Forest) that wiped out a village and now has 400 people missing. This is in addition to numerous bridges washed out and other landslides throughout the south.

Nothing like a little perspective.

For more pictures follow this link (this is also where I blatantly ripped the pictures in this post): http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/typhoon_morakot.html

Phnom Penh Report

Each time I come back from Cambodia I tend to write the same thing—the traffic there is damn crazy. Proof, just look at the picture below of the little kid—he is on his bike waiting for the light at an intersection.

What is the strangest part of this picture. The kid? The tuk tuk I am in? Nope—the fact that there is actually a light at the intersection. Most intersections in the city of Phnom Penh have no lights (or even stop signs). Even the major traffic circle in the city has no traffic lights—much less any traffic guidance.

The lack of traffic lights or even rules of the road (Want to drive in the wrong lane into on-coming traffic or dart across the street? No problem, everyone is doing it!) makes driving there pretty crazy. I have been there 4 times and I still have no idea how it works. That is the main reason I have a driver to take me around.

The scene: average intersection in Phnom Penh. The actors: lots of cars, some SUVs, some big trucks, people on bikes, tuk tuk, swarms of scooters, people walking, people carrying things across the road, people pushing or pulling carts, bikes, people with bike taxis, and if you are lucky an elephant. The title: normal day in Phnom Penh (yawn).

The result is—to my eyes at least—chaos. But it somehow works out. That said, there are a minimum of 2-3 deaths per day from the traffic.

The other thing I learn more and more about each time I am in Phnom Penh is police corruption. The cops there are paid about $50 a month. According my driver there it takes a minimum of $120 to be able to have a place to live and food to eat. So the cops close that gap through extortion and bribes. If you are stopped on the road you need to pay up or in the case of my driver if you want to sell things in markets then you have to pay up.

The other result of low police salaries is that being a cop is not looked on as being a good job and the cops themselves are not seen as overly upstanding people. In a country like Cambodia that is bad. The rich there can do anything and the cops provide absolutely no check. There have been a few times I have read stories in the local Phnom Penh paper that go something like this: rich person or his bodyguard gets into accident, they get pissed, they get out with a gun and shoot into the air or at people, cops look the other way, and all parties go on their merry way. Usually the cops say afterward they cannot intervene or risk getting fired because the rich person will pressure their bosses.

If you cannot tell from this description so far, Cambodia is very poor. Example, garbage collection works like this: collect your garbage and then along with your neighbors dump it in a pile on the street (let stray dogs eat it during the day) and the garbage truck will come with workers and shovels to pick it up at night. The city is run down in a lot of areas and it is pretty dark (literally and figuratively) in many areas. But there is an energy to the whole thing that I don’t find back home.

A random story that is completely normal in the city. I was with 3 business partners from Thailand walking back from lunch. And as we go into our customer’s office we see a (stray?) dog. It was foaming at the mouth and shaking as it ran. Now most people would run away. But the locals just stopped and looked. In fact, there was a guy on a scooter and a guy on foot trying to chase the dog down. Why? Beats me.

Finally, the thing that stuck me on this trip was—in a word—rhythm. I think after being in Asia for almost 14 months I have blended into the rhythm of things. Being in Phnom Penh with all of its craziness, traffic, heat, dirt, and humidity felt completely normal to me. The only way to explain it was that I felt like I was finally part of that rhythm.

Typhoon!

In the post below I said I almost missed my flight back to Taiwan. It was damn lucky I made it since I was taking pictures of the A380 and forgot to change time between Phnom Penh and Hong Kong.

The other reason I was lucky is that all of the Cathay Pacific flights for today are now cancelled. There's a pretty big typhoon headed toward Taiwan and will make landfall in a few hours.

You know what that means....TYPHOON HOLIDAY BABY! No work for me tomorrow and by the time the typhoon passes the restaurants will be open in the evening. The downside is that means I still have to work (from home though) and if the typhoon is pretty bad (this could be the case since the holiday was called amazingly early so they are expecting it to be rough) I don't have much food in my apartment because of my recent travel. But never worry, 7-11 is always open, even during typhoons.

A380

Being American and from the Northwest I love Boeing. Still, as someone who follows aviation, think the new Airbus A380 is pretty cool. I saw one a few weeks ago in the Tokyo-Narita Airport but wasn't able to snap a picture since my flight was on the taxi way and my camera was already put away.

But today I saw another Singapore Airlines A380. This time I got the pictures and nearly missed my flight back to Taiwan to do so.

Everyone Has An Off Day, Right?

Michael Phelps had an off day and lost a race. That means I should have an off day and drop the ball on something, right?

Right now I am back in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I haven’t done business travel from Taiwan for a little bit. But I am defiantly off of my game (but part of that is not doing business travel for a few weeks). Last night I realized that I forgot some things at my office that I should have taken with me on this trip—by that time it was to late to go get them. Then at the airport I remembered some more things that I forgot to grab (passport photo copy, for example).

I hope this is just an off day or two for me and that I will come back with a Michael Phelps 100M butterfly style vengeance. Then again it could be that I am off because of all the sun and nice little pink sunburn I got yesterday at the secret Taiwanese pool I frequent.
Who knows but I hope I snap out of this one fast.