Nader Akhnoukh
Software Entrepreneur
Travel Photographer
Husband & Father
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Posts
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Posts
- Mary Meeker's Internet Trends Report
This is the best report out on there on the habits and trends of the consumer internet.
An intimate acoustic evening with The Infamous Stringdusters
Thanks to Spencer Doyle for making it happen.
- This crazy week
What I’ve found most interesting about this crazy week:
The relationship between the media, the general population, and the “events” continues to evolve.
Reddit had by far the most real time event tracking, with minute by minute play by play action. Of course when you have that level of information there is very little fact checking, which led to many false accusations.
Similarly on Twitter everyone was a citizen journalist, the best images and videos came from smart phones. In fact, besides a camera at Lord & Taylors, almost all the leads came from citizens, which led to the previously frowned upon strategy from the FBI of revealing the faces and names of the suspects.
Finally, the media. With the exception of perhaps the Boston Globe, who performed real investigative work and did so heroically, the vast majority of the media was completely impotent. All news broke via social networks, and while they were on the ground, they were literally just getting in the way as the police and FBI asked them not to reveal locations or to film certain areas.
The times they are a changin’ The internet is still so new, that we don’t yet have societal norms in place. The statutes of innocent until proven guilty that was built up after centuries of experience, are thrown out the window in this new medium that is still trying to find it’s way. I worry a little, but now that what open systems do best is self-organize.
Boston
So many Americans have a piece of Boston in them. The incredible number of college students that spend formative years there and then disperse throughout the country means many of us have lived there or know someone close who has.
Then there is also something unique about Boston, something that sticks to you, whether you want it to or not. A complicated relationship with a complicated city. This variation on RedSox nation roared it’s mighty head this week, and it was incredible to see the outpouring of love.
Dylan’s classic was recorded 50 years ago today. It’s one of my favorites. This is the first recorded demo of it. You can hear both the longing and the apprehension in his voice.
…and thus they might survive. Some might call this choice brave, but anyone who has looked at the data knows it is necessary. Amazingly, there are those that look at the data and refuse to accept it, and all of those media outlets will slowly and painfully die out over the next decade.
100. A Dutch filmmaker captures 100 Amsterdamers from ages 1-100 stating their age. Eerily beautiful.
When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity. -Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami’s daily routine, while writing a novel. via Daily RoutinesA great video on the power of instant feedback in any creative endeavor: Inventing on Principle
The most innovative thing I’ve heard of in the music industry in a decade.
via James King
Physicist Richard Feynman was born this day in 1918. In 1946, he wrote this incredibly heartbreaking letter
Via @LettersOfNote
- Today I Became a US Citizen
I’ve lived here for 20 years. Three years learning who I was in Northern Massachussetts, four building life long friends in the woods of New Hampshire. A summer coding in Seattle, Thanksgivings in Delaware, Spring Break in the Florida Keys. I almost died hiking Tennessee’s fabled Smoky Mountains. I spent a year in DC mostly because someone gave me a job, before discovering San Francisco and falling in love. (With both the town and my girl) I moved to Boston for a few years to start a company, drove cross country twice, and spent a couple months exploring the Southwest and ranching in Wyoming. I drove to Alaska (and back!) camping the whole way.
This is all to say, this is my home. I know this country well. And thus I wasn’t expecting today’s experience to be an emotional one, but it was.
I am nominally Canadian and Egyptian. Canadian via my parents after they immigrated there many years ago, though I’ve never lived there. Egyptian by blood. My name and face are Egyptian. If you force me to distill where I’m from down to one place, and I respect you enough to open up my complex story, I will likely settle on Egypt. But similarly never having lived there, barely speaking the language, there is a disconnect. It is an approximation at best. As a patrol officer in the midst of an unfortunate predicament on the Quebec border once told me, “Son, you are a man without a country.” Thus is the story of the American immigrant, and the connection I felt to those 1000 others from 108 countries sitting around me at the Oath Ceremony this morning. Every one of us has lived a liminal experience to varying degrees for years. Separated from family, afraid to do something wrong and reset the whole process, your dreams in the hands of an immigration officer who you hope isn’t having a bad day. Today there was a definite feeling of excitement pervading the room, but one tinged with relief.
But then you step back and realize that this is the same process that has been going on for generations. America is a country of immigrants. This is how the sausage of America is made, one Oath of Allegiance at a time. And that is what really got to me. Being part of this process, this process that is so imperfect, yet at the same time the most perfect process the human race has yet imagined, to create a better society. Incredibly humbling.
- Dylan’s classic was recorded 50 years ago today. It’s one of my favorites. This is the first recorded demo of it. You can hear both the longing and the apprehension in his voice.
(No streaming audio available)0 plays - Loving this new album from The xx
(No streaming audio available)0 plays - If you’re not listening to Fat Freddy’s Drop all the time, you really should be…
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Posts
- Jun 27, 09
To say that we've spent a lot of time getting from point A to point B in the past year is a bit of an understatement. Other than taking a major toll on the environment (we're going to buy a hybrid soon we promise!), these hours on board were a significant component of our adventure. Here's a look back at some of our favorites....
CARS
There's nothing like a good old fashioned road trip. Our aging Subaru was a champ making the journey up to Alaska and "Petunia" drove like a dream around the coasts of New Zealand.BUSESBy far the most of our transportation hours were logged on buses.... bus travel is really the only way to truly experience a country. Bumping along with all walks of life through all the nooks and crannies of local towns and countrysides. We have a million stories and war wounds to share from our bus journeys but here are pictures from a few of the most memorable. Each journey provided its own special treats of humor, frustration, boredom, and new friends. We wouldn't want to have done it any other way.
BOATS
Boats are always fun. Well, unless it's a 10 hour ride on a smoke infested Indonesian ferry. Cruising through the rivers of Borneo on our private little houseboat was probably the highlight of our boat journeys...
PLANES
The major legs of our Round-the-World plane ticket were fairly uneventful. More note worthy were our numerous domestic flights - particularly hopping between the islands of Indonesia. 50 year old planes that are sent here to fly until they crash and burn.... Thankfully, we survived. Getting tested for Swine Flu on a domestic Burmese flight was also a strange and humorous affair.
TRAINS
Nader claims to have gotten his best nights sleep of the year on this luxury sleeper train in China. Even the hard sleepers provide a great rest and way to see the countryside. We wish we'd spent more time on trains -- maybe the Tran-Siberian will be our next adventure.
MOTORBIKES
Crusing around on the back of a bike can be the most freeing or harrowing experience. Allison preferred Nader as a driver to some of her other chauffers....
EVERYTHING ELSE
It's hard to keep track of all the other modes of transportation we took advantage of on our journey. If there's a tourist looking for a ride, there's a guy who's rigged something up to get you there. Some worked better than others but all were highly entertaining... When you're a backpacker on the road, getting there is certainly more than half the fun. - Jun 26, 09
- Jun 26, 09Yuangshou
Yuangshou Culture House - Mr. Wei is wonderful host. Included with your room are three meals a day. Dinner is an amazing affair with a never ending stream of delicious dishes being brought to the table. He also teaches lessons for free - Chinese, Mahjong, Calligraphy.
Yuangshou Light Show - We try to avoid expensive touristy shows whenever possible but this one was worth every penny. Directed by Zhang Yimou (who did Hero and the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony). The perfect orchestration of 600 dances set on the water beneath the peaks. It was amazing.
Longsheng / Pingan
Countryside Inn in Pingan was a great place to stay in the Dragon's Backbone terraces. Definitely stay in the terraces (Pingan) rather than taking a day trip from Longsheng. At night and early morning, the terraces are most magical without all the masses of other tourists.
Kunming
Cloudland was a great hostel in Kunming.... all the standard hostel ammenities (including a champion ping pong player who Nader beat after 3 tough rounds), and the double rooms are really nice.
Lijiang
Panba Courtyard Guest House in Lijiang was a really nice place to stay. Set a little outside of town, it's quiet with great rooms. They also do a communal dinner which was delicious.
Western Sichuan
This was one of our most memorable journeys all year.... we highly recommend it (if you have a high tolerance for LONG bus rides with spitting and chain smoking cowboys :). Litang is the place you're going to want to spend a few nights along the way. Portola Inn wasn't a bad place to stay, probably the best in town. In Litang, you definitely want to find Mr. Zheng -- he speaks English (kind of) and can connect you with anything you want to see in town, including the Tibetian Sky Burial.
Chengdu
Sims Cozy Guesthouse - Maybe the best hostel we stayed at all year.... All the standard hostel bells and whistles, with DVD players and free movies to borrow. Run by a Japanese-Singapore couple so it's squeaky clean :)
Hotpot - Can't remember the name of the place we got ours, but it was very good... Sim's recommended it. Hotpots are a local specialty so they're all over. Serious spice.
Beijing
Our culinary tour through Beijing was led by local foodie friends.... So these places are all a notch above the backpacker budget, but so well worth it.
Dali Courtyard - Incredible Yunnan inspired cuisine. It's fixed price feast of dishes that just keep coming, no ordering necessary.
Liquin Roast Duck - For your requisite Beijing duck experience this is the place. The rest of the menu is astoundingly creative too so don't be afraid to add a few other dishes to your meal.
Bellagio Cafe - If you're looking for a delicious late night meal set amongst the young Chinese hipsters heading from or to the clubs, this is the place.
Shanghai
Yang's Stirfry Dumplings. Go here early and often. We recommend ordering at least 6 per person, 8 if you can handle it. Might be the best food we ate all year long.
Le Tour Traveler's Rest. This was a nice place to stay. In the private en suite rooms, the shower was actually in its own section which meant no wet room! (Wet rooms were a major frustration for Allison throughout China.... basically a shower head that just sits on the wall of the bathroom which means the floor, toilet, everything gets soaking wet). - Jun 08, 09
Our last stop. Five continents and almost exactly one year later, we've ended up in Shanghai (still sore from the great wall 'hike'). By this point we're more or less done sightseeing and Shanghai has a great place to transition back into normal life, with its metropolitan feel and a growing number of friends in town it almost feels like home.
While places like Western Sichuan might be considered the wild west, the true Chinese wild west is definitely Shanghai. Ten years ago there were no tall buildings, now you can drive for half an hour from downtown to Pudong airport and be on an elevated highway the entire time surrounded by skyscrapers. Everywhere you look there are dozens of cranes and major construction endeavors. Shanghai feels like an adolescent child entering puberty; it's clearly changing quickly, but it doesn't quite know where it's going.
This insane pace of development has led to a flood of opportunities and a booming expat scene. Everyone from photographers to DJs to consultants to bankers are arriving in droves. The most popular job in town seems to be the business to business middleman, ie someone who speaks some Chinese and can find the right Chinese company to satisfy an international (read American) company's needs. We got a good taste of the variety of the expat scene visiting our friends. Vicky, a friend of mine from high school and of Allison's from a prior job, lives with her husband and daughter out in the posher suburbs of Pudong. In an exclusively expat community, we went to an American burger joint for brunch and with the kids frolicking on the grass outside, it could have been Noe Valley. We also spent some time with some college friends Mike and Dan who live in the French Consession. Dan's a DJ and while Mike has an engineering day job he is infamous in Shanghai as the legendary "Roller Mike", the guy who throws the best party in town, a quarterly dj'd disco party at a roller rink. We were fortunate enough to be able to attend, and can attest first-hand that you can't go wrong with costumes, an open bar and roller skates.
Walking around town one afternoon we stumbled across a long of line of people waiting with small bills in hand outside a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. We soon discovered the glory of Yang's Fry Dumplings, quite possibly the best thing we've eaten all year. Pan-fried dumplings, with a perfect crusty bottom and delicate top, filled with minced pork and an amazing hot soup. The proper technique is to bite a little hole in the top and slurp up the soup, before going for the pork center proper. We were only partially successful and had a couple scalding soup face squirts, but it didn't matter. Incredibly good. The fact that you can get a pile of dumplings larger than you can eat for less than a dollar was just a bonus. We later discovered that there is actually somewhat of a cult following around these delicious morsels.
As we've made our way around the country we've been consistently resisting the urge to buy things as we'd have to lug everything around on our backs. Well Shanghai being our last stop changed that. We bought two suitcases and filled them with Chinese wares. As everything in the world is more or less made in China these days, for every legitimate brand, there is a Chinese factory right next door making the Chinese knockoff that is identical in quality at a fraction of the price. While we dabbled in technology and souvenirs, the real damage was done in custom tailored clothes. The process couldn't be easier. You show up at a mall exclusively filled with tailors, pick a style you like from a book of magazine clippings, pick some fabric, discuss details like cuffs and buttons, get measured and voila a few days later you have perfectly fitting clothes. I'm glad I held out on getting that tux til this trip.
As has become standard on our trip we are taking a highly circuitous route home. From Shanghai we fly 2.5 hours south to Hong Kong where we spend the night, before flying 3.5 hours directly north to Beijing, before heading back to San Francisco. But we're excited nonetheless. Excited to reintegrate, see our friends and families, and start up the next phase of our lives.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be posting some retrospective thoughts on the year, so stay tuned! - Jun 26, 09Having local friends makes a world of difference when visiting large cities. In Beijing, we were blessed with Peikwen and Shanti as amazing hosts. They took us on a culinary tour of the city - from soup dumplings to fried lemon leaves to peking duck. After our pathetic efforts to order food in this country (often by marching into the kitchen and pointing at ingredients) it was a real treat to have fluent Mandarin speaking foodies in control of our cuisine for 3 days.A highlight of our visit was attending China's first ever electronic music festival held in the 798 Art District. Home to a thriving new art community, the space is set among 50-year old decomissioned military factory buildings. Incredible art and young Chinese hipsters created an atmosphere more cutting edge than most anything we've seen all year.The music festival, set admist the factory piping lit up as the sun went down, was super fun (perhaps thanks in part to the LARGE mojitos being served) with top notch DJs. Around 11 PM however, hip China on the brink was put back in check as the festival - which was meant to continue all night - was shut down for "security reasons". Nothing seemed out of control in the slightest and even the guards who were marched in to stave off any possible riots where caught snapping pictures of the momentus event. But for reasons unknown and likely unwarranted, everyone was sent home. So close to what it's about to become but not quite there yet...Aside from eating and partying with Peikwen and Shanti, we did also manage to sneak in the big sites. Scared off by the crowds during our visit to the Forbidden City, we opted for an ultra adventurous day on The Great Wall, following a random tip we found on where to trek a truly unrestored and untrafficked secton of the wall. Our journey featured 5 hours of intense climbing -- some of it over sections that really required technical gear of which we had none. But the views were insanely beautiful and we saw not a single other hiker during our entire journey.... So it was well worth it.
- May 25, 09
May 16th marked our one year annivesary of unemployment. We didn't do anything out of the ordinary to celebrate as every day is special, but it did get us thinking about coming home. We've been increasingly excited the last couple weeks to get back into things. I'm itching to start building things again and have been doing some preliminary designs for a couple iphone apps. Allison's similarly eager to jump back into education reform. This accompanied by the desire to try and find a house has made us change our travel plans and we're coming home a month early! That means we're cutting out Western China and Mongolia, which likely would have been amazing, but we'll just have to save them for another trip...
From the Tibetan plateau we bussed down, down, down to the Sichuan capital of Chengdu. Chengdu is famous for primarily two things, incredibly spicy food as it is the heart of Sichuan cuisine and as the home to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Since Indonesia our spice tolerance/addiction has gone way up, to the point where we're putting chili sauce on toast in the morning and are really looking for a spicy meal for every meal. We finally met our match with the Chengdu hotpot, a steaming oily broth filled with hundreds of chopped chili peppers, in which you dip and cook your veggies or meat; a kind of massochistic fondue. While incredibly delicious and fun, we did have to take a break from the spice the next day.
Giant pandas really are as cute as you think. With only 1000 left in the wild, the breeding center in Chengdu is the most cutting-edge Panda research center in the world attempting to keep the species around for future generations. Besides the obvious main problem of encroachment on their natural habitat, what makes things especially difficult is just how lazy these creatures are. They get so little nutrition from the bamboo that makes up the entirety of their diet, that they barely move all day and don't have the energy even to procreate! So the center is resorting to techniques as extreme as in vitro fertilization. It's not looking good for the giant panda's future. The less well known red panda is on the other hand decidedly not as cute, looking more like a raccoon's relative. There appears to be concensus on this, as the Chinese who are very adept at pricing things based on market forces, charge $150 to take a picture holding a baby giant panda, and only $7 for the same honor with the red panda.
We spent the rest of our time in Chengdu wandering through some serene temples and playing with a new mode we found on Allison's camera.
Xi'an, home to the infamous Army of the Terracotta Warriors, is one of the biggest tourist draws in China. It's really hard to grasp the immensity of the undertaking without seeing the site in person, with over 6000 life-sized figures in full battle formation, exquisitely detailed with every body and face completely unique, and the layout planned out as if there was a real battle, from flanking brigades, to a headquarters with generals facing each other as if discussing strategy. These were all so that Ying Zheng, the first emperor of China could rule in death as he did in life. What I found most intriguing was the incredible ego and vast swath of power this man must have wielded. Taking 40 years to complete and employing 720,000 people, his warriors and the rest of his mausoleum were only one of the gigantic projects he undertook. Beginning with the unification of all of China, which involved defeating five other countries, to building the Great Wall, this guy got things done. The fact that this vast citylike mausoleum was only discovered 25 years ago and by chance as a farmer was digging a well, must excite and inspire all fledgling archeologists, as they imagine what other treasures are still buried under modern civilization. Allison was most fascinated by the vast crowds, fighting each other to get the best photo angle :)
Besides it's most famous site, Xi'an isn't a bad place to spend a few days, wandering the muslim quarter with it's delicious lamb kebabs grilled on the street, and hiking up Hua Shan, the most sacred Taoist mountain. The latter is an incredibly steep ascent, all stairs for about three hours, sections of it so narrow and steep you are literally crawling on all fours. We climbed up on a hazy day so were not afforded the views the peak is famous for, but it was fun to be part of an important Chinese pilgrimage, the Chinese huffing and puffing their ways up having a ball of a time along the way.
As we cut a month out of our travel, we've decided to up our transportation budget. Here is us on the deluxe sleeper Z train, sharing a bottle of wine and slurping down some delicious and filling instant noodles. The best night's sleep I've had in months... - May 19, 09
Our adventure into western Sichuan, across the Tibetan plateau began in the town of Shangri-La. Emblematic of the Chinese tourist industry's way of blurring fiction with history with reality to attract the most yuan possible, the town was named after the fictional location descried in the novel The Last Horizon and not the other way around. Although not quite living up to the mysticism and paradise embodied in its name, Shangri-La was a pleasant stop over for a few nights. At 3,200 meters, it helped us acclimatize for the journey ahead and we enjoyed some delicious home cooked dinners at our guesthouse outside of town.
We spent three of the next four days - 29 hours total - on public buses. Each journey took us over harrowingly beautiful mountain passes and came complete with their own special mini-adventures. Day one featured two sections of the road that were massively under construction where 6 foot deep holes had to be temporarily refilled so that our bus could pass by. On day two, the driver needed to pull over every hour to air smoke out of the engine (which was inside the bus) and refill its water supply. On our final journey we were blessed with an especially chain smoking / spitting crowd as travel companions. The guy across the aisle had a routine of one cigarette followed by two massive halking spits, set on repeat every 15 minutes. We estimated he worked his way thru 35-40 cigarettes during our 9 hour trip.
But our 36 hours in Litang half-way through the journey made every minute on the bus well worth it. Litang sits at 4,000 meters making it one of the highest towns in the world. Although technically outside the "Tibetan Autonomous Zone", Litang is just about as Tibetan as it gets -- and without any of the travel restrictions or mobs of tourists that accompany a visit to Lhasa and its surroundings. On our first afternoon we explored the grounds of the local monestary, wandering up to a structure covered with prayer flags waving in the wind against the bluest sky you can imagine. The four monks handing out on the hill as we approached created an image that would almost seem too cliched if it wasn't the real deal.
As if our afternoon with the monks, prayer flags and Tibetan sky wasn't enough, we had the priviledge of witnessing a Tibetan Sky Burial the next morning. This was, without a doubt, the most intensely unique cultural experience either of us has ever seen. To "bury" their dead, Tibetans bring the body up to a hillside and watch as vultures eat every last scrap of meat off the bones. When this is finished, they grind the bones together with a flour paste and let the vultures have another go at it until all the remains have been consumed. As a testament to Tibetan buddhist belief in the cycle of life, this "burial" makes a great deal of sense with the passing of one creature nourishing another. A benefit of being the only four tourists in town meant that we were slowly welcomed into the ceremony by friends and relatives of the dead.... which means that we have some pictures to prove it if you're skeptical that we saw what we said we did (warning, they're a bit graphic)..
Our afternoon and evening were spent getting to know the people of Litang a bit more, playing with kids around the local stupa and hanging out with some nomads over beers in the evening. This town has a truely wild west feeling to it with rough and tumble but at the same time beautifully kind people.
Thinking about the expense and hassle of a travel to Lhasa, we feel very lucky to have stumbled upon this authentic Tibetan experience as an alternative. Thanks also to Sonny for being a wonderful travel companion this week and for tipping us off to the adventure. - May 19, 09Back in the motherland, home of delicious dumplings and efficient transportation. After a couple weeks in Burma, China feels straight up luxurious. We reentered China in the Yunnan province in the southwest of China. Our first stop was the old town of Lijiang. As the railway doesn't go further west of Kunming we took our first overnight Chinese bus. Stripped of any seats, the bus is three rows of double-decker beds. Strangely, the length of each individual bed varies greatly and the Chinese seemingly know which ones are better than others, leaving us with the shortest ones. Not the best night's sleep, but not our worst either. For anyone considering this route, take an upper berth bed.Arriving in town we experienced our most major language barrier snafu yet. Having neglected to have someone write down the name of our hotel in Chinese, we were stuck with only the name of the hotel in English. Knowing it was near an elementary school, we found another traveler who was volunteering at an elementary school and showed her scrap of paper with its name to the taxi driver. 30 minutes later we are in a completely different town at dawn with no one around. To make a long story short, three hours later we arrived at our hostel, after what should have been a 10 minute drive. We won't make that mistake again. The complete lack of English speakers in the west of China is a real shock at first. Even the simple phrase "Speak English?" draws a blank stare more often than not. The exact same thing would happen if someone said "Speak Chinese?" in Chinese in the US, it's just the first place on our travels where it's been this ubiquitous.The old town of Lijiang takes you back to the China of past centuries, mazelike cobblestone alleys, stone bridges over narrow canals, tiled roofs, the picturesque Jade Dragon Snow Mountain looming in the background. If you get up around dawn you can watch men making fires to boil tea water, women shaving fresh rice noodles from a gelatinous mass and frying up the local Naxi bread. By about 9 AM, however, the Chinese tourists arrive en masse as part of tour groups, the trinket sellers take their places in the town squares, and the pseudo-indigenous women in pseudo-traditional garb begin their weaving, in front of whom the Han Chinese tourists enthusiastically take pictures for a small price. With its canal-side cafes and unexplored alleyways the charm is not completely gone, but it's quickly heading that way.Lijiang wasn't our favorite stop but it was the jumping off point for a spectacular two day trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge. One of the deepest gorges in the world, the river flows 2000 meters (6600 feet) below the upper track of the gorge where we hiked. Every few kilometers there is a small family run restaurant or guest house, which means you can stop and rest wherever you get tired. We spent the night near the highpoint of the gorge, at a guesthouse with a terrace that practically floats above the gorge, a great place to enjoy a beer after a strenuous climb.Here's the view from the open-air bathroom (hole in the floor):One of the joys of traveling is the freedom to change your plans based on the advice you get from fellow travelers along the way. Our original plan was to head from Yunnan to Lhasa, but due to some riots surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's exile to India, travel to Tibet proper has been severely restricted to package tours where you must have a guide with you at all times. Which means you will only see the places that Beijing wants you to see. Accompanied by the exorbitant prices of these trips, this wasn't a very appealing option. Fortunately we ran into Sonny, a solo Brit, who faced with the same dillema introduced us to the idea of taking the "backdoor" into Sichuan via the rough and fairly untravelled road across the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau which not officially part of Tibet is open to foreigners (although just recently as their were riots there a few weeks back). So we've busted out our cold weather gear from the bottom of our packs for what should be many hours on a chicken bus, but a rare chance to see a bit of real Tibetan life.
- May 08, 09
Our emerging understanding of Burma - the beauty of its people juxtaposed with the tragedy of their political situation - was further solidified during our second week in the country. Because of our limited time and the travel restrictions, we've stuck to the popular traveller circuit: after Yangon and Kalaw we journeyed to Inle Lake, then Mandalay and finally onto Bagan.
As anticipated, Bagan proved to be the real highlight of our trip from a "sights" perspective. Lonely Planet aptly describes the scale of the region, "Gather all of Europe's medieval cathedrals onto Manhattan island and throw in a whole lot more for good measure, and you'll start to get a sense of the ambition of the temple-filled plain of Bagan". The majority of its temples were built in the 1000s to 1200s, during the time Bagan was the capital of the First Burmese Empire.Our two days in Bagan consisted of sunrise and sunset explorations of the temples on bikes (when the light was most magical and the heat somewhat bearable). The awe which these temples inspires easily rivals that created by Machu Picchu or the Egyptian Pyramids. And yet, there was practially no one here. We often found ourselves entirely alone in the shadows of a giant budda while listening to chanting from a neighboring temple. It was truly magical.... And also so tragic as a stark depiction of how the govemental regime has impacted tourism here.While visiting Burma, we read two books that were very influential on our view into this country. The first was Burmese Days by George Orwell, set in post WWI British colonial Burma. What struck us most about this book was how little had changed in the way life is lived. Men still wear longyis and chew betelnut. Water buffalos are the pervasive machinery of farming. Food is cooked over a wood fire. The "beastly heat" that Miss. Lackerstein describes in the book is just as palpably felt; with less than 2 hours of electricity a day realities of ice and fans are nearly as non-existent now as they were 80 years ago. And most tragically, the people are just as oppressed as they were under British rule, only this time without the pretenses of infrastructure development that came with colonialism.The second book was Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. A description of one man's role in the economic "colonialism" that has defined much of the U.S. empire building in the last 50 years (trading infrastructure for crippling debts that require compliance with U.S. policies), the experiences recounted in this book come as no surprise. What is most frightening, however, is to think about the limitations of this strategy in the face of a decline of the U.S. economic stronghold. The U.S. response to the autrocities of the military junta in Burma has come in the form of economic sanctions. Well it turns out that U.S. sanctions carry very little weight in the world of Chinese investments. Burma's eastern neighbor is more than happy to keep fueling the junta if it in turn fuels the steady growth of the Chinese economy. In a changing global economy, here's hoping that the U.S. figures out another way to prioritize its influence in the world and that China rises to the challenge of being a responsible world superpower. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be much hope for the Burmese people.A few last humerous elements of our Burma adventure -- first, was the mutual fascination in the new and unusual. We've encountered this phenomenon throughout all of our travels.... Us sneaking pictures of the indigenous women while their children sneak glances and giggles at us. In Burma we found that the monks and nuns wanted our picture just as much as we wanted theirs. The shot below was requested by this group of teenage monks, and so we decided to have one taken with our camera as well :)And then, upon boarding our flight from Bagan to Mandalay we found ourselves subjegated to Swine Flu testing. The ridiculousness of this situation was two-fold. First, it was a domestic flight. Second, their method of testing was to stick the same thermometer into each person's ear as they passed through security. So if anyone on that flight had the Swine, you can be sure we now have it too...Finally, the popular debate amongst backpackers these days regarding Burma is "should you go or not? Will your trip aid the junta's power?". Our opinion is definitely go. First, it's incredibly narcissistic and naive to think that your meager funds have any impact on the junta in the face of massive Chinese investments. Second (and more importantly), it's the local people who are being hurt by the downturn in tourism..... Every guide or guesthouse owner we spoke to had been hit hard. Obviously avoid government run hotels and tours but please go visit. Learning more about these beautiful people and their plight can only bring good things through increased exposure and international pressure. - May 07, 09
Within minutes of landing in Myanmar, or Burma as it's better known, you immediately get the sense that this country is different from anywhere else in Southeast Asia. While the rest of the continent is racing into the 21st century, Burma feels stuck in the 1950s. Electricity in Yangon the capital (Rangoon back in the day) is off as much as it is on, and in other towns they're lucky to get 2 or 3 hours a day. Ice is manually shaved in the streets from big blocks, toast is made on wire mesh over coals, there is no credit card network or ATMs, and the most common car on the streets is a World War II era British jeep. Outside of every building in Yangon is a noisy generator keeping the fans running to deal with the 100F degree heat of April, the cruelest Burmese month. The poverty in Yangon is unmatched by anything I've seen besides maybe Delhi.
This situation and blame are perfectly clear. The military junta dictatorship has run the most corrupt government in the region for decades. The manufactured disparity and control is evident everywhere and the Burmese are eager to talk about once you are away from prying ears in the confines of their homes or car or alone on a trail. There is widespread belief that all post and phone conversations can be intercepted. The mobile phone chips that are required to operate on Burmese networks cost US $2000 while the average Burmese income is under US $200 annually, making it impossible for anyone outside of the government to use them. There are two television channels and two newspapers, both government run. The tax on cars is such that even if I was to give a Burmese a car for free, the taxes would be over US $10,000. Restrictions on international travel make it nearly impossible to leave the country without a significant bribe, and within the country foreigners like us, are only permitted to visit a handful of areas. Internet availability is spreading through the country, but many politically sensitive websites are blocked including blogger, the host of this website. (This post is seeing light post-facto from China - ironic, yes)
This is probably not news to many of you as Western countries are attempting to shed light on the situation through embargos and UN resolutions. (Though because of the 'special' relationship with China, these are for the most part futile.) What we have been consistently amazed by in our short time in this country, however, is not only the gentleness, warmth, and generosity of the Burmese, but also their incredible resourcefulness and self-sufficiency. Faced with taxes that return absolutely nothing to the people they are forced to create their own systems. When the government commandeers a water reserve, the monastery on the hill digs a well. With promises of power never realized, local villages pool money to build a hydro-electric power source (which provides power only for the 3 months of the rainy season). In the mountain town of Kalaw, the local bar (where a glass of whisky is 20 cents, there's always a troubadour belting out 80s ballads set to Burmese lyrics, and where a great time is guaranteed) collects donations for the poorest at the hospital. Throughout our travels we've witnessed the poor taking care of the very poor, but this is magnified here.
I don't mean to make it sound like we're not enjoying ourselves here. First of all the mangos are in season and they're the deliciously sweet Indian variety I remember from my childhood. Much better than the fried crickets. And the Shwedagon complex in Yangon with its 82 golden pagodas is a really atmospheric place to wander around barefoot as the sun is setting.We also just got back from one of our best trips all year, a two day trek through the mountains of the Shan state near Kalaw, visiting Pao and Danu tribal villages along the way. We spent the night with an incredibly generous Pao family. The two daughters had just got back from selling fried sweet rice at a fireworks festival in a neighboring village. The festival involves each village putting together a massive homemade rocket that they try and shoot at a goal in the distance. We joined them on the second day of the festival the following morning. The mother cooked us the best food we've had in Burma yet, all over an indoor wood fire.The anachronistic state of affairs also leads to some really comic situations. The money for example. Because there are no ATMs you have to bring in all the money you'll need for your time here in cash and exchange it in the black market as the official exchange rate is less than half what is widely available. More specifically you have to bring brand new, crisp hundred dollar US bills void of any creases, blemishes or nicks. In return for one of those bills you get a thick stack of the foulest, most torn-up currency you've ever seen. (The largest bill is worth about 90 cents.) There's also the strange state of cars. We sometimes joke that we're on the left-handed driving tour of the world, but Burma is the first place we've been where they drive on the right, but the driver is also on the right! This is because most of the cars are left over from British colonial times when the driving was on the left. So, in practice this means that every taxi/bus driver has a guy riding with him in shotgun, to tell him if he can pass or not.
Tomorrow we head to Inlay Lake, where the bus ride will be another adventure of continuous honking and Burmese soap operas played at deafening volumes. Fortunately, it's only three hours away. Much like how it takes two hours to get between any two points in New Hampshire, it takes 15 hours to get anywhere in Burma, Inlay Lake the one exception. Thankfully. - May 07, 09
Continuing our not so direct route around the world, we ended up with an impromptu stop in Thailand for a few days to get our Myanmar vias. Our journey was a little touch and go as political protests and riots broke out in Bangkok a few days after we bought our plane tickets and a few days before we were due to travel.... But peace returned in time for our trip.
Planning on the stop being not much more than logistical, we actually ended up having a wonderful few days - checking out temples while touring the city in a tuk-tuk, re-charging our backpacks with some cheap new clothes, and exploring the night markets. Oh yes, and eating some delicious food of course :) - Apr 23, 09
Our time in the southern province of Guangxi was filled with days spent biking, hiking and boating amidst the spectacular beauty of a truly remarkable countryside.... Karst peaks surrounding Guilin and Yangshou, staggaring rice terraces built on the "Dragon's Backbone" near Longsheng. It all set the backdrop for some amazing explorations that even a few rainy days couldn't damper.
I'll let the pictures tell the story of our explorations and focus this narrative (for anyone who reads it, we know most of you are just here for the pictures anyways :) on a few themes that seem to have emerged in our early days in China: touts, technology, tour groups and time.
Touts (or simply, people trying to sell you things you don't want or need) are a reality of travelling and have been a pervasive theme of much of our year. But the touts of China are of a unique ilk and we've found as much humor as annoyance in their presence. Firstly, they seem to be mostly women. After 6 weeks in Indonesia where women are often subjegated to more subservient roles due to religious beliefs, it's refreshing to see such enterprising ladies of all ages, many as old as 70 or 80 years it seems. Secondly, their tactics are diverse and at times quite creative. The two men who coaxed us into having a tea tasting with them at a local shop so they could "practice their English" (we knew they were trying to eventually sell us seats on their boat trip but enjoyed learning about the tea ritual all the same). The woman who followed us on our bikes at a respectable distance through the rice paddies of Yungshou and then just "happened to be there" when we needed directions (we never would have found the fabled Dragon Bridge we were searching for with out her and so also didn't mind her presence too much). And our favorite strategy of the street vendors -- when you tell them you're "just looking" in an attempt to get them to back off, the respond in turn screaming "JUST LOOKING!" or sometimes "LOOKING!" or occasionally "JUST!". Check back in a few weeks and we may have had our fill of these touts but so far they're mostly just a funny distraction along the way.
Technology is quite simply everywhere. Train and bus tickets are printed instantaneously from any random travel agent you visit. We have yet to stay in a hotel that didn't include WiFi in our room.... Yes, this includes our lodging in the small mountain town of Ping'an where there are no roads and traditional farming techniques are still used in the fields. The owner of our little guesthouse there appeared to be day trading in his free time. Our wonderful host in Yangshou, Mr. Wei was seeking advice from Nader on how he can better optimize his search capabilities on his guesthouse's website. Everyday technologies -- from how subway cards scan to the design of wall outlets are just a little smarter and better than those back home. Tic-toc goes the clock on the U.S. empire....
Chinese tour groups are also pervasive. The guide, with her little yellow or red flag and high-tech microphone system leads a group of 10-20 Chinese tourists who seem to be checking off the sites off there list of "must dos" with a quick photo and lots of chatter. This was a piece of China that I was most expecting and prepared to find terribly annoying. But, surprisingly, it's actually incredibly refreshing to see an country filled with it's own tourists. So much of our year has been spent in developing countries where the places we visit are too expensive for locals and have been turned into foreign playgrounds catering to young backpackers from richer nations. I'm reminded most starkly of the salt flats in Bolivia -- breathtakingly beautiful but not a single Bolivian amidst the droves of tourists. Here in China, the tour groups are a sign of the large and growing middle class. Sure, the crowds can be a bit tiresome at times (see if you can spot Nader hiding amdist the group below), but it's energizing to be in the presence of such growth and opportunity. Also, since they all seem to be following a prescribed route and the script of their tour guide, we've found that if you hike or bike about 15 minutes off the beaten path, you can still find the solitude of a beautiful countryside.
And finally, time. It's been our biggest asset this year. I'll never forget that freedom and excitement that we both felt on our last day of work and then when the movers came to take all our possessions into storage. Over the months that followed, we embraced this freedom of space and time as our new reality as the novelty wore off a bit. Though deeply enjoying and immersing ourselves in each new experience, we perhaps lost a bit of the appreciation for the gift of time. Without discussing it, we both have found ourselves in the last week cycling back to a feeling of gratefulness for the time and space that we have. With only 10 weeks left in our travels, each day starts to feel precious yet again.... Not only the sites that we will see but also those morning where we can lie in bed reading books or those afternoons spent on buses and trains watching the countryside roll by. We feel very lucky.... - Apr 11, 09
I'm sitting in an underground internet cafe with about 200 gaming teenagers. The two girls to my right are furiously clicking away at a Chinese version of Dance Dance Revolution, while the guys to my left are watching movies while loudly video chatting and surfing the web at the same time. This is more or less a microcosm for what we expected all of China to be like. With the notable exception of places of congregation, like internet cafes and train stations, our first stop in China has been a pleasently surprising revelation.
So much of the experience of travel has to do with expectations. One of the main reasons people travel is to experience new things, whether that is a foreign culture, an awe-inspiring vista, or a curious meal. Over time a traveller's expectations become more and more concrete, because a) you've seen more of the world, b) the abundance of travel media, whether they take the form of travel guides, documentaries, or travel blogs, and c) the world is getting increasingly globalized and places are sadly (to the selfish traveller) losing some of their uniqueness. This is why travellers every year are searching out ever more remote locales.
We had done a decent amount of research into China, but at least based on our first two days, pretty much all of our expectations were wrong. Times like this are why I travel.
Guangzhou is a large city in southwestern China with 11 million people, one of the many cities in China with over 10 million people that most people have never heard of. We picked it as our entry point into China purely because it was in the region we wanted to start in and it had the cheapest flight from Singapore. (My China visa was about to expire so we came here before Burma.) I expected a brash, crowded, dirty, hectic city void of personality. There are a lot of people, but there is also plentiful common spaces, with large squares, wide sidewalks, numerous parks, and a nice walking strip by the river. It doesn't feel crowded. The metro system is probably the best I've been on anywhere in the world; a train comes every 2 minutes, it's clean, fast, cheap and goes everywhere you want to go, including inside the train station. The neighborhood we stayed in, Shamian, is leafy and calm, older women doing some form of synchronized paddle dancing in front of the colonial buildings in the mornings, people of all age using a badminton birdie as a hackeysack in the afternoons, middle aged guys using the public outdoor gyms. The focus on public exercise is pervasive.
Guangzhou is better known by it's former name, Canton, and is the heart of Chinese Cantonese culture. Which to us means we won't begin to learn the language, and more importantly delicious food. Every meal in China so far has been a treat, the majority of them from the various street stalls serving up delicious freshly cooked treats, from dumplings and buns, to pick your own ingrediant soups to mystery meats that we generally steer clear of. Every restaurant has a veritable zoo of caged animals outside. Some you wish you hadn't seen, like snakes and turtles, others you just really have no idea what they are, like some sort of spiky armadillo.
So far our favorite activity has been just walking the streets checking in on everyday life, sampling teas, watching calligraphers, joining the crowds around impromptu checkers matches and jesting with the hawkers. Guangzhou is large enough that nobody notices you, which is nice. We've had perfect spring weather and with the good value accomodation and food, we're really enjoying our time here so far. - Apr 06, 09
Air conditioning, a proper bed with clean sheets, hot showers, flushing toilets, drinkable water, cooking dinner, wine, scotch, yoga mat, elliptical machine, TV shows, movies, trashy magazines, fast internet connection, shopping malls.
Singapore seems to fall behind only one country in the world regarding hedonistic consumption.... Which makes it feel very much like home :)
It's been a wonderful little first world break as we're almost halfway through our Asia journey. THANK YOU to Crispin and Ali for letting us stay in their apartment while they're back home in South Africa.
Off to China on Wednesday.... Mixed reports on whether blogger is blocked there or not so it may be awhile until our next entry. - Apr 06, 09Bali (all in Ubud)
Honeymoon Guest House - a bit more expensive than a backpackers budget but still very reasonable with great breakfast and a nice pool area
Gusti Garden Bungalows - a cheaper hotel in Ubud which was still very nice
Sedona Spa - $8 massages in a beautifully clean and comfortable spa... Not bad.
Kalimantan
Borneo Expeditions - Organizes multi-day trips into Tanjung Putting National Park to see the Orangatuns. You pay a bit of a premium to book through them (versus spending a day hunting for a boat and guide down at the dock) but Danson, the guy in charge is extremely responsible and organized. He can also book your flights for you which proves invaluable if you don't speak Indonesian.
Flores
Reefseekers - an EXCELLENT dive shop for exploring Komodo National Park. We dove two days with Kath. It had been awhile since either of us had dove and she made us feel completely at ease, even with the currents that Komodo is famous for. She was incredibly knowledgable about the sea life and we loved the briefings before each dive. They are building upscale bungalows on an island in the area and we're already planning our next trip to Indonesia around returning to visit :)
Lombok (Kuta)
Surfer's Inn - is a great place to stay even if you're not a surfer (although, warning, you will be subjected to endless hours of surf videos at the bar and strange looks as you head off to the beach without your board in tow).
Ashtari Restaurant - an amazing vegetarian restaurant perched in the hills above Kuta. You'll need a motorbike to get there.
Lombok (Gili Air)
Blue Bar - Dean, the owner, is great. Wonderful sunset views.
Italian Restaurant - We can't remember the name but it's the only Italian restaurant on the island, recently opened (as of March 2009) and run by Italians who make their own pasta. It was a delicious break from Indonesian cuisine.
Sumatra (Danau Toba)
Samosir Cottages. We visited many of the hotels in town before settling on this one. Great swimming area and rooms
Jenny's Restaurant. Delicious food (especially the beef rendang) and Jenny was so nice.
Sumatra (Pulau Weh)
Norma's. Best place to stay and eat in Iboah. Norma and the rest of the folks there are a real treat to be around. - Apr 06, 09
Sumatra wasn't on our initial itinerary, but after meeting several travellers who said it was there favorite destination in Indonesia, we decided to add it to the mix. As it's the 6th largest island in the world, covering all of Sumatra in the two weeks we'd alloted would be a bit aggressive and so we decided to focus on the North. Getting from the airport in Medan to the bus station, we added a new form of transport to our lengthy list -- the sidecar motorbike, where we rode next to the driver in a covered seat with my pack strapped to the front.
Our first stop was Lake Danau Toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world. We spent 5 days on the island of Samosir (which itself is bigger than all of Singapore) located within the lake. At a higher altitude, the climate on Samosir was wonderfully mild and the lake was a refreshing temperature for our daily swims.
The people in the Lake Toba region are Batak, a traditional culture known for it's unique architecture and traditions, specifically regarding marriages and burials. We spent several of our days exploring the island on bikes. I got to join in with a traditional marriage dance demonstration which involved circling around a water buffalo while bowing in respect to each member of the other family (as an aside, I'm not quite sure why I always get sucked into these things while Nader sits back taking pictures.... that's going to change going forward I've decided :).
Due to Dutch and German missionary influences, most Bataks are devout Christians, and therefore very much in the minority within the staunchly Muslim island of Sumatra. At least partly stemming from this reality, the Bataks seem to embrace travellers in a more authentic manner than we'd experienced most anywhere else. We immediately felt welcomed and at home within this friendly community.
What was most interesting about Samosir was its existence as a traveller's ghost town. Huge hotel after huge hotel, most of them completely empty. There were approximately 50 travellers on the island while we were there. We estimated the capacity to be closer to 5,000. Danau Toba was a hotspot on the hippie travel trail back in the 60s and 70s. For whatever reason - perhaps the growth of party spots in Thailand and the number of disasters (both man made and natural) that have hit Indonesia recently - travel to the region has rapidly fallen off a cliff. Many of the travellers we did see where noticably older than who we usually encountered -- folks in their 50s who were perhaps coming back to revisit their memories of yesterday. It was a fascinatingly unique view on travel, and also meant that we (again) had a beautiful slice of Indonesia mostly to ourselves at a very cheap price.
After Danau Toba, we ventured into the Aceh region to the island of Pulah Weh, chasing what we'd heard was some of the best diving in Indonesia. The Aceh region has not exactly experienced happy times in recent history. The region has been highly instable since at least the 1970s when the Free Aceh Movement was formally established. Stemming primarily from a desire to control natural resources and Islamic law, Free Aceh members have fueled a separatist movement which fanned into a full fledged armed conflict in the early 2000s.
And then, the Tsunami hit in December 2004 with its epicenter just off the coast of Aceh devistating the region harder than anywhere else. It's hard to wrap your mind around the devistation caused by this disaster, even after visiting the region. 225,000 people died. That's 80x as many people who died in 9/11 and 120x as many people who died in Hurricane Katrina. We have visited the sites of both of these U.S. disasters, spending time at each taking formal tours and honoring the dead at memorials. In Banda Aceh, we found little in the way of formal rememberance -- apparently there is one museum but it's often closed according to other travellers. We did visit a massive oceanliner that still sits where it was carried by the storm, 7 km inland. Comparing the scale-to-response ratio of our national disasters versus those of this country was a stark contextualization of what it means to have the privledge of being born into one society rather than another.
The Tsunami sparked a tenuous peace agreement between Jakarta and the Free Aceh movement, one that's been in place since 2005 until the present day. For the past 4 years, Banda Aceh has had a relatively peaceful and international face -- with the myriad of international NGOs co-leading the reconstruction efforts. But now the region seems on the brink of entering it's third phase of recent history and it's anyone's guess how the cards will play out. This coming Thursday (April 9, 2009) are the Parlimentary elections in Indonesia. There is strong speculation that if the separatists win enough seats, they may launch another offensive. The military was increasing its presence in the region in anticipation. Coincidently - or not - most of the NGOs visas are also running out this week. Most foreigners were leaving the region just when we were for the dual purpose of renewing their visas and being off site for the elections in case any uprising ensued. It was an interesting time to be in the region and we'll be watching closely what happens.
The little town of Iboah where we based ourselves on the island of Pulau Weh was completely isolated from anything described above. Remarkably, Pulau Weh was mostly spared any devistation from the Tsunami. And being a small town mostly fueled by travellers, they are able to live outside the strict confines of Sharia Law, which has been in place in Aceh since 2003. (In an ironic relationship that often typifies this type of scenario, they buy their beer "for the tourists" from the police, paying a bribe which ensures they won't be caught). We stayed in a basic bungalow overhanging the ocean where we happily traded running water or a flushing toilet for a million dollar view. The diving was incredible and afternoons were spent lazing in the hammock. Norma who ran our guest house cooked up delicious communal meals for us in the evening.... It was a hard spot to leave. - Mar 22, 09
Vacation. After a couple weeks of roughing it across Kalimantan and Flores, that's what we were looking for in Lombok, Indonesia's second most visited island after Bali.
Vacation is what we found, but first we had to get there. Getting from Flores to Lombok ended up being the longest continuous journey we've taken yet, at about 30 hours door to door (8 hour ferry from Labuan Bajo that left 2 hours late, overnight bus across Sumbawa, early morning ferry to Lombok, back on the bus for another hour, and lastly a hired minivan for a couple hours). You meet way more interesting people using public overland transportation than you do flying and we met our share of characters. On the ferry we met a couple guys who in their words run a "local exim". After a little while we deduced that was short for export import. They take the 8 hour ferry each way twice a week, carrying oranges one way, and bananas the other, staying the night in an apartment they rent for $2 a month. By the way they were dressed this is apparently a very profitable line of business. We thought we'd get some rest on the overnight bus, but with the freezing air condition and blaring Indo rock music, we didn't have a chance. I had the good fortune of sitting next to an older man who had hiccups that manifested themselves as burps every three seconds. Just as the music is beginning to die down and we're beginning to fall asleep we stop for the promised "included dinner"...at 2:30 AM. Six women got on after dinner all screaming into the cell phones, and we completely forgot about sleep. As the sun was rising on the second ferry we talked to a guy who worked in Cleveland for two years and loved American casinos. He had been to them all and couldn't wait to go back. Atlantic City was curiously his favorite.
Our first of two stops in Lombok was in Kuta in the south of the island. Primarily a surf destination, it's been hit hard by the succession of bad luck Indonesia has had recently (Bali bombing followed by the tsunami). This meant magazine-cover beaches that we had to ourselves. Our daily routine was hopping on our motorcycle to drive to one beach in the morning, have lunch at a great vegeterian restaurant atop a hill with superb views, and then head to another amazing beach in the afternoon. Grilled fish caught that day every evening.
From there we head to the fabled Gili Islands. The Gilis are three tiny islands in between Bali and Lombok. Motor vehicles are not allowed on the islands which isn't a problem as you can walk around each in less than two hours. Every morning all the food and water are boated over along with any visitors. We liked it so much on Gili Air we stayed for a week, which is longer than we've stayed in any one place since Nosara, Costa Rica. After the lack of reliable toilets and cold water showers of Flores we were excited for a little accomodation luxury and I think we stayed at the nicest place on Gili Air. For $20 a night we stayed in a modern bungalow with an outdoor bathroom, beautiful pool and great snorkeling right out our doorstep. Breakfast brought to our deck in the morning, and walks over to the west side of the island to watch the sunset behind Bali's massive volcano in the evening. Good living...
Vacation's over and we're on our way to Sumatra. Back to the real Indonesia... - Mar 17, 09
Travel in Indonesia is slow going even when you're willing to pay for flights. Cottage airline businesses are a popular enterprise these days with over 10 domestic carriers running similar routes, some with only 1 or 2 planes under operation. The result is a jumbled map of very cheap flights, with not always the most logical connections. After our adventure in Tanjung Puting National Park our next destination was the eastern side of Flores. To traverse this distance of approximately 1,000 km took us five flights over two days. However our journey felt very small in comparison as we soon met some travellers who had taken a four day / four night ferry to cover the same distance.
Flores further rounded out our emerging sense that the only cohesiveness of Indonesia is the islands' geological proximity to one another. First Hindu Bali with it's luxury seeking tourists. Then Muslim Kalimantan with it's steamy jungle. And now Catholic Flores with it's spine of dramatic volcanos traversing the island. We've met travellers who have 6 months in this country and still can't fully experience it all. So for all you who thought Indonesia was just beaches, think again...
Our first stop on Flores was the small town of Moni to see the crater lakes atop Kelimutu. With it's primary source of income being tourism in a country that's been hit hard by a reduction in travellers, Moni was a bit depressing and hassling. But the sites of Kelimutu made the stop well worth it. As we watched the sunrise over the colored lakes, we learned that five of us eight travellers on top of the volcano were from California. Seeing as that's probably about as many American travellers as we've met in total all year, it was quite a remarkable coincidence. We traded stories of where in the world we were for election day and what $500,000 will buy you in the Bali real estate market versus back home. One of the Californians also happened to be working on updating the next version of Lonely Planet for Indonesia and so we felt some karma at work as we'd just been wanting to send in a complaint about our less than stellar accomodations in Moni.
Our next stop in Flores was the small town of Bajawa, set in the middle of the island. The area is known for a continued strength of its traditional Ngadha villages and culture. We were lucky to meet some travellers who had hired a fabulous guide, Florean, for the day and they let us tag along as he took us to several local villages including his own where we shared lunch with his family. Because he is himself so strongly committed to the beliefs this culture, Florean's descriptions were incredibly rich and at times intoxicating. He described the details of rituals still performed to this day -- such as the process of building a shrine to ones ancestors which involved the burial of a live pig, a duck and a chicken under the wooden structure. Perhaps most interesting was his description of how he had found peace in the harmony of still being deeply committed to the beliefs of his traditional religion while now also practicing as a devout Catholic. In all of the villages we visited, Catholic crosses - the result of Dutch missionary work - sat next to the traditional houses and ancestoral shrines.
Our third and final stop in Flores was Labuanbajo and the Komodo National Park where we did two days of absolutely incredible diving -- the best either of us had ever done. We also visited the island of Rinca to see the komodo dragons. Though interesting by virtue of being so unique to this part of the world, the dragons ended up paling in comparison to all the creatures down below the sea. A highlight was watching the giant (4-5 meter wingspan) manta rays surf through the "airstrip" where they come to be cleaned by fish and the coral was like none we had ever seen before, particularily at the dramatic Batu Bolong site. We also say black and white tipped reef sharks, greenback and leatherback turtles, porcupine rays, napolean fish, scorpion fish, barracuda...the list goes on and on... Ah, if diving all over the world was only as inexpensive as it is here in Indonesia... - Mar 04, 09
From the early planning days of this trip, we've been really excited to venture into mysterious Borneo and see orangutans in their only natural habitat. Straddling the equator, Borneo is the world's third largest island, and is shared by three countries, Indonesia (the Kalimantan region), Malaysia, and the sultanate of Brunei.
Before heading into the jungle, we flew to the largest city in Kalimantan, Banjarmasin. Kalimantan is 90% muslim, a big change from Hindu Bali, and we felt the difference immediately, from the more conservative dress, to the lack of any alcohol, to the sometimes beautiful, sometimes annoying (at 5 AM), call to prayer. Banjarmasin is one of the more bizarre places I've ever been. Teenagers sell turtle oil on the side of the road, next to plastic bottles of gasoline. We heard some thumping music coming from a building and popped our heads in to see a room full of sweaty women doing aerobics, in full proper muslim garb, headscarf and all. We visited a mosque that looks like a spaceship, a seemingly out of place Taoist temple, and ate bountiful amounts of curious seafood.
The real weirdness begins though when you get off land and hop into a motorized canoe. Half of Kalimantan's million inhabitants live on the water in small canals in ramshackle one room wooden homes, either floating on bamboo, or balanced precariously on rickety stilts, with the water reaching about an inch below their floorboards. Within 5 minutes of checking into our hotel, the only guy who speaks any English in town (and not that well) found us and offered his services as a guide. While we generally like to go off on our own, we're finding in these remote parts where no one speaks English, a local guide is essential. So we spent the majority of the day with Tailah in his boat exploring the canals. Every house has an outhouse in front, where everything just ends up in the canals. Despite this we were surprised by the fastidious cleanliness, bordering on obsession, exhibited by everyone we saw. In the morning and late afternoon, everyone emerges from their homes and is at the water, bathing, washing dishes, the younger kids doing backflips off the bridges, girls splashing each other in the water, boys flying homemade kites. Every five buildings you find a tiny mosque made out of cardboard and sheet metal. It is a beautiful, cacophonous jumble of humanity. We also saw a massive Storm's Stork sitting on someone's deck, which only later did we discover is incredibly endangered with only 500 or so left in the world.
Tailah woke us at 5 AM to take us upriver to see the daily floating market that has been in continuous operation for 350 years. Farmers ride their boats up to 10 hours downriver to get to the outskirts of Banjarmasin to sell their goods to the cityfolk. Just about any food item is available from the stinky, spiky durian to fresh fish. Sellers who don't do well sleep in their boats and try again the next morning. At around 6:30 AM the breakfast boats shows up, where you grab a stick with a nail at the end and impale your selections.
We didn't see one other non-Indonesian in all of Banjarmasin. And everyone we meet that learns we're from America has the same reaction, "Obama!" with a big thumbs up.
From there we began our long journey to Tanjung Puting National Park to try and see the orangutans. A quick tangent on getting around in Indonesia. Indonesia has dozens of domestic discount airlines. They are for the most part mom and pop operations, often having a vat fleet of two planes and one route. Even the travel agents (when you can find them) don't know how to get to certain places. The one thing each of these airlines has in common is an invocation card in your seat pocket with muslim, catholic, protestant, hindu and buddhist prayers for a safe landing (in that order).
We had heard that the best way to experience the park is by staying on the Kalimantan version of a houseboat, called a klotok. In Pangkalan Bun we hired a guide (again the english speaking guy in town found us) along with a klotok driver and crew (cook and mysterious third guy, we were never really sure what he did) to take us slowly upriver. Four flights from Bali, on three airlines, various taxi rides and two days in a boat and we finally arrived at Camp Leaky, where Dr. Galdikas, a disciple of Louis Leaky, has been studying and living with the orangutans since 1971, the longest continuous study of one animal group anywhere. Her primary role is to rehabilitate orangutans that have been dislocated either through illegals captivity or more often loss of habitat, but her broader responsibility is educating and putting pressure on the world. The massive-scale illegal logging of the nineties has thankfully subsided through intense government intervention, but has been replaced by the tearing down of rain forest to build palm oil plantations. We spoke to her for a while and she is an interesting woman. The orangutan only gives birth to one child every eight years, the longest birth interval of any animal, and thus is especially prone to extinction. A child orangutan does not leave its mother's side for the first 6-7 years of its life. This is the most intense mother-child relationship in nature. Largely pessimistic about the future of orangutans in Borneo, Dr. Galdikas thinks that only the minority that live in the park have a chance at survival. 6,000 of the estimated 30,000 orangutans left in the world (mostly in Borneo, some in Sumatra) are in the park. You can find out more about her organization and work here: www.orangutan.org.
All of our expectations were blown out of the water and they were high to begin with. Some of the rehabilitated orangutans have a hard time giving up the free food from the park administrators so every day there is a feeding at designated stations in the park. This gave us a chance to see these magnificent creatures up close. We saw some orangutans from the boat, wild in the jungle, but nothing compares to seeing them up close. Looking into their eyes you feel an immediate connection. There is clearly so much thought going on. It is a little spine-tingling at first to have one stare at you, scoping you out, you doing the same to him or her. The juveniles and females swinging through the trees, bending small trees as they nimbly swing from branch to branch or scale vines is like the flying scene from Crouching Tiger. Watching a dominant male, at 250 lbs, doing the same, you feel like you are watching King Kong, huge trees bending, smaller ones snapping as he gracefully, yet forcefully moves anywhere he pleases. It is no accident that the best analogies I can find come from art, as it is really unlike anything I have experienced in life, and is one of the most awe-inspiring things I've even seen.
We spent three days on the klotok, and even withouth the orangutans, that would have been an amazing experience. Waking to the haunting arpeggio of gibbon calls at dawn, the rivers teaming with life, long-tail macaques and the Pinochio-like probuscis monkeys flying above you, kingfishers and hornbills darting across the water, giant butterflies all around, crocs patrolling the waters, and fireflies filling the night.
We got a little physically beat up our second day on the water when Allison got a nasty bee sting that made her right hand swell up like a balloon, and I found leeches on my stomach and calf, but the crew took good care of us, with great meals and a great mosquito netted mattress on the top deck for the nights.
All part of the great adventure. - Feb 25, 09
Our first stop in Indonesia, Ubud is located in the hills on the island of Bali. Originally a small artist village, the town has grown significantly in recent years due to the number of tourists who are drawn to its multifaceted beauty -- art, gorgeous landscapes and wonderful people. Despite the hustle and bustle of tourists, we've loved our time here in Ubud and chose to use all our time on Bali here in this town (rather than exploring the beaches).
After saying goodbye to Crispin, Ali and Clara we continued our exploration of Ubud and neighboring villages. A highlight has been several walks through the countryside. One such walk found us hopelessly lost in a beautiful river ravine. The farmer whose land we were crossing helped us to find our way, proudly showing us his plants of sweet potatoes and tapioca along the way.
We were very fortunate to have our good friends Crispin and Ali come join us here for the weekend from Singapore with their amazing little daughter Clara. We hadn't seen them since Crispin and Allison finished business school 3 years ago so it was a wonderful reunion. Clara showed off her stellar swimming skills in our hotel's pool (look out for her in the 2024 Olympics!) and we enjoyed some great meals together, including a local hotspot for suckling pig. The food here in Bali has been delicious and we look forward to trying new dishes at every meal. Food was definitely not a highlight of our South American leg and so we're exciting that Asia is living up to our expectations so far.
Hindu is the predominant religion (95%) of the Balanese. A more ritualistic strand of Hinduism than that of India, the religion of the island is palpably felt in everyday life. Small offering are laid out each morning by housewives before they prepare the morning meal – palm leave constructed boxes filled with rice, flowers and burning incense. There’s a seamless transition in architecture between the temples and neighboring houses, each decorated with ornante wood carving and faces of the gods. Perhaps most significantly, the peace and kindness of all the people we’ve met is a testament to how their beliefs influence their daily business.
At 12,000 rupiah to the dollar, our funds are also going along way here in Bali: $3 for a full day scooter rental, $6 for an hour massage, $7 for an amazing dinner for two, $15 for a private bungalow in a small hotel with a pool. It's tempting to just settle into the relaxed luxury of this beautiful little town..... But alas, the jungle calls us. We're off to Borneo to see the Orangutans tomorrow. To a person, each Balinese that we've told we're headed that way has laughed at us in surprise and amazement. For the record, this part of the adventure is Nader's idea. But Allison was very glad he dragged her into the jungle in Costa Rica so she's hoping this one's worth the journey as well :) - Mar 04, 09
With an 18 hour lay-over in Hong Kong between New Zealand and Indonesia, we decided to head into the city for the night (no, Hong Kong is not even remotely on the way between these two countries but according to our plane ticket it is).
Getting from the airport to city central was a mind boggling lesson in efficiency. $8 and one easy 15 minute high speed subway ride later we arrived. Coming back to the airport they actually will let you check into the flight and leave your baggage at the in-town stop before boarding the subway.
Wanting to keep within our lodging budget, we ended up being routed to "The Mansion". The mansion is a decrepit high rise building set in the center of the upscale Kowloon neighborhood. Each floor of the building is filled with several guesthouses each and we estimated there were approximately 5,000 beds inside. Expecting to the overrun with young Western backpackers, we were surprised by the international face of The Mansion's residents -- African and Middle Eastern predominantly -- many of whom seemed to be living in the building semi-permanently. A man who ran several of the guesthouses toured us around showing us numerous rooms which looked exactly the same but which he quoted for different prices. Each had two small single beds with a miniscule bathroom, the faint stale scent of curry wafting in through the windows. When asked why this one was more expensive his response was "more cleaner". We survived the night but have decided that if we return to Hong Kong we may be spending some of our precious Starwood points on a real hotel room. Somehow "roughing it" in a large city doesn't have the romatic appeal that it carries in the country side.
Aside from "The Mansion", Hong Kong was a great short stop. Vibrantly alive with colors and lights. The energy of a chaotic international hub where squalid dim sum joints sit next to lavish four star hotels. After perusing the latest technology for sale, we took advantage of the international cuisine with some great sushi and then headed back to the airport early the next morning. - Feb 24, 09Hotels
While in New Zealand we spent about 1/2 our nights camping and 1/2 in backpackers hostels. There are some great campsites and we highly recommend seeking out the Department of Conservation sites vs. the fully equipped "Holiday Park" types. If you're willing to trade in the services for solitude, you will have many of the sites completely to yourself. You can download a complete guide of all DOC sites from their website.
New Zealand has some really great backpackers for very reasonable prices (we were surprised). With a little marketing, many of them could advertise as "Bed and Breakfast"s and triple their prices. But let's just keep that between us :) The best source is Budget Backpacker Hostels New Zealand. Users rank the backpackers and we were very happy anywhere we stayed over 85% satisfaction. Two that it's worth changing your itinerary to stay at (we did):
Old Bones Backpackers. Set on the coast just outside of Oamaru this place is a true gem. Modern energy efficient space, great kitchen, very friendly owner.
Billy Brown's. Nothing around you but 600 sheep, a gorgeous ocean view, and Billie Holiday playing on the old record player. Change you plans to find this place. It's about 20 minutes outside of Dunedin on the East Coast.
Restaurants
Does raman noodles cooked on our camping stove count?? We really only ate out with Mom and Dad in Queenstown.... Fish Bones was very good.
Tour Operators
Ultimate Hikes - our Milford Track outfitter (the only way you can do a guided trip on the Milford Track). They were EXCELLENT. Not a backpackers budget option but very reasonable for what you were getting (at least that's what the people who paid the bill told me :). - Feb 17, 09
The last 5 days have been a mad rush up the West Coast to get back to Auckland for our flight tomorrow morning. We didn't have as much time to explore the little places, but it felt like the West Coast was much more of a circuit with the same couple sites that everyone stops at. But again, that was probably just our limited time.
We did manage to squeeze in some fun, camping on yet another beautiful beach, kayaking through a bird sanctuary, and checking out New Zealand's most famous glacier, Franz Josef (which of course led to us calling each other Franz for a day or so. This is what happens when you spend half a year interacting primarily with one person.)So, I think we've gotten to the bottom of New Zealand's problems. There are none really. It is just a simple society, people living contentedly within their means, without the desires or aspirations that drive the capitalistic growth we're used to in North America (and increasingly the rest of the world). Besides tourism, which overall is fairly low key, the major industries are sheep (wool and lamb) and fishing. With the exception of Auckland which has some internationally focused businesses, most people run the farms that their parents did, maybe try and save up for a little place on the beach. I'm torn. There is a part of this lifestyle that is incredibly appealing, to raise a family outside of the modern day rat race. But there is something I love about the entrepeneureal spirit that drives innovation back home, working hard to create something new and useful for the world. And everything that comes along with that, different ideas, people, etc. Greg Caimi, a friend from Hawaii, once said "Culture is for people with bad weather." The answer as with most things surely lies in the middle ground...Tomorrow we shift gears. With significant exceptions, like Bolivia, we've spent the last 7 months exploringly and experiencing the beauty of the natural world, from Alaska to Patagonia to New Zealand. While this will always be something we look for and an environment we love being in, it's hard to say, but after so much beauty you do begin to get desensitized to it. (Who knew we would have seen so many glaciers this year?) So as we begin our foray into Asia, we're looking forward to a larger focus on experiencing different cultures, while I'm sure there will still be some natural beauty thrown in there.Due to our weird round the world air ticket, the best way to get to Bali was through Hong Kong, which if you look at a map, is not at all on the way. So perhaps some quick dim sum in Hong Kong, before we head to Ubud to meet up with Crispin and Alizanne, our long lost friends now in Singapore, who are meeting us for the weekend.Good Bye New Zealand. We'll see each other again soon. - Feb 12, 09
We spent a wonderful week with Allison's parents -- five days on the Milford Track with a day in Queenstown on either end. Self proclaimed as "one of the best walks in the world", the Milford Track had a lot of expectations to live up to.... It meet and exceeded all of them for us. Our first day on the track was mostly a transportation day from Queenstown through Te Anu and into the first hut with only a mile of walking. The real trek began on Day Two. 10 miles through a beautiful valley along the Clinton River. There was a swimming hole a few miles from the end of our day and we started a trend braving the frigid waters... Followed first by Yutaki, who according to our guide was the first of the many Japanese travellers on the track she'd seen go for a swim all season. Not to be outdone by his kids or the Japenese, Dad quickly joined in as well.
Around 4 pm we arrived at Pompolona, our second of three lodges along the track. A quick note on our trip which was organized through Ultimate Hikes. There are two options for doing the track -- independent hikers carry their own food and bedding, sleeping in basic huts along the way (how we would be living without Mom and Dad as travelling companions :). We were on the guided version which meant luxury huts complete with showers, 3 course dinners and wine at the end of the day. Thanks Mom and Dad!! It was an amazingly organized trip from start to finish --great guides and a wonderful group of travelling companions. The most noteworthy was 84 year old Jack from Australia who jogged down the steep descents on our trail and closed down the bar around midnight on our last night. An inspiration for us all to say the least.
Day two was the big one.... 9 miles over Mackinnon pass. A challenging hike in good weather, we woke to torrential downpours that didn't let up until late in the evening. The most magical parts of the Milford Track are all the waterfalls, many of which only show their true splendor when fed with a fresh rainfall. And so our dread of a day trudging through the rain quickly changed to wonder and amazement as we witnessed some of the most beautiful and unique scenery any of us had ever seen.
Our third and final day of hiking led us through another beautiful valley and near many beautiful waterfalls. The rain had cleared and so we had some bright sunny weather for our trek. Upon finishing the track, we were shuttled by boat over to our lodge for the night which had the most stunning views of Mitre Peak in the Milford Sound.
The next morning we took a boat cruise through Milford Sound before getting on the bus back to Queenstown. It was really an amazing journey..... I'm also very proud and impressed that my parents breezed through it without any trouble! We hope that at age 60 we can be doing the same :)
Our two days in Queenstown on either end of the trip were also lots of fun. Despite being 100% tourist gears, it's a very cute town set on Lake Wakatipu. Before heading out to the Milford Track, Mom Nader and I went paragliding which was so cool. You really feel like you're flying. We had a great dinner with JP and Kaki Smith, friends of my Aunt Coco and Uncle Steve who were also here in Queenstown to do the Milford Track. On our day after the track, I went bungy jumping (couldn't convince anyone else to join!) and we celebrated our last day with some wine tasting at a few local vineyards. Thanks again Mom and Dad for a wonderful week.... We had so much fun!!
Oh, and Nader is making me post these videos. If you watch the first one (I was a bit overserved the night before, thanks to JP!) please do watch the second one also.... I redeemed myself on the bungy :) - Feb 04, 09
It is official. I am in love with this country. The past week we've been working our way down the east coast of the South Island where things have got progressively more remote, wild and beautiful. There is so much to see and do here, we've realized we could come for another month sometime and do a totally different trip.
From wine country we had a big driving day to get to the small coastal town of Oamaru, famous for the blue penguin colony that lives outside of town. The blue penguins are the smallest penguins in the world. We watched them climb out of the water at dusk after a full day of catching food for their young. A nearby yawning seal sent them fumbling back to the water to regroup which was comical. These little guys are less than a foot tall. Nearby there were also the rarest of penguins, the yellow-eyed penguin. We watched some of those from afar as well. Unfortunately taking photos of penguins is not recommended as they're afraid of humans, so no penguin photos.
Oamaru itself is an interesting little town, with a lot of intact 19th century buildings, a cool local jazz bar, and a great single malt whiskey brewery.This is the beach in front of the great place we stayed at.With all the sheep you would accept some great lamb. We cooked some up and indeed it was some of the most tender we've had.From there we drove by the bizarre Moeraki Boulders, five million year old, perfectly spherical boulders, now lying on a beautiful beach.On our way down to the Otago Peninsular, we drove further inland to check out the Otago Central Railway, a defunct railway line which has been converted into a 150 km long hiking/biking trail, going by tiny mostly abandoned settlements. We hiked one leg of it through, green hilly terrain and by a chilly yet refreshing river.Allison's birthdays** fell over the time we were in the Otago Peninsula. This is a spectacular area, famous for its accessible wildlife. At the very tip of the peninsula is home to the only mainland royal albatross colony. With a 10 foot wing span, these are the largest flying birds in the world. Too fast for our camera though. We walked a beautiful beach dotted with lazy sea lions (although surprisingly active if you get too close) and went for a hike from a huge chasm down to a bay over steep duney terrain. The walk back up over the sand got us sweating. It reminded me fondly of the the 'big' dune at the beach in Saudi that we used to roll down into the sea. (For those that know what I'm talking about picture one 5 times bigger).While exploring the Peninsula we stayed on a sheep farm a few kilometers away. Billy Brown, the hospitable owner educated us on the dwindling sheep business (we just missed the semi-annual shearing). We really enjoyed his woodstove and amazing record collection. They inspired us to pick up a player when we get back.Here's the field of sheep out our window. No better way to wake up in the morning.From there we head all the way south to the appropriately named region of Southland. Specifically we spent a couple days in the remote and unpopulated Catlins. Every turn off the road led to something spectacular.A New Zealand traffic jam.Beautiful Nugget Point. On both sides was a steep drop-off to rocks covered in frolicking seals. There were hundreds of them, teaching there pups to swim in little tidepools, the males play fighting.Matai Falls.Another amazing campsite.Cooking our favorite camping meal, veggie fajitas.A hike through rainforesty terrain, that reminded us of Corcovado in Costa Rica, minus the jaguars.We stopped for lunch one day at Porpoise Bay and were treated to a full on dolphin show. They were playing in the waves and doing full flips completely out of the water. The photo doesn't do it justice.At low-tide, at the very southern tip of New Zealand in Curio Bay, a 170 million year old petrified forest is revealed. An ancient volcano turned all the trees in this area to stone and you can still see the logs and stumps. To put that in perspective that is before there were any birds on the planets. Way older than the dinasours. Allison wasn't impressed :) Even without the historical significance it was a fun place to explore.Another fun place to explore were the nearby Cathedral Caves, five massive caves extending 200 meters inland. If you walk in deep enough, past where natural light arrives, you'll feel some slimy things crawling over your feet. I felt like Indy.
** We realized on Feb 3rd, the day after her birthday, that it was Feb 2nd in the US and thus it was her actual birthday that day. So she got two celebrations. The benefits of living in the future...
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Founder & CTO @ Kapost. Creating the future of marketing...
I care equally deeply about the user experience and underlying details, but strive to hide them latter from the former.
Specialties: Software architecture & design. UI/Usability design. Distributed systems. Prototyping new technologies. Growing teams. Global R&D management.
Experience- Aug 2009 - PresentFounder & CTO / Kapost
Lead the technology effort of Kapost, the Content Marketing leader. We're creating the future of marketing by helping brands become publishers and win in the post-advertising age.
- Jul 2009 - Jun 2011Founder & Partner / BEMA Studios
As a sideproject worked on a social sports iPhone app
- Jul 2008 - Jun 2009Traveller / World
Took a year to travel the world with my wife. Surfed in Costa Rica, drove to Alaska, camped in New Zealand, backpacked around South America and Asia.
- Sept 2002 - Jun 2008Co-Founder, Director / Tamale Software
Held multiple roles over 6 years.
Designed and built the initial platform. Grew and managed the development team. Managed several major releases. Listened to customers, focused, shipped a lot of good software.
Lead the research effort for Tamale Software investigating new technologies, algorithms, platforms. Did some innovative things like introducing Tamale's first search architecture and spearheading a natural language processing categorization engine.
Launched a new division of the company responsible for the centralized service platform. Responsible for strategy, technology and operations.
- Sept 2000 - Jun 2002Senior Software Engineer / Anuvio Technologies / i-drive.com
Led the development effort of the mobile application suite, used by global telecom companies.
- Sept 1999 - Sept 2000Software Design Engineer / Microstrategy, Inc.
Helped develop the web component of the Business Intelligence platform, Microstrategy 7.
Education-
1995 - 1999Dartmouth CollegeAB in Philosophy, Computer Science
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1992 - 1995Phillips Academy
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Honors:Hold multiple patents in systems for information organization
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Interests:Photography, Travel, Ceramics
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Repositories
- Ruby Date Recurrence Library - Allows easy creation of recurrence rules and fast querying1 watcher / Pushed Oct 22, 12
- mongoid-encryptor encrypts and decrypts one or more fields in a Mongoid model.3 forks / 2 watchers / Pushed Oct 03, 12
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- Classier solution for file uploads for Rails, Sinatra and other Ruby web frameworks1 watcher / Pushed Jan 05, 12
- A feed fetching and parsing library that treats the internet like Godzilla treats Japan: it dominates and eats all.1 watcher / Pushed Nov 02, 11
- Simple rails instrumentation for the ruby mongo driver/ Pushed Sep 24, 11
- Mongoid Slug generates a URL slug/permalink based on fields in a Mongoid-based model.1 fork / 2 watchers / Pushed Jul 31, 11
- A Chargify API wrapper for Ruby using ActiveResource1 watcher / Pushed Jul 24, 11
- Rails plugin to conveniently handle multiple models in a single form.1 watcher / Pushed Jul 18, 11
- starting html/css template. so much goodness baked in by default1 watcher / Pushed Apr 16, 11
- Autoscaling Delayed Job workers on Heroku to save money1 watcher / Pushed Mar 24, 11
- Some [hopefully] useful extensions to Ruby’s String class. It is made up of three libraries: ActsAsUrl [permalink solution with better character translation], Unidecoder [Unicode to Ascii transliteration], and StringExtensions [miscellaneous helper methods for the String class].1 watcher / Pushed Mar 10, 11
- Database based asynchronously priority queue system -- Extracted from Shopify2 watchers / Pushed Oct 28, 10
- webrat alternative which aims to support all browser simulators1 fork / 1 watcher / Pushed Sep 05, 10
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- Authenticate your users with RPX in your Rails application using Devise1 fork / 1 watcher / Pushed Aug 06, 10
- A Rails form builder plugin with semantically rich and accessible markup. It's deliciously close to 1.0!1 fork / 1 watcher / Pushed Jul 13, 10
- Chosen is a library for making long, unwieldy select boxes more friendly.2219 forks / 12510 watchers / Pushed Jun 17, 13
- A Ruby wrapper for the FullContact API23 forks / 18 watchers / Pushed May 20, 13
- a mongoid 3 zero-config, zero-integration, POLS pure mongo fulltext solution1 fork / 15 watchers / Pushed May 08, 13
- Ruby Date Recurrence Library - Allows easy creation of recurrence rules and fast querying1 watcher / Pushed Oct 22, 12
- mongoid-encryptor encrypts and decrypts one or more fields in a Mongoid model.3 forks / 2 watchers / Pushed Oct 03, 12
- 1 watcher / Pushed Jun 12, 12
- mongoid-encryptor encrypts and decrypts one or more fields in a Mongoid model.11 forks / 22 watchers / Pushed May 01, 12
- 1 watcher / Pushed Apr 24, 12
- 24 forks / 10 watchers / Pushed Apr 03, 12
- Classier solution for file uploads for Rails, Sinatra and other Ruby web frameworks1 watcher / Pushed Jan 05, 12
- Ruby Date Recurrence Library - Allows easy creation of recurrence rules and fast querying1 fork / 2 watchers / Pushed Nov 18, 11
- A feed fetching and parsing library that treats the internet like Godzilla treats Japan: it dominates and eats all.1 watcher / Pushed Nov 02, 11
- 8 forks / 68 watchers / Pushed Aug 10, 11
- A Chargify API wrapper for Ruby using ActiveResource1 watcher / Pushed Jul 24, 11
- Rails plugin to conveniently handle multiple models in a single form.1 watcher / Pushed Jul 18, 11
- Ruby wrapper for the chargify.com SAAS and billing API1 fork / 2 watchers / Pushed Jun 02, 11
- This gem is now being developed here: https://github.com/freerange/mongo-rails-instrumentation1 fork / 30 watchers / Pushed May 18, 11
- Ruby wrapper for the chargify.com SAAS and billing API1 fork / 2 watchers / Pushed Apr 22, 11
- starting html/css template. so much goodness baked in by default1 watcher / Pushed Apr 16, 11
- Autoscaling Delayed Job workers on Heroku to save money1 watcher / Pushed Mar 24, 11
- Some [hopefully] useful extensions to Ruby’s String class. It is made up of three libraries: ActsAsUrl [permalink solution with better character translation], Unidecoder [Unicode to Ascii transliteration], and StringExtensions [miscellaneous helper methods for the String class].1 watcher / Pushed Mar 10, 11
- Autoscaling Delayed Job workers on Heroku to save money5 forks / 25 watchers / Pushed Jan 10, 11
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Posts
- Jun 17, 13
Similar to the way you can customize your columns on the “Content” tab of Kapost we have now added the functionality to customize your filters (always on the lefthand side of your “Content” and “Calendar” tabs in Kapost).
You can now remove unwanted filters and re-order them so it makes sense to you which provides even more customization options from within Kapost.
What has changed:
- Ability to hide/show certain filters/custom fields
- Ability to re-order these filters in an order that makes sense for your team
- Admins can set ‘defaults’ for their instance (so that other members see the default view you setup for them)
- New filters (see below)
New Filters:
“Add task owner filter”: This allows you to add a filter for any task to filter by a specific user who is the owner of that task. In the example below, I created a “Copy Edit Owner” filter from the drop down. Now I can filter by any user to display all the content that exists where the selected user is the task owner of “Copy Edit” in the current workflow.
“Add task deadline filter” This will turn on a date selector for certain tasks that will allow you to create a filter for any task in your instance to filter by a specific date range of a deadline for that task. In the example below, I created a “Copy Edit Deadline” filter from the drop down. Now I can filter by a date range to display all the pieces of content that has the “Copy Edit” Task with a deadline in the selected range.
You can now filter by “All My Tasks” that you are the owner of, despite whether it is a Next Task or not:
This should queue up all the projects that are upcoming for you and really help you from a planning and forecasting perspective.
To learn how to get started on setting up you custom filters, check out our help article. Please let us know if you have any questions and if this is helpful. We welcome your feedback.
- Jun 09, 13
- May 22, 13
Based largely on customer feedback, we have made changes to the Workflow area of Kapost Settings and to workflow/task options themselves.
The premise is to make tasks even more user-friendly and easier to customize your workflow.
Worfkflow Settings:
You can now make any task a smart task. A smart task is a task that will only be checked off by a certain actions. For example, if you assign the smart task “Completed by sending to Twitter”, this will only be check off by promoting or publishing to Twitter.
The other functionality is still the same, you can assign a default task owner or set a date relative to the publish and submission deadline.
Workflows on Content Types:
Similar to settings, you can turn any task into a smart task but now we allow you to assign tasks to multiple people. This allows for great collaboration and you can do this on any task in your workflow.
Let us know if you have any questions around the user interface change in the Workflow Settings area or around assigning tasks to multiple people.
- May 15, 13
Kapost > Eloqua File Storage Integration:
Kapost now allows you to push files over to the File Storage area within Eloqua. You can select which folders inside of File Storage you would like to put the file in, and we will push it over from Kapost! We will also return the URL of this file and display it for you in Kapost. Learn how to set that up here. Please note this only works for Eloqua10 users.
Kapost > FTP Integration:
FTP is a very common way to store files to make them very easily transferrable, while remaining secure. Kapost now allows you to ‘publish’ files to a location on your FTP server. We have allowed you to select a specific folder in your FTP server. You can read instructions on how to set it up here.If you have any questions, please let us know. We are happy to help!
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Posts
This weekend we went on our first camping trip as a foursome. We explored a beach north of Bodega Bay and camped in the hills above Guerneville. Reid was either eating dirt or off exploring other peoples’ campsites. I spent a lot of time searching for the Gruffalo. I didn’t find him, but I did find a fox’s house. Mommy and daddy were impressed at how easily me and Reid went to bed after watching the sunset. - Jasper
Last weekend, we spent the afternoon in Point Reyes exploring the lighthouse, watching whales, and playing in tidepools. It was a lot of fun. Jasper and I were so tired we both feel asleep on the drive home. —Reid
We spent Christmas in Canada. Part of the time in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, and part of it in Toronto. I played in the snow and ate a thousand tangerines. Reid was really into the toolset Santa gave me.
We just got back from a week on the Big Island. We stayed on a macadamia nut farm outside of Hawi, up north. I spent a lot of time chasing wild turkeys around, while Reid just put anything he could get in his mouth. We went to the beach every day. It was more or less the most fun I’ve ever had. —Jasper
Auntie Dina came to visit for a few days. We were sad to see her go! See you at Christmas Dina!
