CD-retro

Today I decided to go to the mall and pick up a few things, since the mall is only a block from church. I knew that it would be crowded because Sunday is the day to take the whole family to the mall and spend a few hours. But little did I dream I would stand in one line for nearly 40 minutes!

I was looking for a particular kind of cable to connect some antique (ie last millennium) computer equipment. I checked at a couple of computer shops and they all said to go to CD-r King. CD-r King is a no frills computer accessory shop. It doesn’t sell computers but sells lots of cheap no-name CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, mice, cables, earphones, etc. The place is always crowded and you have to take a number. There were 10 people ahead of me. Today I found out why it is always crowded.

The shop is no frills but also no touch. Everything is behind the counter or locked behind glass doors. It’s kind of hard to shop because you can’t quite see the items well enough to read the fine print. I had plenty of time though to spot the cable I was looking for. There were 7 employees visible. One was a bored cash register operator who had something to do only about once every 10 minutes. Two girls were selling to customers according to their number. The other four were milling around behind the counters maybe stocking shelves or assembling merchandise or something.

Since there wasn’t a lot to do in those 40 minutes I started watching the way the two sellers worked. They would call a number and get the plastic number from the person and go off and hang it on a hook. Then they would wander back and begin serving the person with that number. One guy was looking at CDs and earphones. After explaining what the various prices of CDs were he finally chose a brand. Then she obligingly got down 4 different kinds of earphones, opened up all the packages and patiently stood there waiting for him to try them on one by one and discuss it with his girlfriend. Finally he made up his mind so the girl reassembled the earphones all back into their original packing. Then she wrote on a sheet of paper the product code, the number, the price per unit, the number of units purchased. Then she rewrote all the same information onto a paper pad with a carbon copy. Then she added it up on a calculator, figured out the tax, and asked the guy to sign the receipt. Then she counted out 25 CDs and carefully wrapped them in plastic. Then she got some small stickers on which she wrote today’s date. She had to re-examine everything to find out how long the warranty was and then wrote that on the small sticker. She opened up the earphones again and put the small sticker on them and then reassembled the packaging and told the guy the warranty was 30 days. Then, she put all the things into a plastic bag and then finally accepted the guy’s money. Then she went back and woke up (just joking!) the cashier who then added it all up again, gave a receipt and change and the seller girl took it back to the customer and FINALLY was ready to attend to the next in line.

You would think a computer related chain of shops could come up with a little bit better system. I mean like scanners so the girl doesn’t have to handwrite everything several times? (And somebody in the back must be retyping and collating all that stuff for inventory and bookkeeping!) Like a go-fer so the girls don’t spend so much time wandering around the shop, finding keys for the glass cases, finding a stool to climb on to get three sets of headphones down and could maybe attend to a second customer while the first is waiting for the merchandise to appear?

The “r” in CD-r must stand for “retro”. And I guess they are Y2K compliant—still.

But I think I will buy my CDs elsewhere.

Delights of high humidity

Ah, the delights of high humidity! Soon after landing in the third of my worlds I could feel my freeze-dried nose and airways beginning to heal. No more bloody nose. No more chapped lips. No more need for body or hand lotion. Even my Velcro fingers have finally healed! Now it’s back to two showers a day and using a thin towel so that it has a chance to dry in between.

It’s also wonderful to be able to touch things like doorknobs and computers without a jolt of static electricity. I wonder how long it would have taken Ben Franklin to study electricity if he had lived here instead?

It is amazing how much easier it is to move around when you don’t have six or eight layers of clothing on. More than once I felt like that little kid in the movie who was so stiff from his big fat snowsuit that when he fell over in the snow he couldn’t get up and had to just lay there and cry for help!

Oh, and I brought back a thermometer so that I can tell you what the temperature is in Fahrenheit. It is currently 81 degrees in my office, pleasantly cool with a fan (but with exertion and no fan, enough to make you sweat!)

Gadget Test

This is an attempt to add some fun and games:



If you don't like that, what about this:

Domestic Airport: A Dreadful Place

The domestic airport in the third of my worlds is a dreadful place indeed, a place of constant chaos. There are clumps, clots and dribbles of people everywhere milling and moving in all directions and constantly reforming. One clump may seem to be moving in a particular direction when without warning one or more people in the group stop to talk or rearrange things or they stop for no observable reason. The rest of the group wanders on and then like slow motion elastic eventually returns and reforms the clot around the stoppees. Meanwhile others who were trying to move behind or beside them have to stop or swerve and seek a new opening in the crowd. As soon as a new opening appears, like as not a child will suddenly pop into the opening from a stopped clot bringing those trying to get by to another halt as they try to calculate the child’s likely speed and direction. Perhaps someone from the child’s clump will pull him or her back into the clump. So if the way should open up again, you must move immediately. If you don’t, another group or clot will surely jump into the opening ahead of you and you will have to swerve, stop, or back up again.

The security check is similar to others except that they are short of plastic trays. So you had best repack all your coins, cell phones, documents, jackets, watches, and loose children into your bags so that things don’t get lost in the x-ray machine. Here you DON’T have to take laptops out of their cases.

On the other side, the people who butted ahead of you to rush through the security are frustrated to find that their bags inside the x-ray machine did not jump the queue with them and so they are forced to wait until your bags come out before their bags finally appear.

The waiting room is also a mad house, but there is a sea of plastic seats in rows facing the front which keeps some semblance of order if only that it makes it difficult to mill around much. At the front off to one side is an Our Mother of Perpetual Responsibility statue for those inclined to burn a candle for traveling mercies. At the back is a series of fast food vendors selling healthy foods such as donuts, sweets, and soft drinks. The nice thing is, there is only one kind of coffee and it comes in only one size!

There are three or four gates at the front of the hall and girls are continuously hanging signs above them which have reference to either a flight number or a destination. Newcomers tend to sit in the back and have refreshments. As flights are called and the crowds ease slightly in the seats towards the front, those in the back move forward.

I will say, it is a people-watcher’s delight. Some are dressed for the beach, even though they are not going to the beach. Some are dressed for business. Some are dressed for comfort, others are dressed to kill. One group has just come back from Mecca and are dressed in white Arabic-style robes complete with Yasser Arafat type kaffahs on the men. No need for a book or a TV. The crowds provide plenty of entertainment. (Like the older lady walking with a cane but still wearing clogs...)

Tips, er, traps for the unwary travellor

January 2, 2008

My trip back to the third of my worlds was relatively uneventful. But travel is full of traps for the unwary and requires quite a bit of juggling of luggage and documents. Security checks are always a challenge. Currently they want you to divest yourself of shoes, jackets, electronic equipment and the little ziplock bags of liquids as well as keys, coins, cellphones and place them in little trays and send them through one by one. The less you are carrying the better, But they also tell you not to check electronics, valuables, keys, etc.

Those little zip baggies with liquids are a relatively new thing. They are where you store any non-solids needed for your trip – chapstick, toothpaste, hand lotion, contact lens solution, etc. So you take things out as you use them but you’d better remember to put them back into the baggies lest you suddenly have to go thru another security check!

If you buy anything at the airport – and you will, you need to pay taxi, porter, airport tax, overweight luggage, drinking water (because you can’t take any through security with you.) DON’T put your coins in your pocket – otherwise you might get in trouble if you suddenly have to go through a security check. Pity the poor people traveling with small kids as they juggle kids, strollers, car seats, shoes, jackets, liquids, money, documents, and valuables plus try to keep track of it all!

When I arrived in the third of my worlds there were 3-4 jumbo jets all disgorging passengers at the same time. The immigration hall couldn’t hold all the people so people were piling up down the hallways too and for all I know, all the way back to the runways! In true Asian style there were no visible lines (queues) until you were quite close to the counter. You can’t really see from the back of the hall what the signs said and you can’t get to the front to read them. I kept asking other passengers if I was in the right line. After all you don’t want to wait in a huge long line only to find out you are in the wrong one! But the local passengers said it didn’t matter what line you were in. And I saw that it didn’t, because when you finally got close enough to read the signs and found yourself in the wrong line no need to go to the end of another line. You just slither over and sort of insert yourself into the next line.

The immigration officers were madly stamping passports, even so it took over an hour to finally get to the front of a line. I have a rather strange visa and so sometimes immigration officials don’t know what to do with it especially because I don’t have an “e-card”. I had a special letter I carry with me in case there is a problem, but the officer in my line didn’t even blink. She stamped my passport and card just like it was supposed to be. By then my luggage was on the carousel. Unfortunately, by then there were no more baggage carts and nary a baggage handler to be seen.

I was also sweating bullets because I had read the new customs form and it said that electronic devices had to be reported. That was a new requirement. I have a letter that explains that our contract gives us permission to import stuff needed for our work but I had forgotten to print it out. And I was carrying rather a lot of computer equipment, some mine, some for other people.

I couldn’t see any baggage handlers so I started asking people with badges about it. One guy turned out to be the airline agent and he said he would help take my suitcases outside to where I could get a cab. With a wink and a nod he sailed me thru customs and I didn’t have to explain anything after all!

Shot dead by own security guard

December 25

A rather shocking development back in the third of my worlds, is that my Korean neighbor of 10 years was shot dead on Dec 23 by our own security guard. It is rather a puzzle as to what happened, or rather WHY it happened. Neighbors said that the Korean had returned a bit after 9:30pm. The security guard was apparently sleeping so the neighbor had to get out of his car and open the gate himself. He was quite irate about that and may have kicked the guard post or slammed the log book down or something. He drove his car down to his apartment and hit a rock that someone had left in the drive to wedge their tire. That of course made him even more irate so he picked up the rock and then went back up towards the gate and started shouting at the security guard. People say that there was shouting and yelling for about 5 minutes and them bam! The man’s 26 year old son ran out to check out what happened and called for a neighbor to accompany him. They found his father laying in a lake of blood in front of one of the other apartments. He had been shot in the chest with a shot gun at rather close range. The son and his cousin took him to the hospital but he was dead on arrival. The security guard vanished. The Korean was said to have been drinking, as he often did at night. But the security guard was also said to have been drinking which he shouldn’t have been, and he certainly shouldn’t have been asleep at that time. No one actually saw if one of them hit or kicked the other and the Korean wasn’t armed.

The 911 phone line was apparently closed for the holidays but somebody managed to call the police. The police were over later that night and the next day. The security agency was over as was the owner of the building. We heard that the Korean embassy may get involved if the security guard isn’t found. Nobody seems to satisfied as to WHY the man was shot.

The people living in the apartment he died in front of are the ones that ended up having to clean up the mess. They have been burning candles on the spot. I understand that the local belief is that the soul hangs around the spot for about 40 days after death so maybe they will burn candles that long?

Apparently shot ricocheted around the front of our apartment, there are “burns” on the wall and a big chip out of the plastic front of the motorbike parked out front as well as a hole in the seat. It scared the daylights out of our cat who was probably sitting on the bike as is his custom.

It’s really a puzzle because the Korean had lived here for 10 years, in fact he was the one who pushed to have a security guard in the first place. He did have a temper. In the past we have heard him slamming things and breaking things in his apartment when angry at his wife or kids, though not recently. But I had never heard him yell at others. That particular security guard had been here three years and always seemed pleasant, and laid back and easy-going. Neighbors near the guard house said he had in fact apologized to the Korean for being asleep so it is unclear why the matter progressed any further. The security agency said that the guard may have been having some personal problems recently and suggested that the Korean may have appeared threatening.

It doesn’t really make sense. But one could safely conclude that it
is unwise to argue with an armed man.

PS The guard finally turned himself in and last I heard will be tried for manslaughter. When asked why he didn't shoot in the air if he thought the Korean was out of control- he said he just didn't think.