davethegrinch.net

Dave Says:
The nice lady at the Hong Kong tourist board said we should visit a small fishing village called Tai O. The Hong Kong tourist board is pretty well oiled machine so if they say Tai O then we say “Tally Ho”. We hopped a local bus from the giant Buddha and wound down and around for about thirty minutes to the small village. Strangely for Hong Kong there were no tourists or westerners on the bus and once we stepped into the village it was obvious why. This is a town that despite it’s proximity to one of the busiest cities in the world, doesn’t see outsiders very often. Situated in a natural harbor it’s main industry is fishing but industry is putting it grandly. Small boats head out for shrimp and other local seafare but its a subsistence operation. The water is dirty and diesel spills are common yet most of the fishing is done off the bridge or from the window of the stilt houses that sit over the water. Even the fish look sick. Most commerce and most fish preparation is performed on the street. (more…)

Dave Says:
Now, pay attention - there are 15,700 dongs to the dollar. Water costs about 10,000 dongs, beer about 15,000, tea 10,000 but a bottle of the not so finest but drinkable Vietnamese wine is priced at $10. Currency here jumps between dong and dollar partly because you can’t physically fit 1,000,000 dong on price list or label very easily and partly because the only people likely to afford 1,000,000 VND are those who think in USD anyway. You can also pay in dollars but they don’t like that very much so one is left to convert dollars to dong in ones head and then fork over millions at a time. There is also a problem getting small change. 100,000 VND ($6.36) is almost impossible to spend because nobody will give you, or has change for, such a large amount. Credit cards are accepted in some places but this is a cash based system with ATMs commonplace, which is very frustrating when the ATM spits out 100,000 dong bills and nobody will take them or your credit card.
There is no escaping the fact these are poor people and so whenever there’s a chance to exploit (and I use a small ‘e’) they do. You have your tour guide and then a ‘local’ guide, bus drivers, boat drivers and crew and everyone needs a tip. Tipping however is not like the US. These people earn next to nothing so even tipping them a dollar is huge. The average tour guide makes about $100 a month and they are relatively well paid but do work seven days a week, every week.
Then you need to check your bill and count your change carefully. Mistakes of 3000 dong in their favor are quite common. It’s important to keep this in perspective though - 3000 dong is about 20 cents so nobody is getting ‘ripped off’ but then its also important to let them know that you know you’ve been overcharged or underchanged. It is not OK to do this to tourists, in fact, it’s not OK to do this to anyone. It’s also not OK for tourists to shout and scream about the 20 cents. So there’s delicate balancing act of getting the 20 cents one thinks they deserve and giving a little to people who live a quite bare existance.

-OR- experiences in Hanoi on a scooter.
Dave Says:
Everything you may have read or heard about traffic insanity in Vietnam is true. In the city there are tens of thousands of scooters randomly moving around Hanoi in less than thousands of feet of road space. Even the normal vehicular sanctity of the freeway is a free-for-all of cars, bikes, mopeds, oxen and even pedestrians.
Imagine a system of complete highway lawlessness where road markings serve as mere suggestions of thoroughfare and road signs do nothing more than use their red and black geometry to break up the palate of soft yellowing green that blends buildings into countryside. (more…)

Notations on Hong Kong by Sarah Lukacs
Sarah says:
In no particular order:

1. Fashion: Hong Kong women are *very* fashion forward. I mean, they are pushing the fashion envelope hard. Some things work, some really really don’t but they are not scared. And they are raging on white leather knee high boots. they’re everywhere on every age. you haven’t seen cute until you’ve seen an 8 year old in knee high white leather boots. I’m telling you, this city is crazy. which brings me to: (more…)

Dave says:
Well folks, we actually left. I know, I know - after months of talking about it, planning it and stressing about it, we finally boarded an aircraft to leave. Only to then have to unboard that same aircraft because of an instrument malfunction. I am, however, somewhat gald the malfunction was detected before we were airborne. Instruments are one of those things in aircraft that sound as important as they probably are. Beverage carts are the exception to that whereas not sounding important to safe flight are actually vital to the safe operation of this passenger. “Duty free” is niether an important word or function in aviation and I wish they’d stop interrupting my movie in repeated attempts to convince me otherwise. However, I digress (and likely will continue to over the next 364 days ( we crossed the date line and lost a day ( which we’ll never get back because we’re always going to heading west))). (more…)

After seven and a half years it’s time to say goodbye.

Here’s some parting remarks about my tenure on the edge of the internet.

• I’ve had more managers than offices
• I’ve had a lot of offices
• I started as an immigrant, became a resident and left a citizen
• I’m surprised I wasn’t fired
• Flexible work schedules make flexible employees
• Free pepsi and coke is not an effective tool to boost employee morale
• Beer apparently is
• Life balance is not defined by how many hours one spends in meetings versus the hours one spends in their office
• Why bother holding a meeting when the decision has already been made - send a memo or something
• Becoming a VP doesn’t automatically make you Bill Gates
• I’m surprised how many people love taco salads
• The quality of software engineering is directly proportional to the quality of the software engineers’ management.
• Halloween should be a national holiday
• August R’n'R is a good idea only if you plan to not achieve anything in August
• For a company on the bleeding edge of the digital information revolution, submitting paper forms to report vacation seems kind of quaint
• Rebranding websites and players for “partners” is never a good or profitable idea
• It’s just entertainment on the internet, nobody is going to die if it doesn’t launch on time
• Deadlines should only be decided upon when at least one person knows what should be delivered on that deadline
• There are worse places to work than RN however complacency is not an excuse to stay