BRAIN DRAIN

With one more trip across the Pacific under my belt, and the accompanying jet lag and distractions behind me, it’s time for another round of Random Travel Notes!

Unleft behind. Because my parents were away on business and my brother off at school, no one was around to see meoff on my trip. No big deal, really: it just meant that I was responsible for locking up the house and putting things in order before leaving. When I got to the airport, and was about to go through the first security screening, I found I’d accidentally brought along with me something I was intending to leave behind: car keys. It’s a good thing that my ride was still in the area and I was able to send the keys back home, otherwise I would have found myself in New York with car keys but no car — and my parents with a car but no keys.

Can there be anything worse than Philippine immigration? Seriously! It amazes me to this day that no one has figured out how much more efficient it would be to have a single line for all counters than a separate line for each. Further, I still can’t understand why I have the uncanny ability to end up on the slowest line available without fail. Then again, I suppose one can’t really blame the immigration officers for working painfully slow: it must really be a terrible existence to be reduced to an unthinking passport stamping machine of the Man with a Hoe variety.

A tale of two 747s. My trip was divided into two legs: one from Manila to Hong Kong, and a connecting flight from Hong Kong to New York. It turned out that both were being serviced by a Boeing 747-400. For the first flight, I was surprised to find that the plane was relatively new, with a business class cabin whose chairs were arranged in a very modern diagonal fashion vis-a-vis the aisle in order to give each passenger more privacy. Most passengers seemed to be pleasantly surprised by this, as several started whipping out their cameras just to take a picture. For my part, just seeing the cabin made me wish that this were the plane for the long haul journey, convinced as I was that I’d end up with an older aircraft. True enough, the connecting flight made use of just such an aircraft, though I was fortunate enough not to have a seatmate all the way through to New York (a first in the three years I’ve been at this). So I suppose this tallies as a win on the scoreboard for me no matter how one looks at it.

Intruder Alert! Since no one sat beside me for the longer part of the journey, I used the empty seat as a repository for some of my things. However, sometime in mid-flight something unusual occurred that made me pack up and secure my things. I’d nodded off, but at some point was roused when I felt that there someone was encroaching on my space. It was a middle-aged Chinese woman trying to take the seat. I was still coming to my senses and my first reaction was to vacate the seat for her, thinking, at the time, that the flight attendant may have offered the seat to her. But once seated she started acting strangely. She shook me awake and began gesticulating so as to ask how to manipulate the seat. I did, bewildered, for which reason she started thanking me over and over again. Only then did some flight attendants come by, speak to her in Chinese, usher her out of the cabin, and apologize profusely for the disturbance. I don’t know if the woman was just trying to score a better seat or if she had anything less forthcoming planned, but it’s a good enough reminder to remain vigilant over one’s things while travelling.

Glocal advertising. Lately, Gilette has engaged Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Thierry Henry as champions for the company’s line of razors. because I follow these things, I’m quite familiar with the three icons and know that they are top athletes in their respective sports. Yet even I take for granted how marketing global brands with global personalities still requires fine tuning to local tastes. When the ads first came out in the US, it was plain to see how Federer and Woods were featured more prominently than Henry, someone who may even be nigh unrecognizable in the United States where football (soccer) is a second-class professional sport at best. Yet at the Hong Kong airport, which is presumably more attuned to the football scene, I noticed that a fair number Gilette billboards placed Henry front and center instead.

Haywire. These past three years, each time I’ve been on a flight with a personal video entertainment system I’ve had the misfortune of mine going momentarily haywire at some point during the flight. It happened again on this trip (which is why I bring it up), but certainly not as bad as that one time my fiddling with the remote caused my screen to freeze up — and thereafter the entire section of seats where I’d been sitting (I kid not). The only interesting thing to come out of all this is that I’ve found out that these systems make use of Linux as their OS (or at least Cathay Pacific’s does).

Fitting the profile. Speaking of “things that happen to me without fail on these trips”, I’ve also noticed I have a knack for being singled out as the passenger the flight attendants will ask to fill out a customer feedback form. I haven’t figured out why. Could it be because I make an effort to be rather polite to them when they see to me? Do I just happen to look like a gullible sap who’d fill out the form favorably? Or is there something about people traveling alone, seemingly without much to do, that flight attendants gravitate towards for these things?

By now I’ve become convinced that everything in New York even remotely worth talking about happens while I’m not around.

Truly, in the nearly three-plus years of my ongoing adventure, interesting things happen in the city whenever I fly home on holiday. To wit:

Maybe now that I’m on the way for what should be my last lengthy layover in the capital of the world, something noteworthy will happen. Just saying is all.

I have become quietly addicted to Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

It’s not like the game is new: it’s prior release on every platform in at least two other separate incarnations allowed me to hedge my bets (correctly, I might add) and just wait for a collected Wii port. Nor is the game particularly well designed: in fact, it is mostly quite the opposite, with many a frustrating moment caused by terrible camera angles, character control, or stage layout.

Yet for all that I can’t keep from playing the game, struggling to unlock all the extras and gain “True Jedi” status in every level. Why? Simply because none of what’s wrong with the game really matters, because it gets so many other things right.

Ultimately, the combination of Lego and Star Wars is just ripe for a geekgasm and utterly irresistible, to boot. In many ways, it brings back much of the charm that made the original trilogy a smashing success, warts and all, while also doing justice to what the prequels tried to be but never were (while they were a travesty in theaters, in Lego Star Wars they’re fantastic!). All this while poking fun at the Star Wars legacy with a lot of off-kilter and insider humor that’s just right on.

It also helps that, even in Lego form, Darth Maul is wicked cool. That alone is enough reason to pick up the game and lose oneself a long time ago in a (Lego) galaxy far, far away.

Vida Winters is a successful author famous for two things: that one of her anthologies was published with a missing story, and everyone knows that she has lied about herself during each and every public interview she has given throughout her life. In the twilight of her years, she enlists the assistance of one Margaret Lea — a bookseller’s daughter and amateur biographer — to chronicle her life’s story. Will she tell the truth? What secrets will be unearthed? And does Margaret have any secrets that she is keeping herself? This is the premise behind Diane Setterfield’s novel, The Thirteenth Tale.

All in all, it is a mystery — albeit a somewhat unconventional one — that should appeal to bibliophiles on principle, if only for the occasional literary reference (implied or otherwise) thrown into the mix. Yet the novel suffers in at least two respects. First, it is without a doubt a very circuitous way to tell a story. Setterfield’s narrative is a whirlwind that employs unsettling jumps in storytelling, whether in terms of the plot’s heavy reliance on flashbacks or in the way that it is pushed forward via changes in perspective from main to supporting characters. In this regard, reading The Thirteenth Tale sometimes feels like a wearying affair.

Second, and more importantly, there is a psychological element to the story that will for many readers be a hit-or-miss affair. One of the book’s underlying themes involves twins and how having a twin can affect one’s psyche. Some may find this interesting; others will find it hard to relate. Indeed, there are moments where this device comes across as “artsy” and drawn out, to the extent that the book’s critical revelation becomes fairly (and logically) predictable.

Nonetheless, the book is interesting enough, owing mostly to Setterfield’s ability to entrance the reader in the opening chapters and wrap things up quite satisfactorily in the end. It is really in the middle that story and storyteller alike waver, however, in what is evidently an attempt to breathe life to an interesting premise and take the reader from Point A to Point B. On balance, this means that The Thirteenth Tale could have been better, which is really just another way of saying that it could’ve been much worse.

…is perhaps an unusual way to keep tabs with how long I’ve been at this. Sure, another year has passed marking this blog’s inception, but it’s not as if each and every moment was spent blogging. In fact, I think upon greater scrutiny it will become painfully obvious that I’ve actually blogged not more, but less.

Besides, wasn’t 2008 a leap year? So even that screws around with the math somewhat.

But hey! A “blogoversary” is still cause for celebration, methinks. So here’s to another year spent trying to make a dent in cyberspace. I thank all of you for coming along for the ride. It ain’t over yet.

This one falls squarely between “somewhat disturbing” and “oh I’ve always wanted to try that”:

Wired Magazine’s Kevin Kelley reports on the Geekdad blog that he and his son decided to have an impromptu lesson in anatomy by reassembling a chicken’s skeleton from bones leftover after a chicken dinner.

The result is a “chickensaurus” that’s actually quite interesting. Apart from pictures of the finished product, the article comes complete with a detailed description of how to go about the experiment on one’s own.

Chicken not included.

[Read: Chickensaurus Skeleton (via Wired's Geekdad Blog)]

I came home one evening to find my brother with a mischievous grin on his face.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“You have to see this,” he says, pulling out his laptop with several Youtube videos lined up in tabs on his browser ready for viewing. The first of these, evidently, was someone singing the Aladdin theme song A Whole New World.

Before I could blurt out “What the hell?!” at what I presumed would be an utter waste of my time, my brother clicked away and the video started to play. “Wait for it…” was all he said. So I waited. Then around 1:00 into the video I found myself doubled over laughing:

I think everyone will agree that it takes a lot of talent (and a great sense of humor) to pull this off. He also apparently has lots of potential as an animator, too. But in case a career in animation isn’t in the cards for Nick Pitera, I would think he has a bright future as a singer, be it solo or as a “solo group act”.

Now that’s talent!

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner seems to be in vogue these days. Critics adore it, fans can’t get enough of it, and its film adaptation is sure to keep people talking about it for a long time to come. This being the case, could it be that the novel just so happens to be one of those things that is popular for being popular?

Perhaps. But it doesn’t matter. As most anyone who has actually read the book will attest, The Kite Runner is nothing short of remarkable. Wrapped around some vivid prose, it is at once a love letter to a country besieged by conflict, a cautionary tale about the cruelty that children can inflict on one another, and an inspiring piece about coming of age, redemption and forgiveness. It is a truly touching story, one well deserving of the acclaim and attention that have been bestowed upon it by avid reader and critic alike.

In relatively belated news, it turns out that the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom prepared by the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal has been available online for quite some time now.

As these things go, there are some noteworthy developments in the index compared to its 2007 counterpart. Hong Kong and Singapore remain at the top of the list, with Ireland edging out Australia for the top third spot. The United States, New Zealand and Canada round out the countries deemed “free” by the index, whereas the usual suspects — Libya, Cuba, Zimbabwe and North Korea — constitute the handful of “repressed” economies that dwell at the bottom of the list. Meanwhile, China finds itself dropping several notches on the index, ranked 126th out of 162 in 2008 compared to 119th out of 161 in 2007.

The Philippines also finds itself slipping in this gauge of economic liberties. Whereas the country came in ranked 97th out of 161 and was deemed “moderately free” in 2007 based on the index, in 2008 it ranks among the “mostly unfree”, coming in 92nd out of 162 with a score that barely edges out Pakistan. As in the previous year, the index reports that the Philippines does well in terms of trade freedom, fiscal freedom, and “freedom from government” (i.e. dependence on government spending to support the economy) yet performs poorest in the areas of investment freedom, property rights and most of all freedom from corruption.

Accompanying the Index Rankings are summary reports of the findings for each country. For posterity’s sake, the following is an excerpt from the report on the Philippines:

The economy of the Philippines is 56.9 percent free, according to our 2008 assessment, which makes it the world’s 92nd freest economy. Its overall score is essentially unchanged from last year. The Philippines is ranked 15th out of 30 countries in the Asia–Pacific region, and its overall score is roughly equal to the regional average.

The Philippines scores relatively well in just two areas: trade freedom and government size. Fiscal freedom is average because income and corporate tax rates are burdensome, although overall tax revenue is low as a percentage of GDP. The average tariff rate is low, yet non-tariff barriers are significant. Total government expenditures in the Philippines are equal to roughly 20 percent of national GDP.

The Philippines is relatively weak in business freedom, investment freedom, property rights, and freedom from corruption. The government imposes both formal and non-formal barriers to foreign investment. Inflation is fairly high, and the government subsidizes the prices of several basic goods. The judicial system is weak and subject to extensive political influence. Organized crime is a major deterrent to the administration of justice, and bureaucratic corruption is extensive.

Seen at a bookstore in Lucerne, Switzerland, during the family jaunt there last summer. At the time, I didn’t really get a chance to piece together what the game was about as we were just passing by. Since then, I’ve learned that this is a product of Rio Grande Games, who describe it thus:

It is 1821, and for 250 years the Philippine Islands have been under the thumb of the Spanish crown. But, in the end, the Spaniards do not really control everything. In the shadow of the colonial power, self-willed natives have established secret maritime trade with neighboring islands and the Asiatic mainland. Using odd-looking punts and fragile bamboo barks, these black market traders cram their boats with nutmeg, silk, jade, and ginseng, and set sail to smuggle them into MANILA. Succes in each venture is uncertain, as the seaworthiness of both boats and captains is poor. To add to their woes, pirates lie in wait to plunder boats that cannot escape them. Given all this, it is not surprising that wares that reach the black markets in MANILA command high prices, making the venture worth the risk for those who succeed. The black market dealers use accomplices to ensure they get the wares, bribe pilots to aid their cargoes and hinder others, and insure their cargoes against failure. And a few wealthy merchants hire pirates to attack the black market boats and secretly pocket the profits from these raids.

It’s funny: while I wouldn’t be surprised if the game were laden with historical inaccuracies — I seem to recall seeing a picture of a golden buddha on the rear box artwork that just seemed so…wrong — that brief description right there is probably more exciting than most of the social studies courses on Philippine history that I’ve had to take in my lifetime. If only history could be sold in the same way, no?