Martian Chronicles

Autofill extension / add-on

2011-02-17T13:22:00.006-08:00

This blog has not been getting a lot of love. I have been too busy relocating to Vietnam, spending a good chunk of time with family and friends in California, relocating to Singapore, and developing my two form filler browser extensions that are inspired by RoboForm and LastPass:

Autofill for Google Chrome (Chromium)

Autofill for Mozilla Firefox

I may also get my feet wet creating a mobile app for Android, iPhone, webOS, PlayBook, Windows Phone, or MeeGo. Do we really need six different mobile platforms? There won't be enough room in the pool, so something's gotta give. 2011 will be a busy year.

East vs. West

2010-10-20T00:55:00.002-07:00

USA: One person per large vehicle.

Vietnam: Multiple persons per small vehicle.

Saigon, Vietnam - Maison Chance

2009-02-28T20:06:00.029-08:00

A few weeks ago Lynn Peterson, an Emmy award-winning producer of Profiles in Caring, came to film a half-hour TV program on Maison Chance, the NGO I volunteer at. GoodTube just published a short video clip from Lynn's documentary; it provides a brief history of Maison Chance and its future plans as well. Pretty good summary.

Well, this is my life so far. Every day is an adventure. Literally.

What's the true cost of an x-ray?

2009-02-24T10:24:00.006-08:00

Mai-Linh, the physical therapist at Maison Chance, recently took one of the beneficiaries to the local hospital for an x-ray. Total cost: 30,000 VND, which is under $2. She has a friend who was charged $600 in the US for an x-ray and some Tylenol.

From what I've seen in my nine months in Vietnam, prices for goods here range from being about 2x more expensive (for new imported cars) to 5x cheaper (for most other merchandise and food you get off the streets). Now to go from $2 to $600 for what is essentially a piece of x-ray film from an advance Xerox machine (a 300x differential!)—that is ridiculous. It makes me wonder just how profitable health care is in the US.

Saigon, Vietnam - Downtown Before Tet Fireworks

2009-01-25T06:21:00.002-08:00

This 360-degree capture was recorded on my Panasonic digital compact standing in a corner of downtown Saigon at about 9:30 PM on the last day of the Lunar year, 2008:

Fireworks were scheduled at midnight over Nguyen Hue street in District 1. As you can see, the streets were bursting with lights, sounds, motorbikes, and life.

Kieu Tien, Vietnamese pop star!

2009-01-04T22:49:00.005-08:00

My Web design student Tien, in a festive mood, lip-syncs to a popular Vietnamese song over the 2008 holidays in her "nhà trọ" (flat shared by students) after Vietnam beat Thailand for her first ever AFF Suzuki Cup football championship.

Three things I love about this video:

The mobile phone ring at 2:07, just like the clip reminding people to turn off their phones in American movie theaters.
The leg kick at 2:17 (classic technique ^^).
The girl sitting down was so engrossed in her studying she couldn't be bothered. This reminds me of the third roommate always fragging in the background of the Chinese Backstreet Boys videos.

Not bad for an impromptu performance, huh?

Vietnam - "VIET NAM VO DICH!"

2008-12-28T09:49:00.014-08:00

With 90 minutes already over and the 3 precious stoppage-time minutes ticking down to the seconds, team Vietnam initiates one last desperate attack to tie the game up. Vietnam's #1 player Le Cong Vinh prowls the Thai penalty box and gets tripped up to earn a free-kick. All of Vietnam is silent. Nguyen Minh Phuong lets loose a canon into a sea of yellow jerseys (Thailand's color)...Le Cong Vinh somehow finds the ball and heads it into the top right corner of the net. GOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!! Vietnam goes into a frenzy.

This was the finals of the 2008 AFF Suzuki Cup, and Vietnam needed a tie to win the championship over three-time winners Thailand. As Le Cong Vinh secured the tying goal, Nha May Man ("Lucky House") exploded into an exuberant display of table banging, clapping, screaming, hugging, and kissing. It was good to see everybody so happy...there was so much energy in the room I swear you could start a Maison Chance reactor ;). Outside past midnight you can still hear hoards of people, young and old, crowding the streets beating pots and pans, waving flags, dancing gleefully, and honking their motorbike horns. Not many Vietnamese will get a good rest tonight. This was a historic achievement because Vietnam has never won the AFF tournament before. Just as how I never really enjoyed cricket until I lived in India, I never really enjoyed football ("soccer") until I lived in Vietnam.

(Note: "Viet Nam Vo Dich" translates to "Vietnam #1", which is commonly shouted here when you win a championship.)

Giant Sea Monsters

2008-03-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

Today I had dinner with an old schoolmate I haven't seen for 14 years. We went to a seafood restaurant in the same neighborhood we both grew up in. As we were catching up the restaurant waiters were parading this menacing king crab around—and it was alive! Oh my gosh, this has got to be the biggest, ugliest living crab I've ever seen up close and personal. It looks like something from a monster movie. Surreal. When the waiter brought the crab to our table and quoted the price, my friend thought he said $7.99 per pound and I thought he said $17.99 for the crab; well, neither of us got it right because we were charged $107.94 for the crab ($17.99 per pound).

More giant sea monsters spotted in the water tanks at the back of the restaurant. Sightings confirmed.

After seeing this crab, I got curious and checked online to see what the biggest crab species in the world is. Answer: the Japanese spider crab, which can grow to be as big as a small car! It is truly monstrous in size compared to the average man. You can also see a video of them at an aquarium.

If you happen to be living on Christmas Island, then you can wake up to see a giant coconut crab on your garbage can. It's the largest land-living crab species in the world.

California, USA - Tet 2008 Firecrackers

2008-02-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

Happy Vietnamese New Year! This is the year of the Rat. Tet, as it is called in Vietnamese, actually started on February 7th (first day of the first month based on the Chinese Lunar calendar). It is the biggest holiday in Vietnam, and festivities usually last for three days or more. This weekend marks the end of the Tet festival, so I decided to go out to capture the final moments of celebration.

Here's a phonecam video of people setting off firecrackers at the Grand Century Shopping Mall on Story Road in San Jose. They've been setting off firecrackers for at least six hours non-stop before I came; you can tell by looking at the ground painted red by spent firecrackers. Even standing that far away, my ears were ringing by the end of this recording. There were also tons of people playing bau cua ca cop, a traditional Vietnamese gambling dice game. We came at the right time because shortly after we left, the cops came to shut down the festivities. Firecrackers are supposed to be illegal in California, so I'm surprised they took this long to come.

California, USA - Cirque du Soleil's KOOZA

2008-02-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the circus with my friends Warren and Debbie. I've been to two other Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas, but this was the first time that I can recall being to a circus under a tent post-adolescent (I vaguely remember being to a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus as a toddler). Even though the KOOZA production was not as grand as the ones in Las Vegas, I enjoyed it more because of the increased intimacy inside the tent. The quality of the performances was consistently high, with some spectacular acrobatics leaving the audience holding their breath. It's a shame the quality of the photos below are so poor because I forgot to bring a real camera and had to rely on my phonecam.

Me, Warren, and Debbie standing outside the auxiliary tent with "KOOZA" in the background. The auxiliary tent is where you can shop for merchandise before and after the show.

We are now inside the auxiliary tent. Warren is wearing a clown hat posing next to Debbie behind a masquerade mask.

Tom behind another masquerade mask doing the "vogue" thang.

Tom wearing a different clown hat giving two thumbs all the way up.

Tom is trying out for the circus by demonstrating his superhuman ball-on-head balancing skills.

A peek inside the main tent where the show will take place in about ten minutes. It's pretty dark, but you can see that most seats are already filled even before the show has started.

A shot of the auxiliary and main tents. They look small from the outside, don't they? Don't let looks deceive you though; they are cavernous inside.

A cool snap of a backlit umbrella. I believe the photo is flipped the wrong way vertically, but it looks better this way IMHO.

The auxiliary tent has flat-screen TVs hung on columns for marketing and various projections on the canopy. It reminds me of the tent that I saw in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Portable toilets (porta-potties) and sinks were conveniently placed outside of the tents.

I was able to get off one shot as the show was starting before security asked me to put the camera away. The atmosphere was great...just so full of energy!

Inspiration for a New Chapter

2008-02-05T02:40:00.000-08:00

I'm so inspired right now my head is bubbling over with energy, so I'd like to share my excitement before it fleets. We all need heroes in our life—here is a story of how I discovered one of mine.

It all started on a Monday evening, with me coming home from work late as usual, dreary-eyed and a dry cough to boot. I have this aunt, Bac Thich ("Bac" is a Vietnamese honorific for older people) who often comes over to our house on Mondays and Tuesdays to eat my dad's fine cooking. On this particular Monday we struck up a conversation about our family's pending trip to Vietnam in May for Grandma's one-year passing anniversary. One topic crashed into another, and the next thing you know she's telling me about a Swiss woman named Chi Tim who was honored at a popular Vietnamese music function called "Paris By Night" (kind of like the Grammys I guess). My parents happened to own this on DVD (PBN 90), so out of curiosity I popped in the disc to see what Bac Thich was talking about. And then I rewound, and rewound, and rewound. *SHHH-KA-PLOOMF* Throughout the universe you could hear the sound of a mind expanding...an ego disengaged from hubris.

I was looking at a Swiss woman speaking almost fluent conversational Vietnamese (way better than me!), who practically gave up her Euro comforts and personal life to dedicate herself to sheltering, feeding, educating, protecting, and speaking up for Vietnam's silent, unwanted, abandoned, and forgotten. Wait, I take that back—Chi Tim didn't give up her personal life, she has single-mindedly made _this_ her personal life. Her family members are abandoned orphans picked up from shadowy alleys lying dormant next to the dog shit, too weak to call for help, too rancid to receive help; her family comprises the disfigured and the undesirables, the handicap people and the paralyzed victims of work-related accidents disowned from their own blood family.

Her real name is Aline Rebeaud, but she was given the beloved nickname Chi Tim by the Vietnamese community, which can be very roughly translated as "woman with a lot of heart" ("Chi" is a Vietnamese honorific for slightly older women, and "Tim" means heart). Chi Tim came to Vietnam in 1993 as a tourist at the tender age of 20 after backpacking through Serbia, Mongolia, and other exotic countries to soak in their diverse cultures; she was trained as a painter and loved to travel around the world.

While in Vietnam, Chi Tim by happenstance walked into a Saigon hospital and heard a little orphan boy's cry. He was going to die, but looking into his eyes she didn't see any life to begin with. Since nobody wanted him, nobody spotted him a fraction of an ounce of hope, and everybody expected him to die within a few days (and maybe hoping he would to make room for the higher percentages), she did what her namesake told her to do, the act that most pretend to consider doing, myself included—she took it upon herself to do whatever it took to save this boy's life. By sheer determination and moxie Chi Tim nurtured the little boy back to life, and eventually took him in to live with her. The house they shared evolved into Maison Chance ("can nha may man" in Vietnamese), and the family of two has blossomed into sixty plus, all under one big roof. These kids have been given a second chance on life, and are provided with the vocational training necessary to survive in a society that shuns them.

Granted this is the life that not many people choose, yet it's the life that has given so many other people a second life. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Some links on Chi Tim...

She won the Henry Dunant award for her humanitarian work:
http://www.prix-henry-dunant.org/?p=10069&lg=en

Her organization's official home page:
http://www.maison-chance.org/alpha/

How it all started:
http://www.maison-chance.org/alpha/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&lang=en&id=68

Her MySpace profile:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=314933769

I wasn't the only one inspired:
http://inspiresomething.blogspot.com/2008/01/tim-aline-rebeaud.html

Below is a three-part video of one visitor's trip to her house. The videos are captivating in both the heart-rending tragedy that you see before your eyes and the unfathomable compassion of one individual that gives hope back to those who were never given a chance. (Chi Tim is in red, naturally :))

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvT3dWfAosU
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFbvyki-MU
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHbSVSqJZ2Q

After seeing this, I can't help but feel like a sham. Pardon my French (don't normally like to swear), but what the fuck am I still doing at HP when there is a Swiss lady walking through mud in a 40C degree muggy day to buy bread for a boy with no legs in a third-world country run by a corrupt Communist government that pretends these children don't exist? Call me self-righteous, but I'd rather be that than pampered and self-centered in my air conditioned office arguing how my projects would make a multinational millions more in revenue.

Steve Lisberger, director of the cult-classic movie Tron, once said, "You don't know how hard things are so you just do them. Then later on you learn that a pound of flesh is extracted for doing this and this, so you avoid it. One has to be naive enough to not worry about making mistakes because if you're second guessing yourself all the time, you'll never even get started."

Well, I'm about to get started before you or I second-guess myself. Good morning, Vietnam!

P.S. Chi Tim is now hard at work expanding her Maison Chance into a Village Chance. It's a pity that we have wildlife sanctuaries all over the world for broken animals, but not as many sanctuaries for broken human beings to live comfortably, heal and belong. Feel free to go to her site above and donate some money—even $10 goes a long way in Vietnam.

Google as a Grammar Coach

2007-10-20T18:18:00.050-07:00

Up late into the twilight (again), I stumbled as I was trying to write in plain English. No, it was not writer's block; I think my communication faculties are slowly diminishing as I become more senile, which is a bit of a dark irony since one of my favorite books to read is the dictionary. For example, I couldn't decide between "coined from" vs. "coined by" in the context of coming up with a new term. Here's a useful Google trick that I've been using: when in doubt, try searching for each variant in double quotes. Here were the results:

"coined from"
"coined by"

As you can see, about 70k results for "coined from" compared to 450k results for "coined by". Of course you shouldn't use Google as your academic grammar book, but it does help in leading you in the right direction when you are not sure which way to write something. If you want to pick up a real grammar book, then Diana Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual is one of the best out there IMHO.

Changi Airport, Singapore - Sunflower Garden

2007-08-20T04:59:00.000-07:00

I took a moment to smell the flowers in this little garden on the Changi Airport Terminal 2 Level 3 Transit Lounge while waiting for a flight to San Francisco.

This photo probably looks smoggy because of all the mist in the air at the break of dawn. You can't really feel it from looking at the snap, but this garden was at a very high elevation.

There were places to sit, relax, have a cup of coffee, and enjoy the fresh air high off the ground.

A close-up of one of the sunflowers. Sunflowers are compound flowers made up of three parts: (1) ray flowers, which are the outer yellow flowers that attract insects; (2) florets, the sunflower flowers that form the middle ring; and (3) the seeds in the center that are produced by the florets. As you can see, a sunflower flower by itself is actually tiny. Looking at this gives you a warm, sunny feeling, doesn't it?

A macro shot of part of the sunflower. You can see a six-legged visitor crawling up a ray flower at the top.

A hummingbird's eye view of the sunflower's florets and the seeds within.

A top-down macro shot of the florets and their seeds. This is nature at her best.

Gazing at a sunflower through some sort of sundial.

A close-up of the time band on the sundial. I have no idea how to read the time from this, though I can make out twelve ticks to a unit on the band.

Crisscrossing lampposts high in the overcast sky.

A zoomed shot of one of the lamps. This could easily be a UFO after some post-processing work in Photoslop ;).

Delhi, India - Birla Mandir

2007-08-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Developing story...

More photos coming...

Delhi, India - Qutab Minar

2007-08-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

Developing story...

More photos coming...

Delhi, India - India Gate

2007-08-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

Developing story...

More photos coming...

Delhi, India - Government Buildings

2007-08-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

Developing story...

More photos coming...

Delhi, India - Lotus Temple

2007-08-12T16:55:00.000-07:00