If you stay in Vietnam for awhile, you learn to always keep small bills handy and never hand a Vietnamese a large bill — you will usually get shortchanged one way or another.
If you hand a Vietnamese person a large bill, you better both count your change and figure you wll have to argue to [...]
Archive for July, 2006
Jul
2006
31
Learn to always keep small bills handy
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Travel Experiences. 1 CommentJul
2006
31
Broken derailler, Ride to beach and
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Vietnam. 1 CommentInteresting day: broken derailler, 35km trip to the beach where I fell down, flat tire on the return ride. Negotiating over price of everything. Foreigners almost always get overcharged.
As I am sitting behind the computer, Mai, Hoa, Huang are sitting on the living room floor contentedly eating delicious crab noodle soup. The crabs were crawling around in the kitchen just 20 minutes ago. That’s FRESH SEAFOOD soup!
Jul
2006
30
So much to do and so little time…
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. ClosedMai’s nephew who’s going to the university in Singapore and is home in Hue for 1 1/2 months summer vacation over and we talked. I found out that he had not backed up his computer for quite a long time, so I offered to use Acronis Backup software and backup his Fujitsu notebook. [...]
Jul
2006
28
After 10+ hrs debuggin’ I can finally add new entries!
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. ClosedI just spent 10+ hours trying to find the solution to the problem: I could write something new, post it to the blog, and it disappeared into “never, never land”, i.e. I just couldn’t add new material to this new blog.
I was pullin’ my hair out. I had to debug it step-by-step and finally found [...]
Jul
2006
28
Finally online with the new blog! I’m jazzed!
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. ClosedI finally did it — got our new blog online! After days and days of very intense focus and frustrating moments, success it at hand.
I spent over three weeks sleuthing the internet for Content Mgmt Sofware (CMS) and blogging software, downloading, installing on my laptop and evaluating their features. Weighing the pros and cons of [...]
Jul
2006
25
Heads Up!
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. ClosedHello, I’m still here in Hue, Vietnam and I’ve not forgotten about you! “Au contraire” - I’ve been totally focused on investigating what software I should use for this site.
Why? Because, in my experience, this Nucleus software has limited choices and too many bugs. I don’t want to spend my time [...]
Mai bought a several washcloths in the local market a few days ago — light blue, dark blue and blood red.
She washed both of the blue washcloths but gave me the red one. When I went to use it I was covered with red dye and the floor and walls were splattered with reddish [...]
Jul
2006
22
Vietnam Road Building Update
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Travel Experiences and Vietnam. ClosedYesterday and today the road crew worked on the road. It has progressed 200 feet further from here — almost at the intersection which will mean that they have the whole square block paved. They will then continue the 1/2 mile futher to the paved end of Chi Long street which is under [...]
Jul
2006
22
Backache and the MS Natural Keyboard
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. ClosedWell, this morning I woke up with a backache which made it so I could hardly move. Getting up and down from the tile floor last night was a killer. Sleeping on it was easy, it was the up and down which was painful.
The backache was the result of using the laptop [...]
Jul
2006
20
The Road Ends Here
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Travel Experiences and Vietnam. ClosedAs I sit here typing this entry, I am bombarded with the noise of two cement mixers outside the front door.
While we in the US may have our cement delivered in trucks to build road, here in Vietnam, roadbuilding is done strictly by hand with the help of two cement mixers. The sequence is [...]
Jul
2006
12
Online… Whoopie!
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. 1 CommentAs of 10:00am, a tech from Vietnam Telephone came by and configured the hookup to get me on-line.
The “glitch” was that when Mai wrote the user name during yesterday’s telephone call, she wrote it hurriedly on the very top right corner. I could read the “nthitam” OK but the following “.hue” looked like a [...]
Jul
2006
12
Getting Internet - A Cultural Experience
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 5 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. ClosedI was supposed to be connected to the internet on Monday and now it’s Thursday and still no connection.
Seems that this is a new connection and the Vietnamese telephone monopoly still has a central office problem, i.e. they cannot get a dedicated connection from the central office to the house.
The last two days have been [...]
Jul
2006
11
Ain’t Online Yet
Published by The Alchemist? 2 years, 6 months ago in Computer and Vietnam. ClosedToday the whole city of Hue was offline most of the day. The internet just came up at approx 4:00pm.
Hope hooking me up at Mai’s parent’s house (where they had a problem in the Central Office (CO) yesterday afternoon, didn’t precipitate the whole city outage :-).
Hopefully will get DSL hookup tomorrow and updating on [...]