Good mornin' cloudy sky.

I had my daily chat and bitch session with Digs last night and it was an unusually juicy one. Man. Anyway, that's not my point.

We touched the topic of travel again where he outlined his plan for Middle East, in which I held my head down in shame, after a year of abysmal record. I watched in envy from the sideline about Paola's adventure in India, Amanda's tale of Kenya, Ying's new life in Sweden, Andrea's night life in Tokyo, stories of Sarah's live-in-two-new-countries-in-a-year, Digs 8 new countries, Becky's El Salvador travel and incoming Australia/NZ gig. Courtney quipped to me weeks ago “it must have been weird for you not to travel” (and she's doing England and Hongkong in a year), Art is going to Jamaica this March, along with Pablo, my sister is in Beijing and then going south west to Tibet, my mom and dad partied at the highland of Malaysia for New Years Eve, Felice just completed her one month tour in South East Asia. Who else? Ah, Mike went to Wales, Santi in Poland, Mahbod was in Brazil, another Becky just returned from Guatemala, Peach spent three months in India (Mel is still there) and another good month criss-crossing Europe, Sapna frequent flight to Brazil, Bulan's Phillipines and soon to be Melbourne moves, Patrick three months in Papua New Guinea, Jamie West Africa Rebel Zone tour, Jason already 6 months study in Syria, Koen's European travel, ...

Sigh, I'm greener than Hulk.

There you go, I just want to get those out of my system. I could scream like Howard Dean. Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh!

Good mornin' cloudy sky.

From Wired:

”Aparna Jairam isn't trying to steal your job. That's what she tells me, and I believe her. But if Jairam does end up taking it - and, let's face facts, she could do your $70,000-a-year job for the wages of a Taco Bell counter jockey - she won't lose any sleep over your plight. When I ask what her advice is for a beleaguered American programmer afraid of being pulled under by the global tide that she represents, Jairam takes the high road, neither dismissing the concern nor offering soothing happy talk. Instead, she recites a portion of the 2,000-year-old epic poem and Hindu holy book the Bhagavad Gita: "Do what you're supposed to do. And don't worry about the fruits. They'll come on their own." “

From Martin Fowler:

“The experiences I'm writing about here are based on work done over the last couple of years by ThoughtWorks. We opened an office in Bangalore India in 2001 and have done several projects which have used a Bangalore based team. We've also done some offshore development with our Melbourne office. In these projects we've committed to using as much of an agile approach as possible, since we believe that agility is an approach that's in the best interests of our customers. In this essay I'll describe some of the lessons we've learned so far.”

It's here. Be prepared. Go abroad. Deal with it.

Got a call from Felice. Never fails to lift my spirit up since we started our conversation back in summer of 1995. That's almost 9  years. Amazing.

I called home earlier today and got a bad news, the first harvest failed. Too much rain. I am talking about shrimp farming. Man, that sucks. A smaller harvest is coming in two weeks and we are hoping for a better result (marginally). A season lasts for 4 months. So the next harvest is going to  be on May.

The economy in my island depends on this type of aquaculture. We export most of the shrimp to Japan, which means dollars, which valued very generously against Rupiah, our own currency.

I realize how much exposure to turbulance I have had  growing up in an enterpreneurial family. Little victories here and there and sometimes a series of dissapointments and setbacks. And things are always steady. I am still amazed how my parents kept their cool in one of our worst incident ever happened to us (our 6 months old house got burn down 5 days before I left for Australia. I rushed back home for two days and spared one day, flew out to Australia)  

From The Jakarta Post

“After keeping the bird flu from the public since September, allegedly due to pressure from several well-connected poultry businessmen, the government finally confirmed on Sunday the avian influenza, or bird flu, outbreak in the country.”

Strap on folks, we're going to global def-con 1 pretty soon. Indonesia is the 7th country in Asia that got hit by the virus (and guess what, the spread of the virus actually happened months ago) after Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Damn, my whole family is in the region. Eat fish instead.

I watched this movie with a friend last Saturday over soft tacos, on 13 inches TV and seated on a comfy loveseat. Get the DVD (or VHS;which is the case of mine). The movie is a poignant narrative of 6 middle-age men who lost their jobs in a shipping yard somwhere in Spain that closed due to losing competition to Korean ship yards. The first scene actually reminds me of the scene from the “Full Monty“ in which the main characters continued their search for the ever elusive jobs.

It's a smart, funny and thoughtful movie. A great movie for two. Well recommended.

From New York Times

”''Mondays in the Sun,'' which examines the lives of a group of laid-off shipyard workers in northern Spain, similarly surveys the state of the working class in the wake of its historical defeat. The film opens with a violent protest, in which workers in their hard hats face helmeted police officers across makeshift barricades. The rest of the action takes place a few years later, when the barricades are gone and the shipyard has shut down. “

Check out the trailer courtesy of Apple. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 79%.

Contrary to latest trend in dieting (lookup for Atkins and Southbeach) that treat Carbs as 'haram' or 'not kosher', I have piled on pasta and vegetable as my main staple for this cold season. Yeah, I'm going half-vegetarian and I actually feel fine going for days without eating meat.

There's a practical reason for that. I'm too lazy to buy food outside for lunch (brr, it's cold) and I can't stand the smell of cooking food with oil that lingers long after the cooking is done. I would have to open the windows for an extended period of time to clear the air and that's just bad idea in Chicago winter. 

So it's pasta seven days a week. Well, that's boring. Perhaps, but I have been conditioned during my stay in Italy to eat pasta everyday (off course, there you can have bazillion of variety of food that comes with your pasta)

My favourite recipe for pasta would be combining Barrila (stick only to Barrilla) Angel Hair pasta with freshly cut tomatoes over a squeeze of citrus. Yum. Mix a bit of olive oil if you like but skip the cheese. All this took 5 minutes to cook. Tuna would be a great addition to this meal except that I can't be bothered of opening a can of Tuna everytime (hmm, there's a theme of “laziness” here).

And boy, the calorie count is *low*. Combined with a four days a week swimming regime, that makes enough room for the sugar in coffee, once a week chocolate bar, red wine on the weekend, a beer bash and an occasional pig out session with Annie without worrying of putting on weight in winter.

Pasta, milk, veggies and fruit. It's a great diet for a busy lifestyle in a frozen season.

This is the second time in three days I went to bed before midnight and wake up around 2.30 am.

And yet again Asia become the most productive trans-species virus producer. Ain't I proud ?

From the Grey Lady

“Provincial governments in west central Thailand dispatched hundreds of soldiers and prisoners on Sunday to slaughter chickens in flocks infected with avian influenza, as hospitals across Southeast Asia remained on high alert for further human cases of the disease.”

If my day count is correct, Andrea would be in Bangkok by now, leaving the hectic Tokyo behind. I hope this virus scare doesn't ruin her travel plans.

And the virus just claimed its first victim in Thailand.

Bugger.