Peter’s Blog V2

‘Tis the tax season and my notorious analytical habit couldn’t sleep.  Here I present to you my 2008 gross earnings breakdown:

Apparently, in this past calendar year I worked nights and days:

• Through April 12th (just in time!) to pay my taxes - to feed the poor, the old, the super rich, and the countries we destroy
• Then through end of June to save up for the far distant future (if I hadn’t done this, I would’ve been working through May just to feed more poor and the super rich)
• Then the entire summer through September 9th so I wouldn’t be homeless
• Another week so I could pay for the company-subsidized healthcare and shitty Subway rides
• Just as the weather started to get cold, I could finally start to think about feeding and clothing myself, buy a PS3 or otherwise have a life

What a depressing view of the reality?!  Technically I haven’t worked enough this year to cover my 2009 income taxes yet!  Let’s not even mention the $$$ that went into and disappeared right from my 401(k).

Hurray!

You’d think I’m a very bitter person if I wrote three continuous posts complaining about the same thing… well, more or less.

The MTA has voted today to increase fares and cut service.  My monthly pass will jump from $81 (which not that long ago was $76) to $103.  The single rides will go up from $2.00 to $2.50.  Among other things, subway lines and bus routes will be cut, and off peak (including weekend) services will be reduced.

MTA’s propaganda attempt at illustrating their low ride cost with bogus math

Since I moved to New York 4 years ago, the subway/bus fare will have increased 30% for single rides and 36% for monthly passes.  That’s an average of 8% per year!  Imagine getting an 8% raise annually… we can all retire early!

Give that it could already take hours to get from one place to another within this city, it’s almost a joke to cut transit services even more.  Might as well take the weekend off so we can all observe Sabbath.

Well, guess what?  We just have to suck it up!  It’s not like we 8 million people have any better option except maybe to get up four hours earlier and walk.

Sigh… enough ranting.  On a more educational note, we should all know that New York is by far the city with the highest commuters on public transportation (call us the greenest city, perhaps?):

US City Commute Patterns

But did you also know that 2/3 of the rapid transit (subway) riders in the US are New Yorkers?

At the same time, we also have 1/4 of the country’s local bus riders.

New Yorkers are also 53% of Americans who take a train to work, served by 3 railroad systems.

What can I say?  MTA sure is screwing over a lot of people.

A. An earlier incident
B. Held by the train dispatcher
C. Train traffic ahead of us
D. Police investigation
E. Unusual track condition
F. Broken rail
G. Signal problems
H. Mechanical problems
I. Collapsed building
J. Construction
K. Congestions ahead
L. Track work
M. Power outage

Note - these are all actual excuses for service delay/disruption/outage that I had personally experienced, some of them on a daily basis.

“your train is no longer going where you’re going.  To continue trying to reach your destination, please transfer here to the crappy 7 train by walking two blocks underground and then two blocks above ground in the cold air, ride it half way and then get back on the street to wait in the cold in a mile-long line to transfer to a bus that you’ve never even heard of.  We’ve got agents scattered around the place but we won’t tell you shit.  Ask a question and we’ll yell at you.  Since nobody in New York is ever in a hurry, if you express your anxiety we’ll make fun of you, too.  Thank you for riding with MTA New York Transit - we never fail to fail you.  Please come again for our latest excuses for why things don’t work.”

Since Penang is such a tropical island that makes you sweat as soon as you step out of the hotel, my mom suggested to eat lunch at “an air-conditioned restaurant”.  And Chee Seng hesitated, reasoning that good food and air conditioning don’t mix in Penang.  We later experienced this ourselves, and found an inverse relationship between the number of walls surrounding the meal and the satisfaction we had from eating it.  Under the guidance of our Penang native and his particularity about food, we had a fantastic experience.

Let’s eat!

Here’s a good roti place where the family had our first dinner and where Aunt Marian fell in love with the key lime iced tea.  This is a corner restaurant with two walls:

Breakfast at the hotel - since Malaysia has a lot of Muslims, public food places are usually Halal.  In this picture are chicken bacon and chicken sausage:

Sambal, curries, anchovies, egg, etc.  Common breakfast food (plus coconut rice) in Malaysia that I’ve been hearing about:

Coconut experience #1 at a tourist spot.  Supposedly not that great in either coconut quality or the vendor’s opening skills.  Some of the juice was spilled during the process and it got sticky.

One of the most recommended bal kuh teh places in Penang.  That and curried fish head:

The most spicy vindaloo I’ve had, by faaaaaar.  And other northern Indian dishes:

Coconut experience #2, by the beach, while waiting for the bride and her mom to get prettified at the salon.  These were better coconuts and the vendor cut them open more skillfully too.

Rojak, the Penang specialty of shrimp sauce and fresh fruits.  Can’t say I was a fan of it.  Chee Seng had a good laugh watching me eat this thing.

Coconut experience #3, the best pandang coconut vendor in town.  The pandang (sp?) coconut is a generically modified plant that’s sweeter than regular coconuts, and is supposedly hard to find.  You wouldn’t think that coconut quality varies by vendor, by somehow it does:

In two slashes with the knife, the vendor shaves off parts of the coconut’s exterior and turns it into something very easy to hold in one hand.  Then the third slash opens up a hole precisely big enough for the straw.  I wouldn’t mess with this guy

After you drink the juice, hand the shell back to the vendor and with the same knife, he (1) sculpts off a piece of the shell into a scraper, and (2) cuts the shell in half.  Now you can eat the inside with the scraper!  What could be more eco-friendly than having a single thing serve as a drink, a snack, a bowl and a spoon?

Next, onto the best char guay teow in Penang.  This lady is supposedly so amazing, that people would come across town despite her obnoxiousness, and wait for a whole hour just to eat a small plate of her stir-fried noodles:

Snacks we had while waiting for an hour for the char guay teow: mee goreng (sp?), spring-roll like thingy, and the “brain brain” fish paste that looked like poop.  All these came from different hawker stalls (street food carts), and the char guay teow lady didn’t care that we ate them in her seating area:

The newlyweds and their drinks - watermelon juice and tang shui.

Finally!  The well-famed char guay teow!  It doesn’t look any different from the chow mien from your local Panda Express, but the explosion of flavors is simply unexplanable!  You might think I’m exaggerating, but after this plate I actually felt sad about leaving Penang…

Afternoon snack was provided by these people frying curry puffs and bananas (the oil is more black than the stuff you pump into your car, though):

Another roti vendor:

When you look hard enough at a street food vendor, you’ll find (at minimum) unsightly sanitary issues.  For example, what I saw about the char guay teow lady’s assistant - well, I’ll spare you with the details here.  But instead of thinking poorly of street food, this only makes me wonder how much nasty stuff is hidden from us in restaurant kitchens.  It’s great being able to see the chef, the ingredients, and even the source of heating.  Chee Seng says that in Penang, words travel like wildfire and good/bad incidents about each stall is quickly known by everybody, sort of like an old school version of CitySearch.  I wonder if that or the state department of health is a more effective way to control quality.

Goodbye Pulau Pinang and your good foods.  The only question is now, how will I be able to go back to eat at Penang the restaurant chain?

[1:30pm Penang time; 1:30am New York time; 6:30am here in Frankfurt Airport]

My second visit to Europe has been a lot less pleasant than the first time.  I’m stuck here for three hours by flight schedule instead of by mechanical delay, i.e. no compensating free meal, and instead of being able to roam around the airport, we’re restricted within a small confined boarding area with no food or drink or souvenior available for purchase, let alone any chance to win an Alpha Romeo.  There’s no working phone data connection or Wi-fi.  Thanks Germany - this must be what jail feels like.  Oh, and I just watched a mouse running by.  Yay for Mickey.

For some odd reason, the returning trip is always less encouraging.  16 hours earlier at the Penang International Airport, I watched the four most obnoxious line-cutting actions right in front of my eyes at the immigration counter.  Two parties of two Indonesian (I think) ladies apparently had no concept of queueing order or “please wait behind the yellow line” and proceeded directly to the counter, standing right next to the passengers being examined.  The first pair apparently knew one of the passengers at the counter, and started passionate hugging and screaming like what American girls do when they get overly drunk.  It was such an awkward situation that neither I, nor the officers, knew what to do besides letting them do whatever.  I spoke up minutes later when the second naive/retarded pair cut in front of me.  They gave me the look like they had no idea on what basis I was making a fuzz, and just moved to another line.  Maybe they really don’t know anything about airport security or orderly conduct?  I really hope they’d visit New York one day.

But a bad returning trip is not so bad as long as the actual trip itself is good.  Ariel and Chee Seng’s second wedding is happily over, and I’m glad to have seen some traditional Chinese practices, for probably the one and only time in life.  CS’s sister asked whether we Taiwanese follow the same traditions, and I had to explain that we weren’t exactly of Taiwanese heritage and had no clue about some of this stuff.  The tea ceremony, for example, where the couple served tea to all family elders, accepted their gifts and blessings, then gave red envelops to all the family children.  CS’s older sister and I were “stuck” being not old enough as elders but too old to want their red envelops.  The program was modified last minute and we were the only attendees that drank tea standing and involved in no monetary exchanges.

The wedding reception was awesome.  The magnitude of fanciness was something I don’t expect to witness again unless my friends win the lottery or get married in a country with low labor costs.  The grand entrance was led by one of the four singers/dancers performing at the event:

The centerpiece on table #1 looks crazy:

The the first course entered the room between two rows of waiters with plates of candles by the red carpet (not pictured).  Each table had its own dedicated waitress serving food to the individuals, and there were additional food/beverage waiters running around:

The event went rather quiet and slow for the most part, until most guests left and Chee Seng’s friends started to get rowdy and toasted the couple over and over, Hokkienese style.  Given the amount of wine spilled on the tableclothes, I was glad to see nothing harder around:

The after party party:

The after party games:

The travel map - it’s a loooong way!

[4am]

I had not been so excited about flying, in a very long time.

Singapore Airlines is among the very few five star airlines, and was rated #1 in the world in the recent past.  Compared to the major American airlines, this is like driving Rolls Royce over riding a water buffalo.

It’s all about the minor details: the silverware is silver; the glass is glass; the hot food is still hot after bread and salad; for dessert you get ice cream that’s not melting like mud.  The stewardesses are no wider than the carts they push; there are too many movies that you actually want to watch; you also get a bag of towel and toothbrush in the event that grooming is necessary on a 24-hour flight.

The only complaint is that they feed you too often.  Having a “light snack” between “dinner” and “breakfast” at 3AM is something I haven’t done since college, not to mention it’s a full-sized entree seasoned with more than just salt and pepper.

Alcohol is not only free on the flight, it also comes in a great variety of options.  With dinner I got a Singapore Sling, a cocktail that required the stewardess a trip back to the station to make.

Here’s the optional survey I filled out.  When was the last time you saw something this pretty being called a “survey”?

[7am]

Writing now from the Frankfurt Airport.  I was originally very excited about this point of layover, just because I had never set foot in Europe before.  Well, now I got here, and it looks no different from any average American airport… everything’s in English here!  There are fewer labels in German than JFK would have labels in Spanish.  Their duty free stores also sell the same liquors, same fragrances, and same Victoria’s Secret lotions.  Maybe a bit more Swarovski crystals and a few more brands of watches with 4-digit price tags.

Cultural observation #1: European toilets look and work quite differently from the US toilets.  Also the paper towels by the sink are softer than the toilet paper in the stalls.

Cultural observation #2: their sweepstakes car is a Alpha Romeo Spider, instead of a Land Rover.

I wouldn’t really mind driving this thing.  It’s just that if I bring a convertible back to New York, no matter where I park it, people will use it as a trash can.  It’d be a shame to see cigarrett butts and chewed gums all over this thing, so I decided to forfeit my chance of winning it.

As I wrote the above paragraph, I was sitting in a random seat at the airport, waiting for my plane’s “mechanical problem” to be resolved.  Then all the sudden a whole herd of people stampeded into lining up for the restaurant in front of me.  That’s weird, I thought, how could an airport restaurant get this sort of popularity?  Ten minutes later, I realized that among the crowd (still in line) were a lot of Singapore Airlines crew members and a girl with a travel bag with a creepy doll head, who was waiting for my same flight.  It turned out that due to the delay, the airline is now buying everyone lunch at this restaurant!  Now I’m writing this paragraph from a restaurant table, drinking European Coke from a curved glass.  Wow!  I’m so used to the American airlines that just tell you to fuck off when any problem arises, that this treatment almost makes me uncomfortable!

An 18.50-Euro filet of salmon later, I started a brief conversation with this guy who sat behind me on the plane and is headed to Cambodia.  He’s a law school student, and I told him I’m an actuary.  Not that I expected him to know what an actuary is, as most people have not a clue.  Moments later, we were served with boxes of Nestle ice cream snacks, as dessert.  He flipped the box over and studied hard, as if he could understand the nutritional labels in German.  Then to me he said, “so you could tell me how this will decrease our life span, right?  Isn’t that what you actuaries do?”  Holy crap!  I just got pulled the very first bad actuary joke in my life!  In Germany!  Once I read an extensive discussion on how to respond to these lame encounters, but of course I blanked out now.

[9pm]

Flight is finally approaching the Lion City, and I’ve accomplished one of the greatest tasks men have ever attempted in mid-air… I did my taxes.  After hours battling the everchanging jetlag, I had filled out my federal 1040, 8889, NYS-2 and NYS-201.  I wonder what’s gonna keep me busy on the returning flight.

[11:30pm]

So I had, as expected, missed my connection flight to Penang.  The next one is much later in the afternoon.  Sucks, but oh well, the airline had handled the situation very professionally.  As soon as we landed, our new boarding passes, meal vouchers, and transfer information were all printed waiting at the gate.  I even got a voucher to stay at the airport hotel during this six-hour layover (that’s somewhat extreme, if you ask me).  It’s kind of hard to get upset when people treat you so nicely.

Let’s be honest here.  If you have to get stuck at any airport for six hours, the Singapore Changi Airport has to be one of your top choices.  It’s huge, it’s clean, it’s technologically advanced and it’s simply bad ass.  Let’s see…

Environment: Gardens like these, with koi ponds, are scattered all over the airport.  The sheer mass of orchids on display makes you think they’re fake (but they aren’t!).  Alongside the motion-activated moving walkways are other potted plants like sunflowers.  If your gate is really far and you get tired of walking, you can also take a break in random corners with these (free) foot-massage machines.

Shopping: Bvlgari, Tiffany’s, Cartier, Hermes, Rolex, and Swarovski are among the average stores in this terminal.  Although I’m used to New York’s Fifth Avenue, this place still intimidates me.  Check out this bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label.  I bet it’s worth more than the taxes I paid in 2008:

(pardon me for not rotating it properly)

Entertainment: If you like sports, you can sit down in one of those speakers-equipped seats in front of the, eh, wall with soccer game display:

Right behind it is “the world’s largest 103″ 1080p HD display”, showing some regional tourism information:

If you’re young, or young at heart, there are also stations of Xbox 360 setup for you to play, for free.  The numbers of gamers this terminal can accomondate is no fewer than the Nintendo World at Rockefeller Center.

I picked up a controller, ran a race of Burnout Paradise, and won.  Then I sat down at the Internet station right next to it.  There are 24 computers set up for you to use the Internet for free, and there are these pods of stations (reminds me of Math Emporium) for you to plug in your own computer for power, ethernet, or the airport’s free wireless Internet:

There’s also a really cool “gadget recharging station”, which is like a set of lockers with cell phone adaptors inside.  You (1) find an unused locker that fits your phone, (2) plug your phone in to charge, (3) lock your phone inside and take the key with you, (4) go shop/eat/poop/whatever, (5) return with the key to retrieve the phone when you feel like it.

Alright I’m hungry.  Gotta go use my meal voucher and explore this cool place more!