snow in shanghai

it has been raining and cold this week since i arrived from thailand, quite the contrast to the warm weather in back in bangkok. the temperature had been a few degrees above freezing with rain and strong wind every day making it a bit miserable to walk around outside. yesterday the temperature dipped slightly below freezing so the rain turned into snow.

apparently this is quite the event in shanghai, something which happens rarely. one of our office staff told me that the last time she remembers seeing snow here in shanghai was when she was nine, though it apparently did snow briefly last year.

our staff rushed to the windows to see the snow coming down and a few others went outside to walk around. i joined them to walk over to the bund but after walking about 500m i realized it was just too cold so i ducked over to nanjing donglu to take a few photos.


note to self: must remember to buy an umbrella... and some gloves... and a hat... and a warmer jacket!


in the evening i left the office and decided to walk nanjing donglu back towards my hotel. to my surprise i saw that the snow had actually accumulated and there was quite a lot of slush on the road. a couple of large paths had been cleared (by what, i wonder) for people to walk but between the paths it was very icy and i almost fell over once.

to think a week before i was reading a magazine by a pool!


the snow had accumulated on grass and trees, and this morning there was a photo in the shanghai daily newspaper of a child making a snowman a park.


it was absolutely freezing cold, the wind really biting into you. even so, haagen daaz was packed as usual.


there's an enormous neon thermometer on a building near my hotel. it was exactly zero degrees celcius when i took this photo.

definitely need to buy some warmer clothes!

nam jai

the following is an article from an australian newspaper describing how compassionate and helpful thais have been towards the foreign tourists who survived the tsunami. keep in mind these people aren't doing this because they work for any specific organization and the locals in phuket and other affected areas don't have the option of repatriating to another country to escape the mess- after all the tourists leave thailand they will still be there, trying to pick up the pieces of their lives.

a swedish woman and her daughter, survivors of the tsunamis, were walking barefoot along a street in phuket on monday when a thai woman stopped them.

"she took off her shoes and insisted i take them," the tourist said. "i tried to tell her i was all right, i was fortunate, i had not lost my family, but she insisted i take them. and then she bought a pair of shoes for my daughter. i tried to pay her but she would not take the money, even though i am sure she had much less than me."

there has been much talk of looting in the immediate aftermath of this disaster.

but the many anonymous acts of kindness, large and small, should also be recorded.

the thai people, dealing with the worst natural disaster in their country's history, have overwhelmingly reached out, volunteering their services as translators, emergency workers and information officers, giving their time and sometimes scant resources.

"in any disaster, the first responders are the community, and the thais have responded admirably," said a westerner who works in disaster management.

one australian survivor spoke of a small thai man on a water tower who saved several people by snatching them as they swept by him out to sea.

with impossible strength, and at great personal risk, he dragged them from the torrent and certain death.

in the early hours of monday morning, as survivors struggled into overflowing corridors at wachira hospital in phuket town, young thais with language skills were immediately at hand to explain the long lists on butcher's paper in the hospital forecourt, shepherding dazed tourists and ensuring they had food and drink, which ordinary thais were carrying in through the gate on foot.

on monday night, survivors from the similan islands were ferried ashore at taplamu and housed in the wat lamkaen temple compound.

around midnight, a truck carrying a satellite dish with banks of free phones arrived so people could phone home.

on tuesday in khao lak, phang nga province, one of the worst-hit areas, the roads swarmed with emergency services workers. and volunteers.

assaree rerksin had come up from phuket town to help clear roads. or translate, or whatever else he was asked to do.

phuket town city hall, a beautiful two-storey mansion with wide verandas, was the first makeshift camp for survivors with no clothes or place to stay.

late on monday, as 1000 survivors from the decimated phi phi islands arrived, a line of 40 thais stretched across the lawn, each holding up a country sign.

"the tourists come to us and if they have a passport we can get them straight out of here," said boonchai sompolpong, who had the australia new zealand sign. he runs tours for first-time tourists to phuket and here he was, helping them leave as quickly as possible

two stories

i finally managed to reach some friends of ours who were on phuket sunday morning. luckily both are ok. they were staying at cape panwa which was partially shielded and away from the face of the wave, so they escaped much of the damage though their hotel was still flooded and the local village was under 5ft of water.

some time after the tsunami struck, one of our friends went to stand on a nearby pier and saw a massive debris field stretching for miles- the current had swept everything around the southern end of phuket and carried it eastward past cape panwa. everything was in the water- chairs, clothing, furniture, tires, food, everything.

nearby is a naval base and as i type this boats are still arriving around the clock with tourists who were stranded on the islands. the large area between phuket and krabi has hundreds of small islands.

then there are the boats bringing back bodies.

when i spoke to our friend on the phone he said several times how lucky he was. in such situation there are always 'what if' thoughts. i also had wondered what if i went to phuket. for them they wondered what if they hadn't decided to stay in and instead went to phi phi as planned, or what if they had decided to take a walk on the beach. that's not a stretch by any means. very lucky indeed.

displaced tourists arrived at the hotel starting from monday morning. injured people, some on crutches, and people who have lost family members.

although many people have left phuket, our friends have decided to stay. there are a large number of people in their hotel who are staying and helping the hotel staff to clean the nearby beach every day. after each tide, however, more debris washes ashore.

lots of people have cancelled their planned holiday to thailand, even to other unaffected parts of the country. earlier today i received an email from a friend of mine who is planning to travel to bangkok next month but is being urged by his family not to go. unfortunately, it looks inevitable that although the tsunami was a freak occurance, people will think 'thailand = tsunami' and cancel their vacation plans.

this will have a broad impact in thailand, a country whose economy depends quite a lot on tourism.


i also reached a former work colleague who was staying at patong beach at the time of the tsunami. he had actually felt the earthquake as he was relaxing by the pool- recalled a swaying motion but thought at the time his chair was just unstable in the wind.

later he stepped outside on beach road to buy some suntan lotion and was walking there when the first wave came in. he took off running but said it was difficult as there was already a foot of water on the road and everything from the beach (umbrellas, chairs, bags, clothes etc) was strewn all over the place. he cut his leg on an umbrella stand as he ran kept going and managed to avoid the second and third much larger waves.

he was one of the first people back to beach road after the water subsided and some photos of him are in an australian newspaper.

he said when he returned to the beach he saw a man standing on the beach and when he got closer he realized the man was standing over the body of a dead woman. he tried to talk to the man but the man was in shock and couldn't respond. at the time what he noticed was how the beach was completely wiped clear of everything and how there was no sound- no cars, no people, just the quiet noise of the now calm sea.

after that point he said there were multiple rumors/scares of another tidal wave coming in, so everyone scrambled for higher ground. there was little news at that point so no one knew what to expect- perhaps there was a giant movie-sized wave just over the horizon- anything seemed possible at the time. he said he and a large group of people (including many injured) sat on the hillside for almost 6 hours until people began to venture back into patong, though a lot of people continued to stay on the hill 'just in case'.

he returned to the hotel to find it a complete mess, though somewhat functional as it was slightly elevated in comparison to the other hotels. many injured were in the hotel- an old german man full of small cuts, sitting in a chair with towels to stop the bleeding. a woman from singapore who couldn't locate her husband and child.

his thoughts went out to the art gallery in the hotel where he had bought a painting the day before- completely gone, to the basement shopping center across the street- full of water, to places he had been a day or two before, to people he had spoken with, to people he shared a smile or laugh with.

he collected his stuff and left for the airport, heading to safety, heading home.

thailand tsunami 2

the tsunami was a much bigger event than people initially realized. whereas cnn's 'largest natural disaster in recorded history' label may be sensationalist, it's growing increasingly obvious that this is a huge tragedy, affecting an enormous amount of people in the region.

it's often difficult to comprehend disasters of such scale. whereas the challenger accident and the events of 9/11 are etched in the mind of many people, large natural disasters and conflicts can seem like distant events happening to foreign people very far away- something of no consequence to one's daily life.

sunday was also the one-year anniversary of another tragedy- the earthquake in iran that killed over 30,000 people but received relatively little media attention. what this sunday's tsunami had that the earthquake didn't is a lot of western tourists caught in the middle and, as a consequence, lot of photos and video. it becomes clear that anyone, you or me, could have easily been caught up in this if we have decided to go to the beach last weekend.

it's especially shocking for me as i've been to the beaches affected many times. i'd never imagine something like this could happen- it's absolutely the furthest thing from one's mind when relaxing on the beach in peaceful happy thailand.

* * * * * * *

below is an amazing sequence of photos showing the rush of water towards the sheraton grande laguna hotel in phuket. they were taken by helmut issels, the subject of this brief australian news story. the rest of the sequence can be seen on the original website as well as helmut's comments that the man in the photos was saved.

thailand tsunami

i'm sure you've seen the news about the sumatra earthquake and resulting tidal wave hitting thailand and other countries in the region. the pictures on television are amazing- everything near the shore was blasted by a wall of water, devastating the beaches.

apparently the water initially swelled high on the beach and then receded very far out, about a kilometer according to the bbc. then the swells started, one after another. the devastating one was either the second or third series- picking up cars and smashing them into buildings, knocking over houses, moving buildings off their foundations, and so on.

the destruction was limited to about 500m from the shore in thailand, but as most hotels are built as close to the beach as they're allowed, this meant a lot of people and a lot of property were involved.

things don't look good for phi-phi island, as the hotels are mostly built in the center of an hourglass shaped piece of land between two bays.

cnn is reporting between 250 and 400 people killed and many many people are missing. i've got a couple of friends down in phuket- odds are they're ok but of course it's worrying.

it's unlikely that another tidal wave will hit, unless there is another big earthquake. even so, everyone is spooked- people are leaving phuket in droves and those still on the island are trying to stay the night on higher ground.


a calm-looking patong beach shortly after the tidal wave passed.


patong beach road with a lot of standing water from the tidal wave.


patong beach road after the water receded. what a mess!


the force of the water must have been amazing to have picked up these buses and thrown them into buildings like this.


cars stacked on top of each other.


a bit difficult to see, but this haagen daaz has been stripped almost completely empty. most of the businesses facing the sea look like this, some buildings collapsed as the water knocked down supporting pillars.


some of the tourist rental jeeps smashed up by the floating debris.


a car and debris piled up down a side soi.

truly a freak occurrence as the last tsumani of this size apparently took place over 170 years ago, though this is the third earthquake felt in bangkok in the last 18 months. in the pacific there is a warning center as tsunamis are a much more common occurance. it's likely that the death toll from this disaster will warrant creating a similar system for the indian ocean region, even if such a thing only happens once in a lifetime.

* more pics here

hodoo

"it takes 3 seconds to fall in love... but 3 decades to get along..."

there's a sony handicam commercial running in heavy circulation on cnn that uses footage of mongolia and a beautiful song by urna chahar-tugchi. ever since i heard the song it was stuck in my head but i couldn't find any info online. thanks to some better googling techniques today i finally found the song on cheryl's site. take a listen for yourself here (*see note at bottom)- the song is titled 'hodoo' from the album tal nutag (grasslands).

urna is from inner mongolia (part of china)- she came here to shanghai to further her education at age 20. she has since moved to germany with her husband where they produce music together. take a moment to listen to more of her songs here and here.
"my homeland is the ordos district, a high plateau in westen inner mongolia belonging to china. it was there that i was born in the last winter month of 1968 into a humble family of livestock farmers. as a child i looked after lambs on the sand dunes with the neighbouring children. sometimes we lost track of our flock whilst playing. so to gather them again we tossed lumps of sand into the air. in this way we sometimes caused whole sandbanks to collapse. later i looked after calves in the plains fo shirdegiin tsaidam where the thick grass grows tall. and so the first ten years of my childhood quickly passed." (more)

*sorry, i've had to take the song down. several people in taiwan remote-linked the song to mp3 search engines resulting in my bandwidth was being eaten up on the first day at a rate of 4000 megabytes and growing quickly. if you want a copy of the song, write me an email and i'll send it to you.

bird's eye

this trip i made a point to take a window seat on a few flights. was glad i did as the weather was excellent and i saw some amazing scenery.


approaching san francisco airport with the golden gate bridge in the foreground. i like flying over cities and seeing all the famous buildings and monuments so small beneath the plane.


early one morning over portland, much of the city covered in mist. was the first time i had been to portland and i thought it was the nicest stop on our trip. the city has a nice feel to it, is not too big, and is convenient for flying to asia.


flying high over the midwest.


the late afternoon sun breaks through the clouds, illuminating a small lake below.

merry christmas

merry christmas everyone!

i'm writing this from the royal orchid lounge at don muang airport as my flight to shanghai has been delayed by a few hours. thanks to the miracles of modern technology, i'm able to update my blog for the first time in a while.

i checked the winterson.com site statistics for the first time in a while and was amazed to find out that this site is actually more popular when I'm not updating it. am averaging about 150 sessions per day, up from 100 a couple of months ago. of that about half are bots and the other half are (obviously very bored or very lost) readers.

the most popular search engine keywords taking people here are:

• "robomaid" - ever since my blog on robotmaid in september this site has had a flood of traffic, mostly from people looking for reviews or electrostatic pad replacements
• "winterson" - no doubt people looking for the other winterson
• "proxified" - i rank #3 on this strange search word
• "kai tak airport" - a common search, mostly for the video i posted
• "pittsburgh flooding" - ranked #1 for the pics i posted

then there are the (err...) more interesting keywords:

• "farang girl boob"
• "contacting a lost love, broken heart, love of my life"
• "which fruit is banned from public transport in thailand" - the answer being durian
• "anything"
• "rollar blades duck feet"
• "subservient stickman"
• "i saw colin farrel"
• "diarrhea antidisestablishmentarialism"

shanghai transit

around the world and back again.

a major inconvenience on this trip was losing my american passport. i checked into a hotel in florida using my passport, but by the time i checked out a few days later it was gone.

although my room and belongings can seem messy, there's a method to the madness. i always keep my passport in the same place in my bag so it not being where i expected it to be was a bad sign. a thorough check of my belongings turned up nothing, as did multiple calls to the hotel and its lost and found department.

aside from usual paperwork nightmare, the final outcome of the loss was my having to bypass a planned couple of days in shanghai and go straight to bangkok.

flights to bangkok were quite full so i was left with a couple of not very direct routes- flying back to chicago (from portland) and then over to bangkok via narita or flying to shanghai via san francisco and transiting to bangkok. i chose the latter as it was a much more direct route.

in a previous blog i wrote about a lot of things in shanghai being new and untested. well, i've found that international transit is one of them.

upon landing in shanghai there wasn't the expected sign directing transit passengers. instead, there was just international arrivals. near the health inspection counter (left over from the sars days) there was a transit desk with no one there. so, with nowhere else to go, i quickly filled out an immigration form (location in china: bangkok) and queued up with more than a little bit of apprehension.

as i reached the counter i handed over my passport, boarding pass for the bangkok flight, and immigration card and told the woman at the desk that i was in fact a transit passenger. no answer.

she flipped through my blank passport, looked at me, flipped through the passport again, then called over a guard. uh-oh!!!

in such situations i've learned that the best strategy (at least in thailand) is to remain smiling and happy and try to make friends with the guard. i gave him an enthusiastic smiling hello which he returned as he asked me to follow him.

we walked to a small room in a nearby corridor where he motioned for me to sit as a very official-looking person took my documents. without saying a word he looked at my ticket to bangkok and stamped my passport with an enormous temporary one-day permit.

he told me 'ok' and gestured in the direction of the door. i asked him which way i should go- was there a special corridor for transit passengers? nope- he told me to go out and downstairs like everyone else.

my cases were checked in all the way through to bangkok but considering the trouble i had so far i thought it'd be a good idea to check to see if they were on the baggage claim belt. sure enough, both bags were there circulating on the belt instead of having been put directly onto my connecting flight.

so i exited through the arrivals area pulling my bags into the mob of waiting people, hotel greeters, and taxi touts. 'taxi sir?' 'where you go?' 'hey, you, taxi?'



went upstairs, lined up, checked myself and my bags in, walked to the departure area, filled out a departure card (location in china: none), went through security again, arrived at the gates, and breathed a sigh of relief- made it!!!

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