Solar panel phone charging unveiling in high school (story)

This school newspaper article (not depicted) fails to capture the sheer embarrassment I experienced on that day. For starters, the actual project was a goofy outcome relative to what I envisioned. Basically I had built some good graces with a random corporate dude from [local Electric Company] who was trying to make the Electric Company name look good with public schools. So I asked him whether he could get Electric to donate a phone charging station to my high school, like the ones they have at malls and airports. And it could be solar powered, to be cool. His eyes got super wide, because this was a brilliant proposal as far as his goals were concerned.

So anyway, the dude buys us like a huge ass battery (think like a black speaker) on a rolly, and one of those camping fold-out solar panels, and then some extension cords and iPhone charging cables. And it's really derpy, because there's no way this thing is gonna last as a permanent fixture at our school.

So now that Electric Company has gone out of their way to make this "thing" for us, our club has to do a whole presentation to show it off (to show Schneider's name off). And so I have to engineer a crowd for this shitty unveiling. So I have my club put posters around the school advertising that we will be giving out free pizza for lunch on Friday.

So I use my club's bank to buy a couple hundred dollars' worth of Costco pizza. One problem that arises is that the flyers work too well, and so there's a huge stampede of kids, and our club is overwhelmed and definitely doesn't have enough pizza for the crowd. (Afterwards, I felt so bad because some of my club minions worked so hard but didn't even save a pizza for themselves). But the bigger problem is that I've positioned the unveiling ceremony facing opposite the pizza tables. So we have this huge crowd of kids fighting for pizza, and and all of their butts are facing the unveiling ceremony.

So I end up doing this awkward, banged up job of being an MC. I shout into the mic, "Who likes solar panels!!!!!", and basically nobody notices, because they're all going for the pizza.

I can still feel the cringe to this day, me screaming into that mic at max volume and no crowd response. I just remember reassuring myself of the embarrassment, "Well, thank God the school year is almost over and I'm going to [Particular University]; I'll never see these people again!".

There is something extremely mortifying about screaming into a mic at the top of your lungs and having nobody in the crowd respond. But like all embarrassments, nobody remembers it but me. Duh, nobody else was listening lol.

(I should add that this "solar powered phone charging station" cost Electric $10,000-$15,000; and after that presentation, it was shoved into the vice principal's office and never used again. I got a couple nags from the sassy vice principal to remove it from her office, after it had been sitting there for a year, and I think we eventually did, and put it who knows where).

Portion sizes in Phuket

It's interesting how 2 of Thailand's top industries, tourism and agriculture, seem to go hand in hand. In Phuket they give very generous portion sizes, in a way that feels almost American, where Las Vegas is the extreme version of this. I imagine it's because they've learned what Western tourists like (blast the AC, give big portions), but their willingness to do so suggests that their country has sufficient food abundance to give it in this manner. I'll have to report from Bangkok whether these portion sizes are just a tourist-serving phenomenon of Phuket, or whether it's commonplace in Thailand as far as serving tourists (or serving everyone everywhere).

Meeting a Thai family in a Bangkok airport (BKK)

I had a layover from DAD to BKK to HKT, and the Thai family consisted of a mom who works in hotel management and a daughter who works in real estate. They are Phuket natives. They did not have an extended family and told me the mother daughter duo was their entire family.

Anyway, I guess the reason why it's interesting to bring up the story is because the daughter studied abroad in high school as an exchange student to California. Apparently Thai exchange students like to go to English speaking countries to build fluency in English. 

But somehow, this Thai student ended up going on exchange to McArthur, California, which is like, northeast PAST Sacramento. It's in what the "real Northern Californians" call "real Northern California." So she hung out on farmland and went shooting with the family (which was her matching preference because apparently shooting is a hobby in Thailand). And bought a bunch of denim while she was there. 

But I thought it was interesting that a foreign exchange student spent their time in California shooting guns. I thought it was quite funny that this student somehow managed to go all the way to California but got immersed in what is more traditionally thought of as rural American culture, rather than mainstream "California culture". She didn't visit San Francisco or Los Angeles once. She landed in SFO, and it's a 6 hour drive from SFO to McArthur. Her host family drove out to pick her up, and drove her back at the cessation of the foreign exchange. Just an interesting story, is all. It was interesting to hear from her what it was like to stay in McArthur, California, since as a Californian it is as foreign to me as another country or state.

BOS to DEN to LAX (story)

This was in December 2019. I went outside my comfort zone and flew United. What a stupid airline. I had a return trip from Boston to Los Angeles, so was flying BOS to DEN to LAX. Denver. What a stupid airport. Okay, I kind of forgot the details of this story, but basically what happened was that the BOS to DEN leg got in late, so I ran across the entire airport (DEN is huge) to catch the DEN to LAX leg before it took off, but then I had to run back across the entire airport again because they had changed the gate to the other side. So I deserve a lot of the blame for being stupid here, because I didn't check whether the gate had changed. But the reason I call United and DEN stupid is because the United staff were so snarky and unsympathetic about the fact that I was at the wrong gate. Rude. I got in a lot of cardio that day

Remarks on Thailand

Thailand is different from Vietnam. It's about twice as rich as Vietnam if you go off of GDP per capita.
Thailand, unlike Vietnam, wasn't colonized by the West, and it actually shows in their culture in how foreign their culture seems to me
It's interesting, because they have a very strong tourism industry so as far as being a tourist is concerned, i mean like there's a fuckton of stuff to accommodate tourists. Like you can eat burgers and spaghetti every day if you want. You can't do that as well in Vietnam
But that's a layer of tourism on top of their culture, but you can tell that the original culture is intact.
It's kind of like India in that regard, in that it's on the literal opposite side of the planet as USA, and it definitely shows in that the thinking is so different
The Thai, unlike the Vietnamese, are simply not East Asians at all LOL
Yeah, something like that

Lactose intolerance in Asia

After spending a long time in Asia, it seems the Asians are genuinely confused why I can't eat milk. They tell me to keep having the shits until it goes away. Maybe this is the solution? Lactose intolerance is unheard of in Vietnam 

Bao nhieu

But yes I asked my VN friend to teach the Argentinians to say bao nhieu because I cannot do it right in the slighted 😂😂

I just told the Argentinians to say "bao" and English "new" like "nueva en Español" and that's close enough for me 😂😂

Argentinians in Ba Na Hills

In the cable car I met a group of Argentinians musicians who are temporarily working for the amusement park on top of Ba Na Hills. So I spoke to them in spanish, but the problem is that I have been cheating memorizing Vietnamese by using my Spanish brain. So all the sudden I started forgetting how to speak Spanish and started speaking Spavietnamese. So they would ask me something and I would say "khong, no tengo familia en este pais" 😂 And because we went to Italy, I spoke with some idiotic Italian intonation: "Khong, no-a tengooo familiaaa en este paisaaa" 

Omg garbage 

But the nice thing about South Americans vs Spaniards is that they speak slowly and so I can understand them and they can understand me 😂

But that was absolutely terrible, they asked me in spanish how to say "cuanto Cuesta" in Vietnamese and I taught them it's "bao nhieu" but I am just translating one garbage version of a language to another 😂😂

Chilling at cafe with Grab driver in Da Nang

Vietnamese is so hard 😂😂

I tried to ask him if he lived near or far from the cafe and he was like "boi I don't live on a farm"

xa = far

xã = boonies 

🤦‍♂️ 

Language salad at the Da Nang Vincom Center mall

Ran into this weird Japanese tourist at the mall in Da Nang today. Possibly a crazy. Idk, she heard me speaking English for a second and got super excited then tried speaking to me in the worst English-but-actually-Japanese to tell me that her brother is a Stanford professor?? Of course had to use Google translate. So I got taken aback because that was a weird coincidence, and then some Vietnamese lady next to me was confused that I knew English. Then this Japanese lady tried telling me that she traveled to and lived in Chile, but again in raw Japanese. And this Vietnamese lady started asking me why I knew English. So I had to switch to my bad Vietnamese to tell her I'm from the US. Then switch back to talking to this Japanese lady. And she kept saying Chile, so I switched to Spanish because maybe she knew Spanish and that would be better than her trying to speak Japanese to me. Then the Vietnamese lady got super shocked that I spoke spanish and started asking about that 😂😂 Anyway there were like 2 conversations in 4 languages going on at the same time

Other cultural observations of Vietnam

Sometimes the locals are worried I am displeased but I think it's because they cannot read my facial expressions (cultural difference), which is interesting because as an American and southern Californian my expressions ought to be rather… expressive. And smiley! Relative to the global population or constituency of Vietnam 

Re VN, in the US we have our own interesting facets of age judging

Namely, difficulties around judging ages is one component of race relations and police brutality in the United States 

Cultural and public health observations in Vietnam

Without judgement, some observation notes for safekeeping: 

1) stark emphasis on age rank, almost opposite the US. Instead of how are you, the polite thing to ask upon first meeting someone is their age

2) people don't seem to be as ceremonious about saying goodbye as in the US. I think that was the same too of the Singaporeans. Kind of interesting because without insight it might feel like someone just kind of ditched you without properly saying goodbye because they didn't like you or something. And of course hugging is not as big as in the Americas 

3) seafood allergy. Met at least 2 VN who are allergic to seafood. Suggests that allergy is likely not a consequence of overcleanliness as in US and EU, but maybe my hypothesis of pollution-induced allergies (since the sea floor is polluted and facilitates bio accumulation of pollutants). Also that's why I think peanut allergies are a thing, because the legumes are buried in the soil and the soil likely had some pollutants. Also because peanuts and nuts are high in lipids so you get bioaccumulation 

Kem vs klem

I tried to ask someone if they like to eat ice cream 🍦 

I learned very quickly it's 

Kem 🍦 

Not klem ❌ 🍦 

Someone died laughing 

They told me that's what children say because they don't know how to say ice cream 

I basically asked "Do you wike to eat i-cweam?"

They pointed to a corner of children at an ice cream stall and said

You can go eat klem with them 😂😂😂

Di ve nha

I say

Di ve nha ⬆️ 

And they're like no idiot

It's not nha ⬆️ 

It's not nha ↗️

It's nha ⬆️↗️➡️↘️➡️↗️↘️➡️↗️➡️↘️➡️↗️➡️➡️↘️

Vietnamese is so hard

Vietnamese is so hard 😂

Dua ⬇️ coconut

Dua ⬆️ pineapple