The Visa Collector

A blog about travelling with a Filipino passport, and life overseas

Archives for Slices of life

A nuclear accident in Japan

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I was 15 when a Soviet nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine suffered a catastrophic accident. It was the story of the year, and was an event that my dad and I pored over with great curiosity, but with little concern. It was half a world away, so the biggest threat to the Philippines at the time was the rumored possibility of radioactive milk being exported to the Philippines. As the story went, milk that couldn’t be sold in Europe because of fears that cows had ingested irradiated feed, would be exported to other parts of the world. Back then, department stores in Davao had gotten into practice of selling re-packed powdered milk, and our family jokingly called this “Chernobyl milk”. We stuck with canned or liquid milk.

The reactor accident in Fukushima, Japan, on the other hand, was much closer to home. As horrific as the effects of the tsunami of the 11th of March were, the plant appeared to be a problem with wider implications. My wife is visiting the Philippines, and the rest of my family is still there. So this was a problem with a personal dimension, unlike the crisis in 1986.


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The search for nerve-calming information started not long after reports of an explosion at the plant surfaced in the media.

NHK World reported that the event at the facility called Fukushima Number One was rated as a “Level 4” event. Useful information for a keyword search, which lead me to the following document:

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Factsheets/English/ines.pdf

The document above was a significant relief. Chernobyl had been a Level 7, and the Three-mile Island incident in 1979 was Level 5. The Japanese problem was an “Accident with local consequences”, so apparently wasn’t as bad as the aforementioned accidents.

Another intellectual tranquilizer I found came in the form of a blog put together by an Australian living in Japan for the benefit of his family in Australia. The post entitled “Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors” is based on a letter from Dr. Josef Oehman, at the Center for Technology, Policy, &amp Industrial Development at MIT. Although Dr. Oehman’s expertise is in supply chains, his father was reportedly involved in the German nuclear industry.

Here is an interesting excerpt

I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single (!) report that was accurate and free of errors (and part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication). By “not free of errors” I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By “not free of errors” I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.

To read the rest of the blog, click the following:

https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/

You be the judge of Dr. Oehman’s analysis. On my end, the two tid bits of information above have me at ease . . . for now at least.

Mar 13, 2011

Philippine Consulate: San Francisco, CA

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The Philippine consulate consulate in San Francisco CA is a pleasant place to renew travel papers, certify documents, and other similar transactions. It’s is neat and organized. The consulate occupies space at the Philippine Center along Sutter St. within which a variety of establishments address a variety of Filipino concerns, from travel to sending money home. A nice one-stop-shop. The consulate is on the 6th floor.

Unlike other embassies, which can be found in the hilly residential parts of the city, the Philippine Consulate is situated in a commercial area. Street parking, therefore is a valid option, but more often than not is unavailable. Embassy staff recommend the following parking lots listed in the picture on the left.

Personally, I favor the Sutter-Stockton Garage. Its within a stone’s throw from the Philippine Center and is not claustrophobic.

Each time we visit this consulate, which is typically a year or so apart, we always notice improvements to their service offerings. We processed my wife’s passport extension (more about why on another post) yesterday, and changes were readily apparent. The following sign greets when you step out of the elevator.

These weren’t there the other year. The overall layout had changed, and there were more desks for various consulate services, from passport renewal to processing of notarized documents.

Convenience was a focal point of many improvements. There is now an ATM in the waiting room, which particularly useful given that they neither accept personal checks nor credit/debit cards for their services. For those who neglect to bring copies of key documents, citizens can avail of a self-service photocopier for $0.25 per copy. This used to be situated at a rather odd location outside the main waiting area. These days these machine are now situated in the waiting area.

Now that my wife’s passport renewal has been processed, I probably won’t be back till I apply for an ePassport next year. Looking forward to next year’s surprises.

To the folks at the San Francisco Consulate: “Keep up the good work”.

Feb 9, 2011

How to refuel your car

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A few years ago, my brother and his wife visited us for a few days. We don’t live in one of the major bay-area cities, so we had to drive a fair distance to see the sights. From the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, to the world-famous aquarium in Monterey.

The first time we stopped for gas, my brother got out of our CR-V with me to watch me fill up. “It was about time I learned how to fill up by myself”, he said. That caught me by surprise. He moved to the US east coast back in 1993, 11 years before I did, so this just didn’t compute.

Until that visit, I had come to believe that unattended gasoline stations, save for a solitary employee manning the cash register, were the norm for the US as a whole. I had come to accept this as just one of many things that set this country apart from the Philippines, where gas attendants abound.

That apparently wasn’t the case. My brother’s home state of New Jersey, for example, still had attendants. A co-worker would later share that there are actually some states that don’t allow drivers to pump fuel themselves.

I learned to operate a fuel pump on my second day in California. My boss back then walked me through the process of getting my first rental car, and immediately afterward led me to a gas station and taught me to work the pump. To this day, I flip the nozzle to drain residual fuel from the hose into my tank — just as she taught me that sunny 3rd of May.

The fill-up process is straight-forward for most gas machines. However there are less-than-well-designed ones out there that will will require a bit of probing. But the basic operating steps pretty much remain the same.

The approach

When driving up to a machine, it usually helps to know which side of your car permits access to the gas tank. This probably isn’t much of a concern when driving your own car. But if you travel a lot, and have to deal with a plethora of rental cars, not being mindful about this can result in the occasional three-point-turn at the gas station parking lot.

Fuel gauges offer aid in this regard. Note the samples below. On some cars, the side where the gas pump is on the fuel gauge corresponds to the location of fuel tank access. On others, the location is indicated by an arrow.

The photos above were taken from a Honda CR-V and a Honda Accord. Both of which have their fuel tank access on the driver side. The following photo is from a friend’s Mazda which has its access door on the passenger side.

Most pump consoles will walk you through the fueling process. The photo below shows what most start screens look like.

They typically assume the following sequence:

1. Choose a payment method: cash paid directly to the cashier or via debit/credit card
2. Choose fuel type
3. Remove nozzle from its cradle and then insert into fuel tank receptacle
4. Begin fueling
5. Return nozzle to cradle
6. Wait for additional instructions

Payment method

Unless the credit card reader on the pump isn’t working, I typically prefer to use a card. Its faster and you can just let the pump figure out how much gas your car needs (See nozzle discussion below). If you pay through the cashier, you have to guesstimate how much fuel you need because they’ll ask for a dollar value.

Choose fuel type

Pumps segregate gasoline by octane levels. The higher the octane rating, the more expensive the fuel. Refer to your car’s documentation for the appropriate fuel type for your vehicle. When driving a rental car though, I always go cheap.

Some pumps have a single nozzle for all three types. Others have nozzles for each. Watch out for machines that also offer both gasoline and diesel. Diesel nozzles are typically in a different color from those dedicated to gasoline.

Gasoline, single-nozzle Gasoline, multi-nozzle Diesel

Insert nozzle . . . begin fueling

Fuel won’t flow till either the credit card is authorized, or the cashier approves the sale. Once approved, fueling can begin. Unscrew the fuel cap, insert the nozzle into the fuel tank, squeeze the lever, and then engage the lock (shown on the picture on the right).

Nozzle locks are great. They allow you to do other things while fueling, like cleaning your car’s windshield or grabbing a quick bite at the station convenience store. Once the tank is filled, a sensor in the nozzle automatically disengages these locks, making the fueling process painless.

While researching for this post, I was surprised to learn that there were literally dozens of nozzle brands. Here’s a sampling. One key difference between nozzles is the location of the lock. The photo above only shows one design. Others, like the one shown below, have the lock within the lever guard itself.

Locked, fueling Released

Return nozzle to cradle

Once fueling is done, and the nozzle is safely back in its cradle . . . don’t forget to screw the fuel cap back on.

Interestingly enough, forgetting this final step is not an all-too-rare occurrence. Googling for the terms “gas cap” + “forgot” yields a fair number of results. It’s . . . like . . . a special club.

My first weekend with my first rental car also marked the first time I took it to a gas station by myself. I’d been driving along city streets to work all week, and hadn’t been on the freeways yet. I resolved to change that that Saturday and figured that I’d tank up before did so.

I pulled up to a Union 76 close to my temporary apartment, filled up, and mentally went over my freeway route while waiting for the click of the nozzle lever that signaled a full tank. That click didn’t take long since I hadn’t really been driving around very much. Ready or not, the Interstate run was on.

While filling up, a police car pulled up to the fuel pump ahead of me. As I was getting ready to go, I couldn’t help but notice that the policeman was staring at me through his side mirror. Flashing lights and sirens didn’t mark my departure from the station. So I figured that was that.

Upon arrival at my destination, I discovered what he was staring at. Like a black tassel hanging from the side of the car, my fuel cap was hanging by its restraining cord, below a fully open fuel door. Happily it wasn’t raining.

Wait for additional instructions

Some gasoline stations use their machines to up-sell other services. Car wash services, for example, are often offered at a discount.

Make sure you answer all the prompts on the console to prevent others from taking advantage of your purchase.

This is a reasonable snapshot of how things go in California. Moving forward, will be more mindful of the experiences in other states. Till then . . . happy fueling.

Feb 6, 2011

4th season encounters: A surreal walk to work

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I travel a lot for work, and my company has a fair number of offices in cities that receive their share of snow. So it was really only a matter of time before I was sent to a snow-bound office.

One of the projects to which I am assigned is based in Kanata, Canada — a suburb of Ottawa. I travel there periodically, and half-expected that this would be the place where I’d eventually have to walk through a field of white. Although I am fascinated by snow, I do not look forward to driving in it. So thus far, I’ve been careful to plan my travels ahead, or before, any possibility of “black ice”. As of writing my efforts have been successful.

Then came a trip to Munich . . . a week before Christmas.

It was only my second visit to Germany. My first, back in 2004, had been in summer so this was going to be a completely different visit. I touched base with colleagues at our Munich office well in advance of the trip, and they all reported that the most I needed to worry about was cold rain, since it never really snowed that early. But as luck would have it, Munich went through an unusually cold winter in 2010. So I was greeted by the following.

The part of this trip that will be most memorable, is arguably the part that everyone else around me probably felt was the most mundane: the walk to work. Anyone who’s grown up with snow will, in all likelihood, have sloshed through snow more times than they care to remember. But for a tropical person who hadn’t put together a snowball till earlier in the year . . . this was still coool (figuratively). Check out an older blog post about winter: Encounters with the fourth season.

The hotel was a mere 10 minutes from the office, so getting a taxi was absurd. So everyday that week, I walked the path shown below.

I can only imagine how odd I must have looked to the folks driving by: a grown man stopping by plants along the path, taking off his gloves, and then scooping the soft literally powdery ice off the tops of leaves. When faced with fleeting opportunities, curiosity trumps awkwardness . . . as well as the feeling of “freezer burn”.

With fields of powder white visible from our office window all week, two words eventually formed in my head “snow” + “angel”. Hook or by crook I was going to make one before I turned 40. After taking pointers from incredulous friends about snow-patch selection and the “proper” technique for angel fabrication . . . voila!

My coldest evening ever happened while at the Munich Christmas markets, on the last night of my visit: -9C (15.8F). It was a mercury value to which my Canadian friends (who’ve been openly plotting to send me on a one-way trip to Manitoba in January to get me over my cold-weather curiosity), simply shook their heads. Mild weather for folks accustomed to -40C weather . . . but still a first for me.

The unexpected discovery of the evening was how cold could actually make you lose facial sensation. It felt like dental anesthesia, and actually added a level of difficulty to speaking. You don’t see that in the movies.

Here are a few other things that Hollywood doesn’t show that I found on this trip:

– Snow “cakes” everything. Shoes, mud guards, road surfaces, etc. The stuff forms a substantial layer on everything. You can’t easily scrape the stuff off the pavement to see the asphalt.

– Stores can get very wet and messy as patrons walk in from the cold with their snow-covered boots. Leaving tracks and even pools of water as they move about.

– You can still sweat in -9C if you exert yourself and you’re bound up like a burrito

The warmth of good camaraderie trumps cold

Many thanks to the locals that added the many highlights on this trip. You know who you are.

Jan 9, 2011

First earthquake of the year . . . that we noticed

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From the USGS Website: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc71506850.html

Magnitude 1.3 at the following location. Still felt as far away as Cupertino.

You have to admire just how fast the US system dishes out data for the benefit of the public. The report above, and the corresponding Google Map data generated below, was available seconds after we felt the quake.


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Jan 7, 2011

Happy 2011 everyone!!!

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Happy New Year everyone!!!

From the party at EleTRONica in California Adventure.

The Laserman show was awesome.

Jan 1, 2011

Book review: Lonely Planet Taiwan

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By Robert Kelly, Joshua Samuel Brown

Description

Take your tastebuds touring around the buzz of food stalls at Taipei’s Shilin Night Market
Soak yourself in the steaming, smooth waters of the Taian hot springs
Hike the Walami Trail to the sound of monkeys crashing through the jungle canopy
Emerge from the temples of Penghu straight onto some of East Asia’s finest beaches.

Other reviews for this book available here

This is an updated version of the book that I bought before I embarked on my first overseas adventure: Taiwan. I bough my book way back in 2000, so there are arguably quite a number of updates to this book by now. I found the original book very very helpful in providing the lay-of-the-land so to speak. General locations of points of interest, what one could actually do on the island for recreation, and very basic survival tips. Briefings about social norms, for example, were quite useful.

Coverage of the island was also excellent. Information was not restricted to the capital or the cities. Even details about the smaller islands around the main island were available. For my first few months, the maps within were a God-send.

There were even attempts at pointing out useful phrases for everyday use. However, if you’ve never really spoken Mandarin, or some other tonal language, these tips will — quite frankly — be of very limited use. You have to hear the language, and learn the phonetic rules, to say them effectively. It will do any traveler good to remember that tones change the meaning of words. On one occasion, I met with friends, who were helping me learn Mandarin in exchange for my helping them with English, at a McDonalds. I had picked up the Mandarin word for “secret”, and wanted to practice it with them. Unfortunately I messed up the tone by saying the word with a flat tone, instead of a downward one. So instead of saying “I have a secret”, I instead said “I have breasts”, to the amusement of the people in the adjacent tables.

The book was, and it appears to still be, written from the standpoint of a Westerner seeking to get a taste of Asia. While it did provide insights into what such a traveler would encounter when seeking to reside on the island over an extended period of time (e.g., work considerations, etc.), these are often not applicable to Filipino workers whose job options, as well as nature of entry, are quite different. Nevertheless, it remains a good book to have.

Dec 20, 2010

Power@plane

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On a recent flight to Germany, I discovered the following interesting gem that would have been cool to have on other flights: a USB power outlet at each passenger seat. This was on a US Airways flight from Philadelphia, US to Munich, Germany.

Interesting how they had these on an international flight, which had a myriad of other entertainment options by way of personal entertainment systems, but not on the domestic flight which had virtually no entertainment. Bummer.

Dec 20, 2010

Encounters with the fourth season

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What blog about Filipinos living abroad would be complete without a post about winter? With December upon us . . . it is time.

I have a friend at work, a Canadian-Armenian, who had seen one too many winters and maintains romanticized notions about the tropics and palm trees. In a classic example of “grass is always greener in someone else’s garden”, we regularly exchange nightmare stories about each other’s home-country weather. He’d talk about stepping out of a properly heated airport into freezing, humid winter air and not being able to breathe. On my end I would relate how tropical humidity would trigger asthma attacks and other heat allergies.

We both liked to make light of the other’s climate preferences. I’d also give him a hard time whenever he complained about the air-conditioner in the office being set too low, or if he showed up with a jacket on just-slightly-chilly days. For his part, he liked joking about sending me on a one-way trip to Manitoba in January, and sharing videos like the following:

He once asked me “How many Filipinos really share your dislike of heat, and don’t believe that they are living in a tropical paradise?” Without hesitation, I said: “100%”. I shared that question with friends and relatives, and they all laughed in agreement. On the flip side, given how temperate-climate people love to soak up the sun in spring and summer, its arguably safe to say that winter doesn’t hold the same fascination for them as it does a tropical person that hasn’t really seen the worst of winter . . . yet.

My first falling-snow experience happened in New Jersey in December of 2005. My wife and I were visiting my brother for Christmas. We had just gone to bed, when my phone rang. It was my brother’s eldest son. “Uncle, go outside, quick!!!” he said.  Apparently light, feathery snow had started falling, and he recalled a conversation earlier that evening about my only having seen snow on the ground in my first US visit in 2001. He wanted to be the first one to make the introduction to the stuff that regularly buried their drive way each year.

More snow was in the cards on that visit. On the day we were to visit New York City, the weather had turned bad. We had originally planned to take rides on the upper deck of Greyline double-decker buses for a hop-on/hop-off tour of the city. But both my brother and sister-in-law warned that it was too cold for what we wanted. “People get killed in this weather” my brother said ominously.

So, as any good tropical person would, we headed off to NYC, bundled in wool coats that my brother lent us as replacements for our pathetically inadequate San Francisco cold wear . . . and went on the roof-top bus ride anyway. Cold . . . shmold.

The adventure started uneventful enough. We found the bus, and proceeded to the top deck where we saw a fair number of people who felt as we did about missing out on views of the city’s skyscrapers. As we waited for the tour to start, we were treated to our first daylight glimpse of snow fall. Large, cotton-like flakes were drifting into view . . . sideways . . . which was a surprise.

When the bus finally started moving, fascination with the flakes, gave way to a new-found appreciation for thermal underwear — which we didn’t have. I knew things were going to get interesting when I started losing sensation in my toes. Even on the coldest days in Baguio City, Taipei, and San Francisco, that never happened. All of us on that deck pretended that everything was fine for a few blocks. Then when the first couple stood up and made for the stairway, we were all gone faster than it would have taken any of those snowflakes to melt in a Philippine-noon in summer time.

Believe me that experience stuck. When we made preparations for a cruise to Alaska a couple of years later, long johns and thermal socks were on the top of the list of things to buy. As we stood on deck watching the local wildlife, while our boat navigated through glacial melt, my wife and I were warm and toasty (more on that cruise at a later time).

First encounter with large volumes of fresh powder-like snow, not the solidified brown slush pushed aside by snow plows, was in February of this year at Sierra Summit, 65 miles northeast of Fresno, CA. It was too short of a trip to learn winter sports so I spent my time discovering the small things that children at this latitude probably take for granted by the time they learn to write:

  • The way snow sparkles like hundreds of tiny pieces of glass
  • How it crunches as you walk on it, and how it accumulates on your boots
  • The way snow spreads in a powdery arc when you kick it
  • How snowballs do indeed get bigger when you roll them down hill

As expected my Armenian friend told me I was nuts for having gone through such lengths for an opportunity to get frostbitten. I simply smiled and shrugged.

If I ever got him to the Philippines, I figure the tables would be turned. My father-in-law, who used to work as a shipping manager for an export company in my home town, once told me about a Russian ship whose crew couldn’t get over how green the mountains around the port were. I suspect these boringly plain mountains would have the same effect on him. Wait till he sees the folding leaves of a “Makahiya” plant, or the pods of what we used to call as kids as “water bombs”.

All this writing about grass-is-greener-in-someone-else’s-yard got me thinking. If snow is to a tropical person, what thick greenery is to a cold climate person . . . ever wondered what would fascinate a sand-blasted-all-his-life Bedouin?

Dec 11, 2010

Power @ airport

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When traveling, I lug around two laptops, a digital camera, and an iPhone. This stuff isn’t checked-in with the rest of my luggage. These are on my person as I wander around airports looking for a seat . . . and a power outlet. As an Economy class traveler, one that still hasn’t earned enough miles in his travels, the lounges are not an option . . . yet.

At most airports, there is a silent race for the sweet spot: the chair-next-to-the-outlet. These are few and far in between. If someone beats you to it . . . happily most airports I’ve been too have had clean floors. Here’s a sampling of both from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport

Some airports like San Francisco Int’l Airport (SFO) offer special booths or kiosks specifically for “wired” patrons.

Terminal 2 (Centennial) at the international airport in Manila (MNL) has powered high-top tables at the pre-departure area.

These facilities, however, are often away from the gates. So if your not careful, you’ll be at a disadvantage when the embarkation lines form, and consequently behind in the race for overhead space on the plane.

“The dream” would be to have power outlets where the seats are. Happily, airports are responding to that need.

The Ottawa airport (YOW) offers a few seats with outlets for both regular power sockets, as well as devices that draw power from USB ports.

At the moment, my favorite seats are in the San Jose airport (SJC). They’re a nice blend of style and function, just what you’d expect from a Bay Area/Silicon Valley airport.

Just a word of caution with these outlets though. Make sure that your actually getting juice out of them by pressing the red button, between the outlets, to reset the circuit breaker. Found that tid bit out the hard way.

Nov 13, 2010