danhou.com

I’ve always understood from a theoretical perspective why outsourcing is such an attractive option for many US companies. But its only in the past couple of weeks that I’ve developed a far more concrete appreciation for the economic forces involved.

Traveling in China is not unlike constantly swimming upstream through a torrent of human flesh. There’s a suffocating crush of people everywhere you go - in restaurants, on the streets, at the ticket counter. There’s simply no escaping it. This makes it easy to see how the cost of Chinese labor can be one of the cheapest commodities available. Equally obvious is the impact that cheap labor has on everyday life.

Clever innovators in the Western world have developed innumerable technologies which exponentially increase the productivity of a single person. From what I’ve seen thus far, little of this has made its way to China:

• In Bejing, I passed a construction site which required some cables to be strung through a section of sewers. Rather than renting a vehicle with some horsepower to quickly tow everything into place, the construction firm hired over a dozen men to collectively (and ineffectively) tug at the cables, all the while yelling the Chinese equivalent of “heave-ho.”
• One of the hotels that I stayed at had the exact same card-based lock configuration installed in every room. It was cheaper for management to pay someone to carry the one key card they had, and be available around the clock to unlock the door for guests as needed, than to hand out distinct key cards for each room.
• Every retail establishment I hazarded had at least a 5-to-1 ratio of sales people to customers. I was swarmed every time I came within arms reach of a given counter. Its a stark contrast to US supermarkets, which are clearly moving towards automated check out.

Half of the fun of independent travel is in deciding what to pack. The engineer in me insists on optimizing every last ounce that I’ll be carrying. I’m constantly looking for high utility, versatile items.

First, lets go through my requirements. The entire package needs to be compact enough to fit easily under a bus seat and light enough to carry on my back all day. I’ll need to have clothing suitable for fairly extreme climates ranging from northern China and Tibet during the winter, to Israel during the summer. Finally, I want a significant amount of space left over for souvenirs or clothing that I pick up along the way.

Having said that, here’s what I’ll be taking:

• 44 liter backpack
• footwear: sandals, shoes, 3 pairs light socks, 1 pair thick socks
• jackets: soft shell, fleece
• clothing: long sleeve shirt, 2 t-shirts, 2 pants, long underwear, 3 boxers, board shorts
• toiletries: glasses, contacts, toothbrush/paste, soap/shampoo, razor, sink plug
• laundry kit: detergent, elastic clothes line, Febreze, stain pen
• repair kit: duct tape, scissors, tape, needle/thread, twisty ties
• first aid kit, including prescription medication for altitude sickness, malaria and diarrhea
• other necessities: cord lock, journal, headlamp, sunblock, insect repellent, seat belt, towel, umbrella, sleep sack, bandanna
• electronics: hacked iPhone with global sim card, digital camera with 2 GB memory card, chargers & plug converter

Everything fits easily in the bag with 20% extra storage capacity and weighs under 20 lbs. I’m pretty pleased with the results, as well I should - I’ll be living with nothing but the above until November.

Upgrading to Wordpress 2.3 was actually pretty straightforward. It took longer than anticipated because I was doing this from a Macbook Pro that’s been collecting dust in my closet. I ended up using a combination of Terminal along with an older version of Cyberduck because the latest and greatest isn’t compatible with OS X 10.3.9.

Wordbook seems to work just fine. I’ll know after this post whether it actually shows up in my Facebook profile and with what sort of lag. I also took this opportunity to update the look and feel with something that I find more visually appealing.

In case you’re curious, my profile pic was edited using FotoFlexer to give it that old black and white photograph feel. The web app was super easy to use and uploading large photos was surprisingly fast.

I’m renovating this blog in preparation for my year of travel, to make my entries more accessible for my friends. Here are a few pieces of functionality that I’d like to have in place by January, in order of priority:

• Exposing blog entries on my Facebook profile
• Exposing Flickr albums directly in this blog
• Adding Google maps functionality which will show my location for each blog post

There are already a few different plug-in options available for 1 and 2. I’m definitely going to be using WordBook, since I often edit my posts after I’ve published them for grammatical errors, and don’t want the incorrect version being pulled down by Facebook’s RSS reader. For photos, I’m torn between FAlbum and Flickr Photo Album. I’ll probably try out both and make a call after seeing the presentation differences for myself. 3 represents the greatest challenge, since (to my knowledge) there aren’t any existing plugins that offer comparable functionality, which will mean building directly on top of Google’s APIs.

We’ll see how many of my to-do’s I actually get through. But first things first - I need a much overdue upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress.

I was very intrigued by Amazon’s new eBook reader when I first heard about it. I’ve played around with the Sony Reader, and it just seemed like the Kindle had a more refined implementation. E-ink is a fantastic technology - you’ve really got to see one of these displays in person to understand just how readable they are. With its incredibly low battery consumption, I figured the Kindle would be a great device to bring along my tour of the world.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm quickly died out when I perused the catalog of content available in the Amazon’s proprietary format. Not a single travel guide is available for the device. No Rough Guide or Lonely Planet or Let’s Go. I’ll be traveling through at least 10 different countries next year, and the greatest benefit I would’ve gotten from the Kindle is not having to lug fat guide books from place to place.

Extrapolating from this, the Kindle’s usefulness is directly proportional to the amount of content you need to carry. What I’ve seen thus far from their catalog is a heavy emphasis on novels and non-fiction best sellers. Yet the largest/heaviest pieces of content are reference materials. In this instance, I define reference materials as content which you don’t consume end to end and might not use that often, but when you do need it, its an immediate need.

There are dictionaries and the like available, but I’m talking about a broader set. Travel guides fall into this category, but so do textbooks. My brother is a med student, and he’s regularly forced to carry back-breaking loads of anatomy and orgo books across campus. Imagine how grateful he would be to instead carry a single 10 oz device complete with keyword searching?

Kindle itself is a compelling device, but there are definitely some missed opportunities that Amazon needs to capitalize on. For Amazon, being the content king that it is, there’s simply no excuse for anything less than a complete catalog.