Delays, Dinner, and Deng Xiaoping
May 12, 2009
Hello everyone, it is 9:00 a.m. in Tokyo...May 12th. Traveling has been strenuous on us; for it has been about 35 hours since we left Birmingham. The important thing is that we are safe.
The start of our journey was really great. We walked off the Birmingham to Dallas plane and went into the baggage claim area for who knows why but to find the mother, sister, niece, and nephew of Lissa all with arms wide open and happy to see her. They had a delicious and well appreciated Mother's Day breakfast prepared for us! Many thanks goes to Lissa's mother Kathy. ;)
To Tokyo: Where do I start? The flight was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. CDT, but was delayed twice and switched to another plane. That was no huge problem except for the fact that we then had an hour layover in Tokyo before getting on a plane to Vietnam, and incoming flights from the Americas were inspected for the swine flu upon arrival. Despite the trouble, we have great pictures that will be uploaded later on. As you can imagine, we never caught the Vietnam flight.
Since we have had so much time on our hands while on flights and in airports, we have been reading up on Japan in the 2008 edition of Japan Now and Vietnam in the Lonely Planet guide. That is, when we weren’t making fun of the quarantine crew. I wonder who all actually told the truth on the health surveys. Have you been around anyone with a cough in the past 10 days? Would we be going against our engineering ethics if we lied on that?
When I think of Japanese, I think elegance. They strive for the most luxurious cars, clothes, jewelry, and food. I also think of their willingness. Each Japanese person serves another with great enthusiasm. They are passionate of their occupation. The following are some other facts I have observed of Japan: Japanese have salmon and rice for any course meal, it was really foggy with a slight mix of smog, the exchange rate was 90 Japanese yen to one U.S. dollar, the sun rises at 4:00 a.m., and gentlemen, like Dr. Johnson, enjoy bird-watching at the break of dawn.
A wonderful quote that I found interesting for the engineering field comes from Nambu Yoichiro, the 2008 Nobel Prize Winner in Physics for his idea of “Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking.” Nambu believes that “Curiosity is the driving power for everything.” Nambu, going by the name of Professor Emeritus, is among 82 other Nobel Prize winners of Chicago University, while 28 of the 82 were in Physics alone. It turns out that this “spontaneous symmetry breaking” is now in use within The Large Hadron Collider at CERN nuclear research center in the attempt to prove the Higgs Particle exists. (32 Japan Now)
Curiosity is the driving power for everything. We can think of ourselves as crazy Americans throwing themselves out to a near third world country in hope of learning how to create a sustainable water treatment system. We are trying. I assure you that with our curious crew, we will have some understanding of it before we leave this country.
This trip to Vietnam is a great opportunity to see what makes a yearning nation boom. In 1986 a free market and capitalism was introduced after the Uncle Ho Chi Minh influenced communist collectivization nearly toppled Vietnam into bankruptcy. Then came southern Vietnam’s eager businessmen and an influence of Deng Xiaoping’s school of economy which both led to the nation becoming Asia’s second fastest growing economy in 2005 with an asstounding 8.4% growth. Among this growing nation are large industries, like Intel, that give jobs to many computer specialists and cement producers. The countryside is full of rice fields of course, and there are many textile manufacturers here as well, Columbia sports-wear being a leader. During one of our pre-trip meetings, we found it ironic that we were buying Made in Vietnam Columbia shirts and pants from Perfect Touch for 40% off retail value when we could just pack lightly and purchase the same stuff in Vietnam for market-price. While reading a newspaper, I found that the government is deploying an initiative to have four new electric generating plants on cycle by 2025. All they need now is the essentials of pure H2O.
Coming into Vietnam was interesting. Ten years ago the place was filled with bicycles only inches apart. Now there are motor bikes everywhere. Dr. Joe Brown had an analogy of the conglomeration of motorists to a school of fish and how one either eases its way through the midst of the pack and the others dodge that individual; or the way they go with the flow at same pace and all end up in a mosh-pit down the road. Watch out Dr. Turner, Drs. Johnson and Brown want you to do a transportation project on this mess. Among that busyness was a big mess of transmission wires dangling from poles and trees.
May 12th evening we spent time atop The Majestic Hotel with a grand view of the Mekong Delta River. We then had supper in a fine restaurant with shrimp, squid, and various other delicacies for only $6.75 tip included! Marcus Aguliar, our Hispanic, found himself 10 cool points after calling a Summer Roll a “clear burrito.” Ynhi Thai was able to hang out with her dad’s side of family that she hasn’t seen 18 years.
On the airplane.
Dinner time.
