Many have heard of Tokyo's Akihabara Electrical Town. I suspect, though, that fewer people have heard of either Yongsan Electronics Market in Seoul or SEG Electronics Market in Shenzhen.

Here's a description of that last one (from http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=147):

As I first step foot into the building, I am assaulted by a whirlwind of electronic components. Tapes and reels of resistors and capacitors, ICs of every type, inductors, relays, pogo pin test points, voltmeters, trays of memories, all crammed into tiny six-by-three foot booths with a storekeeper poking away at a laptop, sometimes playing Go, sometimes counting parts. Some booths are true mom-and-pop shops, with mothers tending to babies and kids playing in the aisles.

And it’s not like, oh, you can get ten of these LEDs or a couple of these relays like you do in Akihabara. No, no. These booths specialize and if you see something you like, you can usually buy several tubes, trays or reels of it–you can go into production the next day.

Stacks of power supplies, varistors, batteries; ROM programmers. Atmel, Intel, Broadcom, Samsung, Yamaha, Sony, AMD, Fujitsu, every variety of chip. Some of them clearly ripped out of used equipment and remarked, some of them in brand new laser-marked OEM packaging.

Chips that I couldn’t dream of buying in the US, reels of rare ceramic capacitors that I only dream about at night. My senses tingle, my head spins. I can’t supress a smirk of anticipation as I walk around the next corner, to see shops stacked floor to ceiling with probably a hundred million resistors and capacitors.

All of this available for a little haggling, a bit of cash, and a hasty goodbye. This is Digikey gone mad. It’s as if they let the monkeys into the warehouse at Thief River Falls, Minnesota and spilled it into a flea market in China, and then some.

And that’s just the first two floors. Six more floors of computer components, systems, laptops, motherboards, digital cameras, security cameras, thumb drives, mice, video cameras, high end graphics cards, flat panel displays, shredders, lamps, projectors, you name it.

One of the commenters says:

It is a whole district with a few buildings full of these stores. Yes, “Buildings”. To name a few, there are SEG Square electronics market building. Hua Qiang electronics world building and also other small building the specialized in cell phone parts. It may not make you rich but can definitely help you to kill a lot of time there. The more experience and knowledgeable in electronics/computing/telecom parts, the more surprises you will get. If you are a real nerd, just like me, you can kill a few weeks there, just like when your first time visiting the NY or British Museum. It is definitely the mecca for any electronics hobbyist. You can easily start any business, build any electronics products in no time. If you know what you are doing. In the cell phone parts building, you have the selections of different parts and also semi-finished (SKD) parts. Just tell them what you needed and they build one for you. Maybe one quarter of the price of an off the shelf similar products but it will not pass any safety test and will not come with any warranty, as usual. Not to mentioned that there are wholesale shops that sell finished products.

Another adds an important warning, which anyone who buys anything in China should remember:

One thing to note. Those Kingston memory modules that were being put into “retail packages” were almost certainly not real Kingston modules. In Shenzhen, like all over China, copies and fakes are everywhere. Sometimes the copy is just as good as the original and it is almost impossible to tell the difference. Other times the parts sold are “overstock”, meaning they are made in the same factory as the original parts and are the same in every way. We call this “fourth shift” production. The original brand never sees a dime from the sale of his branded product. But beware of fakes that are completly mislabeled. For example, you will see flash memory drives labelled 4 GB and when you put them in the seller’s notebook, they show up as 4 GB, but when you get them back to your hotel you will find a nice virus as a gift and when you format the drive, it tuens out to be 256 K. I am not kidding. Also, you will see Products labelled as Sony, Apple, and the like that Sony and Apple never developed. These folks will blindly put anyone’s logo on anything. In fact, in one both we bought some music players and the seller offered to put various different logos on them for us. We could have Apple, Sony and about six other brands.

File under: Another idea for a tour I could do, to go along with the fabric tour of the world.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/travel/franciscakellett/march2008/terminal5.htm:

We all expected a certain degree of teething trouble when the new terminal opened. But stories flooding out of T5 read like something from a Benny Hill sketch.

Let’s just remember that it cost £4.4 billion to get this show on the road. Which would, you’d think, cover things like functioning escalators and an effective baggage handling system.

But, no. Instead of a super-efficient, high-gloss travel experience like you might expect in, say, Beijing’s new airport terminal, our home-grown version has seen T5’s first frustrated passengers scurrying between out of order carpark paying machines and broken escalators – only to be told that their flights have been cancelled.

Those that have arrived at T5 have been stranded in planes as gates have had to be found for their flights. They’ve then had to hang around for 90 minutes waiting for their baggage.

In fact, seven of the terminal’s first flights today left without any luggage at all. T5’s new sophisticated baggage handling system is obviously a little too sophisticated, and has done little to help British Airways’ label of losing more suitcases than any other major airline.

And, to add to the fabulous confusion, amidst the travel chaos there have been hundreds of airport expansion protestors milling around in red t-shirts.

You can almost hear the Benny Hill theme music warbling in the background as harassed BAA workers chase red-clad protestors, who trip over frazzled passengers who are chasing luggage.

It just couldn’t happen anywhere else.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/542bc5ae-fc27-11dc-9229-000077b07658.html:

Day One at Heathrow’s shiny new Terminal 5, and it suddenly all started to seem horribly familiar.

A growing mountain of misplaced bags. Angry, frustrated passengers in the arrivals hall. No announcements. No explanations of what was going wrong, that made any sense. British Airways ground staff present, but themselves bewildered with little useful information.

Long queues at the lost baggage desks filing sorry reports. Growing crowds at the baggage carousels. Passengers lying around on the cold floors because of the shortage of seats. And out front at the sales desks a growing queue of travellers trying to rebook cancelled flights.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

It is mayhem at carousel nine. Two flights were in hours ago from Los Angeles. One three-and-a half-hours ago, and still no bags. Next door passengers from Athens are still waiting for bags after two-and-a-half hours. Many have given up, filed their claims and left.

A BA ground services employee admits, “there is a shortage of staff, we are still spread across all the terminals, and there is a shortage of equipment”. Another says, “it was the volume of departing bags. It crashed the system and stopped arriving bags too”.

Not a good start to the bright new world of £4.3bn T5. They have only been planning it for 19 years.

Finally, they gave up on the whole checked-bag idea.

From http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jctHo5GEA-k7o5ZPJcNimRqf1UCg:

A disastrous opening day for Heathrow's flagship £4.3 billion Terminal 5 ended with British Airways having to suspend all baggage check-in at the new facility.

The decision, taken after a series of problems had wrecked what should have been a landmark day at the west London airport, meant travellers could only fly with carry-on hand luggage.

The German railways have this offer on the weekends they call the Happy Weekend Ticket (Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket). (The German link has a lot more information. For €35, you and four companions can travel anywhere in Germany in second class on the local network. That's a lot of trains. They're relatively slow, but it's still Germany, so they run pretty efficiently.

On Sunday, I decided to see if I could get to Cologne by local train. Many years ago, when I was still a student, I changed trains in Cologne's main station. I had a short layover, and I decided I'd go look at the cathedral, which is right on top of the station.



Anyway, that time, years ago, I got as far as the cathedral tower's ticket window. I had a quick conversation with the ticket clerk, and came to the conclusion that I just didn't have enough time to climb the five hundred or so steps to the top. So I turned around and walked back down to the station, figuring I'd be back later in the trip, because I was in Europe for months on a rail pass. I'd surely come back through Cologne with more time than a half-hour layover.

As it turned out, I didn't, and I went home that summer not having climbed to the top.

Years went by. Every time I went past the cathedral on the train I thought about it, but I was always just passing though, often without even stopping. But you can hardly miss it when you go through Cologne's main station.

This time, I looked at the timetables--the German railway has a nifty timetable site--and that if I left early in the morning I could get to Cologne and get back in the same day, all on the one €35 ticket.

It's a nice view. I didn't have a camera with me, but here are a couple of example photos from other people:





On the way back, it worked out that I could give myself a nice train ride along the Rhine, which I'd done before, years ago, but always on an express train. As it turns out, taking the local may be better for sightseeing, because you stop at every little town, and you don't go very fast between them, so you can enjoy the scenery for longer.

(Some more photos I didn't take:)





The white castle in the middle of the river is Burg Pfalzgrafenstein, a toll castle on Falkenau island.

It was a nice way to spend a Sunday, riding a train along the Rhine at dusk. I decided that at some point I should come back with buckets of money and take a river cruise, or rent a car and visit all the castles and stay at some of these inns. Or both.

There are lots of bicyclists in the Netherlands. Very few of them seem to wear helmets.

I'm posting this from the trade show venue, the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam. (I guess this is where the cruise ships dock in other, warmer seasons.)

Just a quick hello.

So, I posted about this sign I drove past when I was in South Africa. I just discovered that someone else took a photo of it:



This is what I posted about it:

On the off-ramp from the N3, northbound, for both the London Road exit for Alexandra (a township) and the next exit (Marlboro Road) for Sandton, the richest neighborhood in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

Even the Automobile Association map of Johannesburg has a note next to the exit for Alexandra warning drivers not to use this exit except for access to Alexandra. Apparently enough rich people took the exit (which is in fact a more direct route to Sandton) and got carjacked by armed poor people.

Alexandra is a township where the government is trying hard to turn the shacks into tract housing. You can see from the motorway that they really have built many, many little houses, complete with electricity.

http://r-ness.livejournal.com/24862.html is my original post.

Salon's Ask the pilot column linked to this photo showing the new double-bed cabins on the A380s that Singapore Airlines has just put into service:


(click on photo to enlarge)

s. sen commented:

"Singapore Airlines unveiled those pretty double-bed cabins on its A380s, only to announce (with a typically Singaporean, have-fun-and-we'll-cane-you-and-not-in-a-nice-way perspective on life) that passengers are not allowed to fool around. What a gift for Richard Branson! This all but ensures that Virgin Atlantic will place a condom on the pillow on board its aircraft to seize the competitive advantage."

link

Edit: I just checked the full fare prices. You can fly from Singapore to Sydney, round-trip, for $6,495.70 each, or $12,991.40 for the entire cabin. One way from Singapore to Sydney is only $3,553.30 each, or $7,106.60 the pair. One way in the opposite direction is $3,965.40 ($7,930.80). All prices as of today, in USD, for travel originating Monday, December 10th.</b>

Sometimes I even implement them.

This is one I'm unlikely to implement, because I have more sanity than money, but here it is:

The largest 52 metropolitan areas in the world, one a week for a year!

The reasoning goes like this. I like cities, and I like travel. I've been to a lot of these places, and I'd like to visit most of the ones I haven't been to yet. (Clearly, there are exceptions: for example, I won't be going to Baghdad as a tourist until the security situation improves.)

Wikipedia and world-gazetteer.com both have lists of metro areas, which of course conflict. In fact, Wikipedia has two: a list of urban areas by population and one of urban agglomerations. (I prefer the former, because Boston/Providence is on that list at #37, while on the latter Boston is way down at #56. On world-gazetteer.com it just misses the top 50.)

Needless to say, this trip would be very expensive and quite a test of stamina. Even if I didn't visit them in order of population, but chose some (relatively) sane geographic order instead.

But boy, imagine the food blogging!

This was one of the odder polls sent to me by one of the many polling outfits whose lists I'm on. I thought I'd share as a poll.

Poll #1073217 Someone got paid to come up with these questions.
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

If you were shipwrecked on an island beach, which island would you most like to be on?

If you were stranded on an island, who would you most like to be stranded with?

Which two public figures would you most like to see stranded together on an island?

If you chose "Other", please specify here:

(Note that I chose "Other" and then specified "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney". That answer probably got me on a watch list.)

(Edit: I forgot to include another text field for an answer for "Other person" in the second question. Feel free to use the comments for that, if you like.)

This looks like it might be useful for folks who travel out of the States.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/technology/circuits/27pogue.html:

Early next month, a small company called Cubic Telecom will release what it’s calling the first global mobile phone.

And there’s no monthly fee and no commitment for any of this. It works like a prepaid phone, where you put some money in your account and use it up as you talk.

At this point, the appropriate world traveler’s response ought to be involuntary drooling, but there’s more to the story. Most of it is more good news, but also more complexity.

For example, consider this: at the MaxRoam.com site from Cubic, you can request local phone numbers in up to 50 cities at no charge. Now you can have a Paris number, a London number and a Mexico City number that your friends overseas can use to call your cellphone.

No longer must you hand out a series of international phone numbers for each trip you make, or expect your colleagues in the United States to pay $50 a pop to reach you.

Cubic points out that this feature alone is a life-changer for people who have moved, for example, to the United States from overseas. Their family back home can keep in touch for the price of a local call.

I signed up for numbers in Paris, London and Barcelona, and then asked friends in those cities to call me. They dialed local numbers, and my phone rang in New York — very slick. Voice quality was typical of Internet calls: perfectly understandable, but slightly muffled, with a quarter-second to one-second voice delay.
( full article behind the cut )

So I went to the MAXroam site, and had a look. The bare SIM costs €29.99, including €5 call credit. They charge you €1 per month if you don't use it. (But I'm guessing you could simply send one SMS a month, at €0.37, and then I guess you've used it that month. You'll want to check if you actually do go with this service.)

Within the US, incoming calls cost €1.10 per minute, outgoing ones cost €1.18 per minute, and sending an SMS costs €0.37. Receiving an SMS is free, as is checking your balance or adding credit. Customer care calls cost €0.35 per minute.

Back home in Ireland, where the company is based, receiving calls costs €0.24 per minute, outgoing ones cost €0.31 per minute, and sending an SMS costs €0.22. The other costs are as above.

I didn't get a chance to look at the prices in every country, but I did notice that incoming calls in Australia were only €0.21 per minute.

All these prices appear to be with reference to where your phone tower is when the call begins.

You can get a local number in Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA. Since you get up to fifty numbers, you could have one in each country and still have 22 extra numbers for I don't know what. It does make it easy for people to reach you, which could be very helpful for international businesses.

"The 1945 train for Bristol Temple Meads will depart from Platform 2. Calling at Reading, Didcot, Swindon, Chippingham, Bath Spa, and Bristol Temple Meads. Passengers for Oxford, change at Didcot."
(1974)

The train to Buffalo isn't just the train to Buffalo, it's the train to everywhere in between New York City and Buffalo. Announcing a train departure properly can't help but have more personality than an airport speaker's monotone statement that 1st class passengers are now welcome to step onto flight somethingoranother going to whothehellreallycares. But there was one guy at Grand Central when I was growing up who could really do it right. I can still remember:

"Now boarding at Gate Number twenty-three, Platform A, Train Number 63, The Lake Shore Limited 2:30 departure for Buffalo. Making station stops at Crrrrrrr-Oton HarmonPoughkeepsieRhinecliff HudsonAllll-Bany Rensselaer. Schnectady. AmsterdamUticaRomeSyracuseRochesterBufffffff-Alo Depew! Continuting on to Erie. Cleveland. Chicago. Connect at Chicago for Allllllllll points west and south. Now departing Gate Number Twenty-Three Alllllll-A-bo-oard!"

It had rhythm and poetry. It was a performance in the spoken word. And I miss that magic.

(From http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/08/poetry_and_motion.php)

http://www.airlinequality.com/Product/seats_global.htm lists carriers worldwide.
http://www.airlinequality.com/Product/seat_intro.htm breaks them out by region.

Those low-cost airlines, like Air Asia (29"), easyJet (29"), and Ryanair (30") really cram 'em in. Most US carriers seem to have at least a 31" seat pitch.

Seat distance isn't everything, of course, but that's what the passenger submitted ratings for airlines and airports are for.

They're just brief glimpses of exact locations: the Niterói ferry dock, Maclears Beacon, Offenburg town square, Raffles Place, the Shrine of St. Anne, Marrickville station. (They're actually more exact than that, because they're memories of where I was standing, but explaining more precisely gets tedious.)

They're somewhat pleasant, or at least neutral. It takes work for me to remember difficult or annoying memories, and this is about the opposite of effort: they pop into my head, one replaced by another, unbidden and without apparent connection or emotional charge, like my mind is flipping through someone else's snapshots. The ones I just mentioned took up less time than it took to type this sentence. Often they're mundane and prosaic places no one would go to visit, but sometimes they're not.

I can tell I'm bored when they start to appear. They usually pop up when I'm doing something dull, like data entry at the computer.

I guess it's my mind taking quick vacations while I'm doing something else.

(From http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-passports20jun20:)"

"Desperate to obtain their U.S. passports, world travelers have been flying to Seattle, where the passport office is considered one of the nation's most efficient. But even there, more than 110,000 backlogged applications are piled in closets, the supervisor's office and the break room.

"Many won't be touched for months. Half of the staff is trying to help the crowds jamming the lobby and spilling out the door."

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-passportdiary13jun13 has one reporter's diary of getting her passport renewed.

"I also had an interview this morning with Colin Walle, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1998, and he tells me the passport backlog is close to 3 million. The good news: The backlog has shrunk in the last couple of weeks. The bad news: The backlog was only 1.3 million in February."

"In testimony on Tuesday in the Senate, Maura Harty, assistant secretary of State for consular affairs, said the backlog was indeed 3 million. That 500,000 number was the number that had already taken longer than 10 to 12 weeks."

(Today seems to be my day of "stupid government tricks" posts.)