• Bangkok police wearing smiley masks to make delivery of the requisite Thai smile that much easier – " The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help “reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police,” said Mr. Somyos, the highway police commander. To that end, he said, some 200 police booths would also distribute small bottles of holy water, chewing gum and mints."
• Why is Dora crying? – Ridiculously manipulative full-page ad run by Viacom as they drew towards the deadline for a fee renegotiation with Time-Warner. Looks like (big surprise) they struck a deal.

Photos from my various travels depicting global cultural variations of the fundamental person icon.

Bali, Indonesia. They’re some pretty small people, so why does that first person seem so hulking and Cro-Magnon-y?

Taipei, Taiwan. Note the hip chapeau the stroller is sporting, and the protective headgear (?) worn by the worker.

London, UK. This fellow toils as above, but without the benefit of a helmet. Less chance of sunburn, maybe?

Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese cute aesthetic shows up in the large head and even larger cigarette.

Bangkok, Thailand. Who takes care of children?

Providence, RI, USA. Not just walking, but actively moving forward, dancing, and exuding joie de vivre.

And Karrie Jacobs has a nice example here.

I’ve finished uploading more than 200285 photos from Bangkok to flickr. Check ‘em all out, but here are a few samples

It’s butter

Ronald does the wai

Crockery Flower

Detail: Shrine at a shrine at a temple

Working Boat

Thai Coke

Reserved for monks

Monk awaits

Soi Cowboy

Big Bowling Pin

Reindeer pair

Insane Thai beaten to death for destroying sacred Hindu shrine

A 27-year-old mentally disturbed Thai man was beaten to death by enraged onlookers at a world-famous shrine in downtown Bangkok after he destroyed a popular statue of a Hindu deity with a hammer, police said.

Thanakorn Pakdeepol, who police said had a history of mental illness, was killed after he broke into the Erawan Shrine and used a hammer to shatter a four-headed statue of Brahma covered in gold. Thousands of Thais and tourists seek good fortune at the statue every day.

We were just there in January. Here’s our pics.

Core77 has fixed the problems with the slideshow in my recent Letter From Asia article. If you couldn’t see the pictures in the piece (the pop-up slideshow with more images than appears in the body itself), you may want to try again.

Core77 has just posted my latest article, a travelogue- Letter From Asia.

Hong Kong is a visually stimulating city–where bright neon signs stretch horizontally out from the buildings across the road and electric boxes are covered with graffiti advertising household services. Storefronts open to the street, and service windows for snacks of every kind proliferate.

The standard line about Hong Kong is that it’s a shopper’s paradise. But Hong Kong shopping seemed to be more about the shallower pleasures of acquisition versus the immersive indulgence of massive choice . Take Tokyo as a point of contrast: Tokyo’s Akihabara (or Electronics Town) is a place to find all things electronic. If you want USB cables, you choose from myriad lengths, each in a large variety of colors and translucencies. If you are a Rolling Stones fan, in the Harajuku neighborhood you will find a tiny store with an exhaustive collection of trinkets, books, and assorted Stones ephemera.

But in Hong Kong, shopping is more about bounty; quantity over variety. For example, Mong Kok is a neighborhood with several shopping areas, including Sai Yeung Choi Street, where you’ll see a crowded street with small stores selling the very latest digital cameras, mobile phones, and MP3 players. Next door will be a similar store selling a similar selection of gizmos, and three doors down will be another branch of the first store…and across the street will be yet another branch of that same store. A few chains occupy many of the stores, seemingly with little specialization. The point seems to be that there’s lots of this stuff here, so why not grab some? It seemed to work–people were actively buying.

There’s more about Hong Kong, as well as Bangkok, and India.

I’ve begun to post pictures from Bangkok to flickr – there are tons more to come, but the set is beginning to accumulate some mass, so go check it out!

Hey, Anne’s got a flickr account!

Arun Wat, originally uploaded by Anneincal.

Hong Kong art museum, originally uploaded by Anneincal.

We’re now in Mumbai – the last of our four-city tour. Since posting last, we spent two hot and fun days in Bangkok, had an interesting and great time in Bangalore (best parts being an interesting conference, a visit to Microsoft Research, and some really wonderful hosting/socializing/touring). We got here last night and have benefitted similarly from some great hosting/socializing/touring. In fact, we’re out in the suburbs where tourists would never go, visiting a friend in her home.

There’s just so much to see and think about and write about. I imagine blogging non-stop for weeks upon end when we return (not possible, I suppose). I’ve taken hundereds of pictures and will see if the technology I’m using at this moment will allow me to easily post a couple of recent ones.

Excited to see a bit about Hong Kong in the travel section of today’s New York Times. Since we started planning our trip, there hasn’t been much coverage or advice of the places we’ll be going in January, as we travel to Bangalore where I’ll be speaking at the Easy6 conference. There are books and lots of web resources, but still always cool to see something in the Sunday paper as you plan a trip.

We’ll be going to
Hong Kong (obviously) for about 4 days
Bangkok very briefly
Bangalore for about 4 days
Mumbai for about 4 days

and then an unbelievable journey home – it’s just travel all the way back, we won’t be chunking it up as with the outbound portion. I can’t imagine how destroyed we will be upon our return!