Category Archives: Travel

Whereabouts, Thereabouts

At the moment I’m getting all my things together to head out to London for Carson Systems’ Future of Web Apps conference. I’m speaking there on Wednesday on the subject of “Managing User Interfaces,” and then giving a workshop on Thursday morning about designing with grids. It’s going to be great fun, but unfortunately, it’s sold out if you’re looking for tickets.

Also, while in London, I’ll be appearing on a panel assembled by Nico Macdonald called “Who Wants Tomorrow’s Papers?,” in which we discuss the state of online news design. That event will take place on Tuesday night, and it’s free, so come on out.

I’ll be turning this trip across the pond into a little getaway, too. On Thursday afternoon, I’ll fly to Paris for a few days to see my father and hang out with some friends. I’ll be back in New York a week from this Monday.

As always, my schedule on these trips is going to be pretty tight, so I apologize in advance if I can’t catch up with folks in London or Paris, though I will try. Posts here at Subtraction.com will be somewhat erratic too, if they happen at all… though that will also be due, in part, to the fact that just thirty minutes ago, with only an hour left to leave for the airport, the hard drive in my laptop died. Crashed. Kaput. I’ll be trying to resuscitate it in London, but the prognosis is grim. Ain’t that always the way?

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Mr. France-y Pants

If you can believe it, I disappeared over the past few days to Paris, France. Yes, that Paris, France: land of unconscionably good baked goods, storybook architecture and head-shakingly beautiful women. Since my father now lives there, I’ll be visiting fairly often (even if my last trip there was nearly a year ago), which poses a semi-interesting question for blogging purposes: should I even bother posting about a trip to a romantic locale when those trips are common-place enough to be not particularly romantic? It wouldn’t seem to make for particularly good reading if I did, which is part of the reason I didn’t even bother to leave a ‘Gone to France’ post last Thursday afternoon, when I flew out.

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Report from SXSW

South by Southwest InteractiveSo I really blew it with the live blogging from the epicenter of the 2006 South by Southwest Interactive Festival thing, meaning I barely did it at all. I blame it on preparatory frenzy, post-panel appearance exhaustion, and general laziness — I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a pen almost the entire time I was there. In practice, I’ve never really understood those who show up at conferences and find within them the fortitude to record nearly every single point made by speakers and lecturers on paper; I much prefer to just absorb the onslaught of knowledge. In that spirit, I mostly just kept my ass in my seat, listened, and hung out, and had a great time. But, for the record, here is a spotty list of the conference as it went for me.

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Post-Trip Wrap-Up

Viet NamJust a word to say that I’m back from my trip to Viet Nam. Technically, I’ve been back since about 11:30p on Sunday evening, when my plane touched down at the end of 22-plus hours of transit. But I’ve been dealing with the inevitable jet lag, as well, which accounts for why I’m writing this post at 6:30a (and I’ve been awake for two hours already!); in case I hadn’t mentioned it before, Viet Nam is exactly twelve hours ahead of New York, so you can imagine my body clock is completely off. Somewhere between the haze of insomnia, walking catatonia and catching up with work, I also managed to corral all my trip photos together into a Flickr photoset, and this morning I went through them all and added titles and captions, so if you’ve browsed through them already, it might be worth another look for more back story. More posts as soon as I’m all caught up on sleep…

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Surfing in Viet Nam

Two years ago, broadband internet came to Viet Nam in a big way thanks to the country’s Ministry of Post and Telematics, which brought ADSL to most urban areas throughout the country. Today you’ll find dozens of small, ramshackle shops marked with signs that say “ADSL,” “Game Online,” or simply “Internet.” It’s hard to miss them because they’re everywhere.

The proliferation of this industry is fueled mostly by Vietnamese kids nursing increasingly pronounced addictions to online gaming. The most popular MMORPGs, like “Swordsman,” are ported from other culturally complementary sources (read: Chinese game publishers) by local upstarts like VinaGame. At just about US$0.19 for an hour of playing time, the result is an apparently ferocious gaming market that wasn’t in evidence just four years ago.

You can use the machines for anything you like, of course, and so it’s not uncommon to spot disproportionately tall and/or well-dressed Westerners surfing next to thin, gangly Vietnamese kids; the former playing at business, the latter at swordplay. Such sights are as close to an advertisement for technologically-enabled cross-cultural bridges as you’ll see this side of an IBM commercial.

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Sleepwalking Abroad

BalloonsThere’s a lot of family stuff to be done while I’m here in Viet Nam, leaving me with scant little time to try and provide the tourister narrative that Jason Kottke did such a good job with during his trip here. I’m probably not the best such guide in any event. My experience here is fairly atypical, I think, due in part to my stranger/familiar status as a Viet Khieu: a returning Vietnamese who, quite unfortunately, doesn’t speak the language very well at all, but who looks just Vietnamese enough for the locals to expect a certain level of fluency I just can’t manage.

It’s frustrating, because I do make an effort to communicate in what is ostensibly my native tongue. Members of my extended family encourage me to speak it more frequently so that my skills will improve… but ultimately their own mastery of English is sufficiently superior to my pathetic mastery of Vietnamese that they all speak English to me anyway. I’ll never learn, it seems.

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First Day Back

As much as small things have changed each time I come back to Saigon — roads laid with gravel now paved, broadband Internet now almost commonplace, newer, taller and more gleaming high rises towering over old construction — the city is basically the same as it was when I first returned here eight years ago. Undeterred by progress, it remains a mess of human traffic, diesel exhaust and unkempt and unregulated commerce everywhere.

I can’t resist it. Its disjointed clicks and whirrs are in sync with a romantic idea of home that I nurse very tenderly: so too the omnipresent and melodic sound of spoken Vietnamese — nasal, drawling, bearing hurt and satisfaction at once.

I was born here but I left when I was three and a half. So just being back, in the midst of the quotidian and the unremarkable, is profound in a very private, intimate way. It’s more than just being a visitor to a place one cherishes; it’s like playing tourist in another course of events, sightseeing the attractions of a life I might have led if it weren’t for, you know, global politics and war and all. Everywhere and everything is a could-have-been for me, superficially strange and foreign but, in an emotional way, also deeply familiar. It’s weird, it’s fun, and the food is amazing.

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Away from My Desk Right Now

A quick housekeeping post before I head out to Newark International Airport: as mentioned earlier in the week, I’m leaving for Viet Nam this evening. I’m bracing myself for the day-long plane ride that it’ll take to get my feet back on the ground in Saigon, but it’ll be worth it. Like a dutiful digital dork, I’m toting along my digital camera and my PowerBook, so if I find the time and the Internet connection, I’ll post pictures on Flickr and updates here. Otherwise, I’ll be back in New York in early December. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Unaware Over There

Trip to ParisI’ve been back from Paris since last Wednesday night, but I spent the first two or three days battling a jet-lag-fueled exhaustion so acute it hurt. It gripped my spine, shoulder blades and neck in the same way that I histrionically and baselessly imagine the bends must treat its victims. Not fun. I’m closer to normalcy now, but I’m still waking up very early in the morning and going to bed very early in the evening, which I admit isn’t unpleasant.

Until yesterday, I was in no shape to blog, but I’m not sure I had all that much to say about Paris anyway. That is, apart from the obvious, which is that it completely justifies its reputation for being redolently gorgeous and romantic, at once historically overwhelming and inspiring… if you conveniently ignore the civil riots taking place at the edge of the city.

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European Vacation

These days, I seem to be doing less blogging and more getting out of the house, which includes leaving tomorrow for a one week holiday in Paris, France. Joy and I are going there to visit my father, who moved there late last year, returning decades after having grown up there in his teens and early twenties.

I’ve been to Paris four times, each visit separated by at least five years, and I’ve enjoyed each visit quite a bit. It’s hard to resist Europe in general, but I’m wondering if France can really top my visit last year to Italy — our trip to Sicily was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable getaways I’ve ever had (so enjoyable, it seems, that I never got around to properly blogging about it). I was reminded of this recently when I watched the Criterion edition of Pietro Germi’s “Divorce, Italian Style” — hilarious and well worth the rental, definitely. Anyway, I’m sure Paris going to be fantastic all the same — I have very little cause for worry.

We’ll be gone for a week, with a side-trip to Amsterdam, but at this point, having both been so busy just trying to clear our plates to be able to leave, we have no agenda. If you have any interesting ideas, please let me know. Until then, the posts here will be sporadic — or at least very continental.

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