IJCH - Inside JaiChai's Head (Meaning: My Warped, Personal Opinions and Musings)
From the Author:
Salutations.
I am JaiChai.
And if I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before, I'm delighted to make your acquaintance now.
I invite you to interact with everyone, learn, and have as much fun as possible!
For my returning online friends, "It's always great to see you again!"
First off, A Day Without Electricity
In my little city, once a month we have a 12-hour long power outage (locally called a "brownout"). No one has ever told me a believable reason for this phenomena, but it's ass-umed that some kind of periodic maintenance is needed.
My suspicion is that the severely overloaded transformers need to shut down before they are irreparably damaged.
Of course, if this is true, the real solution is to install more transformers until the manufacturer's recommended user/transformer ratio is reached.
I guess that logic makes too much sense to actually happen?
It's kind of like the way the city "repairs" potholes in the roads by filling them in with dirt - dirt that washes away after each hard rain.
And subsequently, after the "repaired road" is rained upon, it makes the road a dangerous, muddy path for vehicles to slide around on!
But hey, I guess it's better to hire cheap labor multiple times, right? Besides, not many people here have enough money to litigate such nonsense.
My old saying rings true here:
"You're not a veteran of the Philippines unless you fix most things (including the 'always broken bottle opener') with an old rusty nail found on the road!
Never mind worrying about the 'always broken can opener' because the Filipino solution for that is to use your expensive kitchen knives to open cans of all sizes!
Or finally...
If it's broke (like a wall clock), leave it in place for home decor!" - Jaichai
I keep forgetting my fellow ex-pat buddy's advice:
"You're only allowed to ask 'WTF?' once a day in the Philippines. Anymore than that is not only additional wasted time, it's mental suicide..."
But I stray from describing my "Brownout Day".
I woke up to no electricity and was informed by my neighbor that the brownout will last another 11 hours.
Great. It's gon'na be another one of my monthly "I hate Asia" days...
Then, since rice is eaten for EVERY MEAL, my daughter needed me to cook rice on the stove - because she usually uses our electric rice cooker to cook for herself.
BTW, in the Philippines, any meal without rice - even if there's bread, potatoes or pasta available, IS NOT CONSIDERED "A MEAL", JUST MERELY "A SNACK"!
My theory for this mindset is less due to physiological "hunger" and more the result of the widely accepted, but ostensibly not voiced in public settings, uncomfortable feeling of poverty that gnaws at people's psyche whenever there's no rice.
Think I'm full of shit?
OK, just tell me why eating cheap corn meal is relegated to the poor?
And watch how fast people disappear from your dinner party when your local friends realize that there's no rice on the table!
What, No Rice!? Sacrilege!
Furthermore, if rice is served, explain why any expensive, imported rice - or anything that incorporates it into a dish - is a prized creation that's proudly displayed (and disappears from the banquet table onto people's plates first) at any gathering?
Annoyingly, in spite of following the printed cooking instructions (to the letter) on the rice bag, my daughter and I routinely burn the rice that we cook in a pot over the stove.
As an aside, the brown, burnt rice at the bottom of the pot is called "ducot" (pronounced: "doo-coat") and I actually like munching on it like potato chips.
After cooking the rice (and yes, I burned it again), I had some coffee and gave my three dogs some much needed attention.
We rough-housed it, wrestling and affectionately "play biting" each other in the livingroom.
And against the advice of most dog trainers (BTW, I used to train military and civilian dogs when I was younger), we played tug of war first with a toy resembling a popular TV evangelist - until it was decapitated and became a canine choking hazard.
Then continued our games with a stuffed toy of "the purple anti-christ" until the demon was shredded - soul unboubtedly sent back to Hell.
After feeding my chickens and tending to my veggie garden, I settled down on my porch and began reading "Deception Point" by Dan Brown.
Dan Brown's "Deception Point": A Novel so Good YouTuber's are campaigning for a movie! (or How I used a Day without electricity to read this Great Novel)
About Dan Brown
Daniel Gerhard Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author of thriller novels, most notably the Robert Langdon stories: Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003), The Lost Symbol (2009), Inferno (2013) and Origin (2017).
His novels are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour period, and feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories.
His books have been translated into 56 languages, and as of 2012, sold over 200 million copies. Three of them, Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003) and Inferno (2013) have been adapted into films.
My Brief Review of "Deception Point"
Since retiring 15 years ago, I read at least one book a week.
Sometimes I start a book and if it feels like a waste of time, I quickly discard it and start another one.
But from prologue to last page, Dan Brown's "Decpetion Point" had me eagerly turning page after intriguing page.
I enjoyed reading about some real-life, but little known, government organizations (e.g., Delta and the NRO).
Then there's a whole lot of tech that's not sci-fi anymore (e.g., mosquito sized, recon and attack drones, special black "split-tails" - modified F-14s, the sophisticated Air Force One's gadgets - including its identical twin "Doppelganger", ice rovers fashioned after Mars' Lander specifications, and many more fascinating/lethal technology).
The plot itself is thought-provoking; that is, Proof of: ET life, panspermia, space morphology - and much more!
Other Reviews
From the ultra secret National Reconnaissance Office to the towering ice shelves of the Arctic Circle this is pulse-pounding fiction at its best.
When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory...a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election. With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find.
Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery -- a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy.
Struggling to rebound from a series of embarrassing blunders that have jeopardized its political life at the start of this lively thriller, NASA makes an astounding discovery: there is a meteor embedded deep within the arctic ice.
And it isn't just any meteor. Inside the huge rock, which crashed to earth in 1716, are fossils of giant insects—proof of extraterrestrial life. Yet, given NASA's slipping reputation, the question arises: Is the meteor real or a fake? That uncertainty dogs NASA and its supporters in Brown's latest page-flipper, a finely polished amalgam of action and intrigue.
Intelligence Analyst Rachel Sexton is in her mid-thirties, is single, and works for the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). Her father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is a presidential candidate who is more popular than incumbent President of the United States Zachary Herney.
The President sends her to the Arctic as part of a team of experts to confirm and authenticate findings made by NASA deep within the Milne Ice Shelf. NASA's new Polar Orbiting Density Scanner (PODS), part of the Earth Observation System (EOS), a collection of satellites monitoring the globe for signs of large-scale change, has found an extremely dense spot in the Milne Ice Shelf.
Here's a YouTube book review:
And here's some calls for a movie:
I Highly Recommend this Book!
By JaiChai
Thanks for stopping by.
About the Author
Believing that school was too boring, he dropped out of High School early; only to earn an AA, BS and MBA in less than 4 years much later in life – while working full-time as a Navy/Marine Corps Medic.
In spite of a fear of heights and deep water, he performed high altitude, free-fall parachute jumps and hazardous diving ops in deep, open ocean water.
After 24 years of active duty, he retired in Asia.
Since then, he's been a full-time, single papa and actively pursuing his varied passions (Writing, Disruptive Technology, Computer Science and Cryptocurrency - plus more hobbies too boring or bizarre for most folk).
He lives on an island paradise with his teenage daughter, longtime girlfriend and three dogs.
