Asia Update #21 - 2 rental cars, 2 backpacks, 0 wallets

Went to Hawaii for a well needed 5-day vacation. A good friend from the States came and met me there. Actually, she is a bit more than just a good friend, but I'll save details about that for a later message…

Had many very good times, and one especially bad experience. At the end of day 2 we stopped at Pali Point lookout vista point. Jumped out of the car with the camera to take some pictures. The mountains in Hawaii are relatively young, so they have spectacular angular formations to them, covered with lush, tropical vegetation. The vista point was a hundred yards away, so we walked over. Took some pictures and then returned within 10 minutes. I walked up to the door and was surprised to find it unlocked. I thought to myself "Damn, I forgot to lock it. Good thing nothing happened". Opened the door and found a roll of bagels on the floor of the front seat (I bought bagels to bring back to Asia with me, and had left them in the back seat). That wasn't right. Looked in the back seat and found that the backpack I had bought was gone. In the 10 minutes we were away, someone had picked the door lock, opened the door, grabbed the bag, and drove away. Amazingly fast.

Turned out we made it real easy for him. We had left most everything we needed in the bag to make it real easy for him to grab and go. Particularly, both of our wallets (complete with credit cards, cash, drivers licenses, etc.), my US cell phone, some suntan lotion (in case he has to sit in the sun while waiting for his next mark), etc. And we had left the bag on the floor of the back seat, in plain site.

How do I know it was a him? He went for a bit of a spending spree that evening with my credit cards, but not with my friend's.

I have never been a big fan of American Express cards because of their high costs and all, but now I am quite glad to be a member. We had some cash and traveler's checks back in the hotel, but not a lot. Definitely would have put a crimp on our vacation to have to live off of that. We were able to get a replacement Amex card and cash the next day. This definitely saved the vacation.

The lock picking broke the lock, so we had to return the car. Hertz didn't have another Mustang Convertible (bummer - sure was nice to drive around with the top down), so we had to settle for a 2001 Explorer with 800 miles on it.

This type of thing definitely makes you go through a lot of what ifs. What if we had brought the bag with us to the vista point? Things would have been much better. What if my passport was in the bag? Things would have been much worse (I likely could not have returned to Asia for a while, let alone have been able to get a replacement Amex card). But that all doesn't matter - what happened is that some guy got a nice Xmas present off of us and we made the best of a bad situation.

We definitely put this behind us and moved on to have a great time. Had to waste about a day getting everything sorted out (closing credit cards, getting the Amex card, buying another backpack to carry stuff, etc.) but once that was done we went back to vacationing. We did find time to:

• snorkel at Hanema Bay (picture above), where we saw many amazing fish and a few very large sea turtles. We bought a disposable underwater camera, so will hopefully have some pictures soon

• go to a Luau so that we can eat way too much food and watch Polynesian dancing
• drink more than a few tropical drinks (with umbrellas in them, of course)

• see the Arizona Memorial (which was incredibly touching)
• lay in the sun at Waikiki Beach and at the hotel's pool
• and hike in a rain forest.

Of course, we did keep the backpack with us at all times…

Sucked to go back to Seoul. It was 85°F and sunny in Hawaii and I spent 5 days wearing shorts and sandals. Returned to Seoul to find it 22°F. Sure brought me back to reality quickly.

Asia Update #20 - Counting

Counting in Korea seems confusing to me. Koreans have their first birthday on the day they are born, so their age is 1 or 2 years older than we are. They say that they start counting the day they are conceived. How do they know what day they are conceived on? And why is the Korean child's gestation time 52 weeks instead of 40 weeks like in America? I checked and the Japanese and Chinese do not use this method, so this seems to be a Korean thing.

Went to a cash machine to get money out. I want to take out 100,000 won (about $80). Go through the process - select cash withdrawal, swipe card, enter my PIN, and then it gets to where I choose the amount. Has numbers listed in various increments up to 70. I figure these are in thousands, so my option appears to be 70,000 won max. Not as much as I wanted, but 70,000 will do. Hit that and wait a long time as the machine clunks and creaks. Then the receipt pops out and the door opens and in front of me is this huge wad of bills. Turns out the 70 meant seventy 10,000 won bills. Way more than I wanted. Kind of like a cash machine in the states not asking you how much money you want, but how many $20 bills to give you.

Americans base our numbers around ,000 increments. Thousand, million, billion, trillion, etc. - each has 3 zeros more than the last. Koreans don't seem to do this. For example, when I watch an English language TV show with Korean subtitles, I will hear they say 6 million, but see printed in the subtitles '60' and then some Korean character which must mean 100,000.

Koreans (and most Asians at that) count with their hands different than we do. Americans start with a closed fist and point out a finger at a time to count, with the pointer finger first and their thumb last. So a 2 would be pointer finger and middle finger stretched out (the British way of saying 'piss off'). Koreans start with an open hand and pull in a finger to count, starting with their thumb. So a 2 for them is the middle, ring, and pinkie outstretched, and the others curled in (kind of like the OK sign). I asked one of my coworkers to count to 2 with her hand and I did the same with mine and took a picture of this (the Koreans already must think I am nuts, so my request probably didn't surprise them)…

The Korean method does allow them to count to 20 with their hands. 1 through 5 is as I described. 6 through 10 can either be the other hand in the same manner, or the same hand in the reverse (6 is the pinkie outstretched, 7 would be pinkie and ring finger, etc.). An American would have to pull their shoes off to get past 10 (or more likely just give up).

There may not be too many updates in December. Have a 5 day vacation coming up and will be back in California for the Holidays, not leaving me much time in Asia to be experiencing things.