Échalote

A few days ago I had an opportunity to try wireless while I was traveling to LA for IETF 77. I haven’t flown Virgin America in a while although I heard about the wireless offered during flight. Here are some interesting things I noted while on transit.

1) You must be above 30,000 feet before the service is turned on.

2) If you are flying international and coming into the country the wireless service is turned off when you are at a certain distance (can’t recall the exact number).

3) It costs $9.95 for the flight. A great deal if you are flying across country for 5 hours, I will be doing that end of this month so looking forward to getting some work done during the flight.

4) Network latency is not too bad. I was above Santa Barbara and my ping time to a server at my data center was 135ms. My upload speed was 1.1Mbps and download speed was 0.3Mbps.

5) No IPv6 support. I was sad but not surprised.

One of the great advantages of using a wireless service (aside from working or passing time) is that you can contact someone to pick you up within 15 mins of when you land. As you descend you know you are close,  so a perfect opportunity to send a note to your designated chauffeur. I had a rather unfortunate incident at LAX where I dropped my iPhone into a sink with running water, I saw the screen flicker and it went dark. I missed an important call to a colleague which was frustrating but I also had not contacted my colleague at work to pick me up from the airport. Having wireless in the airplane enabled me to contact my colleague at work to pick me up when I landed, if I did not have wireless on the airplane it would have been difficult to contact  him when I landed since my phone was absolutely dead with no access to my contacts. It wouldn’t be impossible for me to get back to work because I can always resort to what one did in the old days e.g. use a pay phone, call the office receptionist etc but who want to live in the stone age?

There is no doubt that Ubud is the art capital of Bali. Every where one walks in Ubud they cannot escape works of art, you will see great paintings, amazing wood carving, perfectly chiseled stones depicting gods and goddesses and eye grabbing textiles. Almost everywhere is of some walking distance but you have to be brave enough to walk amongst cars and motorcycles, they move at low speed so it is quite safe but you just have to be aware. We took a long walk yesterday trying to find a yoga studio and along the way we discovered many interesting shops and residences of wood carvers and stone masons. We eventually found Amber’s yoga studio but no class due to the full moon.

Art for sale in a typical Ubud store.

The monkey forest sanctuary was an amazing find. The cool and dense jungle known as Mandala Wisata Wanara Wana houses three holy temples. The monkey forest sanctuary is home to a band of grey haired and greedy long tailed Balinese macaques who are not innocent and cute as one would think. They sway from statue to statue looking for offerings to fill their appetite. Hinduism is very large in Bali and if you know Hinduism there is a belief in reincarnation so the offerings eaten by monkeys is revered as gods and goddesses accepting the offerings in reincarnated form. The tourists carrying food however is probably not mistaken by the macaques as statues but they are quelled by their earthly desire to get the food from your hand and even run up to you and search your pockets for food, they are not shy about this.

Monkey bitchslap, stay away it's mine !

We landed in Taipei international airport around 6:30am. China Airlines entertainment facilities include only a large projection screen with an A/B system which was popular in the 80’s. I slept pretty much throughout the flight which is one good thing about leaving SFO to Asia at midnight. For future travelers I would suggest forgoing the Chinese style breakfast because it is quite bland. Taipei international airport is wonderful. It has a lot of cool stores and a large array of restaurants, as I am writing this post I have lost Amber to some duty free store. We found this tiny place in C3 which served authentic Chinese food and I got a serving of amazing dumplings (USD$6 with tea) while Amber got her noodle fix. I am off now to explore some electronic stores to see if I can find any cool gadgets.

Dumplings for breakfast at Taipei International Airport

I haven’t been blogging for a while now but I think its time I get back into it so whats better way to start then my 2009-2010 vacation. Every year Amber and I have a tradition to leave the US and bring in the new year at an exotic foreign location. We have done Mexico a couple of times but this year we decided to stretch the distance further by going to Bali and Java. We are leaving SFO monday 29th december 2009 and arriving in Taipei as the first leg. I hear that noodles at the Taipei airport are really good and I hope to have a real Chinese breakfast with Bao and dumplings in our 5 hour layover. We then leave for Denpasar, Indonesia and then to Ubud where we will be spending most of our time. Stay tuned and I hope to be writing as I get time on the internet and posting pictures also.