Tears On My Algae

This is what it sounds like when algae cries.

No, those are not very large crying algae. They are, as you suspected, monkeys.

Don't worry if you're mystified, all will be clear soon. However, first I must fill you in on some of the prerequisite knowledge you need to continue, given in no logical order, just as it occurs to me to list it.

• You know how some flavors are just more popular than others? Like consider ice cream. If you ask people for their favorite ice cream flavor, you will get many answers. But you are going to get a lot more people who answer chocolate than those who answer pistachio or birthday cake or (shudder) durian. Well, in some parts of the world, durian will rate higher, but you understand my meaning. Mosquitoes must have similar variation in which humans they bite for blood. Different mosquitoes like different humans, but some humans are the favorites of more mosquitoes than others. In the big picture of mosquito preference, I am a pistachio, not highly favored. My daughter is a chocolate; many, many mosquitoes love her. And while it is nice to be loved, it's less nice when what they love is sucking your blood.
• There is a musical called The Scarlet Pimpernel based on the book of the same name. In that musical, there is a song called The Creation of Man. And in that song there is a recurring line
  La, but someone has to strike a pose
  and bear the weight of well-tailored clothes.
  That is why the Lord created man.
• It is common, in Southeast Asia, to visit a public restroom and find that, once you have washed your hands, there is no paper towel nor hand dryer with which to eliminate the remaining manual dampness. This is not exclusive to Southeast Asia, either.
• Our daughter, Syarra, is visiting us in Kuala Lumpur during her winter break.
• This past Saturday was the night of the new moon.

These bullet points above are preparatory for my new discovery, a second benefit of pants. You would assume the first benefit is to keep your legs warm. That may be true, but I dismiss the obvious. Consider the third bullet point above. What would you do after you had washed your hands and there was no practical drying mechanism? I don't want to speak for you, but I will speak for me. I would dry them on my pants. And when this occurs, frequently, I sing some variation of the following to Alrica:
When you soap your hands and rinse them clean
But find no towels or blowing machine
That is why the Lord created pants.

Reference the second bullet point above if needed.

As you may have guessed, a lighthouse.

On Saturday we took a trip out of Kuala Lumpur by van to a smaller town called Kuala Selangor. It is along the Selangor River. The drive out was about 90 minutes and then we visited a few sites. First we went to Bukit Malawati or Malawati Hill. It is a high point in the region where, at one time, there was a fort and there is still a lighthouse. The historical aspects of the hill were somewhat lost for us. We did see a rock called The Bedrock. And a sign told us either it was a place the Sultan liked to sit so he could look down on the city or a place where people were beheaded. Who knows? Maybe both. There was no real explanation of what the history was. But there were monkeys, many monkeys on the hill.

More monkeys!

Our next stop was a seafood restaurant for dinner. We had fried rice, seasoned vegetables, a fish dish with a savory sauce and other vegetables, a chicken dish with a different savory sauce and different other vegetables, and fried prawns with no sauce and no vegetables. We also got Chinese tea to drink. Tea is not a particular preference of mine (not as low as durian, but not as high as pistachio.) But I'm adjusting.

Sunset over the Selangor River

After dinner, we got on a boat in the Selangor River. First, the boat took us upriver to an area full of fireflies. We slowly trolled through the water near the bank, looking into the bushes and scrub full of flickering lights. It was interesting to me, because this is not at all the way I remember fireflies (or what we called lightning bugs.) When I was a boy in Iowa, the summer nights were full of lightning bugs. They would fly around, light up, their light would stay on for several seconds as they zoomed around, and then it would go out again. Here, these fireflies just blinked on and then almost immediately off, over and over in quick succession. It was like looking at flickering Christmas lights. It was also interesting how many people have never seen fireflies before. You don't see them in the summer in Iowa anymore. I imagine our many pesticides have done a wonderful job of wiping them out.

They gave me a life vest for a man twice my size. Glad I didn't fall in.

After seeing the fireflies, we finally got to the main reason we had chosen this tour. It is called The Blue Tears. The boat took us downriver and out into the Malacca Strait. Then the boat slowed to a crawl (crawling on water so would you call it a dog paddle?) and the driver gave us all small fishing nets. We dipped our nets into the water and saw something magical. It was a blue glow being churned and caught in our nets. Since it was a new moon, there was little light in the sky, and it was very easy to see.

This is not the only place in the world you can see this phenomenon. But here in the Malacca Straight, what you are seeing is algae. It is a marine plankton algae called dinoflagellates. Within these single-celled organism is a chemical called luciferin. I'm sure it is named for Lucifer, but not so much in his aspect as a devil. I think it is because Lucifer means Light-bearer or Light-Bringer. When the algae are agitated, they come in contact with excess oxygen. This makes the luciferin in them glow blue. So when we dipped our fishing nets into the water, we were agitating the dinoflagellates and a stream of blue streaked in our nets and just behind them. If you pulled your net out of the water, the algae left in your net continued to glow for several more seconds.

It was fascinating to see. I tried to get a picture, but my cell camera was incapable of picking anything up. The pictures are just fields of black. But I have memories of it in the photo album of my mind. Along with what it sounds like when algae cry.

But wait, what does this have to do with the second benefit of pants? Understand, it was dusk or past dusk while we were on the boat. The mosquitoes were out in force. We had applied mosquito repellent and perhaps it helped. One can only wonder what would have happened had we not. Personally, I didn't have much problem. Remember, I am at best pistachio to the mosquitoes. But Syarra, well, she was much more popular with them than I. The good news is that Syarra was wearing long pants. A woman sitting across from us, another mosquito favorite, was wearing shorts. And she was being eaten alive. Syarra, unfortunately, was not wearing long sleeves, so she still had her share of unpleasant mosquito affection.

Seeing how strongly affected was the woman in shorts, this gave me a second reason to sing the praises of pants. I present it to you herewith: Or forthwith: Whichever with is the proper with:
La, when insects need to feed their eggs
Why offer a buffet of your legs?
That is why the Lord created pants.

Thai the Loose Ends

Our time in Thailand ended. Thailand is an amazing place and we are going to miss it.

Later today, our daughter arrives to join us in Kuala Lumpur where she will spend her winter break. She is spending her spring semester studying abroad in Amman, Jordan, so when she leaves us she will head west again.

We are excited about that, but because we enjoyed Thailand so much, here is one last post about the end of our time there and just some of the fun things that Thailand has to offer. That's in addition to super kind people, delicious food, great public transportation, and affordability.

Chinatown in Bangkok

Our last "adventure" was to head into Chinatown in Bangkok. There we had a delicious dinner including pork on a stick and fried balls of coconut custard. And then we headed to the Chao Phraya River to see a drone show. Except, we didn't see a drone show. We saw fireworks and expected some sort of drone show either before or after. But we did not see one. If there were drones doing anything amazing, it wasn't where we were. And there were lots of other people around, so we weren't the only ones watching.

Those are fireworks, not an apocalypse, I promise.

On our way back, we went through a walking district (called a walking district though there were still cars driving on the roads, so what's that about?) Here we saw a play. It was being performed on a raised stage right at the side of the road. It was in Thai, so we had no idea what was going on, but it was interesting to watch for a few minutes.

Here are a couple of other sites we beheld that night:

How'd you like to spend Christmas in Bangkok, Thailand?

Even in this mostly Buddhist country, some of the stores are brimming with Christmas items for sale.

Do you need somewhere to lay your weary head?

While others are selling penis pillows.

And here are a couple of items we saw in Thailand, not during our Chinatown adventure.

I'm sure they are going for a pun on "excuse me" rather than "execute me" but I would still be wary.

I am amused that it has a cartoon on it, but says it is "Adult Toothpaste"

Now this second one we bought. I know you're thinking, seriously Erich, you needed childish toothpaste. Brace yourselves. This one wasn't me. Alrica wanted it. Not so much because of a cartoon character that we don't know, but because she wanted to try peach flavored toothpaste. And you know what, it's good! And it's for adults. It says so right on the tube. So back off, haters!

Farewell for now, Thailand. I'm sure we will be back.

Beating the Odds

Let's talk about beating the odds.

Alrica, I realized today, is a rare and unusual woman. Yes, you are all saying "obviously, Erich" and you all have a variety of reasons. But let me explain my reason: If we let C(X) be the number of countries that person X has been in and we let Y(x) be the person's age (the number of years they have lived, rounded down,) for most X, we have C(X) < Y(X). However, C(Alrica) > Y(Alrica). Saying this in a less mathy way, though why would anyone want less mathy when more mathy is an option, the number of countries that Alrica has been in is greater than her age.

The next time you want to say Alrica has a big head, note, it is still not big enough to fill her big hat

This came up today because today is Alrica's fiftieth birthday. She had previously set a goal she called "Fifty By Fifty". As you might have guessed, this meant she hoped to have visited her fiftieth country before she reached her fiftieth birthday. She accomplished that goal when we arrived in Costa Rica.

The birthday girl buying from a peddler

Since then, we have added three new countries: the Philippines, Taiwan, and Cambodia. So on the day Alrica turns 50, she has been 53 countries. Her number of countries exceeds her age.

Even on her birthday, she goes out of her way to give the gift of her help

But this is rare, I think. Consider the example of me. I have not yet reached that milestone except trivially. What do I mean by trivially? I mean, it has only happened in the uninteresting edge case that is true for almost everyone.

Alrica (and the other thinkers) are pondering my premise

When we are born, we have suddenly visited one country, yet our age is zero. So almost everyone on Earth spends at least the first year of their lives having visited more countries than their age. I was thinking it was true of everyone, but then exceptions occurred to me. What about people born on a vessel in international waters? Or flying in international airspace? Those people will have been in zero countries and also have an age of zero. But I would think all of them have to arrive in a country before their first birthday, so they are also in the trivial case, just they get there a bit later.

After thinking it through, Alrica decided to sit out the rest of my mathy diatribe

For me, since I turned one, I have never again been in the situation where C(Erich) > Y(Erich). Though I suspect I will get there sometime in 2026. I wonder at what age most people get there. If they get there.

All of this, thus far, is just a rambling preamble (dare I say preambling) to the point of the post: what did we do to celebrate Alrica's birthday?

Not counting our recent trip to Pattaya, which was in celebration of her birthday, but wasn't on her birthday, we still did a few things on the day itself. And I should point out that when I say "on the day itself" I refer to the day on the calendar in our current location. So, for example, when we went to a bakery today and bought her a birthday cake, it was not yet her birthday in the United States. But it was her birthday in Thailand. I consider that to be "on the day itself". Alrica feels that not only should all day today be her birthday, but it should extend to 3 PM tomorrow. You see, she was born in Pacific Time, and it won't be until 3 PM in Thailand that Pacific Time will pass out of her birthday. I'm reasonably okay with this idea, though I have some fear that Alrica will later suggest that since we added an extra 15 hours to her birthday, we have to balance things out by taking away 15 hours from mine. (I'm not that afraid. My birthday is over seven months away. Most likely when it comes she won't even remember that any balancing is necessary.)

The birthday cake

In addition to buying a birthday cake, we headed into Bangkok today. We got lunch and used buses to reach a shopping area called Asiatique. The shopping area (also full of entertainment) wasn't our true goal. That was the pier that is at Asiatique. You see Asiatique is on the Chao Phraya River, the main river of Bangkok. And tonight we took a sunset cruise on the river that came with dinner and performers.

A bit off topic, just a funny sign we saw today (not on the cruise.) The illiterate do not drink tea.

We had fun with both our exploration of Asiatique and the sunset cruise. It was hot today, but beautifully sunny. The sunset was magnificent from the boat. We also got to see bridges up close. We had to stay seated and lean as we passed under one of the bridges. You probably think I'm exaggerating, but this I mean literally. The boats haven't been allowed to go under that bridge for awhile. Today was the first day that the river was running low enough that the government allowed it. And it was barely low enough. In the States, there is no way a river cruise company would have done it. If some idiot had thrust up his hand or his head, it would have been badly damaged, and then the cruise company would get sued. They would have been way too afraid of litigation to go under that bridge. But in Thailand, well, I can only say we did go under it. And no one on the ship was stupid enough to thrust up hand or head.

This is us approaching that crazy low bridge

We got to see amazing sites. The Wat Arun is perhaps the most spectacular. We saw it twice, going upriver with the sun setting behind it. and going downriver under the night sky, but the wat is well lit and equally splendid as in the day.

I can't capture the full majesty of the Wat Arun in a picture

Alrica was given a birthday cake (which was 12% cake and 82% icing and 6% mini cookies set into the icing.) She wasn't alone. There were over a dozen people who were celebrating their birthday on the cruise. That seems weird, right? (WARNING: I'm getting mathy again.) Let's talk about beating the odds. You would think only one out of every 365 people on the boat would have a birthday today. That's probably about true in the population as a whole. But not on a sunset cruise. Why? Well, because if it is your birthday on some Wednesday, you want to do something to celebrate it, right? That's exactly the kind of reason you take a sunset cruise. Hence, (using all my best math words,) there is a higher proportion of people who have their birthday on that day on the cruise than you find in the population.

Alrica with her other birthday cake

So today was a celebration of Alrica. But it reminded me of how lucky I am. I get to share the adventures of this rare and unusual woman.

Talk about beating the odds!

The rare and unusual woman with her adventure partner