Steve asked how I’m accessing the Internet here in Bangkok.

Right beside our hotel, by coincidence, is a 24 hour Internet/video game centre that charges 10 baht (about 50 cents) for 30 minutes of Internet. The bandwidth feels about 56K, but it’s hard to tell because I’m mostly accessing sites that are on the other side of the world.

The weirdest thing about surfing here is that most of the other people around me are actively engaged in killing each other through various virtual methods; as I type this, there is the sound of constant machine gun fire, a woman’s voice calmly saying “Unit Ready” and “Unit Locked” every couple of seconds, and the occassional speech from a GI Joe-like commander in chief.

Hot and humid today in Bangkok, where it’s 11:00 p.m. on Thursday evening as I write this, and something like 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning back home.

So we have lived Thursday and our neighbours and friends at home have it to come.

Today was our “get the lay of the land day.” Steve (as Harold is called by everyone — somethings you can’t learn via email) introduced us to his wife Michelle, and their Korean friend Susan, and we all went up to the Sky Train together.

The Sky Train is a wonderful piece of Bangkok’s public transportation network — indeed it’s part of complex series of things that led Steve and Michelle back to Bangkok from California a couple of years ago. It is essentially an elevated transit system, similar to the one in Vancouver in both design and name (but cleaner and better run here). In a city as congested as Bangkok (and truth be told, it doesn’t appear as congested as the guidebooks would have you believe), something like the Sky Train is a tool for social revolution; while it’s obvious that it hasn’t completely caught on yet, it’s also obvious that it’s starting to have a dramatic impact on the way that the people of Bankgkok get around.

Sky Train lessons done, we headed to the Oriental Hotel in the riverfront, where one of Steve’s books, At Home in Asia, is being buried in a time capsule this week. In the lobby of the hotel, while Steve was up with PR folks, Catherine and I and Oliver plunked ourselves down.

Now keep in mind that the Oriental Hotel was 10 times voted the best hotel in the world. And there we gruffy three sat, Oliver wanting to putter around, Catherine going hunting for a bottle of water. And we felt at home. The staff came over and picked up Oliver and carried him around, showed him the lily pond fountain. And when we left they all waved at Oliver.

This is a constant theme here so far: my son is more popular than I am. Everywhere we go — everywhere — Oliver is treated like a prince. At restaurants he is spirited away from the table so as to not need fuss while we eat. On the riverboats he flirted with the ticket taker. At the grocery store the clerk looked blankly at we when I walked in, and then when she spotted Oliver on my back, her face lit up brightly.

And it works at airports and in customs lines too — faced with a line of some 500 people at Bangkok International last night we were spirited ahead by an official to the special “Diplomatic” line.

After the Oriential Hotel, we headed out to the street for a bowl of miso soup, and then out onto the river. Another of Bangkok’s transportation methods is riverboat — ferry boats that run up and down the river stopping at various places. The fare is 10 baht — about 50 cents — and the experience is indescibable but to say that Oliver didn’t fall off.

This last point is relevant because last night Steve told us that the only thing we had to worry about was the water. In my bleary-headed post-flight fog, I said “falling in, or drinking it?” Both he and Catherine looked at me like I was an idiot. Which, of course, I was.

After the river, we Sky Trained back to our hotel for a rest, and then joined Michelle, Susan and later a couple of guys, Sri and Sunam, from Sri Lanka, for a spaghetti dinner. So there we were, three Canadians, a Korean, a Philipinno (albeit with a Thai passport) and Korean, talking about hamburgers, Anne of Green Gables (nobody had heard of), snow (everybody had heard of) and Quebec separation. This is why it’s good to travel.

After supper we took Steve’s advice and travelled the 5 blocks back to our hotel by tuk tuk (basically a 3-wheeled motorcycle with a passenger compartment in the back), Oliver asleep for the whole thing. And this is where Catherine and Oliver are, hopefully enjoying their first Thai sound sleep, as I write. And where I must now go and join them.

More later.

So here we are on the aforementioned other side of the world. It takes a long, long time to get here. And for those of you who think that once you’re in Tokyo, you’re in the neighbourhood of Thailand, well, you’re not — there’s another 6 hours to go.

Oliver was the best flyer of any of us — he just ate and slept and flirted with the flight attendants. He can go anywhere. I, on the other hand, came close to melting down from the lack of sleep of it all by the time we reached Narita; thankfully Catherine kept us going, as she somehow eluded exhaustion.

Wonder of wonders, we met Harold at the airport in Bangkok — nice of him to trudge out there for midnight! — and made our way to our hotel.

Today we’re out to explore the world of Bangkok. More later.

Off we go, our little family, to the other side of the world.

It’s -8 degrees celcius here in Charlottetown this morning, and the streets are alive with the “beep… beep… beep” of snow clearing equipment trying to dispose of the 2 or 3 feet of snow that have gathered over the last few weeks.

Today in Bangkok it’s 33 degrees celcius, hot and humid. We’ll be there on Wednesday, fates willing.

Before you have any tinge of envy, recall that between here and there is 30 hours of travel with 16-month-old Oliver.

Updates as opportunity presents.

Take care of the Island for us.

Little know fact: in the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle, there is a scene near the end where Sam Baldwin, played by Tom Hanks, is flying cross-country from Seattle to New York in search of his son Jonah. If you look carefully at the man seated next to him on the plane, you will see that it is none other than Charlottetown lawyer Alan Scales. It’s a small world.

We (Catherine, Oliver and I) will be in Tokyo for 12 hours in late February, and welcome suggestions for interesting activities that we might throw ourselves into for that short stay.

Much has been written about being a twin. There are entire sub-branches of several scientific disciplines devoted to twin studies. Books about twins. Movies about twins.

But nothing at all about being the brother of twins.

My little brothers Steve and Johnny are now 29 years old. They will be 30 years old in October, a scant 4 days after wee Oliver turns 2. Their collective has gone through several namings: when they were born we called them “the babies.” Later it was “the twins.” And finally they have settled in to being “my little brothers.” They will be my little brothers even when I am 66 and they are 60.

There is, in addition, a complex scheme having to do with “brother” and “brothers.” When I refer to “my brother,” I mean my brother Mike, 1-1/2 years my junior (and without website to link to, alas). When I refer to my brothers, it is to Johnny, Steve and Mike. When I want to talk about Johnny or Steve individually, they always get the “my brother Johnny” or “my brother Steve.” Catherine will never understand this system.

In any case, for all of you twin researcher readers, please refer to this article (on Steve’s website) and this article (on Johnny’s website). They were written completely independently of each other. Johnny and Steve live in different cities, thousands of miles apart.

It is my role, as big brother of twins, to point these things out.

Although our Provincial Library System has been automated for several years (automated in a non-steam-powered fashion at least), they’ve continued, for various arcane technical reasons, to cling to the regular postal mail for sending out “your hold is in” notices.

But no longer! I received the following email tonight:

RUKAVINA, PETER

***** AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED MESSAGE,
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO IT *****

Confederation Centre Public Library (902)368-4642 www.library.pe.ca

***** HOLD NOTICE *****
The following material is now available for you and will be held at
this Library, until the date shown ON THE LINE BELOW. Please collect
it at your earliest convenience (or kindly notify us if it is
no longer required), resolving any outstanding balances beforehand.

ANF 915.93 MCD 2 The National Geographic traveler.02
ANF 915.93 CUM 1 Thailand

Wonderful!

Sandy Griswold died on Sunday. I didn’t know Sandy well, but he was, in large part, responsible for creating the conditions which brought us to the Island 9 years ago, and for keeping us here.

I first met Sandy back in 1994. I was working at the PEI Crafts Council on what had become an Internet project, and needed some funding to attend a Community Networking conference in California. I didn’t need much funding — just $400 if I recall correctly. Sandy was working with ACOA at the time, and when I made a request to ACOA for funding, my request ended up on his desk.

And so it came to pass that one winter day I made my way up to ACOA for a meeting with Sandy and Gerry O’Connell. The problem with my request, as it turned out, was largely that it was for too little money. ACOA was well set up to handle funding million dollar business expansions, but to fund $400 was difficult.

An additional problem, Sandy relayed, was related to the location of the conference: it would be much easier for them to fund my attendance at a conference in, say, Lower Musquodoboit Harbour than in San Jose, California.

But Sandy was wily, and figured out a way of funding my travel under the Cooperation Agreement for Rural Economic Development. I was off to California. Learned a lot. And a lot of what I learned lives on in the www.gov.pe.ca website.

It was ACOA, again under the Cooperation Agreement, that originally funded the project I was working under at the Crafts Council, and Sandy was involved in later years helping to get the mapping project on the PEI website underway. And the funding that originally brought the Internet to PEI in the first place — first through CA*Net and later PEINet — passed through Sandy too.

Outside of formal (or informal — Sandy never seemed very formal) meetings with Government, I met Sandy only one other time, and that was on Queen Street, one fine fall day. Sandy had an interest in old DeForest Radios, and we stood on the street corner for 15 minutes talking about the Internet and mailing lists, and where and how he could pursue this radio passion online.

Sandy Griswold wasn’t a public person — you never heard him on the radio or saw him on television or saw his name in print. He was a dedicated public servant, working in the background, with a sense of humour and knowledge of the Island that sometimes seems rare in such circles. At 58, he died too young. And so last week we lost two good people, Peter Gzowski and Sandy Griswold. Both will be missed.

All the things I imagined — and a little more — were in place this morning when I went through security at Logan Airport here in Boston: I had to take my laptop out of its case (although I didn’t have to turn it on which I did in Charlottetown), remove my jacket, get scanned two or three times with the wand, and take my shoes off for inspection.

In addition I got patted down, my belt buckle examined, and my wallet was examined closely.

I have no problem with any of this: I’ll give up most any civil liberty you want to esnure safer skies.

Brother Johnny and I had a pleasant week at Yankee in southern New Hamphire, followed by a day of rest in Boston. I my usual pattern, I have arrived at thye airport about 2 hours too early, but this gives me lots of time to write and think and eat sushi, so it’s not all bad.

Looking oddly forward to arriving back on Island soil tonight.