Vietnamese Dancers

Ok, its not really traditional

Victoria Hotel Hoi An Resort and Spa

Victoria Hotel Hoi An Resort and Spa
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

We are at Victoria Hotel Hoi An Resort and Spa right now and relaxing over the weekend, to get the strength to go to Bangkok one week later :-) Life is hard in Vietnam, as you can see.

Fivi Market

When we moved to District 7 we were quite happy to have the Fivi market next to us, mainly because of it's large selection of kind of international brands. I like the frozen fishcakes, the Kettle Chips, they even have Haribo and Beef Jerky. Everything is fine at Fivi Market as long as its packed or canned.

The fresh goods are a nightmare. Whenever I bought some vegetables, after one day they were already rotten. Same for fruits: I bought some sliced pomelo on Saturday, today it was moldy. Fresh milk gets curd after one day too. I think the problem is that they don't keep their products cool the whole production chain. The way from the producer to the supermarket can be long, and the vegetables can already start to decay. This process is normally invisible in the first stage, and will be interrupted when the goods are cooled for a while. But the minute you take them out of the market, the process will go on.

Oh, by the way, I bought last Saturday expensive sausage at Veggies, it was packed 29.7. and started already changing the color. So its not just a Fivi problem.

Lightning strike at our lake

Lightning strike at our lake
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

I made this picture yesterday when a thunderstorm brought heavy rain to HCMC

How our work(place) is changing

ZEN Habits worte an excellent article about how our work environment is rapidly changing. He noted 12 points or new rules of working:

Excerpts:

1. Online apps and the cloud beat the desktop and hard drive. While the majority of workers use desktop applications such as Microsoft Office, that’s rapidly changing. Today, people like me use apps that are almost all online, such as Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Gcal, WordPress, Twitter, Zoho Office, High Rise, Backpack and many others.

2. Collaborate on documents, don’t email them. I won’t name names, but recently I had to work with a group of people on a draft of a book. These people are intelligent people, but they are used to their old processes, and one of those is to use the Microsoft Word format for drafts, and to email revisions of the draft back and forth. In one case, they actually printed stuff out, marked up the printout, and FedExed it to me for further revisions

3. Collaboration is the new productivity. It used to be that we tried to work our butts off to produce, but mostly individually. Sure, there were meetings, and there were teams, but in the end we mostly did it individually. It’s still that way mostly.

4. People don’t have to be in an office. This is the one I wish most businesses would get, right now, right away. It’s so obvious once you get away from the traditional mindset. Traditionally, people worked in offices (and of course most still do). They go into the office, do their work, go to meeting, process paperwork, chat around the watercooler, clock out and go home.

Read the whole article

Garbage everywhere

Garbage everywhere
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

When we came here 2 months ago we were suprised how clean it is. That's still the case in District 1, and in Phu MY Hung. At our place its different. People throwing their garbage away. Today we saw a lady cleaning the street and the pavement, but she just threw the trash 3 meters away like you see in the picture.
The government is running a campaign against envirionmental pollutio, but people are not really understand what it is about. Its saves money to get rid of your waste just in the meadow arround the corner. Even our guard did this with our garbage one time.

Sunset at our home

Sunset at our home
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

Awsome Non-musican

Amateur - Lasse Gjertsen

Black

Black
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

Isn't he cute?

Just men

.. is the name of a beauty salon in Ton That Thiep Street (just across Saigon Center), and the offer kind of beauty treatment for men. I went there at 9.30 am, just to make sure that's a safe and proper service the offer. And, hell, it is: Even some called me a metro man, its a real relaxing experience. I had a head, back and should massage, manicure, shaving and shampooing and felt like in heaven and surrounded by angels. The staff speaks english, they are friendly, attentive, the place is clean, they offer you free coffee or tea, but beer and wine is available too. So is Wifi.
Prices are reasonable. Haircut and style 9 USD, shampoo 5 USD, manicure 5 USD.
Massage is 15 USD for 45 min men recovery and 20 USD for 60 min relaxing.
Yes, there are cheaper places in HCMC, but it's like having a dinner at a restaurant: You don't pay just for a grilled chicken, you also pay for service, environment and so on.

Open daily from 9am until 8pm. after 8pm by appointment only.

Black

Black
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

.. is the new puppy in our house. He belongs to the guard, and we loved him from the first ment we saw this cute little creature.

Chicken curry

Chicken curry
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

Serve with rice and basil leaves

Chicken curry

Chicken curry
Originally uploaded by thomaswanhoff

Ingredients for a chicken curry (not on the picture: Basil leaves and coconut milk)

Why Twitter is so successful

Gregor made a good point in an article on techcrunch about twitter and its success:

This simple premise holds the key to Twitter’s success: messages go to a well-defined audience. In the moment you release a tweet, you know who’s on the line and you have an idea of who can catch a glimpse of your message. @replies are the best illustration for this sense of audience: Even though Twitter is not a point-to-point message delivery system (let alone a reliable one), @replies are sent with the understanding that they will be read by the intended people because they are known to be in the audience. (Imagine a newspaper article that suddenly greeted a specific reader.)

Thats excatly why people feel comfortable with twitter. Its more like a chat room, where you can find real (yeah, i know about fake accounts) people.

If your blog isn't commented daily, you have no clue who are your readers are. With twitter, you have.

Gotta go and tweed this article now.

Be pure on your iPhone

If you one of the guys still living (and working) with Telnet and the Mac Terminal Sessions, then you propably should try this new Iphone app.

Its a complete terminal software for SSH, Telnet and TCP connections.

My Holy Grail Of iPhone Apps Arrives: pTerm | The Apple Blog
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Dog owners group Saigon

I just started a facebook dog owners group for people living in Saigon to share information about everything related to our lovely friends.
http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/group.php?gid=21377463258

or just look for dog owners saigon on facebook

Steve Jobs came to early

Steve Jobs: MobileMe "not up to Apple's standards"

In an internal e-mail sent to Apple employees this evening, Steve Jobs admitted that MobileMe was launched too early and "not up to Apple's standards."

I agree with the standard, but does that mean there will be a delay for the nano iphone and the tablet mac? :-(

Abacus for iPhone

iPhone Abacus, old wine in a new bottle | Asiajin

Isn't that cool? Ancient technologies on the latest computer gadget

Dave Winer about Twitter, Identi.ca and missed chances

Twitter will kick themselves for missing this (Scripting News)

Imagine if the world of Instant Messaging had been under one roof, if one vendor had invented it, and had 100 percent market share. Further, what if that vendor had the foresight that there would be other vendors and that compatibility between their services would make a huge market, and that incompatibility would keep the market fragmented and relatively small. What would that vendor have done?

Rumor: Nano-iphone for Chrismas?

Apple to launch the iPhone 'nano' in time for Christmas | Mail Online

Apple is about to launch a 'nano' version of the hugely successful iPhone. It is expected to be in the shops in time for Christmas.

The product will be launched in the UK at up to £150 for pay-as-you-go customers by O2, the mobile phone group owned by Spain's Telefonica. 'This will be a big one,' said an industry source.

Snakebite

Whooo