North Korea, South Korea and a closely watched train

by Iva Skoch on

Well, it hasn’t taken a long time before the “most closely watched train” in the world may need to cut back its service.

Last month, North and South Korea started a symbolic rail service connecting the heavily fortified joint North-South industrial complex in Kaesong, just north of the border. Although the train served only to ship goods, it seemed like a start of some sort of communication. After all, it was the first train connecting the two countries since the Korean War in 1950-53.

Now, North Korea has proposed cutting the service down, citing a lack of cargo to transport. South Korea says buses are, in fact, more convenient. And that is, probably, the end of the closely watched train fairytale.

Internet failure hits several continents

by Anna Brones on

Internet has undoubtedly changed the way we communicate, travel, think, and even live. So what happens when there is an all out Internet failure? A good bit of chaos.

That’s exactly what happened today across large parts of the Middle East, Asia and North Africa, when tens of millions of Internet users were without a connection. India’s bandwidth was cut in half, posing problems for not only the outsourcing industry that is dependent on Internet connections, but also the stock exchanges in Delhi and Bombay. The United Arab Emirates was also hit hard, as the outage affected telephone and television services. Dubai’s businesses, notoriously known for their billion dollar a day transactions, were also stuck without a way to conduct affairs. Basically, things got messy.

As for travelers? Although sources from Emirate Airlines denied that the Internet failure would lead to flight delays, Dnata, a government group in charge of air travel services in the Middle East, admitted that they would most likely be facing some problems. So if you are traveling in that area today or through the weekend, I would recommend to be flexible and prepared for anything.

Transportation in China is not for the faint of heart

by Iva Skoch on

I was looking the the images and videos from blizzard-crippled China this morning and it made me remember my 2004 trip there. Especially the photos from Guangzhou, China’s major southern city… I remember that train station! It was packed with thousands of migrant workers then, so I can’t even imagine what it must look like now, after hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded. (See Aaron’s post from earlier today.)

This photo, by AFP, is from Guangzhou: a man pushing his friend inside an already packed train. While nothing quite that extreme happened while I was there, I will say that the Chinese people do have an amazing ability to squeeze a lot of people into packed trains and buses. Getting inside is half the fun. It is like graduating from University of Darwinism – only the strongest and those with the sharpest elbows get in. At first, you feel like you shouldn’t participate in this. After all, you are on vacation and have time…but then you realize you will never get in if you always allow everyone to get ahead of you. So you start pushing and showing with the rest of them. When in Guangzhou…

More on global happiness

by Iva Skoch on

Since Eric Weiner’s book, The Geography of Bliss tops all kinds of bestseller lists, the concept of happiness–and the concept of measuring it–seems to be high priority. Why we are so obsessed with happiness is certainly interesting, but even more interesting, I think, is that–contrary to the spiritual teachings out there–money apparently does buy happiness.

As reported by the Holland Herald, using data from the World Database of Happiness, the top 5 happiest countries are also some of the wealthiest countries in the world, despite their lack of sunshine:

  1. Denmark
  2. Switzerland
  3. Austria
  4. Iceland
  5. Finland

On the flip side, the bottom 5 are some of the poorest:

  • Tanzania
  • Zimbabwe
  • Moldova
  • Ukraine
  • Armenia

The interesting part is that most people experience a happiness dip between the ages of 30 and 50. Those are generally not the happiest years in a person’s life. Those are also, paradoxically, the wealthiest years or a person’s life. Hmmm.

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The happiest fliers in the world are the ones riding on the new Singapore Airlines A380:

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Elephant attacks American tourist

by Catherine Bodry on

When Jeremy Allen McGill set out in China’s “Wild Elephant Valley” nature reserve yesterday, he was probably just hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the magnificant beasts. But McGill got that and a lot more — for unknown reasons, an elephant used its trunk to pick McGill, who teaches English in China, up and then tossed him.

An official said that three elepants were roaming as close as 65 feet from McGill, and also noted that elephant attacks have happened before — “mostly after the pachyderms were spooked by camera flashes or loud noises from visitors.”

Bear attacks and moose tramplings aren’t uncommon here in Alaska, and though they most often occur when someone has surprised the animals or gotten between them and their offspring, they often result from brave people trying to get close enough for a good photo. The same thing happens in Yellowstone with wild animals that have gotten so used to humans they casually munch away until someone gets too close.

Sixty-five feet from an elephant might count as too close for me. You?

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