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It is less harmful to cool down the overheated reactor with sea water and return the radiating water back to the sea than letting the reactor melt.

It is less harmful to tell to the public that the radiation leak was as nominal as normal background radiation and not harmful at all than driving people to hoard radiation meters and iodine.

It is less harmful to tell that the reactor exploded but the casing will hold than cause an uncontrolled mass migration because of the lethal fallout.

After the reactor has melted, it is less harmful to convince everyone that the reactor will soon be sealed and further radiation leaks blocked.

It is less harmful to tell people that the reactor seal is holding and they are safe than unveil that they are going to die soon because of radiation. There is no reason to burden their last days on earth with technical details.

Could it be less harmful to downshift and reduce consumption to better match the capacity and resources of earth instead of using nuclear power?

Why Not Every Day?

If the English language speakers would like to increase equality, the whole language should be fixed. Words that separate genders—like pronouns he and she—should be replaced with gender neutral words and in some other languages masculine and feminine forms should be removed. Finnish language has very few gender dependent words and those remaining are currently being rooted out and replaced with gender neutral terms.

If you want to celebrate women, why don't you do it every day? We have proposed the same approach for Valentine's day, which we have replaced with True Friend's Day. We celebrate it every single day of the year except on Valentine's day.

How the System Should Work

We registered to BookMooch on the 20th of July. In the beginning a new user is expected to fill an inventory. This means typing into the system the books you have and are willing to send to other users. Sending books gives you points which you can use to get books from others; three points if you send a book abroad and one point for domestic delivery. You get 0.1 points for each book you add to your inventory. When you ask for a book, it's called mooching, and it costs you two points abroad and one point domestic.

The system is rather clear and simple to use when and if everything goes fine, but this was not the case with us. We wrote to the profile that we prefer e-books to printed books, which was a taboo subject. Soon there was an e-mail from New Zealand claiming that e-books are illegal and soon after that our profile was edited behind our back with blatant lies about e-books being illegal. In the meanwhile, nobody from the administration bothered to contact us.

Too Good To Be True?

After our profile was edited, we fixed it back to its previous glory and added there a message to the administration:

TO BOOKMOOCH STAFF: Next time you edit profiles without without permission, please contact the profile owner first and make sure that you know what you are doing. That is common courtesy. Thank you

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Digging BookMooch a Bit Deepers

When the damage had already been done, we began to dig out what went wrong and read documentation provided in the web site and the Internet. We had not violated the terms of the site, but there was a hilariously ignorant notion at the end of FAQ telling that eBooks are not allowed because of “many issues with copyright, DRM, and no shipping for it to work with BookMooch at this time”. Perhaps expressing our liking of eBooks was too much.

A quick search of the Internet provided some interesting background information. We were not the only ones getting the BookMooch treatment. Here is what another former BookMooch user writes about the system in a blog comment:

(--) His [John Buckman] administrators are using the site to make money out of Bookmooch by creating their own accounts and mooching expensive books and giving away cheap books in return! Then they sell the books they've mooched. If a member competes with them in mooching hard-to-find or expensive books their accounts will be closed or suspended indefinitely based on ridiculous reasons, which are meaningful for only themselves! (--)

The site doesn't offer any venues for removing private information and at the same time it reserves all rights for selling private information to anyone. After checking the sites privacy statement, there was no doubt that the community was managed by fear and with serious lack of transparency in privacy as well as in the work of the administration:

- if you abuse the trust of the community by attempting to, or succeeding at “gaming the system”, violate the terms of use, or other forms of cheating or fraud, we reserve the right to publicly publish all your confidential details and identify you as someone we believe has betrayed the trust of the community.

Would you like your private information to be published when some anonymous administrator decides to get a vendetta on you for an unknown reason? The company operates under Californian law which explains the lack of privacy. Considering the site's code of ethics, practices of BookMooch administration and the outcome of our test run, we are not able to recommend BookMooch.

Other stories about BookMooch: BookMooch sucks, Review of Bookmooch.com, comments, librarytwopointzero: Proper review of Bookmooch, comments, LibraryThing discussion forum: BookMooching, shelfari discussion forum: i need help..., Book Chase: "When Free Books Aren't Really Free", Jingles got ripped-off 22 points.

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The lady in the customer service booth explained that jogging shoes only have a warranty for textile parts, not for sole. So because there was a hole in the sole of both shoes, nothing could be done. We asked her kindly to provide us proof that we had talked with her about the issue. This would have been necessary for filing a consumer complaint against Carrefour, but she refused without explanation.

Next we asked her name so that we could at least refer to the incident in the complaint, but she refused again. Instead she lost her temper. Our next question was to speak with her superior. She showed a photo of the store manager in a poster hanging on the wall, but added that the manager would be too busy to talk with us anyway. So our only option for having a proof was to take her photo so that she could be identified later if necessary.

At this point the lady got really mad and asked the guards to take our camera. The photos were erased, but the guards agreed to ask some kind of boss to help us. The boss came, yelled at us something in French and ran away. That was their understanding of the quality of service as one of our main source of competitive differentiation.

The shoes cost us 8.90 € and they lasted for less than one week. Our expectation was one year or more, so the annual price of the shoes would have been 462,80 €. According to Carrefour policy quality always corresponds to what the customer explicitly or implicitly wants and must be clearly perceived as such. The value for money must be the best. What do you think, is 462,80€ for jogging shoes the best value for the money?

One can only speculate what will happen when a customer discovers something dangerous in Carrefour food products or children toys. Perhaps someone will have to die before Carrefour shows respect to customers and follows the rules of responsible commerce. Do you dare to use Carrefour?

We didn't go to Spain with high hopes as the previous visits had not been very pleasant. We had been in Madrid and Andalucia, got bad customer service and were treated rudely and unfriendly. Despite of that we wanted to give Spain another try. After all, the climate is nice and living is less expensive than in other EU countries.

Minor Setbacks

We went to Spain from France through the impressive Pyrenees and continued towards the South along the East coastline. We stopped in Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante and Granada. Unfortunately nothing had changed. Service was bad and we discovered several cheating attempts: we were being lied to, the prices changed suddenly upwards, our VISA card was not accepted, and we were constantly short-changed. These things happened in railway ticket offices, big supermarkets like Mercadona, and Internet cafés. Nothing serious, though. We didn't fall to these traps thanks to learning them in Brazil. It was only after being robbed in Alicante bus station that we decided to abandon Spain. We lost our laptop, a hefty amount of cash, and our trust to the country.

Filing the police report appeared to be mere paperwork. It was obvious that the police wasn't interested in solving the case. There are simply too many open cases. Crime is increasing and people don´t even bother to report petty crimes. Päivi interviewed the PR Officer of Alicante police station to understand why. The story will be published in Matkalehti next spring.

Päivi the Quijote and Santeri the Pancha

As the police was not helpful, we went to the bus station to watch how the robbers operate. We spent there three days and took photos of the crooks. It was easy as the same thing happened every day. The robbers came to the bus station when buses and crowds arrived, circled between the buses like vultures, rushed to open trunks, and stole whatever they could. After that they returned to their nearby nest in a bar called Poppey. The best working time for robbers were Sundays and the siesta breaks of the police from noon until 2:30 pm.

Quite soon the robbers started to recognize us. When one of them saw Santeri photographing him, he got aggressive and tried to hit Santeri. Look at the photos and see for yourself. Nevertheless, we got some good photos which we gave to the police with no luck. We felt like Don Quijote and Sancho Pancha fighting against the Spanish windmills of crime.

We filed a complaint to the bus company ALSA as our stuff was stolen from the trunk of the bus. We had placed it there for the ten seconds while we took off our bigger backpacks. The bus company´s only concern, however, was to argue that the bag wasn't inside the trunk when the robbers took it. And when this failed, they tried to put the blame on bus station security. That made us to wonder if they were co-operating with the robbers and sharing the profits. We had no other option but to take the case to the European Consumer Centre and wait for the results.

Finally, just before leaving Spain, our cooking knife was confiscated in Valencia train station by the security guards. Earlier the knife had travelled with us through eight countries by bus, train, and aeroplane. Guess they did not have anything better to do.

Business As Usual

Our experience is by no means unique. One of our travelling friends was robbed three days later in the same bus station and most of the people shared our experience telling that either they or their friends had been robbed in Spain.

Crime undoubtedly has a negative effect on tourism. Even when people have an insurance a theft or a robbery will spoil the vacation and the tourist is not likely to return. Tourism is one of the main industries in Spain and it is already suffering as many tourists seem to prefer East European countries. These two trends contribute to deeper financial problems in Spain and cause more crimes.

Spain has already been in depression for a year. The GDP has dropped, inflation is high, unemployment is rising and real estate prices collapse. Experts forecast that property prices will decrease even 50 per cent more within the next three years. We saw a huge amount of empty buildings and business locations which were built with high hopes.

Sadly enough, Spain is not a country to be recommended in spite of beautiful nature, sunny weather, sea, beaches, and low prices. Special thanks to the wonderful people we met in Spain for balancing the negatives.

Go back to Thailand

A few weeks ago while travelling in France there was a problem with the keyboard.
Enter key functioned only every once in a while and required pressing hard. This proved to be pretty annoying when trying to write a book or chat with friends. After a quick research on the Internet we found quite many reports of similar problems in the model we have (A9RP). One review was praising the laptop but at the same time warning about weak keyboard.

Changing the keyboard is rather easy to do so we decided to go to a local computer
store selling ASUS. The person serving us told that the company would hardly do
any warranty exchange in France as the computer was bought in Thailand. He
told us cheerfully that one of his customers with a broken ASUS had to go back to
USA for the warranty fix. Then we were told to call to a service number. If we had called to that number they would have probably played us endlessly some expensive evergreens. When asking how much a new keyboard would cost, he told it's about 50 € which is more than the value of an old broken laptop.

After-sales scam

We decided to contact them and get the problem fixed. There was no warranty
service information on their web site excluding the phone number. Paying
for getting their faulty product fixed sounded stupid so we filled out their web
form. After a few days we got a reply explaining that keyboard is not included in the warranty. When we sent them a copy-paste of the International warranty rules where there is no such exclusions they didn't reply to us any more.

The next thing we'll have to do is to contact European Consumer Centre who solved our problem with Air Europa, and stop buying ASUS products in future. It's in a way pity because with proper warranty the laptop would have been worth of recommending it. Now we can only recommend to avoid ASUS as it does not appear to have international or actually any kind of warranty, at least outside Taiwan.

Our flight was from Salvador, Brazil to Madrid, Spain. When we noticed that Päivi´s backpack had got broken, we filed a baggage
claim report right away at Barajas airport. First, we were told to get a replacement bag in Madrid, but unfortunately the luggage shop that Air Europa used, did not have backpacks. Next, we were told to buy a new one from Finland where we were going, and to send the receipt to Air Europa’s Luggage service for refunding.

We found a new backpack easily and it was as dirt expensive as everything is in Finland. Päivi mailed all the original documents that Air Europa had requested, and kindly asked for reimbursement. Nothing happened. We called to Air Europa several times. During those phone calls we were told to send again all or some of the documents we had already sent. This finally cost us almost half of the price of the backpack as we had to make the calls from various parts of the world and queue in Air Europa's ever-busy Customer Service line. Just imagine what those other phone calls were about.

When eight months had passed, we had had enough. Päivi filed a complaint to the European Consumer Center. The processing took a few months after which we finally did receive the reimbursement. At that time, it was the end of May. More than one year had passed of the incident.

In general, Air Europa is one of the so called cheap airlines which practically means that the price is about the same as with traditional carriers, but the services are not. Seats are uncomfortable as they cannot be adjusted. For a shorter flight it would have been tolerable, but eight hours was too much. Everything costs extra like listening to the movies, and even a baggage claim for a broken backpack.

Air Europa reference number: MADUX58212 / ET6E676766.

Visa-run to Myanmar

We bought a visa-run package tour from a travel agency and paid 600 baht (~13 €) for a 10-hour van ride.
The price was not bad but the trip was far from enjoyable. The van came to pick us up from our place at 08:30. It was 45 minutes late, and we had had to wait all the time outside. There were already seven other foreigners in the car with a similar aim: to get a stamp in their passport. The driver seemed to sense the frustration of the passengers. He was speeding as much as he could in the winding road and dodging other traffic making sudden brakes all the time. We were holding our seats in the rodeo. Santeri was feeling motion sickness, and Päivi's head was banging between window and Santeri's shoulder as she was snoozing. Everyone was silent except the radio that kept playing childish and irritating Thai pop with refrains like "ding dong-dong, thing-thang-thong".

The ride took a little bit over four hours. After Chiang Mai mountain views and pleasant-looking picnic areas were soon replaced with a flatter view, and little villages following one another. The city of Chiang Rai looked especially boring, even compared to the one of the worst ever cities we have visited: Bangkok. The destination itself, Mae Sae, was crowded with all kinds of street vendors scavenging for their share of the tourist influx.

The procedure in the immigration was simple. We got a stamp from Thai officials and then entered the Myanmar immigration office. There they ripped us off with obligatory "visa" to Myanmar costing US 10$ per person. According to the travel agency the fee should have been US 5$. We didn't have two ten-dollar notes but just 100 dollars. Because the officials refused to give us any change we had to pay 500 baht instead. So we ended up paying 1.000 baht for the two of us which equals to US 28$. When we returned to the Thai immigration they checked very carefully that we had actually paid the Myanmar fee. Why were they so interested in it? Maybe because of corruption and making sure that they will surely get their share of the Myanmar bribes.

The whole play took one hour after which we went immediately back to the van for return trip. People were a little bit more talkative once the obligatory humiliation had been suffered. There were people from Ireland, Britain, and Australia, some working and others on holiday. One guy had made the trip already seven times every month and this was his last. Everybody was frustrated with the visa system but nobody wanted to complain. According to them, they were guests of Thailand who had to endure the whims of their host. Our interpretation was contrary: we are paying customers who receive constantly bad customer service. Thai officials have made us run from one counter to another because of their corruption, ignorance, brainless bureaucracy and despotism. The distance between these counters was long: this time a ten-hour van ride, earlier a 17-hour train ride to Bangkok immigration office, and before that a 3-day trip to Singapore and numerous bus rides in Chiang Mai.

An Inquiry To Thai Officials

We asked the top Thailand tourism and immigration officials about reasons for humiliating tourists, but received just one answer telling that the highest tourism authority had forwarded our letter to their PR department, and they should answer us soon. We were stunned. Is corruption and the humiliation of tourists with visa-runs really just a 'PR problem' that requires a proper excuse?

Here is the letter we sent them:

INQUIRY

3.11.2549

Attn: To whom it may concern

DEAR SIR / MADAM ,

We are a married couple, freelance writers and full-time travellers. Our country of origin is Finland, European Union. In the past two years we have travelled around the world in South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. In August 2006 we arrived in Thailand, and got a 30-day entry permit at the border whereas in almost all other countries in the world the limit is 90 days. Later we tried to prolong our stay on the grounds of our writing work, but failed. During the process we experienced extraordinarily unprofessional service from Thai immigration and embassy officials. Here is what happened.

Our plan was to spend a year in Thailand writing a book about Golden Triangle. Later we discovered that Thailand's visa regulations do not acknowledge this kind of activity and we should work for or found a Thai company to get a working visa. In order to learn this we had to visit Chiang Mai immigration office three times, travel from Chiang Mai to Singapore Thai Embassy, and finally travel from Chiang Mai to Bangkok immigration office. The visa regulations proved to be so complex and obscure that even government officials were seemingly afraid of giving advice. Instead, they quoted the cryptic laws, made us run around asking the same questions time and again, and gave us every time different instructions.

We have two options: 1) exit the country every month for a so called visa-run, or 2) travel to the neighbouring countries and try our luck with local Thai Embassies so many times that we would finally get the visa granted. Let us consider a bit more thoroughly what these options would mean to us.

In the first case we would have to travel to the border to get a 30-day entry permit every month. This permit, according to some officials, can be renewed three times in half a year's time. According to some other officials visa-runs can be performed as many times as we wish without any problems, and according to yet other officials they are totally illegal. No matter which answer we choose to trust, the whole idea of visa-runs is ridiculous. The only reason we could figure out for government to promote such an activity is corruption.

In the second case, the advice was to get a two-month, multiple entry tourist visa from a Thai embassy in some nearby country. We did this once in Singapore and found it as frustrating as a visa-run trip. Moreover, we were at the mercy of arrogant embassy officials. We had asked about our visa and sent all our documents beforehand, and we got a confirmation that a working visa would be granted. But when we arrived in Singapore, the official changed her mind claiming that our books are ”rubbish". This rude comment from Ms. Shima Han and her manager Ms. Phrintra Sucharitakul was quite striking.
Finally the Immigration Office Manager in Bangkok was kind enough to explain us the whole visa procedure, frankly and straightforwardly. It was the same answer we had received earlier from numerous tourists and expatriates who are in the same situation, and read from various Internet forums: Visa laws, applicants' activities, merits, and the money brought into the country do not matter. It is the language skills, the mood of the official dealing with the case, and sheer luck that dictate the results of a visa application.

Thailand seems to favour a short-sighted business model with visas; take-the-money-and-run. Visitors are granted only short-time entry permits to support visa-run businesses. Yet there are two privileged groups: retired people of over 50 years of age, and men supporting Thai families. In both cases visa applicants are often elderly, Western men travelling to Thailand for having sex. Or visiting their second, ”secret” Thai families also known as rented wives while the official family is waiting at home.

To understand the visa policy thoroughly we would like to know:

1.What kind of training do you give to your embassy officials to qualify them in literary analysis?

2.Visa regulations force people to make monthly visa-runs, which is a big business. Why is that endorsed?

3.Why foreigners have to use trial and error method, face despotism, and receive unsystematic service from immigration officials?

4.How can Thailand's tourism ever be sustainable, when most of the foreigners get sick of daily encounters with repulsive pedophiles?

5.Why the visa regulations are made so cryptic and complicated?

6.Why do Thailand prefer sex tourists to normal people in visa regulations on both legislative and national level?

We feel sorry to bring these questions up as we have otherwise enjoyed our stay in Thailand greatly. It has been easier to take care of everyday life, for example renting a flat and opening a bank account, compared to any other country in the world. The atmosphere is easy-going, and most people are very polite and respectful. However, the visa regulations form an obstacle to normal tourism, far greater than current martial law and military dictatorship. Visa regulations force us to reconsider our options: shall we pursue the original book idea or leave Thailand and share our experiences.

We look forward to receiving your answer. Thank you in advance.

We wish you peace and harmony,




The undersigned

Post Mortem

You can influence on Thailand's visa regulations by writing to Thailand authorities.
When they receive more similar letters they are more likely to change their minds and realize the financial losses, the bad reputation, and the shame they impose on the tourism industry of Thailand.

If you plan to travel to Thailand maybe you should consider some other country instead. In most of them you can stay 90 days without humiliation and they do not prefer sex tourists. Those who visit Thailand approve pedophilia and visa-runs.

Piece and harmony,



Päivi & Santeri

A cheap dream holiday in Sydney, Australia (21-26.10.2005)

Päivi wanted to see Sydney and Santeri wanted to try to locate his old friend Kristiina, and so we had a stop-over in Australia on our way to New Zealand, altogether five days. Sydney is well-known for its easy-going lifestyle, parties, and modernity, and we wanted to experience it all.

At the airport we found a very organized information desk about reasonably priced accommodation. There was a brochure of a very attractive backpacker hostel called "School House". After comparing prices and services of several options we made a booking to that hostel. Half an hour later they already came to pick us up.

School House backpackers hostel is located in the very heart of the world-famous Kings Cross. The price was reasonable 50 Australian dollars (more or less 40 Euro) per night for an en-suite room with a private toilet and bathroom. It was low-season time, and we were glad to hear that in high season we would have had to pay for the same room 85-115 dollars. The room was also recently modernized and perfectly spotless, we were told.

The hostel's brochure advertised tons of Free Stuff including free barbecue (BBQ), breakfast, coffee, movies, in-house big screen movie theatre, Internet café, huge kitchen, popcorn, tea and coffee, rice, beer, pool competitions, darts & games. The front door promised e.g. air-conditioned clean rooms, roof garden for sun baking and famous Australian BBQ, cable TV/videos/cinema screen, and homely clean communal area.

BBQ was unfortunately cancelled because of rain, but we found a lovely Korean-style BBQ nearby, only 21.95 dollars/person. The breakfast was also temporarily unavailable because of the low season, but we found Coles supermarket a few blocks away selling bread and cheese. Large screen TV & movie theatre was under construction, and the hostel had just run out of free popcorn, beer, coffee, tea, and rice. After all, it was low season during that week. Luckily we found some interesting books from their book shelf, and bought some coffee from nearby McDonald´s with 2.95 dollars a mug.

When asking the owner of the School House how to use free facilities and services, he replied that we were making him pissed off, and then he asked us to kindly fuck off. Polite service is available only during high season, because business is only profitable then. And the fixed costs are around 40.000 AUD/month, he added. But who cares about polite service with the price we paid.

We highly recommend you to visit School House. If you are going there during high season, better make the booking beforehand by e-mail as the hostel is hugely popular among backpackers. But first see the photos of School House telling more than a thousand brochures. Have a fun, funky, and original time!