This will be my last post on this blog. I have been writing on here for three years (988 posts) and wanted to change things a little. I have a new blog started at the following address: www.tourista04.blogspot.com. This new site allows me to add polls, pictures, etc and while I haven’t figured it all out yet I plan on only using the new blog from now on.
So check out my new blog and let me know what you think.

We got the first snow of the season last night into today. While it wasn’t a lot - about an inch - it does seem to be fairly early for snow. I guess living here in the mountains of New England means winter comes sooner and lasts longer (and is colder with more snow.) I took some pictures of it both at 4 am and around 10 am and posted them on Facebook. I just hope the real, measurable snow doesn’t come for a long time.

This was a good week. They went from Vietnam to Cambodia. I thought it was pretty interesting that every Cambodian seemed to know the exact location after only looking at an old black and white picture. It was funny that many of the people on the Race thought it was a local Cambodian in the picture and not Jackie Kennedy. I really liked the challenge where they had to act like monkeys. Monkeys are my favorite animals.
It was a surprise that Zev and Justin couldn’t find Zev’s passport and so went from being the first team to finish to being eliminated. Several past seasons people have lost their passports, but this is the first time that a team was sent home because of it. It makes sense though: if you don’t have your passport you can’t travel and thus can’t be in the Race. Hopefully, no one else looses their passport.

Yesterday I went to Upstate New York with my mom for our Annual Fall Trip there. We ate at our favorite fast food place: Ted’s and then saw my Grandparents and Great-Aunt. We celebrated my Grandmom’s and Great-Aunt’s birthdays and hung out a little. Then we went to the Lakeside Cidar Mill (where we saw my Aunt) and bought some apples, apple cidar and apple cidar doughnuts - they are so good! We then checked into our hotel. An hour later we went to a German restaurant that we have gone to many times before. The food was basically good, but the ginger ale tasted like it had wine in it. We had a busy day and so went back to the hotel and crashed.
This morning we got up, checked out of the hotel and went to a diner for breakfast. The food was pretty bland and bad - but it came out 5 minutes after we ordered it. Then the waitress messed up our bill. I told her what the problem was and she said she would fix it. She came back to our table and hadn’t changed anything. Again I showed her what was wrong and then she got all defensive and started going on about how she has been working there 25 years, etc. I was just glad to get out there and have no plans to go back.
We drove home and the drive through the mountains of Vermont was pretty nice. The rain held off for most of the trip. We then picked-up our dogs from the kennel and came home. All-in-all it was a good trip and I’m sure that next October it will be even better.

I think it was very dumb of the Nobel Peace Prize people in Norway to give it to President Obama. They even said it was done because of what he preached and not his actions. Those of us who are not under Obama’s spell and can think for ourselves (rather than blindlessly follow his every move) know that Obama has been all talk with very little concrete action. It seems that the Socialist Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize people just want their 15 minutes of media time and also want to influence Obama’s decisions on different issues - which is just plain wrong. I can only hope that the rest of the world sees through what the Norwegians with the Nobel Peace Prize are doing and call them out on it. I do not understand how Obama could get the Peace Prize when he has said he won’t bring the American soldiers in Afghanistan home. He is also thinking about sending another 40,000 new troops there and expand the war. How is any of that bringing peace to the world?
The Nobel Peace Prize has just lost any respect it once had in the world. It is now just a tool that the Norwegians are using to try and influence important people throughout the globe. It is a very sad day. It would have been better to not give the award to anyone rather than use it as a cheap ploy.

Yesterday’s show was alright. At least the other tribe finally lost and had to vote someone out and they kicked that woman who didn’t do anything around the camp. It seems that Russell - who is the leader of the one tribe - is mad that his tribe decided to vote out the person who he wanted to stay. The reward challenge was pretty boring, but they got the chickens (and Shambo lost one of them.)

This week’s show was good. They stayed in Vietnam. It was odd that in the little village they found lots of people who spoke English, but when they got to Ho Chi Minh City hardly anyone spoke it. The challenges were ok. The team that was eliminated (the old guy and the weird old woman) made a big mistake when they did the Vietnamese word challenge. The woman seems like a hippie from the ’60s that never got the word that it is now the 21st Century. I also don’t care for Lance and his finacee. They should just go back to Long Island or New Jersey or whereever they are from.
I would still like to see either the brothers or the father and son win.

I had TiVoed the show and just watched it today. I really liked Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis and so thought I would like this new show. I found it to be very boring and long. The 2 hour premiere felt more like 4 hours. It just kept going on and on with no real action or good story-line. I guess the writers of this show didn’t take the same care as the other two shows and you can really see it.

This week showed that Russel wasn’t completely in charge of his tribe since he back-tracked and instead of getting everyone to vote Ashley off - like he wanted - he went along with Jason and voted Ben off. I thought Jason’s little attack at Tribal was just stupid and he’s supposed to be a lawyer. I don’t like Ben and think he is a looser, but Jason accused Ben of being racist because he called the dumb woman “Ghetto Trash.” I don’t recall Ben saying anything about her race in his fight with her. Jason was looking for something that wasn’t there and as usual it led to someone being called racist. I think people use the words: racist, sexist, etc too liberally and it is has become the “cool” trend - when all else fails and you can’t think of anything true call someone one of the words ending in - ist. Jason needs to get over himself if he plans on lasting long in the game - right now he just sounds like a big cry-baby. Does that make me a racist? Because I called him a cry-baby? Probably in Jason’s eyes, but not in any sane person’s.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC.) From 1949 til the 1970s the United States and many “Western” countries did not have any formal ties with Beijing, but instead recognized Taiwan. China before the Communists took over was full of war lords and then the Japanese. When the Communists took over they did what Communists do when they take over - they re-educate some people and either kill or imprision all those deemed “Capitalists.”
The PRC had many issues from the beginning and it wasn’t until Mao died in the 1970s that things began to move China from an isolated country to a more open society - as open as Communists can be.
There are still many problems: human rights abuses, lack of personal freedoms, the one child policy, Tibet, Taiwan, etc that need to be addressed if the PRC ever hopes to be a completely civilized and modern country.

From the BBC:
“Ban on Kiev massacre-site hotel”

^ I can’t believe that the city of Kiev wanted to build a hotel on Babi Yar. Luckily, the hotel was over-turned. Babi Yar is the site of the largest mass murder “death pit” of the Holocaust. On September 29-30, 1941 an estimated 33,000 Jews followed the Germans’ instructions to meet at a certain location with all their documents and belongings to be transported East instead all of them were marched to a ravine (called Babi Yar) and shot. The Germans expected around 5,000-6,000 people to show up, but “managed” to kill all the men, women and children in around one day. Not only Jews were killed at Babi Yar. An estimated 100,000 addition people (Communists, partisans, etc) were killed at the ravine throughout the war.
I have been to Babi Yar and while I saw the monuments to those killed (there is one made during Soviet times that doesn’t mention the Jews, there is one to the children murdered and one at the exact location of where the majority of the shootings took place) I still thought both the city of Kiev and the country (the Ukraine) did a very poor job in remembering those murdered. The ravine where the shootings took place during the war is now a park and most of it is full of mothers with their children, soccer goals and, as my guidebook told me, is known as the local “lover’s lane” where teenagers and young people go to make out. I thought at the time (see my entry on my trip to Kiev) that it was disgusting and still think the same.
I know many Ukrainians thought of the Nazis as liberators from the Soviets and that many of them, the Ukrainians, (along with Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians) willingly helped the Germans both at the death pits as well as the death camps. It seems that there are still Ukrainians (and others) today who do not think twice about what awful crimes happened during the war or see no problem about what happened and instead want to build stupid things like hotels at these murder sites rather than remember all the innocent men, women and children who were murdered there.
I know first-hand how hard it is to find a hotel room in Kiev. There are so few and the ones that are there are very disorganized. I had to rent a private apartment for myself and my family when we went over there. Even with that said I would never think of building a hotel on a former “death pit.” There are many places around Kiev that are much more suited and those places should be used. ^

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8278601.stm

I watched the 2 hour season start tonight. I didn’t really care that one team was kicked out before the race even started - since I didn’t know anything about them. I thought the Japanese Game Show was very Japanese - made no sense and was for cheap laughs. The two Poker Players aren’t that smart (although they say they win alot.)
I liked how the one team in Vietnam asked the taxi driver if they knew where the bus station was and the driver replied “Yes, this is Vietnam!” There was water everywhere. I guess the monsoons had come. I would never want to be walking or swimming in that water since it looked very dirty. I thought the Vietnamese over-crowded bus looked just like a few I took when I was in Russia (including the animals being on them.)
I’m glad that they eliminated a second team. As of right now I would like the two brothers or the father and son to win. They both seem to know how to play the game well and haven’t stabbed anyone in the back - yet.
I’m also really glad that they haven’t gone to China or India like they do every season - but I guess there is still time for that.

While doing the research for the previous entry I noticed many US Embassies that do not have an Ambassador. I know that these things take some time and they have to be approved by Congress, but this long list really surprised me - especially since some of them are key posts.

The following countries do not have an American Ambassador at the Embassy:

- Antigua & Barbuda, Australia, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Burma, Canada, Costa Rica, Dominica, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Grenada, Guinea, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, Jamaica, Luxembourg, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nauru, Nepal, New Zealand, Palau, Portugal, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, Seychelles, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Tanzania, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkmenistan, Uruguay

If we want countries to take us seriously than we need to speed up the process of placing qualified (ie speaking a second langauge) Ambassadors in these posts.

Since yesterday was European Languages Day I did some checking on languages in the United States and found that a number of Government agencies that require the knowledge of a second language do not enforce that. I chose to focus on the Ambassadors sent from the United States’ Government to other countries since they are required to know a second langauge and it just makes sense since they are representing our country.
The information was taken from each US Embassies’ websites official biography of their Ambassador. If they know a second langauge it should be noted here.

Here are the countries where the American Ambassador does not know a second langauge:

-Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Chad, Congo (Democratic Republic), Congo (Republic), Croatia, Denmark, Djibouti, East Timor, Egypt, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe

*This list does not include the countries that the US does not have diplomatic relations with (Bhutan, Iran, North Korea, Somalia) or the countries that do not currently have a US Ambassador.*

You would think that the official representatives of the United States Government to other countries would want to learn another languages. I did find several Ambassadors that are “career officials” and have been stationed in many locations that speak many languages. This list though seems way too long to me.

Today is the European Day of Languages. The European Union has many official languages - too many if you ask me - and so they set aside a day to focus on those langauges. While I am all for people being able to speak their native language I think that being able to speak a second or third langauge is also a good and smart thing. Many native English speakers feel that they do not need to learn a second langauge because English is the world’s de facto “official language.” I think that view is stupid. People should strive to learn another language regardless.
I have been to many countries where I didn’t speak the native langauge and have tried to say a few phrases and was given praise for trying. Of course I have been to countries (ie France and Russia - before I studied French and Russian) where I tried to speak the native language and instead of getting help I was made fun of and made to feel stupid - yet the same people who made fun of me couldn’t or didn’t speak English - especially in Russia. It wasn’t until I learned French and then Russian that I was treated any better.
Langauge is a way for people to communicate with other people. To learn a second langauge shows that willingness/openess to continue that communication with people from different countries. Of course learning a language isn’t always easy, but you should at least try. It makes me disgusted when I see foreigners in the United States trying to speak English and Americans make fun of their accents. As I already wrote, I experienced the same thing when I travelled.

I heard that in Manchester, NH the city does not officially celebrate Halloween on October 31st. Since the early 1970s the city has forced children to Trick-or Treat the Saturday before Halloween. The city officials say that it is because they want the children to be safe and to celebrate Halloween in the daylight. So why can’t they do so on October 31st (during the daylight?) The US changed Daylight Savings Time from October to November so that children can have more daylight on Halloween - among other reasons. I think Mancheser needs to re-examine it’s Halloween practices and start allowing children to Trick-orTreat on October 31st. If bigger cities like New York and Los Angeles allow their children to go out on Halloween then surely Manchester can do the same.

This week was pretty much like last week - predictable. You knew Russell (or Texas Golum as I call him) was going to be a hill-billy scum-bag and he was. He acts like he is so smart when in reality he is just around a bunch of dumber idiots. The fact that he found the idol doesn’t mean much since he is so arrogant that if his tribe was smart they would blind-side him. Ben was a loose-cannon and should have been voted out instead of Betsy. As for the old guy leaving - I don’t see how he said he gave it his all during the challenge when you could see he just gave up.
The clips for next week show that Jason tells people it is either him or Texas Golum - hopefully Golum will be sent packing.

I should start by saying that after the issues I had with Lowe’s when we bought our new stove and snow blower (see other entries) I decided to cut my losses with this company and not buy from them ever again - at least not something that has to be delivered and/or installed. Well, one of my family members (the one who decides what to buy and pays for it) decided to buy a 2nd freezer since the current one we have is getting full and we want to stock it up for the winter, and went to lowes.com to order the freezer - that was in stock and was to be delivered from a different Lowe’s store than the one we got the stove and snow blower from. I had told this family member that it wasn’t smart to buy from Lowe’s since we have had all those recent issues with them. I was ignored and the freezer ordered.
We ordered it last Sunday at 6:15 pm and got the e-mail receipt for it. The receipt said we would hear back to schedule delivery within 24 hours. I didn’t wait exactly 24 hours on Tuesday - I called the main Custimer Support Number at 5 pm. I explained what was going on and the woman was very helpful and nice. She even had me on the line when she called the local Lowe’s store. Then when the manager on duty (G) came on the line the woman left. The manager gave me a stupid excuse as to why I haven’t been contacted - he said it was because they close at 7 pm on Sundays and that it would go into their computer system as 5 pm on Sunday (I think he meant to say that it wouldn’t go through their computer system until the next day - Monday, but that’s not what he said.) He said they would be in my area this Thursday and Friday and I said I was available on Thursday only. He said he would check the times available for Thursday and call me back.
Yesterday, Wednesday (Sept. 23rd), I hadn’t heard back from (G) and so had my family member call another family member to contact Lowe’s - I figured that with all my recent bad experiences with them that I should just let someone else deal with it - I was wrong (as you will later see.) This other family member called some Lowe’s store - doesn’t know which one, just has a phone number they dialed. She was told by someone there that the freezer would be delivered on Thursday morning and that someone would contact us to confirm.
So today it is Thursday (4:40 pm) and no Lowe’s truck came. I decided that even though I am very sick and on medicine I would have to contact Lowe’s myself - as usual I have to fix other people’s mistakes. I called the main Customer Support number and told them to just cancel my order. The guy tried to save the order and I told him just to cancel it - that Lowe’s keeps lying to me and making excuses and I was fed up with it and would get the freezer elsewhere. The guy said I would be contacted with 4 hours from the local store manager to confirm the cancelled order and within 24 hours from senior Lowe’s supervisors.
At 4:05 pm I got the call from the local store manager and tried just to say that I wanted it cancelled and nothing more. It wasn’t until the manager tried to make excuses as to why I wasn’t contacted - he said that the area code was wrong and they didn’t know the right number. I told him that our state only has 1 area code and it’s a local store that doesn’t deliver to any other states and that his excuse was pointless. I told him that I was told it would be delivered today in the morning and here it was at 4 pm and since no one at his store or at Lowe’s seemed to care about customer service I would buy the freezer elsewhere. I also told him that I had called the main Customer Support number and that they were going to investigate this incident. I then asked him what needed to be done now since I considered the order to be cancelled - he said he would have to call the delivery people and tell them to return it to the store (no one had ever told me that it was on its way or I might not have cancelled it, but since I already had I just let it be cancelled.)
I still have to wait for the senior Lowe’s managers to call me, but I consider this over and done with and will just make sure the money is returned. I have already told my family that they should never order anything from any Lowe’s that needs to be delivered and/or installed - and hopefully they listen to me - if not then I am wiping my hands of it all. The saying: “fool me once - shame on me, fool me twice - shame on you” applies - if I did it a third time I would just be a complete idiot and so will not do that ever again.
Of course we still need another freezer and my family member now doesn’t want to buy one - even from someplace else - I think that is just stupid. We need it and should get it before the roads become bad.

I have found what I consider a great solution to the problems I ,and millions of other people, have experienced whenever we try to remodel or buy something such as an applicance. I believe that all contractors, sub-contractors, day laborers and all other “professional handymen/women” should be sent to either Iraq or Aghanistan to rebuild those countries. I understand this would take them decades to do and cost millions (if not billions) of dollars, but it would stop these workers from constantly ripping off Americans. Let them tell their lies in a war-zone.
If we can’t ship them all off to war-zones then the Federal and State Governments need to create new laws that do more to protect the consumer in these circumstances (and enforce them.)

From Yahoo News:
“EU warns may impose visas on Canadian diplomats”

^ I will never understand how the European Union can verbally attack and threaten Canada for not allowing citizens from the Czech Republic from entering their country visa-free when the EU itself continues to discriminate against its own member-states (ie there are restrictions on citizens from Bulgaria and Romania in many EU countries.) Why should Canada, the United States or any other country allow themselves to be threatened by the EU when the EU is being very hypocritical? They (the EU) are allowed to discriminate and place restrictions on their own citizens, but no one else is - even if there is a valid reason. Right now there are many EU countries that do not have visa-free access to the United States and the EU is pressing the Americans on this issue. Why should we be forced to open our doors visa-free just because the EU doesn’t know how to expand itself without thinking about it first? It seems that the EU just wants to allow any European country in as fast as they can. I guess the EU thinks they can pressure Canada because they can’t get to the country they really want to: the United States.
I say: the United States, Canada and other countries should not change their immigration policies before the European Union changes their’s first. The day the EU allows all of it’s citizens - and not just a select few - to have full, equal rights in every other EU member-state then the visa-free issue should be brought up again - and not before. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090921/wl_canada_nm/canada_us_eu_czech_canada;

From Yahoo News:
“Restaurant forced to change “Anti-Soviet” name”

^ Talk about going overboard. Moscow threatened to close a restaurant that opened last July that was called “‘Anti-Sovetskaya.” It is a few months short of 18 years since the Soviet Union collapsed and yet many Russians can’t seem to move on. While the majority of the world would agree that the USSR imploding in December 1991 was a good thing, it seems that there is still a large section of Russian (and other former Soviet countries) society that see it as a bad thing - but so did many Germans in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated. People need to move on. Threatening anyone who pokes fun or believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was a good thing should not be allowed. I guess that since the majority of high positions in Russia (both private and governmental) are held by those that blindlessly followed and believed in Communism and the Soviet State shows that you can change a name, but unless new people and ideas are brought forth then “old habits die hard.” ^

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090921/od_nm/us_restaurant_odd_1

As you can see from the previous entries the majority of countries, provinces and territories want to have some sort of political, cultural - or both - links with their former “mother countries.” Not only is this reflected by the transportation links, but also by the langauge these places decide to use. Some countries/territories that do not have direct flights to their former colony power is due because of their size (ie a small island, etc.)
One thing to take note are the countries/territories that are included in the organization that were never colonized by that “mother country.” It is also worthwhile to look at the places that have decided not to be part of the organization, but could if they wanted.
I know that Great Britain, France, Portugal, the Netherlands and Russia were not the only countries to have colonies around the world (ie the United States, Germany, Spain, etc), but they are the only ones to have done so and create organizations to keep that bond together - even if it is a loose one.

Here is the last link I will use. Here are the countries of the Содружество Независимых Государств (Commonwealth of Independent States - CIS.) These are all former republics of the Soviet Union. There are 9 full members (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan), 1 associate member (Turkmenistan), 1 participating non-member (Ukraine.) That makes a population of 276,917,629. I chose Moscow since it was the capital of the USSR and is the capital of Russia. Russian is the official working language. There are three airports in Moscow and I have included all of them.

Countries that have direct flights to Moscow:
- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan

* Georgia was a full member from 1994- August 2009. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will never members and instead are part of both the European Union and NATO. *

Here are the countries that are part of the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union.) There are 2 full members (the Netherlands, the Flemish Community in Belgium), 2 associate members (Belgium, Suriname), 2 candidate members (Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles: Bonaire, Curaco, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten) and 2 special partners (Indonesia, South Africa.) I chose Amsterdam as the city with the transportation link since it is one of the capitals of the Netherlands and the only international airport. These countries/territories all use Dutch in some form and were either colonies of the Netherlands or are still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Countries/territories with direct flights to Amsterdam:
- Netherlands Antilles (Bonaire, Curaco, Sint Maarten), Aruba, Belgium, Suriname, Indonesia, South Africa

Countries/territories with no direct flights to Amsterdam:
- Netherlands Antilles (Saba, Sint Eustatius), Flemish Community in Belgium

Here are the countries that are part of the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (Community of Portuguese Language Countries - CPLC.) There are 8 countries that are full members (7 if you take Portugal out) that use Portuguese as an official language and was once a colony of Portugal and 1 candidate territory (Macau.) There is a population of 223 million people - not including Macau. I have chosen Lisbon as the main city since it is the capital of Portugal and the CPLC. There is only one airport in Lisbon.

Countries that have direct flights to Lisbon:
- Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome & Principe

Countries that do not have direct flight to Lisbon:
- East Timor