================================================= Expat Worlds Bi-Monthly Digest ================================================= 31 July, 2004 Vol. 6, Issue 12 .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== THE STORY =================== -=Develop Your Own Odyssey!=- ==== OTHER EZINES ================ ==== EW SPECIAL ================== -=Webmaster Special=- ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... == -=Trivia=- -=News Story=- -=Traveller's Tales=- -=Jokes=- ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============= -=ZPG - Password Generator=- ==== INSIDE THIS MONTH EXPAT WORLD == -=Table of Content=- ==== THE STORY ================================== DEVELOP YOUR OWN ODYSSEY! - An Open Letter to 17-22 Year Olds - By Arthur Fern First, I'll tell you I'm not a career counselor. They'll measure your abilities, motivations, and advise on resumes and interviews. I'm the devil's advocate, enticing you, trying to enthuse you to check out 'public service - international'. By that I mean US Government activities abroad, multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the private non-profits operating overseas (earthquake rescue, famine relief, democratic institution building and the like). Don't always take the easiest, most convenient path. The military draft was in effect when I graduated from college. Instead of spending two years as a clerk typist, I enlisted for three in the US Army's Counterintelligence Corps. After agent training and German language school, I volunteered for Berlin duty. Others sought Frankfurt or Munich so they could tour Europe. But wasn't Berlin on the frontline in the Cold War? We lost an important intelligence source in East Berlin. President Eisenhower had issued him a letter of commendation for his work, particularly on Khrushchev's secret XX Party Congress speech denouncing Stalin. 'Peter' was caught, convicted of espionage and executed by firing squad. Some 22 years later I learned by chance from his handler how he was compromised. Ever heard of Kim Philby? He was a British intelligence officer and one of the Soviet Union's most successful spies during the Cold War. He was on the Joint British-American Intelligence Board in Washington and on the American Desk in London, when the US Government shared Peter's sanitized reports with the Brits. After graduate school, a tour in international finance at the US Treasury and as a financial attaché at the US Embassy in Bonn, I 'had' to take the chance of 'going independent' and opened an office in downtown DC to work on World Bank projects. We did competitive intelligence after World Bank project invitations. An official said that after great preparation the farmers didn't show up for a rice project in Malaysia. They supported their families well with five months' work per year and seven of vacation. Through religion (the Sultan) and sex (their wives) they got the farmers to work harder and longer. Guess we'd need to hire an anthropologist for this one. Or was it a modern, subtle 'heart of darkness' a la Joseph Conrad? Keep your eyes and ears open when working abroad. On project trips, we'd visit 'rim' countries for new business. On one Middle East trip, I landed in Beirut in the midst of civil war (I was told it was 'a civil disturbance'). After visiting ministries and realizing projects would not materialize, I returned to the hotel to reschedule my flight home. While on the telephone, I could see rockets from Muslim West Beirut crumbling the hi-rises in Christian East Beirut. My eyes were in one world, my ears in another. Later looking for gifts for my children, strangers invited me for a drink in West Beirut but I declined. Months later several professors from the American University were abducted. Later, Terry Anderson, an AP correspondent, was taken hostage. Some did not return. The exotic jungle in Senegal. Nine foot termite hills; a farmer not knowing seeds needed dirt to germinate, wound up having mushroom omelets with champagne (Veuve Clicquot) after midnight in a French colonial mansion and classical music (Rimsky-Korsakov) as background. Fascinating conversation. I, as the only American in the province and from Washington, was bombarded with questions about Vietnam and I, in turn, was trying to understand the traditional, conservative, Muslim Senegalese farmer. A young technician, whose uncle was at Dienbienphu in 1953 when the Vietminh defeated the French, said America would lose in Vietnam. Belize. I met a resident American businessman, 'Turpentine Man'. Because it was his 'territory', he said he would pay for drinks at a club, 'The Big C'. Chinese firecrackers were popping off on the dance floor! A scuffle broke out with British soldiers and the bouncers threw them out. They were surprised we didn't know who our 'friend' was - Belize's President had awarded him a national medal. We had a 'quiet American hero' amongst us. There are more stories, of course, but there might be one question you would ask. What would I do, if I were your age? For starters, try the Jobs Board of the Foreign Policy Association (www.fpa.org). Here you'll see job descriptions and qualifications required of many nonprofit and non-governmental jobs - senior, intermediate, starting and internships (some you could take on summer vacations and built up your resume!). These internships just might be more fascinating and fun than a fast food job. Last year, an environmental group sought an intern for a 2-3 month period for work at Lake Baikal, the world's deepest (nearly a mile deep) and one of the world's largest lakes in south-central Russia. Recently, I was dismayed to learn from a neighbor's son, a graduating medical student, that he had not heard of Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner a few years back. He 'guaranteed' me three-quarters or more of his medical class had never heard of them. Or a fireman, who has not heard of American Rescue Team International. Good gracious! You can't get there unless you know the opportunity exists. And that is only the tip of proverbial iceberg! Information is a funny thing. You may collect a lot of worthless garbage, but, unless you have it and can corroborate it, you'll never be able to determine whether it's garbage or gold or gold leaf in-between. Guys, 'You're born, you die, do something with the interval' and 'Do what you love and love what you do'. International work is fascinating and fun! And you might just make a little difference. Discover your own odyssey! -- good luck. Arthur L. Fern --- Copyright 2002 Arthur Fern ==== OTHER EZINES =============================== ASIAN TIMES ONLINE Asia most trusted source for news, business,commentary and analysis from throughout Asia and our world. (www.atimes.com). ----- Subscribe now to the "Timely Time Management Tips" newsletter. Free tips sent to you to help you get more done in less time, with less stress. Send your email now to: mailto:timemanagement-subscribe@topica.com ----- japan-guide.com Extensive, up to date online guide on Japan living and travel related information. http://www.japan-guide.com/ ==== EW SPECIAL ================================= WEBMASTER SPECIAL 10 years ago we found the perfect webmaster to manage our Expat World Websites. We haven't look back since. Now we convinced him to offer his services at a discounted price to our readers. He now only hosts personal and business websites but also assist in design, programming and administration. For our business he even setup our whole payment processing including merchant account. So our advice, if you intend to have your own personal website, start your own internet business or just want to change to a reliable service -- he is the man. You may contact him directly at jszabo@plasticroad.com or send us an email at office@expatworld.net and put "EW Webmaster" in the subject header an we put you in contact with him. ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... ================ NEWS STORIES Oops, Wrong Car. Sorry. BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman became so furious after a fight with her husband she stormed out of the house armed with a hammer and smashed up his car -- before realizing she had vandalized the wrong vehicle, police said Wednesday. The 43-year-old from Essen, western Germany, told police she shattered the windshield, broke the headlights and wrenched off the wing mirrors, causing more than $1,200 in damage, because she was filled with rage after a telephone quarrel. After going back indoors she realized she had battered the wrong car. Only noticing the color, she had attacked her neighbor's blue Opel Corsa and not the blue Ford Fiesta belonging to her spouse. --- $111 coin contains $140 worth of gold SRI Lanka's central bank has suspended sales of precious metal commemorative coins that were becoming gold mines for speculators, an official said. Buyers could make a mint out of the eight gram gold coin priced at 8000 rupees ($111) when the equivalent gold value in the open market had shot up to at least 10,000 rupees ($140). "We stopped the sale of the gold and silver coins pending a revision of prices," the bank's superintendent of currency, S. Wijesinghe, told AFP. "The gold value in the coin is more than the current market price." The coin was issued with a face value of 5000 ($70)rupees to mark the country's independence golden jubilee in February 1998, with a tidy 3000 rupee mark up for the central bank. Sales of the coins were suspended last month without fanfare, although the bank's website has continued advertising the coins at the old price. The 4100 people who had bought the 5000 rupee gold coin before sales were suspended could now be laughing all the way to the bank, or the jeweller. The 1000-rupee silver coin weighing 28.28 grams has also been held back because the metal value in it is more than the 1200 rupees ($16.70) the bank had been charging. Jewellers here said a sovereign, or eight grams, of 22-carat gold in the form of a medallion or coin retailed for 12,000 rupees ($167), while in uncrafted form it costs 10,0000 rupees ($140) - the "paper gold market" price. Wijesinghe said he did not expect the commemorative coins to be melted down, but jewellers said it made good business sense - although no one would openly admit to something that is technically illegal. The bank had similar problems with smaller denomination brass coins which have virtually vanished from circulation after enterprising industrialists turned them into screws. To a lesser extent, the five rupee coin is also being taken abroad, especially to London where some vending machines could be fooled to accepting it as a one pound coin. --- Costly Fake Bank Notes Puzzle Police TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese police have been scratching their heads in bewilderment over the country's latest counterfeiting trend -- fake bills that cost more to make than their face value. Experts estimate that it cost 1,000 yen ($9.10) to make each of the more than 400 bogus 1,000 yen notes that have turned up in vending machines in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, suggesting profit was not the motive, the Asahi newspaper's English-language edition reported Tuesday. "Police suspect a techno-maniac is involved," the Asahi said. The fake bills are made by replacing the middle strip of genuine notes with a color photocopy, and securing them with tape. To the human eye they are obviously bogus, but they fool some older vending machines. ----- TRAVELLER'S TALES LIFE IMITATES ART: A man in Australia had his dead father's skin removed and exhibited in his dining room. The reason? Carl Whittaker's father Barry wanted his tattoos preserved. So Carl, a miner in northern Queensland, arranged for the skin to be tanned by a leather firm, the Australian press reported. The skin, which shows the usual eagle, snake and stuff, is now on permanent display. Not all his dinner guests are impressed by his wall-hangings. "You've got your fors and againsts, and a lot of people are quite horrified by it all," Carl said. "The people that know me just know it was out of respect for my old man, because he was my best mate." Musical readers will be reminded of the last verse of that Australian pop classic Tie Me Kangaroo Down: "Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred/Tan me hide when I'm dead./So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde,/And that's it hanging on the shed." ----- Oxymoron: low tax ----- "The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind." -- Humprey Bogart. ----- "If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing rods." -- Don't know origin but heared it first from Gene ----- Laws around the World Law: The drinking age on Furman University campus is 60 years old. Country: United States City: Greenville Citation: Furman University was originally a "dry campus", but recently, condos built for senior citizens were erected on the property, so drinking was allowed, but only for the senior citizens. ----- Lawyers Question and Answer jokes Q: Did you hear they just released a new Barbie doll called "Divorced Barbie"? A: Yeah, it comes with half of Ken's things and alimony. Q: What's the problem with lawyer jokes? A: Lawyer's don't think they're funny, and no one else thinks they're jokes. Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: How many can you afford? Q: When attorneys die, why do they bury them 600 feet underground? A: Because deep down, they're really nice guys. Q: What's the difference between an attorney and a pit bull? A: Jewelry. Q: What do lawyers use for birth control? A: Their personalities. Q: What's the definition of mixed emotions? A: Watching your attorney drive over a cliff in your new Ferrari. Q: Where do vampires learn to suck blood? A: Law school. Q: What do honest lawyers and UFOs have in common? A: You always hear about them, but you never see them. ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============================ ZPG - PASSWORD GENERATOR With zpg you can generate passwords. everybody knows, that passwords should be choosen very carefully, therefore this software is very good to produce accidental passwords. it is proofen, that zpg generates passwords more accidental than one can do this 'by hand'. there are two possibilities for generating passwords: standard passwords: - the length of the password can be set freely, of course. for the generation zpg uses optionally small characters, capital characters, numbers and a self-defined set of symbols. passwords from a given sentence: - here you enter a sentence. every first character of every word is used for the password. punctuation marks are also inserted into the password. additionally there is the possibility to replace a given number of letters into numbers. Best of all it's free. Get it at ==== INSIDE THIS MONTH EXPAT WORLD =============== EXPAT WORLD NEWSLETTER (VOL.16 ISSUE 06) Table of Content: - PANAMA IS HOT - A WORLD CLASS RETIREMENT HAVEN THAT'S RIPE FOR PROFITABLE REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT - BITS & PIECES - THE RED LIGHTS OF SEOUL - YOUR PRIVACY IS BEING SLICED, DICED, CUT, SHREDDED AND HOMOGENIZED UNTIL THERE IS VIRTUALLY NOTHING LEFT OF IT. - PASSPORTS BY MAIL UPDATE - ISLANDS LURED TO SELL PASSPORTS - DOMINICA PASSPORTS - SERBIAN CUSTOMS SEIZE FAKE BELGIUM PASSPORTS - EUROPEAN UNION SEEKS VISA-FREE TRAVEL TO THE USA FOR ALL EU MEMBERS - TURKS-CAICOS SERIOUSLY CONSIDER BECOMING CANADA'S 11 PROVINCE - THE EMPLOYEE TAX-FREE TAKE HOME PAY INDEX - AROUND THE WORLD WITH EXPAT WORLD - INTERNATIONAL SNIPS & CLIPS - CRAPPER RAPPER - THE PERILS OF BEER - HOUSE OF PRICKS - "JOHN" WAYNE YOU MISSING SO MUCH Each week the EXPAT WORLD DIGEST gives you just a smattering of what you can find in the EXPAT WORLD newsletter that we produce once a month. Why not get the whole story and subscribe now to our electronic version for just US $30 per year. Go to our website: www.expatworld.net to sign up. ********************************************************************* EXPAT WORLD - the newsletter of international living URL - http://www.expatworld.net Email - office@expatworld.net ---------- End of Expat World Digest -------------------------------- To unsubscribe, write to unsubscribe-digest@expatworld.net