Well today I had the singular experience of a colonoscopy. The worst part was fasting for 36 hours. The other part might have been worse, but they gave me some real good drugs and I apparently snored through most of the procedure. They removed 3 polyps which they will biopsy. The Doc said the color was good so just expected good results. I will know where things stand definitively in a couple of weeks.

So after exiting surgery I had a double Whopper, fries, coke, and large chocolate milkshake. Ah much better. The only side effect of the procedure so far is uncontrolled flatulance. Which should makes darts tonight rather interesting. I don’t fill drugged up now, but I was warned to avoid alcohol and not to drive for 24 hours. But I will drive to work tomorrow anyway. May or may not avoid beer tonight.

I still need to report on my trip to the Philippines. Will do so this week. Promise.

Out fo now.

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I’m ready to go.

Making my first journey to the Philppines tomorrow. ‘Bout time after three years in Asia to see some of it besides Korea. I’ll be seeing the Subic Bay area, Manila, and Cebu this trip. If I find my way to an internet cafe I may do a post during the trip, otherwise ya just gotta wait till I get back home. Only gonna be gone a week, but damn, I need this vacation.

Anyongheegaesaeyo.

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Well, my son Kevin turns 30 years old today. Which makes us exactly the same age. Although he is 30 in mind AND body. So this post is for him.

Turning 30 is a good thing, son. A whole ‘nother world of possibilities await you. To me, it is the real beginning of adulthood. I hope you don’t feel like you are getting too old to achieve your dreams.

I guess the other thing I would tell you is too hold fast to what you value most in life. You have a beautiful wife who loves you and that is a bigger treasure than you may realize. Richness is not always about money.

Although I’m not around to be offering fatherly advice (which I probably wouldn’t be good at if I was around), I trust I can serve as an example to you. A bad example, it’s true, but an example nonetheless. I hope you will reflect on my many mistakes in life and resolve yourself to be a better man than I was.

I have always been prouder of you than know. Nothing would make me prouder than seeing you live a happy and fulfilling life, surrounded by the many people who love you.

Happy birthday, son. I love you.

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We had the mid-season tourney this weekend. I was teamed up with Natalie and we played tough but didn’t place. The highlight for me was throwing a ton-80. Of course, in the next round I got to experience the flipside when Chris B. threw a ton-80 against us. As you might expect, we tied for the high-out and had a nine dart shoot out. Which I took 267-262 and resulted in my walking away with W10,000. Hey better than getting poked in the eye with a bounce out. Which I’ve never seen happen, but you never know. Heh, I guess it could be the last thing you ever saw, especially if you are blind in one eye. Which I’m not.

Last night in league play we had the White Horse guys from Blue Frog. An all Korean team that has some pretty tough players, including my bud Jin Jun and Mr. Lee. We won the match 23-8. I threw ok, going 5-4 but was limited to two 5-marks and a 3BC. So, three marks in 9 legs shows that I am still off my game. I’m just not throwing with much confidence right now, and more than halfway through the season I should be over my “A” division jitters. Of course, week in and week out I am facing much stronger competition. But, when I lose I am losing ugly. Meaning I am beating myself more than I am being beat, if you get my meaning.

Nothing to do but suck it up and keep on throwing.

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Well, seeing the hypocrite Obama Hussein, er, Hussein Barack, um, well, you know that guy with three years of Senate experience who thinks he should be the leader of the free world, squirm over the NAFTA kerfluffle is quite entertaining.

So, the plan is to mend our relations with the world by unilaterally repudiating a multilateral treaty? Yeah, that will work. And I guess not being a lying politician (sorry for the redundancy) isn’t the kind of change Mr. Obama is talking about. Hell, I already had him pegged for a Carter-like weasel anyway.

No, what has been great has been the reaction up north. Our Canadian cousins are calling Barack out on his double talking, and the Obama-maniacs are taking it rather poorly. Noam Scheiber, Obama’s chief economist, wonders: What is it with these Canadians? Are they running some sort of entrapment operation up there? Why do they keep trying to torpedo Democratic candidates?”

HaHa! Yeah, just what are those wacky Canucks up too? Trying to get McCain elected?

Nah, Daniel Drezner has got it all figured out:

Based on my extensive experience with the people of the Great White North, I’ll be happy to answer Scheiber’s question. All understanding about Canadians are based on based on three very simply rules of thumb:

1) Canadians are the most polite people on earth. Really, compared to Americans, it’s just embarrassing at times. Canadians never lose their temper in meetings, ever. This is deceptive, however, because…..

2) Canadians are also the most passive-aggressive nationality on earth. For their entire lives, Canadians have had to cope with the fact that everyone assumes they’re essentially just like Americans — including Americans. The best way to make a Canadian blow a gasket is to mistake them for an American. There are other dyads that have this kind of dynamic as well (Russia-Ukraine, Australia-New Zealand), but among Canadians it leads to this kind of resentment boiling just beneath the surface that, if ever unleashed, would look like a scene from 28 Days Later.

This has a profound effect on Canadian behavior vis-a-vis the rest of the world, because just when you think a Canadian is on your side, s/he does something that completely gums up the works of a policy initiative. In the case of Canadian-American relations, this is compounded by the final rule….

3) Canadians are really schizophrenic about American attention. On the one hand, countries that are the focus of lots of American attention don’t necessarily fare all that well. Canadians like the fact that their country is often below the radar.

That said, I’m always surprised when, every four years, Canadians ask me, “So will Canada be an issue in the presidential campaign?” Every time, I say, “no chance in hell.” Clearly I’ve been proven wrong this year, but this is because the Canadians themselves lengthened the news cycle.

So to answer Noam’s question: the Canadians are doing what they’re doing because they don’t want any Americans taking Canada for granted. But they’ll do it as politely as possible.

Try applying these rules whenever one deals with Canadians — they’re easy, and fun!

I basically gave you lazy people who won’t follow a link all of Mr. Drezner’s piece (hope he forgives the violation of fair use), but click the link anyway because the comments are quite entertaining as well.

And to my Canadian buds here in Korea all I can say is pretty good stuff, eh?

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My laptop died. Well, it is not dead but it has alzheimers or something. It just shuts down with increasing regularity. It started happening a couple of months ago with things like YouTube videos, which I guess take a lot of computing power to run or something. Then it started happening with simple tasks like email. Well, it was three years old so I suppose that’s about all the useful life you can expect.

So yesterday I went to the PX and picked up a new machine. I bought a middlin’ HP desktop with a nice 19″ widescreen monitor. Set me back $700. I looked at a Toshiba laptop with the same memory as the desktop for about $150 more, but you know I can’t see myself lugging a laptop around much anyway. So I will wait till I can afford something top-of-the-line before I take the plunge on another laptop.

So, this computer is ok. It runs Vista which I have heard nothing good about. So far no problems though. The pain in the ass is that all my bookmarks, photos, etc. are on the old machine. Ah well, I think it has enough life where I can get my hard drive stuff salvaged and transferred to a new home.

On a positive note, I was able to load and play CIV IV. Got it for Christmas a couple of years ago but the laptop didn’t have the systems required to run it. Then the CD/ROM quit working so I couldn’t even play CIV III. So it was nice to get back into some gaming. CIV IV is quite a bit different than its predecessors, so it will take some getting used. But I spent most of the day yesterday getting a feel for it and I think I’m going to have another enjoyable pastime to fill in the gaps when I’m not throwing darts.

And there you have the latest fascinating episode of my so-called life.

Cheers!

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