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I enjoy quality journalism from international news channels like BBC World, Al-Jazeera and France24, but as I don’t own a TV (and probably never will) my only option is to use video streams from broadcasters or commercial third parties, and as unicast streams consume a lot of bandwidth for each concurrent user, they are not an affordable service for broadcasters to provide en masse. Usually, I’ll have to pay for the access, and I gladly do as long as the price is right.

Unfortunately, this is not a suitable solution if online TV streaming (where expensive ISP-dependent “value added” services like Nextgentel’s Broadpark just doesn’t cut it) are supposed to go mainstream. For a while now, I have been looking at different technologies for using peer-to-peer technology for distributing live multimedia streams as an alternative to unicast. There seems to be several services available online, depending on what you’d like to watch and if you don’t mind poor quality. One P2P service offer limited reception of Scandinavian entertainment channels like TV3, as well as NRK, TVNorge and others, probably without any consideration of copyright infringement. Besides this, the problem with solutions like this is also that the P2P distribution technology seem to be proprietary and poorly implemented with heavy dependencies on lock-in technology like Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and ActiveX plugins.

Multicast transport might have been a good solution, but access to the MBone is usually not available outside academia, and IPv6 is just too far away.

Peer to peer distribution of live content is a complicated matter, and I have still not found a suitable open platform for P2P distribution of livestream content, so I am considering looking a bit deeper into current P2P protocols together with others. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

When I discussed this matter with a friend recently, she mentioned a service called Zattoo which seem to provide live content like Al-Jazeera, France24, Deutsche Welle and NRK in an acceptable quality for free. It is proprietary technology, and they seem to “only” use p2p to reduce the broadcaster’s bandwith demands to 10% of today. Not exactly what I was looking for in the technology itself, but it seems to be a cool service providing my favourite content free of charge. Much to my surprise, they also support a Linux client.

I am a Patriot
by Frederick H. Winterberg III

If being a patriot means hanging an American flag from the antenna of one’s car or from the flagpole in front of one’s house, then I don’t qualify.

If being a patriot means standing behind the president, no matter what he and his administration do, then I guess I’m out on that count too.

If being a patriot is not voicing your opinion because it goes against what the government is saying, I lose again.

If being a patriot means giving up my civil liberties, then I guess I’m out of luck.

If being a patriot means supporting the use of torture in questioning suspects, holding people indefinitely without bail or legal representation, or holding military tribunals to try “war criminals” out of the sight of the public and judiciary, then I am the antithesis of a patriot.

And yet this is what our government is calling for, in the name of patriotism. Anybody who doesn’t get in lockstep behind the president and embrace what I’ve outlined above is considered a traitor, or worse, a terrorist.

In my heart, I know I’m a patriot.

I am a patriot because I dearly love my country and what it purports to stand for. I love the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, without interference from the government. I feel blessed to have grown up in a country with guaranteed basic human rights, which is so much more than many people in the world receive. I cherish the right to speak my mind when I want, where I want, on whatever subject I want, no matter how much it may go against the beliefs of those around me. And I cherish the right of other people to do the same, even when what they say infuriates me. I am grateful for my right to privacy, to be free from intrusive searches and seizures by the government and police without a warrant and just cause. I am thankful for the beauty and splendor of this country’s untouched and undeveloped areas, where the true beauty of nature can still be experienced and appreciated. And above all, I appreciate more than anything else the right to live my life as I see fit, without any government, religion, or corporation telling me what I should and should not, or can and can not do.

For these reasons, and many others, I am a patriot.

In the wake of September 11, the government has, with predictable zeal, gone after the very things that I cherish about my country and that make it a special place to live. Our rights are flying out the window at an alarming pace. My privacy can be invaded, my home searched without reason, the environment and nature are being bulldozed in the name of profits and oil. I could even be jailed for writing this piece.

Yet I am still a patriot.

I will not abandon my country by moving to Canada or another country because I don’t like the way this one is being run. I will not stand silent as my rights are being stripped, even though to speak out against the government these days is considered treasonous. I will not “watch what I say, watch what I do”, as the President’s press Secretary advised us last month. No, I will stand and fight for what I believe in. I believe in the constitution of the United States, and what it stands for. I believe in all the things I spoke of above that I love and cherish about this country.

Most of all, I believe patriotism comes from within, from a place deep inside me. Not from a flag, not from my possessions, not from my stature in society or how much money I make, not from getting in line behind those in power because they tell me it’s the right thing to do. To me, it is to stand up and fight for what I believe is right for myself and my country in the face of adversity, which is what we are facing now.

And that, in my opinion, is the true definition of a patriot.

November 21, 2001

Thursday, March 2nd

OK, so this is it. The last day. I was feeling awful, because I knew I would miss so much. I checked out of my hotel, left my bag in storage, and went to take the Skytrain to Mo Chit and the MRT metro to Phahon Yothin in order to get my vacation photos printed at a bargain price of only 2.50 baht. With 399 pictures, it turned out to cost me nearly 1000 baht, but then again, this was 1/6th of the price back home. The clerks did not manage very well with English (this was not exactly a “touristy” area) but sign language and patience did the trick.

They needed two hours to do the developing, so I took the MRT metro back downtown to Sukhumvit/Asoke, and then the Skytrain one stop further down to Phrom Phong and the Emporium, where I sat down at Starbucks with a large drip coffee and today’s edition of the Bangkok Post. I contacted Sampron (from Koh Jum) who was in Bangkok at the moment, and we agreed to meet at Mo Chit again at 15:00, as I would go back there to get the photos. After some delays (hey, it’s Bangkok) I fetched the photos at Phahon Yothin and took the MRT back to Mo Chit, where he picked me up. We went downtown to have lunch at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, but we had to go to Siam Square instead, as Sampron had left his membership card at home. We had a snack and a nice conversation on a Starbucks in Siam Square (I don’t know why I keep ending up at Starbucks, I really hate that place) and later I was offered a ride to the airport. We got my bag out of storage and went uptown in his neighbourhood near Don Muang where we had a meal and some beers, before I was dropped off at the airport.

KLM was in a good mood that day, so they gave me an exit row seat, but unfortunately I got the seat right next to the emergency slide, so that my legroom got even smaller than with an ordinary seat. The good thing was that I could have my legs resting on the slide during flight. I didn’t give this much thought – I was too sad to leave Thailand in order to enjoy this rare privilege at all.

When arriving in Amsterdam, disembarking from the aircraft, I was welcomed by a chilly wind coming into the walkbridge from outside. My thin jacket didn’t help much, and I was really feeling down when it turned out to be somewhat of a snow blizzard around Europe that day. Most flights was delayed or cancelled, but eventually my connecting plane turned up at the gate, and I got back home to Kristiansand about 90 minutes after schedule.

With my pockets full of everything but Norwegian currency, and a bus service that didn’t accept credit cards, I went about the airport looking for an ATM. After finding one (on the other end of the airport, of course) withdrawing enough money for the bus and a taxi from the bus terminal, I discovered that the bus was gone. Luckily, the next bus would come by 30 minutes later. When I got to Arendal, I decided to not waste money on a taxi, so I had to run around to the other side of the terminal to catch the bus going to my parent’s house (where I had parked my dog and car while I was away), nearly missing it. Never mind that my shoelaces had gone up, that I had gotten a cold and was feeling terrible – the bus driver had the biggest smile I had seen after arriving back in Europe, and that instantly made me feel a whole lot better. On the bus, I met an old friend from back when I grew up here, as he was going home together with his young son and baby daughter. We nearly didn’t recognize each other, but when we did, we had a great oppertunity to catch up.

At around 14:00 on Friday, March 3rd, I was back where I started.

It had been wonderful.

Wednesday, March 1st

I was starting to feel a bit sad for leaving soon, so I didn’t feel in the mood for doing much at all this day, but I ended up at Silom Complex reading the Bangkok Post thouroughly and having several cups of jasmine tea, before I met Pim for the last time, walking about the weekend market at Lumpini Park and shopping for some gifts for home. It’s always sad to leave a good friend, especially when there’s no way of knowing when we’ll meet again. It might be one year, it might be five years, and it might be never.

Tuesday, February 28th

Boring day. I didn’t care for taking a daily excursion to Ayutthaya as I originally planned, so I have just been walking around. I’m going to the Emporium later on, and perhaps I’ll go for a stroll in Lumpini Park again later.

Yesterday, I went to see the Siam Ocean World at Siam Paragon, and went through the whole thing in about an hour. It was some impressive creatures there, like huge sharks passing by 20 centimetres over my head, but in general my impression was only a mild dissatisfaction. It was OK, but I’ve seen much better aquarium concepts before. Being a concept in the Siam Paragon I would expect more excellence.

Today I guess I’ll go see a movie at the Discovery, or I’ll follow up on Sanpron’s invitation to give him a call on the 28th, when he would come to Bangkok. (It’s the owner of the resort on Koh Jum, who lives in Bangkok.)

Monday, February 27th

I’m starting to see the end of the vacation now, with my plane leaving for Amsterdam on thursday at 23:30 in the evening. I will seriously miss my old and new friends, as well as the country itself and its sometimes mind-boggling ways. I’m trying to not think too much about this.

So far, I have spent the day on the 7th floor of the MBK centre, writing articles on my blog about the last few days. I have no plans for the day, and I guess I won’t be doing much, perhaps a movie later on. Pim is busy, so I’ll have to go by myself.

One funny thing happened to me when I got into the MBK centre, though. A guy came walking along next to me, and then he chuckled and asked me how tall I was. Around 190 centimetres, I said, and then he started comparing our foot sizes. European 45, I said with a smile, and we exchanged pleasantries when we walked down the mall. I was already having my warning light strobes up, and they were flashing quite intensely. No worries, I thought, I’ll just see where this goes. Without being asked, I said that I was soon going home to the snow, and then I would be skiing. I was waiting for him to ask me where I was from, but then I just said “I’m from Norway, by the way”. Wow, my sister is going to Norway, he said, and warning lights were flashing in my head almost to the extent that I wanted to laugh really loud about the whole thing. Good, I said, and then I said that I was going this way to the elevator, and wishing him a nice day. He asked if I wanted to meet his sister, and I asked if she wasn’t still in Norway. No, he said, she was still here, but she was going to go there. He started to look at the watch and asked me when we should meet, he would bring his sister. No thanks, but good luck anyways, I said and walked away. When I got up to the 7th floor, I was thinking along the lines of “fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me”.

I wonder how good the business is for these sorts of scams. Damn it, I should have asked him about that before walking away.

Sunday, February 26th

Pim had a little hangover today, even though she didn’t drink much the day before. After breakfast, we thought about going to an underwater world, but as it did cost quite a lot of money for foreigner, Pim suggested that I visit the Underwater world in Siam Paragon instead. We ended up taking a walk to the bus station before giving up to the heat and taking a 10 baht songthaew the rest of the way.

After a sleepy bus ride back to Bangkok, we went with the Skytrain to National Stadium and MBK centre, and had dinner at Bar-B-Q or something – you get some japanese dishes and fry or boil them yourself on a plate on the table. It was 290 baht for a big plate of stuff, and I really got full without managing to eat it all. It was really great food, and a nice experience, as I don’t think we have anything like that at home. Perhaps a business oppertunity for when I get tired of working with computers?

Pim felt sick, so she went home, and I went to my A-One hotel closeby to rest the rest of the day.

Saturday, February 25th

After arriving to my hotel at 04:00 in the morning, I enquired about storing my big bag in the box storage, and booked a room from sunday to monday. I had quite a few hours to kill before Pim would be calling, so I went to 7-eleven to buy Bangkok Post and something to drink.

Eventually Pim called, and we agreed to meet on Ekkamai skytrain station next to the Eastern Bus Terminal in 30 minutes. She was delayed by the typical Bangkok traffic and was 90 minutes late. We went on to the bus station and grabbed an air-con bus to Pattaya, for 117 baht per person. The ride was two hours and comfortable enough. From the bus station we took a songthaew to the Green Park Resort.

The place was swarming with old, fat and bald men with bargirls, and some of them even winked and whispered on Pim while we were walking down the promenade. This was a meat market, but I sort of knew this already, and didn’t get too fussed up about it. We met some young school girls further down on the promenade, practicing English by talking to foreigners. It seemed like this was the action of a foreign guy who tutored these girls in English for free. Some of the girls came up to me and Pim while we were taking a rest on a bench and asked if we would help them with their English. While we were making easy converstaion in English, Pim started correcting them in their tones (when asking a question, for example) while I was just chatting away, getting reprimanded by Pim several times for talking too fast.

Later on, we went out for a drink and a cabaret show at Tiffany’s Show, a ladyboy ensemble with extravaganza and glam. It turned out to be only so-so, with some good dance performances, but I didn’t like the concept as everything was playback. The artists were just miming the songs and the words, and there was no orchestra. It really made the whole thing boring for me, and I was very happy when it was over and we could leave. But it did get me a kiss from a ladyboy and a photo of me, Pim and two ladyboys, costing me 190 baht in total. (They really wanted 300 baht, but I didn’t have change for that.)

After this, we took a 10 baht songthaew to the infamous Walking Street and had dinner with live band performance (rock cover artists and even an Elvis inpersonator). We had a seafood/lemon sauce dish which was absolutely delicious. Afterwords we took a little sightseeing stroll on Walking Street before we went back to the resort.

Friday, February 24th

I was actually thinking of leaving the day before, on thursday, but I had to stay another day (and that was fine with me, I was really enjoying it on Koh Jum) due to the fact that all planes and express VIP-buses were full. I was due to meet Pim in Bangkok on saturday morning for a one-day trip to Pattaya. To get to Bangkok in time, I would need to take the bus from Krabi bus terminal on friday at 17:00.

Due to the low tide, the Bonhomie longtail was stranded, and I was to be shuttled to the Krabi ferry (passing by at 14:00) by someone from another resort. Fate would play tricks with me, as someone died on Koh Jum the day before, and muslims will bury the dead within 24 hours. The funeral made it impossible for me to get to the Krabi ferry in time, and I was stranded. This was something I just had to accept for what it was, so I embraced myself for an early departure the next day and a very expensive plane ticket in order to get to Bangkok that day.

To my surprise, the owner of the resort, Sanpron, offered to drive me to Krabi, and all I had to pay him was what I would have paid for the ferry to Krabi and taxi to the bus station, around 350 baht. I was very grateful for his offer, but would not hear anything of his attempts to take responsibility for the situation – he claimed that he said everything would be allright with the ferry, and when it was not he felt guilty. I was very clear that my vacation is my own responsibility and things like this happen. I gladly accepted his offer to transport me to Krabi, but with at least a more proper compensation than 350 baht (a taxi would cost 600 baht)

We took the jeep along the bumpy Koh Jum roads, and I even got to see a monkey on a very close range during the ride. They seem to be more afraid of people than of cars. We got to the pier, and would cross over to the mainland in a longtail full of children who had attended the funeral of the beforementioned person. During the ride, I had a pleasant conversation with Sanpron, generating some laughs and smiles. This must have eased up the young boys, as they started to gather around me and play with my backpack next to my feet. Suddenly, one of them broke out in a big grin and asked me proudly where I was from, in English. Sanpron told me that these kids learn English in school, but never gets around to practice it with foreigners, so this was very exiting for them. Eventually, I was talking very slow English with 15 muslim schoolboys from Krabi. When we got to the mainland pier, one of the boys asked me something that I didn’t understand, so I had to get them all to repeat the question. After a few attempts, I grasped that they were asking me about what my favourite football team was. I am not interested in football, but to avoid long explainations about this, I told them my favourite team was Manchester United. What I didn’t tell them was that this is my father’s favourite team.

On the mainland, Sanpron went to get his mainland car. On the resort, he said that it was not a car. What is it, then, I asked him, quite curious to what kind of veichle this was. It’s not a car, he said again, and showed me his car keys with “It’s not a car, it’s a Volkswagen” on the keyring. I almost fell out of the chair laughing.

The car was a very old, white Beetle Bus, but it did the trick. We got to the bus terminal in time, and I could get my bus ticket (920 baht). I had some sandwhiches for lunch with Sanpron at the closeby restaurant before we parted ways. I thought it would be proper to pay for gasoline, expenses and time, so I gave him 800 baht. He said it was too much, but I insisted and then we parted ways. I got into the 24-seat VIP bus for Bangkok (24 seats in what would ordinarily be 50 seats, mind you – I had plenty of legroom) and off we went at exactly 17:00. At 19:30 we stopped at a roadside restaurant to have dinner (included in the fare), and even though there was no information in English, I followed Sanpron’s suggestion that I just follow the Thais, and this worked out fine. We were ushered into a big dining room where there was plates, cutlery and cups on the table, together with bowls of rice and some Thai dishes. When I finished the meal, I went to a department store nearby to buy a fill-up card for my mobile phone, and ended up buying a 300 baht card even though I didn’t need that much.

The ride was nice, but the roads to Bangkok was very bumpy, and several times I woke up with a shock, as the bus “flew through the air” after hitting one enourmous tarmac bump. The bus went along the way from Krabi, passing Surat Thani, Chumphon and Phetchaburi on the way to Bangkok, passing very close to the Burmese border. I didn’t see much as I was drifting in and out of sleep all the time.

When we arrived at Bangkok Southern Bus Terminal in Thonburi the next day at 03:30, I was immediately hawked by people wanting to offer me their taxi services. I was trying to find a ride on the meter, but most of the taxi drivers declined, as they wanted a fixed price of 150 baht for the effort. Eventually I found someone who would accept my demand for a metered ride to Siam, but he looked like he was about to fall asleep. As I stuffed my backpack into the car, I noticed some of his colleagues saying “baht, baht” to him, not happy with the fact that I declined their offer of a fixed price. I was sure that the ride was not worth a baht over 100, as Siam would be a nice ride straight east from the bus terminal, passing through Banglamphou and Democracy Monument.

On the ride, I offered the taxi driver a Red Bull energy drink that I had tucked away in my daypack, so that he perhaps would wake up. He was no good in English (even though the window had a big sticker saying “I love farang (foreigner), we speak english”) and started to talk about alternative routes. I told him to go through Banglamphou and drive me to Siam, but he said something about problem and go through Silom instead. I thought that Silom was further down the bank and quite some detour, but he insisted that this would be the best ride. I was not one to argue, so I said OK and off we went down the bank off Chang Phraya on the Thonburi side, before we passed the Chang Phraya and got close to Silom. The taxi driver then started to gaggle about girls and pointing to Patpong which was close by. Not interested, I said, but he still seemed like a sexual deviator, pointing to girls in school uniforms passing in front of the car on a red light, making drool sounds and clearly indicating that he wouldn’t mind having his way with them. I found the whole experience to be outright disturbing, and eventually I just ignored him.

Well, I arrived at my hotel in Siam, and the meter said 155 baht, so I would have been better off taking the offer off the meter. This guy had been taking me for a joyride in Bangkok, and even though it was on the meter he made a good profit. I was too tired bothering about demanding change back from the 160 baht I gave him (that is not an automatic affair with Bangkok taxis) and just wanted to get rid of him.

Thursday, February 23rd

Today I got to drive the longtailboat on a little cruise down to the southern part of the island. Tchum didn’t want me to give it so much speed, as this boat is quite difficult to steer. The thing is really just a 300kg diesel engine mounted on the boat by a oiled junction, and a propella mounted on the far end of a 3-4 metre pipe. This design is typical for South East Asia, and is quite ingenious for navigating through shallow waters and where there are plenty of fishing nets floating around. I read somewhere that this design allegedly stems from a time when there was a lot of old diesel truck engines for sale in Europe, and a clever Hong Kong businessman figured out what they could be used for, implementing them on Asian longtailboats for effective propulsion through rivers and canals.

Sarah and Tchum invited me to go with Tchum to Coconut Island on the most northern part of the island, where their dream was to buy land and build a resort of their own. Tchum and myself went out there with a MTX cross motorbike, at least as far as we got before the thing ran out of fuel. We passed some rubber plantations and eventually made the way to Cocunut Beach, and it was quite beautiful. They would need to do a lot of work with the place, with the road and with setting up the resort, but it was doable, at least if they got the funds together. I think they talked about needing about one million baht to get everything up, and they would go to Sarahs hometown of Bordeaux in May, possibly to work up money. I hope their dream comes true.

I also went for a walk along the rocky seaside further north, but I decided to not go very far, as the weather was starting to turn, and I could see that it was raining heavily out in the Andaman Ocean.