|
Monday, March
23th 1998
It's Monday and we're in Malaysia. It's early in the day. For you
in North America, it's late in the day on Sunday. Good day to you.
Don here. Terri is in the observation car of the railroad train
on the Eastern and Orient Express. It travels a route from Singapore
to Bangkok, Thailand, and our report is coming to you on board the
Eastern and Orient Express Railroad. We're in our small cabin on
board, along with 92 passengers here and we're traveling up the
Malaysian peninsula. Malaysia is like the Florida peninsula in that
it jets out in this part of the word from places that we only hear
about in geography - the Straits of Malacca, the Bay of Bengal and
Thailand and Cambodia are to the north of Malaysia. Singapore is
a colony that sits on the end of the Malaysian peninsula, sort of
like Miami or Dane County. We've been traveling overnight a distance
of about 800 miles from Singapore. We're schedule to stop in the
city of George Town, Malaysia and then go to an island called Paneng,
which is where we'll be for a couple of days. We're rolling along
at 50-60 miles an hour.
Remarkably, we're using a mobile telephone with the European GSM
standard, which enables us to make this transmission directly to
you. Mobile telephones in the United States are not compatible with
the phone systems in Asia and Europe, and consequently, we have
two mobile phones as we move around the world. One for only North
America, a PCS digital phone and an analog system phone for the
United States. The rest of the world has a standard called GSM,
and you have to have that standard to have access to the mobile
telephone system. Some of these areas encourage competition with
telephone providers and they have multiple mobile telephone systems,
as many as 5 in Hong Kong. The penetration and the usage of mobile
cellular phones in this part of the world is amazingly high, I think
it's in the in the 60, 70, 80 percentile range. Almost everyone
carries a mobile telephone.
We had dinner in the dining car last night. The food was terrific.
We're passing through sort of the backdoor of Malaysia. As you ride
the railroad throughout the world, you have sort of a backdoor look
at the local culture and the local standard of living. You see people
who live in substandard housing conditions and sometimes they'll
live underneath the overpasses of the highways and the railroad.
The scenery, as you look out the window, is palm trees and tropical.
Flooded areas sometimes have rice fields. Rubber plantations, coconut
oil and palm oil are the agriculture products. Where in Wisconsin
you're likely to see pine trees, as you look out the window of the
railroad car, you we see palm trees. That's the scenery. It's warm
and humid in this part of the world. We're just near the equator,
as we reported earlier.
We have a factoid kind of question that we want anyone who is interested
to look up. The question came up in the dining car last night from
our friend Gary Edens from Phoenix and Peter, who is the President
of the Montreal Expos from Montreal. They were wondering why, during
the vernal equinox, the sun rise and sun set is at 6 AM and 6 PM,
and in this part of the world the vernal equinox is at 7 AM and
7 PM. We're not quite sure what the reason is for that difference.
We have some family news to report. First thing when we awoke this
morning, we put a phone call directly from the train to our father-in-law,
Dick Eversole, who's in room 642 at Scottsdale Memorial Hospital.
Dick is undergoing tests and being treated by physicians for a little
flare up with his heart. He was laughing this morning and sharing
with us that he's being well taken care of, waiting for the results
of some tests as they try to track down the source of a slight stroke
that affected him. As a precaution and as good health maintenance
practice, he's in Scottsdale Memorial Hospital for 3-4 days. We
told Dick that we'll have to go fishing in Canada this summer, so
he needs to take care and get well real quick. Dick, we know that
you and Carolyn are listening to our updates and we're doing everything
we can to both pray for you and support you by knowing that we're
here but thinking about you. Terri, of course, is being a doctor
by intuition from 10,000 miles away as she seems to have thoughts
about what the doctors should be doing and what you should be doing.
Hopefully, you get those messages telepathically from your loving
and very caring daughter Terri.
There are a couple of landmarks along the route of the train that
one doesn't expect and you discover when you travel. The bridge
over the river Kuai, that was a movie that when we were young, was
a very profound movie, had a very wonderful story and sticks out
in our mind as one of the great movies of our lifetime. The bridge
over the river Kuai is a bridge that the Eastern and Orient Railroad
train passes over in this part of the world. So it's here where
the river Kuai and great story that made a movie very popular in
the 50s and 60s is located. And then we've all heard the expression,
"the road to Mandalay", and it's here that there is such a road,
the road to Mandalay. So we discover these things as we come into
an entirely new place in this beautiful, beautiful planet earth
that we live on. So we're rolling along here on the Eastern and
Orient Express.
Terri will be disappointed that she didn't get to participate in
this update, so we'll give her extra time on the next report. She's
on the back on the train. There appears to be about 18 or 20 cars
on the train, and the last car is an observation deck, open air.
Joseph, our son, will remember riding on the railroad in South Africa
and Joe, your Mom's getting a taste of the close quarters and the
fun of living and using the restroom facilities in our little, teeny,
tiny cabin here on board the railroad. We're headed to the island
of Paneng, which is off of the coast of Malaysia. We understand
there's a lovely hotel there on the beach, for a few days of beach
R & R, one of Terri's favorite things to do.
Reflecting back on our visit to Singapore. The Sunday newspaper
featured a front page comment by none other than Bill Gates and
an extensive interview with Mr. Gates discussing information technology.
He was the speaker on Thursday before a crowd of 3,500 people that
filled a room. Information technology, for people of all ages, in
this part of the world, is the number one industry. The society
and culture are very focused on learning and adapting and using
information technologies, so Mr. Gates is very impressed with that
focus on the part of the local culture. It's very impressive how
they transform and manage these cultures in these places of the
world where there are 4-6 million people - Singapore/Hong Kong.
New Zealand is similar to that. The population of the state of Wisconsin
is about 5 million and it appears to be an optimal number to make
major changes in how we live and work. In the State of Wisconsin,
welfare reform, public and private education reform, all possible
because of the scale under which those kind of changes are being
implemented.
We're going to finish up now by telling you that all is well as
we begin a new week in this part of the world. We'll be here in
Malaysia all this week and we'll keep you posted and updated on
our discoveries every day. The staff on board the train here are
all from Thailand. Bangkok, just north of the border with Malaysia,
is the capital of Thailand. The Eastern and Orient Express travels
from Bangkok to Singapore and back and forth. We have some jelly
jars to bring home to our friend who collects those things. The
Hoppers are doing well. I would say that everybody is in a good
frame of mind and enduring the process of traveling. Well we don't
want you to feel sorry for us or think that we're not doing ok,
we're just delighted at all of the new experiences and the fellowship
of being together with a great group of people. That completes this
update. That tells you what our circumstances are. It's early in
the morning on Monday. We're entering a city of George Town. As
I look out the window, we're pulling into the station, I can see
a mosque above the palm trees. There are houses on stilts here and
living conditions are rather like a jungle and very tropical, sort
of similar to Florida, and the people are very, very nice. On behalf
of Terri, who will get some extra time on the next update, this
is Don coming to you from Malaysia and we wish you a good day and
good week to come. Thanks for coming along on our journey. So long
until the next update.
Back
to CEO Page
Voice: (920) 923-6336
Fax: (920) 923-4369
info@spiritenterprise.com
|
