Just checking in from Bangkok, where I am nearly a week through my Southeast Asia Vacation Extravaganza. I’ve enjoyed a few days of relaxation, massages, and delicious food, along with a bit of sightseeing. At some point I’ll put up photos.On Tuesday I am off to Koh Samui for a week of fun in the sun, with some SCUBA diving hopefully in the mix. I haven’t decided what to do with the week following that, though I’m thinking either more Thailand for simplicity and thoroughness, or Phnom Penh (Cambodia), or Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). Following that, I’m off to Tokyo to cap off my trip.I had originally planned to go all over the place, but travel here is slow, and I’d rather fully experience a small number of places than spread myself thin. After all, my goal on vacation is to relax, not to sit on hot busses for 14 hours at a time. Speaking of relaxing, there’s a pool on the roof of my hotel that I should check out…

For the Thanksgiving holidays, Apple was kind enough to give all of its non-retail employees this whole week off. While I didn’t get enough notice to make plans with my family back east, I was able to get a flight out to Los Angeles to spend the week with my girlfriend. She and her roommate are unique compared to most people in that they do not own a television. While some television shows are still watched by the two of them, television viewing is directed (watching DVD episodes or web streams on a laptop) rather than idle channel surfing.

My first observation after only a few days here is that I have a lot more time to do the things that I want or need to do. It’s only 7 pm and I’ve already accomplished everything I set out to do today and had dinner. There is an empowering feeling that the evening is my oyster to enrich myself through reading and writing in my journal or to do any other of myriad activities. To be clear, I don’t think that television programs are a bad thing - I enjoy watching several, including almost nightly viewings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I do, however, want to do away with the notion of surfing the channels to pass the time until bed. My Tivo has already helped a great deal to reduce my surfing, but some of it has been replaced with watching reruns or “suggestions” that the Tivo picks up for me.

I think one of the first things I do when I get back to San Francisco will be to turn off Tivo Suggestions to rid myself of the temptation of low-hanging entertainment fruit. Similarly, shows like House that I Tivo could just as easily be picked up on DVD and watched in a binge on a sick day. My hope is that one day I won’t be scared of the prospect of not having a dedicated device in my house to record television for me - I’m getting steadily more confident that I’m not missing out on anything other than life.

No, readers, I have not turned my site into a Viagra store… we should be back in good shape now. For those who missed the excitement, twice over the past few weeks my site has been replaced with contents that are not my innermost thoughts, but rather various schemes. It seems that there was a security flaw in WordPress, the software that my blog runs on, and someone used it to replace my BS with their BS. I updated to the latest WordPress and have changed my passwords, so hopefully it doesn’t happen again. When I can spend a few hours writing instead of fixing my site, I’ll get another post out.

Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” is available on store shelves tomorrow, and tech journalists are already gushing about it in their reviews.

• Walt Mossberg (WSJ): Leopard Faster, Easier than Vista
• David Pogue (NYT): Apple Offers New Goodies in Leopard System
• Edward C. Baig (USA Today): Leopard, Apple’s new Mac operating system, hits all the right spots

Something that touched me was to have the work that my team is responsible in part for called out in Walt Mossberg’s review:

“In fact, every piece of software and hardware I tried on two Leopard-equipped Macs — a loaned laptop from Apple and my own upgraded iMac — worked fine, exhibiting none of the compatibility problems that continue to plague Vista. My old Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer, for which Vista lacks the proper software, worked instantly in Leopard, even over the network. And, unlike with Vista, it was able to print on both sides of the page. I popped my old Verizon cellphone modem card into the test Leopard laptop and it worked, too, with no software installation or tweaking.”

I can’t be prouder of my colleagues and all of their hard work and dedication to excellence.

So Mac OS X Leopard is nearing release, which means that I too am nearing release from the shackles of crunch time. For a bit of perspective, the last day that I took off from work was April 20th, which I took off to fly up to visit Nick in Boston. Since then, I’ve worked generally no fewer than six days per week for generally 10-12 hours per day.

So I need a break.

So I am taking one.

On 9 December, I’m flying to Tokyo to travel around southeast Asia for four weeks. My plan is still coming together, but the countries that I am expecting to visit are Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and possibly Laos and/or the Phillippines. I suspect I’ll do Japan last, as I’d like to partake in the New Year’s celebrations in Tokyo before flying back to San Francisco on 4 January.

In the two months leading up to my trip, I’ll be planning a rough itinerary and securing the necessary visas and innoculations. Generally speaking, though, I’m expecting to more or less bum around, going from place to place following my interests on my own schedule. I dislike “destination tourism,” in which people write down a list of things they plan to see in between meals at places that serve American food before leaving a country in which they never spoke to someone outside of a consumer context. Rather, I like to wander around and take in the people and their culture, customs, and cuisine. My style will be faciliated by the fact that I’ll be traveling alone for most if not all of the trip.

Thailand is probably the place I’m most excited to visit, as I’ve heard nothing but good stories about the beautiful environment and friendly people. There are myriad possibilities there, ranging from partying with the European and Oceanic visitors to scuba diving to trekking in the wilderness. I suppose I’ll need to pick up a camera.

More details to come…

I was just looking over my Wells Fargo statement online, and discovered that they have hidden (not indicated clearly at time of service) fees for everyday banking activities. I was charged $1 to check my balance on one of their ATMs, and I was charged $2 for accessing my account over the phone. Oddly, these sorts of fees will simply lead most people to go into a branch and occupy a banker, costing Wells Fargo more than if they just let the customer use the ATM.

The bank also automatically transferred $25 from my checking to my savings, untold to me when setting up the account (and I read everything!). This seems like a nefarious scheme concocted to make people bounce checks… I only keep what I need for a check to clear in my low-interest checking, leaving my savings, well, in savings. Here they go moving $25 out of checking into savings as some sort of favor to me, and had I written a check it would have bounced, leading to fees and hassles. As a further kick in the stomach, WF deducts any fees from your checking instead of your savings, also in an apparent effort to get you to bounce a check.

Now that I’ve been bitten by them three times to me in as many months, I will no longer do banking with Wells Fargo. That’s their loss, particularly when I leave before they recouped their investment in me, and warn potential customers in this review. I’m moving to E*Trade bank after next month’s rent check is taken care of. E*Trade will reimburse my ATM fees anywhere, and has the highest checking (3.25 APY) and savings (5.05 APY) interest rates in town. I guess I’ll be moving my ING account, which hasn’t kept up interest-rate-wise into E*Trade as well. At this point I have no idea how brick-and-mortar banks will survive much longer now that online banks are better across the board.