Saturday, November 20, 2010

Sinking Princess Takes her Maiden Voyage

We did it. Cyril, the Swiss, Romauld, the French, and I are the proud owners of the Sinking Princess, as we have named her. We met for breakfast at 7 30, got our money at 8 30, and by 10 am we were taking the inaugural cruise around the Mekong.


Sinking Princess sets sail. You control the throttle with a rope that you tie to your big toe.


The Mekong is thiiiis big.

This feeling is indescribable. We actually own a boat. After an hour on the water or so, we took it back to shore to buy supplies and make some minor repairs with spare bamboo that we found lying around.

Our deck had some holes. But nothing a machete and bamboo couldnt fix.
This took quite a while, especially the thorough spraying of the boat to get rid of ants and cockroaches. This is going to be our transportation and lodging for the forseeable future, so might as well make it nice.

Just two hours ago, we realized that all the boats on this side of the river are flying Lao flags, so we figured we ought to do the same. We went to the flag shop to make our purchase, then got to talking. Shouldnt the Sinking Princess have her own flag?? OF COURSE SHE SHOULD.  So, we designed a flag and brought our idea to the seamstress. She laughed, but was very helpful.

There was a language barrier, but the hand of a sinking princess piercing through water is pretty much universal. She knew what we wanted.
This woman was good.  Within 40 mins or so, she had taken our sketch and turned it into a flag. While she was making it, we wandered around her house. On the wall, I saw her son`s physics homework. It turns out that 15 year olds in Lao learn how to add resistors in parallel and series. This is awesome.


To all my former tutees reading this (if any), can you, using your incredible physics knowledge, tell me what those equations on the bottom represent?
 So, it was a great day. We bought a boat. We fixed the boat. We even bought a flag. Tomorrow morning the Princess sets sail.


We are all pretty proud of our flag.

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7 comments:

  1. TomNovember 20, 2010 at 7:13 AM

    Where do you stow the life jackets?

    ReplyDelete
  2. TomNovember 20, 2010 at 1:11 PM

    I think the reason for the Lao flags is so the immigration folks can identify who's who. Your flag is neat, but may cause you to get pulled over. Hope you're not carrying any plant samples.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JennyNovember 20, 2010 at 3:15 PM

    Seriously, Andy, you do have lifejackets, right?

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownNovember 22, 2010 at 5:14 AM

    Hey Andy , The trip sounds exciting but I think your family must be worried sick . Please be careful and do make sure you have lifejackets . They only work if you wear them .

    ReplyDelete
  5. TylerNovember 22, 2010 at 12:31 PM

    Where do you keep the dead hooker in that boat? I don't see a trunk...and I assume that is the inspiration for the name "Sinking Princess"

    ReplyDelete
  6. CMBNovember 22, 2010 at 1:43 PM

    You buying this boat makes me think of that episode of It's Always Sunny. You almost assuredly haven't seen it since it's recent, but I hope that your boat ownership experience turns out better.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jordan YanaNovember 26, 2010 at 11:48 AM

    A friend showed me your blog. For your question about those equations the top one looks like resistors in parallel. The bottom one looks like capacitors in parallel.

    ReplyDelete

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