Goodbye for Now

Made it home just as the typhoon Haiyam hit land north of Da Nang.  Amazing trip and can't wait to return in February.  There is something really welcoming about Vietnam, and the awesome food really adds to it too.

Here are some leftover photos I liked, with little commentary and not necessarily in order:

Great smoothies are everywhere - three on the block near our hotel

They load everything onto scooters... I wish I had more scooter photos - amazing what you see!

I was in love with this little girl

Pho was soooo good - these bowls cost about $1.50 us

Tasty coconut, cost about a buck

HCMC Bus Ride

This band is named "Tastes Like Chicken" - very danceable

Our last night before heading home

Veggie spring rolls and Crispy rice with Shrimp.  Rice was awsome, but the shrimp went flying when you cut the Crispy Rice!

Nice cat

Barely caught this scooter dude with Bananas

Our last orphange visit - cute kids, and sadly they all are HIV+ at this orphanage

More "Starter" Kids (first class)

Anh seemed like a great teacher, though it was all in Vietnamese

My biggest guitar fans!  Thank you guys...

More cool scooter photos!  These are Jak fruit - huge...

Back home and the kids love these hats

Starting from Scratch

Pho breakfast with Bang and Anh

When we come back in February we'll be building a new computer lab using VMware View, and today was the day we were going to visit an orphanage that Orphan Impact had never visited, and see if it looks like a good place to build a new computer lab from scratch.  We assumed that the kids would be in school and we'd just wander around and check out the location and infrastructure, but turns out we were wrong.  Instead the kids were off-school due to flooding, and seemed to have absolutely nothing to do but hang with us and run around.

The place was honestly a bit rough, looking kind of run down, and when we arrived the kids were pretty much hanging by themselves as the director was out somewhere.  But having some time to play with the kids turned out to be an unexpected but really cool surprise.  The fact that we don't really get a lot of kid time is one of the harder pieces of this gig.

Super cute kids

The lab area was also pretty rough and needs a lot of work.  They have a computer lab full of machines, but they are some 1980s vintage, and every single one of them is broken, meaning its a bit like a computer grave yard in the middle of the school.

Land of the Dead Computers

Random lost puppies were everywhere

We walked around the corner and it turns out the orphanage is right on the river.  Pretty scary with all the flooding issues we've seen, and with more typhoons bearing down on the area.

Definitely will need to keep computers and power source way off the ground here

Overall its a place that really needs help, so will be a lot more fun to come install systems here, rather than the kind of clean and new centers we were seeing in Ho Chi Minh City.

Our buddy Ho Chi Minh

Honestly I'm probably too tired to do a good job at this post, so let me just post more photos from the day that are generally cool...

Saying goodbye to the kids - but we'll be back in February!

Yet more random puppies

Apparently I've become obsessed with Fruit markets

Can Tho and Rural Orphanages

So turned out that after the crazy floods, the roads were in pretty reasonable shape outside of Ho Chi Minh City, and our larger bus that took us to the Province of Can Tho had no real issues.  How does a relatively small storm disable a huge city when its no big deal beyond the city?  Not sure I get that, but apparently the drainage in HCMC is just really bad.  Either way, we rolled the 3.5 hours to Can Tho in good shape, getting my first glance of the Vietnamese countryside.

I guess every American has seen the Vietnam country side in movies about the war, but I wasn't prepared for how beautiful it would be. Or how wet.  I don't think its just during monsoon season - seems there are little twisty streams every mile or two, with standing ponds everywhere between the rice fields.  

The bus was able to go fast as few cars were leaving HCMC and we arrived for a quick lunch in Can Tho before heading out to a rural orphanage that Ophan's Impact works at.  Can Tho is super fertile, and where most of the countries fruit is grown.  Funny how protected we are with fruit - like the average american things the only fruit in the world is what we see in Safeway (and maybe that it grows in Safeway).  Here there were huge markets (including one right below our hotel), and the majority of the fruit was stuff I had never seen.  Even the dragon fruit seemed tame!

Name the weirdo fruit - hint: the red ones are not apples!

We take the taxi outside of town and then hike over this tiny footbridge with no railings - apparently if you take a motobike taxi (a hug taxi they are affectionally known) they'll keep driving right over this bridge, even though its a bit scary just to walk over it.  The pictures don't really do it justice.  We got to see our first computer class with Tad's team at this orphanage.  A really beautiful place right on a river, with kids jumping into the water to cool off after class.  We poked around on the internet to see how View works out in these settings and generally tried to understand what its like to run a class out there.

The only way in to this orphanage

On a personal note, I'd mention to Tad my interest in playing guitar for the kids, so he said this is the place - I'd like get a place to play after class.  So I was super excited about that prospect, and of finally getting to hang with some of the kids.  Class was interesting - they have the system dialed, and I think the focus on training and curriculum is really what sets Tad's team apart from many NGOs we hear about here, who often dump equipment or courseware on a school that's not really prepared to make it work on their own.

Hiking along the river to the orphanage - cringe worthy selfie

The class is run by a local teacher , Nho (apologies if I'm blowing that!), that Ophan Impact recruited here - recommended by the orphanage themselves.  Scaling the teaching piece is one of the harder challenges for OI, so this local recruiting model really helps solve that challenge.  Nho is an amazing woman, who's had many challenges, but has a light bubbly persona and is super sweet.

Nho teaches the starters class with aplomb

Finally between classes I was given the nod to get ready to play.  Honestly I was feeling both rusty and nervous, as I haven't played a lot since Hong Kong.  But what an amazing opportunity, to play in front of the whole orphanage before bed.  I knew most folks wouldn't know my songs or understand the lyrics, but I still think music is a unique way to communicate without language.  The kids were super excited and a perfect audience!  We had them sit in rows - I naively suggested they stand and dance, which led to more pushing and rough housing than dancing.  Helped me get over some of the nervousness of finally getting to see these kids I've been thinking about for a while.

So cool to play in this place - I'll never forget this

Anh made a video of me singing Stereo Hearts, which is over here if the link works, but not sure if google and FB like each other enough to allow that.  Tomorrow we're off to a new orphanage that the organization has never visited, which should be really exciting.

What its all about in the end is this right here

And just to make things exciting, a "super typhoon" is headed right for us!  In theory I can leave just before it gets here, but let's see - either way, its pretty scary for Vietnam, which is so wet already.  Here's a news story about that if you are interested.

Typhoon!

My first attempt at blogging from my phone so will keep this short, though I have a ton to talk about.  So today we took a bus to Can Tho City to visit a very special orphanage - more about that place later.  But there are various Typhoons circling around Vietnam right now, and we had this dump of rain for half the night last night.  So we woke up early to catch our bus and things got crazier and crazier.

The Diversity of Rain Ponchos was really something to see

First it was just watching the moto riders with their cool rain panchos.  But then we started seeing some flooding.  Then we Really started seeing flooding...

These bikes were cool with the water for like 5 minutes, and then they dutifully conked out

It got to the point that 1000s of motorbikes were sinking into the water.  Our bus was like a lifeboat floating over the mayhem.  Let's see if I can upload a short clip here...

Mom's hauling babys through the torrent was a common but sad sight

Bummer - doesn't seem like videos work on this app, so will make due with photos for now.  As the bus rolled through deep water, it kicked up a huge wake that rolled right into family living rooms, as houses here often are totally open in the front.  People seemed at first amused by the flood and then a bit freaked, as u see moms with babies in 3 feet of water and pushing a dead scooter.  Turns out scooters suck for deep water and we saw literally hundreds stalled in the water.  A whole impromptu business started for the guys who knew how to dry out the key engine parts and restart them...

I know the fotos are blurry but that's the bus wndow doing that.  U can see a cool article on the event (thanks tad!) over here- http://goo.gl/e9qOGC .

Gotta go sleep - more news tomorrow...

We had to dump the shoes to get off the bus, but at least we didn't need to swim, which seemed possible at one point

Cyclists got the last laugh, as their engines kept working even after a soaking

After the novelty wore off, folks just hoped they could get home safely

Bring on that Nerdy Stuff

Finally blogging in Vietnam!  And cringing a bit, as it will be hard to make this first VN post half as interesting as crazy HK fishmarkets and night life.  But the truth is not always pretty ;-).

The truth on this trip is that we're trying to evaluate just how handy our VMware technology will be for helping our NGO partner build computer labs in orphanages.  More specifically, we want to use VMware View, which uses virtualization technology to run many desktop computers inside of one server, and then "screen scrapes" what is running on the server and displays it on a far away monitor.  So the users are sitting at desktop machines like normal, but every time they type or execute a program, the actual work gets done on a remote server running View.  Lost yet?  And what is cool about View for our NGO?

Basic View Architecture - server running the desktop workloads, and desktop computers across the WAN

Orphans' Impact is running roughly 10 computer labs in Vietnam, and each lab has like 8 computers. Now imagine they need to install a new application, or upgrade the OS of the machines.  They grab the needed software (on DVDs or thumb drives), and they jump on a motorcycle, drive out to their first orphanage, walk in and install the software on each of the 8 computers.  Then (assuming that worked), they jump back on the bike and drive off the next orphanage, rinse and repeat 10 times.  Quite a day for that poor software installer!  Now instead with view, all 80 desktops are actually running in one server in the Ophans' Impact office in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon).  They install the software once on one desktop, and then clone that desktop to create a new pool of 80 desktops.  Done.  Maybe 30 minutes instead of a full day or days, and the now-happier software installer never had to put his shoes on.  Cool huh?

Tad and Andrea on our first morning in VN - Anxiously awaiting coffee

Ok - but now the scary part.  Basically I'm the technical lead on this project, and there are some really hard technical problems about this effort.  So its both scary and exciting to think that the overall success of the project may come down to how well I can navigate those tough problems.  Example - View depends on good network connectivity between the server and the far away desktop machine.  Vietnam has pretty good internet, but "pretty good" is definitely in quotes when compared most view customers in the world.  The internet goes down fairly often, and can be both high latency and low bandwidth at times.  Another more personal challenge - I'm trying to build out a prototype of all this technology on very short notice with not a lot of hands-on experience on it (I can't bring my team to vietnam, though they still back me up).  So yes, I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder - what if everything goes great in the project, except I can't get the demo gear going, or something I assumed just breaks everything?  But if you got to make a mistake, go big I say, and this may be that kind of chance.  

Typical HCMC Scene - Scooter traffic is sometimes crazy

With the nerdy preliminaries out of the way, let's get back to our normal blogging topics.  Left HK on Sunday evening, totally cooked from all Bill's crazy social events, and got to Vietnam late Sunday, meeting up with Andrea, our project manager from VMware, and Tad, who's the director of Orphans' Impact in VN, and hence a big center of the action for this trip.   Its a fantastic coincidence that I got paired up with two really cool and like minded folks on this trip, and we've ended up having tons of long chats about how to help kids with technology.  Tad has a team of 4 young folks working for him, all vietnamese and all in their early 20's I think.  Their jobs are to help deploy the technology, train the teachers, build curriculum, work with the kids - OK, they do a lot of cool stuff.  So our first day we get here, we meet up with Tad's team and get settled in their office.  Fun kids all of them, and a surprisingly familiar feel to the office, like other IT labs I've worked in abroad.  The whole time we're learning about their work and the orphanages I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head - its the friggin' View demo kit.  One goal of this advanced trip is to try view out for small deployments and see how it works with the local internet challenges.  But a week before our trip, our allocated view demo kit got snatched by another colleague for his trip to the UK, and real paying customers.  The last thing I want to do is start a rift between sales and our philanthropy work.  So not a problem, we'll just find hardware, deploy software, config and test everything while Oh Yeah, gotta get my visa and pack and get travel plans sorted, not to mention that pesky day job, etc, etc.  So long story short, I showed up with a backpack full of cables and wires, servers and routers, all of which should magically become our highly touted view demo kit, even if it never has been a view demo kit in its whole life, and I've never built a view demo kit in my life.  Douh - back to the nerdy talk we go, that didn't take long.

Left to Right- Bao, Tim, Lum, Andrea and Anh

So tuesday I'm plugging in cables and working with Biswa, my view lead in Palo Alto, and nothing is going right.  Finally its 11:30pm Biswa's time - we are nowhere near success and I gotta send him to bed, and we need to regroup for one last push the next day.  Plan is (going backwards in time) - we will leave for the orphanage to test at 7am on Wed, and so Biswa and I will gather via webex starting at midnight my time on Tuesday night (9am his Tues am) and crank this out.  Long story short, Biswa put in superhero efforts and we worked through the VN night.  About 3am we finally saw that Biswa could open a desktop from our demo kit, while the kit sat on my desk in Vietnam and he sat in Palo Alto.   How cool is that!?  Took until 6am to wrap up and head back to the hotel, witnessing a glorious and quiet VN sunrise that I was too dopey to take photos of.  So I grabbed a shower and we headed to our first orphanage, me strutting past the breakfast buffet all "Oh yeah, no problem, its all goooood...".

3am Celebration as we finally got the View Demo Kit working - slightly creepy solo office night with Biswa on webex

This Orphanage is a pretty nice spot - its where Angela Jolie and Brad Pitt adopted their Vietnamese child, if your on the gossip track.  But the kids are kind of on lock down, and since there wasn't a computer class when we were there, we barely saw kids ;-(.  But it was an interesting chance to test out view in a real world scenario here.  When we got there we did our first test of the internet connectivity.  460ms of latency, 0.3 Mega-bits per second of bandwidth.  What?!  I can do more bandwidth than that by running down the road with a USB drive in my pocket.  Seriously!  It got better as we played, but not that much better.  But view looked roughly the same as the physical desktops, and so I guess it is what it is when it comes to the internet here - we certainly can't fix that stuff, as long as we don't make performance any worse.  Anyway - many heads were scratched as we all tried to understand how view networking and physical desktop networking is different, and what to conclude from the tests we ran there.  And we were able to easily connect from the orphanage outside of HCMC to the demo kit running in Tad's office, so that was like a huge weight off my shoulders.

Our first orphanage was bucolic, but oddly devoid of kiddies

So what did we conclude - can View work in this setting?  Honestly I'm too dopey from lack of sleep to know exactly what we learned.  The good news is that Tad, Andrea and I all seem to be able to swap points of view and ideas without taking too much of a position, and I think that's all very good. Yesterday we changed our ideas about deployment strategies so many times through the day that we were kidding, "Dude, the idea of deploying only in Ho Chi Minh City is so two-hours-ago.  Now its clear we need to get outside the city."  So what will be the right answer in two hours?  I'm gonna take a long nap and then hopefully I will know...

Tad Clarifies the Impact of Latency on View Deployments - or he's smooshing a bug, I forget