Group for expats and neighbors in Vientiane

After having good experience with the an Phu Neighbors group in Saigon I founded Phu My Hung Neighbors (a Saigon suburban area where I lived for 2 years), and after moving to Vientiane I think something like this is missing here. A group for private sales, expat questions, local events, information about schools etc. Yes, there is WIG, but you have to be a member and they have their special cause. I wanted to have something
more open. Everyone can join. However, the webmaster (me) has he right to ban people or set the status to moderated, if the abuse the list. This is usually the case with aggressive real estate ads or commercial sales. So let's be just nice and have fun together.

JOIN THE GROUP: http://groups.google.com/group/vientianeneighbors

Buying furniture in Vientiane

When we arrived in Laos we were quite lucky we took our sofa with us and moved into a complete furnished house. What we discovered so far is that acceptable furniture is either incredible expensive or not available. A few shops sell actually close stuff close to western standards. One is Rossano, next to the Supreme Court on Tadeua Road. They have branches in Phnom Penh and Saigon, the shop in Vientiane is rather small, but has a large selection of sofas, dining tables and a few beds.
Quite new is Winner, a bit far outside town, on Road Number 5 down south. They have good quality matresses, also leather sofas and some accessoires. Worth a visit.
What is supringsingly expensive is rattan furniture. We found a shop with reasonable prices. It is close to Dong Palan road, next to Khiri Travel or the Lao-Singaporean College. The shop also serves food, so don't be confused when you see a restaurant in the front.
Rue Asean has also some furniture shops, one is Phonesavanh furniture close to the airport. They also sell safes.

Do not expect high quality, and no selection like you know from IKEA. It is pretty basic stuff here. Only the wooden tables and beds are quite good. When it comes to chairs, they live for 6 months, then you start repairing and glueing. And be aware of termites.

By the way, if ou have any chance to bring your washing machine, do it. Hot water machnes are arround 1000 USD, what is way to much.

Diapers, Garbage and Dogs

There are actually only two things that annoy me in Laos: One is burning trash and the other thing is placing open baskets full of garbage on the streets. There is NO sense of locking the garbage in a plastic bucket that keeps it safe from dogs. So what happens is that dogs see (or better smell) the trash with all it's eatable contents and distribute it all over the streets. More serious is that since now also diapers are part of the waste, dogs seem to like them the most. The result you can see in the picture below.
I think this may result in a serious public health threat. Open diapers with baby poop in the streets may attract any kind of animals, from rats to viruses.
Oh, and don't blame the dogs. If it's not dogs that pull out that stuff, it will be cats or rats or .... Laos needs a proper waste management. Replace bamboo baskets with lockable plastic boxes and put them only on the street when it is collection day - done. It is easy and not even expensive. It is not a matter of money or culture, it is a matter of will.

LIFPA Concert at Cultural Hall

LIFPA is a NGO that wants to fight poverty, so they ask for any kind of donation. I havent heard from them, but I learned that the wife of the former president is involved, that might be a reason why they got live TV coverage today. Anyway, the concert was good, the fashion show was quite bad because of the models (learn walking in this shoes, honey), but the bands were quite good, although the Lao singers still lack of expression, presence and the will to connect with the audience. Isn't is that hard?
anyway, some pictures:

Lao is included Debian built now

Anousak just send me this mail:

On *daily built* images (not beta!) which you can get from
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer, you'll find Lao and
listed in the available language.

Please note that, as many packages need to be uploaded with your
translation work, if you happen to try starting an install in one of
your languages (you can on any machine, at least up to the
partitioning stage, without any risk), it will be mostly in English.

Thanks to Debian maintainer, Christian, who have been working with me
to bring Lao into the Debian Installer and etc.

Debian is the main distro other Linux derivatives including Ubuntu.

If you want to play with Lao Installer, feel free to do so, and
comments are welcome.

ICT meetings in Vientiane

We had a gathering in Saturday from ICT enthusiasts aka geeks, and agreed to have bi-weekly informal meetings Barcamp style, where we talk about specific ICT topics. We now look for a name and a venue. If you now a place for 20 people, roof, electricity and chairs, let us know. Next meeting will be December 19th. Location to be announced.Everyone can join!

Nutrition databases and Asian food

I am on a diet again, and I really like to monitor what I ear with a application named Nutrimanager. It counts calories, weight, protein intake, fat, etc. It also has a database with a lot of dishes. The reason why I used it was that it measures in Gramm and litres since most apps use lbs and oz. But the real struggle I had with this program and have with another one for my android phone is, that it does not cover Asian food at all, and of course only a few Asian dishes. While all fast food meals like Chucken McNuggets are present, it lacks of Fish Amok, Chicken laab or Banh Xeo.

So I am thinking right now about a Asian food database, with nutrition in formation. the most common dishes from countries like Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Anyone knows if these databases are already there?