Tales from the Man who would be King

© 2009 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

This is the first in a series on this topic. It contains observations I've made after the following experiences: living for 25 years in Australia and another 30 years in the US; working with and hosting people from other regions and countries; and making more than 350 domestic and international trips for both work and pleasure.

Introduction

Ask anyone what the word normal means and it's very likely they'll understand it to be something like "according to formal or informal rules, usual, ordinary", while its opposite abnormal means "to deviate from the usual or normal". Being normal is often associated with being socially accepted while to be abnormal has negative connotations. This is not always fair; it might just mean different. As for me, I have never claimed to be normal and I've never aspired to be usual let alone ordinary. And, many years ago, I decided that it was easier and much more useful and interesting to be different than it was to be better. [Like normal, better is another of those relative words, better than what?]

What is often forgotten about normal is the fact that its meaning depends on the context in which it is being used. For most people their everyday interactions are with people in the same local area in the same local language using the same local customs. They are all operating in a normal fashion. However, 100 miles away, people from another community interact with people in their local area, in their local language, using their local customs, all of which might be quite different from those of the first group. Yet the second group is also behaving normally. As for me, in a normal week I speak by phone with and write via email and instant message to people from a number of countries, from Asia through the Americas to Western and Eastern Europe.

Well that might be interesting from an anthropological point of view, but why should the average (dare I say, normal) person care? As long as there have been humans on this planet, they have grouped together in small bands, and then larger ones, right up through states and nations. And this has resulted in the creation and evolution of language and customs. They have traded with their neighbors, intermarried with them, and gone to war with them. And quite often, they have had significant misunderstandings with each other, based on differences in religion or custom.

In today's highly interconnected world very few of us can avoid being exposed to the customs of other groups, some of which are radically different from our own. Unless we are intent on becoming isolationists the challenge is to try and understand things from their perspective, probably without having experienced it or anything like it ourselves. Our normal is not their normal, and suggesting they should behave like us is at best naïve or ignorant and at worst foolish.

We are Products of our Own Environments

While we certainly inherit some things genetically, I'm a great believer in people being shaped by their environment; the larger their environment the greater the number of influences on them. In my own case, I spent my first 16 years in a rural community of South Australia (SA), most of the time living 5–30 miles from a town of about 5,000 people. My parents had a 6^th-grade education. I had no role models for higher education or any profession, no or limited access to television, and limited choices of radio stations. Once every few years we made a day trip to the state capital. The most exotic thing I did was to spend several weeks on an Aboriginal Mission (which is much like a Native American Reservation here in the US) when I was 15. My environment was quite small.

Despite its enormous size, Australia was a country in which most people got from Place A to Place B by driving, and if it couldn't be driven in a reasonable time people didn't go there. [This changed somewhat once airline deregulation happened just as it did in the US.] As a result, people didn't go far on vacations and their exposure even to people from neighboring states was very limited.

After WWII, Australia supported a series of large immigration waves, each of which had a significant and permanent impact on the nation. The first to come were the English and Scots, then the Greeks, Italians, and Yugoslavs, and they came in the tens of thousands. After that, the economic refugee "Boat People" from Vietnam arrived, followed years later by the Sikhs, and more recently by people from various parts of the Middle East. As many of these people worked as itinerant fruit pickers, they took seasonal work on my hometown's citrus, grape, and stone fruit properties. Over time, they stayed permanently and started social clubs, sporting teams, newspapers, and radio programs, and for the most part, they integrated into the local community.

From age 16 to 25, I lived in Adelaide, a city of about a million people that is the capital of the state of SA. While there I bought a car, traveled to several other states, took my first airplane ride, became politically aware, and started voting (which is compulsory in Australia; is that normal?) I also discovered music, theater, and computers. My environment got substantially bigger. [However, I realize now that I didn't take advantage of it nearly as much as I could have.]

At 25, I left Australia for a multi-year adventure abroad. At that time, I had visited a number of regions of my large home state (which is nearly 150% the size of France or Spain) and I'd visited small parts of a few other states. Then, over a 7-week period, I visited Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Italy, Switzerland, France, and England. By the time I arrived in the US, my environment had become much larger, especially as I wasn't going home at the end of the trip. In fact, those seven weeks were just the beginning of the adventure.

Despite my extensive travels and interactions, I can still be surprised when it comes to normalcy. One such example occurred during my first visit to the state of Western Australia (WA) several years ago. [Each time I go back to Australia, I try to visit different bits of it to see what it was I had unknowingly left behind.] I was touring the southwest corner of that state when I came across a small town with a butcher shop. Right about then I had a yearning for some smoked sausage of the kind with which I'd grown up called mettwurst. Interestingly, the butcher knew exactly what I wanted, and asked me if I was from SA. I replied that I was, at which point he reminded me that the recipe for mettwurst came to Australia with the German immigrants in the 1840's, but they only settled in SA, so mettwurst was not normally available in other states. [Subsequently, I spent time discovering more about my own family background and state's history. As a result, I found that much of my knowledge about Australian customs really was specific to my home state or region.]

Another example involves books. I have worked with Nihon-jin (Japanese people) for more than 25 years. I've visited and travelled in Japan on numerous occasions, and I've hosted quite a few in my house, so I've come to learn quite a few things about their culture and customs. Being a book lover, I like to go to bookstores when I travel, and I do so in Japan. Most books written in Japanese have the front cover where we Westerners would say is the back cover, and vice versa, with the text going down the page in columns from right-to-left, and with pages being numbered from right-to-left. So when I see a stack of books on a table in a Japanese bookstore, I have this incredible urge to go and "turn them up the right way". I know they are already the right way up, but after all these years I still have not yet adjusted to that difference.

Getting in the "What is Normal?" Mindset

So what does normal mean to you? Without thinking too hard about them, answer the following questions:

• On what date does summer begin?
• If it is 11 o'clock in the morning in New York, ignoring any adjustment for Daylight Savings Time, what time is it in Paris, six 1-hour time zones to the east?
• What date does 1/12/2009 represent?
• Write the following value as a number: Three thousand four hundred point five.
• How many lowercase letters are there?

Now let's go over each question and see how your answers compare with those from other readers of this blog.

On what date does summer begin? Here in the US summer begins with the Summer Solstice, on June 20^th or 21^st, when the sun is furthest north. For countries in the southern hemisphere, the Summer Solstice is on December 20^th or 21^st. However, in some places equinoxes and solstices are considered to be in the middle of the respective season or at least some weeks after that season's start, but never actually at their start. For example, in Australia, summer starts on December 1 and ends the last day of February.

It's 11 o'clock in the morning in New York, and Paris is six 1-hour time zones to the east. From where I'm sitting near Washington DC, I'd say it was 5 pm in Paris, but my friend Stéphane—who lives there—would probably say it was 17:00. [It has been many years since I've worn a watch. However, I do carry a pocket computer that has a clock. When I travel to a country that uses a 24-hour clock, I change my computer clock to use the local time display format just to "get with the program" and to experience a different kind of normal. This is also useful when I look at transportation schedules as they typically use the local time format.]

What date does 1/12/2009 represent? In the British Commonwealth (and numerous other) countries, dates are written "day/month/year", in which case, this date would be December 1, 2009. However, in the US it represents January 12. [I am reminded of two things regarding date format differences. I had a traveler coming to stay and she informed me by email that she'd be in my area around 5/6. She was from Australia, but had been touring the US for some months, so I didn't know if she meant May 6 or June 5. I had to ask; otherwise, I might have been preparing for her visit on the wrong day. The second has to do with the attack on the World Trade Center (is that spelling normal?), which took place on September 11, 2001. Here in the US, that date is referred to as 9/11; however, I was surprised to also see it written and hear it spoken the same way in Australia where it would normally be 11/9.]

I write the value "three thousand four hundred point five" as 3,400.5; but my German friend Astrid would write it as 3.400,5. In France, Stéphane would write 3 400,5 (with a non-breaking space as the thousands separator) and in Geneva, a French-speaking part of Switzerland, Daniela would write 3'400,5. What we native English speakers generally refer to as the decimal point is actually known to others as the decimal comma or decimal separator.

As to how many lowercase letters are there, being an English speaker, I'd say 26. However, my Russian friend Sonja would say 33 (using the post-revolution Cyrillic alphabet) and my Danish friend Keld would say 29 (the 26 English letters followed by Æ/æ, Ø/ø, and Å/å, in that order). [Years ago, during a lecture I gave in Copenhagen, I said naïvely that the Danish alphabet had three extra letters (meaning the 26 English letters plus three more). A member of my audience raised his hand and politely informed me that his alphabet had exactly the right number of letters; there were no extra ones! That day, I learned a valuable lesson about normal.] On the other hand, my Japanese friend Misato would say that not only doesn't she have any lowercase letters—poor Misa—she doesn't have any letters at all or even an alphabet! (Which begs the question, "Is there such a thing as a crossword puzzle in Japanese?") She writes using Kanji ideographs from Chinese, and symbols from the Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries. [You should have seen the stunned look on the face of the young sales person here in the US when during a stay with us, Misa signed a credit card slip using Kanji and the clerk had to check it against the "signature" on the back of her card! "That doesn't look like a real signature," he said.]

Having done that little exercise, let's go back to a statement I made earlier: "The meaning of normal depends on the context in which it is being used."

Computer Software and the Concept of Locales

In my initial blog post, I said that I was going to write about things outside my work, but bear with me while I get a bit closer to that subject. After all, my work is my life and my life is my work! [I promise not to be a complete computer nerd, however.]

You are reading this blog post using a web browser, and its controls and menus very likely are annotated in your native language, whatever that may be. How then does someone design and implement such a program so that it supports multiple languages and conventions? 25 years ago, I attended my first meeting of a committee that was producing a standard specification for the very popular C programming language. As some implementers of the resulting standard wanted ways to support different cultural conventions the committee invented a foundation stone—called a locale—for doing that. Simply stated, a locale is a named collection of local conventions of nationality, culture, and language.

Here are some examples of locales. A US locale supports the English alphabet, a 12-hour time format, a month/day/year date format, a comma thousands separator, and a decimal point, among other things. On the other hand, a France/French locale supports the French alphabet, a 24-hour time format, a day/month/year date format, a space thousands separator, and a decimal comma. Note the use of "France/French". That is necessary because former French colonies, which still speak French, might have conventions different to those used in France. Likewise for the languages of the other colonial powers, such as the Dutch, English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

In the two examples above the whole country uses the same set of conventions. However, that is not always the case. For example, Canada supports two official languages (English and French), Belgium supports two (Dutch and French), Finland supports two (Finnish and Swedish), and Switzerland supports four (French, German, Italian, and Romansh). And to make it interesting, some towns near one or more borders use one or more conventions borrowed from across those borders.

Implementers of computer programs determine which locales they will support and produce corresponding versions of their products. The larger topic of supporting customs and conventions in computer software is known as internationalization (or I18N for short, as there are 18 letters between the first and the last) and the application of I18N techniques to produce a particular flavor is known as localization (or L10N). As my involvement in information technology standards increased and globalization in business took off, the ideas of I18N and L10N dovetailed very nicely with my own interest in natural languages, customs, and travel.

Broadening Your Own Horizons

Not everyone has the opportunity, time, or budget to travel abroad, to work with or host foreigners, or to do any number of seemingly exotic things. And not everyone wants to. [That said, I've long maintained that by definition experiencing foreign travel must be positive. Either you have a good time, meet interesting people, and possibly even adopt some changes in your lifestyle as a result, or you have a bad experience that causes you to appreciate more what you have back in your own country and home. Either way, you will learn something about yourself and your own circumstances relative to the rest of the world.]

Here are some small ways to be pleasantly abnormal without expending much effort or expense:

• Travel to the next town, county, or state just to have a look around and meet the locals
• Read an article, book, magazine, or newspaper that it outside your ordinary fare; spend time browsing at your local library or bookstore
• Talk to people who've traveled and asked them why they did and what they learned about themselves
• Select a radio station at random; listen to music in a different language or from a different culture
• Talk to visitors from other towns, states, and countries; talk to immigrants
• Visit a museum or art gallery; go to a concert or see a play; try to sit through a ballet [I fell asleep during Swan Lake in St. Petersburg, Russia. You wouldn't believe how long that damned swan took to die!]
• Look at alternate news sources [I get my daily world news in English from DW-TV (Deutsche Welle in Berlin, Germany) and I watch programs regularly from and about Japan, in English.]
• The Internet truly can be your oyster, and if you don't have a computer, get free access to one at your local library
• Look up in a dictionary new words you come across; improve your word power; do a crossword
• Set out to learn something new and useful at least once a month

Now, add at least five of your own ideas to this list.

Conclusion

In future installments in this series I'll look at a number of different aspects of cultural differences. These will include writing systems, calendars and dates/times, numbers and counting systems, currency, measurement systems, forms of address/names, computer keyboards, electrical and phone plugs, driving, address formats, country and place names, surviving with chopsticks, and some cultural things such as which gestures might get you in trouble and which indicate to observers that you are dead!

I'll close this first part with a story about the first night I ate in the US after arriving in August 1979. I was seated in the restaurant at my hotel in suburban Washington DC and I'd ordered a salad and an entrée (which in the US is a main course; go figure!) The salad came, but being a good little Australian I waited for the main meal to arrive before I started my salad. After all, everyone knows that you eat your salad with your meal! Well I waited and I waited some more and finally I asked the waiter. I was politely told that he was ready to serve my main course just as soon as I finished my salad. Welcome to normal!

© 2009 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

On December 12, 2009, I achieved a significant milestone: I completed 40 years in the workforce. That's 280 in dog years! How time flies when you are busy working to pay taxes!

Of course, as I'm still just a young whippersnapper you may well ask how I've clocked up so many years. Well, I was sent out to work in the coalmines of darkest South Australia (SA) at the age of six where I worked 20 hours a day. And when I got home to the hole in the ground in which all 14 of us lived my dad thrashed me to sleep with a broken beer bottle. And that was on a good night! [Thanks to the Monty Python gang for that inspiration.] Of course, I exaggerate; the shifts were only 18 hours and our hole was one of the more comfortable models. At least we didn't have to eat cold gravel every night; that only happened when we were bad.

All right. Ok, I'll start again. Being six months younger than students in my own class and then having completed two elementary school grades in one year, I started high school (Year 8) at the grand age of 11 years and 2 months. As a result, I completed Year 12 one week before my 16^th birthday.

So, with all that experience and maturity under my belt what was I to do with my life? Well, I had two things going for me. I was a decent math and science student with good enough grades to get admitted to the South Australian Institute of Technology (SAIT), but only as a part-time/evening student. And I had enough ability to be offered a spot with the Under-17's team at a semiprofessional Australian Rules football club based in Adelaide. [This was in 1970, well before the national professional league (AFL) began, and when Adelaide—a city of around a million people—supported 10 semipro clubs. It still has nine of them, and two pro teams as well.]

The sport would keep me fit and give me something to do with my spare time, and it would even generate a little income, but that would be invested for a rainy day. And the studies would keep me busy two nights a week from February through early December; however, I'd have to have a job of some sort to pay the rent, pay for school tuition and books, and to buy polish for my football boots.

Hoe Hoe, Hoe Hoe, a Hoeing We Will Go!

At the time I finished high school, my father worked for Simarloo, an American fruit conglomerate owned by the Mariani family from Silicon Valley, California (back before electronics arrived there, when it was a valley full of fruit growers). While local growers in Australia were content with their 20–50 acres of citrus, stone fruits, or vines, not so those big-time Yanks. Simarloo put thousands of acres under irrigation. In fact, just before I started work there, they planted 10,000 almond trees.

Now classes at SAIT and training for the new football season—which ran from April to September—didn't start until March so I had 10 weeks to kill before moving to the state capital 150 miles away. As such, I signed up as a general laborer at Simarloo making AU$1/hour (which was comparable to US$1 at that time). There was plenty of overtime available, but it paid the regular rate. I distinctly remember earning $100 one week; yep, I worked 100 hours, which is probably one reason why I like to keep it around 25–30 now.

Each morning, someone drove me to some remote patch of young fruit trees that were 1–2 feet high, and left me there alone with a large water container and a freshly sharpened hand-held hoe. You know them there gardening implements for weeding, with the long wooden handle! At noon, someone drove me back to the main shed for lunch with the other worker bees. And in the afternoon, I'd do it all over again. My job was to walk up and down 250-yard rows removing weeds from anywhere within a foot of the base of each young tree. And as my water was left at the end of a row, I had 500 yards to go to the next drink, and it was high summer with average temperatures reaching at least 95 degrees F (35 C). Fortunately, it was dry heat. To this day, I have to say that I'm not much into gardening!

If I Had a Hammer

In March 1970, I packed my meager possessions and moved to Adelaide, the capital of the Aussie state of SA. My family had arranged for me to live with a widowed old-age pensioner within walking distance of my football club's stadium, but that was all the help I got. I also had the name of my "minder" at the football club and around AU$500 in my bank account.

I started night school with classes in chemistry and lab-related studies and my goal was to get a job in a science lab; however, as a 16-year-old in a strange city I found it hard going. After three weeks of looking at the job situation and spending money, but not earning any, I took a temporary job at D.B. Harrison and Son, a small factory that made wooden boxes for the wholesale fruit and vegetable trade. Each of these boxes had a lid, which was held in place by two small wooden stays nailed one on each end. My job was to nail those on by hand. I soaked the rather small stays in an old bathtub of cold water for some hours so they wouldn't split when nailed onto a box. I worked with two other drones and the son of the cantankerous owner. I earned AU$16 for a 40-hour week and paid $12/week for room, laundry, and meals including a cut lunch on weekdays. After a few weeks, I was given a $4/week raise. I worked there four months.

Extruders Beware!

I took a cut in pay to move to BG Plastics—a firm that specialized in plastics extrusion—making those nice little molded plastic packages in which brush and comb sets were packaged. The highlight came when the state fair was held and we made plastic spacesuit helmets for kids and sold them there. I took a turn working at the booth; however, almost all the buyers wanted them assembled. And as I was the fastest assembler they had, I got to work the fair for two whole weeks. That job lasted six weeks.

Oil be Loving You, Oo Oo Ooh

A fellow student knew I was looking for a lab job and as he was about to quit his he recommended me to his boss. I fronted up to Adelaide Margarine for an interview and got the job. That company was a subsidiary of Vegetable Oils Australia, which operated an oil refinery near Sydney as well as thousands of acres of olive groves around the country.

Although I was hired to run the quality control lab, I was really being trained in factory management. We made cooking margarine, most of which was packed in 50-pound boxes for commercial bakeries. The rest was in half-pound blocks for retail sale. Once every hour I'd do routine testing on the new batch of margarine that had been made. Other duties included testing the milk reconstituted from powder, testing the water, and placing Petri dishes in various parts of the factory to detect the presence of molds. It was routine chemistry with a little microbiology thrown in.

Although I was still only 17, once I proved to be a self-starter I got to help manage the ordering and shipping of the bulk vegetable oil from the city rail yard and I served as an emergency driver for the transportation department. Quite often, I got to drive one of the company cars (even though I didn't have one of my own), and I even managed to drive one up the back of a car that stalled at a traffic light. (Don't you just hate that when that happens?) I also became proficient at driving a forklift.

Being a non-union employee, during several union strikes I also got to put on white coveralls and a hair net and cap to actually make the margarine. On one such occasion, I had to "supervise" the company President who had no clue as to how things worked out in factory.

At age 18, I had my first business trip—a week in Sydney to visit the refinery and the main labs. It was heady stuff to catch that Boeing 727 and to have a driver pick me up on arrival and again each day at my hotel to go to work.

For quite a while, I had a separate contract with the company to bottle vegetable oil at nights and on weekends. That was my first entrepreneurial fling and it went well.

Rex Learns about Chemical Aids

After 2½ years, I was ready to move on and I chose pure lab work rather than the applied world. I had also completed my first 3-year program at SAIT so I could command a better deal. I joined the South Australian Department of Chemistry where I caused a ripple with their pay grade system. No one had ever gotten that qualification before age 21. [Back then, full adult pay started at age 21.] So at 19 they agreed to pay me as though I was a year older.

The Department was small with fewer than a 100 people, and it had five divisions: Forensics (doing stuff for autopsies and all the state's blood alcohol testing), Agriculture (looking at mercury in fish and DDT in the state's food supply, among other things), Cereals (playing with cereal grains and cooking in their test bakery), Gas and Explosives (testing public gas supplies and issuing explosive permits), and Food and Drugs, of which I was a part. I was assigned to the Pesticide Residues lab as a Technical Officer Grade 1, complete with white coat, safety glasses, and a pocket protector containing pens and a spatula.

This was the age of 2-4-D, 2-4-5-T, Chloropicrin, and other nasty chemicals that were being sprayed onto all sorts of aspects of the human and animal food chain. And aerial sprays caused wild bird's eggs to have very thin shells. Pesticides collect in fatty tissue and professional hunters would go out, shoot foxes, and send us batches of fox fat to analyze the impact of sprays in rural areas. My principal job was to check the Adelaide metropolitan area supply of eggs, milk, and fresh fruit and vegetables to monitor their pesticide levels. Occasionally, I'd get one-time tasks. The most exciting things that came our way were the stomach contents of a farmer and his dog. Wishing to commit suicide by drinking a concentrated chemical—Hey, sign me up for that plan!—Farmer Brown forced a dose down Rover's throat to make sure it was quick acting. Once he saw that it was he took a solid swig himself. Forensics got the case and handed off the pesticide component to my group.

Once, I was on-loan to the main Food and Drug lab to test 240 bottles of red wine for artificial coloring. I took a 20 ml sample from each bottle, gassed it with CO₂ to preserve the contents, and resealed it. After many weeks of negative tests, and checking and rechecking my control process, about three bottles from the end I found one that was over the limit. The Deputy Director of the Department was so excited when I told him that he had to come and repeat the test himself. Months later, after I had given away most of the bottles of wine to staff members an agriculture inspector came by and asked what happened to all that wine. Of course, I had to inform him that it had been "consumed" during the testing.

I had taken on the task of handling lab maintenance requests for the whole department and enjoyed getting out of the lab to work with the maintenance staff. The electricians and plumbers I used supported the state library, state natural history museum, and Government House as well. On one visit to find them at Government House I had the good fortune to meet and chat with the Governor, Sir Mark Oliphant, a noted Australian scientist who worked on the Manhattan project in the US during WWII. [In Australia, the head of government in each state is an elected politician called the Premier. The (largely ceremonial) head of state in each state is the Governor, appointed by the Queen and who represents the Crown.]

While I was taking classes in my second 3-year course at SAIT, I discovered computers and programming. Minicomputers were becoming affordable and labs were starting to install them to automate all kinds of things. And while I loved programming, the Department didn't have any computers. It was time to move in a different direction.

Along the Highways and Byways

The SA Government had an acute shortage of computer programmers so they had SAIT develop and teach a 3month training program to be run in the summer when the campus was otherwise empty. They announced an opportunity for state civil servants to take an aptitude test to see if they would qualify for selection to this program. In my case, I had already taken the test as part of an effort to see about transferring to another department. As for the other 500 applicants, they all had to cram into a very large hall and compete with each other and the clock. I was one of the "25 chosen ones" and in January 1976, we went off for 13 weeks to be full-time students on full pay and benefits to learn COBOL on CDC mainframes. Along the way, we also did a bit of FORTRAN.

Each student was assigned to a state government department and mine was the South Australian Department of Highways. After that, we served six months "on the job training" before moving to the ranks of Computer Systems Officer Grade 1. And for those of us already with a pay grade ahead of that level, we kept it. My team leader was a former high school teacher who delighted in teaching.

After a solid stint in coding standard validation, update, and reporting applications in COBOL, I literally attached myself to an engineering group that got me my own office—only the Grade 4 boss had one of those—and a project processing statistics from highway and bridge concrete crushing compression results. From there, I transferred myself to a Digital Mapping group that had its very own DEC PDP-11 minicomputer. There, I designed and implemented a system to digitize from topographic maps all the state-owned or maintained roads and their adjunct facilities like bridges, rail crossings, and quarries. That got me into real-time data acquisition. I then tied that system to a cadastral system of land use and valuation information allowing planning engineers to figure out where to run new highways through neighborhoods. That project involved a lot of plotting and graphics. Others in my group worked on a system that gathered traffic statistics by punching holes in paper tape when cars ran over those rubber hoses you see stretched across a highway, and they were on the fringes of the first work in SA on computerized traffic system controls.

The state government was a classic British Commonwealth operation; you waited for someone to retire or die to get ahead. And I was a young man in a hurry! Once again, it was time to move on.

Along the way, I dropped out of my science course, one class short of completion. Then I started a 3-year Computing Science degree as a halftime student—without any previously earned credits transferring—with time off with pay from the Department. By the time I left Australia in mid-1979, I'd completed one year of that program. And just like Bill Gates, I never did get to finish university, yet somehow he finished a few billion ahead of me; however, due to a drop in the price of Microsoft stock I've managed to narrow the gap.

Laboring in Chicago

After traipsing around Asia and Europe for seven weeks playing tourist, in August 1979 I entered the US via New York and rode the Eastern Airlines Shuttle to the Nation's capital. A week later, I was living in Chicago and consulting to the US Department of Labor, Region 5, which covered six mid-western states.

My main project was to design and implement a system to track all apprenticeships in that region. Each state office had a computer terminal and dial-up modem to access the minicomputer in Chicago. When I delivered the system, users moved from an antiquated error-prone batch system to an interactive system, the contents for which they controlled directly. And they could query it in real time. It was very successful and I was asked to demonstrate it for other regions.

My second project was to design and implement a system for the Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) in Cincinnati, Ohio. Numerous public and private organizations and companies sent their lab instruments to OSHA for repair or calibration, and my system was used to track instruments from arrival to shipping.

Achtung Gesundheit!

After 13 months in Chicago, I started with Software AG of North America whose headquarters was in Reston, Virginia. The company developed and sold database management software. I was the first non-IBM mainframe person at HQ. Nominally, I was the technical support manager for a new product, the company's first foray into the world of minicomputers. In reality, I did whatever it took, developing installation procedures, writing training manuals, delivering training, and working with developers, sales, and marketing staff.

It was a stormy 2½ years involving quite a bit of travel, the company going public, and a lawsuit around my project. Along with that, I was thrown in at the deep end to manage staff and I had the unenviable task of hiring people for a project I knew was going to be cancelled! [To this day, I have no interest in hiring or managing anyone.]

So what does "AG" stand for? The parent company was German, and Aktiengesellschaft (AG) is a suffix indicating public trading and limited liability in Germany. Whenever I was asked its meaning, I usually said the (nonsense) title above, which means literally Attention and To your health.

Farming out the Cash

For some months in 1983, I worked on a contract with the US Department of Agriculture where I developed spreadsheets to manage federal grant money for agricultural research. I also worked on various database systems. PCs were becoming popular and lots of groups wanted to control their own computing destiny.

Becoming a Mainiac

Late in 1983, a major opportunity came my way when a company had need for a person experienced with DEC PDP-11s, real-time process-control, and FORTRAN. It was a great fit and I soon found myself in the wilds of Maine at Great Northern Paper Company's (GNP's) Millinocket papermaking factory. For each of three weeks a month, on Monday mornings I flew from Washington DC to Boston, Massachusetts, and then to Bangor, Maine. From there I drove more than an hour to the town nearest the north end of the Appalachian Trail. On the following Friday afternoon, I did the reverse process. It took six hours each way, and so began my extraordinary flying experience.

GNP generated a great deal of the power it used at its papermaking facilities at six hydroelectric dams and two steam plants. My project was to maintain, document, and later to enhance the software that ran on a network of minicomputers to monitor the steam plants and control the hydro plants. I got to hang out with a great bunch of engineers, electricians, and power dispatchers and I made some good friends.

By the way, rumor has it that if you spend one or two winters in Maine you are a Mainer. If you spend three or more, you are a Mainiac! I spent a lot more than that.

Doing It My Way

After five years in the US, in mid-1984, my application for permanent residency was approved and I got my green card. Very soon after, I started in business as an independent consultant. I continued to work on the GNP project for another 14 years, first as a subcontractor and then as the prime contractor. And I implemented the software changes for some major engineering additions to the power generation system.

Along the way, I started writing for publication and I spun off collections of articles into some seminars. As I wrote more, I started to plan each series, turning the resulting work into a seminar and then a textbook. And I continued this approach for some 15 years. Early on in that process, I started a quarterly publication and was its editor until it was sold three years later. Some years thereafter, I published and edited another quarterly. By then I had a very nice writing and publishing business on the side.

In December 1984, I attended my first meeting of a computer technology-related standards committee. It was a US committee, but before the end of my 15 years as member, international representative, then chair, it had spun off an international counterpart. That got me onto a regular schedule of national then international meetings, usually with some personal travel as well. And when I retired from that activity, I was hired by a software company as a consultant to help them build their own standards capability. 10 years later, I am still working with them in a number of forums relating to computer programming languages and office technology. Almost all my work is as project editor where I write and/or edit some or lots of a specification, and I help manage the maintenance process. For quite a few years, this meant attending 2- or 3-day international meetings every month, and on one project, 2-hour phone meetings every 1–2 weeks.

After a long break, I'm back to writing and teaching and recently I started a website with a partner to sell a lot of my previously published and unpublished intellectual property. (See www.ProgrammingClassroom.com.)

Throughout my 25+ years of being self-employed, I've had two very important rules: never ever hire anyone, and take as much time off as I can afford. And I am very happy to say that I have never reconsidered either of those and in fact, I have reinforced them many times. For 15 years, until 2006, I worked halftime and now after a few years of working more than full time on several interesting projects I'm back to part time. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Conclusion

Now my boss is an understanding bloke so recently I had a chat with him about cutting back my hours or even retiring. Of course, he laughed aloud, but said nothing. So for the foreseeable future I guess I'm stuck with a good income, a part-time job, plenty of interesting work, a good amount of travel, a chance to work with some really good people, and no gold watch. Oh well, I guess someone has to do it, right? And as for retirement I guess that will happen when I die; however, I can't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, Hell might be a technical support job at a software company!

© 2009 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

It has been my experience that people who travel for pleasure fall into two main camps: tourists and travelers. Tourists tend to have less time and less frequent trips and they don't want to spend time on organizing lots of logistics themselves. They want the security of having their itinerary locked-in in advance. They stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, and go on guided tours. Many want the romance of an international encounter but at arm's length from the locals. Travelers, on the other hand, often take long and frequent trips. They want to "make things up as they go" and might not have any accommodation or travel tickets booked at the destination. They stay with host families. They buy food at bakeries and supermarkets and they picnic in scenic places. They wander the back streets in search of the unexpected opportunity, photo, or personal encounter. To be sure, many people have a leg in both camps and one approach does not fit all circumstances or personalities. Both have their place and their adherents. As for me, I prefer to be a traveler as much as possible.

Many of my trips have involved stays with strangers, most of whom I had contacted in advance—but maybe only one or two days before—through one organization or another. Some hosts were people I met while on the road and others were "friends of friends". Some of my travel diary readers have commented on how exciting it must be to arrive in some far-off place with an as-yet unknown "friend" waiting to meet me and to share hospitality and a cross section of their life and community. And yes, it generally is exciting. Inevitably, I am asked how I organize a home stay and whether I have encountered any problems. And since I also host travelers, I am asked about that too.

What follows are some of my experiences, both as a host and as a traveler. I also offer some advice for anyone considering hosting or traveling in this manner.

Europeans Tête-à-Tête with the Philistine Americans

My first experience in hosting via an organization came through American Host Program (AHP), a group that, unfortunately, is now defunct. During the Cold War, a teacher couple from California was traveling in Europe. They were disturbed at the negative view that many people had of those arrogant war-mongering Americans ("What? Us warmongers?"), so they decided to do something about it. They invited teachers and librarians to come to the US for 30 days and to stay 10 days with each of three families or 15 days with each of two families. Guests had to have reasonable English skills so they could have a prolonged and meaningful exchange with a small cross section of the real America (you know, with people like me, immigrants!). Hosts provided accommodation and meals and were asked to be ambassadors for their country. To be sure, it was a big commitment for both parties, but it was only once a year and it was a great opportunity to have a meaningful exchange and to make lasting friendships.

From 1988 through 2000 Jenny and I hosted 12 sets of guests, 10 of whom were on their own (seven women and three men) and two who brought spouses. They were from Austria (1), Finland (1), France (2), Germany (7), and Sweden (1). Three were born and raised in the former East Germany. As well as hosting them, I have stayed with or visited eight of them at least once and one of them, Astrid, numerous times. She has also visited me again. I keep in touch with four former guests via my trusty and cheap Skype internet phone software.

Peace, Brother!

Seventeen years ago, I read an article in the travel section of the Washington Post newspaper about a couple traveling in Wales with their 3-year-old daughter and staying with host families. The host organization was Servas International. Soon after, Jenny and I joined as both hosts and travelers and three years later, we also became interviewers for new members. [As it happened, our first Servas trip as a family was to Wales where we stayed with three completely different hosts.] Servas has members in more than 60 countries and is a peace-based organization intended to facilitate dialog between people from different countries, regions, or cultures. [I host and stay with members from other parts of the US as well as other countries. After all, the US can be viewed as 50 different countries.]

Most Servas hosts provide accommodations and meals for two days and nights. The rule is that a traveler doesn't just "use" a host for an overnight stay or wear out their welcome over a longer period, although hosts and travelers can agree to other terms. For example, a veterinary surgeon in Mexico offered a month's stay provided guests helped him in his practice. Some hosts offer longer stays if you buy language lessons from them. One man offered a long stay if you worked some hours each day helping him renovate his large villa.

There are also Day Hosts, people who cannot—or chose not to—have people stay overnight; perhaps they live in student dormitories or are priests or nuns. They like to meet guests for coffee or a meal, to take them on a walking tour, or to practice their English. Day Hosts are great! They allow for meaningful contact with little commitment. In either case, travelers arrange directly with hosts based on entries in host books, each of which covers a single- or multiple-country region. Membership runs for a year at a time and each country charges an annual membership fee.

I've stayed with hosts in Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Uruguay, the US, and Wales. [As I write this, I am staying with the second of two hosts in Normandy, France, where I'm spending a 7-day holiday after a business meeting in Paris. The experience has been fantastic, despite the inclement weather, and I'm already planning a return trip; thank you Jean-Claude, Brigitte, and Martine.]

Given the "competition" from internet-based hosting organizations, Servas is looking at going online in some form or another. However, one of its strengths is that membership requires personal references and an interview.

Servas conducts an international conference every few years. Some countries host annual conferences and some local chapters hold regular events. In the Washington DC area, we have a summer picnic and a Christmas party, with occasional functions through the year as members chose to organize them. The idea for these is to allow local members to meet each other in addition to the people from out of town who they host.

Bring out the Best China

My first internet-based hosting experience was with Hospitality Club in 2005. I was planning a vacation to Hong Kong yet there were no overnight Servas hosts there—only Day Hosts. As it happened, Hospitality Club only had Day Hosts too, but I made contact with a number of members living there, and an expatriate American and two young Chinese businesswomen each agreed to meet me. The American took me on a walking tour of the financial district and had a meal with me at an Irish pub where his wife joined us. One Chinese woman took me to a banquet with her extended family. The other took me to a neighborhood restaurant and brought two friends who wanted to practice their English and to pepper me with questions about travel.

Can I Surf Your Couch?

In mid-2008, I was staying with a Servas host in Philadelphia and he introduced me to CouchSurfing (thanks Todd). This internet-based organization is very popular. There are members in pretty much every corner of the planet. Although I have yet to stay with a host—I tried to in Rome, Italy, in May 2009, but without success—I have hosted quite a few members, mostly domestic travelers within the US. One of them finished up living with us for five weeks while he worked on the Obama Presidential campaign, a cause dear to our hearts.

The Second Viking Invasion

Some friends of ours were involved in a Danish program that needed extra hosts one year. Jenny and I were "pressed into service" and discovered that that year's group was made up of retirees from the island of Fyn who were amateur folk dancers. They were traveling around the eastern US having a holiday and performing. We hosted the leader and his wife and had a great experience. (I have stayed with them twice since and met their extended family.) In subsequent years, we hosted other adult groups as well as members of several Danish national youth gymnastics teams.

Konnichiwa and Domo Arigato

In 1999, I read in our local newspaper about a hosting opportunity. A company nearby provided business English lessons and customer service training to employees of foreign companies. Most students were from Japan and their companies sent them for 2–12 weeks. Over the 3-year period before the school's closing Jenny and I hosted 14 Japanese men and woman, most of whom stayed with us for two weeks. The school gave us $120/week towards the cost of meals and we were asked to spend at least an hour a day speaking English with our guests and helping them to use the skills they were learning. We had some great experiences and I visited several of our guests back in Japan. On one memorable occasional at a dinner party we hosted I prompted Harusa to "sing us a song", and without fluster she broke into a Japanese girl-scout campfire song.

Don't Wait for a Knock at Your Door

You don't need to be a member of a hosting organization to host, however; you just need to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. For example, while staying in a youth hostel in New York City I gave my contact information to a German traveler called Frank who was headed toward Washington DC. I invited him to stay, and he did. (Separately, I had also invited a Chinese professor called Frank to stay, so when someone called Frank phoned Jenny to be picked up at the station she looked for Chinese Frank when it was German Frank waiting!) Whenever I meet interesting people on my travels, I hand them a business card. I do so more to keep in touch on a personal level than for possible business connections.

Once, I was waiting at the Toronto airport for a flight that had been delayed by the first snowstorm of the season. I got talking to a young Brazilian mother who was flying home to Rio with her 5-year-old son. We were together more than an hour before our flight was called. We didn't sit together in-flight but I saw her at the airport on arrival. By then she had missed her connection to Brazil and was going to have to spend the night until the next flight 24 hours later. Although she was prepared to deal with that, I told her that in 15 minutes, my wife would pick me up, and we could host the two of them. She hesitated for all of five seconds before accepting. The next day, she gave me a music CD by well-known Brazilian singer and songwriter Tom Jobim. Although it wasn't something I would have bought for myself, I came to really like it and 10 years later I still play it regularly, thinking often about that fortuitous meeting.

I remember well a very nice random act of kindness bestowed on Jenny and me when we traveled to Brussels with our 3-year-old son. We'd ridden a public bus to the Waterloo battlefield and were eating our picnic lunch at the top of the huge earthen memorial. There our son played with a girl about his own age so we got to meet her parents, a Canadian couple posted to their embassy in Brussels for several years. They invited us to ride back to the city with them and to spend the afternoon and an evening meal at their house, after which they'd drop us back at our hotel. We cheerfully accepted and had a very nice time.

Opportunities are all around us; we simply have to recognize and take advantage of them.

Some Host and Traveler Considerations

There are many things for a potential host or traveler to consider. Based on personal experience, these are the main ones I cover when interviewing new members for Servas:

1. Home Access: Should the host give the guest a house key? Some hosts require that a guest leave when the host does—possible early in the morning—which means that the guest typically cannot get back in until the host is back home. In general, this is very inconvenient for the guest. Traveling can be hard work and some days you just want to lie in bed, read a book, and write postcards, do laundry, or rest.
2. Food: Discuss any food restrictions and allergies. Hosts or travelers may be vegetarian or vegan. Don't be shy as a host about asking guests to contribute food or, if you are a guest, to bring food or offer to buy food. Remember, the host is already providing accommodation without charge.
3. Generosity: Hosts are well advised to not say "Make yourself at home" since they have no idea what the guest's home life is like.
4. Helping Out: Good guests offer to prepare food, cook, clean, and help with other household chores without needing to be asked.
5. Phone use: Understand the rules about phone use and the cost of calls.
6. Smoking: Do not violate any smoking rules of the host. [I have heard of a case in which the host said, "You may smoke in my house, but if you do you may not exhale!"]
7. Appropriate Expectations: If a guest wants a choice of food, that's called a restaurant. If they want an en suite bathroom or a private bedroom, that's called a hotel.
8. Computer stuff: Is internet access available and, if so, what are the costs and limits? Travelers often take many digital photos, which fill up memory cards. Offering guests to burn pictures on a CD-ROM or DVD is very thoughtful, but don't be shy about charging for the media you use.
9. Space: Give everyone his or her space. Don't s/mother your guests but don't ignore them either. Don't over plan.
10. Convenience: Discuss things that might be needed unexpectedly such as umbrellas, hats, gloves, water bottles, and picnic equipment.
11. Interaction: Unless it has been pre-arranged otherwise, be prepared to spend some quality time with each other and to have a meaningful exchange. A host stay should be more like a good bed and breakfast experience rather than a cheap hotel visit.

What's the Worst that can Happen?

So what are the risks of inviting strangers into your home? Should you be worried about them stealing all your stuff or running up large telephone bills with international calls? What if they are escaped mental patients who killed their families with an axe?

After 20 years of hosting, I am very happy to report that I have had none of the problems most people think might occur. And, apart from some family photos, home movies, and personal effects, household goods are replaceable. It's just stuff, right? My experience has been that if you are that much in love with your stuff you probably aren't a real traveler. [I met a man who complained he had no shoes until he met a man who had no feet!] As for the escaped mental patient, if he stays at my place he'll simply think I'm a fellow patient. We'd probably get along just fine.

The worst I can report is a lack of synergy, punctuality, or sensitivity. (Fortunately, not all were with the same guest!) In the latter case, Jenny and I hosted a young Russian man who lived three hours away on the mid-Atlantic coast. He was using the program to stay with families on weekends to get to meet Americans and to learn about their culture. However, a few hours after we met him we decided that we needed to have a serious talk with him about his approach. When he didn't understand something or didn't agree with it he expressed very strong opinions about it even saying things like "Why do Americans do such stupid things?" and "We had much better ways of doing that back in Russia." The next day we told him that sooner or later he was going to stay with someone less understanding that us, and they would simply tell him to go back home if he was going to be that ignorant and arrogant, and rightly so. While his intent was good, his execution was seriously flawed.

In this internet age, I have computers and gadgets throughout the house with protected wifi access. However, because my internal network is not secured from one machine to the other (to allow Jenny and me to share files), I don't give open access to my computer systems. If guests have their own laptop, they can "plug in" without breaching my security. Take sensible precautions and you should be fine.

As far as staying with strangers, I have never felt any environment was unsafe or unhealthy. I've had a couple of experiences that made me wonder why the hosts bothered, however.

Conclusion

As with many other aspects of life, problems in hosting can arise from a lack of communication and unreasonable expectations. Most can be avoided with a little planning and some common sense. As a host, ask yourself what you'd reasonably expect as a traveler, and as a traveler ask yourself what you'd reasonably expect as a host. While it's not necessary to be a traveler to be a good host or vice versa, experiencing it from both sides certainly can help. I've had many great experiences from hosting and from being hosted, and I have made some long-term friends. I've really gotten to appreciate that "normal" is relative to the experience of each person even within the same country or region.

Is hosting or traveling for you? Are you more interested in the journey than the destination? Are you more interested in the cultural aspects than the sights? Do you want the challenge of being an unofficial ambassador for your country even if you disagree with your country's policies? (One Mexican host held me personally accountable for much of the illegal immigrant policy that was being enforced in California!)

You never know what new friendship, experience, or adventure is waiting for you around the corner. But don't sit at home and dream about it, go make it happen. Create your own luck. Oh, and beware of hosts and travelers who list "axe murder" under their personal interests!

© 2009 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

Dear friends and colleagues, welcome to the first posting on my personal blog.

A World of Publishers and Writers

As A.J. Liebling wrote, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Of the many millions of people having access to the internet, a significant percentage of them have decided that as they can easily create their own blog they too can be publishers and writers. Unfortunately, having something worth publishing does not appear to be a prerequisite.

I arrived in the US in August 1979. Very soon after, I recognized that for a product, idea, or person to be successful in the US [and maybe in most countries] packaging was paramount with substance being a distant second. If you can't get potential customers to look at your wares—typically via some flashy advertisement, scantily clad woman, or other promotional vehicle—the quality of those wares is unimportant. And, as best as I can tell blogging and social networking provide the masses with tools to promote themselves—and to do so shamelessly.

Without substance, you don't get many repeat customers for your products but with a potential customer base of 300 million one-time customers here in the US [and many more if you can sell to the world] you can still do a lot of business., For example, take the prestigious [and fictitious] legal firm of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, which has been screwing over its clients since 1902! Of course, with substance as well as attractive packaging you literally can "write your own ticket".

Regarding setting up a blog, it is very easy; once I got the software installed, I had a reasonably decent mockup operational within 30 minutes. But what to do after you have played with all the dazzling features? The blogosphere is littered with "publications" having only a handful of entries, fewer than 5 followers (excluding family members, who are "required" to subscribe and to appear interested), and with very long delays between posts. Once the novelty has worn off, most bloggers simply run out of things to say, assuming that is they had anything to say to begin with.

So, does the world need yet another blog? And if so does it need one from me?

Why I Want to Blog

I enjoy writing [I really do], I like reading good and clever writing—George Bernard Shaw, W.S. Gilbert (of the team Gilbert and Sullivan), and Oscar Wilde come to mind immediately—and I've even been known to take an English grammar book on holiday! [That coupled with the fact that I have a copy of the US Constitution by my bed might make me rather odd but then I never was accused of being normal.]

Instead of writing about work-related topics, I've decided to push myself into other areas. However, that doesn't mean I intend to write about things I'm not familiar with. As many of you know, from about 1990 to 2005, I worked only halftime, and after some four years of working more than fulltime since then, once again I am back in part-time mode. As such, I have a very full life outside of my work and I'll draw topics from that.

With this blog, my goals are to do the following:

1. About once a month, write and post a substantive essay.
2. Share my perspectives with friends and colleagues in a manner not possible during phone calls, emails, or short in-person visits.
3. Stimulate discussion and encourage lively interaction and constructive criticism from my readers. (Yes, dear reader, I mean you specifically.)
4. Take responsibility for my words and set a reasonable example of writing.
5. Set a respectful tone and discourage knee-jerk reactions. The world definitely does not need more flaming/ranting on blogs, in emails, or other public forums.
6. Be informative, educational, and, hopefully, a little entertaining.
7. Do my bit to improve the quality of the blogosphere. You can't improve the process if you don't participate, right?

I see no reason why any of my postings will need to be published in a hurry. To that end, it is very likely that I will write each one over a period of weeks or months so it can be fully baked before its public debut. I certainly plan to have at least two people—with whom I don't always agree—review each one before it is posted. That way, most—if not all—of my errors, missteps, and faux pas will have been detected and fixed.

A Few Rules

This is a personal project; at this time, I do not plan to announce this blog to the world, just to invited guests like you who might be interested readers and possible respondents. And while I'm open to suggestions for topics, style, and so forth, ultimately it's my blog. If you don't like the rules, you can always invent your own game just as I'm doing with this blog. After all, we can all be writers and publishers now!

1. Although I encourage you to submit comments, they will be moderated. Specifically, they will only appear on my blog once I have reviewed and accepted them. The reason for this is to eliminate spam and other malicious postings. It is also to guard against knee-jerk and potentially offensive replies. If ever you should disagree so much with someone's writing or speech that you "just have to dash off a rebuttal that very instant", then it is highly likely you will embarrass yourself more than them once everyone reads what you wrote while so overcome with emotion. [Regarding emotion, I am a Vulcan.] In such cases, by all means write the response but sleep on it for at least a night if not two or three. Make sure your brain is in-gear before you press the "send" key.
2. When you submit a comment, I expect you to be responsible for what you write. Specifically, you must use your real name and email address. I can assure you that the comment, "Rex, thou reeky, flap-mouthed clack-dish!!!", posted by someone calling themselves "Aphrodite" or "JuliusCeasar" will be rejected, whereas the same comment from a reader willing to put their real name behind their words will almost certainly make it through the process.
3. As you write comments, remember that more than a few of my intended readers have never lived in the US, and that their native language is not English. I say this not to try to confine your or their responses in any way, but to remind you that "normal is relative". Not everyone drives on the right, writes a date "month/day/year", has Christmas in winter, or uses the term college to mean a 4-year university.
4. In order to help me improve the quality of the blogosphere, if you have an English-language spelling checker please run it over your responses and add grammar checking if you can. It has often been said that, "You are how you dress." or "You are what you eat." I'd add to that, "You are how you write." Try to set a good first impression.
5. Above all, have some fun and don't be intimidated, especially if English is not your first language. Enthusiasm and a willingness to engage in constructive conversation count for a great deal. And if you learn something in the process that's great.

Conclusion

Several years ago, I came across the following poem by the great American statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin. It so impressed me that I memorized it, printed a copy, and taped that to the edge of my computer screen where I can see it every time I write.

"If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
Or do things worth the writing."

According to some readers of my technical materials, I have been writing "things worth reading", and more than a few of the readers of my travel diaries have reported that I've been doing things "worth the writing." As such, I am encouraged to try to bring the same success to this blog. I look forward to hearing from you. And, as the dwarfs sang in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, "Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's Off to Write I Go."

[For some background on Rex's introduction to English and writing, see the link "Rex on English and Writing" off to the right, under "Useful Information".

Thanks much to John, Scott, and Tom for their help in getting this project launched.]