Aside

This is all too true: There are people all around, but few of them are passengers. They are touts, hawkers, vagrants, drifters, thieves — a melee of dubiously intended hangers-around, each of them eyeing you with the stubborn, languid glare of a vulture. Set against a back wall, the sole ATM is flanked by armed guards, whose duties are particularly effortless, since the machine doesn’t work. There is nowhere to sit, no seats. Which really is all right because the…

You know, there are worse places to do research besides the Kohvik Moskva. Who knew that in summertime they had an outdoor patio?

PC Magazine: ARTICLE DATE: 07.11.07 By Cyrus Farivar You may want to think twice before swiping your credit card at your favorite store. In January, the parent company of Marshalls and T.J. Maxx stores revealed that over 45 million credit and debit card numbers had been stolen from its databases. In the wake of this and other egregious slip-ups, legislators are calling for new federal blanket laws to protect consumers. Currently, a tangle of state and local laws leaves consumers…

Wow, I can’t believe that in the last two-and-a-half years I’m now on my third trip to Tallinn. (First, Second). I just did an interview with Sten Tamkivi (See: The Economist, August 17 2006) — the Skype offices feel exactly like every other startup I’ve ever seen. They even showed me off a Skype payphone prototype that used to be in their lobby! Now, Veljo and I are having lunch at my favorite spot in town, the Mauruse Pubi, a…

After reading the accounts of sleeping in Schoenefeld airport in Berlin, I thought I might take it up. However, given that I would be in this fair city for a good 16 hours — after having spent the better part of the day on a train (that’s seven hours, 440 miles, or 710 kilometers, depending on how you feel like counting it) — I decided to shack up one night at the Heart of Gold hostel — where I get…

I made it to Breda without any problems. Giselle and I are going to spend the afternoon across the border in Antwerp, Belgium — our plans are to drink beer and eat loads of Belgian fries! Yay!

So my flight to Amsterdam got delayed. While I was waiting for them to put up the flight status on the monitors, I went to grab a sandwich at Upper Crust. Seeing as I’m spending as little time in the UK as possible, I don’t have any British pounds on me — just dollars and euros. My first instinct was to whip out my credit card, but the clerk informed me that they only accepted pounds, euros, or dollars. No…

Mohammed Mossadeq was overthrown in Operation Ajax on August 19, 1953. The New York Times Editorial, August 15, 1953. The world has so many trouble spots these days that one is apt to pass over the odd one here and there to preserve a little peace of mind. It would be well, however, to keep an eye, on Iran, where matters are going from bad to worse, thanks to the machinations of Premier Mossadegh. Some of us used to ascribe…

Enjoying a quesadilla con pollo and a pretty serious strawberry margarita at the Blue Mesa Grill. Michael Jackson’s Thriller is on the stereo. Seems like a good way to kill an hour, hrm?

I’m en route to Breda, The Netherlands to visit Giselle de Grandis this weekend. Then I’ll take the train to Berlin on Monday, and catch an EasyJet flight to Tallinn on Tuesday night. I’ll spend two weeks there doing research, and then will swing back via Berlin and one night in the new Yotel at Gatwick airport in London. I’m back in Oakland on July 28.