The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I had a rare dinner night out with a couple of girlfriends. Per usual, we turned the date into a chance to get away from our husbands, and (excluding myself) our children, and to eat the type of food we are usually not allowed to eat. This night, we chose to dine at a Korean BBQ restaurant because our husbands don’t like Korean food. And so, as Kalbi ribs sizzled before our table top grill we turned the night into a vent session, per usual. 

All three of us are well-educated, and competent in our fields. All of us are Asian females working in heavily masculine fields in the Silicon Valley, and to be honest, some of us are not appreciated or respected to the extent that we should be.  

One of my friends is a software engineer. She is known for being a pinch hitter, taking on tasks that others fail to complete after being given weeks or even months. She is then given 24 hours to complete the task, and she will begrudgingly do it, staying up until midnight to complete it.

My other friend is a software product manager. Her mind races and is often miles ahead of her coworkers. People are taken aback by her rapid fire line of questioning. The engineers working on her project love her because she is logical. But its her managers and peers she has more difficulty with, mostly because they lack some of her critical thinking skills.

As for me, I’m a competent engineer whose people skills sometimes get in the way of my career. I sometimes open my mouth when it is best to keep it shut.

Throughout the evening it became clear there was a common thread behind our work woes. You see, all of us are dealing with less competent colleagues. But even more frustrating is that they don’t realize they are incompetent and don't ask for help when appropriate. As explained by my colleague, this is called the Dunning Kruger Effect: When people are so dumb, they don’t know how dumb they are.

I don’t mind when people know that they have shortcomings. I for one, am not the brightest, nor am I the most talented. But at least I have enough critical thinking to realize when I fall short some of the time. I may not progress as quickly as I would like, but at least I know when weak areas exist. What frustrates us is when someone is so clueless, they think they can do the job, but they can’t. And then we have to pick up the pieces.

As the evening wore on, we figured out some strategies for dealing with people with Dunning Kruger, or Dunning Kruger-ites. Here are our: 

Strategies for Managing “Dunning-Kruger”-ites:

1. Keep the Dunning-Kruger-ite busy with something long and menial to get them out of your hair. God forbid if they get bored and start messing around and harming actual work (as was the case with me). They might even be happier doing a task of this sort.
2. Vent and complain to someone astute with office politics. It helps to have the situation acknowledged through a different set of eyes. In my case, I vented with a mentor, who offered some key advice (see #3 below).
3. Actively monitor the Dunning-Krugerite’s work. “You can tell when a task is too hard for someone when they make a lot of excuses, and take too long to finish,” my mentor said. If someone with Dunning-Kruger is doing something they cannot do, they won’t know it. You have to actively monitor their work to see.
4. Try to get someone else to manage the Dunning-Kruger-ite.
5. Be very very nice. Usually the Dunning-Kruger-ite has good standing in your place of work because people feel sorry for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have lasted as long as they have. People have special soft spots for people who are both dumb and nice. The smart person who is mean will usually be punished far worse than the dumb person who is nice.

A Story For When I Feel Pessimistic

There’s a lot in the world to be pessimistic about right now. When Trump was elected, I screamed inside. I didn’t know what kind of country I was going to wake up to the following morning. The country was so vehemently sexist and so full of hatred and anger, that they voted for a malignant, racist, narcissist over arguably the most qualified presidential candidate to ever exist in the history of our country. Now that the mid-term elections are nearing, my mood is in a word: pessimistic. Because of gerrymandering, and because half the country is under the thrall of conservative state TV (Fox), and because terrorist acts perpetrated by violent white men have happened in recent days, I have doubts that normal democratic processes will actually endure this coming election day. 

But something happened to me today that actually had me sobbing in my car on my way home, and sobbing even as I write these words. My V.P. of Engineering is hands down one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. Because he is getting on in years, I am sometimes the repository of his pearls of wisdom. He said something that was so prescient today, that I felt like I could, just for a moment, glimpse past the micro-problems of our day, and it had me gasping.

ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) are responsible for delivering nuclear warheads. After the rocket fuel is exhausted, the ICBM is essentially radio silent. If it isn’t radio silent than foreign enemies can hack into it and possibly jam it. If the rocket is essentially dumb/unhackable and radio silent, than how possibly can it reach it’s destination, and within feet of it? 

They launched test missiles from Edwards Air Force Base in California into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, using only simple Newtonian physics to drive them, but the missiles they launched did not reach their goal. When they relaunched the same missile after tweaking what they thought was a faulty rocket motor, the same result happened. Then some smart person realized they needed to do more than use simple idealized trajectories. The missiles had been pulled off course by tiny changes in gravity during flyover. 

So this is how we solved it. We MAPPED the earth’s gravitational disturbances. We launched a fleet of satellites and tracked their speeds and altitudes as they orbited the Earth. The extra gravitation pull from a mountain range, we logged it. The placid pull from the oceans, we mapped it. Even the minute fluctuations of the ground water, we recorded. Any ICBM that will ever be launched will be launched with a single set of mathematical coordinates. Without ever having any sensorial input on where it is in space, it will reach its target, having taken into account every ditch, hill, stream it will have passed. This might be the first and last time a gargantuan feat of science and engineering had me so awestruck, that I literally trembled in my socks.

This is WHY North Korea will be decades away from launching an accurate nuclear warhead on an ICBM, if they ever will. This is WHY we will eventually reverse global warming. This is why, even though our White House and Congress, and perhaps even our Supreme Court, is full of nincompoops, we will eventually come out on top.

The technical brilliance within our country is astounding. The technical talent is so deep, that even now it is not fully realized.

The depth and magnitude of our labor resources is breathtaking. 

We WILL pull through this. If not in this election cycle, then the next, or a couple of decades from now. Our country, even our planet, might be under threat, but we WILL meet this challenge. The next time I am feeling pessimistic about my country, or the world even, I should look back on this moment when I was awestruck.

Diving in Rangiroa - A Trip Report

Bannerfish

Ever since reading “Travels”, by Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame, I’d been fascinated with Rangiroa Atoll. In his short essay entitled, “Sharks”, he thrillingly described diving in Tiputa Pass in Rangiroa. He described drifting rapidly through a school of sharks with his family, then ducking into a crevasse, only to submerge into another herd of surprised, Gray Reef Sharks. The family emerged shaken, but itching to do it all over again. I very much enjoyed reading the short essay at the time, but dismissed it as an impossible pipe dream for a broke college student. Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine I’d repeat the same, thrilling dive. 

Fast-forward 20 years to present day. My husband and I decided to go to Rangiroa as part of a larger French Polynesian holiday. I was more excited about experiencing the paradise of Moorea and Bora Bora than I was about diving Rangiroa. Based on the lack of coverage of Rangiroa in American dive magazines, I had lowered expectations about diving in Rangiroa. However, Rangiroa far exceeded my expectations for diving. It was some of the most challenging, most thrilling dives I’ve ever done.

Titan Triggerfish

Thrilling Dive

“Are you guys comfortable with decompression diving?” our divemaster, Antoine asked us after introducing himself. “Deco diving” was precisely what I worried the most about diving in Rangiroa, not diving with sharks. After not having scuba dived in a year, the idea of diving in high current, being encumbered with an underwater camera, AND being at depth was a little daunting. (Decompression diving, for the uninitiated, is any scuba diving performed past the time limits prescribed by one’s dive computer, or dive tables. It requires additional skill and dive planning because it demands that divers stay at depth to off-gas before surfacing.)

I looked to my husband, Mark, and the young female French internist who would make up our small group and none seemed to object. Encouraged by our seeming confidence, the dive master recommended we dive the “Canyons”. We would enter the water outside of the lagoon, look around for dolphins and sharks, then enter one or two crevasses in the pass to escape the current. In the channels there would be a lot of life, Antoine said. We could then do our safety stop at the sand bar in the middle of the pass.

A mere minutes after gearing up, we back-rolled off the inflatable zodiac and plunged head-first into the blue. The water was so clear (the visibility was ~200’) that we could see tiny divers playing with a column of barracuda several stories above us. This betrayed to me that we were already quite deep. 

But we descended further. As we neared our 120’ max depth, I realized that swarming more than 30' below us were over a hundred Gray Reef Sharks. It was like a scene from a horror movie where the heroine turns on the lights only to see aliens swarming into the dark. Only here, the aliens were sharks. (Later on, I would learn that the sharks were circling into the current over and over again, where they found it easier to breath.)  

Christmas Tree Worms

Our visit with the sharks over, we approached the pass, a barren moonscape. I looked at my dive computer and noticed I only had 2 minutes of no-deco left. I hurriedly ascended a few feet above our group, but got swept further downstream. The current high up was much faster. I kicked as hard as I could to enter the crevasse, and to rejoin my group, and was conscious of my panting. I checked my air-I had blown through 500 psi. There was not enough time to worry about that, however. All around me were innumerable banner fish, surgeonfish, and butterfly fish taking shelter from the current and I swiveled around to take it all in.

Pretty soon it was time to kick off, and off we went. Despite my best efforts, I got blown off again on a much faster slipstream. Learning my lesson from earlier, I deflated my BCD in order to sink and hug the bottom as much as possible, and collided straight into the razor sharp hard coral. Like a rock-climber, I hung on for dear life with one hand. I could see Antoine more than 50 feet away, and I could see Mark furiously kicking to meet up with Antoine. I let go of my handhold and kicked towards them, but found myself getting swept further and further away. I arrested myself several times by grabbing onto whatever sharp coral or rock I could find with my available hand (my other hand was holding my camera), but using just one hand was simply not enough. Finally, Antoine swam over to come retrieve me and together we half-climbed, half-finned our way over to where my husband awaited. 

Decompression...

Eventually we managed to kick our way to the sandbar where the current had subsided. But there was a problem. Mark, who was already buddy-breathing at this point with the divemaster, showed us his wrist-mounted dive computer. He still had 30 minutes of decompression left. I checked my console. Although my computer said I was already in the clear (I have a far less conservative computer), my air was at a new low - 500 psi. I usually have the most air left out of everyone. I could only extrapolate how empty everyone else's tanks were. We were all running out of air and we still had a significant mandatory waiting period to go.

Giant Clam

Feelings of fury and grief washed over me, with tears almost welling out of my eyes. I had already watched Mark’s GoPro camera flood on one of our earlier dives, which had him reduced to lugging it like a useless appendage for the rest of the dive. I was already heartbroken for my husband’s disappointment. And now this? I feared that Mark would be traumatized, or even ashamed about being low on air, when in fact, it wasn’t his fault. (Mark has excellent air consumption, and all of us, even the divemaster was low on air.) I feared that our dive vacation was ruined.

Fifteen minutes of no-deco left. Our dive boat, having spotted our divemaster’s SMB (surface marker buoy), had parked itself above us. They had already finished picking up the other group and were just waiting for us to finish and board. The boat bobbed gently in the sunlight, so close, and yet so far. At this point, the divemaster asked that Mark breath from my octopus, since he was too low on air to continue buddy-breathing. I was down to 300 psi, nearly empty with 15 minutes left to go, but offered my octopus to my husband. I quieted myself, breathing as slowly and sparingly as possible. As we waited I watched blood rising slowly from my wounded hand, which was caused by my attempts to self-arrest in the current. Even at 10 feet of shallow water, the blood looked green.

Bloody Hand

Finally, it was time to surface with air still left. We had caused the rest of the divers on the boat to wait for us in the exposed sun for 30 minutes, so we probably looked quite ragged as we boarded the boat. One of the other French divers, an IT specialist, widened his eyes when he saw red blood running down my hand onto my wetsuit. It looked much worse than it actually was. A little antiseptic, and I was good to go. More importantly, Mark was equanimous about the situation. He realized his computer was being overly conservative and that he could have monitored his own depth better. And he didn’t let the flooded camera, a separate issue, cloud our vacation. Later on, while driving the van back to our hotel, Antoine apologized for taking us on such a “technical” dive. He hoped we weren’t too traumatized. “Are you kidding me?” I replied, “That was one of the funnest dives, ever! I will remember that dive for the rest of my life!”

Rangiroa of my Dreams

Later on, we would have amazing dive after amazing dive in Rangiroa. We encountered a school of spawning surgeonfish, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And we had a memorable 20 minute long play session with dolphins. After requesting to do the Canyons dive again, however, we were denied. Many of our dives were great, but I think our Canyons dive was the most memorable because I had experienced every emotion all on a single dive - excitement, and adrenaline, followed by physical pain, fury, grief, and finally relief.

It wasn’t until we had come home, and I had reread Michael Crichton’s tale,“Sharks” (now downloaded-my paperback was long gone), that I realized that the memorable dive that we had conducted was the very same dive he had written about in such exciting fashion, and that I had dreamed about doing 20 years earlier. 

Relaxing after Diving

Advice

If I could do it all again, I would do almost everything the same, including using the same dive operation. However, I would probably add a few tweaks. Here are my recommendations, and things I would do differently the next time around.

1. Get the Te Moana dive pass. This dive pass allowed us to dive throughout French Polynesia at a reduced bulk rate. 
2. Wear gloves. The current is so fast and so strong here that merely kicking won’t hack it. It is necessary to grab rocks or coral to arrest yourself in the current.
3. Monitor your depth and no-deco limits constantly. 
4. Be familiar with your dive computer’s graphical screen during a decompression protocol. 
5. Stay above the divemaster if possible - that is until you enter the pass, in which case, stay low to avoid the worst of the current. 
6. Stay as close to the sides of the pass where the current is slower as much as possible.
7. Do the incoming current dive. And if possible, do the “Canyons” dive. This was the thrilling dive that was described in Michael Crichton’s book, and which I described above.
8. Always do the sunset dive. The two sunset dives we did were easily some of the most exciting dives we conducted. They were also the most interesting from an animal behavior standpoint. We got to see thousands of surgeonfish spawning - a once in the lifetime opportunity. And the dolphins seem to be more interactive and playful at this time.
9. Add Fakarava. Most people will say that Fakarava is even sharkier than Rangiroa. 
10. Coincide your visit to Rangiroa with a sharkier moment, perhaps timed with the annual grouper spawning, or hammerheads. I think we came during a lull in shark activity.
11. Train with using an SMB (surface marker buoy). With the current being as fast and erratic as it is, it could be quite easy to get separated from the group.
12. Prioritize a GoPro over a larger camera setup. A big camera setup might get brushed up against the coral and get damaged. And caring for an expensive camera might impair your judgement and impede your dive safety.

Moral of the Story

Rangiroa is part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia, a far-ranging island chain that stretches the distance of Western Europe. Rangiroa is the most populated, and the 2nd largest coral atoll in the region. This coral ring encompasses a lagoon so large, that the Hawaiian island of Oahu would almost fit inside it’s lagoon. It is also precisely this atoll topography that makes it so dynamic to dive. There are only 2 relatively shallow boat passes, Tiputa and Avatoru Pass. During the tides, a large amount of water is forced through these shallow, relatively narrow passes, resulting in fast current, which brings nutrient rich water, which attracts massive amounts of marine life, including top predators, such as dolphins and sharks. 

Most American scuba divers will bypass Rangiroa in favor of other places: the Bahamas for sharks, and Cayman Islands for coral reef life. There are probably very good reasons for this. French is the most common language, and you have to be comfortable with that. Actually, I really enjoyed our company in Rangiroa, and perhaps this is why I enjoyed diving here so much. We met some very nice people who I keep in touch with to this day.

Allow me to make some observations about diving with primarily French and European people. There were just as many female divers as male divers, and not just from being part of a couple. I noticed there were solo divers, French families, and also female friends diving together as well. And maybe this is an unfair generalization, but the French divers were much younger than on the predominately American dive boats. No-one had any troubles getting on our inflatable dive boat, which is an awkward test of strength and coordination. And no one showed too much ego about their diving abilities, either.  

Rangiroa is probably not on most Americans’ scuba diving bucket lists. But that is probably okay. It leaves a more pristine reef for us who are in the know. And for those willing to go off the beaten path, it is one of the most dynamic places to scuba dive in the world. 



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How to Have a Luxury Experience Without an Overwater Bungalow in French Polynesia

One of the things I feel regret about is not staying in an overwater bungalow on our recent trip to French Polynesia. Places like Bora Bora are synonymous with overwater bungalows. It seems a little foolish in retrospect not to cross off this bucket item list after traveling to these islands at such great expense. 

Rather than spending money on luxurious digs, however, we spent it all on scuba diving in Rangiroa (part of French Polynesia). And I don't regret this decision because as it turns out, Rangiroa has some of the best scuba diving we've ever experienced. (I'll be writing more about the scuba diving in Rangiroa soon.) If I had spent the money for an overwater bungalow, I would have never ventured out. And I believe we got a more authentic poignant experience by going out more. And, as I constantly reminded my husband during our trip - we will someday come back again, and maybe we will do things a bit differently. 

Looking on with envy at the Sofitel overwater bungalows in Moorea 

In the meantime, I learned a few things about acquiring a luxury experience without actually having to stay in an overwater bungalow. Read on and enjoy:

Stay at an Inexpensive Beachside Hotel

Our bungalow in Moorea, Fare Tokoau, was chicly decorated, was right on the beach, and we could even see the lagoon from our bed. The best part, however, were the cats, dogs, lizards and chickens that visited us on our patio on a daily basis. The disadvantage was noise. We were wakened by roosters nightly, and the sound of the ocean waves was so loud, it sounded like a storm was constantly raging. These are things we probably would not have suffered at an expensive overwater bungalow.

Grab a Coffee at the Fancy Hotel 

Tourism is down in French Polynesia, so we were able to enter any luxury hotel without questioning. Sometimes we ordered breakfast, or a simple coffee at the hotel's beach bar, and we were able to enjoy the same vantage point as the overwater bungalow. 

Take a Swim in the Lagoon

Just because you aren't staying at an overwater bungalow doesn't mean you can't enjoy the same waters. The water is so calm in Bora Bora, that if you are a strong swimmer, you can share the same waters bordering the hotel.

Get the Same Views by Taking a Lagoon Tour

The main advantage of the more expensive overwater bungalows such as the Bora Bora Pearl, or the Intercontinental Thalasso, is that they are situated on private islands and overlook the lagoon towards the central mountain of Bora Bora. However, you can enjoy the same views by taking a lagoon tour. These tours take you around the central mountain of Bora Bora and so you can see all the same vantage points that the more expensive hotels have. We enjoyed this view during a Lagoon tour in Bora Born

Eat Dinner at an Overwater Restaurant

Creperie Toatea at the Hilton Moorea serves savory Alsatian crepes. It is located above lagoon waters that are spectacularly lit from beneath. As we ate, we saw black tip reef sharks, and even a stingray swim by beneath us.



Happy diners at Creperie Toatea

Eat at Bloody Mary's

Bloody Mary's is the original Tiki Bar. This famous establishment in Bora Bora is positively dripping with glamor. You can feel the history emanating from every corner, from the varnished tree stump stools down to the white sandy bottom floor. Celebrities used to come, and still come to party at this famous restaurant. Pictured above is the selection of the day. You choose what you want to eat, and then the chef grills it for you a la carte.

Shop for Pearls

I admit to contracting “pearl fever” when we set foot inside Tahiti Pearl Market, a second story no-frills institution in Paeete. You may have heard of Tahitian pearls, or black pearls as they are better known. These giant pearls, which are most commonly gray, are only cultivated in French Polynesia. My Chinese heritage came out in full force when we started to roll pearls around on satin covered trays. The way a pearl is graded is pretty well defined: the larger, the rounder, and the more blemish-free a pearl is, the higher the cost. But what isn’t graded is that ineffable life of a pearl, that thing that gives you shivers of excitement and what makes you go “ooh” and “ahhh”. These pearls were so lustrous they looked as reflective as a mirror, and were so colorful, ranging from pink to yellow to green, they wouldn't even register as pearls to the uneducated eye. Selecting and purchasing a pearl was really fun. I highly recommend the experience.

Take Time to Savor the Small Things

After traveling at great expense, sometimes the simplest things are the most memorable. Here’s a meal reflective of French Polynesia that you won't get in an overwater bungalow: everything is imported from France or Asia: cheese, sausage, and Malaysian shrimp chips. The only native thing is the fresh mango. And constantly constraining friendly kitty, Madeline, from consuming the entire meal will certainly be a memory that I will savor.

Afterward: My husband was so supportive of our housing decisions. While walking around the Bora Bora, we ran into some dilapidated overwater bungalows (Sofitel Marara, which is currently under repair), and we even encountered the abandoned Club Med. At the Sofitel, there was no beach to speak of, the bungalow itself was mere feet away from the mainland, and the water below was full of algae. My husband turned to me and asked: aren’t you glad we didn’t book one of these? We would have been so upset. I feel good that we spent less, had lowered expectations, and were pleasantly surprised. I tend to get very unhappy when I feel I spent too much one things. My experience in Rangiroa, where we spent the most on lodging, was an example of feeling ripped off, and I actually wrote a harsh review about it TripAdvisor. I'm glad that such heartbreak didn't happen to us with an overwater bungalow.

What to Bring, What Not to Bring, & What to Buy in French Polynesia

Stuff You Should Bring

1. Mosquito Spray. Bring or buy one can of mosquito spray for each person, for every week spent in French Polynesia. 
2. Swim goggles and swim cap. The lagoons are like swimming pools. Just jump in and go.

   

   The water is so calm, swimming in Bora Bora is like swimming in a pool. Definitely bring goggles if you want to see the fish while doing your "laps". Here I am at the Hotel Temanuata beach after swimming over to the overwater bungalows next door.

3. Snorkeling equipment. The snorkeling is some of the best I’ve ever seen.

   

   I saw some of the healthiest coral I've ever seen while snorkeling, so definitely bring snorkeling equipment

4. Gloves. If you are scuba diving in Rangiroa, the current is so fast, that it is sometimes recommended to climb across the coral bottom instead of kicking and wasting air. Because I wasn’t wearing gloves, my hands got torn by the sharp coral. I will be writing up a review of the diving in Rangiroa at a later date.
5. A beach towel. The medium-range hotels don’t offer beach towels. 
6. Your own pedicure (or nail polish). There were no manicurists in the smaller islands like Moorea and Rangiroa as far as I could tell. And it's always fun to sport a festive toenail color when you’re wearing flip flops all the time.
7. Your own instant coffee. There are no coffee shops in French Polynesia because coffee hasn’t caught on yet. All rooms come with an electric tea kettle. One of the favorite things we did in all of French Polynesia was to enjoy a cup of instant coffee on our patio.

   

   My husband and I enjoyed a cup of instant coffee every morning. Here we are on our patio in Moorea with one of Moorea's major agricultural products: pineapple.

8. Sunscreen. To be quite honest, I didn’t really use any. The sun isn’t that strong in French Polynesia and the native Tahitians themselves are really light-skinned as a result. But you may want to bring some if you are fair skinned.
9. Bathing suits. Mark and I basically shared a single suitcase for 2 weeks. We just wore bathing suits all the time.
10. One or two good dresses, or tops. Dinner is often communal at these mid-range pensions. It would be good to doff the bathing suit you’ve been wearing all day and put on something that makes you less crazy looking.
11. Books. Almost none of the hotels have TV’s, and the ones that do, only feature French shows. And free WiFi is not guaranteed. I ended reading 3.5 books while on my 2 week vacation.
12. A phone that is a good camera so you can show pictures you took to your your new friends at dinner. If your cell phone doesn’t have a good camera, your camera needs to have the ability to download directly to your cell phone or iPad.
13. Space in your luggage. We made the serious error of not leaving any room in our luggage and ran into weight problems at the airport. We bought famous Tahitian rum, and an assortment of fresh fruit jams, and “manoi” coconut oil as gifts for friends. 

Don’t Bring

1. High heels. Some restaurants, notably Bloody Mary’s, have sandy bottom floors. It would be difficult to walk in heels in this environment.

I designed and made this Pareo at the Intercontinental in Moorea

Buy

1. Pareu. This is a sarong-like piece of cloth that Tahitians traditionally used to wear. Buy one (every other store sells them), or even make one in French Polynesia.
2. Jewelry. Every other store is a jewelry store selling Tahiti's 3rd greatest export: Tahitian pearls. You can get a better selection, and for cheaper nowhere else in the world.
   

   

   You can shop for beautiful Tahitian Pearl jewelry to suit all budgets in French Polynesia

French Polynesia Slide Show Presentation

Here’s the slide show presentation that I made for planning our French Polynesia trip (we just recently got back). One of my coworkers’ husband made one for their South West USA trip, and I thought it was so remarkable that I had to copy it. 

I did 100% of the planning for the trip, so it was a good tool to help my husband understand what to expect on our vacation. It was probably good that I did, because once the vacation started, he barely knew what Island we were on. (He literally thought we were on Bora Bora when we were actually on Moorea.) It also helped to convey to my husband what my expectations were, i.e. what I was really looking forward to trying. That being said, we didn't micro-manage the trip to every last detail - we were quite flexible in how we spent our vacation. There were a lot of empty time periods left in the schedule to improvise. We didn’t actually stick to the highlighted plan 100% either, and actually stuck to it maybe 30-40%. Actual details of what we did are forthcoming.

I hope you enjoy the slides, and hopefully this can be helpful to others planning their French Polynesia trip.

Leviathan Wakes - A Review

"Leviathan Wakes"

(This book review is part of my effort to write down a few words after every book I read.) 

If you like science fiction, and love space opera in particular, then I highly recommend reading “Leviathan Wakes”. This is the first book in the 7-part “The Expanse” series by James S. A. Corey (a pseudonym for the writer duo, Daniel Abraham and Tyler Franck). And it is also the book upon which the first season of “The Expanse” TV show is based. I found the book just as riveting as the TV show and perhaps even more fast paced than the TV show. From what I understand, the show added sections from other books, such as what was happening on Earth, to show more facets of the space conflict, and to add more beef to the season.

In the story, people have dispersed across the solar system. Human tensions are high between Earth, Mars, and the Belt - the poor communities that dot the asteroid belt. The book starts out with two parallel stories. Miller, a detective, is assigned to find Julie Mao, a rebellious rich girl from Earth who has disappeared. At the same time, a motley crew of ice haulers lead by James Holden, have been flagged down mid delivery to investigate a distress call in deep space. Pretty soon, both story lines merge in a satisfying way and war threatens to breaks loose throughout the solar system.

Holden (R) and his partner are detectives hot on a case

The Motley Crew of the Rocinante

The book is a swashbuckling space opera in the best sense. There were plenty of epic space battles, and also plenty of exciting human shoot outs as well. There was a budding romance between Holden and Naomi, but more interestingly, a buddy romance between Holden and Miller as well. In one exciting sequence, both have been exposed to a deadly dose of radiation, but need to rely on each other to shoot through “vomit zombies” in order to reach their ship, where life-saving medications await. I also really appreciated the author’s visual imagination. There were some awe-inspiring space vistas, pulsing night clubs, all the way down to tightly cramped ships quarters reeking of unwashed bodies.

One of the co-authors of the book, Ty Franck was formerly George R. R. Martin’s assistant. George R. R. Martin, in case you didn’t know, is the author behind the “A Song of Ice and Fire” books (the basis for “the Game of Thrones” TV series). The first few drafts of “Leviathan Wakes” were developed under Martin’s watchful eye. As a result, I see a lot of influences from George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series on this book. Like in “A Song of Ice and Fire”, “Leviathan Wakes” has a complex plot line that really racks the reader’s brains to follow. There are feints and plot twists. The plot is revealed through characters’ points of view, who don’t always see the entire picture, so the reader is forced to put it all together themselves. I have seen the TV show, and I have read the first book, and I still struggle to fully grok the storyline and the different political interests. Another similarity with“A Song of Ice and Fire” series is that there are very strong, intelligent, fully fleshed female characters throughout. A final similarity is that the characters are not purely good or bad, especially in the case of Miller, the suicidal, broken cop who finds a hero’s purpose for the first time in his life in this novel. 

This book has brought me a much greater appreciation for the TV series as well. The actors who play Naomi, Amos, and Miller characters are spot on. I must give the actor who plays Miller special praise. Thomas James is much younger and much handsomer than the character he is supposed to play, who is supposed to be near 50 and possessing a “sad, basset hound face”. Just watch him in HBO’s “Hung” to see how classically handsome he can be. But in the TV series, the actor has managed to distort his features and embody Miller’s greasy qualities.

Finally, this book has some of the best space ship names ever.  The Rocinante, the Razorback, and Donnager are some of the quirkiest ship monikers I’ve ever heard. If ever I came to own a sail boat, I might have to name it The Rocinante for the way it rolls off the tongue.