It’s a gas: Las Vegas preserves neon

LAS VEGAS – A framed blueprint hangs behind the desk of Melanie Coffee, media coordinator at The Neon Museum in Las Vegas.

The blue lines on the sheet sketch out the design for the Stardust hotel’s neon sign – the billowy, cloud-like marquee and base support that is presently set in front of the property on the Strip.

“We love to collect signs from vintage hotels,” she says of the museum’s intentions. “When we see construction going up around a property or hear something, we’ll ask if they will donate the sign.”

The “pillowtop,” as it is known to locals in the neon industry, could be said to be a target of the museum since it will come down in 2007. Read more

Staying afloat: Tuvalu’s dot TV domain

FUNAFUTI – A report released last week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offered a harsh evaluation of the earth’s environment. The rise in global temperatures since 1950, the study said, is “very likely” attributable to human activity and has resulted in an “unequivocal” condition of global warming.

But for Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific nation of nine narrow coral atolls perched precariously at the edge of perhaps rising waters, its approach in recent years for staying afloat has been more about solvency than sea levels. In late January, members of Tuvalu’s Ministry of Communication & Transports traveled to Washington D.C., where it held meetings with VeriSign – the Internet infrastructure services company to which this alphabetically lucky Polynesian nation leases .tv, its country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD). Read more

Asia shops juggle U.S. animation jobs

For decades it has been a rewarding cycle for both sides of the Pacific: Hollywood studios have sent their animation pre-production work (the storyboards, designs and character and background layouts) to lower-wage nations in Asia for final finishing.

But countries such as South Korea are not relying on lower costs as an advantage anymore, says Nikki Vanzo, prexy of Rough Draft Korea, an animation studio with 400 employees in Seoul that was founded in 1992 and has worked on such toons as “The Simpsons” and “Futurama.”

“Production fees have not increased since they were lowered to compensate for the extremely strong U.S. dollar during the IMF crisis in 1998,” she says, adding that a subsequently depreciating dollar — down 25% over the past five years — has cut into budgets. “Still, we are consistently producing the highest-quality animation and on schedule.” Read more

From a Port Moresby taxi

PORT MORESBY – For Port Moresby cab-driver Paul Egan, the smashed and spiderwebbed upper-right section of his windshield is not a big deal.

Probably, he surmises, caused by a stoning after an argument.

Nor is the bullet hole just beneath the handle of the driver’s side door.

A car-jack attempt?

He doesn’t know.

Sporting a collared plaid shirt and gray trousers, Egan, 46, from Papua New Guinea’s mountainous Simbu Province, pulls his deep blue Mazda 323 cab from the International Terminal parking lot at Jackson Airport. Read more

Tuvalu: Water, water everywhere

FUNAFUTI (TR) – Few places around the globe can claim to be more isolated than the nine low-lying atolls and reefs that comprise the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. On a map, the archipelago – distanced roughly halfway between Sydney and Honolulu – is small enough to be confused for specks of dust.

Tuvalu’s remoteness provides the stereotypical tropical paradise: glassy wave after glassy wave splashes upon its beaches and seasoned tuna steaks are cooked to order in the restaurant inside its only hotel. What may now be attractive to visitors, however, may also bring doom to this far-flung place. Some scientists believe rising sea levels resulting from climate change will eventually inundate this tiny Polynesian nation’s narrow landmasses of twisting palms and coral shores. Read more

Life during wartime: Vanuatu in World War II

PORT VILA – Though a young boy at the time, Wallace Andre clearly recollects that moment six decades ago when a U.S. dive bomber began to encounter trouble while paying a visit to his coastal village on the eastern edge of Vanuatu’s capital island of Efate.

“Something happened,” Wallace remembers. “Maybe the pilot looked back at us and became distracted. Nobody was ever sure.”

Today a 74-year-old who sports patches of gray stubble, sandals, and a ball cap, he pushes his right palm in an upward arc to show how the plane attempted to maneuver just before it hit the tree. Read more

Bullets over Phnom Penh

PHNOM PENH – Bullets and beer, a buck a pop.

After maneuvering down the bumpy dirt side street and clearing the single checkpoint, the entry to the Cambodian Special Forces shooting range is just ahead.

An employee rushes out to greet the car. A menu then falls on one of the half-dozen tables in front of the shooting area. A tray of cold Angkor beer ($1) – yes, beer – and soft drinks arrives quickly thereafter. But alcohol is not the only thing that makes this range special.

The price list includes just about every kind of armament known to man: machineguns, rifles, and handguns. Read more

View from a hill: Scavenging at Stung Meanchey

PHNOM PENH – The white and gray cloud hanging over Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump on a recent weekday morning is thick and smothering. The smoke is rising from the perpetually burning fires around the site’s nearly seven hectares of undulating hills of fetid garbage.

“Actually, today the conditions are quite good,” says Hong Sot, one of a few hundred recyclable material collectors at Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s largest garbage dump. “Usually the smoke is much more intense.”

Sot, sweat clinging to the side of his face, is outfitted in a heavy gray shirt and plaid bandana. He is taking a short break from the activity at the top of the nearby hill. There, collectors frantically pick through freshly dumped Phnom Penh refuse. At his feet are large bundles of what is considered recyclable booty – bottles, chunks of metal, plastic bags, and paper – that have been hauled down from the work area. Read more

Taste of Pyongyang in Phnom Penh

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, July 27, 20007)

PHNOM PENH (TR) – As far as restaurant themes go, conventional marketing might find Marxism to be an odd genre given the success of such standards as rock n’ roll or 1950s doo-wop. But make no mistake: Reservations are absolutely necessary at Restaurant Pyongyang in Phnom Penh.

Inside this 25-table eatery of hermit kingdom blandness, slim and fair-skinned North Korean waitresses sing, dance in teams, and play violin in between serving a mix of Asian fare to customers who are afforded a zoo-like peek inside the illicit dining room of Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.

“I enjoy this job so much,” said one of the attendants, who like her comrades speaks a bit of English and Chinese, about working in Cambodia’s capital. Read more

No beer today

VANIMO – South Pacific Brewery, the largest brewery in Papua New Guinea (PNG), ships its slightly bitter SP Lager Beer to all corners of this South Pacific nation. Yet, amid a rainbow of fruit-flavoured vodka drinks on the large hardwood table inside the smoky bar at Vanimo’s Sandaun Motel, one of two lodges in this coastal town, SP is obvious by its absence.

‘There’s no beer in the entire town,’ says Frank Moi-He. On this humid afternoon, he is one of a small group of middle-aged locals sitting in the darkened lounge, whose walls and ceiling are lined with planks sourced from local timber. Read more

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