Mamma Mia! Long before Benny and Björn ditched Agneth and Anni to launch the “fine piece of pop culture” (to use the Onion’s words) that is currently raking in cash at the box office, they collaborated with Murray Head (I had no idea, but that’s actually his real name) to put together a lesser-known, Cold War musical:
Well, Murray says Bangkok is all about “your bars, your temples, and your massage parlors…” but when I spend one night in Bangkok, it’s the electrical engineering that fascinates me most…even when I’m here on water business!
Here are some shots from my most recent trip (click any image to enlarge):
And here are some similar feats of engineering outside my hotel in Manila:
Now luckily most of these wires are for low voltage telecom purposes (as Bill Gates embarrassingly found out) but lacking the ability to differentiate between high and low voltage cables, it makes me a bit nervous to walk past wires that are tied to hand rails or draped through canals! In Australia, we call electricians “sparkies”…which is exactly what I was afraid of turning into when I pass these cables!
So why not bury them? Well, that’s where the water engineering comes into play and what brings me here in the first place. Besides the cost and lack of easements, as flood-prone as Bangkok, Manila, and other low-lying coastal cities are, would you really want your cables underwater? So you’d probably want to solve the flooding first, then bury the cables! Enter the hydraulic engineer…so what do we do? Here’s a great video by Practical Engineering with an explanation:
Next stop: Fighting tsunamis in Munich