My passport has returned from the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington with multi-entry visa for Vietnam now added.  Once mine returned safely, I sent Heide's passport off to the embassy to be validated.  You can do them together but multi-entry visas cost $130 a piece.  So I waited to do them separate so the wallet is not hit so hard.  I am after all an average guy, not a mega-media outlet with a million dollar budget.  
   Interestingly enough, the Bird Flu hype has simmered to a low roar lately.  Of course Heide and I are going right back in the middle of its epicenter again by going to Southeast Asia.  Last year we saw more warnings about AIDS than Bird Flu.  In fact, I saw no mention of Bird Flu in Vietnam, Laos, or Thailand.  
   I don't want to be too cavalier, but I am old enough to remember the Swine Flu fiasco in the mid-1970s.  It was suppose to reek havoc on the world.  Because I was in the Army, we soldiers were ordered to take the vaccine.  One of my squad mates almost died from it.  I think more people died from the vaccine than the flu then.  I only mention it because having worked in emergency services for ten years, I know the medical establishment is still rather embarrassed by the whole mess.
   - Just a little caveat to remind everyone to think about staying grounded - beware of the odious doomsday, lab-coat experts on television.  You would think people that have PhDs, medical degrees, and spend their whole lives researching viruses would tone down the "we are all going to die" rhetoric.  I guess they still don't teach PR skills in med school.  Although on the other hand you give someone a microphone and a television spot for one minute and perhaps the power trip to scare people is just too tempting.