Monday, August 30, 2004: MP3's and Election Results

I spent some of the weekend going through all the little tunes I've constructed since January and converted some of them into MP3 files for future posting in the music room. It was an interesting exercise since quite often I will "render" (not mix) the final version of the piece from Acid Pro into a .Wav file then forget about it. There was one with vocals that I had totally forgotten even doing. I'm not sure if any of the ideas are any good, or if they are like so many of my previous musical ideas, simply organized noise rather than songwriting, but I enjoy constructing them. All I can do is worry about the quantity and let my muse worry about the quality.

The Bangkok Election was last night. Thaskin's choice was given a sound thrashing at the polls. People don't like Thaskin anymore. They resent his pork-barrel politics style of helping his own business interests, or that of his friends and family and they resent all his stupid meddling little laws, like forcing malls to open later and close earlier, and trying to ban the cheap mini-van services locals use to get around. He doesn't seem to realize you can't make Thailand a first world country by acting like a third world dictator.

Saturday, August 28, 2004: Coffee of the Day

The municipal election for Bangkok is tomorrow. That is, to put it in perspective, an election to govern 14 million or so people. Nearly half the population of Canada. Thaskin has announced to the military that they SHOULD vote for some one or other. Other candidates include a multimillionaire massage parlor owner who's platform seems to be comprised of moaning about all the bribes he has to pay to the cops to keep his establishments open, and a guy who's logo is an ant in keeping with some Thai children’s song that Sandy sang to me the other day. It was about the little ant lifting something heavy and if we all pitch in together... You get the idea.

The question really burning in mind this week is why does Starbucks "Coffee of the Day" always taste exactly the same? Does putting low fat milk and some sugar in it some how distract from the subtle taste differences or are they just changing the name on the chalkboard everyday and throwing the same grind in the machine?

It was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany this week. According to the BBC report the Parisians who flocked to the streets on that day did it to prevent the Americans from installing an "American Military Occupational Government". No footage of them cheering the arrival of the Allied Tanks or turning out to prevent the Germans from burning the place to the ground. In fact, from the way the report was delivered you would have thought the Nazi's just left of their own accord, as if there were no more sausages to eat or something.

Oh well. That's the thanks you get.

I am getting used to the new gym set up. I can't say I like it. But it is always empty now so it doesn't matter much. It is my 45 to 60 minutes of peace. Going in the morning is definitely the most effective plan.

Sandy had 4 exams this week. Hopefully this will be the last of them.

Thursday, August 26, 2004: Hair-pieces

Sandy doesn't agree about the helicopters. Her main points against the idea are the number of them, and that we watched them from 11:30 pm until nearly 1:00 am. (I had thought we'd only watched them for a short time, but she had looked at the clock when she first noticed them, and when we had come back down from the roof) During that whole time there was NO sound, other than the rain, which had ended by the time they were almost passed, and the normal sounds of the city.

So what were they? If not helicopters, I don't know.

Perhaps hundreds and hundreds of flaming hair-pieces caught by a big gust of wind.

Friday, August 20, 2004: Helicopters

The more I think about what we saw in the sky the other night, the more I am certain it was helicopters. Lots and lots of American ones. It is the only explanation. Now I don't know much about much, and I don't know much about American Helicopters or how many they have and so forth BUT...

If you were flying a squadron of them from here to there or from there to somewhere else it makes sense to do it at night. It also makes sense to turn of (I'm assuming they can do this) the flashing lights so anyone who might see them from the ground wouldn't have any clue what was going by (to prevent RPG fire). Switch on the yellow "don't crash into me" light, put on your night vision thing and away you fly, scaring Farang into wrapping their heads in tinfoil and granting wishes for all the Buddhists who happen to notice your passing.

They weren't flying high enough to be planes, and if it was Buddhist lanterns of some sort they wouldn't have drifted around more aimlessly I think. So it had to be helicopters.

Thursday, August 19, 2004: Pass the Tin Foil

There was a huge rain storm yesterday at around 6:00 pm. That isn’t really unusual though, we’ve been having them all week at pretty much the same time every day. Due to the traffic this weather caused Sandy’s sister Pooh showed up at the Redoubt to crash over night. We watched “The Life of David Gale” which was a pretty good movie then called it a night.

Pooh was already asleep, and I had my contacts out when Sandy started shouting for us to “come see the sky”. I’ve been teasing Sandy for a week now because of her claims to have seen something that wasn’t an airplane so I thought she was just joking around. I got up, couldn’t really see anything, then put in one contact. Sure enough to the south west there were lots and lots of strange little yellow lights. I put in the other contact and watched with Sandy and Pooh.

Eventually we went up to the roof of the Redoubt for a better look. I had never been up there before so that was interesting in itself. The roof is has a roof on top of it but is open except the gap between the roof and the building is blocked with chain-link to prevent distraught Thai’s from leaping to their deaths. It was still drizzling so I was happy to be undercover. This provided us a great view of the lights though as we were higher than the surrounding buildings close to us.

The lights were yellow, like fog-lights of a car. They didn’t blink or flicker, and they were all the same in their color size and intensity. They came up out of the horizon in the west, moved at an even pace towards the east and went beyond our view, behind the buildings to our south east. We could see flashes from the balconies of other buildings, of people trying to take pictures of them. Sandy tried to as well, but I don’t think she’ll get much beyond a photo of the chain-link. After watching for half an hour the convoy of lights ended with three lights trailing the rest, in a group.

I have never seen anything like this before and I’m truly baffled. Sandy and Pooh were doing Buddhist stuff at them, and making wishes. My cultural background however only suggests putting on a tinfoil hat.

Wednesday, August 18, 2004: Shoe Hunt

It isn't that I don't like buying shoes; it's just that I don't like shopping for them. So I tend to wait until I really don't have any choice. It's sort of how the Canadian Military is with any and all of their equipment. Don't replace it until you have absolutely no choice in the matter. Shopping for shoes here is also complicated by the size factor.

Yes, those are exactly the shoes I desire, but do you have them in a US size 10?

Fortunately The Blush came along with me on the shoe hunt so that cheered the process up. I also needed some advice on shoes for running, which of course in North America we call "running shoes". The English call them "Trainers", but I gather that some trainers aren't so good for running in. It was easier when I was a kid and we called them sneakers. Did wearing sneakers make us sneak around? Why yes, we did. We snuck around a lot.

First on the list were the running shoes or shoes for running or trainers for running or sneakers for sneaking quickly. We hit the Super Sport store in Siam Center for those. After being overwhelmed by the choices available I found a pair that looked reasonably enough like running shoes, where available for a reasonable price, and passed The Blush test which involved close examination, some bending and flexing of the sole and possibly a spell.

The Blush spotted a pair of Converse but was unable to buy them due to the size shortage. Converse by the way ARE SNEAKERS. That’s what we called sneakers in 1972, and that's what Bill Cosby called sneakers in 1962. I just thought I'd mention that.

We went to another shop, The Blush now in search of sneakers that would fit. Unfortunately after we'd managed to wake the staff from their indifferent slumber we found they didn't have the size in question. I was now searching for walking shoes; something durable for marching around the cracked and treacherous sidewalks of Bangkok. But there was nothing at Siam Center that fit the bill.

Next we headed to Siam Discovery as I needed to buy a new microphone. I picked up a Shure sm58 with an XLR cable that was on sale.

Then we headed over to MBK. At this point we were interested in seeing a movie but we happened upon a shoe store that actually had The Blush sized sneakers in the style and color The Blush desired. And... They had a pair of The North Face shoes that I liked, and they were on sale. So I bought them. These will replace my functional but aging Reefs. I love them. They look like Major Matt Mason moon boots. How can I not love them?

Tuesday, August 17, 2004: Houston We Have A Problem

They have been renovating the change rooms and surrounding areas of the gym for about six months, now they have moved the gym itself to a different floor, up by the pool. Some might disagree with me, but I think this new arrangement sucks. Where as before the gym was in a huge area with lots of room now the gym is split into three different rooms, requiring you to venture outdoors in order to move between them. Several of the rooms are small, and the one containing the free weights is laid out in a way that it is virtually impossible for more than one person to use the room at a time.

The location by the pool might be a plus in that when you've reached the melting temperature of copper due to the lack of air circulation or the glass wall greenhouse nature of these rooms you can run out side and jump in to prevent fainting. The down side is of course you have to work out with all the fat European tourists watching you. Or ever worse you have to work out looking at fat Europeans.

I did my usual workout, the worst part being trying to do the free weights. It was like working out in a cross between Apollo 13 and a fish bowl. I was there early enough in the day that no one else was around but I can't imagine how horrible it would be at 5pm. I may have to check out the new California Fitness that opened up near Asok.

Sunday, August 8, 2004: Co Co Walk

Sundays are really the only full day Sandy and I have together, so my hand phone gets switched off Saturday night not to be fired up again until Monday morning. The new Sunday routine has become going out at around 2:00 pm to rent some VCDs for the week then taking a trip over to Co Co Walk for some food. Co Co Walk is this failed market zone that was built a year or so ago in what was an empty lot. There are only a handful of venders in the place but this summer a buffet style Thai barbeque place opened up, suddenly increasing the number of people actually going to Co Co Walk from nobody to everybody.

For a mere 79 Baht per person you can get as many plates of meat, fish or whatever as you like, as long as you eat it all. You are charged extra for plates that still have food on them. A charcoal cooker is brought to the table and you cook your own food. The cooker has bulbous metal top with a little moat around the edge which is filled with water to create a broth. You simply slap the meat on the top, and toss the vegetables or noodles into the trough.

The restaurant is an open air affair, with some tables exposed to the sky and others under a wood roof. Sandy and I always sit under the roof because since we’ve been going it is always ABOUT to rain, it being that time of year. Sandy always seems to get more food than is necessary, because it is a bargain, and because since I am big I should be able to eat continuously without rest, chewing no doubt with my many teeth. So each Sunday the last 4 strips of outstanding back-bacon will sit sizzling while I feel as if I’m going to vomit... but I will eat them anyways not wanting to incur the additional 50 baht fee.

Of course after we walk home, and I have had a bear-nap I'll be hungry again.

Friday, August 6, 2004: Fish TV

I haven't talked much about the fish in a while. This is because I just don't have the same emotional attachment to the new fish as I did to the original cast. Of the new batch there are 5 or 6 (that's how much I care) big gold fish and only 2 remaining tiny fish.

All of the thin black fish have died except for the one that did a K-Pax on us and simply disappeared from the tank never to be found. I expected K-Pax to turn up when we did the big super cleaning of the tank last weekend but he wasn't any where, not in the filters, not in any of the shells or clay gnome castles...

Anyways Sandy noticed that when we watch a movie the big fish all congregate in one corner of the tank and stare at the screen. I noticed last night than when I pause a movie they go back to doing fish stuff and when the movie begins to play again they go back to watching. Obviously the light or the movements from the screen must attract their attention the way a reflective fishing lure does.

Wednesday, August 4, 2004: All the Young Dudes...

I took a trip over to Khao San Road with Bonhomme and Associates. I really dislike Khao San however Bonhomme finds it endlessly amusing and is always trying to covert me to his unique way of looking at the pajama people.

“Don’t let them annoy you, just laugh at them…”

But they do annoy me. They frighten me. I find the prospect of the most “forward thinking” people from the first world, the very ones who cling to the title of being “open minded” being so completely clueless a deeply unsettling thing.

And what the what have they got in those back packs?

We took a taxi over and settled in at the Buddy Bar. Khao San has become increasingly gentrified over the last three years. Now traffic is restricted after 5pm, and there are as many wealthy Thais or hip Thai youth as anyone else. The pajama people always seem to be in motion, moving along under the weight of their enormous back packs, unusually with sour or bewildered look on their faces. Couples are the funniest to watch as they usually appear mid-fight, silently enduring each other’s company until they can return to civilization and give it the large one about how seeing such whatever changed their perspective blah blah sip latte blah blah blah.

Bonhomme had a meal of great diabolicalness, a meal so unappetizing even looking at it made me feel sickly. Amazingly he ate it, claiming he was hungry. After he’d finished we went to another restaurant and ate again, then eventually returned to Buddy Bar for more freak watching.

The highlight of the day was this one weirdo in dress shoes, white socks, skin tight and short short denim hot pants, a pink dress shirt and a curly top mullet. He was walking around completely unaware that 1976 ended, in some kind of ‘ludes induced daze with T-Rex songs dancing in his head. Some young Thai guy was so amused he was following him. Bonhomme tried to get a picture of him with his phone but failed on the first attempt. Thankfully Mr. Hot Pants made a second pass and he was digitally captured for our future amusement.

It had threatened rain all day, as it does pretty much everyday now. Finally in the wake of Mr. Hot Pants, came the rain. A lot of rain all at once. We hid under the patio umbrellas which sort of worked. Bonhomme seemed to magnetically attract rain water no matter where he sat and ended up soaking wet.

I had to meet Sandy so when the rain had let up a bit I grabbed a taxi and headed back to the Redoubt. Coming out from Khao San and having my bag with me meant I had to be subjected to several attempts go so the wrong way including an attempt to drive on to the express way. I had to shout Thai directions at him until we got back at the Redoubt. No tip for you.

UPDATE: I have posted Bonhomme's photo of Mr. Hot Pants in the images section. Take a peek.