Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Last week, on the way home from my program’s English Camp at Nam Nao National Park, I moblogged about a major police presence on the highway suggestive of the presence of royalty. As it turns out, a princess was in town, and we were cleared off the highway to make way for her motorcade. This is my photo log of this most auspicious event.
Long live the King and his family!
Long live Thailand!
We happened upon a stretch of fried grasshopper stands and decided to partake. They were most excellent.
Also, it turned out that one of the princesses of Thailand was in a motorcade behind us and we had to pull over with all the other cars on the road to clear it before she passed. I had my Nikon ready and will post photos later.
Thailand has been suffering from record flooding in recent weeks. What sets this situation apart from years past is that previously safe areas have also been flooded out. Rainfall has been heavy in some areas, but what seems to have caused the problems this time is the steady meddling with waterways and ignoring what might happen when they overflow.
Maha Sarakham is said to be at risk from today until October 31st.
I think the area where our house is should be okay, but of course there is also the possibility of the roads being wiped out, so I went aggro at Big C last week and stocked up on loads of boxed milk for Max and diapers for both of them. Also, the Nam (river) Chi flows in a long curve along the back of the Big C parking lot before running parallel to the highway to Kalasin, so it’s a good place to see the water level.
I hope I never have to use the rubber raft I brought over from Japan.
Not here in Thailand, but back home in SoCal… I waited for a few weeks since nobody actually saw what happened (a coyote was seen near my house and Yoda disappeared shortly after), but I guess he’s gone. Goodbye, Yoda, you lucky one-eyed bastard.
Fuck a coyote.
I know that boy scout leaders in other countries wear khaki uniforms as well, but it’s just too common of a sight in Thailand. They take their scout positions very seriously here, and the thing that gets me is that the scout leader uniform is just a giant version of the ones worn by the scouts themselves. So sometimes I’ll be attending some official function with school presidents and deans and other demigods-in-their-own-mind and some poindexter in a half-length khaki uniform and clip-on tie will amble up on stage and start presenting awards or whatever… It’s really quite trippy.
I guess the moral of this story is that if you happen to come across a sweaty, middle-aged man in Thailand dressed like a little boy scout, complete with brimmed hat and fake leather shoes, don’t worry! He’s not a pedobear! He’s a leader of… boys!
I use text messaging on my mobile quite sparingly, as is the case with voice calls as well, since my life has become devoted to babies. So it’s a real irritation that some stupid fucking Thai celebrity news service called INN-Dara has been spamming me with 15-20 messages every day for the past two weeks; it’s basically caused me to stop checking messages altogether.
I’m on DTAC, and all the other people I know receiving this spam are also on DTAC. However, calling DTAC to complain has proved unhelpful – they simply say that this is a “service” that will cut off automatically after 15 days if we don’t subscribe.
DTAC and INN-Dara, please take notice: NOBODY LIKES YOUR FUCKING SPAM! PLEASE CHOKE ON FETID RAT DROPPINGS AND DIE HORRIBLY, SLOWLY, AND PREFERABLY AWAY FROM THE VIEW OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN (and don’t let us know about your funeral by text message, either – nobody wants to go).
UPDATE: Of course, within seconds of publishing this post, I received a new message from INN-DARA. Aaaaaaaargh!! Karma’s a bitch, bitches!
UPDATE: I’ve found out how to unsubscribe from this irritating as hell service (a tested solution). From your DTAC phone, dial *74852 and press the call button. You should receive a final message that you have unsubscribed. If you are on another mobile carrier such as True Move or AIS, or are subscribed to another “service” perpetrated by the spammers at INN News, refer to the chart below (I’m keeping it on my server so as not to send these fuckers any traffic). What really gets to me is that DTAC won’t tell you how to unsubscribe; it’s quite obvious they are getting paid to allow this spam on their network.
…Because nothing says genuine 911 like a spoiler the size of a Cessna wing (and judging by the height of the hood, front wheel drive as well).
(thx Mark)
This video intrigued me so much, I had to dig around a bit. Here’s the juicy bits:
UPDATE:
Here’s some alternate contact info I found; I have no idea if it’s correct.
Chris Pongpitaya Schoenes Co.
229/3-4 Soi Akamai 7, Sukhumvit 63
Bangkok 10110 Thailand
Phone +66 2392 4177
Today is Mother’s Day in Thailand since it’s the Queen’s birthday, and the Queen is mother to all Thais. Nam and Max went to Khon Kaen with my mother-in-law and I spent the day watching Mina. She basically slept on me all day, only waking to feed and put everything within reach in her mouth before throwing it on the ground.
While she slept, I trashed several thousand mailing list messages in Gmail that I’ve no longer got time or interest in keeping up with, and hit the Empty Trash Now link. The following message ran across the status ticker thingy up top:
Oops… the system encountered a problem (#793) – Retrying now…
Gmail continued to suffer from Excedrin headache #793 for a few minutes, after which the beautifully empty trash page appeared with this message in the middle:
No conversations in the Trash. Who needs to delete when you have over 7000 MB of storage?!
Cheeky.
—
On a related note, I don’t really like the new Gmail interface (mainly, the Compose mail button sticks out like a wart), but I can live with it. If you can’t there’s a way to switch back to a much older version of the interface, albeit without Labs support.
