Month: January 2006

Video chat

Some people have recently asked why I don’t use a webcam and enable video messenging. Some possible replies:
– Do you really want to see me picking my nose and flipping off the screen that badly?
– I’m not that vain
– I’m a leper
– It feels too much like work (we have videoconferences all the time)
– It would impede my “walk around the house naked” lifestyle
– It makes me feel powerful to be able to watch you when you can’t watch me
– What is this, 1998?

Mexican Food in Bangkok

My research into this subject consists only of an hour-long web search. That is all I needed to determine that the first person to establish a Mexican restaurant in Bangkok with excellent food will probably become rich. I hope somebody steps up to this role soon, so I don’t have to do it myself (in general, I hate living in big cities).
There are a few reviews of Mexican food in Bangkok, to be sure, but I really don’t trust the reviewers. Why? Well, for instance, anybody who even sets foot into a Mexican restaurant named “Charley Brown’s” is not qualified to judge, in my book. Similarly, a “fairly decent Mexican buffet on Tuesday nights” does not a Mexican restaurant make. But the clincher was the following quote from an older review:
“…helpful and attentive staff, an outstanding stock of fine liquor (when did you last see quality tequila like Jose Cuervo in Thailand?), and really great food…”
Um. With Cuervo as a baseline for quality tequila, I don’t think we can trust this guy’s judgment of the finer points of carne asada either.
So. The general consensus of people who seemed to know good Mexican food is that Senor Pico is the best Thailand has to offer. It didn’t get really stellar review from anybody not from Wisconsin or Boston, though, if you know what I mean.
I have thus placed myself in the ironic situation of having to try a Mexican restaurant in a SE Asian country, where a single margarita is sure to cost more than twenty bowls of delicious noodles being sold from a food cart right outside the front door. But I feel it’s worth it – if it’s as bad as I fear, I know what to do for work when I move later this year.
I’ll import a fully-stocked taco truck from east LA and bless Thailand with the best damn carnitas they’ve (n)ever seen.
Ole, bitches!

Random thoughts on movies/TV

– There is no such thing as a movie being better than the book. And the screen version of Where the the Wild Things Are directed by Spike Lee Jonze will probably prove this beyond a doubt (if it’s an exception to the rule, however, excellent!).
– Hollywood is poison to successful Hong Kong talent. Case in point #1: Chow Yun Fat, #2 John Woo, #3 Michelle Yeoh (also read: The law of diminishing returns)
– Amazingly, Japanese TV manages to suck even harder than American TV
– Even more amazingly, Japanese MTV sucks even harder than American MTV (see also: Japanese rappers, J-Pop)
– The only thing more annoying than trailers for a retarded show like Ally McBeal is trailers for a retarded show like Ally McBeal in Japanese (theme songs and all)
– CNN Japan occasionally airs The Daily Show episodes at 3:30 in the morning
– Kiefer Sutherland has nothing to lose by legally changing his name to Jack Bauer
– It is my firm belief that most Japanese people have never seen a Kurosawa film (although many claim to have, and they all DO know who he was, at least)
– At movie theaters in Thailand, people stand up and sing in honor of the king before the movie begins (they hold their right hand over their hearts like the Pledge of Allegiance, if I remember correctly)
– Movie theaters in Thailand have had better seating reservation systems than most in the US or Japan for the past 5 years (customer-operated Windows-based touch screen systems at the ticket booth)
– Overseas movies routinely take several months to appear in Japanese theaters
– Movie channels on Japanese cable/sat TV are unbelievably pathetic (“new features” are often 2-3 years old)
– The NTSC system suxxors compares to PAL

Skype, Out

Will anyone stand up to the Chinese government?
Skype caves in to Chinese censors
I’m sick of those commie bastards dictating morally wrong terms of business to Western companies. And will said companies please grow some fucking balls already? Jeez.
Hope you feel proud participating in the censorship of, say, the Dalai Lama… Well, you just wait. Karma’s a fucking bitch, you nutless cowards.
The thing is, I’d have figured a righteous company like Skype would somehow act better than those pussies over at , say, Yahoo (oooops there goes my del.ico.us and flickr accounts)… Guess I’ll see you guys again when I need to ask someone what Beijing dick tastes like.