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The indelible BA in my head
It was somewhat of an unwelcome surprise to find out that part of my brain needs Mr. T. Watching his new show while making dinner, I kept telling myself how stupid it was the first 20 minutes, and ended up smiling when it finished… For what it’s worth, he’s actually a much better host than Tosh. (awesome graphic via)
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Snakehead in the Gutter
Last time it was a pla salid (Snakeskin Gourami). No pics, but today we found a dead pla chon (common snakehead) in the pool of water that forms on the street to the side of our front yard. It was about 10 inches long, a great size to eat. In fact, I’m pretty sure it must have walked up from the pond (forty feet away) and died sometime yesterday during/after it rained, because it was in a place workers walk by all day and if it had been alive, they surely would have taken it home to eat. A snakehead makes a wonderful meal. A ten inch one could feed a couple…
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A Salubrious Place to Live
This old article in the Atlantic is very interesting: 1492 Throughout eastern North America the open landscape seen by the first Europeans quickly filled in with forest. According to William Cronon, of the University of Wisconsin, later colonists began complaining about how hard it was to get around. (Eventually, of course, they stripped New England almost bare of trees.) When Europeans moved west, they were preceded by two waves: one of disease, the other of ecological disturbance. The former crested with fearsome rapidity; the latter sometimes took more than a century to quiet down. Far from destroying pristine wilderness, European settlers bloodily created it. By 1800 the hemisphere was chockablock…
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Insecticide Spraying in Rural Thailand
UPDATE: I’ve added a video to the bottom of this post. The first time I saw government spraying (fogging, really) in our neighborhood was last year. There was the sound of a lawnmower engine from a block away, and then a man with a backpack sprayer walked by on the street, spraying a dense, white fog over our front yard, which promptly blew through our open windows ala a 1940’s public service announcement/DDT promotion. The cloying stench of RAID remained on the house for a couple hours, and I had to wipe everything down before the kids got back. Today, we got a twenty minute warning by a pickup truck…
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crazy day
After having one of the busiest days in recent memory, I was chilling with the kids in our living room when I heard a bloodcurdling scream from outside the front of our house. By the time I hit the floodlight in the driveway, there was another — the kind you hear when someone’s getting attacked. We peeked through the curtains to see a mid 90’s pickup stopped in the street directly in front of our house. We couldn’t see though the truck’s windows, but saw people struggling on the far side of it, on the bank of the pond. Thinking that someone was about to get dumped, I rushed over…
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BooksThailand.com
A few weeks ago, my bathroom reading materials had dwindled down to the point of having to reread some old favorites. Then, while browsing a Thai-related forum, I spotted a banner for booksthailand.com. They are apparently a used bookstore on Koh Chang that have started selling online. Long story short, they are my new go-to place for books here in Thailand. They accept PayPal or bank transfers and the prices are very reasonable considering the price of new English language books here. They are currently running a “buy 3 get 1 free” promotion that I used for my first order. I paid via PayPal and quickly got an email from…
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Dragon and Peony
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What’s going on (May 2011 edition)
So we went to Koh Samet for a few days with a bunch of my coworkers and some of their families. It was awesome, but I feel the need to write about what’s been happening around here before moving onto editing the trip photos and video. Max and Mina started school on May 18. Max is now going to the demonstration school at the old Maha Sarakham University campus, very close to the Rajabhat University where I work, because his old school shut down at the end of the last term. Mina is going to a nursery school very close to Nam’s office, at the new Maha Sarakham University campus. Both…
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Back from the beach…
…regular intermittent posting to resume posthaste.
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Quick trip to Ko Samet
I am taking the family on a work trip from now. It will be an overnight bus ride, followed by a boat ride to Koh Samet and a smaller ferry-to-shore. We plan to return on Monday night, just in time to finish preparation for the new school term.
