The Doraemon snare is a $5 cheapie we bought at the bicycle/toy store in Kalasin where we went to buy a baby seat for the nanny’s bicycle a month ago. The wooden xylophone is called a ranat (or more specifically, a ranat ek) which was donated to the Yoshida Instrument Collection by Tanaka-sensei, a close friend who is leaving Sarakham at the end of the month. The ranat is tuned by placing wax lumps along the underside of each wooden slab; all of these have fallen off and we need to find somebody who knows how to tune it. Hopefully there will be someone at Nam’s university since they have a big music department.
His majesty’s wooden throne was obtained separately but it’s like the coolest chair I’ve ever seen. I really want a bigger one since my big ass won’t fit in this one.
Author: Justin
Quick update
I’ve basically dropped off the edge of the world trying to get over this cold. I think I’ll be back full swing tomorrow.
In the meantime, I caught this article at the Nation’s website about a graduate of our uni who’s stirring up some things in education over in Buri Ram: The school that sets its own course
The fever has passed… (Dimetapp flashbacks kick ass)
But I felt strangely drawn to reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez as strongly as I usually feel like watching TV after popping heavy duty cold medicine. I realized that reading 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish is quite manageable after having read it in English before (at university), even not having spoken more than a couple lines of Spanish since high school. But maybe I was just fever-hallucinating, who knows?
A kind of trippy thing happened though. After the fever passed this afternoon I went shopping and bought ingredients for chicken soup, including a whole chicken. I bought it at the supermarket so it was cleaned and gutted, but when I tore off the package wrap and took it out of its styrofoam coffin I saw that the head was still attached and tucked under the body. It was Pinky, come to visit Daddy from the grave!
Believe me, it was quite hard to cut off the neck from the body and then the head from the neck with a pair of kitchen scissors. I kept expecting a Pet Sematary scene with dead eyes suddenly popping open and pale beak pecking at my hand… It was soon all done, however, and the soup is delicious.
RIP Pinky
I was away on a scouting trip for our upcoming International Camp all today and seem to have come down with something nasty, hopefully not the piggy flu.
The worst news today, though, is that a stray dog came into our yard, snapped Pinky’s neck, and carried him off. Nam saw the carrying off part and knows which dog it is. Vengeance will be mine…
Why YouTube is blocked in China
The Family Guy officially approves of this video.
Hee-larious
Quick! Type “why won’t” into Google and look at the drop-down suggestions…
The second baby kicks harder
I’m not even sure if I ever really felt Max kick or not when holding my hand up to Nam’s belly. I thought I did, but I can’t be sure. No such thing with the next baby, though – she’s in there jumping up and down every day and night. It seems as though specific poses or actions set her off; when Nam lays on one side, the baby gets really active for some reason. Even Max has felt her kick now, which brings me to my second point: It seems that Max now thinks that all even slightly plump women are PREGNANT. This has turned into something of an inside joke, usually ending when the girl asks, “why are you kissing my belly, Max?”
Well, he thinks there’s a baby in there!
Sunny Day
The view from our front porch.
Ping Test
Give it a try here: http://www.pingtest.net
This is especially useful for people in Thailand trying to stream data or play multi-player games on servers overseas. Try testing your latency to Bangkok, then to a foreign destination. The traffic bottlenecks at the undersea data cables after being squeezed through government filters and ISP proxies, which explains the pitiful latency. It’s not quite as bad as DSL being beat by carrier pigeon, but it does explain why Skype and internet radio reception can be so crappy a lot of the time.