Category: Around Mahasarakham

Monsoon Season

A big storm blew through here yesterday… At one point, it was gusting as hard as I’ve ever seen it. The reeds at the edge of the pond were blowing sideways, and the doors of the house seemed unsure of whether to blow in or out. The babies were sleeping at the time, and stayed that way even though the thunder seemed to boom right over us and the lightning tripped the Saf-T-Cut twice. Nam was still at work, and the street in front of our house flooded a bit, but not as bad as last time.

The storm blew over and the sun came out. The babies eventually woke up and Max must have remembered the floods from last year since he asked me to go get him a fish. Neither the pond nor the storm drains were overflowing this time, so there weren’t any fish.

I had to run errands on the other side of town and saw that the storm had blown down a huge highway sign right in front of our neighborhood. I hope nobody got hurt. The rear entrance was flooded again, like last time, and for a while it was a bit too deep to drive a car or motorcycle through, although pickups were making it through just fine.

If anybody stupid enough to drive through that storm was going under this sign when the telephone pole-sized steel legs bent in half, they either crapped their pants or didn't even see how close they came to being squashed because it was impossible to see or hear anything.
They closed off one side of the highway to pull down the sign with crane trucks. This was the only way to get into my neighborhood, though, because the rear entrance was still flooded.
This doggy found a juicy treat.

It rained again hard today, which made us scramble around to get things done (Nam’s car is in Khon Kaen getting resprayed so we’re doing it all in the Crown and with the help of my <150cc bike fleet), but it’s all good now.

The Toyota “Kujira” Crown, Reborn

After five months of being held hostage by a rogue body shop, a brief return home, and then a serious accident caused by a negligent repair shop, the Kuj has returned.

These are the kinds of photos I really wanted to take before the accident, but I never had the chance. The body shop to which the work was outsourced did a good job – they pounded out parts I thought would be impossible to save, and finished the job slowly while looking for parts.

Only one rare part was totally lost – the lower right front turn signal lens and frame. The shop returned the car to me apologizing for not being able to source the parts in four whole months. At that point, I just wanted the damn car back so I agreed to accept it with this one glaring omission. Then I got my Google on and found the part in one day, shipped from a fellow Crown fan in Bangkok.

Ironically, a good smack in the front end seems to have cured several chronic engine issues. For now, I am just very happy to have the Crown back.

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Location: Maha Sarakham bypass, just around the corner from my neighborhood.

explosion!

So we went out for a family dinner last night, to a place we used to go a lot for crusted garlic fish, but stopped visiting for no reason in particular. Mina was acting kind of funny, not scarfing down everything in sight as usual. Finally, she really stated acting up and did something that merited a spank on the bottom, so I put her over my lap and wound up for effect.

I knew something was wrong by the sound of impact: SCHLOP!!

Baby shit splattered all over my hand and a stinky mist expanded from the area of impact.

Mina looked at me in defiance.

Nam thought it was the funniest thing ever.

Max just shrugged at me.

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Of course, I already had shit on my hand so I had to change Mina’s poopie diaper as well.

Stuck like a boss

Yes, I got stuck.

I arrived a bit late to the first wedding of two only to get trapped in the parking lot due to idiots who had parked every which way Undeterred, I squeezed through a couple of pickups to a promising dirt field that appeared to be damp, but solid. A couple feet into it, the car bogged down a bit, but not wanting to get stuck, I pushed forward… and got stuck further into the field.

Anyway, lemons into lemonade I say. This is what my car would look like slammed, with brown tires:

 

 

Eventually, a truck came and pulled our trusty Cefiro out of the muck, and I took it to get washed before Nam came home.

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By the way, this is the semi-finished parking lot at the new wedding hall of Marin restaurant in Maha Sarakham.

OTOP Marketplace Update – Economic Recovery Edition

The OTOP (One Tambon One Product) marketplace I wrote about a couple years ago is now booming. For the first few years of its existence, it struggled along as a ragtag gathering of unsuccessful vegetable vendors and farmers selling homemade charcoal and surplus rice from the curbs. I visited twice a week to buy organic vegetables and freshly slaughtered/butchered meat (that are, as yet, completely unappreciated in this neck of the woods) for years, and nothing ever changed. The entire market seemed to be run by people too old and frail to work any other jobs, and I was in a small group of regular customers who were barely keeping them going. It was depressing, and I dreaded the imminent demise of my fresh-from-people’s-backyards produce source.

But.

The change came very slowly. From about a year ago, things started picking up. Food stalls that set up on the perimeter of the covered market area (actually in the parking lot) in the evening started appearing. I recognized some of the vendors from other markets around town: A grilled egg vendor from the bi-weekly night market on the Khamriang curve, a fried doughball cart from my university’s food stalls, a smoothie vendor from downtown. I asked around, and there was no consensus as to why vendors had started gathering, except that there was no fee for setting up there in the parking lot – with good reason, as it might have been impossible for most shops to regain any fee at all in sales back then… but the traffic slowly increased. More vendors and more customers started appearing, a fried chicken stall here and a prepared-entree-in-plastic-bag cart there. Villagers started coming in by the pickupload in the evenings to buy cheap veggies, and day laborers would wander through for cheap snacks to go with their white spirit dinners.

A couple weeks ago, when most people were still off work and visiting home from the big cities, I found myself trapped in a crowd at the marketplace. I had to wait in line to buy pork and there were more stalls than ever. Compared to a year ago, the marketplace seemed to be doing twenty times more business. It made me feel all warm inside for a second, and then I remembered how much I hate crowds.

Still, I have a soft spot for this market so I want to see it grow, I guess… It was so unpopular for so long, people who drive by it to work every day forget that it’s there… Whoever thought I would be nostalgic for the bad old days?

Fake Kingston Flash Drive

I went to the annual Chinese festival in downtown Maha Sarakham last month; this is one where they host Chinese opera at the business association meeting hall (I uploaded crappy vids of the opera this year here and here). Aside from the performance, which I generously bear for up to three whole minutes every time I go (once every couple years), I also like walking the wide area of stalls filled mostly with unimpressive yet numerous food vendors.

At the end of one row of stalls was a memory card/USB thumb drive vendor selling at very low prices. I picked up this 8GB Kingston stick for a couple hundred baht with the intention of filling it with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Yo Gabba Gabba episodes for the kids, which they can use with our DVD players at home and in the car.

Unfortunately, the plastic case of the flash drive separated into halves within a week of unpackaging, and most of the files stored on it were corrupted or lost even after low level formatting. I had noticed that the packaging looked a bit suspect just after buying it, but had used fake name brand USB sticks before and hadn’t had any problems… I took a closer look at the packaging:

It's true, nobody reads the fine print!

Lesson: If you buy fake crap, sometimes you will be burned.