Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
This was taken last week at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham, my university, at a welcoming ceremony for freshmen (aka “freshies” in Thailand). In the foreground, English program students are praying during a traditional bai sri ceremony around a Christmas tree-shaped arrangement of folded banana leaves, as other students play takraew on the courts in the background and molam blasts from the unseen stage to the left.
This was waiting for an engine swap at my mechanic’s shop yesterday. I vote for a supercharged V8 diesel for a balance between economy and kicking ass.
The Kodak DC120 was the first megapixel camera I owned. I got it back in 1998 or so and maybe sprung for an enormous 4Mb compact flash card as well, to add to the industry-leading 2Mb internal memory in the camera (enough to store 2 whole photos in RAW mode, but they didn’t call it RAW yet, it was simply described as uncompressed).
After I posted about the iPad 2 yesterday and decided against pitting its hapless camera against the one on my phone, I realized that I might have photos in my archives with which the iPad2’s test photo could be compared. My digicam archives go back to 1998, spanning those years with shots from different models of Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony, Ricoh, Sanyo, Kyocera, Panasonic, Fuji, Casio, Toshiba, Leica (!!), and numerous spotty models of indeterminate Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean manufacture (I even have shots from a camera that apparently embedded a paid porn site URL in the EXIF data — can’t figure out who’s camera it was, though). All of these cameras proved to be more capable than the iPad 2’s camera(s). Finally, browsing through some shots with the Kodak DC120 that Nam took in Yasothon Province, Thailand, during the annual banfai rocket festival, back in 1999, I found some comparable shots taken on an overcast day. Here’s one:
The iPad 2 photos from yesterday’s post:
Aside from the lighting, I think the state of the art digital camera from 1997 actually stands up fairly well with the best-selling tablet computer* of today.
Early childhood training.
In the mall attached to our hotel in Ubon, the Sunee Grand.
A self-explanatory photo set because I have no time, only children.
…regular intermittent posting to resume posthaste.
Yesterday we got home from a trip to Nakhon Ratchasima, more commonly known as Korat. The city is famous for being the gateway to the Northeast region (where we live) of Thailand, and is at just about the halfway point when we go to/from Bangkok. We were only there for one reason, though. Max wanted to see animals…
The zoo is medium-sized, and unremarkable from a technology standpoint. However, some thought has gone into the layout, premium services, and a few of the exhibits really stand out. In addition, the cost of things including admission (50 Baht for Thais, 100 Baht for foreigners, free for small children) is very reasonable. We went from 9:00AM and rented a golf cart for a couple of hours (500 Baht) after seeing the lines for the trams and figuring it would be too hot by noon. Two hours turned out to be just enough time to see almost everything including the obligatory pinniped (why isn’t “pinniped” in the Chrome spell checker dictionary?) show, which if you’ve been to Sea World looks like Retarded Animal Training for Dummies, but kept the kids entertained until they, too, got tired of seeing finned marine mammals playing in the water and doing horribly easy tricks for piscine (why isn’t “piscine” in the Chrome spell checker dictionary?) rewards.
We missed seeing some of the exhibits; it would probably take another hour to cover everything, but then again if you don’t have kids you don’t lose time on diaper changes and meltdown control when they are both convinced that the other has something in their hand that they want.
The highlight of the zoo for us: The giraffes! I have never been so close to a giraffe in my life, and it was a really cool experience. Now I have one less reason to go on safari.
Some pics:
You can tell this is from a couple months ago because my car is still in the driveway (hopefully out of the shop soon), and our front lawn still exists (a month after this it was a rock garden for two weeks, then a weed bed, and now it’s a mud puddle we are waiting to line with plastic so we can replace the rocks and confound the weeds).
