Category: Photos

Hunting Parts for a Kujira Crown

After owning a 1971 MS60 for a few years now, I can tell you one thing: It’s been pretty damn near impossible to find spare parts for it. After spending countless hours trying to find parts overseas on the internet (because there were almost none advertised in Thailand even last year) that I could afford to have shipped here, we lucked out. Parts sellers started advertising in Thai forums.

So to start with, I’ve ended up with a shipment sold as a set:

My car is not missing any of these parts, but these are in better condition(the guy who sold me the car aptly described it as “faded glory”). Some of them, like the taillight lenses, will be dissected and combined with my existing ones to make better parts.

Most important to function of the car is the full set of weather seals for the door. I’d heard rumors that new rubber was still being made in Thailand for virtually every Japanese car ever produced. Now I have proof. Perhaps even more important than the parts themselves were the labels on the bags containing parts numbers and bar codes, with which I was able to trace the manufacturer. Do you need rubber seals for an old/rare JDM car? I can probably get them now (as opposed to all of the Toyota dealers and parts specialists I talked to, who most decidedly cannot).

So what’s my purpose here? Why am I searching out parts for my old Crown, of the only generation of this make that was a complete and utter market failure (while being the first Toyota Crown – earlier models were Toyopet)? Let’s just say I’m trying to restore some glory…

UPDATE: This is what my MS-60 Kujira Crown looks like now: http://cosmicbuddha.com/2012/03/the-toyota-kujira-crown-reborn/

Food Dreams (CUTTLE FISH THE WATER)

Quite often, Max awakes from a deep sleep craving certain foods – strawberries seem to appear in his dreams quite often, as do hot dogs and toast with jam. Just now, I carried him from one room to another after he fell asleep, and he woke up kicking and screaming saying, “NO! I want to eat it! I want to eat it!” It was quite hilarious, except that he woke up Mina, or to be more specific, my laughing woke her up. Nam glared at me for a while, so I dove onto the bed next to Mina until she went to sleep again.

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The photo above was taken in the seafood section of Big C, however, Max has never woken up asking for CUTTLE FISH THE WATER or any other cephalopods.

Jammin’ solo

Max was so jazzed about playing his toy guitar, we broke down and ordered a real one off the internet. It’s called a Plum Blossom, if I remember correctly. I arranged for one of my second year students to come give him lessons once a week, but it’s just too soon. He won’t play when we want him to, and often just ignores people he doesn’t know.

Ah well, at least I got some photos, and the guitar is being kept safe for if he shows an interest again.

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I’m posting a bunch of phonecam photos in the coming days, so please forgive the craptastic quality.

No Holiday in Cambodia

We had been planning to go to Cambodia with Nam’s faculty for a couple days from the day after tomorrow. Max’s chickenpox had cleared up almost completely this week and he was going to go with mommy and daddy. Mina was to stay at home with relatives and the nanny, and we had done a test run with these arrangements. We assumed she would come down with chickenpox weeks ago, but it never happened (truth be told, we wanted it out of the way quickly and knew she was strong enough to get through it – Max and Mina played together all day every day,I even had them drinking from the same cup). Everything was going fine.

Then it all came unraveled.

Our nanny suddenly stopped coming last Sunday because of a serious personal issue. Even that was OK, because Nam’s little brother’s girlfriend, who works with kids, was going to watch Mina at our in-laws house.

Then two nights ago, Mina came down with a fever. Yesterday red bumps started appearing here and there. Today they have turned to pustules and she is itchy cranky baby.

Shit.

No holiday in Cambodia (which we already paid for).

What did we need a holiday from? Chickenpox. What prevented us from going? Chickenpox.

DAMN YOU CHICKENPOX!!

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– Here’s to another couple weeks before we can bear to look at Mina’s face again without feeling terrible.

Wat Ban Donnad

A couple months ago, when it was still “cold,” we visited a temple that we’d been hearing of for a while, Wat Ban Donnad (Wat Ban Don Nad?). At the end of a long, broken dirt road that runs through several villages, we ended up here:

You can see our destination out on the island:

We honked our horn, and a young monk on a small outboard came putt-putting out. Max saw the boat and it was on.

Max was wearing his inflatable life jacket all day in anticipation of riding on a boat.

The monk was shy, so I spared him the embarrassment of  a face shot.

There’s no electricity on the island, so we brought yard-long candles in addition to the usual food offerings. Giving these to a temple is the most popular form of making merit in Thailand. We talked to the monk that greeted us on the other side for a while, and he seemed to enjoy playing with the kids. Then he showed us the new temple they are building with massive slabs of timber floated down the river from Laos.

We walked around the island for a bit, then headed back to the boat.

We’ve since visited the landing again, but didn’t cross over because there was a temple festival with crowds of people, and they were packing themselves onto the tiny boats to cross over and back. In typical Thai fashion, the people sitting on the edge of the boats were half-heartedly bailing them out until the water inside reached their ankles, at which time the rate of bailing doubled or tripled – this would repeat until the boats reached their destination. When we saw this was happening, we decided it would be okay to pay our respects from the shore on this side.

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