Category: Photos

missiles

I was browsing teh intarwebs and stumbled upon this pic:
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…and all I could think of was a photo we took a few years ago on the beach in Sumoto:
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I say “we” because I don’t remember who was using Kana’s point-and-shoot (EXIF says it was a Casio EX-Z500) for this jump series; it was probably me or Kana or Faye. It took me a while to find the photo because I couldn’t spot it in my archives, so I ended up logging into Flickr for the first time in two years (A long story in itself. Basically, the Yahoo login system is fuxxored.) and looking for it among the earlier photos we posted in the might as well jump photo group. Even though I’d basically given up on the NEW! IMPROVED! and utterly soulless Flickr experience after wholeheartedly embracing its awesome start up and being within the first few users to upload over 10,000 photos, many people have stuck with it – that group really grew when I was gone.

Blue kapom (Calotes versicolor) (correction: Calotes mystaceus)

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It took me three years to find one of the blue ones after I heard about them (and possibly ate them as well). This lizard is known in standard Thai as ginka and in Isan dialect as kapom. It has many names in English, including Oriental Garden Lizard, Eastern Garden Lizard, Changeable Lizard, Bloodsucker Lizard, Crested Tree Lizard, Garden Fence Lizard. They are Agamids, from the family Agamidae, commonly called dragons or dragon lizards. Here’s an informative passage from this page:

Changeable Lizards are related to iguanas (which are found only in the New World). Unlike other lizards, they do not drop their tails (autotomy), and their tails can be very long, stiff and pointy. Like other reptiles, they shed their skins. Like chameleons, Changeable Lizards can move each of their eyes in different directions.

I saw it on this tree at a restaurant my coworker and I were having lunch at, and it must have been mating season because there was another blue one, a half-red one, and one changing from tan to tan with spots before our very eyes! It was quite a sight, and I’ll definitely go to see them again sometime.
Note to self: I’m not sure of the restaurant’s name, but it’s in Maha Sarakham, out on the bypass between the crossroad to Borabu and the one to Wapi Pathum, 200 hundred meters before the road to Rui Sap (where my cop student got drunk on pineapple brandy and waved a glock around at everybody) on the left.

Update March 2023: Although the name of these lizards are the same in Thai and Isan languages (กะปอม/กิ้งก่า gabpawm/ginggaa), the red ones and the blue ones are actually different species. The red ones are Calotes versicolor, commonly known as Oriental Garden Lizard, etc. The blue ones are Calotes mystaceus aka the Indo-Chinese forest lizard or blue crested lizard; some of the research online (which I refuse to link to because it’s on a pay-to-access pseudo-academic research site) seems to indicate that these blue ones weren’t officially recorded in a nearby province (Ubon Rachatani) until 2018! I originally posted this article in 2010.

I’ve written some further information on a new post: Blue vs Red Kapom/Gapom Species

max on the wall

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Those are newfangled, lightweight building blocks made of some porous, anechoic material (I yelled at ’em and they didn’t answer back.). They’re predictably better at insulating, but much weaker than good old red bricks – they’re only used for top story walls on a two story houses (or everywhere on a single story).

serious growth

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Mina could prop herself up before she was two months old… She could turn herself over as well, but only kinda by accident. This morning, she almost moved herself off the bed. She can see across the room, recognizes faces, and talks to you in long spurts when she’s so inclined… Other times, she wants to be held up so she can walk across the room.
She’ll be three months old on Saturday.