Earth, sky, sea, and rain
Is she coming back again?
Men of straw sneak a whore
Words that build or destroy
Dirt, dry, bone, sand, and stone
Barbed-wire fence cut me down
I’d like to be around
In a spiral staircase
To the higher ground
And I, like a firework, explode
Roman candle lightning lights up the sky
In the cracked streets trampled under foot
Sidestep…sidewalk
I see you stare…into space
Have I got closer now?
Behind the face
Oh…tell me…
Charity dance with me
Turn me around tonight
Up though a spiral staircase
To the higher ground
Slide show, sea side town
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Above is a partial view from the front of our new house. The view was a major reason why I wanted to build a house here in the first place. If you look closely, you can see the top of my university’s administration building (it’s a kilo or two away in a straight line, unfortunately, there is no road running straight there):
Since you can see that building from my house, the reverse is also true, of course, and when this house was being built, I used to take my camera and a zoom lens up to the roof in between or after the Master’s classes I taught there. I would take photos of the workers dumping trash in the pond or peeing in my backyard and go confront the foreman with it later, saving the photographic evidence for when he swore in front of the developers that nobody would dare do such things (yeah, I’m pretty much the client from hell).
That roof was also my bug-out area when I needed a smoke or wanted somewhere to relax for a few minutes. The door to the roof was always open and it was often the coolest part of the building with constant breezes, even on the hottest days. You could look over the waist-high wall surrounding the perimeter of the roof onto the parking lot, which was green with all the old trees that make my university so nice to walk around, and the people and cars looked like miniature toys scattered across the floor… The nicest part about going up to the roof was that you were pretty much guaranteed your privacy. I went up there at least a couple times a week for six months, and saw maybe four other people in that time.
It’s funny what kind of thoughts go through your head when you’re looking at people you may or may not know from 16 stories up. I know what I always think of. But there’s a big difference between wondering what it would be like and actually stepping off…
Yesterday, one of our seniors jumped off the roof of the administration building and died. What this boy was thinking, I have no idea. The chances are, I don’t even know who he is.
But it still makes me sad thinking about it.
Category: Photos
Cows in My New Backyard
Well, more of the empty lot next door than our backyard, but hey, the important thing here is the cows, right?
If you’ve stuck around this blog since I made my move to Maha Sarakham, Thailand, you know that I’m somewhat obsessed with the flora and fauna surrounding me (whether I end up eating it or not), and I hope for the Cows in My Backyard series to become something of a time-honored tradition. So far, it’s only been a year or so. Here’s to more cows, and maybe even more backyards in the future.
Pumpkin Top Security
I love companies that don’t take themselves too seriously; especially ones that should. Then again, maybe the Pumpkins are old money aristocrat types convinced that their family crest strikes fear in the hearts of would be wrongdoers (fuck thee not with the PUMPKINS, knave!).
Bull with tits
Baby water buffalo are cute as hell
In passing
Photo by Nam @ 50 kph
Mooban Hacking Part 1 (Pimp My Ride, Thailand)
Here are the plans I have for the Crown:
Fix brakes (possibly replace master cylinder)Fixed & replaced- Bodywork/new paint job (needs missing chrome part on front)
- Install parking break
- Install wing mirrors to replace current side mirrors
- Repair/replace gauges (the temp. gauge is the only one I really need and it works; fuel gauge works at full tank and 1/4 tank, again, this is all I really need)
- Suspension (may dump the front; rear sus is OK as is)
Sadly, this car is a poor candidate for classic restoration – she’s a bit rough and it would be quite expensive. Plus, it just doesn’t fit this car’s kick-ass demeanor. She doesn’t want to be pretty in the restoration sense, I think. She is special and deserves to stand out, however. With that in mind, I went searching for some used rims a couple weeks ago with my pal Don. I told him I’d buy a pair of good ones, something with flavor, if we could find them for 6 or 7,000 Baht. We visited five tire shops and joked about calling MTV to Sarakham for help with Pimp My Ride Thailand (after all, people all over the world are thinking similar things). At the last shop, guess what we found?
I know it takes a while to get used to them; it completely changes the look of the car. It’s amazing what new shoes can do – and what shoes they are! In my last post about the Kuj, I said that I began suspecting that this car is a luck magnet… Well guess what? Those are used seventeen-inch Ray’s Volk Racing six points that I picked up for 6500 Baht. With tires, 225s on back and 215s on front, total Jap VIP-car style. Unreal. And the whole time we drove from shop to shop I was telling Don how we were definitely going to happen across a perfect set. This car is a witch. A good witch.
This became evident again last week when we took the car in to a mechanic that Don knew in order to change out the master cylinder. We bought the almost-new part at a local used parts warehouse (2200 Baht, fair) and took it back to the garage. The mechanic turned out to be a kindergarten classmate of Nam’s, so when we went back to pick up the car a couple days later, he only wanted to charge us 800 Baht! That’s like $25 US! For custom fitting a part that didn’t really fit in the engine compartment (because it’s stuffed with an RB-20 engine) and adjusting the brakes! As lucky a break as this was, I couldn’t bear to pay the guy so little for such a big job and insisted he take a thousand (just call me Rockefeller).
Anyway. I took some more photos to update this logbook on the progress of our mooban hacking.
(as always, left click once on photos to open a larger size in a pop-up window)
The careful reader will notice the red spray job that the nice man at the tire store insisted on doing on my brake calipers (rear brakes are drums, luckily sprayed black and not red). He even went so far as to spray a primer coat of silver on them first. This is the level of pimptitude in Thailand (MTV we need you!). Everybody sprays their calipers red, Brembo style. The real posers actually spray their drums red and/or stick Brembo stickers over the paint job. (BTW I noticed that my calipers were made by Sumitomo before the guy sprayed the stamping over. Never seen Sumitomo calipers before. I guess they’re the originals.)
Also, since I wrote that list above a few things have changed. Obviously, the most important item, the brakes, have been worked out, almost completely. There is still a slight issue with balance when braking hard (it’s pulling right), but part of this is the mismatched rubber I’m driving on now. I can handle it how it is for a while. Eventually, I’ll switch over the tires from my Cefiro (luckily, also on 17s – the tires are Eagle F1 215s all around) and buy new tires for it – new tires won’t make a difference on the Crown.
Um, I’m almost ashamed to write this, but I briefly considered having the front springs cut to give it a greaseball Camaro-type slant. I say I’m ashamed because I know this is a truly a Tijuana-level hack. I say briefly because since I changed over to these big rims, I’ve bottomed out the front tires against the wheel wells, lightly, a couple of times. There are big bumps and dips in the road around here, so this has to be done the right way, with new and shorter springs, if at all.
Also, my knee-freezing aircon worked brilliantly for a few weeks after I had it gassed up in Bangkok, but apparently there’s a slow leak because all I get now is a warm breeze out of the vents. So the leak has to be found and fixed there as well.
That concludes this installment of Pimp My Ride, Thailand.