Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
I’ve been having fun experimenting with YouTube Shorts, basically trying to understand the algorithm. I haven’t had much luck deciphering it yet, but I’m still just a week or so in.
This is a time lapse video I shot in the pit of Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan.
I need to get my Crown fixed and out of the shop – it’s been sitting there since the great floods a couple years back. It feels like it’s almost time.
We picked up an incomplete set of Callaway Warbirds for Mina at the Tsuruya Golf (Japan’s golf Mecca) main branch in Honmachi. It was exactly the kind of deal I like to find in Japan, because any imperfection in a product can result in huge bargains – we scored the set for less than half off because it was missing the hood (removable top of the golf bag) and a putter. Nam’s good friend ended up gifting Mina a really nice putter anyway, so we packaged the set with bubble wrap and brought it on the plane back to Thailand. Tonight was Mina’s first lesson in nearly a month, so we were peeling the plastic off of the heads before trying each club. It was like golf Christmas.
She’s only had a dozen lessons, and she seems to really like it (which is great now that we are invested in it LOL). This range is currently the only one open in Sarakham, and it’s owned by Mina’s schoolmate’s mom: Non Duea Driving Range Maha Sarakham
Highly recommended.
I rather like smashing balls with a weighted stick (although I have no proper form and employ only brute force – I hope Mina teaches me the form part someday), so I hope we can start actually golfing soon.
Actually on Soi Rambuttri.
We walked by after dinner, Taro knew the owner and the band. He unslung his travel guitar and immediately hopped in. Music ensued. I posted a much longer vid as a livestream on FB: T jamming at Kalanbatu on Khao San Road
So surprisingly well-done, I had to post it: IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT – Merkurius Gilded (ft. Kenny G and Max Gorelick)
File under: Black metal, Experimental metal, Avant-garde metal (ew!)
One of my YouTube vids from six years ago shows police in Maha Sarakham using a sasumata (a nonlethal man-catching staff of samurai-era design) to subdue a knife-wielding suspect at our local bus station. I posted about it at the time and there are a couple links (amazingly still live) about other incidents down at the bottom.
Weapons similar to the sasumata have a long history in many cultures. They were known as “man-catchers” in Europe and used until the 18th century, although their non-lethality may be up for some debate:
The flanges on the top of that are spring-loaded and were designed to open up after it was thrust around someone’s neck!
The Chinese had a similarly-shaped traditional implement called a “monk’s spade,” or “Shaolin spade” that was apparently used as a burial tool (hence “spade”) as well as a weapon. There are several types still sold today.
During the pandemic, a clamping man-catcher shaped like a sasumata was used in Nepal to enforce social distancing.
This inspired police in India to try their own homebrewed clamping device, which they apparently had trouble naming, eventually settling on “social distancing clamp” or a “lockdown-breaker catcher,” although NPR just gave up and just called them “giant tongs.”
In the latest news, an employee at a jewelry shop in Tokyo is being hailed a hero after thwarting an attempted robbery and giving chase with a sasumata after the three suspects fled. There is some cool video of it:
Two of the three suspects have already surrendered to the police.
I love how they instantly deflate when met with resistance. After their scooters are toppled and the mountain smacks it, the weapon in his hands must have looked like:
I came upon this little guy on my daily walk at the old MSU campus a couple months ago, when it was raining every day and the roadside ditches were filled with water.
