Numbers

Some numbers may be just the thing to get my company-controlled brain really working again after two full weeks of respite.
– Rating of the wedding on scale of 1 to 10: 9.7
– Rating of the trip on scale of 1 to 10: 9.5
– Total number of digital photos taken by myself and my brother: Approx. 2500 (8 GB worth)
– Total number of film photos taken just at wedding: 17 rolls
– Total number of edited hours of wedding video taken by T: 3 hours
– Total number of edited hours of wedding video taken by hired videographer: Unknown
– Total number of dancers at our wedding ceremonies: 50? 100? (I have to watch the video)
– Total number of elephants at wedding: 2
– Total number of white suits I wore for the wedding: 2 (morning Thai-style suit/evening tux; both went well with white pimp boots I brought from Japan)
– Total number of monkeys that jumped on my back at the monkey temple: 1
– Total number of boss monkeys that bared their teeth at me and chased me into the ocean: 1
– Total number of beautiful ladyboys involved with our wedding (attending or working with vendors), not including dancers: At least 5
– Total number of times I knocked on my pal’s door (knowing he had a girl in the room), heard the soundtrack to Raiders of the Lost Ark playing at full volume, and was subsequently scarred for life with visions of him standing over the bed with a bullwhip in a Mola Ram pose: 1
– Kilograms of mangosteen consumed by my father over the course of a five days: 3.5
– Average number of fishballs in a standard bowl of noodles in Thailand: 4
– Total number of 600ml bottles of water I consumed over two weeks: A hundred?
– Total number of guards our driver bribed in order to enter beach compound where the King of Siam’s doctor lives in Hua Hin: 1
– Total number of bags of fruit used to bribe said guard: 1
– Total number of average taxi drivers we had in Bangkok: 10
– Total number of good taxi drivers we had in Bangkok: 7
– Total number of bad taxi drivers we had in Bangkok: 3
– Total number of taxi drivers on speed who kept feeling my arm and telling me “I like man” in Bangkok: 1
– Total number of times I had to raise my voice at the Fortune hotel’s front desk to get stuff done: 1
– Total number of suits made in Bangkok: 1
– Total number of times said suit saved my ass when a job interview unexpectedly appeared at the end of the trip: 1
– Total number of girls who remember T’s name on Hua Hin’s bar strip: 20? 30?
– Total number of flowers bought off from cute/pitiful child hawkers during one long night of drinking: Two fistfulls
– Total number of Scandinavians currently vacationing in Hua Hin, Thailand: Approximately half the population of Stockholm
– Total number of times I felt embarrased to look Japanese because of rude/loud/retarded Japanese in the room: 5+
– Total number of times I have smiled at a cop on a street in Bangkok and he smiled back: 4
– Total number of times I have smiled at a cop on a street in Osaka and he smiled back: 0
– Total number of times I have smiled at a cop on a street in Los Angeles and he smiled back: Are you crazy?
– Total number of times (ever) I have seen people peeing on the street in Bangkok: 3
– Total number of times (ever) I have seen people peeing on the street in Los Angeles: 15
– Total number of times (ever) I have seen people peeing on the street in Osaka: The entire working adult male population, plus a few bums and even a prarie woman or two thrown in for variety.
-Total number of times my ass was saved by family/friends during wedding/entire trip: Countless. Seriously. Thank you all.

The Death of 2

Remember what I said about problems cropping up at the last minute? Well, guess what. Nam’s desktop pc broke this week with most of our wedding planning data on it – irrecoverable. Then just as I finished loading all of the necessary stuff on my laptop last night, the hard drive failed – unbootable.
Dammit.
Gotta figure something out.

Last Minute

It’s funny how the day before you leave for an extended break, problems have an uncanny way of popping up all at once.
I am in evasion mode…. Just call me stealth ninja, baby.
I will be picking up a cell as soon as I hit Bangkok and will post the number here and over at the airset site. Nam already has one so we’ll send out that info at the same time.
Four hours before the end of work. Time to wrap things up.