Even got some cards for my birthday over here! One from my wife and the other from Brando and Kimbo Slice.
Those are some adorable goddamn squirrels. Mary says I have more cards from folks waiting at home for me when I get back to the states'. Anyway, so how did I go about celebrating my birthday weekend, you ask? Well, I cleaned up my little apartment and actually did laundry, and then I went to the Night Bazaar and picked up my suit I got tailored for myself (Hong Kong Tailors). I figured I might as well cut out the middleman and save a couple hundred bucks while I'm here, right? I also grabbed copies of the movies Eragon and Pathfinder (more below).
Then I went to the mall and tried to spend money. Unfortunately I have some sort of defective shopping gene that just makes me annoyed whenever I go into malls, and the fact that I can't read much of anything just exacerbates my annoyance. It probably didn't help that I was listening to the Dead Rising soundtrack (get it while you can) the whole time and kept hoping zombies would bust into the mall. I did consider stopping into one particular store and loading up...
But then I figured I couldn't get anything past USA customs anyway. Its a shame, really, since in Oregon drugs that contain pseudoephedrine aren't even legal anymore (first ephedrine, then pseudoephedrine), so Oregon cold medicine is like 2 parts vitamin C and 1 part Echinachea (read: worthless). Here in Thailand lets just say the Thai-FDA is a friend of Rush Limbaugh. Though I think if you're actually charged with drug trafficing they lop off your hands. At any rate, I grabbed some Claratin for Mary and otherwise steered clear.
A lot of the shopping here is done outdoors at night because its cooler then, and they have little stages set up where they do fashion shows and occasionally wierd traditional dances (the fashion shows are actually wierder than the traditional dances). I took a picture of one just to prove that I'm still in Thailand.
I also took a couple pictures of Chaing Mai from the tuk tuks (3-wheeled motorcycle things) during my rides around the city.
Yeah, they have big pictures of the king all over the place.
For dinner I got some Som Tam (curry soup -- its good for real) from a street vendor and had some roti (fried bread with chocolate, bananas and coconut milk). Then I ate one of the bags of skittles my mom sent me while I sat down to watch some movies.
Eragon:
Holy pile of crap. Its like a 15 year-old director's son watched Attack of the Clones and Dungeons and Dragons (the movie) and said "Yes! I want to make a movie that is an exact combination of those two blockbusters!" and some coke-addled producer green-lighted the project during a speedball party. It was god-awful. I'm sorry I paid 50 Baht for the DVD ($1.50). And remember, I kinda liked 'D&D 2: Wrath of the Dragon God,' so I'm serious when I say Eragon is awful. Final Analysis: Attack of the Clones minus the lightsabers and clones.
Oh yeah, last weekend was Cullen's birthday! In honor of that, here's a little music video just for Cullen's birthday:
Go ahead and watch it again. I know you want to.
The second movie I got was Pathfinder.
You may not recognize the name because it won't be out in theaters until April 13th. Its kind of a 13th warrior meets Apocalypto. I've been wanting to see it since I saw the preview, but unfortunately the DVD quality was terrible and the sound was like listening to your next door neighbor's TV through the wall rather than watching a movie in front of you, so after watching the first 20 minutes with my face right up next to the screen and speakers, I decided I didn't want to spoil the rest of the movie and tossed the worthless DVD across the room. I figure that's the price I pay for trying to see into the future.
I still have another day of birthday time actually since I started my 'celebrations' on Saturday. I'll keep you informed if anything great happens. Tomorrow I am going to try to go see some elephants somehow, and if that falls through I'm reinstalling Baldur's Gate 2:Throne of Bhaal and playing through it as a lawful evil monk.
Signing off,
Cory "At least I'm not thirty" Scanlan
PS: They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!
