Karate Chop Sunday - Final Thailand Edition

Note, once the below flash image loads there will be some nintendo music playing. If you don't want sound surf away immediately and turn off your speakers before coming back.

First things first, lets start off with a Nintendo game box cover art challenge quiz. Sorry it has sound. I hate it when I log onto pages accidentally with music or bullshit playing, but in this case its unavoidable.

NES Quiz Challenge

See what kind of score you get. I wouldn't count yourself out just because you're a girl/Paul, you'd be surprised by what you remember thanks to osmosis from hanging out with cool kids like me during the olden days.

Second, the Songkran water festival is going on right now, and for the next five days, all the way through my remaining time here. The essence of the festival is to drive around in the back of pickup trucks with buckets of water mixed with plaster and throw them on people. Farang are worth triple points. Make sure you throw them on people on motorcycles and cause wrecks too, because there aren't enough of those everyday. The US embassy even warned me not to go on crowded street during this time for fear of motorcycle accidents/plaster splash in eyes. I've been writing up a sort of 'journal' of my last couple of days dealing with the festival and my discovery of it (I kinda just walked outside one day into bedlam). Maybe I'll post it tomorrow or something.





Yeah, those're picks from another American guy's blog in Thailand. I'm not willing to risk my camera out there. Its been a madhouse for the last three days. His webpage is cited there so you can check out his blog if you want here. He talks a lot about bargirls and katoeys, and how to identify one vs. the other, so Cullen may be particularly interested.

So I leave on a plane on Tuesday at 7:45pm to fly to Bangkok airport. My next flight (which I'll have to check back in for, since its a different ticket), leaves at 6:00am on Wednesday, so I am planning on just hanging out at the airport all night long until the next morning. Plus its the last day of Songkran so everybody will be flying back to their home towns. The Bangkok airport is crowded with sales-folks who are sure you, as a farang, want to buy wooden bead headdresses encrusted with fake gems and take taxicabs to every "massage parlor" in the city. You basically have to fend them off with constant mean-face and "mai chai, mai chai!". Its annoying.



I then arrive in Portland, OR at 8:00am on wednesday. So the time between take off and landing is only two hours! Except to me it will feel like 22 hours. Its like that Enders game book with hyperspace travel. Except in reverse, which makes it crappy instead of awesome. Oh well, it'll be worth it to see my kind and loving Mary again.

Karate Chop Sunday

Its sunday again, and you know what that means!



I walked to the Chiang mai zoo today. Left early in the morning so as to beat the midday heat, because Thailand is 90% closer to the sun than anywhere else in the world. Its true. Look it up.

On my way I noticed a couple things about the area. First, the Thai people love to play a couple games that we generally don't in the US. First, they love soccer, second they love badminton, and third, they love volleyhackball.

Here's the net.



Same kind of net you play volleyball with but instead of a volleyball you have a smaller ball about half the size that you kick back and forth over the net without letting it hit the ground, instead of using your hands. I've watched them play and the rules for volleyball seem to apply (3 kicks total per side) and they can head butt. No hands makes spiking very difficult.

Also, the grass grows tall here. I used to work landscaping for UNI with Superchad and occasionally have to flail mow the overgrown areas. But that overgrowth was nothing compared to what kind of plants they have sprouting up on the side of the road here in the tropics.



In any case, I eventually made my way to the zoo and as luck would have it it was already 95+ degrees by the time I got to the Tigers, meaning that just like in all zoos around the world, the tigers and lions were way in the back laying in the shade and nearly out of sight.




One funny thing is seeing this sign over the lion's den:



There are two possiblities here. One is that the Lions club (who do community service stuff) actually sponsors' lions dens in Thailand, and the other is that a Thai came across a Lion's club sign and realized it said "lion" and put it up at the Lion's den as a sign for english speakers to read (as there were no other signs saying "lions" around to mark the area). I'm pretty sure that's why its up there.

The coolest thing I saw were the Hippos. As I was coming down to the Hippo den I saw a man holding his squealing daughter above the hippo tank as she threw bananas down into the den. It wasn't until I got down there that I saw that the hippo was right underneath her and I wasn't able to get a shot until right after he pulled her back over the railing.



You could actually touch the hippos as they came up for bananas (there was a basket of them just sitting there for people to feed the hippos with). Here's a nice close up shot I took.



I have to say that in general the "safety features" of the zoo were not the three-ditch cement barricade with plexiglass walls that I'm used to. Mostly just some railing. It was pretty awesome. You could jump right into any of the dens if you wanted. Even the lions' dens just had one ditch between the lions and the humans that, if they wanted they could probably jump. Only the jaguar den had a cage around it.

I also saw some strange birds. Now tell me this guy didn't evolve from some creepy dinosaur:



Here's some pink flamingos for my parents. They love pink flamingos.



Some ostriches. I think that's a giraffe back there.


Ah, colorful parrots.


Then there is the Asian Black Bear. Or cub, in this case. These guys have really wierd faces when compared with North American Black Bears. I couldn't really get a good shot but they look really wierd when they face you.



Of course the elephants were no where to be found when I was at the zoo. The pen was empty and I couldn't really ask where they were so, haven't see any elephants yet.

Oh, I got one more animal to show you.



This is Carl the lizard, who infests my dorm room. He likes to sneak in through one of the openings around the windows and run across the walls late at night. I don't mind him because he eats bugs, so he and I have an amicable relationship. It is a little spooky when he darts across the wall when you're going to the bathroom though. Though he's really hard to get a picture of because as soon as you move to get your camera he darts away. I think he's finally starting to not be as scared of me though, as I finally was able to get a picture of him.

Now I'm going to lay around and let my sunburn heal. Tomorrow I'm taking a cooking class instead of going to work so that ought to be pretty awesome.

Karate Chop Sunday Special Birthday Edition

So its my birthday! Kinda crummy to have your birthday on the opposite side of the planet as your friends and family, but at least I have the McLaughlin group to keep me occupied.



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!

Karate Chop Sunday

Hey everybody. No karate chop sunday last week because PBS was doing the pledge drive thing and there was no episode of McLaughlin group to screen cap. I guess I could've used an old screen capture but that would've been dishonest.

So sundays could also be called "American Food and Rant Sundays" because I like to go to the nearby farang-friendly cafe and order a burger and fries, and then complain about stuff on my blog.



I asked for "No mayonnaise" on it but it of course still had gobs of mayo on the thing ("farangs like mayo!"), but I just scraped it off and ate the burger. You can't get upset about things like that because if I really wanted to clearly ask for no mayonnaise on my burger maybe I should learn to speak Thai.



I was stopped by one of the military guys yesterday (they are everywhere around here, keepin' the peace I guess) walking back from 7-11 (also everywhere) and he started talking to me really fast in thai. I could tell he was an officer because he had yellow ropes and rank insignia I couldn't identify, and only a sidearm on him instead of the M-16 or AR-15 looking thing. I kind of shook my head and went "I don't speak Thai" and figured that, since I was only a half a block from a big international hotel he'd just let me pass (I thought it was wierd he was stopping me in the first place). But to my suprise, he switched to english and said "Where you going?!" very forcefully (and with mean-face). I said "To my room," and pointed the direction to my apartment, which also happened to be the same direction as the hotel. My paranoia(tm) had already kicked in and there was no way I was going to tell this guy where I was living for another month, but I didn't want to directly lie at the same time. He said "Where you from?" and I quickly said "America" without even thinking. The emails from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok I get every once and while, telling me the pollution levels are above emergency levels (no shit?) or that I should watch my wallet when in the inner city (O RLY?) also told me that I should refrain from telling locals my country of origin is the USA, due to anti-US sentiment in southern Thailand (I am in northern Thailand, however). Still, I didn't even consider saying I was from Canada or wherever, because goddamnit I'm not going to lie about Eagle Tribe USA! This turned out to be to my benefit though as he quickly smiled and said "USA!" and gave me a hearty thumbs-up. I heartily thumbs-upped him back and he moved out of my path and waved me by.



Someone important must've been coming to that area. Probably a royal family member. When I was in Bangkok the princess was coming to the royal palace and they kicked everyone out of the nearby Grand Temple early so they could cordon off like four square blocks. They take royal protection seriously around here, and its the only reason I can think of where they would stop a touristy-looking farang and question him. Also I'm really proud of the fact that the word "America" settles any fears he may have had about any malfeasance I may be involved in. Because we may be a lot of things in the US, but one thing we are not is terrorists.



Did I mention pollution yet this week? Well, it got WAY above emergency levels this last week. According to the Thai version of the EPA, 120 ug/m^3 is the standard maximum acceptable level of particulate matter. It got over 300 ug/m^3 this week, making every workout feel like I was breathing car exhaust when I was done. I even got an email from the US embassy telling me to buy one of those masks and try not to breathe or exercise too much. Of course, I got this email Thursday, two days AFTER it was above 300 ug/m^3 (i didn't get one after it got above the standard, or 2x above the standard, not until two days after it was 3x above the standard).



Thanks a load for the update, embassy, maybe tomorrow I'll get an email detailing how its a bad idea to leave your clothes on the bench when you take a shower after gym class in high school because Kyle Huston will steal them and hide them somewhere. And here I wondered why I was completely winded by the time I got to the gym, which is only 4 blocks away. Also all this particulate matter results in there always being a layer of crud particles over everything. I notice because my laser mouse goes nuts when I try to use it after leaving it sit for an hour because I'm rolling it over sand and the laser gets reflected everywhere.


That picture had nothing to do with anything in this post other than to say Contra rules.

One awesome thing yesterday is that I figured out how to use my GPS here. I gave up too easily when I first tried to use it because it wasn't seeing a single satellite, so I figured I didn't have the right 'codes' for Thai satellites. This was until Brando explained to me that the ONLY gps in the sky is the US Military gps (which they let civilians use all over the world), so theres no good explanation why I couldn't get any satellites. So I restarted my gps and once I figured out how to reset it it works great. Turns out when you turn off the gps on one side of the planet and turn it back on on the OTHER side of the planet, it gets confused. This is a good example of failing because of lack of trying. I already assumed I couldn't do it, so I didn't even try. Once Brando explained to me how the gps system was set up I knew it was a problem I could solve. It went from a "unknown known" to one of those "known unknowns," and therefore solvable. So now I have a goal for this week:



Geocache! Wahooo! The one up on the temple mount has gotten robbed again according to the geocache site, so this is my best bet. It requires me to get across the city somehow, but I'll do it this week. The next closest geocache is like 32 miles away in some tiny hilltribe town, so I may not be able to get to that one on foot.

Finally, here's an interview detailing what T-Money and Bruce Campbell have been up to since Xena went off the air:

Karate Chop Sunday

Well folks, once again its Karate Chop Sunday!



Its also March 4th, and you know what that means...

GM appreciation day!


So go out to your FLGS (friendly local game store) and buy up some sweet rpgs at 30% off (or just buy pdfs online for cheaper).

In other news on Battlestar Galactica, they just destroyed the Cylon's Resurrection Ship, so that's good. But it means I'm running out of episodes, and that's bad.



Vampire: The Masquerade turned out to be too graphics intensive to play it at anything above "slideshow" framerate, so I switched over to Fallout:Tactics, which I never actually got around to beating back in the day.



I'm also playing in an online Ravenloft game tonight, and we're playing through "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft!" My bard is keeping it real. Right now we're in a town filled with zombies, so I'm in my favorite element.



Keep it realsies ya'll!

Karate Chop Sunday

Hey everybody, its karate chop Sunday!



On Sunday I'll fill you guys in on all the pointless and extraneous stuff I'm doing.

Firstly, I'm watching the second season of Battlestar Galactica, thanks to SuperChad, who gave me the first two seasons. I'm spreading them out to just one episode a night, but even so they're going fast. Its a great show. Favorite character: Dr. Geius Baltar. So say we all.



Second, I've just installed the game "Vampire: The Masquerade; Bloodlines" on the laptop. It uses the HL2 engine so it pretty graphics-intensive, but I can run it in safe mode, though I still worry about the heat level of the video card, so I can only play for about an hour or two at a time. Still, the character creation seems pretty good.



Third, a grad student in the lab, Arm, took me to the Farangi supermarket in Chiang Mai, where I couldn't find any Romulan Blue, but I did find some breakfast cereal.



Finally, I start playing DnD with the Ravenloft group in Sweden I joined on the online virtual pnp program Fantasy Grounds. Game starts at 7pm for me, 1pm for them, so I should be pretty good and tired by Monday mornin' at work. I'm playing a Bard.



Peace out!

An Unpopular Opinion

Welp, this president's day my wife helped me celebrate properly, by watching the single greatest political commentary show in existence, the McLaughlin Group!



You may be aware that webcams are my link to America's popular culture, as my lovely wife and the good folks at chez Woods' are willing to set their webcam's up so I can watch things like the Superbowl with them. Well, Mary records our favorite PBS show and on Monday nights (her monday morning) we watch it!

I've come to appreciate one of the members of the McLaughlin group more and more over the years, and its a guy that, from what I've heard, I should dislike. However he's pretty funny for an old politician and his opinions on the show are spot-on usually. If there is some evil belief system to him they haven't broached the subject on the show.



Pat Buchanan! I know! How could I like him?! Well, I do. I wonder if he was demonized into the super-conservative jerk icon back when he was running for president, and that general opinion of him never wore off. If you think you hate Buchanan, you should go watch the McLaughlin group and after that tell me if you still hate him. You won't anymore. And you'll get mad at Elenor Cliff for interupting him all the time.