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31.3.07

Stupidity...

I forgot to let you all know that since the end of February, Chiang Mai has been under an almost dangerous level of pollution.

Royal Flora, the flower expo, that was here from November-January brought with it millions of tourists. So in order for the city of Chiang Mai to look its best, all districts and cities were ordered to not burn any overgrowth, trash or start and misc. fires. So of course when Febrary rolled around everyone burned everything!

Because of this and the already horrid pollution, the sky looks like its in a constant state of fog. Its horrible. I'm buying a new one tonight.

Chiang Mai city hall's solution to the problem? Dump thousands of gallons of water into the air from firefighting airplanes. Thus causing it to rain... ?

They had several weeks of water dumping and no rain, just a massive increase of the mosquitoes that love to chomp on me when i sleep. And finally yesterday it all paid off.

The day started out like any other. Really really, hot. And then in the middle of the afternoon it got windy. Then the sky darkened and thunder was heard. The sky turned to a dark yellow, everyone who's been through a severe thunder storm or a tornado knows that color yellow. Then with a strike of lightning it rained.

20 seconds later, the storm blew away and the sun came out.

So after wasting millions of gallons of water, while most of the districts are experiencing a water shortage, for 20 seconds of rain that has done nothing to abate the pollution, what do you think is the lesson they learned?

They're going to try again tomorrow with more planes and more water.

Mother Nature: 1
Thailand: -3
27.3.07

One More..

I compiled a few Humanism documents including the Manifestos for a personal reference page. Here is the Snapshirt Word Cloud it generated:





If you wanna check out that site:

http://www.geocities.com/thai.fly0/humanism.html

:) Its getting hotter here now. I work most of the day so i don't feel the heat, but some of my students come to school dripping in sweat.

Songkran is coming up in 3 weeks. Thats the Thai New Year. This year they are celebrating the year 2550! Woohoo! :) If you remember me telling you before, Songkran is the week long holiday where they splash water on eachother all day long. I don't work for five days, so its my minivacation.

Its going to be a lot of fun. The biggest Songkran celebration is here in Chiang Mai. The boys are really going to miss out. I sent the camera to them, so you'll have to see if they post any pictures online because i can't. :(

I might be going to an elephant camp next weekend. It is owned by one of my adult students that i teach at night. I'll ride on the elephants, go down the river on a raft, eat from a restaurant in the trees and climb across rickety bridges like the common tourist i'm not. What fun!
26.3.07

Snapshirts...



Interesting site I stumbled on from a fellow blogger. You just enter in your blog myspace page url and it generates the most used words on it. Here are two examples:




This one is from this blog.




This one is from my myspace page.



Interesting...



25.3.07

Here's to you Paul...

When I said "work hard" I took the saying to heart. Halfway into the month of January I got a job working weekday mornings at a Bilingual Nursery School here in Chiang Mai. Then I took a job teaching Private English Lessons weeknights and weekends. And just to ensure that I had no available freetime left I capped it off with another job teaching afternoon classes at yet another school.

Now 3 months later, I've toned it down some. I'm now full-time at the Nursery School and Weeknights with private lessons. It's a meager schedule of waking up at 6:00 eating breakfast, riding my bike 5 kilometers to work, teaching nursery school until 5 and going to my private lessons. I finish my last class at 9 p.m. and ride my bike home. I have just enough time to scramble together a dinner, read a few chapters in my latest book (Just finished Chapterhouse Dune) and fall asleep.

Now you may ask yourself, as Brian did repeatedly, why on earth would I do this? Well I can say that its not for the money. I get paid fairly decent, and despite the long hours, the work is incredibly easy. But nothing worth staying for.

Around the same time I began to emerse myself in work, Danny moved away. And now this last week Brian and Nok did too. Some time ago i decided I needed some alone time. By forcing myself into commitments of working, I have left myself no amount of idle time.

Today was the first time in the last 5 years (almost exactly, happy un-anniversary to us Brian) that I have been alone for the entire day. I woke up at the insane hour of 9:30 and cleaned my room. After that, I did the laundry and opened up my book. Read a few chapters, put the book down, stood up did some exercises. I picked up my book, read a few chapters. Put the book down. Went for a walk to the internet shop. Checked my email. Went home, had some breakfast. Picked up my book. Put it down. Practiced my Thai. Became restless, went to get some coffee. Got on my bike, went to the coffee shop. Studied my Thai some more. Went home. Exercised some more. Read my book. Threw it down. Walked to the grocery store. Bought some facial wash and a loaf of bread. Went home. Cleaned my face... ate some bread. Picked up that damn book once more (sorry mom) put it down. Went into the bathroom, began the systematic genocide of the ants that live in my walls, by clogging their entrance holes with pieces of bar soap. Played Tra-kaw, by myself. And decided I need to go eat dinner. On my way, I stopped here at the internet.

Lesson?

I DO NOT NEED IDLE TIME!

It's 7 o'clock at night and I have accomplished nothing today but temporarily having an ant free bathroom in which i can wash my face with newly purchased rose water anti acne facial foam. (The only part of the product that's in English)

I must admit, I am grateful for the lack of speaking with anyone. It gives me an incredible amount of time to think and then to think about the roots of my thoughts. In the weeks that i have been riding to work, I've managed to control my random trails of thought. But now with nothing to do, sporatic does not even begin to describe the thought patterns i've been having.

I have looked at my empty luggage more than once today in anticipation of joining my friends in the south (Rayong- google it) and I am looking forward to that day. Hopefully by then i will have some control over my free time, so as not to try to throw my friends at the wall when i've bored of them.

>:)