What will we do for New Years?

I can't even fathom the carnage that has took place. More then 120,000 dead. Its strange really. I hear people make jokes about it. I don't know what to say. I don't tend to feel too much when people die, but I am still respectful.

So it would seem that tonight is the eve of the New Year. I plan to go to Warm Up, a very popular nightclub in Chiang Mai that I go to far too often. Meeting friends there for dinner around 8. Not sure if I will stay there all night. Its quite possible. They aren't doing an official countdown in Thailand, so perhaps we will do a countup?

Quick side story. A late night club (open 12-4am)burned down the other day while I watched from across the street. I was actually quite pleased as they had just doubled the price of small heineken. Those bastards!! Anyways, the amusing part is that I met this girl whose name is Beer. Yes, one of my favorite drinks! Upon hearing this I asked her to spell it in Thai to make sure I had heard correctly. I ran into her again last night at Warm Up. I just thought I'd throw that in for anyone who was amused by the girl named Cabinet.



Words of the Day:

津波 (つなみ）tsunami

余震 (よしん) aftershock

การทำลาย - destruction

ความเสิยหาย - damage

New Years is Cancelled...

It seems that they have cancelled all New Year celebrations in Thailand due to the tragedy. I don't know how successful that will be. We shall see. I have no special plans as of yet.

Thanks for the handful of people who emailed me inquiring if I was still alive! Also, my sister who sent me a rather rude email informing me that I should be sending out mass emails telling people I'm ok. Is that how it should work? For those that have any idea what I'm doing know already, I don't live anywhere near the beach. Thailand is not an insular country the last time I checked the map.

I nearly got swept up in a brawl the other night on Saturday. I went out with some considerably younger friends. I stepped out of the disco we were at for a few minutes (The damn disco doesn't sell heiniken! What am I supposed to drink?) I came back and found a bunch of rather large guys screaming at two of my friends from London. It seems one of these goons got it into his head that one of my friends called him gay. I jumped right into it and tried to ask what they were yelling about and managed to calm it down without taking or giving too many hits. Its rare to see any homophobia here. Foolish tourists aside that is. I don't get why people are such morons. This particular disco is where all the bar girls take the tourists. I don't particularly like it as I get into or mighty close to a fight 1 out of every 4 trips to the place, but a lot of my friends like it as its the only really good place to go if you want to dance any night of the week. Ahh well. It was still a fun Christmas! Met a girl named Cabinet! Or rather the Thai equivalent of the word, ตุ้. Thats a first for me. Usually their nicknames are adjectives, animals and the like.

I studied lanaguage for about 5 hours yesterday and I got some new words for all you languge buffs who religiously read my site and can't get enough of all this probably useless knowledge!! (Or rather by teaching the words I am more likely to remember them then just using them in my flashcard program alone. Either way...)

Today's possibly useful vocabulary:

不安障害　（ふあんしょうがい）－ Anxiety disorder

恐怖症　（きょうふしょう）－Phobia

มหันตภัย - disaster

แผ่นดินไหว - earthquake

Tragedy in Asia

It would seem that I managed to sleep through the "strongest earthquake in a century" as it rattled Chiang Mai yesterday morning. A number of friends told me of their condo's moving and they all agreed it was quite scary.

I don't think anyone knows how many are dead yet for sure. I've seen numbers ranging from 11,000 to 14,425. Where do these people get the specific numbers? I haven't found two news sites with matching statistics as of yet.

I had planned to go down South to Krabi for New Years, but I may wait until January if I make it at all.

A friend of mine living here is returning home to Japan for a while and has invited me to come along. I don't think I can scrape up the cash necessary for this, but I will give it a shot. I want to goto Japan!

งงงวย!!

Well I'm taken aback. It seems that someone reads my blog! Thanks Mr. Traina! Perhaps this will motivate me to write more often?

I have been drinking rather heavily since the week before finals. Since finals ended I have been staying out until nearly 4 am many nights! I will need to take a vacation from the booze pretty soon. During these many nights out, I have collected a rather large following of girls and their respective phone numbers. Its quite exhausting, but it sure is fun.

I really need to find a way to put pictures up here from internet cafes. Anybody know? I can't always be downloading and installing the program I used before.

Interesting words of the day:
窒息　（ちっそく）　－to choke, suffocation
อะหยัง - Northern Thai for 'what?' (อะไร)
moil \MOYL\, intransitive verb:
1. To work with painful effort; to labor; to toil; to drudge. 2. To churn or swirl about continuously.

Christmas Already?

So I guess it's Christmas. My second one in Thailand, it isn't nearly as hot as last year, but it sure isn't cold. I have been drinking far too much since finals. Last night was the first night I managed to get home before 4am in a week. Going to a small dinner party tonight before going out to hit up a few nightclubs with the team.

I've been trying to get back into my strict vocabulary-learning regiment. It works really well when I'm being productive. I have about 1200 words in my program now. I mix together Chinese, Japanese, Thai and I've started throwing in some words from กำเมือง, the Northern dialect of Thai. We'll see what happens when I get to Australia in Feb and will need to figure out how to type Arabic to use those words in my program.

Halfway!

Japanese and Chinese finals went well. They were rather easily actually. A's no problem. In 25 minutes I take Foundations of Southeast Asian's exam. I must write three essays on some a few rather uninteresting social topics. One more final on Friday. Oral Presentations.

The End of Days approches - Finals

So I have a mountain of homework to climb. I need to write an essay in Japanese on how I would teach if I was the teacher. Thats going to be stressful. Finals start on the 13th. I'm not ready. Not enough time. Argh.

Zoloft seems to be working great for the most part. I tend to be in a good mood all day. It is as if a cloud has hovered over my head my entire life and now it has cleared up a bit. On the other hand, I don't see any signifigant reduction of anxiety, but I haven't really tested it yet.

Zoloft

I've been taking some pills for anxiety/depression for the past two weeks. It's been doing wonders for my mood. I've almost ran out however, so I bought some Zoloft and will be trying that for a while. We'll see how this goes. Perhaps I can be super-productive for a while.

So I've been a bit of a blog-slacker ...

Yes its true. I haven't written in quite a while. My semester has flown by it seems. My classes are going fairly well for the most part. I've had a few adventures I'll try to get to later. At the moment I have a friend who has come to visit me from New Jersey. My finals start on December 13th. I was accepted into an exchange program in Australia. Therefore, I will be going to Melbourne in February to study at Deakin University. I'm planning to take a semester of Arabic and possibly Indonesian as well as Chinese. I'm a bit bummed that they don't have Japanese, but I can study on my own for a few months if necessary.

Latest Happenings

Well I have been quite busy for some time now. I had plenty of last minute things to do in NJ before heading out to California. I spent 3 days in LA mostly seeing movies. I saw an unfinished screener for a film currently titled "Life of the Party". It was about an alcoholic intervention that goes awry.
Following my stint in LA, I had a rather miserable 40 hour journey (half of this time sitting in airports) from LAX to my room in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
In the week I've been back I have paid my tuition, jumped back into my weekend Japanese class (楽しい六）; a rather slow-paced course aimed more towards children, but I find it is good practice as well as useful for learning plenty of vocabulary that I don't learn at University. I also chose my classes for this term: Japanese III, Chinese I, Oral Presentation, SE Asian Studies, and some sort of reading/discussion class. I left my schedule open so I could take Physics, but I'm basing that on who the teacher is. We'll see.
I'll try to upload more regularly when school starts. I'm considering posting a language lesson once or twice a week. I find that teaching is a very effective way of learning.

Skin Cancer

Well I went to Belmar on Sunday. The strongest suntan lotion we had was SPF 14. My arms and legs are burnt badly as a result. Showers are painful. Tomorrow I'm going to N. Miami Beach, Florida to hang out with my Grandmother for a few days. Perhaps I'll even out my burn base there.

Make it stop bleeding !

I had that tooth pulled this morning. No pain at all. However, there is now a rather gaping hole that likes to bleed a lot. Perhaps I shall hang on to the other teeth for a while.
Another great loss from many years ago...

 

คิดถึงฉันไหมเวลาที่เธอ

While I am not terribly amused by most Thai movies, the music can be quite good at times. Here is one of the recent hits over there by a group called Taxi. Also, you might like this group... Potato

Mwahahaha!! Gmail, Spiderman II, and the loss of my set of +3 wisdom teeth of piercing

I got my Gmail account yesterday. Thanks Gorblumb! I haven't had time to do much with it yet, but it seems cool. I also went and saw Spiderman 2 last night. I'd say it was as good as the first one. It had a few campy parts, but all the fight scenes were great.
It has been decreed that the four youngest yet wisest of my teeth are to be extractiFiEd! The first execution takes place on Tuesday July 6th at 11 am est. This poor fellow was horribly mangled in a ferocious encounter with a slightly over-toasted bagel and has never recovered. He will be missed!

Uneventful Day

I studied some Thai today and listened to the first lesson of Pimsleurs Cantonese Level I. I am also about halfway through reading Song for Susannah, book six of The Dark Tower series. After that I headed to the 'bees in Lawrenceville (It was one of the jobs that got me out of this country in the first place). I attempted to get people to join me for the 12:01 showing of Spiderman 2, but it didn't happen. I'll see it soon enough.

Whether due to a bad camera or bad development, I always thought this was a pretty cool pic. It certainly appears as if I am pining for her.... 

$3/hour Gaming on AOL at 9600 Baud. The Good Ol' Daze

I miss my characters sometimes. Can anyone reminisce with me?

NWN - Gwindarr and Brejin
Federation - Ninjal285, Duke of Shade
Dragon Realms - Krenastae and Wyrm


Bird 1 - "Do you know who I am? I was badass in a text-based mmorpg game."  

Bird 2 - "Nope sorry, I can't read."

Planet Lonely

Lonely in London.  

What is the deal with LP anyways? What exactly is so great about backpacking (I never liked this word as a verb) around Europe or any otherwhere if all you do is hang out in hostels or guesthouses and get drunk with a bunch of other westernized folk with the same heavy inefficient-to-backpack-with-that-pegs-you-as-a-tourist book that you all like to carry? Are you folks that naive? Ok, so its friggin much cooler to be throwing back a nice 6 Euro bottle of wine in Paris then a $3 draft at Mcguinns Place in Lawrenceville, NJ, but are you really getting any useful life experience out of it? If that wasn't your goal in the first place and you weren't telling your friends this, you may be excused from this scolding.

Brilliant View!

I was completely stunned by the view from atop the Arc de Triumphe.  

The view from the top Arc de Triumph in Paris is spectacular. Looking down,
you can see the huge circular road intersection that surrounds the monument.
Piles of ant-like cars endlessly orbit the traffic circle. Scanning in any
direction, you find that the Arc appears to be the center of a huge work of art.
The city unfolds before your eyes in a nearly seamless picturesque map out of a
dream. Each road easing out from its source, as if beams of light from the sun.
Each tree almost caressing the roads they line, as if gently brushing the paths
for your vision. In the distance, in any direction, your line of sight always
ends with something amazing: Le Louve, Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, or of course
the famous Avenue des Champs-Elyse้es, the road which leads to and fro Concorde
Square. Perhaps you might like to view such things from the considerably higher
Eiffel Tower, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Its mighty cold, windy and cloudy up
there. To see Paris, you must see it from the heart.

Wrath of Zeus - Childhood Event of Note

Once, when I was thirteen years old, the sky turned black and the world nearly ended. I was in Rehoboth Beach, Deleware; where my father rents a beach house every year. After dinner, around 5:30pm, I rode my bicycle to the arcade on the boardwalk where I planned to spend the $20 I carried. Things were going very well until I heard a bit of commotion outside. I glanced outside and saw strangest thing; people were running; in the kind of way they only do in horror movies. I asked a bystander inside the arcade what was going on and he only frowned and pointed up towards the sky. As I wasn’t sure what he meant, I stepped outside and what I saw sent a shiver up my spine. A huge black shape in the sky was coming in quickly from the ocean. It didn’t move like any cloud I had ever seen and I was completely at a loss for what I was seeing. My gaze was trapped on this terrifying yet magnificent manifestation of nature. My awe was interrupted as more and more people began to run, seemingly in terror. The shape was filling up the whole sky over the ocean, the brutal waves were higher than I had ever seen, people were talking loudly, a low rumbling thunder was growing louder in the distance, there were shouts and screams, and I realized I had to make a decision quickly. Is the arcade an acceptable place to be for the end of the world? I didn’t mind it so much, but I realized that the power would certainly go out and I decided I could probably get home before the storm hit. I began walking quickly down the boardwalk. The rain started slowly and sporadically, but with the largest drops I had ever witnessed. I picked up my pace, and started running like everyone else. In the few minutes it took me to cover the half-mile of boardwalk and reach my bike, the sky had gone completely black, and the violent rain was no longer spread thinly. I was soaked in seconds, but nonetheless I ran on. After reaching and mounting my bike, I pedaled furiously off into the night just as the thunder had begun a deafening crescendo. The massive rain drops pounded against me, blurring what little visibilty I had from the flashes of lightning which seemed to chase me through the night. I was only a few blocks from the house, but I couldn’t read any of the street signs, and I was too scared to stop. Ahead of me, a bolt of lighting tore into a huge tree on the right. One of the large branches from the mighty fell into my path and I swerved to avoid it, narrowly escaping certain doom. While it took me nearly an hour of being hopelessly lost in the tempest to traverse the few blocks back home, I did manage to survive; the world didn’t end this time, but it sure was close.

MMORPG Addiction?

Last friday, before going out, I noticed the Star Wars Galaxies FREE 14-Day Trial on Fileplanet.com. I haven't touched a MMORPG since I lost interest during the betas of Project Entropia and Anarchy Online. Also, I will point out that I am only in the US for another month or so before I return to my current residence in Thailand. This aside, I still was rather torn. One of the voices in my head said "Well Brett, there is the chance that you will like the demo, fall back into the gaming world where you will eventually find yourself in that fondly remembered state of mind where your characters life has priority over your own. Are you sure you can handle that kind of life again?" Another voice replied with a high pitched "bLiIiNng!". Well I downloaded the 2 gig file and spent nearly 2 hours reading everything I could find. Sadly I discovered that my video card doesn't support the shading technology required for running the game. GnIiLB!

"Swimming Lessons" A Story of Good vs Insurmountable Evil

When I was two I learned to swim and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. One morning each week my mother would drive me to the local pool. In the beginning, I went willingly as I wasn’t yet aware of the horrors involved with learning to swim. Each day I would be coaxed into the pool by an enormous woman. I was quite sure that she couldn’t possibly be any more capable of swimming than myself. Nevertheless, her feet touched the bottom, whereas my feet were many years from performing such a feat. At first, I trusted her to keep my head above water at all times. As is well known to all children who have yet to become adept in the swimming arts, certain death usually follows submergence. I certainly had yet to reach this skill level. It didn’t occur to me that such things were necessary at this stage. The first few lessons consisted almost entirely of rather relaxing bubble-blowing and flutter kick practice. I grew quite accustomed to this rather painless lifestyle. I believe it was on the fifth day when the trouble began. Someone, somewhere must have given the order to dunk my head into the water. Of course, I wasn’t forewarned that I had reached this proficiency level. Day five began as usual, with some warm-up kicks. Much to my chagrin, the enormous woman lifted me out of the water and hurled my flailing form into the abyss (later to be known as the "shallow end"). Upon breaching the surface, I flung my limbs about as best as I could. I knew I must reach the stairs or else this horrid lady might just throw me again. Gasping for air, I reached my seemingly impossible destination. I clambered out of the water and bolted for the pool entrance. Alas, this freedom was closed to me, for I was not yet capable of reaching the gate’s latch. Each lesson following was fairly similar, fleeing the adults as best I could. Inevitably, they would capture me and lead me to my fate: the big lady in the pool. These days I swim very well, but I’ll always be aware of the horrors of learning to swim.

The Super Secret Underground Ninja Cool Life of International High School Students in Thailand

I'd like to begin by pointing out that while I am studying in Thailand, I am by no means a high school student. However, I do study at an international school. It is an extremely expensive (by Thai standards) university that houses most of the rich students in the North of Thailand. It might also be helpful to note that I am 26 years-old, speak a fair amount of Thai and have been in Thailand for a bit over a year. Lets take it from there.
Last night I went drinking with a friend of mine from school. We went to a nightclub on the highway that I had never been to before. Most of the clubs of this variety are quite trendy. Often they will have live bands and a few lounge rooms where groups of people can hang out on comfortable chairs/sofas. Inside we met with a schoolmate of ours. She is in her early 30s. Everyone else in the crowded lounge room appears to be considerably younger. After inquiring as to the identities of these younger looking folks, I learned that they were all students from 2 of the major international high schools here.
Now lets stop there for a moment. Am I that old? Have things changed so dramatically in the *cough* 9 years since I left those same halls of misery? When I was 16 and finally realized that to have any kind of social life, I needed to pretend I was someone other than I was. Many kids realized this at a much younger age, but I must have missed that lesson because I was busy playing NES. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that these kids here have it good. They can go hang out at night clubs where they often have more cash then the locals (and myself I suspect!) and do whatever they hell they want. Not so good looking? Not very athletic? No problem my friend, this is Thailand afterall. In this land of wonder, girls like you for slightly different qualities. They like us smart, but if you aren't smart and have lots of money...No problem !! Also, they like us nice, but again we won't turn away cock-monkeys with cash! Perhaps I'm stereotyping too much, but hell, it seems to me that more often than not, girls think security first here. Whoops, got on a rant there. Terribly sorry. Back to the point. These guys are regular 15-17 year olds who while they may need to deal with some of the normal teenager issues, they can all be 'the man' outside of school. Pretty nice eh? The first few times I discovered myself hanging out at these nightclubs with groups of friends ranging from 15-35, I thought it was a bit odd. I probably won't grow comfortable with it, for me the scene is rather boring, but for them it must be pretty sweet. Lucky wankers.