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.