An ordinary life in an extra-ordinary place
Archive for July, 2008
Missive from my son recommending the above. Not immediately obvious what it might be. A boxing match between a couple of guys whose names led them to being bullied at school, thus breeding a high degree of aggression? Turns out to be music, and very weird and wonderful music it is too. Comparisons with the best of Dylan, Eminem and John Cooper Clark spring to mind.
First “Thou shalt always kill”, stacked with useful advice, such as thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.
And then a Letter from God to Man, a slap on the wrist to the human race to an undercurrent of sampled Radiohead.
Some more great tracks to be found on YouTube if you are interested. I was, and an initial foray into YouTube to search for Mr. Dan and Mr. Scroobius ended up being a two hour musical journey through all manner of wonderfulness. The journey ended with Arcade Fire performing Wake Up at last year’s Glastonbury festival. An uncountable number of musicians clearly enjoying making a wonderful noise; and there is a message in there too if you can hear the words. Play it loud and wave your arms; but not if you are in an internet cafe.
Going to the cinema in Thailand can be a frustrating experience. I have been to a movie where they had the reels mixed up and we saw the ending before the middle (but it was a crap movies so we didn’t really notice). There are regular interruptions by those who not only refuse to turn off their mobile phones, but feel it acceptable to answer them and chat loudly for several minutes. There are regular meetings of “the snack wrapper opening in a quiet moment” club, the picture quality is screwed after a few nights of screening and the surround sound often doesn’t surround.
But it’s comparatively cheap and we do get the latest releases, provided they are mainstream. If you want to see the French treatise on life that won the audience award at the Sundance Festival, go to the Sundance Festival. If you want to see Death Carnage 3 – The Slashback, then you will probably be in luck.
In Bangkok there are a number of up-market cinemas where, for a price, you can relax in extreme comfort. The Lord of the Rings was an excellent trilogy, but each instalment lasted for three hours which was a potentially bum-numbing experience. But slap down some cash for the best seats and you got a reclining seat that would not be out of place in a first class aircraft cabin. To help you relax you were given a blanket to keep your body warm, some socks to keep your toes warm, and a bar service so you could get pleasantly pissed while watching a bunch of little people dragging a ring across the countryside (if you haven’t seen it, sorry, that was a plot spoiler).
Comfy seats have now come to Pattaya in the new cinema at The Avenue. We have been to the normal seats in the cinema once and she who must be obeyed was not happy afterwards because she was unable to find somewhere to pee; and she really needs to pee after being in the cinema and consuming a monster cup of sugar mixed with flavoured water, passed off as a fizzy drink. But we have since discovered that the cinema has their own toilets tucked away in a corner, so last night, having not seen her much since she started working, I splashed out on a “love seat.” These are very comfortable sofas for two on the back row; wide enough so you can spread out and ignore each other if you want to, or do the cuddle thing if you are so inclined. The wife likes doing the cuddle thing, especially if it is a scary movie; then she will do the head burrowed into your armpit thing for the entire movie. Pointless and annoying.
She was impressed by my expensive seat gesture and was looking forward to a romantic couple of hours watching a slightly amusing and ultimately heartwarming story about relationships. She didn’t quite get that, because we went to see “Wanted.”
There is a story, but it is just there to provide an excuse for two hours of extreme violence, wild car chases and unbelievable gunplay. It’s The Matrix on every form of recreational chemicals it is possible to ingest. It’s got Angelina Jolie looking more attractive, and being more deadly, than every before, James McEvoy as a cubicle worker turned assassin and Morgan Freeman being wise and evil at the same time. Best of all, there are rats, hundreds of rats, all with bombs strapped to their bodies (if you haven’t seen it, sorry, that was a plot spoiler). It’s totally over-the-top nonsense and I loved every minute. She who must be obeyed thought it was OK, but not as good as the comfy chair, or the fact she could go for a pee afterwards.
It’s the 4th of July and the Americans are celebrating their independence from Britain. What do they have to celebrate? They are missing out on black puddings, binge drinking and a sense of humour (as opposed to a sense of humor); and their hip hop stars have ridiculous names that have to be pronounced Jay-Z(ee) rather than the much more sensible Jay-Z(ed).
To gain a perspective of just how much the two countries have grown apart, I have been watching two series about life on an aircraft carrier. Warship follows the British aircraft carrier Illustrious on a voyage, Carrier covers the US aircraft carrier Nimitz.
The first thing you notice are the different production values. Carrier is ten hours of slick material, with Mel Gibson on board as producer (expect bloodshed, torture and Catholicism then). The photography is first-class, at times it is like a re-run of Top Gun, and there is a constant rock music soundtrack.
Warship is half the length and appears to have been shot by a man with last year’s Sony Camcorder. The rock music doesn’t rock quite as hard, and the Top Gun shots are rather limited because Illustrious leaves port with only a couple of helicopters and only acquires four Harriers later in the voyage. Nimitz seems to have an endless supply of sexy fighters which spend their days being catapulted off the deck and landing again for the benefit of the cameras.
In the first two episodes, things don’t go well for Illustrious. The crew are tested on their combat status and capability to leave UK waters; and they fail. Then the boat’s propulsion system collapses and the carrier is forced to limp into a UK port just up the coast from their departure point. No such problems for the Nimitz, although being nuclear powered I assume that any problems with the propulsion system would result in people glowing green and melting, not photogenic at all.
The crew that are featured on the Nimitz either seem keen to get somewhere and drop some bombs on those nasty terr-orr-ists, or seem confused as to why they are there at all. One even expresses the opinion that she made a mistake and wished she had joined the peace corp. It’s an easy mistake, meant to join the peace corp, instead joined a zillion ton warship loaded with strike fighters and ordnance.
No such confusions on the Illustrious. Off to see some foreign places and get drunk at various stop-off points. An notable absence of gung-ho, an abundance of self-deprecating humour and a blind optimism that somehow they will struggle through with a ship that has clearly seen better days.
And that’s the difference. The Americans are slick, supremely self-confident and just a little unaware of the realities of the world. The Brits stumble along, worrying what will break next and whether it is actually possible to land an aircraft on a carrier. Their emotional rock is a chaplain who falls off small boats during vessel transfers and clearly enjoys a beer (the two attributes may be related). The Americans emotional rock, if they have one, is George Bush.
Being British, I know which group I would rather share a drink with. Your mileage may vary. Happy Independence day and Jay-Z(ed), you were ace at the Glastonbury festival.
My wife has left me. After five years together including two years of marriage, during which time we have rarely been apart; I now sit alone in my condo with two cats.
For the past three years she has been pursuing an MBA. Although the course was conducted in Thai, many of the course books were in English and I was dragged in as assistant translator at times. I can confirm that books on marketing management are, on the whole, badly written and extensively padded with buzzwords, buzzphrases and buzzpages with the intention of decreasing readability and increasing page count. When it came to the accounting section I was expected to help, the result of a mistaken impression that just because my last job title had included the words “Finance Director”, I was an expert on the black art of keeping the books. Not true of course, but we she did get an ‘A’ for the subject so I was spared a beating.
Course complete, it was time to look for a job. Plenty of opportunities in, and offers from, Bangkok; but her mother told her she had to work closer to home “otherwise Spike will spend all his time playing computer games, drinking beer, and will not go to bed till 0300, not good for his health.” I have no idea how her mother knows me so well, but she is right on the mark. And she who must be obeyed stressed that she wanted to come home to me and the cats at night; although given that she was stroking a cat at the time, I know who she would miss the most if she was stuck in Bangkok.
Eventually she settled for a property company and is now employing the fiendish marketing tricks she learned on her course to sell condos that will never be completed to gullible foreigners for a fat commission.
When she first embarked on the MBA there was a stated noble purpose that she wanted to get a good job so that she could save her salary and build a new house for her parents. Now that real money is in prospect, the focus on expenditure seems to have switched to designer handbags and shoes. Whatever makes her happy; and anyway, her parents have a perfectly adequate house, apart from the roof and some of the walls.
As for me, the days now stretch ahead with no requirements to take her for coffee, hang around while she browses the shops, or get chucked off the Xbox because she wants to watch TV. Should be bliss, and it would be if I wasn’t missing having her around. Bloody women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.
Out and about with a friend and some cameras today and he caught this shot from inside Air Force One as it made an unscheduled stop on the outskirts of Pattaya.
President Bush was on board, leading a task force to discover whether Pattaya was stockpiling WMD (Women of Mass Destruction? Whores Mostly Damaged? Your suggestions please). Expect he had more success than he did in Iraq.
Respect to The Ghost who, although he is having trouble getting laid at the moment, has taken the time to point me to a plug-in which does not make this site more interesting but it does make it much more readable on an iPhone, iPod or most other baby web-browsing devices. He even sent me a couple of examples after I installed it.
Try it and see.
I think I keep a Windows PC around just so to raise my blood pressure. It certainly did so today.
It was a simple task. I had a tentative plan to stick in a faster CPU to service the games that like faster CPUs. A little googling and I discover that my motherboard will accept a faster CPU if I upgrade the firmware. So I upgrade the firmware. Then my own little world of XP collapses around me. Windows decides that it has a boot.ini error, whatever that is. Then it decides it won’t boot at all. Then two disks which had been set in a RAID configuration revert to a configuration called not working. In short, the whole machine has gone to crap, although the firmware upgrade that started it all is acting smug and working fine.
I have been here before, many times. It’s one of the reasons I moved to a Mac which does not die when you sneeze near it. As usual, I end up checking connections and changing cables and swearing. There is a lot of swearing. Eventually I realise that my Windows is lost for ever and I have to start again with all the bollocks that accompanies an installation of XP. After three or four wasted hours I don’t have the strength to continue. But I can lift a beer. Here’s to Windows, may it rot in hell.
When I lived in Bangkok I bought two cars from the Ferrari Concessionaires Honda garage and they were always helpful and efficient. So when I was looking for a new model and Honda Pattaya quoted three months delivery and Honda Bangkok quoted “tomorrow”, it was an easy decision.
I prefer having the car serviced in Bangkok too, so I rolled into the service centre yesterday and was greeted by an official greeter and a lady who gave me some chilled water. Had it been the Ferrari Concessionaires I would probably have got a full-body massage and some chilled champagne, but not a bad effort from Honda.
The service man explained, in Thai, the work that they would carry out, some of which I understood, and then estimated the cost as being 1,800 baht which seemed not unreasonable for a 20,000 km service and certainly cheaper than the Ferrari place down the road. Sadly, they over-ran the estimate and the final charge came to 1,830 baht; but I was given a full tour of the engine bay where they pointed out what they had checked or replaced. They also cleaned the car inside and out and the engine bay looked more sparkly than usual. After a service, the car always feels more lively and if I had not had the automatic speed limiter in operation (the wife), I am sure I would have arrived home in extra quick time.
When I moved to using Apple computers, previous converts told me that the computers were great but the mice sucked.
And it is true. A Mac mouse is a horrid, fiddly little thing which looks cool but isn’t. After persevering for nearly a year, on my last trip to Bangkok I bought a couple of Logitech wireless mice; one for me and one for the wife. The wife’s new mouse has worked flawlessly. Mine worked flawlessly for two days and then stopped. I changed the batteries. Nothing. I tried secretly swapping my mouse for hers, but she found out. So yesterday I took my dead mouse into iStudio in Siam Paragon and asked them to check it out.
I knew before I gave it to them what would happen. I had changed the batteries twice, tried it on three separate Macs, pressed the “connect now” button endlessly; and every time it had refused to respond. So I give it to the girl in the shop and it immediately works perfectly, the devious little plastic bastard.
Of course I am then treated like an idiot by the shop assistant. “You have to put batteries in it. You have to press this little button to make it connect. Are you trying to connect it to a computer or a washing machine?” I snatch my resurrected mouse, which I will henceforth refer to as Jesus, and made a hasty exit. No doubt when I try it out again at home, it will fail; at which point I will throw it out and buy an Apple mouse, at least they work.
To a small shop near the British Embassy which does a brisk trade in passport photographs at 320 baht a time. The rules are very clear: no smiling, no grimacing and no parrots on your shoulder; which makes for a very boring photo which will humiliate me for the next ten years.
With forms and photos complete, I present myself at the embassy entrance where they proceed to relieve me of my phone and camera. The guy in front of me is relieved of what appears to be an anal vibrator, not entirely clear what he intended to do with it in the embassy, although some amusing options come to mind. After a body check by a man who seems to enjoy his job more than he should, I am let inside.
The consular section is a small room which bears a sign advising all who enter that anyone who causes a scene by shouting, tearing down the ceiling tiles or frightening children by waving an anal vibrator will be ejected by the police with extreme prejudice. The need for such a sign is a clear indication that mayhem has occurred in the past and I am sure that all of those waiting to be served are hoping that it may happen again real soon for the purposes of our entertainment. Sadly, this is not the case, although an old chap with a loud voice spends fifteen minutes detailing every aspect of his financial income to a bewildered clerk behind the counter. Much of it stems from income from stocks which are held for him by his mummy, which elicits a couple of sniggers from the captive audience.
Finally, my number comes up and I am served by a very friendly and efficient lady who promises me that my new passport will be on the way to me in three weeks. I tell her that, if it isn’t, I will be back with my anal vibrator to remove the ceiling tiles. Actually, I don’t say that, but she can see the threat in my eyes.
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