This was a pleasant discovery at the Big C down in Pattaya. All you need is to drive a Chevy and you got a parking spot near the front of the building.

I decided to tape our friend Arkom because I just knew he was going to give me a good story. This was from a couple of nights ago around midnight. The background to the story is that Arkom, for all intents and purposes, has a 5 year old daughter named Geena and a wife named Sai. We were having a typical discussion about life and here Arkom is telling a story about a typical saturday afternooon at home. What’s great about this story is that it begins with 500 baht and ends with 500 baht. 500 thai baht is $14.95US. It’s the middle of the month, there are 3 mouths to feed and Geena wants to go to 7/11. And who can blame her? And to sum the story up, it’s cheaper to send Geena to summer school than it is to deal with 7/11 and the ice cream man. Sorry for my swearing.

Now, you know… I spare the food in the refrigerator, almost finish now. Have to spare the last time again. Have only 500 baht left. And Geena “I wanna go to Seven, Seven, Seven, 7/11″. Noooo. “I just want to buy some candy, not toy”. Geena, I tell you now, we don’t have any money for toy, for candy, only food. Only. You understand? I tell her. “Yes but, I want to go Seven.” You want to looking Seven? 7/11? You want something, you want something there? You want to, only looking ok, I take you go. “I want some only candy.” She don’t understand. She don’t understand her mother don’t have any money. But when ice cream coming, she run to me. (hum, damn fucking ice cream cart, ya know? Right? Does it come past the house?) Yeah. (Ice cream cart, will you get the fuck…. (Unintelligible. Laughter.) And this evening, roti. (Wait, what is it? Wahl’s?) Wahl. (Wahl?) They have like a sound doo-doo-doo. (Does he say something?) Yes. (What’s he say? He says it in Thai, what’s he say?) Hey say, uh, ‘Ice cream pormae (mother and father), Wahl coming or something’ (laughter, Wahl coming). And then, then the kids running (yeah, of course) and then Geena, running to me, “I want to buy”. If… I can’t say no because, the kids go around the ice cream and then Geena… if… she upset… I have to give her. (How much?) 20 baht. (Shew, Lorraine only spends 9 baht at the Dairy Queen). But, they come, you know, every 3 hours and different brands. (Oh good lord, ya know when you hear it coming, close the door. You should tell them like, listen, don’t come around). No, now I realize about teacher said, uh, you want, you want Geena coming to school for summer? 500 baht. Now I agree with her, I agree with teacher. (Yeah, 500 baht, cheap).

And… a picture of the bar food from the other night:

Some better video from takraw tonight.

Sepak Takraw, Bang Lamung, Thailand

Here is a nice shot from the other night at takraw. These guys were pretty dream team. But, I was pretty much the best white guy out there.

It’s a complete toss up, this Miike Snow album or Phoenix’s ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix‘. I could ride out 2009 on these 2 albums alone. If Velveteen put out a new album right now, my head would explode.

And I leave you with nice picture of food taken by Lorraine. We tried to take the motobike over to Koh Larn which is a small island just off the gulf. We were denied for the noon ferry. As we were about to leave the pier we were treated to a nice moto-on-moto crash. I looked away at the last second but, Lorraine had to see how it ended. Jeb! Meh, we wound up at Jomtien Beach.

Food vendor on Jomtien

First and foremost, I have to give a congratulations to the Kovacs family on the birth of their twins! We can’t wait to visit everyone back home during the holidays, especially the new additions.

We’re back home in Bang Lamoong after a pretty awesome trip to Beijing and a nice Sunday to ground us back to the heat.  With the humidity, it’s close to 100 degrees again. Beijing was a cool 45-55 degrees but Lorraine and I both agreed that getting a taste of fall was nice (and normal). I posted some pics over at flickr. I took a total of 732 pictures and chose 72 that I thought were interesting enough to show. Beijing is beautiful. Even without the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and the Peking duck, Beijing is soft on the eyes while just walking around the neighborhoods and parks.

I’ve also started to shoot HDR photography and have started a flickr set. I still can’t justify the merit of HDR as an honest photography medium. To me, the purpose of photography is to capture reality, not distort it. For now though, HDR is just a good excuse to spend more time with my camera.

It’s always nice to hear from everyone be it from comments here or on flickr and facebook. If you stop by, please say hi! Lorraine and I are always starving for contact from the western world