bug me not

found a great site that lets you skip those annoying website registrations that are getting commonplace these days. at bugmenot.com you enter the name of a website and it quickly gives you a login, saving you time and eliminating the chance of you receiving spam or 'special offers' down the road.

a couple of examples:

ny times
l: mooos
p: 47000

bangkok post
l: vorsace
p: 129887018

earthquake!

last september 23rd i was on the computer at around 1am when suddenly i felt some movement- the building began rocking back and forth, accompanied by all sorts of creaks and groans. at its peak it was fairly severe- as much as i ever felt when i was living in tokyo. the frightening part was i had previously read that bangkok almost never experiences earthquakes, so the buildings aren't built to withstand them. also i wasn't entirely sure that it was a quake- perhaps the ground was subsiding from underneath the building or was improperly built and starting to collapse as happens from time to time here.

i jumped up and stood in my bathroom doorway (something i'm sure would have helped if the building had started to collapse) trying to call my friends to see if anyone else felt anything. the earthquake seemed to go on for a long time but in reality only lasted around 15-20 seconds or so. everyone i called was asleep but finally i reached a friend on radjadamri who had felt it- but had assumed it was just the effects of the beer he had drank. I joined some chat rooms and found more people who also felt the quake, mostly those living in taller buildings like myself.

the next day cracks were found in all seasons place where my secretary's husband works and everyone who works there was sent home for the day. not very nice for those who live there!

as you see from the usgs website, the eartquake was a strong one at 6.6 but was far away. i hope there is never a strong earthquake near bangkok as most of the buildings here aren't very safe.

under construction

if you click on the thumbnail to the left you can see a comparison of the views from my balcony in october 2000 (on top) and june 2004 (on bottom). as i moved to different apartments in my building the view is slightly different, but you can see a lot of the changes that have taken place over the past few years.

notable differences include the completion of all seasons place, the largest real estate investment project in thailand. to the right of all seasons place in the distance one can see that construction of the world trade center towers has restarted under the name central world tower. lots of the green space between sois 2 and 8 is filling up and you can a very large building under contruction on soi 6 and another one on soi 8.

real estate prices have recovered in the past 12-18 months and this is fueling the current construction boom. although the property brokers and the government keep writing bullish articles, it looks like the market won't be able to sustain all of the new buildings coming online in the next year or so.

sit and smile

a while ago i was shopping in tesco lotus and found this interestingly-titled toilet paper. my local family mart only stocks scott and plus brands, however, so my days of sitting and smiling are few and far between. i sent the pic off to the engrish.com website but so far they haven't decided to use it.

linkin park in bangkok

last night i went to see linkin park here in bangkok- it was a great show and the biggest concert in thailand for almost 10 years. the venue was the impact muang thong thani convention center, but was held outside so they could accommodate the capacity crowd of 26,000 people.

as it has been raining in bangkok almost every day we went armed with towels and zip-lock bags to put our valuables in, but amazingly enough the weather held out and it didn't rain. was really hot, though, and the linkin park guys looked pretty tired by the end of the show.

the doors actually opened at 3pm with several thai bands taking advantage of linkin park's equipment to play from around 5pm or so. we arrived at 7pm and of course had to park a mile away- walking in we passed by a starbucks in a bit of an obscure location. can't think it gets much business when there aren't any conventions or concerts going on.

there were lots of people milling around outside and things were a bit chaotic- lots of vocational school types which made us wonder if there would be any trouble after the concert. Inside everything was pretty well organized, with big defined boundaries between the different admission areas. I thought perhaps the crowd would break through the barriers like in the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, but everyone was quite well behaved.

we found a good spot about 100 feet from the stage with a group of kids in front, so we could see the stage clearly. we kept having to shift places as people would stand right in front of us though, totally blocking our view. at one point a girl stood in front of me, so i started coughing in a sars-like fit which actually worked as she moved out of the way. was all for naught as when the concert started everyone rushed forward about 15 feet or so anyway.

at 8:20 an announcement in english said the concert would begin in 10 minutes. this was followed by a slideshow on the enormous screens either side of the stage saying what we weren't supposed to bring in- including weapons, drugs, and cameras. clearly the camera ban was being sparingly enforced, and many people were taking photos with their mobile phones during the show as you can see in my (ahem) pics.

the crowd was warmed up by some alice in chains, henry rollins, and tool and at the end of every song people would cheer thinking the concert was about to begin. finally the king's anthem played, followed by... more warm up music and the same announcement as before except in thai this time. we had all been given small glo-necklaces without the little plastic piece to make a necklace out of it- so the bored folks started throwing the bracelets around. one or two at first and after a while everyone tossed their bracelets towards the stage. was actually quite pretty but i'm sure the guys in front didn't appreciate the rain of glow bracelets coming down on their heads.

after probably 30min or so the music was cut, linkin park came on stage and the crowd went absolutely nuts. they (linkin park, not the crowd) launched into a series of high-energy songs (linkin1.avi - 631k) and for a good 15min everyone was going crazy until the energy level dropped a bit. the floor underneath us was concrete but my friend and i noticed it pulsing beneath us as everyone jumped up and down.

some pics from the show:

the concert ended after around 80min or so and ran pretty much without long breaks. chester seemed tired at one point- asking the crowd to sing for a while. high energy level (linkin2.avi - 1645k) through most of the show and was overall a really good time. about 3/4 of the way through, linkin park announced that this was the biggest crowd they have ever played for when they were headlining a show.

finally the concert finished with a small fireworks show. the encore was actually wish from nine inch nails, which seemed to leave everyone a bit stunned- really well done though, have a listen for yourself- (linkin3.avi - 902k).

definitely a fun time and great to be able to see a group like linkin park out here in se asia. it took us 90min to get out of the area and back on the highway. while we were driving back we passed a small police-escorted convoy of vans, some with blacked-out windows. one van's windows weren't blacked out and there was a farang (foreigner) inside looking out who may or may not have been rob. sorry, no pic as I was driving, but i know they were staying at the dusit thani. the night before the concert they had booked a table at mystique but wound up going to bed (their bed, not bed) instead- too bad as we had by accident booked the table next to them for my friend's birthday.

haven't yet seen any reviews of the show yet but these two articles give good background info.

fon tok part 2

when i visit america or england and mention that i live in thailand, i'm invariably asked why i don't have a tan. i do like to go out and read by the pool, but working on a tan takes dedication and cooperation from the weather. for much of the year, thailand is either too hot or raining every day- so the opportunity just isn't there except in the cooler months. and of course there's the work thing that seriously cuts into my pool lounging time.

yesterday we had strong storm come through again. i took the top two photos at around 3pm yesterday- not more than a couple of minutes later the wall of water hit and outside looked like the pics on bottom. The rain let up after not more than 15 min or so but then the power cut just as I was in the shower. argh!

america online - what does chiang mai think?

my friend matt took this photo from the narawat bridge in chiang mai back in 2000.

could be 'ruck aol' but sure looks like something else! click on the thumbnail or here to see the actual pic.

gmail baby yeah

who wants a gmail account? i've got three invites to give away and will give them to my loyal weblog readers. of course with my miniscule readership this could take a while. :)

leave your email in the comments if you want one.

fon tok

it's raining ('fon tok') in bangkok... again. i'm not sure what it is about the geography here, but we get many days when the weather in the morning is beautiful. by mid-afternoon one can see huge storm clouds on the horizon and the rain begins to roll in.

my office windows face the west and often the rain looks like a wall of solid grey approaching. once it hits, it really hits- a monsoon of rain, bucketing down.

usually it'll rain very heavily for about an hour or so and then stop. but sometimes the rain continues to pour down for hours, meaning that i can look forward to my soi (street) being completely flooded. the choice is riding a taxi back (if the water doesn't reach the door sills), waiting in a restaurant or bar for the water to recede, or hiking up one's pant legs and wading home.

seems like the flooding hasn't been so bad in recent years, except when the level of the Chao Phraya river is already high and there's nowhere for the rain water to drain into.

chiang mai also has some flooding issues. last year i was driving to doi suthep and had to go through what looked like a river to reach it- see the photos below.

To see what the sky in Bangkok looks like right now, check out this webcam set up by the folks at 2bangkok.com.

insomnia and the election

well it's 5am and i can't sleep. may have something to do with my jet lag, as i just arrived back in bangkok at around midnight last night after having woken up at 4:30am wednesday to take the first flight from pittsburgh. ugh!!! huge layovers in chicago and narita. can't wait for the new long-haul flights from se asia to start, as waiting around in airports when you haven't slept for a day is hell. Watch out, boeing!

anyway, i found an interesting site- it's a market where futures are traded on current events. there's a market for the 2004 presidential election which, as of today, has bush leading 52 to 47 (putting 47 cents on kerry will pay off a dollar when he wins in november).

oddly enough, if you look at the graphs you can see that some people are still betting that hillary clinton will secure the democratic nomination!

nothing to see here, move along folks

what better to do at 2am on friday night (saturday morning) than to create a blog that no one will read.

well, here I go anyway... wai knot?

since is seems tradition to write every blog with some sort of link in it, here is my favorite time waster of the moment.