jet-propelled granny

not thailand-related at all but just had to share this article...

giuseppe cannella had a big surprise for his mother-in-law when he put a jet engine on the back of her wheelchair.

mr cannella says the chair can now do top speeds of more than 60mph and has proved the star of a model plane championship during the bank holiday.

a model plane enthusiast himself, mr cannella has been putting on shows at barkston heath near grantham, lincs.

"it is just the wheelchair with the engine bolted on the back and steering on the front," he said.

"originally it was a gimmick. i had a jet engine and i was going to put it on a go cart.

"but the missus says put it on something unusual and so i put it on the mother-in-law's wheelchair," said mr cannella, who is from luton in bedfordshire.

"she was on holiday at the time so she didn't know what i was doing until she came back.

"she actually thought i was doing it for her."

having a moan

coming back from somewhere where things work very efficiently (hong kong) really makes the inefficiences/annoyances of thailand stand out in contrast. some examples in the past few days since i've returned:

- the confusing left or right turn after exiting customs; the dozen 'taxi, sir?' people standing around near the airport exits

- the air conditioning in my bedroom still not working right despite having been fixed repeatedly; the shower in my bathroom always being at either scalding hot or freezing cold; the ants in my bathroom visiting from downstairs that can't be exterminated (though they've mostly all died off from old age); dead cockroaches that were somehow unseen by the maid

- the two completely independent systems of payment for the skytrain and the subway; the inevitable 'i don't have change' from the taxi driver; tripping over a randomly raised point on the sidewalk; motorcycles revving their engines to get you out of the way on the sidewalk

- mai dai; mai mee; mot leow (aka 'finid')

super size me

on saturday i ventured down to the new houserama cinema on rca and saw super size me (no, not yu-gi-oh).

the idea behind the documentary was to take a close look at fast food and how it's linked to obesity in america. the most interesting and well-known part of this was the filmmaker putting himself on a 30-day mcdonalds-only diet, eating three meals a day of mcdonalds food- much to the horror of the his vegan girlfriend.

the end result was a gain of around 25lbs, with cholesterol and miscellaneous bad stuff going through the roof. the three doctors who conducted physicals had predicted weight gain (as might anyone) but all had underestimated the other changes that took place.

right now america is obsessed with low-carb atkins diets- type atkins into google and you'll get over 4 million hits. rewind about 10 or 15 years and low-fat was the thing. really i've got to believe it comes down to just calorie intake vs energy use- the more excess energy from food the body has at the end of the day the more will be stored as fat.

anyway, the movie was quite fun and i recommend it if you've ever spent time in america. was impressed by houserama and love the idea of a wider selection of movies for thailand, but there weren't too many people in the theater. hope houserama can get some publicity among the local farang community to keep it going.

megapixel madness revisited

a while back i blogged that i was in the market for a new camera but never update my loyal readers as to the outcome. as i know all three of you have been on the edge of your seats wondering what happened, i though i'd let you know that i went down the tiny camera route and bought a sony dsc-t1.

i agonized for quite a while as to whether i'd buy a camera with more features and functions or whether i'd go for portability. when i thought about all the features i wanted, the camera became larger and larger- in the end i decided that i'd buy an ultra-portable model and if i became serious about photography i'd splurge for something like a canon eos-1d and a set of professional lenses.

for its tiny size, the t-1 has a lot of features and takes great photos and decent movies. only kicker is that just as my visa card was cooling off after the purchase sony went out and released the same camera in an even smaller body, thus reducing the cool-factor of mine. doh!

yu-gi-oh no!

was taking a quick look through rottentomatoes at the movie review summaries and found this new anime movie with an amazingly low 2% rating. some choice comments from the critics:

"i took one for the team this week ... if your kid is a yu-gi-oh fan, then god help you."

"i sacrificed 90 minutes of my life points to sit through this and nothing i can summon is going to make up for that."

"adults: if your child forces you to go to yu-gi-oh!, remember that there's no law against ipods in movie theaters."

"if your pulse quickens when you hear lines like, 'not so fast! i still have two cards face down, and they'll bring down your life points to a measly 1000!', then yu-gi-oh is the movie you've been waiting for all summer."

"beyond the clear aim of getting kids to separate their parents from cold hard cash in exchange for... yu-gi-oh game cards... the film is thoroughly incomprehensible..."

now i know what movie i *won't* be seeing today!

hong konging

although i've been quiet for a couple of weeks, i unfortunately haven't spent the entire time at the beach. following my most excellent beach weekend (report and pics to come) i headed to macau for the first part in a company conference and am now in hong kong for the second part of the conference.

yesterday and today were supposed to be apartment survey days but i've been hit by probably the worst food poisoning in years. only thing i ate was the conference food so i'm wondering if anyone else is spending so much time on the throne. i haven't eaten anything since tuesday evening and the idea of food makes me feel sick... ok time for another bathroom break....

housing prices here are absolutely crazy- in thailand i'm in a 2-bedroom, 1200 square foot condo in a nicer building for us$1000/month. in hong kong for the same standard of accomodation one is looking at us$4000/month or more! housing is a major challenge here and by far the biggest expense i'd be looking at. i met with a financial planner from hsbc who told me that according to the latest hk census the *average* household here spends hk$16,666 (or us$2100) a month on rent or a mortgage. amazing!

with the exception of one early morning during the conference the weather here has been rainy and smoggy (just like the pic here). I thought the smog was clouds, but a local hk resident told me it's actually pollution from factories on the mainland which reduces the average lifespan here by 2 years.

on the plus side the city is very cosmopolitan, there is a huge selection of shopping and restaurants (though be careful what you eat!), and things work correctly and efficiently. when i went to hsbc i was blown away by how efficient the bank was- the teller noticed my stunned face and asked me if it was my first time to the bank. in thailand the only way i can get even close to the same level of service is to wander around and speak random english to everyone- so they have to bring out a manager to find out what i want.

as a whole, living in hk would be very very different from bangkok- but it's an interesting and exciting place and thailand is a short flight away. hmm... wonder if my company will allow me to pitch a tent in the parking lot to save on rent.

samui baby yeah

won't be posting for a while... heading off to the beach, yeah!

mame32

when i was a wee laddie i used to spend lots of quarters on arcade games like pac-man and centipede at chuck e. cheese. then there were more obscure games like bosconian and rally x.

now you can relive your arcade kidhood by first downloading mame32 and then scouring the internet for arcade roms. to give you a naughty head-start, click here for pac-man and here for centipede and put them in your roms directory. enjoy!

subservient chicken

this is the most bizarre corporate promotion i've ever seen- subservient chicken. it's a man in a giant chicken suit that obeys your commands. snopes has detailed info about the site including a list of commands. there's something about grown men in badly-made animal suits that i find particularly disturbing....

limewire

a quick plug for what i've found to be the best p2p software out there, limewire. it's like kazaa in its ability to search for music and other files but is free of all the spyware and assorted crap that comes with kazaa.

vladimir putin and travolta's brother in bangkok

although bangkok has something between 7 and 10 million people (there's no census), the foreign community is actually quite small. one begins to spot the same people over and over in various locations.

the guy i've seen the most could easily pass for a younger brother of john travolta. i've seen this guy for years, usually out and about at night (usually in dodgier bars... not that i go there often... *cough*...) but also in restaurants, walking around sukhumvit, in the skytrain, in a taxi at 2am and even once at the airport. i thought if i saw him in a bar i'd sit next to him and start up a conversation to find out what his story is- but each time i see him it's never possible for one reason or another. what i find unusual about this guy is that i don't go out in the evening as much anymore... but when i do the odds are quite high i'll cross his path so he obviously goes out a lot. with no apparent source of income, perhaps he really is travolta junior.

then there's vladimir putin, who apparently works part-time in my office building when he's not busy running russia. i see this guy virtually every day in various locations all around the area where i work and he's a dead ringer for the russian prez. by comparison a friend of mine moved his office into the same office building as mine but i almost never run into him.

if anyone finds any salma hayek doubles... let me know!

corkscrew balloon (+elephant)

what would you do if you inherited a huge family fortune that allowed you to live comfortably and do anything you want? alf erickson was in such a position- he chose to live in various suites at the oriental, buy a fleet of balloons to participate in ballooning events around the world, collect corkscrews, visit odd museums, and compete in the annual bangkok elephant polo tournament with a team of katoey (team name: the screwy tuskers) among other antics. his newest balloon (he is always looking for the 'newest in hot air') is called the patpong corkscrew club, with an giant logo on the side of a naked vixen riding an elephant whose midsection forms into an enormous corkscrew. click on the elephant to enter alf's world.

hong kong approach

a friend sent me an mpeg of a korean airlines flight landing at the old hong kong kai tak airport. click here (911k) to see it - quite a wild ride.

the approach to the old airport was always difficult, requiring a steep turn to visually line up with the runway.

an old stewardess friend of mine had a friend who was on the mandarin airlines flight that rolled over at kai tak while trying to land during the beginning of a typhoon. the stewardess was sitting in the very back of the md-11 and when it rolled over she was soaked with water. at first she thought it was the aircraft going into the bay but later she realized it was from the toilets- yuck!

i, farang

last night i became one of the last few people in bangkok to see i, robot. i enjoyed the movie a lot more than i thought i would, mostly because i had expected it to be an independence day type movie with will smith running around shooting everything. smith did do a lot of running around and shooting, but there was no i, robot will smith rap song intro and the movie as a whole better than most of his other efforts.

the imdb i, robot discussion board has focused a lot on whether or not such a thing could actually happen- with debates into free will and whatnot. i don't think free will plays a part in what happens in the movie- the robots were acting in accordance with the first law, that they cannot let humans come to harm through inaction, and as such can disobey the second law.

the robot sonny (a promotional plug for sony?) is different from the others because he has been given a second processor with the ability to contradict the first- so he has to think things through rather than just obey. he's also given moods which make him seem more human.

so is the premise behind the movie feasible? in one way yes, as i don't think free will is part of the equation. but in another way no- as the robots would need to be able to understand not only the world around them but also human behavior and the source of human thought/decisions- something which may never be possible.

fon tok part 3

it's the peak of the rainy season here in thailand- it'll be dry one minute and absolutely bucketing down the next. yesterday after work i popped into family mart to buy a couple of snacks. after no more than 3 minutes i walked outside to find a wall of water in front of me.

ducked into a local coffee shop to wait out the storm. as it was dinner time i thought i'd order a sandwich. no cheese available, so they couldn't do the ham and cheese i ordered. the clerk suggested a tuna chedder melt... but when i asked about the cheddar he told me that they were out. ok, then what about a chocolate freeze? sorry, out of ice! with that i decided to sit and wait outside until the rain subsided a bit.

while i was waiting i snapped a few photos of sukhumvit road. despite how heavy the rain was coming down there were a fair amount of people moving around, especially motorcyclists delivering pizza and food as you can see in the photo on the right. definitely not the type of weather i'd like to be driving a motorcycle in, but that's of course when there's the most demand for delivery. finally, with no signs of the rain letting up, i called my apartment building and had them send out our building's tuk-tuk to pick me up.

tonight some storms passed through to the south of bangkok before the rain started here and i managed to get a few good shots of lightning. this one struck quite close, somewhere around the khlongtoey port area. pretty cool, eh! just as long as my building doesn't get hit....