Don’t freak out by the post heading, it’s not really a “crisis” level crisis, it’s more a crisis of confidence.

Got my letter from RBH screwing up my surgery dates again, and I’m wondering whether “now” (or early December, specifically) is the right time for it. My gut says “no” so that’s the first problem.

The second problem is that if I go back and have it in early December, then Christmas will be miserable - I’ll be strictly (and strictly in the very strictest terms) on liquids. Not even yoghurt-consistency. Liquids that you can drink through a straw type consistency. And that probably won’t include booze, as it will be difficult hydrating enough under normal circumstances.

The third problem is that I’m settled in bangers now to the point where I don’t miss Australia anymore. I miss the people, sure, but not the place. Same thing happened in American earlier this year. You get to the point where you dread the flight back more than you cherish the thought of being back.

So in summary, let me wish HB to Bek, and HH (that’s Happy Holidays) to Glara. Keep it awesome you guys.

As you may recall, my good friend Lindsay Lohan is in a movie called “I Know Who Killed Me”. Seeing as we’re such good friends, I decided to go see it recently, and let’s just say that it deserved it’s 3.7 out of 10 at IMDB, and was pretty awful. I did, however, wonder if there was more to it. In the IMDB forums, it seems, there was, although nowhere has anybody said that the clever allusions proposed in the forum were ever the director’s intentions. I therefore decide the movie ISN’T clever, and should be taken at face value only.

And I’ve got to say it: Lindsay Lohan isn’t sexy, even if she’s the sluttiest girl in Hollywood. Since we’re such good friends I feel I can say that.

Sorry to those reading the Musings by email: by now the 3 hyperlinks I’ve clicked will have made this entry virtually unreadable html-ese. No more links for the rest of the entry. Promise.

I went out drinking on Wednesday night - I just had to get outta here and talk with real people, instead of the online chats that I’m so prone to. It was pretty good but I felt pretty ordinary on Thursday. I made all new friends who I wouldn’t be able to pick out of a line up, and bought drinks for myself and others with aplomb. Is that how you spell that?

I went for a walk to Godfrey’s bangers hotel - Dream - and found a shortcut which makes it only 4 blocks from my place. That’s pretty cool. He was freaking out about not having received a confirmation email from the website he booked on, so I checked it out for him, like a total legend. Also his rate includes breakfast for two, so if there’s any day that he doesn’t have a “tilac” to share breakfast with, I can sponge off him for free, like Bek and Brett did to me.

Mint will be home on Sunday or Monday, hooray! Oh, I went to the bank (as yesterday’s entry may have alluded to) and again was reminded that I need to learn Thai numbers better. The confusion about how much I wanted is certainly avoidable. Did you know that for an amount like 20,000, you don’t say like in English “20 thousand”? You say “2 ten-thousand”. Does that make sense?

With currency conversions, probably the best way for an expat living in Thailand to do this is to do fewer, larger withdrawals through your Visa card in person at a bank branch … just make sure you a)pay it off in full each month, and b)make sure that having cash “on hand” doesn’t make you spend it unneccessarily. You need your passport and the Visa card.

On 11-Sep, I withdrew 30,000B at a total cost of AU$1097.33 at a branch.
On 19-Sep, I withdrew 1,000B at a total cost of AU$40.92 using an ATM.

Extrapolating from this, I know I want to withdraw around 70,000B soon.
At a branch on 11-Sep, that would’ve cost AU$2,553.77.
At an ATM on 19-Sep, that would’ve cost AU$2,534.40.
But to compare both transactions on the same day, say 19-Sep, you need to take into account the slight fluctuation in exchange rates at the time, so at a branch on the 19-Sep, that would’ve cost AU$2,585.23.

That’s a lot of math to save $50, so sorry about that. When I started this story I thought the difference would be more pronounced. :/

I’m so excited that Godfrey’s coming to Thailand.

03-Oct until 07-Oct if I recall correctly, which is great, but such a shame that it didn’t coincidentally overlap with Mint being away. Snod’s a complex creature, who oscillates in a wave pattern between good and bad. At the moment it seems his wave is on the apex of “bad” so I’m trying hard to get my work done as completely as possible, before Cyclone Godfrey roars in and demands all waking hours be spent drinking and all sleeping hours be spent recovering.

I wonder how the bossiest woman in Thailand will feel about this development? It’s a departure from normal baby, not the new normal. Just grin and bear it.

I’ve got this macho-sounding “Virtual Purse” at 7-11. It’s like a prepaid credit card for use only in 7-11 stores throughout Thailand. I’ve been using it instead of what Mint calls “baby money” for incidental purchases, like water and Pepsi. Pepsi you ask? Man can not live on water alone.

Anyway, last night’s purchases - without intending to - ran the virtual purse down to 3 Baht. That’s AU$0.10. Seriously, what are the odds that without seriously pre-planning it, you would spend that close to the amount you have without going over it? I took it as an omen that I should be frugal for a day or two more, and then get back to normal. Omens are only designed to last for a few days at a time right? I need another omen in the next few days, then.

I believe that Bek and Brett will also be here on the 04-Oct. They expressed an interest in staying on my floor, but at the moment I don’t have the bedding to accomodate - just a couch. I will make half-hearted attempts to investigate temporary bedding this week, which will also please my sponge-like siblings who I assume will want to visit at some stage, for a cheap holiday. Anyone that knows Bryce, in particular, will not be shocked that he would rather sleep on the floor of my place, than in a bed of a hotel. :p

An especially poetic tone to my prose today, don’t you think? No real excuse can be offered for this - it’s merely one of the many mysteries of how my brain works.

Hey everyone. It’s day 17, and I’ve just had the most boring weekend on record.

I got paid on Friday and did some financial wheelin’ and dealin’ amongst my accounts and inadvertently screwed up to the point where all my money was on it’s way somewhere else. As a result, my entire cash-on-hand was tied up in “limbo” over the weekend and I was left with no money to draw on.

And with no money, I couldn’t do anything. And that’s why it was the most boring weekend on record.

I did however, use the internet quite extensively and started a new book - “The Fortunate Pilgrim” by Mario Puzo. I also started watching “The Wire” on DVD - it’s actually quite good, and I almostfinished the entire first season on the weekend.

The arrival of day 13 in BKK tempts me to go to the cinema and market. New movie day has “The Brave One”, “Vacancy” and “I Know Who Killed Me” out and I’ll probably end up seeing all of them before they disappear - it’s that good to hear English being spoken. Interestingly, last week I had a dream about “I Know Who Killed Me” in which I was friends with Lindsay Lohan and told her it wasn’t very good. She got pretty offended by that, and I did a lot of that “backpeddling” that one is sometimes required to do in situations where you hurt someone’s feelings but didn’t mean to.

As for the market, I only really need to go to buy the stuff that prevents you from having to go out and buy stuff. Breakfast cereal, milk, eggs … boring stuff like that.

I’m a bit lonely today - I think I said yesterday that Mint is away, so I’ve gone from having the company of one to having the company of zero. And Glenn told me that the stupid Irvine Welsh book I was struggling with wasn’t worth it, so surely that’s an excuse to go to a bookshop?

Callun’s (and Bek’s) birthday fast approaches, can you believe it? That little larakin will be an old man before we know it. Bryce and I will probably have to find something remote control plane-related that will be delivered in sufficient time. I should get on that soon.

So I suppose this is day 12 here in glorious BKK. Things are good, my friends, things are good.

I’ve been to the movies twice over the last week, seeing The Invasion and The Bourne Ultimatum. Both were worth watching, even if neither was particularly “good”.

What else? Mint has gone to Chiang Mai for about 2 weeks, so I’m living the life of a batchelor for the moment. I haven’t washed a dish since she left. This morning I made pork omelette for breakfast, and forgot to turn the wok off, which made a pretty ingrained burn in. I’m leaving it to soak until I try to scrub the burn off.

In relationship news, the subject of a dowry for Mint’s mother has finally come up, much as I exected it always would … I’m not entirely sure how I will be able to swing it. My book on Thai culture says that many Thai men (and their family) willingly go into debt for years to pay the sin sot. We’ll see how I go I guess. This is one of the primary factors in setting a date for the actual ceremony.

Work is going ok … I would really apprecite seeing a big spike up to Thanksgiving and Christmas, as most places pretty much shut down for November and December, and money in will be slim pickin’s.

Last night I got back the new sheets from our laundry lady … and she didn’t have change for big notes. So I emtpied the shrapnel jar of anything useful in scraping enough together to pay for it. Now I need to make some purchases at 7-11 to get some small notes again.

You know that feeling when you buy a book and start reading it, and you’re not into it even after 40 pages? Thanks Irvine Walsh - not only is “The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs” difficult to read, it’s also boring. If I’d paid Australian book prices for a book this bad, I’b be furious.

So I’ve been a bit “BLAH” today. No particular reason, just … blah. I’ve got heaps of work done that I never would’ve dreamed I’d have time to do in Aus … particularly implementing 3 x sales trackers for search comparison engines. Last time I overheauled our search engine optimization, we discovered we were spending a fortune on LCD TV’s that we hardly ever sold. They’re an item that people do a lot of research on before they buy, and if that research involves clicking every link they find, that starts to cost us serious money. So, as a result of this, we ditched LCD TV’s from our price list, and our advertising budget was immediately more manageable again. So we signed up with a few more comparison places. And, amazingly, now they’re all accountable. We will be able to see exactly where we’re getting value for money, and where we aren’t.

In other news, Mint found me an office chair yesterday, and it’s being delivered today or tomorrow. Hurrah. My ass was getting sore operating from a dining chair for serious hours per day. We also bought new sheets, and I haven’t used my toaster yet.

That sums up day 5 in BKK. It was a pretty social day with a lot of people having too much time on their hands on messenger. It was great to hear from people, that was really nice.

Day 4 in Bangkok and it’s going great. I can think of at least one person who will particularly enjoy the latest development, which was “jogged” in my memory by Godfrey’s post yesterday.

“PANTS OFF” as a concept is not difficult to grasp. Essentially, when one is in the privacy of their own home, the “PANTS OFF” philosophy is that your pants should, indeed, come off, and you should, indeed, skive around in your underwear. I have not been the greatest supporter of the philosophy, but it’s one that I’ve been encouraged to embrace here in BKK. And why is this? Partly because it’s so hot, and (I presume) because Mint’s getting sick of doing laundry for two already. Who can say?

Another great aspect of BKK life is the constant concern for which airconditioners are running and, therefore, which doors need to be closed. As Mint says, “Air can walk.” I guess airconditioning is expensive to run - it’s practically impossible to survive wihout it - so I guess it’s good that we keep tabs on it. Also, apparently you can get used to the heat as long as you’re not in airconditioning all day. Unfortunately, I will never know :p

Yesterday I got a goodly amount of work done, and enjoyed a delicious hot lunch, and yesterday evening we went shopping for (amongst other things) the most western of appliances: the toaster. We also looked at bed sheets, so maybe the pink factor may decrease in the near future.

I had a real wake-up call to what extent I’m living a life of luxury here: Mint’s sister, Far, is a nurse. I spent more than she makes in a month on renting my plush condo. No wonder Mint had her friends over on the weekend to gloat.

ok ok ok dudes I am back from japan which was fabruous. the japanese are as mad for “pants off” as I am, so it was just great wandering around in a perpetual state of breeziness.

Godez in Japan.pdf Prease enjoy it.

japan is now officially tagged and bagged.

- Snod