This will totally confuse most of my readership, but here goes:

I’ve been playing Mob Wars on Facebook. It’s a reasonably fun way to waste 5 minutes at the start and end of the day, attacking imaginary people you don’t know, buying imaginary guns and property, and doing imaginary criminal acts.

One thing that you learn quickly is that cash isn’t very safe: someone attacks you and they take a chunk of it if they win. And just like real life, there’s always someone better than you - with a bigger mob and more weapons are so forth.

So there’s a bank. The catch with the bank is that they charge you 10% to “clean” the money. You do need some clean money to pay the doctor’s bills, but 10% starts to hurt. And you don’t earn anything on any money in the bank.

Then there’s property. Different levels of property attract different levels of income, but some facts are consistent: every purchase you make means the next purchase of the same type will have a 10% higher price; and, If you sell property, you get 50% of the higher price back. Take, for example, an “Empty Lot” which is $5,000 to buy. If I buy it, the price for next time goes to $5,500. If I sell it, I get $2,750 (half of $5,500).  I also get a paltry $100 income from the empty lot. (the next price up is $6,000, not $6,050 if the 10% increase was incremental).

If I build a villa on it, for an extra $10,000, the $5,000 empty lot is gone, because now you own a villa. Same pricing rules apply though, next villa is $11,000, selling your first villa will return $5,500.

But the exploit is in the multi-buy prices. If I buy or sell multiple empty lots at a time, it actions them all at the same price, but applies the 10% increase (per property) AFTER the purchase or sale. So if I’ve got $50,000 to put away, I can either put it in the bank and have $45,000; or I can buy 10x Empty Lots, @ $5,000 each, which at 10% increase per purchase makes the new value $10,000 each, which when sold as a lot of 10 I get half back … ie $5,000 each. But I also earn $1,000 an hour on the properties themself that I hold onto them.

Anyone with big cash on them in Mob Wars deserves to get it taken off them for being too stupid to use their cash elsewhere.

This is the box of my new game: Ca$h ‘n Gun$.

It’s a Party Game which is best with more players - 6 is best, but I also bought the Yakuza expansion which allows up to 9 and includes a team element as well.

Actually when looking for a game I really wanted “something that even Lara would like” and I think this may be it. Let me summarize how it works:

Players are gangsters brought together to split the loot from their last robbery. To ease the negotiations, each gangster brought his gun. (each player gets a foam gun). There’s 8 rounds, and whoever’s the richest alive player at the end is the winner. Each round, everyone points their guns at someone and then that person has to decide whether to lie down and chicken out, or do nothing to prove you’ve got guts. Then there’s a shootout, and whoever’s still standing splits the cash in the middle. Commence the next round.

This looks like an absolute hoot, and from reviews, adding the Yakuza expansion turns it into the perfect party game. With a few drinks under one’s belt, this will be a winner in December, believe that!

Well when you think about it, “Strawberries Jam” (pictured right) is more accurate than the English “Strawberry Jam” but it’s still funny to see. I was amused anyway. Also, note the quality of this photograph. I am quite pleased with it.

M&D have arrived, in an anticlimactic way … Mint was changing Jack, I was making up their bed and I heard a noise from outside. I went to a window, and lo, they had arrived already. We scrambled to let them in and Mum was immediately succumbed to Jack’s gravity, not putting him down unless he was forcibly removed.

We had pad thai at home from the street vendor around the corner for dinner, which M&D ate with rice. Aren’t parents wierd? 

Yesterday, we had our first outing as a family to Kad Suan Kaew, for some shopping. Here’s Mint and Jack, ready to go into the wild world.

When we arrived, Mint went off to do some clothes shopping for herself and Jack and I went to go eat dinner. Of course, as you can see in the 2nd picture the stress and high drama of the outing was too much for him to bear.

I went to a food-court crossed with a restaurant place called The Curry Hut and had a very reasonably priced set menu … roti, medium butter chicken and a hot Indian milk tea for 89 baht. I also added rice (19 baht) and a lassi for desert (35 baht).

Mint then found us and we hit Tops for some groceries. By this time Jack had woken up so he had bright eyes looking at everything and everyone. His good mood deteriorated though, and before long he was out of the pram in mine or Mint’s arms, being “bounced”, which often shuts him, so beautifully, up.

Songtaew home, with remarkably 4 other passengers who had to endure his - by then - crying for the 8 blocks or whatever home.

Just look at how cute this kid is.

It has been brought to my attention that I had not posted ridiculous quantities of pictures of Jack on the ol’ blog, and so here I start to remedy that. He’s 26 days old today.

Mum and Dad arrive in Chiang Mai tomorrow around lunch time, so we’re all looking forward to that. Also Rob W’s birthday - hope my present gets there on time.

My visa is officially expired now, and I am admitted until the 12-November. On the 11-Nov, I plan to cross a border and get a 30-day tourist entry stamp, which will see me through till 11-Dec, which is the day I leave Thailand to come home for Christmas. I suppose I could aim to spend one night in Myanmar to bring my expiry date to 12-Dec, which will give me a day’s breathing room, but I’m not sure yet: do I want to spend a night in Myanmar? Another option is to just fly to Singapore and then turn around and fly back. I think Singapore Airlines has flights from Chiang Mai to Singapore direct.

Just look at this.

It’s Joe’s Famous Burger at my favourite restaurant in Chiang Mai - The Duke’s. It is described as such:

Blue cheese and bacon, grilled onions, lettuce, tomato and spicy horseradish mayonnaise, served on a soft bun with a choice of fresh cut fries, hand battered onion rings, green salad or coleslaw

The best technique I have found is to get it with french fries, and a side of coleslaw. You then eat the burger, then the pickle, then tip the coleslaw into the blue cheese drippings from the burger on the plate, apply tomato sauce to the fries, and eat the coleslaw and fries together to finish up.

Sometimes I also enjoy the apple pie, but this time couldn’t manage it.

And how about the bill?

Joe’s Famous … 195 baht
Coleslaw … 35 baht
Service … 23 baht
Tax … 16 baht
Total … 269 baht

There are two Duke’s now - one at the Night Bazaar and one just a couple of blocks away over the Iron Bridge. I usually go to the Night Bazaar location - which Blacky and I found completely by accident - I think the Iron bridge location is slightly cheaper, but the Night Bazaar location has less mosquitos and better aircon in a “newer” style layout.

I should blog, as it’s been a while since I have.

The US-led economic meltdown is sucking hard. Shares are down of course, but so is the dollar. For the software business, any American customers who actually pay their bills is great, but for me personally living OS, the baht dropping from 33 to 22 baht/dollar effectively increases my cost of living by 33% unless my maths is wrong. Also, the hardware business is suffering with prices shifting between the time orders are placed and the time they’re invoiced. We’re having to contact some customers and tell them we’re unable to fill their order at the price they ordered at. Bleak stuff.

Rob’s long-awaited suit postage is finally updated status-wise on the Thailand Post website: dispatched from Sydney on Friday. Also some books I mailed to Andrew a week later seem to have been dispatched from Sydney on Friday as well. Ah surface mail. Next time I will know better.

I’ve been watching a show called Mad Men, concerning a Manhattan Advertising Agency in the 1960s. It’s really quite interesting, and very period: there’s a lot of smoking, a lot of drinking, and the women are treated pretty badly by the men in charge. I think it’s on in Australia on the ABC before or after The Hollowmen. Also, The Hollowmen is great. Hilarious show, with many characters you can recognize in real life.

I’ve been watching The Amazing Race, and man, I’ll tell ya - the American women competing on this show are really really narky and the guys are really really emo sensitive losers. It’s hilarious.

What else is new? This weekend Mint’s mum and younger sister visited - Mint’s mum ADORED Jack. Interestingly, Mint said that (prior to the visit) her Mum didn’t think we would be able to take care of Jack by ourselves. Usually in their culture, the grandparents pretty much raise the children and the parents go and work to earn the money, so I guess that tradition distilled into the philosophy that only old people can raise babies? Interesting anyway.

On Monday, we drove to Chiang Dao in a hired car. I had requested a baby seat for a 1 week old, but the baby seat we got was more like a 1 year old’s seat, so was useless. The car was a king-cab ute (ie, had 4 doors, two bucket seats in the front, one bench seat in the back) but Mint’s mum and Fern insisted on riding in the tray - that’s the most common way for them to be a passenger. Also, riding inside the car makes mum feel sick - I wonder if that’s just because she’s not used to it?

So imagine my stress-levels, dear reader, driving 50km on roads of various degrees of quality, up to 100km/h, with a 1 week old in his mother’s arms, no baby capsule, and an old woman and a 6 year old sitting in the back tray - both activities that we have had drilled into us since young as being very unsafe.

When we got to Chiang Dao, Mint’s mum took charge of Jack, Mint went to do paperwork, and I found an internet cafe and worked. When I’d finished work, I went back to the government building to see them, and had something to eat for lunch, and then waited another hour or two before Mint, exhausted, finally finished. Mint was wrecked - so much so that we apologized and paid for her mother’s Songtaew to her place rather than drive them ourself. We came straight home, Mint sleeping in the car, waking every few kilometers to adjust Jack in her arms, also asleep.

The next day, yesterday, Jack was a bit fractious which we were warned about after the car trip. He was a bit cranky this morning too, until Mint ordered me awake and to go pace around with him for a while. That set him right off to sleep, so 7am I popped him back into bed with Mint.