C:\Marlow\

I don’t know why I’m blogging more now that I’m in Thailand. My guess is either the warmer weather makes me more creative or that now that I’m outside of my Korean everyday routine I actually have some interesting things to write about. I think I’m going to go with the latter.

So we just got back to Bangkok, which is like our pseudo home in Thailand. We landed here from Korea, we then left on the tour of Kanchanaburi and then came back here again.

The tour in Kanchanaburi was fantastic! It started off on a rather low note in my opinion as the river Kwai museum was a large finely aged piece of ass. Everything had cobwebs on it and was falling apart. There seemed to be no effort at all to preserve any of the items that they were displaying and the translations were pretty poorly done. Then Nara and I got to walk on the old (what was left of it) and new bridges over the river Kwai. Which was cool and luckily Nara and I got off the bridge before the tourist train plowed across it without warning. Others weren’t so lucky and had to wait on these tiny over-hangings.

After the river Kwai we went to the river camp that would be our base camp for the next 2 days. We met some friendly Aussies at the camp and these awesome Italians. The Italians we’re really fun to talk to and had been all over but there was an odd language barrier. They both spoke a little English but Fabio spoke perfect French and Ivan spoke pretty much only Italian but with Nara and I talking French and Fabio translating there was little trouble

After a decent Dinner Nara and I decided to go the extra couple of yards and do the optional “bathe the elephants” item on the menu and got driven out to an elephant riding camp. Here we got thrown on the back of a slightly disturbed Asian elephant which then preceeded to constantly walk off the path to grab food despite the yelling and frantic grunting of our 8 year old elephant driver. This wasn’t too bad until the elephant almost went down a hill sideways at a 45 degree incline. We almost fell off this bastard about 5 times and I’m sure it would’ve hurt plenty. Once in the river the elephant began blowing water/snot all over Nara and making noises akin to that of a slightly broken lawnmower at another elephant, which the guide tried to convince us was because they were friends. Everyone one of us got chucked off the elephant at least once and we all had a great time washing these crazy dudes. Well worth the couple extra bucks and I’d highly recommend you accept the next time someone offers to let you wash their semi-crazed elephant.

< Elephant photos to arrive here once hard drive roblem is resolved>

After all that jazz, we went to see a beautiful waterfall but there were no psychotic pachiderms so i’ll just leave some photos to look at

< waterfall Elephant photos to arrive here once hard drive roblem is resolved>

The next day we got to ride the elephants at the same camp on a seat but it wasn’t quite the same as riding them bareback down a steep hill so it was unfortunately a little of a let down but fun all the same (note: next time ride the elephant and THEN clean it). Then we went back to the camp and relaxed for a bit before heading off to the Tiger Temple which was FANtastic.

UPDATES TO FOLLOW BECAUSE I THINK THIS THAI LADY WANTS US OUT OF HERE.

Well Nara and finally arrived in Thailand at midnight on our Saturday. We went straight from the airport to Khao San Road, which is the backpackers haven in Bangkok. We jumped in a cab for 40 minutes racking up the huge bill of 291 Baht (about $9 or so).

We weren’t on this road for even 5 minutes before I came across some Thai bboys dancing in the road. Nodded a greeting and then we grabbed a hostel room and went back to see the bboys. They had already stopped dancing so I was a little downed by that as I wanted to join in. One of them, however, spoke perfect English and we chatted for a bit. There are no competitions coming up this week while I’m here (I think I saw Nara smile when he said this) but he gave me his proffessional bboy card so I could give him a call to go and practice with him and his crew. I think I like this country.

We walked around Khao San for a bit and I grabbed a Pad Thai for 20 Baht which is approxiamately $0.64. Not a bad deal at all. Anyways, we didn’t ask to see the room at the Hostel because it seemed pretty bare in the photo anyways so we didn’t think there’d be a problem. We didn’t however expect there to be no bed sheets. Oddly enough Thailand nights aren’t as warm as the days and it was an uncomfortable sleep to be sure. Not staying there again, to say the least.

Anyways, I’m sorry I don’t have any photos to update with but in a day or two I hope I’ll have some nice shots to show off on here and keep you all entertained. Tomorrow Nara and I should be going to a tiger sanctuary among other things so stay tuned

Where else do you think I should go and what should I eat? I hope you guys have some recommendations for me

Well, today at work we had a winter party for the kids mainly because we weren’t allowed to have a hallowe’en party (I know, bunk eh?). So today was the short day so there weren’t too many kids and it was pretty fun. So I thought a few people would get a kick out of some photos cause that’s what makes the blog post, right?

So without further ado….

This game involved sucking up “snowflakes” to get them to the other side of the class room and drop them in a bowl. This was an awesome game and only two kids cried cause they didn’t have the lung power to suck the cotton thing up (that’ll teach ‘em for smoking)

This is a game of stickball and Susan (seen here) was hillariously bad at it. They had to hit a syrofoam snowball in a straight line, around a chair and in a straight line back. Some kids almost friggin died somehow. I kept cringing anytime a kid went off sprinting towards the white board which has a jagged marker tray at exactly eye level for these uncoordinated balls of hyper.

This is just Ross being sexy. Nothing unusual here.

I hate this thing, whatever the hell it’s called. I think Nara said his name was Hank but someone changed it to Eric. They should have called him Kragnell the Irritating or something equally goblinesque.

Believe it or not this was a pose. I thought he was depressed or something but when the camera went down he smiled and wanted to see how damn pouty-sexy he looked. Oh right, PS: this is a boy.

Never yell “Sexy pose!” at students. This disaster is what happens.

For winning games the kids got play money to buy treats with. Nick (on the right) bought me a chocolate bar. He is going to be getting a very nice report card. You know what? I think he deserves a haiku, Jon-style.

Happy finger sign

Chiseled good looks of a god

Chris can be bought cheap.

Back to back girly poses. Top girl was cute but annoying. Amber is just plain cute.

Ron and Calvin, these two bad-asses are telling me how much time I have to live. I’m actually posting this from the hospital because they beat me up so bad.

And if any of you sick freaks make messed up comments about these students being hot…

Just tell me which ones and I’ll give you their number.

Oh! If you want to check out any of my others photos I’ve been taking feel free to check out my Flickr account and tell me your favourite photo in a comment!

technorati tags:Korea, teaching, students, party, winter, kids, cute

This is a sample of the confusion in the aftermath of yet another bomb siren drill. They would not let us cross the damn street until the second siren went off signifying not that this time there is a REAL bomb threat but that in fact the drill was over.

This second siren went off 15 minutes after Nara and I got to the intersection. This was especially annoying because our workplace is the second building on the other side of the road. You can see two of our damn students on the other side of the street and when the kid with the soccer ball tries to cross the street he gets his ass yelled at.

Here’s an awesome little webpage I found the other day on www.digg.com and spent a good hour or so fooling around with. I’m incredibly impressed by how inutitive the designer has made sketching in 3D. The only thing I think it’s missing is a zoom control.

Anyways, this great little applet lets you sketch a design in 2D and then it creates a 3D model from what you’ve drawn. The controls couldn’t be easier: Left click to draw, right click to rotate. If you want to attach an object to another object draw the shape of the connection and it enters “extrude” mode. then you can rotate the image and draw the shape to be attached.

Anyways, here’s the link to part of Takeo Igarashi’s site Teddy: A Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design .

Apparently he has created a newer version that lets you colour the 3D object as well but it must be downloaded. It’s available here (SmoothTeddy).

technorati tags:sketching, 2d, 3d, design, fun, doodle

Ok, so after having lived in our free Korean apartment for seven and a half months we finally decided to test out the mysterious device sitting atop the bowl of our toilet. I figured the safest way would be to put cling film over the top and just let ‘er rip.

So we set it all up and tested her out, I’ll let you have a look at the video instead of trying to describe what happened exactly. By the way, that’s me laughing like Kermit the Frog.

Google video in a new window and Download Here

So, all in all, the bidet gets a mediocre C in the water temperature category delivering a luke warm stream. It gets a B+ in ease of use, though I’m still puzzled by the flower knob. But blows the competition out of the water (pun not intended and then later intended) with a massive A+ managing to soak the ceiling above the coat closet in our hallway.

Just thought I’d drop this quick post to help out some bboys and bgirls who visit my blog. This is the final battle from BOTY Korea 2006.

Drifters vs Rivers

Drifters won and will go on to compete at BOTY Germany

It’s technically no longer summer but it’s 25 bloody degrees out and I’m in here freezing my butt off. We had the aircon (it’s easier for Koreans to say than air conditioner) set at 24 and let me tell you that for such a tiny little box it’s done a hell of a job of turning our
apartment into an ice box. Maybe it’s my terrible blood circulation but until I just put socks and a sweater on I think my feet were about to fall off.

Anyways, I’ve been worrying a bit about the future recently and reading some job/financial blogs recently. Namely raganwald2.0 who is a very well spoken person in the tech field. It’s gotten me thinking about whether I want to try and get a tech job right when I get home and start moving up in their company as Az and Tony are both doing at their jobs. Or whether I want to go back to university and earn a masters degree, as I’m really excited about the field of HCI (or Human Computer Interaction).

Even though I miss all my friends from back home and can’t wait to see them all again I’ve still got the travel bug and want to see more of the world. The thing that bothers me essentially is that I love travelling and meeting new people but I’m also excited to get a job in tech and start coding or designing things. Unfortunately, as far as I know these two passions do not overlap very well and there is very little demand for wandering hobo-coders.

So my goal here is to strike a balance between the two and find a job that allows or encourages travel and is also tech based. Any suggestions or encouragements would be well appreciated.

Cheers

technorati tags:hci, masters, technology, computer, science, travel, job