Grass Chairs

Is this brilliant, or what? Get ready for summer by growing your own grass chairs! Instead of wasting hours trying to decide on which matching lawn furniture set to buy, why not let nature do its job by letting it grow eco-friendly organic grass chairs for your backyard while you wait? No more of the annual scraping and painting. Now, all I need is a yard!

I am looking forward to retirement

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.
Well, for example, the other day my wife and I went into town and went into a shop.
We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.
We went up to him and said, 'Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?'



He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi turd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.
So my wife called him a shit-head. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, we didn't care. We came into town by bus. We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age.

Teacher's License Update

Well, although it's still a bit gloomy where this is concerned, we did find some new info. With a letter from my school, I can get another 2 year extension. I have to keep taking those damn tests though to show that I am making an effort. This is a lot more than I can say for the Thai government. Roong found a Uni in Lopburi that offers a condensed teachers certificate course that will satisfy the Ministry of Education. It takes 9 months of going to school one weekend a month. Not bad, but it costs 60,000 baht. That's about half of what it would cost in Bangkok. But the catch is that they stopped the program due to lack of interest. There aren't many foreigners where I am, and most seem to have given up. I am searching for others that might be interested in the course because the prof. told Roong that he would re-open the course if we could get 8 students. We will see how that goes.

I have to get my visa renewed this month. I think we are going next Thursday. I don't look forward to sitting in the Immi. office all day, but I do get cheeseburgers. With all the fuss over education lately, I was looking online for free courses that I might be able to take to give me an edge on something. A surprising amount of places offer free courses. None of them give you any college credits of course, but I thought I might find a useful one.

I noticed that Brigham Young offered a few, so I looked at the list, and noticed that they offer bowling, beginner's swimming, and 300 religion courses. There's a lesson in there somewhere. I almost signed up for the swimming just to see how that works online.

A Hoax?

This Is Not A Joke!

4 THINGS YOU PROBABLY NEVER KNEW
YOUR MOBILE PHONE COULD DO

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.

Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival.

Check out the things that you can do with it:

FIRST
Emergency
The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112.

If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112<> and the mobile will search any existing
network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialled
even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

SECOND
Have you locked your keys in the car?
Does your car have remote keyless entry?
This may come in handy someday.
Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home,
call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone.

Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button,
holding it near the mobile phone on their end.

Your car will unlock.

Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you.

Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has
the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

Editor's Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a mobile phone!'

THIRD
Hidden Battery Power
Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the
instrument will show a 50% increase in battery.

This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.

FOURTH
How to disable a
STOLEN mobile phone?
To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 #

A 15 digit code will appear on the screen.

This number is unique to your handset.

Write it down and keep it somewhere safe.

When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code.

They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either.

If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

ATM - PIN Number Reversal - Good to Know
If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN # &n bsp;
in reverse.

For example, if your pin number is 1234, then you would put in 4321.

The ATM system recognizes that your PIN number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine.

The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be
immediately dispatched to the location.

This information was recently broadcast on CTV by Crime Stoppers however it is seldom used because people just don't know about it.
Please pass this along to everyone.

This is the kind of information people don't mind receiving, so pass it on to your family and friends

Pancakes hit Thailand!

While we were at the store last week in Lopburi. I stumbled across a box of pancake mix. I hadn't seen it anywhere here before. After blowing the dust off the box, we decided to give it a go. This morning, because she was the hungriest, Palmiez decided to try making them. She did great for her first time. They don't in any way shape or for even resemble round, but they taste ok. The shape may be due to her trying to make them in a wok. We may need to find a legit frying pan somewhere.

Oh, and you may have noticed that Palm is sporting a new shorter doo. She got fed up with the heat, and whacked it all off. Makes sense to me. I have mine so short now that I noticed I have a small birthmark on the left side of my head, just above my ear. Who knew?

Palmiez the Mad Scientist

Palmy built a robot! It was an assignment for one of her classes. While she was building it, I was trying to guess what it would do. I naturally went for the most obvious things. Like a robot that could talk on the cell phone for her, while she was talking on her other one. Or, maybe a robot that would fold the laundry for her (she hates doing that!). As the unveiling crept closer, she ran into a snag. She had been working with a group of other students, but it seems that her instructor wasn't to thrilled with what they had achieved so far. This worried her a bit, but didn't stop her. Palmiez decided to do it herself. What she ended up making, is a little robot mouse that follows a beam of light to wherever you want it to go. I am not sure what you could do with it, but it's pretty cool just the same. She received a very good grade, and is most pleased with herself.

Buddhism vs Easter

Happy Easter everyone. I hadn't noticed that it was almost here. Living in the land of Buddhism can make that easy to happen. There isn't much attention paid to the Christian holidays. I believe that Easter is a celebration of Christ's rise from the grave? Let's face it, everyone here believes in continuous reincarnation, so JC coming back from the dead only once, pretty much makes him an amateur! XD

4 out of 5 RedBubblers agree....

Yeah baby! My "Return of Dead Fish" tee design made the first slot on the front of RedBubble's home page. A little recognition isn't a bad thing to see first thing in the morning. Now, if i could just sell a few of the damn things! Haaa!

Ead had a baby!!

You get used to some pretty strange things here. A few times a month, you have to wait a bit at an intersection, because there are elephants stomping down the street. Cobras in the bathroom, stuff like that. But this one was the most interesting. I finally got Roong to go to "Long Bia" again. She doesn't like it much, because the music is a bit loud for her, and the food isn't that great, but she finally caved in.

While we were sitting there, one of the regular waitresses strolled up with what looked to be a baby in her arms. I must admit that the long arms and long orange hair threw me off for a second or two. Most kids here have black hair. Anyway, it turns out that she was holding a baby Orangutan. It seems that one of the keepers at the local zoo occasionally gets a wild hair, and takes one of the animals for a night out. Babies give me the creeps, but I must admit that holding a baby Orangutan is pretty cool. They hang on with their feet. Either he was pretty tired from all the excitement, or maybe he just found a nice soft place to put his face, because he just hung on and slept. Was very interesting indeed. The picture was taken on a cell phone, so it's not too clear, sorry.

Famous in Thailand

Which is basically like being the head french fry boy at McDonalds. I have been teaching here in one place or another for almost 3 years now. It seems to finally be paying off a bit. People have started to come looking for me for lessons. That's a good thing because trying to initiate a class or group to learn English here in Pattananikom is pretty difficult. The few times we have tried always start out great, but slowly fade down to classes that are too small to make it worth while. Let's face it, learning a language pretty much sucks if you don't have a reason to do it.

This scared me because I just assumed it meant I wasn't a very good teacher. But, although I still have a lot to learn about my new career, I don't think that's really the case. It's just hard to keep kids focused or even interested in learning English here. We are so far away from any other exposure to the language that most can't imagine why they should bother to learn it. Kids in Bangkok, Pattaya, or Chang Mai hear, see, and use at least some English every day. But here, unless they happen to be talking to me, they don't.

Luckily, now that I have been here a while, people that are serious about learning have started to look for me. They young lady in the photo's name is Dok-Mai. She heard through friends that Roong and I go hang out at Bannok at least once a week or so, so she came and found us there. Give lessons in a bar? Hey, why not? Roong removed my beer and put a glass of water in front of me for a better appearance. All that did was make the lesson go quite a bit faster, so I could get my damn beer back. Haaa! Like anyone is going to believe that.

The local school that our daughter attends has called Roong several times in regards to hiring me for next year. I would like to teach there, because they have 10th - 12th grade there, and my current school does not. I would like the experience. But, as they are a government school, they are under funded, and their management is a bit shakey. That's ok though, as my boss has assured me that Penpattana will be renewing my contract for this coming year. Though probably without a raise from the cheap bastard. I keep praying that one day Roong will get tired of living here in the styx, and we can move to a real city.

I am supposed to start teaching an adult next weekend. She lives in Saraburi. That's about 30 minutes south of us. Her husband is in America, and she wants to take a crash course in conversation before she moves there. At first I wasn't sure what to teach her, but then I just kind of let my mind wander over what an average day was like in the USA. Coupling those things with what I can imagine she is going to go through when she immigrates there, gave me a pretty good idea of what she may need.

Roong is setting up a small course, maybe 6 weeks, at here district that I will teach over the spring vacation. 13 days until 2 months of freedom!!!!!! There won't really be much free time though, because I have to write 2 books to use in my classes for the next term. I have been working hard to refine my lesson plan, and try to put some things in there that the kids will be ok with. I think I have made good progress with that this term. I will know more once I have put it all together, and can look at the finished idea.

Roong and I are going to Bangkok today. We will meet Palmiez there, have lunch, and then go wander about. Palmiez is in the middle of exams now. I hope her grades come up a bit. Last time was a wee bit disappointing.I am hoping we have enough time to go to the used book store again. It's small, but it's the only place I can find affordable used books in English. I will say one thing though, lack of availability sure broadens your horizons. I will read just about anything, so i have found some new things that are interesting, that I wouldn't normally have looked at. Pukky has seemed to cheer up a bit lately. I am not sure if it's due to the fact that she is realizing her boyfriend is a loser, or if she's up to something. We will see. That's all for now. I will probably be posting more after the kids are finished with their exams, in about 2 weeks.

Featured Fester on RedBubble

One of my t-shirt designs has gotten featured on the homepage of RedBubble (the black and white of uncle Fester). "Woohoo" and all that jazz! I get featured on several different group homepages like "Fabulous T's" and "Back in Black" pretty regularly, but this is the first time I have made it to the community's front page. Now if my sales would just recover from the X-mas slump, I would be ok.

Other than that, it's been kind of quiet around here lately. Next month, I will be teaching a sister of one of Roong's classmates English for a few weeks. It seems she is headed to America, and wants a crash course in conversation. Works for me. A few extra baht sure won't hurt around here. My free class at the Pattananikom school has been suspended until next term. The kids have to get ready for their finals next month and all.

We met Palmiez in Bangkok for a bit of school supply shopping and what-not last weekend. Always fun to hang out with her for the afternoon. She and her boyfriend "Ice" are doing ok. His family owns a beer distributorship here in Lopburi. Of course, I liked him right away.

Find your passion!

This little guy knows what he likes! Nothing fires you up like a box of Crayolas and an endless supply of blank paper.

This is one of Roong's t-shirt designs, I think it's called "Lovely Caterpillar". Watching her learn how to create what she is imagining has been an amazing experience. She couldn't draw a stick figure a few months ago, and now she is having her work featured in many of the groups on Redbubble. She seems to be doing mostly t-shirts and greeting cards now. I am very proud of her and her accomplishments. Please giver her designs a look on Rainy's Bubble.

Sushi Time!

Ok, just how bored are you? If it gets really bad, there is always "Sushi Time". You have to make sushi to order for the customers. Remember to pick up the empty plates and re-order ingredients when you are running low. Have fun!

From: Home

Roong has been working hard at making greeting card and such seasonal things from many of her photos. My mom was cool enough to send some samples for her to get an idea about Christmas from. She also sent some shots of the snow. I am the only one in this household that has ever seen it. I guess it is a pretty strange concept if you have never seen it before. I have had to explain a few things about it to them, such as, building a snowman is in no way a religious ritual. Palmy and Pukky were a bit doubtful when I told them that American children LOVE to shovel snow. Haaa! I told them about some of the 8-10' deep blizzards that Jen and I weathered in Lake Tahoe. I don't think they could really grasp the magnitude of such a thing.

My nieces (eat your hearts out boys). From L to R, that's Melyssa, Catherine, and Lauren. At least I think, I haven't seen them in a few years. Catherine was refusing to talk last time I saw her, I hope she got over that. Mel was in the middle of her 37th boyfriend trauma of the week, and Lauren was doing a bit of acting. I have another niece named Kelly, and a nephew named Tyler. I will try and get Mom to send me some recent pics of them.

This is a shot from the deck on my Mom's house during the last snow. There is an eerie calm and quiet about being out in the woods like that. Very peaceful.....and creepy.

English Camp and Us

Hi all. We just had our "English Camp" at Penpattana a few weeks ago. I just got some of the photos back from one of the teachers that was acting as the photographer for the event. This was grades 1-3. They are a lot of fun, because they are up for just about anything.

This is the shot of the teachers starting a game they play with a totally unpronounceable name. The teachers start out with a small line of children behind them, and as the music plays, each of these little trains does sort of a duck dance. As they move around, the lines will run into each other. When this happens, the teachers do a rock, paper, scissors. The loser has to join the back end of the winners kid train. This goes on until there is only one huge line with everyone in it dancing around.


This pic is of one of the combatants getting ready for Muay Thai. That's a trditional Thai martial art that is pretty cool to watch. The kids are pretty harmless, but Muay Thai is pretty exciting when you are watching the real thing.

This is the game I played with them. Luckily I had about 5 girls there to help me keep them focused. The object was to first write their nickname on a balloon in English. Then, they tied the balloon to their ankle. Once the whistle blew, the object was to pop everyone else's balloon, and the last one with a balloon was the winner. The only problem we ran into, is that many of the 1st graders were terrified of the sound that the balloons made when they popped. Not sure why. The other problem we had, is that many of them are so small, that they couldn't pop the balloon. Some solved this by sitting on it and bouncing up and down like on one of those bouncy balls with the loop you hang on to. When this didn't work, we would gently grab their shoulders and push down to give them a little extra umph. Most had a fun time with it.

I am not sure which game this was.

This is Jan and I bestowing the medals to the winners. The medallions were made of chocolate covered with tin foil. I think most were eaten before they got too far.

Another shot of one of the groups. They do a lot of sing-a-long stuff. Seems to keep their attention and keeps them happy.

That's teacher Aww standing next to me. I think we were waiting to give the closing speeches or something. Aww is a hoot. She is great to work with, but has an impossible job that no one in their right mind would want. Being the middleman between the teachers and our boss would make anyone crazy.

And finally, is a the latest shot of 3/4 of us. That's Palmiez on the left, and Roong on the right. Palm is doing quite well in school so far. Pukky was still sulking at home over one thing or another. Her loss, we look damn good!

New Grading System

I am trying to come up with a new grading system at school. Something that will leave a lasting impression of how serious a matter good grades are on the kids. Archery just seemed a logical step.

The "IN" Crowd Cafe Project

Welcome to the "IN" Crowd Project. Please let me explain what this is all about. There is not much of a retirement plan here in Thailand for a teacher. Because of this, I decided it would be nice to own a little cafe to spend those final sunset days waiting to take the dirt nap. The problem is that cafes don't come cheap. Having already come up with a t-shirt and sign design for the cafe, and deciding that Pattaya was a beautiful place to have it. Thailand is a great place to retire, due to all the nice things to see and do, and also because the cost of living is very affordable. So now, I figure it's time to try and sell enough of the tees to get the cafe.

Here are a few shots of Pattaya and the beach. Pattaya is about 2 hours south of Bangkok. During the day, it's a place to for boating, fishing, swimming, or just hanging out at the beach..

At night, it turns into a crazy fun place. There are plenty of restaurants, bars, dance clubs, and pretty girls to keep you busy. This is a shot of the infamous "Walking Street". Walking Street is only about 100 yards from the beach. It's a wild place at night, but in the daytime, its just a quiet spot by the beach, where you can take a beer break from strolling about, or have lunch and chat.

And last but definitely not least, are two of Pattaya's main attractions. :)

So, here's the deal...If you buy one of the "IN Crowd" t-shirts, your name, hometown, and e-mail addy (if you want) will go on the wall of the cafe, so all the world will see that you helped put the walls there in the first place. And, of course, I will happily buy you a beer, if you ever happen to wander into the cafe wearing your "IN Crowd" shirt. So please help support the IN Crowd Cafe Project by buying on of my "IN" Crowd Cafe T-Shirts.

And don't forget to get your very own "IN" Crowd beer stein for when you stop in.

I have calculated that I need to sell about 62,500 of these to buy a bar in Pattaya, so start saving your pennies, and please remember to tell 62,499 other people about The "IN" Crowd Cafe Project.

*Total "IN Crowd" Tee sales as of 11/20/08 = 18

School stuff

I couldn't remember if I had put up a pic of the school after it had been added on to.

We are full up at about 2800 students.

This first shot is of the kids playing "chair ball". They have 2 teams of about 8 kids, on a field about half the size of a soccer field. The object is to pass the ball (you can't run with it) to your other team mates, and get it down the filed. Once there, you throw the ball, over the goalies head, and your team mate standing on the chair, tries to catch it in the basket. They have a load of fun with this.

Is my class thrilling, or what?

A few of the cheerleaders taking a break. They take their cheering seriously here. They will all have laryngitis tomorrow

This is the next team warming up in the bullpen.

Uncontrolled chaos!

Sunflower Time in Thailand

Yep, it's sunflower time again here in Thailand. They are just starting to bloom now. Once the big farm crops are going, there are seas of these pretty flowers everywhere. We are hoping that it doesn't rain anymore for a while, as these plants don't like to much water. Last year's crop was pretty disappointing, because they got rained out. These are just a few shots that Roong and I took last Saturday, to make cards and posters with, that you can see on RedBubble.

More Pattaya Pics and Poo's Baby

These are a few photos that I got from Noi and Tan from the Pattaya trip.....

Teacher Poo finally had her baby. I swear that she has been pregnant for 2 years. She had the baby while we were on vacation, so I don't know her name yet.

This is a shot of with Tan (l) and Noi (r) at the big Wat near Pattaya.

Group shot of a few of the teachers that went on the Pattaya trip.

Another group shot.

This is a shot from the cabaret show they went to on Monday night. Jan and I didn't go, because we didn't want to spend another 2 hours on that damn bus, so we went and raided the strip on "Walking Street". Tan and Noi wanted to come with us, but got the evil eye from Nang (Mrs. Boss), and chickened out. Maybe next time. They said the show was ok, but I think we had more fun.