Monday, October 27, 2008

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.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Howdy!


Roong opened the front door to go feed Bongo, and noticed we had a visitor. He was kind of hard to miss. Those tiles he's sitting on are 9" tiles, so you can get an idea of how large he is. Between the scorpions, the lizards, and the cobras, it''s like a damn zoo around here.

The night we raided Pattaya





Our boss took about 90 of the teachers on a short vacation to Pattaya. And, I do mean short. Pattaya is a costal resort town that is about 4 hours away from here. It's probably the naughty capital of Thailand. There is all kinds of trouble to get up too. I didn't get many photos, because most of the activity happens at night, and the shots didn't come out so good. Sorry about that.

At about 5 am, we all hopped on 2 big tour buses and headed out. Jan and I were in a small compartment with about 10 other teachers. These idiots started pounding down that cheap ass Thai whiskey immediately. Then, the started singing karaoke. There was a small tv and a sound system in the compartment. Thai music is hard enough to handle, but listening to these fools screech was too much. Because we stopped at a few places on the way, the 4 hour trip down there took 12 hours! Their plan was to arrive at 5pm, go to a caberet show at 7pm, and then leave again at 9am the next day. You gotta be kidding me! As I said, Pattaya is fun central here. There was no way Jan and I were going to spend 24 of 48 hours on a damn bus listening to them again. So, Jan and I stayed an extra day. We had a blast! There was so much to see and do there. There are restaurants from evey country, the beach, great live music and plenty of bars with pretty girls that can't wait to spend your money. I loved it.

Pattaya is a lot cleaner and more interesting than Bangkok. It's not quite as expensive either. The new dream is too retire there. Upon Roong hearing that, she just glared at me. Haaaa. She has been there several times. I will have to work on her for a looooong time to get her to agree to this I think. Roong got a new Pentax camera, so, the next time I go, I will take that, and try and get some decent photos. Night shots are hard with my little Nikon, and I didn't want to take that to the beach for fear of getting it wet, or sand in it, or have it stolen. These shots are of one of the Wats that we stopped at, the great band at "The Rolling Stone" Bar on "Walking Street", and Lamai the bartender there.

And the winner is......ME!

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Yowzaaa! I won a contest! The groups on RedBubble have contests all the time, called "Challenges". We join lots of groups, so you can get your submitted artwork seen by lots of people. These groups will suggest a subject or topic, and the members make artwork accordingly. After a few days, everyone votes on which art they think works the best. One of the groups I belong to is called Japanfluence. The topic this time was "working and playing in Japan. I submitted this origami instruction T-shirt design as my entry, and I won. It's called "Origami Samurai", because it shows you how to fold a little origami samurai helmet. The prize is not only being the featured artist for the group for a while, but I also won an original painting by the artist who sponsors the group. Her name is Thickblackoutline. Be sure and give her page a look.

I was very surprized, because there were many terrific works submitted. I thought it would be a cute idea to put origami instructions on a T-shirt. I got great reviews from many friends. They suggested that I do bunch of different ones, and try selling them as a stand alone niche idea, so I will do that. The one below shows you how to make a squid. Please check out my other works at My RedBubble Page.

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