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Hello! No pictures! No scans!
I have now spent a more-than-full week at school. 'More-than-full' because my classes actually began tuesday but I was so anxious to get started that I spent 7 hours on monday in Freshman Introduction to English. I should have known I was in the wrong class because I chose each one and I didn't sign up for Introduction to English, but I had forgotten... The good news is that I met some girls in the class and I actually went to a movie with one of them on Friday. Her name is Meen (not "cruel" and not "the average"). We're going to hang out later today at a mall...

My real class, Electronic Commerce, is pretty good. The group of people that I'm joining have been together for two years so they all know eachother well. It's an interesting group of people. There are four guys from China, one guy from Columbia, a German/Thai guy, a lot of ethnic Chinese Thais, two Thai girls that have lived in the US (one for middle school and high school), and one ethnic Taiwanese guy that was born in Singapore but spent twelve years in an international school in Bangkok so he only speaks English (perfectly). The teacher is a german guy, U. Werner, that I had actually emailed for the first time about eight months ago. He runs the international program's webpage so he thinks that I'm proof he's doing a great job (I didn't tell him that I accidentally wandered onto RU a year and a half ago, liked it, took a digital picture of the school's logo, emailed it to my friend in Singapore who showed it to her Thai teacher who finally knew the name of the school. Then I spent at least six months trying to get in contact with any of the faculty - my "lucky break" was when I googled the Thai version of the website for "IIS" and found the email address of a student. I emailed her a few times and she gave me the program director's email. So the webpage, to use Werner's expression, "is shit").

It's funny having a German teacher. He paces around the front of the room bolt-upright smirking at his jokes that no one understands. When he gets real hot on a topic he'll lapse into a thick German accent, raise his eyebrows cuz he's so sensible, look for the horizon through the back wall, and whack the projection screen with his pencil. When people talk in class (and they talk all the time) he starts telling them to be quiet very playfully by smiling and making bad jokes. By the end of the day, though, he'll stop pacing, look the person straight in the eye, and say "wouldyoupleaseshutup"... then he waits about five seconds before continuing. The guy commutes about two hours to school every day. He lives way out of Bangkok for some damn reason. About commuting, most students in the international program spend about an hour on the bus getting to school - Meen spends an hour and a half. The international program costs about twenty times more than the normal in-Thai programs, so most of the students are somewhat rich. Being rich, their families live in Bangkok so the students still live at home. After school most of the IIS students hop on a bus to go back home to sit on the computer - a bit annoying actually. The majority of the regular Thai students are from the south so they're away from their families in Bangkok like me. They're much more independent, I think. Bumming around Ram Rd. doing nothing...

Class is definately not hard. Our only assignment so far was a complete/incomplete type thing that I did in about ten minutes. One of the guys conned me into being in his little group and it took twice as long as it should have... Also, the dress code is not enforced at all. You can wear whatever you want. All the girls wear the uniform, though; even the International Program pin. Why? It's cute. Meen wears these white socks and sneakers...

How is everyone on the w-w-w?

12_06_05

12_06_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

Hmmm... I was able to locate a scanner that doesn't believe in gray tones and this was the result. It turns out the same place won't let me upload pictures so I'd have to go to two seperate internet cafes to post anything. So I'm still looking around...

Let's see. Last update was the gay bar! The next day I paid my tuition and ran into some people that I'd briefly met before:

(I'm having to use Paint to resize and save these pictures before I upload them - Paint compresses them way too much so there's no detail at all. Aiyo, where's some good 'ol Photoshop...) When I first walked on to Ramkhamhaeng a year and a half ago I really just liked the "feel" of the place. It reminded me of the Singapore American School back in the 60's. I still get that feeling, actually. Some things remind me of the old International Baptist Church ... I love the library here. I'll post about 20 pictures of the first chance I get.

Mmm. So I was sitting around with those people for two hours or so. They're all in a club that's for people from a certain province in the south. They actually invited me on their three-day trip down there next month.

The Big Wat at the Grand Palace (could google the name but mee times running out). The girl on the left, Ning, goes to Chulalongkorn. It's the oldest, most prestigious university in Thailand (RU is tamada - "so so")

So we went over to her university to walk around and eat at an ice cream stall that's been around for a long time. Very pretty campus. We wanted to get a look around so we went up to the top (19th) floor of the science building. The other two girls went back to the ground level to use the bathroom when I noticed that one elevator went to "R". So Ning and I went up... those buildings on the right are the school's oldest, I think. I'd seen pictures of them before. Ning was really excited to be on the roof... she was smiling like she was going insane or something...

We went over to MBK to look for a phone for me. This cost 1200baht or $30 which is very cheap for over here. The phones the other girls had were 3000-4000b. I think it's good! Oh, that's my new number too.

So yesterday I was just sort of bumming around. That's when I found the crap scanner. I ran into everybody when I was coming back to the apartment. I went with them to a big dinner then we walked over and sat outside the indoor stadium for an hour or so. Then ice cream. Very, very nice evening lazing around laughing. Today:

School boy.

Drunk!

Hiya! Some very interesting days in Bangkok! I went to Chinatown two days ago to buy some tea. Took the water taxi which goes all the way to Siam Square (veddy Central Bangkok) for 14 baht. The water is sooo black... anyway, it was so different in the "city" compared to where I live. Big buildings, tons of white people walking around, swanky hotels, traffic... not so good, really. But I went to Chinatown, got some oolong tea, and found a chawsiew place to eat at. Got chawsiew mee with wontons. It was really busy so a guy, maybe 45, and his girl friend had to sit at my table. We started talking cuz he spoke good english and it turns out he'd driven all the way from outside Bangkok, parked by the train to avoid traffic, taken the train then a taxi just to eat at this particular noodle stall. It's very famous for its wontons and its noodles, he said. Well the guy was pretty wealthy and he bought my dinner and suggested we all take a cab to his car where I could also get a bus. Very nice! After paying for the cab, he said that Ram was on the way to his place so he actually drove me all the way back. Wah lau. He was an ethnic chinese from Hainan but of the first generation born in Thailand - has a son in Canada. So I experienced a bit of the high-flying Bangkok. Now to the low-flying:


This is the main road I live on. Keep following it into the distance and you'll run into my school (gotta take a pedestrian overpass though). To get to my apartment, you'd turn left where that big white building on the left meets the ground. And you'd see...

See that motorcycle driving down the street (not the red guy)? You'd turn right just where he is to get to my place.

Everyone has been really nice and laid back. It's been fun meeting new people and just walking around. So yesterday I was hanging around with these girls but mostly with those three that I met first from my apartment. We had lunch and dinner (dinner was sooooo gooooood... and a total of $6 for four people - expensive for here).

Room

Allright, many pics this time. The first one is along one of the 'klongs' were you can hop on a boat to central Bangkok. The second is the pavillion in the pond at Ramkhamhaeng. Nice, eh? Still trying to find a scanner though....
So Bangkok is good! On Sunday morning I was about to go out to look for an apartment (Max, the guy who helped me the night before, wrote down some questions in Thai) so I was about to go out when another guy from the hotel, Teung, asked if he could help me look. Good. We started looking on the other side of the school where there are more shops and, I found out later, it's supposedly safer to live. The first place we went was his sister's room to get try to get some info. We woke her and her roommate up and and it turned out there were no rooms in that building. We kept looking for at least 3 hours, going down one road (soi) until it was too far and then going down the next road. We finally found a place that looked really good and I signed for it. Twas 2500 baht a month which works out to about $65. Not bad. After that, we went over to a friend of Teung's place. We woke him up too. Teung and him had been out dancing the night before and there were glasses of stale beer sitting around. So they emptied those out and went to 7-11 to get some more... we only had a bottle each but I hadn't eaten all day except for some papaya so I was suprisingly "silly". We sat around listening to some bad, cheap reproductions of recognizable songs. They asked me if I knew who the singer was and I just laughed... but I don't want to seem like a music snob or anything. Casual listening is always good; I would rather listen to the music I like alone. Me and Teung ate some lunch then it started to rain and we got caught in Ramkhamhaeng for a while:




Back at the hotel:

And this is the new room. The front door is just to my left:

I've gotta work on the matress... it's just a thin bag of cotton. That "sheet" is from my freshman trip to Bali. We had to buy sarongs so we could go in a temple and I found it recently in a box. When I get a real sheet I'm gonna use it as a curtain.

That fan cost about $20, actually. A heavy son of a bitch. Had to carry that and my water-boiler for about 45 minutes from a department store.

Here's the water plan: 1) Make drinking water with the water-boiler, 2) Pour it into the clear, plastic bucket and let it cool down, 3) Fill up my glass bottle by using the faucet at the bottom of the bucket (not there yet)

Trash. TV and stereo gonna go there.


Hehe, I was shaving this morning when a guy from the apartment next to mine started talking to me. I was a bit shy at first about having a family right outside my window - but who cares. Best not to think about it and just do whatever you'd normally do.
Oh, I was lying bed trying to sleep last night when I got a very unexpected phone call. This was my first night in the room and no one knows my number (including me) but my phone was ringing... I pick it up and its some giggling local girls. They ask me what my name is and everything and I say, "Who.... Who are you?" She says, "My name, Nor." I'm like, "ahhh.... ok.... but, who are you?" "Nor!" It turns out that they were two floors up and had seen me move in. They came down and took me to their room (five of them in a room my size). They were really nice actually, and we sat around trying to talk for about 3 hours. We're gonna go look at a temple on Saturday morning... good! Nice to easily meet new people.
Well, I gotta go to the bank. I walked for a half hour over there then realized I didn't bring my new address... so my break is over. Bye bye.

From BKK

Well, I've been in Bangkok for two days now. It's good to sweat again. I'm actually wearing pants today because only seriously ah beng guys wear shorts. I'm still looking for an internet cafe with a scanner... may take a while. Maybe there's on at the library....

I went to every little tourist-crap/food/drink shop in Narita looking for one of these babies. I used to drink one of these everyday in High School ... still tastes somewhat off :D

Leaving Tokyo... I was looking for a computer to email matsuri but, alas....

My $7 dollar room... i thought i'd have a connected bathroom but, alas....

There's a patio outside my window with a door and it connects to the main hallway. A bit lax on the security. No problem, though. I just gotta carry around my passport and iPod in my bag when I leave.

Yah, so I realize these pictures suck. Sorry, I'll try to get some better ones. The food I've had so far has been really good. I got some Pad Thai last night that was awesome and this guy who was helping me look around for apartments showed me a stall that serves really good kwai teow tom yum. The food at the canteen at school is about 15-20 baht which is 37-50cents and veddy tasty. For apartments, I may rent a little place for about $60/month in a dorm right next to the school. At night there's hundreds of students just loitering around eating and stuff... very cool. Well, i'll try to get some actual content sometime soon...