Waiting For Mama

 

“Another day, another morning walk, but today was different… when I woke up, I was all alone…

After screaming a little, no one came…

What else could I have done if I didn’t follow my daily routine,

jumped out of the cot, walked gingerly downstairs to make my own bottle.

Got dress, still having a hard time tying the shoe-laces, so that took a bit of time.

Trying to reach the keyhole in the door also took forever...

Now that I was out, there wasn’t a soul in sight… decided to wait for Mama…”

(actually she is really only behind me in this photo :)

Nothing Like a Brisk Walk in the Morning…

 

Since you have started walking (kind of), it had become one of your routine to have a quick walk most mornings. We think the only reason you enjoying walking so much is in fact because of the ‘Chase’… The little dog’s name is ‘Chao-Gooauy’ (which is actually a Chinese dessert, the best description is ‘Black Herbal Jelly’ eat with brown sugar (absolutely delicious)).

First thing first, you must be wondering what is on your head… am I right?

That is a rabbit hat, now now, don’t blame me, I did my best to hide the darn thing, but you see, your mother has this 7 sense (the seventh sense is a gift to catch me out in whatever I am trying to hide), luckily there were no fashion police around, for if there were, you would surely have been incarcerated for atrocious headgear! (99 days prison term and 25 lashes).

  

The Alexandria Link – Steve Berry

Finished it around one this afternoon, this was my first book by Steve Berry, it certainly didn’t blow me out of my seat/bed/car/toilet (for the past 2 weeks I must have read this book almost everywhere) but it certainly was a good ride… I think if you enjoy Dan Brown, then there is no harm to give this book a glance.

To me, you can break the book down into 3 fights. Cotton Malone vs Dominick Sabre (aka Jimmy McCollum), I think this was supposed to be the main fight, but honestly I found myself attached to this book not because of the ‘road’ to the “Library” (by Malone and Sabre), but to the second and third fights.

Second being between Stephanie Nelie vs ‘I don’t know who to trussssssssttttttt’ (Brent Green? or Danny Daniels? or Larry Daley?, and the third fight was between Henrik Thorvaldsen vs Alfred Hermann. It was these two co-stories that had me glued to the book, I think this was Steve Berry 5th book and the second with Cotton Malone as the main character.

Like Star Wars, I have decided to move backward, I have just started ‘The Third Secret’ by the same author… looking forward to it, there is no doubt by year end I should have read all of his books (8 or them, and 5 had Cotton Malone as lead.

A Bunch of Lens

When I got the  D90 a few months back, I had promised your mother that I shan’t be buying any accessories for the camera, so far so so so ‘terrible’… Somehow the D90 had turned me into an old woman, I began to have ‘bags’ (camera) fetish… I just could not get enough of the camera bags… just bought another one from my latest trip to the Philippines (Crumpler 7 MDH, just like all the bags before this, I absolutely love it… until the next bag of course).

Before this your mother got me the best present ever… the grip for the D90… and now I have an itch for lens… listening to TWIP (This Week in Photography, www.twiplog.com) every week doesn’t help… 50 mm prime lens is a must have for portrait or should I get something more interesting like a fisheye lens, how about lensbaby, or tilt shift… or this… or that… aaaaahhhhhh

Time to meditate… and let it go… the kit lens 18 – 105 mm is great, and fine… (repeat 100 times).

It doesn’t help, when one of my colleague (Mink, who had actually studied photography at Uni.) brought in her old University kit (Nikon 801). Once she found out I had a Nikon, she was wondering if her old lens (16 years old) would work with the new body… eerrrmmm I was salivating.

24 – 50 mm, 105 mm micro, 70 – 210 mm, not to mention all the filters and loads more stuff, it was such a laugh. Mink was kind enough to offer them for me to take home, but I had decided against it, I mean, a weekend with these bunch of lens would probably mean an end of my marriage… haa haa, I am not kidding, your mother would have kicked me out of the house quicker than you can spit your milk all over the cat.

Love you.

M & D

Not as difficult as the real 2 iron

Right after Songkran (April) we were told you’ll be moving up to level 3 at your weekly Gymboree class, meaning it will now starts at 15:00 rather than 14:00, which is of course great for us, no more rushing around trying to get there on time (but somehow we still managed to be late).

Level 3 is for babies who are just started to walk, most of your classmates have also moved up as well (Taeya and Pound). It is such a laugh for me to see all of you walking and falling all over the place, this time your teacher was trying to get all of you to kick a ball… what a lark that was! It was more like playing golf, I mean, I was the golfer and you were my 2 iron, because there was no hope in h$%^ you were going to kick that ball so I cheated (just) a little, by picking you up and used you like a golf club to hit the ball… your mother was not impressed. 

Building a new system

It is such a bad time to think about building a new system, I was just gathering some information about building a new PC, and have come across so many factors that have put me off for the time being…

First of all Core i7 is still so expensive at this moment, all the new motherboards look so attractive but again I think USB 3 is coming, and it will be a while before that is incorporated into the MB. USB 3 is such a huge leap from USB 2, I think it is worthwhile to wait, this is especially true when I am in no rush to upgrade. Although my set up right now can be look upon as ‘pre-historic’ with Pentium D at the heart of the system.

Apart from the hardware, Windows 7 is only just beyond the horizon, and hopefully it will be as good as everyone is saying. Another development I am waiting for is the SSD, there is no doubt that soon it will be the standard C: drive (as soon as the capacity increases and the price drop). Another thing I am waiting for is the Drobo to come to Thailand, there are is no official distributor yet (fingers cross).

The most important thing is to get permission from your mother… :) and that could take a while…

It’s just like Flying a kite (22.05.2009)

I think trouble is coming :), yesterday when we came home (in the city), we found my mother very excited, she couldn’t wait to tell us that you have taken your first couple of steps… you are already a handful on your four, can not imagine you running around and us trying to keep up… I am already knackered just thinking about it.

Ok, imagine this, there were 3 of us, sitting in a triangle formation, your grandmother has this down to perfection… here goes…

First is to make you stand up (by holding you under your arms) then wait until you are almost still (waiting for you to be still is like waiting for the rain to stop in a monsoon season)

Slowly, we transfer one of our hand from underneath your arm to grab on to your shirt (at the back), then remove the other hand, so what we have now is you standing by your own with only us holding on to the back of your shirt, honestly it is like just flying a kite, you would be swaying from side to side and of course we have absolutely no control whatever… :)

Here comes the tricky part, ‘aiming’, let say you started with me, so now I have you in the ‘launch’ position… (check list… standing (yep), shirt holding (yep), smiling (yep)). Aiming is 80% luck and 20% destiny, what I did was to wait until you looked at your mother and the real signal is when you stick out both of your arms… now ‘THAT’ is the time to let go…

Talking about a great example of a ‘waddle’, grown ups usually walked that bad usually only after a few pints of snake bite & black, right now you can only manage 3 to 4 steps (in an almost straight line).

Today we have Gymboree, I am sure the rest of your classmate, Taeya and Pound would now be waking too… can not wait to see them all with you today, thinking about all of you waddling around makes me smile…

Love you.

M&D

Monsoon is here

It had been raining quite hard for the past couple of days, it was an absolute nightmare on this past Thursday and Friday, when it began to rain heavily right through the rush hour, driving on the roads really tested one’s ability to remain calm. The rain will make you driver slower and to add to it, all the accidents that happens and you have a recipe for a fantastic traffic jam.

Last Thursday, we had left the house a little late, but it took us over 2 hours to get into the city where usually it only take around an hour, meaning after dropping you off and driving to my office, I didn’t get into the office on that day until around 11, by the time I had settled in it was lunch time (talking about feeling guilty), and I was not the only one.

But we don’t really mind the rain, it means all the farmers will now have enough water for their farm, the weather seems to be getting a little strange of late. There is a ‘winter’ season, but usually it only consists of one or two cooler days, but last year there were some weeks where one would say it was actually ‘cold’, the ‘summer’ is getting hotter and hotter by the year. This year is absolutely noticeable, the heat was quite unbearable.

Some say that the peak of the summer is our ‘Songkran day’, then slowly we move into the monsoon season, always, the first rain is the hardest with very strong gale and this year was no different. Since the first rain we have been getting heavy downpour almost everyday, we are now in May, so there will be many more months of rain yet.

Turning slightly “Orange”

Several times during this past two to three weeks, several people had mentioned that you looked slightly ‘orange’, and when putting you next to us you can really notice that you are slightly orange… Well, this was not that surprising to us, your diet consists of quite a lot of pumpkins and carrots, but in reality you should have turn “green” considering how much more of the green vegetables you’ve been eating (Broccoli, Chinese Cabbage, Ivy Gourd, Spinach, courgettes and etc).

Anyway, all the comments we’ve been getting got us a little paranoid today, so on your way back (from your swimming exercise), your mother popped in to see the Doc. just in case. Well, apparently as long as your eye is still white all should be fine, but we’ve been told to lay off all the ‘orange’ food for the time being.

No more carrots/pumpkins for a while… :)

Love you.

Mum and Dad

Happy First Birthday

Happy Birthday… you are a massive 1 year old (May 5th), luckily you were born on a public holiday (Chatmonkol Day) so I had a day off. As you can see, your right eye is still a little green, trust me it looks a lot better than just a couple of days ago.

After your breakfast and your morning sleep we decided to go out, the first port of call was ‘Baromrachakarnjanapisekanusorn’ temple, it was close by and had become well known through television (still getting use to the camera, this time I had left it on iso 1600 by mistake… so the pics look a little grainy… :) )
 

It was such a hot day even for Thailand, moving from building to building we had to walk barefoot on searing hot stone floor, I should have taken some clips of us running across the hot floor, it was not a pretty sight.

After  arriving there, it was not difficult to gasp why it took over 12 years to build this Chinese style temple; full of small detail and very well structurally organised, all in all very impressive.

I don’t want to admit this, but I think your mother can take better photos than I can on this camera.

After the temple, the next stop was a water market near by, your mother came across this from one of the guide she was given (sorry I can not remember the name of this water market), it was about 20 Kms away but the drive took longer than it should because the roads were terrible (most of the roads were under construction). We must have arrived there around 15:00, but the market was already closing, most of the stalls were closing up, so the plan to have a late lunch here went out of the window.

  

Driving back home was not that bad, we had to stop off at a market near our home to get some dinner, your mother and I were both totally famish, more importantly we had to get you a cake… how can it be a birthday without a cake? :)

Of course we took forever shopping, this time our stomachs were much larger than our eyes… Anyway, we got a cake and a candle as you can see (sorry, this photo was captured from an mp4 clip so the quality is rather terrible).

I am still trying to find a free mp4 editor program, so there will be no post of any clip until then…

Love you.

Mum and Dad