Exciting Start… (another trip to the emergency room)

Wow, what an exciting beginning to 2011 :) Last night everything ran like clockwork… You had your dinner, had your bath and was all cosy in bed asleep by around nine. Then at around midnight both your mother and I heard you crying, thinking nothing of it, your mother went into auto pilot mode.

In the dark she picked you up and started to cradle you to sleep, but something was wrong… then your mother turned on the light. I was in the kitchen when I heard your mother scream (of course in a calm way :) ), dropping everything I ran to your bedroom, and saw blood everywhere!

 
Your mother was checking every millimetre of your body, and it was obvious that all the blood was coming from your bottom lip… somehow you had fallen over and badly gashed your bottom lip. Leaving nothing to chance, we got dressed and quickly got into the car to go to the hospital… and here is a funny story :)

It is quite a long walk from the elevator to our car, so usually I would jump out at parking level 2 while your mother and you ride the elevator to the lobby and wait for me to pick you both up. So that is what I thought was going to happen, but this time your mother decided to follow me out from the elevator. I ran toward the car, not realising that your mother was trotting behind, carrying a very sleepy & bloodied lip you :). I got in the car and sped off to the ground floor (also driving passed your mother without seeing her or you), leaving your mother very puzzled and kind of crossed :) After I arrived at the ground floor I realised almost immediately that your mother must have followed me out of the elevator… the rest is history :) of course it wasn’t funny at the time :)

The Dr. took a good look and decided that the gash was wide but not deep, so he decided against putting in a stitch (much to our relief)… Some one thousand and seven hundred bahts lighter, we headed back home… Of course the night had just started for me, as I had to stripped and re-made your bed, washed all the bloodied clothes (my shirt was covered), cleaned all the walls and floor as well as the dirty dishes and washed your bottles, it was way passed two when my head touches the pillow (can you hear the sad violin in the background? :) ).

Please let the rest of the year be less exciting :)

Together

Although by the end of November you’ll see all sorts of iconic Christmas decorations being put up all over the city, especially in the leading department stores, hotels, major office building, and on main roads. Of course colourful lights are mandatory, a (fake) Christmas tree is also a must, as well as a perfect snowman made from the perfect polystyrene, Santa Clause do make an appearance, even a few reindeer here and there. But as a nation, 25th of December is just another working day, oh well, at least the lights do cheer up my little Matt to no end, screaming ‘lights’ every second can be very annoying to say the least.
 

The official holiday started on the 31st and ended on the 3rd, during these few days where a large number of Bagnkokian leaves the capital city, either for overseas or upcountry, Bangkok suddenly became a totally different city, to me it is now able to breath, smile and even laugh, it seems Bangkok also needs a holiday :)

No bad vibes oozing from every traffic jams, there were less pollution, less anger and frustrations; street hawker are also taking their much needed rest (simply because there were no customers), so the footpaths were no longer a compilation of mini mission impossible type assault courses, being able to walk freely is quite liberating.

Of course there are always an opposing view, ‘Boring vs Blissful’ would be the best description of each viewpoint. I do fall heavily in the ‘blissful’ camp, during these few days Bangkok or Krung Thep (Thai name) have a chance to truly reflect in the  meaning of its name, ‘City of Angles’.

We spent most of our time in various parks, walking and talking, a thoroughly wonderful & uneventful holiday, it was very good just being together :)

The final curtain call for 2010

2010 will soon be just a faded image in our rear view mirror, sitting back and staring at the credit card size calendar, reflecting on what had happened in the past twelve months is turning out to be quite a good mental exercise.

Anyway, lets hope 2011 bring only joy, happiness and prosperity to all of us :)

I wonder if I could reach 100 posts next year? :)

Returning to the Marble Tripitaka

We got there a bit earlier than last time, so there were some goooooooood light left :) (are there such a thing as bad light???). So this time round, I had to get some pics of the marble tripitaka (I think I got too carried away with the post processing…).

After a good walk around, it was obvious that this place have been neglected, although it is still in an ok/good condition but, as important that this place is, it should have been in better shape (more top notch), in one particular corner it was being used as a storage place for a huge old wooden door.

Pigeons were everywhere but there were no usual mess that seems to follow these pests, so these were either the cleanest pigeons I have ever seen or they were all totally constipated, because in a simple equation, Pigeons equals a pile of … :)

My only wish this Christmas…

Dear Father Christmas,

My only wish this Christmas is for a boffin to re-invent all of the known medicine for toddlers.

Our Matt is about two and a half, and after a visit to the Doctor last week, he was given 4 bottles of liquid medicine. One for his cold, one to ease his congestion, one to ease his phlegm and the most important one was the antibiotic, all of these came in different colours and flavours; green, yellow, orange and white...

Obviously I took the easy way out, all of the above went into his milk except for the white antibiotic (not allowed to be mixed with milk), and of course there was no hope in *&^^ that he was going to willingly swallow that.

Who the *&^^ would invent an antibiotic for toddlers that is a thick white liquid and smells like a million bananas being squeezed into a single drop! It was like making him swallow ‘over ripen banana flavoured Tipp-ex’.
 
 
And of course the dreaded syringe had to come out, oh what joy. Giving him this antibiotic can be classified as torture for both him and us. We hate it, the missus have to lock down his arms while I use one hand to gently squeeze his mouth, of course he would be gritting his teeth like his life was depending on it, you would have thought we were giving him poison (perhaps we were, perhaps it was really banana flavoured correction fluid).




 
 

After getting through his gritted teeth, comes the most powerful tongue in the known universe, it is like duelling against a giant one tentacle octopus, the syringe would be fighting to get into the correct position, while the tentacle would be cunningly getting in the way and pushes the syringe out.

Ok, I am in position to deploy the correction fluid, I am now gently squeezing the syringe to release the ghastly white paste into the deepest side of his cheek; his final trick is a classic and I have no idea who had taught him to spit while his mouth was fully open.

It’s like a giant whale’s blow hole, for a millisecond I could see that he had blocked off his throat, and most of the white ooze is just laying there, and in a blink of an eye I could tell that he was drawing in air through this tiny nose and next comes the release… just like a whale’s blow hole… I never knew the white thick antibiotic is so difficult to get out of clothes, face and hair.

The counter punch is to make him swallow before the air intake… not always possible… of all the bouts we have taken, I’d guessed we are talking about 50-50 success rate, which is pretty darn good, did I mention the crying and the screaming that comes with every bout?

I lost it once, ended up slapping the sofa and shouted at him like I was an idiot, of course I felt absolutely terrible straight away, I was making him drink correction fluid that smells like a banana, anyone would fight tooth and nail against that too.

Coming back to my wish, someone please just invent an odourless and colourless medicine with a consistency of H2O, but at the same time make it so potent that one would only need to use 1 cc instead of the usual 5 or 3 cc. Matt loves to drink water from a syringe, he can go all day long pushing syringe after syringe of water into his mouth, but anything else is just a no no…

So Dear Father Christmas, please, I have already been watching out, and I have not cried and I am certainly not pouting… so please just give me a boffin who can make my wish come true…

Practice Practice Practice

This was taken back some time in June of this year, while we were on a business trip in Shanghai. The group was given a few minutes to wander around; not being much of a shopper I decided to head for the nearest road and whipped out the G7.

Have been trying the pan technique on & off for a about a week, and so far have not had a single acceptable photo. This was the first ‘acceptable’ capture ever :)

What worked for me was to use continuous shooting mode and the panning was purely guess work, which got better with experience. I kept rushing the camera while panning, so instead of keeping pace with the subject my composition often cropped out part of the subject.

Wow Grandma, what big eyes you have!

I have no idea how this came to be, but the latest trend over here right now are these ‘big eyes’ contact lens. They are just like normal contact lens, a pair lasts about four weeks and purely for cosmetic purposes.

It simply increases the size of the pupil of your eyes, and I must admit the effect can be stunning... frighteningly stunning... it is like looking into someone possessed, making very hard to hold a normal conversation :) (especially at work).

Looking at the point of purchase materials, it looks like these came from (South) Korea, apparently Thailand’s teens are all Korea crazy at the moment, just like the British invasion of the American music scene, K-pop are everywhere and in everything from sweets packaging to representing the top motorcycle brand.

Hoping it will be just another phase

For the past few weeks your eating has gotten so much better, but a couple of days ago we noticed you were chewing but ended up spitting out all of the food rather than swallowing it. Yesterday and this morning you have decided to go back to square one, refusing all solid foods.

Not exactly sure why this has come back, we are all hoping it is just another phase you are going through, both your mother’s and my patience were running so thin yesterday, going back to square one was quite hard to take and so frustrating. However, this morning our senses have returned, at least you are still taking you milk.

You are now on your Christmas break, so to keep you entertain, we decided to enroll you into another half day nursery, it is so much better than having you cooped up in the room, as this nursery is only across the road, we decided to walk across the overpass rather than driving. Walking and carrying all your stuff took some getting use to but as of now it is all running like clockwork :)

Marble Tripitaka

 

Not wanting to take you to same old places especially when Phutthamonthon is such a huge place, there was this landmark that I have been meaning to visit but never did.

On this day your mother decided to stay home to make her infamous soap, it was just you and I this time…

Tripitaka Marble Shrine (actually not quite sure if is correct to call it a shrine) totally took my breath away, unfortunately didn’t have a chance to take a pic of the Tripitaka itself (ran out of light juice), just imagine a tall man height marble slab, at about one and a half to two meters in width and about 15 cms in thickness. On it are etching of Buddhist canon. But there wasn’t just the one, there were hundreds of these, all laid out in a circle surrounding the centre shrine architecture (these pics).

It would have made a really good location for a ‘Lara Croft – Tome Raider’ game (by the time you are old enough to understand this I am sure Tomb Raider would have already been totally forgotten).

It was obvious that I found this place far more interesting than you did, being only two and a half all you wanted to do was to play hide & seek, and in this place hiding (your job) was easy, seeking (my job) was frighteningly super difficult… :) However in this serene surrounding it was totally inappropriate (although I was awfully tempted to have a quick game).

And now for something completely different…

 

During this past long weekend there was an event in Lumpini Park, International Street Show (in Bangkok).

There were 12 stages plus some roaming shows all around, what a nice change of pace, it had a real festival feel to it, unfortunately the weather was far too hot and humid…
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

With everything that was going on, I had only managed to take Matt there late one evening while the event was winding down, walking with a pram against the hoards of people coming from the opposite direction was like swimming against a land slide, after a couple minutes and 2 cms later, an alternative route was taken… Managed to get to station number 11, a show from Laos, “Kabong Lao”. 
 
It was a great change to see a performance that was not based on physical strength or agility, but an actual performance-performance… We had already hit a real Gem with our first stop.

After a few minutes Matt was getting a bit restless, and that was a signal to move on…

The next stop was a pair of acrobats from the Netherlands, “Bencha Theatre”, talking about a ‘Wow’ factor… it had a flying hoop and everything (leaving the rest to your imagination). Matt was mesmerised, but now it was my turn to get a bit restless, people dangling from hoop and ropes was nothing new, the choreograph was actually very good, and I must say seeing it live did hold my total attention for a while…

The night ended with a huge balloon and a ‘multi coloured flashing light stick’ thingy for Matt… and now we are having trouble taking both away from him :)