Now it’s Official :)

Dear M & M,

Today your mother and I are now officially husband and wife :) Don’t ask why we had left it so long (after two ceremonies, after two receptions, after six years and  you two later, :) ) before going to the register office, I’d guess it wasn’t important for the both of us. However now that your mother has sacrificed her career to look after the both of you, registering seemed to be quite important, one prime example is the visa application, if we remained separate it would have been so difficult for her.

We went to the district office this morning, arriving there at around eleven(ish), there were tons of people  but the district office and other government offices have improved light years to what it was before, all web based application now :) Registering the marriage took less than half an hour and all we needed was our identification card, the rest of the documents was pulled from the system, such as our housing registration and your birth certificate.

I am more than glad we did it, just to make it official and by the book as they say :) she has already started to threaten me with the “D” word… haa haa haa :)

From three became four :)

Dear Marcella,

You came home today, and I thought we were well prepared this time, lol. Found out that I had forgotten a vital part of your mother’s pump, had to get on to a motorcycle taxi and rushed to Central Chidlom...

It is now coming fast to seven in the evening, you are fast a sleep in your cot that is sitting next to me, Matt is enjoying his supper, and your mother is scoffing down my mother’s cooking... lol. My mother is working overtime preparing food for your mother (which would then be delivered across the city to us), we (Thais) have our belief that certain food help the women to produce more milk after delivery... lol.

Unfortunately your mother’s parents are now in Chiang Rai (to the North of the country), to escape from the flood, the last time your auntie was at their home, the water was just about entering the house, but that was a week ago, we are all still hoping for the best.

Having difficult time choosing which photos to post, in four days I had already counted almost 500 photos... and 450 no one on earth would find interesting apart from me and you mother, haa haa haa, lol.

Love you,


Dad.

In readiness for the flooding of Bangkok 2011.

We have moved into the heart of Bangkok for almost a year now, so our house on the out skirt of the city has pretty much been empty (obviously) for the same amount of time, the house sits on the very edge of a sub district named Salathammasop, which is a part of the larger district called 'Taweewattana' and that sits on the top left hand corner of Bangkok, a sneeze away from Nonthaburi Province and Nakornpathom province.

To the North of our home lay two other districts, 'Bang Bua Thong' and 'Bang Yai' (both are part of Nonthaburi Province), both have been hit hard by the flood (so my area should be next). The first floor of a colleague's house is now 50 cms under water, however if you go out onto the main road of the housing estate then the water level is chest high. How can that be that in the year of 2011 any part of Bangkok can be chest high under water! This wasn’t some freak event like a hurricane or an earthquake, I believe there were warnings, several warnings, many are saying it was just poor management by the various authorities.

Yesterday, I had to go back to the out skirt home to pick up the cot, and decided to take a short trip to the local supermarket, talking about being totally prepared, there were make shift walls, sandbags and other water stopping measures everywhere, totally putting me to shame, all I did to prepare for this flood was literally 3 extra tins of tuna, several bottled water and two dozen eggs.

This market is at least 50 to 60 cms below the road, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to see this pretty hefty wall (but it was). 

People were selling life jackets and boats on the street; all bridges, even the expressway have turned into car parks, so was the U-Turn bridge near our home.

I am sincerely hoping that these people, who had no choice but to stay, will be safe and that the best case happens for them, that is somehow the water manages to miss them all.

Feeling like a Grasshopper…

I must admit that I have been a bit of a ‘Grasshopper’ so far with the advent of this horrific flood, as time passes and seeing the advancement of the unrelenting flood, together with all of the everyday essentials disappearing from the shelves, is quickly turning me into an ‘Ant’.

My main concern is clean water, with a three year old and another love of my life coming in about two weeks means clean water will be absolutely essential, so I have now started stocking water. To put things into perspective, we went to a restaurant today, and they couldn’t give us any water because they didn’t have any! All they had left was fizzy water (no brand will be mentioned here, lol).
 

That really scared the %$#* out of me, whether it was through panic buying or whatever, the result is the same if the water becomes contaminated from the flood (a very strong possibility here) there is a strong possibility that I shall not be able to find clean water in the near future and this is a good enough reason for me to also start stocking the essentials, just in case...

I wish I have become an Ant sooner than this... Well better late than never... :) Family do come first :) Personally I can live on beer for the next six months, lol.

Thailand flood: Watching Google.org Crises Response.

I never knew this service even existed, and I must think everyone of us in Thailand are watching this right now, to see the flood coming in graphical detail is quite frightening… The ground floor of a colleagues’ home is now under water, so he is now having to move into a hotel for the time being.

Looking at the map it looks like our outskirt home will be hit as well, but I am hoping that the area where our house is, is high enough to avoid the worst of the flood, nothing is certain until it hits.

http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/thailand-flood-2011.html

Everyday we are seeing it creeping closer and closer to the City Centre, nothing is certain now, Bang Yai and Bang Bon have already been hit, it is just a matter of time and the skills of the authority now.

Surprisingly no anger this time (stolen spare tyre).

My 5 years old Fortuner have spent more time standing still than on the road since we’ve moved into the city, and with the new job with a position car meaning the Fortuner has even less of a chance to run wildly on the open roads.

Anyway, it is well known that Fortuner is a soft target for spare tyre theft, as it hangs (in plain sight) under the boot of the vehicle. This past Sunday we drove the Fortuner to our home at the out skirt of the city, Gio noticed there was a unsymmetrical trapezium shape hole in the rear bumper... WTF, was my first thought, how on earth did that happen, even upon closer inspection I was still baffled on how it could have happened and not for a second did I realised that the spare had gone!

Did I back the car into a horizontal ‘this is Spata’ spear? Or was it just a simple case of a vandalisation? Anyway, it quickly went to the back of my mind and didn’t think much of it, and at around lunch time we drove back to the condo in the city.

In the same afternoon I took a taxi to take Matt to his Little Gym class, and on the way back as the taxi was stopping at the condo there was another Fortuner right in front of us, naturally I was focusing on his rear bumper... Then it hits me literally like a bolt of lightening. “Oh %^#& someone stolen my spare tyre”!




There was no anger, just very annoyed that the thief actually drove through the security guards, and had the time to remove the spare tyre without being spotted by the security guards. How did I know that it happened in the parking lot? Gio went down to look more closely and found the missing part of the rear bumper, it was still there in my parking spot.
 



After Gio found the plastic part, she went to verbally complaint to the management, they sat down and watched the CCTV feed, however the CCTV proved little use as they can only go back one week.

The day after I had to go to the police to log the case (this is a normal procedure in Thailand), not hoping for any compensation but will submit a letter to the condo’s management, just to let them know how disappointed we are. I was later told that another Fortuner also had his spare tyre stolen exactly in the same manner and probably at the same time as mine.

Bringing back memories.

It is amazing how some senses like smell can bring back so many memories, we have moved to the condo for just about a year now, meaning our house on the outskirt of the city have also been vacant for the same amount of time. Some time during this past week the ‘safety cut’ was tripped (perhaps due to the storm), so the house was without electricity for a week (at most), the consequences was a real pain in the behind.

Of course we do go back to the house now and then, so we still have some food frozen in the fridge-freezer, with such hot weather and without electricity the fridge-freezer had behaved like an oven. So when we turned up on this past Sunday, the smell was out of this world, the frozen stuff were no longer frozen but as black as night, the pork was swimming in its own juices and the mince meat was simple indescribable.

Although the stench (and the cleaning up) was a pain and very inconvenient, but I was more bothered  by the memories that it was bringing back. Back at the end of 2004 the earthquake in Sumatra had caused one of the most devastating natural disaster (Tsunami) in the South East Asia region. To cut a long story short, a group of us ended up flying down to help out with the relief effort, through osmosis all of us found different jobs to do; I ended up with the Dr. who had to individually examine the bodies that was coming in by the tens and hundreds each day.

Each team consisted mainly of a Doctor, 1 or 2 body examiners (me), 1 or 2 photographers, 1 evidence collector and 1 note taker. My job was to unwrap the body, then if they were clothed we would then re-arrange it so that it looked as normal as possible, then a photo would be taken.

After that the only objective was to find anything that could reveal the identity of the victims, going through the pockets, looking in the mouth, looking for tattoo(s), did they dye their hair, did they have false teeth, did the wedding rings have names in them, body piercing, estimate his/her age and so much more. Everything was photographed, all removable belongings were examined and collected then carefully logged.

The main message of every morning’s briefing was to ‘take them home’, meaning, find out who they were and bring them back to their family. Our group were there over the New Year period, as I remembered we didn’t celebrate much (obviously), had some beer then went to bed that was about it, in actually fact I don’t remember us talking to each other that much. I got up early, washed, walked to the temple (centre of operation) alone, drank 2 small tins of instant coffee, got dressed up then waited for the morning round to start.

Anyway this Sunday cleaning up was already a pain in itself, but all the while my mind was on old memories of an awful event that I truly wished it hadn’t happened at all, for the immense sadness did not come from the job I was doing but from seeing the families who were waiting anxiously all around.

7 Nights in Munich: (part 2) Friday & Saturday.

Sugar high… just drank three pints of full sugar coke… :) Ok, back to Munich, while we were there, one of the most famous global event was being held in Munich, the grand, the fantastic the unbelievable, Oktoberfest :) I mean who hasn’t heard of it, but I never realised how f-ing ‘HUGE’ it was!

Our German colleague said each “Tent” takes around 2 months to complete, in my mind a “Tent” should take more than 30 minutes, an hour max, of course when one of the tent (and there are 14 of them) can hold 8,500 and 2,500 seats inside and outside respectively, now two months seems pretty short.

From a quick glance at Wikipedia, “The Oktoberfest is known as the Largest Volksfest (People's Fair) in the World”, enough said. Disneyland + several breweries & wineries, what a perfect combination for quite a mess :) in fact I almost went that way too and I didn’t even need the rides, lol.


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I wished I could post photos of all of us making a fool of ourselves, but of course that would be so, so wrong of me (lol), Friday was only a half day at the office, everything was wrapped up by around three in the afternoon, our kind German colleagues when to change into their traditional clothes, what a lark, I was already having fun and we were no where near the festival yet :)


































The undergrounds took us straight to one of the main entrance of the festival (above top), I’ve seen lots of rides in my time but doesn’t that ‘Column of Natural Selection’ (right) seems insanely high to you?


I really thought I had more ‘showable’ photos than just these four, some were out of focus, a few were private but frankly, mostly were rather of poor quality, the subject were quite interesting but the composition was just terrible, must practice two things, a) taking photos while walking (without stopping) and b) taking photos after a few beers (PUI, Photographing under the Influence).

Well, this was the final day of work, and talking about ending on a high, great city, great friends and colleagues, even great weather, and the most important thing of all, super great beers :)



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Our flight on Saturday was in the evening so we had the whole day to roam around, most of the people from our group was somehow tied to BMW, now being in Munich, everyone told me to visit the BMW Welt and the BMW Museum, so that was my first port of call on this final day.

All in all we must have spent over three hours in BMW Welt and the Museum (mostly in the museum), so that was the morning very well spent. According to the plan, the next stop was supposed to be the high tower in the Olympic park, but because of the timing the three of us decided to go to the Deutsches Museum instead.


































































































I think we took off from Munich around eight pm, and it was around two pm when we landed in BKK; I was given one of those blow up U – shaped pillow by an elder colleague that must have contained some strong magical power… this is how my flight went… got on the plane, took off, had dinner, put the pillow around my neck… blank, blank, blank… woke up, had breakfast, land… the ten hours flight felt like two hours… :)

7 Nights in Munich: (part 1) Sunday - Thursday.

This trip was on the card even before I had joined the company, an essential part of this project was to come to Munich to study from the brand owner, enough of the work part :) I have been looking forward and dreading this trip at the same time, simply because (respectively) I have not been to Munich before (in fact, first time to Germany) while on the other having to disappear for a week and leaving Gio in her 34th week all alone with Matt somehow worries me :)

The main theme of the whole trip was for us to spend a majority part of the day in a seminar, and together with some official evening engagement, simply meant we had little time to roam around Munich, but luckily some free time had also been slotted in to the timetable, what an insight by the organiser :)

 

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The flight took around ten hours, but it passes by quickly (when travelling with friends), the plane touches down just a little before eight on the Sunday evening, immigration was so efficient and quick so in no time I was standing outside in a very crisp night air, coming from an oven cranked on full (Bangkok) and now standing in a refrigerator (Munich), was a welcome refreshing (literally) change. After meeting up with our driver we were soon whisked off straight to dinner on Maximilianstrasse, the rain was light, the air was calm and there was no noise apart from a few conversations that come and fade into the night, could it have been anymore different than BKK? (No).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The first full day was Monday, full day in the office and together with the official welcome dinner in the evening meant the whole day, although was very productive, was over in a blink of an eye, just as well as jet lag was hitting all of us quite hard.

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Tuesday was pretty much the same as Monday, but after 5:30 was free time :), the group decision was to head for the centre of Munich, my camera was ready and fully charged :) Of course before I could touch the shutter button there were some mandatory shopping for Gio (lol), well with such a short (but Fort Knox expensive) list in hand the shopping was over in about half an hour, now to explore the city.

With population of around 1.4 million when compared to the Bangkok’s 10 million, the contrast was clear, walking around the city was such a joy to the extent that I was very late for our group dinner at Hofbrauhaus (I don’t think you can say you have visited Munich without coming to this place). A friend described it the best, Hofbrauhaus is like a calmer Oktoberfest but all year round :) The beer glasses were huge so were the meals :)


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Wednesday evening was another ‘less’ official dinner with our host, and what a wonderful place they have chosen. Luckily we arrived quite early, the small town where the restaurant sits was more than a postcard picture, and of course once again, I was late for dinner :)

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Thursday soon arrived, all the work stuff had wrapped up by the time the clock struck four, so once again we were off to the city centre, a friend and I decided to split from the group, bought a map and decided to have a wander around (the only shopping I had to do now was for Matt, and to be honest he would have been over the moon if I’d just brought him a piece of left over pizza, of course I didn’t :)

 
 
 

 
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I am leaving Friday and Saturday for the next post, Oktoberfest and a full day at BMW Welt, Museum and Deutsches Museum deserves another post :) (too many pics).