Chinatown Shoes: a Montreal Christmas Post

A video of me and rue Mont Royal in Montréal. Visiting home is nice.




As always, Facebook won't show this. So click to the blog or just close the tab and call it a day.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

Bendigo's a cool place. I spent a good 6 days there, mostly indoors recording music, but it was worth it. Kangaroo Flat is a real place. So is Dead Dog Gully, apparently. Crazy stuff.

Australia's Great Ocean Road

As always, if you're on Facebook, just click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX9eJop4EO4

Singapore

My 10 hours in Singapore. If you're on Facebook, the video won't show. Go to http://miaowmatthew.blogspot.com/

Melbourne

The Stars in Bendigo

So here's something that seems like a non-sequitur, but my life has been an unbroken series of events, I swear, so it's not. It's just the rarity of my updates that make it seem that way. I'm in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. I still live in Bangkok, I'm just here on vacation for a few days.

At any rate, there are many more stars visible here than either in Bangkok, Montreal or Melbourne (to which I've also been introduced) and although this is my first time in the southern hemisphere (!) and I'd like to be able to talk about how amazing it was to look up at the night sky and see the different (or upside down) constellations in the southern heavens.... the truth is that I don't know the constellations in the north well enough to notice the difference. So, I admit it, the stars look exactly the same to me down here :(

Book Shopping in Vientiane

I'm back to old purchasing habits, it seems. These make up only a little more than half the language books I've bought in Laos in the past 3 days. I bought these on my first night here (Saturday) when I was wandering around looking for an Indian restaurant I'd eaten at over a year ago, on my last visit. Instead, I came across a Chinese bookstore, which was stocked with mostly DVDs, actually. In the back, however I found the jackpot, and bought:

• a used Chinese-English dictionary
• 4 leveled Chinese writers, for schoolchildren (and me) to practice writing their characters, and
• a Chinese-Laotian phrasebook! Awesome! A Chinese-Laotian phrasebook!

My other books are a secret for now, since I'm not going to dig them out to remember what they are, and since one of them's a gift. Oh wait, no, I remembered:

• A Laotian alphabet book (my second; those are always fun)
• A Laotian songbook (more exclamation points probably belong here, but I'll explore it first to see if it lives up to its promise), and
• two secret books. Also bilingual.

Vientiane Visit September 2010

Matthew in Vientiane. The nitty gritty.
If you're on Facebook, click "view full note -> view original post" to see the video.

In the Airport (The Only Living Boy in New York)

Recorded in Suvarnabhumi airport, Bangkok. That's a really badly Romanized word. Suwanapum is more like it. Or Soowanapoom, if you prefer the double o for the "who" o-sound.
Now I'm in Vientiane and they have different but perhaps even worse romanization, I don't know who decided to put all these x's in the words (perhaps the French?) but s's would have done just fine. It's an 's' sound, guys. What's an x supposed to sound like anyway?

Sept 18 2010 Going to Lao PDR

Post-Crisis Vacation

Going on a weekend vacation today, now that the violence is over. The obvious choice may have been to get out of town during the violence, but I think the connoisseur's choice is to be around for the interesting stuff and then relax during reconstruction. Pranburi is just a few hours south of here by van from Victory Monument, and it's supposed to be a-nice.

Bangkok the Morning After the Crackdown

This is what I woke up to this morning. It was all refreshingly normal, actually.
Hey tourists: come to Thailand. I mean, buy travel insurance, yeah, but please come. NO ONE WILL HURT YOU. You'll have a good time snorkeling, lying on the beach, visiting temples, and helping revive the economy of the country. Really. I can vouch for it.

Long story short:
"Is it safe to travel to Thailand?"
Yes.
"How safe?"
Safer than Brazil, probably safer than New York City.
"Will anything bad happen to me?"
You may get overcharged for a taxi ride. You may even get a sunburn. Take precautions (SPF 30 and you're good to go).

Sex tourists need not apply.

My Life in Bangkok: May 19 Protests Update (High Resolution)

Today was a pretty rough day for downtown Bangkok. A lot of things got lit on fire. I don't have interesting video of that (sorry to disappoint) but it's all available online here and there if you're inclined to search for it. This is what I was doing this afternoon before the curfew went into effect (after which I was at home being a good curfew-abiding citizen*, of course).


*I'm not a Thai citizen, although that would be kind of cool.

Bangkok Burning Update

Well only PARTS of Bangkok burning, really. Even more precisely, things being burnt in parts of Bangkok. believe it or not, I'm going out to Ekkamai to watch a movie now. Ong Bak 3, with Tony Jaa. If they start burning the theatre, I'm coming home, though.

Bangkok I'm Doing Ok Update

If you're on Facebook, you'll have to click to the blog to find it.

A Bangkok Update

Matthew and a Dusky Langur

They do ok without opposable thumbs, it just looks weird.

Like a Monkey in a Zoo (Bonus)

Written by Daniel Johnston
Covered by me

D A G - ////
except the bridges, which both begin with "And it could happen to you" and go:
G - - - / D - - - / G - - - / A - - -

I'm chained to the wall

I'm nothing at all

And my eyes look into the sunset 
thinkin' of better things to do,
Like a monkey in a zoo



The days go so slow

I don't have no friends
Except all these people 
who want me to do tricks for them
Like a monkey in a zoo

G - - - / D - - - / G - - - / A - - -


And it could happen to you
You could be in my place

No it wasn't always like this
But I never saw it coming

I'm so alone

But this is my home

And the bars that surround me
 keep me from knowing any better,
Like a monkey in a zoo

Throw me a peanut
Laugh and make jokes
But I've had enough peanuts 
and I'm ready to choke
Like a monkey in a zoo



You come to look at me
You seem so amused
But things would look different 
If you were in my shoes

I know its my fault
But I want out
And when I cry out
 nobody seems to understand

Like a monkey in a zoo



You say I'm cute
You don't know how much that hurts

You don't know how it feels 
to live in your own dirt
Like a monkey in a zoo



G - - - / D - - - / G - - - / A - - -
And it could happen to you
You could be in my place
Don't let yourself slip
Don't keep egg on your face



I used to be happy

I cant remember those days
'Cause I sold my freedom 
for free room and board

Like a monkey in a zoo

Saturday in the Park

I changed jobs 4 months ago. Changed from a language school with an evenings-and-weekends schedule to a high school with a 7:45-3:35 Monday-to-Friday schedule. It's much nicer in that respect, as well as a few others. Language school work did have its perks, but that's yesterday's news. Speaking of yesterday's news: I went to one of Bangkok's larger parks last Saturday (since I now get those off) and had a really lovely time. I forget the name of this park, but it's on Asok, just south of the Asok Skytrain station. The park is quite big, but what's wonderful is that the larger part of it is taken up by a man-made lake. A big-old rectangular one. Nothing too fancy, just lots and lots of water. Bigger than either of the lakes in Lumphini park. I sat for a while on the promenade reading the book above left (good book) then I took a canoe out on the lake for half an hour. It was a terrible little canoe. The paddle was maybe 3 feet long and had no grip. It was like trying to J-stroke with a rake. I later noticed one of the park attendants out in a canoe, and even he was paddling one stroke on the right, one on the left. It looked, as Ben (my brother) put it when I told him later, pretty pathetic. Then on the way out of the park I found these two lovely bits of flora. The frangipani flower is ubiquitous in Thailand, and smells fantastic, the branch with little seed pods is an alien species to me. I left by climbing over the fence. They have an annoying habit of fencing in all the parks here. The end.

Spécial #6

I'm translating under deadline and listening to music. Not the most productive way to do it. I just heard the line "l'hiver était frette en calvaise" and missed home. It's on "Spécial #6" by Les Cowboys fringants. Every time I hear it I can't get over how good it is. "Le soleil s'est couché sur Repentigny..." it's so slurred and poignant and rocking.

In conclusion, I've just turned the music off. Back to work...

Fruits and Vegetables

Today's post is a video. You won't be able to see it on Facebook. Serves you right.

Day 4

Man, blogging every day is hard. Today, I...
...jumped in the pool. Twice.
...went to Chinese class, at a language school which isn't far from the high school where I teach.
...did three sit-ups. Just for fun.
...gave my students that vocabulary retest I was talking about. They did "just so-so".
...cleaned the heck out of the little kitchen in this apartment. More is needed. There are cockroaches.
...appreciated the sun and the sky in this tropical country.
...talked to Douglas in China.

The End

Test writing, teaching

Ok, some mundane news just to keep the blogging ball rolling. Tonight I'm writing a test for my students. They're in mathayom 6, which is their last year of high school. The test I'm writing is a pretty dry use-this-word-in-a-sentence vocabulary test, and it's a retest of one that most of them bombed just before Christmas. They do more or less okay at remembering the meanings of words, but if I ask them to make a sentence with it I consistently get nasty surprises like:
1) worthwhile: "Global warming is the worthwhile problem."

I get sad when my students don't know stuff. Next year I'm going to throw so much more mud at that wall...

Pool Pictures

This is day two of me blogging everyday. These are just some pictures I took a couple of hours ago down on the 4th floor, where the pool is. I'm taking baby steps with the blogging here. A pool picture or two today, maybe something else tomorrow. Goodnight, friends.

Blogging every day, Rain in Bangkok

I'm going to blog every day for a little while.
Today it rained heavily. In Bangkok. I'm still living in Bangkok, for those of you who haven't been following. I forgive you, since there hasn't been much to follow - here, anyway. I do (usually) reply to e-mails, so you can always keep tabs on me that way if you need to. It makes me feel loved too, so please don't hesitate to break out the old web-based e-mail client and send me some love.

But back to the rain. It rained heavily, which was wonderful. I opened all the windows and doors in the apartment and let the fresh and heavy and blessedly cool tropical air sweep through this little place. It's nice to remember that the air is, by definition, tropical air in Bangkok, even on the days it feels like dirty old hot city air. Today it felt like gloriously fresh tropical storm air. It's not the rainy season here in Bangkok now, so rain is pretty rare. I went out and walked in it with an umbrella, but I got all wet anyway.

The end. Please feel welcome to check back if you're interested. I really will blog every day for the next little while.

-Matthew