Aventures d’un métis

I can not think of a more simple yet universally delicious thing than the french fry.  Who would have thought that deep frying julienned potatoes could produce such a culinary icon.  I had not one but two servings of these golden treats today.  How is it then that I can’t seem to gain any weight?

Proctoring in the morning was rather dull.  I started reading the final book in the trilogy.  Even after a few chapters I am anxious to see how the story will come to its conclusion.  Though I am an avid fan of the cinema, there’s something about reading that captures my imagination.  Perhaps that’s it.  Imagination.  I’m free to create whatever images I want instead of getting force fed someone else’s vision.  Ironically I think these stories would make a great movie… done according to my vision of course.  Hehe.

The rest of my day was spent sitting in front of my computer.  Not exactly exciting stuff but I did manage to tweak XP to squeeze out some more performance. I also did some audio tweaking of the sound clips for bplaek.com’s Thai language pages.  Plosives and sibilants.  Nasty buggers.  By far my greatest achievement this afternoon was successfully installing MediaWiki (same engine as wikipedia) on my holedu.us/com domain.  Now I must begin the arduous task of redesigning the look and feel of it.

Tawadaeng German Brewery. Food, beer, and entertainment… but not enough parking.

• Leave a comment...

I’ve finished two thirds of the book series I bought last month.  At this rate I won’t have anything left to get me through next week’s proctoring!  It’s amazing how many pages you can read when the story is engaging.  Where was this literary ease when I was in high school?  Back then we had to read perhaps 3-4 books during the school year.  I go through that many within a month.  Oye.  I don’t mind.  It’s just that I’m running out of books to read within this series.  I find I like a  certain style that just a few authors can do.  Perhaps I’ll have to risk trying something new when this I’m finally finished.

Proctoring today wasn’t anything special.  For once I didn’t mind the three-hour stretch since I lost myself with my book.  I actually ran out of time!  The rest of the day was spent observing the steady trickle of students coming to drop off portfolios and submitting lab assignments through e-mail.  With Tuesday’s exam I’m in for one hell of a grading week.

• Leave a comment...

While preparing to write yet another entry filled with complaints and rants, it dawned on me that since I began my blog a few years ago I’ve had an unending stream of criticisms. That lead me to ask, why? That’s when it hit me. Although I enjoy my career as a university teacher and my moonlighting as a TV show host, I’m just generally unhappy with both of them. My time spent in New York City, pulling twelve and fourteen hour work days, dealing with extremely temperamental stock traders, and even worse company executives was fun! I never complained the way I do since I moved here. I accepted the ups and downs as part of the city life and reveled in it. But here I am, in what are comparably less strenuous jobs and in a culture that is more relaxed than a hound dog in a balmy southern summer, unhappy. What gives?

Life is too short to live day to day with such negativity. Perception is reality. I hold no illusions that with this self-realization will come deliverance from my discontent, but perhaps knowing is enough to enact a change for the better.

I believe the first steps towards that change must be made where the wheel meets the road… In simple terms, I need to stop teaching and my TV work. It doesn’t mean I need to stop writing witty and sarcastic remarks though… hehe.

Today’s “fun” started of at the DMR and pretty much went down from there.

1) Department of Mineral Resources [ Natural disasters in Thailand ]
2) Bumrungrad Hospital [ Promoting the benefits of breast feeding ]
3) Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel [ Assistive and rehabilitive technology ]
4) BFM [ Metal composite cladding provides fire protection ]

On the way back to my university, to retrieve my car, I had to weather the steady rain on the back of a motorcycle taxi. Yeah, I got wet. But when you think about it, we all shower. Well mos of us do. We wash our clothes. Sometimes we even gets wet while wearing clothes on purpose! So why is it people do everything in their power to avoid getting wet while it rains. Its almost as though they fear they will never dry out!

• Leave a comment...