It's interesting that I have twice made the trip up to BKK to visit a meditation center, and have twice been turned away because the center, which is "always open to everybody," was holding a retreat and didn't have room. So it looks like I'll get some extra beach time: all I'm after in BKK is an Apple service center and some discount DVDs. Should be one stop, right--the tech mall with the real Mac service and authentic copies of new and to-be-released DVDs?
Well, the keyboard isn't fixable, the nearest replacement is in Tokyo, and the only way I can get my educational discount is to order it through my school's bookstore. Heh. And there's no way to get a new case for a first generation ipod. Anywhere.
I really thought Apple was about long-haul customers and making use-friendly gadgets, but that took a hard hit today. Maybe if I hadn't heard, "no, is too old" or the equivalent so many times....
And it's hard to believe, but all evidence points to Lord of The RIngs not making it to Thailand. If it did, it was only in English and drew no Thai following, as none of the four places I stopped in the mall had it, and only one of the vendors in two klicks of Sukumwit had even heard of it. But that vendor was a ladyboy who was holding my wrist and petting my arm while nodding his head and saying, "no have," so who knows.
What makes me wonder is that the last cut-rate DVDs I bought were what I thought was an unreleased season of the Simpsons, but believed was legit based on the idiomatic case (don't judge a dvd by its cover). Most of the episodes were recorded in Mississippi, so it makes me wonder where the source is, and why what is arguably one of the most epic moviemaking ventures in history is absent from this culture.
So on the way back to my accommodation, I decided to stop at Soi Cowboy on the way back to my room-hat says ho-ho-ho better?
It's 1900 and I'm in a place where the half dozen girls on the bar outnumber the johns. The next guy down, one bench over and one level below me in the stadium-style benches and bartables loves the ratio as he leans and whops and pounds down triple-priced beers. He is louder than the music thumping from speakers in the back toward a TV blaring from above the front door.
I wish I could say more about it, especially enthusiastically, but there's something about watching a girl watch TV while mechanically stepping from side to side in rhythm with a music only she hears while pulling off a tankini by disinterestedly automatic stages that kills the Christmas spirit, especially when she's wearing a Santa hat. Thanks for the effort, but I wish you hadn't tried....
So I'm back at the place I didn't have the oomph to move from after making a telephone reservation, watching CNN.
Interesting bits:
It's interesting that in CNN's 30 year retrospective, the only blink of hope was Obama's acceptance speech.
There is evidently a new Yogi Bear movie, a new Dreamworks movie, a new Narnia, and I guess a Spielberg take on War of the Worlds. It kinda makes me wonder what else has been going on in the American world that I've heard nothing about.
Also makes me wonder what's going on in American media. After a couple of months on BBC and Al Jazeera, I've learned a fantastic amount about Korea, China, Pakistand and Afghanistan, wikileaks and FIFA debacles, and it makes me wonder at the root of my nigh-on complete ignorance of the rest of the world: was I lazy, stateside, or was the information not so present?
Okay, sometimes I stop on Fox as I pass from BBC to Jazeera, and there have been mentions of stories on the other channels. But for every five times I hear, "an Oklahoma boy's college hopes were destroyed by the Democratic agenda" I hear about bombings, terrorist attacks, hostage situations, or natural disasters elsewhere in the world.
Interesting.
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