I’ve finally booked my flight home! I will be leaving BKK on Sept 1st flying to Vancouver. I’m going to hang around in Van for a few days before flying back to Ontario and home to Cambridge. :-D Will be great to be home again. I am really looking forward to it. Sucks to be leaving behind numerous things here in Thailand that have been great, like friends and beaches… but it will be good to finally move on. It will be 3 years less a month that I’ve called Thailand home, more or less. Which has honestly been long enough. Lately the heat and pollution and various other factors have been causing me stress and health issues. I’m not naive enough to think that everything will be perfect wherever I end up next, but just being home for at least a while will be fantastic! :-D

I’m back from a three day trip to Laos and I’m Gold again until September with another Tourist Visa. Feels good to get the last one finalised and off my mind. I had a nice rest in Vientiane as well which happily cleared up a couple nagging health issues that had been plaguing me for a while. Another thing I will be glad to leave behind in BKK when I leave…

Unfortunately the preparation for my trip and the trip itself were an extended exemption from my games work and also my MA that is not so great. Once again, I really have to get back into the swing of things, which is getting increasingly more difficult. The count down has already begun ticking in my head and my schedule. Only three months left now – well, just a snidge under. I’m afraid to say that my motivation has been lacking lately, for various reasons. Really, I’m just going to have sit down and examine the ones I think are inhibiting my work and try and clear them away.

After being asked twice yesterday by two people I haven’t seen in a while, and after checking its veracity on a scale this morning, I have apparently lost some weight (10 pounds!) without even noticing it. :-O

I have to assume it’s because I have cut back almost completely on my Guinness drinking (for health reasons) and have also been eating a bit leaner (though far from starving myself) to keep my budget low.

Either way, it’s a surprise to me! Though I wonder why I still have slight love handles if I’ve supposedly lost the weight I gained over the last year? Who knows… hehe. ;-)

So there was an earthquake just the other side of the northern Thai border in Laos yesterday at just about 4PM measuring 6.1.

I first heard of it when the boss at the one school I teach at comes into class, utters something mostly unintelligble and says ‘the school is closed, everybody go home.’ My class only had 10 minutes let anyway so it wasn’t a big deal, but I was glad to leave for home a bit early anyway. ;-)

Later on I found out the quake was so far North that only tremours were felt in BKK. Though  that was enough to make the building managers on Silom worry enough to evacuate the buildings. hehe. At first people misunderstood and believed a 6.1 quake had happened on Sathorn Rd itself – real near my work. I just remember sitting there after I got a call from Kaywood, wondering why I hadn’t felt anything? I may have been involved in my class, but not enough to miss a quake of that magnitude. ;-) Regardless, my buddy Toon was happy cause his evening class was cancelled. ;-) It also made me laugh a bit thinking about Hiromi and all the earthquakes Japan gets in comparison.

So I have one more assignment left in what will be my second semester at Northumbria. I actually start my third semester this week. So, three more months in two classes and I hand in my final thesis (18,000 words) in the third week of August. :-O :-D I can’t say it’s gone fast, but it definitely is a surprise to be so close to finishing! *Fingers crossed* that I get my degree. I am optimistic.

Then I will be back home in Ontario for my folks’ 40th wedding anniversary and hopefully one, if not two, actual weddings of some cousins. Four happening this year in total! I so wish I could go to all of them.

So, with the MA near completion and my shifting back to Canada for a bit in the closing months of this year, my future prospects are looming closer. Still quite a bit uncertain what I will do, but my highest priority is to find a good job. I may even focus on Canada instead of straining to stay abroad. Though I will look abroad and if I do get an offer outside of Canada it may take precedence. But, being in Thailand for over 2.5 years already has me yearning for home and more ‘normality’ in my cultural interactions. hehe. Regardless, if I end up back in Vancouver or Toronto again, I do believe I would be happy, or at least content. ;-)

Been busy with school and some web design jobs so haven’t been working on Dink and Nipples that much lately. Have a lot of level design to do, which is a lot of slogging and tedious work at times.

Anyway, I am alive and kicking. And appreciating the cooler weather that an early rainy season seems to have come to BKK earlier this year. Here’s to staying dry. ;-) Cheers.

Well, it’s been a million years since I’ve posted, I know. I would like to say it’s because I’ve been dead busy, but mostly it’s been because I haven’t felt the urge to post. Just been partially quiet, as well as not too outspoken.

That’s one thing I do like about getting older – the need to talk less. A lifelong ambition of mine really ;-)

Anyway, so I am going to be posting more lately. Probably less posts about what I am doing and life in general. There is a need to write posts about my MA and the research I have been undertaking coinciding with such. I also will be posting examples and ephemera about my latest projects – which at present mainly includes pre-production and planning for an online flash game, and in the future links to some websites I will be designing.

So, it should be interesting. I am happily working away on things lately and hopefully things will stay that way. More about that in my MA posts and rants.

Oh and I’ll be posting about some recent trips I did as well, probably. There are already photos on my flickr page as well. ;-)

Cheers.

Hey all, it’s been a hella long lapse since my last post – over two months now… :-O I’m just adding a small note to say that I’ve not passed on and that I am still alive and kicking in BKK. I am off to visit Laos this weekend for a small trip, and then back to the big polluting and my continuing MA and such… Will endeavour to post some actual news and stuff when I return. Cheers. ;-)

Broke my own recent silence on the blog front to link to this. Great article about Andre the Giant and his drinking feats of lore. He was a big and great man, and this story, not only amusing, was a bit touching even. Cheers.