070515 Thaikarl - days in the house and about town

friends,

I was sitting under the mango tree playing my guitar, and a moth the size  of my thumb landed on the branch above my head.

how many of you can say that?

it is just such an experience that makes travel and living away from the homeland such a worthy adventure.  but truth is, you could be sitting under any tree, doing anything, and have any insect land on a branch above you, and have it be a worthy experience.  but somehow, sitting under a pine tree, cleaning your fingernails and  watching a fly land on a branch doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

since the shower room is all tore up for cementing and taking out thee  tank, we get to take showers outside behind the house.  now, that's fun!  last night  i took my shower before bed in the rain, throwing bowels of water on myself from the big jar.  in the morning, you wrap a cloth around you, and shower with it on so as to not excite the neighbors. much.

last night teri gave me a beautiful bug. on a string.  i had heard of this - tying a big flying beetle on the end of  a string and using it as a flying toy, but up until now i hadn't seen it.  i spent a half hour trying to remove the string from the insect without cutting off it's legs or squishing it  in the process.  it was a most beautiful iridescent green color, with red iridescent streaks on either side of it's head and wing cases.  i finally managed to free it,  and i crawled all over me for a while.  dinner time came and softy  me took the bug out  to the flower bush and released it back  into the wild,  since  it seemed to be still quite lively.  then tok told me this  morning that she had never ever seen this kind of bug before.  so it's rather rare.  drat. it's gone now. but i did take photo's,  which i've posted to my Picasa web album.

it's a bit disrupted here, with all the work going on, so our normal things to do are somewhat shifted.  but, we still go into town nearly everyday, go  shopping for food at the market, stop and look at tile patterns at the home marts.  tok occasionally gets a call from a massage customer of hers and we dash into town so she can work.  i get the bangkok post newspaper, which is in english from the bookstore in town nearly everyday.  i  read the paper in the mornings, tok brings me out fresh  made espresso from the stovetop espresso maker i brought with me.  after a while, eggs, pork, toast and tomatoes magically appear before me on a plate.  with butter and green custard ("green stuff" we call it) for the toast. then  another cup of coffee appears, i have a few smokes, scratch the kitties heads, and consider the possibility of doing  something today.  i've been getting up a little after tok most days, which means i'm u anywhere between 6:30am and 8:00am.  which is quite extra-ordinary for me.  my dear older sister suggested that  my circadian cycles are easier reset to mornings, the closer i am to the equator.  so this  means that i get to bed, and sleep anywhere from 8:00pm to midnight.  still easy  for me to be awake at night, but there's not much todo - tok mama and teri go to bed, the TV only has 3 stations - all  in thai, and there's no  internet... so i get in bed and read by little flashlight for a  while.  if there is one single mosquito inside the mosquito netting, It  will  have it's  meal of me.  sometimes i just turn off the light and lay  in the dark warmth next to tok,  listening to the sounds of the night.  frogs calling, gecko's chirping, the cars, trucks and motorbikes that go by on  the big road.  occasional the Tokay will sing his territorial song loudly,  near the back of the house.  sometimes that rain comes, drips at on the tin roofs at first, but frequently it turns into a mighty roar as a tropical shower passes over.  then there is a  long period where the water running off everything makes intermittent splats, slowly decreasing in frequency,  until only the frogs and  the road is sounding.

Bak, the female cat i know from last year had three kittens the other day.  we had to make sure that  all  the windows are blocked at night, else the  male cat will come in and kill the kittens.  that is what happens in free-range country cat life.  males make sure  that cats they  didn't sire don't live to compete.  i'm in favor of taking both Bak and Niki, the  other calico cat to the vet for spaying.  only costs 50 baht or so - about 1.5 USD.

i just finished reading "House of Sand and Fog".  very good book.  i  saw the movie a few years ago. very intense character stories.  the movie closely follows the story in the book, so the reading fills out  the story of the film.  i  have only one book in English left, and i'm half way through  it.  after that...???  i should have brought more books!

by  the way, i  do have a mobile phone here.  to call from the united states dial:  011 66 83 161 7558.  overseas long distance  is pretty pricey, but  i  can call you back.  and if  you  really want, i can give you the numbers so you  could call me on a calling card i  have, but you have to ask me.  when you use a calling card,  you have to dial something like 36 numbers.
and i have a mailing address:

Anukhun
167 Moo 11
Namshun Lomsak
Phetchaboon 67110
Thailand

International priority mail gets here in about a week.  regular mail takes 3 - 4 weeks.  one of the things i forgot when i left was to copy my postal address list.  so if you want a postcard, i need addresses.

photo links:

assorted pix - including the new shower room
thai bugs - some of the interesting ones....
working on the house the never ending project :-)

i just got an email from a friend i met in cambodia two years ago.  he's in bangkok, so we might take the bus down for a couple of days and see if i can hook up with aaron, and do some shopping.

ONward!
Nu and Tok

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I am in southeast asia April 19 - July 20 2007 ::: http://thaikarl.blogspot.com/