Haha! I got a kite up! -does a little dance-

Finally the wind is up! It was up two days ago and I called Pascal (my kiteboarding contact) and he was on the mainland buying kites! Wha! Such unluck!

So yesterday I’m up at dawn like usual and the wind is up again. But this time I finally get the call I’ve been waiting almost 2 months for. It is on!

Pascal called me at 9:30 but we weren’t going to meet until 1:30 so I got to bounce around the house for a while waiting for the time to come. Couldn’t wait the full time as it turns out and I headed out 1/2 hour early.

The ride was really fun. Nature put on a good show yesterday. Dark clouds dominated the sky and the wind was whipping at the jungle. The island was in a rainless storm. It was very cool. The colours were great. (note I have no pictures of the entire day because I was affraid to leave the camera unatended on the beach). It became pretty obvious on the way out to Mae Haad (the place with the island connected only by a stretch of sand) that it was REALLY windy.

I got to Mae Haad without letting the excitement make my driving too reckless and walk-jogged out to the head of the sandbar where the kiteboarders meet. There was Pascal, in a sweater. In the water was Frankie leaping huge distances into the air, landing perfectly and firing on.

Quick intro, sans pictures unfortunately. Pascal owns the kiteboarding shop/school on the island. He is shorter than I am, about the same build, but much more fit. That means he’s pretty small. Frankie is much taller than I am, of a bigger build, and also very fit. That means he’s fairly large. They are both really fun to be around. And since they are kiteboarders on Koh Phangan they are both french (if you’re a restraunteur you’r english and it your a diver you’re scandanavian).

I’ve gotten to hang out with them a bit before. I talk to Pascal on the phone and by email occasianally about the wind and I let him know when I’m not going to be in town. Frankie taught me and a couple of luckless americans the rigging about a week ago on a windless day. We also spent an afternoon drinking beer at Mae Haad waiting for wind that never came.

So I walk up to Pascal (they are clearly much more than 1/2 hour early) with what I’m sure is a huge grin. He tells me that there is too much wind today! Too much! And that he isn’t even going to get one of the new kites up today because of the wind. Grah! Frah! Anyway he says we can wait and see if the wind goes down a little. Time to hit the bar again.

The ride up was a good show. But Mae Haad was fantastic. I really should have brought the camera. The tide was over the sand-spit and big waves from both bays where breaking over it in opposite directions at the same time: smash! It looked great, I wondered if there was anyone stranded on Koh Ma. This was actually another reason we were waiting. They use the spit alot for teaching so we had to wait for the tide to come down and things to settle down a little.

Anyway Frankie got exhausted before long and pretty soon I was surrounded by 1/2 dozen happy french kiteboarders. It was fun. Most of the conversations where in french uneless I managed to start something with Pascal or Frankie. But nature was putting on a good show to fill in the gaps and it was fun trying to comprehend some of the conversation.

So anyway eventually the tide went down a little and the waves started breaking way back at the entrance to the bays, leaving the water relatively calm. I guess the wind went down a little but I didn’t notice it. At any rate. It was finally time to play.

I didn’t get a board yesterday. It was mostly learning to control the kite (which I have a head-start on) and getting used to the pull and some of the theory.

The highlight was body drags. We would walk out onto the spit, thigh deep in churning, mad water. Then walk out into the bay into waist, and then chest, and then Frankie dragging me – deep water. Then we give the kite some power and tack back and forth into the beach (well you can’t tack without a keel but you get the idea). This was much fun, although the treck out was arduous. Especially trying to keep up with the big Frencheman.

We did some take-offs and landings, I did one solo trip out to the spit and back and that was the day. It was so much fun and I am so eagre to be out there again.

The wind looks good again today and it will probably stay high for the next little while. Of course I have the cousin with the WORST TIMING EVER PETE! So Sarah and I are off to Bangkok today. Which should generate some fodder for the journal, alot of fodder for the flickr account, as well as a laptop and some new lenses.

Yes yesterday was a good day!

Wicked future-from-the-80s book artSo, they’re making a six hour miniseries of one of my favorite childhood books, The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. But they’re going to ruin it! The guy writing the screenplay also wrote Reindeer Games, The Brothers Grimm, and the US clones of The Ring and The Ring 2. Yuck. Yuck! The first two were terrible movies from directors with previously great track records, and the latter almost word-for-word translations.

Spielberg is producing; does that mean it’s going to have the entire budget poured into effects? One of the two leads will either be CGI or a guy in a big hairy suit. Or a muppet I guess, best-case. Stephen King will probably have his paws in it though, and we know what that means for screen adaptations of his books. True to the material with somewhat of a disregard for the art of filmmaking.

Awesome fanart by edved
on TheDarkTower.netHmm, I didn’t know they wrote a sequel to The Talisman. Somehow I just want everyone to leave the story alone so it can stay precious.. though I am kind of excited to find references to it in the Dark Tower series I’m finally reading the end of.

I’m on Wolves of the Calla now, and reading it on the DS because I couldn’t find a real copy (I have the next one ready in paperback). He wasn’t kidding about this being his masterpiece; it ties all these different books together with little references and characters. TheDarkTower.net has a thrillingly obsessive collection of these connections, complete with diagrams, and sweet fanart. The webmaster seems to share my apprehensions surrounding the Talisman miniseries – coming in 2008!

Yeah, I guess we’ll see…

But certainly not a complete waste of time. We had three missions:

1. Get 30-day visa extensions
2. Buy a laptop for Colin
3. Buy a lens for the new camera

The plan was to get in and out in one afternoon. On that we failed. Well, actually we failed at everything but the visa extension because the shopping on Samui consists solely of:

1. Wooden knick-knacks
2. Replicas of brand name watches
3. “Armani” suit tailors
4. Silk pillow covers
5. Copies of DVD movies
6. Shoulder bags
7. Beachwear Thais wouldn’t be caught dead in
8. Camera… film
9. Copies of music CDs

We started in the capitol town of Nathon then took a sonthaew to the resort side of the island. We walked all afternoon, amazed at the phenomenon: at every 10th store the pattern starts over again with wooden knick-knacks. The Armani tailors were particularly striking. Each store had slick looking young men in suits outside who would shamelessly badger every person who walked by to come in and be fitted for a suit. We passed maybe a dozen of these places, and every one was named “Armani” something and had these guys out front. Two jackets, two shirts, two pants, two ties, all made to order, $149 USD. Armani

We also tried the “big tech mall” which turned out to be ten cellphone stores and the Thai equivalent of a Walmart (no, we haven’t seen any actual Walmarts).

Exhausted, and having missed our ferry, we booked in to a cheap room across the street from the $4000 Baht resorts on Chaweng beach, then went out in search of food. Here, we were finally successful! We found the most unassuming place with the most glorious food: the Chilli restaurant. By unassuming I don’t mean down a little alley and populated by Thais; I mean it looked like crappy tourist fare: on the busy street, well lit, bad decor, menu out front boasting five wildly different food genres beside a half oil drum filled with ice and raw seafood.

Thumbs up for sushi at
Chilli’s on Chaweng BeachBut the prices were better than most on schmancy Chaweng beach, and we were right starving. And one of the five genres was Japanese – sushi! Now… we’d been burned by sushi back in Chiang Mai; drawn in by the incredible decor and Japaneseness of the place, when we should have been looking at how far Chiang Mai actually is from the ocean. It had been expensive and not very fresh, so needless to say we were wary.

But, the waitress had suggestions for what we should order, and as you can see from my thumbs-up here it was as good as it looked. So good in fact that we had seconds, and thirds, then ice cream and espresso. The staff were great and the sushi was amazing. Huge chunks of crab and the most delicious fresh wasabi I’ve ever had. Some fish that were new to us too; new and tasty.

The next day of course we were back to failing our missions; we waited for a computer store that didn’t open, then missed our ferry due to some miscommunication with a travel agent and ended up bumming around Nathon town for five hours taking pictures.

We’ve decided, screw this island stuff; if you want to buy something in Thailand, you go to the place that has it all: Bangkok.

We’ll let you know how it goes. ;)

Gah, I just had a second wonderful long bath ruined by inconsiderate ants. Nothing is better for insomnia but reading in a nice long bath (I’ve noticed we’re both a little rank lately so the longer the better really). I borrowed Clive Barker’s Galilee from the Chills guys, and after a dozen afternoons in the hammock and a few long sleepless nights, there is no sign of nearing the end of it. It’s… well it’s a long book anyway. Good weight to price ratio I guess.

So after like five hours of turning my toes to prunes and remarking at the amount of gunk in the water that wasn’t there when I got in, I’m finally feeling peaceful and sleepy enough to go to bed. I get out, towel off, and spy a blurry line on the wall opposite.

I didn’t take this,
I only wish I didI get closer – no glasses – ants! And of course it would be those nasty red guys; they bite like a bitch if they get between your toes, unlike the mostly harmless tiny ones that seem omnipresent here and don’t form lines so much as spontaneously generate on an abandoned food source. I don’t know how the red ones got there and I don’t know what they expect to find, but they’ve been foraging like this around the bathroom for weeks. This time the line seems a little denser, so I follow it to see if they’ve finally found something.

The ant conga goes up around the shower then across the wall, passing behind my toiletries bag that is hanging from a hook there. I see a few of them on one corner of the bag where it touches the wall and I go to brush them off with my hand. This is when the bag – a large black travel bag with zippered compartments – finally comes into focus.

It is fucking crawling with the little devils. The line on the wall is maybe four ants abreast, but there are hundreds upon hundreds crawling over the face of the bag looking for an opening. Ug, I realize, I’d put an opened Halls package in there the other day after I found an ant investigating it. I disloge a bunch of them with a brush and unzip a corner of the biggest compartment to confirm the worst. What the hell, did they decide to move their whole nest in there or what??

And so my wrath was upon them! I sprayed that bitch down with the shower, sending thousands of ants running furiously away. Thinking I’d got most I grabbed the bag by the hook, then realized almost too late that they were hiding on the underside – coating it like a shiny undulating mat – as they came running up the hook to my hand.

I didn’t take this either,
but this is how pissed they wereCunning maneouver, yes, but nothing against one who has mastered the use of tools! I sprayed it down again then used a mop handle to move the mess into a bucket and put it outside on the deck. I considered freezing the bastards as I do sometimes (it is most effective on the tiny guys if you don’t mind a little anty “seasoning” on your salvaged food) but it was too big. I’m just hoping they’ll all have wandered away by morning, unless their queen really is in there snacking on ginger Halls.

Yes, I did consider taking a picture before I gave them the hose, but I had such a reaction of sickness and anger to the squirming mess that I acted in kind of a rage. I don’t know why ants get me like that… I guess it must be the same way it is with spiders. I really like most insects and would usually be happy to sit and watch such an example of nature’s ingenuity, or what have you. But when they’re all over, and in your stuff like that, not to mention on your skin and biting you (only one bite on my foot this time luckily, and he suffered greatly for it).

Erg, I get the shutters just thinking of it. I’m still finding the bloody things crawling on me (or at least feeling them). I am sooo happy I didn’t go looking for lip balm or something and blindly stick my hand in the bag before I saw them; I can’t belive how fast they can coat your skin when they are pissed off. And I swear they wait until one ant gives the signal for them all to bite at once. I’m more okay when this happens out in the woods, but Sarah will not abide their presence in her home!

Thx Lawrence for letting me know I could get a real Flickr address. I found the “blog this photo” function while I was in there. So, here’s a photo of dogs, I’m blogging it.

Colin has been taking lots of texture shots lately, which are pretty, but I’m finding it’s hard to top a puppy as a photo subject. Our harddrive is quickly filling up with 8 meg raws of a banana leaf taken from 5 different angles at 5 different exposures. Although, some of them… do look damn good.

I’m glad we got a digital cam; it’s so easy to play around like that. I don’t know how Alan does it – out of every roll of film I’ve seen from him, half the photos are just incredible, and he takes at most a couple pictures of anything. Colin’s all on about getting another lens, but after the crazyawesomeness of Alan’s fisheye shots, seems like it will be hard to beat.

But then, Colin’s spent weeks researching this stuff, and I still get math headaches when he tries to explain f-stops and aperture settings and whatnot. So what do I know, really, except tired puppies is cute. :)