Today I went to the Bengals preseason game against the Detroit Lions. One of the things that I do miss while in Thailand is attending Bengals games. They have another game that they refer to as football. I call it soccer, and am not very interested in any game in which my children are not playing.
My new wide angle lens arrived this week, so I decided to take it to the game. Some pictures are here. These pictures were taken with my Canon 40D and a EF-S 10-22 mm lens.
The game was fun. One nice thing about being a season ticket holder is that you generally see the same people each week. Well, I guess its nice for me in that the people around me are pretty cool. I sit in section 151, row 44, seats 3 and 4. Three of the seats behind me are occupied by Jack, Kim and Megan. Megan didn't make the game, but I got to catch up with Jack, Kim and Kim's fiance Chris.
I left about midway through the fourth quarter. The Lions had just scored a touchdown to put them up.
After six years here in Thailand, we moved back to the U.S. Instead of returning to Ohio, we settled into California.
Showing posts with label Brian Vogel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brian Vogel. Show all posts
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Gencon 2008
On Thursday I took a road trip to Indianapolis Indiana with some friends for the Gencon 2008 convention. Gencon is one of the largest gaming conventions in the country. Fans of collectible card games, role playing games, miniature games and board games all find plenty to do at the con.
The pictures are here.
Back in my younger days, Dave and I would head up to Gencon when it was in Milwaukee Wisconsin. We would play RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons twelve or more hours a day. I look back on it sometimes and just shake my head. Look, I was young and experimenting. If I ever decide to run for public office, I'll probably have to answer if I've ever rolled a twenty sided die. Perhaps someone will dig up one of my old character sheets and ask if I ever used the aliases Jack Brash or Ho Bo.
Okay, enough for the jaunt down memory lane. I didn't play any games at this Gencon. I hung around with my friends consuming some adult beverages. I also took in some independent films showing at the convention.
The first film was A Great Disturbance, a mocumentary about four young men attending Celebrations III, a Star Wars convention that was held in 2005. The movie was laugh out loud funny. They did a great job of presenting these four over the top star wars fans. After the screening, some of the cast and crew answered questions. They talked about how they get such a different reaction at different showings. At Gencon, a lot of the viewers were Star Wars fans who "got" a lot of the genre specific humor. They told us that at the Indianapolis Film Festival, many of the viewers didn't have the same background and didn't find the same humor. I ended up with a free copy of the movie.
The second film was called Captain Blasto, a film by the makers of A Great Disturbance. They are distributing Captain Blasto as webisodes and they can be viewed here. I enjoyed Captain Blasto, it was a clever film. The entire budget for the film was $7,000. To put that in perspective, at one of the independent film festivals they attended the next cheapest movie had a budget of $130,000.
The final film that I saw was named Gamers. This was not made by the same people as the previous two films. Gamers was a comedy about a group of DND players on the cusp of breaking the record for playing the longest ongoing game. It was a pretty ridiculous, but funny movie. While A Great Disturbance and Captain Blasto are family friendly, Gamers is definitely not.
The pictures are here.
Back in my younger days, Dave and I would head up to Gencon when it was in Milwaukee Wisconsin. We would play RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons twelve or more hours a day. I look back on it sometimes and just shake my head. Look, I was young and experimenting. If I ever decide to run for public office, I'll probably have to answer if I've ever rolled a twenty sided die. Perhaps someone will dig up one of my old character sheets and ask if I ever used the aliases Jack Brash or Ho Bo.
Okay, enough for the jaunt down memory lane. I didn't play any games at this Gencon. I hung around with my friends consuming some adult beverages. I also took in some independent films showing at the convention.
The first film was A Great Disturbance, a mocumentary about four young men attending Celebrations III, a Star Wars convention that was held in 2005. The movie was laugh out loud funny. They did a great job of presenting these four over the top star wars fans. After the screening, some of the cast and crew answered questions. They talked about how they get such a different reaction at different showings. At Gencon, a lot of the viewers were Star Wars fans who "got" a lot of the genre specific humor. They told us that at the Indianapolis Film Festival, many of the viewers didn't have the same background and didn't find the same humor. I ended up with a free copy of the movie.
The second film was called Captain Blasto, a film by the makers of A Great Disturbance. They are distributing Captain Blasto as webisodes and they can be viewed here. I enjoyed Captain Blasto, it was a clever film. The entire budget for the film was $7,000. To put that in perspective, at one of the independent film festivals they attended the next cheapest movie had a budget of $130,000.
The final film that I saw was named Gamers. This was not made by the same people as the previous two films. Gamers was a comedy about a group of DND players on the cusp of breaking the record for playing the longest ongoing game. It was a pretty ridiculous, but funny movie. While A Great Disturbance and Captain Blasto are family friendly, Gamers is definitely not.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Beer Suit
My attire here in Thailand generally consists of a pair of shorts and a polo or tee shirt. The fact that I've only had to wear slacks or jeans a handful of times since I've been here has probably helped make the heat much more bearable. If I had to wear a suit and tie every day, I would seat even more profusely.
As a consequence of the heat and the absence of a dress code in my current role in life, I did not bring a suit with me. It just didn't occur to me to bring one. When would I possibly need one?
Apparently "when" is today. Singha Beer is the king of beers in Thailand. It is produced by the Boon Rawd brewery. This year, Boon Rawd brewery is celebrating their 75th year anniversary.
At this point you might be trying to find the intersection of beer, which I don't drink, and a suit, which I don't have with me. Well, Boon Rawd is throwing a big party to celebrate three-quarters of a century brewing beer. My wife has been invited as a VIP to the party. Her bus station is a very good client of Singha (I'm hoping the passengers are drinking it and not the drivers, although one never knows here), so they invited her. Since I will accompany her to this event, I need to dress nicely.
If I knew a little more in advance, I probably could have had a suit made for me in fairly short order. There are a lot of places to have a suit made here in Bangkok, and many of them cater to tourists. If they are catering to tourists, that means that they need to be able to turn orders around pretty quickly. Since I've only been back a few days, however, I'm just going to borrow a jacket from my brother-in-law. We'll see how it goes.
As a consequence of the heat and the absence of a dress code in my current role in life, I did not bring a suit with me. It just didn't occur to me to bring one. When would I possibly need one?
Apparently "when" is today. Singha Beer is the king of beers in Thailand. It is produced by the Boon Rawd brewery. This year, Boon Rawd brewery is celebrating their 75th year anniversary.
At this point you might be trying to find the intersection of beer, which I don't drink, and a suit, which I don't have with me. Well, Boon Rawd is throwing a big party to celebrate three-quarters of a century brewing beer. My wife has been invited as a VIP to the party. Her bus station is a very good client of Singha (I'm hoping the passengers are drinking it and not the drivers, although one never knows here), so they invited her. Since I will accompany her to this event, I need to dress nicely.
If I knew a little more in advance, I probably could have had a suit made for me in fairly short order. There are a lot of places to have a suit made here in Bangkok, and many of them cater to tourists. If they are catering to tourists, that means that they need to be able to turn orders around pretty quickly. Since I've only been back a few days, however, I'm just going to borrow a jacket from my brother-in-law. We'll see how it goes.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Krabi Vacation
The kids had a four day weekend so we flew down to Krabi in the south of Thailand. Krabi is a small beach town located near Phucket and Pee Pee Islands. The sea in this part of Thailand is full of small islands. These islands were used in a boat chase in a James Bond movie.
We left Bangkok at 8:00 a.m. and arrived in Krabi at around 9:30. The airport sent a car to pick us up, but unfortunately they were late so we waited about 15 or so minutes before we took our 30 minute ride to the hotel and the beach. Our rooms at the Pakasai Resort were not yet ready, so we took a stroll down along the road with the shops on one side and the beach on the other. The shops mainly consisted of vendors selling clothes, sunglasses, and beach gear, massage parlors, restaurants, travel agents/tour bookings, and bars.
We had lunch at a Thai Seafood restaurant which was decent. After lunch we checked in and spent the afternoon at the pool. The hotel was nice, but it was spread out. There were a series of buildings with 4 rooms each. It took us about 5 minutes to walk from the lobby to our room. What made it more challenging was it was an uphill walk.
We were all pretty tired, as we had to get up at 5:30 a.m. to make it to the airport by 7:00 a.m. For dinner, we went to a seafood restaurant on the beach which was decent.
On Friday, we rented on a long tail boat and visited four islands. A long tail boat is a wooden boat powered by a gas powered propeller. There are pictures of the long tail boats in my pictures from the trip.
The boat ride is absolutely beautiful. The contrast of blue sky, white clouds and the green islands dotted around the blue sea were just gorgeous. Even though it was quite hot, the wind over the swift moving boat (had to put a verb between swift and boat to avoid any political commentary) made it quite cool and comfortable.
Our first stop was a beach that is only above water during low tide. It was a strip of sand between two small rocky islands. This was a national park which cost 100 baht for me and 20 baht for Tim. When the tide comes up, the sand bar is under water.
The next stop was an island with a small restaurant. Jacob was the first to comment on the topless woman sun bathing about twenty feet away from us while we ate. I think we only saw two or three topless sun bathers the entire time that we were there. While I generally have no issue with topless sunbathers, its not something that the Thais do or care to have on their beaches, so I think its a little bit rude to do it. Its unlikely that they would say anything to you, but think about it this way, there is only one profession of Thai ladies that would go topless on the beach.
Our third stop of Friday was a nice beach where the kids swam and played in the sand. Jacob asked me to bury him in the sand, which I was happy to do. He did not ask me to give him the form of a mermaid, but I was happy to do that as well. Jacob was not at all pleased by the boobs that I gave him. Fortunately for him, I didn't take any pictures.
The final island was not as nice as the third. I can't remember that much about it.
On Saturday we rented another long boat and went to Hong Island. The highlight of our four trip stop was a bay where kids could feed fish, snorkel and play in the sand. Jacob made a friend there and was building a sand fort. Aleena got bitten by a small crab and did not want to get too close to the water after that.
The long tails are supposed to be in by 4:00, but of course we pushed it until 5:30. Tim had asked why they needed to be in so early, and we found out why. The water on the way back was a lot choppier than the ride out in the morning. The waves really weren't that big, but the boats don't sit that deep in the water, so you could definitely feel them.
Aleena was being a real trooper all day, but at the end of our boat ride she was just exhausted. She really tries to keep up, and we help her by carrying her sometimes, but its not easy for her to do everything like her older brother and sister. She felt kind of warm when we got to the hotel, so we decided to just eat at the hotel restaurant so we could get back and put her to bed.
It turns out that this was the best meal of the trip. They had a seafood buffet, which we were the only guests at for about 45 minutes. Aleena slept through the entire meal. I think one other group joined later.
The food was pretty good, particularly the grilled shrimp, but a few things made it really fun. At one point Tim sent Nalin over to ask the waitress for something. Now, if I haven't mentioned it, Nalin is getting very good at speaking Thai. When the waitresses learned that she could speak Thai, four of them came over and started talking to Tim and Nalin. They were asking Nalin questions and doting over her. You could tell that Nalin was enjoying being the center of attention. They asked if they could braid Nalin's hair, which Nalin eagerly accepted. They took her over to another table and one of them braided Nalin's hair. Nalin told Tim that she was very happy because she had wanted the pretty girl to braid her hair, and she had.
While Jacob was not particularly impressed by Thai waitresses, hair braids, or the woman singing in English with a strong Thai accent, he was thrilled by the fire show. While we ate desert, we were entertained by a performer who breathed fire and had spun two flaming pots. My description doesn't do it justice, but it really was a pretty neat show. He spun the pots like flaming nunchuks. Jacob moved up to the chair closest to him and watched in silent rapture. At one point, the performer spun the flames closer and closer to Jacob who let them get within a foot of him and never flinched.
Our flight out was at 4:30 on Sunday. We spent the morning and early afternoon doing some shopping and hanging out at the pool. As we were getting ready to board our return flight, we noticed that we were flying into a different airport. Domestic flights here can originate out of either the new or the old airport. We had left from the new airport, but would return to the old one. Unfortunately, this was one of the few times that we had driven to the airport (we are usually dropped off), so Tim called Top who sent his driver to pick us up. There is a free shuttle between the two for ticketed passengers, but we didn't want to the kids to be up too late.
Overall the trip was a lot of fun. My pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. I accidentally changed the auto focus setting on my camera so that it didn't lock focus. I thought it was broken, so I was manually focusing. Tim was using auto focus, and while it would focus, it wouldn't really lock. While we have some nice pictures, there are a lot of ones that would have been good if I hadn't screwed up the focus. Of course, I finally figured out what I had done when we got home.
We left Bangkok at 8:00 a.m. and arrived in Krabi at around 9:30. The airport sent a car to pick us up, but unfortunately they were late so we waited about 15 or so minutes before we took our 30 minute ride to the hotel and the beach. Our rooms at the Pakasai Resort were not yet ready, so we took a stroll down along the road with the shops on one side and the beach on the other. The shops mainly consisted of vendors selling clothes, sunglasses, and beach gear, massage parlors, restaurants, travel agents/tour bookings, and bars.
We had lunch at a Thai Seafood restaurant which was decent. After lunch we checked in and spent the afternoon at the pool. The hotel was nice, but it was spread out. There were a series of buildings with 4 rooms each. It took us about 5 minutes to walk from the lobby to our room. What made it more challenging was it was an uphill walk.
We were all pretty tired, as we had to get up at 5:30 a.m. to make it to the airport by 7:00 a.m. For dinner, we went to a seafood restaurant on the beach which was decent.
On Friday, we rented on a long tail boat and visited four islands. A long tail boat is a wooden boat powered by a gas powered propeller. There are pictures of the long tail boats in my pictures from the trip.
The boat ride is absolutely beautiful. The contrast of blue sky, white clouds and the green islands dotted around the blue sea were just gorgeous. Even though it was quite hot, the wind over the swift moving boat (had to put a verb between swift and boat to avoid any political commentary) made it quite cool and comfortable.
Our first stop was a beach that is only above water during low tide. It was a strip of sand between two small rocky islands. This was a national park which cost 100 baht for me and 20 baht for Tim. When the tide comes up, the sand bar is under water.
The next stop was an island with a small restaurant. Jacob was the first to comment on the topless woman sun bathing about twenty feet away from us while we ate. I think we only saw two or three topless sun bathers the entire time that we were there. While I generally have no issue with topless sunbathers, its not something that the Thais do or care to have on their beaches, so I think its a little bit rude to do it. Its unlikely that they would say anything to you, but think about it this way, there is only one profession of Thai ladies that would go topless on the beach.
Our third stop of Friday was a nice beach where the kids swam and played in the sand. Jacob asked me to bury him in the sand, which I was happy to do. He did not ask me to give him the form of a mermaid, but I was happy to do that as well. Jacob was not at all pleased by the boobs that I gave him. Fortunately for him, I didn't take any pictures.
The final island was not as nice as the third. I can't remember that much about it.
On Saturday we rented another long boat and went to Hong Island. The highlight of our four trip stop was a bay where kids could feed fish, snorkel and play in the sand. Jacob made a friend there and was building a sand fort. Aleena got bitten by a small crab and did not want to get too close to the water after that.
The long tails are supposed to be in by 4:00, but of course we pushed it until 5:30. Tim had asked why they needed to be in so early, and we found out why. The water on the way back was a lot choppier than the ride out in the morning. The waves really weren't that big, but the boats don't sit that deep in the water, so you could definitely feel them.
Aleena was being a real trooper all day, but at the end of our boat ride she was just exhausted. She really tries to keep up, and we help her by carrying her sometimes, but its not easy for her to do everything like her older brother and sister. She felt kind of warm when we got to the hotel, so we decided to just eat at the hotel restaurant so we could get back and put her to bed.
It turns out that this was the best meal of the trip. They had a seafood buffet, which we were the only guests at for about 45 minutes. Aleena slept through the entire meal. I think one other group joined later.
The food was pretty good, particularly the grilled shrimp, but a few things made it really fun. At one point Tim sent Nalin over to ask the waitress for something. Now, if I haven't mentioned it, Nalin is getting very good at speaking Thai. When the waitresses learned that she could speak Thai, four of them came over and started talking to Tim and Nalin. They were asking Nalin questions and doting over her. You could tell that Nalin was enjoying being the center of attention. They asked if they could braid Nalin's hair, which Nalin eagerly accepted. They took her over to another table and one of them braided Nalin's hair. Nalin told Tim that she was very happy because she had wanted the pretty girl to braid her hair, and she had.
While Jacob was not particularly impressed by Thai waitresses, hair braids, or the woman singing in English with a strong Thai accent, he was thrilled by the fire show. While we ate desert, we were entertained by a performer who breathed fire and had spun two flaming pots. My description doesn't do it justice, but it really was a pretty neat show. He spun the pots like flaming nunchuks. Jacob moved up to the chair closest to him and watched in silent rapture. At one point, the performer spun the flames closer and closer to Jacob who let them get within a foot of him and never flinched.
Our flight out was at 4:30 on Sunday. We spent the morning and early afternoon doing some shopping and hanging out at the pool. As we were getting ready to board our return flight, we noticed that we were flying into a different airport. Domestic flights here can originate out of either the new or the old airport. We had left from the new airport, but would return to the old one. Unfortunately, this was one of the few times that we had driven to the airport (we are usually dropped off), so Tim called Top who sent his driver to pick us up. There is a free shuttle between the two for ticketed passengers, but we didn't want to the kids to be up too late.
Overall the trip was a lot of fun. My pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. I accidentally changed the auto focus setting on my camera so that it didn't lock focus. I thought it was broken, so I was manually focusing. Tim was using auto focus, and while it would focus, it wouldn't really lock. While we have some nice pictures, there are a lot of ones that would have been good if I hadn't screwed up the focus. Of course, I finally figured out what I had done when we got home.
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