DIY Mosquito Trap

This is a non-toxic and totally green way of keeping the mosquito population down in your house.

You will need :

• unwashed clothing, preferably gym clothes with lots of sweat — as bait
• a tall tin can or a large vase

How-to :

1. Place stinky clothing into a tall tin can or large vase
2. Leave it in a dark corner overnight
3. Next morning, sneak up and cover the opening. Put the covered can/vase under direct sunlight. Leave it there for 2 days. The trapped mosquitoes should die from the heat and/or starvation.

You will have to fish out the stinky sock, so it may not be 100% non-toxic. XD

mondegreen

Now this is a word I won’t be able to find in my copy of Webster ( it’s a triple hand-me-down , so my dictionary may be older than me. ) It has recently been added along with some 100 other words into the Merriam-Webster dictionary. My current mondegreen is from Madonna and Justin Timberlake’s “4 Minutes” where Madonna sings in  , what I think is,  her cold and sexy dominatrix voice :

” Sometimes I think what I need is an urinary infection, Yeah “

I did some lyrics googling and found out the lyrics was the following :

“Sometimes I think what I need is a you intervention, yeah”

I still don’t understand it.

104.5 FM

For some reasons, my radio could no longer pick up 107 FM without some “luk thung” ( thai country ) songs playing simultaneously. While flicking thru the channels , I found 104.5 , a Thai indy song station. A nice alternative , some of the songs are bilingual too. There’s this  song by a band called “Jui Jui” that’s been played almost every hour. It’s in Japanese …

Jui Jui singing : * strong guitar strumming *  ke wa na ottowa …. aso wa kodewa…

me, thinking : thai music scene so damn cool, we so multi-lingual, man.

Jui Jui, singing : ya kee mo !  ya kee mo ! ohhh….. ohhho ….

me, thinking : what is yakeemo ? … sounds like  japanese dessert…

halfway thru the song , Jui Jui, singing :   … Doraemon, Nobita, Shisuka, Giant, Szu-na-ok …

me : ARGGHHH!!!

” Ya Kee-mo ” in thai means “don’t be a braggart.” Maybe I’m imagining the other parts, did their lyrics have ‘ a$$hole’ and ‘ shut up ‘ in it too ? Or is it just gibberish ? Anyone understands Japanese ? Please tell me. Here’s a link to the song.

a bag post …

I drafted this pattern myself … changed the handles just 4 times… This is my secret shopping bag. The husband doesn’t know what I’ve been up to because I come home looking very innocent with no plastic bags. BUT !! There is a new T-shirt, a kitchen gadget from Daiso, 2 cream horn buns, anti-cellulite gel, and a dozen travel-size pack tissue paper, along with all my regular stuffs. Mwahahahahaaa …

Enough coffee …

… to pop your eyeballs … This is what the K2 did as a finale to a particularly rough day ( “rough” here , meant for us ) …

This was after I stomped out of the room feeling pissed at myself for being tricked into giving her pork floss along with her dinner which she has been trying to finish for the past 2 hours eating just a grain of rice at a time.

How does she do that ?

I handed the kid a blank canvas ( buy 2 get 1 free , I scored ! ) She thought for a moment, then said , “I’m not going to draft , I’ll just paint it. I need blue, green, red , and white paint.” A little later, she has painted some flowers layered behind some grass on a snowy day. How does she do that ? I spent my high school taking art class and the most dreaded assignment is a blank piece of paper. All other assignments where we were asked to replicate a drawing, I can do. When it comes to drawing from my own imagination, the brain just went blank.

I’m beginning to understand what the art teacher was talking about. We chose this art school because it was near our house and the owner was , well, interesting. Let’s just said that, if you see a man riding a bike with today’s oil prices attached to it, it’s him. At that time, he told us that we should not show our kid how to draw. If she draws a tree that you have drawn , you are DESTROYING her creativity. If she wants to color her tree pink, let her do it ! It is HER tree ! That was very puzzling then, and it make us feel very apprehensive when the kid said she doesn’t know how to draw something and ask if we will please show her how.

Anyways, the way they teach art is to give the kids a topic. After they have drafted it out in pencil, they show it to their teacher. The teacher will then give them advice, for example, this part is too blank , go add something to it. After the draft is okayed, the kids then add color , pastel, watercolor or acrylic , depending on the course level.

The kid’s drawing is not neat, even today. During the first course, she came back with a color pencil drawing of us, and we thought “How much did we paid for this ?” But now we understand. Their goal is to foster kids imagination. It is not necessary to draw a realistic tree at this age. It is more important to imagine your own tree.

New place to take kids to

At last, a new museum ! We are so tired of the never-ending Princesses thing going on at the Children’s Discovery Center. The Museum of Siam is located between the Pharachawang Police Station and Wat Po. It’s an old government building ( Ministry of Commerce ) that has been converted into a museum, so there are antique tile floors and wooden stairs that makes one feel … cultured ? Well, this is what this museum is about. Where did Thais originated from ? Where is the real Suvannabhum ? As you weave through each room you travel from the past to present . Lots of multimedia tools used to get the message across. There is a cannonball game where you steer a canon to shoot your enemies on screen. The kid was glued to the windows watching a movie projected onto a model ( The movie is about the fall of Ayudthaya , I think. I was very distracted by the K2. ) Much , much more that I can write about . There’s no entrance fee and parking is available. Weekends are crowded, go during weekdays ( closed on mondays ) if you can. Map here.

interesting story…

I heard at a seminar in the kids’ school. The seminar’s called ” How to prepare your child for Mor 1 ( grade 7 ) examination ” and they invited some parents of past graduates to share their story.  The elementary section is fairly new, there are just 2 years of alumnis freed into the wild so far. There was a dad whose son  got accepted into a gifted class. This caused quite a stir amongst the parents because parents here are worried that their kids are not academically competitive with kids from other schools. ( This is a child-centered school so they don’t overdo the academic side of learning. )

The dad’s story was his son started school in the regular school system. He was ranked number 38 out of the 40 students in class, almost bottom of the class. The dad then transfered his son to an international school but tuition fees soon turned into a financial burden. He looked for alternatives and found this school. The way he put it was , the school’s system created a healthy core for his child. Instead of just throwing textbooks and homeworks at his son, it gave time for his brain to be ready for them. When he started grade 5, his dad started preparing him for the mor1 exam. What he did was, he look for weekend cram schools located around the high school that he planned to send his son to. The purpose was not to study for knowledge, but to familiarize his son to doing timed exams and to practice doing different style of questions.

I was very impressed with this dad’s story ( along with a hoard of other moms who sat around him during tea break like he is a guru of some sort ) . He completely overturned his son’s fate of being labeled an underachiever into a gifted child. How cool is that !

random updates …

• I’ve joined a gym, not those california wow or fitness first . It’s a small n quiet gym in a service apartment. Nice equipments, no crowd which is good for my anti-social behavior. It’s a bit pricey but hey, you have to keep me healthy or else who’s going to do all the housework here ?
• The kid’s going to hold the ” plarn ” ( flower tray ) on teacher’s day. I have to wake up at 6 in the morning 3 days in a row to get her to school on time for holding-the-plarn practice. Hence, no updates lately.
• Found some nice thai blogs to read via The Lost Boy’s Top Thailand Blogs . You have to see this post by Bangkok Klong of Consciousness. Anyone can be ‘ abraew ‘ with big eye contact lens. Also the rabbit pics in Lost in Translation. So funny !
• Tried to watch the no confidence debate. Want to scream after the most trivial point is objected upon for over 20 minutes. Will read up in newspaper instead.

Small time Ripoffs

Last week I met up with my parents for sukiyaki. The waitress there must think we are sitting ducks because we spoke Cantonese throughout the meal. When it was time to pay, the waitress came and told us ” 1,470 bht “. Was she surprised when I asked to check the bill. Like “omg-she-can-read-thai??!!” face. She fumbled with the bill and said that she has over-billed us with a pot of hot tea.  Yes, she suddenly knew that she has over billed us when I asked to see the bill. The revised one was 970bht. The tea must have cost 500bht. Ducki Suki ? Please check on your people ?

Another ( reoccurring ) incident. You know those Spot reward cards ? I never fish them out of my wallet . I just tell them my phone number so I can get the discounts. Watch the cashier’s fingers. Sometimes the number they are typing is not yours. If you can read thai, you can double check on the receipt because the card owner’s name will be printed on it. This happened to me twice and I don’t go to Tops that often.

I don’t know if time is really lean these days that people have to do whatever to make ends meet. Or is it just people don’t have a good conscience anymore ? It really isn’t worth it to be caught.