Porkchops will never be the same again

after listening to Weezer’s “Pig” … so saaaaddd !!

Donate those milk boxes

Thai TV Channel 3 is accepting milk/juice ( uht ) boxes where they will be recycled into desks, chairs, waste baskets, etc … and donated to schools. The pdf file is here ( in thai ). They accept both washed or unwashed boxes. Please refer to page 2 of the pdf file to see how to fold the unwashed boxes which can be kept for up to a year.

You can send in the boxes to the TV station ( 3199 6th floor Malenont Tower, Rama 4 Rd, Klong Toey, Bangkok 10110 ) or ask for a donation box by faxing your name, address, contact number to 02-262-3344 or 02-262-3372.

The Case of the Missing Remote Control

The remote control for the car’s stereo was with us when we got on the car. Halfway home, it just vanished. While the three older kids ( that will be The Husband, Me, and the Kid ) pointed fingers, trying to figure out who used it last and dropped it out of the car, there was one sitting very quietly, looking out the window.  We store our music in a memory stick . It will take about 378 minutes to get to my song and that is very, VERY bad.  I would have to press fast forward 120 times to get to my favorite song. Two days later, the K2 said in an edgy-too-happy voice, “Oh, I’ve found the remote control. It was in the playground at school ! Ah-hahaha !” and fished it out of her schoolbag.  Someone got herself in BIG TROUBLE.

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.