BKK 2012 - Day 2, Part 2 - Ayutthaya, Bangkok

“An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.” ― Edith Wharton

***

BKK 2012
Day 2, Part 2 - 8th September - Ayutthaya, Bangkok


On Wat Phrasisanpeth


Wat Phrasisanpeth










Nua




"Clean Ayutthaya"
Presumably this was the imperative mood




The Director-General of UNESCO was visiting around this time


Lake

I then had a look at another site without entering, since it would just be more of the same.


"Please do not climb up" because you must pay for a ticket

This temple was quite similar to the others I'd seen, except it had a very phallic main building.








Map of Ayutthaya


This was a neat anti-dripping device for ice cream. The coconut ice cream was 10B which was a fair price. However it was slightly too sweet and had coloured coconut shreds in it.

Only Indonesia rivalled what I'd seen of Thailand for lack of signage. Of course this was to generate work for guides.

Next was Wat Naphrameru-Rajikaram. This last temple had escaped Burmese destruction.




Dog


Buddhas


On Wat Naphrameru-Rajikaram
"King of Burma... He fired a cannon by himself and one of the cannons burst out and injureel him seriously. He had to go back to Burma with his army. But he died at Tak's border on his way back to Burma"
Sad.


Buddha


Buddha behind rolling door


Guan Yin


God of Many Faces




"Astrologer"


Maybe this read "clean me"


For some reason I found monks on the back of a pickup quite funny


20B mystery meat sausages. I couldn't even finish the one I bought.
Across the road there was real food but I was scared of missing my train.


18B mystery flavour (probably Freaky Fruitade - I'm not sure if it was F&N) Fanta in a weird 450ml size


What Last Class looked like. A Japanese woman paid 245B for first class tickets. This was 15B for the real Third Class - unpadded wooden benches (on my way here my seat had at least had some padding). Too bad there were no chickens in the cabin.


Fortune Telling


"Shield. The Glamorous Bangkok"
"Glamorous" is not the word I'd use


Thai convenience food. Which looks very good.


Schwepps Manao flavour (Thai lime), 14B
I love local flavours
Long live 7-11! May Western Economic Neo-colonialism drive out bastard hawkers who overcharge farangs!


Hua Lamphong Station

A tuk tuk quoted me 30B to my hotel. I was surprised it was so cheap, then I found out the catch: he said I had to stop at his "sponsor", but did not buy anything. At least he was honest, but I didn't want to waste time (the point of taking a tuk tuk would've been to save time anyway). I gave him props for his honesty. I said no, and he claimed it was 3km to the hotel. At this point I got annoyed since he was lying now - I'd walked the distance in the morning and it was no way it was 3km.


I'd read that we could thank the British for covered sidewalks (i.e. 5 foot ways, which supposedly are exclusive to British Southeast Asia), but this was close enough even though there wasn't 100% shelter.


Narrow Alley


"General Paint"


Cute pigs

One shop advertised Birds Nest for 100B. I went in and the cheapest was 300B, but it came with coconut.


I couldn't figure out the translation logic on which languages to use.

A man I presumed was the owner couldn't speak Mandarin, and I didn't do Cantonese, so we used English. Hurr hurr.


Birds Nest with coconut. The coconut added a delectable richness to it.


"Special Discount"

I ended up topo-ing (getting lost) a lot as it was hard to navigate (no romanised signs, a bad map, confusing streets). Perhaps I was losing my powers. In the end i walked more than 3 km.

A lot of people think Thailand, Southeast Asia etc are very cheap. Actually this is not the case. One must factor in hidden costs, swindling being one. I had already spent 2900B (~S$120) in 1.5 days, excluding my hotel and the sumptuous Chinese meal, and it wasn't as if I'd spent a lot (I'd only taken one taxi or other form of transport dedicated to me, e.g. tuk tuks). Everything adds up - people think Bangkok is cheap because they take short trips, but on a daily basis this is not so.


Huge snacks


Pandemonium: there was a temple event


Temple


Wat U Phai Rat Bamrung


Nice pig

There was a place called "Visa King". Green cards on the fly?


"Warning for Tourists... They are usually well-dressed, friendly, speak little or good English, but all of them have one thing in mind... TO SCAM YOU... Take the above-mentioned advice and your vacation will certainly be spared from 'nightmare' perpetrated by con-artists"


Flasher


Map with warning: "Beware of stranger offering ride to discount Jewelry stores or buying fake goods or Other forms of deception. Firmly decline when approached and report any such incidents to the Thai Tourist Police"


Carpark shrine


Even in Eastern Europe and Greece I don't get Asian-level swindling. The White Man's Burden should've been to make honest men out of Asians. It says something that there is a site called BangkokScams.com.

One way not to get swindled: get the hotel guy to call a taxi for you, so they will use the meter. Or you can try calling the Passenger Protection Center, I guess.

Links - 14th April 2013

Wealth is key for marriage, study claims - "when men become in short supply, for instance in the wake of the First World War, women are happy to put up with poorer partners of lesser social sway. And when men are commonplace, women are in the driving seat and become correspondingly more choosy, driving a hard bargain for the richest and most powerful men, with the marriage prospects of a male pauper being "drastically reduced". The findings back a prediction made more than a decade ago that also said men will become more faithful to their wives and take more interest in their children when women are in short supply."

Girls Lead in Science Exam, but Not in the United States - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com - "girls generally outperform boys in science — but not in the United States. What explains the gap?"
What explains the more important gap - why girls generally outperform boys? What explains the gap in explaining gaps?
Comments: "Do you noticed that the countries with the highest male advanteges (Denmark, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, ...) are the ones which are the most feminist countries? In contrast the countries with the highest female advantages (Jordan, Albania, Qatar, Kyrgyz Republic, ...) are usually at the bottom of the gender equality index. I think these gender differences are more complex then "cultural forces keeping girls away from scientific careers""
"A science exam given to 15-year-olds? Little "real" math or quantitative reasoning. As a 15-year-old at Stuyvesant, I was great in chemistry and biology. But it was really just studying and
memorization."

Are Filipinos Malays? - "If asked about their race, most Filipinos would identify as being Malay... Filipinos wishing to migrate in Singapore have to deny this fundamental identification because the Singapore government rejects the classification of Filipinos as Malay... Officially, Singapore recognizes immigrants from the neighboring Philippines as part of the racial category referred to as “Other.” But why refuse the Malay background of Filipinos in the first place? Perhaps it has something to do with the special privileges accorded to the Malay minority in Singapore.. Philippine hero Dr. Jose Rizal is often called the “pride of the Malay race.” Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, for instance, has recognized Rizal as the “greatest Malayan,” calling Rizal an “Asian Renaissance Man.” And what to make of the racial status of residents of Sabah? This territory is officially part of Malaysia but is also claimed by the Sultanate of Sulu, a local kingdom in southern Philippines. The people of Sabah belong to the Malaysian Federation. What would happen if the state became part of the Philippines? "

>> Thanks to Catholicism ♥ - "Tempura (天ぷら) The beloved Japanese dish comes from the ancient Catholic observance of the Ember Days. Occurring as they did four times a year, the Ember Days corresponded to the four natural seasons and fell on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of a specified week. Since the time of the early Church, it was mandatory to fast and abstain from meat on those days. In the 16th century, when Spanish and Portuguese missionaries settled in Nagasaki, Japan, they sought ways of making tasty meatless meals for the Ember Days and started to deep-fry shrimp... “tempura” and “ember” both come from the Latin term, Quatour Tempora, “the four seasons”"

MacGyver Challenge Winner: Build a Better Mouse Trap with LEGO

The
Importance of Men Seeing Women as Human Beings
Comments: "44% of 18 year old men in South Africa have been victims of sexual violence. So male victims are not some minor footnote to the problem, that can be briefly mentioned then waved away. A higher portion of men in South Africa are rape victims than women in the US."
(someone replied by saying "At least one in three women is victimized by male violence" - I think the person can't count; 1/3 is lower than 44%)
"Most of male violence is directed at other males. The fact females are sometimes made victims does not point to a hatred or disregard for women in general at least in our country. The dialogue we've heard from feminist relies on bunch sexist stereotypes rather than a honest critique of individual motives. If this were black people instead of men I think the amount of unrepentant bigotry men are up against would be made clear."
"You can't use a few horrific crimes to profile the nature of violence between men and women. This is what we call sensationalism and it serves to distort reality... Do I need to bring up the women who have cut off men's penises? No of course not."

REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY - "This bibliography examines 286 scholarly investigations: 221 empirical studies and 65 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 371,600" This evidence that men are at least at as much risk from female violence than women are from male violence is a great example of "derailing" or maybe even "trolling". Continue with the White Ribbon Campaign and painting women as perpetual victims!

Why I Dumped My iPhone—And Why I'm Not Going Back - "On the long flight home, my iPhone on airplane mode, I began reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It was one of several dozen classics that I’d downloaded for free in a fit of literary quixotism, then ignored. I was almost embarrassed by the degree to which Walden felt directed toward me. I was particularly stung by his withering take on news junkies: “Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What's the news?’ as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels ... Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe,” he wrote in 1854. And when I came across his famous verdict—“Men have become tools of their tools”—I felt like an enormous tool... my daily life has improved. Commutes are no longer opportunities to catch up on email or Twitter, so I’m reading books again. It feels a little like getting a new contact lens prescription: Things that were blurred together feel sharper and more distinctly colored. And of course, I’m no longer engaged in half-conversations with the people in front of me and half-conversations with the Internet... One of the hardest things to get used to was being unable to instantly share my awesome and horrible experiences with my friends online. Now, I write down my impressions in a notebook, and by the time I get back to a computer, they rarely feel like must-tweets. I’m forced to slog through the tedium of waiting, to wrestle with dull passages and slow scenes, to grapple with confusing and sometimes scary situations on my own. I’m able to savor an idea and allow it to gestate... Do I really want the Internet to be something I feel naked without? "

Taiwanese girls launched the "No Pants Day" which attracted men crowds (Photos) - " "the United States New York City no pants day subway, originally only wanted to promote interesting spoof, evolved into the liberation of bound, simple living, energy saving and carbon reduction, wants to promote to Taiwan"
The contrast with the Improv Everywhere one is striking

The 13 Most Meaningless Platitudes Of Social Media Week 2013 - "Social Media Week is a conference in which people with a lot of Twitter followers brag about how many Twitter followers they have to a room full of people with fewer Twitter followers... As you might imagine, much of what is said at at Social Media Week is totally incomprehensible. Below, we've collected some of our favorite platitudes and aphorisms that not only actual people spoke out loud, but that other people then tweeted out to the world. #Enjoy, and #remember to #retweet and #repin and #regoogleplus if you #enjoyed this #article."

Former Onion Staffers Denounce CEO's Apology For Quvenzhané Wallis Tweet - "Former Onion staffers Monday reacted with dismay to the satirical newspaper's apology for calling a 9-year-old a "cunt," saying the apology marked a loss of editorial freedom. "It shows they don't have faith in the writers, or in their public. It looks worse that they took [the tweet] down"... [It] marked "the first time The Onion has ever retracted anything and run a real apology"... Another former Onion News Network writer warned the CEO would use this tweet to compromise the organization's editorial freedom... The Onion has moved most of its operations to Chicago and has suffered layoffs and cuts this year. In 2012, the majority of its editorial staff — with many citing a loss of creative freedom — left the publication and started new projects in New York City."
The only thing they should apologise for is making a bad joke

AFieldNegro.com - "There’s a lot of FRICTION between Black men and Black women. We can lie to ourselves and pretend that the problem is not there, or we can do something to try and address this problem. What I’m trying to do is create a dialogue, so that we can take a look at this problem. These are some PICTURES of BLACK MEN that date, and marry outside of their race... I’ve often heard Black men complain about Black women hot temper, and their attitude. A few weeks ago I was talking to some brothers, and they said man I love sisters, but it seems like they are never satisfied. With that being said when we look at these pictures, then we have to ask this question--------is it possible that some sisters, are driving brothers away?"

'Ban Abortion to Improve Birthrate' Says Japanese Politician - "This recent column published in the Asahi Shimbun by Liberal Democratic Party politician Noda Seiko suggests that abortion should be prohibited in an attempt to address the falling birthrate"
Noda Seiko is female, contrary to the liberal myth that only men are against abortion (actually both genders are pretty evenly divided). This is why liberals want not just on women in government - but women who espouse "pro-women" views (i.e. not Sarah Palin, even though she has the right parts). In other words, anti-democratic legislative stacking

Chinese Student’s Bicycle Seat Breaks and… Gyah! - "the bicycle’s seat got bent over exposing a cold, merciless steel rod which penetrated the boy’s buttocks. The seat was unable to be removed."

Communauté française à Singapour - "La Cité du Lion avec 9940 citoyens français recensés par le Ministères des Affaires Etrangères abrite la seconde plus grande communauté française d’Asie, loin derrière la Chine et ses 30,000 français mais juste devant la Thaïlande et l’Inde. Les Français sont toujours plus nombreux à Singapour."

Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication
Time to move to 3FA! And then 4FA, 5FA, 6FA... Till everyone just goes to the bank instead

Printer ink cartridges: why you're paying more but getting a lot less - ""The strategy has been to nudge the consumer towards a high frequency
of purchases," says David Connett, editor of The Recycler, a trade magazine covering the remanufacturing industry. "The big printer manufacturers have reduced the amount of ink in a cartridge, encrypted the chip technology, and used aggressive marketing tactics to discourage refills." Chris Brooks, technical director of industry group the UK Cartridge Remanufacturers Association, is more forthright: "The big printer companies do all they can to squeeze ever-increasing amounts of cash out of the poor consumer in exchange for less ink"... The shrinking amount of ink in cartridges has enabled manufacturers to offer a remarkable new product – called "XL" (extra large) but almost exactly the same size as the standard cartridge"

Down Syndrome vs Down's Syndrome

"In this book I have used the term ‘Down syndrome’ often you will see it written as ‘Down’s’ with an apostrophe ‘s’ — this is more commonly used in the UK and the non-possessive used in the US. The term ‘Down’s syndrome’ is what is called an eponym, where something derives its name from a person; in this case the physician John Langdon Down. I personally prefer the non-possessive spelling as it’s not as if Langdon Down had or owned the syndrome and this type of eponym is falling out of use more generally."

--- The Politics of Down Syndrome / Kieron Smith


Calling people "goondus" for using the term "Down Syndrome" just shows you are not just ignorant but so ignorant of your ignorance that you can be truculent about it (aside from the other problems with truculence; if you want to be truculent, at least be right).

Strangest Healing Request

"Give us an example of your healing."
"strangest request ever."


"Okay, I like you now."


"First good healer I've seen in a long time"

The Sphinx Without a Secret

"I found him a good deal changed. He looked anxious and puzzled, and seemed to be in doubt about something. I felt it could not be modern scepticism, for Murchison was the stoutest of Tories, and believed in the Pentateuch as firmly as he believed in the House of Peers; so I concluded that it was a woman, and asked him if he was married yet.

'I don't understand women well enough,' he answered.

'My dear Gerald,' I said, 'women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.'

'I cannot love where I cannot trust,' he replied."

Links - 2nd April 2013

Survey: 74% of women turn down jobs due to work-life balance concerns - "Having a life outside of work is so important to women in Singapore that 74 per cent of them have turned down a job due to work-life balance concerns, a recent survey found. For men, that figure was 50 per cent... men and women here define career success differently reported the survey. Recognition of one's contributions was the defining factor for career success for 66 per cent of female respondents. Meanwhile, 64 per cent of male professionals considered money to be the hallmark of career achievement."
More reasons why men earn more money than women

How tiny Estonia stepped out of USSR's shadow to become an internet titan - ""For other countries, the internet is just another service, like tap water, or clean streets," said Linnar Viik, a lecturer at the Estonian IT College, a government adviser and a man almost synonymous in Estonia with the rise of the web. "But for young Estonians, the internet is a manifestation of something more than a service – it's a symbol of democracy and freedom." To see why, you just have to go outside. Free Wi-Fi is everywhere, and has been for a decade. Viik says you could walk 100 miles – from the pastel-coloured turrets here in medieval Tallinn to the university spires of Tartu – and never lose internet connection... You can vote on your laptop (at the last election, Ilves did it from Macedonia) and sign legal documents on a smartphone. Cabinet meetings have been paperless since 2000. Doctors only issue prescriptions electronically, while in the main cities you can pay by text for bus tickets, parking, and – in some cases – a pint of beer. Not bad for country where, two decades ago, half the population had no phone line... To a British audience, the ID card will have a whiff of Big Brother. But many Estonians argue the opposite: that it allows them to keep tabs on the state, rather than the other way round. "You'd think, given our history, we'd have a problem with it," said Ilves, in an oblique reference to the days when the KGB had an office down a cobbled street in central Tallinn. "But I feel much more secure with a digital ID. If anyone goes into my files, they're flagged. Whereas if my files – which would exist anyway – were made of paper, no one would know who was looking at them." Every Estonian can see who has visited their data, and they can challenge any suspicious behaviour. In one famous case, a policewoman was caught accessing information about her boyfriend. During a recent election campaign, a candidate was swiftly punished for accessing personal information about would-be constituents. "I don't know what the idiot was thinking," said Viik. "You can't hide.""

Employers spill the beans on how they hire (image, JobsCentral survey)

TunnelBear - "We think the Internet is a much better place when everyone can browse privately, and browse the same Internet as everyone else. TunnelBear wants to bring the benefits of VPN to everyone with our incredibly simple applications for PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices. Our highly accoladed applications have appeared on Lifehacker, PC World, TNW, Huffington Post and WSJ.com for making it easy for average users to avoid access restrictions and browse the internet privately. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, TunnelBear is available everywhere (except China occasionally)."
Pretend you're accessing the Internet from another country

Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages - "In the U.K., social welfare benefits make up 44 percent of wages and salaries"

400 yrs ago we painted our breakfast! - "stop ranting on the meal pictures on instagram, we’ve come a long way! 400 years ago We had to paint it! "

Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends - "legends that contained more disgust motifs were distributed more widely on urban legend web sites."

Compulsive liar Elizabeth Jones who cried rape 11 times is jailed - "She had made her first false rape claim in 2004 when she was just 13, Southampton Crown Court heard. Between 2005 and 2007 she made another eight allegations which police investigated and dismissed, although she was not prosecuted. In 2009 she was sentenced to a ten-month detention and training order for a similar offence. Jones’s latest victim was a boyfriend against whom she made the allegation after the pair had an argument... ‘The man was arrested and he gave a statement. He had to live his life with people accusing him of being a rapist’"
9 false allegations with no punishment!

Oscar ratings higher with box office hits nominated? Charts show the correlation. - "Ratings for the Oscar broadcast have been in a fairly steady decline over the last 35 years, but spikes have occurred when a blockbuster film was nominated"

Mikan Newspaper | an epic ad for oranges

Chimps' 'girl talk' uses more negative gestures - "In female-female interactions, the chimps used more aggressive signals and "apologised" less often with gestures of reassurance. But they employed a more positive strategy around males, with more expressions of greeting and submission... "To speak anthropomorphically, I can certainly see some parallels in my own life: women are generally more aggressive and competitive with each other... [and] men do not change their behaviour outside the context of social rank," she said, referring to studies of gesture differences in humans... She added that her analysis of female aggression could be controversial because "there is a belief in the field that males are more aggressive than females." "Some researchers likely will have trouble accepting my results since I show that females are also aggressive," she said. "It's not that they are more aggressive, just different from males in their use of aggression.""
Patriarchy!

Noodles With No Need to Dress Up - NYTimes.com - "those fresh noodles were quite unlike anything I had ever tasted, toothsome, yet tender and delicate... Fresh pasta is indeed best with very little in the way of sauce. The point is to show off the noodle and enhance its flavor with a little butter or cream, perhaps a bit of prosciutto or snipped herbs"

Welcome to Rangers in NZ - "This is a nerds’ guide to filming locations used in Power Rangers shows filmed in the Auckland region of New Zealand, where the show has been made since 2002 with Ninja Storm. This guide is from the perspective of someone who’s actually walked to the locations themselves on two separate occasions, once in 2011 and again in 2013"

Rod Liddle on Rennard and women in parliament - "some say it's time for women to "toughen up" about workplace harassment. Jo Phillips, once former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown's spin doctor, told Radio 4’s Today programme this morning during a discussion about sexism in Westminster that politics was a "very tough world" with "a lot of bullying ... so you do have to toughen up a little bit". John Major's former press secretary Sheila Gunn said women should understand the "culture" of Westminster and find ways of "coping with that sort of inappropriate behaviour". Liddle suggests such advances should be "brushed off", describing a dinner party he attended where an attractive young female journalist fended off a lecherous fellow guest by warning him of severe reprisals if he tried to touch her "clunge" again"

Colombian Army Mortar FAIL! - YouTube

Go Away MDA - "Bypass MDA filters. And bring porn back into your life"

Yahoo: Mayer culpa | The Economist - "Forcing workers to come into the office is a symptom of Yahoo’s problems, not a solution to them... A study by researchers at Stanford and Beijing Universities of a large Chinese travel company compared the performance of employees allowed to work from home with those who were stuck in the office: among the home-workers, job satisfaction rose, staff turnover fell by half and productivity went up by 13%. Hardly surprising, since a lot of people don’t seem to work while they are at work: last year J.C. Penney, an American retailer, discovered that a third of its headquarters’ bandwidth was taken up by employees watching YouTube videos. Ms Mayer’s move is not just a bad idea in itself but also a nail in the coffin of the naive notion that women with big jobs help their sisters up the ladder. Her plan will knock out a few rungs. Flexible employers help women run families and jobs simultaneously. Rigid working practices make combining the two impossible or unpleasant. To be fair, as somebody who took two weeks off to have a baby, Ms Mayer is hardly asking others to do what she would not; but then she has dulled the pain of separation from her child by installing a nursery next to her office. Yahoo’s less privileged and less Stakhanovite women may well hoof it to a friendlier organisation."

Why rich men are better in bed: Women have more orgasms with wealthy partners, study finds - "The researchers found several factors influenced the women's enjoyment of sex. However, one of the biggest turned out to be the income of their partner... The link between enjoyment of sex and partner's wealth was statistically significant even when they took into account other factors such as age, education, happiness, the length of relationship and health. The scientists say the findings could be explained by bias in the study - that women who have frequent orgasms tend to overestimate their partner's income, or that women with 'high powered' partners exaggerate how much they enjoy sex... The link between enjoyment of sex and wealth has also been found in studies in Germany and America."

Best. China Souvenir. Ever.

Something a chap handed me when I was walking in ChengDu with my friend:

"
“第一次不来是你的错
下次不来是我的错

清纯秀丽
中高大学生
活波可爱
青春少女
都市美女
高口味
高素质

货真价实
诚信为本
先玩后付款
不实不收费
可出具发票”

Translation:

"If you don't come the first time, it's your mistake
If you don't come the next time, it's mine

Pure and Simple Beauty
Middle and High School, and University Students
Lively and Cute
Young Girls in Bloom
City Beauties
Sophisticated Taste
High Quality

Real Products and Honest Pricing
Honesty is our Foundational Principle
Play first, Pay later
If we're not honest with you, we won't charge you
We give receipts"

(no, this is not an April Fool's joke, hilarious though it is)