The sound of the rain outside reminds me of how much I used to love visiting resivoir spill-overs, dams, or anyplace that released large amounts of water at once. The rain is coming down so hard off the two 500 sq.ft. carports that it really does have the sound of a large lake being drained through a small nozzel. The parking lot is what that big lake is spilling into, and it is getting deeper by the second. The dogs that howl and run around chasing eachother everynight are now swimming their way into territory belonging to other dogs. I enjoy it all. As I said, heavy water, falling, has always been been on my "likes" list, right next to lightning storms.

Today was a normal school day. The teacher spent an hour explaining the reveloutionary concept of media bias, while I daydreamed plans to do something with my life. When she finished explaining, I cut short my dream, then we both watched a five person group give a 15-minute presentation about the movie "Insider" Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer. I'd actually to see that movie, it looks interesting.

A quick optional computer lab was next. I went, because I enjoy the proffesor and was already at school. I had lunch then left to the Emporium shopping mall.

Today was the first time I have ever seen a movie alone. Either the movie "United 93" or the two Aspirin I took before watching it made me want to both vomit and cry.

Very good movie. I particularly enjoyed the filming style. There wasn't any normal Hollywood crap thrown in to juice up the story. No shots of the father leaving his kids to go away for a short business trip, no goodbyes at the airport gate, no terrorist camps or planning. United 93 just used the sequence of events and left out the slow, typical build-up of a Hollywood movie. And that made it very emotional. The movie used clever timing, the shock of a real tactical problem, and the overwhelmingness of that day in history to thrill and inform the audience. The best part in my mind was that the film doesn't try to bullshit anybody using special effects or actors. At all. The plain clothes, clean shaven terrorists are scared and make mistakes too. Air-traffic controlmen are pissed at the millitary, who are pissed at the FAA, who are counfused as hell because they only know as much as the air-traffic control guys. As the airplane is going down we can't see what is really happening in the plane because... we really don't know what did happen in the plane as it went down on September 11th, 2001.

It's not a fun movie by any means. At times I felt downright sick. Yet, it's movies like this I would love to see more of. In many ways I think my generation is half brain-dead and half asleep. If we can get the sleeping half to wake up through films that show how life is never certain, that means we'll have a half-functional society, right? Or maybe I've only got half my math correct. Either way I enjoyed this film alot because it was able to do so much using the audiance's emotions and chilling facts vs. computer generated animations and acting skills. The later is great, don't get me wrong, but the first is personally more impressive.

Sunday I went to BU's sport day rally at the Rung Sit campus. If you can imagine 100+ freshman sitting in perfect rows and columms of stadium bleachers, all raising their hands up at once in front of them. It looks like a display screen. Then they all turn 90 degrees to the left and clap, slowly but in-sync, three times. Then they all turn 180 degrees to the right, clap three times. The left half of the crowd turns back to the right while the right half stays perfectly still. Then the all pickup wooden boards that were planted infront of their knees. This is all from a distance so we can't see the image of HM The King until all the boards are flipped at once. Then flipped again to form a 100 by 200 foot screen saying "WE LOVE THE KING, ACCOUNTING, BU, 2006". Then everyone stowes the boards in-sync, turns quickly to the right and sends a 100 by 200 foot image of the accounting kids thrusting their rear-ends at the engineering department only a few feet away. This is the cheering we've been practicing, developing, and competing in for the last few months. You get points for all sorts of things: content, clarity, colors, decorations, costumes, staff, freshman behavior, originallity, loudness, ect. This may not sound too exciting, but having a couple hundred students clapping, grunting, singing, or just giving you the finger, from 200 yards away, in perfect unison is pretty impressive. The BU cheerleading team was pretty hot too. (Four of the cheerleaders live on my street, by the way!) Most of the cheers are fast paced onces that have been passed down by litterally centuries of students. Momo knows the same cheers I do. She taught them eight years ago, and I taught them two months ago.

Sunday was fun, but very long. 7am-8pm at school. I got: a เรารักในหลวง t-shirt, a medal (for winning the school soccer tournament last week), and a horrible sunburn. Everybody got the later. We didn't expect to be sitting in bleachers for 8 hours in the mid-day sun. My face is more red than I've ever seen in a carton of strawberries. Neckline too. Everyone who went is now bright red and black.

A couple nights of lost sleep left me with a bit of a cold.

News of the World wants to give me 120GBP in exchange for the pictures they stole. Other photographers said 200-400 would be about right.

Other than those two things everything is pretty good. School is going. Classes are fun. Sport day is this Saturday which means the team will have another tournament to compete in.

After a little googling I found that there are Lasers in Thailand! I'm psyched. I'll try to rent a boat for Oktoberfest in September. I might rent a boat sooner than that just to practice. I haven't sailed a laser in years.

I haven't slept in awhile. Last night I did go and take pictures of the hotel room/home of John Mark Karr. Mathew Scott, a British writer, called me around 11 and asked me if I wanted to shoot the JonBenette Ramsey suspect's place in Bangkok. Taxi ride 100฿. The staff told me photographers from all over the world had been marching in all day wanting to rent Karr's room and take picture, all were told no. I tried sweet talking and pleaing with the desk staff for a good hour. Police were done with the room, had locked the door themselves, and nobody had entered since the suspect was arrested.

The staff took me up to take pictures of the door. Then the bicycle that was left behind. All the police helmets laying around... finally a bell man came and asked me how much I would get for a job like this. I asked how much he would want to get for a job like this. He said a lot. I said 1,000. He said more. I called the writer. 3000฿, out of my pocket, I'll be paid back later.

I rented an hourly rate (yes it isn't too far from that area of town) room and went up. Getty had just put an image on the wire of a room just like mine, saying it was similar to Karr's room. It wasn't, but I still took pictures incase. The bell man called me and we met at the 2nd floor elevator. He told me he had gone in the room once, just to look around, this would be his second time. We took the elevator to the 9th floor, then sent it to the 10th floor so the staff below wouldn't suspect anything.

The room was clean. Police took the sheets and everything else. Only Karr's two beer bottles were left behind. The room was a typical hourly/daily/monthly rate room I suppose. PVC curtains, old aircondioner in the window, bed taking up the main room, small bathroom dimly lit.

I took pictures for 10 minutes, then we hurried out. Getting caught would mean much more than a light spanking for the bell man.

I went back to my room, locked the door, took the elevator downstairs, checked out, and said "Thanks everyone." The bell man smiled and held the door for me on the way out.

Another 100฿ taxi ride and I'm broke. I got home around 2:30am and started writing to the editors that were running the story. After some googling I found out these were mostly all tabloid papers. Mathew told me just that, "It's just tabloid fluff." Mathew got a bill out of the hotel staff yeterday showing phone calls. Many of the numbers were cosmetic surgeons giving bids for an opperation... thats my guess for the story line.

I didn't get any sleep but I did get lots of phone calls from the New York Daily News, News of the World, and Daily News. LA Times and Seattle Times said they were interested but had no story to go with the pictures.

I took the bus to school at 8am and then took the tour bus with the team to Rungsit. We played a 7 on 7 tournament and won in penalty kicks. We had another match at noon, but I got a call from an editor and had to rush back.

I didn't make it to Stats. Just as well: I know what the book is and remember last year's first Stats class being 15 minutes long.

Rub Nong (รับน้อง) means accepting the youth. Saturday night O and Gaeb came to my place and slept over. Sunday morning we went to the university, loaded three tour busses with first year incoming freshman, and headed for Hua Hin.

In Hua Hin we went striaght into the good stuff. I had group number 3.

We blindfolded the freshman and had them grab on to eachother in a single file line. After leading them down the beach and through the water, we lead them up to a garbage bag tunnel. This tunnel had several possible routes, but all directions had portholes built-in, with upperclass (my upperclassmen) standing above or to the side. The freshman were unblindfolded one by one and sent into the tunnel. After all had gone, I had to go too! The trick was to crawl through the sand slowly, then quickly past the 3rd and 4th years. Upperclassmen were armed with a paste made of brightly colored dye, flour, and starch. After the paste is smeared on your face and hair it dries very quickly, leaving a plaster-covered face and stiff hair.

The next few stations included water gun battles, to knock Mickey Mouse ears off of the other team's head, eating competitions, clothes changing races, and obstacle courses. Around 4pm we checked into rooms, took showers and went to dinner. After dinner was over, we all gathered in the conference hall and played more games, skits preformed by 2nd years, and more games. The next part was a bit of supprise.

The lights were turned off, and the 3rd/4th year students gave a slideshow and a speech/song on how important it was to enjoy ourselves and have a good time as a student. We never did turn the lights on again. We lead our groups ourside again, once again in single file lines, and down the path to the beach. The path to the beach was lined with upperclassmen, still singing. The beach was lined with good size holes, about 40 of them, each with a candle at the bottom. 40 was the number of staff members on the trip, and was just enough for each of us to have our own hole and candle. Freshman were allowed to roam the beach, visiting all the candles. When a student would sit down infront of us, we would tie a string onto their wrist and give them a blessing and advise for the upcoming year. All of this was done at a near whisper. The beach was pitch black accept for our candles and the lights of all the fishing boats moered offshore. Once all hundred freshman had gone back to there rooms, staff members visited their upperclassmen for the same thing. I recieved some of the best advice I've ever had that night.

The next day was breakfast, pack, and leave for Bangkok. At some point we drew siblings พี่รหัส. This meant I have 5 freshman that I must treat like my siblings for the next few years. Help them when I can, take them out every so often. Likewise, they help out their older brother. I got some pretty cool siblings. I'll be passing out old textbooks next week, when school starts again, as presents.

After getting back to the university a group of friends and I headed for the Eastern Bus Terminal, bought tickets, and headed down the other coast, to another beach. This was a great trip. We got to Bang Saen around sunset and rented an empty house. We spent the night eating food, drinking (sorry mom), playing cards (more scandelous than drinking here), singing songs, and just having fun. Tuesday morning we walked over to the beach and had breakfast on the beach, then headed back to Bangkok.

Wednesday was the longest football/soccer practice i've ever done.

Thursday was freshman oreintation for the the foreign students. We went to the Buffalo Center in Supanburi. This was a fun trip, but very tiring and not quiet as personal as Rub Nong in Hua Hin.

Yesterday was more practice for freshman rallies and soccer.

Today I have to go somewhere for HM the Queen's birthday. Not sure where, but I hear it involves a lot of walking in the mid-day sun.

Tomorrow is my first free day in weeks! What will I do!? Buy school clothes and sleep are my guess. Monday is the first day of the first term in 2006. Fundamental Mathmatics and Presentation Techniques. 11.20-16.30, 7 hours.