I've been sick, busy, and lazy the past few weeks and haven't written much.

Loi Kratrong has come and gone. This is a Buddhist holiday where we float krathongs, or small rafts with candles, for good luck. I went to the Rungsit campus with the rest of the BUIC staff to run our annual fund raising booth. What do we do to make money? We let people hit us with pie cream, for 10 baht a plate. It was great fun, but in over two weeks and a bottle of shampoo, I am just now starting to get the last bits of lard off my head.

That same weekend I passed up a soccer game to go audition for a motorcycle commercial This was my second time casting and possibly my last. I just don't have very good acting talent. Every time I've done casting I am dressed up in clothes I'd never consider wearing and powdered with layers of makeup. Then I'm told by two lady-boys holding a small video camera to turn in circles, jump around, and smile pretty. I just can't handle that part. How am I supposed to act "cool and appealing" while I blow bubbles and skip around in a small room. Afterwards I get yelled at for being too straight. I'd rather be behind the camera I think.

Or behind a guitar. I was warned by my Grandfather on my last trip home that I shouldn't spend my time on music and focus on school. I agree but disagree. At the moment school is pretty spaced out. I mean that in a sense of time. I have 6 classes a week, but really only a two-hour class a day. So I'm gonna have fun with music while I can and without stopping school. My fellow staff members First and Oh have decided to play music together and just see how we like it. No record deals, no bars, just trying things out for a bit. It's fun and when we're ready we could play in restaurants to make some extra money. A really cool thing in Thailand that the US doesn't have a "practice rooms". These are everywhere in Bangkok. A person takes a small room and soundproofs it, adds a drum kit, bass, guitar, amps and a mic, then rents the room to people for about $5 an hour.

I'm in student government I think! The huge speech I was worrying about a few weeks ago was done yesterday without any problems. My topic was student unions and BUIC's lack of one. We all pay student union fees but receive absolutely no support. While doing research I found that BUIC has an elected student government ! Bullshit. I've never voted for people to represent me and I'm quite sure my classmates haven't either. So who is this group of elected students??? BUIC "staff". ME. It makes a bit more sense now why we put on all the activities and attend so many meetings. Ah the power feels good. I'm going to refer to myself as co-president Dan from now on.

Last weekend I went to the 2006 Fat Radio Festival or FAT FEST. 2 days of non-stop music on 4 stages, and booths from all sorts of bands and magazines. Lotta fun! I got myself an Artist pass from Pancake and wandered around with a friend of mine. I met the Bhudda Bless guys who way nicer guys than I had imagined and Joey Boy who I'd ever got to chat with before. Pancake, Thaitanium, ผัดพริกแกงไก่ (you must buy this cd), Slot Machine, Paradox, and Silly Fools were really great too. Paradox was the best out of the 100+ bands that played I think. Their concerts are just so much fun for everyone in the crowd. I got to meet my guitar idol too. P'Ton Silly Fools. He let me play guitar while he was warming up and told me about how he writes songs. Very nice guy. Silly Fools are getting older now. Kids, wives, new singer. Only 2 songs :(

Last Tuesday was Co-Pres. Oh's birthday. He rented a room on Ekkmai above the Tuba restaurant which was really fun. Maybe 20 people in the room, karaoke on a projector screen, pool table, food and drinks, the works. We all had a lot of fun. Everyone started to leave by 11 o'clock so the people left went to eat noodles together. We all loaded in Opp's modified pickup which seats 8 but manages 10. Opp hadn't been drinking but was maybe going a bit fast. With an attitude of most taxi drivers in BKK, race everywhere... even if it is to get behind the stopped car in front of you, a taxi preceded to do this: Raced by our left side going twice our speed... on a curve, then swerves left to avoid the parked car he didn't see before he tried the stunt. Opp slams on his breaks and swerves away from oncoming traffic, skidding into the parked car, bouncing, then skidding further into the curve. This all happened in slow motion because we were skidding to a halt before the impact. I grabbed the girl next to me and First because I knew they weren't wearing seatbelts. Luckly the truck hit both the car and guardrail at a 45 degree angle which absorbed the impact and kept us all from whiplash. Nobody was hurt. Parked car was pretty banged up and Opp's lower-riding converted Nissan pickup lost all the front corner up to the wheel. The impact actually blew the tire out! We waited a good two hours for the car owner and insurance to show up, then took taxis home.

In Modern Presentation class we are required to present 3 speeches of different genres: entertainment, informative, and persuasive. I've learned my lesson with group projects and friends, so I picked the Chinese couple and my Nepalan buddy Shy. We all sat down and decided what we want to accomplish. All four of us saw that most Thai students were going to give mono-tone presentations about why smoking is bad for you or something we've all heard before.

We decided to take the taboo subject of sex and persuade students that they shouldn't be ashamed of or shy to buy condoms for protected sex. This is going to be challenging in that we might really embarrass our teacher and peers. But as my Chinese friend said while brainstorming "Fucking get a grip. You are 20 [yrs. old] and people have sex."

The entertainment speech will be a bit more lame. We were thinking of telling each of our life stories as super heroes. It's easy and it is easy enough language for people to understand.

Informative we aren't sure of yet. Has to be something crazy and not "Why trees grow" or something simple you would expect from this class.

I just aranged a meeting tomorrow afternoon to talk about how we'll do this stuff. It's 3am and I'm off to bed.

I just got back from a rush to see the protesters in Sanam Luang. A first year student sent me an email saying he had heard that there were riots going on but the Thai news didn't want to run the story in fear that more people would come (Thai news media are all currently under military control). There was a protest, 20 people showed up, and it happened THIS MORNING many hours before my freshman informant said it was planned for. So much for that lead.

I did however get to see the Royal Palace area at night with all the lights and decorations left over from the 60th year celebrations. I also saw tons of rats running past me and prostitutes lurking in the shadows. That one caught me off guard. I had heard about the pull-up and roll down the window type thing in other parts of the city but never thought there would be that kind of thing happening in front of the Royal Palace, Tammasart and Silpakorn University campuses, and the military barracks. Interesting planning on the pimp's part. I noticed some guy staring cross eyed at me for a long time, sitting on his little bench under a dimly lit tree. I was talking on my phone and didn't get why he kept staring at me. Well apparently, I was on his turf. There were a lot of women just walking around slowly in circles, normal for Sanam Luang, but then they would walk up to parked cars to talk to the driver and finally get in the passenger side of the car. Ugh. Different crowd at night I guess.

Today I got damn close to being killed. A shirtsleeve length actually. Riding on a motorcycle taxi from the University to the Skytrain the driver and I very nearly got smashed by a police pickup truck passing us on the left (wrong side) at over 80. We were going 60kmh on the edge of our lane and these guys just zoomed right between us and a semi truck with no warning. Picture standing in the road with your back to the direction of traffic with a container truck a car's width to your right and nothing to the left. Now imagine a 2 ton truck doing 80 past you on your left side when you had no idea it was coming. The mirror hit my sleeve!

Tomorrow I need to get to la libriteca and find some books on god knows what. Haven't picked my topic yet.