Getting close to finals. This means I have a lot of procrastination to do... errrr A lot of hard studying to do. My first final is on the 8th of May. Nammon and I have both been lucky enough to have finals everyday of the week, with no breaks in between. This is unusual because most schedules allow a 1-2 break between each class's final exam. Oh well, at least we'll finish quickly.

Good news. The 2007 Prom is not this week, before finals. It is on the weekend of the 19th, after finals are finished. This means I have more time to study, relax, and practice before heading into exams.

I'll be going back to Washington State next month. I changed my ticket this morning for the 23rd of May. I plan on getting a job and working as hard as I can for 2 months. I think that I will plan on returning in the middle of July. I shudder at the thought of leaving for this long, but it's something I have to do, right? After all, I'm not going to be very far away from friends. We'll still have MSN, email, telephones, cameras, and postcards. 2 months should go by quickly.

The karaoke video Nammon and I shot a month back has just been released. Grammy Light Pack 3 and 4. I bought the first VCD, Nammon's Dad bought the second. I'll post some screen shots hehe.











Thinking about where to work once I go back to Washington. I will (แน่ๆครับ) go crazy if I work in a stressful place like before (I don't want to say any names but, Nifty F****s). Great money, but I know I'll go crazy missing people in Thailand all day. I think that working somewhere more peaceful would be good. Maybe in the Co-op Grocery Store or a store downtown. Jobs in restaurants are always nice, though. Tips make the stress worth while. Either way I've got to remember to chill out as much as possible. I'll need to make it back to school in Bangkok sane.

My birthday was pretty laid back. Nammon didn't have enough money for bus fare and had a cousin coming to visit, and all of my friends seemed to have disappeared for the holidays. I just stayed in my room, slept and talked on the phone for most of the day. In the end my birthday was a good reminder that I'm not a little kid anymore. If I want to do things in life I need to be the one who makes it happen.

Songkran was more exciting, but not much more. I stayed in my room and slept during the three day holiday. Most of my friends were on family trips or afraid to leave the house in fear of getting squirt guns and baby powder shoved in their face all day. I gave in the second night and went out with P'Ek. Ek picked me up wearing a tank of water with a gun attached. I hopped on the back of the bike and we went on a tour of Bangkok's hot spots for water fights. First we went to Silom and watched Ek's younger brother play music with his friends, then we went to Kao San road. Kao San have already "closed" so the only people left over were there to drink or buy expensive touristy goods. Next we went back to Silom and fought our way through the crowds to park. We walked down one side of the road, faces white with powder girls and gays would gently smear on our faces, then walked back the other side of Silom Road getting buckets of ice water poured down our necks. Back on the bike and headed to RCA. RCA plaza had the normal scene of scantly dressed twenty year olds hopping between expensively priced bars, but also had a huge plastic tent that ran the length of the road. Inside the tent machines shot out foam bubbles which were chest deep. Ek and I had fun walking around, saw some friend's of P'ek and ate food. I missed Nammon a lot. She couldn't leave home and I had to tag along with P'ek alone.

Worked out ok thought. After Songkran we took Nammon's cousin Punch to Big C and sung karaoke together. Then went to eat at a barbecue buffet. Lots and Lots of food. The girls fought each other in order to get all the bigger shrimp heads, I was happy just eating shrimp. Afterwards, we bought ice cream at 7-11 then took a taxi back to the house. We looked at some old pictures then went to buy more food. Just hanging out at the house was a good end to the holiday. That was about it for Songkran. Laid back, easy, fun.

The university prom is coming up next month on the 5th. This means band practice at least twice a week. 30 songs.

Wish me luck. This month has been stressful already and I we're just now getting close to finals = twice as stressed. I need all the luck I can get.

Every feel awful for making a mistake you know you wouldn't normally make? Even the smallest of bad judgment, or a lapse in good judgment, can snowball into big problems quickly. Making mistakes is easy, fixing mistakes is much much harder. This seemed to have been the theme of the month for March this year. Myself, and others, have found out that the only thing to do is to keep walking forwards and do the best we can.

Last month I was picked to take care of Peacemaker's guitarist during a special guest performance in Big Ass's concert at Thunder Dome Arena. One day was spent practicing and doing sound checks. During the 8th song of the show the lights would go black and the GMM Live team, P'nueng and I would have exactly 45 seconds to setup for Peacemaker to play along with Big Ass. The drum kit slides out on a 100 foot long platform on rails, P'nueng takes care of one guitarist's equipment, I do the other.

What exactly do I have to do in 45 seconds in a complete blackout? First, push. Push the guitar amplifier cabinet and head out onto the stage so that Big Ass's drum stage clears my feat and goes off stage. I then need to get the amp in front of the others and plug in the extensions cord which has been setup ahead of time. Next, I need to plug in the bass player's wireless receiver while I am still next to the amplifier stack. Running back to the offstage area, I grab the effects pedal board and take it out to the front of the stage. Connect the in/out and wireless send cables, then move the microphone to the front of the speaker cabinet. Turn on the amp and get offstage.

This is rushed, but not too bad. Today, however, the cable connecting the guitarist to the amp has been snagged and loosened a fraction of an inch. The sound cuts in an out, but can only be heard by the guitarist. I don't understand why P'Toe looks so confused and when I check the cables things seem ok. Finally I find the trouble-making cable and fix the problem. The guitarist has lost confidence in the cable and shouts that he wants me to pull the cable and plug in the guitar (versus a wireless antenna on his belt. I connect the wrong end and run back offstage. It took me about 20 seconds to realize that I had just made one of the stupidest mistakes I could and ran out to switch back to the wireless, which works just fine if the cable is snug. No big deal right? Well, when an entire arena watches a guitarist stop playing altogether, it becomes a big deal. We made it in time for the guitar solo, but I was too late to save P'Toe's embarrassment and anger. After the second song we did all the 45 second work in reverse and Big Ass was back into their 25 song setlist. P'Boy came by and patted me on the back, but nobody said anything to me the rest of the night. I tried apologizing for the miscommunication but got only a hand gesture in return. Later that night P'nueng informed me that during the set change the cable connecting the guitar and effects for the second guitarist had also been snagged and unplugged. Both guitar player couldn't hear anything through the entire intro piece. luckily a recording system in place meant that the audience had no idea, but both guitarists did. P'nueng is still with the band but I likely won't be invited to do much more work with Peacemaker. I still get asked to do AB Normal, Potato, and some other bands but schedules are full at the moment.

School is a much better subject. Midterm scores were decent, ethics being my lowest score, barely passing. The teacher latter told me that the highest grade was an 80% and didn't suggest dropping the course.

My mom came in Late February. We had a lot of fun traveling and living together. Got to go to Chiang Mai, Phapang, Hat Rai Lei, Koh Pi Pi, and my mother took a trip to Ankor Wat in Cambodia. Now that she's gone I miss her being here.

My computer finally died at the end of last month. After showing signs of bad health for months my Acer finally took it's last gulp of power then flashed me the blue screen of death one morning. I replaced the hard drive, installed Windows, then it crashed again. I wiped the hard drive and had a repairman install an illegal copy of Windows which seems to be working better. Still managed to get a couple blue screens in the last couple days. Maybe bad memory?

While doing the Big Ass concert I had someone invite me to play guitar in their music video. I managed to get Nammon a part in the video too. Neither of us have any acting training or experience so we just faked it. I was given a CD of 24 songs and 1 day to learn all the guitar solo parts. Near impossible. In the end I was told to just play along and fake it. I've never been so tired in my life. We arrived on the set at 8 am and were the only two people. Around 10 pm I though I was going to die. I'd shot music videos all day with only 5 minute breaks every couple songs. At 10 pm we still had another 10 songs to shoot out of the full 24. Nammon kept me going and I managed to make until we shot Palmy's Koon Jae Tee Hai Pai ไอ้กุญแจที่หายไป and finished about 2am. I thought I was going to be playing in the background of a couple songs and taking it easy. Wow was I wrong. The album is acoustic jazz versions of pop songs, and was written by various small GMM Grammy record labels. I hadn't realized that I had become the body to represent the album. This meant that every song featured me in the foreground playing god knows what chords while a small percussion group played along side. MORE THAN HALF THE SONGS I learned while shooting... 4 3 2 (1) Action. Just grope my way along the guitar neck and act like I had heard the song before. It was fun. The songs I knew I was actually able to play the solo parts for. Nammon got to be the actress in the drama scene of one video and a dancer in a couple other songs. Excited to see the finished product!

Last weekend Nammon and I went a highschool friend's birthday party at Lemon Bay. We all took a tour bus down and rented a two-story house right next to the beach. On Mo's birthday we ate seafood on the beach at night by candle light. All her friends made tee-shirts ahead of time which spelt H-a-p p-y B-i-r t-h d-a-y M-o when the stood together and turned around. Lot of fun.

The twelfth day of this month will mark my twentieth year of living. Two decades! The thirteenth will be the start of Songkran or the traditional Thai New Year. Last year I celebrated in Chiang Mai with May and other friends from school. This year I think Nammon and I will probably just hang out. I might go out for a day with friends but this holiday is brutal. Water fights are fun and all, but the heat is killer. Traffic is horrific.