It's getting noticeably colder in BKK. Morning showers are shocking and a bit painful. The breeze feels great though. Today some friends and I tried out a new (to us) cake buffet after class. It's actually a large Italian Cafe hidden in the back-sois of Sukumvit 33; but we call it the cake buffet. 150 baht per person gives you your choice of mouses, cheese cakes, various fruit cakes, cream cakes, and four or five types of chocolate cake. It's a small restaurant on a spacious piece of land nudged in between large condo and office buildings. Half of the cafe is a large deck, under a terrace arches covered in mangrove trees that block the sunlight and funnel a nice breeze through the place. It's built like a Tuscan winery with a large field and a farm house; only it has a parking lot and sits in West urban Bangkok. We sat outside the farmhouse and had the place to ourselves. The five of us a great time stuffing trying different deserts, salads, and bread until we started to get sleepy from all energy we had drained lifting our forks.



I nearly cried last week when I successfully pre-registered for the second term this year. This is the first time in three years the computer hasn't refused my status as a student, citing my 6 transfered courses from my high school days. I almost screamed in the joy I felt when I saw the conformation email. So.. I think I'll be taking:

รหัสวิชา.	.กลุ่ม.	.ชื่อวิชา.
ICA317	5431	CORPORATE RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
ICA427	5431	SPECIAL TOPICS IN COMMUNICATION
ICA419	5431	COMMUNICATION PLANNING AND POLICY
ICA327	5331	MARKETING COMMUNICATION
ICA225	5232	MEDIA COMMUNICATION

Seats may be full, or sections changed, so nothings for sure yet.

Political Communication was an interesting course today. Not really. The teaching style was the same as always: reading the text book to us, pausing for poorly translated memories, having nothing to do with political communication. Two and a half hours of these stories went by as they always do (without a break or a change in PowerPoint slides) but today ended differently. Afte 4 weeks our teacher has finally released the midterm grades of all fifteen people in the class. This was the midterm which had no review, only three questions, but was easy if you read the book. My grade? 18/30. I wasn't too satisfied with my grade as I was next to the lowest in the 15 person class. Even some of my next-to-illiterate friends managed a B. I decided to find out what I was missing in what I had been studying.

The result of my consultation with my professor left me confused and depressed for the future of BU students but hopeful for my grade. I asked "Next week, can we look over my mid-term together? I'm not sure why I received such a low grade." She replied "Oh no. I can look for you but I can't let you see your paper now." !?!
I really wanted to see what combination of marks I recieved to have gotten 1.2 questions wrong, and BU allows students to request to see their exams. Drops of sweat started to pour from my teacher's brow. I couldn't understand why she wanted to keep this paper, one of the worst in the room, from being seen. All I got was a repeated "Oh no. Against policy." I replied politely that BU's policy allows this and if she was worried about policy conflicts I could speak to the dean myself. Apparently this was too much! "Just accept that you can't always have good grade because you are speak English. This is my way. I am not like other teacher. Do you think you can do better" Pardon? At this point we had reached a humorous yet scary level of communication. I didn't understand what was going on, and she obviously felt threatened. I decided best to answer her questions, play the obedient student role, and talk to the dean myself.
"Yes. I though I did better than this because I knew the answer to all three questions." Did this make things worse? No! :)
"Oh! You think you should have better grade?"
"(You're &%#* right I do!!) Yes, professor. But mostly I am worried about making the same mistakes again."
"Hmm. If you want a better grade, I'll take a look at your test for you. Sometimes I make mistakes."
Ahhh. So I might be getting a boosted score as long as I don't talk to the dean? What's wrong with letting me see the marks on the paper? Do they exist? Other prof.s are happy to tell you what you answered wrong. Eh. I don't have time to worry. If I get a bad grade in this course I and 14 other students will be walking up to the deans office to have a word about all this. -*- but for now taking it easy seems best. From what I hear 5-6 people complained about the poor and confusing grammar on the midterm which had the teacher worried about keeping her comfy job.

Spring break 2008! Means I may be taking a trip to the states. Almost a 3 week break this year, 4 weeks if I miss one day of each class.

Yesterday was the first band practice in almost two weeks due to school concerts for Bank and Boat. Felt like months. Might be because it's been a while since I learned 11 songs at a time. A lot to remember. But it went well, Saturday's practice should be even tighter if I don't mix up the solos to different songs again. Another month and we should be getting close to lining up a schedule for next year.

P'Ekk signed me up for some cool free seminars the other day at Central World Siam. They were sponsored by Mac and GenX Academy. Famous artists and directors came and taught techniques for movie production. The most interesting to me was movie sounds. I never realized that so much has to be done to exaggerate
door closings and clothing shifting on the body. I also thought Foley was the name of a character in Black Sheep. Animation showed the design of a robot/fax machine destroying cars downtown, a popular commercial for a paper company. Special effects was amazing. How much time and money (millions of dollars) just to make the sails of Pirates look believable, let alone the ghosts and canon balls flying around. Overall a great workshop and fit perfectly in to my budget.



P'Bom Potato isn't with Potato anymore. This is sad news as P'Bom and P'pee, the deceased brother of my friend and band mate Por, were the two who started the band. P'Bom has always looked after me and treated me like a younger brother and has always been the most professional member of the band. Which makes it odd for a GMM Grammy producer to announce that after five #1 albums, P'Bom is no longer good enough for the band. Even more surprising is the replacement drummer pulled out of somebody's hat in no less than two days. Ready to play all 25+ songs used on tour. The official word is that P'Bom made the decision to study drums with renown jazz drummer Lek T-Bone for a while and take a break off tour. At the moment he's in a nearby province being a monk for a while. When he's ready to come back he'll think more about where he wants to be drumming.



The good news in all this is that P'Bom has agreed to teach Por everything he knows. I'm slightly jealous, but P'Bom doesn't teach guitar so: tough. Haha.

I've been thinking I may look into Chula's graduate school. It is after-all the best graduate school in South-East Asia for liberal arts and medicine. International Development Studies seems like it might be a very useful thing in the next 30 years in Asia.

Things are going well.

In the last week I:
Held a training seminar on making scented candles for a group project.
Gave a presentation on bias of major news media in the United States and Middle east.
Walked home from the Skytrain three times.
Sold my PRS guitar.
Bought another one.
Watched a concert from the side of the freeway.

My head cold is getting better but it's not over yet. Last Wednesday I was miserable. Slept the whole day, drank lots of water, ate soup, and felt a lot better Thursday. The weather was really cold this last week which didn't help. Whenever I took a shower at night I would have to drink hot tea while showering. Weird huh? Well I didn't drink tea the first night and came out of the bathroom feeling as though someone had welded my nose and throat to the back of my skull. The mucus was so think I couldn't talk. Keeping my sinuses warm helped keep things moving.

The Annual New Years Trip might come early this year. There's a 5 day holiday early next month which P'1 and P'Oun are looking at. On the way back from last week's AB Normal tour in Chiang Mai they stopped to survey Pai [1] [2] [3]. Not sure what we'll do yet but this group is always fun. The waterfalls might be a bit cold right now but rafting to mae hong song, hot springs, and cruising around sound like fun. Should be a nice chance to relax before final exams come.

I made a huge mistake last night when I closed the door behind me. I assumed I wouldn't need to lock my door because I was only going to check the laundry machine downstairs and walk back up. It was my lightning fast reflexes and impressive muscle-memory that got me into trouble. As I was swinging the door shut behind me, flicking the light switch and grabbing my keycard in one swift movement... I locked the door. This wouldn't be a big problem in the middle of the day but after midnight there's nobody around to help you.

I considered crawling out the window of the hall, onto a ledge that led to my open sliding window. I would need to keep my balance a ledge no wider than my shoulders, cross an air conditioning unit, move some PVC pipe, duck under a piece of metal, and backslide through my window. After almost an hour of pacing around considering how likely I was to fall three stories I decided to wait until morning and call the landlady P'Eat. I tried sleeping in a sitting position in front of my door but it was just too uncomfortable. How was I going to sleep on a tile floor in the hallway of an apartment building? I needed some help so I walked to a nearby restaurant and ordered a large plate of food and a bottle of beer. By 3am I plopped down in front of my door using one hand as a pillow. I could feel the draft from my air-conditioner, still running in the room.

I woke up with a sore throat and pain in my legs at 5.30 when two women were talking outside a door at the end of the hall. They didn't say anything but did give funny looks. I wasn't sure what to say either. I'm sure they though I was crazy. At 6.30 and called for help from a phone booth on the street. 15 minutes ago (7.30) a key arrived. It felt so good. Having a key to my own room again.

Today is now a rest day. I was going to go to the first day of Fat Fest, the annual indie and book festival by Fat Radio, but that's not happening. Tomorrow has most of the big acts anyways. Sleep. The one thing on my mind right now is sleeping. Sometime tonight we'll have band practice.

Ah. That's all for now.