I have just witnessed evidence that a smarter species than mankind have managed to solve this problem.
We are visiting friends in a small low rent [read "slum"] area near the old airport. Travelling by car, and using the "convenience" of the elevated tollway tung duan, it has still taken us 45 minutes or more to cover the modest distance from our apartment.
We have arrived. I step out of the airconditioned cocoon of the car and into the cauldron of stifling 40degree heat in the narrow lane outside the dwelling place. I find a plastic chair and some shade; our guest trains a large domestic fan on me, and brings a long icy "pepsi"...obviosuly she does not want to be regarded as responsible if the farang turns up his toes on her door-step.
I acclimatise, slowly. I retrieve my camera from the car, and allow my eyes to wander about, looking [on automatic] for something that might be interesting material for one of the photoblogs I contribute to daily; that should amuse me for an hour or so while everyone prepares the evening meal. It's too damn hot...even the flies are comatose in the shade.
Something catches my eye, overhead. I look up. No birds in the bright blue sky. There it is again. I sit up, and focus my eyes deliberately. Up there...on the power lines. Small, hairy, and with a [relatively] huge, bushy tail...its a squirrel, and it is bounding along on the black plastic covered wire.
I fumble with my camera...but I am too slow in these conditions. Finally its powered up, lens cap off and ready to shoot. The squirrel is gone. Probably leaped off the line and into the large flowering tree nearby for a snack of flower-buds. I stagger to my feet and amble over to the tree. Peering up into the foliage of the heavily blossomed tree fails to uncover the little rodent.
I am on my feet, now, so might as well wander about for a while...perhaps something of interest will appear, and pose, for this slow-moving photographer. I walk to the end of the lane, into another, then another...this place is a maze of narrow lanes. Finally, after travelling 700-800 metres, I come to a major road. All I have found so far is a mildly interesting red bug and a couple of [frankly] boring flowers. Time to retrace my steps, and take refuge in the fan-blasted farang-friendly cell.
Something causes me to glance up. There it is again...that squirrel. That's how it gets about in the congested city. It has an overhead highway, where it has no problems with cars, people, dogs, cats....perhaps the only predator it has in the environment is a hawk or kite, and the powerlines possibly cause them some problems too.
The camera is ready and the brain is sort-of functioning, so I manage a couple of pictures and a short video; maybe there is something I can use later.
;)
...on the "highway"There are several trees touching or close to the powerlines, and the little guy stops at a couple of these as I travel with him; it rubs its body along a branch occasionally....fleas, or perhaps scent glands.
;)
...steps onto a tree"This is funny", I think, as I leap back into a bush to avoid being struck by a fast moving motorcycle; "the little bugger has a better road system up there than I have down here".
;)
...intersectionNow it has turned around, so I rush along after it, and within minutes I am back with my friends and my comforts. Life in the teeming city of Bangkok is not so challenging if you are a wild squirrel.
;)
...big tail[ add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
Teachers, students, snakes....
In a moment of madness I tell the Boy I will go with his class and teachers on the excursion to The Snake Farm. One likes to think one acquires wisdom with age, but...ain't necessarily so!
There were plenty of portents, but I ignore 'em. Every morning for two weeks before the outing, the Boy's first words on awakening are "Today we go to Snake Farm.....huh?".
The information note instructed that we be on time at school, by 8:00am, so we can start the day on schedule. So...we are at school by 7:55am. I presumed we would be boarding the bus at 8:00am...aaaaaah, no! There is a whole routine associated with getting ready to board the bus:
* there is the waiting [noisily milling about] for all the participants to show,
* there is the chat about excursion rules [who buddies with whom, what to do if/when there is the need for a toilet break, how to behave on the bus, stuff like that],
* there is the hand-washing routine, preparatory to the snack-time [we have only been 20 minutes since breakfast...give me a break],
* there is the snack-time event in the school canteen [wow! what a surprise!...none of the kids is remotely interested in eating the snack...especially when one little gal comes along and offers a plug of bubble-gum to each of her friends],
* there is the toilet routine [take a pee now 'cos there is no toilet on the bus, and then wash your hands]
* there is the frenetic mobile phone exchange to try to locate the esky of lunch boxes to go on the bus [resolved only when a bus driver admits to have used his nut and fixed that up while everyone else was doing the snack thing.
Yes! Now we are loading, and it's only 9:00am. But, I am getting ahead of myself, in my enthusiasm to be there:
* first, the kids have to be counted, by two teachers, and their count reconciled. Its tough...there are three attempts before the number matches. Good thing there are only 10 kids, or the excursion might have run out of time while the starting count was being made,
* ooooops! There are 2 mini-buses, so there is the complexity of determining who goes in which. Ok...got that worked so now lets get aboard....
* damn...one little girl and her Mum show up late, just when it is decided they are not coming. Now we have to re-count, and re-place.
We are on the road. I am in the leading bus. I am in the front passenger seat. I watch the driver; he is relaxed; he knows where he is going, and we are on exactly the route I would have chosen for this 4km journey. We stop at the first set of lights. The second bus pulls up on our left, and it is evident the other drive wants to chat with my driver. I wind down the window. They chat. The second bus turns left, and my driver [puzzled look clouding his features] follows.
What the hell? This is not the correct route. Unless there are two Snake Farms, we are definitely taking a long, irrational, scenic route. I let my driver see I am as puzzled as him. With [mainly] body language, I reconfirm to him where I think the destination is. He agrees...a few complicated driving procedures later, and he has corrected the bearing. He calls the other driver on his mobile...there is a heated exchange, and it is clear we do not have a general agreement regarding where we are going.
There is a bit of traffic ahead of us. My driver has been unsettled by the heated exchange with his buddy driver; with temporarily impaired judgement he thinks he knows a short cut, so goes for it, and ensnares us in a narrow-lane traffic snarl, from which there is no escape. No kidding...I could walk at least twice as quickly as we are now moving in the mini-bus.
I amuse myself, taking pictures of all sorts of street theatre happening outside my cocoon. I have a camera, a toy...something to amuse myself with. The kids sharing the cocoon do not have cameras; they are becoming seriously bored and noisy. A teacher has a diversion; she hands a pirate copy of "Favourite kid's Movie Songs from the past 50 years" to the driver. The driver knows what to do...he turns the volume way up! This has zero effect on the kids, of course, but adults are happy cos they executed the approved emergency procedure.
We have arrived. Only 10:00am! This event has already been in progress for 2 hours, and not a single reptile has been sighted. 20 minutes pass: the other bus arrives. Now we are ready to see snakes.
...Snake farmHmmmm! They knew we were coming, but we are so late they have dismantled the show and the MC [Master of Ceremonies] has wandered off somewhere for a siesta. "Just 1 minute", says the obviously highly experienced greeting lady. Twenty minutes pass, while everything is made ready. So, now we have the show.
The Snake Farm is in the grounds of the Thailand Red Cross headquarters. Logical, really; the purpose of the facility is mainly to harvest snake venom for the production of anti-venom for the several poisonous snake species that call Thailand home . Real snake venom is injected into horses, who then produce the anti-bodies that are harvested and processed into anti-venom. I don't know where they keep the horses, but certainly I did not see any at the Snake farm.
But, we did see a few snakes, and some of them were even of poisonous species. For twenty minutes the MC introduced us to a representative of the main species of snakes native to Thailand. There was a little bit of fun stuff with getting them to wriggle, to rear up in defensive stance, and even to give up a few drops of the precious and deadly venom. The MC was a man of some humour, and he tried to make the show fun for the kids and interactive; before starting, he asked what language he should use, and was not at all concerned when told English...little did he know that the first language of most of his audience was Thai, Korean, Japanese, Lebonese but mostly not English. And, his information was interesting...but not to 4 year olds.
...King Cobra
...Common CobraShow finishes. There are a couple of sleepy snakes in show cages, so we take a quick peek.
But the kids are already at the next phase. They are hungry! We find shade, and pull some tables together. Out of the esky comes enough sandwiches to feed an army brigade. The kids ignore the sandwiches, of course, as they have seen there are bags of crisps, tubs of yoghurt, boxes of flavoured milk and these are far more appropriate to sustain four year olds on an excursion.
A little kid, from the family who runs the snack shop, hovers. He has a small dog, which is more of a hit with the kids than were the snakes. He is a smart kid...soon he has traded petting favours for a feast of crisps and flavoured milk.
The kids are bored. A couple of kids torture a potted palm, by stripping it of fronds. Another couple of kids terrorise the tiny goldfish in a small bowl by trying to spear them with twigs they plunge into the bowl. Ok...we have some serious fun happening now.
But it is time to return to the school. First, of course, we repeat the peeing and hand-washing routine; then back into the mini-buses; then the return trip, which takes about ten minutes [probably because the drivers get to knock off for the day as soon as they return the kids].
I survive!
[Footnote: There are about five poisonous snakes of note in Thailand; most famous of these is the King Cobra and the Common Cobra , but the most dangerous is one of the Pit Viper family.]
...Pit Viper[ add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
A year or so back I watched the movie Sin City on my loungeroom TV. It is an amazing movie, an adaptation of a graphic novel [read "Adult Comic"] created by the artist Frank Miller; stylistically, it has retained the look and feel of its comic antecedent, and this seems to have allowed the audience to accept a higher level of blood and guts than would have occured if the style was normal.
My one disappointment was that I didn't get to see the movie in a theatre.
So...along comes a new Frank Miller adaptation, called 300 , and I am not going to let its multiplex season pass without seeing it, even if I have to go alone.
I front up to the ticket office thirty minutes before the first scheduled screening today. The ticketing girl shows me a theatre layout, and I can see I am the first to purchase a ticket for this screening. I pay my 100baht [about US$2.50] and calculate there are about 350 seats in this theatre, so wonder if the owner will recoup the costs of electricity for this showing.
I kill a little time, wandering about the shopping mall, checking out a digital camera that I am fantasising about perhaps upgrading to, drinking a garfey lartay rawn [hot milk coffee with a small hill of froth on top] while watching the young ladies amble past...that kind of thing. Time passes quite quickly.
I take my seat right on time; looking around, I confirm that I presently have the auditorium to myself. There are twenty-five minutes of very loud ads and movie trailers to get through, before the movie starts. Generally I like to sit through all the preliminaries, as I find the Thai language soundtracks demonstrate all the gimicks of modern theatre sound technology. Today, though, there are a couple of trailers for local-made horror movies...I could do without that stimulation, as it is totally devoid of subtlety and originality. A few people come into the auditorium, and take seats behind me; glancing back, I see the audience is made up almost entirely of lone males...I guess the word has spread that this is not a movie one cuddles and snuggles to.
The King's tribute anthem comes on. I stand at the start, and am slightly surprised most of the audience is still sitting...never have I seen this before. Perhaps I have embarassed the others, and slowly they all drag themselves to their feet. I have to admit I am not naturally a monarchist; however, I am impressed at the obvious effort and selflessness Thailand's King has put into his sixty years reign, and have no difficulty at all in showing respect by standing for the playing/showing of his anthem at all public events.
Now the "main event" is starting. And so, for the next two hours I am totally absorbed! Having read the book 300 Spartans several times about forty-five years ago, I already have an understanding of the story and its ending.
Its not the story...its the technique and technolgy of the movie that takes me under its spell. On a few occasions I feel I am reading a comic, and then finding myself immersed in the experience as though I have somehow been included as a character in the comic.
It is a very gory movie; there are numerous decapitations, depicting spurting arterial blood and great detail of the rent bone, flesh and sinew, almost...I think on one occasion...like the anatomical drawings in the biology texts available for the computer these days; there are countless, squishily noisy penetrations of bodies with lances, arrows and swords; there are darkly humorous passages of good natured chatting between spartan soldiers as they humanely finish off their conquered and maimed enemy in the lull between rounds; there are horizontal storms of blood and bits of flesh, painted deep red on the sepia battle field.
And, there seems to be nudity, perhaps bare breasts and even pubic hair, but I cannot be sure of this as the Thai censor has seen fit to crudely pixellate large acreage every time it seems there is likely to be a bouncy mound of unclad female flesh in the scene. Damn!!! I did so want to see some of the gorgeously overdrawn mammaries so common in adult comics. There is an odd morality to Thai censorship...buckets of blood and body parts are all good, wholesome entertainment; but let's not have any of this [even partially] uncovered female chest stuff!
Wonderful!! The whole thing is superbly overacted, and camp is poured all over certain characters including Xerxes the God/King of Persia. I cannot see how "sandals and toga" movies to come will be able to be made without in some ways acknowledging influence of 300 .
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