Yes, the time is coming, in a mere 9 days, I shall become one year older. Ahh, a time of celebration. The planning for the party has already started! It’s going to be as debauched as Bangkok can be, you only live once right?? 
There will be no photos, only a few select verbal, unrecorded, deniable reports to a few male friends. Sorry gals, trust me, you don’t want to know!
The down side of all this is that it requires some considerable research and development. Alas, tonight being Friday, I must force myself to trawl Bangkok’s nightlife in search of the required resources for our Saturday night session next week. Oh it is a hard life, well, I guess I best get to it…
While searching for a genuinely benign web site (ok, I was looking for a gnome clipboard manager if you must know, it’s a linux thing!) I saw this little message courtesy of the Thai government.
I’m reliably informed this message means that I can go screw myself, the government has decided the page I have requested is not suitable for my consumption. Yes, in this supposed democracy, the internet is censored. Not that it matters to me of course, with my limitless technical genius I can simply bypass these foolish, amateur attempts at censorship with a mere keystroke. However, it does make those little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Grrr….
Black has been conquered. At last, after some considerable effort, I have been welcomed to the realm of Black Ops. If you don’t know what that means, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you. However, I can tell you that I’m not able to discuss it and that I’m able to tell you that I can’t discuss it.
In other news, I am still alive, Linux is now just about running properly, work is busy, and in case you hadn’t noticed, time is marching onwards as usual.
My defacto test to check if the internet is working is down. When in doubt, I hit Google to check, you can always rely on their servers to be up. While their server wasn’t exactly down, it was displaying a rather bland error message…
It seemed like a good excuse for a picture on the blog!
I was starkly awoken up by thunder this morning. Where I woke up and whether I was alone is not the point, it was some serious noise. I actually thought it was an explosion. It was only when I went out to get a taxi I realised it must have been thunder as it was pouring down. Ok, so the fact I got up and then got a taxi is a slight clue, but honestly, that’s not the point!
The rain’s fantastic in Bangkok. After a downpour, the air is much cooler for a day or so. It rained yesterday as well, there was what might have been described as a “cool night air”, something one doesn’t normally experience in Bangkok!
Ahh, all this talk of rain makes me think of Scotland…
Last night marked the beginning of the Thai new year celebrations called Songkran. The party lasts for three days and could essentially be described as a nationwide waterfight! I’m reliably informed that stepping outside today signals that you’re happy to have buckets of water dumped on you, be shot at with water pistols, have water bombs thrown at you, and so on.
Khao San Road, the heart of Bangkok’s backpacker area is supposed to be the busiest. It’s not unusual to see pick up trucks with four or five drums of iced water on the back, driving around generously sharing their icedness with the rest of the country! But fear not, it’s not only about water. There’s also rather a large amount of alcohol involved as well!
I read in the Bangkok Post that 80 people will die as a result of the celebrations today alone. In a mixture of drownings (believe it or not), car accidents, and so on. Who knew that new year could be so dangerous?
In my aparmtent my internet access is wireless from the router in the office across the hall. Given the walls it has to go through, it’s a pretty shaky connection. Jeremy uses an external USB wireless adapter in his apartment next door because his laptop’s in-built card isn’t strong enough to maintain a connection.
Over the week or so it seems to have been getting a bit worse, that was of course until I installed Linux! Since I installed Linux, the connection hasn’t dropped once. It just doesn’t go down. Which makes sense when you think about it, I’m not moving my computer, the router is not moving, the only thing affecting the signal is people moving in the middle, and that will have a minimal affect on signal strength.
Oh the joys of Linux. I might have to rename this Callum’s Linux blog soon… 
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