"มือถือสาก ปากถือศีล"

Its funny, but I just can't help laugh at this message a friend sent to me. Its just to obvious that this is prevalent in our lovely country :P

1. คุณรู้สึกว่า ทำไมนักศึกษาสมัยนี้แต่งตัวกันโป๊จัง ทั้งสั้น ทั้งบาง
ทั้งรัดติ้ว โอ้ว คนโน้นเดินมาเห็นถึงลูกไม้ในเนื้อ
ทำไมคุณต้องเห็นนักศึกษาแต่งตัวสไตล์นี้แทบทุกวัน

2. คุณเป็นคนไม่ชอบเล่นการพนัน ล็อตเตอรี่ ไม่ซื้อ หวยไม่เล่น
เพราะคิดว่าเป็นอบายมุขและเสียเงินเปล่า
แต่คุณแอบอิจฉาหรือเสียดายถ้าได้ยินว่า
มีคนเอาเลขทะเบียนของรถคันใหม่ที่สำนักงานไปแทง หวยแล้วถูกจังๆ

3. คุณรู้สึกว่าในอินเทอร์เน็ตมันเต็มไปด้วยเว็บโป๊ เช่น หลุดโลก
ไทยเซ็กซ์สตอร์รี่ อู้โอ้วดอทคอม ไทยอะเมเจอร์ สคูลเฮเว่น แมกวีซีดี ว้า
...ทำไมเว็บ ลามกมันเยอะนักวะ

4. คุณเป็นคนใจบุญสุนทาน ไปทำบุญที่วัดทุกสัปดาห์
ยึดมั่นในหลักพระธรรมคำสั่งสอนของบวรพุทธศาสนา ว่างๆ
ก็ไปนุ่งขาวห่มขาวถือศีลแปดเพื่อ ทำจิตใจให้ผ่องแผ้ว แต่เสียอย่างเดียว
ทำไมคนอื่นที่วัดถึงไม่เป็นคนปฏิบัติดี ปฏิบัติชอบ อย่างคุณเลย เช่น
นายหนิง..หนอยแน่ มาวัดแค่เนี้ย ต้องเอาบริวาร มาตั้งสี่ห้าคน ชะช้า
ยัยแป๊ดทำเป็นเอาอาหารญี่ปุ่นมาถวายหลวงพ่อ เชอะ นังส้ม
รู้สึกจะปลื้มหลวงพ่อ ออกนอกหน้าเกินไปแล้วนะยะ
เดี๋ยวก็เป็นอย่างสีกานิดหรอก

5. คุณล็อกอินเข้าไปตอบกระทู้ในเว็บบอร์ดด้วยถ้อยคำอันสุภาพ
แฝงด้วยหลักวิชาการ และการ ยอมรับฟังความเห็นของผู้อื่น
รวมทั้งอภัยให้คนที่ใช้ถ้อยคำไม่เหมาะสม
และเรียกร้องให้ทุกคนในเวบบอร์ดใช้สติ จากนั้น คุณล็อกออฟ ลงทุนต่อเน็ต
ด้วย ISP ใหม่ กันคนเช็ก IP จากนั้นเข้ามาโพสต์โรคจิตหยาบๆ
ด่าคนที่ไม่เห็นด้วยกับคุณในกระทู้นั้น

6. คุณสามารถบริจาคเงินให้โรงพยาบาลได้กว่าสิบล้านบาท
จนกระทั่งมีตึกเป็นชื่อนามสกุลคุณเต็มไปหมด แต่คุณรู้สึกหงุดหงิด
ถ้าคนรับใช้ที่บ้านจะขอเบิกเงินเดือนล่วงหน้าเพื่อส่งไปจ่ายค่าเทอมให้น้อง

Players with 100+ Caps and 30+ International Goals

I just noticed a statistic site that lists Football Players with 100+ Caps and 30+ International Goals. I was surprised to see Kitasak Senamuang, in the top listing, and it makes me wonder if the Thai fans have underappreciated his contribution to Thai football considering most of the talk about him was rather negative of the late.

http://www.rsssf.com/miscellaneous/century.html#goals

Random Self Reflection

I just noticed a chain letter in my inbox yesterday. I usually don't reply to chain mails, but since I'm in a dreadfully bored mood today I just thought it would be fun to fill it up for fun and post here. The chainmail has a number of Random Self Reflection questions, so I just thought, might be fun to do :P

Oh well, here it is:

***************** STATISTICS AND OPINIONS *********

START TIME:

FULL NAME: Pisal
ENTERED THE WORLD: Its not good to enter all information due to possible credit card fraud :P
EYES: Black
HAIR COLOUR: Black
WHAT IS YOUR ZODIAC SIGN: Cancer

*************************** LOVE ******************

GIRLFRIEND/BOYFRIEND: When It comes it will come.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE: I think so :P
A SONG THAT DESCRIBES YOUR LOVE LIFE: Don't Worry be Happy - Bobby McFerrin

**************** MISCELLANEOUS***************

ARE YOU A RIGHTY OR A LEFTY? : Right-handed
HAVE YOU EVER SAVED YOUR CHAT? I keep logs of things I do
DEADLY OR EXCITING: Exciting
SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU: ...
SAY SOMETHING TO THOSE WHO REFUSE TO RESPOND TO THIS: ...

************THE FUTURE **************

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS? That is the matter of the future to answer
FUTURE SON'S NAME? That is the matter of the future to answer
FUTURE DAUGHTER'S NAME? That is the matter of the future to answer

********************* HAVE YOU EVER ***************

BROKEN THE LAW? I used to be a anarchist, but I'm reformed
AWAY FROM HOME? ???
CHEATED ON A TEST? No
MEDICAL EMERGENCY? Yes

*************** DO YOU BELIEVE ********************

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT? Hard to say
GHOSTS? Not the conventional way
HOROSCOPES? Good for enjoyment

********************* WHICH IS BETTER *************

MUD WRESTLING / JELLY WRESTLING? ...
DEAF / BLIND? Logically Deaf, but if I dont' have to work, Blind is better
BLONDES / BRUNETTES? : Roughly the same

************* WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU..*********

YOU CRIED? I can't remember O_o

*************************** WHAT ****************

IS YOUR MOST PRIZED AND IMPORTANT POSSESSION? Life
WORST SONG YOU'VE EVER HEARD? Modern MTV Crap
IS THE BEST THING THAT'S EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? Buy myself a PS2
IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK WHEN YOU WAKE UP? Roll out of Bed
IS YOUR FAVOURITE NUMBER? : 2,42
IS ON THE WALLS IN YOUR BEDROOM? Plain
YOU WEAR TO BED? : Anything comfortable
IS THE WORST THING YOU'VE EVER DONE IN YOUR LIFE?: broke Dream's heart
FAVE RELATIVE: Brothers
FAVOURITE TV SHOWS? Conquest (History Channel)
BEST FRIEND? USC, the IT/HAM Club, CS Alumni peeps
BOOK? LoTR
DRINK? IceTea - Peach, Water
SOUND? ...
THING TO DO ON THE WEEKEND? Take it easy


*************************** IF *******************

IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Filthy Rich Person with no job
IF YOU COULD HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT & WHERE WOULD IT BE? I won't consider that
IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY PIERCING, WHERE WOULD IT BE? I won't consider that
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Nothing different

************************ DO YOU ***********************

DO YOU GET MOTION SICKNESS? No
DO YOU GET ALONG WITH YOUR PARENTS? Yes
LIKE TO DRIVE? No
SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? No
TYPE WITH FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? Offcourse
DO YOU SMOKE? : no
DO YOU TAKE DRUGS? : no
WHO DO YOU HATE? Agents/Lawyers
WHO HAS IT EASIER, GUYS OR GIRLS? : ???
GET UNHAPPY? Occasion mood swings
DO YOU LIKE TO DANCE? If I'm in the groove
YOU LIKE TO TALK ON THE PHONE? No, I prefer to meetup for trival talk
WOULD YOU RATHER GO FOR A WALK OR WATCH TV? : Walk when the weather is nice, TV otherwise
HONEYMOON PLACE? First things first...

FINISH TIME: 12 minutes

Anticipation for the (Short) Future

During the last week had been rather busy with work and brushing up a few things. I've got a back log of things that I want to write here, which includes the following:

1) My own recollection of a fire that happened just behind my home
2) A rant about unorganized and careless ways of deploying the election posters
3) A selection of my new photographs of exciting nightshots around the Victory Monument area

I promise I'll get to them once I'm less busy with work, but when thinking about that, I used to remember someone telling me about the following quote:

Live your life as an Exclamation not an Explanation

Never dwell in something that is done that you don't like, but anticipate for what good things the future may bring ;)

Segregration on Buses?

I happen to stumble upon an article saying that "Women on
Buses Face Harassment" in which I want to highlight on the following
quote:

Another way to solve the problem is to have ladies only buses.

Regarding that point, I wanted to point out that we used to have
ladies only buses on rush hours about 5 years ago. One of the bus
routes that had lady buses was bus No.137. This experiment ran for a
year or so, and ended in complete failure.

First of all, there are low level of occupancy in lady buses as
cutting off male passengers will potentially cut off half the amount
of possible customers on the bus. With lower rate of occupancy in the
buses, the BMTA runs at even higher lost. With an already high lost,
BMTA cannot field more buses to compensate for the buses that were
allocated for lady buses. From that, male bus riders end up waiting
longer and longer for a ride. Basing on my own experience I used to

wait for 2 hours at a bus stop along Ramkamhaeng road waiting for a
137 bus, whereas 4 Lady Buses zoom by - in which most of them were
almost empty.

I wanted to point out that segregation of the buses is a completely
wrong approach to solve the problem of harassment on buses. By using
segregation, it is similar to labeling that all male bus passengers
are "sicko" and denying them equal access to mass transport system.
This draws uncanny parallelism with how USA was in the past, when
whites discriminated against the blacks and denied them the chance for
equal access to mass transport system. I wonder why are we following
in this direction?

Gender equality does not begin with segregation, but it begins when
Females manage to break out of their mold on a basic premise that they
are the weaker sex and stand up against these deviants.

A Quote for those without Hope

I want to dedicate this quote to many people who have lost their way in life:

If one sees a giant it is recommendable to examine the position of the sun first to see if its not the shadow of a pygmy

Novalis

First Subway Crash in Thailand

There was just word that Thailand just had our first Subway crash, in which the BMCL trains crashed around the Thai Cultural Centre station. On preliminary reports it said that a train tail-gated another train parked at the station causing about 2 dozen injuries - though none of them fatal. Luckily it wasn't a full speed - head on crash so things were less fatal than they are and certainly a wakeup call for the authorities to think more about the safety features.

Anyway, it just makes me curious because I do remember modern train systems have automatic train management systems, and it would automatically stop trains from crashing into each other if they see trains on the collision path. I've even played some of the simulators at the Transport Musuem at Japan nearly 15 years ago in which it allowed children to play with the entire train system in Tokyo and no matter how hard we tried, the train would never crash due to installed safety systems. This makes me believe that either the software managing the train are either faulty or either the train drivers overide the system. Whatever it is, we got to wait for more information.

On a strange note, I was scheduled to leave my home and go on the subway to get a few grocers just a few minutes before the news happen at the exact station where the crash happened. Talk about luck.

Modern Prince

I found an interesting online read that is based on the updating Machiavelli's Prince to modern examples. I would like to recommend our readers to read it at Antonio Gramsci's The Modern Prince.

The Ugly in The Thai Tsumani Disater

After the Asian Tsumani has caused widespread devestation throughout parts of Asian, its only much later when the ugly started to rear its head during the time of extreme bleakness.

After reading reports that the Thai Police are planning to completely redo the DNA identification process, it just drops the credibility of the Police down another few notches from its incredibily dirt like creditily rating to muddy like proportions. If you have been covering the Thai Police scenes, you could notice that the spat between Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunand and the Police Department that dated back to the murder of Golden Sauce Baron - Hangthong Thammawattana in which Pornthip has debunked the Police's first autopsy on the long running feud. The Police Department decided to enter in a war of wording instead of allowing additional autopsy to be done by foreign experts. The second major event that caused a further rift, was the Bak Tok Uprising Investigation in Khunying Pornthip has unearthed facts that army neglience was much to be blamed for the abnormally high rate of deaths after the investigation which was odds at many sections of our government that includes the Police who seem to want to downplay the whole issue. Based on this long running feud, I believe to any casual observations, there is certainly no lost love.





During the early onset of the Asian Tsunami Crisis, we could see that one of the first to appear on the scene unselfishlessly was Khunying Pornthip who lead the DNA identification of victims in the Asian Tsunami disater in Southern Thailand. We have seen her worked over New Year, non-stop to help identify all of the victims here. We have seen the representatives from Police Department come and go, without much comment during the early period. It was just a few days ago, the Police Department decided to rear its ugly head once again and claim that the DNA identification process was flawed and the process has to be done completely again. Though I am not an expert on such matters, the timing of such event conventiently after so much work has been done, it just sounds more likely as an attempt by the Police Department to get back on their biggest detractor over the years disregarding all the work that has been done. Though there may be some merit on redoing the proces, one can't help but question, why didn't the Police Department told something if they think the early DNA identification was faulty? Why didn't they send their own experts to help early on the offset? It seems that by doing it now, it was just an orchestration of power in the later stages of disater which is shocking to know that some parts of our society are willing to stoop so low in times of dire need in order to settle a score.

Talking about another ugly in the disater, I want to point a finger at our PM. Our PM has steadfastedly refused all foreign momentary aid claiming that Thailand doesn't need any money and that we are no backwatered country. Talking about Aid in time of disater, I remember well how much the world did to help the victims of the Kobe devestating earthquake, where people from all over the world sent aid to the world's second largest economy - Japan - even with a number delegates and aid from our country! Now Aid that comes during disater is consider humanatary aid, and we are not subjected to repayment terms like Aid from institutes like WorldBank or IMF which expects the country that receive aid to change certain elements of their country. Now by refusing foreign aid, and using our own funding, one can't wonder how much more tax money an individual Thai must pay? We already have a blugeoning debt account per household - and coupled with our government's increasing high spending public policies, I wonder how much more debt can we run up? Somehow I do feel that the brave face that our PM is putting up is certainly not worth the longterm implications of what will happen. We are in need of aid, and why should we turn away aid?

It doesn't make sense...

How to Remember Stuff

One of my relatives that visited our home today, had pointed out that he remembered the Soi of our house by using the following words:

1 dozen or 2 dozen

Since they find it hard to remember numbers directly, they remember it in figuratively, but using other methods - and 2 dozen translate directly to 24 - which is indeed the Soi Number where our home is located in :)

A Quote for My Students

I find this quote something that should be a good reminder for my Students:

One ought to be ashamed to make use of the wonders of scienced embodied in a radio set, while appreciating them as little as a cow appreciates the botanical marvels in the plant she munches.

Albert Einstein

Update on my Little Coke/No Fries/Little Snacks Diet

Based on my old post at http://pisal.blogspot.com/2004/12/drafting-my-new-year-resolution.html 2 weeks ago, I've mentioned about planning to cut down drastically the amount of Coke, ice cream, snacks, and french fries I consume in my daily diet. I've reasoned that those items were causing my rather inflated weight - from 50kg to 75 kg in a rather short time of 6 years, and thus the rationale why I'm cutting them off in hope for curtailing the spiraling weight.

To make it fair, I'm just normalizing those factors, and keep the rest of my diet and exercise regime the same. This is a diet course in which I'm going to eat normally, do the same amount of exercise per day (which is usually limited to walking), and stay away from weight lost medication. In other words, I'm not going for the medical fads as the Atkin's diet or medication or extreme dieting to get my weight out, but engage in my own easy diet system I've thought up of. Talking about it, I still eat Big Macs(had one today), I still eat pizzas(had one today :P), I go to buffets, and I still managed to lose 4 kgs in 3 weeks ;)

Not bad eh? Maybe if you drink excessive amounts of softdrinks you may want to try this diet out ;)

Hijack A Train

My Struggle with Public Computers

When I go to work, I usually hug around my notebook. As there are severe budget cuts, it happens that one of the most technologically saavy personnel (that happens to be me) in the department has not been given a computer (not if you consider Pentium 133 as a computer) to me based on the fact that I have a rather state of the art notebook.

Anyway, since I have my own notebooks, I'm usually spared the monstrosity of using public computers around my university. Anyway, it happened that today, I decided not to grab along my computer since I thought it would be a good idea to stop hauling along a few kilograms of extra baggage for only a few minutes of usage, I decided to use one of the public computers that were allocated in the public teacher's lounge around my university.

Today I had the chance to use it. I was booting up the machine, and reading the newspaper on the latest news and happening around the world. It happened that multiple minutes later, the computer still have finished booting. So after going through the main headlines, editorial, sports news and later the comics, the computer suddenly finally booted to the first screen, and what I saw was a complete mess.

First of all, there were 3 chat clients that were open and logged on - MSN, AOL, and Yahoo. In all the cases, someone forgot they were using a public computer and stayed logged on. Though I felt it might be a good idea to play pranks with them, I decided due to my own rather "sunny disposition" to log off them all. A few other strange applications such as weather and temperature report were on. I wonder why anyone would bother with such app when we are in an air conditioned room? So I closed that also along with the useless Microsoft Office Toolbar that is dormant on the computer.

Just as I done that, I thought I was ready to fire up the browser and head out to my favorite online news site. The problem happened that the harddisk trashed too much and nothing happened. If you notice the harddisk trashing alot just to boot an app, we can know that the computer has low specs and needed to dump the memory contents to the harddisk many times just to run a certain app. Now with no apps open there is something awfully wrong with the computer. It just hit me that the background used in this computer was a dynamic background! In other words, somebody liked animated backgrounds so they installed a background - which is essentially a flash animation - which pulled alot of resources from the computer! Gah, so I had to change the background from that fancy animated background into a blank screen to conserve more resources.

Finally after that, the browser finally appeared and I could finally fire out the websites I've intially planned to go to. The whole process? That took close to 20 minutes...

Good grief, now I know why I don't want anyone to touch my computers. The reason is just to spare me the headache like this example of struggling with a public computer just to get the browser fired up and ready to go.

Video Game Crossover

Back from the doom and gloom of the Asian Tsunami, I decided its a good time to lighten up things with the following article. I found a very interesting article called video game cross over and you can read it at http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2401

Here is a nice example:



Try visiting the site, and try to figure what games are used in each of the pictures ;)

On a side note, you may enjoy this article - video game photoshop pranks - http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2570.

Interesting Tidbits on Tsunami Crisis Today

After the death toll reaches over 155,000 people and devestation on a scale unheard of in modern history, during the last few days, we've seen an huge increase in International cooperation in helping Tsunami-Affected countries in the region. It warms my heart to know that our world has finally awaken to the face of humanity. At least let this tradegy be a huge wakeup call for all of us out there.

On related news, USA pledges a ten-fold increase from $35 million to $350 million dollars of aid supplemented by a carrier force deployment to aid in the rescue operations a few days ago. The UN is playing a lead role in the humanitary effort which should help restore some credibility to the organization after a number of scandals. Sir Cliff Richard and Boy George leads a number of international pop stars writing a single to raise up funds to aid the Tsunami Aid effort.

The only sad note is that
some of the tourists decided that the tradegy means nothing to them and continues to enjoy their vacation in the midst of all the despair and anguish of people searching for their missing loved ones - which is despicable.

I guess that rounds this blog up. Both the beautiful and the ugly of this crisis.

Happy New Year 2005!

Oh well, since it is finally New Year, I've decided to spam this site to say Happy New Year to all our visitors :)

Search for Missing People Index/Registration in Thailand

For people worried about their friends/relatives in Thailand, you can search the Thai Government's index of missing people from the following urL:
http://missingpersons.or.th/index.en.html

For a generalized information of Tsunami in Thailand, a good site to visit is the Ministry of Public Health website at the following url:
http://www.moph.go.th/ (Thai language)