Daily Budget - January 30, 2008

Here is the daily budget for today:

January 30, 2008

Breakfast - 0 baht
- Ate at home

Lunch - 35 baht
- LardNa and Coke

Snack - 51 baht
- Coke (15 baht)
- Ice Tea (14 baht)
- Mars (22 baht)

Dinner - 179 baht
- Honey-Glazed Pork Chop/Southwest Chicken (119 baht)
- Water (10 baht)
- Icecream (59 baht)

Travel Expense - 167 baht
- Bus (34 baht)
- Transit Bus (12 baht)
- Van (36 baht)
- Taxi (85 baht)

Clothing Expense - 270 baht
- Trousers (270 baht)

Total Spending: 702 baht

Today was a bad day. Other than having to travel all over Bangkok due to numerous errands to run, it seems that bad luck follows my every single turn. To cap things off, the zipper of my trousers broke off, requiring me to get a replacement.

Oh well, all I can say tommorrow should be a better day :)

Daily Budget - January 29, 2008

Here is the daily budget for today:

January 29, 2008

Breakfast - 37 baht
- Bread (14 baht)
- Salapao (15 baht)
- Chocolate (8 baht)

Lunch - 75 Baht
- Katsu Curry Rice

Dinner - 0 Baht
- Dinner (At home so free!!!)
Total Spending: 112 baht

Nothing too significant, but based on the figures, I haven't been spending too much which is good.

Daily Budget

How much money do I spend each day? I had this nagging feeling that I've been spending too much, so I've decided to post my spending for the unforseen future and evaluate my spending patterns.

January 28, 2008

Breakfast - 36 baht
- Bread (14 baht)
- Water (14 baht)
- Chocolate (8 baht)

Lunch - 70 Baht

Dinner - 100 Baht
- Icecream (100 baht)
- Dinner (Free!!!)

Total Spending : 206 Baht

Seems like I've overspent on desert today. Due to that reason, I've decided that I'm m not going to eat ice-cream for the next forthnight :P

DeathNote Character Quiz

Oh well, just a quiz I did for fun. Amusing...!





What Death Note Character Are You?


Hosted by theOtaku.com: Anime. Done right.

500 posts and a New Resolution

I've just noticed I've reached 500 rambling and random posts.

For this post, I've decided to post to remind myself that I've got to slim down. I'm getting heavier, and my usual exercise schedule isn't doing that well. Maybe I should either get more active (In which I think I'm already pretty active), or either eat less. Hmm... I guess I've got to go with the second choice at this moment :(

As they say, eating is a joy. Too bad I've got to keep a lid on that.

Entrance Exam Blues

How is it like to take an exam? I've forgotten the feeling already. Now that is a big problem considering I have to take another entrance exam for my Ph.D studies. Hmm... I hope I haven't grown rusty from all the years of giving exams, not taking one :P

New Year's Resolutions

I remember distinctively that I usually come up with a number of New Year's Resolution before every change of the year. I found out that usually after a few days or weeks, I forget what I have promised myself to do. So to make a change, I've decided I should remind myself by posting my resolutions in my incredibly dull blog just to remind myself.

Here are my resolutions in no order of precedence:
1) Follow my resolutions from the first to the last steps.
2) Read and finish up the cooking textbook I've bought ages ago.
3) Get enrolled for my third degree.
4) Sleep in more regular hours (avoid early morning sleeping sessions).
5) Get myself in a more positive frame of mind.
6) Read more books (even though I read ferociously already).
7) Be more aware of people around me.

From the looks of it, it sounds as a pretty vague resolution. Could either be very easy to accomplish or not depending on my own perspective. In a year's time, I'll figure out how much I did accomplish.

Live Music?

You can tell if a music band is good if the music they play live is better than the studio album. That is why I like music festivals, in which you listen to many bands and at the end you can decide what musicians are worth supporting :)

Peaceful Kinoko-World

A few days ago, I watched one of my favorite saxophone player Sadao Watanabe in concert in Bangkok. One thing I liked about Sadao is that he is extremely versatile jazz musician. Though I don't like his Brazilian offerings that much, I absolutely love how he incorporates elements of African influence his music.

Anyway, during my music browsing through YouTube, I've happen to stumble on a strange recording below:



If I'm not mistaken, it was the remix track of a theme from Mario that was rearranged by the artist I mentioned above. Strange! Now there is also game music :P

December Blues

For most people December should be a great month. First of all, there are numerous holidays on December. We have the King's Birthday, Constitution Day, Christmas (for some of us), and New Year. In addition to all of that, it seems that many of the weddings are arranged in this month also - considering it is one of the most auspicious months as defined by fortune tellers. Now that is where the trouble lies. If you have a number of friends and collegues that have weddings on the same date, and you have to go to a wedding for nearly everyday for a week, then that is where December can be very aggreviating. Maybe it is just me, but I keep on wondering why those fortune tellers don't spread out the auspicious dates into other months?

GK Glut

Every Sunday, I usually go to play football at a local field that I rent with a group of friends. One of the funny things that has happened in the field is that our group of players that has been assembled from various sources and teams (or we could call team fragments), we suddenly have a glut of Goalkeepers.

In Thailand in most amateur leagues and teams, it is difficult to find a decent goalkeeper to stand between the posts. This could easily be found in public football fields that you can rent. You will notice that many of the teams do not have a dedicated goalkeeper which is evident by the lack of goalkeeper attaire and equipment (e.g. gloves). Usually the weakest player is punished by letting them stand in that postition.

Strangely enough in our Sunday games, we now have like 5 decent goalkeepers including one of them that was in the under-17 national squad. Now we are having a dilemna on who to place in goal. At the moment, all I'm planning to do is to play one half as a GK and the other half as an out field player. That should be fun :)

Selecting a Browser Over a Decade Ago...

I started browsing the Internet around 1996, and my first few browsers I've tried was Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer Lynx, and an lynx. For those who don't know, lynx was a text based browser. At that time then, Navigator was the best browser overall, but it was slow as a turtle. IE was lacking in features. What I ended up using the most at that time was lynx. It was a text browser, but it was blazing fast considering that I had a crummy connection back then. As I didn't care much about eye-candy, lynx was the browser of choice.

Talking about it, it was strange to recall this story. Makes me sound old and like an old dinosaur :P

Motivation

During the last few days, I'm finding that it is high ironic that seeking revenge is certainly one of the best form of motivation. What I need to do now is only to make sure that the drive doesn't consume me.

Strangely enough it sounds like StarWars doesn't it?

Test Recordings

In a few days, I have to present a paper at a research conference about a Computer Vision to aid myself playing the EWI. In my paper, I've used a number of image processing techniques to find where I am relative on the stage and then make real-time on the fly changes to the software mixer. A number of extensions to help me play the EWI such as using multiple cameras (to define surround sound position), and other natural input devices such as Using the WiiMote were discussed on the paper.

As I was preparing my paper presentation, I've noticed that the demos and music recorded in the paper presentation was rather sparse. I have one piece showing me playing the C Major Scale (which is absolutely boring), a short Glide, and a short piece. In other words, I only had very few recordings of myself playing the instrument! Just to fix things, I've decided to cover a few quick songs, just to make sure the audience knows that at least I can play the EWI :P

You can take a few listen to it at the following url: http://168.120.1.247/dump/ewi/

Buring Work

It is common knowledge that in most workplace situations especially in the land of Thailand, many people here have this easy go happy attitude in which they take things easy until the deadline approaches, they turn into a crazed mode, trying to get the project submitted before the final deadline - hench in our own dialect, we say people are burning their work. As being teaching over half a decade, one of my own personal observation is that it doesn't matter if you assign a project over a few months or a period of a week. Most students would work on it only a day or two before the deadline.

On a short note, I haven't been doing any burning work for years. During the last 10 days, I've precisely done that. It happened in a upandcoming national level event, there was a competition for seed money. Initially I did not plan to submit the work there as there was a project in the pipeline, but after serious consultation with my partner over the direction of the studio, we have decided to u-turn and submit an entirely new work in the competition that I've been designing during the discussion. I had a game design that was simple enough so that we didn't need to hire any artists, and yet interesting enough that it would be a fun game. After 10 days of sleepless and over-worked nights, we've finally finished the working prototype. Though some of the features proposed were lacking, it was polished graphically, and on the requirement, we only had to show a working prototype. So what is a better way than to test all the latest tricks in graphical programming here?

Just by the time I've finished writing this blog, the copies of the proposal and demo are finished and ready to be submitted. More details of me in this competition should follow soon, after the presentation during the middle of next month :)

Great Comedy

Talking about Comedy, I found it somewhat irritating that many of the current crop of comedic movies in the market are pretty much not funny. To sum it up, many of the movies try to play the obscene card as they think it is funny to the point that it gets repulsive. Good examples of obscene acts that are over done are like excessive vomitting, public urinating, and over miscreant behaviors. In many of these movies they spice it up with a little of sex, and they think it would sell well to the young adolesence market. As I myself am out of touch with the trends of today, yesterday, and I believe to the future, I can't really mention much more than that.

On a short note, what makes a good comedy to me? The last really good comedic movie I saw was a witty German movie called "Say Goodbye to Lenin". I don't think it would be easy to find, but the premise was tad intelligent, and was excecuted well. To get a quick idea of what type of comedies that I really like, take a look at the following video clip:



As noted, I like that skit. If you thought it was about APPLE products, think again very careful! It isn't about Apple, but its about a hidden topic, and that is why I find this parody to be extra ordinary funny and witty without all of the obscene nonsense.

If you don't get the message, try reading out the names of all the products out loud, and you will find the hidden and underlining meaning of the whole thing :P

...Bored...

Just a short note that I'm excessively bored of the late. Hard to get out of the emotional funk at the moment. Maybe I should finally resort to alcohol :P

Who would be happier?

Who would be happier?

Interesting read, sorry if it is only in Thai.

New Mobile Phone?

Just a few days ago, during one of my proctoring sessions, one of my co-worker's phone broke down for no apparent reason. After trying to resurrect it for a while without any luck, we concluded that the phone was dead and my friend needed to buy a new phone. As he was a Indian lecturer, I took him to a mobile phone store and took the time to help him browse through the list. As noted, if you don't speak the Thai here, you're pretty much clueless of what is offered. After much consideration, my friend picked up a rather nice multimedia phone for about 7k baht - which had loads of features such as photograph, MP3 player, radio, blue tooth, and a whole load of other goodies.

On a short note, I was also planning to buy a new mobile phone soon. If I do have to replace my mobile phone, on a strange note, I was planning to go to an old retro version. A mobile phone that is only a mobile phone. Cheap and effective. That is all I need. To be exact, though it is good to be excited with all the new features, at the end of the day, I figured that it was more important to have a working phone during crunch time than to burn my batteries with all the unnecessary tasks such as listening to music or playing video games.

Talk about how different the philosophies are LOL

Alone Again Naturally.

Just a short note that my little bro got married this year. The next year, my big brother plans to marry. Hmm... It seems that I'm going to be alone again, naturally :P

Is that necessarily good or bad? No idea LOL