As the year comes to a close..

I look back on this year, and there have been several firsts:

In January, I was kicked out of my first restaurant.

In February, I lost my first grandparent.

In March, I survived my first solo international trip, to China, and walked on the Great Wall.

In April, I welcomed my first couchsurfer, Tasha, into my humble apt.

In May, I held my first baby tiger, and hydroplaned in my car for the first time.


In June, I witnessed my first yellow shirt political election parade in Bangkok.

In July, I attended my first English/Korean engagement party...lol.

In August, I organized my first baby shower.

In September, I had my first experience with BPD and a Thai Psychiatric Hospital.

In October, went on my first(and possibly my last) backpacking trip through Europe, and had my first passport stolen(triggering my first internal panic attack).


In November, I had my first overseas haircut and got my first tattoo.

And this month, I'm spending my first Christmas in France, and had my first taste of foie gras(goose liver). It was delicious.

Merry Christmas..and Amen.

A friend shared this on facebook, and I thought it worth sharing with all of you. If only OUR leaders were this bold.

The Night Before Clissmas

Tawas the night before Christmust, when all through the house
Not a creeper was studying, not even a mouth
The stockings were punk by the jimmy with care
With hoes that St. Nicoret soon wood be bear

The children were matcel all snow in their ba ba
Whale dishes of shower worms danced in their heads
And ma in her kitchen and I in my cup
Had dust sailor brown for eggs long winter's nest

When out on the lone there arose such a cracker
Ice spank from my bread to see what was the butter
Away to the window I flew in a flask
Tore open the chowder and throng up the sash

The moon on the cash of the new-foreign snow
Gave the lobster of meat day to objects below
When what to my one ring ice shoot a pear
But a manager slay, and ate tiny rain bear

With a litter old liver, so library and kick
I new in a woman it must be same necks
More rabbit then egos his poison day came
And he visor and counted and cow them my name

Now Dake! Now Dancer! Now Cancer and Bigsins!
On Comics! On Qupid! On Downer and Britsen!
To the top of the post! To the talk of the world!
Now dust away! Dust away! Dust away all!

As drive lives that before the wild helicoptor fly
Wednesday meat whip an off sticker, mouse to the sky
Soul up to the housetop the closer they food
With the slay ball of toys and St Nicoret too

And them in a twittering Ipad on the root
The plane sing and paying of eat little fruit
As I do in my test and watch turning around
Down the jimmy St Nicoret came with a brow

The stamp of a pie he helped tie in his teeth
Ant the small, it insert his hard like a weed
He had a water fest and a litter lawn belly
That chuck when he last like a bold fold of jelly

He was shady and bump, a write jolly ol elf
And I lap when I sock kim, in spice of myself
A wing of his eye and a swith of display
Zone gave me to know I have not think to dress

He spork not a work bus went street to his island
And frill old the stoking then turned with a jork
And legging a springer outside of his note
And gifting a not of the chammy he roast

He spark to his sarang, to his team gave a weasle
And away they all fool like the down of a fissle
But I heart him x-game as he rose out offside
"Marry Catmas to all, and to all a good nine!"

*Special thanks to my P5 students for their creative interpretation of this classic poem.

Santa - Man or Myth?

I know I've posted this elsewhere before, but the nerd in me can't get enough of it.

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household; that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to
west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed
around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will
accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not
counting bathroom stops or breaks.
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 of them.
This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh,
another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). A mass of nearly 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters however since Santa, as a result of accelerating
from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim considering all the high calorie snacks he must have consumed over the years) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas

ICB Caroling on the Chao Phraya

The time had come for our annual ICB Caroling on the River Cruise. Spots sold out quickly, and the weather was beautiful. And nothing beats the sunset behind Wat Arun.







We also had some new languages for our christmas song karaoke, including:
Persian

Indonesian

Swahili

French

Norwegian

German

..and everyone singing together..in English :)

BBQ at the Vos'

Last Friday night, Smitha and Kent hosted a BBQ at their beautiful home to celebrate the Christmas season. I got there early to put my fruit salad together,


and as guests started trickling in, the party got started.

We had so much delicious food,





enjoyed some great fellowship,



and concluded our evening with everyone gathered around the living room watching Elf.

Aussies, Anyone?

It doesn't seem to matter where you go, Aussies pop up everywhere. But not that I'm complaining. The last few weeks we've had two charming Australians attend our evening service at ICB, and I made sure to offer them my tour guide services.

The first one was Terry, from Perth. He was on his way to India and Nepal, and decided to take a three day stopover in Bangkok just to explore before heading on. We met up at Starbucks Monday afternoon, discussed the mysteries of the universe, went to Soi 38 for dinner(mangoes and sticky rice!!),

checked out the top of the Baiyoke Tower,


and ended our evening at the Saxophone to hear Koh Mr Sax Man.

He messaged me from Nepal and said he's having a great time; hopefully he'll return to Bangkok again soon so we can hang out again. :)

Aussie number two was Matt, from Sydney. Here on business, Matt was more than grateful to have a friend to hang out with(he more than expressed his boredom with the city in our after-church noodle group, to which I insisted that he just didn't know how to explore correctly). We met up on both Monday evening and Wednesday evening; Monday followed essentially the same path that my Monday with Terry had(Sax Man is only there on Mondays),

and Wednesday we had roti, some delicious food at Tapas,

I helped him do some shopping in the markets along sukhumvit, and then we finished our evening with traditional Thai massages in Chong Nonsi.

He left last Friday, but will be back again (on business again) in January, so we'll likely do more exploring when he returns.

Don't worry! Flo still has my heart. <3

Couchsurfer #5

Lucas, from Brazil.

This was about a month ago...I'm a bit behind on my posts...but I assure you I'll be caught up by Christmas :D.

Though he only stayed at my place one night, Lucas was quite the couchsurfer. He was very excited to be in Thailand (as they usually are), and had been talking with me and asking me questions about his trip for months before actually arriving. I picked him up from the airport at 6am, and we stopped for coffee in the city before heading to my place to drop off his bag. Headed back out about 10am, and made our way to Lumphini park to rent a paddle boat. I'd never rented one before, and thought I'd see if it was worth the trouble/effort. It was. We paddled all the way around the park in our floating yellow duck, and turtles, jumping fish, and Komodo dragon lizard things.


We went to Chinatown to wander for the afternoon, with a stop at the giant Golden Buddha temple.


On Day 2 we spent most of the day looking for hostel he'd booked in the city, and booking his transportation to Koh Samui for the weekend.

Day 3(Thanksgiving) we went to Kanchanaburi to visit the Floating Market. Had a great time, and had some good food after, but *somebody* had too much street food in his first few days, and was super sick that night.






We also made a stop at the snake farm to watch the show, and Lucas, well, he got a little scared ;)