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06 Mar 08
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Moving On I'm in The Philippines now and getting settled in. Check out my new blog at http://junglejil.blogspot.com/. |
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29 Feb 08
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A Safe Alternative Energy Source? A 100-meter tall wind turbine meets a 100-kph breeze. |
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29 Feb 08
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No. She. Can't. Somebody with a few more minutes to spare than I do does the math: At this point, it is statistically impossible for Hillary to win the Democratic nomination for President. Assuming an even split of superdelegates with Obama, Hillary must win 65% of Ohio... |
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24 Feb 08
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A Video From The Philippines I forgot how much I enjoyed the music when I was living in Brazil. It's too bad that the English-speaking world is so hesitant to listen to music in other languages, because there is so much good stuff out there to listen to (especially nowadays). ... |
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24 Feb 08
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A New Record At Bob's Bob's BBQ has a standing offer for anyone interested, called The Wagon Wheel Challenge. If you can eat one of Bob's Wagon Wheel Burgers (about 3 pounds total weight, price range 400 to 500 baht depending on toppings) including the french fries in under 45... |
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21 Feb 08
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I'm Not Recommending TQ2 Anymore OK. Let me explain this. There are two owners of the bar called TQ2 here in Pattaya: One is Mem, who is the widow of my old friend Steve. She "inherited" the controlling half of the bar when Steve died a year ago. The other owner is Alf, who bought... |
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19 Feb 08
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Update On The Move Well, things are slowly getting smoothed out here for the upcoming move. Epril and I will be leaving Pattaya, Thailand on March 1st, moving to Cagayn De Oro in The Philippines. We've got the house (see below), and the view (see below). The cable is... |
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15 Feb 08
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A Video Response To C&L Late Night Music Crooks & Liars put the Cocteau Twins on their Late Night Music Club tonight, which immediately made me think of another lesser-known but equally interesting band from 4AD Records during the 1980s: Dead Can Dance (introduced to me, if I remember... |
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12 Feb 08
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Compare That To Twenty Years Ago About twenty years ago this month, I was standing on the hangar deck of the USS Nimitz about 8:00 in the morning. At sunrise, we had passed between the north and south islands of Japan. I was standing there watching the islands slip away behind us in... |
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09 Feb 08
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Avoid Traveling To Or Through Dubai At All Costs I'm not joking. A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the... |
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09 Feb 08
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Daily Report: I'm Going To Miss This I was up nice and early today. Maid Go has been working days at her new employer's house, and evenings here (I don't have that much to do) and had already left by the time I made it downstairs at 7:30.Epril and I spent the morning in front of the... |
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08 Feb 08
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Phonebook Friction Something you didn't know you wanted to know: If you interlace the pages of two phonebooks they are impossible to pull apart. |
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07 Feb 08
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Daily Report: Light Blogging Apologies Sorry about having been so light on the blogging lately. I just been focusing my attention elsewhere for the past few weeks. Got a lot to think about... The move mostly: What to do with my stuff I'll be leaving behind, the finances associated with moving,... |
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05 Feb 08
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Superbowl Ads Are Up The one thing that sucks about the watching Superbowl in Thailand is that you don't get to see the ads. Fortunately, Time magazine has them all up on the internet (with grades... and I think they were much too generous, as these ads mostly suck). Well,... |
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03 Feb 08
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Yes We Can The Black Eyed Peas have written a pro-Obama song and made a heck of a video to go with it. |
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02 Feb 08
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Got My Taxes Done, Thank You Turbotax I had started off my tax preparations this year by going to H&R Block and having a tax preparer assigned to me. I've always had somebody else prepare my taxes because I've always been convinced that the vagaries and mysteries of living overseas and... |
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01 Feb 08
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Bob Bakes A Big Burger Bob cooked another one of his world-record-sized hamburgers today, this time at the order of a Japanese film crew doing a documentary on Pattaya. The film crew asked nicely not to put their stars faces on the internet, so I haven't, but apparently they... |
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29 Jan 08
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President Bush Will Cut Spending Bush said he would cut or eliminate 151 "wasteful or bloated" government programs in his budget for 2009 -- cuts he said would total $18 billion of a budget that amounted to $3 trillion in 2008.Hmm...$3 trillion is the same as $3,000 billion. $18 billion... |
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29 Jan 08
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World's Best Maid For Hire I'll be leaving Thailand soon, and it is time to help Maid Go find a new home to clean.As you know, Maid Go has been working for me for 2½ years... an eternity for domestic help in Thailand. Quite simply, she is as reliable and dedicated a maid as yo... |
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28 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Back To Cambodia Epril and I did a visa run today: an old-fashioned, out-to-Cambodia visa run. It's the first visa run like that for me in eight months actually.I couldn't get in touch with my old visa run company, and instead went to Key Visa Run, and they hooked me up... |
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27 Jan 08
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Harris Black Tries To Be Liked Pattaya's most famous sociopath, and JIP Wannabe, Harris Black, is back on the internet again, trying to get people to like him the only way he can anymore: As an anonymous poster named "Piker" over at Thaivisa.com, trying to create a "Daily Report" type... |
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27 Jan 08
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Top 100 Stand-Up Comedians Of All Time Via Crooks and Liars. My favorite comes in at #41: The inimitable Eddie Izzard:Here are the Crooks and Liars Top Ten Stand Up Commedians from their top-100 list, with links to other videos:1. Lenny Bruce2. Richard Pryor3. Woody Allen4. Mort Sahl5.... |
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25 Jan 08
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Thanks George I hear that George Bush is sending out orders to have the IRS mail me a check for $600 next year as a kind of "sorry the economy is screwed up" gift.Well, for me, that $600 is just going to wind up in my bank account and get spent along with the rest of... |
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24 Jan 08
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Pattaya Now Has Taxis I saw these two taxis today on Beach Road. If you'll notice they say "Pattaya Taxi" on the windsheilds. They seem to be standard meter taxis which Pattaya has never had before. The Thai urge to scam tourists seems to be alive and well, however: I talked... |
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24 Jan 08
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Aikido Lessons In Pattaya Epril and I are taking a series of Aikido martial arts classes with our friend Geordan Reynolds at the martial arts center in Mike Shopping Mall, 4th floor. For those of you who don't know, Aikido is the martial art that focuses primarily on using an... |
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24 Jan 08
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My Simple View Of Things At this point, it is down to three choices: We can elect a guy who is going to keep on doing pretty much the same stuff that George Bush has done, we can re-elect Bill Clinton, or we can vote for Obama. |
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22 Jan 08
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I Wanna Know OK... head over to the comments section: It's groupthink time.If there is a world wide recession/depression, what do you think will happen to the value of the US Dollar, especially vis-a-vis the Thai Baht?My personal opinion is that the bigger,... |
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22 Jan 08
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My Prediction John McCain will win the Republican nomination. He'll either beat Hillary Clinton in the election, or he'll lose to Barack Obama. |
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22 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Blue Monday Sorry about the light blogging here at J.I.P. lately. I've been enjoying a bit of time away from the responsibility of putting up posts every day. I haven't been doing anything particularly noteworthy lately... although I did go out to TQ2 with Epril on... |
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21 Jan 08
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Interesting Article From The Independent in England: On average, about 50 civilian UK nationals are murdered around the world each year (excluding terrorist attacks). This means that almost 10 per cent of all murders of Britons abroad are committed in Thailand – a chilli... |
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18 Jan 08
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It Beats Graduate School I was reading this article on the American military's struggle to retain its officers, and the opportunities it has created for those officers who remain. The line that struck me was, "If you breathe, you make lieutenant colonel these days." The other... |
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17 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Housing Settled, Blog Not I've been over-sleeping a bit lately. I think the reason is that the sun is rising much later now than it did in the summer time (as it tends to do). I wait until the sun is up — at about 7:00 — before contemplating wakefulness.I've been in touch wit... |
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16 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Moving Along I'm relaxing a little bit from blogging this past weekend: After all, hobbies are enjoyable because you can put them down and walk away from them from time to time.Work is fair. I was out with Stan today for lunch at Dao Café. I finally got a virus of... |
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11 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Close to Perfect on the Recipe Up early, but laid around in the sunshine which streams directly onto my bed every morning, nice long shower, blogged, and enjoyed my coffee until mid-morning. Then I got to work. Go and Epril went to Fuji and brought home dumplings and makizushi for... |
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10 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Dancing Not Boxing I lazed around in bed this morning, enjoying lying in the sunshine coming through the window. After that I watched the results of the New Hampshire primary on the internet. (I have no idea why I grew this intense interest in politics 10 or 15 years... |
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09 Jan 08
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Peace Or War Coin Toss I'm kind of torn here: I don't want America getting into another idiotic war, especially with a country as pointless and worthless and powerless as Iran. But then, the other half of me really really wants to see some beligerent pissants in blue speed... |
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09 Jan 08
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My Lame Attempt At Liveblogging 9:00 p.m. McCain already won, which makes Romney winning the nomination much less likely.9:01 p.m. Hillary is in the lead now, which is hardly what the polls predicted.9:09 p.m. Ron Paul may actually beat Rudy Giuliani tonight. Oh how I hope. In other Ron... |
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09 Jan 08
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Daily Report: The New Store I made several phone calls to TOT today to try to get my internet switched back on, which finally happened at about 6:00 tonight. Typical customer service in Thailand: I have three "backup" TOT numbers to call for when I have problems with my internet... |
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08 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Yeah... The Water Too Standard morning wake-up routine: Epril wakes up with the alarm, and then climbs on top of me and pokes my nose and nuzzles me and flicks my eyelids. Then, I tickle her until she squeals and giggles. Then we go back to sleep for 20 minutes. Repeat... |
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07 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Down But Next Door I got home on Friday night from dinner out to find that my phone line (and internet) was out. Unlike the electricity, I'm pretty sure I paid last month's phone bill... but you never know.Since the phone company doesn't open until Monday morning, I (with... |
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04 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Jil In The Dark I was up at a pretty early hour for my first day back to work. Back in America, this morning represented the evening of January 2nd... the end of the first day where there would be patients visiting doctors offices since breaking for the holidays a... |
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04 Jan 08
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Good Websites For The Moment Iowa caucuses, up-to-the-second, constantly-refreshed results.DemocratsRepublicans |
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03 Jan 08
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Daily Report #1797 There was still no work to do this morning, and instead I spent the time wandering around the internet... and didn't find too much of interest. (Or at least if I did, I can't remember it now.)I had a late-morning nap, and had Indian food for late lunch.In... |
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02 Jan 08
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Daily Report: Friends In Distress I didn't bother doing any work today, primarily because there was none to do. Instead, I'm putting in for some more vacation time over these few days to cover the lack of work. I spent most of the day blogging instead, and got the rest of the photos from... |
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02 Jan 08
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Pattaya Numbers Up, But Not As Much As Hoped After a dismal 2006 tourist season, the number of tourist arrivals appears to be up in 2007 by about 10% over the previous year, but that falls below the Tourism Authority of Thailand's expectations. I would suspect that most of the year-to-year... |
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02 Jan 08
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Princess Galyani Has Died The king's eldest sister died at 3:00 a.m. on January 2nd. Thailand government agencies will be in official mourning for 15 days, and you can expect local Thai citizens to be practicing some form of grieving as well, although what effect that might have... |
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01 Jan 08
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Philippines Trip Day 10 Epril with her parents at the airport in Cagayan.We had an uneventful trip home to Pattaya.Filipinos are supposed to show return plane tickets when they leave the country, but I decided to try getting Epril out without one, and if the people at the... |
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01 Jan 08
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Philippines Trip Day 9 We rode up into the mountains outside the village of Jassan today. About 30 minutes out, we got this view of Epril's village on the peninsula.The Philippines has great baked goods, as this bakery in the village of Jassan illustrates.Threshing rice near... |
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01 Jan 08
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Philippines Trip Day 8 Epril and I did some after-Christmas shopping in Cagayan De Oro before heading back to the village. We bought little sister Inday this cute outfit, and bought little sister Dimple a Barbie backpack for school.The stereo and television I bought on... |
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01 Jan 08
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Philippines Trip Day 6 Doreen after morning shower.Unlike Thailand, in The Philippines, gun ownership and being armed is legal. Hence, signs like this one below on the doors at banks. It is a bit weird to see guards with pistol grip shotguns at McDonald's though. Nonetheless:... |
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