Ninjas STILL can't catch you if you're on fire

Dear LJ,

What has happened in January 2012 so far?

1) I've moved back into the house, and besides having to get up at 5AM or thereabouts since Monday also seem to be coming down with something. UGH UNCOOL, BODY. Though going to sleep at 10PM ish gets easier when you have a throbbing headache and can't quite breathe through your nose. I cannot get sick, I have an important meeting on Friday!

2) Work is AWESOME. Passed my probation period (it wasn't officially declared or anything, but I think I can consider it a success when my boss calls me in to discuss my self-evaluation form and asks me how long I've been working here anyways, "it feels like so long already")! We're busy like hell now and sometimes I make the kind of mistakes that make me want to headdesk when I don't catch them in time and BigBoss has to point them out to me in various stages of annoyed, but all in all it's going great. MyBoss is at least easier to please, and we have a new designer who is good and also SOLELY here for the unbrand stuff and I have been gleefully piling up aaaaall the projects I wanted to do since last year but couldn't, due to lack of aforementioned unbrand designer. He is also v. dryly sarcastic, snipes w/ my desk neighbor in a very entertaining way and wears things like randomly flowery shirts and bright purple dockers lol I love Asian male fashion.

3) As a result of both points, I thus have next to no real time to LJ at the moment and I STILL haven't many any 2011 recap posts yet baaaaaaaaaaaaalls, soon soon soon I promise (myself). Hopefully our internet at home gets fixed soon! Until then, I shall see most of you on the Twittersssssssphere and FB XD Eventho I am also massively behind on uploading pictures to the latter and just also ANSWERING EMAILS in general, sigh!

Kisses,
SHAZ

...where does the freaking time go, ughhhhh. A lot has happened since I last posted, and that wasn't even a "real post". Don't really feel much up to a detailed recap so here are random bullet points.

-work still enjoyable, semi-quiet lulls interspersed with STRESS STRESS I AM ANNOYED BY THE DESIGNER TEAM THEY VEX ME AUGHHHH STRESS
-house dry now, water's been gone for 2-3 weeks and Dad and Sue have been speedy in getting everything in somewhat fighting shape again. Tentative moving back date sometime in Jan, though of course the entire ground level is gutted and will be empty for a while. We even had new ceilings put in, hopefully the mold won't return. Might be pretty hardy, since the house was under 2-3m of water for 2 straight months.
-Ma's one year anniversary came and went without me breaking down into a useless gibbering heap too badly-- Dad was thoughtful enough to take me out to dinner that night so that I got back to the hotel room late and tired, and the next day I went and made merit with my aunt and uncle and spent some time at their house, where I got to see my grandma and the cat. Khun Yai still skinny, cat still FAT lol. Ex-stepdad didn't post anything about the date on FB, but he "liked" my status about it. WOW.
-speaking of moods, I have been up and down and all around these past few weeks but it's in times like these when friends and your remaining family can be so wonderful and lovely. I would go into more whine and cheese about how I seem to have gotten more anxious about a worrying amount of things when I have the time to think about them but I can't be bothered at the moment, hah!
-christmas eve was spent at a friend's party with my int'l school people. On paper it sounded like a kids party (but with tequila and baileys) but in reality it was awesome. Christmas day was spent making my other friend feed me (muslim friend & hotel kid brat unite in not really seeing this holiday as a family thing lol), watching the Swedish Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and being introduced to the amazing world of REVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENGE. Awesome. Eps 1-4 down, now gimme moaaar.
-in Europe I always thought I was too Thai to really fit in there. Now at work I realize that I am not broadly Thai enough to really fit in w/ my colleagues-- though this is different when I'm with my international school friends, who are themselves either Thai or half-halfs. Specialized identity it is then! Also then I will just own the fact that people don't expect me to own the sometimes unnecessary nuanced conversations in the office lol and here I thought I was passive-aggressive by European standards. This isn't to say that I am not enjoying my office and colleagues though, this is just something I've been trying to articulate to myself.
-SO MANY PEOPLE IN BANGKOK UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CROWDS WHYY.
-should probably look into mirroring to DW soon but this is something I will ignore until I have constant net at home again. I miss comment subject lines though! UGH

...anyone have any decent end of year memes to pass around? I haven't had the time to really look.

It's startrekbigbang posting time!

Presenting the art for ellipsisthgreat's lovely fic: Focus (on Me)!

This has been a journey filled with more ups and downs than I had first expected-- here I thought I'd only have to juggle work with my usual laziness and procrastination, but nope, turned out to be a surprise!evacuee of the worst floods in recent Thai history and had to deal with all additional crappery that entailed. One keeps on keeping on though, we have somewhere to stay in town, it could have been worse and hey, I got to practice using actualfax drawing implements again! There's something to be said about the kind of lines that come directly from your hand, but oh how wonderful life would be if CTRL+Z worked in real time and one didn't have to erase and erase and pray that the paper wouldn't rip/smudge/whathaveyou.

( WITHOUT FURTHER ADO... )

ATLANTIS, VERSION TWO: COMMENCE.

Thailand is currently experiencing its most intense flooding in recent history. It's all but reaching catastrophic levels, in terms of scope at the very least. As of today, SIXTY of 77 provinces have been affected in some manner, with 12 severly affected (water above 3 meters and counting) and 17 critically affected. Over 2.3 million people are currently affected, with over 252 dead. Most of our dams are operating at peak or more capacity, which means that along with the flooding caused by rains alone, you also have the water that needs to be systematically released downstream to deal with.

I've been tweeting intermittenly about this since the flooding situation has really started getting worse here and is now kind of affecting me directly (always makes a thing different, doesn't it), but it has actually been ongoing since about July and I've mostly just discussed it with local friends and my family before. But the last few weeks and most importantly DAYS have shown that these are not the usual floods that are a yearly occurence in Thailand. Quite frankly, and what many are saying is that it's never been flooding THIS much before. People are used to a certain amount of hardship because of the floods, but it seems that now we have a perfect storm of the recent string of tropical depressions hitting SE Asia back to back, the monsoon rains from the rainy season and just not enough planning for effective waterways and deforestation over the years all culiminating into the epic shitshow that is going on here. We're not a country used to natural catastrophes-- now (military-backed) coups, on the other hand....--, so people aren't trained to make the "right" decisions, to evacuate instead of stubbornly staying in their houses with their possessions (again, also understandable) and this makes all the rescue and relief efforts all the more difficult.


(flood footage starts after ca 40 seconds. The aerial shot is just stupendous)
The water is UP TO FOUR METERS HIGH in parts of Ayutthaya. 80% of that province is under water, and Lopburi, Singhburi and other low-lying provinces like Ang Thong are equally hard hit. At first one worried about the Northern provinces and they had had some pretty nasty floods earlier in the year, flash floods from the mountain rivers, some mudslides, but now it's Central and pretty much the rest of Thailand's turn. Only time will tell how long it'll take us to collectively drag ourselves out of this mess, and I can only hope our politicians get their heads out of their useless, corrupt asses to tackle this matter effectively. The military at least seems to be acquitting itself well in dispensing aid to people, I must admit. But what Thailand really needs to wake-up to after this is the fact that you fucking have to think of the enviromental factors when you plan/build things, especially in a country with our soil make-up, with our history of flooding. Our ancestors got it right, but of course greed makes you do other things instead. We're all so very short-sighted when it comes to this kind of planning and it is so, so completely frustrating to hope that this will change soon. Ugh.

But just to reassure everyone, we're fine here. Our province, being one of the surrounding ones between BKK and Ayutthaya is flooded, although the worst has thankfully still left our mooban and house untouched. The communities near the klongs and river are a whole 'nother matter though, and the flooding on the roads around those areas meant that I am inadvertantly stranded this weekend, as my tiny car wouldn't have been able to make it through the wall of water. Luckily Dad's Ford can still hack it, otherwise getting to work on Monday and the following week will sure be very interesting for all three of us. The next doomsdate that people are fearing is the 11th, when we're expecting the next amount of water to come down from one of the big dams. We shall see. Now that the waters are starting to rise in BKK, people there are suddenly panicking and emptying all the supermarkets etc of food and stockpiling. Everyone was counting on BKK to stay unscathed and now they're all rattled out of their "well it's upcountry. Not affecting me, tch" mentality. I mean, to give credit, people have really been donating a helluva lot and helping with the relief efforts but the last heavy flood that BKK had was over a DECADE ago. Bangkokians never expect to have to deal with such things.

The worries about the dams and if we can drain enough of the water through the dykes into the sea kind of feels like the BKK of The Wind-Up Girl now, I have to say XD.

I have been meaning to post about this for ages; basically every time I have to drive the 100kms roundtrip into town I am mentally composing this entry. It certainly does wonders towards centering myself! I was nervous about this ever since I got the car in C'Mai and knew that I had to one day steer it through the streets of the capital but now I can with confidence say that DRIVING IN BANGKOK SUCKS. Ultimately dealable, but oh the frustration!

The actual act of driving is fine if various combinations of the following is true: A) you're on an expressway/tollway/elevated highway, B) you're either driving super early, smack dab in the afternoon or rather late at night or just C) YOU'RE NOT ACTUALLY IN BANGKOK BUT EVEN IF YOU ARE YOU THINK YOU'RE THE BIGGEST PIMP ON THE ROAD AND JUST DON'T GIVE A SHIT (and drive a hugeass pick-up or SUV). The roads here are mostly okay and I have been lucky enough not to live in areas where when it floods the roads are totally impassible (as often happens right now, pretty scary water levels up-country in certain provinces, augh), and I rarely actually have to drive IN town because this entry would be much, much more longer and bitter otherwise ...but the biggest problem about driving in Thailand in general remains EVERYONE ELSE ON THE ROAD.

( CUT for venting and complaining! )

BUT, that venting aside, I still would take this over driving in Bali or Hanoi any damn day. The traffic there tended to be more than vaguely alarming to me and I have great respect for anyone who succeeds in driving there safely. Anyone have any driving stories to vent about with me? Now that I actually possess this skillset I want to hear other peoples' battle-stories, too :DD

My recent fandom Big Deals: Watching Captain America and finishing A Dance with Dragons in two days after a two week wait. YEAAAAH. Thoughts on the latter to come in a seperate post, but first:
STEVE ROGERS, ILU <3.

THIS ENTIRE MOVIE, AHHH. SO MUCH AMAZING. How adorable and just plain ol' FUN was this movie, even in hated 3D? The Marvel movies are on a motherfuckin' roll. I clapped, squeed and glee'd my way through basically all of it, (though I did rolll my eyes at the ueber cheesy 3D action bits) and I have to say that New Friend Lydia (my BKK ladies are widening my social circle and it hilariously includes people who know people I know from school, the BKK int'l school graduates crowd is so teeny and incestuous ahhh) was amazing company to watch it it.

ASSORTED SQUEE/THOUGHTS BEHIND THE CUT
( FONDUE JOKES FOREVER PLEASE )
( FONDUE JOKES FOREVER PLEASE )

OH AND THIS SONG IS GREAT. Beirut, you have done it again *plays on endless YT loop*

6.8 Magnitude Earthquake in Myanmar ... the article only states the distance to Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai itself is around 3 hours away by car. I am blanking on the precise distance, but whatever it was, we were actually able to feel things shuddering lightly under our feet in the office (6th floor) at shortly around 9PM. At first I thought it was just MR kicking the connecting wall of our cubicle unit, but slowly the entire office seemed to realize that Something Was Wrong. Cue the vaguely confused cries of "earthquake?", and then our servers had a slight hiccup and all calls were fucked, which was ace timing as everyone basically dropped everything to file out down the stairs to the ground floor. We milled around for a bit, the smokers happy for the respite and soon enough we headed back in to continue work. It was pretty freaky, but seemed to be a one-off occurrence, though of course this was the beginning of rampant speculation to happen and people to post OUTDATED news reports of the 2006 earthquake on FB (seriously, it's like the French upstairs are unable to read posted news dates, sighhh) ...until we felt more slight wobbling shortly before 11PM. That was also right around my clocking out time, and MR and I were considering trudging down the office again before DI was all "uhh hello, it's all over now wtf, stay inside." And the dude did have a point, so I sent off some credit requests as we log ALL THE MINUTES EVER and this crap plus our server problems from yesterday mean I have some annoying time deficits..... only to then find out that we were closing the office early. The late shift people effectively didn't have to work 2 hours! God, couldn't they have had this bright idea at fricken' 9PM the first time we felt anything? Gah.

This may sound flippant to y'all, but let me reiterate that we were effectively so far away that what shaking we felt really wasn't enough to even damage anything, just disturb people in a country that isn't used to earthquakes AT ALL (EDIT: At least not in Chiang Mai, as I was typing this post at something AM I didn't hear about the one old lady who died in Chiang Rai, nor about the housing damage there.). Floods and forest fires, now those you kind of learn to expect here when you think about natural disasters. I would obviously have been more worried were we in Chiang Rai, but uh. We weren't. It must've been pretty disturbing for people in the way high highrises in BKK though, I imagine.

AND SPEAKING OF BANGKOK-- that's where I'll be headed tomorrow morning! Yet to have packed, I might add, and there's an eaaaaaaarly wake-up for me, awwww fuck.

So that's all from me for now~~

PS: OH AND cheshire_tabby, YOUR MAIL CAME kfhkjfj such a pleasant surprise THANK YOU SO MUCH, BB!! Love the cards, love the butterflies and the note book and also the caramels! Already ate two of the three and totally had to hang up on some incoming calls, as I was smart enough to eat time during work and wasn't expecting just how they'd meld my mouth together XDD. Also I was reading this list of badasses and saw this hardcore POLISH BEAR SOLDIER and had to share the awesome with you. SO AMAZING.

Well okay, I've technically been back since Tuesday and didn't even make a holiday hiatus post in the first place (I HAD ONE PAINSTAKINGLY TYPED OUT ON FUCKING LIVEJOURNAL MOBILE ON MY BB AT THE AIRPORT, but of course that shit never works when you try to post ughhhhh).

So! Recap: I was in Hanoi, Vietnam meeting my dear old friend La from the 4th to the 8th of this month. Vietnam was quite the experience and not as empty as we feared over Tet/Vietnamese New Year. It was actually more like, INSANELY PACKED AND LOUD lolol and it is always weird for me to actually have that touristy feel of not understanding a single word of the local language when I travel. Most of the time I did either speak some form of the languages there or it was possible to kiiiind of guess at word meanings, but Vietnamese really was beyond my ken lolol. We had lots of awkward and/or random conversations with shopkeepers, waiters and our receptionist guy and muddled through everything. It's also the reason we sometimes ate truly strange and not really ~traditional Vietnamese food~ as planned, as we'd either inadvertently want to order breakfast foods at dinner, order things that were all out and as a result just randomly point at some of the weirdly translated food listings. Fact: THE HANOI BEER IS DELICIOUS THOUGH. And I say this as a person who normally really dislikes beer!

Will be working on uploading pictures soon and of course have all the postcards to sort out for people :DD. Everything was pretty cheap and I didn't really buy much besides an extra small poster, so I kind of went crazy with the postcards instead. The propaganda poster-based ones are simply so amazing!

...and I'd write more, but my eyes are nearly welded shut on me rn and I just wanted to at least post something on LJ again. LATERS, MY PRETTIES <33

PS AHHHH SO MUCH TV I AM TRYING TO CATCH UP ON! HAWAII 5-0! COMMUNITY! WHICO! GLEE! Re: that last one-- I take it back, my one true Puck pairing is now Puck/Lauren. MAKE IT HAPPEN FOR REALS, GLEE CREATORS. She is just unbelievably awesome. And we are getting more Kurt/Blaine action! Was halfway cringing through the GAP serenade bit, but I like Blaine's veneer of ~always knowing best~ being chipped away and him and Kurt approaching more equal footing with each other. AND AFTER A BIT OF PLOT DEVELOPMENT, MOVE STRAIGHT TO THE MAKE-OUTS PLEASE. It is becoming kind of weird that Blaine gets all the Warbler numbers though, as much as I love Darren Criss and his performances, this does fly against the Warbler borg motto of ONE VOIIIIIIIIICE and all that. AH WELL.

My first week of being back on the job since the 9th of December last year is behind me now and I have got to say that barring getting to see my ladies (and dude, can't forget M, our lone XY chromosome-holder in the group) again, IT WAS A LOAD OF STEAMING SHIT. I thought it was all in my head at first, that I wasn't used to the workload any more, the way the calls seemed to pile up but I counted along and we are back to the level of having a call come in every minute for about 95% of the work day. I am still lucky that most of these aren't the negative yelling-and-insulting-your-intelligence ones, but it is only a matter of time. In the interest of keeping my sanity up, I have implemented the usual coping-strategies without shame again, fuck my statistics: delaying the moment of picking up the phone, spending a bit of the post-call processing time eating snacks and uh, sometimes just hanging up on the callers for accounts that piss me off. These little rebellions are still a drop in the ocean though, since deep in my heart I normally like to follow rules and normally feel very guilty about these things.

We also have a new girl R, who I am still formulating my opinion about, but the current forecast seems to be rough since she pings all my dirty-hippy-backpacker prejudices and that just makes me automatically affect a more disdainful and stuck-up version of who I normally am. I KNOW BACKPACKERS ARE MOSTLY VERY NICE PEOPLE but man the ones that I have talked to that keep yammering about how their way is the only ~true way to experience the REAL Asia just keep getting my hackles up. Also perhaps we are too jaded but I. told me that R also has some pretty naive expectations about her working life here and ahahahaha we'll see. We kind of have an unofficial bet going for how long she's gonna last.

BUT NOW FOR MORE ~*FANDOM-Y NEWS*~:

yuletart reveals went up a few days ago and I can now say that I was behind the following The Hunger Games paper dolls! I remain pretty pleased with how it turned out, and again, many thanks to laliandra and laulan for being my usual art betas! Am not at my own computer at the moment, but I'll put up an actual post soon with the HQ versions as I did make them to actually be playable (well somewhat. At the very least, they're supposed to be nearly A4-sized!). My gift art this year was the following SMOKING HOT CAROLINE from The Vampire Diaries (season 2 spoilers!) by the lovely dualbunny, who was also my own recipient lol. BASICALLY I WAS VERY PLEASED BY THIS YEAR'S YULETART and it remains one of my favorite yearly art fests ♥

Here are also some awesome vids that I have been linked to and have been obsessively rewatching:

Cupid's Chokehold by nel_ani. Hawaii Five-0 Steve/Danny goodness, AHHHH ♥. I need to download this onto my laptop so I can watch it every day for that shot of pure happiness, ahh. Such clever use of the clips to the lyrics, too-- I just keep alternating between cracking up and sighing contently.
Runs in the Family by kaiyote. Supernatural and a total MOOD SHIFT from the previous vid. Fantastic song choice and look at the fucked-up angels and again, excellent use of clips and sharp, rapid cutting. I particularly adore the editing of the "fill me up" (all the sex and in between it all, Cas gorging himself on food) and "knock me up" (ANGELS WILL MESS YOU UP) parts. Also, it reminds me that Misha Collins is fantastic at all those different weary/hopeless/dead tired Castiel!faces.
Sex and Reruns by greensilver. Community and mucho thanks for Lalface for reccing this to me. I cannot say enough that Community is one of the best shows ever and every one should watch it. How can it be so consistently hilarious and touching, creative and zany and still above all retain such a lovely heart? I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT and this vid just reinforces my convictions ♥ ♥.
Folding Chair by sisabet. Another Community vid, this time focusing on Annie. Lovely song and OH ANNIE, YOU ARE SO AMAZING AND HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE <33. I had the biggest smile after I finished watching this. And Allison Brie is hot, it has to be said.

Keeping everything else I want to post on the backburner AGAIN, have some YT clips that have been rocking my world lately. I must pack for my imminent wake-up in uh, 5 HOURS because I will be flying to BANGKOK!! again for 5 days FUCK YEAH. Three days without work, glory glory hallelujah.

NUMERO UNO: SANTANA ROCKING THE FUCK OUTTA VALERIE (ALSO: MIKE CHANG & BRITTANY = BEST EVERRR)


NUMBER TWO: I NEED TO WATCH THIS MOVIE ASAP. Historical anecdotes apparently spun to high heavens and movie-transformed! EPIC TRADITIONAL MUSTACHES!! FUCKING BADASS FIGHT SCENES! Muay Thai remains one of the most hardcore and awesome things everrrr *wipes away a tear of national pride*.


NUMMER DREI: THIS SONG HAS BEEN MY EARWORM FOR THE LAST FEW DAYS DURING WORK. And also the awesome banality of the lyrics never stop cracking me up-- a sample: "Found a wallet/but there were no thousand baht notes there/Want to go for a mountain road-trip/but there's no gas in the car" OR "Bought fancy wine/didn't know how to open it/now it's expired/Want to go to heaven/but forgot to make merit/so now it's probably hell for me" A+++ I LIKE.

(ughhhh why the fuck didn't embedding work just now?? *shakes fist at LJ*)

PEE ESS ...we still have to check out things + everything is still super tentative and dependant on a million things BUT I. AND I MIGHT BECOME HOUSEMATES (!!) SOON. There is a house basically across Ma's where the owners who live in BKK or whatever need tenants to uh, keep the mice away after they get the exterminator to do their thing. The rent would be something ridiculously low like 5,000 THB which I. and I would split anyways + utilities and just... This would be so much less than my current rent for my dinky apartment, an ACTUAL HOUSE and also: SEPARATE BATHROOMS (!!!) so I can happily live out my neuroses of not wanting to share bathrooms/toilets with other people! SWEET. Of course, we'd both actually have to get/renew our driver's licenses respectively, but one would have actual incentive now lolol