In Bangkok:

Nowhere near the bombs. Only heard about them from the taxi driver as we tried to make it to Siam Square. The roads seemed really empty...

Lots of soldiers out here, but lots of police too. They were pretty willing to tell us what they knew (not necessarily up to date). They were amazingly efficient cleaning out Siam Square. It was packed at 8:30 when we went by and empty by 11:30.

Plenty more from here later.

I head off for Singapore in about 15 minutes. In case I don't have a chance to post, have a great Christmas!

I'm looking forward to this trip. I bought little padlocks for my checked bag, but I defy anyone to slip 4 kilos of marijuana in there anyway. Still, Singapore does have the death penalty for drug smuggling...

Also, I get to test whether travelling on multiple passports is difficult or not. I'll let you know.

DVD player:

So my DVD player was very cheap and can pay all DVD regions, so I shouldn't complain too much, but it defaults to Spanish subtitles every time I turn it on. It's a little odd.

Cricket:

I've been watching the cricket recently, and I've actually basically figured out what's going on. I think cricket is not a game that can be watched without beer. It's looking pretty good for Australia right now (and it turns out that even if Australia goes up 3-nil, they play the last two games in Sydney and Melbourne which must be a lot of fun for England...). I would like to inform the English side that sunscreen actually still works if you rub it in, rather than having a centimeter thick coating on your nose.

Also, Bill Bryson had a great cricket- and Australia-related quote. "I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished over night and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other." Which sounds about right. I did see some AFL and rugby union when I first arrived.

Bushfires:

They're burning about 35km west of Canberra right now. Yesterday, it was windy and really hot, and it was smoky here. I could smell it from my desk. They're nothing like the fires in Victoria this weekend, of course.

It's so early for this. It was 45 degrees in Melbourne this weekend. That's insane.

OK, I guess that's no Christmas then:

Well, I just got my Christmas box from my mother. Apparently it fell in the ocean on the way over here or something. It was totally drenched. The guy gave it to me in a plastic bag because just touching the cardboard made it disintegrate.

Here it is in its swaddled in plastic glory.






Can't you tell how much that smells?

Basically instead of nice Christmas presents, I get to keep stinky wet cardboard in my apartment for three months or however long it takes the post office to sort out the insurance claim. Thanks, USPS/USAF!

To the people of Canberra:

"Frosty the Snowman" is not appropriate music when it is 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

This is so hard:

I can't do this. Not by myself. I can't get through the season when everyone's supposed to be happy when there's a giant hole where my sister used to be. I have to go to parties and smile and be a good little liaison and inside I can't understand why I'm here and she's not.

I make it through the days well enough, sort of one hour at a time, but the nights are another story. I try to sleep, can't. Cry for a while in bed. Get up, pace around, take some nyquil, watch TV or read, try again. This time with the help of the nyquil I can sleep, but I have weird dreams, that should be nightmares but aren't quite. I think I dread those dreams, dread what they should become.

Then I get up in the morning a little more tired and start over.

Car, redux:

My car lacks fuel injection. I didn't even know what that meant until I bought it. Basically it means that there's no way, when the car is off, to get gasoline into the engine. Well, there is a way; you have to pump the gas pedal a time or two. If you pump it too much, you flood the engine. Not sure what that means, but it sounds like something to be avoided.

Two and a half weeks until Malaysia! I know I just had a holiday, but I'm beyond ready for another (longer) one.

It's been a long and annoying week:

The kind people of the road transport authority decided that it was a good idea to schedule road work (of the tearing up asphalt kind) from 6 pm - 6 am in a residential area. Said area is about as close as possible to "right under my bedroom window." The lack of sleep made me sick, etc, etc. Two more days till they are done.

Also, I played golf on Thursday. Considering my previous golf experience was limited to "Introduction to the Golf Swing" my third year of college, I think I did all right.