Blog July 2008

I think I know that Thai politics is ugly and full of "legal" criminals. People know they are corrupted and taking away tax to enrich and empower themselves. It is too bad that the majority of Thais are blind to pretend to be blind to the rightness and the justice.

According to the news, the prime minister decided to substitute some positions in his cabinet. This is the moment that people can see news about lobbying for positions in this rotten cabinet of senators. I wonder how people still do nothing about it. The way they are doing now doesn't look like the representatives of people. It seems to me that they so want to be a senator just for fame, money and power. This is very disgusting thing to see on news. Speaking of which, according to rumors, the new members of this cabinet are not so good. In fact, only one person, the new minister of foreign affairs, is apparently professional and corruption-free-like. The rest are rotten. Start from the future minister of commerce. He was a former minister of medicine until he has been convinced guilty by breaching numbers of the latest constitution with the charge of dishonestly conceal personal assets. The another one is the future minister of civil affairs. He was a former commander of Thai royal police force until the interim cabinet after the bloodless coup in 2006 demoted him as the result of his intention to stall the investigation against the former PM Thaksin. To put someone like him in this kind of situation in Thailand is a kind of joke.

In conclusion, this change is nothing but to make this cabinet even more uglier, except the change in the position of the minister of foreign affairs.

But one thing I am really surprised is to see how efficient Japanese people make every single square inch of there land useful and productive.

And actually, Shouji's house illustrates the fact that even Japan has this kind of agricultural scenery. But the roads there are really small even for two-way traffic.

After Panote, Shouji and I dropped off our luggage and the souvenirs (お土産) were given to Shouji and his family, we went out for lunch. It was the first time for me to have buffet (バイキング). What I found over there was even impressing me. Who would think that Thai spicy glass-noodle salad and Thai chicken green curry were found in Japanese buffet.

Then, after good lunch, we went to Hōryū-ji (法隆寺 lit. Temple of the Flourishing Law) in Ikagura, Nara. Shouji told me that it is well known mostly to Japanese people but not to foreigners. I found myself that the transportation to Hōryū-ji was not something that foreigners could get here as it was local unless he or she did some research on Hōryū-ji.

Although I was not expecting to sightsee things in Nara, coming here was the first beyond-my-expectation. In my opinion, this place is more like a castle to me and it has the Chinese atmosphere as it is built during the early period of Japanese culture.

As I took too much photos (approximately 188 photos) at Hōryū-ji, I decided to randomly show some of them.

Luckily, on that day, the temple opened the special area consisting the study hall etc.

It is not exactly a real war like what is happening in many places around the world. But oh yeah, let see when developers go bad.

I really wanted to add more photos but the work-place network did not grant my wish. (> <)

The recent traffic statistics from both Shiroyuki Studio and Primal Fusion show me that there are quite a lot of users still using IE 6. This is very amazing but I really hate the fact that many people still use it and I have to some how tweak a standard code to an IE-compatible code. Arrrr!

In my opinion, although I hate it, I still have to support it until Microsoft ends its IE6 support. But I don't understand the reason people still use it since now IE7 is safer, faster and more compatible to the standard coding than IE6 (but still worse far beyond the other except Opera). Moreover, IE 7 is now available for everyone who even run a pirate-version Windows XP. But I believe that the majority of the users are not able to upgrade their web browser. Sadness.

ちょっと前に、暇� から、私の小肺のブログを見た時に「なん� 、これ！」と思っていた。どう見ても、１００％じゃないけど、彼は私のホー� ページをコピーした。大学生なのに、自分で考えをされないのかな。

After my convocation (June 13), I visited to Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa with my family. It was more like a re-visiting trip. There was nothing particularly new except a new house of my dad's friend. But I met some persons whom my family know but i didn't.

In June 18, eleven hours after my family left Canada to Paris for their second stop of the visiting trip, I left to Japan for my own visiting trip. It was almost a re-visiting trip except this is more interesting.

In the first 36 hours, I pretended not to understand a bit of Japanese although I could understand about 70% of the CONTEMPORARY conversation. However, after things became pretty complicated, I decided to speak Japanese again.

My trip in Japan started in June 19. The first place is Machida, Tokyo (町田市、東京) to meet with Panote and Patrick. We had a dinner at Dennis, a family restuarant. One thing interesting is that a half of the items listed in the menu are quite traditional Japanese food.

After dinner, I went to Hotel Vista in Hashimoto, Kanagawa where I made a reservation. Just for fun, although Panote was with me, I asked him not to say a word and letted me ONLY speak with them in English. Amazingly enough, they understood my word but they just couldn't reply me in English. However, After having done the business with the hotel counter and sending Panote to the train station, I went back to my room to take a shower since I couldn't take a shower for 24 hours and I wouldn't be able to take a shower for the next 36 hours. Well, it was the start of the unforgettable trip.

This trip is a kind of De-Ja-Vu. My first breakfast was still a pancake, which I mistakenly thought it as a Dorayaki, Chocolate milk, green tea and Chocolate cake.

Not too long after I checked out; the reception ran after me to ask me to pay for the outgoing telephone service. This is what I am a little bit pissed off about. They were supposed to tell me that earlier. So, I ended up paying 111 yen. Well, it's still cheaper that using my own cell phone.

Then, I went to JR Hashimoto Station to take Yokohama line to Hachiouji Station (八王子). Then I took a train from there to Shinjuku Station (新宿) to take Yamanote line to Akihabara station (秋葉原). I arrived in Akihabara station around 11 AM. I first ran to Yodobashi to get a camera since my lovely Sony DSC P-8 was malfunctioning just not too long before I came to Japan. Before I bought a new camera, I was very hungry so I went to Ramen shop. After having a bowl of Ramen, I ended up with Canon PowerShot SS IS because it was not too expensive and SLR-alike at that time. Actually, there are a couple candidates for my new camera. However, the testing model of one of them was not working as it ran out of battery. The second one didn't have English-UI being sold in Japan at that time. So, I picked Canon instead.

Then, since last time I didn't walk around in Akihabara as I pleased, so I decided to check it out until 3 PM (JST). Well, it's really a waste that Akihabara has nothing interesting except its electronic products, animations, comic books etc.

Then, I walked around Shinjuku with the same reason. It was not really interesting except I could buy 2 volumns of クロスゲー� , one battery for Nikon SLR Camera D80 for my oldest brother.

I did see a monk in the Shinjuku train station. I wondered what he would say if there is no one donate him a yen.

I would say I was not too surprised by the number of people during the daytime in Japan but I was really surprised that there were too many people. Maybe I've lived in Waterloo too long and I was used to life in Canada.

One more thing which is really surprised. I didn't even think that Japaneses would go that far to make their (banks') customers feel comfortable whenever they use ATMs by making a room that only one person can get in.

While I was walking around, I felt hungry so I ended up again in a Soba shop. It was pretty nice and its food was good too. One thing to mention was that there was no seat.

And then, after I met Panote again, we spent two hours to find where to get on a bus to Osaka (大阪). Then, as soon as we arrived in Osaka, we departed from JR Nanba Station (なんば) to Tenouji Station (天応時) and Shin-Osaka station (新大阪). There was a bit confusion about the time table. Shouji was not expecting us to arrive so arrive and so were we. So, he was sleeping soundly in his house in Tenouji. Panote and I then had some times sparing on sightseeing the location around Shin-Osaka Station and had breakfast.

After that, we three went to Shouji's hometown "Ando" (JR Yamato-Koisumi Station -- 大和小泉駅) in Nara. Well, my first impression is the way people here efficiently manage their land and make it as waste-less as possible. Good god. I won't be able to see a very small rice field in front of my own house in Bangkok for sure.

As the result of their efficiency, everything looks so compact and small to me. As Shouji's parent's house in Nara is very old, I am very impressed about the atmosphere of the ancient Japan in this house. We also could see how Shouji was in high school.