The Rain Had Fallen, Finally!

This morning I stirred up and greet by the sound of rainfall outside my room. The first sign was how I pull the blanket up to cover my legs.

It was gray almost all day today, which is lovely!! It bring down the temperature nicely, just when I bought a new white work shirt for summer :ppp The bad news, however, is that the new shirt is not wrinkle free type. And it looks more obvious with the

The chair and the desk works nicely. It seems to have overall space more than the old one. This one is wider, though narrower in some area with the wavy rim design but it looks nice and the curve in area allow me to push the chair in.

However, the chair itself create a problem I never thought of, sweating. I actually soaked the seat of my boxer shorts and the back of my tank top by sitting on it for a certain period of time. So I am now on my flat cushion again just like with my old chair. Although my butt feels a lot better because I now sit on a lot softer surface.

I am looking forward to 4 working days this week as Friday will be holiday. I will also have to step up my things for my visa application next week.

The Desk Arrived and Now Waiting for the Monitor

The desk and the leather chair was delivered this morning. I was worried at first that the desk might be too small for the new monitor but once it is up to my room I can see that it will be just right. If not I still could shift things around to make room.

The chair is really really nice. I have made the right choice of the chair to buy the more expensive one for better back and head cushion. Although it did not tilt backward and stay there like the one that I looked at.

I also made the order for Dell monitor. It should arrive in 7-10 days. Can't wait :D

The weather also getting really really hot. It's like 39C in my room, right now. I also shutdown my computer when I am not in the room as well, to make sure it will not overheat. This Summer is Really Really Hot.

First Chunk of Purchase

I finally went to the furniture showroom and purchase the desk and the leather chair, office stlye, to put my computer set on. Oddly enough, the chair is more expensive than the desk :P

I am finalizing my decision on which monitor to buy. I have not found a nice one from Samsung or LG just yet but I have found a nice, relatively cheap one of Dell. I have also got a price quote from Dell as well for LED monitor. Which made me wondering what will LED screen looks like but after reading up soem review cnet.com, it wasn't that much better than LCD screen except for energy consumption aspect.

I think I will probably goes for Dell. The price is cheap enough and Dell have good gaurantee. I will have to decide before Sunday before they close the order.

Charming Wombat

I am a big fan of comics, although I am not familiar with Web Comic. I have been a fan of a few like 8-Bit theater and the now defunt Flintlock Adventure. I recently reading up and following a Web Comic of Ursula Vernon "Digger".

It is quite an unusual story, as the pretext at the top of the page said, "A wombat, a dead god, a very peculair epic". This is the story of "Digger", a female wombat who accidentally thrust into an epic adventure by chance. I would not say more, but would recommend you read from the start. While the art looks nice, the dialogues are pure gold. There are many great lines in this comic. I really love the dialogues :)

Ursula Vernon has always been a very entertaining writer, as you can see from reading her blog, and the same goes for many of her works as well.

I would highly recommend reading Digger, especially now that it is free to read.

Perception of Expensiveness

I realized that my sense of "Expensiveness" has change a lot from when I was a kid. Although not by much and I think I do think in relative terms more.

Even now I do find some certain things *expensive* for 100 baht, while at the same time think some certain things are cheap for the same amount of money. Thinking back when I was a kid, I saved up my allowance to buy an SD gundum figure. It was almost 200 baht and I did thought that it was Very expensive but I just could not resist.

Now I am considering spending 30,000s baht on new mobile phone, 24" monitor, new desk and leather chair. It made me shuddered how much I am planning to spend, considering that I will made a two weeks trip abroad this year as well.

Although these purchases will be of items that I will use for more than 5 years (except the mobile phone perhaps), it still make me feels uneasy about buying those. I think it is a good thing that I still maintain this reservation about money. It means that I am still quite grounded and not lost touch with reality yet.

I will probably buy Nokia 5800 in a couple of weeks.

A Day Outside of My Room

Today I went to see my *funny friend* who just came back to Bangkok after his long trip in India.

I went to see him at his guesthouse. He shows me many photos of India that he had developed. I must say that their colours are very rice and vibrant. Certainly live up to India's reputation :) Some of his photos looks good enough to be in travel magazines. He also brought me a box of chocolate, the Jameson Irish whiskey chocolate truffle! He assured me that the whiskey is just for flavour and should not make me drunk. I will definitely tried it out soon. After I finish the other two chocolate items that I had bought recently :P

After a while we went to the 7-Eleven to buy Walls ice cream, my recent favorite Berry Blitz ice cream stick. Which is a blended berry mix covered a vanilla ice cream. While I am not too crazy about the strawberry, the mix taste nice and I find it quite soothing during my recent stress periods.

Then we walked into the subway station. I noticed a white guy walk up to us waving his hands. It turns out that he is my friend's friend from the extras acting job that my friend got into the last times he was in BKK. We must have stood there and chat for like half an hour. From our chats, I gathered that his friend is an American veteran from northern state. He studied at Chula for free with his funding from disability leave due to lost of hearing during his service. He is married to a Thai woman and love the long shiny black hair women (darn!). He is also very energetic and seems like a fun guy to hang out with. We would probably meet again soon. Since I gave him a phone number to Kuroda and he love the idea of authentic Japanese buffet restuarant :)

All in all it was a good day.

The Brand Spanking New Look

I finally done it. After been putting it off for quite a few months, I finally use new template for my blog.

Personally, I would prefer dark/blue colour motif but this is the best I could find with three columns that I wants. I tried to get some help but free helps are not easy to find. Plus, after I check the template more closely, most of the white are not code but rather image files. So it will be extremely difficult to change it. I guess I will have to just use it as it is.

The move is not a smooth one, as many of the page element can't be export easily. I have to let go a lot of stuff I used to put up. I guess I will do some new ones later or just left it like this.

One thing that I do not like about blogger, is the fact that they have not update their own template collection for a really long time. Which I think it's a real shame.

Let me know what you think of the new look :)

New Item in my Home

This is the first times that I own a large electrical appliance, though I did not buy it myself. My mom gave me her old refrigerator.

She had bought a new bigger one as this one is not big enough anymore. Since she live quite far from the main road, she wants to stockpile more groceries. So I have got a hand-me-down fridge :P Which is nice, it is not that old yet. It not as big as the one we currently have, which is enough for my usage. It is about as high as my chin so it is not a large one.

I now kept my juice boxes in there. Now I am thinking about stocking some fruits and some snacks in there as well. I just bought a 6-packs of Pepsi Lemon today :)

Today I spend my day outside of my room, which is nice. I went to check the price of mobile phone at MBK mall and found that the price has gone down about 1,000 baht from its initial release. I will buy it soon, I think right after I am done with my bank statement for my visa application. I am sick of the current state of my smalltalk cable. I will just have to wait for about two weeks more.

Holiday Post

I had spent most of my holidays so far at home and did not go out much, other than the mandatory meals time.

Mostly this is because of my lack of friends and desire to go out and partially because of the red-shirts riots. My mom called me a at least once a day to check on me during the riot. At first I was thinking about a rendezvous with my funny friend from New Zealand who is back from India. I have not seen him the last time he come back.

I am also looking at B&B websites and info in Prague to plan my trip. But all that I could find are quite expensive rate if about 60-70 Euro. However, I am started to find some decent price range on a website. I just sent emails to ask my German friend and my boss about those hotels.

Hopefully I will hear back from them soon. The booking needs to be done before my visa application interview.

Making Progress

I have finished about 85% of the application with the guidance of my boss. I must say that I would felt quite lost with this had he not help me out. He likes what I write so far and he will help edit it before he went off to his holiday.

While I was not really stressed during the writing of it, now it's back at full force. To quote Big Daddy from "Raising Duncan" comic strip, now I feels like the devil is making a animal balloon with my intestine.

Now I could relax a bit and try to enjoy my Songkran holiday. I have a plan to meet my Australian friend who is moving to Hong Kong on Sunday. I am also contemplating whether I should buy new thumbdrive since I lost both of mine. Because I forgot to zip up the front of my backpack... Which lead me to lost mobile phone cable, camera cable, and both of my thumbdrive :((((

I also felt rather tired and sleepy but I do not want to go to bed and lost my free time... I recognise this feeling, the feeling that I wants to just stay in bed and do not get up. I heard of this symptoms many times on various TV programs that this is the symptom of depression. I do tried to keep my mood in check and try not to let this affect me more than it already has.

I will now concentrate more on my free time and that should do wonder for my psyche.

News Update

Today the head of HR department call me to give me more info about the process of my job *promotion*.

It turns out that the job will be posted internally first. This give me the advantage to get the position. Since it would be most likely that I will be the only one applying for it. But this does squash my dream of the ideal scenario where a perfect external candidate comes along and the head office would wants to have him while let me stay in the branch office. However, it seems that my moving will be inevitable, provided that I would get the job. It is the company's policy that promotions will be considered through application process.

The process will take longer than I first thought. Since the interview was said to be happen around mid May. However, the move will likely happen, eventually...

The update, while still filled me with terrible dread, did not affect as bad as when the boss confirm the news. Although the more I think about it, the worst it make me feels. But I will need to concentrate on this for at least a couple of days to write my application. At least if these were finish within two days, I can rest my mind easy for a few weeks before the interview.

Part of me wants this to be done with other parts just wants to sleep and forget the whole thing.

I do not wants to move, one of my aspiration is to decorate my office for Christmas again and again... But I will just have to think positive, let the angst wash away and not bother me more than it already has. I also have to remind myself that I will be most likely visit my branch office rather often. I will have the time to do this. I am sure I will have some leave day left to visit later to buy more stuffs and use them to decorate.

I know it sound whiny of me to bitch and moan about this. After all, I will get paid more, with more responsibilities that should be good for my career and perhaps better future. While many others loose their job and have to look for jobs in this economic climates. Not to mention that the raise turns out to be quite a considerable amount. Almost one third increase from my current salary base. Which would more than enough to absorb the traveling cost and the meals which would be considerably more expensive in that area. Still... I would rather be in my current position than move.

A Lazy Holiday Weekend

It was a 3 days weekend for me this week as Monday is public holiday. It is also my mom's birthday but since she does not do birthday, my mind slip... I should have call to say HBD though...

My mind still rather frazzle around the edge but it was not as bad as last week. Although I must say that the timing is really bad. Since I planned to start calling around for plane ticket for my trip in July, this just put a damp on my moment.

This week I will have to concentrate on writing my application. I still have the one I wrote when I apply for job in my current office. I think I can use that as a guideline. After all, I can't just use my old one now that I have more experience :P My boss will also start his holiday after this Friday, so I better start cracking.

Songkran is also coming up next week, again the timing is Really bad. I do not have any plan just yet, although I will probably hit Oishi express buffet again. I think that one of my friend would have sometime to meet up. He will leave BKK to take a job in HK after April. I hope he will keep in touch. He is fun to hang out with.

I must focus on both the application writing and my trip. Otherwise, I might return to the mild depression state that I was in a few years back. I am kinda know that this is not depression just yet. It just rather severe stress that I am experiencing. The word severe seems an overstatement but since I have little stress to begin with... Anyway I should go to bed now... It's been raining today and I do wants to take advantage of the cool night.

Mobile Phone Reflection

To take a break from the mentally exhausting topic, I will post about my relationship with mobile phone.

About 10 years ago, when I started to earn my living, my mom began to push a pager for me to carried. After that I have a PCT, a quasi-mobile phone that connected to the home phone but with worse reception. I used to despire owning a mobile phone, thinking of it as an invisible chain that will yank by other people.

Now that I use w810i as my main music player, I hardly left home without it. On a contrary to one of my friend's behavior. He often turn his phone off or divert his calls, he sometimes even left it at home. He prefer SMS over call while I am totally the opposite. Maybe that will change once I bought Nokia 5800.

Right now I am barely tolerating the condition of my smalltalk cable which broken inside and need to be in particular position to make sound on both side of the headphone. I planned to buy it after I have got the statement from my bank for visa application. Which means that I will mostly likely buy it in May.

The price has drop about one thousand baht since its release. Added that to the fact that there should be some newer released, the price should come down nicely by the time I buy it. I can't wait to buy new phone...

The Development

Today I went to the HQ office in place of one of my coworkers to attend a meeting regarding our telephone answering system. And by chance I ran into one of the big boss there (not by chance really... It's not a bit office)

As it turns out, this will not be simple move. There will be an application process, with the job being advertised in newspaper. As I mention earlier, I like how things are just fine right now but there is nothing I can do other than apply for that position. I suppose I have to take solace in the fact that this was not just my case. Due to the restructuring, they remove about 20s positions and create 10s new ones. Those that wants to remain have to submit their application still.

Anyway, this means that I will, again, have to do the job application and interview. Not that I mind but it's not what I signed up for in the first place. It still not a deadlock either. Since it will be advertised externally, I will be competing with other applicants.

But it could have been worst and so could the traveling. Still, my wishful scenario is that someone with the best qualification will apply for the job and they decided that I should remain in my current post.

I am not hopeful but hope is all I can do, and the application and interview preparation. The big boss said he wants to fill the position before the first of May. My own boss will help me with the preparation process and I hope to be ready for it.