2 Hours

Ah-haa! No one on the internet in the Thai Airways lounge. Maybe I'll just kill the next couple hours surfing.

Things worked out pretty well getting here. Ok, ended up pretty well. Getting here always sucks. Sow and Ray joined me at the Chiang Mai airport for lunch and a well timed departure just minutes after leaving the Black Canyon Coffee we'd discovered. That was nice. And then...

Lame, full flight. Lot's of trying people. Bumpy landing. Long luggage wait. Stand in line for 20 min to have bags unpacked & repacked, then discover that they didn't need to since I wasn't checking anything in. Long line for the check in window... And then, I pulled out my Thai Airways card and cut ahead in the Royal Silk Class line. I handed all my stuff over, and waited, and waited, and waited. The woman behind the counter looked up at me and frowned. She said she was very sorry but our flight is full. Overbooked even. Would it be alright for an upgrade to business class?

Would it!? Hell !@#$%ing yeah! You mean that business class with the fully reclineable seats and built in video on demand displays in every seat!? I noticed that this flight is going to take an extra hour or two tonight. A nice comfortable seat outta make up for it. Maybe I'll watch Shop Girl again.

What A Week It Was

Gotta go catch a plane back to Bangkok in about an hour. Then a 3 hour wait and back to LA. Wow, what a week. Sure took it out of Ray. He's crashed out in the other room. Gonna wake him in a few to take me to the airport and grab a quick bite before I leave.

Glap Baan

We came home from the hospital this morning. Ray's doing really good. Just has to take a little medicine for a few days. I snapped this pic out on the balcony right before we left. I love this picture. I wish I could subtitle it "F!@#$% yeah!!! I'm going to America!!!" But I guess that still has to wait. Have to get an even better picture for that one.

Fever Dog

Ray's doing better. He got a bit worse overnight, fever went up and less energy. Mostly due to him getting dehydrated I think. We were having trouble getting him to drink any liquids. I ran all around this morning looking for the juice he likes. For some reason, no one in town has any Gerber juice of bottled food in stock!? The doctor recommended to just put him on an IV. That totally did the trick. He was back to being playful within the hour.

I just put him down and gonna crash out myself. Only got about 4 hours of sleep last night. Got a nice vinyl couch to lie down on and everything... zzzzzz...

Sounds worse than it is...

I guess on saturday Ray started to get a little cough. Just a couple times here and there. Then yesterday when I got here I noticed it too. But just a little, and slept thru the rest of the day. This morning he felt a little hot so we took him over to Chiang Mai Ram, the same hospital he was born at. Figured we'd get a little check up, some medicine for his cough, and go get some breakfast. Boy were we surprised when the doctor had us get an x-ray and confirmed that he had a slight case of pneumonia!?

Anyhow, he suggested two ways to treat him. Stay in the hospital for about three days and get proper care, or take him home and feed him pills then bring him back in three days if that didn't work. It's a pretty cheap stay, so we've gone with the hospital. We're actually two rooms over from when Ray was born. All the nurses are excited to see him and help out if we need anything.

He's doing good, he slept for a good part of the morning, but he's been very playful other than that, and his fever seems to have gone away. I've just layed him down for the night. We fell asleep on the bed together. Not a bad way to end the day. Look at that happy little mug.

He's just worken up now. And hes talking to me and smiling when I look up from typing this.

The C.M.

Back in Chiang Mai now. I made it here yesterday at about 9:30am. I didn't check any bags in so I saved an hour at LAX and was able to walk right off the plane and down to the domestic terminal in Bangkok.

Man, that was a long flight. I've done it a bunch of times now, I even slept thru some of it this time, but wow was I ready for us to get here. I did get a chance to watch Shop Girl again. I'm not sure about recommending it, but there's something about it I really like. Jason Schwartzman is awesome in it.

So I got here yesterday and just crashed out. Played with Ray for a while, took a shower and lied down for about 20 hours. Somewhere in there, Sow woke me up with some food. I barely ate anything on the plane so it really hit the spot. Couldn't believe I hadn't been starving already.

I think I've missed out on Songkran altogether. I didn't see anyone throwing water the whole way from the airport, but it was pretty quiet out in the morning. I hear Pattaya is the place where it lasts for 10 days. Big party town. If they ever shoot a Girls Gone Wild in Thailand it would probably be there.

Thailand Bound

I'm so excited. I'm heading back to Chiang Mai tonight. I'll be there sunday morning! The date kept changing, but I've finished up on the movie trailer stuff I came back to work on. Picked up my ticket yesterday and I'm ready to go.

Starting to get a cough. The flight's so long I'm thinking it could be full blown and be over it by the time I get there.

Still waiting on immigration stuff, so this is just a trip to see Sow & Rayluk. I found out last week that someone, somewhere, made a mistake and our paperwork seems to have been held up a little, again!@#$%? I still don't know when our interview wil be, but it had sounded like it was getting close. I've been circling around mid May, but I think we've just added 4-7 weeks onto whatever that date was going to be.

I just talked to someone at Barnes & Noble and they've got a copy of the book I've been looking for, Sign With Your Baby by Joseph Garcia. I've known a few people that've used it with their babies and it comes highly recommended (thanks Chris & Nisha!). There's also a friend of mine who's brother is deaf, so he grew up using sign language. He's very excited about the prospect of being able to talk to all these little babies. He's like a modern day Dr. Doolittle, but with babies and without Eddie Murphy.

Songkran

Today is the first day of Songkran, the Thai new year. I'm not sure if the calendar actually flips at this point (I think that's rooted in january), but it should be 2549 by the buddhist calendar.

Songkran is the single greatest holiday anywhere in the world. I dare you to come up with something better. If you do I'll buy a ticket and go there next year. Songkran is a 3 day festival celebrating the new year by cleansing with water. It started long ago by the parents & grandparents gently pouring water over the children's hands. Then the children doing the same thing for the elders. What it's turned into is the greatest 3 day nationwide water fight. It tends to stretch into even 4-5 days in the bigger cities. Starting after work on Songkran eve, you'd see people still dressed in suits from work, dowsed from head to toe with bang (an old fashioned shaving powder) hand prints all over them. Chiang Mai is apparently the place to be, with the festivals stretching a whole week there. The actual days are April 13-15th.

I've been in Thailand twice for this and it's soooo much fun. The first time I went stood soaked to the bone among a mass of people along Khao San Road in Bangkok. There were people from all around the world there. All having a great time and laughing when they'd get dowsed or squirted with a water gun. I stood there and thought to myself, "You could never do this in America. People would wind up dead."

With that said, if you're interested in experiencing it here in LA, they're having an event at the Wat Thai in North Hollywood this weekend April 15th & 16th. And if you're somewhere else in America, take a look in your local Thai community, it's so much fun.

Happy New Year eveybody! Prepare to be dowsed.

Bangkok Wins 2006 Maverick Award!

As Method Fest closes it's doors for another year of hibernation... we walked away with this sweet plexi-glass trophy last night. The Maverick Award for quality acting and production in low-budget film (under $1,000,000 - wow, if we'd known we had that much to spend!?). Yee-ha! Of the 723 films submitted to Method Fest, 22 were selected to screen, and 5 were nominated for this award, and we !@#$% took it! That's right, Bangkok is now an @!#$% Award Winning Film!

And as if there weren't enough gay undertones in our film, Daniel and I didn't help any with this pose as we accepted our Maverick Award at the closing of Method Fest 2006 last night. *roll over image

6 Months!

Happy 6 months Rayluk! Wow, can you believe it!? Six months and he probably looks like a completely different kid by now.

We talk on the phone just about ever night, unless he's napping. I can hear his voice changing. It's just a bunch of eager huffs, puffs and squeals at this point, but I can hear the difference. He starts getting wound up and vying for Sow's attention when we're on the phone, so she'll put it down near his ear so I can talk to him. I can hear him get excited, kick his legs, and try to talk back. And if I start whistling to him, he stops completely and goes quiet to listen.

Sow & Ray just got back from his monthly checkup and here's some new stats: 7,895 kg & 68 cm. I forget what that works out to in dog years, but he's getting bigger either way.

Happy Anniversary!

Wow, can you believe it? We've been married a year today!? And what an amazing year it's been too.

I Love You Honey

Happy Anniversary!!!

Screened!

Just got back from screening Bangkok at Method Fest. Wow, that was the way to see it. A brand new theater with amazing digital projection. I never would have expected a DV film to look so nice projected.

Got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long while, and a lot of people I'd never seen before. We got a lot of good feedback from the screening as well. I guess we did a better job acting than we'd given ourselves credit for. Unbeknownst to us, Dennis Washburn, the Mayor of Calabasas, was at our screening. Afterwards he came up to meet us and tell us how personal he felt the film was to him. As a veteran of the Vietnam war, it really struck a cord with him. Wow!? And what a nice guy. He even hung out with us at the festival party tonight at a local Ferrari dealership.

Alright, I know I've got more to say, but I',m tired and need to get to sleep...