Hm..

Well, it seems that calendars are only available in January in Thailand. I went to several banks and a bookstore and lo, there were apparently none to be found. I thought about taking a display calendar from one of the banks but felt that might be a bad idea. It was massively disappointing. However, I consoled myself by going to the market and spending lots of money. I finally found a pink shirt, also! They were selling them way back in a corner I hadn't made it to before. There were also yellow shirts, green shirts and purple. I'd never seen the green before, and I wonder what the color green is associated with, if anything. (Also, I took a lot of pictures!)

In some ways, the market is easier for me to remember my way around than the mall, which I also visited today. The market hasn't changed all that much since we moved here nearly 15 years ago. It is still strange to me how empty the market has been, especially because the malls have always been packed. (However, in my personal opinion, that may have more to do with the fact that the mall is airconned than anything else.) I do think that tourism must be down, because the tuk tuk and song taow drivers are extremely eager to take us places. (My brother tells me that the Night Bazaar, at least, is still full of farangs.)

I went to the movies tonight with my brother. We watched Inception. I think he was a little annoyed because I made him go in for the previews because I wanted to see the King's Song. I'd heard there was a new vdo. It was really interesting, actually. In the past, the vdos have mainly been compilations of still photographs of HM and the Royal Family. The one tonight had the photographs, but they were interspersed with footage of HM's trips out to the provinces earlier in his reign. The emphasis on movement, rather than just still photos, seems significant to me.

Inception hurt my head rather. But my brother and I think we liked it. We caught a song taow home and hung off the back. This was something my parents forbade us to do when I was at home; I guess things change, haha. (For clarity, song taows are trucks that have benches in the back as well as a platform you can stand on off the end. I have pictures. Not from just now, of course, because hanging off the back of a truck does not lend itself to photography.) Fun times.