Sunday November 19 2006
Trip Start
May 01, 2002
1
31
64
Trip End
May 01, 2009
Cha-am,
Thailand
Sunday, November 19, 2006
i crawled over to my computer and got the thing started and tried to put the solution together. and then i tried again. and then i tried this and i tried that and then i tried some more. the more things i tried the stranger the problem got and soon i was lurching. yes, lurching. i am a lurch. my name is soidog and i am a lurch. and before i knew it i had fallen off the edge of the grand canyon and i fell into a ring of fire
palm hills fairways
. down i went. down down down, a ring of fire, a ring of fire. so there i was in the netherlands of reality where many professors have gone and from where few have returned. i tried this and i tried that. i read this and i read that. i analyzed this and then i analyzed that. then i googled this and i googled that. and finally, as god is my witness, finally, i got it and like a brilliant flash of light i got the solution up on google spreadsheet for my students to see and play with. mission accomplished. suicides averted. oh, the problem? a case where anova says one of the means is different but pairwise comparisons are unable to find the different one. it turned out to be a peculiar violation of the homogeneity of variance assumption.
by then i was hungry. i wondered if it was noon yet and whether it would be proper for me to have a beer. if i have one too early pencil will call me an "alcoholism". she means alcoholic of course but it's so cute i don't want to correct her. i looked up at the clock. it was 3pm. what to do, what to do. where has the day gone and what does the little i have left hold for me? i grabbed a tuna sandwich that pencil had placed in the refrigerator for me and ran off to the golf club.
thai monks
i teed off at 4pm. "nine hoe?" the starter inquired. "yes, nine hoe" i agreed. so off i went to hole number one right up to the white tee to speed things up a little. the white tee is for old folks and for golfers with a handicap of 18 or more. i qualify twice for this tee. here are my nine holes at palm hills golf resort on sunday november 19, 2006.
Hole #1 379 yards par 4: 3 on 2 putt, bogie
Hole #2 460 yards par 5: 3 on 2 putt, par
Hole #3 178 yards par 3: 2 on 2 putt, bogie
Hole #4 379 yards par 4: 3 on 1 putt, par
Hole #5 346 yards par 4: 2 on 2 putt, par
Hole #6 363 yards par 4: 2 on 1 putt, birdie
Hole #7 509 yards par 5: 3 on 2 putt, par
Hole #8 142 yards par 3: 2 on 2 putt, bogie
Hole #9 382 yards par 4: 3 on 2 putt, bogie
4 bogies, 4 pars, and 1 birdie. some kind of symmetry to that. total score = 39. how sweet it is. did you hear that old golf joke about the high eighties? i play in the high eighties. if it's any hotter than that i don't play.
after the round i sat in the country club and had a few beers with some european golf buddies. they complained to me that the fucking muslims in europe live in ghettoes and speak arabic and eat kebabs and they don't assimilate. i wondered to myself whether there was an ironical parallel here to the way the falangs live in thailand. they live in falang ghettoes, eat falang food, and talk with each other in falang languages. they don't assimilate much as far as i can tell.
i know this is not a good time for me to be doing this but i have to get this gripe off my chest and be done with it so here it is. no matter how much you love 'em, there is nothing more irritating than to be stuck in a car having to listen to otherwise gorgeous thai women engaged in non-stop high speed thai conversations for hours on end. they don't even stop to breathe. i've got to assimilate one of these days.
one more quick footnote. no matter what you may have imagined life to be like in a buddhist monastery, the reality is likely to shock you. little incidents reported in the bangkok post reveal weirdness. here is one. in a temple up in kanchanaburi of river kwai fame, novice monk takilo, age 19, had broken some temple rules and these incidents were reported to the abbott by a fellow novice. the abbott reprimanded takilo whereupon ta-kill-o picked up an iron bar and killed the abbott and the snitch and then he set their bodies on fire.
i have read a lot of stories about buddhist monks in thailand and in cambodia killing each other with iron bars. i can't help but wonder why they keep iron bars in temples. shouldn't we have iron bar control laws here? or is there a constitutioal right to bear iron bars?
and from the isaan country in the northeast we get this weird report. one morning monks from two different temples found themselves begging for food on the same street. normally begging rights are well demarcated to avoid conflict. and conflict there was indeed. it was a full scale knock down drag out brawl on the street between the rivals that might have impressed even english football fans. inevitably, iron bars were used in that melee. where did they find iron bars? do they hide them under their safron robes?
in cambodia, monks apparently stay up late gambling and drinking rice wine. often they throw a live toad into the wine to give it an extra punch. there was one case where a taxi driver was budgeoned to death with an iron bar for trying to leave the game prematurely with his winnings. in another case, a drunken monk streaked through the town at 3am. he was arrested by the police. it was reported that he would be disrobed.
