Friday night frivolities... and more fishy anecdotes

Wow... it's been a long time since I've been back on my Blog site... mainly because when I go to post something new all the instructions come up in Thai so I have to guess which buttons I have to press!! But, now I'm going to make up for it by doing a ridiculously long blog, but with the added bonus of some new pictures :)

First up... we had quite a few of Dan's work mates cram into our tiny little apartment on Friday night for a few after work drinks. Of course, after quite a few glasses of some nice Aussie reds, and many beer cans later we were all starting to feel quite a bit silly which resulted in the following photo with some gorgeous girls....

Dan heard on the news this morning that there had been another explosion in Bangkok on Saturday. At the moment we don't really see a risk in being here, but if something big happens I don't think there will be any hesitation in getting out of the country as soon as we can. Apparently it happened outside the King's residence. I don't think they are targeting tourists at the moment, but it's still a little scary all the same.

Going to the gym is my new stress relief at the moment... With the added incentive of having to fit into a nice dress for a wedding I have to go to in August, I thought it might be a way to take out all the daily frustration of my thesis. Unfortunately my muscles are paying for it, but hopefully it will bring some good results... if only I could stay away from chocolate!

Getting to this point in my PhD has made me think about the future... where I want to work, what I want to do... it's a scary prospect considering I've been at various unis for the past 9 years of my life! Time to get a haircut and get a real job I think! Better get this thing finished first I guess.

Ok... now the saga of the fish tank continues... recently we had to put one of our favourite fish out of it's misery, so we went and bought some awesome looking puffer fish (sorry for the crap piccie!!)

Anyhow... they looked really cool swimming around the tank, and eating all the snails which were eating all our plants so we were happy... up until our one and only shrimp made a dash between his rock and a plant and promptly got attacked and eaten right in front of us! It was awful! Then... about two hours later we went to check out how their progress in the tank was going and we noticed that all of our fish had humongous chunks taken off their fins! Particularly our orange platy fish... poor buggers... almost all of their fins were gone!! Next thing we see a puffer fish gently sidling up to one of them and then turning on it and ripping bits of fin off!!! So... after that performance we've had to transfer all of the babies from their baby tank into the big tank and hope that they are big enough not to be eaten by the other fish now, and the canabalistic puffer fish have been segregated to their own tank... I don't even care if they eat each other now... little devils!!

Speaking of the baby fish... here they are enjoying the nice new spacious surrounds of the big tank....

Dan and I were coming home from the pub the other night and got caught in a doozy of a storm... we couldn't be bothered waiting for hours for it to stop so we took our chances, without umbrellas, and this was the result... yes... hilarious I know :)

And now for some more Bangkok visions... I've decided that I really need to document my time over here a little better so I just went and took some pictures of the various views you get from our apartment in the early afternoon with the storm clouds building.

The first one is the street that runs down to our apartment... you can see the Elephant Building (the big white one) in the background.

This one is from our bathroom window... I love the lush green look of the treesThis is the complex that Dan's office is in... they are pretty impressive looking buildings, and are good landmarks when you have to figure out where you are!!