Location, Location, Location

I've never been much of a commuter. When I lived in Melody Ranch for a couple of years, that extra 20 minutes every day just about killed me. My house on Nimmenhamen isn't that far from town (maybe 15 minutes) but I commonly have to go back and forth 3 times a day: Drop Pui off at work, go home, drive to Thai class, go home, go climbing at the gym, go home. So basically, everyday, I'm spending up to 2 hours in some pretty nasty traffic. Here is a map of said commute.


So when a friend sent me an ad for a house in the old city I jumped at the chance for a move. My old place was basically a small studio with an attached bathroom (video of old place). The neigborhood was very urban- I could throw a baseball from my room and hit 4 high end sushi restraunts - and I've got a pretty weak arm. The new place is the antithesis of that. It's in a really quiet Thai neighborhood. I can walk just about everywhere. I've now got 2 guest bedrooms, an office, a kitchen, and a sweet ping pong table. I'm dealing with problems like spiders and chickens at 4am instead of traffic jams and car exhaust.
Here is the video of the new place. And the video of the giant spider that jumped on me while trying to get him to move.

My 2nd Family

There is this little noodle shop not 30 meters from my condo. It's famous for two things, really good noodles and a family of 10+ rats that hang out about 2 feet from where you eat. Every night I come home I will check out the goings on. Sometime there is garbage strewn about and they will lose all the inhibitions that a well behaved rat might have. Last week their was something particularly tasty in one of the bins and they all piled in, probably 3 or 4 deep.
They have also become one of my favorite things to photograph. I've got some touching shots of a mother rat either giving food to her kids (or stealing it, I'm not quite sure). Recently I had dinner at the noodle shop. I brought along a cliff shot (energy power gel). I poured it out right next to the noodle stand and setup my camera. I'll let this video show you the rest.


Rat Update (2 weeks later): Pui thinks it's because of the publicity they got on this blog, but somebody got wise to them and slipped them something a little less healthy than my energy gel. Rest in Peace good buddies.