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blogs -
About Thailand
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| If you have an aversion to the little creepy-crawlies of the insect world, then perhaps a trip to Thailand will not be the dream vacation you thought it would be, and maybe Antarctica would be a better idea, because Thailand is a very good place for bugs to thrive. Anyone who has lived for a time in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver or any other inner city's...how should I put this... disadvantaged neighbourhood will realize that insects are a fact of life almost anywhere in the world where wholesale chemical dissuasion has not kept their numbers down.
| | The sheer biomass of their collective genus must amount to many times that of humans, and probably mammals as a whole. But you don't think about it so much when you reside in a place where pest control is a given. This is not to say that here in Thailand no effort is made to minimize their impact, but hey! It's a jungle out there! | | As I sit here writing there is a symphony going on, played by a couple a' zillion beetles - or maybe crickets or cicadas - but whatever they are, the din would do justice to a sci-fi horror movie in surround sound. This particular orchestra seem to practice at odd times during the day when the sun is beating down with adequate intensity; at the moment, at 10:44 AM, the temperature is hovering around 30 degrees Celsius, and that seems to make the little fellas want to sing their hearts (do bugs have aortas?) out. |  | | There; they are taking 5, maybe having a smoke and a coke, with only a few keeners still trying to get that darn arpeggio just right, but the real show starts in earnest at PRECISELY 6:36 PM every day, unless it happens to be raining at that time, because, it being an open-air concert, perhaps they are reluctant to get their violins wet. Actually, they seem to favour the percussion side of things; imagine a band with one violin, but that sole string player completely drowned out by a trillion maracas players.***4WINGED FLYER*** |  There's not a moment in the 24 hour day when no insects at all aren't chattering (double negative? Get over it!). Not one second, unless a downpour is drowning out their conversations, but even then I suspect they are whispering the latest gossip in each other's ears (do bugshave ears? Somebody get back to me on that). They are creatures of the night, though, for the most part, and every night brings a new visitation to our humble abode. | | Last night was "The Night of the Dumb Beetle", and at one time I counted a dozen parked in various places around our deck. They are dumb because they can't fly worth a sh*t, smacking into anything and everything including your face, the walls, the ceiling, each other, and the morning after Dumb Beetle Night finds their body parts strewn willy-nilly all over the floor. Wings, mostly, for I suspect that some other critters feast on the suicidal little buggers after they've so thoughtfully dashed themselves senseless only to lie exhausted and vulnerable on the floor. |  | Last week, after a day of rain, it was a different plague; not sure what these were, but I'll call them the "Flying Ant-like Annoyers". About the size of a flea with wings, they don't bite or sting, but their sheer numbers and their persistence would make an effective torture technique that would render water-boarding obsolete. But you can't imagine what I mean by their "sheer numbers", because there is no real comparison to anything one can experience in Canada, and I'm even talking the Yellowknife Air Show that happens in the summer in the land of the midnight sun, where mosquitoes the size of sparrows (well, OK, hummingbirds) swarm, or the "no-see-ums" that harry the head and add their protein to your supper in the wilds of canoe-trip country, or the ants that invite themselves to our picnics back home just don't come close to the scale of what I'm talking about here that night As I sat here reading the news on the BBC with all the lights out, because it's the light that they seem to worship, I counted....
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| | well, OK, estimated... a hundred on the screen with another fifty on the keyboard, and every few minutes I brushed dozens off of my long-sleeved Thai shirt and long pants. There were thousands earlier when we stubbornly refused to turn out the light above by which we read on the deck. |  | Thousands, at any given time, and I would suggest to them that this activity was contra-indicated, because on the floor beneath the light was a pile of buggy corpses. But maybe I wouldn't suggest anything of the sort, because their little deaths I do not mourn. OK, I'm a failed Buddhist, but hey! I didn't tell them to fly into the light; although, to be fair, I didn't
offer them counseling either. My bad. But you won't believe this. In the morning we swept up a pile from every room in the house that would have filled a two-quart saucepan. Listen, for once I'm not even close to exaggerating. I swear! | | Now dumb beetles are similar in size to june bugs back home, but for the last two nights we were also visited by a beetle the size of a small mouse (see for yourself the photos, and am I lying?) | Now dumb beetles are similar in size to june bugs back home, but for the last two nights we were also visited by a beetle the size of a small mouse (see for yourself the photos, and am I lying?) |  | On his first visit he flew in and narrowly missed clocking Ea upside the head, and then went into the kitchen to see if there were any snacks. He patiently sat for a fairly long photo shoot where the photographer kept pushing him into different poses, all the while the while fighting back the urge to scream, or at least flee, and we later learned that this big fella has a nasty bite. Well, that would seem obvious, given the size of his "Alien"-like choppers. Just who that photog was I'll let you guess because this behemoth was scream-worthy regardless one's gender (and besides, she DIDN'T scream, so there!) On his second visit he was just all of a sudden there, on the lip of the kitchen garbage can, which just goes to show you that vigilance is de rigeur if you don't want a nasty surprise. |  | | Canada has its share of biting, stinging things, to be sure, but they're a known entity. Here it is a voyage of discovery, and we as farangs aren't up on all the dangers lurking. For example, a centipede is an innocent little guy where I come from, but here they grow big, and apparently give a nasty sting should you inadvertently piss one off, like, say, putting on a shirt that you left at ground level without giving it a shake, 'coz one of those devils just might have decided that was a splendid place for a nap. Knock on wood (but give the wood a once-over first) I can't tell you first-hand just how much of an injury you might sustain from such an encounter, and I hope to remain in the dark about that on a permanent basis, thank you very much. | | One gets used to sharing one's space with this overwhelming variety of bugs, because frankly, short of Agent Orange, there really is no other option. And besides, in their limitless diversity there rests a lot of beauty, and I wouldn't part with that just for the sake of a guarantee of perfect comfort. By and large they aren't dangerous, say like cobras (which...never mind. I'm not ready to face that particular fact of tropical life yet), and they mostly mind their own beeswax. Sometimes you can count a couple of dozen insects on the walls and ceiling of one room, and no two will share the same latin name. And all of them are beautiful, and they were here first, so enough said. |  | There are some of these small critters that can be considered infesters, such as fleas, bedbugs, well...you get the drift... but you deal with those things as you can, and that's another story. There's always another story, isn't there? Stay tuned.
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About Thailand
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 | At least once every couple of days, or hours, I find myself thinking how happy/lucky we are to be wandering through the whiles and wilds of this particular place on planet earth. Pinch me... There are many places I could be, jobs I'd/we'd be doing. The western world is still struggling to right itself from the tippy canoe ride of fiscal greed, and..well, lets just call it.. fiduciary mismanagement, and leave it at that. | There seems to be very little "tug" in the tug of war of ethics and morals, between the extreme self interested parties and... the..um.. extreme self interested parties. Generally speaking, those same self interested parties are usually the smug royal flush in the hand of the man behind the man, which is to say, our employers on the global scale.My biggest employer, the feature film industry, has a strong history of gamble-savvy ability, but would have a hard time standing comfortably at the high stakes roulette wheel of global industry at this exact moment in time. |
I know that as I write from my spot in the jungle, Hollywood deals are being struck, people are about to be employed with respect to a whole lot of ifs.. if the Canadian dollar doesn't get too strong, if the technical unions are willing to roll further back on cutbacks already sawn off the lifelimb of the industry, if the actors settle, if something doesn't happen to upset the precarious balance that is profit margin, if everyone hasn't burnt out,..if..if..if..
|  | | I'm thankful for the something that seems to have helped us decide to sell off and invest in ourselves somewhere safe, warm, beautiful, and relatively inexpensive, while we draw up the plans for our next bit of life's architecture.That same something now sees me gently swinging in a blue hammock, looking over my tanned toes at the jungle mountain in the near distance, watching the tall coconut trees swaying in the breeze, hearing monkeys call back and forth within the jungle, the whoosh of wings as a large unseen bird flies through our auditory sphere, watching the afternoon sun play along the shiny palms, seeing my bath water heating in the black bucket that we've placed in the sun, knowing the unconditional love from the 4 puppies who've adopted us, the smell of burning coconut husks that usually finds us at some point in the day, an invisible cloud of the sweetest jasmine that drifts by, birds whose calls evoke exotic images, and knowing that my hammock hangs within the full range of that exotica. | |
We've now been here just over 2 months, and some of our venture's bricks are starting to click into place with lego-like precision. We'll keep working on some of the others, like the mother hen rounding up her chicks, not so much to protect them from the fox, more just to know how many of them there are, and to keep them from getting too scattered through the jungle. Yes, Thailand definitely does have chickens in the jungle. I don't think there's such a thing as a non-free-range jungle-chicken here, at least as far as Koh Phangan is concerned. | | The 2 month mark meant that the first portion of our Thailand visa expired, and we were required to experience our first "visa run" down to the Malaysian border.Envision a 4 hour, 2 way (meaning on coming traffic on mostly narrow twisty roads) NASCAR race in a minivan down through the blur of what might have been incredible countryside, roughly a 400 km edge-of-your-seat speed race to the border. The vehicle screeches to a stop on the Thai side of the border, and out pile the "visa-ees" and hurry to a window still within Thailand, where the departure paper that was stapled into your |  | passport upon arrival is removed and stamped "blacklist offline", which in itself is a bit bewildering (still not sure what it means - we better google it). Next, you're vaguely pointed in the direction of another window still within Thailand where another official takes the "blacklist offline" paper and stamps you out of Thailand. Guessing correctly, you head towards what looks like the Malaysian Customs portion of the border complex. Fill out an arrival and departure form, get stamped into Malaysia, walk around the building and get stamped out of Malaysia. Walk back to the Thailand window, fill out an arrival and departure form, get stamped in and the new departure form stapled back into your passport. Which makes you ready for the 4 hour white knuckle blur repeat race back to the place where we can get out of the van, which happens to be the ferry pier near Surat Thani. The ferry ride back to our island was a restful slow chug across calm water after the ass-numbing hair curling adrenaline rush ride that was our run to and from the Malaysian border. Next time we'll take a train and make a day or two or three out of it. All in all, the experience was worthwhile and one I won't soon forget, but likely one I'll never repeat on purpose. Last night we headed over to the island's saturday night "Jam" with our little guitar, and a sack full of harmonicas, prepared for come-what-may..., and come-what-may grabbed us and threw us onto the stage, delivering a really fun night of music for all. | | The one exception might be the poisonous centipede that somehow got into our guitar case between sets and was crawling up the neck of the guitar while ted carefully sought expert advise on it's speedy removal. Fortunately, Rob the owner of the "jam" jumped in like a crocodile hunter and deftly killed it using both his cell phone and a disposable lighter. We carefully observed his technique as this was the 2nd time we've seen one of these creatures. The basic speedy crush and kill technique seems to be most efficient. |
 | Of all the critters you might encounter here in Thailand, those centipedes are one of the nastiest as their bite will make you really sick for quite a few days ("you cry longtime..."). My wish is that none of us anywhere have to experience what this guy can deliver in terms of pain... |
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About Thailand
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| A puppy followed me home yesterday, a beautiful female puppy, about the size of an adult Jack Russell, so I'm guessing 4 or 5 months old. From time to time a dog will follow you if you've shown any signs of liking dogs, but you don't want them to latch on permanently, so you have to say, firmly and with conviction "bye! bye!!" Not quite as in "Bye for now, see ya later", but sharper. It's a Thai word that probably means something like "Go Home!", or maybe just plain "NO!", but it usually has the desired effect and the dog to whom you are speaking generally gets the message that you like him, but you don't want to adopt him. | 
| | It usually has the desired effect, but this little beauty just wasn't getting it. Maybe my Canadian accent... but anyway nothing I said or did deterred this one. I was on a walk to the market in Sri Thanu, which is a half-hour hike from our house in the jungle, and it was actually on my way there that "Jezebel" decided that I was her mommy or her alpha-whatever, and so, despite my efforts to discourage her devotion she fell in and wasn't taking "no" for an answer. I went back to the driveway where we first met, trying to persuade her that she was better off with her own peeps and pack. There was a person in the porch, an older gent, so I tried to make it clear to him that he needed to talk to this pup and tell her what's what. All he did was wave to me in a friendly manner. I waved back. I asked him in pidgen Thai-Canadian if it was his dog. He waved to me in a friendly manner. I asked him to call the dog. He waved. I tried "BYE!" a couple of times. He waved again. | So I figured that it was a long walk into town, and she would get tired, hot and thirsty pretty soon, and give up this crazy courtship. It was at least 30 degrees, and there were even scattered rain-showers. C'mon, little one, this isn't fun, is it? Well, it wasn't about fun, I guess, it was some kind of quest, and a little rain and tropical heat didn't seem to matter. Half a kilometer down the road she was still with me, and I even considered blowing off my mission to the market and returning home, thinking she would just peel off when I passed her place. But then I decided not to change my plans because of a mere puppy, who, after all wasn't doing anything evil, and besides, she made me feel kind of special, so after another klik or so I found myself checking every few seconds to see if she was still with me. Practically glued to me she was, so much so that when a car or motorbike went by, I stepped off the road to make sure she wouldn't wander out. I stepped off, she stepped off. It hasn't rained much since we've been on Koh Phangan and when it does, it's usually for only a few minutes, but in that short time it can leave some substantial puddles and so it did yesterday. The intersection in the village was flooded with a little lake about 15 centimeters deep, but the puppy bravely forded it. When we got to the market I tried to explain that she had to wait outside, but the language barrier was there again. The folks that run the market thought it was cute, and they let her follow me around while I shopped. In fact, everyone thought it was cute; people driving by would laugh and point, as I tried to mime to them that the little thing wasn't mine, she was just stalking me for some reason. Try to mime that. In Thai. Or German. |
 | So we started back, but I needed to go into the Seven-Eleven, and here I knew they wouldn't tolerate a puppy in a store, so I left my bag of market goods outside and told her to guard them. When I came out she was gone. I should have been relieved, because my responsibility was theoretically terminated, but I looked around for a minute, and there she was, resting at the internet place. Resting, because she must have been exhausted from the trek so far. But as soon as she spotted me she took up station and off we went. | I knew that on the way back we would cross the territory of many a dog, and I knew that some of them would be confronting my new ward, so I looked for and found a stick with which to deter any cur that got too close to my dog. "My dog". Uh-oh... Well anyway, what could I do? She'd followed me all this way, so I was at least a little responsible for her safety, wasn't I? You can see, can't you, how those dogs or wolves or whatever had cast their spell on the cavemen of long ago, and since that time have refined their voodoo to a point where an otherwise seemingly intelligent human being can be at the utter beck and call of a 5-month-old puppy in less time than it takes to prepare a Kraft dinner. | 
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| I had one more stop to make on the way home, at a corner store to get some cold water. Again I left my bag of goods outside, but again she followed me in. I even bought 2 bottles of water: a big one and a little one! That nasty voodoo again... but when I got back outside, the little one was nowhere to be seen, and I figured that as I was pretty close to where she had picked me up in the first place, maybe now was the time to sneak away and let fate dictate the rest of the story. So I skulked off, and was about a hundred meters down the road opening the bottle of water...the small bottle... her water... when I realized that I'd left the bag of groceries back at the corner store. Karma. So back I went, and there she was, looking for me. Why did I feel guilty? She wasn't giving me a hurt look or anything, she was just glad to have found me, and so off we marched. | | | We went all the way back to my house in the jungle, because when we passed the place where she started following me, she showed no desire to go there. Now, back at our place we already have dogs. Six dogs, a momma, a poppa, and 4 puppies even smaller than the one glued to my foot, and they weren't too impressed with me bringing this "jezebel" (hence the name) into their territory. I had to use the "bye" thing to back them off, because momma was already in her little face. The reason that I brought her all the way home (as if I really had free will, or something) was that I knew that Ea, my wiser, better half, would have a solution to this dilemma. (I should explain here that the six dogs mentioned aren't actually our dogs, it's more like we're their humans, because we've come to stay at the place where they live, albeit temporarily, and we might accidentally drop a piece of chicken, or maybe even have an extra piece of cheese lying around, or maybe we just like to pet dogs, which seems more than enough.) But the minute... no, the second she laid eyes on Jezebel I knew I had better start thinking of permanent immigration. "She followed me! I tried to shoo her off! WE CAN'T KEEP HER!!!" |
Well, her solution turned out to be a wise one: we'd let the puppy rest for a while, because after all it was a somewhat epic voyage for one so small. We gave her some water, which she drank happily. She even cooled her feet off in the bowl - I'd never seen that before - and then she had a nap on our deck, a privilege not granted the other dogs, because they have serious colonies of fleas aboard. I walked back to the spot where she found me and marked it with the stick I'd picked up to ward off evildoers, then I came home to tell Ea where it was. Ea then packed her in a shoulder bag and drove her to the spot on the motorbike, knowing that it was most likely her home anyway, or at least, close to it. Jezebel, after all, was a well-cared-for dog, with no fleas to speak of, and no ribs showing...she had a regular meal ticket. |  | Interestingly enough, while Jezebel had been resting on our deck, an older Thai man came down our driveway on a motorbike, and he seemed to be looking for something. He couldn't see our deck from where he was, and soon he took off to wherever, but although I couldn't be positive, I suspect it was the same guy that kept waving to me when I first encountered the pup. We can be reasonably certain that Jezebel is back in the warm embrace of her true family, and that brings us back to the real story: What is it like to be a dog in Thailand? But of course we haven't seen much of this country yet; Bangkok for about a week, and then a couple of months on the Island here, which is somewhat of a tourist destination because of the Full-Moon, Half-Moon, Black-Moon, and rising-or-setting moon parties that happen pretty well year-round (or so we've been told), but it's also a somewhat typical rural setting, and as such may be fairly indicative of the Thai way of living. So I will assume for the time being that a comparison between a canine existence here and one in Northamerica will have at least some merit. |
 | First of all, if you want to make your fortune selling leashes, then I would suggest that Thailand is not the place for you. I can't offhand remember having seen any leashes at all since I've been here, although I'm sure that some of the urbanites
| | may possess them, but most of the dogs run free. They are everywhere: in the markets, on the streets and roads, on the beaches, everywhere. And although some of these dogs have families to which they are attached, many, and maybe even most do not. Some have collars, and that is probably a good clue, but most don't. Some of them look the picture of health, but many suffer from various ailments, from skin disease to road rash. |
Although they all seem to be somewhat road savvy, and for the most part here in Ko Phangan the traffic is not moving much faster than 40 kph, there are those unfortunate fidoes that are tripods due to contact with some vehicle at some time or another. Also, many of the dogs, from puppies on up, have scars to show for their conflicts with their own kind; their siblings, their neighbours, maybe even the odd monitor lizard! It takes a bit of getting used to, especially if you are a softy for the furries, because here, and no doubt in countries all over the world, a dog's life is not the pampered existence that we of the so-called West are accustomed to. | 
| Here dogs take their afternoon siesta in the middle of the road, if they feel like it, and drivers are aware of the fact. Dogs fight for food, territory, and some just because they're jerks. In my hometown that kind of behaviour is usually the domain of humans, as the dogs back there are mostly taught at least a modicum of obedience and respect. It all seems to work in some karmic way though here, and everyone seems to get along for the most part. But I find myself wondering how any of these feral dogs live to any kind of ripe old age. I'd be surprised if many of them even see a decade, because unless you have a full-time provider, you aren't going to spend your golden sunset years in a luxury retirement home for pooches. But then, this is the Jungle, and it has its Law... | | |
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About Thailand
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 | We used to own a condo in Burnaby, with a dog, and a cat, and a microwave, a stainless steel fridge and stove and dishwasher, a washer and a dryer, two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a deck with plants and a fountain, two cars (a Toyota and a BMW), a land line, a fax machine/printer/scanner...Oh hell! We had lots of stuff. We also had a mortgage, a line of credit, strata fees, credit card debt, utility bills, insurance for cars and insurance on ourselves with the bank as beneficiary (God forbid something should happen to us and we couldn't pay the mortgage!), and did I mention showers (2) with unlimited hot water.
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| And a gas fireplace. And unlimited access to the internet 24/7 at the highest speed possible anywhere in the world. In our building there was a cafe/gelato place run by the most beautiful people you could ever meet, Dolce 67, where the best expresso drinks on the planet can be had, and even if I couldn't yet speak properly, not having had my heart-starter caffeine fix, they knew exactly how I liked my soy latte. We had family and friends in the same time zone (or almost) that we could call or see without thinking about a world clock. | So as I lie here in my hammock listening to the sounds of the Thai jungle that surrounds us, as I tap away on my laptop while waiting for those damned monkeys to make those awesome sounds they make so that I can push the record button on the H2 Zoom, I guess I should try to point out what we have now, and how we live without so many of the things it was so easy to take for granted. And also to try and show how easy it is to do without most of those things. Our dog, whom we adored, and who was so much a part of our little family, lived to the ripe old age of 17, and our cat, who for almost 21 years slept on the pillow above Ea's head...are no longer on this mortal coil, although their little ghosts visit from time to time. But here there are many dogs, and quite a few cats, and they seem to know that we can't resist stealing a little affection from them as we pass through their territories. It would be hard to imagine any of them living 20 years, or 17, because it's a harder life for
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| them here than back home in the pampered world of petdom. Many of them are not family pets, but exist much like the first of their kind so many eons ago, on the fringes of human society, hoping for a handout or catching a carelessly dropped morsel. The lucky ones have homes with the "two-legs", and some of them even have flea collars and get to visit the vet once in a while, but they are the exception, I think. |  | The dogs of Thailand really deserve a dedicated blog, so for now I'll only say that our new "temporary dog", whom we've named "Brutus" after a similar small black Lab we knew years ago on the Rex Ranch in Langley, has just showed up after two days of gallivanting who knows where, and he's been given fresh cold people-water (from our bottled supply) and a saucer of milk. The chicken skin that was left in his bowl was gone when I looked this morning, so maybe he was here earlier, on his rounds, or maybe some other lucky critter got that in the night. Our kitchen, not much smaller than the one in Burnaby, comes equipped with a fridge (not stainless steel, but green, sort of the colour of the inside of an aloe vera plant), half the size of the stainless one back home, and behind which lives a foot-long lizard (maybe it's actually a giant gecko!) that we have seen only once, a rice-cooker, what they call
| | locally a thermos but is more like an electric kettle for coffee water, a propane cooker good for one wok or pot, not four, and no pyrex top, and no self-cleaning oven, and a sink (stainless steel!) with one tap. There's no hot water here although our bathroom has a shower if you're brave enough for a cold one. |
What I do instead is fill a 3-gallon black pail with cold (what else?) water and place it where it will get the morning sun, and by noon the contents are hot enough but not quite scalding, and good enough for me. Better by far than at Boy Scout Camp, where I learned for all time that cold showers are cruel and unusual punishment as far as I'm concerned. There's no engineered hardwood here, but the entire place is tiled in 1'by1' glossy tiles which are warm to walk on barefoot, unlike the ones back in frostland. |  | I haven't asked anyone why the houses are usually on stilts, because I'm not sure I wanna know: this is the jungle, after all, and I don't really want to dwell on what they might be preventing from getting into our living quarters, which we already share with at least 8 geckos and that behemoth behind the fridge.
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| Hey, at least the insect population is manageable, thanks to those little hunters (that don't have english accents and don't try to sell us car insurance). But the cost of this dwelling is one sixth of those aforementioned mortgage payments and strata fees, including the propane and water. | | Instead of the cars we get around on a motor scooter that costs less to rent than the insurance on one of the cars, and that includes gas. Personally, I'm not crazy about being a passenger on a motorbike, for reasons some of you know, but my chauffeur keeps it to 40kpm max, which is the speed that some of the locals drive when the entire family is squeezed together on the seat, Mom, | Dad, Baby and Child, all of them sans helmets, or driver and Grandmama, side-saddle and oblivious on the back. Or driver and saffron-robed hitch-hiking monk, discussing Buddha on the way into Thongsala. That's not to say that there aren't things I truly miss that just don't exist here, or at least not in the way we were used to. Coffee! Give me a Dolce latte... please!
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Here we have to settle for something called a 3-in-1 mix: individual mini packets of instant coffee with coffeemate and sugar already in. We can get filter coffee and filters, but only in one store that we know of, and beans? Whole beans? Dream on, brother. Not gonna happen. On the bigger Island of Ko Samui we did find a Starbucks where the lattes were exactly the same as one would expect in Seattle, but they cost the same as well, and you can have 50, yes, fifty cups of 3in1 for the same price. As a drug the dose of one cup is approximately the same, and besides, Starbuck's isn't really much better. But a Dolce, now that's a different matter! I also miss high-speed internet a bit, because even though we have an aircard that allows us to be wireless, it's dependent on the strength of the cellular signal and the available bandwidth, and those things are not what we've come to expect in the first world. Most of all, though, I miss my family and friends, but once we solve our connectivity issues I'll be able to skype and voip to my heart's content, and I'll probably be even better at keeping in touch than I was on the other side of the world. We're going to fashion a DIY signal booster thanks to some links sent us by our great friend Liz, so I'll leave it here for now, and we're off to find a female SSMB connector, some copper wire, and a 40-ounce coffee can. Easier said than done, but one must live in hope... | |
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