One minute left on internet. Bangkok smells but TS took us to dinner with his girlfriend, and they’re great. On to Laos tomorrow. My whole body is itchy, and I owe a whopping $220+ to Bank of America for support phone calls because my card hasn’t been working at any ATMs. I’m trying to demand a refund now.

Have to run. Eat some croissants for me. See you in Laos.

Or, Grassroots Human Rights Education and Development Committee, or Foundation, or whatever you want to call it. I’m in the office right now.

Am working on setting up a GHRE Flickr page, a Myspace page, a Blip.tv page for syndicating video, and a Flektor page.

Will write more later…

Bangkok smells like poop and exhaust, as you may have already learned from ｍｙ　ｍｏｂｉｌｅ　ｐｈｏｔｏ　ｂｌｏｇ. We can’t wait to get to Phang Nga on Saturday, and then over to Cambodia & up the Mekong through Laos, then back to Thailand to Burmese refugee camps in Chang Mai, then back to Bangkok to get our flight home.

I have to run, internet is running out, and these keyboards are strange.

It’s 86 degrees in the city today. I came very close to passing out in the subway, where it’s about 2,000 degrees and humid. Now I’m in J.’s apartment while DD roams Union Square in an effort to meet up with P. There’s a business aspect of our stop here, which is to drop off the wedding photos we shot last week to said groom. Meanwhile, while J. is marching in a Memorial Day parade uptown alongside the governor and the AG, I’m exploiting his air conditioning. I think I just want to sit here until it’s time to go to the airport, which is now in a matter of hours.

Guess what? I’m pretty sure I can continue posting phone photo updates even while in Asia, thanks to my GSM Treo, so check the mobile blog often. Check this one for text updates and audio, video and “real” photos too.

See you in Banglampu, Bangkok!

We’re in the throws of cleaning, packing, and tweaking our GSM phones for internet use internationally. We have yet to read the travel guide, book a room in Bangkok or actually plan any aspect of our trip after volunteering with GHRE, and we need to get on a bus to NYC in a few hours.

I’m growing concerned that there will not be enough room in my bag for a camera, audio recorder AND the Canon HV20 camcorder I have yet to purchase with the fleeting remains of my savings, but maybe I can dump some clothes to compensate…I mean who needs clothes?

Just wanted to give a big shoutout to all the wonderful people who donated batteries, school supplies, and money for AV equipment and web programs to Grassroots HRE, the Burmese-run human rights group on the Thai/Burma border whom I’ll be visiting. If you weren’t able to donate yet but want to, you can send a check directly. Make it out to “Grassroots HRE” and mail to:

Mr. Htoo Chit, Director
Grassroots HRE
Contact: PO. Box (13)
Takuapa Post Office
Takuapa, Phang Nga Province 82110
Thailand

Htoo Chit recommends that you first go to their website and choose what program, if any, you’d like to allocate your funds to — women’s health education, children’s education, distance learning programs, building tenement housing, worker’s rights training, funding for work permits for migrant workers on rubber plantations and construction sites, etc. If you don’t specify, it’ll go to general expenses, or whatever needs funding most. I’m hoping to help them start a podcast with people who’ve fled Burma, maybe very recently. We’ll see what’s feasible and what they feel would be best. We’ll be thinking of y’all during our 19 hours on the airplaine to Bangkok.

I’ll post updates when I can — hopefully soon!

Best,
A & DD

What a bad day.

In addition to the $2000 eBay auction we had to forfeit with two minutes left (Sony lied to me and didn’t actually clean the camera head I sent in, even though they charged me $75 and told me it was all set) — in addition to this, I had a horrible ortho appointment.

After four months of waiting for my bite to realign with ineffective elastics, today was the terrible day my doc decided to start “correcting the over-correcting”: he glued white filling material (cement, basically) all over my bottom canine, such that my left molars will no longer close and it looks like a giant snowman made of white cement has parachuted from the sky onto my tooth. Minus the corncob cap and the button nose.

To make it worse, the assistant then dug in these horrible wires around my left molars so I could “wear the elastics on them” (two more elastics, both top-to-bottom on the left side molars to raise up the bottom teeth, so that when he puts a bottom wire back on they all even out).

At that point, I pretty much flipped out.

“Get these OFF!” I barked at my doc, after my appeals to the assistant went ignored. “I DON’T NEED THEM!” I was so angry about the cement snowman. Here I am, about to venture into the Southeast Asian jungle, about to backpack through landmines and join the Burmese democracy revolution and lead professional multimedia training sessions in Thailand, with a giant cement snowman on my bottom tooth and thick elastics pulling my mouth closed. Plus I can’t chew on the entire left side. “If you don’t take them off I swear I will rip them off myself!”

Opting for a truce, Doc removed one of the wire things on the bottom, but left the one on the top in place, as well as, sadly, the snowman. I would show you a picture but you’d be too horrified, or I’d be too horrified, or both.

Then I had a shameful episode: I threw a tantrum…not like a 2-year-old tantrum, though. More like a 14-year-old tantrum, which as we all know is much worse.

“I’M REALLY MAD AT YOU!” I screamed, because I was really mad at him, and also I could feel myself starting to cry and I didn’t want to bless the office with more of my tears. Lord knows that baptism happened too many times in 2005. Anyway, at that point the entire office froze and stared at me in fear. Doc stammered, “You know I love you,” to which I hurled the mirror they’d given me onto the table (I mean I really slammed it down, on purpose, as if I was in my bedroom and my mom just told me I couldn’t go to the 8th grade social because I didn’t pass algebra). The assistant jumped. Then I stormed out. Before leaving, I glared at the doc, now bending over some other patient, and growled, “When can I come back?!” I wanted everything off, immediately.

“When do you get back from your trip?”
“The 27th.”
“Ok, come back the day you get back from your trip.”
“FINE!” I said. “I WILL!!!”

And then I went in the car and whined to DD on the phone in my best I’m-almost-crying-because-I’m-sick-of-wearing-horrible-braces-when-I’m-almost-30 voice. He was very sympathetic, which is the best way to be when you’re dealing with a maniac.

If I don’t return from Asia for whatever reason, somebody please go to my ortho’s office and get back the $5500 he owes me. For the four extractions, for the exposure gum surgery, for the novocaine that bled out during the exposure surgery, for the impacted canine that took nine months to come down, and for all the times people saw the braces and mistook me for a student instead of working professional, for the 18 extra months that have elapsed after the date they were supposed to come off, get that money back for these dang braces, and invest it in GHRE.