TIdbits about Squaronians

It's coming up on noon, Thursday, August 7th here in Texas as I write, and I just got off the phone with "Crane" Joe, who called me from his home in Phoenix.

Joe has been in-country for several weeks -- about six, actually -- working on the sale of some equipment, and he's had to shuttle back and forth between the place from where he was shipping the equipment and his home, not thrilled at the hassles he had lining enough shipping containers. Not just any ol' containers, mind you, but special ones designed for hauling huge stuff by sea. But he finally got it done and is aiming to head back to the wilds of Bangkok sometime in the next few days, then plain REST. Well, okay, maybe with the help of a drink or two . . .

Joe mentioned he had been up to Las Vegas. Asked him if he got to see Herb, a regular annual visitor to the Square who lives in Las Vegas the 9-10 months he's not spreading the joy, so to speak, around the Square. At this point, Herb isn't sure if he'll make it out to the Orient this year, though I'm sure everyone will be disappointed if he doesn't. Anyway, we'll see if the attraction doesn't overcome his inertia! Besides, he needs to touch Square soil at least once a year to maintain his Squaronian Citizenship. ;-)

Had an interesting phone call last night from halfway around the world. Some of you know I've been itching to go back to work, and the call regarded that. I had sent my resume to a school, and the lady calling from there was wanting to set up a time for a panel of professors to interview me over the Internet -- an Internet interview that'll be my first such interview. As I like the location and have some fairly extensive knowledge of the institution, I'm hoping we can reach an agreement for me to go there. More about it as I learn it.

Hard to believe I've been in the States as long as I have; I'm actually getting used to going to the "wrong" side of the car so I can ride in the passenger seat and to adjusting to the fact that whoever's driving me is tooling down the "wrong" side of the road. Means I'll have to get used to driving on the *correct* side of the road when I get back to The Big Weird! Not much more than a week left now in this strange, alien land called "America" . . . my homeland.

Still kicking myself for not thinking sooner to use this venue as a stand-in for "The Rounds." Not that I know much about the Square (or anything else in Bangkok) from 9,000 miles away! (That's almost 14,500 kilometers for you metric-system slaves! See -- I reverse things when I'm in the U.S. when it comes to dual systems!)

I mentioned I applied for my driver's license online. I was a bit worried about it, because there's some confusion about which address I should use when buying stuff online -- my Bangkok or U.S. one. Had opted for the latter, then got to thinking about the writ-in-stone, hard, cold fact that messing with the Texas Department of Public Safety could be a very, very bad idea. Which putting in a "wrong" address might be deemed as me doing. Sweated about it a bit, wondering if they'd accuse me of online fraud or some such, but decided I'd wait until early next week to give them a call. So, imagine my astonishment whn I received my new license in yesterday's mail! Checked my bank status, and sure enough, there the charge was. It's amazing how quickly they got it to me. I hadn't known my picture and signature were electronically stored last time I got a new license, back in 2004. Now I'm good to go until my birthday in 2015 -- if I kick around that long :-) . . . and learn to DRIVE again! But I guess that's like riding a bicycle, except on steroids: never really leaves you, especially as many miles as I've driven. (Probably close to a million, maybe even a little over.)

Later --