Catching up

Been away for a few days. Nothing much to catch up last weekend.

Aug 26:
Having done terrible mistake in the morning, I felt down all day. What happened must be because I was over-confident about myself, and bad decision making. This has to be changed. At the end of the day I tried to cheer myself up. I went out to the beach with my friends for a small party. It was nice. At least I got to relax a bit. It is because I am surrounded by good friends. They always cheered me up. On the following day there was a flight scheduled for me in the early morning. Must concentrate on that.

Aug 27:
It took me a while to gather enough courage to face my instructor. Surprisingly, my instructor decided to send me to fly solo (alone) again. I was a bit confused as I wasn't sure what he had in mind. Maybe he trusted me so much that he decided to let me go for a second chance. Or maybe he hated me so much that he just wouldn't care if anything wrong happened again. Must concentrate on flying...

It all went well, however. It was not a perfect flight but not a terrible flight. Felt a little bit better. Back to Bangkok in blue.

In the evening there was a meeting with my high school classmates. 8 people were there. Quite a long while after last seen. We talked about everything, from what we do now to what we did when we were in school. It's funny when we recall those memories. Sounds like we are old, huh! Of course not! We are just in the late-teenager period. LOL

Today is my bad day

Did terrible thing in-flight. No more to say..

Leo is back

Last night we were drinking some Leo beers. It's a local beer. Same brewer as the popular Singha's but the price is less expensive. It reminds me of the time when I was in the university, when I was young. We always drink Leo, Chang, and Singha beer, of course because of their low prices. We also ended up having terrible hang-overs the day after. (Thai beers are strong!) But it was so much fun though.

There was no plane to fly today as usual. After having spent a few hours pointlessly browsing the net, I found a link to eBay (the infamous on-line bidding site) showing bids on gmail.com account invitations. (If you've no idea what it means, you may skip the following...) Strange offer--how could someone ever think of selling account invitations? But what is stranger is there are people who actually buy those invitations. Anyway, I did participate in some bids though. haha.. Come on! The deal is tempting, gmail.com offers absolutely free e-mail accounts with storage space as large as 1GB! (Plus I'm one of those "strange" people.) It is still in beta period but will be publicly launched soon.

Umm. Gonna have a glass of pineapple fruit shake. See ya!

Academy Fantasia

Result: The winner is Wit as expected. He is so talented and deserved the prize. First runner-up is Jean. 2nd runner-up is Off.

Didn't-do this weekend:

• Revise FTM
• Homework: engine failure in flight & forced landing procedure

Love..Love

After having spent whole Thursday afternoon and evening on reading my Flight Training Manual about crosswind landing, which I did terribly the day before, and a number of dry-runs. I was well prepared for crosswind today. But guess what? The wind was so calm! From 6am until 11am there was no wind at all. Never mind, maybe next time. huh Anyway, still very happy with today's flight as I finally did better on landings.

Return Bangkok home in the afternoon. A little nap while driving. (Dangerous!) May get some sleep this evening and if got up early, party is waiting!

To-do this weekend:
• Academy Fantasia final episode on Sat. night
• Revise FTM
• Homework: engine failure in flight & forced landing procedure
• Pay bills

Article: Eats, Blogs & Leaves

Interesting article: Eats, Blogs & Leaves by Jennifer Garrett. Saw it on Blogger site.

I personally agree that articles or blogs or messages or whatever that go out to public should be grammatically correct. However, I would like to add that some exceptions should also be made to people who don't speak English as their primary language, uh, like me for example. For someone who rarely speaks, expressing thoughts/ideas in English is difficult enough, let alone a grammatically-correct one. Don't you agree?

First Flight

Finally, I had a flight yesterday. After having waited for more than 2 weeks. (Actually 18 days which is current class record!) It was my first flight with my new instructor, or kru in Thai.

Thai language has 2 regularly used words that mean teacher or instructor--ajarn and kru. Someone once told me that these 2 words are different in that kru is used when more closed relationship between teacher and his/her students exists, and more than knowledge is offered to students, like teachers in kindergarten/pre-primary school. This also applies to teachers in aviation schools because their lives and their students' lives kinda bond together--if, like, a plane crashes, it is more likely that both of them won't make it. The word ajarn is used in general teacher meaning, like a university teacher.

Back to the flight, it was a disaster though. I took off at noon and the wind was quite strong. I had to land with 8-10 knots crosswind which I couldn't do it. Very disappointed in myself. Hope I'll do better next time. More dry-runs needed.

Long Drive

Yeah I'm back. The island was nice, everything looked almost the same as before. Last time I went there was about a year ago. But driving Bangkok-Rayong trip was not so fun. This week I drove almost 1000km in total. (Hua Hin-Bangkok-Rayong) Exhaustive, huh.

Plus there's something wrong with my digital camera. It just decided not to re-charge the battery. Hope it has something to do with the battery, not the camera. I know it's 2+ years already but now is not a good time to buy a new battery cause I just can't afford it. During my study here my allowance is .. well, not very much. Anyway, luckily I also brought with me a camera that uses film so at least I've got some pics to post here.

I wish I have flight this week. Sa-tu.

old links

This morning I checked out my long list of favourite websites in order to clear out some. Found out this site: Portrait Illustration Maker. Some of you might already have heard of. This very popular site lets you create an avatar of your own to be used on IM, web log, or whatever. You get to select each part of your face and background and combine them together. Cool application, well, uh, at least it can kill your time. By the way, I decided to have a short trip to Koh Samed. By short trip I mean spending only 1 night there. Time to relax a bit. ^^ Later

mother's day

Today is mother's day. Let your mom know how much you love her.

(err.. me? still suffer from hang-over from the party. maybe later in the afternoon, mom. --bad boy! kids don't do this.)

back to the big city

Just back from a 3-hour drive from Hua Hin to Bangkok, and driving across town to get my wallet from Jon (I left my wallet in his car the day before). Yeah finally I'm home--very tired. Tomorrow is mother's day (a holiday) so I decided to take Friday off so that I can go back home a bit early this week. Mother's Day Party is coming up tonight! Haha.. Another irrelavant reason to party--they say Thai people always are able to find a reason to get drunk, I totally agree. Better get some sleep for a few hours before going out.


sunset in Bangkok

new instructor

Just a short update that I had just been assigned a new instructor. He is one of the most wanted instructors. hehe I'm lucky again!

Anyway, no flight schedule tomorrow as expected. (Well, actually there was, but some other people need to use the plane more) Maybe another party tonight? hehe

starting new week

wondering who's gonna be my new instructor. no doubt there will be no flight schedule for me this week. boring!

bad news

There have been rumors going around about my instructor leaving for airline company. This just happens to be no rumor, but truth! My instructor confirmed me the day before that he'd leave on Aug 9th for an airliner.

Well, there's not much to say, except farewell to him. Though I'm feeling a bit down cause my instructor is the coolest guy in school--he's always chill and teach very patiently. Now I don't have an instructor anymore, guess next week they will assign me new one. My only wish is to have a nice instructor!