We Had A Quiet Day,

strangely enough I had a few telephone calls from friends in England,

 I say strangely because we can go for weeks, months even with no calls and then on the same day 3 or 4 friends call, which is nice, in the evening we walked to the main road,

 and into Thepprasit Road and caught the 10 baht bus, on market days there are always ones waiting to take you to the market and back again,

 I started at the far end of the market where the food and shoe stalls are located,

 and noticed these colourful shorts,

 and into the market I walked, looking inland slight cloud,

 the mobile fruit seller doing his rounds,

 these shirts really stood out, 

 and could do the same for you in a crowd,

 I had reached the point where I used to enter the market,

 looking towards Jomtien,

the sky was slightly cloudy,

 the same inland, 

 opposite the bar this evening all of the welding seems to have been finished, as the steelworks has been given a painting of grey undercoat,

and for tonight a stall selling T shirts and shorts,

 I am guessing work will start on the roof, or if you like car park floor over the next few days,

 and it has disappeared, the Monkey Shake stall, noticing that it had gone I made a point of looking for it, but it seems that it has not relocated,

 looking towards the pet section, the safety rail completed, 

 the fruit stall ready for business,

 and I know Diana will be buying some of these later, 

 this is the stall that usually sells handmade wicker products like bags, 

 but today they had these rather neat dresses/tops,

 in the most vibrant colours,

 this end of the pet section now finished,

 looking up the hill towards the Thepprasit Road,

 at the far end of the aisle,

 the steps were nearing completion,

 sunset over the market,

 I made my way up the hill to the yet to be covered section,

 and found more colourful items on sale,  

 we had a nice surprise, as we sat at the bar Brian walked over, he had just arrived this week from America, so we chatted the evening away, after saying our farewells, we caught the baht bus home,

 and walked back to the condominium to drop off our shopping,

 then we were out again,

 to Dongtan Beach Road,

 we were going to try a restaurant that has a branch in Camden Town in London, and just 9 weeks ago opened another here in Pattaya,

 and here it is, the Arepa,

 a restaurant that specialises in Venezuelan street food,

there were customers outside, but in the air conditioned section we had the place to ourselves for the early part of the evening, and I knew the evening was going to be great, I recognise song after song from the Buena Vista Social Club, considering the theme of the restaurant the choice of music just could not have been better, admittedly the music is actually Cuban, but it just sounded so right,

I am actually playing it now as I type this, one of my favourite tracks star 41 minutes in, delightful,

 on to the food, I have to admit I do not remember what Diana ordered,

but it was huge and Diana said so delicious, 

 for myself I went with a starter of lime prawns,

 which were amazing, the largest prawns I have ever seen in a starter and there were 10 of them! 

 Diana was so full she did not order a main course, but I did, a shredded beef wrap, with rice and beans, which would also come with cheeses, but I am not keen on melted cheese, 

 and there was plenty of it,

 so I tucked in! we were so full we did not have a dessert, the meal with water for Diana and 4 or so glasses of wine came to 1,090 baht, thoroughly recommended, especially if you are hungry,

 we started on our walk back, stopping at the local 7-11 to buy some sodas, whilst Diana was inside I took a couple of pictures of the stalls outside, this one,

selling squid,

 and another selling drinks, arriving home it was feet up for a couple from Columbo and with that we were off to bed.

Stuntronics,

a word I have never heard of,

until today, whilst in films you can use stuntmen, CGI and special effects et al, for theme parks a different approach is needed if you are going to perform the same stunt multiple times a day, Disney imagineers have been working on animatronic stuntmen, in this short video below you can watch them progress from a simple stick figure to full-on robotic acrobats, they are called Stuntronics, Principal R&D Imagineer Tony Dohi spoke about them , “So what this is about is the realization we came to after seeing where our characters are going on screen,” says Dohi, “whether they be Star Wars characters, or Pixar characters, or Marvel characters or our own animation characters, is that they’re doing all these things that are really, really active. And so that becomes the expectation our park guests have that our characters are doing all these things on screen — but when it comes to our attractions, what are our animatronic figures doing? We realized we have kind of a disconnect here.” 

so they came up with the concept of a stunt double for the ‘hero’ animatronic figures that could take their place within a show or scene to perform more aggressive maneuvering, much in the same way a double replaces a valuable and delicate actor in a dangerous scene, you can read more about these incredibly lifelike stunt doubles at TechCrunch, the doubles look so real, amazing, absolutely amazing.

Painted Pavements

we normally see them with pictures drawn on them,

 but Arthur-Louis Ignoré, also known as Ali, paints white patterned carpets on public sidewalks and passageways in cities across the world,

 including recent installations throughout France and Finland,

 the works are inspired by both geometric and botanical patterns found in ancient ornamentation from a wide range of cultural contexts,

 and very impressive they look too,

 almost looking like a magic carpet,

 I have to say pavements are not the easiest of mediums to work with,

currently the artist lives in Rennes, France, where a few years ago he painted his largest installation to date, the 10,000-square-foot mandala was painted on the roof of the Social Welfare Family Allowance building, You can see more of his painted carpet installations on Instagram, I wonder how many pedestrians walk over his work or go around them?