“Be who you are and say what you feel,

because those who mind don’t matter,

and those who matter don’t mind.”

- Dr. Seuss

I content that we are both Atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

- Stephen Roberts

At least that’s what it would probably have sounded like in a comic strip… as some of you may already know, I just had my 4th motorbike accident in Thailand.

click on image to view it in large...

The first one was in 2000, when I lost control of a 400cc dirt bike and fell down a mountain. The accident cost me almost all my back teeth and I only got myself to blame for that one. However, I was wearing complete protection gear like the Pro’s do in the Super Cross on TV, unfortunately a rock sticking out from the side of the mountain caught me right under the helmet on the chin and made me bite my teeth together, so hard that they crumbled to pieces.

My 2nd accident was also the only one that knocked my out. I was on my way home at night with my girlfriend on the back when I hit a huge pile of sand that was illegally put on the outside lane of the road. A friend of mine went to the crash site at night to see what happened to me and went back the next morning to take some evidence photos, as the police never even made it there. The people responsible for putting the sand pile there saw it as their responsibility to remove all traces of it before the next morning, so officially there was no reason for me to crash and it was deemed as my fault.

My 3rd accident was directly in front of the day market in Hua Hin around 9am with about 20 people witnessing the event. I got cut off and flipped the bike, landing quite hard on the street. After a few minutes the police was there and asked me to follow them to the police station, while blood was running down my right hand from a nasty cut, luckily that was the only injury I had. So, I refused to go to the police station and demanded to go to the hospital instead. Still in shock and a bit of a daze I picked up my bike got on it and started cruising towards the hospital about 3km down the road, thinking I would be followed by the police. After going there half way I realized I am all by myself, so I stopped by my house and picked up my wife, and later no one ever heard of the accident… no witnesses, no license plate number of the asshole who cut me off, so no case…

Well, now my latest and most likely last motorbike accident. It was 3:15pm and I needed to be in town by 3:30 to make it to the bank. I was going accordingly fast on a wide open straight road with no traffic but one pickup truck coming towards me. I floored the bike and hit the magical 155km/h – top speed of my beloved Honda CBR 150 Repsol Edition. The driver of the pickup truck must have realized he’d gone too for or something like that, so at a distance of about 50 meters to me he initiated a 3 point turning maneuver, putting his truck sideways on the road blocking my entire lane plus my emergency/motorbike lane. I hit the brakes for about a second, realizing I would slam into the truck going at least 70 km/h or so, and decided to try and go around behind him on his side of the road. The same moment I had  leaned the bike to the side to turn and was on my way to the other side of the road, the pickup truck initiated phase 2 of his 3 point turning maneuver  – reversing – right into my way. I tried to avoid hitting him, but still clipped his tail light with my hand/handle which made my bike tilt even more to the side. I tried to catch it and make a left turn to stay on the road, but then I saw a motorbike with a side wagon coming towards me on the emergency lane. At this point I was still going about 90km/h and I would have never made it without colliding with the other bike, so I left the bike in the tilted position and just went off the road. For a moment I thought I may actually make it then I saw a tree and knew I could not avoid hitting it, so I jerked the bike and myself  as hard as I could to the same side it was leaning anyways. The bike went into the tree, but because it was tilted so much, I flew passed the tree and hit the ground about 20 meter away from the tree. The impact with the ground was literally breathtaking, it hurt so much I got tunnel vision and thought I would pass out. After a minute or so of laying on my chest I tried to get up. My back was hurting like crazy and I screamed  out of the top of my lungs, which surprisingly hurt even more. so I just collapsed again in agony. I made it to lay down on my side so I could see the road, and started waiving with my arm at passing cars and bikes. I had eye contact with at least 3 people driving by, but no one stopped until about 10-15minutes later. The pickup truck ran away of course, and the guy on the motorbike with the side wagon didn’t come back until after others had stopped to assist me. He gave his name, phone number and license plate number of the apparently black Chevy pickup… a number which tuned out to belong to a white Volkswagen and not a pickup truck. Shortly after the first people stopped to help me, there were about 20 people around me. A brand new Toyota Vigo Police Car stopped on the side of the road and the officer talked to some people through the window of his car, then he drove off again! My guess is he was off duty, on his way to pickup a bribe, or going to see his geek – all all of those reasons. Later an emergency car arrived and after that 2 more ambulances, as no one dared to move me after seeing me and my back, something I wish I could have as well, as it really freaked me out.

So, what’s the outcome? I didn’t brake a single bone, had a few scratches of which only one was so bad that it deserved a regular band-aid. However, my back pain was really extreme and they “rushed” me into the x-ray room. 4.5 hours after I arrived at the emergency room they had finally completed to take 4 x-rays and the doc gave me the news. I compressed one of my bones in the spine by up to 50% and it is angled by 30 degrees where it should be “flat”. His “text books” (I’m serious, that’s what he said) say that I need an operation. The best guy in Thailand for a surgery gave it a 10% chance that I will end up paralyzed waist down – that’ 1 out of 10! I have no clue what I am going to do now. At the moment I am thinking to start exercising and just build up a lot of muscles to support my spine, the doc says there is a chance that it may do the trick – at least until I am 60+ at which point he says my muscles will get too weak. IF this is the way it’s gonna be, I just hope the odds have improved in 30 years. For now, I got to stay on my back for at least 5 more weeks to give the bone time to heal and harden again, 5 weeks in which I am going to research all I can about this and all the possible treatments etc.

Here is the x-ray of my spine, I took the liberty to highlight the healthy bones in green and the broken one in red, which should have the same size and shape as the green ones...

… are definitely The Daily Show and The Colbert Report!

Why? Because they look at the mainstream media/news with a saner view, and it really is the only way I am able to consume mainstream news. The REAL news are not on TV… turn off the damn tube and get online.

Both shows can be watched online directly from the respective websites (here and here) the day after they aired, and for the real junkie they are available via torrent almost instantly after airing. Thanks to torrents, I actually watched all shows from 2009 and currently catch up on 2008.

Both shows are in the good sense of humor, but feature real news, events and people. It is amazing how they manage to put everything in perspective so that you can easily see what is really going on, while mostly featuring footage from other “real” news channels. For example, they catch politician totally contradicting themselves, one time saying “yey” and then later in another video saying “I would never ever agree to that”. They also expose channels like Fox News for being biased, my favorite slogan for Fox News that The Daily Show came up with is: FOX NEWS : We alter reality. You are being sold a preconceived narrative.

If you are interested to see some honest and fun news comments, you will love these shows!

Hello,

I think everyone is seeing it on the news, so I am not going to go into detail… I just wanted to let everyone who cares know that my family is OK and that Hua Hin is safe and nice as always.

One thing I would like to say though is my personal opinion about this: I think Thailand needs someone to lead the people, maybe someone like Hugo Chavez (watch “The revolution will never be televised” to learn the real story about Venezuela and Chavez). Anyways, I mean someone who cares for the greater good of the people and just takes control. Thai people are not educated enough to even understand what a democracy is.

Just an example from a friend: Local elections are on and the whole family goes to vote for “Number 2″ (every person that runs for the job gets a number, Number 1 is the person currently holding the position), because Number 1 did not build the road he promised. After voting they all drive over to the house and collect the 200 Baht (about 5 Euro) per person/vote for Number 2. Then Number 1 wins the election, because he paid 500 Baht per vote. Family says: NOT FAIR!

I still prefer to live in Thailand 1 million times over Germany, life is good here!

I love Thailand, give peace a chance

I just had a great time at Thaiwaii Bar & Restaurant on Soi 80 in Hua Hin.

The food is awesome and the company very nice.

Recommend the place to anyone who comes to Hua Hin or lives here

Ok, I think having that HIV post as the first thing to read from me this year is not the message I want to bring across at all. So, I guess it is time to do a bit of a review of the last year, which was VERY eventful.

In January, I was working on a new business venture together with a friend of mine. It is a software which makes it possible to download and watch Internet TV/Video Streams with a slow connection – a great tool for people living in Thailand as the Internet here is in general pretty slow and unstable. However, there were a few people determined to ruin our business, and we (he) ended up getting tired of constantly having people trying to ruin things for us. In the same time my partner got involved into a new business which took his attention off our project, and he was the one who was supposed to do the marketing – you know I am not a good sales person – I am the geek behind the computer.

So, back I was doing website work for others, but because I was planning on doing the business with my friend, I had no work lined up. I went flat broke, which is a horrific thing to be when having a toddler to feed. To save money we moved out of our beautiful rental home into a… dumb. It’s probably the worst place I have ever lived in, and I have lived without electricity or running water before… this was just horrible. We had wet walls from all the rainfall, and having a baby that is really dangerous, as babies are easy to develop asthma in those conditions.

My friend, the one who started that new business that took all his time and attention from our project, came over just two month after moving, and asked me why I don’t buy a house? I think I gave him a pretty sarcastic look, and said something like: Even if I had the money to buy a house, I would not buy something in Hua Hin, as the prices are just way too high compared to other areas (country side). Just as an example, in Hua Hin 1 rai (1,600 square meter) costs at least 2million Thai Baht, while it costs about 20,000 Thai Baht where Wan’s family lives… anyways, he then said: what about if you would only have to pay 10,000 Baht a month for 15 years (lease purchase agreement) for a 3 bed room house with a swimming pool, would you then buy a house? OF COURSE! I said, I pay 8,000 for this hell hole I am living in right now! So he said, ok, let’s meet tomorrow and I show you the house! The houses are a little out of town (13km) in an area called Khao Tao (Turtle Mountain), which happens to be one of my favorite places to go to the beach. There were a few more houses for sale under the same conditions and they were really nice, so I asked him if I could also take 2 houses… of course I could, but I had to move quick. Of course at that stage I could and would not take 2 houses, as that would put me at a monthly cost higher than the house I had to move out of due to being low on cash. So I had to come up with some plan, and as things happen to play out, I was offered a full time job working as a webmaster. The pay was good enough to be able to pay both houses and live on a small budget if I had to, but of course I was planning to rent out the 2nd house. With that job in hand, I went directly to sign the papers and got me those houses.

At the end of the first month of my new job my boss came to me saying: I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is, you get half your salary, the bad news is you got to wait for the 2nd half. This of course meant big trouble for me, as I had to make the payments on the house AND I needed money to live. The deal with the houses is, that if I default on 2 consecutive monthly payments, all money paid will be seen as rent and I lose all rights to ever own the houses. So, I HAD to pay for the houses, leaving me with a few Baht to my name. I bet you can guess how that made me feel, so I told my boss that I did not take this job because I love it, I took it because I wanted stability in my life and this situation is just unacceptable for me, and IF this should happen again I will have to quit. So, the next month comes along and the unthinkable happens, I didn’t get my salary again, and I didn’t even get half of the salary – I got NOTHING! I cannot even put in words how that made me feel.

I talked to a friend of mine for whom I had done web work before, and as it happened to be he had a lot of work for me to do. He sent me the money to sort out my house payments and leave enough money for my wife to live, as well as money for a flight ticket to come up to Chiang Mai and work with him. I can not even imagine how things would have turned out if it weren’t for my friend. While being in Chiang Mai I got a few phone calls from my “ex-” boss asking me to come back. The work I had done for them had increased inquiries though their website a lot and he wanted me to continue upgrading their site to it’s full potential. I was promised that they got the financial situation under control, so I finished the first part of what my friend needed me to do and came back to Hua Hin, just to be told they still can’t pay me last months salary but want me to continue. I honestly didn’t know what to think of this situation, however after the “meeting” I walked out of the office, called my friend in Chiang Mai, and flew straight back there to continue working with him.

After I returned from Chiang Mai, I starting working on some website projects I had been offered and moved into the new house. It was an exciting time, and even though there were quite a few things wrong with the house that needed to be rectified by the developer, I was really happy to finally be able to say I live in my own four walls. At that time I got a phone call from a guy (now friend) who I helped before getting his laptop working again (Thanks David!) and I told him about the houses and that I wanted to rent one out. As it happened to be, he was looking for a place to rent, and I think he fell in love with the place the moment he saw it. He wants to live in the house for the rest of his life he said… it almost sounded to good to be true. As of November, he is now my neighbor, and the first thing he did is to create a FANTASTIC garden, with huge (palm-)trees and a koi fish pond that curves around one corner of the house with a waterfall and underwater lights and the hole shebang. I actually envy him… if I were a bad person, I’d probably kick him out now! hehehe

Over the years of doing websites, I have created a little side business for hosting and domain name registration. At the end of 2009 I decided to turn this into a real business. I setup a complete system where people can order their web hosting and pay online via credit card or paypal etc, and the hosting is being setup automatically after the payment has been received. I created many different hosting packages to serve everyone’s need, and soon people will also be able to register domains on the fly via this service. Have a look: Affordable Web Hosting

Right before New Years I finally was back to the financial situation I was in at the beginning of the year, but this time with enough jobs lined up for the coming months to not having to worry about where to get the money to pay for the houses and buy food.

I have had quite a few people ask me how I can live like this, being constantly in the edge of being broke… all I can say is that I can live with it quite well as long as I know that I got friends who will save me should I be in danger of falling over, or catch me if I did fall over the edge.

So… I hope this explains a bit why I haven’t found the time or energy to update my homepage.
I wish all of you a wonderful 2010 with lots of fun and success with whatever you are doing.

Today is Wan’s Birthday!

I knew it is on the 2nd, but for some reason I thought it is actually Monday! That really screwed up all the plans I had or was trying to make…

The day, however, was totally screwed up thanks to her youngest brother (17 years), who was out late last night. He came back home around 2am to get an ATM card, took (stole)  money out of it and as of right now has disappeared. So, instead of enjoying her B-day, Wan was half worried half mad about her brother and was not even willing to leave the house because she was worried he might come back home in the meantime and may just get some stuff to be gone for even longer.

What makes things even worse. he got Wan’s scooter (which I hope he hasn’t pawned yet), so she it pretty much immobilized until he returns it. I don’t know if you know, but a Thai without a motorbike, that’s like me without a computer.

Anyways. this is one of the days you just wish would be over and done with and it’s too bad this is Wan’s birthday. At least it gives me a chance to come up with something really nice for her to make up for this day and show how much I love her.

Feel free to comment

Hi there,

most people who know me are aware of the fact that I am an Atheist – I do not believe in any god. Sorry for using my freedom of speech, but I have to say that think it is stupid to believe in a god, I hope religious people can tolerate my opinion on this as much as I can tolerate when they tell me I will go to hell for saying that.

Ok, now… I have been a follower of two of the greatest Atheist (in my opinion) that have made it their mission to inform people of their (non-)believes through the Internet.

1. Pat Condell
Pat is a 59 year old Englishman from London, who has produced many videos where he is ranting about Christianity and Islam, as well as complaining about the fact that religion is interfering with our politics and freedoms. He used to do stand-up comedy, so his videos are not only well spoken but also amusing.

Have a look at his website, his youtube channel, his blib.tv channel, his myspace page, his facebook account, and last bot not least his LiveLeak videos.Should you start liking him so much that you feel like showing your support in public, then have a look at this.

2. Edward Current
Ed is an excellent comedian and Atheist from the US of A, in fact he is so good at it he even makes Christians that watch his videos believe he is a Christian! If you don’t know him or haven’t already heard from him, I strongly suggest you have a look at his youtube channel. I’ve had a lot of fun watching his videos, and even more fun reading the comments… it is unbelievable how simple minded some people can be to not catch his sarcasm and think he is actually being for real in his videos. What I admire about Ed the most though is him actually actively reading the Bible, something that I neither have the will nor the time for. There has been so many times where I simply could not argue with/against a Christian simply because they were quoting the bible and I can’t.

So, now to the actual reason why I decided to write this post. Today I have redefined myself as being a Secular Humanist.

“Secular Humanism is a way of thinking and living that aims to bring out the best in people so that all people can have the best in life. Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs. They affirm that we must take responsibility for our own lives and the communities and world in which we live. Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation.” – Council for Secular Humanism, USA

The National Secular Society, UK stands for a society in which everyone is free to practice their faith, change it, or not have one at all, and that our beliefs or lack of them should neither be an advantage nor a disadvantage. If I were British, this quote would make me join the British Humanist Association: “Rights, equality and human rights are for people, not religions or believes. Humanism for me is holding nothing sacred but the human being.” by Human Rights activist Maryam Namazie.

Der Bund Freireligiöser Gemeinden Deutschlands hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, allen der religiösen und weltanschaulichen Freiheit aufgeschlossenen Menschen unter Anerkennung ihres Rechts auf selbstverantwortliches Denken und Handeln eine dogmenfreie Religionsauffassung oder freigeistige Weltanschauung in der Gemeinschaft Gleichgesinnter zu ermöglichen und weiterzuentwickeln. Ihr damit verbundenes Streben nach friedlicher Koexistenz gründet sich auf die Achtung der Menschen-würde und der Menschenrechte.

Peace!