"Bangkok, here we come!" or "How Miikka got confused"

Once again, it's time to write something because people are whining that I'm lazy...

A lot has happened since my last update. So, let's get started, dear readers! <3

Friday 24.6.2554.

We were decided day before to go to Bangkok in the morning. When I woke up and came downstairs and Kari was already up. We didn't want to wait for Ilari and Petri (the Masters of Sleeping) so I took 2 empty water canisters and went upstairs to bang them together. It's amazing how loud was the sound.

The two missing heroes got up surprisingly quickly and we were set to go look for a pink taxi...

The pink taxis do stand out, don't they?

We didn't have to wait for long, and we got in to the car and Kari said "Mo Chit Sky Train please!" Our ultimate skill in Thainglish was understandable enough and the driver nodded his head. (I think his name was Noob.) It took about 170 ฿, 23 km, 45 min to get there. Actually we got out of the taxi in Chatuchak and walked about 100 m to the sky train platform. Sky train ticket from Mo Chit station to Siam station cost 35 ฿ and took about 15  minutes.

Sky train.

The train took us right next to Siam Paragon. Siam Paragon is a huge mall in Bangkok. The place is not cheap but you'll see shops you can't find in malls in for example Finland. When we entered, we walked through a metal detector and on the right was Madame Tussaud's wax version of Jackie Chan. I was eager to take a photo of it(/him) but there were too much Japanese(?) tourists with cameras at the moment.

There was some kind of a intelligence contest in one hall. There were mostly old people playing different table top games, for example chess, Srcrabble and many others.

Pro gamers.

We walked through a section called "Hall of Mirrors" which was full of diamond shops. I first noticed that this mall was quite a tourist attraction because there was too many westeners (länkkäri) for my taste... We walked further and found shops of Lamborghini, Maserati, Lotus, BMW and some others. Unfortunately, taking photos was forbidden in there and I didn't want to get kicked out (and maybe banned and slapped around a bit with a large trout) from the mall because of trying. We didn't buy almost anything from the mall because it was a bit too expensive for us and there were no shops for us. A word of this place's standards: they had screens all over the place which showed a list of best spenders in the mall. That is, who has spent the most money...

After hours of shopping and walking we started to get hungry. We found this great place called "Sunrise Tacos" that tempted us with a challenge called "All you can eat"... Challenge accepted! It cost 220 ฿ + beverages. There was a catch though. First you'd choose three tacos from the menu. After you've eaten them, you can order more, but "only one at a time, sir!"

Why didn't anyone take a picture of our meal!?

Again, the Crusaders were full and happy. Then we decided to go to a mall called MBK. It was the place for us! It was full of little shops that offered something for our every need! (Well, not exactly for every need...) We wandered around and bought a lot stuff. I was looking for sun glasses but skipped those because I didn't have enough cash at the moment. There was also this beautiful girl (hopefully) selling jeans. She shouted to me and I went to see her shop. This girl was the best salesperson ever! She said "I've got just your style here" and the artist was curious. She took a pair of Diesel Zathan from the shelf! I've been looking for those jeans for about a year, because I think they've cancelled that model! Well, I didn't buy them. (Costed too much, almost as expensive as in Finland)

Diesel Zathan.

But eventually I bought a bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier's Le Male.

The man.

I can't remember what items others bought, but I remember that we went to Swensen's. It's an ice cream bar. I ordered "Choco Rocko" and was surprised how much chocolate can be in one ice cream! :D There was chocolate ice cream, chocolate mousse, chocolate chips, brownie thingies, chocolate cookies, a cherry dipped in chocolate, chocolate waffer... I'm loving it. (I didn't upload a picture of Petri's ice cream drink... By the way, don't you love the positioning of the next images?)

Megamättö.

Choko Rocko.

Banana split.

After eating, we went to the cashier and I saw the first fake DD- (or even bigger) boobs in my life IRL (at least the first that I know of)! They were so beautiful!!! <3<3 How do I know that they were fake? Well...


They were on a man.

Yes. A ladyboy.

And now few examples of ladyboys for those who haven't ever seen one. (These girls guys are not related to the incident.)

It's not a surprise if a man falls for this.

A man. Obviously.

Well this "girl" at Swensen's wasn't so beautiful, he was a bit easier to spot, maybe because he looked like a drag queen, had more muscles than me and Kari combined and was probably taller than me (I'm 185 cm)...

When we got out of MBK after several hours, we saw a dance audition in the yard. We had no clue what was that all about, but it was nice to look at cute girls dancing... :P (Hopefully Kari will upload a video)

The journey back to our place was a bit more difficult. The sky train was the easy part. The taxi trip from Mo Chit to Rangsit U. (a.k.a. [mo:] Langsit) took 350 ฿, 2 hours, almost 60 km, 2 stops for asking directions, 2 smoking breaks and 1 peeing break and 1 cigarette as a tip. The driver was clueless where the university is. Next time, I think we'll take a taxi to Future Park, and then take a local (Rangsit) taxi to our place...


But yeah, after all, interesting trip.


And when I have the energy, I'll write about the next day, the Freshy Night... But before that, we have to prepare some videos for it...


Thanks for reading!

xoxo Your mighty sex idol Miikka xoxo

Three crusaders went to a bar

Hello once again!

It's been a while since my last post. I first thought that I would be a master writer and write to this blog all the time, it wasn't really like that... :/ Like June said, "epic fail @blog."

To help my guilt, I can tell you a story about 3 crusaders who went to a bar.

Story tells that,

there were three crusaders who were very thirsty after fighting in the endless swamps of game development and studying for a couple of weeks. They were so thirsty the had to go find an bottomless pit of beer. So they started walking. Thanks to Skype and Google Maps, they had found an oasis called Virgin. This place was told to have lots of girls and nice disco music, so the crusaders adventured forward. The walked for miles and miles from 7-11 and found nothing. They looked around corners and went to unforeseen alleys to find that oasis, but it was nowhere to be found. Teh crusaders got a bit frustrated. After scanning a horizon for a while, they saw a mechanical chariot and decided to ask the driver to take them to a bar. The chariot driver nodded his head and the crusaders sat in to the chariot.

After going to a wrong direction, the crusaders told the driver to turn right and look for a bar with lots of beer. The driver nodded. The crusaders were setting foot to a place where no man had set a foot before, and the driver suddenly asked: "Diskotek?". The crusaders were amazed, but after a little conversation between the heros, the leader of them said: "Yes." The foreign adventurers didn't know what was coming...

The chariot had been rolling for about 5 minutes and the crusaders saw their redemption: "Sitnee Club". Our heroes had been told that this place was full of beer and friendly maidens. So they told the chariot driver to stop here but he didn't listen. He insisted on going to a discotec, which was half an hour away. The crusaders got a bit anxious and the driver was telling that "11 PM, to discotec" and the crusaders said "Stop here, we can get off here", but the driver didn't listen at all. The master of crusaders (aka. Miikka) said "Thank you, we get off here, here's your 50 baht!" and the driver let us out of his captivity, and the crusaders had to pay 7 baht for their freedom (William Wallace would be jealous).

The crusaders saw the oasis called "Sitnee Club", but saw that there was no-one in! Their mighty leader told the otherr crusaders "We will enter, no matter what." There was a huge black metallic gate which was guarded by three golems. The golems said "You may enter, but don't forget to get the brand" but the leader of the crusaders was a bit suspicious and asked "Where do we pay?". They walked to the second golem and he branded their arms with unforeseen language. The story goes, that they entered with a maiden in white...

Crusaders clubbin'.

The maiden in white was deceitfully beautiful and signed them to follow her. Like a siren she made them follow her by her beauty, even though the crusaders were a bit cautious. She brought the heroes to a table and asked charmingly "Do you want a table?" The crusaders looked at each other and said: "No." In the background, there was a local Sum41 playing some college rock and all the other visitors were enchanted by their magical performance and they twisted and moved around infernally. The maiden in white asked: "Do you want something to drink?" Of course they would have something to drink, it was the reason they went to this place after all! A bottle of Leo (local beer) was given to each of the crusaders after a small understanding.

The crusaders drank their elixirs of life while refusing performance's catchiness. The temptation was intense, but they survived. After the performace of those hidious monsters, the master of ceremony put the record on full volume and when that Jennifer Lopez ft. Pitbull - On the Floor started pounding from the speakers, the mighty leader lost it. That's another story.

Beautiful hair styles of Jennifer Lopez.

After that magical experience, the crusaders throats were still a bit too dry, so they decided to move on to another bar, which was next to Sitnee Club. No man has ever come back to tell its name.

Instantly when the crusaders entered the bar, a hundred evil eyes were looking at them. The story doesn't tell was it because of their skin color, their way of speaking or what. Everywhere they moved, the "Eye" looked at them. The crusaders were so cautious that they didn't dare to sit down until a confirmation from the host. The crusaders feasted. They ordered a huge tower of beer, a bottle of Blend (don't really know what it was, it tasted like ass), and they were surrounded by beautiful girls (even though the girls weren't sitting in their table or even looking at them, but at least they were surrounded :D). After a tower, the mighty Dragon (aka police) came to the tavern. With it's blinking red lights and flashlight it stopped their party (once again). This time, there was no way going back. One of the crusaders was still thirsty, and he defiantly went to the host and asked, could he take the unfinished bottle of blend with him. The need of liquid was shining through his eyes and no one could say "no" to that. So they took the bottle and left to 7-11 and then to a taxi.

Btw. The leader of the crusaders was really happy when he found a Sofia Vergara look-a-like.Unfortunately, there was some weird chinese guy with her... :/

Sofia Vergara.

The crusaders found a chariot and went to their camp (thanks to their leader's ultimate skill in Thai, saying "Rangsit mhawithyalai" was enough!) There they found their long lost crusader mate, stuck in the webs of Skype and fap. The other crusaders pulled him out and told him to join the others to another bar. He agreed, and in an instant, they were on their way to the closest oasis they knew. There they ordered another tower of elixir of life and their life bars were almost full. If that wasn't enough, they smoked some apple skins and ate some french fries.

I guess that's the story. There's no huge epic climax or anything. They just went home and went to sleep.

I guess you guys need a nice picture for the end... Let's see... Something random... Ilari told me to google "random" and I found this:

The Master.

That's all folks.

The first complete week in here

Well, well, well. The first complete week we had is now behind us. It was also the first week of school and things are still a bit unclear at school. We are not 100% sure which classes we will be attending but I guess it will all straighten out after the next school week.

We only have school on mondays through thursdays now, so no school on friday and the weekend, but of course now that we also kickstarted our project, we still have lots to do during the friday and weekend as well. The schooldays were quite fun albeit we couldn't understand anything that was going on during the classes, because they were all taught in Thai and none of us can speak a word of Thai yet. But it's good that the teachers know how to speak English and they could clear a few things up for us after the class ended. I guess we still have to decide how to complete the courses though, as we are quite in a unique position now.

And like mentioned before, we started the initial design for our game project this week too. We scrapped the idea that we came up with before in Finland, but fortunately Kari already had an idea we could use for the project. This week we mainly did the outlines for the game and we will continue our work from there.

The weather has been quite okay in here and it has rained a few times. We are already getting a bit accustomed to the weather in here and it doesn't feel as hot as it did on the day we landed in Bangkok. The airconditioning inside the house has been superb and I'm already thinking how can I manage the summers in Finland without airconditioning, it feels so good to have a/c in the house.

As for the food in here, we already found a regular place to eat at school and also found a good place to eat at nearby next to our closest 7-11. The food at the school place and also at the restaurant is very good and quite cheap too, so we don't have to spend any extra money.

Yesterday we also went to the Futurepark with just the 4 of us, no local people with us. Getting there by a taxi was quite easy and we had tons of fun doing the shopping too. We bought some things we haven't had the chance to buy before and also ate there. We ate at a place called MK restaurants and the food was quite good, but we were a bit confused about how things work in there. But the waitress helped us understand how everything works and the food ended up being really tasteful. After the shopping trip there we had some problems getting a taxi back home, but eventually we did end up at our own doorstep, or gate actually, and all was good.

Tomorrow we will start our second week of school in here and I guess we will see how much homework we will get so we can calculate how much time we have for the project as well. As for me, I'm looking forward for the second week and looking forward to see our project progress too into (eventually) a full game.

Maybe next week we can update some more things about the project as well. We'll have to see how things end up going. Until the next time, bye! (And I really need to get a better camera so I can also add some pictures too, the one in my cellphone is quite bad at the end of the day.)

"Mikä olis tämän päivän otsikko...?"

And here comes the ultimate WWF heavy-weight champion, The Undertaker!

Yeah, that's me, Miikka. Or at least some Thai students said that I look like The Undertaker. I disagree.

Alta ottaja.

This day was also just for relaxing. I got up at around 2 PM and went downstairs to see Kari playing SC2. I went to 7eleven to get some breakfast and I bought some Thai chocolate bars, bread and chocolate milk. Also I bought a sausage cake (?!, that's was an accident, I thought it was just a sandwich!) and after tasting it, I gave it to Kari.

By the way, this was an exceptional day for us: the sun was shining for the first time! Yes, the sun hasn't been shining at all, but the weather has still been almost +30C. :D

6 PM Mr. Kong and Joona arrived to our place and we went to a market nearby. There were a lot of stalls selling different stuff, for example trinket, clothes, sunglasses and food. Mr. Kong bought some kind of snacks(?) for us. They were balls that tasted like rice pudding even though the outside was some kind of deep fried stuff (crusty) (correct me if I'm wrong), but I'm not sure what they were made of. And no way I could remember that name!

We walked through the marketplace and went to a seafood restaurant and ordered some giant shrimp, squid or  calamari (at least it had some kind of tentacles) and rice. I have to admit, that I was a bit hesitant to eat giant shrimp because it looked a bit weird... :/ The shrimp was quite good, even though I really didn't know how to open it properly and got only about a spoonful of meat out of it.

A small shrimp.

The walk back home after the dinner was successful, no one got killed or anything. Here's a picture of our dinner. Enjoy.

Almost the whole set.

Once we got home, we started to do some chores. Me and Kari took out the laundry from the washing machine and put the clothes to the balcony. Ilari and Pete assembled the new vacuum cleaner and cleaned the house. Now our place is clean and our clothes are clean, everything is set to start a SC2 session.

About tomorrow, we start at our new school RSU, Rangsit University (for you ignorant fools) and I'm quite psyched... :D Luckily we have only one lesson tomorrow (Game Project 2, from 12PM to 15PM) so the starting of the school is quite easy.

And yeah, tomorrow's the day I will wear a school uniform for the first time of my life. I'll promise to upload a picture of us in uniforms to FB and/or here... :) Can't wait...

Soundtrack of the day: Surprise hit

Shopping like girls

Hello again!

It's your favorite host, Miikka here!

Today, we woke up at about 11 AM feeling a bit hung over because of the mayhem of yesterday. Our place still stayed quite clean even though we hosted a party. (By the way, thanks to the boys and girls from CGM for helping us clean up the place). This day's agenda was to go to the university and Mike would show us how we could get a shuttle taxi to Futurepark. We paid the lady 12 baht each and got in the car and waited. And then we waited some more. I'm not sure, but I guess after that we waited some more.

...





Eventually the driver got into the car and we started our "little" trip to that huge shopping mall center complex thingy called FuturePark. (I hope we'll get some pictures soon...) First we decided to get some food. We found a place called The Canton House. The food was good, but the concept was quite unfamiliar to me. We decided to buy a big plate of some shredded chicken with some noodles. The main point in that restaurant is that you buy a large meal for your group and then buy maybe ten smaller ones, so I ordered some spring rolls also. After the lunch we started shopping. We went to like 20 different shops to buy almost everything we need. For example, we bought school uniforms (yes, I know, I look ridiculous in it), pens and sketch pads, a set of speakers, a vacuum cleaner, wallets... We spent about 6 hours shopping, everyone of us had a couple of plastic bags full of stuff in their hands. The weird thing with those shops was that they really didn't have any checkouts. Almost everytime we paid directly to a clerk.

Futurepark.

Leaving FuturePark is a different story. We went to the place where the shuttle taxis stopped. There was about 10 people waiting for the car, and the policy is  "dog eat dog". Meaning that the first people who can fit in the car can stay and others will have to wait for the next car. We were in bit of a rush when getting in, but luckily we all boarded almost safely with our bags (you can imagine, the box of a vacuum cleaner or a set of speakers isn't too small).

We got back home and decided to get something to eat. We walked around and found this nice Japanese restaurant (can't remember the name, it was something in japanese). The first surprise was that the waitress spoke proper english! Choosing and asking was a bit more easy this time. So we sat down and ordered. Then the waitress came with a big bowl of hot coal! She put it into a hole that was in our table and place a grill on top of it. Needless to say, we were a bit confused... The main point of that was that she brought our meals raw and we'd grill/cook it by ourselves (I heard that this is a normal concept in Japan, I surely wasn't aware of that :D). So we ate some medium chicken (that's because we're not Bachelors of Grilling) and some well prepared pork. Chocolate ice cream was a good choice for dessert (and it cost 19 baht, that's about 50 cents). Then we went to Tesco Lotus (it's a market) to buy some mättö for tonight.

Mättö.

This night we used just for relaxing, so we ate chips, some of us drank beer (I only drink Pepsi Max) and we played a couple of rounds of Starcraft 2. It's 4.30 AM now and I'm still awake writing this blog and listening to Dream Theater and it just started to rain. Now it's time to go and sleep, so have a pleasant night and good night! I'll get someone else to write this blog also so you don't have to read about my thoughts only.

Soundtrack of the day: Stam1na - Pakkolasku

- Miikka "The Undertaker" Rekiaro

I'm too fat for Thailand.

Good evening, everyone!

It's 3 AM now and I'm feeling a bit tipsy... :) This was truly an interesting day. We didn't get struck by a lightning or anything, but this trip today was a bit different...

First of all, we got up at about 8 AM and we hassled a bit and went to get some breakfast from 7-11 (hell yeah, we have a 7-11!). Everyone had a proper breakfast except Pete who had like coffee and chips! (We're a bit concerned about his eating habits at this point....)  After the breakfast we went to RSU (that's Rangsit University, to you ignorant fools) and enrolled to our courses and got our student IDs and network passwords. Before that, there was a heavy rain and THunder when we got back to our place to get our passports (for us ignorant fools, don't leave your passport at home when filling any important papers).

By the way, on the way out from the school, we witnessed a welcoming ceremony for the freshmen in RSU! I really enjoyed watching it, there we're nice rhythms and nice girls dancing! Beware of the Kajak's boot camp for the freshmen... :)

When we we're done at school, we went to look for a Tesco (for you ignorant fools, it's a market all over the world!). Well, didn't find any Tescos so we went to the 7-11 on the next block.

A hairy strawberry.

The clock was around 3 PM we we're hanging out at our place and killing time listening to Boney M and Tony Halme. Suddenly, Mr. Kong (for you ignorant fools, he's mr. Ekapong Nopawong!) appeared in our window and we let him inside. He had bags full of weird vegetables(?) and stuff and he got Kari to taste one of those hairy strawberries. I first thought "that's disgusting" but after I tasted that and the big bomb-looking berry I realized that they were not so bad after all! Then they left (for you ignorant fools, to change clothes!).

After a couple of hours, they came back with hundreds of Thai people (or at least 20) to cook for us! :D Suddenly, our place was filled with people from CGM (for you ignorant fools, it's computer game multimedia!)! They we're moving tables, setting up the speakers, putting the beer in the fridge... Everything was fine. :) I got to meet a lot of new people, and thankfully, they all introduced themselves to us. I'm a bit ashamed but I really can't remember all the names, only At, Nun and Pun (or Bun?)... :/ And I guess there was a Denis and a Benjamin (Ben?) also.  For a blink of an eye, I felt like I was some big shot producer checking out the talent or something. But luckily, only for a blink of an eye. (Kari here is the money making big shot producer-machine) :D The party went well, we ate fish.

And some other dishes.
People liked the food, and the Finns liked the beer. We particularly enjoyed the dance Bun or Pun showed us (for you ignorant fools, we will upload it to youtube eventually!). We we're talking a lot about traditions in Finland and in Thailand, we offered them some salmiakki (for you ignorant fools, it's black candy!) and some Finnish booze called Suomi Viina (and they drank it all!), and they offered us some Thai vodka and some candy that tasted like raisins in sugar or something... :D And they were made of some fancy Thai ingredient, the name of which I can't remember... And yeah, we got a confirmation that "Moi" means boys(?) pubic hair. They got a good laugh out of it...

After everyone had left we listened to some Sm3tana and M0k0m4 and drank some beer (for you ignorant fools, they're probably the most popular metal bands in Finland!), we went to a bar. It was a nice bar, they were showing NBA on a big screen and the beer was cheap (for you ignorant fools, look at the sizes of beers from Kari's FB pics or if you're lazy, just scroll down!)!

But then, everything fell apart.

I had just my meal brought to our table, when Joona crashed the whole tower of beer to a glass table! Needless to say, everything got shattered; our table with a glass top, our morale, our dignity, and the most important of all, my french fries!

After the incident, the waitress asked me if I'd like a new set of fries. Of course, I said yes (for you ignorant fools, I'm a hill billy from Finland). We were sitting at a table for a while and then the waitress came to us and told us to leave and come back soon. We were a bit surprised but when I looked behind my back, I saw a police officer. I was wondering what the **** is going on here, but we left peacefully. At least, me, Kari and Ilari left peacefully, I think Pete locked himself to the bathroom and stayed there for the whole time. (I am not sure if Pete even knew that there were cops telling everyone to leave... He's too busy writing some SMSs to Finland. You all know what I mean ;)) Then we went to the 7-11 (once again) to get some water and stuff. I waited outside the shop and watched Bad Boys 2 with some bike taxi drivers just by the road. 

So, we went back to the bar as the waitress told us. I got a new set of french fries. I was really happy, and I was thinking, this is good service but then they charged me 150 bahts once again! I started a little riot in the bar but then Pete paid for my fries and we made a deal that Joona will pay them to Pete :D So it's a win-win situation! Of course, when I sat down to my chair, it broke to pieces (almost). First we break the table, about 5 glasses, a tower and a plateful of fries, I break a chair. I guess, I'm too fat for Thailand. After eating our supper (Pete ordered the same set of food as me) we went to the counter and gave about 1000 baht tip to the waitress for us being such jackasses. Breaking everything, well, you could say, true Finns.  

Now we happily at our place and not maybe willing to show our faces at the local bar for a month... :)

This wasn't our strongest moment. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, they say and they're right. 

But yeah, everyone's asleep once again and I'm still up writing this blog... By the way, there are like 20 stray dogs on the street just right in front of our house barking... That's not nice. Now I should get some sleep, we have to get up quite early (for a saturday) tomorrow so i guess i'll be going to bed now! See you next time! Hope you enjoyed! And for all of you, who were at the party tonight: MOI!!

- Miikka

My thoughts on the second day

Hello, it's the wanna-be designer, Petri Ruuskanen writing this time.

Tonight we had a small party at our place where a lot of the Thai students attended. We only heard of this party some time during this week and didn't even know it was gonna be tonight, but we still played along. We had lots of good and tasty food and it was a real pleasure to eat it too.

With the food we had some Thai beer between (mostly us Finnish students) people and it was really good as well. I also had some Salmiakki and Suomi viina (Finnish booze) to treat to the other party at our party and others had their share as well. At least the Suomi viina had many drinkers and almost everyone tried out the salmiakki, but seems like no one really liked it (not a big surprise for us really :D), but still some students wanted more than just the initial tasting piece that we gave them.

After the party we checked out the nearest bar which is just down the street from our place and it had a real good feeling to the place. The place had like high beer towers which were quite cheap to buy for a table and there was also a table for pool and with the drinks we could also order some food. We had some mishappenings along the way tonight, like one beer tower tipping over and shattering a table, but we still came out of the situation like bosses and we also gave a nice tip to the place so we could come back later.

Now it is almost three o'clock in the night and I'm feeling a bit tired so I better get some sleep soon, because we have to go for a shopping trip in the Futurepark tomorrow at noon. Tomorrow we will buy stuff we couldn't buy last time due to the lack of space and most important, some clothes that aren't all black so the weather won't feel as hot then. With these words I will leave you tonight and wait for our next post in the future =).

The first day

And thus, started our campaign to conquer Bangkok's gaming industry. We were warned of the dangers that may lie ahead. Nevertheless, we weren't too prepared when a lightning almost killed us, but I'll explain that later.

Let me introduce these mighty pioneers:

- Kari "Rokniel" Ahdan, the producer
  Our omniscient producer, all-knowing financier and the master of the sacred art of whipping. This 24 years old handsome (in Ron Jeremy-kind of way) British stallion is the primus motor of our adventure in the vast jungle of game development. He commitment to his work and team mates has actually made him solve team mates' sex lives if it effected on the current project!

- Petri "Pete" "Tuuhl" "Thuul" Ruuskanen, the designer
  Pedo-Pete as we call him, has the ultimate ability to write GDDs in just mere hours. Last time I checked, he wrote 40 pages in couple of hours (of course, beer is his fuel) :D His overwhelming knowledge on Dibidogs is undeniable and you can really see it.

- Ilari "Tebeer" "TeddyBeer" Lähteinen, the programmer
  This metal head started programming as a little child and is one of the most talented programmers I know. I don't know what to say about him... He's a quiet genius. (I actually think that he thinks in binary...)

And lastly
- Miikka "dubious" Rekiaro, the wannabe artist
  Well, what can I say? Of course the most handsome of the bunch!

And the story starts...

We landed in Bangkok in the morning, I guess sometime around 10 AM... The feeling was unbelievable when they opened the back door of the plane and the warm air mass hit us. From that point started the never ending sweating that hasn't stopped and will not stop until we get back to Finland. After we got out of the plane, I literally ran to the closest smoking area so I don't know what happened during that time. (Maybe one of the guys can fill in later.)

We were a bit confused where to go and what to do after getting our baggage back. Suddenly a sharp-dressed man shouted at us and offered a ride. We weren't sure should we trust this guy but he was convincing and we ordered a ride from the BKK airport to our apartment in Rangsit. We waited maybe 10 mins feeling a bit uneasy if we got actually scammed... But then a lady told us to follow her to the taxi. The car was a minivan with a nice leather interior. We took off and got a nice joyride through BKK in the car listening to Boney M on full volume and subwoofers kicking our asses with the bass! I have to admit, it was quite interesting ride. The taxi drove 140km/h and skipped lanes like nothing. It's a weird thing that we didn't see any accidents even though the scooters and bikes tried to squeeze through every possible gap between cars (but Kari said he saw a dog getting chopped into pieces by some cook...). After about an hour and about 5 calls to Mr. Nopawong, we finally managed to get to our apartment in one piece.

The apartment looked nice. Everything was in good shape. We even laughed how luxurious our life is in Thailand, I guess not many students have a place as nice as ours. :D After putting our baggage into our rooms, we went to eat some Thai food. On the way there, a lightning struck into a pole next to us! It was the loudest bang by a lightning I've ever heard and there were also sparks flying (let's hope this isn't an omen)... We ate at a Thai restaurant and it was good and cheap! My dish cost 40 baht (about 1 euro). I'm not so adventurous so I just ate a plateful of good old fried chicken and fried rice. Ilari ordered some kind of noodles that looked to me more like tentacles... :P After the lunch, we went to the university to see some of the facilities (for example motion capture studio and edit room...). After that, we headed back to our place.

In couple of hours, Mr. Nopawong gave us a ride to Futurepark. It's a shopping mall complex, a huge one to be accurate. There we used about 6000 baht to some basic stuff we could need for the first days in Thailand. And of course, we had to eat, so we went to a steak house called Sizzler and had a good dinner.

Now, a couple of hours later, I'm sitting on my bed, writing this blog (while everyone else is asleep). I should get up at 8.30 AM so that we'd get a tour at the university and the campus. And of course, we're throwing a party in the evening. Actually, we're not throwing it, but someone else is throwing it at our place! (I heard about this in the plane). So, I guess tomorrow will be a busy day. Now I'll have a little shut-eye and get back to you probably tomorrow. See ya and good night!

Soundtrack for the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtxlCsVKkvY