Friday Night Funnies-Earthquake Edition

I seldom post back to back on the same day, but my thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar and Thailand earlier this afternoon. For my Thai expat readers did you feel it where you were? I hope all are well.

I didn’t feel a thing in Phuket when it struck at around 1 :30 PM local time, but I saw earthquake trending shortly afterwards on twitterx. My immediate unsettling feeling was to get away from the beach ASAP. This area was struck by the 2004 tsunami which killed some 250,000 globally. Quite a few Thai locals lived here and remembered it, so speculation about a tsunami striking was rampant in this area. Thankfully this earthquake and the aftershock were shallow and struck far inland, so there is no tsunami warning. I am curious what the one taxi driver was talking about when he insisted that this event would turn the water black.

They have already declared a state of emergency in Thailand over it. Apparently 43 construction workers are stuck inside a building which collapsed in Bangkok near Chatujuk market:

Is it the new moon weirdness? I wondered then if earthquakes and other natural disasters have any link to planetary alignments. Based on Google, they do:

Planets interact with each other influencing earthquakes via the gravitational stresses arising from the configuration of the solar system planets that cause a slowdown of the rotational/revolving speed of the Earth.Dec 9, 2567 BE (the date of this piece is December 9, 2024 for those unfamiliar with the Buddhist calendar which is used here. Greetings from over 500 years in the future!)

Solar system planetary alignment triggers tides and earthquakes

Here’s the March 28th chart, courtesy of Isaac Middle:

For a change I have no speculation about some nefarious power on this Earth controlling or causing this. Perhaps these things happen to remind us who is really in charge.

Now onto some lighter memes. It’s official:

Now I did read some of the reviews though I have no intention of ever watching the movie. I think casting former Wonder Woman star and once named “Most Beautiful Woman in the World” Gal Gadot as the evil queen might have been a poor choice, even if Zeigler’s singing was supposedly much better. And isn’t making the seven dwarves into CGI fantasy characters excluding to actual dwarves?

I love Craigslist. It’s a shame it isn’t used much in Thailand. I was looking for kittens for my Mom on there in January. Instead I saw free baby pot bellied pigs being offered in Pahrump! Hmmm…maybe next time.

I recently gave up coffee (or caffeine) for about one week. When I quit smoking in January I upped my caffeine intake as I often do. I’ve gathered that coffee can lead to estrogen spikes in my age range. Quitting coffee helped with my headaches a bit maybe, but it wasn’t a magic bullet, so I’m back to one watered down cup in the morning…

Me and Ka seem to alternate who this person is in our relationship. We have no refrigerator of course so we have to be careful with food that has been left out for any length of time. But it seems like we switch roles. One night he’ll tell me to throw something out that we just bought two hours ago from the market that I am trying to reheat over the fire, the next night he’ll insist the three day old fish with maggots on it is still good, the next night I’ll tell him to shake the ants out of the rice and it will be perfectly fine.

Epsom salt, however, was poorly named. Some days ago my husband was trying to put some duck eggs in a salt water brine to preserve them. I went to check on them today and cooked a few to see how they turned out. They were not salty at all but were extremely bitter. Then I sampled the brine they were supposed to be in, and noticed my bag of Epsom salt nearby was half empty and…well it said salt in English, didn’t it?

That might be a cure for something…but I’m not recommending it…

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