The Guinness book of records has been published for more than forty years. It used to be a useful compendium of facts about nature and the noble achievements of mankind; nowadays it is mainly bollocks. The longest ear hair, the most glasses balanced on the chin, the longest string of dirty dishes washed with one bottle of detergent.

Hang on, that last one sounds interesting. The record was set in the Philippines in 1999 when 8,754 plates were washed and placed end to end over a distance of 2.2 kilometres. Now that’s what I call an achievement.

Enter the proud city of Pattaya. Ever keen to organise events which will have zero impact on tourist numbers whilst providing copy for the local papers, the deputy major announced that a record breaking attempt would be held from the 26-30th April. Also, please welcome Unilever, who are going to supply the single 875cc bottle of Sunlight detergent which will be used to wash the planned 10,000 dishes.

Not as exciting as an ear hair challenge, but your fearless correspondent was determined to capture the sights, sounds and smells of thousands of dirty dishes getting the Sunlight treatment. So she who must be obeyed was tasked with finding out more about the event (like exactly where and exactly when). And she found out nothing. She even rang the hotel that was meant to be directly involved (perhaps providing the dirty dishes), and they knew nothing about it.

Filed under another cocked-up local event and forgotten; until this morning when I saw this:

Sorry I have not been posting for a couple of days. I have been away, hanging out in Baviasi which, as I am sure you know, is in the Tash Murkon region of the Arvachah constellation. Still lost? Me too.

MMORPG is an LLA (ludicrously long acronym). It stands for “massively multi-player online role-playing game”, and the biggest by far is World of Warcraft. More than eleven million people around the world pay good money every month to stomp around in an on-line imaginary world. That covers the “massively multi-player” bit. As for the role playing; well you decide to be an Orc or an Elf or something else that sounds like it comes from a kid’s fairytale book, and looks like an unlikely genetic cross between a circus clown and Thomas the Tank Engine. And then you then spend hours collecting things, killing monsters and visiting cities to do a bit of shopping. Just like real life really, apart from the killing monsters bit.

The more you play, the more you progress in skills and wealth, and so you gain levels which give you access to more skills and wealth, bigger monsters etc. Once you have played for a year or so, you realise you are just doing the same thing all the time, just at higher and higher levels; and then you stop. At least I did, although I will admit it was difficult to walk away from a character I had spent so much time and effort in developing. There is a communal aspect to this too. To take on the more difficult quests, you need a team of people to work with online. So you have to walk away from them too.

But I did manage to break the 2-3 hours a night habit and vowed I would never get myself sucked into one of these time and money wasters again. And I didn’t. Then last week I had an email from a friend in America, pointing me towards Eve Online. I should have deleted his mail, but curiosity got the better of me.

Eve Online is another MMORPG. Unlike World of Warcraft, which a child of ten can probably pick up in an hour or so, Eve Online is a frighteningly complex challenge which a child of ten will take weeks to understand, and a child of my age may never be able to get to grips with. To get you started there are a several days worth of tutorial missions and I have spent several hours playing the first few and I feel like I have not even scratched the surface of how this thing works.

This is my ship. I shall call it “The Doomed”:

All three of our regular readers may recall the most excellent helmetcam; an exotic blend of bicycle helmet and camera with which I planned to make the definitive windsurfing movie.

Didn’t work. The camera is not sufficiently wide angle to capture anything but sea; which makes for a rather unexciting video experience. So when searching for a solution for a mount to insert the camera into Dean’s racing car, it seemed obvious to move from helmetcam….

Down to Bira this morning to catch Dean’s first race of the weekend. Having tried and mainly failed to take a video from the passenger seat, I thought I would try installing a camera in his car for the race. Unfortunately, I arrived a little too late to spend much time on installation, and the best I could do was tape a camera to the roll bar. I managed to disturb the control wheel when doing so, and the result was zero video. Never mind, I have grand plans for an upgraded installation tomorrow and hopefully we can capture the race.

Last time Dean raced he was surrounded by girls on the grid. Today he was not so lucky:

Parked in the basement car park of my condo yesterday and the handyman pointed out that one of my tyres was partially deflated. I think he was hoping I would slip him a few baht to fix it; but I was determined to do it myself. I am a stubborn old bugger who likes to do things for himself when possible; and having a practice tyre change in the relative comfort of a car park would prepare me for the inevitable day when I had to do itmyself when stuck out in the country in the dark in a rainstorm.

Hell of a name for a swimsuit competition, but here are a few photos from the event. Leave you to decide whether any of the contestants were unlimited, sexy, or stars.

It’s not often I offer to be nailed to a cross, but such was my desire for a Cadbury’s creme egg that I was prepared to suffer a few nails for a taste.

Enter a saviour in the form of one the more eloquent, acerbic and grammatically correct commenters on this site, genuinej.

He mailed me to tell me he was coming to Thailand and, for a donation of up to 50% of the costs of his flight, he was prepared to smuggle some creme eggs into the Kingdom. Once he had assured me that the smuggling would not include storage in his anal cavity, and a price of around 0.0000002% of his travel costs had been agreed (to be reimbursed in the form of a cup of coffee); we had a deal.

And we met today for the handover. In the flesh, genuinej looks a little like Charlton Heston (during his Ben Hur period, not during his lunatic NRA gun wielding years). He is here on a golfing holiday to work on a handicap which has seen better days but is still probably better than Billy can manage. He is full of stories and it was a pleasure to meet him.

Oh, and he brought eggs:

I enjoy photographing sailing craft. Windsurfers, yachts, even racing jetskis. They are all difficult to shoot from the shore; particularly here, where the sun is shining into your lens from midday onwards. And if I want to capture windsurfing or yacht races then I really need to get out on the water to follow the racers around the course.

I tried to cover a big windsurf racing event in Jomtien a year or so ago. There was a “press boat” and I signed on as press. There was also a “VIP boat” which took off with a fat man on board a few minutes before the first race was about to start. But the press boat never moved. As start time drew near I enquired why were not leaving; apparently we were waiting for someone. The someone turned out to be another self-important twat VIP who was eventually installed in the boat along with three women, two kids, and three of us who were actually there to take photographs.

Rod is a successful software salesman. We know this because he sits in a shit cubicle and, after offering a 50% discount, he lands a deal worth $1 million. Shortly after, his company is sold to Oracle for billions, meaning his stock options are worth millions. And suddenly he has a start-up company selling solar panels which an investor is prepared to provide with $10 million. Rod has everything going for him; except love.

Enter Natalie. She is an aspiring model who is suddenly called by Victoria’s secret and offered a modelling contract, which means she is now a lingerie model; an ideal potential girlfriend for Rod and his stock options. They hook up and eventually spend the night at a motel.

By this time, we are 45 minutes into a movie directed by James Nguyen. During the week, James is a software salesman, and you can imagine him sitting in his cubicle dreaming of big sales, stock options and a lingerie model girlfriend. And then making a movie about it at the weekend. But this movie is called “Birdemic: Shock and Terror”, and all we have had so far is the totally unbelievable story of Rod and Natalie.

But here it comes. After a night of what appears to have been no sex, Rod awakens fully clothed to find that their motel is under attack from birds. And not just any birds. These birds make noises like dive bombers and explode on impact when they hit the ground.

I can clearly remember the last time I sat in a racing car. Actually, I can’t remember exactly when, 1984 I think, but it was a Phantom P75, it was at Doune, it was raining, and I won my class. The trophy lies rotting on a shelf along with a few others that I collected in my brief and not particularly auspicious motor racing career.

This was my Phantom, with me inside it: