NEW BLOG NAME

Since I'm leaving Albuquerque in just over one month on my way to new adventures in Thailand, I've been thinking a lot about what to rename my blog.  I was never really happy with 'Burque Blog anyway ('Burque simply being local slang for my city) and I've never been very good at coming up with clever titles.

Of course, I want the new blog name to reflect my new location, the island of Phuket.  Most of the really good names incorporating "Phuket" seem to have been taken by other websites and blogs I've stumbled across; I thought about using "Patong" or "Kathu" or "Kamala" but I'm not yet certain which of these communities I'll end up in (or perhaps I'll find a place in Thalang or Rawai, or elsewhere).  Today, the term "Goodnight Phuket" popped into my head.  I thought, "well, that sounds kinda nice" as it sounds like good reporter's tagline (was it Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Morrow who signed off from his broadcasts with a similar phrase?).

In Thai, "goodnight" can be said as râat-dtree sà-wàt — this is what Tim taught me (although she pronounces it as laa-tee sa-vaht) — so I thought perhaps that should be what I call the blog.  However, that might be too obscure.  How about including Thai script instead of the transliteration, as well as the English title?  Well, it actually proved a little difficult to find the script for this phrase because most online dictionaries use the catch-all phrase sawaadee — this is similar to the Hawaiian aloha in that it is used to mean "hello," "goodbye," "good morning," "good night," etc.  But I finally succeeded.

Once I found the Thai script for my new blog title, I simply cut-and-pasted it into Microsoft Word and adjusted the font-size and color (I thought yellow would look nice on the blue background).  It wasn't too difficult to match the background with that of the existing blog.  I took a screenshot and then cropped it out in Microsoft PictureIt! Express 9 (I can't figure out more advanced photo editors like Adobe Arobat).  I quite like the end result.

Here's a preview of how the masthead will look (click on the image for a larger view):

Of course, I'll use a different subtitle once I make the changeover as I'll no longer be living in the Northeast Heights of Albuquerque.  Perhaps I'll use something along the lines of "The New Adventures of a Farang In Paradise" (farang is what the Thai people call all foreigners).  (I'm not really happy with that subtitle — it just came off the top of my head — so I'll need to spend some more thought on that...)