Hi there! (30/07/10),

My cup runneth over! Yes indeedy the annual ISO quality assurance inspection is once more upon us!

Actually it comes as a constant surprise that in this ever so slightly dysfunctional land of blissful ignorance and responsibility shirking, that we are required to jump through such annual hoops. What next? Health and Safety inspections ? I think not.

Either way it’s time to gather up the paperwork and have it all easily to hand when they ask for some piece of paper 6 months old . Last year the external auditors only spoke German for some reason so I was in there trying my best in Thai, English and German to make sense of it. ….I wonder if they’ll ask about the fire exits again?

Looks like another opportunity to don my corporate English camp hat has come up towards the end of the month. This time it’ll be up in Kanchanaburi ( famous for the “Bridge on the river Kwai” ). That should be good, the extra money especially welcome as after 6 months of asking every month I finally got a whopping 12,000 baht leccy bill.

Actually it’s not really that whopping, works out at about 40 quid a month, a little higher than usual, but then again it’s been bastarding hot, the antiquated aircon has been on a lot, especially as I was housebound with the civil unrest troubles for a good number of days over the April/May period.

Ah yes, my aircon. To put it mildly, death is too good for it. The massive drum shaped fan bin outside my bedroom rattles and coughs and now whines , hums and now intermittently screeches to such an extent I had to  duct tape a piece of futureboard over a defunct expelair vent in my bedroom to cut down the noise.  As it regularly cuts out and starts up again due to some internal thermostat, I found I was waking up at night all the time due to these irregular and nocturnal noises. Now it appears my neighbour has been complaining to the office downstairs…Can’t exactly blame him/her..it is very loud.  Thing is, I’ve spent about 10,000 Baht in the last 18 months maintaining a couple of units in the place and I don’t feel compelled to spend significant amounts to actually replace the units when it’s not my flat. At the same time I feel a bit guilty driving my neighbours nuts with the rattle. It is cooler at night just now cos of the rains and I can make do with a fan for a while but it ain’t gonna be much good in the long run when it gets hairy hot again.

Small paul is wending his way back to BKK in the next couple of weeks just as Tall Paul is heading off to make big money in Boston. The good news is there will be a small window of opportunity to get together while they are both here. Indeed, tall Paul has even expressed a desire to get together and play as Snatch one more time before he heads. That would be so fantastic. Noriegas bar (aka Nomads), is likely to give us any weekday we want (we still have a solid welcome there) even if we haven’t rehearsed!!! Haha. Call it an ambitious extended jam! Either way it’s encouraging enough for me to restring my guitar and get some practice in so I can remember some of the tunes!!! It’s a bit of a shame really. We were really quite good at our peak. At least with small Paul back there will be a bit of an impetus to get back to playing music. You tend to forget that successfully making music and committing to practicing and playing requires all different sorts of input from the various band members. Paul’s infectious enthusiasm is his contribution.

Bring it on…..

Hi there! (23/07/10),

One of my most favourite authors William Boyd once wrote "The last thing you ever learn about yourself is your effect on other people".  Indeed, to self assess your worth or effectiveness either privately or professionally is always fraught with heaps of  pro-me subjectivity and false bravado. Nobody with any sense after all ,likes to readily admit  failures however small, especially when , at least in a professional sense, it welcomes pelters of overt and uncomfortable criticism from your superiors.

Perhaps it might be best to hide those minor failures, sweep them with all those other bothersome dust motes of existence under the lumpy carpet of life. It's what people do… But unfortunately I'm not hard wired like that. I've always been one to stand up and be counted for my failures as well as my victories. Don't get me wrong, my lack of progress in a particular project wasn't exactly a biggie or major fuck up but it got me thinking about how we as individuals actually go about progressing in our  lives and how we actually measure our successes or failures. I once wrote a song called "precious little victories"  that make our lives so sweet. Is the creeping shadow of pessimism something that seeks to cloud our bright eyed optimistic vision as the years march inexorably on?

This idea of success or failure is perhaps even more particularly exacerbated by how you measure yourself as a teacher in this crazy profession. Sure others can watch, can assess for a period or two, but what exactly are you trying to achieve in a classroom and how are you going about it? These things can only be answered by honestly looking at yourself.

 The academically minded throw themselves into thick books of teaching methodologies and classroom psychobabble to further their careers and perhaps also that they might loom loftily over others and quote slightly defunct or mildly outdated concepts in an ever so slightly patronizing manner. They, after all, having spent 3 tortuous years grinding their way through a very difficult course to a Masters degree have to get some mileage out of it in any way they can.

When it comes to teaching there as sooo many ways to skin a proverbial cat ,the only way to approach it is to adopt as many of these different methodologies into a progressive framework of teaching as you can: Grammar study, TPR,  Task Based Learning, CLIL . It's when you come to assessing how much you've actually achieved that questions arise, especially when you only have 3 hours a week with your class.

I've spent the last 2 years and three separate courses working completely off the coursebook, preparing my own style of teaching using project based teaching and trying to get my class to adapt their English capabilities into everyday functional situations. Fact is, I don't know how much I'm reaching my goals. I'd like to say I'm a popular teacher, my students like to come to my classes because I put a lot of effort in, they have fun,  and they do try to work for me as best they can.

But I think it's time to return to the coursebook grammar  outlines for a while before I lose my way. Perhaps the new coursebook we're adopting will be better…

I was down at the outreach project again yesterday watching and overseeing the latest group of 4 doing their teaching. GOD it was so hot. No aircon, just wooden classrooms with a large and wholly ineffectual ceiling fan turning lazily like a buffalo grinding a rice millsone. I got to thinking about how hard it might be teaching in these temperatures for 20+ hours a week. I realize just how good I have it in my aircon haven here, and that other foreign teachers  before me sweated and shat themselves in skinny bags of bones in desperately poor and rural places of Thailand. Rural school teaching here is a young man's game it surely is. Despite not actually teaching and drinking about 1.5 litres of fluids whilst there, I came away with a touch of dehydration and heatstroke yesterday. A pounding headache at night and bright orange pee confirmed this!! Next time it'll have to be at least 2 litres!!

So it's another holiday weekend ! 4 days off to celebrate Buddhist Lent.  Don't think I'll be giving anything up really!. I think it'll be quite a quiet weekend, just chilling wit ma Boo, going to the flicks, a couple of nice lunches and maybe a day date hanging round the city centre. We might finally have our long intended walk around the zoo: love 'em or hate 'em it's  set in really nice surroundings…. In the central lake there's an ancient Koy carp the size of a large dolphin I'd like to try and lure to the surface with a loaf of bread or two.

Hi There (19/07/10),

To the uninitiated, the expression "Dim Sum" conjures up a world of Chinese dumplings, usually steamed, filled with a cornucopia of readily unidentifiable ingredients that may or may not prove to be appetizing.

So it was with a certain small degree of trepidation I went off with Cherry to her family's "secret" Dim sum destination in the Asia hotel at Ratchetwri last Tuesday. Dim Sum, I learned means something like "tasty wee afternoon snack", not indigestible dumplings as I thought.

Indeed all that is Dim sum is not dumplings, nor all they aall steamed, they come in exotic sauces, grilled, deep fried, with and without some noodle type casing.

It was an "all you can eat " do. For  a meagre 340 Baht (about 7 quid) you could order as many items from the 60 on the menu as often as you liked. I think we started with about 15. The bamboo baskets were stacked high as we dug in: Stuffed crab claws, scallops and mushrooms, garoupa and xo sauce, steamed prawns, pork, mussels, dory balls,. Dipping sauces, curry sauces, sweet and sour, peppery..the range of things on offer was stunning. Needless to say we went to town (just as well we both skipped breakfast to do this). Verdict: Dim Sum is just like Tapas and Wonton (which are part of the dim sum family) is best regarded as Chinese Ravioli….Remember you heard it here first!!!

Good news is I'm heading back there at the months end to celebrate Cherry's dad birthday YAY J.

The observant amongst you will note I did blog in last Friday. Fact is we've been helluva busy again at work this past coupla weeks and I didn't find the wee half hour I usually need to get it done..sorry for that.

Congrats to my bro Andy this past week. Not only celebrating his birthday, but landing a column in the "Scots" magazine (the one they sell in masses to all those ageing ex pats and Scottish wannabees in North America) about the life of a gamekeeper. I'm really chuffed for him , his writing style and word play can be a joy to read ,and maybe this augers for bigger things.  It'd be nice to have someone in the family who finally put pen to paper and got properly paid for it. And no, writing Homeopathy curriculi doesn't count older bro!

I got my first Thai Credit Card this week. Strangely a Visa card from a bank I don't even have a regular account with AND a 1000 quid credit limit!! I'd always heard it was relatively difficult for a honky farang to get one, but as I put in 6 applications ,all from Chula Uni at the same time, I guess they thought we were probably a safe bet.  I don't really expect to use it much, but it would be nice to get myself a credit rating here an also cut out the necessity of carrying around my UK platinum one: I don't fancy being defrauded by someone maxing that one out to its limit!!

The charity project is rolling down to Samut Prakhan again next Thursday I'll be going down again as an observer. I'm interested how it will pan out this time as I've purposely left the assigned teachers to their task of putting together a lesson and left them to get on with it. When you've 4 teachers teaching 2 groups you have to hope they can work a lesson out together that suits them both and is pitched correctly for the students. Some people love to work in a team and others remain steadfastly egregious, that's the way of things.

I'm hearing distant murmurings of some more paid work sooner than I thought which is also good. I'm expecting to meet a rich dad and his mildly disturbed spoilt child next week with a view to teaching writing to. Not ESL teaching, more like UK curriculum Keystage level 2 writing. So it'll be something new for me. I've done a bit or reading up on it and what I have to get him to achieve and it seems pretty straightforward, but it seems to get anything out of this spoilt, difficult , and mental kid it's gonna have to be pitched in a way as to keep his severely impaired attention. My colleague teaches him Maths once a week and often returns to the office frazzled and deeply irritated. But at 1200 Baht an hour , I'd be a nutter to let it pass, especially as it's 5 mins walk from the office.

So I'm trying pretty hard to make some money and fill up the depleted savings coffers. I also need to start thinking of Christmas a return trip next April. Before that however, Cherry and I will go up to Hua hin for a couple of nights in early August and enjoy a luxury hotel, the same one we went to way back at the start…awwww!

I hear my good friend small Paul has finally shaken off his terrible skin complaint after long treatment in the UK and is heading back to Thailand in the next few weeks. It'll be great to see him back. Perhaps we an try and get the band back on its feet, though Jon seems busier and busier with his drumming duties nowadays. I went to see him in a Jazz trio last week and really enjoyed what he was doing. Nice to see some genuine originality with talented playing in this cover copy town.

An email yesterday confirmed my folks were back in one piece from Greece. I'm glad I was getting a little worried about their continued radio silence. I guess they must have gone to one of the few islands in Europe that was still net free. It's most unlike them not to send a wee update from a dingy internet café when they are on holiday. Hope you had a great time folks. I watched a little of the British Open from St Andrews on the telly and felt a little homesick yesterday.  I guess its time to make rough plans to go home…. J

Hi there! (09/07/10)

It's been a source of surprise that Thailand has ridden the global meltdown storm so successfully. We've waited with bated breath for months to see the Baht finally get up to what (we exchange rate conscious farangs) would consider a "normal " level , say 55 Baht to the pound, only to see it stick tenaciously around the 40-44 mark.

Fact is Thailand is getting more expensive as a result. My recent trip down to Pattaya for this English camp at the beginning of the week highlighted the great disparities in price between Bangkok and the rest of the country. I hadn't really been so aware of it before, partially as I'm in BKK most of the time, but also cause I haven't been up country for about 18 months now. It must be very very hard for low income earers in the city just now, especially those dependent on tourism, Pattaya was a ghost town.

One of the more interesting things about getting middle aged is how you habitually put a value to everything, not just monetary values either: "emotional involvement" values, "Is it worth the effort?'"values , and morally correct/incorrect values amongst many more grey areas.

In terms of monetary values it seems pretty clear to me that if you want to make any decent amounts of money you either: get involved in an industry where your skill set is such where demand far outstrips supply (doctors, dentists, …) or you're in a semi entrepreneurial position to get other people to do the work for you and you cash in on their labours.

I would appear to fit in neither of those categories.

It doesn't exactly bother me. I mean it'd be nice to find a wee market gap where I could exploit my skills more keenly. I have one or two things I'd like to expand upon but they are dependent on the support and input of others.

As it stands I'm doing corporate evening work twice a week (may take on another 2), possibly starting to tutor a mildly hyper-spoiled deranged kid (by all accounts) next week, teaching my normal classes ,and doing any other additional odds and sods I can squeeze in is making for quite a busy time. But the fact is, working in the public sector with no pay increase in 9 years, and annually fiddled out of the work bonus whilst all around me people are stuffing proverbial nuts in their cheek pouches, is a little , how do I put it? Offputting..

I love my job though, even with all the hassles, politics, nonsense, abuse, and everything else I'm subjected to, I've got better at "valuing" things and I don't get so negatively emotionally involved in idiots and situations outwith my control so much now. That's gotta be a good thing.

But this constant "valueing" process can be misleading as much as it purports to guide an individual. I don't think any of us can escape it. Responsibilities and various human relationship pressures force us to make daily value judgements on our lives and we all have to muddle through as best we can with our scruples and morals surviving mostly intact and unscathed as much as possible. "Realpolitik" for modern life I guess. I look at how full the planet is getting, how many millions are living in the most abject of conditions and envision a future where swathes of citizenry will be excluded from work purely because of they're lack of a skill set. Brave New world indeed.

A hard rain IS gonna fall…………..

Hi there! (2/07/10)

It's that time of the year where the transient expats of Bangkok are starting to wend their way to their respective homelands. International schools are starting on their "summer break" and teachers between contracts, or not having had their contracts renewed, are Blighty bound. It's interesting to note how some people are already dismissing Thai life and culture at this phase and telling themselves (and anyone else who'll listen) how great it'll be back in a decent and cultured society once more. It strikes me that however much you can take a poke at aspects of life out  here in the east, there are a myriad  of equally depressing and dysfunctional aspect to consider in  society back in the west. If I never see another ned/chav in my life it'll still be too soon par example. Oh, and you can take your 20 % VAT and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Slag Thailand and Thai culture off as much as you like, but do us all a favour and wait till you've left. Those of us who quite like it here don't want to hear your feeble self justified   narcisstic bleatings anymore..so do us all a favour and just go! You know who you are….. J

So it's off to the beach resort at Pattaya for a couple of nights next week to deliver another of our English camps to the Provincial Electric Authority. I'm looking forward to it. Always nice to get out of the big city and take in the sea breezes. And always nice to make a bob or two extra cash, well worth sacrificing my days off for.. Doubtless we'll have a little time on the Monday night to enjoy a few sherberts out and about once we've set things up over the afternoon. Yes of course we've got to dine with the HR trainers, but at least we've managed to successfully decline joining them afterwards for a glitzy ladyboy show with all the other course delegates, (Thank God) . I'm sure we'll have to make up for it with singing a round or two of songs in their "sanook" in house Karaoke evening midway through the course that we're always invited to. L

I've been doing a lot of interviews lately. It's funny how the more you do these, the more you garner some sort of "spidey sense". It's really hard to explain. Candidates may say all the right things, look the right way, even have a C.V. that appears at first glance to be sound. Yet the tingly feeling prevails…I've ignored it enough times now to realize how wrong it was to discount it. Now I'm taking a greater role in Sam Yan school I'll be sure to make sure all the fingers fit the glove correctly if you know what I mean.

The rainy season finally seems to have come. Temperatures are finally dropping , ooh, to 33 degrees or so. The nights are punctuated by violent thunder storms..the one last night camped over my condo for about 2 hours at three am this morning and kept waking me up: shook the blooming walls and ruffled my hair so it did! Now all I have to do is figure out what I did with my small collapsible Siam Bank umbrella…although this morning's walk to the skytrain wasn't too bad, 30 seconds out in a downpour will have you soaked through and it's a good ten minute walk to my corporate class twice a week.

Week 2 of the charity outreach programme appeared to go well again this week. I went down as observer/photographer this time. It was very hot down there, I'm glad I managed to find us all some of Toyota camp t shirts to wear. Now I'm working on the Baan Jaan petrochemical company to give us a few natty joint Chula-Ban Jaan logo-ed ones to wear when we're teaching. It'd nice to give the volunteers a wee free t shirt incentive to participate. I reckon Baan Jaan will be only to happy to see us Chula teachers wearing their logo!!!

Now all I gotta do is find another 4 volunteers to watch when we head off down there again on the 22^nd…

Easier said than done….

Hi there! (25/06/10)

Given that I've been leading this frugal and monk like existence for some time now, I finally decided to ring in a major change this week.

You'll remember my last blog venting some frustration at the world cup tv signal…well I went out and rectified the situation: I bought a stonking great Samsung 42 inch plasma TV and had the cable guy come and wire it in (along with the tv in the living room for a wee 500 baht backhander) the same day. I've installed said tv at the foot of my bed and it looks, frankly, magnificent . Only once before have I had the joy of purchasing a nice big shiny new TV, but the sheer screen size of this one is really quite breathtaking and a joy to behold. Picture quality is damn good, even from a usb thumbdrive. It's like having a cinema in your bedroom. It goes without saying I'm considering a modest surround sound system at some point in the future too.

I know some of the more health conscious of you out there will question the Feng Shui/health aspects of such a large electromagnetic device so close to where one sleeps. We are after all, according to recent media reports, on the verge of an epidemic of ear/brain cancer as we all determinedly and indifferently microwave ourselves with rampant mobile phone overuse. If you stop to think of it, just how much in the way of radio waves, microwaves, xrays, electromagnetic pulses, static and low level radiation is a person in a banging frontier town like Bangkok exposed to everyday anyway?

Like the clouds of foetid car pollution that fill my lungs every day I chose not to dwell on it. If however, I find myself being plagued by headaches or becoming irrational , or behaving out of character, I will take steps to remove said tv from such a direct placement . I wouldn't want any involuntary modern day electro-shock therapy now would I? As things stand however, I totally love it. I even woke up at 130 am last night to watch Denmark v's Japan (tough luck Denmark) and even in a half dream-sleep state still experienced the "oooh" factor when the screen lit up. J

My new passport arrived this week. This in itself is not a particularly remarkable event, but it does herald a long and boring sojourn at the immigration office out in the styx on my day off to transfer all the relevant stamps (work permit/visa/multi-rentry permit etc etc) across and THEN reregister for 90 days before it runs out and I get fined for overstay. It's incredible the amount of stuff I have to photocopy and take with me too. I'm quite surprised they didn't ask me to drop my keks and photocopy my bum cheeks for good measure!

I'm also applying for a Thai visa card this week (MORE photocopying). Cherry's brother has kindly offered to process the applications so I've got a whole bunch of colleagues applying at the same time to improve all our chances. The banks are not too keen on issuing visa cards to people who earn less than 50,000 Baht a month, let alone honky foreigners. It's not like I'll be using it much anyway, but it'd be nice to have a Thai visa card for credit rating car rental, flights and hotel room booking purposes. We'll see how that pans out.

Serendipidously a faulty pipe on my balcony that was flooding below needed fixed at the same time Cherry happened to be staying at my place for the day. It allowed me the chance to communicate my displeasure at the state the painters left my balcony with all the crap and paint flakes lying around and to also mention the things they broke like the hosepipe tap and the swing chair. I looked out this morning to find the roof terrace miraculously cleaned and buffed up … YAY! naice.

Shame for poor Cherry though, she was looking forward to a dozy relaxing day only to have 4 guys on the balcony with heavy power tools drilling and banging from 9-3pm. Allegedly, I should be free from workmen walking all over my balcony from now on as the building has been fully repainted. That'll be a blessing, it's hard to relax when strangers are constantly criss crossing in front of your windows.

I've got lots more work and projects coming up in the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to another business English language camp at a nice beach resort in  Pattaya early next month. Even if it's hard graft for a couple of days, it's always nice to get out of the city. I've also got the 2^nd set of teachers, (with the 3^rd set as observers accompanying) off down to the outreach project school on Thursday morning. I'll be heading down with them to watch and oversee a bit. Hope that goes smoothly. It's funny how when you let go of direct input and start delegating, the ghosts of worry start to raise their wispy spectral forms in your subconscious.

Ah the joys of project management…:)

Hi there! (18/06/10)

It never fails to amaze me the lengths some people will go to divest themselves of responsibility and consequently push the failure or blame for something as far away from their sphere of influence as possible.

This culture is particularly true of Thailand. In many respects they have the additional,  (and complicated) concept of face saving to deal with as an extra bugbear. But in the long run, a culture that lacks the balls to accept ultimate accountability will always founder on the pointy rocks of experiment and innovation …. In short, you gotta fail to progress…… You gotta go to come back.

Thus it was with a degree of sadness that the cool dedicated website I/we recently lovingly put together was deemed surplus to requirements and it's immediate termination ordered. Whither this directive comes from is not exactly clear, but then I guess ultimately doing a better job in three weeks that has taken a dedicated computer department  years  to make an utter pigs arse of, was bound to put somebody's nose out of joint.

So you just say "fuck it" and move on. After all, it's not the end of the world is it?

But it's the nasty taste in the mouth that remains. The jealous, petty, pointless, de- constructive, de-motivating, feeling of helplessness that cloys like an elastic booger to your nostril in a swimming pool .  If I stopped to reflect on all the similar incidents like this that have plagued my thoughts of late, I'd start losing my burning faith in human nature pretty quickly, and I pride myself on being the office optimist ..

 So sun spots are active eh? You don't say? It's baking just now. Oh there are nice thunder storms every other night but that doesn't ever seem to make a dent to the heat  during the day. My living room temperatures barely hovers under 40 degrees. Without even realizing it, I'm turning into some kind of naturist. Whilst I'm really not trying to insert disturbing subliminal images in your collective minds dear readers, I am trying to get across it is so blinking hot all the time that removing clothes to the barest minimum at any and every opportunity is de riguer,  especially as even the cold tap in my shower is only couple of degrees below the temperature of blood….The swimming pool option  is nice though.

World cup fever abounds here as much as anywhere I guess. The only difference is that the tv feed has been blocked by FIFA to stop surrounding countries who haven't paid (yes you Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos) piggybacking on it for free. It is still available from traditional aerial antenna receivers (as opposed to free satellite signals like I usually get) but this now involves me waltzing round my room with a bit of makeshift aerial cable and duct tape craning around to look at pictures of anything up to 44 players (if you include their multiple ghostly shadows) running around the stadia in an electro blizzard….Who is using a hairdryer Goddammit! . It takes me right back to my first bedroom tv upstairs in my family home in Tayport all those years ago. Except back then to signal was a lot better and the picture was black and white!

This leaves me in a quandry. How to watch the footie… Accept the eyestrain and confusion caused by a shit signal (and you were complaining about the Vuvuzela horns…). Invest in some indoors "bunny ears" aerial that might rectify the situation for the duration of the cup? Or go the whole hog and get me a new tv and a UBC cable setup? The jury is currently out on the latter. I'm kinda keen to blow a bit of cash on some home entertainement. I know I'd enjoy getting the BBC world service news as I've been cocooned from the outside world for many years now. I also currently really enjoy a selection of watchables I download for free (and probably illegally) from a thumbdrive and a nice big tv would very much enhance this.

My brother recently suggested that some  people invest in large and unnecessary luxuries like a big tv to make up for their unhappy lives. I found this to be an interesting perspective and thought about my own case. I reckon I'm pretty happy actually. I don't have many friends and I don't go out galavanting very much any more. I spent a lot of time on my own (and increasingly more with Cherry J ). But I wouldn't regard myself as unhappy or needing to make up for things that are lacking in my life. It's more about making some headway in feeling like I'm going to stay here in the long run. It'll be 5 years in October since I landed here, yet my life still feels pretty stripped down to the bare essentials, you should see my cutlery and crockery collection haha! Perhaps it is time I went out and got something substantial like this big tv to push me into another go at making myself a proper home. I'm 44 and still feel pretty rootless compared to all my dear friends who've readily adapted to middle age and middle aged responsibilities. Maybe this is my lot, maybe it isn't. Either way, my days of dancing round my room with a makeshift aerial and a metal coathanger are most definitely over….

Oooh, and there's also the surround sound and home theatre aspect to consider….

Hi there! (11/06/10)

Well it's been one helluva busy week this last one. It's Friday, I have a long working weekend, my raging cold has finally reached it's streaming peak after 3 days and all I'd like to do is spend all weekend in bed!!!

Still I mustn't grumble, things have gone mostly well. On Tuesday I started my new corporate class at Thai military bank teaching a tiny class of 4 students. It didn't help there wasn't a meeting room for me, so I hads to teach them in a small partition of an open plan office whose aircon went off a 6 pm..What joy!! Sweating like a _______ I was!

Still, they're a nice bunch and seem to be into my teaching approach. The only drawback is that being so few in number they tend to race through the activities I provide..oh well.

I also got the charity Outreach programme underway this week. The team went down to the school last Thursday morning and delivered a couple of hours teaching to the kids (all dressed in their finest: cubs and girl guides uniforms they were ..awww). I've got three weeks to get the next team in place and ready as well as develop interest in the programme and find other worthy causes to look into.

I've seen a lot of Cherry this week . Like me she's been very busy at work till late and as a consequence decided to drive on over to my place rather than a long drive home. And very nice it has been too….Now the bed seems too wide when she's not there LOL!

I don't appear to have any witty or astute observations on the vagaries of Thai society today. This is partly due to my lack of humour with this bloody cold and also due to the fact that there is a certain lull in reflective thinking as I'm running around like a blue arsed fly.

So the world Cup starts tonight. My colleagues have been playing a medly of England World Cup squad songs all afternoon and have all decided to set "Three Lions on a shirt" as their ringtone. As a dyed in the wool Scotsman it's deeply traumatizing. I shall be supporting Denmark all the way…Though I wish the Tartan army was there I must admit…..

I'm taking them all out on Sunday for 90 mins of free beer to celebrate Dundee United's Scottish cup win, hopefully by then USA will have humped England in the first game!

Hi there! (04/06/10)

The observant amongst you will have noticed I didn't post a blog last week. Well it was a holiday weekend and my blogs had been filled with a little anger and frustration as of late, so I thought I'd give us both a short break from it all. J

I'm glad to say that things (at least in Bangkok) have settled down to such an extent there's the inevitable rounds of finger pointing and blame allocation being done on a variety of public stages. It's all bollocks if you ask me….. nobody is going to fall on their sword so it'll all swirl around in the light media breeze whilst the redshirts cause small stooshies in the provinces and gear up for another eventual assault on the capital… It looks like I was wrong about the government's position being untenable, they'll not be announcing elections before the end of the year, which is a bit of a shame if you ask me. They're likely to start living up to the unfair demonizing they received in the western press at this rate.

A big congratulations to my good friends Donna and Leigh on the birth of their 2^nd daughter Alyssia. (Time for the snip Leigh!!!). I'm looking forward to seeing their lovely prune next Monday after I've put in my passport for renenwal at the UK embassy..

Yup, still 3 years on my passport but it's completely full..The more insignificant a country is (in global terms) the bigger amount of space their visa stamp takes up. In the cases of Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, and Cambodia, their visa stickers take up a whole page…Whilst Japan's is barely the size of a thumbnail!. It's gonna be an expensive business: Ok so I'm gonna get a 48 page one as I might yet travel lots..that's er  9000 odd Baht ( 200 quid incl. postage), then I have to get all the official stamps transferred across…A whole day at the government  offices in Chang Wattana. Then in September when I get my new 1 year visa I'll get a multiple exit visa (so I can leave and return without anything being stamped invalid) for another 90 odd quid! I'm constantly told the bureaucracy here isn't a shadow of what it used to be like in the good old days, but that doesn't make the waiting any easier..just glad I'll have my itouch and a good book to amuse me.

I've been idly window shopping lately (now that some of the malls have reopened) and strangely find myself jonesing for stuff. I've managed to keep a lid on extravagant spending of unnecessary gadgets and fripperies for the last year and a half, so why do I keep drooling at 42 inch flat screen tv's? World cup fever?  I don't have cable, council telly is awful. And my living room is around 41 degrees, (when is it gonna get cooler, this is going on too long!1) and the aircon unit will cost far too much to fix (new compressor 30,000 baht) Everything I currently watch I download and watch via USB on the small 22 inch screen in my "cold"  bedroom. In my minds eye I see this behemoth screen sitting at the bottom of my bed with a natty home theatre system..I wonder if I'll give in to temptation? The prognosis isn't looking too hot, my interest remains piqued and twitching..Thank goodness I've steered clear of Powerbuy. Is it in any way generated by World cup fever ? Nah don't think so!

Cherry and I celebrate our "official" 1 year anniversary this Sunday. I'm looking forward to a nice night out. I know she is too. She started a new job last week and now finds herself in a  number crunching jargon filled world of sales reports and bar charts.  Poor Lass, I don't envy her one bit.

This weekend finally sees the school opening back up and getting back on track. I'm looking forward to teaching and seeing my students again. Whether they feel the same way remains to be seen. J

Hi There (21/05/10),

I guess a few of you will be logging on to find out my take on what has been going down here the last few days.

Like I've mentioned before, it's hard to have an opinion on what is going on here as it is not my country, not my fight, and I am not in possession of enough truths in endless packs of lies to be certain of much.

I would say however, that the BBC and CNN's handling of the coverage has been pretty disgraceful. I have a good friend who works as a freelance cameraman and he was doing some stuff for the BBC and simply couldn't believe the bullshit they were coming out with when voicing over his footage….BTW He's Canadian/Nepalise who's lived here since he was a baby…

So let's put a few myths to rest first: The Red Shirts are not freedom fighters ok? They are not the poor suppressed voices of a nation struggling for political representation in the face of an aggressive 1984 like dictator. Yes, they originally made some valid points about the democratic process, and yes they won what they originally came for (democratic elections in November ), but the knobbers wouldn't leave it at that. Oh dear no..Schisms appeared amongst them. A large part of this force was motivated purely by the money that Taksin was paying out daily, and a small but significant part of those wanted anarchy and chaos to boot.

Still after, (I believe) a period of showing endless restraint and attempts on negotiation on the governments part, it still came as a shock to see arson and looting become so widespread so quickly in the aftermath of the government forces closing down the protest.

Make no mistake here, despite what you see reported by the "right on" sensationalist fire stoking western press, many of these redshirts were armed: armed with grenades, guns, explosives and prepared to shoot just about anyone or anything. Spreading disinformation by shooting and killing to make out like the army was at fault was a recurring pattern right up till May 19^th. I'm not saying the army was completely innocent, or that there was collateral damage or friendly fire, but this idea put about in the media of the armed forces' indiscriminate shooting of poor peasants armed with bricks, fireworks, and slingshots has got to be stopped. Even as we speak, many of those redshirts are returning to a living martyr's welcome back in their hometowns where they'll sit around like local heroes drinking cheap whisky with their cronies analysing what went wrong and how they'd do it next time….And there will be a next time. …They will be back.

To my mind the government really  tried everything to avoid bloodshed. They showed so much restraint that many of their dyed in the wool supporters saw them as weak and flaccid in the face of such provocation. I doubt the present incumbents will last to years end.

Of the security forces I will say this. I was very disappointed with the performance of police force over the crisis. They more than anyone showed themselves to be fractured into factions with divided allegiances . After this, I believe the entire Thai police force needs to look at itself really carefully, the structure examined, and heads must roll. We already know how underfunded and thereby open to corruption it is… We know that policeman and women have to buy their own uniforms and guns….We know of the usual little ways in which they can extort and supplement their meagre incomes with the tacit blessing of those above.

,…..But a Police Force is , and remains, first in the line as a tool of government to UPHOLD THE LAW… Not the self interests of various police chiefs and captains. No-one, especially the police, should be above the law. Law is where democracy starts and democracy ends. If the police had acted in unison and with cohesion right at the start, none of this would ever have got so far…..Just imagine a mob taking over Buchanan St in Glasgow , or Princes St in Edinburgh and then just staying there for 6 weeks while its ranks swelled! They wouldn't even be allowed to park their arses on the tarmac, let alone set up a camp with a soundstage…have running water , electricity, fresh food,and mobile toilet facilities…Who let all this happen eh? Who let all the trucks through in the first place and continued to wave them by in the following weeks.?

My journo friend still (3 days now) has his condo in Sathorn swimming pool area occupied by police sitting around drinking whisky and playing cards…

If Thailand is to get over this and prove to the world it is still a proactively emerging country with law and democracy at it's beating heart, then it has to show a willingness to demonstrate that nothing, and nobody, is above the law

….. No your son can't buy his way out of a stonewall nightclub shooting murder charge Mister!......  Daddy to pay off the families of 5 people killed at a bus stop by a pissed up rich kid in his sports car?..Enough!.......

 If the money people and ruling elite finally accept and embrace this fact then we might see a bright shining future for all….