Weekend

Here are last. Last night, Tom, Patrick and myself went down to Co-Art, had some beers and watched the guitar player. It was good fun. We met some new Dutch and German teachers who seemed cool and later we came back to mine for some chill times.

I woke up at six and found Tom asleep on the floor. He had to teach and 8.40 so I hope he made it.

I have had no water in the house for about 3 days which has been a mare. Now I have just a trickle but enough to take a long awaited shower. I will try to be a bit productive this weekend and get my arse downtown and do some shopping.



I have been enjoying the game Company of Heroes, reinacting WWII Normandy invasions and driving Sherman tanks around the battlefield. There is a part 2 in town so maybe I will invest.





School has been ok, but Kindergarten only has limited appeal. Yes, they are funny, but progress is quite slow and you're not getting too far beyond ABC and simple reading. Right now, I enjoy my private classes more. It's a shame my superiors can't get decent contracts with school and get us some real work.

Wedding still looming and I have transferred all my money to Oi to relieve myself of any responsibility. Hopefully I will just have to stand aound and nod politely. It should be enough to get me through.

Stoned at Last

Finally....Tom came through.

While I was sick, there was a 2 day public holiday too. Tom took the opportunity to do a quick run up to Koh Phang Ngan and score some weed.





So glad he did.

Last night I went to pick up and we watched The Prestige. I made him watch it. I think he liked it, but maybe not as much as me. He seemed to like Horton Hears a Who. And maybe he had a valid point. But anyway, we watched the magician one. And it was good on Don's big screen. Tom is staying at Don's house while he is in Canada. I think Tom might have to do some cleaning up before Don comes home.



He might read this, but it ain't like Don kept it, unless he likes empty Pringle tubes scattered around the room and pieces of old sandwiches sitting comfortably in a chair.




So at home now on Tuesday night. This morning I got up at six and went for 4 laps of the lake. I convinced myself that I would feel absolutely great for the whole day if I did it.



And I was right. I have felt good today, which makes a change from feeling like a piece of crap like I have of late. I must try to go everyday.


Oh...here's hoping!





The wedding nightmare is approaching and I am getting
loads of conflicting stories from the girls,"She cancelled the
restaurant!","Why didn't she tell you?!","You have to organize thetransport!". I feel like going into the next room and switching on the telly. My only plan is to transfer all my money into Oi's account and then blame her for everything that goes wrong. I can just say, "But I gave you all the money." Whenever something goes wrong, shrug my shoulders in a very Shilock way and grimace and stare.

It's early ways but warning stress signs are appearing about the wedding. I think I might have to go to my Happy Place.

I have been listening to a lot of John Zerzan and inundating his email address with "interesting" stories and critic. I wonder how long before I piss him off! I'll not have to sent too many, I might trigger a major riot or something.




Anyway, it's gone 8 and I think it's time for a nice cup of tea, curl up on the sofa and watch "On Golden Pond."

Really.

Night all.

JJ

Back to School

Well...after being sick for a week I finally went back to school today. It was a horrible illness, a real kids illness. Red spots, sore, fever and awful. I felt terrible and extremely bored too. I was quite happy to go back to the olde school house today, though I am very wary of catching some horrible disease off these disease-ridden rodents. Most of them spend their free time rolling around on some dusty earth floor with the dogs and chickens, and there is normally snot streaming down their noses. Oh, how awful.

So, it was good to get back and now I am at home again.

I have to start transferring money to my lovely girlfriends account soon to pay for the impending union. Everything I have. I beat them down from nearly twice the offered amount and in the end said, "That's all of it. Take it or leave it." Ha ha!

After this we have to spend more money on my lovely wife, a motorcycle and a computer. After that it will probably be children. But I do want to move house afterwards, to somewhere with a garden. Whether this is offset by no internet I will have to see, but I do want to sit under the olde banana tree of an evening and smoke a banana leave or two.

What dreams may come...

The Dark Knight

Just got back from the flicks. The Dark Knight was fantastic, if very long, but very gripping. Halfway through, I was thinking, this isn't a superhero movie, but a brilliant crime flick. Heath Ledger was amazing as The Joker and pretty darn scary.

On a different note, I went to the hospital today and I am finally feeling ok again. It was a horrible sickness and very boring at home. I hope things will be normal again from now on.

I watched a lot of movies though and played a lot of games.

Great movie - Chop Shop.

Sex and Fury and Sickness

Well...all that overindulgence finally caught up with me and in the space of an hour I had gone from feeling perfectly normally to feverish hell. That was Friday.

It's Sunday evening now and I still don't know if I feel right. I have got straight on a strict diet of water, Vitamin C, Nurofen, pasta and soup to try to kill it as fast as possible. It might be working.

So, its been a bit of a crappy weekend, especially now Oi is studying all the time. I watched tons of movies (some great ones, actually) and did some stuff on my website.

I have noticed it really stinks around here, even in the house. Fumes and polluted water.

Movies to watch; Crank (hilarious), Belly(great hard core), Faith of Love, Sex and Fury (Tarantino owes a lot to this 1973 Japanese sexy action flick), Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift.

And I just found an awesome track by Sister Nancy - Bam Bam.

Feeling a bit peeved at my nothing weekend.

My Webpage and Fatness

California Tom

My God, I am feeling fat today and it is quite depressing. It's the result of all this Guinness, you see and it will have to stop. I see my pal Tom quite a lot during the week to watch a movie or listen to some tunes and we always have a few glasses of the black stuff too. One great thing is that there is no hangover whatsoever, but the downside is that you can really feel the swelling barrel of lard washing around your middle region.

I am definitely not going to get fat, so I am going to have to cut down on my beloved glass of blackness.

On top of this, I have also gotten a liking for bacon and eggs which to is serving little purpose. This too is for the axe.

Oh! And I was supposed to be going out tonight to watch Dtoi play guitar at the Co-Art bar!

The arrival of Patrick Larkin hasn't helped in this department as I am sent into a sudden desire to drink and make merry whenever I see the Irish Rover.

Patrick Larkin and Gee

The good news amongst all this self pity is that I have a web page up and running and it's great and I love it. It can be like a little hobby and I will basically stick all my handouts and conversation exercises on it for poor teachers across the globe to utilize. While doing this, I am also learning a lot about this stuff so I can get better at PC's too.

The Morning After

Well, movie night was good. Rescue Dawn is a pretty good movie. A factual account of an American pilot shot down early in the Vietnam war, imprisonment and escape. Shaz, Tom and Patrick attended the viewing and we drank Guinness, ate cheese, ham and popcorn.

I don't teach until this afternoon and have only one class, so I can take it easy once again. I am progressing through the game Bioshock and doing some household chores.

I may soon be buying a graphics drawing tablet so I can draw my own pictures for flashcards etc. Also, I am finally figuring out Paypal and such and I can feel myself working towards something lucrative on the computer. I found a site where you get paid to click on adverts and am exploring websites. Maybe it will lead to me putting a teaching book together as my brother suggests. Who knows?

In fact, I just took the time to start it;

englishhandouts.weebly.com

Bookmark it and check for progress. You might even find it useful.

Photo....Oi on Koh Lepei

Five Rounds with Jim

Today was quite busy. I had 5 kindergarten classes in a row, each 30 minutes long. It's a very fast and energetic sequence of ABC, reading, jumping up and down in a circle and a great rendition of "Wheels on the Bus". It's all over by 11 o'clock and I'm relieved I haven't yet suffered a coronary due to over exertion - sometimes it feels quite close though. I have to frantically pause for breath between ABC's. Emergency water supplies are always at hand.

After that, it's a big lunch with Phit in a fine local restaurant. We have both reduced our portions as we were racking up quite a bill and had trouble getting up from the table. When there are acres of delicious dishes to taste, it is hard not to want a little of each. The soft crab curry, pork cakes, soups and salted fish are my favourites.

Then it was home and a chill out session. I fell asleep on the sofa and managed to get down to the lake for 4 circuits.

Right now, there are big diggers outside the house as they are laying a new surface water drainage system. Hat Yai is built in a flood plain and is prone to seasonal flooding.

Official movie night tonight and I am hoping to show Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale, which I believe to be good. Hopefully I will not drink too much Guinness as it really puts on the pounds. Guinness wins hands down against Thai beer though, I'm afraid. Danny told me they are poison and the blinding headaches the next day are testament to that. Guinness just makes you feel a bit dopey, like you spent the night in a hedge. I have some Palma ham and blue cheese too, which makes a perfect light or appertizing fork-supper treat .

Not too long before the big day and people seem very keen to remind me. Maybe they are surprised by my lack of response. I am fairly indifferent to the whole thing. I am sure it will be a lovely day and it will be great to see my friends. Oi too, sees it as something more for her mother than for herself. I guess I feel pretty much the same. Normally, I don't celebrate anything like birthdays, Christmas or anything like that. I don't like it.

I seem to be suffering from a constant urge to do things these days, which is not good at all. I said to someone the other day, you feel stupid staying at home here when there is so much going on outside. One thing I love about Thai people is that they are so sociable. They are constantly out doing something, normally to do with food, but at least something. These days I tend to cat nap between these journeys outside, though I try very hard to stay at home as much as I can.

Photo this time is Gee, Phit and Mai on the mountain outside Hat Yai.

Movie Night - In Bruges

Recently and sometimes I have been showing an extra movie night in the week. Either I have nothing to do and want to keep busy or just feel like like company. Last night was such an occasion. I was toying with the idea, debating if I was too tired or not and the fact that today (it's now early morning) that I have to teach five kindergarten classes in a row - something where I approach the realm of heart attack and pulled a muscle in my back a couple of weeks ago - excruciating, but not serious whilst performing "Head and Shoulders" for the fifth time that day.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and Patrick joined me for a film. He brought some Guinness which was most welcome and we talked about teaching for a while and about his encounter the previous Friday with a retired American lawyer who was drunk and extremely rude to all those around him. Stinking rich and absolutely horrible to everyone was this guy, who for whatever reason was washed up on the shores of Hat Yai. Alas, there are many of this kind over here who spend there waking hours drinking in the Swan pub complaining about everything in their miserable lives and why they hate Thailand and the the Thai people.

This is why I never go to these places.

Anyway, we started watching a movie I had Dl'd called Dark City which received glowing reviews on IMDB, but it didn't really wash. SO after fifteen minutes I suggested we change to In Bruges with Colin Farrell. What a choice. It was great, especially for Patrick Larkin.

About 2 Irish criminals sent from London to hide out in Bruges in Belgium to lay low for a while. It is both funny and sad. He loved it. And so did I.

Spelling

Alas, I fear one must learn with grate haste of the importance, and indeed, checking of this herewith blog before thus pressing the ever dreaded "Save" button. If one, desireth to evade the raptures of spelling.

Or perhaps, to deliberately include such errs for the general amusement of the reader.

Chocks Away, Old Beans.

JJ

My Blog

After hearing of the lady who moved to the desolate North of England from exciting London city life, then promptly wrote a blog and made a million, I have decided to do the same.

This will be instead of the long, rambling e-mails I send my to friends affectionately known as "folsbackhome" and means I can continue my writing knowing that these precious and, sometimes provocative words, will be saved for eternity for all the read. Or at least until they turn off The Machine, as indeed I hope they do and as my newly elected hero, John Zerzan strives for.

So, I will attempt to play catch-up regarding the 6 1/2 years already spent in Thailand and perhaps something of my childhood and plot to escape the evil clutches of Western civilisation that dwells perhaps only in my mind.

I hope you continue to read and enjoy these simple words from a bear of little brain.

Jim Wilson