I made some home made salsa today. Tom often brings some over that he buys in the supermarket, but ever to do th eright thing I looked it up on the Net, raced down to the shops and made not a bad one. Oi loved it. Luckily, you can buy decent nachos here, no fat and very cheap, so it looks like party snacks are here to stay.
Saturday and watched Thor today on my now free Saturdays. I loved it. I had sudden urges to check out Joseph Campbell again (the myth hunter) and downloaded 3 of his books. I just finished book 2 of Game of Thrones. JC's great book is called Hero with a thousand faces for those wanting to know.
Been working which has been okay, but hit a bit of a boring patch at the main school. Still, we do push them so I guess it is to be expected.
Still, battling through Oblivion which is great but quite wearing. I remind myself to stop playing when it gets fucked up. Actually I can tell, when I suddenly creep into someone's house in the night, steal their gold and hack them to pieces if they wake up and cause a scene. I turn it off the return to a previous save when I am feeling a tad better.
Grace has just got sick again and once again we go into recovery actions of no food or milk and just water. Hopefully it will pass in a day or two.
Lots of work leaves little time for anything else and when I do get a break I am truly grateful just to kick back.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Workin'
Tuesday night and finished my gruelling start to the week. 3 different jobs in a day, for 2 days which has me riding to the other side of town. The work is okay but the prep and the body ain't so good at massive workloads anymore. I frequently drop stuff and forget stuff when I got too much going on. And a plethora of health issues comes to plague me, in the form of rroids, a sty, cough, tight chest pains etc. I had to squat in the middle of Robinsons the other day until it subsided. I am looking for ward to when the extra work drops off in September.
Grace's birthday tomorrow and I think I will buy her a Thomas tank engine toy train set. never know with toys. Some they love, some they ignore.
Been watching an awesome movie I last saw when I was about 12 when BBC1 would show a movie at 9.25, after the news. I saw tons of gritty 70's stuff in my bedroom at High Trees on a 4 inch screen on an ancient telly we used to have. This is Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman. I always remembered it and it is as brilliant now as it was then, and more so.
I am trying to detox a bit right now and eat a lot of fruit to help my body through this trying time.
Grace has come to annoy me. Byee.
Grace's birthday tomorrow and I think I will buy her a Thomas tank engine toy train set. never know with toys. Some they love, some they ignore.
Been watching an awesome movie I last saw when I was about 12 when BBC1 would show a movie at 9.25, after the news. I saw tons of gritty 70's stuff in my bedroom at High Trees on a 4 inch screen on an ancient telly we used to have. This is Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman. I always remembered it and it is as brilliant now as it was then, and more so.
I am trying to detox a bit right now and eat a lot of fruit to help my body through this trying time.
Grace has come to annoy me. Byee.
Monday, August 15, 2011
On The Mend
Just to let folks know, that Grace is much better now. She isn't completely well and may be off school for a few more days, but the miserable days have ended and she is back to being naughty and cheeky and funny.
Things have calmed down for me too as I am getting used to working 3 jobs. I enjoy all of them but they do take preparation. I try not to rush through lessons and spread them out a bit to soak up some time. The nun at work keeps smiling at me so something must be going right.
I haven't seen much of anyone lately, and often when I do someone has a problem with someone or such and such, so I am fairly happy being left to my own devices. There is enough to keep me busy in my own life. I remember dad never had mates over. I wonder if that is something to do with age.
I have even converted over to cans of Leo beer. They are smaller and more handy. Two cans refreshes me quite well after a hard days graft and doesn't get me drunk.
I am still ploughing through Book 2 of Game of Thrones. Gruesome news in the latter pages of this tome for those embarkig on the quest.
Much of last weekend was spent playing Oblivion The Elder Scrolls. It is huge and countless ways to get absorbed in alchemy or exploring. Highly recommended if you have acres of time. The sequel Skyrim is out in November. Utube it to be blown away.
Cash has started to re-enter our lives, though I have to go and pay off the boss after last months hospital injunction. The new jobs will give us enough to live a little more comfortably. Snickers bars and Pepperidge Farm cookies are back on the snack menu.
Things have calmed down for me too as I am getting used to working 3 jobs. I enjoy all of them but they do take preparation. I try not to rush through lessons and spread them out a bit to soak up some time. The nun at work keeps smiling at me so something must be going right.
I haven't seen much of anyone lately, and often when I do someone has a problem with someone or such and such, so I am fairly happy being left to my own devices. There is enough to keep me busy in my own life. I remember dad never had mates over. I wonder if that is something to do with age.
I have even converted over to cans of Leo beer. They are smaller and more handy. Two cans refreshes me quite well after a hard days graft and doesn't get me drunk.
I am still ploughing through Book 2 of Game of Thrones. Gruesome news in the latter pages of this tome for those embarkig on the quest.
Much of last weekend was spent playing Oblivion The Elder Scrolls. It is huge and countless ways to get absorbed in alchemy or exploring. Highly recommended if you have acres of time. The sequel Skyrim is out in November. Utube it to be blown away.
Cash has started to re-enter our lives, though I have to go and pay off the boss after last months hospital injunction. The new jobs will give us enough to live a little more comfortably. Snickers bars and Pepperidge Farm cookies are back on the snack menu.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Guardian - Russel Brand
I don't know much about this chap, except he is a bit of a twerp. But when he makes more sense than the Brit. gov, then things are beyond the pail.
"This week's riots are sad and frightening and, if I have by virtue of my temporary displacement forgone the right to speak about the behaviour of my countrymen, then this is gonna be irksome. I mean even David Cameron came back from his holiday. Eventually. The Tuscan truffles lost their succulence when the breaking glass became too loud to ignore. Then dopey ol' Boris came cycling back into the London clutter with his spun gold hair and his spun shit logic as it became apparent that the holiday was over.
In fact, it isn't my absence from the territory of London that bothers me; it's my absence from the economic class that is being affected that itches in my gut because, as I looked at the online incident maps, the boroughs that were suffering all, for me, had some resonance. I've lived in Dalston, Hackney, Elephant, Camden and Bethnal Green. I grew up round Dagenham and Romford and, whilst I could never claim to be from the demographic most obviously affected, I feel guilty that I'm not there now.
I feel proud to be English, proud to be a Londoner (all right, an Essex boy), never more so than since being in exile, and I naturally began to wonder what would make young people destroy their communities.
I have spoken to mates in London and Manchester and they sound genuinely frightened and hopeless, and the details of their stories place this outbreak beyond the realms of any political idealism or rationalisation. But I can't, from my ivory tower in the Hollywood Hills, compete with the understandable yet futile rhetoric, describing the rioters as mindless. Nor do I want to dwell on the sadness of our beautiful cities being tarnished and people's shops and livelihoods, sometimes generations old, being immolated. The tragic and inevitable deaths ought to be left for eulogies and grieving. Tariq Jahan has spoken so eloquently from his position of painful proximity, with such compassion, that nearly all else is redundant.
The only question I can legitimately ask is: why is this happening? Mark Duggan's death has been badly handled but no one is contesting that is a reason for these conflagrations beyond the initial flash of activity in Tottenham. I've heard Theresa May and the Old Etonians whose hols have been curtailed (many would say they're the real victims) saying the behaviour is "unjustifiable" and "unacceptable". Wow! Thanks guys! What a wonderful use of the planet's fast-depleting oxygen resources. Now that's been dealt with can we move on to more taxing matters such as whether or not Jack The Ripper was a ladies' man. And what the hell do bears get up to in those woods?
However "unacceptable" and "unjustifiable" it might be, it has happened so we better accept it and, whilst we can't justify it, we should kick around a few neurons and work out why so many people feel utterly disconnected from the cities they live in.
Unless on the news tomorrow it's revealed that there's been a freaky "criminal creating" chemical leak in London and Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham that's causing young people to spontaneously and simultaneously violate their environments – in which case we can park the ol' brainboxes, stop worrying and get on with the football season, but I suspect there hasn't – we have, as human beings, got a few things to consider together.
I should here admit that I have been arrested for criminal damage for my part in anti-capitalist protest earlier in this decade. I often attended protests and then, in my early 20s, and on drugs, I enjoyed it when the protests lost direction and became chaotic, hostile even. I was intrigued by the anarchist "Black bloc", hooded and masked, as, in retrospect, was their agenda, but was more viscerally affected by the football "casuals" who'd turn up because the veneer of the protest's idealistic objective gave them the perfect opportunity to wreck stuff and have a row with the Old Bill.
That was never my cup of tea though. For one thing, policemen are generally pretty good fighters and second, it registered that the accent they shouted at me with was closer to my own than that of some of those singing about the red flag making the wall of plastic shields between us seem thinner.
I found those protests exciting, yes, because I was young and a bit of a twerp but also, I suppose, because there was a void in me. A lack of direction, a sense that I was not invested in the dominant culture, that government existed not to look after the interests of the people it was elected to represent but the big businesses that they were in bed with.
I felt that, and I had a mum who loved me, a dad who told me that nothing was beyond my reach, an education, a grant from Essex council (to train as an actor of all things!!!) and several charities that gave me money for maintenance. I shudder to think how disenfranchised I would have felt if I had been deprived of that long list of privileges.
That state of deprivation though is, of course, the condition that many of those rioting endure as their unbending reality. No education, a weakened family unit, no money and no way of getting any. JD Sports is probably easier to desecrate if you can't afford what's in there and the few poorly paid jobs there are taken. Amidst the bleakness of this social landscape, squinting all the while in the glare of a culture that radiates ultraviolet consumerism and infrared celebrity. That daily, hourly, incessantly enforces the egregious, deceitful message that you are what you wear, what you drive, what you watch and what you watch it on, in livid, neon pixels. The only light in their lives comes from these luminous corporate messages. No wonder they have their fucking hoods up.
I remember Cameron saying "hug a hoodie" but I haven't seen him doing it. Why would he? Hoodies don't vote, they've realised it's pointless, that whoever gets elected will just be a different shade of the "we don't give a toss about you" party.
Politicians don't represent the interests of people who don't vote. They barely care about the people who do vote. They look after the corporations who get them elected. Cameron only spoke out against News International when it became evident to us, US, the people, not to him (like Rose West, "He must've known") that the newspapers Murdoch controlled were happy to desecrate the dead in the pursuit of another exploitative, distracting story.
Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, "mindlessly", motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that's why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few fucking pairs of trainers.
These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing.
If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.
As you have by now surely noticed, I don't know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass. But I know, as we all intuitively know, the solution is all around us and it isn't political, it is spiritual. Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world."
In this simple sentiment we can find hope, as we can in the efforts of those cleaning up the debris and ash in bonhomous, broom-wielding posses. If we want to live in a society where people feel included, we must include them, where they feel represented, we must represent them and where they feel love and compassion for their communities then we, the members of that community, must find love and compassion for them.
As we sweep away the mistakes made in the selfish, nocturnal darkness we must ensure that, amidst the broken glass and sadness, we don't sweep away the youth lost amongst the shards in the shadows cast by the new dawn."
"This week's riots are sad and frightening and, if I have by virtue of my temporary displacement forgone the right to speak about the behaviour of my countrymen, then this is gonna be irksome. I mean even David Cameron came back from his holiday. Eventually. The Tuscan truffles lost their succulence when the breaking glass became too loud to ignore. Then dopey ol' Boris came cycling back into the London clutter with his spun gold hair and his spun shit logic as it became apparent that the holiday was over.
In fact, it isn't my absence from the territory of London that bothers me; it's my absence from the economic class that is being affected that itches in my gut because, as I looked at the online incident maps, the boroughs that were suffering all, for me, had some resonance. I've lived in Dalston, Hackney, Elephant, Camden and Bethnal Green. I grew up round Dagenham and Romford and, whilst I could never claim to be from the demographic most obviously affected, I feel guilty that I'm not there now.
I feel proud to be English, proud to be a Londoner (all right, an Essex boy), never more so than since being in exile, and I naturally began to wonder what would make young people destroy their communities.
I have spoken to mates in London and Manchester and they sound genuinely frightened and hopeless, and the details of their stories place this outbreak beyond the realms of any political idealism or rationalisation. But I can't, from my ivory tower in the Hollywood Hills, compete with the understandable yet futile rhetoric, describing the rioters as mindless. Nor do I want to dwell on the sadness of our beautiful cities being tarnished and people's shops and livelihoods, sometimes generations old, being immolated. The tragic and inevitable deaths ought to be left for eulogies and grieving. Tariq Jahan has spoken so eloquently from his position of painful proximity, with such compassion, that nearly all else is redundant.
The only question I can legitimately ask is: why is this happening? Mark Duggan's death has been badly handled but no one is contesting that is a reason for these conflagrations beyond the initial flash of activity in Tottenham. I've heard Theresa May and the Old Etonians whose hols have been curtailed (many would say they're the real victims) saying the behaviour is "unjustifiable" and "unacceptable". Wow! Thanks guys! What a wonderful use of the planet's fast-depleting oxygen resources. Now that's been dealt with can we move on to more taxing matters such as whether or not Jack The Ripper was a ladies' man. And what the hell do bears get up to in those woods?
However "unacceptable" and "unjustifiable" it might be, it has happened so we better accept it and, whilst we can't justify it, we should kick around a few neurons and work out why so many people feel utterly disconnected from the cities they live in.
Unless on the news tomorrow it's revealed that there's been a freaky "criminal creating" chemical leak in London and Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham that's causing young people to spontaneously and simultaneously violate their environments – in which case we can park the ol' brainboxes, stop worrying and get on with the football season, but I suspect there hasn't – we have, as human beings, got a few things to consider together.
I should here admit that I have been arrested for criminal damage for my part in anti-capitalist protest earlier in this decade. I often attended protests and then, in my early 20s, and on drugs, I enjoyed it when the protests lost direction and became chaotic, hostile even. I was intrigued by the anarchist "Black bloc", hooded and masked, as, in retrospect, was their agenda, but was more viscerally affected by the football "casuals" who'd turn up because the veneer of the protest's idealistic objective gave them the perfect opportunity to wreck stuff and have a row with the Old Bill.
That was never my cup of tea though. For one thing, policemen are generally pretty good fighters and second, it registered that the accent they shouted at me with was closer to my own than that of some of those singing about the red flag making the wall of plastic shields between us seem thinner.
I found those protests exciting, yes, because I was young and a bit of a twerp but also, I suppose, because there was a void in me. A lack of direction, a sense that I was not invested in the dominant culture, that government existed not to look after the interests of the people it was elected to represent but the big businesses that they were in bed with.
I felt that, and I had a mum who loved me, a dad who told me that nothing was beyond my reach, an education, a grant from Essex council (to train as an actor of all things!!!) and several charities that gave me money for maintenance. I shudder to think how disenfranchised I would have felt if I had been deprived of that long list of privileges.
That state of deprivation though is, of course, the condition that many of those rioting endure as their unbending reality. No education, a weakened family unit, no money and no way of getting any. JD Sports is probably easier to desecrate if you can't afford what's in there and the few poorly paid jobs there are taken. Amidst the bleakness of this social landscape, squinting all the while in the glare of a culture that radiates ultraviolet consumerism and infrared celebrity. That daily, hourly, incessantly enforces the egregious, deceitful message that you are what you wear, what you drive, what you watch and what you watch it on, in livid, neon pixels. The only light in their lives comes from these luminous corporate messages. No wonder they have their fucking hoods up.
I remember Cameron saying "hug a hoodie" but I haven't seen him doing it. Why would he? Hoodies don't vote, they've realised it's pointless, that whoever gets elected will just be a different shade of the "we don't give a toss about you" party.
Politicians don't represent the interests of people who don't vote. They barely care about the people who do vote. They look after the corporations who get them elected. Cameron only spoke out against News International when it became evident to us, US, the people, not to him (like Rose West, "He must've known") that the newspapers Murdoch controlled were happy to desecrate the dead in the pursuit of another exploitative, distracting story.
Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, "mindlessly", motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that's why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few fucking pairs of trainers.
These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing.
If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.
As you have by now surely noticed, I don't know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass. But I know, as we all intuitively know, the solution is all around us and it isn't political, it is spiritual. Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world."
In this simple sentiment we can find hope, as we can in the efforts of those cleaning up the debris and ash in bonhomous, broom-wielding posses. If we want to live in a society where people feel included, we must include them, where they feel represented, we must represent them and where they feel love and compassion for their communities then we, the members of that community, must find love and compassion for them.
As we sweep away the mistakes made in the selfish, nocturnal darkness we must ensure that, amidst the broken glass and sadness, we don't sweep away the youth lost amongst the shards in the shadows cast by the new dawn."
Sickness
I have been working like a bastard at 3 different jobs, to get out of this crap cash problem. It has been tiring but not without some fun. I am managing to squeeze games of Carcassonne in with some students who are determined to beat me.
Grace has been horribly sick and spent a night in the hospital for a mere 9,000 Baht. We had to borrow from my boss to get through the month. I told Phit it was like those jobs the Indians do in the Middle East. They get paid, then have to pay back for rent and food and end up being in debt to the boss. Doctors and hospitals are just scam mechants here taking advantage of peoples ignorance and need to stay alive. It's disgusting.
Grace has dehydration through a cold bug in her stomach causing her to vomit continuously and loose fluid. Then she got broncitius like me. She seems a lot better now though. She has got better much more quickly than her aging dad.
With Grace sick, things have been a tad touchy between me and Oi. We disagree on medical grounds fairly fundamentally. With G's improved health though thus returns our peace. It's just horrible when your kid is sick and you don't know what to do or who to believe.
Patiently awaiting Oblivion Skyrim, I reinstalled Obivilion and have become engulfed in amazing gameplay. Luckily, it was mother's day yesterday and I got some time to play it.
Hoping to return to the jungle behind the house today (Sat) with a friend and explore the mountain.
Grace has been horribly sick and spent a night in the hospital for a mere 9,000 Baht. We had to borrow from my boss to get through the month. I told Phit it was like those jobs the Indians do in the Middle East. They get paid, then have to pay back for rent and food and end up being in debt to the boss. Doctors and hospitals are just scam mechants here taking advantage of peoples ignorance and need to stay alive. It's disgusting.
Grace has dehydration through a cold bug in her stomach causing her to vomit continuously and loose fluid. Then she got broncitius like me. She seems a lot better now though. She has got better much more quickly than her aging dad.
With Grace sick, things have been a tad touchy between me and Oi. We disagree on medical grounds fairly fundamentally. With G's improved health though thus returns our peace. It's just horrible when your kid is sick and you don't know what to do or who to believe.
Patiently awaiting Oblivion Skyrim, I reinstalled Obivilion and have become engulfed in amazing gameplay. Luckily, it was mother's day yesterday and I got some time to play it.
Hoping to return to the jungle behind the house today (Sat) with a friend and explore the mountain.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Hash Run No. 2
Just done my second hash run and it was great. Such fun and a wonderful bunch of guys. Danny, the Aussie, came with me and thoroughly enjoyed it. Up in the rubber trees and it was quite wild and gruelling. The party and beer afterwards was fantastic and the folks there are awesome.
Thanks, Percy, for introducing me to something so fantastic.
Thanks, Percy, for introducing me to something so fantastic.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Natural Obvilion
Just had a fun ride with Grace. I took off down a dirt track into teh rubber plantations. I found these huge lakes and tiny wooden farm shacks way off in the woods. It was very quiet and serene. Grace loves anything with water these day.
Got a bit of bronchitisosaurus, so coughing up nasty phelm.
Gameswise, I loaded up Obvilion, an epic adventure quest, swords, magic that sort of thing.
I am churning out lesson plans, wordsearches, colouring sheets, crosswords and flashcards 24/7 at the moment. I think Oi is a bit shocked at my transformation from lounging around the house complaining to busy ultra effecticient and dynamic problem solver extrodinaire!
I'll ride it while it lasts!
Got a bit of bronchitisosaurus, so coughing up nasty phelm.
Gameswise, I loaded up Obvilion, an epic adventure quest, swords, magic that sort of thing.
I am churning out lesson plans, wordsearches, colouring sheets, crosswords and flashcards 24/7 at the moment. I think Oi is a bit shocked at my transformation from lounging around the house complaining to busy ultra effecticient and dynamic problem solver extrodinaire!
I'll ride it while it lasts!
Double Dip?
I don't know why the media is reporting the latest crash as a double dip. It never recovered in the first place. If an old git in the jungle can see what's going on, why can't the folks who are paid millions?
It may cause personal discomfort, and for that I am sorry, but Cripes! we fucking deserve the shit that's gonna go down (as a race of fuckwits - that is).
Of course, it's all just a news story projected to the global population to appease the masses. You can still sit in the garden, drink beer and watch the sun go down, it won't change that.
Love to all cuddly people!
From the Guardian;
The Repugnant party in the US have themselves to blame and nobody else. Clinton got them out of debt and Bush the lesser bankrupted the country with two pointless wars...... congratulations right wing America... you have screwed your country up just nicely.
It may cause personal discomfort, and for that I am sorry, but Cripes! we fucking deserve the shit that's gonna go down (as a race of fuckwits - that is).
Of course, it's all just a news story projected to the global population to appease the masses. You can still sit in the garden, drink beer and watch the sun go down, it won't change that.
Love to all cuddly people!
From the Guardian;
The Repugnant party in the US have themselves to blame and nobody else. Clinton got them out of debt and Bush the lesser bankrupted the country with two pointless wars...... congratulations right wing America... you have screwed your country up just nicely.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Private Classes
Woah! I have been projected into a savage and hectic world of private classes.
After putting the word out and doing the rounds I have got a whole bunch of extra work on top of my morning gig. Working every day except Saturday afternoons and evenings. So far, I am quite enjoying it and am trying to make it as easy for me as possible. Everyone seems happy with my performance, and although the pay sucks, it does make quite a difference to how we can live. I was initally a bit stunned by the extra workload but now I am coping pretty well and like being ultra busy for a change.
We are heading to Songkhla again this weekend so Grace can play in the sea and run around a hotel room and eat in reastaurants. It should be fun.
Oi is busy making her T shirts and both of us keeping busy with our activities.
I caught Tom the other day. First time in a month, and he is very well.
After putting the word out and doing the rounds I have got a whole bunch of extra work on top of my morning gig. Working every day except Saturday afternoons and evenings. So far, I am quite enjoying it and am trying to make it as easy for me as possible. Everyone seems happy with my performance, and although the pay sucks, it does make quite a difference to how we can live. I was initally a bit stunned by the extra workload but now I am coping pretty well and like being ultra busy for a change.
We are heading to Songkhla again this weekend so Grace can play in the sea and run around a hotel room and eat in reastaurants. It should be fun.
Oi is busy making her T shirts and both of us keeping busy with our activities.
I caught Tom the other day. First time in a month, and he is very well.
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