Tag: breakfast

No Subjects – 16th October 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

With no subjects, you are no king
Perhaps just the king of nothing
No one to serve and bring
To give your life the desired meaning

Addicted to looking on down
From the belltowers of the town
An arsenal of words to deploy
The superiority for one to enjoy
The minions though, now vacated
The unknowingly abdicated

Today I’m feeling:

I managed to sleep around midnight but kept waking up, eventually getting up at 9.30 but not really waking up until coffee and breakfast at 11. Even so, I think I could sleep again now. I miss the times of long good sleep, about two weeks ago!

I got a photo from Noey yesterday of her and Art in Utopia without me, where we all usually are on Sunday mornings.

Today I’m grateful for:

Dave and Mai to pick us up and pick up Amy’s things that she can’t bring back to Thailand, drive us into the city and enjoy breakfast together.

The best thing about today was:

A general feeling of calm and well-being, noticed particularly when sitting in Three Wise Monkies as Amy drank a red wine and I looked out of the window as folks struggled with the sudden cold wind and rain.

Something I learned today?

Israel advised people to leave the North Gaza Strip before they would bomb there. That’s nice, isn’t it? Then, they bombed the people as they were out in the open leaving. There will be war forever in Israel. Even when Palestine has disappeared completely, the Zionist agenda has made too many victims.

I took this picture because I was quite impressed with this view from the top floor of Myer.
Fatman report

Preach – 25th May 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

There’s a gospel of prosperity
With riches as reward
Fall into the algorithm
Or risk to be ignored
Click, like and share
This message was meant for you
Fall into the matrix
Now dawns a new age anew

25th Nov 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – preach

When you’re at the beginning, don’t onsess about the middle, beacuse the middle is going to look different once you get there…just get moving.

Chip Heath

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for ant spray. Those bastards get in everything. Now I’m eating them with my breakfast.

The Week That Was – 12th August 1979

Mere Man – 2nd March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Mother, I am a mere man
I will climb mountains higher than you can understand
To show what a human can do
Tut and scoff, weep and worry
Yet it is something I must do
I will attempt impossible things
Because in the death zone, I come alive
I will be strong
I will leave no brothers behind
You taught me everything
And this is to honour you

Written whilst watching 14 Peaks.

People get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life.

Robert Greene

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for this chocolate muesli to break up my normal breakfast eating. What a lot of work must go into making muesli.

The Stolen Masks – 19th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

I cursed the thieves the night my masks were stolen
Yet I found the freedom of loneliness a blessing
Now I was safe from ever being understood
Those who would enslave, now forever guessing

And so I became a madman as I let go my masks
When the sun kissed my face, I found my belief
*But let me not be too proud of my safety
Even a thief in a jail is safe from another thief

*Inspired and pilfered from Khalil Gibran’s parable ‘The Madman’
17th Apr 2024 – Submitted to WDYS

You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’t come off the way you thought it should come off.

Aretha Franklin

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have found my regular breakfast of yoghurt and muesli. My modern version of cornflakes and milk.

Alone In My Grandparent’s Living Room – 29th November 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

The air in this room is still
No motes of dust floating in sunlight
Each second the grandfather clock creaks
Each hour a church bells delight

Braced against cold, a fire emerges
Blankets removed at the next bell
The crackle and roar has settled now
As the sun struggles up over the hill

The window frost starts running
New roads made on the warming glass
Soon all the bears will awaken
And another day shall quietly pass

The ghosts of this room may gather
But will one day be all forgot
The fire replaced, the window glazed
And the striking of bells will not

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for this crunchy strawberry muesli – it’s delicious. I look forward to breakfast every morning.

Try to get some writing in today as tomorrow I probably won’t have time. I did briefly talk with Hayden yesterday. He was out on a walk at the beach with his mum, so we didn’t talk for long. He seemed pretty happy after doing his care training. It’s early days but I hope he keeps it up and starts to feel the rewards of the work.

I sat down with my first class this morning – the wonderful 2/9. Whilst about 80% of the class do my work, there are a few who are struggling. The work is not hard once you understand what’s required. I sent all the class out except the 4 students who didn’t do my work last week and with the help of the leaders, explained how to think about my work. I’m hoping they understood a little bit and will put in a little more effort. I told them that if they don’t do anything, how can I know what to grade them? That trying and being wrong is better than not doing anything.

I think I’m going to do the same thing with my afternoon class – my least favourite class – 2/10. I’m hoping that this approach will ward off any more parent complaints. I was thinking over the weekend how the parents and many teachers just want their kids coddled through school. Pretty pictures and Venn diagrams.

I must admit to being a little lazy now at finding more engaging methods of teaching. The whole online/in-school fortnight is a bit of a challenge and I’ve tried to make it so that the method for the kids is the same in and out of class. We’ll get there. Keep going until they fire me.

The Week That Was – 4th March 1979

Whistleblower – 19th October 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

A truth-teller, honest words
Reality dealer
Things you don’t like to hear
Uncovered, revealed for all
Blown whistler
How could it happen here?
Sentenced, silenced and forgotten
Muddied water
Evidence made to disappear
A memory, a closed chapter
Listed traitor
History rewritten clear
The winners, they are liars
Losing later
And always living in fear

Inspired by Daniel Hale. I feel we should rename ‘whistleblower’ to ‘truth-teller’. I can hear the Minutemen in my head as I read this.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that the gasman comes whenever we call him so that we have gas and I can have omelette for breakfast this morning.

Amy dropped me at school this morning so she can go shopping so I’m practically stuck here. I’ve just been sat in my classroom, reading and writing and keeping my head down so as not to get asked to do anything, though I did knock together another English presentation for classes next semester.

Anyway, having remained successfully without much disturbance, I decided to go for a walk down to House as it’s not too hot and sunny outside. I could kill an hour, listen to podcasts and get some exercise.

As I was eating lunch, I listened briefly to a podcast called Street Wisdom that directs you to pay more attention as you are walking somewhere, much like children stopping and investigating everything they are curious about. As I set about my walk, I noticed lots and lots of different flowers blooming but as cars and footing became more of a concern, I ended up focusing more on smells.

Thailand has some wild, interesting and unusual smells that are sometimes difficult for me to identify. The fresh fruit and veg markets are easily identifiable though, with all sorts of exotic mixes. Outside one tired-looking building, an old man sat playing a guitar, sat at a ubiquitous round concrete table so familiar here. He returned my smile as he slid a barre chord up the neck.

Other buildings are derelict, sometimes overgrown, next to smart new four-car, CCTV’d houses. People seem somewhat proud of their own space but don’t give a shit what may be ont he other side of the fence, where garbage can be thrown if they can get away with it.

I love the new wooden houses that get built here and there, but there are many old ones around still in use too, though poorly maintained. I sometimes envy the people living in them, comfortable in the familiarity of their own mess and junk. It reminds me of my dirty, messy bedroom of my teenage years. A safe haven for me to stay in my stink. If I lived by myself, I’m sure my house would end up like it too. Amy keeps me clean and on my toes.

What a wonderful walk, lost on the way back, though never really lost. Hot and sticky by the time of my return where I sit now writing this.

Push – 30th September 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Forcing this one out
Like a rock-hard turd
No ideas forthcoming
Today I have no word

So I pushed and squeezed
For the longest time
Eventually, I came up
With this little rhyme

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the crunchy muesli I bought yesterday and about to eat for breakfast as Amy prepares her workbench for baking her buns.

Another month down and all classes finished. It’s been a trip. There are a lot of Covid cases around Chiang Rai, apparently. It feels like the official figures don’t include any Burmese workers, where they live together in squalid camps and also cannot afford to isolate ‘at home’ for even a day. Whilst cases in general seem to be reducing around the country, potentially it could easily get out of control here as the country prepares to open up again. Despite this, I hope that the kids can come back next month.

After Amy and I are both vaccinated, I guess it will just be a matter of time before we catch the virus and hopefully we will be best protected. I’m of the mind I’d like to get it over with.

This morning there was a beautiful kitten sitting in the teacher’s room. No one knew where it came from. It looks and feels very healthy and it purred loudly when I picked it up. She (I think) followed me downstairs as if I were its new owner, which was tempting, I must admit.

When I came back after coffee, the kitten had been named Chicken and was comfortable on the lap of one of the teachers downstairs. I’m a sucker for a cute cat, even an ugly one, but adding another to our family wouldn’t be fair.

Who was I? – 8th July 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

If being dead means not alive
What was I before I was born?
I’ll be Shaun into the forever future
But was I Shaun before I was Shaun?

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the two small pieces of chocolate I have each morning to spice up my yoghurt and muesli. It’s my favourite – dark chocolate Toblerone and reminds me of our trip in 2012 to Lausanne in Switzerland. This in turn reminds me of Fahmir in Kuala Lumpur – when he couldn’t say ‘Switzerland’ so that I could understand him.

Poems on this day – 17th May 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Beauty Sat at Table

Dare to sneak a peek at you
Cast an eye beyond my book
I don’t intend to speak to you
Hope you miss my furtive look

Keep eating your ice cream
And playing with your phone
I just want to sit and dream
While we both sit here alone

Ah! Now you’ve got up and gone
Just a memory fading away
For you I wrote this little song
Beauty sat at table today

Watching the English

Anti-clockwise to pass the port
Dab your napkin as you’ve been taught
Take an Englishman’s dis-ease
Tell me, how do you eat your peas?

Is it dinner or is it tea?
It’s just eating food to me
Ensure your thank yous and please
How do you eat your peas?

No fish knives in my class
Let’s get out the crystal glass
Keep your napkin on your knees
How do you eat your peas?

Gave the world our fish and chips
Kept the flavours from our lips
Travelled across the many seas
How do you eat your peas?

*obviously inspired by Kate Fox’s ‘Watching the English’

Fat Fingered Fuck

Skateboarding in my 40s
I soon fell on my ass
Guitaring in my 50s
How long will it last?

I’m a fat fingered fuck
Is that striking a chord?
What a time to learn guitar
To stop myself being bored

I can never hit D minor
Unless I play so slow
Even an A is a problem
But damn, I’ll give it a go

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for these yummy rice cakes that I can add to my muesli and yoghurt, making a yummy breakfast even more delicious.

What does it matter to a cat? – 30th March 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Yufu, Maeve, nonsense in my head, breakfast ready, ache in neck, birds chirping, lesson plans, write, read, coffee, holidays, alcohol.
Kim Chi, lazy Kim Chi, are you boy or girl and does it matter to a cat?
Work those abs.
What are you grateful for today?
Get nonsense out of your head.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for this awesome breakfast Amy has prepared for me. Set me up for the day. Gotta start eating before it goes cold.

The best thing about today was when I was asked to attend a meeting with all teachers and the presenter was an hour and a half late and I dealt with it by meditation and thinking about other things that I wished to do.

Previously I would have been upset by situations like this and thought of them as a waste of time but now I can occupy my mind instead and let any frustration ease away. This is a sign of my growth.