Tag: Covid

Heavy Lies – 6th November 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Seeking connections far outside of town
Wanting a verb but always finding a noun
A big nose, a smile upside down
Heavy lies the head that wears the clown

Trying to float yet about to drown
These waters swam are turning brown
This king is in a state of constant frown
Heavy lies the head that wears the crown

Inspired by a misspelling on an online post

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to be able to sit in my hammock this morning and finish reading the Rolling Stones biography. It’s a nice and cool temperature as Tangmo and Kim Chi chased each other and sniffed around. Days are good.

Dragged myself up out of bed this morning as I was up later than usual last night, reading, trying to finish Cosey Fanny Tutti’s Art Sex Music – almost made it.

Utopia is closed at the moment due to one of the staff members catching Covid. It seems the main outbreak around here was from a Halloween event at a place called Retro Bar. Not sure where that is, somewhere on the university side of the highway.

Although we didn’t know it at the time, Aing was there too and I’d been trying to arrange meeting her as she was only here for three days. One evening, she messaged us that she was at Hope Bar, two houses away from us, but Amy and I were already in bed, old folks that we are these days. It was 9pm. So, as it turned out, it was good that we didn’t get a chance to meet this time.

So, with Utopia being closed, I had to do without my regular morning coffees and chose to read the Rolling Stones bio in my hammock, buffeted by a cool, almost cold, breeze and I did that for an hour or so until finishing the book. Hooray. The Slash bio next, as I continue on with the rock bio books on weekends.

Despite running around shopping, dropping off cakes and picking up coffees in the city, the day feels relaxed and stress-free despite all the potential for anxieties. My attitude is good, my head is in a good space and I’m chilling to new music and staring in wonder at my bookshelves, contemplating what to read next.

Condemned – 5th November 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Condemned to a life of luxury
Paranoia digs away respect
Seen through anger-coloured glasses
Your reality empowers neglect

Trapped in a downward spiral
Your happiness evaporating
Chased away all the pleasures
Now anxiously awaiting

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the coffee beans that came from all over the world to make my stronger coffee at 22 Grams yesterday. A really fruity flavour. I’m also happy and grateful to Bruno for paying for it this time.

A busy day running around, organising, getting everything prepared for my students to work by themselves next week so that they don’t need to attend class. I hope that enough students are self-motivated. It’s the first week so I guess I should give them a break but breaks are all they ever really get. I’d rather push them!

It’s great having students at school again. I love it when ones I don’t know try to talk with me or we can play around a little.

Lots of Covid cases around where we live at the moment. I don’t know what the future idea is. It seems inevitable that we will have to catch it one day. How do we manage that?

For instance, there have already been cases reported at school but there’s no protocol in place. Do we close the school? Close those classes with known contact? How many people have it undetected without symptoms? Have I had it already?

Of course, everyone is tired of the situation. Should we just get back to business as usual and accept the consequences?

Secrets of Hosseini – 3rd September 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

“Tell your secret to the wind
But don’t blame it for telling the trees”*
Like a mynah bird in your hands
Slacken your grip and away it flees

*Khalil Gibran
These two lines (modified slightly) appear within a few paragraphs of each other in Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ and stood out immediately to me for their poetry. I take no credit, really, for jamming them together.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have gotten an appointment for the Pfizer vaccine today. Let’s hope it all goes well.

Well, I surprisingly received an email late yesterday afternoon with an appointment to get the Pfizer vaccine – something I registered online for a few weeks ago. I wasn’t really expecting anything much to come from it but the appointment was for this morning! Typical Thai last-minute information!

Anyway, everything went smoothly with getting the vaccine at the hospital in the city. I was even in and out before the actual appointment was scheduled. No undue side effects that I notice and I go back for the 2nd job on 1st October.

I assigned work for my morning class to do and quite unexpectedly ha;f of them did it even though we didn’t have an online meeting. I’m in the middle of my afternoon class and they are all working surprisingly well too. Except for Dew.

Dew cannot understand English at all and shouldn’t really be in this class. Last year, he frustrated me in class a lot, not because he didn’t do the work but because he would always be talking to other students and disturbing them. And not just talk and stop but like an unbreathing radio DJ.

With studying online now, it is easy to mute him, when he even bothers to attend.

But I must admit, I like him a lot. He’s pretty funny and when I asked him to sing a song, he would do it. I think we understand each other well enough. We both accept that he is no good with English. Let’s see if he stays quiet when he’s back in the classroom.

Just Words – 3rd August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 12 Comments

I just want to play with words
Fumble them around my mouth
First, seconds and thirds
North, East, West and South

No serious poem is this
Just a pleasure for me to write
Pen on paper is bliss
Without them there is blight

The Week That Was – 31st December 1978

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the avocado season here, providing lots of fruit for us to eat. Hopefully one day our own trees do the same.

4th Dec 2025 – both our trees died, eaten by some unknown bugs. We have a new one growing but it will be years before it may ever fruit.

Tonight I have no extra online teaching classes as Maeve will do her IELTS exam today. She is very good at English but I think she will fail the exam. I am not really an IELTS teacher and don’t really want to be seen as one. I much prefer just to have conversations so that the students feel more comfortable and familiar with the language. This is what I’ve been doing with Ashley. After a couple of cancelled flights to Australia, it seems she may suddenly be able to go there tomorrow. We’ll see. Especially as Australia is locked down and China may be headed that way too.

I was thinking how much I enjoy speaking with those two and why I am more comfortable to chit-chat with younger people in general. Perhaps I’m envious of their naivete and the possibilities they have for their futures. It’s why I want to push my students in the classroom to be the best they can be and I hope I can follow their lives into the future and watch all their stories unfold.

Most people around my age, and even a couple of decades younger seem stale, boring or dead! Or, sometimes like myself, feel so superior in our hard-earned wisdom, feel we are better than everyone else.

I love to teach my students how to find the answers to questions, rather than giving the answers. This skill will serve them better in the future.

In sad news, Mee’s father passed away from Covid at the weekend after being in a coma for a week or two. The cases of death are having less degrees of separation from my life and it is a confusing time. I would like to be locked up in the world of my home, just to venture out for supplies rather than having to come to school each day. Even with no students here it just all feels risky. Along with the vaccines – who knows how that will play out.

It feels like we are living through real history right now but we fool ourselves that we weren’t always doing that before. History is what’s happening, as they say.

I really must try and compliment someone today. I try to see so few people that it has been difficult for me to compliment others. I don’t count complimenting my students, baristas or Amy. That would be too easy. And I’m not about the easy!

Waiting Game – 2nd August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

What is it that we were doing
‘fore this trouble started brewing?
It feels like the world is waiting
An endless anticipating
Which direction were we going
When we had ideas of knowing?
No longer standing proud and tall
Now forgetting about it all

The Week That Was – 31st December 1978

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have Tigger home again – though he doesn’t look well. We are doing our best to help him through.

Face – 14th July 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Let’s be straight and say what we mean
Because saving your face doesn’t keep it clean
Words that please can be heard as lies
To misunderstanding they give rise

Are you really so delicate you can’t hear
The truth when spoken loud and clear
We’re going backwards, why not advance
Here’s the real world, given a chance

19th Mar 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge – Misunderstanding

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to be kept busy by my students. It is a difficult task to motivate them when teaching online so I spend a lot of extra time chasing them up.

Kim Chi is here in my room, and as she has stolen my chair, I have time to sit here on the floor and write this. I don’t want to push her off as she is very happy and relaxed with her paws over her eyes to block out the light.

I am home today, after arriving at school, out for a quick delicious coffee, back to start my lesson, only for Dylan to come and see me and when I saw he was wearing his backpack I asked him where he was going and he said ‘have you heard that there’s no classes today?’ Responding in the negative, he said that the Thai teachers were all going off for their second dose of vaccines and cancelled all classes – without telling us! So typical and annoying.

When I called our coordinator, he just said, ‘Oh, I thought you knew!’ How the fuck were we supposed to know!?

In the past, I would’ve gotten really wound up by this bad communication – especially as I’m always well-organised and have lessons planned around a regular schedule. Today, though, it’s just, oh well, at least I can go home and relax.

First, I went with Dylan to his girlfriend’s cafe, Tongsiam and had a coffee and chat there. His girlfriend, Wa, is a nice, level-headed girl, just out of Uni and looking for a more rewarding job.

Two coffees later (another delicious one at Utopia), and I got home for lunch – much to Amy’s surprise. And now, I’m relaxing in my room – after a quick go at the grass with the cutter, until it ran out of petrol. I feel compelled to get it back into proper working order again and make a little more effort in the garden, which is totally out of control at the moment due to constant rain this year.

I’m finding it a little difficult to love it here at the moment, but I must remember that I will be here for another 5-10 years at least, as I will stay here for our cats. I guess it’s all the frustration of not being able to go anywhere at the moment, too, and the Covid situation getting worse in Thailand. It’s hard to see an end to it or even the much-touted ‘new normal. ‘

Still, it’s my mind that needs to get in order – the world is going to carry on.

Fall From Grace – 9th July 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

That time everyone worked together
Fighting for what was best
Made us leaders, held us up
A shining example to the rest
So it goes, the group divides
And no longer meets the test
From leaders to losers now
Others are no longer impressed
The fingers point at each other
As if each had so been blessed
Outside the insular echo chambers
The faults are easily guessed

Comment on the pandemic situation in Thailand, once kept well at bay and since gotten out of control.

You are just wandering around the goal with your monkey mind. Always looking for something without knowing what you are doing. If you want to see, you should open your eyes.

from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that there is a guitar shop in town where I could buy the little tool to help pull out the plugs on my acoustic guitar. I enjoyed looking at the guitars there too.

We got that attitude! – 23rd April 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I am so happy and grateful that today I can grab coffee at 22 Grams in the city. We have to take Kim Chi to the vet, hopefully for the last time. Thankfully, she is starting to eat again and acting more like she normally does. Due to Covid, I haven’t been going out to have coffee so it’s a positive that 22 Grams is close to the vet.

The best thing about today was laying lazily in Amy’s arms (or she was in mine), naked, aircon dreaming, drifting, relaxing – purposefully relaxing. It was a very nice feeling once I could strip away things I had to do, supposed to do or wanted to do.

We got that attitude! – 23rd March 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I am so happy and grateful for our month of supplies so we don’t have to go out too much. I love being at home though I would prefer to have the option to go out anytime.

The most beautiful part about love was that you could savour the memory forever.

To-do list

  • Record new TCRAH
  • Call Hayden
  • Write some lessons

Didn’t make it to my room today. Enjoyed lots of reading and watching TV.