Tag: dad

Recognition – 12th June 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

What does your world feel like?
Is there still wonder in your eyes?
Do you recognise yourself anymore
When you hear the children’s cries?
Can you describe this moment
Even to yourself in thoughts?
Or are you too busy thinking
What may be in others’ reports?

Today I’m feeling:

Busy and positive. Even with only one class today I seemed to have little relaxed time though that’s not to say that it wasn’t enjoyable. I was at House most of the morning but filled that time with schoolwork and writing. I got back to school early and helped out a few students before class as well as getting some volleyball in with a mix of students I knew and others I didn’t. It was a lot of fun. Time ran away quickly.

Today I’m grateful for:

The lady in the next air con shop who I communicated with using translation and asked for a mechanic to come visit on Saturday if all goes well. I hope she doesn’t get scared off like the last shop.

The best thing about today was:

Watching one of my students, Goya, in Kru David’s class do really well at finding information within a text. David had been complaining about her before as her behaviour in class is not always attentive and he wasn’t convinced when I told him that she was quite clever at English. I was proud of her today.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Whilst I was talking to Amy on video call Tangmo and Tigger were suddenly fighting on the terrace. I got them apart and Tigger ran off with Tangmo chasing and barking. They ran all the way around the teaching room and back again until Tigger got himself up a tree. I was quite impressed as I’ve never seen Tig run and climb like that before. The old fat furball still has some energy in him.
I managed to drag/chase Tangmo out and close the gate before trying to coax Tig down from the tree. Eventually, I was able to get him down with help from the step ladder and he seemed to be ok though shocked and grumpy. Amy went off upset too but I reassured her that if there were any problems I’d take him straight to the vet.
He seems ok now it’s later in the evening but I’ll continue to keep a close eye on him. That was a bit of excitement I could do without. I’ll keep the gate closed more often again now. 

Something I learned today?

Apparently, China plans to build a military base in Cuba! Well, why not? China is surrounded by US military bases.

Who has had a significant impact on my life?

My mum, for being there; my dad, for not.
Bronwyn, for helping me gain confidence and to leave England.
TLJ, for being the kick in the ass I needed at the time.
Amy, for being able to share a life without letting compromise get in our way.
These are just very quick and minor thoughts, before bed.

I took this picture because cows were on the loose. This is just outside the school cafe.

A Bigger Prison – 19th May 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Once the walls are escaped
And feet touch on new ground
A new reality ignites to show
That nothing new is found
The banging drum is heard afar
But the beat remains the same
On the horizon new walls to scale
In between remains the game

Today I’m feeling:

Positive, almost sincerely happy.

Today I’m grateful for:

Amy’s dad who came to fix the back door. Unfortunately, his definition of fixing didn’t quite match ours and he just nailed two bits of wood not just across the door but across the frame too making it unusable. His reasoning was to leave it like that until Amy gets back to find a replacement door. I still need to use the door though!  But I’m still grateful he came and tried to help.

The best thing about today was:

Hanging out with all the English program students in the morning and having fun with them. 
At one point Kru Mai introduced all the teachers around the room and when it came to me there was a big cheer around the room from my students which made me feel really good.
I also talked a little with the ‘weird’ teacher Ren that I mentioned yesterday and he seems really cool.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

I didn’t go to sleep until late last night and also woke up during the night so I ended up snoozing my alarm and skipping any workout. That’s ok. I’m still working my way into my daily workday routine and don’t want to push it.

Amy sent this picture because this was the scene one morning a year or two ago. This year no insects (so far) but also no Kim Chi 😢 Amy and I are still feeling sad about this and it is taking us time to get over, I think because we are not together. When Amy is back in July we can fully grieve and heal.

To The Wolves – 9th December 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

The wolves are gathering
Circling their prey
Armed with razor claws
Wet teeth on display
Surrounded by enemies
Fallen down ill
Fears turned to acceptance
Of the coming kill
Hot breath drinks blood
Flesh torn and ripped
Life flows away
Once so tightly gripped
Now the hunger sated
Left in the soft snow
The body reconciles
The way we all go

The future of the human race will likely depend on our ability to transcend this tribalism and to see our fate as interconnected with everyone else’s.

Robert Greene

Today I’m feeling:
Happy and relaxed
Today I’m grateful for:
The confusion caused with communication in our school as there was a meeting in the afternoon that meant we didn’t have classes. It was not clear if we were supposed to attend this meeting, along with all the students and there was enough confusing information that it meant I could sneak away, come home and have a nice afternoon nap! I can see my attitude to miscommunication is positive when the outcome works in my favour like this and luckily in this part of the school everything generally works out like this. This was not the case in our other schools.
The best thing about today was:
Listening to the Pitchblende album at high volume after Amy went out for the night and I ate a weed gummy. I always liked Pitchblende and their music is not easy to latch on to. Last night took it to the next level. If I hadn’t been getting sleepy I would’ve listened to the whole album again. As it was I hopped into bed and fell asleep listening to the jazzcore podcast which was also terrific.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
As I was driving dad’s van back from our Mae Chan dinner, all the u-turns were closed off by police, which happens when a member of the royal family comes to visit Doi Tung and they want the motorcade to be able to smoothly pass on through. This meant we couldn’t make our exit for the last 200 metres home and we were instructed to pull over to the left and turn our lights off and wait for it to pass. Amy was a little frustrated and said “fucking stupid” and her dad was annoyed at where I pulled over and wanted to move 5 metres forward but everyone told him it doesn’t matter though by this time he’d jumped out of the car indicating he was going to drive now. He got back in the passenger seat and I was just bemused by everything. Amy’s dad has some weird reactions sometimes and I don’t get it at all. I can’t see any connection between the way Thai kids react and the way he does. It’s like an alien mindset to me that I just can’t understand. It seems to be cultural but most reactions I can see some sense in but sometimes his are just bizarre. I’m curious about how his thinking works! Anyway, I agree with Amy that it’s fucking stupid to inconvenience so many people like this (hundreds and hundreds of police have to stand around for up to six hours preparing for this)but there doesn’t need to be a reaction to it. In the end, we only had to wait a few minutes and I calmly sat and waited until we could go again and we were home without too much delay.
Something I learned today?
I’m writing this on Saturday morning and recalling events of yesterday and I know there are many small things I learned in passing, by reading, talking and interacting but nothing is stepping forward to announce itself right now. It’s one of those days of learning whilst not knowing you’re learning. Accumulating knowledge, stored in the brain bank and used subconsciously. Today I will try to be more conscious.
In what ways are you good at your job?
I’m good at my job in that I can make the students feel like they are having fun whilst learning a little. I come up with ideas for classes and I try to gauge my student’s feelings and abilities and help them when I can. I’m flexible, patient and understanding. Really these are not specific skills for my job of being a teacher but more for life. Life is my real job. Am I good at that? I’m still a student in that regard and hope to always be.

I took this picture because Cap was super chilled and sunk into the sofa, lost in his fur. No new pictures today so this is a default fallback cat pic!

Derelict – 18th October 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Smashed windows and roof decayed
A place where memories were once made
Now hidden to the exploring eye
Possibilities came here now gone by

One day the love in my own home
Will be left to explorers unknown
Pondered upon with little idea
Of all the things that happened here

The tiles will crack and ceilings fall
Jungle vines will creep up the wall
The once-pretty garden overrun
Plastic disintegrates in the sun

The roaming ghosts of our happy cats
No longer worry the scurrying rats
Body broken as the irons rust
Will all be blown away as dust

I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorcer, distortion.

Yohji Yamamoto

Today I’m feeling:
Chill chill
Today I’m grateful for:
A long catch-up sleep with interesting but forgotten dreams. I also woke up with no pain in my neck but that didn’t last for too long.
The best thing about today was:
Its simplicity and feeling contented with a day of non-excitement. A little bit of this and that counters any possibility of boredom. I feel free!
In what ways are you “just like your parents?”
I am just like my mum now. It’s scary how much I look like her. Right now I live by myself (practically) and love to read books, much like she did. I don’t need to be around people often and happy in my own company, just as I saw her. I don’t think I can be much like my dad as I have no idea if he had any influence over me in my first 18 months before he died. I wonder though if there was a residual sadness that brushed on me in that short time…?

I took this picture because it just looked idyllic as I was speeding by and had to turn back to take a quick picture. This one is from yesterday. I didn’t really do anything today.

Smug – 15th May 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Shake yourself out of smug satisfaction
Are you perfectly formed? Happy and disgraced
Apply the training beyond your aspiration
The destination always remains misplaced

True action, food and radiant action…grows out of the suffering which you have not yet learned to suffer.

Hermann Hesse

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the tree-cutting tool Amy’s dad brought yesterday. making it easier to hack away some branches that needed doing.

N.C.O – 10th May 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Those secret deep-state meditations
Held complicit by dollar motivations
Data collection and manipulations
For narrative control operations

What people want, above all else, is not to be happy; they want to devote themselves to something, to give themselves away.

Tim Kreider from We Learn Nothing

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the mango sauce Amy’s dad made. Even though it’s supposed to be jam, it goes well with yoghurt.

A Time And Place – 13th April 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

The smell of photosynthesis
Around the privet bushes
The trail of LouLou in the night
Is a memory that crushes

A sneaky cigarette
Shared among us out of sight
The threat of being caught
Running amok in the night

Jumping over fences
Sending fireworks to the skies
Bored but never boring
Each moment the thrill of surprise

Shaking heads in wonder
At the stupid things we’d done
Living each moment in joys
Of lives that had just begun

You should, in science, believe logic and arguments, carefully drawn, and not authorities.

Richard Feynman

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to Amy’s dad who came to fix our gate yesterday morning.

Mail Order Monkey – 1st January 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Your life won’t be complete
For the girl you want to impress
Get your mail order monkey
Put it in a pretty dress
Or how about a monkey skull
Comes from the same supplier
Stick it on your shelf
For your new friends to admire
Mail order monkies and skulls
It’s the weirdest thing I’ve heard
Is there a better way to impress
Without something so absurd?

Weight: 76.0kg
Resting heart rate: 41

There’s only one age: alive.

Agnes Varda

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to Apa for driving us up to Doi Chang yesterday and paying for lunch.

A long day yesterday. Amy’s dad drove us, with Oh’s girlfriend, her sister and mum, up to Doi Chang, which I hadn’t visited before. It was nice to have the opportunity to just sit and look out of the window and not have to concentrate on the road. Doi Chang has become well known for its coffee and now is turning itself into a camping lifestyle destination.

To be honest, there’s not much to do up there except enjoy the views but every second person seems to be building a cafe/homestay and it occurs to me that everything now is just a photograph – there’s no substance. Perhaps I’m jaded and don’t see much underneath due to cultural differences.

Anyway, I thought it’s not so far away and I’d like to ride my bike up here sometime. I’ll have to prepare for a sore butt doing that but I think it would be nice.

We had a late lunch at Singha Park. Busy but a pleasant time looking over the park from the restaurant. I try to take as much as I can with my eyes rather than taking photos. I could feel a sense of contentment rising from my stomach to my chest when I tried this.

I was flagging it by late afternoon when we got back to Amy’s parents’ house and dozed before getting up to eat a little bit of dinner, whilst everyone else geared up for drinking and karaoke. By 8.30, I lay down again and had wild, interesting, lucid dreams, punctuated by waking periods overhearing out-of-key singing to Thai tunes.

I knew it was getting late when I heard renditions of the Carpenters, Hotel California and Have You Ever Seen The Rain.

Lots of fireworks and cheering woke me again as the clock went past midnight and I got into a deeper sleep until Amy woke me at 1.30 and said it’s time to go home. She had a great time and I enjoyed everything too. I’m not big on drinking, partying and socialising and Amy understands that. We fell asleep content.

I managed to get up at 7 and, after feeding the cat,s wanted to use my aching body as I had spent most of the previous 24 hours sitting or lying down, so I walked to Utopia in the cool morning air, chatting on the phone with Hayden along the way. He may try to come to Thailand in April. Let’s see if that happens.

Lots of things I hope to catch up with today. My new MacBook Air arrived yesterday and I need to get that set up too.

Remembered – 18th August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Dull light, half awake, in lucid dreams
Words arose to poem make, remembered as
‘An intimate melody to my ears reached
Through downy feathers, softened so
Was the tune of my fucking alarm clock!’

26th Aug 2024 – Submitted to Word of the Day Challenge – remember

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to all the people who help keep our electricity supply constant. It is something I had always taken for granted but now that I live in a place where it can be unstable I must remember all those who made it happen and continue to make it happen.

Struggling to savour, I notice. Maybe forgetting how good everything is, or the constant good feeling I seem to have these days, is becoming too normal.

Spent a lazy morning filling in the visa forms and reading, while drinking coffee. Arranged for my morning class to do work ahead of time so that they could skip my class if they wished, which freed me up!

Re-connected with Big Tom, who is still living in Adelaide, though no longer working at DXC – made redundant due to offshoring. Good to chat with him even if only through Twitter messages.

Trying to nail Scarborough Fair on guitar so I can complete the level in Yousician is driving me crazy and torturing my fingers. But never give up! It’s cool to think that by moving some fingers on some strings that nice sounds can emanate.

Looking forward to more Louis XIV tonight and comparing it to our current situation in Thailand. Also, reading about being a ‘good’ Dad and considering how I have lived my life has affected Hayden. He is struggling with addiction and depression, and I can’t help but consider my role in that. He is going to have a difficult time ahead.

You cut off his head, legs come looking for you – 2nd July 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Rainy season started early this year – very early in fact. So, it’s hot and wet and therefore, sticky and humid. Every year, usually after a big rain, some form or another of bug will suddenly emerge from the ground by the millions, to flutter around for five minutes, procreate and then die. Each morning we have to sweep away the piles of carcasses from around our front porch.

On this occasion we had some assistance from a colony of ants in search of nutrition. The picture is taken from a video, which I can’t post here, so it’s difficult to see the army of ants carrying these insects off to their nest. I followed the trail, along our front path, under my hammock, passed the garage, the outdoor toilets, the teaching room and somewhere in amongst the grass near our front gate. A good twenty to thirty metres away from where I took this picture I guess.

A few weeks later and the rains became more torrential and consistent, another colony of ants decided they needed a new home. It wasn’t unusual to see some ants around by the back door and inspecting under the washing machine as it was a pantry of dead bugs and lizards under there. But this time, over the course of one night we found this nest of mud the following morning!

A dose of ant killer soon stopped them and then the task of dragging out the washing machine and digging out their nest with a small shovel! Sorry, ants – this house isn’t big enough for all of us. We can’t have a million of anything living here!

Damned Ants

The invaders are coming
Building castles in dark recesses
An unstoppable force
With an ingenuity that impresses
Counting in their millions
Each one so sure of their role
Ceaselessly marching onward
In determined self-control
I must gather my own forces
With a bucket, shovel and mop
These damned ants – be gone!
Like them, I too, will never stop

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that Amy’s dad took the student’s dog. I hope he takes good care of it. I’m also happy and grateful to be able to start teaching a new student of Ellen’s, a 16-year-old who is moving to Melbourne with her family. She is very quiet but knows she has to study hard.