Tag: Dexys Midnight Runners

Shaken and Stirred – 15th December 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

The drudgery of the day-to-day
Took our childlike sense away
No longer dwarfed by all around
Bored with all the knowledge found

No longer novel and mysterious
Everything became so serious
Less scared of what’s seen and heard
Memories need to be shaken and stirred

The eyes of children opened wide
Light pouring in deep down inside
Inspiration to seek the sublime
A world in which you can redefine

The battle against conformity requires you to adhere to another kind of conformity.

Dana Kletter, from Manchild 5

Today I’m feeling:
Happy and positive though a little tired due to the lack of sleep from recent nights.
Today I’m grateful for:
The school director thanking us teachers for our hard work and effort at his school. Even if it was just a vague excuse for a meeting arranged by TLC as pats on each other’s backs, I still appreciate that he said these things. Most of the time we feel quite unrecognised and underappreciated. Of course, no pay rise, no bonus, and no Christmas gifts for us! Oh well, my coffee schedule messed up by the meeting I took the opportunity to invite David to House for a quick Kickstarter brew.
The best thing about today was:
My unruly class of kids in 1/7. Before it started I took Goy aside and asked how she felt about my class. She’s a quiet and top-grade productive student and I don’t get chance to talk with her much. She said she liked the class but when prompted said that it was too easy. I know this and apologised to her but she understood that I have many low-skilled students to manage. I asked her about her classmates and she said they were very annoying and make it difficult to concentrate. Obviously, I agreed and I thanked her for her thoughts. I was glad that she was happy with me as a teacher at least. Back in class, the kids wandered in lazily and mostly in high spirits. The two that I kicked out on Tuesday sheepishly laid low in their seats but I made an effort to try and engage Nong Aoi though she insisted she couldn’t write because her hand was hurting. I tried to make it fun by writing with my other hand which she tried for about ten seconds before giving up. With my left hand I write ‘Aoi ❤️ ?’ and Saipan and Rista got excited and said ‘Geno’. So I got a little embarrassed but it gave me an idea. I quickly got to a break point with some writing and hooked up the speaker and searched YouTube for Dexys ‘Geno’ and started playing it. Many kids got up to dance including Aoi and she had a big smile on her face. It was good to see. I settled them all back down with a promise to play it again at the end of the class. After a while, Aoi asked to escort another student who was feeling sick to the bathroom, however, a few minutes later she turned up with four boys, one of which was Geno. They stuck around for a while but got bored waiting until the end of class. When it did come I played Geno again and other excited dancing kids asked for a couple of other songs and that’s how it ended. I love these kids, one moment crazy upset, the next crazy happy. Just like every other human you ever met.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
Last night I found a scratch on Kim Chi that looked pretty serious. Amy was concerned and we talked about whether and when to take her to the vet. It was already 9.30 and I was ready to sleep. We decided not to go then but spent the next couple of hours trying to clean the wound and watching her, putting on a collar to stop her licking and discussing what to do today. As we give her a special medicine for her leukaemia, we don’t generally give her any other medicine from the vet so as not to mix them. She seemed ok this morning and ate without a problem, just annoyed at having her collar on. I called Amy later from school and she’d cleaned up Kim’s room again and decided to keep her there to keep her out of any more trouble. When I got home though she seemed to be more uncomfortable with the wound, which is right on her empty ballbag and was weeping a little cloudy fluid. We quickly decided we should take her to the vet which meant a 2-hour round trip and not a relaxing evening at home. But this is what we do for those we love and so I enjoyed the drive, the traffic, the vets and everything else. I could’ve been annoyed at this loss of free time but I turned it into positive time. The vet advised to bring her again tomorrow which throws out some other plans but this is the way we have to roll.
Something I learned today?
Talking to David over a coffee he told me new things about South Africa that I didn’t know. There are maybe 11 tribal groups in South Africa, all with slightly different cultures. Since the end of the apartheid, the ANC has ruled non-stop but corruption is rife and although overt racism has gone it still exists in more subtle ways. The government is seemingly directed by rich bankers and billionaires ensuring their money keeps rolling in. David said he has come across many more South Africans in Thailand recently as folks are getting out to seek a better future, something which is not possible for the majority. Of course, it’s far more complicated but the underlying immorality and inhumanity are obvious. Perhaps inhumanity is actually the default of humans. Humanity is only something achieved in small doses.
Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?
It’s late already and I would like to write more about this but it also seems obvious that the answer would be ‘every aspect’. There’s no getting around the fact that everyone is unique.

I took this picture because, on a valley bike ride with Bruno, he recommended stopping at this fish restaurant for me to check out. We had a small quick meal and chatted overlooking the fish pond. It was only about 2pm and the owners/staff were lazing around one of the tables. Bruno seemed to think they were high or perhaps they were just in that chilled laid back zone of rural northern Thailand. We were also greeted by an assortment of shaggy dogs and scrawny cats, happily playing, hunting, snacking and snoozing. Lazy days at the fish pond restaurant on a road off the beaten track. A ‘local’ fish pond restaurant for ’local’ people.

The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #41 – 7th June 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

This week there’s music from Volcano Suns, Universal Totem Orchestra, The Controllers, The Piranhas, The Hollywood Squares, Rhun, Off Band, The Stains, Dead Milkmen, Ex Models, Dexys Midnight Runners, Dino Valenti, Unknown and Goblin.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for my man cave. Last night we had a problem with our electricity so had to sleep in my room which was cooler and still had aircon.

To-do list

  • Don’t say anything negative or put people down ½
  • Relax and enjoy – there’s nothing that NEEDS doing ½
  • Enjoy what you are doing – savour it ½
  • Scan some photos today? ½
  • Ask Bee about photo printing ✅

Another easy and pleasant day. I feel like I could do the things listed but didn’t fully invest myself in them.

*Amy interrupted my writing and I didn’t get back to it in the end – so, now it’s Monday.

With nothing to do at work now it’s becoming challenging to stay focused. Still, we’re getting paid and not being asked to work. It’s okay for now; enjoy it while you can.

Sleepy day at work after drinking two beers last evening. Probably not eating enough at the moment either. Would like to stay under 80kg if possible but think I may need to increase my calorie intake if I try to do much/any exercise. Should drink more water too. I never drink enough water.

The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #01 – 2nd September 2019

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Music from Lifter Puller, Thinking Plague, Ozric Tentacles, Built To Spill, Unknown, Shellac, Parliament, Naked City, The Fall, fordamage, Boredoms, Pink Floyd and Dexys Midnight Runners.

14th Feb 2021 – Around this time things were getting very difficult for me with the school I was working at, which led to me leaving at the end of the semester – I forget exactly when perhaps late September or early October. I’ll write more about that at some point.

Anyway, with the stressful situation, I decided to adjust my focus to making a music podcast. I would often sit and marvel as my music library would be set to shuffle and so much great music just kept popping up, so I started keeping track and then making recordings of those songs. I eventually settled into a rhythm of doing one episode per week, often working 3 or 4 weeks in advance.

It was a really enjoyable habit, to focus 3 or 4 hours per weekend to put an episode together. It kept me sane until, of course, it drove me insane. As usual, I developed more ideas as I went along and refined and improved things (I think).

As with this blog, I only made the shows for my own pleasure and didn’t really care whether anyone listened or not and was happy when one or two listeners became comrades. Only after seeing that a million others were doing the same thing and not many people were listening to them either, I decided to bow out and not add any further to the noise of the internet for a while.

When I was in my mid-teens I would blast crazy music out of my bedroom window in the weird hope that people might be intrigued enough to come in and discover more about this mad world of music that I existed in. But living in rural Dorset with only the odd farmer and stray cow or dog passing by, no one ever came to enquire – or even to complain.

Now I can sit in rural Thailand and do the same.