Tag: Flower Festival

The Tech Ghosts – 25th November 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

The victim of these spectral slaves
Invited into our rooms
Ghosts of make-believe realities
On which this monster consumes
Mere cogs of a mega machine
Assimilated to technological production
With immediate planned obsolescence
And the means of its own destruction

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Today I’m feeling:
Pretty good, a little relaxed
Today I’m grateful for:
Kru Fluke coming to assist me in recording my voiceover for the flower festival this year. She helped me with pronunciation of the Thai words and translating with the audio guy. She didn’t really need to come and help but I appreciate that she did.
The best thing about today was:
Being around the students for the open day. We were all happy that we weren’t in classes. I was super happy that some of them were even doing the work I asked them to do!
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
I guess this is connected with the comment above. I asked my students to do some work for me as we didn’t have classes. I realised pretty quickly that many of them wouldn’t bother doing the work and most of them weren’t around to be able to follow up with. There was no way I could control this situation and whilst I feel a little disrespected by the students who won’t do the work out of laziness or sheer bloody-mindedness I have to let it go. So I’m thinking now about how I can reward those students who did do the work.
Name 10 people you love.
Amy
Hayden
Jochen
Kieran
Chrissie
Sharon
Aaron B
Kimi
Steve
Mum

I took this picture because there are new monsters everywhere.

A Dog’s Performance Review – 17th November 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 11 Comments

Oh dog, your performance is far too poor
You are not achieving what we hired you for
The rats still run rampant everywhere
You’re on probation until you start to care

Your KPI’s are well below par
Do you know exactly what you are?
Eating shoes and snapping at flies
You are a dog! Do you realise?

Scared of cats and other critters
The village bears your many litters
Hopefully, these puppies understand their job
The proper work of being a dog

Based on this article
15th Aug 2024 – Submitted to What’s Going On – cats and dogs

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that I have been asked to be the voice of the Chiang Rai Flower Festival again.

Amy was pretty drunk yesterday. She is obviously very excited about going to Australia and open to the possibilities there – lots of options. Sometimes when she is drunk, her emotions can swing wildly. Last night she was ok but cried a few times, not with happiness or sadness but with gratitude and appreciation for her parents and me.

We both went to bed early and I held her little body in my arms as she settled down and rolled over and found her sleep. I had some interesting dreams, with lots of people from my past.

Today I usually only have one class and that was cancelled as the kids are off for vaccinations. I knew that I had to do recording for the Chiang Rai Flower Festival today, like I did last year but I only found out that I had to go to the CRPAO official offices, next to Immigration, about 15 minutes before starting.

I met Kru Gratae and Kru Tee there and they did their Chinese version and I did the English version, even nailing the long Thai name first time. The texts they use are pretty weird, flowery words that any English speaker would immediately recognise as fantastical hyperbole. It’s pretty funny to read though.

So for the rest of the day I’m pretty much free. I will take advantage and prepare the class work for students next week, do a little reading and check out more of this free literature course that I found online.