A fish for today
A problem gone away
Tomorrow, will you be so kind?
A gift quite odd
Here’s a fishing rod
And you may eat all the fish you find

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Today I’m feeling:

Ready for the day. I had a bit of a bad dream when my alarm went off. A weird story of Nong May and I walking across a street and she bumped into a guy and they both fell over. I was concerned for both of them and we ended up catching a scary bus to get to a doctor and insurance place. Everything around was getting darker and more ominous. I could’ve slept a lot longer but I was quite glad to get out of this dream.

Today I’m grateful for:

Not having caught everyone’s colds and flu so far. Many students are sick, coughing and sneezing in class. Sooner or later I will get sick for sure but so far so good. I can feel my throat is dry and itchy just when I’m writing this!

The best thing about today was:

Feeling like my Thai language learning is improving just by using it in class more often and trying to understand the kids when they speak Thai to me. Google Translate is much better than it was a couple of years ago and I can imagine we get to a point where we don’t even bother to learn languages anymore and use super fast translation instead. 

In my grade 10 class today I asked the students how often they used messaging instead of calling and it seemed to be 80/20 favouring messaging.

Will we stop talking altogether? Once we figure out converting thoughts into text maybe our mouths will only be used for eating.

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

Yesterday I was thinking about doing a particular exercise (running dictation) with a couple of my one-hour classes but then remembered that in previous years it had taken much longer, so I quickly switched them around to be in our two-hour classes, one of which was today. 

I was then shocked to find them finished within the hour and us having time to spare. I stretched things out before letting them do other work or free time. 

Everyone enjoyed the class, though they got hot with the running and as I had anticipated the lazier students soon got distracted but in the end, things turned out ok. I do the same exercise with another class tomorrow.

Something I learned today?

There are rumours that the terrible fires in Hawaii, which locals are saying may have killed a couple of thousand people, may have been deliberately started or at least had a deliberately delayed response as investors were looking to get the area cleared out to build a new ‘city’.  Save time and money by letting everything burn!

The locals are still struggling to receive help or even information. It sure looks like a horrible situation and is close to a modern genocide if these people are to be believed.

What random memory comes to mind right now?

This is a difficult question to answer when sitting and trying to think of it. It then becomes not random. Random memories will pop up during the day but not at the time I have this question in my mind. All the things that happened today are already memories and they are already swirling around in the quagmire of my brain.

Next time an older memory does randomly appear I’ll try to remember it and come back and add it. Or more likely I will read this sometime in the future and all the text here will be the actual random memory.

What am I taking for granted?

I think I am probably taking a lot of things for granted right now, though because of that, they are difficult for me to identify. Everyday things such as water, electricity, internet, phone, computer data, and music are almost ubiquitous and easily taken for granted and would be stressful if taken away. 

In some ways, I take Amy for granted but that is part of a relationship and we often remind each other in mostly humorous ways that we don’t do that.

Part of writing a gratitude entry every day is to be reminded not to take things for granted.