Tag: injustice

We’ll Be All Right – 25th March 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Get ready for the struggle
Get up and get strong!
Don’t waste time on the puzzle
If all the pieces are wrong

Injustice sits in the heart
Sending signals to the head
Ignore them from the start
Choose to grow instead

The world is not unkind
Neither is it cruel
Fast forward, not rewind
The correct use of the tool

Inspired and paraphrased from The Red Hand Files #272

2nd Jun 2024 – Submitted to the Word of the Day Challenge

Today I’m feeling:

I’ve got some energy today, mainly through having ideas for lessons for next semester, which I need to focus on this week in preparation.  

I just hope that what I’m working on is suitable for the students and not above their level.  

I sometimes overestimate how skilled the students are and as this is my first time teaching grade 12 I have some reservations.

Today I’m grateful for:

Cap being able to come home from the vet.  He hates being there as he is a princess scaredy-cat a lot of the time.  

I doubt he slept much for the last three days but the saline has helped stabilise his blood levels and hopefully, he soon gets his appetite back.

The best thing about today was:

Getting on a roll with my lessons.  I checked with the grade 12 teacher from last year and they were very supportive of what I was hoping to teach some of these students.

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

I talked to Kru Mai about changing one of my classes so that they matched the other classes in that grade and he said he will look at it.  

But in the process of that conversation, the annual discussion of integrated study came up again and our grade 7 and 10 classes may need to follow that format.

I argued against this unless we are given the lessons to teach (which is not likely).  Every year they try to implement this and it’s always been shot down but it looks they are going to try and muscle it in somehow this time.

Also, any rejigging of our classes may also mean I don’t end up teaching the grade 12s that I just spent all day working on lessons for.  I asked if that could be left alone because I hope that I can get this opportunity to test out my skills and abilities, as well as the students.

Something I learned today?

USA TikTok users said that they were worried if the company was sold to a US corporation, believing that it would be more censored and restricted than it is currently as a subsidiary of a Chinese company.

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

Amy asked me to do many little things for her this evening and I’ve done them as required, even though it interrupted things that I was doing.

I took this picture because the full moon was looking rad as I went out to help Amy in the teaching room. She has plans for it but I’m not sure exactly what yet.

In Empathy – 6th August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I cannot close my eyes
to the injustices I see;
unable to make a difference,
it’s just frustrating me.

Whilst others suffer,
happiness is an illusion;
I can’t wrap my head around
this disappointing conclusion.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the availability of almost any book I desire to read. If I can’t buy a physical book I can usually find a digital copy.

Reading ‘The King Never Smiles’ is a saddening experience. Each night, I read about 10 pages, and I am enlightened more and more about the reality for Thai people. They have been totally manipulated and tricked into submission – not even submission – it’s like Stockholm Syndrome.

They have learned to love their captor. Every protest and uprising in the last 100 years has amounted to exactly the same thing – a useless government hamstrung by palace politics and corruption. Governments can barely last a few years, sometimes not even making it to their first day. It’s so frustrating that it makes one wish for private fighter jets to go and eliminate evil.

Whilst mine and Amy’s lives here are beyond comfortable, we are struggling through empathy for the rest of the population, deluded and ignorant or not. When Amy says she wants to leave, I can’t help but feel it is a case of wanting to stick one’s head in the sand. If it can’t be seen, then it has no effect.

Unfortunately for me, I have always felt empathy for people around the world suffering in this way, no matter where I reside. I have been, and still do, enjoy my time here, and the suffering I see for the people here doesn’t lessen my concern for those suffering in Brazil or the USA, anywhere else.

With the rules and laws here, though, trying to fight back against them is very dangerous if you live here. The ones desiring radical change are forced overseas to speak their mind and often lose the local population’s confidence by being abroad. A catch-22 easily exploited by the powerful. It’s sickening and saddening and pushes one to the dark corners of nihilism.

There seems little hope for humanity despite these comparatively good times we live through.

The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #21 – 18th January 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Music from Motelli Skronkle, The Chords, Dot.Organ, DMBQ, Isocracy, i.e. crazy, Capillary Action, Ruins, Bukkake Moms, Killing Joke, Butthole Surfers, Sex Pistols, Debt of Nature, The Poles, 17 Pygmies and Sebadoh.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for Art and Utopia. Nice coffee and nice people and easy to get to. Lifesaver for a hangover!

To return to the books one lived in one’s youth is to risk disappointment – in both the books and in oneself when young.

Joseph Epstein

To-do list

  • Upload TCRAH ✅
  • Finish writing to Chrissie
  • Go for a ride around the hills again ✅
  • Go to the gym
  • Sort out more in the office ✅

I ran out of energy today. After teaching, which was very enjoyable today, it was about 5.3o pm and I spent a few minutes watching TV and energy just zapped out of me. Oh well, despite my best intentions, going to the gym the day after drinking probably wasn’t the best idea.

Today, Amy was upset by some pictures on an English poster we had bought – they showed ‘cute’ as a white girl and ‘ugly’ as a black person. Pretty fucked up and Amy said that she would complain to the makers.

In the afternoon I shared the picture with the TLC LINE group with the question ‘What is this teaching Thai children?’ I was quite surprised at the acceptance from Mike and Ben (himself black). I think it’s a fairly serious issue but felt like they were countering it because they were either used to it or it never affected them.

I feel proud of myself and Amy because we are prepared to stand up for what we believe to be right and fair. Amy even did it last night with the car park attendant as he called me ‘it’, which I was obviously oblivious to. Then Nancy cut the conversation short by talking about loving everyone and Malcolm piping up with emoji support.

I found the whole conversation very thought-provoking. Mike called me a ‘troublemaker’. I don’t know? Is facing issues causing trouble? I didn’t think I really had to defend my position – the consequences of letting things slide are obvious and some are prepared to leave thinking and doing to others and live the easy life.

It was interesting that Mike and Ben are French and I wonder how this affects their thinking? What an interesting day!

Should I not raise these things as discussion – live the easy life myself? I feel like that is what I want but something in me sees the injustices in the world and that I should say something even if nothing can be changed quickly.

Well, what will tomorrow bring?