Oh homeless man, the new waiter
The undercover friend, the infiltrator
TV celebrity, the idol musician
The data points inform the position

Oh trendy barista, petulant child
Enraged protestor, a traveller wild
The service staff, the queuers waiting
The data points accumulating

Oh gentle find, words so kind
A bus conductor helping the blind
Kissing the ugliest and prettiest face
The data points fall into place

Oh fighting man, the bruise creator
The best, and worst – lover, hater
The times recalled of instant regret
The data points are all being set

Oh husbands, wives, fathers and mothers
Every conversation where meeting others
Their influence felt without fail
The data points tell their tale

Today I’m feeling:

Pretty rough in the morning but I knew as the day went on I would improve. My cough has gotten worse but the sore throat is almost gone.

After my only class in the morning, which went well enough considering, I’ve been running around getting documents copied, printed and pictures taken.

By the time I got home I was tired but not sleepy and if I had slept it would have been long and deep and then I wouldn’t sleep tonight. But that has left me a little deflated and unenthused.

I played guitar for a little while before stopping feeling a bit frustrated. Some days don’t feel right and I can accept that much better these days.

Today I’m grateful for:

The immigration officer who was sympathetic to my situation though unable to do anything to help. He was kind and friendly.

I’m also grateful to TLC to put together all my paperwork for my visa and dealing with immigration for me this time.

The best thing about today was:

The feeling of things getting done and finished by mid-afternoon, even though it’s not really completed yet. It was just satisfying that after the running around everyone said ‘ok, done’. Now wait for the next bit of running around.

Maybe I still have to do a border run to get another 30 days extension if this visa application through TLC isn’t ready in time but even that could at least be an interesting day out.

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

A little frustratingly in my class this morning many students were having trouble recording audio on their phones due to permission settings.

I’m getting better at figuring out how to change their phones’ language setting to English so I can then figure out how to fix the app permissions. In the course of doing this on one girls phone though I found she had about 60 porn website pages open.

I wasn’t particularly bothered about the content just that there were so many pages open possibly draining her battery and taking up bandwidth so I started closing them. When she saw that I could see these pages she wanted to grab her phone but I told her not to worry, that it wasn’t important right then and I eventually fixed her settings for her. 

When I got home I sent her a message to clean up her phone just in case another teacher or her family members might see.

I also told her that I understood that all the kids her age are curious about these things but wanted her to understand that pornography doesn’t represent what sex is really like and that it is acting.

I sent her a translated version so she could more easily understand and she soon replied, though just with a simple ‘ok’ so I’m not sure exactly how she might be feeling.

Sometimes when I see my 13-year-old female students I’m reminded about the book I read years ago about a poor Thai girl who sold her virginity at that age to an old white guy. It was sure a depressing story and I can’t imagine the desire that drives people to seek out youngsters in that way. 

Yes, they are cute, curious, sexy and everything else but actually having sex…? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Something I learned today?

I learned that I have to go and interview the primary students in the morning tomorrow instead of the afternoon as originally planned. Who knows, it might still change again in the morning….

What is something positive happening in my life right now?

My attitude. Considering I’m stuffing around with visas yet again, maybe working without pay, dealing with naughty children constantly and many other little niggles that could accumulate to get me down I’m still surprisingly upbeat and positive.