Music from Pregnant Neck, The Fugs, 35mm Dreams, Tsushimamire, Skurge, Mudhoney, George Duke, Electric Light Orchestra, Lightning Bolt, Unknown, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Dennis Brown, Wild Youth, Vibrato Fetish, Spanish Dogs, beNt, Cockney Rejects and The Temptations.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for my shower in the morning, to cool and refresh, and prepare for the day.
To-do list
Continue video editing ✅
Enjoy Baew’s birthday party ✅
Record TCRAH if time
Find warm up video and then exercise
Read some more – I want to finish this book! ✅
I enjoyed learning the video editing software today. Amy was obviously in her monthly bad mood so it was good to be out of the way. She was baking cakes too. I find it hard to deal with her when she’s in these moods and even she knows that she is not herself.
She was happy when we got to Baew’s though and we started eating and drinking. I had to stop after a little bit though because I was tired and I ended up sleeping for a couple of hours!
Music from Pile, uSSSy, Melt Banana, Patti Smith, Cleaning Woman, Dancebeach, Lilliput, Eric and The Smoke Ponies, Show Business Giants, Arab On Radar, Cutty’s Gym, Peter Black, Steve Harley and the Cockney Rebel, Unknown, Zachary Thrax, Obat Batuk, The Homosexuals and The Fall.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the brownie I was able to eat for breakfast. It was yummy.
To-do list
Record new TCRAH and finish upload ✅
Check out Google Sheets for school ✅
Check out Microsoft Teams
Meditate ½
Both Amy and I got nicely relaxed yesterday on our cannabis brownies – I had to eat six of them to get a good effect though and felt so chocolate-sick by late evening. It was a very nice effect though and I actually sat and just listened to music which I haven’t really done for a long while. So, I was a little bit too relaxed last night to write anything!
I feel OK to go to work again tomorrow and really want to crack on with the lesson writing so I can get a good head start for when all the classes start again properly in July
Music from Senyawa, Jamesy and Sean, Far East Family Band, Air Miami, Arcwelder, Flesh Narc, X_X, Deerhoof, Hidden Rifles, The Damned, Chepang, Lindsay Cooper, Tigermen, Fifty Foot Hose, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, F, Younger Brothers, Shadow Minstrels, Cypress Hill and Eddie and the Hot Rods.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for my computer. It enables me to do so many things. I wonder if I could live without it? Of course, I could but I don’t think I want to.
To-do list
More 1994ever ✅
Record TCRAH – spend time on this one ✅
Watch less TV today ✅
More drawing
Today is Tuesday. I haven’t been writing in here because I have gotten myself absorbed in some good TV and by the time I come to bed it’s too late to turn on the light and write.
I feel like things are coming together more in my room – nearly got all the CDs in their cases – after more than two years! Now I’m trying to get rid of the CDRs and thinking about all the DVDs I have and what to do with them.
I’m hoping to keep up with all the backlog of 1994ever and other bits and pieces of writing. It’s been enjoyable to go through all those, thinking about the past. It still feels like it happened to someone else. Even brief glimpses of mundane things pop into my head and it makes me think about what times and events that I’m part of now will pop into my mind in the future.
Life feels quite mundane and predictable though I also feel quite happy and content.
High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed
Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Story of Mankind
That little bird is our lives. Dwarfed by the magnificence of time.
We are small and insignificant. Not individual, not a group, nor a race. Not a society, a species or a thought from God. We are nothing.
The dinosaurs, the mammoths, the pharaohs, the sultans and kings, the inventors, the thinkers and philosophers, the builders, the masters and slaves, the writers, the historians, the celebrities, the murderers, the saints and the despots. You and me. Nothing.
What will you do with this information?
Our floating houses on molten granite Our liquid planet, it is a home for us all I’m firmly planted, my earth is solid I feel a presence but there is nothing at all I wanted something, down here is something It’s really something but there is nothing at all
‘Slowly Melting’ by Nomeansno
The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #34
Music from Tipographica, Keukhot, Chui Wan, 400 Blows, Lifter Puller, Mazaj, Geronimo, Unknown, Pell Mell, Opal, Child Bite and Debile Menthol.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the space we have in our house and garden. We can move furniture around and reinvent ourselves, change our views.
To-do list
Talk to George ✅
Record TCRAH
One more lesson plan
Record more 1994ever for blog ✅
Write a short blog post ✅
Almost didn’t make it out to my room but somehow managed to motivate myself. I am slowly completing things, whether it is sorting out bits and pieces from my past, things I’d intended to do for a long time, reading books, watching movies and TV series, sorting out my CDs etc. So at least I have a sense of achievement.
I’m reminded of when I was about 10 or 11 years old and used to ‘race’ my Matchbox car collection and keep tables of which was fastest and kept all sorts of statistics about them. I was already organising my mind, putting things in order, sleeping everything straight.
I can pinpoint other instances of this at various times during my youth actually. Looking through old diaries has triggered some deep recollections which is interesting. I’m testing myself to see what else is hidden away in there.
Music from Cause For Effect, The Fall, All, Non Compos Mentis, Unwound, The Who, Black Flag, Beau Navire, Maximillian Colby, Sir Millard Mulch, Thin Pillow, Volcano Suns, Angst, And The Earth Swarmed With Them, Empat Lima and Captain Beefheart.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for Sichuan pepper. Numbs my lips and creates havoc in my stomach but it tastes so good.
Music from The Radwan Satellite, The Spielbergs, The Ex, Teenage Depression, The Dickies, Prince Francis, Nihilistics, The Ladies, Third Thumb, Mothboxer, Bare Grillz, Sakarin Boonpit, Blondie, Naked Raygun, The Satellites, Ambient Noise and the Sex Pistols.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for these masks that can help me breathe. Coronavirus and high AQI.
14th Mar 2023 – That looks like a pretty fine podcast. Sometimes I go and listen to them myself. I think they’re pretty good. The mix of music represents my madness. After having Covid last year I decided to stop wearing masks but with the summer burning season here again I’m wearing them intermittently when I’m outside.
To-do list
Record and upload TCRAH ✅
Install Powerpoint on laptop ½
Sort more CDs ½
Try to move more
Started off the day well then fell back into reading and watching TV. I do, however, feel much better today and much happier too. With holidays coming up, ie. not really having to work, I feel like I have lots of free time at the moment so I’m enjoying watching TV, though I do notice that time goes too fast.
Same with reading. I’m reading a lot more these days and before I know it, a couple of hours have gone.
Tomorrow is the end of quarantine and I’ll go buy coffee in the morning and we’ll stock up on supplies again.
In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, Arthur Deikman warned that many of the spiritual and utopian groups that had mushroomed out of the counter-culture were harmful cults…… He identified four signs of cult-like behaviour — dependence on a leader, compliance with the group, forbidding dissent, and devaluing outsiders. These four behaviours were particularly strong in cults, he suggested, but existed throughout society.
Jules Evans – The soulful psychiatrist (email newsletter)
When I read this I immediately became aware that the school system that I am working within in this country is cult-like. These are government schools where I work, so it makes some sense. Governments operate utilising these four behaviours too.
In this system, preferences are given to the leader, superior or elder, whether they are deserving or not. If they are found lacking machinations begin to move that leader along, often with a handshake to comfort the stab in the back.
Compliance within the group is essential. You must conform. Non-conformity will enable idle gossip, rumour and lies. This will dig deep into your soul until it becomes unbearable. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. (I am that nail, over and over. Yes, I am stupid but I hope to learn.) It is a culture clash that happens repeatedly as teachers come and go faster than they can be replaced. No one learns from this as each party shakes their fists as they walk away.
Dissent leads the same way. Any question is seen as dissent, any suggestion is dissent, opening your mouth can be taken as dissent. To make improvements trickster behaviour must be employed, backroom suggestions that may filter through as if the leaders had thought of it themselves.
And the old favourite – devaluing outsiders. In an environment of education, it seems like it should be essential for everyone to work together. However, here there is a palpable us and them. If you decide to follow the path of non-compliance and dissent you will be seen to have no value (‘you’re one of them, one of them’). The survival technique ensures devaluing yourself – it is too great a burden for many to take.
I am not filled with hope for education in this country. But I can hope that it is only my limited experience and that things are much better in private schools at least, but which unfortunately only the wealthy can afford.
The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #28
Music from Aburadako, Ween, The Fall, Ahleuchastistas, Steve Miller Band, Radio Palestine, Sajjanu, The Motions, The Letters, Abnorman Chaffy, The Ramones, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Girls Against Boys, Marmalade Butcher, Guzzlemug, Slight Seconds, Cinematics, Strange Changes.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to watch our trees sprout new growth. To see the birds fly down from the branches and pick up yummy worms.
To-do list
Practice being nicer to everyone ½
Upload and record TCRAH ✅
Check files and start grading ✅
More CD sorting ✅
Xbox Dance today?
I woke up a little hungover today despite only having two beers last night. I’m really not enjoying drinking as much now, though I think I’m not really enjoying anything at the moment. It’s just a feeling that I’m sure will pass soon enough. I feel like I’m going through the motions mostly.
I did get a few things done today and starting to refocus myself a little and after six days stuck at home, I am getting a little itchy to just go for a walk.
I really want to get up tomorrow morning and start playing that dance game. I must do it. I should dance – in my own unstylish way. It will at least make Amy smile.
I got bothered today because Amy mentioned that when I write to school or TLC my words are quite argumentative, or could be perceived that way. I need to become more aware of that and be more amenable. I must think more about what I write and hoping that will transfer to the way I speak too.
Music from Art Moulu Trefin, GÄA, Sly and the Family Stone, Reciprocate, Death Pedals, Sonic Youth, Jimi Hendrix, Irving Klaw Trio, The Sonics, Pavement, Andy Partridge.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to my friend Kimi who unexpectedly passed away this morning. He was a good man and I loved him very much. I will miss him.
To-do list
Get out of this funk
Upload and record TCRAH
Find opportunity for acts of kindness
Case CDs
Try longer meditation
Unfortunately, today got worse as I found out my great friend Kimi passed away. I’m shocked and devastated. Despite living in different countries we have remained close since meeting and I always with or visited him when I was in KL. I can’t believe he’s gone.
I didn’t want to do anything except be by myself.
On top of this, the grandfather of the village family also passed away today and we had to help them too. So it’s been an awful couple of days and going back to school on Monday will be a challenge.
Kimi, me and Stacked State in Singapore (2019)Hayden and Kimi in KL (2015)Me and Kimi talking shit in Singapore (2019)
Music from Bob Drake, The Work, DMBQ, FLIRT, Neutral Sons, Prag, Brainticket, Grobschnitt, Appollonius Abraham Schwarz, The Sweet, The Dazzling Killmen.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to see Oh’s puppies again and thankful she gave us a place to stay for one night.
To-do list
Stay relaxed – it’s a mini-holiday ✅
Do another Smiling Mind meditation
Really savour something today ✅
3 acts of kindness ½
Only buy books on your want list
Went book shopping but ended up buying a couple of extra things because I didn’t see any books on my wants list.
In the morning we went to visit Jessica’s aunt and I really savoured sitting and talking with her in her garden. Whilst we were talking she mentioned a book she really enjoyed about Afghanistan. She couldn’t remember the exact title, something about a Thousand Suns. Just as I was leaving the bookshop I spotted on the shelf ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ and that was the book – so I bought that too.
Music from Aksak Maboul, North of America, The Milkshakes, Lungfish, UXA, Tipographica, The Cramps, Ex-Models, Magma, Cicala Mvta, Cicatriz En La Matriz, Trick Cigarettes, Neutral Sons, Karminsky Experience, Undertones.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the sun this morning. It’s cold again so sitting in the sun feels good on my face.
In order to live at all one must come to terms with non-living.
Analysis of Levin, Anna Karenina
To-do list
Record new TCRAH ✅
Go to the gym in the morning
Try to pick Amy up
Visualise and review the day hour-by-hour
Spent time enjoying the room ½
Today got derailed somewhat as Amy and I had a minor fight before Amy even got out of bed. She wanted to talk about my passport and it being delivered by DHL to Chiang Mai. I know this is on her mind but trying to think about serious things may be better done after getting up and being more prepared for the day.
This start left us both in a bad mood and I felt unmotivated to do what I had planned. After coffee, I had thought to go to the gym but just by chance, it was closed anyway.
We both picked ourselves up a bit by lunchtime but I felt a sort of relief to not be thinking too much about my daily challenges and practising more philosophical ideas.
Even though I enjoy the weekend teaching I am starting to feel a little like a machine. I’m not exhausted by it but would like more available contemplative time.
1994ever 