Tag: rainy season

No More Shiny Things – 25th August 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

What is left to be pursued?
The bigger, brighter things have faded
Realising that there’s nothing new
Has made us all become jaded

No longer entranced by shiny things
It’s all been seen and done before
A mind that’s closing sooner brings
Death knocking at your door

5th Oct 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – pursuant

Today I’m feeling:

Tired and good! I slept early last night and ended up waking a little earlier but as it was still dark I tried to get back to sleep and when I finally got real deep into it again the alarm went off.

I pushed and struggled through exercises telling myself how much better I will feel afterwards. My arms and legs ache at the joints from all the extra work they’ve been doing but ultimately my body feels more together and capable. I can only imagine how I might feel if I had treated myself better in my teens, twenties and thirties.

In my early thirties, I started going to the gym after work and then straight to the beach to bodyboard. I always felt great after that but rewarded myself by drinking. One step forward, one step back.

Today I’m grateful for:

The nice taxi driver that took drunk Amy home from the city this evening. It reminds me that most people are ok.

The best thing about today was:

Messaging with Nong Mee and getting an update on how she is doing as I rarely see her these days. She is the girl who swallowed a bunch of pills last semester. She said she is doing better and that even when she feels down she knows both myself and some of her friends are there to support her. I was heartened to read that and happy for her too.

Something I learned today?

I read in Derek Sivers’s book Hell Yeah Or No that our beliefs and understanding of the world are based on our location. 

Obvious, true, but the point was that when you go to foreign places, the people there grow up with their own set of beliefs and understanding. Rather than take the approach that our way is best we need to unlearn our own beliefs and accept different ones. 

Even knowing your way is better it’s not appropriate to try and change something blatantly. Gradually, exposure on both sides will find some kind of agreement.

I know I struggled with this when I started teaching in Thailand. Of course, I want to improve things for the lives of those I’m teaching. I no longer think I can do that with words but rather through actions and just being.

Quote: Day by day, what you do is who you become. – Heraclitus

I guess it’s obvious. But when you are in the middle of being you, and always believing you are right, the obvious becomes obscured. 

Since my late teens, I became less confident in the things that I knew. Doubt crept into everything. 

For a long time, I considered myself a fence sitter, often admiring those who held strong beliefs. Now I have come around to the fact that the fence is often the best place to be. The wind can blow in different directions. Whilst there may be universal truths everything else is always up for debate.

How did I practice stillness?

I’m going to say that I practice this when I’m reading. I know my brain is still active but I am usually focused within the story, almost out of body.

Even when I do meditation my brain struggles to calm though I do generally feel less stressed after. I know it’s a matter of practice. I don’t think I’m in a state of stress that requires me to counter it with converted efforts towards stillness really.

I took this picture because after I finished my class around 4 pm I ended up playing volleyball with Nicha and one of the boys and got soaked with sweat as there is no cover in the playground at the moment. The sun kept appearing through the broken clouds along with the already high humidity. Nicha joked about how cold she was when I tried to block the sun with my hand. I didn’t even really cool down in the aircon of the car on the drive home and the house was already stinking inside so I tried to cool down with a shower but even that was a struggle. Then, seemingly suddenly, it got dark and proceeded to rain heavily non-stop for about thirty minutes resulting in all this water sitting on top of the soil under the trees, the ground already too waterlogged to soak up more. The rain has calmed down a little now but is still coming down with no sign of it stopping just yet.

No Code – 13th June 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I don’t want to leave here
These familiar sounds and smells
Every hour, stand up, sit down
With the tolling of the bells

The time of laughter and joy
Mixed with frustrations and tears
I want to be a kid forever
I don’t recognise these years

Freedom and future evaporate
As responsibilities reveal their load
I fail to understand how adults work
I don’t want to know the code

19th June 2023 – At 55, as a teacher, I’m finally enjoying my school years!

Today I’m feeling:

Last night the aircon in the bedroom was working again which was a relief…until! The power went out sometime while I was sleeping. I woke up hot and sticky and checked if the ELCB had tripped which it hadn’t so there was nothing to do except to try and get back to sleep which I did eventually and when I woke again, which may have been 5 minutes or 5 hours later, the power was back but the aircon stopped working! So when my alarm went off I elected to snooze it though stirred myself before it re-triggered.  I pushed through an ab workout and slowly my brain and body woke up properly.  By the time I was in class, I was set and felt good for the whole day.

Today I’m grateful for:

Breaking a guitar string that I had a single replacement for without having to open a new pack. It’s simple but I’ll take what I can get.

The best thing about today was:

The feeling of flow in the classroom. Sometimes being a teacher feels like herding cats and whilst that can be frustrating today I had the energy to run around and keep everyone focused (from time to time at least).

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

Before I left school I met a few grumpy students from my last class. They were grumpy because they had been blamed for someone else’s garbage outside and had been made to clean up around the whole playground. When I got home Kru Wow had sent me a picture and message about the rubbish my students left in her classroom. Possibly the same students who had been wrongly accused outside! I apologised to Kru Wow but those kids are a very messy bunch. It’s up to me to check before they leave though.

Something I learned today?

Apparently, the forecast for this rainy season is no rain until August.  Fuuuuuu…..

What is a dream or aspiration that I have yet to pursue?

One of the main ideas of being located in Thailand was the easy access to the rest of Asia but due to covid, I’ve barely been anywhere. Still want to visit Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia as well as get back to Japan and China too.

Little Nicha (front) took this picture because she stole my phone out of my pocket while I was talking with JubJib (back). I was curious about what photos I would end up seeing and this is my favourite. Noah, JJ, Fah, me and Nicha. All good kids.

Scrabble – 1st October 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

After a fall you may rest in bed
But those words can never be unsaid
Your actions may bring some trouble
But your words will score them double

Live long enough and you’ll learn that the people who’ll really hurt you and screw you over aren’t the obvious, overt monsters but the sly manipulators who smile to your face.

Caitlin Johnstone

Today I’m feeling:
Happy and relaxed.
Today I’m grateful for:
Being able to listen to CDs throughout the day. Marc Ribot, Half Man Half Biscuit and That Fucking Tank. To have music available to suit (or make) any mood is something I’m grateful for.
The best thing about today was:
Walking in the rain and being in the garden in the rain, with Cap watching me from the terrace and Tig curled up on the chair. Idyllic.

What is your favourite season of year? Why?
My favourite season depends on where I am in the world but I guess spring would generally be my favourite. The balance of the four seasons in England makes each of them enjoyable. Sydney, Australia mostly felt like having two seasons but a short break in between each. Thailand has three seasons with no spring to really talk of. Just winter, summer and rainy seasons.

Spring is the light after the cold dark of winter, everything renews and regenerates. A time of hope and possibility. Sometimes summer is tinged with a hint of sadness, knowing that it will finish soon.

I took this picture because despite the rain I was enjoying this walk and I wanted to show my village, with the highway running through. I no longer wonder what I’m doing here. I could be anywhere and this is just where I am right now.

Rolling In – 22nd September 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

The bird in the limes whoops
‘Here comes the rain’
Ants busy themselves in relocation
Coming inside again
At each gust the bough twists
Fruit falls to the ground
A flash to signal cats
To hide from the oncoming sound
Low breaths hanging dark
Pushed frantically apace
Rapid gunfire hits the sheets
Falling around this place
The frogs shout out their pleasure
The cats, a-sleeping, wait
Again the birds are whooping
As the worms turn toward their fate

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Thomas Carlyle

Today I’m feeling:
Tired but content
Today I’m grateful for:
My students at least seeming to understand what it is I want from them in class. They lose their bravado when having to talk with me one to one.
The best thing about today was:
Finishing classes early and being able to come home and have a sort of nap whilst listening to Sebka Chott, with Cap alongside me.

I took this picture because I love finding drawings of me in my student’s books. Some of these kids are quite talented.

The Week That Was – 16th December 1979

No Fuss Life – 20th September 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

She’s the one, happily jumping in the mud
She’s got a little bit of crazy running through her blood
One fifty on the highway, three up on their bikes
She’s gonna live her life just the way she likes
Into the wind, any speck of caution thrown
Maybe she’ll be gone before she’s fully grown
But she’s lived a life more complete than all of us
Left the chains for freedom and didn’t make a fuss

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

Steven Pressfield

Today I’m feeling:
Happy
Today I’m grateful for:
Finding a cheap power adapter after losing mine somewhere. I’d prefer the real thing but will make do with a less expensive one for now.
The best thing about today was:
Watching a video of my crazy student, Nong Aoi, diving into a huge puddle of water after a storm and to the delight of all her friends. I keep watching the video because it makes me laugh so much and it’s great to see her and her friends so happy

I took this picture because the cats had been scared of the storm and wanted to be close by to feel safe and to be ready when I get up to feed them.

Robot Human Robot – 10th July 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Busy turning humans into robots
Learning to love the monotony
Building robots to resemble humans
Forming a ridiculous dichotomy

It has always been hard for me to understand myself, to know why I work and love and live. Yet it is fortunate that such matters find a way of caring for themselves.

Rockwell Kent

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for all the workers that helped clear the streams a few years ago so that it is not so easy to flood the land around us during the rainy season. I wonder where they all are now.

Our House (again) – 17th July 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

The feature picture (above) is a picture that we have to take every year for my visa application, to show that we are the happy family that we are telling them we are. We also have to supply a picture in our living room and bedroom!

The dog, Tangmo (Watermelon), is our neighbour’s but he is increasingly happy to be at our house these days as we give him love, pats and attention. We do not listen to the aunties who insist that we should hit him when he’s naughty. And they don’t understand why he likes to visit us so much…

This is the view from behind the village market, across the paddies looking towards our house, which you can see on the left, with the green fence. On the hill on the horizon is the stupa. I still don’t know what they indicate or ceremonies they are used for.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for our fresh-cut garden again. I love it when it’s been tended to and happy to pay for someone to do it (5 people!).

Life To Rise – 28th May 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I love to watch the mountains in any season but in the breaks of rain, it’s fantastic to watch the clouds drop down into the valleys to give more depth and definition to the peaks on the horizon. It’s lovely to watch the rain out of the window.

The mountains advance from their cover
Mad swirling whispers rise and grey
Filled to dripping with lumps of water
The jungle climbing up trees to sway
The streams are full, crabs are caught
In plastic buckets and crowded net
Paddies complete for more life to rise
First came the sun and now the wet

Luring me with all the people I love above all else – 3rd September 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Now is the time of change. After a long sticky summer and apparent death to all plant life suddenly the rains come. Despite the cooler temperature the humidity rockets making one wish for the drier heat of summer. After a week or so of the rains, those apparently dead plants now threaten to destroy everything built by humans, house swallowed up by jungle. Thankfully, the snakes go and hide from the rain; somewhere…they are always hiding. We call the gardeners, they do their work but it looks like they need to come back again the following week, the week after and so it goes.

And soon the rain deluges. Not much thought seems to be given to drainage. Perhaps it’s just an inconvenience for a month or two and not worth the investment but a lot of shoes get wet or you may choose to stay at school until the water has eventually seeped away.

Some creatures have little care for the foibles of the weather. They always find the right spot.

At the tail end of the season we head to a hot spring where we can soak our legs for free at varying degrees of insane heat. Kids play and splash in the 30 degree water while we suffer in the 45. No one is even close to the 85 degree water – who would be!? Predictably, whilst we are there, it starts raining. Later, at a restaurant, I can’t feel my legs. They are either relaxed or in shock. Either way, the no-feeling is good.

As if to signal the end of the rainy season (after a brief 6 to 8 weeks, though thankfully much more rain than last year) critters emerge.

Weird hairy caterpillars bumble about and the snakes make a reappearance. One morning as I’m leaving for work I’m surprised to find a couple of small crabs standing guard in the driveway. Amy says they usually live in the rice fields but to me it seems so weird to see crabs about 500kms away from any coast.

And so it seems the rain has ended until next July. We get out and pay a visit to the border market town of Mae Sai and shop for more socks and underwear and visit our favourite cafe/bar/restaurant.

This parrot announces our arrival like a door chime fog horn and I jump out of my skin. Other birds step out but thankfully don’t squawk.

The cafe is hidden away in a market, down a hallway that then opens out into this fantastic courtyard of artwork and decorations. All sorts of obscura adorn every space. In a shed area the owner keeps his batches of homemade hootch though he tells us that he was recently fined one hundred thousand baht and forced to pour it all away.

However, he disappears off somewhere for a few minutes and re-appears with a couple of bottles of plum shoju which are duly purchased. He remembers us from our last visit back in October and doesn’t seem to phased about his fine and lose of illegal merchandise. In fact the cafe is only open for 4 hours a day and I’m not sure anyone goes there to eat.

He potters around rearranging things, happy to chat about life but also happy to be alone by himself. He owns the whole market area and can easily survive of the income from rent. Nice life.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the toilet paper at DeLanna. Sometimes I forget to take paper to the bathroom at school and have to sit and wait for my bum to dry. Luckily, today the timing was right and I could use the facilities at DeLanna.

To-do list

  • Compliment someone ✅
  • 7-minute workout again ✅
  • Write a blog post during the day ✅

It’s now the 21st! I have gotten busy with my normal routine things but also added some yoga practice to my day. As well as home workouts, meditations and Thai practice getting a bit longer as I get better at them.

I’ve made myself busy again but I am also mostly happy these days. Writing here has gone by the way for now. I’ve even committed to some Thai lessons on Tuesday afternoons.

There are still some feelings and emotions that I would like to explore further but I’ll not push myself with them much at the moment. I will try to write here more often – maybe focus on particular things.

Too much, double bullseye, too much, do it again – 5th July 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

A long weekend with two extra days. Though I have been barely working at all this semester, at least this weekend promised not having to attend school and an opportunity to do whatever I wanted.

I had half an idea to get back into playing some video games again but only got around to it on the last day. It was fun but unfulfilling, possibly the spectre of disappointment raised by having to relearn how to play a game again, that I was halfway through and not played for 18 months. I wonder when I’ll give it another go? I wonder if my old Nintendo DS still works after all these years?

On Sunday, the skies were cloudy but the rain had been holding off. It is gonna rain again, right? That can’t be it for rainy season already? Last year it didn’t seem to rain so much and it lead to drought in many parts of the country. We’ve had some big rains and the ground is getting saturated but there’s been nothing really approaching flooding.

Anyway, Amy and I took the opportunity for a quick drive down to Phayao. Amy had an idea to pick up some English muffins and jam from a local farm run by an Aussie and his Thai wife. Well, we didn’t really need much reason. It’s nice to have a break from the regularity of school and home and we haven’t been out much due to the pandemic situation, which, despite having limited impact here so far, is always something to be cautious of.

Amy’s old workmate, Jackie, had also managed to get himself out of Australia recently, having overstayed his visa by a few years already. Now, Jackie is a character, or perhaps even more accurately, a caricature. He can be difficult to talk to, difficult to listen to and difficult to understand. Having not seen him for 3 years or so it would be interesting to hear some of his stories from that elapsed time.

The drive was very pleasant and enjoyable, some fantastic mountain ranges on the right with fresh paddy fields across the plains of the valley. Everything one shade of green or another.

Soon we arrived and met up with Jackie at his friend’s fish restaurant on the lake, where I took the attached panorama. Jackie was exactly as we remembered though looking more like he was hitting his old age than before. He talked loudly and non-stop, mostly polite nonsense but always, always, about money, and he made us laugh with his absurd pronouncements. He paid for everyone’s lunch, despite having little money, insisting that this is the ‘Thai way’ and we will of course reciprocate if he ever comes to visit.

Next, we headed to a coffee shop, also next to the lake. Everything is next to the lake – it is the main feature of the sleepy little town. Jackie told us that the waters are lowering due to the Chinese damming rivers further upstream – a common issue amongst adjacent nations around the world these days. We waited at the cafe for the farmers to deliver our order to us, as they had decided to close the farm to visitors until next year due to the virus.

When they arrived I chatted with the Aussie and Amy chatted with his wife in Thai. Jackie was listening in as they explained about closing the farm and after a few minutes it was time for them to leave. Just as they turned to walk away, and well within earshot, Jackie turned to Amy and said in Thai, something along the lines of “Fucking stupid, why they close the farm, no virus now, fucking open, make money!” Amy shushed him (and told me this story later) and Amy and I discussed driving around the lake before heading home. Jackie said we should and he would leave us for ‘romantic time’. We laughed and then he instantly invited himself along too! He actually hasn’t been here in his hometown for about 20 years so the drive around was all new to him too.

Eventually, we dropped Jackie home and headed back along the highway, shaking our heads at the things Jackie had done and said in the short time we caught up with him. I concluded that we were being punished for something bad in our past lives. Meeting once every three years or so still might be too often.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for getting paid this weekend and being able to order in Lazada!