Tag: rice

Beyond The Threshold – 6th February 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Won’t you let me in?
Open heart, open door
A warm welcoming

Wanting little more
Than a hand to hold here
As we cross the floor

Overcome our fear
Let’s go through together
Our intentions clear

In silk and feather
We find ourselves humming
A friend forever

Won’t you let me….

Fake Flamenco: Thursday Doors

Today I’m feeling:

Like I haven’t slept enough. I could easily curl up and snooze for a bit but hopefully, this coffee will kick-start the morning.

Today I’m grateful for:

Having things to read while sitting around doing nothing at school this afternoon whilst the Thai teachers were keeping the kids occupied.  After an hour and a half though I snuck out and didn’t bother signing out either.  Hopefully, that doesn’t come back to bite me but Scout week is one of those frustrating wastes of time for us foreign teachers.

The best thing about today was:

Amy’s dinner of fried rice with fish sausage, crunchy cabbage, carrot and topped off with a perfectly fried egg.  Since I started just eating breakfast and skipping lunch I’ve been able to easily adapt to eating rice almost every day at dinner time.

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

Despite having to show groups of 8-10-year-olds over and over again how to tie knots this morning and itching to get out for more coffee it wasn’t actually too bad.  David and I had fun with the kids, some of whom were hilarious. 

It was interesting to notice how much better their English is than the kids we actually teach who are up to 5 years older.  We finished up at around 11.30 and I was happy to get away by then.

Something I learned today?

From Stephen Fry’s SubStack he talked about how in a group of twenty people, for example, there will be a leader, a clown, a know-it-all, a shy one, a complainer, a rebel etc and then if you take all the leaders and put them into a group, all the rebels into a group and so on, within each group they will soon revert back to having a leader, a clown, a know-it-all etc

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

In the morning I met Waiz’s younger sister who always runs up to me for a fist bump.  I had just been given a scout scarf and asked her to ‘do it’ for me because I wasn’t sure how.  She then folded it up and put it on me as she had been taught to do.  It didn’t look great but I kept wearing it because she had done it for me.

25 THINGS ABOUT LIFE I WISH I HAD KNOWN 10 YEARS AGO –  12. Money Isn’t Important. It really isn’t. But you have to train yourself not to care about money. Don’t become too dependent on the stuff you own; otherwise, the stuff will own you.

Money is important when you want to do things.  As I’ve aged I’m starting to want to do less. 

As I write that I question myself whether that is true or not.  Sure some things have dropped off but I still have stacks of music that I haven’t properly listened to yet.  Years and years worth of books and comics that I wish to read. 

So perhaps I should say that I refined some of the things that I want to do.  I want to read more than travel but hell, I’d still like to travel.  I guess I’m taking the easier path more often these days.  But I also see doing less as more suitable to my age. 

Damn, I’m conflicted with this because I’m always imploring people to do something, to do more!  The dichotomy of life in Thailand is rubbing off on me!

I took this picture because our two boys often spend the afternoons dozing in the boxes on their cat castles, often swapping places depending on who gets there first.

Our House (again) – 17th July 2021

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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

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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

Well, I’m standing here what do I see? A big nothing, threatening me – 12th-16th March 2018

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Back with the ants.  Life seems to be involving them in one way or another as each day passes.  I guess we gotta share this place.

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Another visitor we will be sharing time with.

One dinner time, as Amy was preparing some fabulous dish that I forget now as it’s not really relevant to this story, she told me to serve myself and heat up some rice from the fridge.  I grabbed the container and a plate and went to the table, plied the lid off and saw little black dots on the rice which looked like it may have been mould.  I decided to wait.  In Amy’s parent’s house, copious amounts of rice are made daily, whether it’s used or not, some kept out, some in the fridge and a fresh lot in the rice cooker.

I called out to Amy and said there was ‘black stuff’ in the rice.  She asked if it was mould, and I said maybe or maybe ant eggs.  She came to have a look and declared it was just tiny ants.  That’s ok then.  I picked around the black bits as best I could.  Amy estimates she would have probably eaten well over 10,000 ants by accident in her lifetime.

The following night Amy’s dad offered me a dish of red ant eggs with veggies to which I declined.  I also spied the tub of rice from the fridge and noticed that one of the tiny ants in there was still moving.  I bet those things can live all the way through your body.

The ants are everywhere in Amy’s parent’s house, anywhere where some form of food can be found, though not sure what’s in the bathroom that entices them, maybe flecks of toothpaste and dead skin.  I’m wondering how we can keep them out of our house.

Which leads me to the second ant story.  As I was watering the garden I’ve been pulling out weeds, loosening the ground with water so I can pull up as much of the roots as possible.  I find this strangely satisfying.  I’ve been careful to look out for snakes and other little beasties and then I came across an ant’s nest, less than ten feet from our kitchen.

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The ants were possibly disturbed by my watering but were running around in a bit of a tizzy, some of the carrying stuff that I couldn’t quite make out.  I went and told Amy about the nest and she didn’t think much of it at the time saying if we need to we can get rid of them with ‘chemicals’.

So I went back to watering and weeding, noticing that the ant action had died down mostly, with just a few scattered wanderers scurrying about.  That was when I felt an almighty sting on my finger as I was pulling up a weed.  I let go of the weed and pulled up my hand to find one of these little bastards attached to my finger.  I quickly brushed it off as the pain intensified and I wondered if I needed to go to the hospital or something serious like that.

I pissed and moaned for a bit and carried on watering and after a while, the pain subsided.  It did make me think though that if a bunch of these ants had decided to climb up inside my shirt or shoes, that would be something a little more worrying and potentially dangerous.

Later, Amy saw a picture I took of the ants and proclaimed ‘Oh those ones are nasty – we need to get rid of them’.  We’re looking for ‘chemicals’ now.

PS – the feature picture isn’t connected to this post.  It was taken when I managed to duck out from Amy’s parent’s house on my pushbike.  I enjoy just riding around the small sois (streets) nearby and getting lost before finding my way again.

12th Mar 2023 – How cautious I was at the time, still not knowing what was dangerous or not. Now, ants and lizards, in and around the house, are just normal. We never did get any chemicals.