Music from KIV Orchestra, Rolling Stones, The Malibus, Uz Jsme Doma, YUP, Buildings, Hard Ons, The Who, Lines, Tera Melos, Lashio Thein Aung, That Fucking Tank, Unsane, Teardrop Explodes, Rancid and Wyxz.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for my yoghurt, muesli and Toblerone breakfast. Healthy body, healthy mind.
To-do list
Awards again
Compliments ½
Record TCRAH ✅
Blog post ✅
It’s the 19th of August today. I’ve been occupied and happy in general but also a little blurred at the edges. As I mentioned before I haven’t been thinking about thinking so much and have mostly been getting on with living and doing.
Occasionally I trip up and forget some of the things I’ve learned recently and sometimes beat myself up too much over it. This is usually relatively brief though.
I really enjoy being in class with the kids even to the point of joining other classes. Sometimes I still feel frustrated with the system here and the kids always playing with their phones in class. This is going to have serious consequences for those kids in the future. Well, at least it will be interesting to see how things turn out.
Amy went out on Sunday night and met Miche and her friend and that really cheered Amy up. She was happy to find some people she could relax with and just talk stupid girl stuff with. She’s not so comfortable with her old friends who now live completely different lifestyles to her. I know she is still frustrated here in general though.
Tomorrow we go into the hills to do some activities at another school. It should be a fun day and at least we get away to a different environment. Change is as good as a rest.
Music from The All Seeing Hand, Rolling Stones, Bongwater, Blurt, Shield Your Eyes, Cat Power, Josiane Rey, Rhino 39, The Fall, Cause for Effect, XTC, Moody Blues, Racebannon, Heavy Vegetable, Sir Millard Mulch, Big Block 454, Steve Harley and the Cockney Rebel, Ruins, Scrid and Christmas.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to have been teaching all morning. I think the students are enjoying my lessons and I am really happy with them.
Music from Joanna Gruesome, D.I., Mighty Baby, Univers Zero, Christian Fitness, Neos, XTC, Chokebore, The Necessaries, Electric Light Orchestra, Owen Grey & His Jets, Unwound, Ilaiyaraaja, Bollywood Funk, The Milkshakes, The Pogues, Fotriafa and Groupe El Azhar.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for a sleep-in this morning and not to be thinking too much so having a break from journalling and reading.
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
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 Girolamo Ugolini, Dragibus, Giant Sand, The Majic Ship, Bellini, Psychedelic Furs, The Sugar Shoppe, Sax Ruins, Beefeater, The Show Business Giants, The Hoax, Lindsay Cooper, The Afterglow, Amaxonas, Delroy Wilson, Dag Nasty, David Bowie, Christian Fitness, Beekeeper, Jackie Wilson and Negazione.
Music from Here and Now, Bob Drake, Orthrelm, Per Purpose, 20 Minute Loop, Shinki Chen, Tuxedomoon, Smog, POX, Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, The Move, The Who, Unsane, Samla Mammas Manna, Unwound, Bob Dylan and Retox.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for these cushions where I rest my head on these lazy days.
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 The Cavedwellers, Circus Brekovic, Deerhoof, Descendents, Gregory Isaacs, The Milkshakes, Queen, Didjits, Octafish, Elvis Costello, Emporer Yes, Althea and Donna, The Soul Owners, White Blacula and This Heat.
Weight: 79.0kg Resting heart rate: 48
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for being able to sit on this plane. To be able to afford to visit my friends. And for having a home to return to.
To-do list
Meditate on the plane – reflect on these days ✅
Please try to stay calm when back ✅
Wear mask all day ✅
Finish reading book ✅
Take some photos
It’s Tuesday as I write. Getting back was equally emotional and equally flat. I felt numb. Amy is angry at the inconvenience that my trip has now caused us. She’s not so much upset with me as upset with the situation.
I drank a couple of whiskies and fell into a deep 12-hour-long sleep. I got up for lunch and fell back asleep again for the afternoon, got up for dinner and then went back to sleep around 9 pm.
Now it’s Tuesday morning and everything still feels flat. The situation with the virus is looking increasingly likely to postpone the WDS tour which meaning losing all the money on our flights in South East Asia. That’s the situation now and what we have to deal with.
Amy and I are stuck at home for another 12 days. I don’t anticipate any illness from the virus so we just have to wait and carry on as best we can.
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 