Photographs – 1st November 2023

No longer memories in a desert
That night of drunken play
Lost to the pictured word
That claims all that happened that day


Today I’m feeling:

Anxious and excited as classroom days resume. The fun, the fighting, the lessons we all learn.

Today I’m grateful for:

Finding two useful textbooks in the teacher’s room which I immediately turned one part of the text into a lesson that I used for the grade 7 class. I figured it would be pretty easy revision and just take an hour but they managed to stretch it to two with lots of faffing around.

The best thing about today was:

Listening to the You Don’t Know Mojack podcast about the Volcano Suns album ‘Thing of Beauty’ on the way home from work and then in the evening playing guitar along to a couple of tunes from it. Love that band.

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

A couple of my grade 7 students were a little temperamental in my class this afternoon and tested my patience a lot. It’s early days as we all get used to each other again and instead of getting too bothered, I tried to find other solutions to get them back in line.

Something I learned today?

I read about the China-Laos rail line that crosses the border in Laos at a place called Botan. The crossing in 1993 was little more than a single iron bar gate but now lots of investment has grown the city rapidly. Despite the economic slowdown and the pandemic’s effect on travel, Laotians are hoping that this is a springboard to a better future.

List three goals for this month.

Renew my tourist visa. This is a must!

Get back to the exercise routine I had before the holiday.

Get back to around 80kg again, whilst improving my fitness.

Nam took this picture because the class insisted on a photo with everyone showing off the koala souvenirs I gifted to them.

Some people in elevators are going to the top but I know you’re not there with them – 30th October 1994

Got up early, lost an hour last night due to daylight saving, so pretty tired, ran up to the train station and hopped on, taking the top deck for viewing reasons, I just had the urge to look out the window even though its getting very familiar, it still seems new.

We headed over to Petersham where we lost our way as soon as we got off the train so we called up Geoffrey, who we were visiting, to find out where the hell we were, he told us to wait and he’d come and get us. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, Geoffrey comes streaking up the street with a big grin for us, pleased that we are here.

We stop off at his place for a while, the more I’m getting to know him I realise how well he’s doing and how he’s coping with his illness, he also comes up with some pretty profound stuff occasionally.

We decide to head into the city and go up Centrepoint and dig the views across the city out to the ocean east and the great dividing range west, the north shore and south to the airport, Botany Bay, where we live and the bush further on where there’s a bush fire raging away on the horizon, we look down at the tiny figures navigating the busy city traffic, the cars all stuck in gridlock, busy on this Sunday midday.

The elevator takes us back down the thousand feet in about ten seconds, our ears pop and through the slight gap at the bottom of the door you can see daylight seeping in reminding you there’s just a flimsy elevator door between your body and the view, rushing past it would be, wind up yer drainpipes.

We all come back to our place and when Geoffrey leaves a while later I feel sad again, maybe because I’m not distracted, because I’ve got time to think and I seem to be spending more time thinking rather than acting at the moment. It’s a long struggle but I’m determined to make it shorter and easier, I will soon be living in the now again.