“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” – Andre Gide
We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.
Robert Greene
28th Oct 2022 – You Mei You video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQul53ywOkM
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for my old laptop bag that I had planned to throw out but now is a place for Tig and Kim to sleep.
21st Jun 2024 – Submitted to FOWC with Fandango
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for our washing machine that can fit a doona inside. Needed today as Tigger peed on Amy’s last night.
I was super tired last night and got into bed at about 6.30 pm. I read for a bit and then slept and slept very well, even when Amy woke up and turned the light on as Tigger peed on the doona right next to her head! I don’t know why he pees everywhere at random times. If there is something wrong, he doesn’t show it. He’s really happy most of the time, with us at least.
He fought with Kim Chi a few days ago and was having a go with Cap yesterday, too. Usually, if we see something starting, though, it seems to be Cap that starts it. He’s stupid like that! Tigger is much bigger and stronger.
Two good classes this morning and I will only do a little easy work tomorrow in preparation for a 3-day week next week. Thailand certainly enjoys its public holidays.
I’ve become involved in helping Champ with plans for the students to do a TED Talk video. I’m not sure what it involves just yet but I think it’s good to be asked to be involved. It’s a little bit of a show thing and I would prefer just to be encouraging all students to put in more effort day to day.
I’m feeling ok, though I may flake out again early tonight. I’ve been getting up a little earlier and I realise that my morning exercise has moved up to about 30 minutes from the ten minutes or so when I started doing this. I feel good after exercise and I’m definitely working off the weight but I will need to find a better balance and increase my food intake again.
Apart from breakfast, I generally only eat lunch and then snack on nuts in the evening. I’ve managed to push my lunch until 3 pm, so I have two long periods with no food intake. Just water and coffee between breakfast and late lunch.
The abs routine is getting tougher but I struggle my way through and don’t feel inclined to give up as I may have done in the past.
Inspired (and butchered) by a reply to a letter to Nick Cave at The Red Hand Files newsletter
and submitted to Thursday Inspiration #246
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful that our cats seem to have recovered. Cap from a bad stomach and Kim from wounds after a big fight with Tigger. Tigger has been very well recently though his fur is starting to make him look old.
I was planning to do some preparation and reading and writing this afternoon but Fui brought his teenage son and daughter to House and I ended up talking with all of them for most of the time! Fui’s kids study in Singapore, and have done for many years. I’m not sure why and didn’t ask, but it’s interesting to get their perspective on things especially as English has become their first language.
My one class this morning was with 2/11 and it went well. I got them more involved by helping me to learn the Thai words for all the English vocabulary that I wanted them to remember. So, I’m feeling good.
A rest day from the abs workout. I can feel that there is less fat on my chest and my ribs are becoming more visible. I like this healthier me. As with anything, I should’ve started sooner. I’m still thinking about that time of brushing off Rupert when he started lifting weights at school. I was all about smoking and drinking. I was lucky that my metabolism sustained my skinny body into my late 30s and only the beer started sticking on my hips.
OK – back to it. More free time tomorrow afternoon to finish off this preparation.
Weight: 76.6kg
Resting heart rate: 47
What is it that we were doing
‘fore this trouble started brewing?
It feels like the world is waiting
An endless anticipating
Which direction were we going
When we had ideas of knowing?
No longer standing proud and tall
Now forgetting about it all
The Week That Was – 31st December 1978
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to have Tigger home again – though he doesn’t look well. We are doing our best to help him through.
Since Kim came back from the vet she has been fairly content to be stuck in her one-room paradise. The room is bigger than my own! We take her out on a leash each day but she doesn’t like it and just sits sniffing the air. She is getting more keen to dash out whenever we open the sliding screen door and occasionally I will let her roam close by and try not to let her run off.
This time I failed! She quickly jumped up the wall and onto the roof for a look around the trees, where she used to pull little birds out of their nests. I ran around the other side to the step ladder and poked my head up. Luckily she was curious enough to see my head in such an odd place and crept out from the cover of the leaves (can’t really camouflage orange!) and came to investigate whereupon I quickly scooped her up and back into the safety of her room.
It’s sad that she can’t be allowed outside but as she is still a rebellious fighting teenager cat we can’t risk her hurting herself with her weak and compromised body. We are trying a special medicine that has helped some cats fight back against leukaemia but there’s no real guarantee that it will work.
And as always, we get all 3 cats home for a few weeks before another gets sick and has to go and stay with the vet for a while. This time it’s Tigger, who has suffered kidney problems over the last few years. He was looking uncomfortable and stopped eating and the vet found he had high counts of something or other in his blood. He’s on a saline drip until that stabilises again.
We do love our cats.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to be able to sit in our dining room and over the last three years watch our trees grow higher and higher. It’s the slow passing of time compared to the feeling of time accelerating.
Inspired by We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider, recalling bad reactions to broken hearts
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the preserved cabbage that we got given by the Chinese students who went back to China. It was yummy.
I ended up sleeping at around 7.30 last night and I’m glad I did. Still felt dizzy and tired this morning but my mood picked up after my first class of the day.
Tigger is in the hospital again and Amy and I went to see him at lunchtime. He has some dodgy blood level count which seems to indicate a kidney problem but the vet said we caught it quickly before he had organ failure again.
I’m glad I cancelled teaching yesterday and tomorrow. I’ll have one class tonight after school but like I mentioned yesterday I’m in the right frame of mind as I already have the natural tension from teaching at school.
Perhaps I’ve been working too hard recently but I feel compelled to be doing things. The quote from Ryan Holiday that we are human ‘beings’ and not human ‘doings’ was interesting to me as at this time, with lockdowns and everything, we are not actually ‘being’ as much as we would like. I am always ‘doing’, I never stop doing things, and those things keep me happy. Sometimes I get too focused on some things when I could be doing more, perhaps around the house or in the garden, for example.
Sometimes I wish all my stuff was in the house (as opposed to my man cave outside), especially as I would have my music playing all day long, and would read books on the terrace more. Now I feel like I have to do all my things in my room so it divides everything up into ‘my’ time and ‘other’ time. It’s a first-world problem in a third-world country!
15th Aug 2024 – Submitted to What’s Going On – dogs and cats
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful that we could take Tigger to the vet today. He’s been a little subdued and not eating much and due to his condition, we erred on the side of caution. He’ll be there for a few days.
Sometimes my mood changes suddenly and I just cancel everything. The last few days I’ve been tired and was looking forward to a lazy long weekend, which it has been in general but I had committed to teaching online for Ellen on these days off and I just feel like my brain isn’t in the right place.
It’s weird but when I get up early and go to school I end up with more energy to do more things. I find if I have a relaxed morning, I really struggle to motivate myself.
So, with a tired weakness, I cancelled my lessons for today and for Wednesday, which is also a holiday. On Tuesday I have to go to work and should be ok to do the extra classes after school. I should try not to get stuck like this and work myself up to being ready to go whenever asked of me.
Sometimes, I think my life is too easy. Sometimes I feel like I need pain and stress to work, to appreciate living. I can relax but why can’t I relax correctly! My brain….
I am so happy and grateful for my dreams. This morning I didn’t get up with my alarm to exercise. One, because I was tired and two, because I was having a nice dream. I remember meeting Stef again and she was happy to see me and I told her I missed her, she had a stomach ache and I comforted her. Later I was cleaning my room and there were two Cappuccino’s playing with Tigger.
We had a 4-day holiday over the new year. For 2021 I have made a half-hearted resolution to play more video games! Last year I rarely played anything at all. In fact, I have many things I could, can and will do but I thought it was amusing to make a resolution often seen as negative.
So for much of this 4-day holiday, I gave myself a backache by playing new games on my old Xbox One.
An exception to this was the evening of the 31st December where Amy and I enjoyed a spicy hot pot with the last packet of sauce my friend Ellen delivered from China last year (or the year before….when was it!?). We also sipped on yoghurt-flavoured shoju but Amy gave up around 11pm. We had watched the Sydney Harbour fireworks at 8pm and that is when Amy considers the new year to have actually started for us, her heart still being there. I carried on building cities and shooting monsters and was up again pretty early the following morning.
On the Saturday a few of Amy’s friends and I got together at a cafe on the way to Mae Sai. It was busy there but we all ate our fill and lazed around, Amy knocking back a few Heineken’s and getting a little louder as she likes to do.
We decided to visit her old friend from Sydney who has a cactus farm nearby and he kindly gave us a couple for Amy’s collection.
We had to stop at a shop on the way home so that Amy could grab another beer and she organized herself to head on into the city for more food and alcohol! My sweetheart the drunk!
I left her to it but she came back much earlier than I expected, mentioning about some of her friends who insist that good luck only comes from going to the temple – something that particularly rubs Amy the wrong way. Amy believes in herself and all good and bad comes from within. Thai people are still very superstitious and like to put blame and benefit on things outside their control. Obviously, I agree with Amy’s point of view but I don’t let other people’s ideas like this rub me the wrong way, though I also don’t have to listen to them complain about their lives either!
Before this holiday I thought I’d like to do something artistic again and started off with sketching. I have more ideas for continuing this than I have time currently available – it could be a battle between sketching or video games. I hope to balance this effectively. So, I was quite happy and proud of my first sketch – just looking up from my little floor table where I was working.
Brain dump
Post-yoga workout, meditate. Thoughts focus on relationships at school and people’s personalities. Stop comparing, you are you and you are fine – you don’t have to be like George or Dylan or anyone. Being yourself is fine.
Tigger cries in the morning. My middle back aches, work on core. 10 Burpee’s was tough! Getting up was tough.
Little Kim sleeps next to my butt. So much time – enjoy it – use it. Feel good. Feel strong.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for my body to struggle through doing 10 burpees this morning. It was slow going but I made it. I must carry on.
The best thing that happened today was to watch a student’s face look happy when knowing that they had learned and remembered how to say a word correctly. This always makes me happy.
I am so happy and grateful to Tigger to come to me this morning for belly rubs and big purrs. I love our animals.
1994ever 