i will never ever want to have a city wife

I've been going through my late mother's documents - organising them, scanning them to make them available for family.

She collected all of my poems - even ones that i had never kept a copy of.

Here's one from August 2002 - i guess i did not like it enough to keep it

the scanning is way too difficult, even for me (ie i have to reread too many lines)

I went to an air show

We live right next door to an army base.

On occasion that means we have to put up with explosions and gunfire and loud aircraft noises.

For a few days we watched as parachutes opened up above us and a Saab Griffin rocketed back and forth.

It was all in account of "army day" which is a Thai event similar to 'children's day" which is like mother's day. Kindof.

So i jumped on my trusty steed:

and sauntered off to the base to see what would happen.

I took my beloved Pentax K5 and a decent set of lenses and snapped a few pics like this one of a kid who caught a lizard:

Eventually i was snapping shots of skydivers:

When this guy (on the left):

called me over and from then on i was immersed in all things Military Thai (God bless them every one):

such a wonderful experience and such lovely people

you can see all of the pics i took (and my friend who took pics for me) here

pop

The police are your friends? I think not.

Sad story of brutality

My brother suffered schizophrenia. He was terrified of policemen. I get it Allan. So sorry to have doubted you.



story here and here.

pop

ps NSA? fuck you, slimy, dishonest, abusive, lowlife, servants of the American Dream

Singer sewing machine: built for a lifetime

In 1954 my father bought my mother a new Singer sewing machine.

Mum used it to make all our clothes:

Of course that changed once Australian clothes manufacturing got off the ground:

She still used it time to time but it was not used much until I was in my teens and decided making my own clothes was the only way i was going to be able to dress like a real hippie.

That's when mum taught me how to use the Singer though i never thought to ask her how to maintain it properly.

Years later, when i had children of my own, I begged her to let me have it so i could make clothes for them and do repairs and alterations.

I used it for years though i often cursed that it did not have a "free arm" so i could take up jeans and such.

The Singer was lugged from house to house as over the years we moved to where the work was. That meant that it moved from Melbourne to Sydney and then to New Zealand where it moved from town to town until returning to Sydney, back to NZ, back to Sydney and eventually to Thailand where it's been sitting at the farm of my wife's family for a while.

My mum died in November 2013.

The day she died my mother in law reported that the Singer had stopped working.

I've spent hours trying to fix it but it just refuses to operate properly:

It's survived the lifetime of my mother but seems as though it misses her as much as i do.

Update! October 2015.

Now we have a "new" one - a Singer special zig-zag 498:

what's really nice is that we have the User Manual.

Welcome to Civilization

"Knockout" game is coming to teenagers near you




and if you think the law will help you



pop

Weird

yeh well

Thai Drivers - worst in the world

Let me start by making something very clear from the start. I love Thai people. I frequently find myself saying to myself “I love this place”. Whether I am riding my motorcycle through throngs of market goers or walking through a market or visiting a famous temple or even driving on major highways through Bangkok, i find myself spontaneously saying under my breath “I love this place”.

That being said let me now deliver the point of this post. Thai drivers are not very good.

Ran into a big truck full of earth and rock? Going to fast?
Neither: LPG system blew up.

Of course that does not mean all Thai drivers. Not infrequently I recognise in a Thai driver all those things that I count highly as attributes of a good driver.

And I'm not asserting that “farangs” are better drivers. No. In Thailand the farangs are frequently as bad or worse than Thai drivers. I recall just recently in Chiang Mai sitting in a big 4WD driven by a farang who did not even see the two girls caught on the center line between fast moving cars begging to be freed from their trap. He simply did not register that they were there. He exhibited the very essence of what I now assert is at the heart of the atrocious driving in Thailand – lack of empathy. Or tunnel vision. Or lack of training. Unaware.

sometimes it's just inexperience and an old car

I read once that the Buddha defined compassion as the act of “seeing” others. Not "looking at them" but not being blind to them. Being blind to others is what all those neuroscience and psychology studies tell us that the rich do. They quite simply do not “see” those who are “lower”. You walk along a street and there is a man with twisted legs and disfigured arms holding a tin while he sings badly. The few cents that you might give him make the all the difference in his day. But many people walk by with hearts so hardened by their frequent acts of “not today” that they no longer even see the beggar. He is just an object on the street like a trash can or lump of concrete to be walked around, to be avoided. We do not see him.

Too fast past a construction site

It came to me just recently that, here in the heart of one of the most Buddhist countries on earth, the majority of people, once behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, had no theory of mind whatsoever.

Black pick-up overtook blind to hit U-turning car.

I've tried to figure out what is behind this apparent truth. For example it crossed my mind that it might be to do with the fact that almost every car in Thailand has reflective tinting which makes it impossible to see anyone in the vehicle. This is mostly to do with keeping out the heat (or so I have been told though I've seen no research to back it up). I've also theorised that because most Thais had mobile phones with games on them before they had cars, maybe they drive like they play phone games. Who knows? The bottom line is that Thais quite simply don't seem to realise that all the other cars on the road have living breathing THINKING humans in them.

My sister in law is a fitness freak so recently we went to watch and photograph her at an aerobics competition. When I was parking the car there were cars forced to wait for another car to exit a parking spot. A Thai woman simply saw those cars as obstacles and tried to drive around them. Just like people avoiding the beggar on the street she simply saw the waiting cars as obstacles. That there might have been a reason for them waiting did not cross her mind. She exhibited no theory of mind.She behaved exactly as if she saw the other cars as not human objects.

On the highways oh my God. They are simply insane. They overtake at the most dangerous places and they seem to lack any understanding of driving physics.

at Ta Sala police station - just the ones out front

We recently drove almost 5,000 kilometers around Thailand – from the Malaysian border to the Golden Triangle and back. We lost track of the accidents we witnessed and of the insane behaviour of drivers. It's bad enough that many of the roads are like the surface of the moon but with the Thai drivers it's like threading your way through a mine field of death traps. They are often the silliest drivers I have ever seen anywhere on planet earth. I have driven all over the world including places that left me gob-smacked as to how insane the drivers were (Italy, Mexico) but Thai drivers are so bad it takes your breath away.

So how to resolve the problem?

I've thought of a nutty campaign of my own where I mass produce a poster that I then plaster on the wall above the men's urinals at the PTT service stations (the most popular places for drivers to fill-up) – something along the lines of “hey man, drive careful dude!”

It's a truly bizarre place – it's the “wild wild west” in ever way except of course that it's the “east”.

A rescue vehicle that careered off the road
lucky occupants could have drowned

I really hope that as they all become more middle class they will develop some road sense.

pop

update

since writing this piece they do as a whole seem to be improving

the pics above are recent though and all were close to where we live

p

Four dead, 47 injured in Ayutthaya crash; Four dead as train hits car in South

Boy dies, skull fractured in crash, Woman killed at railway crossing train crash,

Indian tourists killed in van crash on elevated road to airport

ECC CELTA Phuket - test yourself.

I'm typical of the "baby boomer" generation. Apart from that meaning that I'm now old it also means that I experienced quite a few of those boomer generation "groovy things to do".

For example I have done the Goenkaji Vipassanā 10 day sit. That was, as anyone else who has done it will tell you, hell. It was tough. Maybe you don't know much about it but it's easy to explain - you sit absolutely still for long periods of time trying to dominate your body's natural and healthy inclination to move (and keep vital functions like your venous pump working). It's 10 days of torment that you afterwards wear as a crown of accomplishment: "I did the 10 day sit, man!".

I've also got a black belt in karate. If you've done karate you know what that means - if you've never done karate it's something that can't easily be conveyed. I did the Seido black belt grading - that means 40 fights at the end of a gruelling grading that pushes you beyond your limits and then further still. Man if you have a real black belt in karate then I totally respect you - it means that you can focus for a long time, years, and go through excruciating pain, humility and testing. Man, I did a black belt grading!

Yeh, I did a degree in computer science too - and got straight "A"s. That was kinda tough I guess though it's really just a case of slogging your way through it for 3 years and not wasting your time having fun like most of the other students.

There's lots of other trials and achievements that I could tell you about but let's leave the ones above as the "biggest" for now though really none of them compare to all the trials there are just getting by in life - like raising kids, keeping a marriage going, not killing or being killed by your workmates. You know what I mean I'm sure.

So comes my early retirement courtesy of the NSW State Government giving me a redundancy package.

OK, I'm pretty much done with big business and government and computers and everything else that has been my life until now. What shall I do that has any meaning? What can I do that I can look at and say to myself "you are worthy Murray".

I got it!

I'll be a teacher!

I'll teach English in Thailand where I have decided to "retire".

That's got to be honourable right?

Right.

Ok, so how do I become an English teacher?

After a bit of research (not enough as it turns out) I decided the CELTA course run by the ECC in Phuket was the right one for me - made sense that I'd do it in Thailand if after all I was going to teach Thai people English. Right?

Right.

ECC Phuket accepted me for the course (sheesh, I barely passed English in my HSC) and sent me a bunch of stuff to study (which of course I scanned and told myself "yeh I know all that duh!")

My last day at work then my flight to Phuket. The next day I went to visit the ECC. I met Robin - he was nice, gentle, offered aid with accommodation etc though my wife and I had already sorted all that out.

Two days later the course started.

Forget about anything you have ever thought was tough. Whatever you name I can tell you it was baby stuff compared to the CELTA. The CELTA course is tough - even if you are a natural English teacher with a bent in the CELTA way. It's work, solid work, for 4 weeks.

Frankly, by the end of the second week, I was sure I would either fail or drop out. I'm pretty bright, or was, up there with Mensa types, but bright "aint nuthin" in a CELTA course. You have to learn to teach English the CELTA way and the course tutors are masters of the way.

I stuck it out. I loved it as much as I hated it. There's no way to explain any of it except to say that if you ever contemplate doing the CELTA then the best advice anyone can give you is study English and study hard. Make sure you really know English grammar, function, spelling etc before you go.

The tutors at the Phuket ECC - well I loved them and hated them thoroughly - often both many times a day. They are not going to give you your CELTA certificate for free. They expect you to work for it and they "aint no dummies".

So, it's now a few months since I did the course. What can I say?

Here's my bullet point summary.

1. Don't approach the CELTA course lightly - it's tough, it's rewarding but it is hard.
2. Study English language as much as you can before you do the course.
3. Don't try and mix the course with a rich social life - it wont work.
4. Be tolerant of the fact that Phuket is not Sydney or New York. Their computers are old, adequate but old.
5. Respect your tutors.

If you want to do the CELTA then ECC Phuket is as good as anywhere or better because it's in a lovely part of the world where lovely people provide wonderful food and hospitality. The ECC staff are great, professional, dedicated and human.

I'm happy to recommend them.


Yeh! I did the CELTA!


pop

On our way to BKK

Stopped to overnight.

Dinner on the beach

Tiger mozzies eat cat.

You can't see the mozzie.

But this cat battled it.

So i know now.

Tiger mozzies eat cat.