Books galore!

I’ve been having a saga with my Blackberry charges… I went to Emporium Mall to sort it out yesterday. Two lovely staff at AIS have been soooo helpful and now I’m nearly sorted out.

I can’t go into Emporium without stopping by Kinokuniya bookshop – even when there isn’t a specific title I want. There is never a time that I don’t want to stop by any bookshop: bookshops are my church. And what luck, they were just setting up their sale table. They have periodic sales where the fiction tends to be 100 Thai Baht (£1.70ish) and the non-fiction paperbacks are 300 Baht. So I bought this bundle of goodies for just 1000 baht (look at it in Baht and it sounds much cheaper than the £17 in sterling!)

When I got home I got my second parcel of the week! How lucky am I? It was a free copy of ‘An Old Fashioned Arrangement’ by Susie Vereker. The blurb sounds great so I’m very excited about reading it. I shall report back.

Bangkok Residents Note: There's an email originating from the US Embassy going around that PAD are demonstrating today between Siam Paragon and Emporium, via the British Embassy, so if you go to the book sale... take care or maybe go tomorrow instead.

Words

1,700 words today.

I might not be able to keep that up as I also needed two doses of paracetamol today aswell.

My tea intake has been a bit OTT - I might need Husband to send an emergency package of tea from Bangkok!

Rewarded myself with Bridget Jones' Diary. All that talk of Colin Phwoarth and Hugh Grant, well, what can you expect?

Can't post on my laptop. I'm hoping my trusty Blackberry won't let me down.

Sent via BlackBerry® from AIS

Give me a slap

I’m feeling pitifully sorry for myself today. I need a good slap because it’s not life and death but nonetheless I’m feeling wretched.

It started on Friday evening. Daughter was at a sleepover with four friends; Son was watching TV and Husband had braved the tropical rain storm to get home for his last phone meeting of the week.

Through the wall I could hear Husband on the conference call – him talking loudly as though to someone slightly stupid and the tinny voices of his colleagues from the speaker phone. I was finishing off Two Caravans when the email bleeped red on my Blackberry.

Every time the thought had entered my head that the writing course might be jeopardised by the political unrest here I gave it a firm whack away. It would be fine, I said, it’s in Koh Chang not in Bangkok.

Yesterday the news came: The Literary Consultancy has taken the decision to cancel the course. I’d tried so hard not to think this might happen but at the same time I understand. If I were in the UK thinking of coming to a country under a State of Emergency... well, I don't think I would.

Lovely Husband is telling me to go anyway… it's all in the diary, got everything in place at home - have a break, he says, but I don’t need a break – I need a writing course.

See, I just need a good slap for being a spoilt and selfish.

I'm off

I'm off to Brittany today.

I am not taking the laptop: I'm trying to prove to myself that I'm not addicted and I can live without it grafted to my hip. (I can, only because I've got my trusty Blackberry...)

I'm going to read, write, socialise with family, eat too much bread and cheese and drink too much wine.

Back next week.

Internet Mai Sabai

Sharp eyed folks out there might have seen that my last post was courtesy of my lovely, lovely (have I told you how much I love and adore it?) Blackberry.

That’s because our internet was misbehaving at home. Son had a new game he was subscribing to online, and he’d bought at upgrade, so sod’s law said our internet would fall over and flatly refuse to get up again.

We tried all the usual fixes, of turning it off and on again (this is a very technical IT trick I’ve learned because I’m lucky enough to have Husband who works in IT). Son got cross, whined, blamed everyone, hassled Husband who grumbled and whined back, before pressing the RED (on No Account Press) button that wipes out our internet account. And if you think it’s tough dealing with internet providers in the Western world, you should try it in Thailand! Because my Thai is restricted to ‘Where is the toilet?’ ‘Turn left/right here’ ‘Go straight’ ‘Vegetable/Chicken Fried rice please’ ‘Beautiful’ ‘pain’ ‘not well’ and ‘well, thank you.’ None of which helps much, although I think I could say ‘Internet, mai sabai’ which roughly translates to ‘Internet not well.’

So now, believe it or not, I’m sitting in the foyer of our local hospital because I came to pick up a prescription. They have wifi here … but I can’t stop and visit all my blog friends because I’ve got a website lesson now. Hopefully the internet will be fixed and I'll be around for a cup of tea.

Too many parentheses

Well, they’ve gone.

I had a little look at the map on my blog this morning to see whereabouts they might be. I reckon they’ll be flying over Europe – hope they wave.

They land at 6am ish UK time. For the next nearly three weeks I think I will be doing a lot of translating clock times in my head, imagining what they’re doing.

For one weak and self indulgent second I thought about them all alone up there (oh how the imagination works… do go and look at this post!) And then, I realised that for all the ferocity of a mother protecting her young, I am not superwoman, and I’d be pretty much buggered myself in an aeroplane doing something unpredictable.

So now, I’ve pulled myself together and started thinking about showering, packing, PICKING UP MY BLACKBERRY (HURRAH … Who? My children are …where?)

Then, then, the excitement of today (apart from being footloose and fancy free with my Blackberry to play with, and getting ready for Skyros (HURRAH)) I’m going with a group from the British Women’s Group to sing Christmas carols at a Bangkok Hospital (this is something I did last year, and I’m sorry but drinking sherry, eating mince pies and singing carols in the sweltering heat of Bangkok doesn’t do anything to persuade me it’s December the something. BUT, it’s lots of fun – I love to sing (the same stanza over and over, and probably badly, mostly, but tough. It’s MY singing and it’s good for my mental health!)).

If you’re very (un)lucky I may see if I can make the technology work to upload some of our ‘singing.’

(When I’m over-excited I use too many brackets – it’s the digressions.)

Woo hoo: carols, BLACKBERRY, Skyros …Children are safe, happy and being looked after … I am a good mum.

PS. I LOVE blogging. I am so glad to be back (I never really went away: I lurked. I just didn’t post!)

So, I've got a sick feeling in my tummy tonight.

So, I’ve got a sick feeling in my tummy tonight.

I keep forgetting why I’ve got it and then … I remember.

At lunchtime I tipped a cup of tea on my Blackberry. Oh, my, god, I’m, such, a, f… fu … fool: a clumsy fool.

And, as you’d expect, it’s not behaving quite as it should.

In an attempt to forget my clumsy f***wittery, let me tell you about my day.

This morning I went down to the SCAD (Soi Cats and Dogs) Health Centre. This is one of the charities who have asked me to write for them and this is where the street cats and dogs come to be treated. The main idea is to spay and neuter them, but they nearly always have other bits of treatment that require doing. There were some pitiful dogs there which made me sad … but, that is what SCAD is doing – trying to improve the lives of street cats and dogs.

This afternoon I came home and tipped a cup of tea … but I’m supposed to taking my mind off that, so instead …

I’m going to go back to Andaman Discoveries to show you my ludicrous eco warrior bandana. If you peer you can see the orchid I planted and my name tag.

After I got back to Bangkok I read this in my book:

'Spiders are everywhere, in the forest, in caves, atop mountains, even in your bedroom. Anyone with arachnophobia would not want to shine a torch on a forest floor at night to see the million pinpoints of light reflected in the eyes of the spiders.

'There are spiders that actively hunt and pounce of their prey; there are sedentary spiders which wait in ambush; there are web spinning spiders which construct elaborate traps and there are even flying spiders.'

I was just so glad I got out of there without seeing any large spiders.

Taxi tales

I’ve got to the office at last today and found I’d got a squatter: a big cockroach - eeewugh. I showed him the door.

I caught a taxi this morning to my hospital appointment (we don’t have GPs here, we just go straight to the hospital and see whoever we need to see). We’d got about a quarter of the way there when I first looked at the meter: it was four times the price I’d pay at my destination. I caught taxi man’s eye in the mirror and pointed ‘not working; broken.’ ‘Accident’ he says, 60 baht okay?’ It was and I went back to my ‘Crackberry’ to answer an email. So I didn’t see if a policeman wouldn’t let us turn right or not up crucial road to the hospital and when I next looked up we were hurtling along in completely the wrong direction.

Well now, Bangkok roads look as though they were designed after hours in a bar following the consumption of too much whisky. Sometimes, believe it or not, you can legally drive up the wrong side of the carriageway – this rule appears to be invoked entirely indiscriminately. The first time a taxi happily swung off the road onto the opposite carriageway is still etched on my heart in claw shaped scars. So this cock up (policeman’s or my taxi driver – who’d already tried the meter fiddling trick on me) meant we had to drive another 4 miles around the one way systems in figures of eight to approach the hospital from another direction. Having agreed the price, taxi man had no incentive to drive on a tour of Bangkok so I don’t think I was done but it led me to wanting to tell you about the eccentricities of taxis here.

They are a most bizarre lot. Quite often you stop them, tell them where you want to go, and they refuse to take you. Frequently you tell them you destination and they have no idea where it is – you can ask them for the equivalent of ‘Trafalgar Square’ and they still have no idea how to drive you there. One time shortly after we moved here we couldn’t find the coffee house Husband had been recommended by work, and the driver threw us out of the cab after the second request to ‘u-turn.’ Yes, they are taxi drivers, but they only moved to the city from upcountry last weekend.

Husband had a taxi driver who told him he’d just got out of prison for killing two pedestrians. Several taxi drivers have fallen asleep at traffic lights, and I’ve had to wake them up when the light goes green. Many drivers decorate the inside of the cabs with offerings to Buddha - the one today was particularly beautiful. This appears to be so that they have continued good luck while they drive and read the paper. One of the habits to threaten me with spontaneous vomiting is to hoik the contents of their nasal passages into their mouths, open their door and deposit it on the pavement. Mostly they do this when they’re in a traffic queue.

But lots of taxi drivers are lovely. Delighted to speak some English with you; go out of their way to help you find somewhere (a map, directions, several landmarks and in Bangkok you still can’t find it). Last week Carol and I were on our way to the most famous sports club in Bangkok (not as members, I hasten to add) but I’ve learned not to make any assumptions about taxi drivers knowing the city. I had a map, the address in Thai, the address in English, the telephone numbers. He picked me up a few roads away from our destination and Carol up two roads closer, still he’d neither heard of it, nor knew where it was. Had I got the telephone number? He pulled over on a non stopping main road and with the world beeping and screeching at him, he phoned the club for directions. Still, we got there.

Armed and Dangerous

Today is the start of half term. Hurrah. We have two extra days tacked on: more hurrahs.

Tomorrow we’re off to the beach: we’re going to Koh Phi Phi. This means we’re actually going to The Beach. I suppose, strictly speaking, we’re going to this The Beach, because we're going to where it was filmed.

Sorry, has this all got a bit confusing?

I think I might be a walking cliche, because I'm thinking of going to buy the novel. I might have to wrap it in a brown paper cover...

I could say ‘I’m taking a break from blogging’ but I’m not. I have every intention of going fully tooled up: laptop, Blackberry and digital camera.

21st century birthday

I am having a very twenty first century birthday in keeping with my technology addicted life.

I am posting this to tea-stains with my very exciting birthday present, my new Blackberry, courtesy of Husband after much whispering in his ear while he was asleep and sending subliminal emails, with barely seeable text saying 'buy JJ a blackberry'.

I've had lots of birthday wishes from blog friends, an email from my sister, my brother and my two sister in laws. And I've just watched my gorgeous god-daughters and their Dad, singing a beautiful rendition of happy birthday to me on a podcast on our closed blog 'The Bull's Horn.'

I've only had real cards from Bangkok people, but all those cyber wishes have made my day: thank you.

Happy birthday to blogger Lane and her daughter too!

Sent via BlackBerry® from AIS