Anyway, here is one of the latest pieces. This is the 'go to the back of the class and practise your
(*Ahem* I left the solder visible just so that you could see how beautifully I'd done it!)
Showing posts with label taxi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxi. Show all posts
Monday, March 19, 2012
Monday morning
I nearly got hit by a car and a motorcycle this morning. Not really nearly but almost nearly. It is partly the fault of lax road rules here but also my own stupidity. I recovered as our taxi drove us to the MRT (underground) station (Husband was going to work; I was going to jewellery) and then I realised that I hadn't got my partly prepped bits of jewellery with me. I had to take a taxi back home to pick them up. I considered getting back into bed and staying there just in case the day didn't improve.
Anyway, here is one of the latest pieces. This is the 'go to the back of the class and practise yourhandwriting soldering' design. One of the pebble shapes is copper (top left) and the rest are brass. It's quite nice, isn't it?
(*Ahem* I left the solder visible just so that you could see how beautifully I'd done it!)
Anyway, here is one of the latest pieces. This is the 'go to the back of the class and practise your
(*Ahem* I left the solder visible just so that you could see how beautifully I'd done it!)
Friday, June 03, 2011
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Gargantuan food; gargantuan feet.
Oh good grief; you wouldn’t believe the amount of work that goes into sending Son off for an International Award expedition…( the same thing as the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the UK.) This year it’s silver and he’s off on a rehearsal this weekend for three days. I tell you, the amount of work involved means I feel somewhat deserving of a silver award myself.
When I moved to Thailand I was warned that you couldn’t buy western sized shoes here, but I was okay Jack. I’ve got size five feet, I fitted Thai sized shoes. NEVER did I imagine I was going to need to worry about the children’s feet. But here we are: gigantic feet, both of them. I’ve been in email negotiations with someone in London to see if they could get hold of great big trekking shoes. (Thank you Simon: I know you were too busy, really) and he was going to have to get them to whichever colleague was the next visitor to Thailand. I finally found enormous trekking shoes yesterday morning. The man at Central Chit Lom had size 45 and 46 and said he’d keep them for me until Son and I returned around 4.30pm.
This whole thing is assessed. The students have got to plan their diet to suit the tasks they are undertaking. It needs to be varied and sufficient. This amounts to about 5,000 calories (*sits at the keyboard for a second, wondering if hiking up a mountain is worth doing so I can consume more calories. No, maybe not*) So then we had to go to the foodhall for two hours to consider what can be taken; carried; enjoyed; prepared; fulfil leaders' ideas of balanced diet…
Truly I began to lose the will.
Eventually, we finished. We went to the taxi rank: BIG long queues. Bangkok was under attack from a tropical downpour. We’ll have to take the sky train. “But,” I say to Son, “I’m not walking home in this. We’ll go to the next sky train stop [from home] and get a taxi just the local bit.”
So there we are, not at our local sky train station but one further away to justify a taxi journey. It's still pouring sheets of rain. The roads are car parks and so the first three taxis refuse to take us. We are soaking wet already. If we’d got off and walked from the correct stop, we’d be home by now. Eventually a taxi agrees to take us. He doesn’t know his way; we miss our left turn, we do a u-turn, he misses the next right. He reassesses; instead of a u-turn we turn right. From this direction cars are forbidden to turn right into our soi. He drives up the wrong side of the road, hits another car (no damage, just the wing mirror flipping in) and turns right to a symphony of honking horns, flashing lights and tropical rain.
But you know what? It could be worse: I could be going camping at the weekend!
Finally, just because it's fun, long time readers might remember this picture of Son from our trip to see grandparents in France.
When I moved to Thailand I was warned that you couldn’t buy western sized shoes here, but I was okay Jack. I’ve got size five feet, I fitted Thai sized shoes. NEVER did I imagine I was going to need to worry about the children’s feet. But here we are: gigantic feet, both of them. I’ve been in email negotiations with someone in London to see if they could get hold of great big trekking shoes. (Thank you Simon: I know you were too busy, really) and he was going to have to get them to whichever colleague was the next visitor to Thailand. I finally found enormous trekking shoes yesterday morning. The man at Central Chit Lom had size 45 and 46 and said he’d keep them for me until Son and I returned around 4.30pm.
This whole thing is assessed. The students have got to plan their diet to suit the tasks they are undertaking. It needs to be varied and sufficient. This amounts to about 5,000 calories (*sits at the keyboard for a second, wondering if hiking up a mountain is worth doing so I can consume more calories. No, maybe not*) So then we had to go to the foodhall for two hours to consider what can be taken; carried; enjoyed; prepared; fulfil leaders' ideas of balanced diet…
Truly I began to lose the will.
Eventually, we finished. We went to the taxi rank: BIG long queues. Bangkok was under attack from a tropical downpour. We’ll have to take the sky train. “But,” I say to Son, “I’m not walking home in this. We’ll go to the next sky train stop [from home] and get a taxi just the local bit.”
So there we are, not at our local sky train station but one further away to justify a taxi journey. It's still pouring sheets of rain. The roads are car parks and so the first three taxis refuse to take us. We are soaking wet already. If we’d got off and walked from the correct stop, we’d be home by now. Eventually a taxi agrees to take us. He doesn’t know his way; we miss our left turn, we do a u-turn, he misses the next right. He reassesses; instead of a u-turn we turn right. From this direction cars are forbidden to turn right into our soi. He drives up the wrong side of the road, hits another car (no damage, just the wing mirror flipping in) and turns right to a symphony of honking horns, flashing lights and tropical rain.
But you know what? It could be worse: I could be going camping at the weekend!
Finally, just because it's fun, long time readers might remember this picture of Son from our trip to see grandparents in France.
Monday, November 05, 2007
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.
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.
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