Sorry about the "blowing" sound on the video...rather irritating.  It's the fan I had going on the kitchen table.  

As I write this post, this very minute, my house and the jungle surrounding it is inundated in flood waters.  I arose this morning to an e-mail from work saying school was canceled today due to the rains as it's been raining steadily for the past two days really and hasn't let up much.  I managed to get everything upstairs, and here I stay while looking out my window at the expanse of water...sorta like being in a boat.  

This is the second year this cottage has flooded.  The villagers told Mam when she was living here that they'd never seen it flood this high up the road until last year.  But, I figured it was coming since this has been a very wet monsoon season.  

I'm probably crazy for taking the little kitty in, but like I mention on the video...I'm a sucker for animals.  I knew the minute the little kitten approached my motorcycle, I'd be taking it home with me.  Trouble is my dog Puppy.  He's insanely jealous and it's going to take some careful management before he takes to the little girl.  

Work is going pretty good.  Songsaeng School is quite literally right down the road from me, taking me all of a whopping five minutes to get to school in the morning.  The kids are older, which is a switch for me, but they all seem pretty nice and respectful for the most part.  I really hope this job becomes a permanent one.  

Well, not much else to say except I'm planning on just riding out the storm and once everything recedes, jumping on the cleanup as quickly as possible.  I'm lucky so far, as nobody's cut the power yet...sending me into boredville.  

-Jeeem- 

I would have posted this sooner but Blogger.com wouldn't seem to upload an .avi video, so I had to search around for a free video converter and changed the thing to .wma, which worked.

Excuse my weird actions and screaming paranoia, but it's not every day I find myself within feet of a potentially lethal snake.  It's not the first time I've seen cobra's around here, as I've seen at least five or six of them, mostly babies.  Seems this one's a teenager.

Before I could grab the camera, I threw my black boxer shorts down at the thing to try and rouse it from underneath the first step, as I didn't want it disappearing again, and sure enough it reared up and expanded it's hood...but, it also hissed and sent a steady stream of venom splashing against the steps and concrete wall.  If you look carefully at the wall to the right in the video, you can see the stain.

I'd gone downstairs earlier and heard a noise while washing the dishes and thought it was Chok, my little female dog, rummaging through the trash again.  I turned around and saw she wasn't there, then I saw the tail end of the snake going behind my little makeshift bookcase on the floor where I store my English lesson plans and school materials.  Black scales with some vague yellow markings.  I wasn't sure if it was a cobra or not, so tried scaring it out using an old mop handle but it wouldn't come out.  I wasn't about to go moving things on the condition it might be a cobra, so I just left it be and figured it would work it's way back outside again...eventually....hopefully.

The dogs scare the piss out of me since they appear to just mindlessly go after other animals and insects that have poisonous potential.  You'd think they would have some sort of instinct about stuff like that.  Puppy has been bitten by a centipede and was terribly miserable for at least three days.  They say around here that many dogs succumb to cobra bites and are found dead.  I certainly don't want it to happen to my pups!

Hope you enjoyed the video!
-Jeeem-

It's been a while since I let anyone know what's really been happening with me, so I'll attempt to be brief...

I left Patong Wittaya Mulnithi School in Thung Lung because I got sick of the corruption, lies, laziness, empty promises and back stabbing.  Pitiful situation for a school supposedly engaged in the education process.  Patong School, I kid you not, is run by a criminal.  A man who carries a gun, is driven around town in a big, black Ford truck with mirrored glass, replete with at least five armed body guards who do nothing to hide the fact they are packing weapons.

His brother, a corrupt local politician, was killed gangland style behind the Thung Lung market some four years ago.  He was found dead in the street with a single bullet hole in the back of the head.  So, the corrupt manager of Patong School is not educated, knows nothing about the educational process, yet he pulls strings at the school and effects day-to-day operations, like coming up with the bright idea to dump 100 plus kids on me, on a Monday afternoon, from ages 6 to 8, for a two hour class he called English Club. 

There's more, but that isn't my focus here.

In the last few months Mam was living with me, she was worried.  She spoke out one day saying, "You should learn to not talk.  To let things be.  You lost your job because of the things you say."  I begged to differ.  I said, "You...you Thai's never stand up for yourselves.  Even when something is happening that you know is wrong...corrupt.  You just sit still and let it happen.  That is why Thailand is as it is now."

And so she left.  Mainly because the money coming in from me was insufficient.  She always wanted more, more, more...but was unwilling to work for it.  Rather ironically, after she left, within days, my prospects began paying off.  Suddenly there were jobs coming at me from all angles, but that didn't last. 

To avoid getting into a long, drawn out story, I will suffice it to say I fell into a whirlpool of piece jobs.  One would run out and another would appear.  But it wasn't enough to really live on.  Currently I'm over two months behind in rent and have two unpaid bills, electric and phone, both of which I haven't been able to pay for two months now. 

I was relying on an agency in Hat Yai called C-Bright to call offering me private adult classes, and the Open Learning Center in Songkhla to come up with much the same.  The same corruption and underhanded dealings is present in both agencies, only now I am able to just turn my head and look away.  I'm only concerned with money at this point.  Here in Thailand it seems, if you make ethics and morals your priority, you will not have work. 

But presently I just signed on for a 30-hour private conversation class at C-Bright on Sundays, which will bring in a little better than 1000 baht for the three hours I will teach on a Sunday afternoon and will be starting a full-time teaching position at Songsaeng school in Ban Klong Ngae, which is only about ten kilometers or so south of me.  Close enough I can ride my motorcycle there. 

So things are looking up a bit, but things have been so bad for so long, things have begun to fall apart here.  My television works, but the sound is gone...not a biggy.  The printer for my computer pooped out long ago.  I have three blankets for my bed, all which need to be retired since my little girl Chok tends to chew holes in them.  My sandals are broken...both pairs.  The rice cooker broke long ago.  My refrigerator is on it's last leg.  And so on and so forth....it's going to be awhile before I get things back in working order again.  But one thing is for sure, it's going to be easier without Mam here to leech off of me. 

I came damn close to bailing out, but I've never been a quitter, so I hung on.  I've got a lot of prospects in other Asian countries, but my dogs keep me here.  I've always been an animal lover, and more than anything negative that Mam did to me, I mostly don't understand how she could just walk away from the dogs.  Chok was her favorite, she rescued Chok from sure death on the main highway near out home.  While Chok loved me, she'd go nuts when Mam would come home.  Now, months later, she's daddy's little girl and I can't go far without her popping up by my side. 

So, that's it.  I do have another love interest in my life, Jenilo Cabasag, a woman I met years ago in the Philippines.  We've been corresponding a lot lately and she wants me to come visit.  She's originally from Bohol but has been living in Metro Manila now for the past two years going to college.  As soon as my finances clear up, that's where I'll be headed. 

-Jeeem-

After work in Hat Yai yesterday I hopped onto a....


Then, while on the way home a large group of young, nubile high school girls got on and I was immediately...





+ ED











Between them....

A big bunch of


Well...

A tad smelly...you know.

Actually it was....



And quite clearly....


...


...


...




I'm still getting over it!

- Jeeem -

Weather predictions...

Over the years, in particular as a fisherman, I learned to watch the weather. Predicting it often became the difference in coming home with fish for dinner and coming home empty handed.

There was an old ditty I remember well:

"If the wind is from the North...Man should not go forth. If the wind is from the South, it blows the fly into the fishes mouth. If the wind is from the West, this is the best. If the wind is from the East, tis not fit for man nor beast."

I found that ditty to often be true.

Here in Thailand I don't fish, but I enjoy watching the weather and sometimes it pays to be prepared. So, for those interested, here are some interesting weather predictors that you can try out at home. I've found most of these work pretty good!

• Insect eating birds will begin feeding lower, on insects closer to the ground, since when a storm is approaching, insects are forced lower by low level downdrafts. In fair weather, insects are forced higher by fair weather updrafts (works every time!).
  

• Winds blowing closer to ground are a sign a storm is approaching.

• Leaves of deciduous trees will turn bottom side up 12 to 24 hours before a storm.

• Swamp, marshland and standing stagnant water odors are more noticeable as bad weather approaches.

• Ants will build tiny DIKES or MOUNDS at the entrance to their tunnels before it rains; their activity will cease within an hour of the storm's onset.

• If you have curly hair, your hair will become more 'unruly' as a storm approaches, due mainly to the increased humidity in the air. In the case of a severe downpour, with possible flooding... wooden handles, inter-meshing or inter-connecting wooden "L" joints, door frames, etc., doors will stick, L joints will bind, and wooden handles will swell with the excess moisture in the air.

• If you have a campfire, or are barbecuing, the smoke will typically hang low in the case when a storm is moving in. Smoke rising straight up means clear weather.

• Lots of morning dew or frost on grass usually means the day will be fair. Little or no dew or frost means the air has been moving and wet weather is on the way.

• Morning glory blooms open wide when fair weather is on its way, but close up when inclement weather approaches.

• A red-sky sunset means rain within the next 24 hours is unlikely; the color occurs when there is little moisture in the atmosphere. A red sky or red sun at dawn means a storm is approaching (I've found this one a very accurate predictor).
  

A ring around the moon is caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals in the atmosphere. If the corona increases and expands as the night progresses, it's a sign that rain or snow is on the way.

Hope you enjoyed those!

Until next time!

- Jeeem -

Bachelor stuff….

So…I’ve found a new spot in which to purchase groceries. Ban Kunine Sang…the tiny village just southwest of my home.

They have veggies, meats, canned goods, and dry goods…anything a guy would ever need.

I usually go there and purchase vegetables, canned goods, and either pork or chicken, and gas up my motorcycle too…but, the other day I noticed the store manager had a nice cache of fish, from where I don’t know, but it looked fresh so I nabbed a couple red snapper.

So I bought those two red snapper. Juicy ones, thick, meaty…got them home and threw them into the freezer. And that’s where they stayed until today.

Now, I’m in a position employment-wise, where I am only working twice a week…which sucks big time because I need much more work to be able to pay my bills, but….I gotta eat.

Those red snapper have been in my freezer for a week now…I love fish, but I’m not that good at cooking them…Well, if it’s already filleted, then yeah…but, these were whole fish…

So today I pulled those big, fat babies out of the freezer and let them defrost while I thought what to do with them. One thing I know about filleting fish, is ya gotta have a sharp, thin knife. Something I don’t possess. So, I gutted the two of them, took the back side of my knife and began scraping off the scales, and then I cut off the heads. I just can’t bear to eat anything with the head still on, something an Asian wouldn’t understand, I’m sure.

Anyway, here I was with two un-filleted fish…what to do?

Suddenly I had an idea…

I chopped up some scallions, garlic, onion, searched the fridge for something…Ah! Tomatoes! Eggplant! Morning glory! Peppers!

I chopped em all up and tossed them inside the cavity of the two fish, sprinkling some on top too. Then I put a big dollop of butter on top of both of them, and threw them in the oven at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes.

It was nothing but a big guess, but damned if it didn’t turn out pretty darn good! There were some remnants left, so I stripped the bones out best I could, threw the rest in a pot, added a little bit of water and tomato sauce, and brought it to a boil. I added this concoction to some rice, sprinkled in a few kibbles, and voila!

Dog food!

My two dogs loved it! They were growling at each other trying to keep each other away from their dish. Too funny!

So, the life of a bachelor isn’t all that bad…ya just gotta get inventive!

-Jeeem-

We’re constantly bombarded with information…stimulus. Some of it we take in, some we discard.

When I was a child I had very little interest in history except what came out of my grandmother’s room. My grandmother, my adopted mother’s mother, lived with us while I was growing up. Her name was a classic southern one…Minnie Lee Hess. She had a room off the eastern corner of our house and rarely moved from her bed.

When I was bored I would often gravitate to my grandmother’s room and snoop. Well, fair was fair, as when ever she did get out of her bed it was typically to spy on me and my goings on.

There were two main articles of interest in that room for me. A large trunk containing the personal effects of her deceased husband whom she called “Pops,” who fought in the Spanish-American war and a small portrait on the south wall of her room, which she told me was called, “The Blue Boy.”

It was difficult to snoop in her trunk since she had a lot of stuff piled on top of it and it was locked, the lock only opened by a screwdriver or other flat object. So, the only times I was able to snoop in her trunk was when she would take a trip with her sister Mildred.

The other times I would walk into her room and stare for long periods of time at the portrait of her Blue Boy. I don’t know why, particularly, as I surely was not a budding art fanatic, but I just loved looking at that portrait.

It was years and years after her death and the death of my adopted mother when the house was donated to the local Grandview Baptist Church, all the contents included. I never saw that portrait or the trunk again.

Then roughly two or three weeks ago I was at work at C-Bright Language School and saw a Xeroxed copy of an article about that very portrait…The Blue Boy. I briefly scanned it and then made a mental note to research the portrait more completely on the Internet once I got home.

I found that the portrait was painted by Thomas Gainsborough circa 1770, and considered Gainsborough’s most famous work. It is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy hardware merchant of the time, although this was never proved.

The blue apparel on the boy was typical seventeenth century apparel and was regarded as Gainsborough’s homage to Anthony Van Dyck, another artist of the time, who painted a portrait of Charles II as a boy. Gainsborough’s oil painting is said to be startlingly similar to Van Dyck’s portrait.

Like many paintings, the portrait made it’s rounds…from the possession of Jonathan Buttall, the son of the wealthy hardware merchant, to politician John Nesbitt, and eventually by 1802, artist John Hoppner.

It currently resides in Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

-Jeeem-

I'm going batty!

I've a new addition to my usual creepy-crawler crowd! A creepy-cruiser...
Alias, a bat. I went downstairs last night to go to the bathroom, flicked on the light and immediately looked down since the bathroom floor is typically a toad-minefield at that hour.

Then suddenly I felt something whiz by my head. Instinctively I ducked thinking god-knows-what, and when I looked up I was relieved. It was only a bat.

Those little buggers are usually down the road a piece, around the durian farms, but evidently one of their crew has gone exploring. I like them cause they eat literally thousands of mosquitoes and other flying bugs at night, but...where there's a bat...there's bat guano.

That's scatological lingo for bat poo-poo.

It's enough I have to clean up tons of gecko poop every few days...but now bat poo?

No way.

So, I threw open all the downstairs windows and the door, in hopes he (or she) would fly out, but no such luck. It found the door to the bathroom okay, but instead of flying outside, it went upstairs and was quite happy since it's flying-bug heaven up there.

So now the thing is camped-in, hanging upside down on one of the roof rafters in the bedroom.

Gotta love this place!

-Jeeem-

COLOR ME MISERABLE!


This is the "I'm MISERABLE," contest...

I am miserable...

Sunday, August 8, 2010 at approximately 10:20 a.m., I spilled boiling water on my hands and forearms while heating water for a bath for my dogs.

After the screaming stopped, I just stood there for a second and tried to calm down and gather my thoughts. My health insurance had run out, I had very little money...(in fact, I can't even pay this month's rent..), and I knew from my medical background I had a severe second degree burn...

Once my duckies were all in a nice little row, I went into the bathroom, stripped down, and began dousing my arms and hands with cold water...for about twenty minutes. Thoughts kept creeping through my mind...should I go to the doctor? Should I call in to work?

That afternoon I had a scheduled meeting at a local Hat Yai restaurant with the C-Bright Language School staff. I had ordered my meal ahead of time, so I had to be there....

I finished bathing, dried off, powdered down, and then went upstairs and got dressed. At that point all I had to worry about was the pain...and it was pretty intense. But, as I dressed and got ready, the pain slowly began to subside...of course two Paracetamol tablets and a couple pain pills left over from my surgery helped a bit too.

I managed to get to Hat Yai, to my meeting and back without a lot of pomp and circumstance. The next day was a Monday and my day off, so I took it easy. But, I woke up with my arms covered in blisters. It seemed every time I did something...washed a dish, hung out clothes, attempted to cook...I'd either pop a blister, or rub and inflame a sensitive area, so by Tuesday, I was one sore dude.

I was eating Tylenol like it was candy, but if I didn't, I was in some pretty unbearable pain. Riding my motorcycle into Thung Lung was no easy task, as my hands were swollen up like balloons. Then I got onto the Songtheaw heading into Hat Yai, and the first miserable incident happened...I was sitting in the Songtheaw, minding my own business, and on hops a drunk Thai man, yapping to beat the band...

"Hey Falang!" he said, and my heart sank. This is one of the things I hate about riding in a Songtheaw...the asshole passengers they sometimes pick up. Without warning he reached over, grabbed my hand and squeezed, trying to be friendly. What happened next, he was not prepared for...neither were the rest of the passengers...

I simply screamed, as he pressed his goddamn hand right into a painful area where a blister was...actually a group of blisters....popping about four out six of them. I screamed and at the same time jerked my hand away...finally showing him (up close) just what he had done...

That shut him up. Nobody, including me, ever heard a peep out of him after that...meanwhile, I just sat there in silence, feeling the pulsing of pain that matched every heartbeat.

Okay...got to work, taught my students, then headed back. Was hanging on the back of another Songtheaw (the women sit down, men stand up unspoken rule. You know...gentleman crap), and suddenly some jerk bounds onto the back pedestal where I'm standing, never freaking looking at where he's going or what he's doing, and grabs onto....NOT the passenger handle...but, MY GODDAMN ARM....popping another four or five blisters....Big ones! So, now I'm hanging off the back of the Songtheaw with serum from my big blisters quite literally dripping onto the tarmac...little pieces of me, scattered all over southern Thailand....

Pain? Hey, let me tell ya...at this point, pain becomes a relative thing...Relative in a sense that at the very moment some jerk grabs my hand or arm, there is an intense amount of pain, but that pain tends to subside quickly, so this last time I didn't even so much as flinch....but, the real pain comes later.

Put my arms up above my heart...no problemo. Drop them down below my waist....OUCH! The pressure is almost unbearable...so you can see how this effects daily life...you just gotta work around it.

Okay, so now I'm MR. MISERABLE.

Your JOB....-should you choose to accept it-...is to click on the black and white "Miserable" picture above, save it to your hard drive, and finally....COLOR THAT BAD BOY!

Yes! You heard me right! COLOR THAT BAD BOY!

...means, clicking on the black and white "miserable," picture...saving it to your hard-drive, then pulling it up in say....Paint.net....or the lame, "Paint," or any other program, color it, add action, flash, or just....whatever!

The best one wins!

Submit your final project to: jeeeminasia@gmail.com

Good luck to you all...and for those who lose....MISERY!

-Jeeem-

I have impeccable timing!

It’s my birthday as you can obviously see* and after I was just getting over the picture birthday card I received from my virtual girlfriend, Lucy Liu, I began to think about the next best things…food and beer. Not necessarily in that order.

I’ve been on a curry kick of late, after stopping off with my friend Rich Ellison to have a beer after work a couple of weekends ago. I’m a lot like Rich in that I love to cook, but sometimes my cooking gets rather boring, so I’ve been thinking about broadening my horizons.

Curry is something Rich loves to prepare. I love curry, but a problem exists. I met Rich after work and he handed me a couple of plastic bags filled with dinner…curries he had prepared at home and gave me a sampling of. I was so thrilled! I could already smell the wonderful scents wafting up from the bags!

When we arrived at our drinking destination (I like that…’Drinking Destination,’ sounds like the title for a book), a store that simply has tables out front for farangs to gather, talk, bitch, and consume mass quantities of beer and spirits (similar to the Coneheads), Rich went inside and came out with a packet of Waugh’s Curry, a brand I’d never seen before. He handed it to me and told me I should try it, which I did.

I usually stay away from curry because although I love it, it does not love me, and I often end up with severe stomach cramps and diarrhea for a day afterwards. But this stuff was different some how. Oh, it wasn’t without any after effects…I had the farts bad for a couple of days, but at least my stomach could hack it.

So, today I got up around five a.m. a free man since I don’t have to be back to work for four days since Tuesday is a holiday here, and while drinking my coffee and reading my e-mails, I began to think about preparing some curry. The thing is though, I’m lazy. I kept putting off getting dressed and heading out on my motorcycle, until somewhere around eleven fifteen…and to explain my opening at the top of this posting, my timing was impeccable since it began raining half way into my shopping excursion to the Thunglung market and surrounding stores.

Aside from the argument I was involved in with an old lady at one of the vegetable stands, who tried to charge me forty baht for a small handful of celery (Celery here is tiny. It’s nothing like the large ribbed versions you get in the West), and a small bunch of fresh coriander, everything else went pretty smooth. I left the wet market having made most of the Thai’s day, since they rarely see me in that market because I do most of my shopping now in Ban Kunine Sang, to the West of my village. So they finally had something to talk about today! I had to be in Thunglung today since I had to pay my electric bill.

By the time I arrived back on the main road to get on my motorcycle, it was raining steady, and on the way home the skies decided to open up. I was soaked once I got home, and to top things off, Chok, my youngest little dog, bounced out of the forest from my blind-side and I dropped the bike in a puddle of mud to avoid hitting her. So I had to spend ten minutes getting cleaned up, then another fifteen to twenty minutes washing my long beans, onions, peppers, celery, coriander, mushrooms, and pork I’d purchased.

I bought a kilo of CP packaged pork to mince for the breakfast sausage I make for myself, a copycat recipe of Jimmy Dean’s sausage…rest his soul. The other kilo is for my curry and some pork fried rice. I wanted to purchase some gung (shrimp in the West…Prawns in the East…Gung in Thailand) but the prices were well out of my spending budget.

So, there you have it. If you’re not a cook, you’re missing out. There’s nothing quite like sitting down and cutting, slicing, dicing, grinding, and mixing, then preparing and cooking…it’s relaxing to me somehow and then there is the finished product! Ummmm. Delicious! Or as they say here in Thailand….

Aloi Maak!

*Please send money and gifts to: Jim Anderson, #134 Moo 2, Tambon Patong, Hatyai, Songkhla 90230 Thailand. Thank you.

-Jeeem-