Mali and Pooh.

This is Mali's favourite toy Pooh. It was given to us by Saskia and Rachel from school, and Mali loves knocking him over.

I've just knocked up a new set on Flickr of other photos of Mali at one month old, so go and check it out at



http://www.flickr.com/photos/ldma/sets/670875/

Malina Kimm Minson

I realise I should have posted this a week ago, but for those that don't know and read my blog just to belatedly announce the birth of our baby daughter Mali, who arrived last Thursday 23/6/05 at 2:37 PM weighing 3.5kg (and no I don't know what it is in pounds...about 7 possibly).

We've been back home for 3 days now, and although it's really tiring and my sleeping patterns are reverting to pre-student days...ie before midnight, Mali has so far been a dream, little crying...cute as you want

Thanks to everyone who sent me e-mails. I may get round to send ing some back, but I have to grab my computer time when I can these days. Yes I have been changing nappies, though Kan is kind enough to handle the pooey ones, despite her being in pain from the C-section.

You can see more photos of Mali and the first couple of days at
the Flickr set I created

I'm Fine!

Just a quick message to anyone concerned that I've been swept away by tsunamis. I'm on completely the opposite side to where it happened, and what's more I snored through the whole force 9.0 earthquake too.

Still thanks to the various friends and family for being concerned, but school entirely prevented me from taking Xmas holidays to Andaman coastal resorts. A few friends of mine were caught up in it, but so far, thank goodness, no-one I know has been killed.

Nasty stuff...the current toll could be upto 100,000.

Morning Sickness

I think it's about time I mentioned on my blog the woderful news we had last week that Kan my lovely wife is about 10-11 weeks pregnant with our first child.

We're deep into morning sickness stage right now with violent retching waking me up every morning this weekend, and complaints that everything tastes of aluminium....there's also a noticable widening of her girth, which I was teasing her last week was just that she was putting on weight from eating too much. She actually eats like a mouse...well she did until this week. Now she's starting to out eat a fat bastard like me.

Laziness Punishment

I have a feeling that my blog is punishing me for not posting enough just lately, as it has a cut off of three weeks worth of blogs and if I stop writing for a while the whole formatting thing goes to hell. I guess I should spend a little quality time with it, which I should be able to do once next week (test marking week) is out of the way. The good news at the Wor Zone is that we get nearly three weeks in stead of the usual two in October, but I can't see us going anywhere for the break as we want to go to England in April 2005. Before that happens theres a whole nother semester. Note to self...must find teachers must find teachers must find teachers.

I'll endeavour to find you something of equal intellectual levels of the paper vagina which has caused record levels of comments(3) in relation to the last 2 months.

Big shout out to Hangover Monkey whose blog My Neighbours Are Hoors caused our staffroom much entertainment a few weeks ago, definately reminded me of the man like Grasshopper who is in a similar situation.

Should also mention that I got my Holy Grail Visa Stamp last week. 1 year until June next year. Still have to report to immigration every three months but thats in Songkhla and not the Sadao border. Immigration are a scarey bunch, but I've warmed to them a bit ever since I met my immigration officer down at the new Vietnamese restaurant/bar on Sisuda Road, nice spot, good tunes, well decorated and interesting if porktastic menu.

A Sense of Normality

A sense of normality returned to the Worzone to day, as the sinking feeling must have occured to more than just the farrang teachers....oh shit it's September and we've done next to bugger all for the last month.

My September schedule introduced to my class today was a bit of a shock...one test on Thursday followed by speaking tests all next week. Just has to be done just to complete the first semester's curriculum before..yes..again, the finel test on the week beginning 20th September...all dates take into account that at least 20 percent of students will miss the first time around with the speaking test.

Ajarn Forum continues to take up waay too much of my time.

Forum Phoenix

Whew! It's been a roller coaster of a day, from this morning when I felt so shit about my efforts of the lat few days being dashed by ajarn forums hacker again to now when I feel on top of the world and my ego boosted somewhat by all the praise I've been getting for getting that damn forum back.

Lets go back to last night. I'd been arsing about with forum mods, Kan had come back home and we went out for dinner..leaving my phone in the house. I get back to find 8 missed calls. Turns out it's Marko and he's telling me that he and BKK Phil have been banned from logging in...me too as it turns out...arse. Well thanks to the miracles of technology and knowlege of passwords I get myself in through the back door only to find myself seeing the board being overturned by this psychopath who eventually deletes all but one forum. BKK Phil immediately puts up a notice saying AF is discontinued forever and there are glum faces all round....well glum smilies anyway.

Well ignoring Phil's notice we do our usual damage assment in our one remaining forum, and theres talk of new boards new names and new domains when suddenly I get a brainstorm and remember seeing some database dumps hosted in the control panel of the hosting company AF uses, so I grab it...do a bit of farting about and slowly but surely the board starts resurecting itself...result...

I genuinely hope the hacker feels that he has made his point. We are going to add security mods like theres no tomorrow and we'll do regular forum backups nightly, this way we hopefully won't have to keep starting from scratch evey time someone takes this cheap pot-shot at Thailand's teacher fraternity. It's a great board and for all the tossers that also seem to like it it's got genuine soul and I've got some good mates from there and I want it to stay. Thats why I've been ignoring my blog a bit, thats why I can see PHP code in front of my eyes.

Lets see how we progress from here.

The New Ajarnforum (again)

Sorry, I'm being a little infrequent at present with my posts but stay with me...

I've just been helping set up the new incarnation of Ajarnforum.net, which got hacked into last Saturday night. Well, out with their old crappy porous Ikon Board in with the sexy (and slightly ubiquitous) phpBB..just like my Songkhla Forum.

I'll try and get back to normal once
1) This forum lark has settled down a bit
2) This highschools debate stuff is over...(tomorrow)

9 Years of Being Online.

iB::Topic::Embarassing usenet moments

Better post this here. I just stuck up a whole bunch of links cataloging a snapshot of my 9 years of being online

Quite a nostalgic voyage, including the post in which the name LDMA first appeared online.

Dodgy, Scarey Geezer Appointed To Head of CIA, and LDMA Leech's Lots of Popcrap

Bush appoints new CIA director
Ooh bloody hell, he doesn't look too dodgy does he? Just a random thought as it flashed up at the Beeb

Sorry I've not been blogging too much the last couple of days but I've been leeching heavily on Soulseek, trying to get a list of 39 cheesey songs for the judges reference at her Song Contest, the finals of which are on Saturday.

The day coincidently is also that of my students in 6/8 have their debating cometition at PSU. Hatyai, so it looks like I won't be in a position to be treated to covers of the likes of Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, The Carpenters, and of course Britney.....gutted!

Singapore - A quick review

I know it's a bit late now I'm back, but I didn't exactly have much time for blogging whilst I was away...the KL entry was at the expense of lunch!

We got to Singapore on Thursday morning. Immigration took a cursory glance at my CD collection, but then ultimately decided that my Acid Techno and House collection posed no great threat to national security contrary to our guide's worried comments on seeing them prior to arriving.

On arriving in Singapore, I was struck by how clean it was, yes probably a cliche, but coming from the Hatyai area a very interesting comparison. We went to see the Merlion on the waterfront, then went shopping in China Town and Orchard Road. China town was kind of shit and touristy, but Orchard Road rocked, if only for having a fantastic supermarket which contained most of my hitlist that I mentioned a few days ago. Sadly, I could only buy a few of those items as they might not have survived the voyage home so well, so out went the Jahrlsberg cheese and sundried tomatos. I did however manage to score fresh peaches and grapefruit. I also found Tahini (whoohoo!), tinned raspberries, and a HUGE jar of Marmite.

After this we headed for Sentoza Island which we reached via the Cable Car. We then got shepparded on this horribly bumpy monorail, and ended up at Underwater World, which was fish-tastic. Then we went to the Merlion statue, on coming down ate more decadent West-only luxuries (Chocolate Eclair and Orangina), then had another shit Chinese meal. After this we hung around until nightfall for the spectacular Musical Fountain Show at the foot of the Merlion statue, an incredible combination of water, lighting, lasers, 3d animation, and fire, that even I was impressed by despite my earlier cynicism.
Then it was off to the hotel for some sleep.

The next day we got up at 5am and were taken to the Naval Base Secondary School, where we joined in their National Day Celebrations. First a parade, and speeches then we were treated to some dancing and 'community' singing (kind of nonsecular uplifting S Club 7, We Can Change the World sort of love in.)
Then we got a tour around the school, which was amazing compared to the Worzone. After a bit of food we bade farewell to the school, went back to the hotel to check out, and went to Snow City, where under the blazing midday heat we suddenly plunged into -5 - -7 degrees. In the snow chamber we had a massive snowball fight, and slid down the huge slope on innertubes. Very strange. Then it was back to Orchard Road for a bit more shopping before getting back on the bus for the epic all-nighter back to Thailand.

I like Singapore, definately rocks more than KL. Would definately consider moving there even though I'm not really a fan of big cities. I got to say that I really craved chewing gum whilst I was there..even though I don't normally chew it!

Curries in KL

I'm currently in Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaysia on a school trip. We got here last night after about 12 hours on the road. We did a bit of shopping last night, and today went sight seeing. I'm sharing a room with the school's assistent director...one of my bosses boss...ulp! Actually he's spot on...I'd rather share a room with him than my boss to be honest.

Thai people have an insatiable appitite for posing for photos in front of things; war monuments, huge skyscrapers, even hotels. The concept of photography for artistic value escapes these people.

The food arranged by the tour has been at consistently bad Chinese restaurants. Today after 3 such meals I thought sod this, and went for some excellent Indian food at the Petronas Towers mall.

My crowning acheivement, was to get the M2 kid that was hanging around with me to acknowlege that Indian food is Arroy Mak, contrary to everything he's been told by every single Thai he's ever spoken to on the subject. Methinks that most Thais never even get round to trying it and just rely on misinformation passed on through genrations that Indian food smells bad.

Must dash, we're off to Singpore this afternoon, well nearly. We're actually spending the night at Jahore Bahru on the Malaysian/Singapore border.
More later.

Pills, Thrills and Bellyache

Was thrilled this morning to wake upto Englands 4-2 win over Croatia, the usual story, we have a shit 1st game and scrape through to the 1/4 finals, winning at the last moment before losing to the Germans on penalties in the semis.

Was also thrilled to hear about SpaceShipOne's sucess, though now it seems that there were serious malfunctions and backup systems had to be used.

This afternoon, whilst being a mouse potato at school I got this terrible pain in the right hand side of my upper abdomen. It didn't feel like anything I'd had before and my first instinct and that of my colleagues was to get me to hospital in case it was serious.

I saw a doctor who sent me to a local lab for tests. There I gave a sample of my finest Chardonnay, and was made to wear silly hospital clothes (I figured out in a hurry how sarongs are tied) and lay on this hard table whilst a lady took my x-ray with this dodgy old rusty machine. Still lying there I wondered what she was doing. Two minutes later the lady emerges from a side room with my x-ray. Bloody quick!

By this time the pain had subsided a little bit, so feeling a bit silly I went back to the doctor, who showed my oversized stomach pocketed with gas, for which I got some stomach pills and some rennies. I get back home and the pain is back 10 times worse than before. I neck some paracetamol and the other stuff I was given and writh in pain for a while, then it all wears off. According to a doctor who I got a second opinion off I have some kind of inflamation of my intestine, hence the side pain. I really don't want that one back.

Spaceman

It's very soon going to be launch time for the X-Prize. I'm quite excited actually.
Here's a picture of the Woodstock thats building up there.

Tales From Chulia Street

Like a grimey old friend, Georgetown appears through the smog as the ferry crosses the short stretch of water separating Butterworth from Penang island.

Deposited as usual in the erstwhile Chulia Street, my intentions to go budget this year go straight out of the window on seeing the 'clean but cheap' Swiss Hotel my neighbour Fat Ian has recommended. Hospital colours and dodgy staff, coupled with tiny run-down rooms. The corridors make this feel more a prison than a hotel. No thanks! The more expensive but nice Hotel Malaysia once again becomes my home for the next three days on my annual visa run.

This year I'm with fellow Wor Zone-ite Charlene, which is cool. The bus down from Hatyai was not too crowded for a change and the journey was uneventful. Once here, and checked in we strolled upto the Komptar, Penangs most prominent skyline feature, a huge cylindrical skyscraper, below which are two huge shopping malls. We did the ATM, then found the most amazing restaurant I have ever eaten at in Penang, a vividly decorated Indian place at that junction at the top of Chulia. The food was reasonably priced, tasted awesome, and was beautifully presented. The first proper Indian meal I'd had for 3 years. The banana leaf plates were also a great touch. The Mutton Rogan Josh got special thumbs up from both Charlene and I.

We then went for a drink down the ever worsening Rasta Cafe (Craig David is reggae?), before going back to the hotel. Watched footie replay of Greece vs Portugal, before dozing off waking up to highlights of Englands win over France.....nice 1!

Got to the Thai Consulate for about 8:45, no problems. The Thai consulate was surprisingly friendly, from the Indian guy on the gate, to the officials inside. I was even offered a multiple entry which I had been informed on ajarn.com, was impossible. That'll teach me to listen to the Interweb!

That brings me up to now. A walk up to Komptar at 11 when the place finally opens (lazy gits in this town!), some pirate DVDs and Software, some new books,and possibly a go on that funky coin-op arcade are on the cards for today, before collecting my visa tomorrow and heading back to LOS and the Wor Zone for Wednesday morning, (and only two classes...snigger.)

UPDATE: I am now painfully aware of England's defeat against France. Dozy Malaysian TV showed the first goal but not the subsequent disaster. Not understanding the Malay language, I took this to mean England had won, til I found out down the Rasta Cafe on Chulia St a full 24 hours later by a German who could hardly contain his glee. Bah!

My Wife Makes Me Fuck Chicken Soup And Pat Prick

Yes indeed, a delicious soup made from a kind of marrow which in Thai is called 'fuck', with chicken and flavoured with fresh cumin. She also made me this pork with fried chillies dish called 'Pat Prick', very nice....yum yum!

What did you think I meant?

Air Conditioning, and Readership

I came to two very unrelated conclusions today.

Firstly, the private service sector in Thailand is extremely odd and frustrating. I've been sat on my arse waiting for the air conditioning man to turn up for two days. Every few daylight hours Kan would phone this guy up and he'd promise to be there at a certain time. It started yesterday Monday at 12pm, then it became 5pm, then it became tomorrow 11am, then 3pm. The guy finally turned up at 5:30 this afternoon, and without a word of apology did the work and buggered off, waving away my offers for payment. Now, did the guy just feel guilty for fobbing me off 5 times? Does he want me to hire him again? (fat chance!) I shake my head sadly and move on to my next point.

I have just been looking at my site stats, and have realised that I seem to be getting hits other than my own sympathy clicks to see who has written something in the shoutbox. I can guess quite a lot of them. The ones from Japan is Tim. The one from Singapore is Chris. There's another few from Holland who is Cheguavarria, and at least one of the Irish ones is Sweary Derry Dave. Looking at my other stats though leads me to a scarey conclusion that other people have just clicked in from places I have dropped my URL (ajarn.com for example where the blog URL is in my sig). It's like 'Eek someone is actually reading this poorly written drivel!!' I was also amused to see that my spelling mistakes have brought people here on the basis that others made a similar error, eg annonimiser in Google brought up my site from an entry a couple of days ago about accessing the PULO site.

It's enough to ram the word spellcheck deep into my psyche.

Papier Mache, Raji Gigs, and MOE Inspections

So here we go with what was going to be my daily blog before all this militant slaughter nonsense blew up.

Today was a mammoth teaching mission. It started off with my summer kiddies classes where we drew random monsters, using this funky game I got from Daves ESL Cafe. It's kind of like consequences but with pictures. They draw a body part at my command eg 'draw 3 eyes' and then pass the sheet drawing another part. Carry on until all the students have bizarre creations that they then get to name after the friend who originally put his/her name on the sheet. Absolute hysterics abound as you introduce each moster to the class. Then we play body part snap which all the boys cheated at. A great photocopy and scissor job in one of my favourite ill-gotten teachers books.

For the first time since I started this course we managed a full 90 minutes without whinging for a break. Following the obligatory 30 minutes playing Metal Slug 3 (I hate this game), we got into the arts hour. We had made papier mache masks over the last week or so and so today, we painted the masks with acrylic paint, cut holes for the eyes attatched elastic and generally looked scarey for the obligatory photo session.

Rather the kids did. I was waay more concerned with not messing up my clothes for round 2...the afternoon session at Rajhabat Institute teaching my wife's class of middle aged highschool teachers on in-service training....eeek!
I got there and was given the typical cheapo mass meal of spicey chicken with basil (and a congealed fried egg...yum). I get to my class, to find that half of the other trainees have deserted their regular class to join mine...result...not enough handouts...doh! I've got to say that the 3 hours went REALLY well from my perspective, though I'm sure any negative feedback will arrive tomorrow. The really scarey bit for me was the realisation 2 hours later that I had been unwittingly inspected by the Ministry of Education, but I think it should be ok, even though this woman had a face like a bag full of spanners. We covered a lot of stuff rangingfrom use of modal verbs to make assumptions, comparisons between manners in England and Thailand, and finally gestures and their possible use in the classroom. They turned out to be a nice old bunch and if nothing else flattered mefrom start to finish.

All in all, a tiring but good days teaching.

The Day After Songkran

Whoops, not blogged for a few days! Naughty, naughty! Im nursing a hangover from today's Songkran festivities. For those of you not hip to Thai festivals, this is the one where you go out riding pickuptrucks like militia men and have a sometimes violent waterfight with the entire nation, a concept which for the first two hours is extremely amusing but gets boring quickly, when you've been drenched for the 30,000th time, and have talcum powder in your eyes all you want to do is sod off back home to eat fried rice and start hitting the hard liquor (which is exactly what we did!), and I'm nursing the same day hangover as we speak. Anyway, I'm off to have a shower.

The Journey From Hell

Welcome dear readers to another day in the Wor Zone. Today I will document my return from Samui.....

AKA

The Journey From Hell

It started off ok. We got the boat from Samui to Don Sak at midday, and made our way south towards Nakhon Si Thammarat. We stopped off on the outskirts of Nakhon for some fried rice, and continued down the beach road.

Then Disaster!

We stopped at a red traffic light, and when it turned green I noticed that the engine had cut out. Starting it again I saw that the tempreture gauge was blowing through the roof, and after another 2km the engine cut out again and miraculously drifted to a halt outside a petrol station.

Now this petrol station you must understand wasn't a Shell or Esso, or even a PTT. No, this was a country bumpkin independent kind of place, no fridge full of Ginsters, and certainly no radiator coolant which is what we needed. We got the bonnet open and tried to cool the engine down by flushing water through the radiator. This seemed to work for a bit, and we got underway again, but about 5 km later it was overheating again, so before it cut out we stopped, and put some more water in to cool it down.

We then made it the next 5 km to the nearest small town where we found a petrol station that sold coolant. We whacked a bottle of it in which seemed to do the trick for about another 60 km, but then it started overheating in a little town called Sating Pra about 50km from Songkhla. We tried another bottle of coolant, but this time when we started back up the tempreture just kept increasing until 15 km later we ground to a complete halt again. By this time it was about 7:30 and dark. We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, but as luck would have it again, we'd drifted outside another sticks garage, who let us have water.

We'd also managed to block up a small soi, which we quickly discovered was called Soi Police because there was a police station up there. A off duty copper came down in his car and tried to help us out, finally going to find a mechanic for us, though he ended up not being able to find one.

By this time Kan was none too happy, so I called the AA....erm that is not the British roadside assistance service but Ae from Coffee Mar, who leaped to our rescue and drove the 30 odd km to come and rescue us.

WHAT A STAR!

So big shouts out to Ae who towed us to a nearby garage (latest estimates are around 5000 baht (80 quid)), and took us and our stuff back to Songkhla.

It seems at first analysis to be a busted piston or two on the engine but don't ask me cos I know nuffink about cars except how to make 'em go left and right and that.

I think it's a fucking joke that if you break down in this country the best that you can expect is an overpriced tow away assuming that you are aware of the police help number, which we weren't. Otherwise there is no such thing as a quality roadside assitance club like the AA or RAC like in the UK. We were very lucky to even get back last night.

I will say this though, Thais are very generous with their help, presumably because they know that we could be very stuck.

Oh well could have been worse, though I don't need the extra expense this month!

Destination Koh Samui

Well, after a glorious 3 days of internet free heaven I thought I'd better bite the bullet and hunt down an overpriced (but broadband) internet cafe here in Chaweng Beach, Koh Samui.

First of all, greetz to Tim who has the blog A Man In Japan, notable for his recent and fascinating expose of naked female sumo wrestling! Will be giving that a read over the next few weeks.
He also wins the prize for first visitor to this blog who I didn't have to beg and cajole in person or via e-mail.

The journey to Samui was pretty cool though I am convinced that Songkhla is the only place in Thailand where it doesn't rain or threaten to rain everyday. I have never driven through Phattalung when it hasn't been raining, I guess that's why it's one of the main agricultural centres in Southern Thailand, (or why it's not in Lonely Planet). We stopped off for lunch in Nakhon Si Thammarat (20 temples!) with one of Kan's students and her Mum, then we headed for Suratani town, where after meeting up with one of my mates off the Ajarn.com board, we checked into the poshest 5* place in town which cost us just 900 baht (about 15 quid). Lovely. Yesterday we headed for Don Sak the ferry terminus, and sailed to 'paradise'.

We are staying in Chaweng Villas, the same place that we stayed on our honeymoon, it's a bit like deja-vu, but at the end of the day, we're right on the beach, it's peaceful and the bungalows are quality and not like some of the awful shacks that I've seen about, without being horrendously expensive.

I have mixed feelings about Samui as a whole. Sure it's beautiful, but only if you can block out the crass backroads whicha re becoming more and more commercial everyday, there's 3 Mc Donalds, 2 Burgerkings, Tesco Lotus, Starbucks, the list just goes on. It's a far cry from the days when you could say it was a pristine paradise.

Still our accommodation does allow us to block this out to a certain extent and it is a lovely place to chill out an get drunk, and yes it's good to get out of Songkhla for a bit, if only to remind myself why I like living there.

Dozily I didn't bring my USB lead for my digital camera, but these cafe owners start going under when you start installing drivers and the hassle that involves anyway so I'll put some choice pics up later when I get back.

Right I'm off to swim in that crystal clear, shallow, warm little bay that is Chaweng and makes all the stress of driving here worth it.

Laters

OK, thought I'd better write

OK, thought I'd better write some thing before I go to Samui (or rather Suratani) tomorrow. I came 22/40 for the Frog pic and 53/55 for the second one....hmph!

Today's picture is of Irish George of The Buzzstop on Sisuda Road, Songkhla. This place is my local and is the reason that I consistently refer to Songkhla as the cooked breakfast capital of Thailand; massive portions, reasonable prices and really shit, shit jokes that you tend to hear about 10 times before George gets bored of them. (Only joking:)

He does really nice burgers too, though they're so big that you have to eat them quick before they disintegrate.