All posts filed under: over7seas

Surrounded by teachers in Northern Thailand

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Suddenly I find myself surrounded by teachers. (I trust you know how hard it is to find them when you are looking for a single one… now I need almost a whole hand to count the sudden influx). It never rains but it pours, right? And each one feels like a relationship of trust. {You know the stories of how I started 3 different postgraduate degrees and ditched two because the teachers just weren’t right.. Or how I rotated through a set of driving instructors until I found THE one that fit like a glove? All the while hearing friends tell me that I am either and or fussy. Discerning guys, it’s called discerning and not paying any old ‘quack’ .. What a cool word! But I didn’t mean it as mean as quack might sound. It just was so snazzy and snappy to use.. } Also in other news: Thanks to Nephyr from the Naga Thai Massage Center I learnt that my website is full of errors. I have a lot to learn it …

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the day good..

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It’s a good day when after a seriously sleep-disrupted night I find that the market vendor left the seeds in the jackfruit. Finally! I’ve been trying to get my hands on Jackfruit seeds for way to long. Sometimes it’s the little things that make the day good.. It was a really quiet day even if the following really doesn’t sound like it: My teachers at Massage school distributed serious kindness, meant it and then revealed my bicycle that I had left here 2 years ago! Got to love them! I got to help translate/correct some stuff and felt way better about getting free classes after that. (yes, that’s right. No charge because that’s the style. And also the only way I could be here in the first place.) After a week here I finally visited my favourite cafe with garden and a fish pond with giant goldfish (I mean GIANT), it is way out of budget for this journey but that’s ok. I’m here to learn and hopefully photograph. Anyhow they remembered me and I …

“ohhhhh !!!!!!! this is terrifying and exciting in equal doses! “

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Terrifying it is – incredibly. I am departing with not a lot of money. Not a lot at all.. It looks like I have money for immigration purposes but once you take into account my bills there is a lot less than zero in my life… Jason will help while I will arrive empty handed really.. I am to some extent purposely putting myself into this position I live in the illusion that I can force myself out of my shell, to jump over the shadows of shyness and to finally crawl out of the chrysalis that I have barricaded myself behind.. Is it wing speeding time or will I flap like a fish on land… even they eventually figured it out… I just hope I am like the fish who figured it out, not like the last one before the fish who figured it out and who instead perished.. Witness me jumping into a very deep dark unknown. You will no doubt find out what happened next. (credit card power sufficient to get me home …

Last full week before departure

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I can’t exactly believe that I am really off, with so little money in my pocket and so little self belief.. But it might be what I need to prompt my confidence to finally sprout and grow. Somehow I feel like I have been so slow at growing in general, it took so long to realise so many basics of life.. Today I will start on the admin that necessarily needs to be prepared for any long journey. I also will take a trip to the charity shop and see if they would like to take all of my things off me. I also am running behind with my studies at my Thai theory Course and need to take that more serious and not miss this opportunity to learn.

Friends in trouble & letting go of the past

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Just as I am getting ready to depart and have started my first trial packing of the smaller of 3 suitcases options I hear the news that two friends of mine really could use my support here as their new year began with seismic shifts of their life’s tectonic plates.. And everything is looking uncertain, new and possibly heartbreaking. I feel so guilty for following my life path which takes me geographically and by default also spiritually away to a far away continent. Trial packing went reasonably well, I learnt that a large bag of my favourite clothes will not even nearly fit me anymore.. Now that is what spending a year glued to information gathering & accumulating will do to a body.. Something that has to change this year. My personal Yoga practice needs to be put firmly back on the menu of life. I surprisingly found the resolve to pack all ill fitting, far too small, items into a bag and set it aside to bring along with me to share with my …

2015 New Year’s Resolutions

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I made 2 so far: 1 – ask to be paid for every service I provide. Do not offer anything for nothing. This is in part to get a better response from clients as well as improve my self-value. 2 – lead with optimism not fear. This relates to my financial reality, stop beginning every conversation with how precarious my financial status is, how I earned not quite 50% of what I need to cover my minimum costs. Instead be optimistic and trust that people will also want to support me if I am not presenting financial fears.. 3 – get on the Yoga mat 3 times a week because it makes me feel great 4 – invest in thai language lessons in Thailand. Because going on souvenir hunts or spending money snacking on surplus snackables will probably cost almost as much as language lessons while not giving me an in-depth view of the place I am in the way language can. 5 – be courageous and create opportunities for myself, find 2 customers per …

Beginning to forgive California

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Being in America I felt pretty angry and helpless a lot of the time. I was there as a guest, with no space and not a lot of small change. I was holding back getting involved in anything because, I realize in retrospect, because I didn’t want to connect and get stuck in a country that I don’t understand. I mean they do things like pour fracking water into rivers.. What crazy people would do this? Don’t even get me started on all the insane rhetoric logic or lack thereof that gets prime airtime in this country. And this wild patriotism, it all astounds me. As does the apparent lack of terms like solidarity, social care, social security nets… I don’t really understand how people live there. Is everybody blindly stumbling around, is this why the media is so dominated by the mantra of: “live for the moment, be happy”, because you better be happy now because ultimately we are all somewhat doomed with threatening poverty in age etc… Well. I don’t know. I simply …

Life is Easy

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It was by chance that I stumbled on this talk this evening when I was listening to a couple of other good talks about what is really essential in life. What we really need instead of what we hold onto out of fear. But none of the talks spoke to me like this one did. It felt like Jon Jandai responded directly to a conversation I have been having with myself over the past year and which feels like it is coming to a point of critical mass, that moment when some change will take place because it just has to. The way that nature takes its course at times because nothing can any longer remain the same. So here it is, the most positive and life affirming talk that I have heard in the longest time and which answers questions that nobody answered for me before. And you know what is mad? I met this man and said yes when he asked me to make some drawings for his business about 18 months or …

When the dog and I saved a baby groundhog on Land’s End Trail, San Francisco

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We are house sitting in San Francisco, pretty close to Land’s End Trail and with that pretty close to the edge of the world, or so it feels. The air is amazing here, the silence only broken occasionally by soft voiced fog horns. On a recent walk with the dog that came with the house, dog and I discovered a Groundhog laying in shock, exposed by the side of the trail. My theory is that another dog had previously dug the groundhog baby up and now it was petrified to move. Our house sitting dog pointed her gentle nose at the groundhog and then walked away, leaving me to scoop it up in my XL sized sweater sleaves. J and I took a couple of photos of it while I checked out if it looked hurt. And I then carried it to an area with deeper grass, just meters from the finding location, and let it walk off the little impromptu wooly nest that it had been sitting on. Groundhog baby walked without a limp …

Dogs of Oakland & Berkeley

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We went to the Actual cafe sitting somewhere not far from the borders of Oakland and Berkeley, it near Berkeley Bowl actually. Actual Cafe is actually another cafe without functioning table service, but we enjoyed having a late breakfast here twice. It isn’t the best cafe in the area but definitely ok and a safe enough bet if you are hungry nearby. However, we won’t be making a detour to go back. We met this quirky dog outside and it’s even quirkier owner, too.

The signs of a good coffee & good café

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A good coffee in my books requires this main characteristic: have a long lasting, beautiful créma. If there is no créma it might as well be filter coffee and I go to Cafés for the romance, the ritual, the specialness of the experience… If my Espresso or Americano lacks créma then it’s pretty much ruined for me. I am more likely to forgive burnt coffee flavour, cheap aroma lacking coffee even, but not the lack of a stable créma. There you have it, I am a snob. Ideally the coffee should be rich and aromatic, too. I have a bone to pick with the lacklustre service in American Cafes, especially those that model themselves on a European theme. None offer table service. And it always makes me feel like I am doing half the job myself. Maybe I should also pour my own coffee while I am at the counter or make my own snack? (The American Diner Cafes do table service , but if all you seek is an espresso and a brioche then …