The Week That Was #2019-03

This third week of the year was a little odd, albeit rather routine.

I didn’t teach very much this past week, which doesn’t really bother me. Living and working in Thailand, you come to expect more cancellations than not. I don’t ever have classes on Tuesdays at the large municipal school where I spend my mid-mornings to early afternoons but I still journeyed to my agency that day in order to teach a two-and-a-half hour lesson in the evening. I was informed five or ten minutes before class time that the student was ill. Wednesday was National Teacher’s Day in Thailand so all the government schools were closed and the students were extremely ill-behaved on Thursday. I was quite strict with them on Friday and they settled down somewhat. My evening student cancelled again on Thursday and a young girl I’ve been teaching for nearly a year now cancelled her Saturday morning lesson. On both of these particular days, the students had cancelled at least a day in advance but nobody thought to inform me to save me the bus trip to the agency. It’s really annoying, but I can always find something to do in the office.

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The Week That Was #2019-02

Wow! Posts two weeks in a row….

The week of January 7-13, 2019, was fairly active in my little world extending between my home in the heart of Old Town Phuket, Thailand, and a bit west to my office in the bowels of the Central Festival mall smack dab in the center of the island with frequent stops approximately halfway between those two locations on those days that I teach high school in the huge Plukpanya Municipal School. I rarely venture outside of this rather narrow band.

The Week That Was #2019-01

At long last, the silence has been broken! Honestly, I start too many entries in a similar fashion on this blog. The last period of activity stretched from the end of July 2018 until i posted my New Year’s Eve shaky-cam video earlier this week. I haven’t checked but I believe it to have been the longest gap in the history of Asian Meanderings and perhaps going back as far as ‘Burque Blog. Does anybody remember that incarnation?

As the end of 2018 approached, I thought that the best way to rejuvenate what was once my one and only blog was by taking a look at the year that was. I began sorting through photos taken and journal entries written each day in attempts to find something interesting to highlight. There were quite a few blog-worthy happenings throughout the year but I quickly bored of trying to find them and put them into a form that people would actually enjoy reading! I got as far as mid-March before I abandoned the project.

Hello, 2019!

The 66th Birthday of King Rama X

His Majesty Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun (มหาวชิราลงกรณ บดินทรเทพยวรางกูร), King Rama X of Thailand

I have been “silent” here on Asian Meanderings for quite some time now. I have, however, maintained daily (yes, daily!) and often lengthy articles on my main stamp-collecting blog — A Stamp A Day. As my place of work is closed today (and I have my regular weekly day off tomorrow), I felt that this holiday weekend would be a fine time to try and get caught up on my other blogs.

Thank you, Google. Thank you, Getty. Image Frustrations 2018

For my stamp and postcard blogs (and sometimes for this one as well), I rely on historic images and maps of places all over the world. Many of these images fall into the public domain and are free from copyright. To illustrate my articles, I seek out high-resolution images on a daily basis and most of these come courtesy of Wikipedia.

When I’ve had to do image searches, however (sometimes current maps but usually vintage maps especially for former African colonies that no longer exist), my go-to for many years has been Google as I found their “View Image” button extremely useful especially when setting the Tools to show Large-sized images first. In recent months, I’d become frustrated when so many of the top results had been watermarked with Getty Images becoming especially prevalent.

This Is Thailand #2: What’s on the Menu?

I love to go out to eat in Thailand as it’s always an adventure. The best food is to be had from the myriad of road-side stalls, some of which appear after nightfall along random sidewalks and others are more permanent affairs in markets or other long-established locales. There are indications as to what is on offer at some of these vendors but I long ago perfected the method of pointing at what I’d like to eat as I often don’t know the name in either Thai or English. In restaurants, I follow the same method of pointing at the picture of what I’d like. Sometimes these have a number. If English is involved, there is guaranteed to be at least one big example “lost in translation.” Here are a few of my favorites….

I think the most common menu misspelling has to be “crap” for “crab”. In fact, a Thai-English menu isn’t complete without this.