Friday 22 January 2021

Bangkok, Thailand 

Hi there,

Today is my free day, meaning all day I have no classes, including online ones, to teach, no articles to write, no events and documents for translation. And no appointments for me to go outside. But such freedom ends there. My whole day is instead occupied by my five bosses and chores. 

It began at dawn once Mr. Namfon (a 15 years old male cat whose name means rain in English) woke up with his threatening scream at Ms. Meaw Dang( an 18 years old female cat with black and white tuxedo pattern). Routinely with my eyes half-opened, I hurried to separate the screaming macho away from the granny empress of the den.

 After that, everything followed as self-trained--preparing cat food and feeding it to  three old cats including 18 years old Grandpa Meaw Noi, and two young tigresses Ms Garlic and Ms Siamzee who seems like a half puppy half monkey rather than a little cat. Next were making my hot coco drink, discarding and cleaning the cat litter boxes, making my bed and my feline bosses and sweeping the room. During that busy moment, I listened to the TV news  that I usually turn on every morning, and let my train of thought follow and screen the information.  

I took some 10 minutes break to take photos of the sky and surroundings from my small balcony. On beautiful days it's fantastic to appreciate the bright blue sky and nice cool weather. But today was not one of the days, I could see the wide band of dark grey at the horizon and the sky was not bright blue either.  PM2.5 has been here in town another day.  My romantic mood for nature was switched off.

My free day continued with my giving after-meal medication to my old cats for poor kidneys and liver and later injecting Acetar solution into their under-skin layer for their kidney treatment. These tasks are far from a piece of cake. Despite raising all of the cats since they were very little and doing the tasks every day, I still get their new scratches and bites from time to time. Like human, my cats truly hate medication and needles. I understood their feelings though. 

Looking at the watch, I saw more than half a day was already gone.  Amazingly, this is my daily life and on my work day I can squeeze more tasks into the timetable and get all done with no problem.  Maybe I should give myself a big reward someday. 

Have a good weekend.  :)

Gigi

 

Bangkok, Thailand

Sunday 17 January 2021

It's 6 PM already here in Bangkok and soon comes dinner time. I know what I am going to eat tonight, because the meal is actually the leftover from my lunch --steamed jasmine rice together with stirfried chicken and bitter cucumber and pork rib soup.

Tasty, yes. Thanks to the ready-to-eat food seller at a Thai food stall near my place, I can save time to do something else--meaning more incomes enough to cover my monthly bills.  Although I usually prefer cooking myself, I rely on her goods rather often these days when I am busy with the work or too tired to cook.  Not only does her food taste excellent like home-made dish but its prices she charges are also incredibly low, at around 30-50 baht per menu.

There are about  8-12 menus she cooks each day. All are newly cooked at the small space inside the stall. Thus, any passers-by can see a slim middle-aged woman busy preparing ingredients and cooking them starting in the afternoon. Then almost all the time she continues cooking and taking a short break from time to time to take orders and pack food for the customers.  She, therefore, looks very exhausted at the end of the day, or I should say at the end of the night because her sales usually ends almost around 8-9 o'clock. Fortunately, her business has gone well with many regular customers. 

This hard working lady reminds me of my mother while the taste of her food makes me recall my mom's cooking during my younger years. As I had been a helper in my mom's kitchen since I was little, I knew it was very hard work especially when we talk about cooking a lot of food for sale, not just for a few persons in the same family. Later after cooking, we had to load all the food  up on the cart and wheeled it to the regular spot on the street. Not until around one o'clock after midnight on the following day that my mother went to sleep after starting her work around 2:30 every night. Still, she poured all intention, love and energy into her products--making all menus taste wonderful to those who taste them. And she sold them in low prices, which made me angry often because we  got little or no profit despite working so hard each day. My mother said it was all right as long as we could continue selling our goods and our customers continued buying from us.  

Now it's time to bring my dinner out from the fridge and microwave it. I am going to enjoy every bite of this meal. Bon appetit!

Gigi

 Thursday 15 January 2021

Bangkok, Thailand

Wat Pathoom Wanaram, a big Buddhist temple, sits on a plot of land next to two major business centers in Bangkok city.  I love visiting this temple whenever I am free from work. It is very convenient to get there by bus, car, city train or even on foot.  When there are no religious events, only a very few people come to this place since most just pass by and head to modern shopping malls nearby.

That makes me love visiting this temple. Many people can bring more headache than peace. Sometimes I just drop by to pay respect to the Buddha images and stroll around the compound, enjoying the peaceful surroundings and appreciating the beautiful architectures, the mixture of Thai and foreign designs.

These pictures were taken last year. Not much change ever since.

Gigi

 

Bangkok, Thailand

Friday 15 January 2021

I remembered that in December 2019 I had first heard and worrried about a new mysterious  disease that started spreading in Wuhan, China.  Shortly after that, the scary disease landed in my country Thailand through a Chinese tourist and the first local infection case was announced later following the illness of a taxi driver.  Ever since there have been a lot of changes in our living not just in Thailand but around the globe. 

At the moment I am writing, Covid-19 has taken more than two millions of  lives of people around the world, including nearly 70 here inThailand, and has infected alomost 94 million humans, around 7,000 of whom are in Thailand. Unfortunately until now no one has known when this spread will end and how many lives will lose because of this viral infection. 

Now when I look back, I think it's unbelievable that within one year this very disease has caused a huge impact on the lives of humans and other creatures on this planet Earth. I have to change my way of living with hope for life safety although not much compared with many others whom I knew. Still, change means change--I cannot do many things as I used to, and I can't complain. 

Like people in other countries, people inThailand take a new-normal lifestyle.  we wear a mask when going outside, wash our hands more often with soap or alchohol gel, avoid staying in the crowd, keep distance from others, etc.  During the period of high spreading, like the second round spread currently, schools and offices are closed while students and workers have to do their job online from home. And gathering together in a big crowd is not allowed. 

Eating out is no longer a happy moment, for eaters must sit separately at different tables. Worse, some times only take-away service is available for restaurant businesses. As a result, many restaurants went out of their business. Meanwhile, seating in public transports is also changed. Passengers who once stood packed in the bus or could take every seat available can not do that; distancing is the key. Those are just some of the new-normal practices we must follow. 

Despite many undesirable impacts on our lives, Covid-19 did bring to the world some near-miracles that many humans have tried so hard to achieve for decades or even centuries but mostly failed. It has driven millions of humans away from the street and quarantined themselves inside their own home--called lockdown.  Every nation self-regulates their own people for no travel to other countries if no speicial permission. Curfew policy is applied in many countries.  With all of these, transportation by car, plane and ship all over the world has decreased tremendously. In effect, man-made pollution that has been destroying the whole world and environments for years drops sharply.  

In several months of lockdowns, I could see more of clear blue skies in the city downtown often. I could take a deep breathe while traveling on the streets. I saw more great news about the recovery of animals and plants that hardly showed up or never appeared in several areas especially tourist sites in the provinces. I enjoyed walking peacefully in many areas where in the past were too crowded with people especially tourists. I wonder if there were no Covid-19, would it be possible for us humans to experience such refreshing changes?  

No matter what will happen, I wish we humans will learn from this situation and rethink how we should do to live more humbly with other creatures and appreciate the world we live more than ever.

Gigi

 

 

Tasty dish. Northern style Thai noodle

10 July 2020
Bangkok

Hi There,

My lunch today was  very tasty. It's called Kanhom-jeen Namngiew.  Here's how it looks like. 

Gigi

Back to class in person, first ever since Covid-19 spread

Thursday 9 July 2020

at 7:07 AM.

in Bangkok

Hi there,

Today is  the first day I  am going to return to school once again.  Since mid-March 2020 when the language school I work with had to tempolarly close, all classes including mine have been suspended, following the government's order to different types of businesses and establishments due to the spread of corona viruses in Thailand.

I am very happy to meet my student (today is my private class with one student) although still cautious about the virus and the risk.  Seeing students, discussing various topics with them and questioning and replying them in person are totally different from and  much better than doing such online.  Speaking from my direct experience, for I have returned to teach through online classes since last month after the school informed that some of my students requested for my online class.

And I agreed on the requests despite I am really not a big fan of new IT technology.Give me the best smart phone and what I can do is  calling, sending messages and recently, learning how to check my e-mail via the phone.

Still, I hurried to self-study how to use various measures such as google class, zoom, loom, etc, through Youtube clips and from my IT expert friends, absolutely for survival like others in this world of work. It's not easy at all for a person like me to excel that in such a short period with those methods, but after learning by doing and experiencing trials with errors, I could handle them with less and less frustration.  Okay, I survive.

During the past months I have observed and been aware of what happened to my students and myself in online classes and the results of our teaching and learning. There are some big differences compared with learning in face-to-face class including students' attention in class and understanding the topics.  I would say I prefer face-to-face classes a lot better although staying at home for online classes is such a convenient life.  Maybe, too convenient.

Soon I am leaving for the class, and I would love to meet my student, a university student who wants to improve her writing.  There are several things to update for both of us.

I know that online teaching is already a trend and becomes a new normal that I must get myself used to it as long as the deadly corona virus infection still hang around us  and no ones knows exactly for how long it would be.

Gigi

Do we really get back to normal after no more lockdown due to the spreads of COVID-19 in Thailand?

Hi there,

Since June 15, 2020 when the curfew ended officially in Thailand, I have observed that many people here quickly return to enjoy their lives as usual, which somehow I am not sure if it is good for themselves and the society as a whole. 

Why am I not sure about that?  Because there are several reasons that we should be concerned  especially when we look around and see what has been going on about the spreads of this colonar virus around the globe.

According to the government daily report, although Thailand has shown no new case of infectious patients locally, there are new infected cases coming from abroad almost everyday--from the Middle East, UK, Japan, India, Korea, US, Brazil, for example. Meanwhile, news coverages around the globe show that tens of thousands of people still get infected daily in some countries led by the US, Brazil, India, and others, while no vaccine has  not been available yet.

And it is too bad that many people in those societies with  high infection rate seem not aware of how terribly it could affect them and their society. Some might not well understand and do not follow good advice by the medical experts while others  not only refuse to take  any recommended measures that can help protect themselves and others from the spreads but also go against those and put themselves and others at risk.  For instance, protesters in the US and Europe with different issues of their protests, American youngsters network that promises to give money as reward for their members who got infected with corona virus first. That sounds incredibly idiot,too sad, but it's truly happened.

Look back here in Thailand now.  Many people no longer wear masks or clean their hands often as before. Not to mention about keeping themselves distance from others. Although warning of wearing a mask, washing hands, keeping distance from others and staying away from the crowd are still promoted by the government through various media, I have seen fewer and fewer people following.

 Since shopping malls are already open as usual, crowds of people rush to shop, dine and meet with friends. Over the long weekend,  people packed at different tourist destinations, even on the tops of the mountains and the beaches, and famous restaurants.

Many people do think they now get back to normal. But when I look at them, I just hope that this normal would last long enough for us to get  ourselves ready for the second wave of the covid-19 spreads that could be more severe and scarier.

Gigi