Payment for tuition is coming due in a few days for the 2 daughters of my Thai girlfriend, Chili and Wasabi, aged 13 and 12.
While they have a village school only 500 meters from home, the instruction is suboptimal, so we placed them in a quasi-private school nearby.
But that tuition bill!
On the other hand, that dutiful mother; what's first and foremost...the essence of femininity, woman, and above all...mother.
My responsibilities are clear, rounding out the other essential: masculinity, manliness, responsibility, and duty.
Read on...
We chose that school because it's somewhat like a "charter school" in the US, having a private element.
Moreover, The Khukhan School has a rich history of exemplary instruction in the English language—something I consider essential gold-weight for these two angel-girls.
Here's a delightful short post from a Peace Corps volunteer who taught English at The Khukhan School in 1967:
< In August 1967, after two summers of intensive instruction in Thai, cross-cultural studies and training in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at
Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, I arrived by train in the northeastern provincial capital of Sisaket as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer. I was greeted by Mongkhon Suwanaphongse, the headmaster of the lower secondary school in the nearby district (amphoe)
of Khukhan. With that greeting, I was off on one of the most wonderful human experiences that a newly minted college graduate—or anyone of any age, for that matter—could hope for. For almost the next two years, I lived and worked in Khukhan and taught English at the Khukhan
School. I'll share some of those times through photographs with the hope that many of those I had come to know, love and respect in Khukhan and elsewhere in Thailand might see them and remember those times.
The mission as defined by the Ministry of Education in Bangkok was no
less than to revolutionize the way English was being taught, to switch the basic texts from the British English oriented Oxford series to the American English oriented South East Asia Regional English Project, the so-called SEAREP texts, and to foster greater student
participation based on an aural-oral approach that stressed listening and speaking skills over rote repetition, memorization and reading. />
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One thing I noted after moving to Thailand over 3 years ago and thought about it for a while is that an enormous number of people are self-employed. Out in rural areas, it's damn near everyone, and many are "jacks-of-all-trades."
Thinking more about it, makes sense.
It's a complete fabrication and illusion that the West are "free countries."
The "Land of the Free" is the biggest laughing-stock joke of all in this regard.
Fucking pathetic.
93.4% of employed Americans work for the man.
"I'm FREE!!!"
LOL
No, you aren't.
Literally every Thai I know is freer than you. I'm freer than you. They may not have the money, pension, enormous mortgage, 2 car payments, other bills out the ass, but they're fucking happy and enjoying their one and only life on this stopover to nowhere.
Then, Trump happened, I saw his imperfect but nonetheless sound value to American Society, and before long I was engaged to the hilt. Since then; for years. Over all tops, drunken on it all. […]
My base and essential point is: what has all this wanking about done for me?
Fuck All is the answer. Not a damn thing. Utterly squandered thousands of hours over years of needless agitation. I fell for CRISIS!!!
—Should I be embarrassed over making a big deal about deleting all social media accounts?
In The Definitive Case For Deleting Social Media, I argued that good reasons for getting off it were:
1. It’s an irrational-fear spreading platform
2. It’s makes people mental and obsessive
3. Steals the times of your life
You’re tending to someone else’s garden, not your own
To the second point, above, I wrote:
I think where it’s not creating more and more plain crazy people, sociopaths, psychopaths, and assholes, it’s at least creating a lot of frustration, obsession, anger, and plain unhappiness.
It’s been quite the standard first week in any new place one finds themselves. Adverse issues reported, routines sorted, screaming internet ported; neighborhood scoped out, walking courses laid out.
Groceries shopped.
Knickknacks and furnishings got.
The pool is dipped, the gyms are hip, and I’m writing at quite a clip.
… This is the most ideal place I’ve lived since my arrival to Thailand over three years ago. That’s easy to say, I know. It’s that feeling.
Guy calls his shit “bulletproof” but he spends all his time talking about all the little micro-shit he’s afraid of (micotoxins in coffee, lectins in plants, etc etc), and of course, he has hyper-over-priced alternatives to sell you for all that.
Never liked them, never engaged in them, certainly never wallowed in them.
"Don't apologize" is my mantra, especially in any political or public context. Personal apologies over personal matters are fine; if that's your thing.
The vast majority of apologies are insincere ploys amounting to 'sorry' (over being caught); or worse, base manipulation to further continued screwing over of whomever was screwed over initially.
I prefer an oath to an apology:
“I swear I’ll never do that again.”
That’s tangible and accountable.
I’ve often said to people offering one to me, “don’t apologize, just don’t do it again.”