I’ve not written in a while… I’ve not written in ages if I be honest…
Lack of time? Nope… I’ve got plenty of that…
Lack of interesting subject matter? God, no… We’re in the middle of a pandemic… The doomsday virus we’ve been warned about, and we have to admit, we’ve been taking the piss out of for years, has finally landed on our collective doorsteps…
Remember Swine flu, Bird flu, Ebola… And all those other diseases that were supposed to wipe out huge portions of the population, killer illnesses that going to result in mass graves… The doomsday virus… Well, it came, it saw… And in some cases it bloody well conquered.
So yeah… Interesting subject matter has not been the problem… Inspiration? Well, there definitely was a lack of that.
We, as I believe a lot of people all around the world have been self-isolating, Jo has been working from home, we only go out to get groceries or for a short walk… We bought a walking machine, Bangkok introduced a curfew so going out between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am became a criminal offense… The city that I believed never went to sleep actually wrapped itself up in a blanket, laid its head on a pillow, and finally went to dreamland.
So, what should I have written about? What would people actually be interested in reading?
How Jo has set up a mini office in the bedroom? How I complain because she’s always got the air conditioning on? Not exactly entertaining is it? And yes, I have to admit I do write these blogs in some part to entertain… There I admit it, I’m a bit of an attention whore.
I think we’ve all been watching the news with some interest over the past few months… I know that I’ve had a renewed interest in it… Well, not exactly renewed… Like politics, I actually had no real interest in current affairs… I found the news boring and found politics confusing… I still find politics confusing… Very confusing if I be honest.
But now I watch the news… Various versions of the news… From independent news outlets giving local (Thai) news via Youtube, to BBC online… I find myself getting angry with how a pandemic that we’ve been warned about for years, A pandemic that we’ve been threatened with for years finally arrived and most of the world’s leaders have reacted like it was some big surprise.
Mistakes were made by various countries, Some countries seem to have gotten control of things rather quickly…
[Squeel of brakes]
I just deleted a load of text because I’d gone on a bit of a political rant… And as I said earlier, I actually don’t understand politics.
Here in Thailand, we’re under a lockdown… Various businesses are closed, various activities are no longer available to us… We miss our friends, we’ve made some really good friends while we’ve been here and this virus is keeping us apart… We hold a regular quiz night via webcam every Thursday so we an al keep in touch, we’ve extended our quiz night by holding a second quiz night on Saturday with our family back in England… We’re doing our best to keep things as normal as they can be… Eventually, Covid-19 will be gone (or at the very least, controlled) the shit year that was (and currently is) 2020 will be a memory and we’ll all be back to normal… I’d like to think lessons will be learned from this… Governments will handle things differently, I’d like to think world leaders will be more honest, I’d like to think that processes will be put in place where an outbreak like this can be managed properly… In Britain, the NHS shouldn’t rely on some old man walking around his garden for sponsor money to pay for essential protective equipment… That equipment should have been in a store cupboard ready to be used… Politicians shouldn’t be voting down pay rises for medical staff… The people of Britain shouldn’t be voting for fucked up things like Brexit (yeah, Brexit… Remember THAT shit show?) on the basis of getting immigrants out of the country… Look back now you racist fucks, those immigrants you so desperately wanted out of “your” country are the same ones who are risking their lives keeping you dumb fucks alive… I’d like to think that the post Covid world will be a better place… Of course, deep down we all know it won’t be… A year after the defeat of Covid-19 politicians will be voting to cut funding for medical staff and equipment, the NHS nurse you so proudly cheered for during the outbreak will go back to finding notes with “PAKI GO HOME” posted through her letterbox… The world won’t learn…
[Squeel of brakes]
Shit, I went political again didn’t I?
Maybe deciding to write today wasn’t the best option after all…
Entertaining…
As life (sort of) tries to get back to normal here in Bangkok I’m seeing more and more groups of “pretty” people once again appearing outside Starbucks on Sukhumvit Road… Groups of wannabe models posing for pictures… The “pretty ratio” an almost constant… Pretty ratio… Three pretty girls and a not so pretty girl or flamboyant gay guy to take the picture… There has of late been an addition to the wannabe models outside Starbucks tho… Fucking TikTok.
Girls doing a shitty dance routine while their not so pretty friend films them… God, I hate social media… Despite THIS eventually being posted to social media… I hate bloggers… Despite… Well, Y’know… I hate social media, I hate bloggers… I do however love me a little bit of hypocrisy.
I also love bats… While on holiday in Pattaya a while ago (a long while ago actually) we were sitting on our balcony looking out over the beachfront and we saw what I thought was a bat… A HUGE bat… A bat so huge that I decided was actually a bird… No way was a bat THAT big.
Fast forward a few months to last week… That’s right folks, fast forward to the past (Great name for a band by the way)… I was in the reception area of our condo when I saw a HUGE bat… It flew right past the window, it was definitely a bat… We went outside to investigate and found a tree by the poolside full of huge bats, flying around, taking the fruit… I was amazed at how big these bats were, Asian fruit bats, also known as flying foxes… They were amazing… The next night we went out to see them again… Last night we went out to find that the condo management had cut down a lot of branches off the tree… No bats… Bastards.
Ah well… Until next time.