Marathon Man

Hang on Bloggy, Bloggy hang on!

Decided to train for the Bangkok Marathon.

I decide on a lot of things but rarely see them through to even a slight taste of bitterness but what the hell, eh?

Bought an expensive rucksack kind of thing that I can just about fit me trousers and shirt into so I can run on my way back from work.

Going pretty well so far - doing 30 minutes of non-stop running each day and hope to up to 40 for the next week, starting tonight. The plan is to build up stamina enough to be able to run 26 miles come November.

That's the plan!

The idea of documenting it here in this blog is so I can remind myself of the fact that I plan to run the Bangkok Marathon.

These were the days of my blog ...

March 9th is 13 days into the hundred days' war 2005. This equals the record for the thirteenth day this time last year, although I am a little behind last year's schedule.

This evening, I am going to a club. Not really my scene but I am going to give support to a colleague at work who is launching a music magazine-type website called, 'Club Tuk-Tuk'.

Special guests are well known Mancunian DJ's Unabombers (who?) who will be joining Yahweh, Kiddle and co the following evening for a game of indoor five-a-side footie.

I shall be sipping fruit cocktails and attempting to strut my stuff without an ounce of alcohol in my blood stream, let alone any other substance that I've long left behind in my halcyon sepia days of youth and experimentation.

What a shame! I am also planning to spend a week in the Indian Himalayas so that would also have been a nice opportunity to get wasted, too! The responsibilities of being middle-aged, eh!

Knitted sweater.

Oh, what a Blog,
late December back in '63
What a very special blog for me
As I remember what a blog!

Here I am in the office. An office which is about to have a complete refurbishment. About time. Anyway, this blog is not about office furniture but it may well get mentioned from time to time. I haven't forgotten about the bananas. I just got distracted for a couple of months.

Today is day 7 or day 93. Yesterday was March the 3rd and a year since my good friend P'Yong departed this earth for the great forests in the sky. If you have internet access up there old chap, and I would have thought that it would need to be wireless, I'd just like to say a quick 'Sawasdee krub' to you.

So, what next. Er .. Oh yeah. I'm going India next month for a short holiday. New Delhi? No. I've had it for ages!

Anyone who ever blogged could look at me and know that I blog you. Anyone who ever dreamed could look at me and know I dream of you, knowing I blog you so. Anyone who had a blog. What am I to do ?

I find myself back in this Blog, a year later and in a similar position. I have discovered that if I were to start the 2005 version of the Hundred Days' War, I'd 'only' have 95 to go, as I haven't had an alcoholic beverage since Friday. Why I need to do this, Blog only knows, but it has to be done .

So ....

Here goes!!!

http://www.mp3search.ru/m3u.html?id=177148

Blog me tender, blog me do.

Tsunami disaster. Good job we didn't choose Phuket for our hols. Shalln't be going to the West Country next year though, just in case there's an earthquake in the middle of the Bristol Channel.

New Year, new challenges. This could be the last year, maybe the last year, I don't know, that I live in Thailand for a while. The UK could be beckoning in July with possibilities impossible to resist, so I shall be making the best of things in these sunnier climes and documenting things that happen; here in this Blog.

My first installment will be about fruit, which I shall start with a banana. The banana in question is much like a banana you'd get in the UK, but tomorrow's will be different. I promise.

It's only blog-believe.

Having not made it back the other evening, I find myself with a reflective 15 minutes. It still continues to rain and therefore Bangkok is scandalously sweaty and steamy, but I have a nice unnatural breeze blowing on my back, so who cares.

I was pleased to hear good news about a plant I have feelings for. 'Olive', or 'Oliver', not sure if Stonewall has had it gendered, is apparently over a metre tall now. Brings a tear to my eye to think he/she was a mere sapling when I brought him/her home as a little bundle of joy to add to my herbacious border, just over two years ago.

Sigh.

Those were the gardening times.

So, day four comes to a close. An interesting day for me but not for those who would surely be appalled by what I consider interesting. I would describe that day for the benefit of myself, so I might compare it with other days, to help me define interesting, but this isn't that type of blog.

Perhaps I should keep a work blog, too.

I see a bad blog arising.

Boggedy blog - don't blog back.

Just a quicky this gloriously sunny morning. Best time of the day in Bangkok before the heat rises.

Felt I ought to pop in before work but actually I've no time to write anything!

Have to blog me and leave me till this evening.

Life's a Blog ...

So incidentally, the place where I stumbled was Kanchanaburi, a place of recent infamy due to the gunning down of two British tourists. Here's an eerie thing. They were staying in the same bungalow - B12, at the same resort - 'Sugar Cane', as we were, when on our little peregrination into the countryside this May.

I also got myself into a little bother with a local Bobby, too, that evening while riding our hired motorbike back to 'Sugar Cane'. The 4 large bottles of lager after 47 days of abstention inexplicably cause me to go the wrong way up a one-way street. Fortunately, aforementioned Peeler did not feel that taking out his revolver and pumping three bullets into my stomach and head was appropriate admonishment for my malfeasance. In fact he found the stupid Farang rather amusing and waved us on to weave back into the night.

I shall certainly think twice before complaining about my eggs on toast again, though, which is one of my numerous proclivities. The usual jeremiad is that either the albumen is aqueous or the yolk adamantine. The perfect fried egg can be onerous to appropriate. I shall be less fastidious in future.

Anyway, as usual, I have great intentions about this blog and shall be back again tomorrow.

Bye bye Blog. Bye bye happiness. Hello loneliness. I think I'm going to blog.

I'm not a Blog, not quite a Blogger ...

Well, after such great intentions of continuing my Blog in order to curb the indisciplines of life, I then proceed to not blog for the past three months.

Ah well!  Here I am, back again and so soon will the footie season and the COB.  Hurrah!

We've moved.  To a small wooden house at the end of a lane on a junction of a road on the junction of a road known as Sukhumvit.

The house needed a lot of doing up in the way of cleaning and painting but its now looking quite nice.

The area is certainly very interesting and I shall document the various going ons of this bustling, yet diverse community in the weeks to come.

Blog this space!

We're Blogging. We're Blogging. Hope you like Blogging, too.

Well, Blogging seems to be quite a nice thing to do from time to time so I thought I'd carry on, post-war.

We, Jeam & I, have just been to Laos after our trip to Kanchanaburi and Sanklaburi, near the Burmese border. It was very nice. Very slow, very nice scenery, very friendly people and all in all a splendid change from the traffic, heat and orderly disorder that is Bangkok. I'll put the photos on the photo album on Panaya Park when we get the film developed and I program in the photo album. Been looking at a few but they seem rather complicated. Others that are not just don't have enough features. Nevertheless, I have to do one for another site anyway so I might as well do it today.

We're off to Ranong tomorrow. There are a couple of islands that look just right for five or six days of doing very, very little, although isms & ics seem to cling to me so I'm taking my laptop so I can do some work/hobbies in the evening and we can also watch DVDs while sitting outside our bungalow. Also hope to watch the Arse win the Premier League tomorrow after Newcastle beat Chelski and the Gunners humiliate Sp*rs.

Blog to me later ...

All I needed was the Blog you gave.
All I needed for another Blog.
And all I ever Blogged.
Only Blog.

Well, I reached 47 days of no alcohol consumption and then succumbed on the first evening of my holiday. No real surprises from me and no real big disappointment. It was an anticlimax as I thought it would be but nevertheless the beer was pleasant.

We were having a meal on a restaurant that also happened to float on the River Kwai so I am afraid that it required the presence of my old friend, Lager.

Anyway, a very enjoyable evening was had by the both of us. Jeam was particularly happy as she had never been on a 'floating restaurant' before and come to think of it, neither had I.

News:

Floating restaurant
Seeing Jack Fruit growing on a tree - bloody big things jack fruit. Poor tree.
Seeing Pomelo growing on a tree. Big grapefruit shaped things. Taste like grapefruit, too.
Eating 'Man Keaw' a type of fruit. Pretty tasteless really and looked much more delicious than it actually was.
River rafting. Enjoyable but would have been less hard work if the old bugger we were alocated had pulled his weight a bit more with the bamboo stick we used to propel ourselves along the river with.
Crossing a river on an elephant. Damn versatile things, elephants.
Swimming in a Thai lake. Very nice after a run in the morning.
Eating so-called 'Burmese curry'. Tasted like dish water and was probably something similar to what the poor sods building the railway were given by the Imperial Japanese Army all those years ago.

So.
Where do we go
Where do we go now
Where do we go
Sweet Blog o' mine?

Blog a little bit. Blog a little bit of your blog to me.

54 days to go. I must say that for anyone who likes a beer as much as I do - and I do like a beer, when you're counting the days till your next one it can usually be done on one hand. I'm looking forward to that day.

The summer is upon us in Bangers and the heat just cries out for a nice thin stemmed but gradually rising to a cresendo of fizzy, effervescent froth, dancing in the shadows of the just-set sun, topping the condensation forming just-off freezing-chilled amber delight called .... Lager.

They don't even sell the crap non-alcoholic version here like they do in Spain so there isn't even a placebo but I suppose it wouldn't really be one as I'd damn well be able to taste the difference between bottled urine and the real thing. Unless of course one likes to embibe Heineken.

Well, will I make it? I am of course posing this question to myself as it is me who has to decide these things. It is certainly the longest I've been without a drink for twenty years, so I'd be quick to offer excuses for not lasting the course and still be satisfied; but which one of me am I kidding?

It's easy when I'm working as I have a good incentive in staying focussed but now I have 25 days holiday.

I give myself a 40/60 chance of making it to the end without crumbling on a balmy evening in Vientiane.

Blogger and out.

I was blogging as a blogger in a blogtail bar. That much I know.

April the 4th. 58 days to go till the hundred days war is over. Well, what can I say? I've ran 5 mornings this week but not much weight coming off. Got up at 6:00 am every morning and went out 'on the road'. It made me feel better but I'm not geting any nearer the half-way 5000 gram point.

I shall try a long run tonight and tomorrow night and see what happens. I'm busy at work and it's quite difficult to do regular exercise at regular times.

Played football in an indoor court the other day. Air-conditioned. Cool. Literally. I did notice the good effects of being a little lighter and perhaps not drinking for such a while. I wasn't as abjectly knackered after five minutes as I would normally have been.

I'm eating meat again - chicken and stuff but I'll try to avoid fried and stuff in sweet sauce. Quite difficult as Thais love fried food in sweet sauce.

As I mentioned to myself at the beginning of this blog, it's going to be one of the most uninteresting Blogs ever, so for those coming in via Panaya Park, you won't be disappointed.

These were the blogs my friend I thought they'd never end, these were the blogs, these were the blogs my friend.

It must be a week since I last sat down and blogged. Indeed it is. Well, nearly. 6 days since I reported anything at all and that makes this day 64 and counting.

As usual, my life is packed with social events and happenings so I'll just document them in bullet points below:

:: Went for a coffee on Friday night then 'out' with some 'friends'. I had my eye on the clock as I had to work the next day so I was glad in a way that the evening was excrutiatingly boring as I needed to get home quite early.

:: That's it.

One full week to go before our trip to Laos. Not sure if Vietnam will be on the itinery as it might not be possible to cross the border. Might come back and then find a nice beach to settle on for 5 or 6 days.

May be meeting Carmel and 'Sharon' who I knew from Tokyo tonight. I hope James is there! Although James being there would be nicer if I was drinking.

Seem to be see-sawing between the 2000-2500 gram loss in weight and I was hoping to stay on course and reach 5000 before the 50ieth day.

I need another plan.

Blog you later.

Blog for Blog's sake, money for God's sake.

A few new's. Ate some 'Mon' food and used an industrial strength hole puncher. 'Mon' is the name of a group of people who originate from around the Burmese border area and I was treated to some snacks of theirs at a school I visited the other day. Fairly tasty. The hole puncher needs no explanation, should anyone be reading this, but it was the' mother of all hole punchers' and could probably enable one to file a steel plate in one's folder, should that be a necessity. That might mean around 94 news to go. Hmm. Difficult.

Anyway, it being March the 23rd, I am now into day 30, or day 70, whichever way I look at it. I ate meat yesterday but am not over-concerned about that. I shall just add another day to my 30 so as to acheive this goal. It was more of there not being anything else available on offer at the MOE in the lunch they put on rather than my 'breaking' as there is usually plenty of fair around that keeps me more than satisfied.

It's strange in a way that I am now even turning my nose up at some of the meat dishes that one sees on offer around Bangkok in the sort of irritating way a 'born again' non-smoker might be 'disgusted' at the whiff of cigarette smoke after he's finally got over the critical stages of quitting his ones extremely pleasurable habit. At least I'm keeping it to myself though and not turning into a complete wanker. Note the adjectival clause. Wanker!

14 days to the steak including the extra day for bad behaviour.

Not much going on in my life except work, domesticity, sleep and again again. I love the work, love domesticity and love sleep so I am happy.

Not sure whether it'll be an ice-cold lager in 70 days time or a large glass of fine Cognac or perhaps a Long Island Iced Tea. I don't really mind what it is and I now know that it won't seem anywhere near as pleasurable as a glass of cold beer would have done after a week of abstinence as that's the way the brain works. Not sure if I was an alcoholic or just had what the doctors or experts refer to as a 'drinking problem.' Not sure I even had that but I do know that the brain will act as a small child if the body doesn't get what it wants in the short term. If you deny it what it wants for longer than it can keep up the histrionics, it'll soon forget what it was even creating about in the first place.

Strange that as it's me who's tellnig me this at the moment. How close we are to clinical insanity.

Bye bye Blog.

March 18th. 3 days later makes it 75 days to go which is 7 fewer than the start of the European Championships so I'll be able to watch the first game over a tall thin glass of ice-cold lager. Might even extend till then - it won't seem that much more.

No meat is good for you. Official. Providing you don't go all Vegan, there's plenty of great fish and seafood here to enjoy. I'm 3/4s the way through the hundred days war and I weigh 2,500 grams fewer than I did at the start, including clothes, so I'm on target on most fronts.

Any news? Hmm. Need to think about this. Not off the top of my head but there'll be loads in the holidays to catch up with.

See you blog!

Hello Blogness my old friend,

It's been another few days so I'll catch up with what been and what's not been going on. Today is March the 15th so by all accounts this is day ... er ...78. Hurrah! 21 days for the T-bone and about the same amount till my holidays.

Nothing to report here. Must get off to Panaya.

Hello Blog,

It's been a while and here I am at my desk at work, hoping to add a few notes to keep the thing ticking along.

Today is March the 10th so that probably makes it 82 days to go. Fairly flying by! 95 news as I have never gone more than a day without meat. Thank Buddha for seafood, that's all I can say.

One more in that as I am approaching the big 4-0h rapidly, and I know you ladies and transexuals going through a similar stage will sympathise, I thought I'd start giving myself a bit of pampering. Apparently it is now 'OK' for blokes, geezers, lads and the like to care about themselves a little more these days.

It's known as 'Metrosexualism'. So, in the good tradition of the phrase, I am 'coming out' before Aree 'outs' me!! Yes, I am a 'Metrosexual' and happy with it. I use 'moisturizer' and I am planning to have a pedicure and possibly a 'Spa'. Panaya are in virtual talks with Nivea. I am not, however, but have no problems with those who choose to be; heteroflexible.

Not drinking alcohol at all and now no meat seems to be having an effect on me. I am thinking strangely but I am getting things done. I seem to have 'energy' when I wouldn't normally have had.

I think it will be for the better when I can welcome back friend 'lager' into my life and my mates 'cigar' and 'cheese and bacon sandwich'. I miss you chaps.

I shall ask for spiritual advice from my mentor, 'The Gift' and I shall hope that he may deliver me.

It's going to be Hanoi in April via Vientienne in Laos and I'm looking forward to a bit of a change of scenery. Hope the seafood's good.

26 days of vegetarianism (well, not exactly, but who cares).

Elvis lives ....

So, 96 news to go and 86 days. Hmm. I have decided to take new drastic action to see if I can encourage a few thousand grams to shed themselves from me.

30 days and 30 nights of no meat to add to my misery. I really felt like a beer last night but resisted. I am glad I did as as pointless I do feel this whole exercise is, more pointless would have been the last 14 days.

So it's a healthy, fishy month to come followed by an enormous, rare steak at the end of it to celebrate. Roll on April 6th and I'll be on my hols after that but it's Easter so I might keep the fish thing up till the Monday after.

Pah! Feels like one of those Japanese challenge shows that I like to watch on channel 37 from time to time.

Jya ne!!

Day 88. Today is 'Macha Bucha' Day so it is a holiday for all.

P'Yong was cremated yesterday and his ashes cast over the Moon river. A good resting place. Now his ex-wife and family and wife are fighting over his property. A global post-death scenario, I guess.

Went out on the town last night. Another excellent Ruby in a different restaurant this time. Thought I'd risk the chicken for the first time in over seven weeks and it was well worth it. For anyone ending up here via Panaya Park and lives in Japan, the Indians in Bangkok are simple in another league. This is UK Indian quality if not better. Chicken Jalfreizi was 'awesome'.

Visited a few bars including one in Soi Zero where the music is excellent. They have a great idea of coming around the bar with a karaoke style menu and asking you to select your favourite tracks. Excellent stuff!

Came home in a taxi and lucidly recall all of the journey. That I will count towards my tally.

Another good thing happened to me yesterday and earlier in the week. First I learned that I would be asked to go back to Sydney in May for a regional meeting and training session. Bummer!! Then I was told that I'd have to go down south to train some schools in ICT & professional development. Catastrophic! Finally I have been asked to organise a Fantasy Football tournament for 16 schools in Thailand to take part in as part of a 'learning through sport and ICT' initiative. Money for what I do in my precious little spare time. Unfair!

Not missing the booze much. Not losing weight or feeling much better (not that I don't feel great, anyway) but I've started so I'll finish.