Siam Longings

Perfectly Dreary Day

2012-01-31T20:41:00.001-08:00

It sure knows how to rain around these parts.

Jack phoned last night to alert me that she was going out and would not be coming home until tonight. It's a mystery to me how she can work a full, long day at Mango Thai Restaurant after spending the night at some friend's place downtown following some partying.

I do not know if it is her absence, but I have come to recognize that I do not sleep well when she is not in bed beside me. Last night, it was as if I had an excess of caffeine in my system...yet I believe I only had one mug of coffee that day.

I was up this morning before her sons had gotten up for school, and I got an exceptionally early start on my shed workout not too long after they both had gone. I could have been back in bed napping long before noon. But my wayward inclinations ordained otherwise.

I ended up wasting as many as 2½ or three hours of my day in pointless computer nonsense, and it soured my disposition for the remainder of the day.

I did get a small nap, though, after finally getting to bed towards 2:00 p.m.

One of the especially irksome things about that lost time is that I had come across a magnificent opportunity to spotlight a fitness affiliate product that would have likely taken all of that time to showcase properly. And now I have to await another day -- Jack may only work the early part of tomorrow, or possibly even have the entire day off.

Later in the afternoon today, while working at editing a post dealing with Kuching, Maylasia, on my website My Retirement Dream, I came across a blog called Follow The Money featuring a January 23 article titled Malaysia Ministry seeks recordings of strange noises in sky. I never heard a thing about any of this, yet there have been numerous reports originating here in Canada and the U.S. Follow The Money gave a further link to a website called Strange Sounds Map that seems designed to provide a record of dates, locations, and videos of such sounds -- not all from January, for some are a few years old.

The Canadian edition of The Huffington Post had a piece about it on January 16. The article linked to the following YouTube video that compiled portions of other videos from around the World to give an idea of just how pervasive and similar this phenomenon is:

So is it all a hoax that everyone is keen to get in on? If not, then why is the mainstream media ignoring it -- as I said, I haven't heard of any of this until today, and The Huffington Post seems to be about as close as I can find to a non-fringe publication?

Both interesting and curious.

Earlier I mentioned a fitness affiliate product. To properly showcase it, I think I will likely have to upload a video of myself to YouTube -- I have to look into how to provide some narration to it, however. It seems a prime use for some footage of myself working out in the shed last (I believe) October that I never had the courage to bother publishing. Anyway, until I put the whole thing together, I don't want to disclose anything about the product except to say that it is a superb bodyweight training guide that should benefit just about anyone.

A couple of posts ago, I talked about astaxanthin. I still haven't bought any, but I intend to. In the video interview I included, Dr. Joseph Mercola mentioned that he personally considered Vitamin D3 to hold more importance in his life than astaxanthin. He certainly does publish a vast number of articles about the steroid hormone. However, he always harps about getting tested to ensure that one's body is being adequately supplied with it. I'm not about to do that -- not even once. I have better uses for my scarce income.

What is important to understand is that the 600 to 800 I.U.s per day that are currently being recommended for adults as the RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) is still far too low. I take a minimum of 800 I.U.s per day, but I realized today that I am fooling myself.

Refer to this November 2010 Vitamin D Council statement on FNB Vitamin D Report.

If you look over this abstract of some recent cancer research, it concluded that up to 40,000 I.U.s per day are "unlikely to result in vitamin D toxicity."

I have read that 400 I.U.s per day "are too low to even maintain skeletal health, let alone prevent cancer." So I think I'm going to start increasing my intake to at least 2,000 I.U.s per day. Heck, even Wikipedia cites that 10,000 I.U.s per day is a safe intake level!

So between doing that, and regularly taking astaxanthin when I get some, I feel I ought to ultimately be faring better than I seem to be doing now.

GOLD FOR SALE

2012-01-30T21:17:00.000-08:00

That was the Subject of a scammer E-mail I received on Saturday -- this was the full text:

From: Desmond Ken <des_ken89@gmail.com>
To: undisclosed-recipients@null, null@null
Subject: GOLD FOR SALE.
Date: Jan 28, 2012 12:43 PM

Hello,

How are you doing? I hope all is well. I am sorry for using this medium to contact you, without your permission. My name is Desmond Ken, and I want to inquire from you, if gold business is a movable business in your country. My Step Father is very old now, and he told me to take 150 kilograms of gold of the 250 kilos that belonged to our family, so I can sell the gold, to further my education, and also take care of my family. Please, I want you to advice me on how I can send the 150 kilograms of the gold to you by courier. Right now, the 150 kilos is in my possession, but I know not what to do with it. Your urgent reply is highly anticipated. I want to use the money from the gold, to pay my school fees. My step father said that he will not pay my school fees again, because he is not my biological father. My father died when I was 2yrs old. Please, advise me on what to do now. Thank you, and God bless you.

Best Regards,
Desmond Ken.

I get quite a number of these types of E-mails. The truly moronic ones are those that try to convince me that they are from the FBI, or some huge European lottery corporation -- and use a Yahoo E-mail account. Right.

Anyway, the reason I have posted Desmond Ken's pathetic effort at conning me is to redirect you to a wonderful two-week exchange someone had with this crook at 419 Eater, a forum where the originators of these E-mails are themselves baited by folks who take great delight in spending considerable time and effort at seeing how far they can inconvenience these con-men.

I wouldn't recommend that just anyone try baiting these scum, however. For one thing, it would be prudent to have an E-mail address that could not possibly be traced back to the person making sport of the scammer. It is always possible that the criminal may have an unexpectedly long reach and decide to make an example of the person making a fool of him, especially if the results are getting published. After all, even a Nigerian scammer will likely be familiar with Google searches.

Today was a fairly good one for me -- I had my workout, and a quadriceps tendon stretching session. Jack did not have to work the first part of the day, so she got to stay in bed. Usually on Monday, she works the early part of the day and has the evening off.

I joined her near the end of her time in bed, and eventually had to give her a little play because she was feeling frisky.

It will be nice to have her company later this evening, if she doesn't succumb to an offer to party somewhere.

I think the only other topic I shall get into today concerns my other websites, of which I have five. As I often mention, I would so dearly love to be able to make an income online. That just isn't happening -- not even close.

Of the five websites, the one I have spent the longest time working upon has some ads for affiliate marketing products that are clearly worthless -- I have never heard from whoever is behind them by way of offering me any commissions. And this is after hosting the advertisements since my first post back on November 8, 2009.

So I am going to start removing them, and replace them with rotating banners or something for affiliate sites like Amazon or ClickBank or whatever else. We'll see.

Okay, it's now 9:00 p.m., so I think I'll go and watch Two and a Half Men. Thanks for stopping by.

Final Weekend of January 2012 Ends

2012-01-29T20:58:00.000-08:00

This first month of 2012 has just blown by, I feel.

I think it has pretty much rained the entire day through. Consequently, I was not tempted to go anywhere. Jack had to work a full day, so I am posting fairly early in the evening in the hope that she will be coming home without too much delay once Mango Thai Restaurant closes -- she often goes partying Sunday night, whatever the draw in that is.

She was good company yesterday, and I quite enjoyed her over the evening. I think the biggest irritation was when she took lazy-ass oldest son Tho to the North Surrey Recreation Centre so that he could have a workout in the gym. What a cipher -- the young prick feels he needs a manly workout, so he imposes on his mommy to drive him there so he can hook up with one or two of his friends.

Precious mustn't walk anywhere, must he?

It sickens me.

I had best get off the topic of those sons of hers.

I had a full day of working out. I had my shed workout, put in some movements with my kettle bell, and had a full quadriceps tendon stretching session. I had missed two days of the stretches.

But further than that, I think I am going to have to start trying to purchase astaxanthin -- I have read just too much about its benefits to justify putting it off. Take note that we're speaking of natural astaxanthin. The artificial stuff isn't worth wasting one's money upon.

If you are unacquainted with astaxanthin, it is a carotenoid, and thus related to other food supplements like beta-carotene (a common form of Vitamin A), alpha-tocopherol (a common form of Vitamin E), lycopene, and lutein. All of these are considered good antioxidants, but astaxanthin is thought to be the most powerful antioxidant thus far found in Nature. It is also a powerful anti-inflammatory.

Unfortunately, it is not as easily derived from the diet as are those others.

Check out this report: As an antioxidant profoundly involved in free radical scavenging, astaxanthin is 65 times more powerful than vitamin C, 54 times more powerful than beta-carotene, and 14 times more powerful than vitamin E.

A Dr. Joseph Mercola article added that astaxanthin is far more effective than other carotenoids at "singlet oxygen quenching," which is a particular type of oxidation. The damaging effects of sunlight and various organic materials are caused by this less-stable form of oxygen. Astaxanthin is 550 times more powerful than vitamin E and 11 times more powerful than beta-carotene at neutralizing singlet oxygen.

With my bad eyes, I am also very drawn to the fact that astaxanthin is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and even the blood-retinal barrier (beta carotene and lycopene are unable to broach this latter barrier), and thus can deliver potent antioxidant protection directly to the eyes, brain, and nervous system. See The Neuroprotective Effect of Astaxanthin.

Harking back to the desirability of obtaining natural astaxanthin, I read that the natural form is 20 time stronger as an antioxidant. So why bother with such a feebler product as the synthetic version? Get the real thing, even if it costs a little more -- it certainly won't cost 20 times more.

Two final comments on astaxanthin.

First, krill oil contains astaxanthin. Krill oil is superior to fish oil, although some people boycott krill oil because they believe harvesting the krill is tantamount to overfishing (in some respects).

And second, Dr. Joseph Mercola recommends 8-10 milligrams of astaxanthin daily. I see soft gels of natural astaxanthin commonly at the 4-milligram level, although I have seen six milligrams. However, this was just at one store that I have shopped at in the past -- perhaps there are higher dosages available.

Watch this video by Dr. Mercola if you would like to learn more:

Now here's something different that might intrigue you -- it concerns the African continent.

I had always just taken for granted that it was probably on a par with North America or South America in size. It seems I was quite wrong. Check this out: The Size of Africa.

Africa is more than 2,000,000 square miles larger than all of North America.

The last thing I intend to get into today concerns a Russian E-mail pen pal I have had for a number of years, although contact has been very spotty. She -- Nata (or Natalia, as I remember) -- does not communicate in English, so she uses an online translator. I do not right now recall just where in Russia she lives, but Omsk seems to come to mind -- she may be very near it.

We had lost contact for...well, possibly since sometime in 2006. And then suddenly shortly before Christmas, she surprised the Blazes out of me by sending me a message.

She sent me this last Tuesday, although it was really something she had tried to send to me a few days earlier:

Мой dear, dear Garnet!

Итак , я получила от тебя письмо 19 декабря! Что было незамедлительно и ОЧЕНЬ приятно! Ты даже не представляешь, насколько я рада! Ты не знаешь моего истинного отношения к тебе, а я почти люблю тебя! Это не реально, это переписка, но я чувствую духовную близость с тобой! Спасибо, что ты есть!

Не понимаю, почему ты считал меня потерянной навсегда? Мой адрес не изменился. Кто сильно хочет, тот находит!

Просто мы все заложники нашего собственного времени, которого катострофически не хватает.

Garnet! Как мне посмотреть фотографии в твоих веб-альбомах и блоге?

К сожалению, мне похвастать особенно нечем. У меня мало фотографий. Я изменилась не в лучшую сторону. Но я обязательно покажу тебе, если хочешь. Будь на связи, насколько это возможно женатому человеку. Расскажи о себе. Я тоже расскажу. Высылаю фотографии, их немного пока. Позже будут еще, но в основном не мои, а внука (если это тебе интересно!?).

С любовью. Ната

P.S.

Вот теперь я реально испугалась, что мы потеряемся! Только что я отправила это письмо по твоему электронному адресу, с фотографиями и оно вернулось. Почему? К сожалению, к этому письму фотографии не прикрепляются. Напиши мне сам. Я пришлю в своем следующем письме

Translated by her:

My dear, dear Garnet!

So, I got a letter from you December 19th! What was the immediate and very nice! You have no idea how glad I am! You do not know my true relationship to you, but I almost love you! It's not really a correspondence, but I feel a spiritual affinity with you! Thank you, that you are!

I do not understand why you thought I was lost forever? My address has not changed. Who badly wants, he finds!

Simply, we are hostages to our own time, which catastrophically lacking.

Garnet! How can I see your photos in online albums and blog?

Unfortunately, I have nothing to boast particularly. I have a few photos. I changed for the worse. But I will show you if you want. Stay in touch as much as possible a married man. Tell me about yourself. I also tell you. Send you the pictures, there are not many yet. Later will be even, but mostly not mine, and his grandson (if you're interested!?).

With love. Nata

P.S.Now I'm really scared that we will lose! I just sent this letter to your e-mail, with photos and it came back. Why? Unfortunately, this letter does not attach photos. Write to me himself. I'll send in my next letter.

These were the photos that she included:

I had some darned sexy photos from this woman nigh on a decade ago -- she was in very provocative form back then. But Heck, I looked darned good, too. Time has been rough on the both of us since then, I guess.

Anyway, she's someone I would love to meet one day, but it would require a financial miracle on my part.

And that's it for tonight!

Lots of Jack!

2012-01-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

My girl Jack phoned me a short time ago to report that she was almost finished at Mango Thai Restaurant downtown, and was wondering if I needed her to pick me up any beer for this evening? When I reported that I likely had about 10 or 11 cans left, she was relieved, and said that we could get by, and then buy some together tomorrow.

She would try not to waste any time getting home.

Might she be feeling guilty for not coming home last night? I sat up until just past 1:30 a.m. before going to bed. She hadn't even called to announce her intentions.

Oh, well -- I'm fairly accustomed to this. And it allowed me to get up fairly early this morning. I had finished my shed workout by about 10:00 a.m. And late into the noon hour, I was back in bed for a good nap.

As I reported yesterday, this is the second school day that both boys have off for some reason. Hooray. Lucky, lucky me.

I frequently express how I struggle to find out how to make a living online. I have never directly received a payment, although I supposedly am slowly building up a couple of accounts penny by penny until the day that the account achieves $100 U.S., and then a cheque will be sent to me. But I've had this blog up since sometime in September 2008, and five other websites that I pay for since late 2009 (in the oldest instance).

And never a cheque in this time.

Still, I did manage to accrue a couple of recent small payments that went into a PayPal account -- one transfer was last June 30 for $10.79; and another transfer this past December 30 for $10.21. In total, I had a $20.00 U.S. account.

It didn't seem too real, though, since I never actually saw a cheque or anything. But it existed -- I recently used the account to purchase a couple of very cheap affiliate marketing products that together totaled out at $10.67. I got the products, so the money was certainly there with PayPal -- it was no illusion.

And now I have a balance of $10.33 remaining.

But this sort of earnings hardly supplements my miserably small Pension!

Returning to my Jack, here is a photo of her from either 2007 or else 2008. She had made a visit back to her family in Thailand, and added a side trip to Phuket to hook up with people she knows there. I met her friend in this particular photo, but I cannot recall if her name was Da (or Dah), or if she was Kit. Jack is at the right.

Anyway, since Jack may well soon be arriving home, I suppose I should get in at least a partial quadriceps tendon stretching session. My bad leg has seemed disturbingly inflexible of late, although I was able to walk around quite well when I was at Surrey Place on Wednesday. Folks probably never even suspected the state of my leg, in fact.

At Home With The Boys

2012-01-26T20:46:00.000-08:00

For some ridiculous reason, Jack's sons have both today and tomorrow off from school. I learned that late last night when Jack mentioned it to me. What a treat.

She had her Citizenship test yesterday over at Surrey Place. It was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Her mood had been foul since the previous night, so I am sure that this would play into her ability to focus.

I went along with her, but there was no place there for the public. Consequently, I had to make do with entertaining myself in the rest of Surrey Place. I did a little shopping at Zeller's, but most of the time I just sat and waited for her to phone me when she was done.

And that was quite a wait!

It was especially puzzling since she was only getting tested with 20 questions, choosing the correct answer out of four or five possibilities.

Once the noon hour was well underway, I resolved that I would hold out until 1:00 p.m., and then hike home -- I fully expected that she might even already be home, and had not bothered to try and hook up with me by giving me a call first.

However, at about 12:45 p.m., she finally phoned.

I must say, that experience took a great deal out of me. I felt burned right out through the later afternoon at home.

As for Jack, she expressed that she felt she had failed the test. She only recognized maybe two questions as having been covered by what she had studied. She won't know definitely about how she did for between one and two weeks, apparently. And then she might even have to come in to Citizenship and Immigration and discuss her results.

I hope she is just being too critical, for I badly want her to have passed. Qualifying to be a Canadian citizen automatically vaults her two minor sons into Canadian citizenship, as well.

Her mood had improved after we had gotten back together, and late that afternoon she even gave me a hug from behind as I sat at my computer, apologizing for her demeanor in the morning.

Anyway, she had the entire day off work, so I never got any exercise whatsoever.

Today began well enough. It was unusually sunny, too. Jack had an 11:30 a.m. appointment with her business lawyer to pick up a $5,000 cheque that was still owed her for the sale of her Pattaya Thai Restaurant. She had been very disturbed that he was charging her $325 for his efforts in getting that payment, which was originally only supposed to have been held back by the restaurant buyers' legal representative for 30 days.

She sold her restaurant last Summer -- July, I think. So much for 30 days!

I guess I'll hear how things went when she is home from work tonight.

I took these three photos of her at about 11:21 a.m. just as she was set to leave for her lawyer's office.

Sometimes she just cannot seem to smile.

But I can always get her to break out into a grudging grin when I put my mind to it.

I felt reasonably well today until the late afternoon. I had become so weary and frustrated working on one of my websites that I culminated in a depressive spirit of despair. I have such trouble with the darn websites sometimes that I may have to sacrifice the pertinent themes I am using on a couple of them and instead just use something of a generic issue.

I found that I needed to lie down in my defeat, and I even felt emotional over how bleak any progress is going in making money via the Web.

I thankfully felt better after lying down for awhile.

Very recently, I posted again about TA-65, the telomere-enhancing substance that I wish I could afford. As I briefly said then, it is the shortening of our body-cells' telomeres that ultimately programmes our deaths. Each time a cell replaces itself, it loses a little off the end of its telomeres. This process continues through the years until we have so little remaining that cell reproduction is no longer viable, and we develop various complications and finally die.

TA-65 not only protects our telomeres, but researchers discovered what was once thought impossible -- it can actually cause the cell telomeres to extend themselves. They actually add on more units. In essence, we become younger than we were.

I had provided a link to an article in Elle magazine that discussed TA-65 and telomeres. I would like here to add another link to an article on TA-65, telomeres, and aging from last Summer that appeared in Popular Science: The Man Who Would Stop Time.

Can you seriously imagine living to be 150?

Be sure to check out the articles at the end of this post.

I still want to have a quadriceps tendon stretching session today, and it is already 8:22 p.m. As a result, I must wrap this post up. First, though, I want to offer two photos.

The first is one I came across on Facebook. I don't know much about it, but believe that it must be my niece Rene (Irene) with her boyfriend's family. Rene is the girl in the pink top at the left, and her boyfriend Derek is almost behind her. I think the lovely gal in the blue top next to Derek is his sister. I know no one else in the photo.

The final photo is one I took of myself either late into 2000, or early in 2001. I was outside near the top of the building I used to work in back then when I was with MOT (Transport Canada) -- that is the Vancouver Hotel towering in the background, if I remember. My location was the corner of Burrard and Robson Streets. I forget now just how high up I was when I took the photo, but I used to go out there in the Summer on weekends when I was doing unpaid Overtime and sun myself while listening to music. This was a colder-weather day, obviously.

And that's it for today.

Rainy, Rainy Day

2012-01-24T21:54:00.000-08:00

Jack did not have to work last evening -- after not coming home Sunday night. A Thai friend's birthday party downtown. Anyway, she showed up very late in the afternoon, and somehow resisted retiring soon thereafter like she often does the evening following one of her overnighters.

So I had no time to post.

It is already just past 9:00 p.m. now, so tonight's effort will be brief -- I only have one can of beer here. I shall have to hie myself up to the Wheelhouse liquor store and buy some before their 11:00 p.m. closure.

Although it was supposedly mild today, it felt miserably cold, especially with the often heavy rains that we had today. When I went outside for my shed workout in my short-pants, I needed to keep my sweater on overtop my short-sleeved shirt.

I took the two photos below as Jack was leaving for work a minute or two after 11:00 a.m.

Obviously it wasn't apparent what the weather was like in the carport photo; but I likely shouldn't have zoomed in on Jack's car after she had backed out onto the cul-de-sac and was beginning to drive off -- only the fact that the road is wet reveals that it might be raining.

I came across a rather interesting article this morning titled Are you Hot or Not? What Thai Girls Look for in a Foreign Guy. The article is not new at all, and a couple of the photos meant to display no longer do because the original hosting websites no longer have them published. But the article itself does give some intriguing insight into the Thai female mind -- whether or not it is actually stating facts, and not just opinion.

I might have had time for a lengthier blog, but I used up considerable time today figuring out why one of my other websites hardly had any advertisements on it. I finally learned that it was not widget-ready, and thus had very limited functions. I'm not bright enough to figure out how to create a function.php file -- I found plenty of description about what HTML coding to put into it, but nothing that actually explained just how to "make" the file in the first place so that I could put the code into it.

So what I eventually had to do was experiment with a couple of other themes, and choose the one that seemed to offer the most flexibility. But I'm still unsure about the result. In checking it just now, a string of Amazon (I believe) products did display when I had completed work on it this afternoon, but now they are not there. I am going to have to look at it again tomorrow, I reckon.

Alright, I had better get cracking, and make that hike for beer -- it's nearly 10:00 p.m. Good night!

Suggestibility

2012-01-22T21:11:00.000-08:00

These past two days have seen me avoid a shed workout, but at least I managed to get in a few movements with my kettle bell, and also have a quadriceps tendon stretching session each day.

I feel like I have gained considerable ground since the last visit I had with my surgeon on October 31st when he allowed that he did not believe I would likely gain much more bend to my knee.

But we shall see.

Maybe I will have to film just what it is that I do for a quadriceps tendon stretching session. I have never been able to find proper help online detailing exercises -- or even a programme -- that someone could undertake once more than a year has passed since surgery to reattach a quadriceps tendon to the patella (knee cap), and there is still considerable limit to the degree of bend the knee has.

I did upload a video to YouTube today, though. It is not really much at all, although it is long -- maybe 19½ minutes. Frankly, it would likely bore almost anyone who tuned it in -- here is my description:

Ignore the fact that the film has the month of February imprinted. It was actually May. I never noticed that fact that it was displaying February when I had set the time and date on the video camera -- a loaner which I had never before used. I was so focused on getting the time and actual date correct, I failed to pay attention to what month it was.

As with all earlier videos, this one has suffered from an excess of too many format changes.

However, apart from the rather poor quality, you will likely find the video boring, unless you enjoy lots of Thai chatter as people eat and children play.

This was the first visit that I paid to my (then) fiancée's home on this particular trip -- the trip in which she and I were to marry.

Note that although her name is Supranee, she goes by Jack -- most Thai people seem to prefer nicknames.

Jack's home lies in Nong Soong village, roughly a 15-minute drive from Udon Thani City, Thailand.

I had brought some gifts of inexpensive toys from Canada for her sons. I cannot now recall what all these toys were, but a small racing car and a two-way radio communication set stand out. I only remember the racing car because I could offer absolutely no assistance in setting it up to function. There is a scene where Jack's youngest son Pote comes over to me as I am filming, hoping I can assist him. We all fast learned that I could not.

Fortunately, Thai boys seem to have an aptitude for figuring out stuff like this.

Anyway, all you are going to see in this film from that single day is an opening sequence in which Jack and her sister Penn are having a meal with their mother.

The lengthy scene with the boys then comes along, and as you will see if you bother to stick it out with the video, there are actually more kids who show up than just her two boys.

Towards the end of the video there is a sequence where Jack has motorbiked me to a nearby rather large man-made pond -- she may have brought us there in search of her sons, who are still playing around with the communicator. Whether this pond is for raising fish, or simply there for irrigation purposes, I have no idea.

Anyway, the final brief scene of the video is yet another meal, at which point the show abruptly terminates.

As I said, the video will no doubt bore most people, but I am sure that there will be some people from Isaan who are far from home who may well enjoy eavesdropping on the various conversations.

The video could have been many minutes longer still, but I had to cut so much footage due to filming while the camera was facing the floor, or else hanging upside down from my lowered hand. Too, sometimes I even set the darn thing down while it was running. And it's a shame -- there were a couple such snips that contained audio of my wife Jack speaking to me that I would love to have been able to commemorate by publishing it online.

Here it is...but don't expect any excitement:

Last Wednesday (January 18), I wrote about the online rebellion that was waged against the U.S. politicians and their corporate sponsors who wanted to cripple and control the Internet by passing and instituting the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) bills.

The very best overview I have seen of what the defeat of those two bills actually meant was written by Gary North. I read it in a January 20 E-mail, but he published it the next day at LewRockwell.com as Victory on SOPA: Lessons Learned. Great stuff!

A good news article is INFLUENCE GAME: Online Companies Win Piracy Fight.

I think the entire episode illustrates just how Web-unsavvy "Old Boy" politicians are. Most don't much use the Web. And they underestimate just how important it is to so many people who do use and understand it.

In my last post of Friday, I mentioned that I had signed up to attend a webinar today in which I was supposed to experience what it is like to be hypnotized, and hopefully gain the mindset of a millionaire.

Well, the promise was far more than the delivery. I shall not name the host, but he was underhanded.

The session was an interesting experience, and I did indeed feel considerable relaxation. As well, I became able to feel open to the host -- if he could help orient me towards success with what he had to offer, then I was willing to try my best to be suggestive to what he was attempting to do.

I felt rather good when the session was done. But then he undid most of it. I was okay with the idea that this would be just the first of seven such sessions -- I do not remember this being proclaimed previously. Regardless -- if he was willing to do this for his audience, then I would faithfully attend the sessions.

And it was here that he deeply disappointed me by turning into just another webinar marketer.

He claimed that each session would normally cost $2,500. But he was giving them away for $75 apiece -- or actually, $375, provided it was paid lump sum. In essence, this meant that one of the remaining six session would be free.

Granted, I did feel some unexpected deep relaxation. But it was not worth $75. It would not have been worth $10 to me. I could have napped and been relaxed for free.

There is no way on Earth I would spend $375 for six more sessions. So who in Hell would have ever paid $15,000 for them (6 x $2,500)?

Clearly, the host was only interested in catering to the relatively wealthy. Poor people -- the ones who might really need his help, if he could legitimately do as he promised -- would have to remain marginalized. Nothing is free. No one is truly humanitarian or philanthropic. At least, not in the Internet marketing realm.

Yes, it was a downer, for certain. I felt as if I had once more been played -- led along on a false promise.

Returning to the subject of Thailand, I today came across this article: Abhisit and the people voice opposition to coup.

Quoting: Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday expressed his opposition to the idea of the military seizing power in Thailand while an opinion survey found that most people are also against a coup.

For those of you who may not know, Abhisit Vejjajiva was the former Prime Minister of Thailand who lost in an election to the current Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

It boggles me that there are still so many people who hope for a military coup! Yingluck Shinawatra won against great odds, and was obviously the choice of the majority of the people of Thailand. Since that is so -- since she won the election fairly -- how can anyone justify a military coup???

Of course, the article says that the call for a military coup has gone out from the People's Alliance for Democracy, or the Yellow Shirts. They resent that the Red Shirts' choice is in power.

Bollocks!

I am going to close today's post with an old photo of my brother Mark -- at least, I think it is he, and not me. As I recall, he was the one that had a mop of curly hair as a toddler. If it is him, he must be no older than about three years. He was born in 1952, so the photo would be likely no older than the year 1955, right? I am guessing the location is Chilliwack, but it might be Richmond.

Cute little tyke!

The Rains Arrive

2012-01-20T22:16:00.000-08:00

The day turned out worse for me than it seemed like it would. I actually felt rather optimistic initially -- well, as much as I seem able to.

I took these three photos just ahead of 10:30 a.m. as Jack was preparing to leave for work downtown at Mango Thai Restaurant. The car directly in front of hers belongs to her friend Mint -- I'm not exactly sure just how long Mint will be leaving it here while she is away to Vancouver Island.

Then I captured these four shots of Jack as she drove off for the day at 10:30 a.m.

Although the outdoor temperature did seem milder, I still needed to wear my sweater overtop my polo-style shirt when I had a full workout in the shed. When I had done, I took these three photos from the doorway of the shed towards the rear of the house -- it was about 1:46 p.m. and had been raining for quite some while.

For some perverse reason, in the latter afternoon, I decided to waste my time and energies doing nothing at all of merit at my computer. These episodes truly drag me down, for I have so much that is constructive that I could and should be doing.

However, at least I did do a tendon quadriceps stretching session, and had a few movements with the kettle bell I own.

Before Jack left for work this morning, she asked me -- should I go out -- to try and buy some aluminum foil wrap, and some of those aluminum foil "plates" that insert beneath the burners on electric stoves in order to catch drips, spills, and boil-overs. She wanted me to phone her if I managed to buy these two items, or call if I was not going to make it out to shop for them.

Well, just ahead of 8:00 p.m., I finally left for the short hike to Cedar Hills -- it's not quite a quarter-mile. I first tried Right Way Market, but they did not carry the aluminum "plates." So I went on to Shopper's Drug Mart. They also seemed not to have them, so I picked up some foil wrap, a loaf of bread, and some Vitamin C and Vitamin D3.

There was a trainee on the till, and he was having quite a time of it -- I was possibly standing in line for close to 10 minutes. Then my turn came. I swiped my debit card to pay for my items...and had the transaction declined.

To my shame, I evidently had insufficient funds.

And this, despite having thus far transferred $1,000 into my chequing account since I got my Pension payment late last month. This is how dire my financial status is.

I could think of doing aught else but leave the store in my humiliation.

On my way back home in the rain, I phoned Jack to report the failure to make the purchase. However, I did not get the chance to tell her about the account shortfall -- she was apparently rather busy, and just exclaimed that it was okay, for she had already bought the two aluminum foil products.

Thanks for letting me know, sweetheart.

Upon arriving home, I logged into my chequing account and saw that -- thankfully -- it had only today just dropped to $20 (and change) as a balance. My attempted transaction had been something over $27, I believe. In other words, as far as I could tell, there should not be any sort of penalty for some financial negotiation that the credit union would have had to do something about.

So I topped up the account with yet another $200 from my Special Tax-Free Savings account.

This cannot be something I certainly can do throughout the year -- the balance on that salvation savings account is steadily dropping.

I want to close with a gripe concerning -- probably -- Jack's youngest son Pote.

This past Tuesday evening, I noticed that the centrepiece of the toilet paper holder was missing -- you know, this thing. The piece that inserts through the core of the toilet paper.

That was the night Jack never came home, so nothing was done about it then.

When she got home Wednesday, only Tho was home, and he apparently professed not to have had anything to do with its absence. Unfortunately, Jack had gone to bed by the time Pote got home.

So when she asked him about it yesterday, he also professed total innocence.

And I place no credit there whatsoever -- he is lying. I am certain that what likely happened is that he was in a rush to meet up with one or more friends, took the centrepiece with the intention of adding a new roll of toilet paper, and quite likely left home with the darn thing in his pocket.

Whether he mislaid it thereafter, or it fell from his pocket -- or he even tossed it away because it would have been embarrassing for him to be seen by any of his friends carrying it around -- I have not the remotest doubt that he is fully responsible for whatever has become of this implement.

And it makes me despise him for lying. He excels at doing every little damned thing he possibly can to irritate me, it seems.

Perhaps these are strong words. And I am not happy for feeling them. But such is my day. Perhaps I chose the wrong time to be discussing the incident, already in a state of upset at myself for how my day feels like it turned out.

Something more pleasant: I signed up today for a free webinar supposedly designed to "hypnotize" attendees into taking on the mindset of millionaires in the hope that it can be life-altering.

There were a few different times, for there were to be more than just the one webinar that people could choose to attend -- I chose the one set for 3:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon.

I am quite curious what the host thinks he can do in the 50 or so minutes it is scheduled to run. As one description went:

...It's going to push you subtly into using a completely different kind of brain activity...

When you start unlocking the right parts of your brain and thinking in a fundamentally different way than you do today...

You'll see the world, the opportunities if front of you and the challenges ahead through the eyes of a millionaire...

And life will never be the same.

Quite a claim for something that is purportedly to be free!

The Freeze Ends Tomorrow

2012-01-19T22:08:00.000-08:00

Although I slept quite badly the past two nights, I did not feel it as much today as yesterday. I'm unsure why I fared so poorly Tuesday night, since I had the bed to myself and retired no later than 11:30 p.m., I think. It was as if I was suffering from an excess of caffeine.

Last night I may have retired even earlier. It probably took two hours or more to finally fall into some sleep. However, part of that delay was brought on by a certain need my wife had which I was eager enough to indulge.

I don't know what causes it, but part of my sleep trouble is nasal congestion. There is no problem through the day, but soon after I lie down, a nasal passage plugs up. It is generally whichever one is beneath the other, so I know that gravity is involved. Changing position can eventually unclog the passage, but the congestion just seems to shift immediately to the adjacent passageway.

The nuisance can greatly impede sleep.

Today was another cold one -- when I went out for a full shed workout shortly after 1:00 p.m., I heard on the radio that it was -5° Celsius. We have been told to expect snow overnight, but things are predicted to warm up come tomorrow afternoon, and temperatures could reach 5° Celsius.

Between these warmer temperatures that are to remain for the foreseeable future, and a fair amount of rain, the snow we have should soon be gone. So I shall have to take a few photos tomorrow if we do get more snow overnight, for it won't be worth recoding once the rain commences.

Jack had wanted me to keep an eye out for her friend Mint who was supposed to show up around noon -- if not earlier -- to leave her car here while Mint continued on to Vancouver Island. Mint had said that she would also leave her car key here just in case Jack needed to move Mint's car to make room for her own within the carport.

Well, she never showed up during the noon hour. Nope! I have been home all day, and was only out of the house for the 10 or 15 minutes I was braving the cold in the shed...and that of course is when Mint came and left her car.

In previous posts, I have mentioned a substance called TA-65®. Basically, it has the ability to not only prevent our body-cell's telomeres from shortening -- a situation that is believed to programme when we each will die -- but it can even add length to our telomeres. In effect, it can make us younger to a striking degree.

Unfortunately, the stuff is not inexpensive. And I only learned of it after I have finished my working life at the beginning of September 2010. In other words, in my present financial circumstances, I am unable to afford it.

Last year's August edition of Elle magazine had an article about it titled Hey -- Wanna Live Forever? Have a look if you have not heard of TA-65. Maybe you can afford to extend your life even if I am presently unable to.

I downloaded the article, by the way; so if you ever check the link and it is not any longer available, contact me for a copy of the article.

I get the impression that TA-65 may cost as much as $1,000 a month for the full optimal does of 1,000 units, and the recommendation is that someone stay on the course for two years to fully undo the various damage one's body has incurred over the lifetime of that person's existence.

TA-65 can be purchased through T.A. Sciences. I have not thoroughly studied the website nor the literature, for it seems futile to me to spend my time doing so for a miracle drug that I cannot possibly afford. But I have read enough to believe the claims.

I wish to close today's post with two photos from what I believe is the Christmas Season of the year 2000. At the time, my brother and I lived in a townhouse on 132nd Street -- not far from Old Yale Road -- here in Surrey. My brother's daughter Rene was staying with us much of the time back then, and her best friend was a neighbour girl Amie. Rene would have been seven years old, I think.

Here she is with Amie, while Mark may be involved in putting up Christmas decorations.

And here the girls are sandwiched by me at the left, and Mark at the right -- Mark used to frequent a tanning salon back then. The budgie was named Birdie, and was truly a wonderful companion for me when I would be home alone. I loved that little cheery bird. It was to finally die here in the house Mark and I own together, which we began buying back in...June 2002? Or was it 2003? I still suspect that Teflon can be blamed for the little creature's death within a year of moving into the house, for we kept it close by the kitchen.

Birdie was the last pet we ever owned.

It is now just past 10:00 p.m. I want to brush my teeth and then enjoy a few beers as I wait for Jack to come home. Good night!

A Freeze Underway

2012-01-18T19:33:00.000-08:00

The freeze is entirely weather-related, and not marital (despite Jack not coming home last night). I understand that it is supposed to be even colder tomorrow, with some wind.

Nonetheless, I managed to get out to the shed today in short pants during the noon hour for a workout -- I wore a sweater over my short-sleeved top, however.

There still has been no new dump of snow, although other nearby regions of the continent have not been spared. Still, we did get enough light snow this morning to entirely whiten the cul-de-sac outside.

Jack is presently in the bedroom trying to study her Citizenship guide. The last time she did this a week ago, she was asleep within a half-hour. I anticipate similar.

At least she claims that she often looks into the manual when she is at work -- I hope so. I am not by any means certain, but her Citizenship test may be scheduled for Monday.

There has certainly been a huge furor today over the two bills that many American politicians (and very invested corporate parties) seem to want to get passed: SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act).

The damned things must be tossed out. The best description I have yet seen of why the bills need to be tossed out is in an article written by Jeffrey Tucker and posted on The Daily Reckoning: Blackout Wednesday: The Time Has Come.

The Internet is nothing less than a miracle -- one of the greatest gifts mankind has known. It must never be stifled or crippled. It is bad enough that certain countries marginalize their own citizens access to it -- the U.S. would have monstrous capacity to damage the World Wide Internet we know if it so chose.

If you are completely unaware of the power the U.S. does have in this context, a 2005 chapter in the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal titled Who Owns the Internet? Ownership as a Legal Basis for American Control of the Internet gets into that very topic.

Another pretty good background article was published in late 2001: The Internet Under Siege.

But I think I will say no more today. Always think for yourself, and don't just accept what you are told.

Alone Tonight?

2012-01-17T23:42:00.001-08:00

I sometimes have issues with my reasonably new cell phone -- after I try to answer, it will not always take the call when it is ringing. The ringing just continues. And then in a bit of a fluster, I tend to press the button that 'refuses' the call.

Well, it happened again -- around 10:15 p.m. or so. I was watching TV with Mark, when I heard the phone ringing upstairs.

Was it Jack trying to call and let me know that she was either going to be delayed, or maybe even not be coming home because she was unable to say "No" to another invitation to party somewhere?

I could have phoned her to see, but I really felt it was for her to call me again if she felt it important enough to have called.

I suppose it is always possible that she was about to head for home, but was just wondering if I wanted her to get me some beer.

Or it could even have been a wrong number.

Time will tell -- she will either be home at some point tonight...or not.

As it happened, I bought a flat of 24 cans of beer today. I had to go to Surrey Place to pay the billing for the couples' cell phone plan Jack and I have with Rogers. I had stupidly waited until yesterday to look at the billing online, and then discovered that the due date for payment was today.

Consequently, around 1:40 p.m. this afternoon, I was away afoot to Surrey Place to pay the darn thing at Coast Capital Savings where my chequing account is. And since I was at Surrey Place, I bought the beer and lugged it home.

That snowfall warning of yesterday? Nothing. It didn't happen.

I really don't have too much else to report. Young Pote stayed up late again last night, and just couldn't get up this morning for school. In fact, he was still sacked out on the couch in the living room when I left to hike to Surrey Place. He had opted to sleep there last night after Jack and I retired to bed, and probably watched TV for some while.

I'm trying to "let go" and not let the boys' waywardness about school upset me. If Jack doesn't give a damn about them being shiftless and useless, then I sure need not. We'll just see how well they perform at keeping jobs once they're done with school. Will they go to bed early -- turn their backs on the damned computer and whatever it is that they find to do on it for hours late into the night? Or will they keep this up, and think that they can just report to work late several times a week -- or even skip work days entirely once a week or so.

This will be when Jack and I will part. I will not live cheek by jowl with either of these two lads if Jack thinks we have to support them once they're out of school and are unable to hold jobs because they cannot beat the Internet addiction she abetted them in developing these years in Canada -- despite my warnings of what was happening to them.

One other thing: Mark came home this evening to a sink filled with dirty dishes, and went on a bit of a rant at me. He claimed that he had to clean out the sink this morning in order to wash the several vegetables he takes to work with him each day as part of his diet.

I calmly expressed how it is not me dirtying the dishes and filling the sink with them, and he admitted that he knew. I added that he needed to speak to those with whom there would be the most impact -- yapping at me does nothing. Nonetheless, I will report to Jack. She has to learn that the boys -- Pote, especially -- have to develop some sort of discipline. After all, she is the one desperate to keep this house. If her son(s) keep infuriating Mark by their slovenliness, then he is hardly going to be disposed to remain living here with us any longer than he feels he needs to.

The main culprit -- Pote -- was typically not home when Mark was unloading on me. So Mark prevailed upon hapless Tho to remedy the situation tonight. Rinse up the two sink-loads of dishes and put them into the dishwasher.

Pote eventually, came home, but Tho was long done by then.

I watched TV until 11:00 p.m. Everyone had already gone to bed by then. However, it is now 11:26 p.m., and that shiftless brat Pote is now up watching TV. No doubt, he will stay up -- what else, after sleeping as long as he did into the afternoon today! Of course he can't sleep now!

And he will dirty more dishes and leave them in the sink for Mark to find in the morning -- for I am certainly not covering for the brainless prick.

I bloody hate ending my day feeling like this.

And maybe Tho has got to start kicking his doubly-useless brother's ass.

Japan's Proposed Offer of 10,000 Free Flights

2012-01-16T16:40:00.000-08:00

I sent the following to my E-mail list late last night after researching the information in it earlier in the day:

Quite late in the Fall, I made mention of a proposition the Japan Tourism Agency had in the works to offer as many as 10,000 free flights to their country in a competition whereby the winners would need to present an itinerary that did not involve the usual big city and other typical tourist draws.

And of course, each winner would be expected to publish an account of their visit in a blog or however else.

Well, further details were to be announced either late in 2011 or this month in 2012. I had not read anything more about it, so I did a search, and found this Press Release.

A little further research uncovered this statement:

This autumn there were many reports about the Japan Tourism Agency proposing to give away 10,000 free flights to Japan in 2012. After the proposal was reported, people from around the world sent messages to Japan National Tourism Organization saying they would like to participate in the programme to visit Japan and to help revitalize Japan’s tourism industry following the March 2011 earthquake. So it is with regret that the Japanese Government announced the budget for this proposal has been declined, so the flight give away will not be going ahead.

And on a Time website, I located a January 5 explanation that made perfect sense to me, and should leave no room for anyone to criticize the turnaround in the free-flight programme:

Japan’s tourism agency proposed a $14.3 million program offering free flights in 2012, but the budget was declined. The organization issued a press release last week, explaining, “…we hope people will understand how insensitive it would appear for the Japanese government to give people free flights to Japan when the cities, towns and villages devastated by the tsunami are still in desperate need of funding for reconstruction.”

But not to dissuade anyone from coming lest they think that Japan is ravished beyond hope, the agency urges travelers that the country is ready to host them: “Please do not let the fact that there will be no free flights put you off visiting Japan. There are lots of great deals available and Japan is ready and waiting to welcome back visitors more warmly than ever before.”

Definitely, the $14.3 million could be better spent helping the people of Japan still in need of aid following that very destructive tsunami.

Time went on to make a suggestion of its own for a way in which people could still save money on travel – at least where the accommodation is concerned. They referred readers to an interesting article they published in February 15 of last year: Adventures in Couch Surfing: One Sojourner's Truth.

On a whim, I checked out Thailand on the Couch Surfing website and was quite surprised to find that the country is full of members. Maybe it's worth joining?

I think I will join.

My wife Jack did not work today, and she managed to stay in bed until well into the noon hour. I rose around 8:15 a.m., however -- none too happy. Her lazy-ass older boy Tho had come knocking on our bedroom door; and then he came in for some money, and to drag his Mother off to drive his scrawny butt the four blocks to school.

She grumbled, but dutifully rose and chauffeured the lout, then returned to bed. I had gotten up as soon as the two left the house.

This selfishness of his aggravated me to such degree that I could not sleep any longer -- in fact, I was furious, although I have said nothing to Jack.

So as to not disturb Jack, I attempted to nap in my niece's room shortly after 11:00 a.m., but eventually gave it up -- my mind would not quit racing.

Jack is away from home at present -- she went out around 2:00 p.m. to go and have her car's oil changed. Unfortunately for all drivers, there is currently a snow warning in effect. I felt a little guilty allowing her to drive off without me, but she had not asked for my company, nor even hinted at wanting it. And she can too often be miserable to me when we go out together on errands.

Nonetheless, I still was not happy with myself. And I said a prayer that she be safe.

If we get the snow being spoken of, she will need more prayer for her drive into Vancouver tomorrow.

The Snow Remains

2012-01-15T15:41:00.001-08:00

Actually, we had a wee bit more snow last night, accumulating above the frozen mass we already had. And with the day as sunny as it has been, I judge that we shall not soon be free of this Winter grip for some days yet.

I took these three photos from the sliding glass door that opens onto the sundeck in back of the house -- it was around 10:23 - 10:24 a.m.

A couple of minutes later, as my brother Mark arrived home and was backing into the carport, I took this photo from the front door of the house.

And then at 10:59 a.m., I captured these three images of Jack as she backed out and then drove up the road to begin her drive into Vancouver to spend the day working at Mango Thai Restaurant.

Last night after she got home, Jack spoke of a relationship conflict she had discovered that existed between her and a friend. Report had come to Jack of how the friend often disparages her, and voices other criticism of Jack, when Jack is not present.

It was clearly disappointing for her to learn of this element of backbiting that Jack would never have expected from this friend.

It will be for Jack to deal with this revelation with as much circumspection as she can muster -- she seemed to realize this last night, so I hope that she does not slip up in any momentary weakness.

My half-sister Phyllis sent me an E-mail late this morning and made mention of our Aunt Georgie's birthday party of yesterday. It seems Phyllis did not attend, either:

On Saturday, I was going to go, but in the end, Sherry didn't want to go and I was tired anyway. I sort of thought you might call me if you had questions and was interested, and if so, I would have gone for a short while.

Sherry is her daughter.

Phyllis added this:

She is leaving on Tuesday, if you want, I could pick you up on Monday and we could visit for an hour (which is plenty of time for me). I made note of your phone # and will call before any unplanned visits.

With my computer being down for so long, I'm not used to checking it each day and besides that, it is cold in the room.

So I was not wrong -- Phyllis never did check for a reply from me to her Wednesday E-mail in which she had asked if I wanted a ride to the birthday party with her.

As for paying the visit tomorrow that she speaks of, I cannot say. I think Jack may have the full day off work. If so, then this would definitely impact any potential visit, although it would be truly nice if Jack was interested in going.

I am not expecting that to be the situation, however.

And here it is -- just 3:40 p.m. One of my earlier-than-usual posts!

I'm A No-Show

2012-01-14T21:31:00.000-08:00

At some point after 9:00 a.m. this morning as I lied in bed, trying to eke out more sleep, I became aware that someone was furiously ringing the doorbell downstairs. I believed that I could possibly also hear some conversation outside.

I was not expecting anyone, so I made no initial response -- surely, I thought, one of Jack's sons were up. Both had gone to bed before I had last night -- I think it was at least 2:00 a.m. before I had retired.

When sufficient curiosity possessed me to rise from bed over this -- was it possible that Jack may have lost her key, and it was she trying to get someone to answer the door? -- whomever was outside had now returned to their vehicle and were leaving.

I was on the far side of the bed from the bedroom window, so I could only partially view the vehicle that was leaving as I directed my attention towards a crack in the venetian blinds. It was not a car-type like Jack's.

Then I went downstairs, but to no avail, of course.

However, I did take these four photos around 9:32 to 9:33 a.m.

This was the scene out in front of the house after last night's snowfall.

And here are three views in back of the house.

It was a little later that I learned who had likely been trying to get someone to answer the door. Pote was in high animation as he talked apologetically on his cell phone and headed towards the bathroom with his clothes, intending a shower. And then Mark arrived home, coming upstairs to ask where Pote was -- a lady was outside asking for him, Mark said.

But Pote well knew, and responded so. Mark could but urge him to hurry.

Apparently Pote is part of some sort of dance team, and they were to all compete somewhere. He only arrived home about 40 minutes ago (after 7:00 p.m.), and said that although they did not win, they did do well. I think he may have said that there could have been a thousand people wherever it was that they had this competition.

As I said in my previous post, today was to be a birthday party for my Aunt Georgie at the "clubhouse" of the apartment complex where her daughter Rocky lives. I had committed to attending.

It was set to start at 4:00 p.m. Mark would have gone if it had been early in the afternoon, but this was too late into the day for him -- he had other plans. My half-sister Phyllis had E-mailed me on Wednesday to ask me in I was going to attend, and she offered me a ride if I was planning to go. I responded back to her on Thursday, but I never did hear back from her about it.

This was not of too great a concern -- Rocky lives just over two miles from me. I could walk that on any normal day.

But today was not normal.

It had been raining this morning, but that rain stopped, and the skies cleared up. By the afternoon, temperatures began to drop.

I left home around 4:15 p.m. to try and get to the party, not anticipating what was in store. Here is what I posed into Facebook when I came home after forsaking the venture:

Clearly, committing to attend the birthday event for Georgie prior to that snowfall was a mistake.

Mark turned out to have something else going on. He said he could have gone if things were happening early in the afternoon, but 4:00 p.m. was too late in the day for him.

Still, I set out to get there afoot, thinking I could make it by about 5:30 p.m. But I hiked about a third of a mile, and then gave up. The sidewalks out this way are just too treacherous now that the temperature is falling – they're already half ice. Trying to walk carefully and not risk my bad knee was just taking far too long.

And the return trip would probably find the sidewalks entirely iced up.

I don't dare re-injure my knee. It has been well over a year since the surgery, and I still do not have enough bend in my knee to allow me to run across a street. It's pathetic.

Phyllis had E-mailed me last Wednesday and offered me a ride. I had replied back to her on Thursday, but I never heard any more from her. However, I wasn't too concerned, and so I never followed up any further. I could have handled a normal two-mile walk – I recently had a round-trip walk of about seven miles. Two miles at a stretch was not too daunting.

And then came the snow last night, and a drop in temperatures this afternoon.

It seems to have effectively put me right out of the contest.

Anyway, I truly apologize for turning out to be a no-show, folks. I hope the event turned out to be enjoyable for everyone who did attend.

Hooray, Aunt Georgie! Keep those birthdays coming!

I suspect that this will likely be perceived as nothing more than excuse-making, but the attempt to walk there is the truth. The broken snow on the sidewalks was freezing into craggy irregularities that would barely crunch beneath one's feet, making it treacherous and impossible to move with any speed; and bare sections of sidewalk that had been somewhat cleared were wet and freezing into stretches of black ice.

The cul-de-sac out in front of the house is now so entirely frozen that vehicles venturing into it do so very slowly, attended with such loud crackling noises as they grind over the frozen snow and ice that their passage can be heard distinctly within the house.

I suppose main thoroughfares would be no problem to drive, but I do not know how the sidewalks alongside them would be. Why should they be any clearer or secure than the sidewalks around here? I could have walked the two miles in less than an hour on a normal day; today, it likely would have taken me an hour to cover a mile. I just do not have the inclination to spend such a futile amount of time in that effort.

But enough on this. If I am to be perceived as doing nothing more than practicing excuse-making for not attending today's party, there is not too much I can do to justify myself, is there?

I came across a couple of interesting stories today relating to Thailand.

Apparently Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her government have set up a fund of roughly $63 million (U.S.) that is designed to compensate for deaths and injuries to the victims of political unrest dating back to 2005. The opposition Democrat Party is largely against doing this. In terms of Thai Baht, this package stands at roughly 2 billion.

However, this headline suggests that there may be even more money being added to the fund: Compensation tab looks set to mount.

More details about the fund, and when and how it will be paid, are here: Compensation to be paid by Chinese New Year.

Now, watch what happens when an airport security officer attempts to pat down a Thai official at the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok:

The story behind the video is here: Caught on camera: Thai official refuses pat down, assaults staff. The young security officer in the suit reportedly suffered a damaged ear drum as he helplessly let the older official have his way with him.

Maybe I'll add this one further Thailand story that occurred this past December 12 -- watch the video first:

Here is the story behind the video: South African woman caught smuggling drugs in her dreadlocks. As the introduction to that story says, the unfortunate idiot was caught on the very same day that a countrywoman of hers was executed in China for supposedly trying to smuggle drugs into that nation (China Executes South African woman today for drug smuggling).

Concerning the executed woman in China, she reportedly learned that she was to be executed on the morning of the very day of her execution -- see here.

Why do people take these lunatic risks? We all hear about how dreadful it is to be imprisoned in these Asian countries, and how severe the penalty for dealing in drugs is. Whoever gets rich by being a mere mule?

I shall just end today's post by commenting that I had been so certain that I would be going to my aunt's birthday party that I never did undertake any exercise today, nor even have a quadriceps tendon stretching session. Apart from blogging, my day has been a complete write-off.

Deep Sleep

2012-01-14T02:18:00.000-08:00

Although it is around 1:45 a.m. early Saturday morning, it is still my Friday night.

I had an interesting experience late this Friday morning. A very few minutes after 10:00 a.m., I became aware of Jack rummaging around as she dressed herself. Unbeknownst to me, she had risen and already finished her shower, and I had not even been aware -- so deep was my sleep. Yet I had gotten up earlier at around 6:45 a.m. for a visit to the bathroom, feeling my usual self for such a foray.

The grog I found myself in was so profound, I could scarcely draw myself from it. Certainly I rose, but it took effort. I think that just knowing that Jack was about to leave within 20 minutes or so lifted me, for I could always return directly to bed. I just felt drugged.

And so she went off to work for the day.

She was sufficiently concerned of me that she phoned me towards mid-afternoon to ascertain that I was yet well, and had not had some sort of pathological decline.

I should have taken the nap earlier that I needed. Despite her call, I proceeded with the waste of at least 2½ hours engaged in frivolous Internet pursuits -- nothing at all advantageous.

Toward dusk, I finally did lie down, but only to rest somewhat. I still intended my quadriceps tendon stretching session -- the entire programme is probably about 40 minutes. And that session I did indeed undertake and perform thoroughly.

At some point this Friday evening, I noticed that it was snowing. As I type this in the early a.m. of Saturday, we likely have about two inches. I attempted to take some photographs, but the camera kept focusing on the nearest large falling snow-flakes, and very little was seen of background. Thus, I shall not waste space posting anything.

Jack has not come home. She must have gotten one of those invitations from one of her friends that she could not say "No" to, and will be spending the night downtown.

Late this Saturday afternoon, I am committed to attend my Aunt Georgie's birthday party at an apartment building on the Newton side of Bear Creek Park. My cousin Rocky lives there -- Georgina's daughter. Unfortunately, the party -- and the apartment building social room has been booked from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. -- is to be alcohol-free. There is no way that I can attend something like this for that period of time -- six hours amongst a mainly group of women drinking tea and coffee and eating cakes and cookies would approach my notion of a time spent of madness.

My half-sister Phyllis had E-mailed me Tuesday or Wednesday to say that she was going and would pick me up if I was intending to attend, but she never responded to a follow-up E-mail I sent her yesterday. I doubt I'll go without a "lift" or "boost" -- I recently bought myself a little metal flask I've not yet used. I could purchase a bottle of something and fill 'er up.

Nonetheless, I would not spend more than a couple of hours at the event.

My cousin Randy's son Brady committed to go -- he loves his drink as much as I. If he does indeed follow through and attends, I suspect his own relief would likely not be far off -- or else his appearance is intended to just be token. But that is my impression -- I should not place such motivation upon him as being solid.

It is now 2:11 a.m. early Saturday morning. I had best begin readying for bed.

Dream Runs

2012-01-12T17:50:00.002-08:00

I believe that it was this past Saturday that this article appeared in the Vancouver Sun newspaper: Slain UBC student was 'full of life and enthusiasm'. She was 39; she and her 38 year-old boyfriend were murdered in Mexico sometime in December. They had gone missing on December 14th, and their bodies were found half-buried in the sand on Punta Arena beach on December 27 "in Huatulco, Oaxaca, south of Acapulco."

Her full name was Carmen Ximena Osegueda Magana, but she reportedly went by Ximena Osegueda.

I bring up this article to quote these paragraphs:

Osegueda's friend Troy Millington, who trained with her at a Vancouver capoeira gym, doesn't understand how anyone could have overpowered the elite martial artist.

"She was not a timid person. This is somebody who could take care of herself," Millington told the Sun. "I am 6'6' and she and I tussled a couple of times....She must have been facing something she couldn't stop - like a gun."

He is devastated over the loss of his friend, who he had known for more than five years.

And he is disturbed by reports coming out of Mexico that she and her boyfriend were stabbed in the neck and found on a beach that officials described as a dumping ground for organized crime.

"What enabled something like this to happen? That someone could manage to inflict stab wounds in both their necks?"

A few other details are offered in an earlier article titled Body of UBC student found in Mexican criminal burial ground: Report.

It's reports like this that make me reluctant to go anywhere – not when I cannot even run away from trouble. I'd like to be able to at least do that much. I feel too vulnerable as I am. I've got the knee bending more than half-way now, but it is still mighty resistant to range improvement. There is a little more spring to the tendon, too -- I can just barely hop a little bit on the one leg. I barely clear the ground, but at least it's something.

I can also sort of do a very slow caricature of a run for a little ways, looking like the stereotype of a very elderly man who can run no faster than someone could walk. But maybe the day will come when I may actually be able to perform the act naturally -- I just don't know. I hope so.

Oddly enough, within the past three weeks or so, I have twice dreamed of running as ably as I once could. In each instance, I was not dreaming of me prior to my disability. Rather, I was dreaming of me having overcome my current limitations to such degree that I had recaptured the long, strong stride that once was mine.

I am hoping there is a chance that the dreams may be foreshadowing something that can and may well be one day yet.

Hope, hope, hope! What would we be without it?

On a different matter, for at least a couple of weeks prior to Christmas, I started remaining in bed in the mornings with Jack, rather than rising early and then returning to bed later. In other words, I began rising only after she did.

I think it was likely due to the increase in my drinking, since rum had begun to figure largely in that liquid diet. I needed the extra time in bed for recovery.

Well, this morning was something of a throwback to my former habit of rising ahead of her. But it was only because her eldest son Tho had come knocking upon our bedroom door to insist that she drive him to school. His disturbance woke her. And she had said last night that one of the kitchen workers would not be at Mango Thai Restaurant today, so Jack needed to get there a little early to take up the slack and prepare for its opening.

Tho's selfish act meant that she would likely be unable to manage to return to full sleep -- or at least, it was going to be a much reduced sleep, since he woke her at 8:20 a.m. or more. She needed to get up ahead of 10:00 a.m., for the downtown restaurant is scheduled to open at 11:30 a.m.today for the lunch crowd. I estimate that she only had about another hour of bed time.

This inconsideration for his hard-working mother roused my ire to such degree that I rose when Jack left to take him to school, and I remained up -- it would have been utterly impossible for me to relax sufficiently in the remaining hour to sleep any further.

Yet I missed sharing that time in bed with her.

The useless prick is 17-years old, yet he has to pull his mother -- who will be working until the restaurant's 9:00 p.m. closure tonight -- just to drive his lazy ass four blocks to school? A walk of about 10 minutes! He would not allow her that last hour in bed in peace before she would have to get up and commence her long working day. His ease was far more important.

It just made me churn with anger.

It's now almost 5:00 p.m., and I am still angry at the thoughtless tool.

Jack had the full day off work yesterday, and roped me into going out with her early in the afternoon because of an impasse she had met with in trying to do an RBC transfer of $500 to her Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand.

I had attempted to do the transfer myself, but the BIC (Bank Identifier Code) just did not seem to be recognized. We were trying to use a SWIFT Code. But it seems that despite what most people think, a SWIFT is not necessarily a BIC. However, anytime I tried to do a BIC search on the Royal Bank website -- it provides that facility -- it kept rejecting the Siam Commercial Bank as a legitimate entry. I tried variations on the bank name, but the search was continually refused.

I enlisted assistance via a 'Chat' feature the bank website has, but "Jennifer" failed to figure out what was wrong. All she could finally offer -- and she even phoned me to try and help -- was that the SWIFT Code had been changed since Jack last did an in-person transfer at the bank (we had the printout that gave the full SWIFT Code as SICOTHBR014). She could not explain why we could not search out the correct BIC by using the search feature, other than suggesting that the official bank name must be something different.

It would have cost us $13.50 to do the online transfer. Instead, we had to go to the bank in person.

An agent at the bank attempted to walk me through the online transfer just to prove I was doing something amiss, but she met with the same blocks. A colleague then told her that a SWIFT and a BIC are not identical.

We were left no option but to let her do a transfer for us, and were charged the usual $45 for that in-bank process. And were advised to phone the bank in Thailand for the correct BIC.

Right. I'm sure whomever would answer the phone would know exactly what RBC was after, and understand any distinction between a BIC and a SWIFT.

This is what I uncovered concerning the twain:

Although BIC is often referred to by bankers as a SWIFT code or SWIFT address, do note that BIC is slightly different from SWIFT§. SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication - a banking industry intranet for worldwide communications and funds transfer.

§ Technical details: BIC comes in either an eight (8) or eleven (11) character format with the digit 1 always in the eighth position e.g. PORA ITR1. SWIFT codes come in a similar eight or eleven character format with any alphanumeric character except 1 in the eighth position e.g. DEUT DEDK 390.

Thus, SICOTHBK cannot be a BIC because there would need to be a digit '1' where there is a letter 'K.'

I located the above information here. Unfortunately, the search feature that site offers does not work -- one is merely transferred to the official SWIFT webpage where it fast becomes clarid that it is required that users of the site must be members of SWIFT. Outsiders cannot do searches for BICs.

And you can see why it is no easy matter to join by visiting here.

I belong to no company -- a mandatory field. I could fake it by using just my name, I suppose; but then I also have to identify the type of organization my company is, and what my company website is -- these are mandatory fields.

At any rate, I finally enquired of RBC just what the BIC for Siam Commercial Bank is (for future reference) by using a ponderous secure online enquiry form that only allowed 3,000 characters (including spaces). Trying to explain everything in 3,000 characters is no easy matter -- especially since making a new paragraph would use up a hundred or more characters, for spaces count as characters. I had to run all of my words together into one long and tangled paragraph, including listing this website that displayed the general Siam Commercial Bank SWIFT Code.

The RBC website said a response could take two days.

But I think I have blathered on long enough for today. It is now nearly 5:45 p.m. I want to get at my quadriceps tendon stretching session, since I missed yesterday due to Jack being off work for the day.

Farewell, Christmas Tree!

2012-01-08T20:47:00.000-08:00

I stalled until a little past dark yesterday before engaging in the sorry task of dismantling the wonderful Christmas tree that has been my cheery company for so many evenings while I have been home here without Jack.

And then I hauled it outside to leave standing against the house in the carport, awaiting its fate this afternoon when my brother Mark would haul it off somewhere to be shredded.

Maybe I really do need to consider some sort of artificial tree. It is always a sorrowful occasion for me to discard something that has brought so much joy and beauty to my house and home.

At any rate, I took the following three sad photos last evening between 7:30 - 8:00 p.m. while undertaking that unhappy task of abandoning the Christmas tree that had meant so much to me this Christmas Season.

Here it is unadorned -- all of its beautiful ornamentation stripped from it:

And here it is, leaning against the house in our carport, naked, awaiting the destruction that was to be its fate this afternoon.:

And finally, the living room, immediately after the Christmas tree's removal -- so very barren and lifeless:

If you can believe it, looking at these photos and reflecting upon them (and the prose I have composed to accompany them) is leaving me with some burning emotion that I did not anticipate -- my eyes are actually tearing.

Perhaps I shall say no more this post. I behaved last night and only drank two cans of beer -- the first time in some weeks that I have consumed so little. I thought to try and have another night of lesser consumption, but I suddenly now feel in the mood.

At least the house Christmas lights are all still ablaze for one last night. This is one of the very few still so illuminated. Just ere commencing this post, I had come back from a mile-long hike to Surrey Place (Central City) for a two-dozen flat of beer, and I could see but two homes still displaying some Christmas lights.

It really is all over.

And I never even said good-bye to the tree today for one last time.

An Agonizing New Year

2012-01-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

I do not wish to relive it, so I am refusing to recount the details of my New Year. I will only cite that it involved a fruitless trip via Skytrain to the Broadway/Commercial Skytrain Station that found me arriving there only a few minutes into 2012, a cell phone conversation of misunderstanding with my wife Jack, a miserable Skytrain ride back to Surrey and the lonely walk home, another cell phone conversation with Jack that cannot be described, and then a night-long vigil here at home all by myself that only ended around 7:45 a.m. when finally I went to bed.

Those hours of drunken angst set the course for what was to follow when finally Jack arrived home from Chu & Trent's home where she had celebrated the arrival of the New Year and then spent the night.

I slept on the floor in my niece's bedroom each night until January 4 had dawned. Apart from raging words of anger in a shouted short exchange between Jack and I that afternoon of New Year's Day when Jack had unsuccessfully tried to get into the room to confront me, we were not to speak again until yesterday afternoon when she could bear living with the rift between us any longer. Around mid-afternoon, she initiated a dialogue to attempt to restore our relationship.

I shall speak no more today about our destructive beginning to 2012.

I have been drinking very heavily. New Year's Day saw me finish a 40-ounce bottle of amber rum that I had only bought the evening before. And this was atop beer, too.

Yesterday and the day before, I justified the drinking that was to come by having a shed workout as early in the day as I could bear it. But yesterday, my constitution had undergone too much degradation. The stress of the workout gave me cause to fear that I might be experiencing the foreshadowing of something serious, such as a heart attack. It was quite late in the morning. I sought my niece's room and lied down upon the floor in the makeshift "bed" that had become mine, and I attempted to relax enough to possibly sink into a needed nap. But it was minutes before I could finally stop making a whimpering noise after each exhalation, so sorry was the state I found myself in. Even when I was finally breathing more naturally, and my heartbeat had subsided to something that might be considered normal, I felt oddly unwell. Sometimes I felt like I might possibly be able to vomit, and there were even troubling sensations that suggested the approach of diarrhea. Since I had been barely eating, I realized that these symptoms were unnatural and justified the concern I was feeling for myself.

I weathered it all, however. I decided to repair to the living room and watch TV while doing my best to improve how I was feeling by taking in some more alcohol. I had already had two cans of beer earlier that my stomach was barely able to tolerate.

What I recognized to be needful was to accelerate the sense of well-being that would eventually arrive if I could only endure the imbibition of sufficient alcohol, so I poured several ounces of rum and would occasionally wash down a good swallow of the stuff with several swallows of beer. The rum on its own only inflamed my stomach each time I swallowed some -- chasing it with beer eased its introduction.

The reestablishment of some cordiality between Jack and I was to be a considerable boon, and as the day turned into darkness and Jack set to work with good heart preparing a spectacular (and much needed by me) supper, life seemed to have some hope restored to it again.

It was certainly wonderful going to bed together again.

Today has found me weak, however. I dared no exercise, and in fact I had to resort to a nap after Jack left for work in the latter morning. But even the nap did not do too much for me, and I did not appreciate how aged my face seemed. Perhaps I was too weakened and unstable for serious exercise, yet I did subject myself to an extra-long session of quadriceps tendon stretching after the mid-afternoon. I had missed too many days.

I might as well post a few photos.

I must first explain, though, that Jack's camera had somehow been set to record images in highly reduced quality. We did not realize it. And now it's too late to do anything about it. I managed to reset her camera, but this was not until some days later. A shame, since these first seven are from Christmas Day.

And these next five are from the evening of December 28.

My own camera took these next photos. We shall start with one I took of the Christmas tree at about 2:51 a.m. New Year's Day as I sat at home by myself.

And at 5:23 a.m., this odd shot of my outstretched feet -- I have no idea what the purpose of this was.

So I suppose that I do have some photos of New Year's after all...but no the delightfully memorable ones of the past few years when Jack and I were actually together.

These final photos I took just this morning -- around 10:50 - 10:51 a.m. as Jack was just about ready to leave for work. As you will see from her smile in the last couple, her mood was a far change from the earlier days of this New Year.

There are other things I could speak of, but I think I have said quite enough for this post. I will only say that the Christmas tree and lights are all still up, but tomorrow may be the day they all come down.

2011: Final Day

2011-12-31T17:11:00.000-08:00

It was after 11:00 p.m. last night before Jack got home. At that point, I was hoping that she had decided to go to the nightclub without me, perhaps believing that I was not interested. I wish I had thought more about going, but my experience with nightclubs is quite limited, and I entirely forgot one crucial deal-breaker -- the one that would have been my excuse to not attend.

The cover charge.

The place we went to is called Mirage Nightclub. There were several things that immediately made me regret attending.

First, there were the many bouncers or whatever one calls the "guardians" at the door who make guests stand in a queue. I don't recall that anyone was there before us, but we still had to wait inside a sort of roped-off passageway until the "doormen" decided to unhook and lift the blocking braid that had defined the end of our progress through the roped-off passageway. Meanwhile, Jack phoned or texted Fanta & Scott to vouch for us, since their presence there already for Bee's birthday celebration would better ease our entry as acceptable clientele of this place.

Scott showed up just as we were inside, paying the entry fee -- $10 apiece! And not only that, one of the "bouncers" or "doormen" suggested to me that I might have to check my cap -- I certainly would have to yield up my leather coat. The cap I was wearing was the traditional one I sport during the Christmas Season -- a "furry" red Kangol.

Well, where a headdress is concerned, I rarely venture into the public without one. Possibly in the Summertime when I am fully coloured by sunning in the back yard, I might go public without a cap, but that is rare.

So learning that Jack and I had to pat with twenty bucks just to enter this place, and then I would have to forgo my jacket and maybe even my Kangol cap, was utterly rankling. As it turned out, however, I got to retain my cap -- perhaps because it was so clearly festive. But the leather coat had to go -- and for the privilege of giving it up, we had to pay $2 to have it stowed away in the coat check room.

My final gripe -- apart from having considerable difficulty seeing the floor clearly, or being able to hear conversation I was partaking of -- was that Jack had believed she had enough money for the two of us, and thus did not deem that we should first visit an ATM before arriving at Mirage. The immediate loss of $20 as a cover charge caught her off guard. But when she ordered us a couple of beers (the popular Mexican brand, the name for which oddly escapes me now) and bought a drink for someone else at our table, she was hit with a charge of about $35.

And that depleted our bankroll for the night.

Consequently, we only stayed a tad over an hour. I never even got to drink an entire beer, for I think Jack helped me on mine.

It was extremely nice having fun with Bee again, and also Fanta & Scott. But I need to have regular fueling of alcohol for a partying social occasion. Making do with a mere bottle of weak beer (I think this popular Mexican beer is only 4.5% alcohol) for an entire hour is not my idea of a very good time.

By the way, the beer was Corona. I've never understood its popularity. I personally do not want anything less than a full 5% alcohol, and I often drink stronger. But Jack placed the order, bless her.

The birthday girl was Bee, as I have said. But I was surprised that it was this Bee -- I had expected it to be another Bee that Jack knows. This Bee is a sheer delight.

Here she is, dancing with Scott.

Scott told me that he and his wife Fanta were celebrating their 10th anniversary -- I believe he said that December 31 was the date. Here is another photo of Scott dancing with Bee -- Bee is obscured from view by Scott's wife, Fanta (who is talking to my wife Jack at the right).

Now we have Scott, Bee, and Jack posing for the camera.

I cannot express enough how delightful I think Bee is -- a fabulous spark-plug of energy and joy. Her husband Jack is one very fortunate guy. I don't know why he was not present, but he was not.

Bee made me get up and dance with her.

I don't know the name of this other lady who was part of Bee's entourage.

Nor do I know the name of the lady in the foreground, between Bee and Jack.

And those were the only photos of me on my camera -- I suspect that Fanta has other images. Maybe she'll share them at some point.

There is a New Year's Eve party tonight at the home of Chu & Trent in Vancouver, but it seems unlikely Jack and I will attend. Jack's Mango Thai Restaurant's staff Christmas dinner was canceled because her partner Ad was sick, but they plan a substitute luncheon that they scheduled for early tomorrow afternoon. If Jack and I went to the party tonight, we would likely party late and have to spend the night at Chu & Trent's home. That would very much complicate not only making it to the luncheon tomorrow, but possibly make even wanting to go a negative matter.

All quite unfortunate, too, for Fanta & Scott are to be at the party, as is Bee (and maybe her husband Jack).

Here are s selection of photos of Jack, Bee, Fanta, and the two other Thai ladies all dancing together. My tall Jack is in the red dress.

It is Fanta with her back nearest the camera; Bee is in front of her.

To keep it clear, Fanta is in the rather dark dress, while Bee is in a blue tank top and jeans.

Here's a smouldering close-up of Fanta -- she loves the camera, as it does her.

Jack and Scott looking on at the dancers.

And Jack dancing by herself, it appears.

Here are a couple of shots of Jack hugging dear birthday girl Bee.

And a tender moment between Scott and Fanta.

I think Bee and Jack may have been looking over at the tall blonde -- she might have been the tallest woman dancing on the floor. She was certainly the most noticeable.

Look at Bee! Here spunky antics are as irresistible as they are irrepressible. But it was her night, so why not?

I think in this capture, Jack and Bee are turned towards the DJ, who was exhorting the rabble to make lots of noise.

So here's Bee complying, arms raised and howling.

A refreshment break for Jack and Bee.

Jack looking pensively intent at her iPhone.

Bee in action again.

And another refreshment break for the adorably vivacious little gal, looking askance intently as she sips.

Some particularly hot action on the dance floor as Jack, Bee, and the two other Thai ladies whoop it up!

Now it's just Jack and the two Thai ladies putting on the moves.

That's Fanta's hand holding the blue camera in the preceding photograph -- she has now decided to get back in action with Jack and the two Thai ladies, taking up the slack left by Bee's disappearance from the floor.

Oops! One of the Thai ladies has had enough, and needs a break.

So now it's just Jack, Fanta, and the other Thai lady.

Bee refreshing herself once again.

Now Bee's hitching up her jeans to get into action with Jack, Scott, Fanta, and one of the unnamed Thai ladies.

Fanta and Bee doings some hot moves together.

I think all five Thai ladies are now dancing together: Fanta, Jack, Bee, and the two who I am unable to identify -- the whole place was just jumping!

Things seemed to have slowed down for the Thai dancers.

Perhaps it is here that Jack has made known that she and I are considering calling it a night. Poor Bee certainly got very serious at that time.

Jack and Fanta hugging good-bye.

They're posing for Scott here, with Bee smiling sweetly beside them.

Bee as she says good-bye to Jack, while one of the other Thai laides looks on.

Wonderful birthday girl Bee and my wife Jack.

I got lots of hugs of good-bye from Bee -- she seriously was very sorry that Jack and I were leaving. I rather wish that I could have caught a few of those tender moments on my camera. She consoled herself with the observation that she would be seeing Jack and I tonight at Chu & Trent's New Year's Eve party, but I didn't have the heart to let break that we likely would not be there.

I am very glad for all of these photos, but I would not return to Mirage Nightclub -- the financial costs far exceed what I deem worthwhile to be with people I care about. Give me a good house-party anytime!

It is almost 5:00 p.m. as I close off this photo-heavy post. Jack did go to work for the evening, as I suggested yesterday she might. I have absolutely no rum to drink, so I believe I shall now see about having a shed workout, then a bath. And then I'll hie forth to acquire some booze for tonight.

...And now I have just reviewed this post ere publication, and it is 5:08 p.m. The shed workout is now impossible -- it is already dark outside, and the shed has no illumination. Neither can I bath at the moment -- Tho has decided to take a long shower. I have no idea how those two boys can uncannily usurp that bathroom just ahead of me as they damnably do, but it is almost as if they sense my intention, and do it to thwart my purpose.

Happy New Year, whatever you find to do tonight!

One More Day Remaining In 2011

2011-12-30T17:50:00.000-08:00

I have not found the time and/or inclination to blog for around 10 days -- very lax on my part. But the post-Christmas period can be wearing, just as the days immediate to the arrival of Christmas can also be straining.

Here is how I updated my situation to someone last night in an E-mail -- I apparently sent it of at 1:08 a.m.:

It's a little hard getting over Christmas, Angela. I'm a big Christmas child.

Consequently, it helps little that my brother is typically Grinch; or that Jack and her sons just don't give a hoot about the Season -- it's rather alien to them. I'm left celebrating pretty much on my own.

Can you imagine that I hiked a Christmas tree all the way home from PriceSmart in Whalley? I'd say that's about 1½ miles. Mark didn't want a tree, and Jack's car likely would have been too small -- or required a good interior cleaning job afterwards.

Older boy Tho helped me set it up and string some lights; but once those were done, I had to do the menial streamer and ornament decorations.

However, once it was all done up, and the outside lights were on full display -- along with a couple lighted window ornaments -- I don't think anyone was truly immune to the visual effect. And we had the most going on of anyplace in the cul-de-sac -- for some odd reason, only two houses even bothered with any illumination whatsoever. Our house was the best-lit.

My niece Rene came by fairly early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, along with her boyfriend Derek. They visited until after dark. Mark appreciated that, and I'm pretty sure he was grateful that there was a tree to have the gifts under.

But I had to recognize that it's tough on me having no Christmas Spirit support. He avows being unaffected by everything to do with Christmas, even though he clearly gets an emotional charge out of some of the traditional movies and Season-oriented TV shows we normally watch.

Jack was a joy last year when I was invalid and could not get out to see or do anything -- she made my Christmas, doing all of the shopping for gifts. This year, however, she bought nothing for anyone. Her sons never even bothered with a token Christmas card to Mark, Rene, nor I, despite getting gifts from us all.

I really doubt Rene nor Mark cared -- nor did I; but it just made so apparent to me that when it comes to Christmas, I'm the sole celebrant. And mattering to me as it does, I am feeling the deep cultural rift.

It will affect me when the tree is gone this coming weekend -- Mark will haul it away for shredding somewhere. But meantime, right around 5:00 p.m. -- or even earlier -- each day, I light up the tree and the rest of the Christmas light displays. And when I am home alone -- as when Jack is working, and Mark is at whatever bar he may be at -- I still play Christmas CDs rather loudly in the living room if the TV has not yet been usurped by either of Jack's sons. I'm still trying to cling to whatever it is that Christmas has always meant to me, even if I have to do it alone with my preferred alcoholic beverages while the lights of Christmas announce to folks passing by that this house still has someone who cares about the tradition, and all that has gone before.

If the music bugs Jack's sons, then too damned bad.

It's quite enlightening what thoughts crop up while one is alone (figuratively speaking, since neither of Jack's sons matter in this context) for several hours, sitting in the living room illuminated by a Christmas tree and the outdoor trimmings, feeling some rum or whatever, and reflecting and reminiscing to lots of familiar Christmas music on CDs that are not heard on the radio. It becomes a wistful and melancholy time.

Anyway, that's how it's going to be until I am fully weaned of it all. Just as Christmas is a period of build-up until the great day, so for me it must be a gradual withdrawal. I cannot go from all-Christmas music on the radio for three or more weeks, to suddenly having the usual dreary year-round musical fare on offer as of midnight, Boxing Day. I need for Christmas to be relinquished as a gradual process, even if it's something I have to do for myself. I've managed to get out each evening when Jack is working and hike off to places like Surrey Place to buy something or another, enjoying some of the Christmas displays along the way that other homes still provide. And it's nice seeing decorations and such still in the stores. But it is all coming to an end.

Ahh! Jack just got home...bye for now, Angela.

That bit at the end about Jack just arriving home was true. Her late nights -- or total absenteeism -- continues unabated. In fact, on Boxing Day (Monday, December 26), she went in to New Westminster to visit the owners of her old restaurant in order to pay a couple of bills that they insisted she was responsible for. It was around 7:00 p.m. that she left, saying to me that she would be back home soon.

I finally went to bed around 3:00 a.m. -- there was no sense waiting for her any longer. Confessedly, at that point, I was just drinking and watching TV -- I was not expecting her back. She had been declaring that her mood of late was rather bad. I guess that after she visited her old restaurant, the trick was fully performed. She had no interest in coming home to be with just me and her boys, doing nothing but watching recorded TV programmes.

I expect that she went on in to the action and noise of a club like Celebrities downtown in Vancouver, and could not be bothered to let me know...although she did later say that she had texted both of her sons that she would not be home that night. Contacting me would have required a phone call -- my cell phone does not have texting enabled. What wife wants to have the conversation with her husband that she just doesn't feel like coming home the evening of Boxing Day to spend it there? So I was left uninformed, well able to figure things out.

Let's indulge in some happier reflections now, though.

Back on the advent of Winter (Wednesday, December 21), I was out shopping with Jack and her sons. One of our final stops was T & T Asian Supermarket at Surrey Place where I took this photo. Jack had just picked up a sack of rice from a stack, and found herself unable find the strength to replace it. Exasperated, she just fumbled it onto the shelf next to the stack, while her sons and I laughed at her evident perplexity.

These next four photos were taken late in the morning of Friday, December 23, as Jack was getting ready to leave for work in Vancouver at Mango Thai Restaurant.

I am certain that I mentioned in a previous post that my niece Rene was to visit us on Christmas Eve. She did that, with her boyfriend Derek. They arrived in the mid-afternoon, and visited until into the evening. I know Mark was glad to have even that much time with his daughter, and I enjoyed having her present, too. Here are a couple of photos of her and Derek opening some gifts.

Jack and her sons never opened their presents until roughly 8:45 p.m. Christmas Day. Here are some photos of that occasion (Mark was not home).

That night, at just after 1:00 a.m. of Boxing Day, I took this photo of dear Jack as she lay bagged out on the couch.

Later on Boxing Day, of course, Jack was to disappear early in the evening and not return home until the following day. I took these three photos of the outside house lighting that evening just after 8:30 p.m.

And on Tuesday, December 27, I took these photos of the 40-ounce bottle or rum my brother had given to me -- what is missing from it is the quantity I had consumed the night before after being abandoned by Jack. I estimate that perhaps 16 ounces were gone of the 40 ounces that it had originally contained. Note that I also drank a full wine-glass of wine, and five cans of beer.

I took these next four photos of Jack at midday yesterday as she was about to leave for work...a little late, I would think.

Finally, this last photo was taken at the end of the afternoon -- I wanted one more full photo of our Christmas tree.

I imagine that Mark will want to haul the poor thing away for shredding on Sunday, New Year's Day, so I had better enjoy it as much as I can whilst I am still able to.

In closing, I want to make note that early into this post, Jack phoned me from work. One of her Thai friends is having a birthday celebrated tonight, and Jack thought to invite me along. Evidently the celebrants will be going to a club or discotheque in the Guildford area of Surrey, and Jack thought that Fanta & Scott would likely be attending. Consequently, since she will have come back to Surrey where we live, I expect that she saw no reason not to pick me up.

I said I would let her know later on whether I would go -- I am actually quite tired. I would prefer to just be home this evening, for I hate going out at 11:00 p.m. or so -- that seems ridiculous. That's when things should be winding down -- not starting up.

I will likely accede and play along. But I had better have some rum & chocolate milk, and listen to some Christmas CDs in the meanwhile. This may be my final post of the year -- I do not believe Jack works tomorrow, unless it is just in the evening. We shall see.

Gift Ideas At Last

2011-12-20T21:42:00.000-08:00

I've finally got Christmas gift ideas for Jack, her sons, and my niece Rene, but I have yet to buy them. For the teens, I think I'll just get them each a distinctly coloured Canon PowerShot A3300 IS digital camera, along with an 8GB SDHC card.

Jack might get two or three items, if I have the time to buy them.

I spent quite awhile today researching this, and basically ate up my day. All I managed to do in the evening was get myself to Zeller's at Surrey Place where I bought myself a pair of Wrangler jeans and a few other things (eggnog was one). Maybe tomorrow I can get out to one of the stores carrying the camera. The issue is that I doubt I can get three differently coloured cameras in any one store. And it will require a fair bit of walking.

The past two mornings have seen me getting up with Jack. In other words, I've been in bed until after 10:00 a.m. because of how late I have been sitting up and how much I have been drinking.

Although I did waste today as far as accomplishing much outside the home, I did have a shed workout (sans one-legged semi-squats on my bad leg). And I set up a few more outdoor Christmas lights.

I wish I could have settled on cameras a long time ago and ordered them online -- I probably would have gotten some better deals!

The Tree

2011-12-19T23:57:00.000-08:00

Here it is, all decked out:

That's an episode of Frazier on TV in the first photo.

Tho helped me erect the tree, and he strung the lights -- which do not display due to the flash of the camera. I took the photo in the living room illuminated only by the Christmas lights and the TV -- the room only appears to be a lighted room due to the camera flash.

I decorated the tree with streamers and baubles entirely by myself. Tho bummed off to do errands.

Jack -- who did not come home last night -- only worked the first part of today. When she came home late in the afternoon, she was of course quizzical. It quite amazed her that I toted the thing 1½ miles from PriceSmart.

I likely would have accomplished more with today than I did, but I did indulge in considerable imbibing yesterday, and undertook more overall physical activity than I have in a long while. My lower back is strained, and my bad left knee is particularly stiff and inflexible. I suspect that if I went for a good walk, it would help, but that chance did not come.

At least I had an upper-body shed workout today, if nothing else.

And Mark came home and got sucked into a pair of Christmas-themed movies: Christmas in Canaan and the sequel. Alas, he had to go to bed halfway through the sequel. I think the emotion and plot evolution kept his own spirits in the fore.

Now, Jack. She did not call me last night to let me know that she was getting involved in anything. Between that lapse in communication and my involvement in TV programming, I did not get to bed until about 3:00 a.m. Consequently, with the drinking atop the late hour...yes, today was a drag.

And I have yet to shop for her, the boys, or Rene.

More drinking ensued this evening. However, Jack went to lie down around 6:00 p.m. ere any of it commenced...and she is till there in bed -- it is now 11:54 p.m.

And since I wish to post this today and not into tomorrow's early a.m., I am going to call a halt to the effort and publish it now.

I hope everyone is approaching Christmas with the best possible heart!

Almost Dreading Christmas

2011-12-18T21:40:00.000-08:00

I am so very NOT ready for Christmas. The only shopping I have done thus far is acquire some booze for my brother Mark. I have so little idea on what to get anyone else.

It is 9:12 p.m. If I did not post to say this little, then I would be skipping yet another day.

I have had some low days since my last report. One day -- last Wednesday, I believe -- I had a serious clash with my dear wife Jack that left me in no state to put up with my brother Mark's aggression later that day, and he and I had a caustic exchange.

At any rate, I have been trying to get out each evening, partly to avoid being home with him during the week. But also to try and keep up with any shopping possibilities. Too, I have been using the walking as a venue to have some exercise, for I've been skipping the shed workouts and quadriceps tendon stretching too regularly.

However, today was nearly amazing. I hiked early this afternoon all the way over to a place called XSCargo, a distance of about 3½ miles. I was unable to see the items that I had gone there to check out, so I bought nothing. Well...apart from some booze at the government liquor store I passed along the way home.

So nothing less than a seven-mile hike, overall.

And then early this evening, I hiked over to PriceSmart after loading up on at least four ounces of rum in eggnog. My true destination was Canadian Tire just to the other side of it, but as I had feared, it closed at 7:00 p.m. I finally bought my Christmas tree -- $33.57, in all. It was the most compact tree there, and they only had a few left. But even when they had many, I did not find one that seemed this manageable to lift. Nonetheless, toting it the 1½ miles home was a job.

I left it out back on the sundeck, and will set it up tomorrow.

So the walking today -- at least a total of 10 miles -- was exceptional.

I've been lying down for a bit over an hour prior to initiating this post. Partly it was to kill some time while Mark has been here -- he will soon go to bed, so I believe it's safe enough to venture downstairs and watch some TV now. He has put on National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation that started at 8:00 p.m. I need a beer, too. All I have upstairs is rum. That's too vicious right now.

Next Saturday is Christmas Eve. My dear niece Rene is actually coming to spend the night. According to Mark, she will show up after she finishes work; and she will go home again the next day, probably noon or so. I have been truly looking forward to her visit, rather forgetting that I am expected to go to a Christmas luncheon that Jack and her partner are hosting for staff and family somewhere the evening of Christmas Eve.

A lot has happened since I last wrote, but I won't try to detail it all. Instead, I will close with these three photos that I took of Jack late this morning as she readied to leave for work for the day.

And now to the last of the movie, and a can of beer!

Now That's Unusual!

2011-12-13T21:35:00.000-08:00

My last post was on Sunday, and I am confident that I had mentioned that Jack had come home from work Saturday night only to ready and return to downtown Vancouver to party with 'Eaw' and whomever else. In other words, she spent the night downtown.

Well, Sunday night around 11:00 p.m. or more, she phoned me to report that the grease drain (or whatever it is that restaurants have to accommodate the stuff) had clogged, and she had to remain at the restaurant until a specialist in these matters had come and got things in working order again.

If it was going to be too late, then she would spend the night downtown at a friend's place.

And this she apparently did.

As a result, she did not come home until last afternoon. In other words, she was away from Saturday night until Monday afternoon.

This is getting to be a bit much.

I said naught; and in fact, we enjoyed one another's company after she was home until she had to go to work again late this morning. She had just better come home tonight.

I must say, she is starting to look unpleasant from insufficient sleep -- her eyes have developed a serious puffiness that just does not wear away after she gets up from bed, and her eye-whites are bleary.

I have concerns for her. It also bothers me that she uses her cell phone so much, and that she and her sons use the microwave for every little thing. They won't even eat food that is at room temperature -- it must be 'nuked.'

Here is a fairly short video discussing the sensitivity that some people develop for microwaves.

I keep hoping that I'll win a lottery or something one day soon, and we can get the Blazes away from our lives here...if she cares to do so, that is. There is always the possibility that my notion of a Paradise lifestyle is the last thing she wants. She is a 'City Girl,' after all. Whatever 'Country' was in her in her earlier years seems to have died out.

By the way, that YouTube video relates to a Website called Powerwatch.

In working on my other main blog (about the Isaan Region of Thailand), I edited a post on Issan Dorsey. Until researching that post, I had never heard of the guy. I found the information I came across to be unexpectedly interesting. The man was born in 1933, and in the 1960s began to become very involved in Buddhism, after some years of debauchery. The link should take you to that post, if you think you care to check it out.

Perhaps here is where I shall end today's post. I commenced it immediately after getting home from a hike to Surrey Place where I did some shopping at Zeller's. It is now just after 9:30 p.m. I have yet to sup today, so I would like to do so while Jack is not yet home.

I'm quite looking forward to her company again.

Meltdown

2011-12-11T21:28:00.000-08:00

If I'm remembering correctly, Jack did not get home Friday night until almost 2:00 a.m. (Saturday morning). I was still up, watching an old black & white movie on the Turner Network. Things were okay -- I had consumed considerable rum and even some beer. But as Jack was heading for bed, I asked her to watch a YouTube video first. At that, she reacted with an inarticulate noise of contempt, and demanded with what seemed to me a loudly snarled, "What's it about?"

At that, I blew up.

We had a couple of exchanges, and she stormed into the bedroom, slamming the door.

I slept on top of Mark's bed, too infuriated to want to be anywhere near her. If economics were not a consideration, I would have gone elsewhere for the night.

But Saturday found me feeling still half-cocked from my drinking and inadequate sleep.

It was probably a bad day for both Jack and I. Things seemed to smooth over later in the day after she had phoned me a few times, though we did not mention our difficulty of the night before.

Jack had the early part of the day off work, but had to do the later session.

I went out in the afternoon to Canadian Tire and bought a lighted Christmas "silhouette" for the window. I've been trying to find a figure of an angel, but there just do not seem to be any. I settled on a Santa Claus caricature that is frankly unidentifiable from the street, but at least it is an attractive illuminated decoration in the night with the other Christmas lights the house is sporting.

I wasn't keen on duplicating Friday evening's lengthy session of Christmas CD music with rum & eggnog, so I delayed it until about 9:00 p.m. I think on Friday, I went through just about a mickey's worth of that Kraken Rum -- at 94 proof (47% alcohol), that has a distinct punch to it.

Jack came home at a reasonable hour, but I soon learned that she was going out again. She said that there was something happening downtown involving the vibrant Thai lass I refer to as "Eaw." Consequently, it was not long, and Jack was away, leaving me to my TV, Christmas lights, and drinking. I don't think I went to bed until just about 3:00 a.m.

So today wasn't peachy, either. However, yesterday was an exercise write-off -- at least today, I did have a shed workout (but without the partial squats for my bad leg). However, I went out early this evening to hike over to PriceSmart and check out the price of the Christmas trees I had noticed outaside the store yesterday.

I took this photo of a huge Christmas tree outside Surrey Place (Central City) as I passed by.

After learning the price of the trees (I think they are almost $28), I returned to Surrey Place to buy a 40-ounce bottle of Bacardi's dark rum. My love affair with Kraken Rum is over. You see, I realized Friday evening that the bottles I had bought were not 40-ouncers -- they were mere 25-ounce bottles (so-called 26ers). The design of the bottle is deceptive. I had wondered on Friday how it was that I had gone through that first bottle in about a week, and still drank the usual amount of beer.

And thus my life since my last post on Friday. It will be interesting to see what communicates between Jack and I when she is home later tonight.

Here is something that I found interesting quite recently. To preface it, I've never run a marathon, but once I put in about 12 miles on each of four consecutive days. I deteriorated more with each day's effort, especially in my hips. My usual routine back then was a six-mile run every second day.

To quote from a Dr. Mercola E-mail:

Not long ago, researchers studied the heart health of a group of very fit older athletes -- men who had been part of a national or Olympic team in distance running or rowing, and runners who had completed at least a hundred marathons. The results were unsettling -- half of these lifelong athletes showed evidence of heart muscle scarring.

The affected men were invariably the ones who had gone through the longest, hardest training. And now a new study, this time in laboratory rats, provides solid evidence of a direct link between certain kinds of prolonged exercise and heart damage -- scarring and structural changes, similar to those seen in the human endurance athletes.

The research effectively shows that years of strenuous cardiovascular exercise can damage your heart.

According to the New York Times:

"Unfortunately, it remains impossible, at the moment, to predict just what that threshold is for any given person, and which athletes might be most vulnerable to heart problems as a result of excessive exercise".

Sources:

New York Times March 9, 2011

The Journal of Applied Physiology February 17, 2011 [Epub Ahead of Print]

Circulation 2011;123:13-22

I was never in danger of becoming a marathoner -- not because of perceived inability. But rather, I was never drawn to the physiques of marathoners. I prefer the heavy musculature of sprinters.

With that, I believe I shall call an end to this posting session. It is getting close to 9:30 p.m. I'm feeling a tad pekid.

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