Worker’s Neighborhood

This day we went for an early morning walk to Kata beach which was about an hours walk. Maybe 45 minutes. A lot of longboats there that will take you out snorkelling.

 

 

Like Karon beach it is lined with hundreds of deck chairs. You hire them for about $3 a day.

 

 

They start filling up at about 10am.

 

 

A lot of europeans go to Thailand, and I can tell you that the sun safety message is not getting to them. I can't believe the amount of purple people I saw. Terrible sunburn, being sunburnt again. They line up out in the sun, with their faces pointing upwards like little rows of sunflowers.

 

 

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few people who have been to Thailand and come home the same pale colour as they went. We saw one woman who looked ridiculous because she had this red raw burnt face but with big white sunglasses marks.

This is one way to protect yourself from the sun I guess. Bet he had trouble getting it off though. The sand there is very fine and really sticks.

 

 

You could hire a jet ski from this guy and he had a long boat as well. You don't see any thai people sitting out in the sun. The hawkers walking the beach wear full length pants and shirts, hats and scarves around their necks. They must think tourists are crazy the way they bake.

 

After lunch we went back for a swim in the resort pool to wash off the sand. You can sit on the beach and have pad thai or grilled corn on the cob or whatever you want.

The place where we stayed had three huge pools, all with bars, but this was where we hung.

 

We liked to try and nab the sun bed. We could fit about four on it and it was more comfy than a deck chair.

 

 

After lunch we went for a walk about the streets.

 

 

I saw another police car that was a Getz. Lots of Tsunami evacuation signs around but they all say things like - evacuation point 1.2kms or 1.7 kms. You have to run a way to get to them. This guy looks like he might not make it. The wave is pretty close.

 

 

 

And early on, it somehow became the agreement that we'd meet in the lobby bar at 5pm for happy hour to see what everyone was doing for dinner.

 

 

 

This was the day we had our first ride in a tuk tuk. Definitely the best way to get around the place. Even though you never feel really safe in them. This one is very new looking. Most of them are red. You can't walk outside anywhere without someone saying - tuk tuk??? But if you say no they don't hassle you. But you never have to worry about how to get somewhere. Just don't expect to wear a seatbelt the whole time you're there.

 

Went to the country today. We drove to the country town of Gatton about 45 minutes from our home in Brisbane, and had lunch at their new "cultural" centre. Knowing the local "culture" a little bit too well, I was somewhat concerned about what we were going to experience, but I need not have feared at all. It was very well done, and though relatively newly opened, and obvious that there is still work to do on the landscaping etc, it was equal to any other "cultural" center we have experienced within Australia.

 

Many years ago, back in the early 1970s, a very forwarded thinking gentleman from the local agricualtural college lobbied very, very hard for a lake to be created in a swampy area just outside the town. The local people thought he was a "mad bastard" in the Aussie vernacular, but he kept at it and eventually won the local council over. Now look at it! The birds have such a haven and many of the locals take their daily walks around the lake. The centre was built in 2009 and houses the library, an art gallery that displays local artists and a truck museum. The town of Gatton is the hub of a rich agricultural area "the salad bowl of the Lockey Valley" and so the trucking industry is a major employer for the town.

So, the center not only has a trucking museum, but on a slight rise next to the lake they have created a monument that lists the names of all the local drivers that have died - too many in accidents, but also as part of the cycle of life. Families pay a small amount to have the name of their loved one inscribed.

 

 

There is a lovely sandstone carving outside the cultural centre that commenorates the agricultural pioneers of the district.

 

 

 

and next door to the centre is the local historical village :

 

Not far away, on the other side of the historical village, a terrible murder was committed at the end of the 19th century. Three members of the Murphy family - two sisters and a brother- were murdered on their way home from a local dance. Their murder was never solved and to this day all the locals have theories about who killed them - irish family vendetta: a jilted lover; incestuous relationship; vargrant who diappeared into the night?  I guess now, no one will ever know for sure.

 

 

Lights on the Hill - song lyrics by Slim Dusty

 

It's a long straight road and the engine is deep

I can't help thinkin' of a good night's sleep

And the long long roads of my li-ife were a callin' me

 

These rough old hands are a-glued to the wheel

My eyes full of sand from the way they feel

And the lights comin' over the hi-ill are a-blindin' me

 

It's a long tough haul from a-way down south

A man's gotta find a little bread for his mouth

And a home for a girl as swee-eet as my honey can be

 

So it's down through the gears, she's a-startin' to pull

The gauge on the tank is a-showin' they're full

And the lights comin' over the hi-ill are a-blindin' me

 

There's rain on the road and I can feel the load start a-shiftin'

I-i-in a dance

Too late, I see the post and I haven't got a ghost of a chance

Ah-hah-hah-no

 

The windscreen wipers are a-beatin' in time

The song they sing is a part of my mind

And I can't believe it's a-really happenin' to me

 

Oh, but I'm over the edge and down the mountain side

I know they'll tell about the night I died

In the rain when the lights on the hi-ill were a-blindin' me

Hey!

 

There's rain on the road and I can feel the load start a-shiftin'

I-i-in a dance

Too late, I see the post and I haven't got a ghost of a chance

Ah-hah-hah-no

 

The windscreen wipers are a-beatin' in time

The song they sing is a part of my mind

And I can't believe it's a-really happenin' to me

 

Oh, but I'm over the edge and down the mountain side

I know they'll tell about the night I died

In the rain when the lights on the hi-ill were a-blindin' me

In the rain when the lights on t

One of the best parts of being in Ohio is that we have reconnected with Ben's (huge) clan of family. I've known them for over 14 years, but from a distance. I was a bit slow on getting all the names right and the spouses and the kids. When I saw one kid I'd known as a little kid (now late teens) I did not recognize him to everyone's amusement.

How could I not know Hunter?

The clan has been together in the same area of Ohio forever. The 14 years Bens been with me in Californa never really took him out of the family loop. Now that he's back here, it's almost like he never left. I have to say I love being part of the "clan".

Today Ben's aunt Bobbie (Barb) had everyone to her home in Mansfield for "pigs in a blanket." (pork and ground beef balls with rice wrapped in cabbage in a soup of tomato and spices and sauerkraut. Thick chunks of bread and butter  and mashed potatoes finished the meal. All served straight from the kitchen to whoever showed up, whenever they showed up. The pot had been cooking for over 10 hours - started the day before and then reheated today so the flavors blended and mellowed. It was so unbelievably good and satisfying. We all ate wherever we could find a spot  while the tv played one of many football games. Ben helped this cousins set up his mom's new speaker system to go with her new tv. Ben and his cousin Lonnie worked together on the project - joking and teasing each other. Honestly they are as different as night and day, but underneath the "types" the connection - the family tie - is obvious. Ben- his tight black jeans, pink and black sneakers, red and black flannel topped with a black biker jacket, tatted and pierced, blue hair, goofy humor - in the snow, Ben makes snow men. In the snow, Lonnie waits for hours with a gun or bow for his prey to pass close enough for a clean kill. Lonnie with his home full of stuffed and mounted animals, deer watch his tv from behind his chair - the black bear comes out of the wall behind the tv. The turkeys and peasants are flattened into wall hangings. Lonnie - in his camo pants and loose muddy boots - hair trimmed short  - buff  - while Ben is a computer whiz who does art for a living. Lonnie works at a correctional facility. He is big and tough. I'm sure on one messes with Lonnie. Different. Wildly different. And yet I've watched them getting closer with each gathering.

Ben's family accepts each other 100%, Can't say they accept everyone - or every type - but once someone is in the family "clan" everyone has their back.

Every time we are with Ben's family - I feel - like I am a part of something.
It's wonderful to feel this much love - from them all and for them all.
 
And Ben.

Out of the 11 of us who went, two have a fear of flying. Both mine. Husband and daughter. And for some reason they both watch air crash investigation religiously.

 

This was probably the longest day of my life. We were up at 5am one day and didn't get to bed until 2.30am the next day. The trouble with Australia is that its so big. It can be disheartening to realise that you've been flying for over four hours and that you're still flying over Australia. It was an 8 hour flight to Bankok from Sydney. Must give Thai Airways a rap though. Their service was very good. And I did eat the food despite Emjays warning. We had potato salad with shaved turkey, then chicken sliced in red curry with bamboo shoot, steamed thai hom mali rice and stir fried mixed vegetables. Then later we had stir fried prawn with black bean sauce, rice noodles and choy sum.

At Bankok airport we walked about 40 kilometres to get to the transfer point for Phuket. Then it was an hours flight to get there.

Stepping out of the airport it was pretty hot and humid. But easier for us I guess coming from a hot australian summer than people coming from Europe. Taxi drivers everywhere but we had a driver booked and he was waiting there for us and we were soon off on a 30 minute drive to Karon.

I think we broke every australian road rule within the first ten minutes. Speeding, no seat belts, driver talking on the mobile phone, overtaking on blind spots, driving on the wrong side of the road. The roads are mad there. Bikes and scooters everywhere. Not unusual to see three on a scooter and a lot of women have little bamboo chairs tied in front of them where a little kid sits.

We were glad to arrive and get booked in and into bed at last. Daz and I only had a couple of hours sleep before we had a phone call from home saying there'd been a huge storm and my car was hail damaged. They didn't know it was 4.30am. So I couldn't get back to sleep so we went for a walk around the streets of Karon Beach before breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, everyone rides scooters. You can buy petrol in old vodka cruiser bottles. Just by the roadside there are stalls with rows of cruiser bottles full of petrol. This is the workers car park where we stayed.

 

 

And there are dogs everywhere. And they all look well fed and most have collars. They're just allowed to roam. But they never bother you. I never had one take any notice of us. We had a look inside a school yard and there were about a dozen dogs just lazing around on the grass. I never saw them fighting either. Always on the beach as well. Even if you're sitting outside eating they don't come up to you. I know that as well as the elephant sanctuary and the gibbon sanctuary there is a dog sanctuary as well though.

 

 

Well, I guess I'm rolling 2010 in on a positive note. I'm cleaning up my blasted study, which means I'm facing my checkbook and bank account statements and am putting them in order nonetheless. Most of the crap lying around are financial records, which are getting entered into my Quicken software. Quicken also has a business planning and expense/income tracking module, so - there! I'm facing the music and getting the crying out of the way. Then I'm going on from there.

I also decided to throw together a yummy, yummy soup. It's very easy, too.

Step One: Open Fridge
Step Two: Pull out your veggies
Step Three: Open cupboard
Step Four: Pull out soup stock and canned chopped tomatoes
Step Five: Go to back pantry
Step Six: Pull out lentils and barley. Grab some small pasta.
Step Seven: Go to freezer
Step Eight: Take out frozen peas and frozen corn

Chop veggies, saute in oil with a bay leaf. Dump in soup stock and canned tomatoes. Add a handful of lentils and barley and bring to a boil. Boil for 20 minutes. Add the frozen stuff and the pasta. Boil another 10 minutes.

Eat!

Happy New Year!

~

Last night, I went to bed around 10:30pm expecting 8 + hours sleep and a good start to 2010 but my neighbours across the road decided I should vicariously party with them.  They let off fireworks in the street around 11.30 and then continued to party on their front porch until about 4am.....   they must have been fairly liquor-lubricated to continue partying in the sub-freezing temperature.  

So ...  2009 has closed for business.  After taking into account all the credits and debits of my year my balance sheet has finished very solidly on the credit side.  I have a job and I got to go home for my first Christmas (and summer!) since 1999 and I witnessed my eldest son's wedding. 

I haven't made New Year Resolutions since I was a teenager and realised that few lasted past the middle of January, but I do reflect on the year just passed and think on ways I could make going forward better.

This morning, feeling tired and grumpy, I gave some thought as to how I could ensure I see many more January 1st mornings - strangely, those thoughts turned to conjuring up ways to get rid of the neighbours!   

* photo taken in the country town of Merriwa, NSW, Australia

 

Still sick....just hanging out at the apartment watching TV.

Happy New Year, Everyone!  Today I have some significant news to share.

On December 17, 2009, in the very early hours of the morning, I nearly bled to death.  I’m afraid I’m serious ─ by the time I was admitted into hospital from the emergency room, I was down to about a quarter of the amount of blood needed to sustain life.

The irony of this situation is that I was under a doctor’s care at the time, and that’s one of the reasons that I’m going public with this today. The second reason is because since I have been off Facebook, my blogs,  and other social networking sites, I’ve been getting emails from ‘fans’ asking questions such as: “Are you in rehab? You can tell me! My brother was in rehab last year at this time.” and “Did you have Demi-Moore-head-to-toe-plastic-surgery? Please post pics!”

I was inclined to let these strangers think what they would, but I’ve also been receiving messages of genuine concern, and those are why I’ve decided to write about this very personal experience publicly.

As boring as this probably makes me, a drug habit and/or a craving to own gravity-defying boobies had nothing to do with my absence from the internet.  What actually happened was that on November 9, I had what should have been routine uterine fibroid surgery. I wanted to keep the knowledge of that fact limited to my family and closer circle of friends, because to me there is nothing more cringe-worthy than people announcing these things on their Facebook status updates:  Jack is …”getting out of jail this week!”  Jane…”’s a husband is a lousy cheat!”  Patricia…”had a fibroid the size of a baseball removed from her uterus.” 

Yuck.

So, I didn’t announce it, (until now) and only made vague references to “not feeling well”, and even those mentions were only because I’d missed some social and business events. However, the “not feeling well” stretched on and on, and when I questioned my doctor, he went from voicing some concern to being brusquely irritated, “You must be patient. You’re not a patient person.”

And that’s where he got me. I’ve heard that more than once.  Even my own husband seconded it. So, I tried to be patient. And, as it turns out, I can be patient. Actually, I was so patient, I nearly died of it.

I’m sorry, I still squeamish about writing the specifics, but suffice it to say that I was bleeding, but in such an unusual pattern that it didn’t raise any alarm bells with the doctor. To be fair to him, the symptoms were atypical. Coupled with this detail was my enormous energy level that was only somewhat depleted by the anemia that was increasing weekly. In fact, the day before I was driven to the Emergency Room by my panicked husband, I attended a business meeting, then went to the market, and ended the day with a walk on the treadmill at my gym!

So, I can’t completely blame the doctor and others around me for missing the signs. But I do blame myself. For the reason that I knew something was wrong, and yet, I allowed myself to be talked out of that gut feeling, because an authority figure’s opinion on that was different than mine. I allowed my criticism of myself for my renowned lack of patience to cow me into accepting advice I knew I shouldn’t have accepted.

This really galls me. In the aftermath of a surgery from which I was not even remotely recovered after six weeks, followed by near-death in which I could literally feel ‘things shutting down’ on the way to the ER, a frantic blood transfusion of six units of blood, a second surgery to correct the problem that was causing the internal bleeding, and a stay in hospital that was like a Saturday Night Live skit (they actually woke me up at 2 a.m. after this ordeal to weigh me), and now looking at another few weeks before I’m able to resume all my normal activities, that one fact that I conceded precedence is what still disturbs me most about this experience. Because if I hadn’t, if I’d trusted myself, none of it would’ve occurred.

Usually, I am confident, capable, and secure in myself. In my writings, especially my political ones, I’m constantly stating how we must all think for ourselves, not cling to an ideology or allow some rhetorical speaker to do our thinking for us.  And yet, it took this illness to discover that on some levels, I am still trying to be that ‘good little girl’ who is liked by everyone. Given the right circumstances, press the right buttons, and I will still defer to the instincts of others rather than my own.  This was a more shocking realization than the ER doc’s words, “Wow- your blood counts are dangerously low. Lucky for you, you’re so fit. You wouldn’t have made it here otherwise.”

And now, because I’ve been so sick for so long (close to two months, now) I have to work twice as hard just to get back to that fitness level I worked so hard to attain in the first place. I also left the hospital with a cough that makes me sound like a TB victim, due to the second surgery temporarily diminishing my lungs capacity, and am short of breath just walking up a flight of stairs. I have to drink a horrid iron potion that tastes like rotted prunes and old coffee grinds. My skin feels like sandpaper, and I have been warned by my hairdresser that some of my hair might fall out due to the trauma.  Pitiful, right? You bet. And stupid, too.

But I did learn some lessons, and oh, boy ─ they were big ones. And I think they might be important enough to share:

First is that this year has been an amazing year for me, and not just because it was almost my last one. I didn’t know when I first published my book that there would be a number of people who’d dislike me as a result. Never thought of that aspect of it, but there it was. So that was a lesson, if not learned for the first time, reiterated:  Your true friends are the ones who stick with you not only when times are bad, but also when times for you are really, really good.  A sad thing to realize, but an important thing.

On the plus side, there were yet a far greater number of people who were tremendously pleased for me and supportive of my first book. Friends I hadn’t seen in years contacted me to offer sincere congratulations, and new people I met through my writing groups, blogs, etc., were equally enthusiastic and complimentary. I feel truly blessed by this. I’ve always thought that the media overhypes the evil of humankind, and now that the average person has his/her own way of communicating globally through the internet, I find that this is true ─ humanity is mostly good, not mostly bad.  It’s a shame that we only get reports about the bad from our mainstream news sources. This was a terrific thing to discover.

I also understood from being ill, that my husband and children, to borrow a phrase from Sally Field, “really do like me”. My son slept at hospital with me the first night I was there, and my husband, whose idea of cooking is to make a sandwich, delivered hot, homemade meals to my bedside every night once I got home. And then there were my friends who rallied ─ Thanksgiving dinner, two Christmas dinners, flowers, get well cards, and phone calls. Messages on Facebook and emails from my colleagues, new friends and former pupils, (who feel like nieces and nephews to me) all meant so, so much.

I’ve always valued my friends and my family, but I admit it was wonderful seeing the tangible proof that they value me, too. It was one more reason to get well, so that I could appreciate and enjoy them all the more.

But the biggest lesson I learned is from now on, with no worries about how others will feel, I’m going to embrace my impatience, rather than try to change it. It’s full speed ahead for me, now and always, because I’m made that way. And never again will I not trust myself. Never again will I feel intimidated by others’ opinions, be they valid or not. And when I find myself wavering from this resolution, I’m going to remember the bruises on my arms from IV needles, the feeling weak and dizzy, the crying as the questions ran around in my head as to why I wasn’t recovering, and all the other momentous experiences of this illness now burned in my memory.  They all happened because I still haven’t completely shaken the “Good-Girls-Don’t-Make-a-Fuss Syndrome.”   Screw that.  From now on, I AM MAKING A FUSS.  And it will be your choice to like me for it or not, however you please.

I challenge everyone reading this to do the same. If we do one thing differently this year, let’s embrace ourselves, even with all our faults. I don’t mean ‘be a sociopath and proud’. I mean that while not deliberately causing harm to others, let’s acknowledge that we will make mistakes, that we are not perfect, but we are still worthwhile human beings who have something to offer our friends, our family, and the world. Let’s acknowledge that we can and should have faith in our own selves, even with those imperfections. If we start with that attitude, the year ahead will open us to new encounters. Since we’ll feel more confident, we won’t be afraid when one of our beliefs is challenged, because if we learn that that belief is wrong, it will make us feel empowered, not weakened. We’ll have the courage to fail, not feeling that we are “failures”, but rather human beings on a journey to ever-increasing knowledge.  And while none of this will necessarily make the year ahead be filled with all the health, happiness and success we all wish each other every January 1, it will certainly help it be filled with less anxiety and self-doubt.

So, look out 2010 ─ here we come!

P.S- As is the case due to VOX software problems, anyone who would like to leave a comment, can do so on my Facebook page, or on my Word Press blog.  The links are: http://www.facebook.com/#/patriciaVdavis?ref=profile

and http://patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/2009-the-year-that-ended-dangerously/  I'm very sorry about this continued inconvenience.Main reason I rarely post her anymore. Happy New Year, Everyone. I wish you all a wonderful year!