From the west » nonsense

Anecdotes?!

Simone — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:09:26 +0000

When I don’t blog often enough, or write things in my notebook, I forget sooo many little funny things that happen, conversations that are had.

Here are some random ones I did write down:

Trek near Umphang, months ago
Our mahout (elephant handler), climbed from the neck of the elephant, over us, and stood on it’s butt and peed off the back. We had stopped to let the baby elephant drink milk, and we were last in line of all the elephants.

Last week in the car in Northern Laos:

Raf: there’s a machete next to the driver, for if we have to hack through jungle
Emily: No, everyone has a machete for when you hit a buffalo, and have to divide it up. Whoever hits the buffalo, gets to keep it. Or half.

Emily is serious. She knows stuff, she’s just lived in rural remote Laos for 10 months. She’s said so many other things I’ve already forgotten :( Except this ones. This is a ‘joke’ in Laos, but really, it’s true.

In Vietnam they drive on the right, in Thailand they drive on the left, in Laos they drive in the middle.

It’s true, though Vietnam is more the middle too. Also, they like to drive on the wrong side on the road here, when the traffic is too busy to cross the street. I came across at least 10 of those just this morning on my crazy trip on super cub motorbike to the Thai embassy. Vientiane rush hour traffic, oh what fun!!

Three buses, one book

Simone — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:56:11 +0000

The plan was to get a bus from Mae Sot to Bangkok at around 8am, arriving there at around 4pm. Fail. I got there at 11pm. Thai time… mine and the bus driver’s.
I did manage to get up early, but then did some work, got distracted online, had a lovely brunch of Burmese tea leaf salad and egg roti at ‘Borderline’, a shop, gallery and tea garden supporting Burmese refugees. I also bought some christmas presents there.

I finally got to the bus station around midday, and discovered that despite the many busses to Bangkok throughout the day, the last one of the morning left at 10.30 and the next one would be at 8pm. Argh! But, no worries, there’s a mini bus going to Tak every half hour, and I could change to a frequent Bangkok bus there.
Well, I don’t know about the every half hour, I sat there reading a book I’d swapped at the burmese tea garden place until around 1.30pm. Then we looked set to go, but only drove to another bus station in town (I’d walked 1km with my heavy bag in the sun to the big one out of town, argh!) and waited there for about half an hour. So we left around 2pm, and after changing at Tak (no waiting, yay!), I arrived at around 10pm in Bangkok, but at the bus station way north of the city centre. Found a bus into the city. I wasn’t actually worried about arriving so late, as I was heading for the Khao San Road area, a backpacker area that stays up late. Getting there at 11pm I had no problem finding a room, some food (street stalls!) and even the beauty salon was open till midnight!
I went to bed and within half an hour I’d finished the 300+ page book I’d started at midday. It was good. I’d spent all the time on all those buses reading it, which is very unusual for me, I usually fall asleep pretty quickly on buses. And seeing as I got up at 6.30am, it was also unusual I didn’t fall asleep at 1am reading the last bit!
The book (Eat, Pray, Love) is the story of a 35 year old woman from New York who recently went through a tough divorce and then lived in Italy for 4 months to learn the language and eat’, India for 4 months in an ashram to pray, and Indonesia (Bali) for 4 months to find ‘balance’, and found love there. In general it was a search of ‘everything’, and love of self.
Lots of similarities with my situation, though a lot of differences too. In part it inspired the post below about gratitude, especially the ‘very amicable divorce’ bit. The fact that my ex-husband eventually forgave me for leaving and thanked me for leaving made things a lot easier for me/us. I haven’t had to live with the guilt of it, thankfully.

This book also made me think more about buddhism, meditation, god(s). Also after recently reading a book called ‘The Big Bang, The Buddha and the Baby Boomers’, by a hippie/journalist/ex-jew from San Francisco.
And about how happy I am right now (after last year being quite up and down, though mostly up). I’m going to look into meditation and buddhism a bit more, but I don’t feel, and have never felt, I need or want a ‘god’.

A summarised (a bit) quote from Eat, Pray, Love:

Destiny is a relationship – a play between divine grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions will show measurable consequence.
There is a lot you can’t control, but a lot you can. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with. I can select what I eat and read and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life – whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on occasions when I can’t rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I’m feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

And then another quote, from the book I’m reading at the moment, The Secret Life of Bees:

The problem with people is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

New beginnings

Simone — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:46:13 +0000

Long overdue I got my own domain name!

Now to actually use it…..

8 random things about me

Simone — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:27:37 +0000

Matt tagged me with the 8 things you didn’t know about me meme, and yonks ago Gary tagged me for 8 random things… so this will be it. I don’t believe in fairies, so stuff the rules. Don’t know why I haven’t done this before, I love the word random…

1. I was in the circus, age 10 to 14. Circus Freefall in Bridgetown… We did shows at schools and festivals in and around Bridgetown, and once at a tourist convention in Fremantle, and stayed the night at Bizircus headquarters in the Old Customs house! I can juggle 3 balls/clubs, ride a unicycle and do some other random stuff. I hate stiltwalking. I’ve also done a bit of theatre, but I’ve never been a performer. I always preferred working back stage.

2. I have scanned all our family photos from 1987 (when we moved to Australia, I’m Dutch) until 1996 (when we left Australia) and some more. See flickr… I enjoy linking to them when I’m telling random stories ;)

3. I’ve lived in 12 different houses for 10 months or longer, a migrant centre (in Perth) for 7 weeks, and a campervan for 4 months going around Australia (doing distance education for year 1). Two of the places were remote communities in north western Australia; Bidyadanga (La Grange Mission) and Nullagine. There are many random things from those periods…!!

4. The first concert I attended was BoyzIIMen at the Entertainment Centre (I’m only admitting this because it was actually my brother who was a fan at the time!), the last was the BDO with Rage Against the Machine. The ones in between have been mixed. One of the highlights was Pinkpop 2000, with Pearl Jam, Live, Muse, The Counting Crows and more.

5. I’m more of a n00b on the web than you think… I’ve never used ebay. I hadn’t even heard of blogs until mid 2005 (and was appalled I hadn’t!!) . I’d never used instant messaging at all until last year. And I’m sure I have more shocking stuff that I can’t think of right now…

But I now hack wordpress occasionally, so apparently that makes me a geek. I think Geek in Training is more appropriate. Just don’t call me a nerd… even if I did win the Library Award when graduating from primary school…

6. My favourite colour is purple. Don’t ask me why this blog is orange and snot. My second favourite colour is blue, and I’d mention black if it was a colour.

7. I’ve never had to stay in hospital (well, except when I was born, I was too early). Worst thing that’s happened to me is some broken bone in my elbow, which happened when I fell of my bike because mum and I were biking next to each other and our handle bars intertwined…duh. Was the day before starting high school in the Netherlands, so it wasn’t just my aussie accent which made me stand out, unfortunately.

8. I have never drunk coffee, and don’t need caffeine to stay up late.

But on that note, I guess I better act normal and go to bed now. Oops, too late.

You can all go tag yourself :p