Hey! Read me you b*stards! – April 3, 2007

Right. I’ve decided this blog’s getting a bit too “expat”, just full of me whinging about shit, and I hate people like that, so I’m gonna try and avoid making that happen now.

Well, March was shit. No, lol, seriously, it kinda was actually. Though I did go to Koh Chang at the beginning of the month, which was awesome, pretty sure I rambled about that one already.

However since then the summer holidays have started, so like most language schools, ECC have started their usual run of summer courses. Although because it’s ECC it means 3 hour lessons 9-12 in the morning Monday to Friday. Just stop for a minute and think about that. Imagine when you were 12, finally getting to the summer holidays only to be sent to 3 hour French lessons (entirely in French too) for 5 days a week, for the whole of the summer holidays. Absolutely. You’d probably go nuts right? And some of these kids have to learn Chinese for 3 hours afterwards as well. English and Chinese, the 2 crappest languages in the world, back to back. I worked it out today actually, in the last 3 weeks they’ve spent more hours learning English than they have in the whole of the last 6 months at school.

I think they do handle it really well most of them, I’ve managed to foster a kindof ‘were in this together’ approach and it seems to be working ok. I’m just glad I don’t have to teach the really young kids, that would be miserable, more for me than for them – I had to cover Vincent’s lesson one time (unpaid, obviously, he’s a cunt) and the five 6 year old girls in the class decided to play a game of “hit the teacher as hard as you can”, which meant chasing me round the classroom trying to hit me in the nuts as hard as possible! Fucking awful.

And then on top of the holiday classes I also have my normal lessons too, so I’m working 9am-8pm most days. When it comes to finding stuff for all those unstructured ‘conversation’ private lessons last thing in the evening, oh-hoh it’s a bitch. Weekends are a bit better, I just finished a course teaching the world’s most bored teenager which is a relief, probably for her too. Although it means I no longer get to hear the antics of August the devil-child coming from the next room at the same time anymore…. he’s so funny, but so unteachable. 6 years old and pure evil. There was one time, I was sitting in silence in my lesson (as usual) and I could hear from the next classroom “What are you drawing there, August?” “I don’t know!” squeals an excited voice, “Maybe… maybe she go to do a pee-pee and then… she eat the pee-pee!” Brilliant! And on another occasion “Right, ok, we’re going to sing a nursery rhyme now….” Cue August’s squeaky little voice: “Kii kii kii kii, kii kii maa! Kii kii maa kii kii maa!” a rough translation of which is “Dog shit dog shit dog shit dog shit!”

I’m just f*cking glad it’s not me in there, you know?

Well, it hasn’t been all bad, you’ll be glad/vaguely interested to hear. Found out on Thursday that ECC Rama 3’s celebrity student, none other than Nitiporn Munark (I know!) was without a teacher, and the word was she was actually turning up for a lesson (for once). So the job fell to none other than little old me. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to teach a celeb, naturally, and I was pretty excited.

I should probably pause at this point and just point out who Nitiporn actually is. Ok, she isn’t like a hi-so dara superstar, but she reads the news on Channel 3 (one of the main terrestrial channels over here) presents a magazine show a bit like GMTV but with just hot women presenting it, writes for a national newspaper, does loads of voice-over work on the radio and owns her own florist. Oh yeah, and she’s hot. She’s even got a fan club on the net, I would post a link, but it’s all in Thai, and the pictures of her aren’t that great.

The lesson went really well in the end, in fact all I can really remember from it is her laughing a lot and agreeing with everything I said. Ace. And afterwards she told my branch manager I was a really good teacher too, so I’ve got her as a permanent student now. Almost enough to make me want to renew my contract here when it runs out in a couple of months. Almost, but not quite.

As for home news, Looksorn’s just had a tooth out, so the situation’s a bit tender there, sounds like it was a really painful experience to be honest, so it’s only fair enough she’s a bit on edge – but it’s just that on top of stupid work hours, trying to get round to organising going home, sorting out a new job, doing everything elseit’s putting me on edge a bit too…. sorry, whinging again. Could always be worse I expect. Well, for her it actually is worse isn’t it? Bless ‘er.

Ah bollocks. Stopped halfway through the blog for a couple of days and now I’ve totally forgotten everything that’s happened to me of even the vaguest interest. Bought some clothes yesterday… hmm nah that’s not very interesting… haven’t been to the gym much cause of all this work… nothing to say there…

Oh I went to Met Bar, that was pretty exciting. I’ve always heard loads about it, people always saying it’s a really good venue for house music (and when was the last time I went to a house night? Seriously, about 6 months ago…) but I was pretty suprised to find it was a members-only club – and the only way to become a member is to be offered membership. And the only way to get that is to let them check out who you work for and how much you earn (and if you’re Thai, your family background too). Obviously if I had said I worked for ECC the reply would have been “er… right, fuck off” but fortunately we were with someone who already had a membership card and that got us in. So after all the hype (it’s where the Hollywood stars go when they come to Bangkok too!) we get in and… it’s a cocking 80’s night isn’t it. You can’t even get drunk since it’s so overpriced. Nice place though, I can imagine if they did play house music there it would be a good place to get your groove on. Lots of young ladies also mistakenly assuming that I was rich and eyeing me up lots too. Nothing much happened, but then for me these days, even getting into a bar is a bit of an event.

Oh well… pretty sure that’s all I can squeeze out of this one. I’ve got to go teach a lesson in a bit and then go pick up some trousers, and then try to think of a way of cheering up Looksorn, probably involving flowers I should expect. I know, I know. Whatever you’re thinking - I know.

Anyway, the maid’s acting up – she wants me to go start teaching now, and what she says goes. Says something about this place, when the bloody cleaner’s in charge, doesn’t it?

See you all soon, maybe, some of you, I dunno… I get bored of writing the same things every time. Anyway, take care, oh shit! The “hit teacher in the nuts” kids are back! I’m out of here!

Maaaaaaaattt 4tg4rg5$##$ get off me you little fuckers!!!! *runs*

Le laptop est vie!…. Le camera, c’est mort. – March 12, 2007

Hey hey! I’ve got nothing to do so I thought I’d post another blog. I’m currently at work trying not to go insane through boredom during my current 3 hour break. 

Work is currently too depressing to talk about, but it generally involves far too many hours of teaching English language far too spread out across the course of the day interspersed with hours of listening to the omnipresent sound of miserable old expat bastards complaining about just about everything under the sun. Except themselves, of course. When was the last time a boring, cynical, fat old gobshite ever caused a problem for anyone, after all? There are a couple of  people closer to my own age here, and I do get on with them well enough, but I really miss being mates with people I work with. Well… not just people I work with, anyone really.

Well, that was the rant about work, which always HAS to be included in the blog of course - I’m pretty sure there’s something in the T&C’s from Myspace about it actually.

In other news, my laptop is back! In fact it’s been back for a while. While I was trying to demonstrate the problem with it to Looksorn, it predictably ’stopped having’ a problem. So that’s good. I didn’t really consider it interesting enough to tell everyone right away though. My camera’s ‘thrown a spakker’ (as Andrew would have put it) instead though, and that no longer works which is not so good.

I seem to have reached new heights of adoration at the gym, most of the male staff had tried to approach me to “chat” to me now, and the security guards in the changing room have got timing their walk past when I have as little on as possible down to an art. I do actually know a ’straight’ personal trainer there, and apparently, yes, I’m not just paranoid. It really does get to you after a while. You go to the gym to try and relieve stress and leave more stressed than when you went in. And to top it all the music there is utterly, utterly wank. Things like a house remix of YMCA. Alai wah?! (Thai for “What the fuck is that all about?!” but quicker to type than the English, which is why I did it. This was unfortunate since I then needed to add a long description to explain it, which has really disrupted the flow of my blog. I should probably stop this now) But if I was to try and walk away with something positive, I guess I must be looking pretty good to be so er… loved. When I have the money I’ll get an MP3 player and everything will be fine. Many birds (or just blokes who think they are in this case), one stone.

Good god I’m rambling again! Just quickly, a couple of good things that have happened. Went to Koh Chang last week for a few days, just me and Looksorn. We drove down in her car. We got a bungalow in some fancy resort cheaply from one of her friends, it even had its own jacuzzi which was fun. The island itself is absolutely amazing, easily the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, though in parts its gone downhill a lot since I last went there a couple of years ago – the main tourist beach is full of girly bars and Irish pubs and Indian restaurants now. But the rest of it is virtually untouched. Took a whole load of photos, obviously, but it was when we got to just about the most photogenic place of all that my camera died. We saw an Indian pop group making a video there too, didn’t recognise them, suprisingly, but they looked well gangsta anyway.

I’ll put the photos on the net in the next couple of days so everyone can feel jealous about it.

Also saw 300 the other night. Not sure it’s out in the UK yet, but it’s an amazing film. A little bit disturbing in places but it does look incredible. And interesting to compare it to the original (not just the comic novel its based on, but Herodotus that the comic novel is based on), it does it justice.

Well, I think that’s more than enough. The next blog will probably be in a couple of weeks, but due to the level of work I’m doing at the moment, don’t expect more than a half-page of “aohasfh-ru 93uj3r9 3 hfkjdn piohefvihowegv”. I’m gonna be too knackered to be coherent, in other words. On second thoughts… maybe I’ll leave it for a bit longer.

Anyway, take care, stay in touch, etc etc

Mat       

Le Laptop, C’est Mort – March 1, 2007

Yeah yeah, I know. It’s been a while coming, this one. February hasn’t been a dynamically exciting month over here. Unlike all my other months which are always jam-packed full of fun and adventure….

Well, I hate to keep firing excuses at you, but this blog was supposed to get posted a couple of days ago. Unfortunately my laptop encountered a major fuck-up and is now unuseable. The back-light in the LCD screen keeps switching off after about a minute, to be technical about it. Chances of getting it replaced are slim, but the joke’s on me really, expecting my laptop to have a life-span of longer than 2 months. Well, to inappropriately paraphrase Buddha, material goods only exist to make you feel miserable when you don’t have them. And miserable is how I feel. Back to gimping it up down at internet cafes it is… 

You want to know how much work I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks? Hour and a half Monday evening, hour and a half Wednesday evening, a few hours at the weekend… that’s it. 

A couple of weeks ago I was told to do a 10 hour intensive university interview preparation course for a nervous 18 year old girl… I have about as much experience of Thai universities as you do, and at least you’ve probably had at least one proper interview for something in your life, I haven’t… despite arguing profusely with the branch manager and being totally ignored by said woman, I ended up having to do it. But I totally blagged it and did a pretty decent job of it too. I don’t know if Need (my student) got in, but she bloody well better have.

Then in the midst of all this, knowing how little I actually wanted to do all this interview preparation stuff, the headteacher’s girlfriend (Thai, obviously) turned up expecting me to give her some university interview preparation too. She definitely did get in and completely aced the interview (thanks to my guiding hand), I know that, but she told me afterwards that the university in question (the only one she had applied to to do her masters) was too far away so she couldn’t go there anyway. Biting down very hard on my bottom lip I managed to stop myself blurting out “So why the fuck did you apply there?!”

She is a bit of a strange one. You’d have to be to go out with my headteacher (he does have a name, it’s Vincent. Couldn’t find an appropriate way of dropping it in without using brackets. Sorry). She has this weird baby voice she uses when she speaks English. The first 5 minutes you spend thinking to yourself ‘That’s not your real voice is it?’ then after about 15 she’s still talking like a baby and you start to feel a bit afraid… Oh well at least she’s got a decent family background and she isn’t a prostitute. That’s a step in the right direction for Vincent. One of only a few he seems to have taken in the last few years.

Now seems an appropriate juncture to start on some sort of nefarious character assassination of my headteacher, and while he probably deserves it I think I should probably leave that for another time, or I’ll be here all day.

Hmmm… what to talk about? Valentine’s Day was fairly quiet, Looksorn was ill which meant that I didn’t have to end up doing too much. Though I did wake up really early, went and bought some roses and then came back with them to wake her up, which she seemed to like. She just thought I’d gone to the toilet to take a massive shit!

Chinese New Year was less eventful than it could have been. They usually have a huge parade down in Chinatown, but as one of my colleagues said “I went last year, it was a once in a lifetime experience. Once was definately enough.” The crowds are usually horrific and getting home afterwards is closer to wishful thinking than an actual possibility, evidently. We had a small parade in the shopping center where I work, just a moth-eaten dragon and a couple of fat bored teenagers dressed up as a lion, with some kid banging a drum very loud – probably to spread good luck or something like that. Taoists eh? Crazy bunch.

Think that’s pretty much it for now, I’ve squeezed all I can get out of this one. I’m off to Koh Chang next week for a few days, should prove a nice photo opportunity even if nothing happens, I’ll tell you all about it either way.

Anyway, hope you’re all well, etc etc stay in touch (or even just ‘get’ in touch, depending on who you are), take care

Mat. 

Good Friends We’ve Had – February 9, 2007

Hi everyone. Bit of a sombre one this time I’m afraid, and a lazy one too, since it’s just an email I cut & pasted onto here. It’s my own email though, so I did actually write it… just something that hit me quite hard just before I came home back in December, and something that hasn’t been easy to talk about. So this is kinda ‘katharsis’, if you will. Is that the right word? I dunno… Still a good read anyway though, even if it is a bit lengthy. Never take your mates for granted.

Mat Luckins to gregor.young

Hey, glad to hear you’re enjoying yourself. Looksorn was quite taken aback by your comment about hot Argentinian women – she thought you might be (god forbid) suggesting they are more attractive than Thai women?! Of course I reassured her that was ‘impossible’… sorry yeah was reading your message on the new laptop in my apartment… I’m with you about Myspace, it’s not the best, I’ve got a facebook page as well if your on that… dunno if signing up for bebo as well might be a little bit of overkill… who knows might be bored enough some time soon. I’ve taught 4 hours since Monday, that’s how hectic work is at the moment.

As for Andrew, I’m glad someone managed to get the word out. I saw him at his ‘leaving work do’ – girls from the front desk + teachers and their girlfriends. Oh yes, that much fun. Didn’t really get much time to talk to him but he told me to give him a call since it was only a couple of days before I was going back to the UK with Looksorn for Christmas. So on my last day here I figured ‘yeah fuck it, might as well arrange to meet up this evening, I might never get to see him again’. Not like some sort of premonition or anything, just figured he’d be going back home for longer than me, and our paths wouldn’t be that likely to cross while I was there. And as you know, he is/was a somebody it is/was very difficult not to become good mates with.

So I gave him a call, went round to his apartment block that evening. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days (which he had apparently spent with Tik doing pretty much nothing) and he seemed to have become so much more relaxed, and just so much happier than I had seen him in ages. He was really looking forward to spending the next couple of weeks relaxing before going home and seeing all his family and friends and everyone. We joked maybe going back to England would be like that scene in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves where Kevin Costner reaches the cliffs of Dover after escaping from the Middle East, and for some reason he always kept talking about how much he was really looking forward to walking round an abbey and the weather. We sat and chilled next to the pool with some American guy he knew from his apartment, who also seemed pretty cool, and then went up to his apartment – he was really keen to show me that football movie he always went on about… can’t remember the name of it, but its got that quote “You tryin to mug me off or summink? You tryin to make me look like a cunt in front of my fuckin pals?” and to be fair it was pretty funny when I saw it. Can’t remember for the life of me what we talked about, nothing especially exciting, just going home, girlfriends, joking about crap, the usual. Andrew and his American friend started getting the beers in, but I had to leave pretty early since I had to be up at 4am for my flight home. I got his email address and we decided to make the effort to meet up once he got back.

Well, I woke up the next morning, pretty excited to be going back. Got to the airport ok, was standing in the check-in queue about 6 when I got a call from Vincent. “Mat! Where are you?” At this point I was thinking you do NOT want me to come in to teach today?! I was about to make a ‘light hearted’ joke about it, but thank fuck I didn’t. “It’s Andrew! He’s dead! Andrew’s died!” Subtle as a fucking brick, Vince. But then what else would you expect from him really? He told me what happened, needless to say I was pretty freaked out by it. I guess he told you everything too. So with that knowledge in hand, I embarked on my 18 hour journey back home. The first 2 hours I listened to the Koran being sung in Arabic I was so miserable. And on the second half of the flight I had some sexpat from Pattaya getting hammered and telling me all his stories (which were for the most part exactly the same as every other sexpat’s) but he was a pretty decent guy at heart, and did a good job of taking my mind off stuff for a bit. Fucking smelly though.

One thing that struck me was the time Andrew was teaching that guy and asked him what he would do if he had 24 hours left to live, and his student kept saying ’sleep’, and naturally Andrew just replied “yeah…but no.” It’s kinda ironic that he spent his own last 48 hours doing pretty much nothing, and he seemed to be the happiest I’d ever seen him, and to be honest, if he had known that he had to go when and how he did, I can’t see him doing anything differently.

Me and Looksorn made it to the funeral while we were back home, it was a really nice service. But seeing all his family and friends from back home (and there were a lot of them) was kinda weird, they were all gutted, naturally, they hadnt seen him in a year. But it was almost as though they knew a different person to the guy we knew. And there was just so much stuff that just seemed inappropriate to tell them, it seemed better to let them remember him as they knew him, maybe thats what he would have wanted. We didn’t stay afterwards, even though there was a ‘do’, it was all a bit emotional, and I kinda felt like an outsider to it all.

I know what you mean about trying to explain it all to people who never knew him, I had a similar problem when I got home. Even when I came back, people didnt really want to talk about it which didn’t help. I guess you just got to move on by your own sometimes…

Well, I guess that’s enough rambling from me… bloody hell there’s enough of it…. I keep trying to write short emails and I can never do it… sorry

Anyway, just thought you might want to know that he was aaaalright before he went. And if you ever want to go see him when youre back in the UK or whatever, I can give you the address. I dunno.

Anyway, hope everything is still good in Argentina, or wherever you are now

Mat

Update No.3 – January 31, 2007

Hello, thought I’d post another update in case anybody’s actually reading them. My student cancelled so I’ve got a 3 1/2 hour break till my next lesson.

You know, it’s difficult sometimes. You tell people this is a tough job, and they never believe you. Yes I do about 4 hours work a day most days, I earn a salary that most Thai people would have to bust their balls to earn, and I usually don’t even start work till mid-afternoon. But at the same time, imagine going to work for 8 hours a day but only ever being paid for 4 of them. Imagine having to deal with clients/customers face to face for 2 hours at a time. Imagine working 6 days a week, and your day off being the only time you can do all those crappy houseworky-things, the end result being you have absolutely no ‘days off’, and definately no time to have a social life or make friends with anybody you don’t work with. ’tain’t much of a life.

So yes, now I’ve got that out the way, things are still ok here really, back into the routine now, going to the gym, going to work, getting home late and sleeping. Although that being said I have had the odd chance to go and do stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I went to some big pop music gala concert that had lots of Thai pop groups from about 15 years ago giving a one-off performance. A couple of them must have changed quite a bit since then (indeed one boyband now has a er… “nearly female” member) but there were 1 or 2 groups that were actually pretty good believe it or not. And a lot of the girls are still hot. The whole thing was free (for me) since Looksorn’s work was the main sponsor of the event, and it was pretty rammed. Quite a lot of celebs there too, though needless to say I didn’t recognise pretty much any of them.

Other than that… went to the beach last Friday with ‘the family’ – Looksorn and her sisters – near to where I worked the first time I was out here. I always get this weird feeling like I’m going home when I go down there. It was nice. Took a few pictures which hopefully be uploaded onto my yahoo site, I’ll let you know when it happens (people reading this on Facebook can see the address in the gallery, people on Myspace go look at Facebook).

Other news? Can’t really think of much, working 7 days a week now, doing a private lesson for some of sorn’s friends on my day off. Not a whole lot of fun, but nothing that’ll kill me. And I need the money. Joined the gym again which is pretty good. Looksorn had some ‘complications’ with the last place I was at, so I can never go back there apparently. So I’m now a member of California WOW!, which is as gay as it sounds. But a gay gym is better than nothing… right?

And then of course the big news from the UK of the last couple of weeks is of course the rediscovery of Tom. I think now we really understand what people in the Dark Ages must have felt when they redsicovered Aristotle, probably a bit like this…. well… ok…. yeah, but it’s good to have got back in touch, isn’t it? He hasn’t touched his facebook page in ages, but he seems to making an effort on Myspace. It’s all good. I guess all of those took-acid-in-the-Pennines-got-lost-passed-out-woke-up-became-some-sort-of-Wild-Man-of-the-Peak-District theories have finally been debunked. So welcome back Mr Clapson, welcome back indeed!

Anyway, think I’ve rambled enough for one blog. Join me for the next installment sometime in… the next week or two I guess.

Speak to you all in a bit, if for some strange reason you’re up at the same time as me!

MAt

Anyone heard from Matt recently? I guess he’s probably working his face in, he usually is. Haven’t heard much from him in a while…  

This is the blog for 31st January, the day I nearly uninstalled half of Windows by accident and then rescued it, and then nearly dropped my locker key through the floor of the shower at the gym, but didn’t. A day of lucky escapes to be sure.   

Hey you, where you go? – January 17, 2007

Hey you. Where you go? You want tuk tuk? Hey Mr! You want sex show? You want ping pong? I take you Patpong fie hundred baht. You wanna go see gogo? Oh you no like girl? I take you boy town see ladyboy! Sik hundred baht. Hey you, where you go? Why you not speak to me?

…and so on.

I dunno. You always think of the most profound things to say in a blog and when it comes to write it, that comes out. I’m sorry.

In more serious news, I now have the internet in my apartment, which means I should be able to keep things on here updated more often with news that is actually interesting and/or factually accurate.

And on that note, how are things with me? Life’s ok, work’s on the up, they managed to tax me about 60% of my pay for last month (instead of the 7% that the national government asks for) and then today they told me I wasn’t going to get any of that money back. I dunno, I guess I should just face facts, the cash has gone and its not coming back.

Looksorn’s fine, I think she’s quite happy to be back here, I dunno, she’s been at work a fair bit so I haven’t seen that much of her relative to the last few weeks. I know, its sad, I do miss her.

On the work side of things I’ve been pleasantly suprised how few gay students I have to teach at the moment. Yesterday I had these two girls studying tourism at university who I teach who asked me out clubbing with them, kinda had to turn them down really didn’t I? Didn’t I? *gets a smack from the gf*

Still have a whole load of bastard kids to teach though. One of them actually wrote on the board in permanent marker “MS.DOLLY (teacher, old Burmese woman) LOVE MR.MATTHEW” Dammit, why is it such a faux pas to smack the hell out of other peoples’ kids?!

In other bastard-kid-related news I got into the lift to go to the office yesterday and one child started whispering loudly in the crowded but silent lift car “Farang! Farang! Pa! Farang mah laew!” (rough translation “White person! White Person! Dad! A white person is here!). As if that wasn’t enough, as he gets out of the lift hes still talking to his dad about me, and just as the doors close I hear him say “…bin gay douwe!” (“and he’s gay too!”). Little bastard.

In other gay-related news (did ya see the link? Did ya see it? eh?) I still seem to have many same-sex admirers living in fairly close proximity, some of whom apparently ‘love’ me now. Oh well, they’re keeping it to themselves for the moment.

It is a nice apartment though, and especially since we got the internet hooked up, worth the risk of being done up the bum everytime I walk out the door. Ok, maybe that’s taking it a bit far… they’re not that bad really.

Oh well looks like my rambling is beginning to turn into absolute shite so perhaps it’s better to stop and sign off now before it gets any worse. Hopefully I can actually get things updated better from now on. Myspace permitting.

Mat

Getting Started – January 10, 2007

Well I did try to post something when I first set up this site, and you know how it goes, you post the most moving and amazing first blog in the world and then myspace and internet expolorer join forces to fuck up and lose it, leaving you in no mood to retype it.

Since that was a while ago now, I have no idea what I wrote about either… but the general idea with this is to just keep people updated on things and make it easier to keep in touch.

Suppose I better type something then. Well, I’m here now. I had a really nice month at home, it was really good to see everyone again, seems like you’re all doing ok for yourselves which is good. Apologies to the people I didn’t get to see or speak to very much (which is pretty much everybody I guess), it’s a shame that I didn’t have more time to catch up.

Bangkok’s its same old self. I didn’t realise how much I missed that food here though, that’s been pretty nice to get back to. Work hasn’t been too hard so far, my only class today cancelled, which is why I’m on here funnily enough. Still can’t get the internet up and running in my apartment, looks like I may have to get it installed myself or just rely on internet cafes which is a pain in the arse. Apparently the whole building is getting a wireless network set up next month, this being Thailand that doesn’t mean anything will actually happen.

As for the bomb situation, it seems like it was just a one-off, everyone’s acting like nothing ever happened but everywhere feels a bit half empty at times, which is actually quite nice. Bit of a change. There were some guys half-arsedly checking car boots for stuff outside Central (shopping mall where I work) today. That’s about as on alert as anyone can be bothered with.

Anyway I’ll leave it there for now, I imagine I’ll probably be updating this quite regularly for as long as it seems like a good idea, keeping people updated on a range of thoroughly interesting opinions on everything that’s happening around me. We’ll see how it goes. 

Inauspicious Beginnings…

Hello, my name is Mat, and I’m here because I’ve had enough of Myspace.

 For the past year I’ve been using Myspace blog to update people on the simply outrageous events of my screwball, hair-raising experiences living in Bangkok (yes, the one in Thailand). Ok, that’s half true. I live in Bangkok, but my life isn’t really that exciting. However, my blogs are apparently entertaining and well-written, so rather than post them on a site devoted to idiot American teenagers, I thought I’d up the age-range of my audience a bit and come here instead. It seems a bit more grown up, am I right? And people who don’t know me are occasionally interested in reading my blogs too, so you never know, you might get something out of it.

I’m a bit unsure of how to do this. I do want to move my entire blog over here so that everyone can read it and I don’t have the headache of coordinating a blog over two sites to deal with. And besides, how many of you would ever go on to Myspace to read a blog? I think the general plan is an episodic approch. It would be silly to bombard you with a year’s worth of blogging (it’s only about 15 posts really) all at once, since that way nobody will read any of it. So I guess I’ll move a post over every week or so, and then, who knows? Maybe a whole person might bother! Amazing!

Honestly, if that just seems a rediculous approach, I’m sorry. I’m a maverick who hasn’t had breakfast yet, and in this state I pull all sorts of crazy shit out of nowhere.

Well, that’s enough. Now, let’s see if I can figure out how to post this…