2007.11.26, 14:00

Kastrup, Santa sits (Thais cannot pronounce my real name...) in a corner with a cold beer can, don't need no glass for double the price.

Yui said I should not cut hear and beard, at least not until after Christmas, so let it sit, let me be "Daddy" for every cab driver passing; want a ride for 5 meters Daddy?"

I sent SMS to Mam and saw that she had the same mobile # as 2 years ago, let's see if we can meet some day - her days are busy with her kid, but an old friend should get a minute or two. I wonder if the kid will recognize me after 2 years.

On the opposite bench sits a hard-working girl, laptop in lap. The only non-Muslim there.

If someone asked me "how do you feel now?" I would say "Huh?" It feels rather normal. Leaving Yui this way might be a first but we know exactly when it will end, she's very busy and likely I will feel much better once I got some warmth back in my body! It was much worse last winter. She went back to Thailand to apply for permanent residence permit, normally taking approximately 5 months, I planned to go down after 2 months, then the damn Insurance Office popped up their ugly head! Stopped me from going! For no reason whatsoever excipt being devils, only to harass a sick person WITH papers and health declarations telling I need it! I sent several mails to them wondering why that idiot did not take any consideration whatsoever about those papers, he refused to answer.... In MAY finally they gave up and put me on permanent sick leave - retroactively for 9 months to steal those extra money too. The sum is lower when it s permanent. Heck.

Slight headache from the cold, otherwise ok. 14:49 now, plane goes at 17:45, 3 hours, wonder when one can check in.

I had planned to switch the coat/jacket, but maybe I keep it, cold in the long-distance planes. So I can look up the big bag. 100 kronor in the pocket, hm, down with it in the moneybag. Yui took all the coins.....

Checked in, less than 2 hours to departure. A Christmas Beer in the Sports Bar. I found a crispy bread with cheese and sausage in the pack, from my dear wife.

We already exchanged some half-naughty SMS. In a way we have a strange relation thinking that a majority of Thai-Farang relations have sex as a strong component. We have expanded on all the other components, partially because of my relative ill-health and I think it can only grow stronger to the bitter end.

And then? Well, she is a Buddhist of course, as many Asians - what the heck, safer with many gods, then one might be the strongest..... The Thai Buddhst monks in Southern Sweden have a Temple outside Eslöv, originating as a farm house. She is there now and then, has donated time to improve and att do their website - a LOT - also filming, taking pictures. See http://watsanghabaramee.se/t/ Just before leaving now the residing monk (others visit temporarily, from e.g. Copenhagen) had written a meditation, for the Website. So Yui translated to English, I translated to Swedish, improved the English somewhat and after a few iterations she published it on the site. Anybody can complain, we did what we could.... There are rather many visitors.

2 years since I was flying so I was not quite sure how strict it would be but not too horrible. I have the feeling that when I come with a crutch and gray beard then I am not considered an obvious security hazard....

I took 2 photos out of the window, over the darkening sky of Copenhagen. With the little table tripod one can take different kinds of photos than without.

People flying look rather ordinary... I guess rich and poor looked more different in the good old days. But well, it is different doing long-distance trains and stopping in seedy railway beer holes at night, or Spanish countryside places, where I have stopped overnight. Remember once in old communist Beograd... An old witch picking up people in the railway station and offering them rooms overnight in her rather primitive dwelling. I remember I forgot a jeans jacket there - was I on my way to Israel or back or something???

Ouch, lost a corner of a tooth, heck. I felt a hard cubic millimeter when chewing the crispy bread, now I discovered where it had jumped off.

16.57, 3 cms of beer left then time to find the gate - it might be kilometers off, even thou this is no major airport. When I checked in a Japanese gal speaking Danish told me I was lucky, not too far to go in Heathrow, London, tje same building as where I would arrive.

Caught a Cold, damn.....

I have hardly had a cold this year, have not met a lot of people after all, but NOW... I was out shopping Friday, after my evening nap I started to feel a sore throat! Now Sunday, tomorrow I go - good that Yui packed most of the stuff yesterday, so just making a check today so I have not taken anything I do not need - but the real necessary stuff like the medicines in the little backpack. That, the laptop and some junk food for the waiting in the airports.

I have some shrimp cakes for breakfast, not tried that before. She found a packet in the Asian food shop in Malmö, so I got it now with a sauce of fish sauce, chili and garlic, very tasty! The shrimps smaller than the usual one gets here in Sweden but not quite as small as the jumping shrimps one eats in Thailand, where you have to hunt them with the chopsticks.

Evening, the progress of this cold, ah well, woke up from my nap coughing, immediately Yui wanted help to translate a bit of Buddhism to English and Swedish and I got headache again. Well, she had made a translation to English, her English is ok but up to writing reliigious texts, while I tried to avoid making it sound too Christian. She sent one version to the monk residing in the temple here out in the countryside, and got some suggestions back - he knows English well enough and has been here - 2 years or so.

Going in two days

Saturday morning, we slept late. Then we took a few pictures - I was off shopping yesterday, earphone with mic to bring along, a half-liter water boiler for coffee and noodle water, and a small table tripod for the camera. Always thought I should get one, so we just tested it - works!



I am the one with the spots in the face... When I was to the skin doc, for a yearly checkup after the malign melanom I cut away 2-3 years ago, he checked all spots in the face, nothing threatening, but as I was anyway there, he used the freeze spray to kill them with frost - so once it has healed and fallen off I will look as well as new! Wished I could do the same with the stomach.

So - when we were at the archive Wednesday we were nicely celebrated, the web design company of the family Haglund... The Landsarkivarie talked about this new project - the boss of my old work place that takes care of all old documents from southern Sweden, has the duty to preserve them the next thousand years, and also make them accessible for people who want to study them. And to save on the wear and tear of the original documents - this way to do research and have all of the material online and not only registers of them, as is usual, was considered a bit of a first. Culture personalities, historical researchers, especially those doing research about Linné, and also the present-day representative of the family of the man who had written lots of corrections and additions to the Linné Travel in Southern Sweden, both the book and the notes 250 years old, was there. He had lent the book to the archive for scanning. The following day they wrote about the event in SDS, the biggest daily paper in southern Sweden. http://sydsvenskan.se/skane/article281512.ece

You can find it also in my server http://arqivariet.no-ip.info where lots of other historical documents reside.

The consequences are of course that we will hopefully get more similar jobs in the future - it is Yui's company and I am inofficial consultant, as I am retired because of my bad health. 50 years of diabetes and kidneys on the way to dialysis DOES make my body tired, but as long as the brain has not collapsed, I am allowed to use it, no?

Later in the day - we have packed and double-checked the medicine I have to bring along, More than half the little back-pack only for that - it starts to be worn so should buy a new one, a step bigger, in Bangkok. I am ot gonna put the medicines in the big travel bag - things there I CAN lose, but the other one I want to watch all the time.

Approaching . . .

The sombreness and darkness of All Saint's Day and this season is like a dead carpet all over. Less than three weeks until I go. Just now I have switched computer - I have taken care of the laptop Yui has used the last year, and she has taken the new Windows machine. I just cleared out the laptop, reformatted the disc, put in everything new, and the programs I will need.

I bought it in Bangkok a day before meeting Yui, when I still thought I could afford it... almost two years ago. But it has worked well. She too . . . . Even if she is sort of stressed now, in the top class for Swedish at Komvux, and now they will start to read two courses in parallel, also one in Swedish as a preparation for studies at the Swedish university.

Everything is just about ready now, tickets, visa, will order a travel insurance in Australia for when the insurance belonging to my home insurance, ends after 45 days. On the 20th the last visit to a doc, checkup of my old malign melanome. The following day to my old workplace and THEN it will be super to sit in the plane, first to London and then to Bangkok! A long nice sleep on an Australian plane, landing on the new already infamous Suvarnabhumi airport outside BKK.

My health is hardly perfect, but when was it . . . . First trip to SEAsia in 1975 maybe..., apart from the diabetes. The next time, in 1987, it felt a bit risky as an assortment of problems had started to pop up, but I felt I really HAD to go! It was during my 3 years in Genève. Next time with hesitation, after another 12 years, I realized that either I go or - I never go. My body had stiffened up, joints stiffer, anhyway I went to Indonesia as I had a group of penfriends there. It was fun..... I was doing a bit of web design teaching during that autumn and went to Thailand again that winter. And so it has continued every winter, except when FK, the Governmental Insurance Bureau, stopped me last winter - pure harassment, and I have reported it to the highest Ombudsman - and some weeks ago I finally got a letter that they will investigate.