Obviously only temporary - she has not been home with her family for 2½ years, we have no money to go more than once each this year, I need to go in winter because of my rotten body, see last post, and then she got no time. Yui has not got "accepted" yet to the university course, too early, but she has many more points for it than needed, and all the necessary prerequisites so no risk she will not get it. And then she will be busy from September 1st and the coming 3 years, will hardly see when I pop off in the most rotten weather, probably around mid-December, for 3 months.
Yui took Austrian, so I got a quick call from Vienna, before she jumped on the big plane, taking her to Bangkok in 10 hours, so she is on the plane now. Once in BKK she will take taxi to some node point at the outskirts of BKK, where her brother will drive from the home village and pick her up with his pickup truck. He is not experienced in driving in BKK or to the airport, so that is easier. Taxis are still cheap in most places of Thailand (except out of my jungle island, Samui.....) so in BKK one can go for an hour for 100B or so. From the new airport, ah well, 3-400 Baht if one forces the guy to switch on the taxi meter, a must.
She has speculated forth and back, she wants to spend half the month in her home village with family, and half in BKK with friends and with shopping. but as we all know, things change from day to day, probably also it will end with a full minibus of villagers going to the airport with her in the end with her (i.e. me) paying a few thousand bath for the trip, as it is a sensation for all of them to see this new big place. It IS a big jump from village to Suvarnabhumi airport!
Being retired, feeling the wet nose of death on my neck, obviously creates all kinds of feelings. I got my particular brand of religion - you know, these etheral thoughts in all human beings including those who consider it a weakness to hope there is something stronger and smarter than themselves. I often wonder if I have created something good with my life - I can only hope so. I think I am considered a positive person, with my kind of sharp logic. I have not been able to do my biological duty of creating 2.1 babies, so I have to do things some other way. There are a million religious and philosophical sayings and I hope that some suit me. Did I spread some wisdom? Did I acquire enough to spread? I am not to say.
I grew up in the Pentecostal Church, with its advantages and limitations, I went to Israel the first time in 1971 and started to acquire another kind of understandings among intelligent and beautiful people there. I learned a lot during more than a dozen trips there, up to 5 months each, in the seventies-eighties, just a few occasional visits after that.
My first trip to Southeast Asia back in 1975, as a young student - sigh..... A real pity I did not start writing a proper diary then! I wrote tons of post cards to friends and family with the smallest possible handwriting, not preserved. In spite of having diabetes since 9, my mother, the typical hen mother, was never worried about my travels, more like she expected it. OK, I was well grounded , my father loved italy and loved to drive there with the family during the summer holidays. 1955, 1958, 1962, 1965, 1966-68 with an old caravan. if I remember right. We lived in Osby during those years when I grew up. I just now have such a clear memory when we tanked the car, with the caravan behind, at one of the petrol stations there, before driving south, before everyone had been south on the charter trips. Before Spies filled old propeller planes with people down to Mallorca end of the sixties....... Remember in 1970 or so, as a new university student I popped off with one of those planes to Mallorca, 4 hours sounding like an old bus, think it was 1972, after a successful exam.
A lot in a human life after all! In some aspects people have compared me with my grandpa on my mother's side - he loved books even thou he had no formal education. Farmer, son of farmers, up in central Sweden in the forest. He had never travelled, once or twice he came down to us in southern Sweden, what I remember from that is that he loved eating pig feet! I have acquired that taste, scaring off the crowd here :) If I remember right one had to put the feet first in very salty water for 3 days, then boil.
I actually have a plate here beside me......
Bedtime.
