Checkered Lounge Pants

Hello to whomever is out there a week before christmas. And happy birthday to mother. I don't know if she ever tracked down my blog writings after her computer geek ofover 60 years went on to the big hard drive in the sky. But I'll cover all the bases. Returned from Myranmar on Saturday. Two friends and I drove up to Mae Sai and crossed over into Myanmar at Tachilek. Tachileik was a border crossing used in the opium trade from the Golden Triangle, and was the home of the drug lord Khun Sa. On 24 March 2011 a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the region very close to Tachileik. It caused some damage as far away as Chiang Mai. On 24 March 2012, a bomb wounded 2 people at the Regina Hotel golf course in Tachileik, followed by a second bomb an hour that exploded later. Now let me tell you about our crossing. The street vendors are on you like flocking buzzards when you clear Myanmar immigration selling you everything from cigarettes to knock offs and ....hmmmm well lets keep

Two friends driving to Burma this week. Was not planning to go but that would solve my visa extension with the border crossing into the northern country. It will be nice to go back to Chiang Mai and see the old city and Doi Suthep temple on the mountain. We will have to drive through Chiang Rai and I have never been there. I love a good adventure. Watch for pictures on Facebook. Ill be in touch.

Hello from the land of red shirts and yellow shirts. Perhaps you've seen media reports of demonstrations in Thailand. I have gotten several messages of the stability in my winter home. The news refers to different factions as red shirts and yellow shirts initially the dispute was sparked by a blanket amnesty bill that has since been abandoned. Simply explained, the yellow shirts are Thai version of republican Tea Party (tea-baggers) and the red shirts are the Thai version of working middle class voters (the general electorate). The general population (red shirts) elected the present day government in a democratic fashion and the tea baggers (yellow shirts) want an appointed fascist model government to nullify the existing democracy. As for my exposure to date, I am in east Thailand and the demonstrations are in Bangkok. So far they have not surfaced here. My biggest issue to datehas been miscalculating exchange and short changing my bar tab. Lol. Be assured I will stay out of ha

Just a note while hanging out at the condo today. It's Friday and its been a full week. Monday saw my first Thai massage since arriving two weeks ago. Toronto Gerry got into the beach town and call to get together. We got some of the expats together and met for dinner. Tuesday my roommate had her second day off this month and we went to the masseurs masseuses and got a two hour traditional Thai massage. Now that was intense. Ning really enjoyed sharing the two hours with me. I was amazed at how she gets twisted up like a pretzel. Remind me next time to tone it down to a medium massage as in soft medium or strong. Wednesday was a chillaxn day. Thursday I hiked my ass off in the am and beached away the afternoon and captured the sunset. Today I saw Ning off to spend the weekend at her home village with her mother and her kids. Just one quick story before I go. I overheard a Thai person at our coffee shop, the other day, ask my Canadian buddy about snow. He tried to explain snow to

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-november-14-2013/cracked News services all over Asia are awash with Canadian mayor rob ford from Toronto. I always like seeing Canadian news coverage while wintering in Asia regardless do the context or pretext. Expats from all over the English speaking countries are having a field day here with the crack smoking, alcohol soaked, obesely bloated, ill mannered, abusively vulgar, Toronto elected and poll rising politician. I quite frankly, take some pride in having one of the most colorful media clips riding the networks of Al Jazeera, news Asia, BBC and Bloomberg just to name a few. Canada news rarely makes one of the networks here in Thailand, let alone the entire gamut. The stark reality of the real drama did not crystallize until I read a Facebook post from a law professor analyzing the same allegations, no wait, confessed infractions in the workplace. "This is really a point I want my students to grasp – we hold politicians to a much l

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjSHazjrWg Hi there. Just rode the train for three days and two nights and arrived in Vancouver about a day late. My good fortune to have some gracious union colleagues who bumped me up to first class and a bedroom. It was a long but very peaceful and reflective ride (hence the link for the heading). Great views and epic pictures for the winter album. I have an artist friend who agreed to do a collection of sunsets that ill catalogue. Got decent cell phone signals so I chatted most of the evenings away. Going to miss those chats but now it's on to quick visits in Vancouver with friends and some stellar fish and chips at Mobey Dicks. I fly to Bangkok via Shanghai. Beaches await.  Peace out. Ill be in touch.

Hi from Winnipeg. Its been a great visit overall. Met many many of the old friends and rekindled long lost friendships as well. The high school reunion was a treat. I was reluctantly anticipating the 50th reunion just because...well who is attractively or interestingly appealing after 50 years. Certainly not me. The evening was a blast however when several acquaintances were reconnected at the pub and reminisced the night away. The best surprise was grammas collection of pictures of my granddaughter Haley in the First Nations community of Keeseekoowenin. She was born on my birthday in 2005. I had talked to her a few times last winter from Thailand but the lines had been lost. I was thrilled to see her pictures and very glad my mom continued her usual tenacity to persevere. My usual family tradition of huddling with my immediate family at the local latte junction was not to be this trip. Family conflicts are invasive and intrusive but a reality. It saddens my heart but this is my

Hi there. Just writing a blog note while riding the rails in northern Ontario. I frantically worked through a checklist to shut the house down for the winter and got a ride to just make my train. I have three weeks planned in Winnipeg with family and friends. I have a school reunion I will attend. It will be a good opportunity to catch up with long lost friends. I'm hoping for good weather and my brother lending me his bike once again. Winnipeg has become very bike friendly and I miss my trails I frequent back home already.  Then it's off to Vancouver to fly to Asia. This is my third winter wandering in Southeast Asia. It has become a welcoming thrilling adventure from the frightening anticipation of the first landing in foreign lands in 2011. The skeptical meeting of strangers has been replaced with the excited expectation of smiling reunions of friends, both traveling and local and discovering spectacular beaches. May Buddha bless us all this winter with good fortune, good

St. Andrews. The home of golf. A parcel was waiting for me when I got home from Boston. It was a promise kept from a lady I met on the BC bound via rail train last fall. When we parted company at the final destination she promised to send me a golf shirt from her home town in Scotland. Well she kept her promise and I am the proud owner of a shirt and a towel from the home of golf.  I've been he a couple weeks but the time to board my flight to Thailand is drawing near. Visa is being processed and hope to be on my way witha stop in Winnipeg for a reunion in a couple weeks. It was a great summer but this one screamed by with the stay in New England. I hope the winter flys as quick on the beaches in Thailand.  I'll be in touch. 

Lulu at Martha s Vineyard Summertime and the living is easy. Rabbits are jumping and the grass Is high. That is the verse that stomped through my mind as I gas up to drive home from Boston. Summer is all done and it seems to have flown by. I thought it would never end some days and this stage seemed so far away when I drove out in June. A few weekends in Mew Hampshire's cottage country, drive to Cape Cod and a ferry ride to Martha's Vineyard and endless hours at the beaches spent with the kids. It was a good summer.  The Next stage is getting ready to winter in Asia. Applying for the Thai visa and making my way to Vancouver for the Air China flight will fill up the rest of September.  I'll be in touch.

As the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians once again threatens to intensify, the international community has called on both sides to come together and engage in peace talks. On Wednesday, leaders from both sides will meet face-to-face in Jerusalem for the first time in five years, to discuss the terms of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the drawing of a secure border between the two nations, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Ahead of these meetings,  The Onion  would like to firmly and categorically urge both Israelis and Palestinians to stand tall and steadfastly refuse to give up so much as a single inch during the negotiations. Israelis and Palestinians, you must accept nothing short of total victory against those who threaten your religion and way of life. Sacrificing just one of your ideals would at this point be tantamount to complete and utter failure. If a settlement is built, you must attack it. If a settlement is attacked, you must rebuild it.

A theory I adopted on minimizing tasks to make goals achievable: “...it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop--and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it. You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else. That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be. And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you are

It's a rainy Friday and the birthday blitz has come and gone. Leo's abound in this house and throughout the friends and family. We had three last week and two more the months prior, in this house alone. Speaking of months prior, July was a brute on my karma. Lost glasses, terminal iPhone mishap, lost email, sporadic wifi hotspots, mechanical breakdown, lousy weekend weather (everyones bad), wrong turns, overcooking, undercooking, heat-waves, enhanced hangovers (my bad), closed beaches and crowing roosters (rural campgrounds). August has been much more compassionate, so far. i ask that Buddha keeps it so. Prayers and good karma to my longtime buddy and close friend John Kuban and his wife Charlotte. Spinal surgery is scheduled this weekl and may he be back up and on his hawg before long. May the winds blow their strength into you both, and the storms their energy. I'll be in touch.

Blog Good morning from Boston's north shore. It's been almost 6 weeks since I pulled in the driveway. It seems like yesterday until I begin recalling the events. Seconds into that flashback and the snapshot seems to becomes a photo journal log. Like now for instance my quiet blog moment out on the back-porch has become a litany of self-answered questions and inquisitions by my 4 year old granddaughter once she discovered I was self-sequestered out in the backyard. movie day Today is a beach day. We have had camping weekends, ocean days, park days, McDonald days(best wifi for d/l movies and the Daily show), dunking donut runs, and a lot of naps(kids and mine), shuttles, snax, juice boxes, sippy cups, and that's just baby's itinerary. The grandson is not quite so complicated. Northshore league baseball games, soccer camp Monday to Thursday at the parks rec and Canabie Lake amusement park. Anyhow, where was I? O ya, blogging. The days have flown into weeks, wh

Once again we loaded up the vehicles with tents, sleeping bags, firewood and ice laden coolers for the weekend drive up to New Hampshire brave the wilds of the New England cottage country. Chatting with friends back home and they hope for a week on eastern seaboard and I suggested a weekend down at Martha's Vineyard later this month. Three weeks plus since I drove to Boston and a weekend sans overtired disobedience is appealing about now. My sons rearing skills mirror his grandparental generation but it seems effective as long as the consistency is unbroken and that chain disconnects regularly in Papubs presence.  My heart is heavy tonight as my cousin has a Kidney transplant this week. He has been diligently going through the medical tests for slmost a year that accompany an organ transplant along with his donor sister. It brought me to tears when he called the day before his admittance to the hospital and, with voice cracking full of emotion, told me his wife of over35 years of

Why are Canada's Trains Vulnerable? Good Old Capitalist Cost-Cutting Leo Panitch The fireball in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, flashed around the world last week as a very hot news item. Thirty-five people are now confirmed to have been killed, with 15 more still missing and presumed dead, as a result of the explosions of crude oil carried by the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway's runaway freight train. When Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper quickly showed up to offer his condolences, this also made international news. What has not received quite as much international attention as it has here in Canada, is what has since been revealed about Transport Canada, the federal government regulator of the railway industry which decided only last year to allow MM&A to run each train with only one engineer. Amidst all the apportioning of blame -- and there is plenty enough to go around -- our sober attention must also turn to what this appalling incident, like the terrible Ba

http://www.cbc.ca/q/mobile/touch/2013/07/08/climate-change-isnt-cool-jians-essay/

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/news-video/20130707-lac-explosion-tictocmp4/article13058248/?service=mobile

Hi from Ayers Lake in New Hampshire . Drove to Boston a week ago and after a week if refreshing my old feeble memory of the neighborhood, the kids loaded me and the granddaughter up in two cars and we went camping. The campground was waterlogged from earlier rains but the kids won't deter a camping trip for any reason short of a climactic calamity. They set up the campsite while I backtracked to town and hit up the Lowes for fire starter to torch the trunk load of firewood we carried with us. Within 30 minutes we were sitting around a howling campfire sipping campers specials. Morning came quickly and baby and i mustered a bathroom recon and the campfire was quickly rescued from obscurity before the mystery of a morning coffee was addressed. Once the campers fully wakened a breakfast run was orchestrated followed by a stop at the local general store to replenish stocks if unique country fare. The weather did nothing to salvage a lakeside camp-spot and we bugged out and headed b

Bonne fête à tout les citoyens Canadien francophone et anglophone de la côte est de l'antlantique à la côte ouest pacifique :)

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I got a call the other day from my friend and neighbor Ted. He was tearfully telling me that an old friend of ours had been diagnosed with a tumor. I asked toward a helping hand and was suggested I offer some graces to send good karma their way. Alas it was not meant to be. Burial and wake were soon followed.  "Somewhere out there beyond Death's dark door--we who were friends will be friends once more. We who in fellowship, walked this way--we shall go on to a brighter day...  We shall discover the greater joy: the gold of true friendship without alloy... We shall unravel the tangled skein. You who have fetched--you will fetch again." Rest in peace Whiskey dog.  I'll be in touch .

New complaints have been leveled in court against Ken Muzik, a Winnipeg financial adviser who was previously reprimanded for unsuitable investing. Copyright 2009 CBC All Rights Reserved ________________________________________________________________________ This story, forwarded to you by bg@gmail.com, appears on http://www.cbc.ca at the following URL: http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/manitoba/story/2013/05/31/mb-muzik-financial-adviser-lawsuit.html

Thanks for the friendship, thank you for the smile. Thanks for the love you showed even though it wa

Home at last. Weather is still cool but nothing like out West. Man o man that was some kinda train ride through the prairies. The rail traffic actually lost a passenger train in the Saskatchewan storms and a rail freight train got stuck and the crew had to seek refuge at a nearby farm. Mark my word, Manitoba gonna git a flood this year almost like the one in 97. Went to London last weekend and played air-soft war games with some friends. I was hesitant to join the camouflaged, radio-equipped  armed to the teeth wargamers but it was fun. I told my brother Douglas about dodging bullets in the bush instead of looking for my lost golf balls and he replied, “Wow, from Arnold Palmer to Rambo.” LOL. Just got the cottage all supplied for the summer with the necessities like land line  satellite, and added some new furniture that had been missing. Got a few appointments to make and keep but those are next week. I asked my friend Val to set up my post winter travelling medical and s

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Home soil feels good. Timmies was the first stop after clearing customs.  I spent a sunny week at Gerry's overcoming the time change. Visited friends in Whiterock. Its been a good week but train day is today and Winnipeg bound through the snow storms of the Canadian prairies.  Ill be in touch.

Last day before journey home. Last month seemed like a long ways but the think went by like a bulldozer. Close out with condo lady tomorrow and bus to Bangkok for air china flight to Shanghai. Be on the Gars couch in 48 hours as the crow flys. Ill be in touch.

Hello there. Well, as sunsets on my winter in Asia,  two weeks and the winter holiday will be done.  Four months in Asia was a good winter. I learned a lot about the cultures, I met some old friends from last year and made some new ones this year, and tired of some trends and discovered some new trends, and saw some new cities and countries and still love Thailand the best. Most friends have gone but a few remain. Seattle John only stayed a few weeks, Winnipeg Dennis left last month, English Clive left last week, and Toronto Gerry flew to Australia with family yesterday (great to meet his daughter, Danny, a fellow people watcher), but Seattle Sam is still here and Toronto Joe (although he has been absent in the café for a week now). There were local friendships as well, for the most part, like Pook at the beach, my favourite dentist in the world and his staff, the condo lady Aire,  Mama at the café and Gift at the massage parlour and  a few others but, hey, this is Thailand and t

I expected to be uneventful this week after Dennis flew home and beach buddy took family to Rayong but its Thailand . Puter crashed and tech diagnosed toasted hard drive had to be replaced. Parking violations had my license confiscated pending fines. Paid fines and recovered license and botr (back on the road). Beach turned into Peyton place when English friend flirted and dated vendor lady. I began to get homesick symptoms till my exsisterinlaw sent me winter MB pictures. Remedied that quick. Thailand for 6 more weeks. I called Kevin and they re having major blizzard in Boston. I called long lost granddaughter Haley a few weeks back and was asked to call again. It was nice to talk to here. It's been almost5 years. Talk to her tomorrow. I'll be in touch.

Here are some pictures from the week I spent in Laos. I went on the trip with 2 friends, a married couple, Gerry and Val.  It took 2 days to drive to the Thai-Laos border. Val is Chinese Laos and grew up a small village named Thukhet and after spending a few days with her family and motorbiking around the mountainous countryside, we hopped a bus and went to the capital city Vientiane.  I call it a trip but it was really more of an adventure. Laos was a french colony in the mid-century, so there was many french influences assimilated into the Asian culture such as;  the language,  the architecture (notice the Arc de Triumphe resemblance),   pastry...Yummy. . The pics, in the Laos spirit of no particular order, include  the Mekong River,  a traditional Laos bowl of noodles as a meal,  a Tuuk Tuuk women planting rice in a rice paddy,  Laos massage lady  temple gate with traffic (where is the rickshas??) monks The adjective most often applied to Laos is

Happy New Year. I wanted to do a blog post today's last day of the year, but the internet is down in the area. It was a good Xmas week outside of being away from family and friends. I had turkey on Xmas and Santa treated me to something special with a Thailand twist for Xmas. The beach has been fairly scenic and hot hot. I have ventured much further into the Thai cuisine and culture from last year with the help and guidance of refreshed friendships from last year. Not all experiences have been delightful but someone once told me, “Asia is like swimming in the waves, you can dive into the wave and swim out the other side, or you can let the wave knock you down”. Some aspects of the Thai tourist culture are still morally condemnatory for me to understand compared with many travellers, but, as they say here, “this is a Buddhist country and as such, Buddha is tolerant and forgiving”. With thanks to Buddha and Santa, I will persevere. LOL I dont know what New Years h