Even though my younger brother retired to his bedroom around 11:44 p.m. last evening and I was able to get early access to my computer to try and get some work done, I still never managed to get back to bed until just about 5 a.m.
However, part of what kept me up was finalizing and finally publishing the post I had been working on for darned near a month at my hosted website My Retirement Dream: Isan Culture.
Apparently it contains well over 32,000 words, if that means much to anyone.
Isan or Isaan is of course the Northeastern area of Thailand, and is home to nearly a third of Thailand's population ─ the poorest of the lot, and who are largely farmers. My wife is from there, born and raised. Her two sons were also born there, but they came here to Canada when one was maybe 14 and the other 11 years old.
I guess I cannot deny that in bringing my wife here to Canada in May 2006, I sacrificed a dream I had developed that was to have seen me spending half of each of my retirement years living over there. By the time I finally did retire in early April 2011, it was impossible for me to even be able to afford to visit Thailand ever again. I was last there in May / June 2005 to marry my then fiancée, but it was almost a year before she was able to come to Canada.
She had never before left her country ─ not even to visit neighbouring Laos (she lived in Udon Thani province, and just a 15-minute drive at most to Udon Thani city). Consequently, it was supposed to be a 'testing of the waters' when she came here to see if she could adapt to the West.
Well, so much for that. She soon had more friends ─ mostly other Thai and Lao immigrants ─ than I ever had in my entire life. And after one unsuccessful bid to get Immigration Canada to grant her two sons visas to come here in 2007, we were successful in 2008.
And that was it. I continued being a working man until retirement in early April 2011 as I said, but have been far too deep into debt to ever seriously hope to do any travelling to her country again, let alone to spend any time living there.
Plus, now that I am 71 years old, and since it has been 15¾ years since I was last in Thailand, I am reaching the point where I have largely lost the adventurous spirit I had when I was back in my mid-50s. Even if I was to win a veritable fortune to rid me of all of my debts, I would probably want to spend as much as a year undergoing serious physical training in order to ensure that I was capable of handling myself if such ever became necessary.
Time is definitely against me. I have just about lost all desire and confidence to be starting a new life abroad.
My two stepsons are now 26 and 23 years old; and even though they and their mother freely still speak Thai to one another, the younger lad has a considerably poorer Thai vocabulary that necessitates that the others employ lots of English terms. Nor can he read Thai any longer.
So even though he can speak the language without an obvious accent to other Thai ears, it soon enough becomes apparent to them that he has a limited grasp of his native tongue.
The lads of course still have a grandmother and aunts, uncles, and cousins back there whom they love seeing, but neither of the brothers wants to live there anymore. All of their closest friends ─ and even some past girlfriends ─ are Canadians. Both of them have driver's licences. And they have been Canadian citizens since September 2013.
They also well know that they could never earn anything like they can here in Canada.
And it's all because I met their mother in late February 2003 on my first visit to Thailand, then returned there in 2004 to become engaged to her, and then finally made a third trip there in 2005 to marry her.
I had no idea at the time that doing so would annihilate my newfound dream of one day having a life over there, spending half of each of my retirement years living over there. Nor had I ever had any debts until becoming involved with Thailand.
But this is encroaching into a subject area that I have no desire to dwell in, so I am going to drop further discussion about any of this part of my life in this post.
The snowfall that we received over the weekend ─ a mere three or so inches despite snowing for so many hours ─ has now been reduced to half the depth it had enjoyed. We've had some very light rain overnight, and above-freezing temperatures overnight as well.
I anticipate that by Wednesday, any blanketing of snow will be lost ─ we will just have a patchwork of the stuff.
My morning today officially began around 8:32 a.m., but I did not go downstairs for a black unsweetened coffee and to join my brother at the T.V. until nearly 10 a.m. After I had, I used our Android TV Box to begin playing videos I had previous downloaded onto a USB Flash drive, most of which related to the COVID-19 scamdemic / plandemic / casedemic.
Unfortunately, the fourth of them proved to be the last of the morning. It was perhaps 40 minutes long, and consisted of a young woman rather slowly and impassionately detailing website after website that she felt were surely of interest to people interested in this sort of information.
Further detracting from the presentation was that she had uploaded the video back in November, so when my brother finally realized this, he blew it off around 11:40 a.m. and went upstairs to his bedroom in a huff to seek some early bed rest to restore him for his afternoon away to end up drinking somewhere.
I think there were barely more than 10 minutes remaining to the video at that point, so I suffered through the remainder of it, and then I also sought a nap. I actually had mine, and emerged from my bedroom ahead of my brother from his own.
By then, he was in his usual mood. However, he wasted no time readying himself to leave into the rather wet day.
His earlier impatience meant that we never had an opportunity to watch an episode of one of the T.V. shows that we follow in common ─ I had intended to tune one in as soon as the boring video had completed.
Oh, well!
After his departure, I had a wee bit of exercise, and then I had my day's first meal. As is typical, that resulted in me needing to lie down to help facilitate its assimilation, and I managed to slip into another nap.
Upon rising from that, I was soon at work on this post.
I am feeling obligated to phone Sandra W., a ladyfriend of my old friend William G. whom I have not seen in over two decades. He is presently spending his final years in a full-time care facility over on Vancouver Island. Sandy manages to keep in touch with him, so I have her as my sole means of learning anything about Bill.
However, she has always been single and lives alone. As a result, she can prove a nuisance because she has so much time on her hands that she will inundate anyone with her attention if given that opportunity.
I like her well enough, but I am not so bored as to need to be in touch with her on a daily basis like she would enforce if I was willing to yield to her. Consequently, I ignore her phone calls and texts or there would never be any peace from her.
She included this photo of herself in a text of a week or two ago ─ the photo was apparently taken on November 22, 2019 if its metadata is correct:
The poor soul does mean well, but one chap reportedly got so annoyed with her that he imposed a restraining order on her ─ twice, I think. She just does not understand what a nuisance she can be if given the chance. And so I choose not to give it.
It is better to just ignore her calls and texts, harsh as that might seem.
However, I have not spoken with her in well over a month, so I am considering biting the bullet and returning a call that she made today. First, though, I want to have a little further exercise.
It is already just after 6 p.m., so I am going to halt further blogging for today.
Well darn! My wife just arrived home ─ she hasn't been home since she left late Friday morning to go to work (such has become our sorry marriage). I won't be phoning Sandy, and maybe not even exercising, but I still must stop blogging for today regardless.
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