Oh, January 2021. How we looked forward to you. How we hoped that the New Year would bring new beginnings and, finally, hope for the future following the Year that Would Not End. But 2020 still has a firm grasp on us all. It’s not over yet and the terrible events of last year linger. In many cases, the start of 2021 has been worse than the worst that came before. Is anybody looking forward to 2022 yet?
Here in Thailand, schools were shuttered just before Christmas so that we had some semblance of a “real” New Year holiday rather than the three-day break that has been the norm. We returned to teaching our classes on the 4th of January and I spent the next three days having conversations with students about what they did on their “COVID Holidays”.
New Year, New Mask. This one seemed appropriate until they closed the school again after three days of in-person classes. 
The students in this class made paired role-plays about what they did over the late December-early January holiday. 
Amazing! All of the students were wearing masks. At least until the photo was taken. 
This is one of several classes where the students either “hide” in the bathrooms or outside rather than attending. Nobody (except me!) seems to care…. 
The students who performed their self-written role-plays really seemed to enjoy it. They were few and far between as many refused outright to do the assignment. 
This class seems to be working but most were doing Thai homework upon closer inspection.
Alas, there continued to be ever-worsening outbreaks elsewhere in Thailand and late that Wednesday afternoon, all Phuket schools were ordered to close until 25 January; Bangkok and other locations closed until 1 February.
Our school was closed only to students. Teachers were required to make their ways to the campus on Thursday and Friday to prepare for what became 10 days of ill-thought-out online teaching. The school demanded hour-by-hour lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations and video content uploaded to our shared Google Drive by Friday afternoon (later extended to Sunday evening); many of our teachers were wholly unprepared for the learning curve needed to do these on such short notice.
We were given our revised class schedules just at quitting time that Friday afternoon but were given completely revised schedules on Monday morning, less than an hour prior to our first classes. Many of my individual classes were combined into huge “super-classes” of 90 and more students, a few of those in two-hour blocks and none of which matched the lesson plans, presentations, and videos I’d spent the weekend laboring over.
We were required to do our online teaching inside of the school which overwhelmed the wi-fi and maxed-out our own mobile plans as the online platform we were required to use increased data transfer with each additional person (student) who joined. My “super-classes” failed as the platform shut off the presenter’s (teacher’s) microphone when more than 49 people were on the call and the audio from my videos and PowerPoints could not be shared online. There were so many technical issues that many of the Thai teachers stopped doing their classes after the first couple of days; unfortunately, the foreign teachers did not have that option.
Many of the students used the platform to chat with their friends as they were all stuck in their homes. We could not mute their microphones so several classes simply talked to each other in Thai; other classes used the chat boxes to type either in Thai or use profanity in English. During the entire process, school administrators (and a few visiting VIP’s) would stop by in our classrooms and film us “teaching”; I was happy once I found a pair of headphones that worked so the visitors could not hear the students — they just heard me “teaching” unless they tuned-in to my broadcasts. Fortunately, not many did.
My second day of teaching online featured a U.S. flag backdrop and a Kansas City Chiefs flag on the side. I ditched those by the third or fourth day. 
During the first couple of days, I connected using my tablet which was also my main camera and content source while my mobile on the tripod provided a secondary camera. I did not use headphones until late that first week. 
Got my old headphones to work and began using my laptop for the camera by Thursday or Friday of online week 1. But the microphone stopped working so my tablet provided my audio and screen-shared presentations, videos, and whiteboard. The phone remained as the source for the internet connection and additional camera (three on me!). 
This was our last day of online teaching as the school decided late on Tuesday to allow the students to return on Thursday. Wednesday that week was spent getting ready for their return.
Attendance dwindled by the start of the second week — one of my classes went from 87 the week before to just 12 on the last day, all of whom logged-in and then went to go eat or sleep as they were completely silent and nobody responded to anything at all (including the “goodbye class” at the end). A dismal failure in all respects.
The students were allowed to return to school on Thursday and, if anything, they were even more ill-behaved than before. We also went to six-day weeks with the Saturday schedules simply repeating our line-ups for Monday. Although attendance is presumably mandatory, I’m lucky if half of the rostered students show up to the Saturday lessons. Those that are there are, for the most part, totally uninterested in doing anything related to learning or studying.
Here they come! Students are back in school. As bad as the online experience was, it was kind of nice being at school when it was as quiet as a tomb! 
Most of the older students pretty much refuse to wear masks now. They feel that since they can come back to school, any “danger” is over. How wrong they are…. 
All students and teachers must go through temperature scanning before being admitted. Although this was in place before, now they actually check. But all they look for is high temperatures. The thermometers are rarely calibrated properly and often give readings between 34 and 35.5 which is TOO LOW!! 
A rare occasion when the majority of the students are actually either sitting in their seats or at least are NEAR them. The Thai teachers have problems with this lot as well, so it’s not just me. 
A Saturday morning assembly. There are supposed to be around 60 students in this group (M4) but about 20 showed up. 
This view is usually jam-packed full of students. I think about one-third of the student population attended the first Saturday of classes. A number of teachers were also absent. 
I have 46 students on my role-sheet for this class. I had 11 on this day, most of whom wanted to eat or sleep. 
Thursday is red-shirt day for the students…. 
I always wear my Kansas City Chiefs face masks on Friday as it is “Red Friday” back home….. 
Saturday class in M4/1. Many of the students were making nam prik (spicy dipping sauces) to eat with limes while a sizeable portion of the boys were playing ROV games and refused to put their mobile phones into their desks. 
I did have a few students up front who participated in actual coursework (a review of the upcoming Mid-Term Exams). 
These girls were very proud that they took good notes on the vocabulary for their exams. 
Full moon over Thalang Road on my way to school early Saturday morning.
All of this has left me with very little time for any non-school endeavors but I try. Most of my daily reading has been between classes while sitting in the foreign teachers’ office and I managed to finish three books (two novels and one WWII historical work) in January. I wrote just over twenty articles for Philatelic Pursuits and one for this blog (the half-finished “Phuket Walkabout”); I did create a few stamp schedule pages for the stamp site as well.
My chief “free time” activity has revolved around stamps as I begin a new focus in my collections. It is actually a return to the very beginning of my philatelic pursuits as a youngster of 9 or 10 years old living in north-central Tennessee. I’d been given my mother’s childhood stamp album as a gift — a Scott Modern which was a very basic worldwide album. From it, I learned a lot about geography and history as portrayed on stamps up to the Second World War and those are the stamps that I most appreciate up to the present day.
I lost the majority of my earlier stamp collections when I moved to Thailand in 2005 but have since obtained quite a few stamps, a mix of classics and modern issues with a focus on Siam/Thailand. My purchases have been housed in a variety of cheap stock books (most of which I can buy locally for around USD $3 apiece) but I longed for a proper album. Over the years, I have dabbled in creating my own album pages (which recently got a totally unexpected mention (complete with images) in The American Philatelist). These are housed in locally-purchased binders (and it is difficult to find one with three rings or more — most are awful two-post varieties).
My dream album for many years has been the Scott International album, specifically Part I covering the first century of philately (1840-1940). Almost every week for about five or six years, I spent time on eBay looking for the “perfect” Part I. Price of the album was, of course, a major factor as was shipping and import charges (which often came to much more than the album cost itself). I did not care if there were already stamps in the album or not as long as the pages were clean and in good condition. By the way, the current cost of a two-volume Part I directly from the publisher, including all the pages, binders and (I believe) slipcases is around USD $750 which is way above my budget on a teacher’s salary.
I love receiving a package covered in postage stamps. Although I cannot exactly soak these off, the box certainly looks nice propped up on my desk. 
My Scott International Postage Stamp Album Part I (1840-1940). That 73-year-old binder sure looks beautiful! (Just a small ding at the top….) 
And look at how WHITE that title page is! All of the pages in this huge album look just as nice other than a few hinge remnants or thins from (pricy) stamps that had been removed prior to my buying it. 
This is a BIG album…. 
Ten days later, Part II (1941-1949) arrived which nicely gets me through the World War II years. I love military occupied territories as stamp collecting areas. 
This was one very heavy box! The two French albums were on top (one of which I got for just US 99 cents!) with the Scott Part II on the bottom. 
I have long been interested in the beautifully engraved stamps of France from the mid-twentieth century and beyond and stumbled across this pair of albums by accident. One came with around 50 MNH stamps in mounts for around USD 25 while the other was completely unused for USD 99 cents! There are detailed write-ups for each stamp issue. I would like to find more volumes of this particular set. 
My Scott International Part II was also very reasonably priced from the same dealer. 
Again, very white pages considering its age (hopefully, they won’t brown from the tropical environment). This album has about 50 mint stamps in mounts (very few duplicates from what I already own!). Looking forward to populating this one as well. 
I was surprised to see that the Part I is shorter than the Part II. Oh, well….. But my stamp shelves are starting to look very nice indeed.
Well, I finally found the perfect combination I was seeking just after Christmas — a one-volume 1947 edition of the Part I album, bound rather than loose leaf, with the binder in nearly immaculate condition (one small ding on the front cover at the top) and pages in pristine condition other than the stray thin from removed stamps. It came populated with “several hundred” stamps (I am still inventorying those) and the total price including shipping and import fees was less than USD $200. Not long after I paid for that, I found a Part II (covering 1941-1949) for even less so I ordered that as well along with a pair of historical albums for France (covering 1947 through 1962). I just love how my bookshelves look with these albums on them (all of which arrived quite quickly).
A fair amount of my downtime each evening and on my Sundays has been spent inventorying the stamps that were already in the albums and adding ones I had in my collection of stock books. I am going to need to order more hinges and plastic mounts pretty soon. Since the Part I album is bound, I cannot remove the pages to scan them (something I have done with every stamp in my collection over the past decade) so I am on the lookout for a hand-held scanner that I can pass over the pages or individual stamps. It is my desire to create PDF’s of these albums that I can annotate with values and catalogue numbers, for example, as I do not like to write on my album pages. Perhaps, someday, I will put these album pages online similar to the collections of Antonius Ra or Dr. Cheng Chang.
I’d been wanting to try John Donut on Thalang Road for a long time. They recently moved from behind the Always Summer Ice Cream shop to the front of China Inn Restaurant. 
These are awesome donuts, a bit pricy but worth every baht! 
I was finally able to buy a few more Thai stamps late in the month but still cannot go into the main post office…. 
JBL Go2 Bluetooth speaker bought to use in my classrooms. I want to start projecting images onto the walls in those GEP classes where there are not built-in projectors or screens (the whiteboards are riddled with holes but that’s okay.). 
An envelope from the UK containing old Italian stamps has a COVID-themed slogan cancellation. 
A few old Italian stamps for my new album. 
Final goodie…. A mini-projector for use in my classrooms in a last-ditch attempt to get the students halfway interested. 
I am very impressed with the quality output by something so small — it is even smaller than my mobile phone!
All in all, there isn’t really much more to report on for January. I did just receive a mini-projector which I intend to use in my classrooms and the quality of the video it outputs is really quite amazing (using DLP rather than LCD in its projections up to 4K). It arrived just in time for the Super Bowl as well so (hopefully!) we can watch the game next Monday morning in the teachers’ office (my hometown Kansas City Chiefs are in it for the second year in a row after a 50-year drought, going against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
I really hope that February proves to be a better month than January. The only real high-points of this first month of 2021 for me were receiving my new stamp albums and a bit of electronics. Oh, and hearing Amanda Gorman’s wonderful and inspirational speech. What a talented young woman!
Mark Joseph Jochim 