Welcome to Sunday Summary, the meme in which I attempt to summarize the week that came before.
The good news is that my dear Kanchana is back firmly in the Land of the Living following a prolonged illness. In fact, it has been a whirlwind week as we both got caught up on things and she is preparing to start a new job in a distant city at the start of February. This means another round of long-distance romance but we aim to reunite once I finish the school year (some time in March — they never seem to know the exact date!) and we are already planning a significant celebration of her birthday in April which coincides with Songkran, the Thai New Year.
As I write this, it is nearing midnight Sunday (I spent most of the evening creating flashcards and other materials for the upcoming school week) and I may “Publish” the article to lock in the date-stamp (haven’t missed a single day on this blog so far this month/year and don’t want to have a gap now!). I am getting a bit groggy so I may go to bed before actually finishing so if this entry looks a bit incomplete, please come back later for another look!
We are also a few hours away from kickoff of the American Football Conference’s Championship Game back in my adopted hometown of Kansas City (I lived in the area from 1977 until the late 1990s). My beloved Chiefs are hosting the game for the fifth straight year (the first time this has happened since the League was founded in 1921); the winner of this game goes on to the Super Bowl. Kan is excited as I have been introducing her to the game by showing her highlight clips of the Chiefs in action during these playoff games. We watched the Super Bowl game that the team won in 2020 as well as portions of the celebratory parade afterwards. She still doesn’t understand the game fully but is getting there and loves it when play-by-play announcer Mitch Holthus yells “Touchdown! Kansas City!” I was decked-out in Chiefs gear when we took a walk on Friday (Red Friday back in KC) and Kan was thrilled for another opportunity to showcase her red dress which is far more revealing than my post thumbnail would indicate (thus, a photo didn’t gain LL’s approval!).
Since I no longer have a Phuket Town lesson on Friday evenings (the students switched to a day that I am unavailable so they changed the teacher), Kan and I had a nice walk on the beach after I finished school that day. It was jam-packed (the majority were Russians) with people sitting all the way to the edge of the surf. On the way to the shore, we found a pair of really nice houses for rent and talked about getting one if it is still available when she returns to Phuket in April.
We took the songteaw to Phuket Town Saturday morning as I had a class scheduled; the students did a no-show so I still got paid. It is frustrating as they only have two more lessons on the contract and I have to show up on the unlikely chance that they will. We headed back to Kata that afternoon after taking some photos of the preparations for that night’s Phuket Festival. It’s too bad that we couldn’t stick around for that.
My lessons during the week were fairly uneventful. Despite this being free of holidays or extra activities (unless you count Thursday afternoon’s parent-teacher meetings), the week went by quickly with no instances that stand out. Just a normal week of teaching and observing how cute the kids can be.
We didn’t go out much during the week other than the aforementioned walk to the beach and journey to Phuket Town. However, taking a break from other tasks today (laundry, flashcards creation, general apartment cleaning) we took a quick walk over to the neighboring temple to make some offerings and take a few photos. It was relatively cool with a very strong breeze coming from the east.
Other than one evening at Madame Steak, our meals were almost always takeaway from 7-11 or small restaurants along the main highway through town. We listened to a lot of music in the evenings — some Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with bursts of early Chicago, Jackson Browne, even a bit of Cowboy Junkies and Blondie (LL preferred the former to the latter funnily enough). The “discovery” of the week was Ray LaMontagne’s second album, Till The Sun Turns Black from 2016, a recommendation from a YouTube video about the 40 best-sounding albums according to the host. This was number 40 and I thought it was really the best one on that list other than the obvious Aja by Steely Dan and, of course, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I love it when I find “new music” this way.
We didn’t watch ANYTHING this week other than a few YouTube videos but I continued reading Around the World in 80 Days (today was the first one that I missed a reading session this year); Phileas Fogg and company have just arrived in San Francisco. The blogging is continuing at a rapid pace — daily Stamps of 2023 articles (except for today) and continuing updates to my rebooted Philatelic Pursuits site. On the latter, I finished the last of the schedule pages this morning making a total of 82 different stamp issuing entities with a known schedule. There are still some major omissions (including Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Greenland, and Greece) but those will appear soon, I am sure. Canada will release her first stamp of the year tomorrow but so far has not revealed the design (the subject was “leaked” on Friday) which laughably is rankling some collectors who feel the lack of communication from Canada Post is not good form. I think it’s amusing to say the least how people can get so upset over the most trivial of matters.
Well, here’s the list of articles I published this week, all are on this site (I will eventually start publishing these articles over on Philatelic Pursuits but first I need to decide what to replace them with — one idea to post the flashcards I create for my students):
- Sunday Summary #32
- Sunday Summary #31
- Sunday Summary #30
- Sunday Summary #29
- Sunday Summary #28
- Sunday Summary #27
- Sunday Summary #26
- Sunday Summary #25
- Welcome, February!
- Stamps of 2023: New Zealand (February 2023)
- Stamps of 2023: Monthly Wrap-Up (January)
- Stamps of 2023: Canada (January 2023)
Oh, my. It’s now a little past two a.m. on Monday morning and I have just now finished this edition of “Sunday Summary”. It’s a bit different from most of the rest as I didn’t categorize parts of the week. All that remains is to add a few more photos of my darling, on the eve of yet another departure. I know that we will survive (and possibly thrive) with the separation although we are both disappointed that this will mean that we won’t be together for Valentine’s Day. We will make up for that during the Thai New Year celebrations in mid-April which coincide with her birthday. I am not certain where we will spend that festive period — Kanchana wants to bring her mother to Phuket for a visit at some point but also wants me to stay in Buriram and meet the rest of her family. We’ll see.
And that is my Sunday Summary for January 23-29, 2023. I hope the week to come is just how you want it to be. Cheers!
Go Chiefs! Beat the Bengals!
Mark Joseph Jochim 