Good for a visit, but.

I can't put my finger on it exactly, but Hua Hin didn't grab us.. Its nice, there's some very nice houses there and it most certainly is less busy than Chiang Mai but...it also seemed a little old and tired... Also something about the general age of the large ex pat community there didn't quite resonate with us... even though I freely admit that we're also in that age group. I saw way way too many very old men, 60,70 maybe even 80's with very young Thai partners.. I know thats not that unusual here, and we even see it here in Chiang Mai, but ...it was a lot.. and hmmm.

The Bars are insanely loud and the atmosphere wasn't as Thai as it is here..(I know I am not making sense here).

Its quite a small town too, no where near the size of Chiang mai and no where near the variety and scope of things to do, places to shop.

We didn't hate it.... and we'll certainly consider visiting again maybe even spending a few months there during the norths smokey season but... not sure .....might need a few more visits.

Ahthankyew

Yeahhhh good choice

I really am loving Thailand, the lovely weather, despite the occasional heavy rain, and the overall ease of getting things to eat and drink its so nice... easy going. I can totally understand why its a hippy paradise.

On a practical note, we went to visit a large  Makro superstore yesterday, just to look around and it has everything and anything you might want, though like the Dutch Makro stores, I am not so sure its a cheap place to go. But for everyday things, some foods, and some specialist foods.. its a once a month place, just like Makro NL.

Other shopping malls and supermarkets are equally impressive, and quite reasonable, though highly variable on price. Live sensibly here and your Bhat goes a long way, live like a crazy farang, and you will go broke pretty quick. Its easy to think, its just 100 bhat, but it adds up.. breakfast today of a nice ham omellete extra toast and a coke 0 was 129bhat, less than 3 euros.. half what you'd pay in NL, maybe even less.. But every day it adds up.

The small markets and street and just off street food vendors and produce sellers are amazing though, there's no need to stock up on things just step onto the street and you can buy breakfast, or fresh meat and veg for tonights meal, for very little money. Its quite extrodinary just how much retail enterprise there is here, 

Tomorow we have a weekend in Hua Hin to investigate it as a possible retirement place, but it will be hard to beat Chiang mai, even just in the old town this place has everything, step out a bit into the many different sub-city centres and you find even more to keep you in the 21st centry shoppers paradise.

We are looking at different areas here, and there are so many options, when we do jump, our plan is to rent for a year until we find the dream place to buy, I am wondering if we'll need that long :D some wonderful houses here at and below our expected budget.

I'll report on Hua Hin soon..But probably won't take laptop with me, which btw is being a bit temperamental, seems the cmos battery has died so it refuses to boot without following a hard reset process... but hard to do on the move so we'll leave it  here as we go into tourist mode for the weekend.

Ahthankyew

Sampling life in Thailand

We're not here for a holiday, that's next week.. I'm using this development time from work they give me to work on my.errmmm development. Which in this case means working on editing my book, which needs a bit more editing than I thought, I missed a whole chapter and its a biggie, that needs a major rework. I also have to put down the basics of the new code that is needed for this edition. I have sketeched out some code but it needs a big update. I don't plan to finish anything yet, just get the frameworks in place, and stored away to work on over the weekends I return. This book needs quite a lot if not all of its code content sent on-line in an effort to shed a few pages and hopefully pounds/euros on the price. I've never been  happy with the price it was sold at, so stripping back a few bits to put on line will hopefully have an impact.

But of couerse, we're in Thailand, Chiang Mai city to be exact. This trip I rented us a whole house to use as we like.. And that means, doing normal every day things Thai people do.. Going to the market, registering cars (Jirawan bought a car...an old one but very tidy), purchasing supplies, like a cheap monitor cos there was no TV in the bedroom as I had hoped. Also visiting friends and going for lunch, and doing a spot of house viewings to see what exactly 8 million bhat can buy you..We've not done that yet but we're going to as soon as I stop screaming when I drive the car in traffic... the traffic here is....there's only one word..insane.

And I am honestly very happy with the mundane things in life, its just simple to go to the market, go for a meal, go shopping for pretty much anything you can buy in Europe...well maybe a few differences, Pringles are waaaay smaller.

Expats on line often make the valid point that the cost of living is very low, if you live like a Thai, eat Thai food and do the mundane things Thai's do, oh and keep off the booze... But you will want to eat and drink western sometimes and it'll bankrupt you the say.

Well its not entierly true, from what I can see, there's a lot of western food and booze on offer at the right places, yes its pricey by thai standards, but about the same price if not a bit cheaper as it is in NL.  As someone who loves Jirawans cooking, even when its a bit off the wall for me, I don't think I have a problem eating Thai food all the time, and limiting myself to a few less well known brands of.....Whiskeee  and Ruhm  ... but whatever..
I'm really enjoying the mundane nature of Thai life, I can't wait to get a lot more of it.

Ahthankyew

Definitely plateaued

plateaued....
Cool word eh?

yeah not dropping down any more, bouncing a kilo or so around 94.. dipping and rising.  I need to try harder.. Still cycling to work despite the cooling weather though so might be getting a bit fitter if not lighter.

I really did want to get below 90 before we head to Thailand for a break, but can't see it, maybe when I get there i'll get some Thai tummy issues that will drop a few kilos... though, I'd rather not :D. I had it last time and we were driving around a lot of places, which made for a few interesting and desperate service station stops... not all of which were as modern and clean as I'd have liked.

I've also got a flair up of my diverticulitis which isn't nice, though no sign of any infections, (temp will spike and I need to report to hossie) so just discomfort and bloating, despite not a lot of food,which is probably why nothing has popped this time (look it up...) So it should calm down in a few days.

oh well, there's not a lot more to report, just working hard, and getting my project pushed along, I've pretty much finished the reworking of the new edition of the book, apart from the code which does need a total refactor. But part of the trip will be spent in peace and quiet to edit it and do some of the coding needed to go on line. I do still have quite a bit of on-line content and how-to content to write, as I was asked to take it out of the main book. So I'll crack on with that.. Delivery is in January so its all pacing out quite well.

Ahthankyew

damn this is hard..

Still not dropping below 93 yet, keep bouncing back to 94 and occasionally 95... I can't seem to lose any more... sigh...Clearly I need to do more excersise and push a bit harder, the diet itself just isn't dropping any more weight... time to feel the burn...groan...

Ahthankyew

tip that balance

Stepping on the scales this morning, I very very briefly saw a 92 flash on the LCD display as the scales settled... on 93.0 but its still only Friday, weekend starts tomorrow... doesn't it? It will be nice to step down another digit towards the 80's.

Our trip to Thailand this year is in 4 weeks time, so I'm fairly confident I'll be below the 90's by then. Which for very practical reasons, not just fuel economy of the overloaded aircraft, will make life there a bit easier. 

It's a wee bit warm there... and fat old sweaty pale scottish people, can get a bit tired moving around too much in that heat, we want to have a good mooch around the place this time.

Mostly though I'll be sat on my touche, doing final edits on my book, especially when Jirawan is off with her son to go visit family. I will go on a few trips with her,  of course, but I'm determined this trip, not to spend it in the back of a car driving around! So we've rented a house for 3 weeks to let us settle in one place and explore, to get a taste for living in Chiang Mai. We'll also squeeze in a few days in Hua Hin to get a feel for that place too, which should help us decide where to target our retirement plans. Both have pros and cons but we need to experience them.

When not editing, I might even try and catch up on my now sadly neglected Language lessons... I found memorising some of the words and phrases just a bit too hard and started to fall away from the pace of 1 lesson a day. I still have all the lessons though so I can pick them up at my own pace.

Ahthankyew

No harm done..

Yeah I did pig out a bit on Saturday and yeah it did dump on a few grams back above 94, but... a very hungry and busy, Monday and we're down to 93.3kg, not sure I could tolorate an even hungrier Tuesday but, I'll do my best and see what happens tomorrow as long as I can squeeze in a bike ride and a bit of light excerise every day I should see 92 by.....

Curry night was a spectacular success though, had a great night.

Also the models are selling online really well, the retirement fund is getting some nice boosts there.

The big sell off gathers pace. Ideally we want to clear out all the stuff we can't take to Thailand with us and make something on it, so yea thats guitars, music gear, models, even the SBC's and old computer gear, I no longer need... time to clear them out, a tenner each for the old SBC's will generate a fair amount.. Pity I can't really use ebay.co.uk anymore, Brexit now adds too many costs to smaller items, but we'll see if ebay.nl produces some interest...fucking brexit, the dumbest thing ever... 

Ahthankyew

Goodbye 94 but see you tomorrow

And the wall got smashed, mainly while being a little too often in the loo.. but thats what happens.. Finally got down to 93.7. There's no way in hell that will stick as I have a curry buffet happening tonight, and even if I  can resist the tempting things I  am cooking, I still have to taste and graze while I cook.

So see you again tomorrow 94... but I know you can be beatern... watch out

Ahthankyew

another wall?

Despite keeping up with the low calories and now including much more cycling, I can't seem to break 94Kg, popping back over 95kg from time to time.... I wish the weight loss was a lot more consistant.. But its clearly levelling out now and I have to work a lot harder to get down below the 94 and keep heading to that 1st target of 80kg (after that I'll see if 75kg is viable)

But, all I can do is keep at it, my determination is strong, my will power is....well not quite as strong, but I am only cheating some nights with protein rather than calories.. 

Got a curry night with friends coming on Saturday, so expect to be a bloated whale again on Sunday... and then we start again..

Ahthankyew

Good gig but bad guitar

We kicked off our post vacation gigs with a really nice gig at the Molen in  Bavel, playing in the shadow of the big windmill. There was a nice appreciative crowd and Karlien sang really well on a lot of new songs and did a wonderful version of Rollercoaster after we agreed I can't do it justice. But Karlien and Ed sang very well, so did I which was surprising. But I fluffed a lot of my guitar stuff, I was very annoyed with myself... Its not that I hadn't been practicing, but I just fluffed so many songs, wrong chords and terrible solo's.. It was as if I was drunk... but sadly no..

Overall we got through it ok, but I need to make sure that I'm never that bad again... I think part of it was having my nails a bit too long, so I was missing strings on some picking, and catching them with some flatpicking, not great... but it was a cascade thing. Once the 1st couple of fluffs happened it got worse... almost every song had a mistake from me, oh well...

We sang very well and people didn't notice it as much as I did... hope we get an invite next year.

It was also nice to have some of our regular followers comment on how much weight I've lost, so that was nice and a good motivator.. The weight loss is certainly slowing down, but I keep at it, and resist the cheats. Starting to lift some light weights as well, to begin the toning process before I start to increase the protein intake a bit.. Hopefully we'll break 90 in Sept, and would be great to be below 85 before our October break.

Ahthankyew

There it is..

94.7 :D finally hitting proper 94....feels good..  Things are slowing down a lot of course, but its no longer a straight 200-300g a day it does depend a lot on how many cheats I have and also honestly...how often I go to the loo. Constipation is sadly a side effect of this type of diet, so there are sometimes a few days of accumulation if you get my meaning..so after a few days... of ahem.. nothing.. I can expect to lose a few kilo's again soon :D

(notice, its spelled lose... I am getting so sick of reading loose on-line, do people not know how to spell....which is saying something coming from a dyslexic old windbag)

Back to work this week, its been pretty straightforward we had most of our prep work done before we broke up so just finalising and checking has been simple.. We now wait to get the details on our new students, who start in Sept, and then we can kick off. As usual, I'll be doing a beginners class each week, which will hopefully catch a few of the students who squeezed through the intake but don't really have the skills. Happens every year sadly, for various reasons, but its a pain to have these lost students falling behind from day one... so the extra class sometimes helps a few of them get a lift up. or just as good for them, to realise they are in the wrong course.

And now of course at the end of this first block I get to go off for a few weeks to Thailand, taking advantage of our Autumn holiday and my sustainable hours to do the edits for the 2nd edition of the book.

Which is progressing nicely, as far as the text is concerned, but need to make more progress on the code examples which are going to be quite different.  I get to combine, work and lovely holiday/research in just a few months... perfect.

Ahthankyew

Strange but true

Very odd, but still not hitting 94 yet, keep wobbling around 95-96, no real cheating, though it does seem every small piece of chocolate or scoop of icecream puts on 1kg ....

Back to work now, so a bit more mobile using the bicycle to get to and from work, and those lovely (groan) stairs every day... just have to stick with it and get even more serious about not having anything more than my 1 low cal meal a day..  Not sure I can cut that down any more, just try to delay eating it till as late as possible.

Sold the 1st of my prized guitars last week, and already having major sellers remorse as I look at the space in the guitar unit where Ruby, my prized Les Paul stood... but.. I can also look at the savings account and take a bit of comfort that the savings have gone up.. Hoping to sell the Traps Drums this week to old bandmate Kees who tried them out last week and noted a small fault which I quickly fixed when he left. The drums are not going to be a huge income, but the space saving in the studio will be nice.

I need to also start advertising the other instruments/equipment and putting some ads out there....its painful but its the only way, the sooner the money is in the bank earning a bit of interest, the better.  It will do more good in my account than it will in the studio not being played.  Brexit has buggered up using Ebay though, its near impossible to ship anything of value to or from the UK, so I will have to list some things on local sites and try ebay.nl which isn't very popular,..But I'll try ebay and see how it goes.

I still have not finished my totalling up of the shed model treasure trove, but will try to do that in the next few days.

My Thai lessons are really falling behind, I can't keep up and thats a bit demotivating. It takes me 2 or 3 days for the content to sink  in, but with a new lesson every day, I find myself getting falling behind.. But no matter, its online so I can do it at my pace, I just wanted to have a firmer grasp of things before our trip in October.

Ahthankyew

now stay under

Back to 95.5, lets see if I can avoid any cheats and get below 94 by the weekend.

Last week of the holidays, and yup, very few of my chores got done, which is bad, but... I did fill the time with other things and have enjoyed the rest.

Most amazing was discovering I have a bit of a treasure trove in the shed... all those models I had planned to build when I retire turn out to be worth a pretty penny.. Since we now plan to retire to Thailand, its not going to be practical to ship boxes and boxes of models over. So I casually enquired online what they were worth.......wow. Anything from 4-6K, Thats amazing... I won't get that of course, since people will only want to cherry pick the good kits, (one is worth over 300euros????) but I've had a couple of resellers interested in buying all for a few grand... that will probably be the best option. Since I really need to clear them out, and can't wait years to sell off the last Airfix Gnat kit or whatever the lowest value one is... So I'll take a hit to get rid of them all, and clear out the shed so its more usable for some DIY or proper storage.

I have to finish listing all the models, their curent low and best prices, and setting a reasonable 2nd hand offer price...its taken days but its been interesting and fun research... I've got a few part built/started kits I will keep and try to finish, but not sure my 20yo paints will be quite up to it :D

Ahthankyew

damn... 1 cheat..

I cheated once.. just once,, had an extra burger and a bar of chocolate and back over 96.. grrr, there's just no cheating allowed is there.

Ok so bike ride and no eating, which will be hard as Im batch cooking a load of chicken samosa's today... maybe I'll just have one of those for dinner...

damn...

Ahthankyew

Breaking another wall and spoiled surprise.

After hitting 95.9 I assumed I'd keep dropping but clearly it was just a wobble, 96.x kept coming back despite maintainig the diet... frustrating for almost a week, but eventually and after one minor lapse, the 95.9 is back again, hopefully not to bounce again.. Going to get a bit more bicyling in today to try to keep the enegy levels up and burn the cals.

The Diet is however still going well.. no eating after 8 and trying to keep to 1 low call meal a day around 6 or 7... there's no doubt my calorie intake is low.. If I was a bit more active it would drop a bit quicker, but I sense I'd be a lot hungrier too, which I might not be able to resist....we'll see... an occasional cheat is normal...but lets keep it to once a fortnight, not every other day.

Got hit with a delayed medical bill yesterday too, Jirawan had a butt load of tests on her skin condition in Feb, but they didn't charge us, until yesterday..ouch...250euros In NL the first 375 of your medical bills you have to cover youself, after that in a given year, its all covered by the insurance.. So that will be the last big bill of  her tab till Jan. They've put her on some very strong (and expensive) biological drugs that seem to be helping her psoriasis, though she hates to do the pen injections.  So we'll probably have to lump out a chunk of change in Jan if she's still on them, as seems likely.

Also despite wanting to keep it a surprise, Jirawan discovered my workbook, for learning Thai, and now she's testing me on my numbers and pronounciation, which is actually frustrating as I'm very early in the process and still having issues with remembering core vocab and tones... I can't serve two teachers lol.. but she's pleased that Im trying... Now that she knows, I can do my class every day not just the days shes at work but Im locking myself in the room when I do it.

Ahthankyew

when was it?

I had a look back in this blog history just now to try to locate the last time I was on a mega diet.... and there's been a few of them... But one that stood out was 2012 when I was......89kg..  wow, so I've been over 90kg more or less since then.. I hovered around that weight for a while before giving in and growing to the ballon I was/am/tryingnottobe.

Todays amazing 95.9  has me continuing a rapid drop, caused by extreme fasting... of only 1 low cal meal per day... which will see me heading back to that sub 80 level again in a month or so...

12 years though... eek and I considered that heavy at the time... 

this pic was 11 years ago so you can see where I was..

Well I got the bicyle tyers pumped up and ready and am going to cycle a bit today and get back into doing that to get around short distances... a mild bit of excercise but exercise none the less.

Ahthankyew

keep going keep going

Dieting is hard, I should effing know.... but I'm motivated and determined and staying, largly off the booze... so my will power is keeping on top of the hunger pangs. It vanishes after the 2nd rum/tequila

96.5kg today, continuing my 100-400g a day loss. I have had a bit of museli this afternoon, to help prevent the previously mentioned bunged up effects, but generally I'm finding my evening wraps to be all I need to eat. The longer I can leave it before my cut off point of 8pm the less hungry I am at bed time when the will power is potentially low.

So 2 weeks from now I should start seeing 80's and then I start excercising... why not now? Well.. I am genuinly very fat and very overweight for a slim cute chap like me, ...who's laughing at the back??? And I need to drop quite a bit before I can start putting my heart and my creaky knees to a severe test... oh also I'm almost 61... so while I see the need and benefit of excercise, it does nothing to reduce my distate for it or the risk of doing too much too soon..so I'll start in earnest when I get down to the 80's. Some nice walks and moving around as much as possible are fine for now, I'll also get the bicycle tyres pumped up and have a little zip around town on that....maybe to the kebab....nope... no no no...

its going well.......

Ahthankyew

ohhh chillies

Jirawan brought home some large green chilli peppers from the Turkish shop yesterday and cooked them off as I was making my evening meal, a small sausage wrap, two tiny chipolata's, some lettuce, 4 cherry tomatoes, 1 gherkin chopped, half red onion sliced, in a whole grain tortilla wrap....yup, thats it, thats my one meal.

I added a chopped chilli to my wrap and discovered while eating, it was... ,hotter than a burning pizza oven in hell....

wowser.. normally the big green chillies are just mild and sweet, not these badboys... but I hadn't had chillies for a while so the burn was fun..... until 6am when the burn decided to eat through  most of my lower intestines and seek an outlet.... which it did for about 2 hours.

96.9kg this morning.... no no Im not going to be eating those chillies again even though thats the best diet pill I've ever had.

Ahthankyew

Constipation has a reward....kinda

Diets do have drawbacks, I havn't been to the loo for a few days, and of course that bungs you up, even if you don't eat much. I try to eat fibre in the form of cabbage,lettuce, musli in small amounts,  as well as fresh fruit and veg.. but... ,yeah it can be a few days...and not always..ahem pleasent...

But the good thing is when you do go.... you go... and todays morning weigh-in produced 97.5kg so the drop continues...

Im going to start with the excercise when I hit 90.. nothing dramatic, I hate jogging, but a few weight routines and more regular quick walks to push  things along...

I'm actually starting to enjoy this process, the hunger is controllable as long as I don't drink, and indeed not drinking also drops the weight.

Really not sure if I'll ht 70 before we go on Holiday in October, 10kg a month is pushing it a bit, bbut should get to 80kg so I won't be quite soo chubby and puffing in the Thai heat when we get there.

Ahthankyew

missing money, lost and found

Today was a good day... I managed to locate a long lost but still growing pension pot, I started over 20 years ago and only paid into it for a few years before the financial shit, hit the bankruptcy fan...

But that pension pot was forgotton and left to die lonely. Until I accidently discovered an old letter about a year ago, that showed there was indeed a pension, and who administered it. Barclays... 

But after a bit of chasing, it turned out Barclays, had sold their pension business on to L&G who in turn sold the old pensions on to Re-assure... A long chain of emails ended up in a dead end when I didn't have the specific policy details and got no reply to emails.. so I gave up, and left it....lying there somewhere...

After mentioning this online to old collegues, it was suggested to get an advisor to hunt for it.. and as luck would have it, the sister of an old collegue is an advisor, agreed to check for me... and she found it... it was with Re-Assure, she confirmed they had it, and it was just a case of making direct contact with an 0800 number, but I can't use them here in NL, so after a bit of hunting around... 2 dead phone numbers later, and 30 mins on hold..

I got hold of the lovely Shannon, who indeed confirmed they had a pension, and... it was worth, a pretty penny... (not retire now on this pretty, but it adds a fair chunk to the pot).
So thank you so much to Sadef Latif, and her brother Amir, for helping me to locate the pension.


After updating Re-assure with my details, and confirming my ID, I can now make use of that pot at any time, either by transferring to a pension or cashing it in... Cashing it in has a tax hit though. It will be best if I leave it for a couple more years till we're ready to jump and get a bit more of that high interest savings action on it.

I won't say exactly how much it is, but it will help fund some of our plans to retire early which is a massive boost..

Yup, today was a good day.

Ahthankyew