Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

I regret to say I have struggled to make time available to update this blog. So let me wish you the seasons' greetings, somewhat belatedly. I must confess it was great to finish teaching before Christmas and get a 10 day or so break. It is tiring and I think it would be fair to say that over the last few months it has aroused an amount of fear in me. The truth is I am making great progress but  I live in fear of something going badly wrong. There is a lot of pressure on at times. So the Christmas closure was very welcome.

I have also been incredibly busy. Immediately prior to Christmas I was preoccupied with exams and had a very enjoyable day trip to Khao Yai National Park  for with the Bird Conservation Society Thailand. A fantastic trip, some wonderful birds and great company. I finally got round to buying a decent camera and behaved very sensibly and bought an entry-level Canon DSLR kit at a reasonable, affordable price. I am very pleased with initial results but it has so many features.....

We had a couple of trips to Bangkok on either side of Christmas to register Benedict's birth with the British embassy in Bangkok. An initial trip to get Benedict's Thai birth certificate translated into English and then a trip to the embassy with all documentation to register his birth. Benedict gets British citizenship by rights through me. On receipt of his UK birth certificate we will apply for Benedict's British passport. It was pleasant to be in Bangkok and I must say Benedict as always was a crowd stopper. People just love him, it really is amazing. It's not hard to see why, even if I say so myself!

Christmas was quiet. We went to Midnight Mass with Benedict at St John Bosco Church in Ratchaburi, as always a very pleasant ceremony. A quiet day ensued with a number of Luna's friends spending the day with us. Immediately prior to Christmas we added a hot shower and surround sound! So we are really running with the times.

Our friends Greg & Julia from Canada are back in Thailand and we agreed to get together for a couple of days in Kaeng Krachan National Park. We had a really pleasant day watching birds with our old friend, Mr Peeyat, the guide. We stayed at Baan Maka, again, excellent.

In view of my health situation I decided to have a check up in one of the big Bangkok hospitals so when most people are nursing Christmas hang overs I was on the treadmill. Results are a mildly fatty liver and borderline high triglycerides, obese and to lose 17 kg. One of the reasons I went for the check was I was aware of losing weight, I am now weighing in at 96 kg.  Everything else is in order. I took myself off the antihypertensive medication before Christmas; it was causing me to cough to such an extent I was in danger of doing myself a mischief. The cough has gone since I stopped taking it. Luna and I have started doing some gentle walking and I will try to build that into jogging over the next few months and we have also started to take a bit more care with our diet. Watch this space!

We had a quiet New Year at home and headed down to Hua Hin on New Years Day. We had a lovely time and saw a few friends. Great fun. The western New Year is a public holiday here and believe me it is a big event. The Thais need little encouragement to party! So that's us for the moment.Happy New Year and God Bless You all.