Bangkok 30/7/06

Well yesterday we went on a school field trip to "the Buffalo farm". Thailand as I think I have mentioned previously has one of the best police forces money can buy, and we had a police escort for the two hour drive both to and from the farm, there were 20 mini vans of us and the police car (complete with sirens and flashing lights) simply blocked traffic at intersections insuring our convoy stayed together.
To give you some of how over the top the parents of my kids are a dozen of them followed us all the way out to the farm, wandered about behind us all day and then reclaimed their children so they wouldn't have to endure the mini van ride home. Those parents who didn't come spent a lot of time on their mobile phones checking in with their kids. Did I mention all of my kids have state of the art cutting edge mobile phones, far superior to the hunk of 90's junk I have, but hey I barely use the damn thing anyway.
After the day watching the farmers and trying to keep children from killing each other with wooden machetes available for purchase from the souvenier shop. After I went into the city and caught up with friends for the obligatory chill out bottle of whisky and met a girl who's school is looking for staff and prepared to pay a lot more! Interesting! It's also in a part of Bangkok I really like, the old city, which is really attractive and full of historical canals, of course it is probably prohibitively expensive to live in that neighbourhood so commuting may become an ugly reality if I am prepared to allow myself to be poached, and of course I would have to give up science teaching, which is both a blessing and curse in equal measures. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Tony (the French swimming teacher) was asking me for my political opinion on the middle east, I guess I may have to glance at some newspaper headlines and make some pat ill informed response to such questions, trying to become offay enough with middle east politics to come up with a well informed intellegent response seems to require a degree in political science. Religion one of the three great evils, increases it's damaging influence on our faltering planet. It's so much easier when he just tells the children to jump "through zee houp, or een zee houp", and leaves Political analyses alone.
All else is going along fine so I must wander away and plan some lessons.
Love N.J.