22nd June
The Divorce

Before I could even see, my vision was tainted sky blue. Hours after I was born my Dad's mate registered me as a junior blue (Man city junior supporters club). One of my first images is of a poster on my wall as a young boy. I remember a black guy with an afro who stood out on the team photo (I think his name was Dave Bennett?). There are plenty of picture as me as a small boy, beaming in my sky blue kit, sponsored by Phillips, or was it saab?

Throughout all of those 26 years It's never been much fun to be a city fan. We're the team that gets relegated, that always manages to mess everything up, that employed such footbal luminaries as Alan Ball, Frank Clarke, Phil Neal, Alfons Gronendike, Laurent Charvet and Gerry Creaney. At school it was cool to support United, but for me that made it much cooler to support City. I went even when we were in the third division and getting beat by Lincoln and Barnet. In spite of all the shit I never wavered from my dedication to the cause. We were the family club, the real manchester club. We didn't care if we lost as long as we played with heart. While we were falling through the divisions our local rivals were cheating and moaning their way to countless trophies. Not once did I ever wish I was a United fan. They won trophies by employing players like Roy Keane, Paul Ince and Mark Hughes and having a whingeing manager with a stopwatch and a frown.

Today that has all changed.

I should be delighted. Twenty six years might be finally coming to an end. Twenty six years of no trophies, hardly any good players and public ridicule may be over as our night in shining armour has rolled into town. Thaksin Shinawat, former Prime Minister of Thailand has bought out the controlling stake in the club and promised to spend big on renovating the squad, most fans are delighted. After all of these years we may be able to compete with the big boys and win something, that should make me feel great. It doesn't. Quite the opposite in fact.

I lived under Thaksin's rule and saw first hand the kind of person he is and how he has made his money. I'm not sure what my favourite 'Thaksin moment' is, perhaps the death squads roaming the streets during his infamous 'war on drugs'? Perhaps it was when he gave government aid to the burmese military junta in order for them to buy satellitte acess from his personal company? The destruction of democracy? The mess of an airport that stands as monument to his corruption? Mass media manipluation? Or was it him using the country as his own personal piggy bank in oder to further the wealth of him and his family? There are so many examples of that final one it's untrue. Selling government land to his wife at a massively reduced price, subsidising his private television station with governmet money, buying a 50% stake in AirAsia in order to grant them a license to fly within the country. There are plenty more......

I can't support him. I can't watch Manchester City knowing that everything that I am seeing is funded by him. I won't pay for another piece of merchandise or a ticket until he's gone. I know it's a big statement but I just can't support what he stands for. If that means cutting off a part of my life which has been me since birth, then so be it. I can't imagine watching a game and seeing that smug square faced wanker in the stands while he is wanted for arrest over here. If a man has no morals how can he truly be a man?

So that's it. I'm an official football widower. I can never remarry, there will be no other, but my one true love has turned into a cheap whore on the arm of the local crook and I can't overlook it. It's like the man who raped your wife (she was a cheap hussy but that's not the point) offering to pay for a night on the town for you to make up for it. Or the man who robbed your life savings giving you a 100 quid back to ease the pain.

I hope for all my friends and family that the team go on to do great things, win the trophies that I have dreamed about us winning, sign the players I have dreamt about us signing and thoroughly stuff United every time they play them. Maybe this is just an initial reaction and it will become easier with time. I doubt it.

18th May
Back on the net!

I've been off the net for a while but I'm gonna start updating again more regularly. I've just got the net at home for the first time which I'm loving, gonna try and spend less time downloading music and movies and get writing!

Anyway, Blair is going and Brown is going to come in. I don't anticipate any change whatsoever as Brown has been holding the purse strings and must have had a big say in many of the neo-liberal policies New Labour have implemented. Across the water, Sarkozy has been elected in France. This is a tragedy. France is one country which I have a lot of respect for. The workers rights which were won in the 60s are a shining example to the rest of the world how a country could/should treat it's workers, good healthcare, unions, workers rights. Sarkozy will destroy all of this and will do it on the back of a racist non-immigration platform. It's a sad day for the workers of France.

On a personal note I've just started back at work for the first time since March! It's been the summer holidays over here and it's been a busy time. Thai new year as ever was excellent and this year we took a road trip up country to Udon Thani, near the laos border. Also managed to hit the beach a couple of times and just spent an excellent couple of weeks with my Dad. The serious business starts now, but it's not too bad, another month off in October! I love living over here!

pictures here - http://davenorcross.fotopages.com

31st December 2006
Saddam Hussein

New York, Bradford, and Sydney tonight you can sleep easily, the imminent threat of the terrifying Iraqi regime is over. Our soldiers and almost a million Iraqis haven't died in vein - the tyrant is dead. In reality though, there was never a threat and the whole war has been an elaborate hoax. Killing of innocents, torture and genocide are the worst crimes imaginable which no one should be allowed to get away with. The problem with all of this though is that we, the west, don't have the moral right to decide this. We supported Saddam, we gave him the WMD's to gas the Kurds and in all honesty commit more heinous crimes than he did. If there was true justice then Bush and Blair would be next to the gallows. This article doesn't make pleasant reading but shows just how little right we have to attempt to spread our 'values' across the world -

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/12/12/1035/

10th December 2006
Coup Update

I've added an update on the coup to the coup section of the site. Things aren't going so well!! Click here

8th December 2006
Santa Claus is coming to town - bunda!!

I can hardly believe that this is going to be my 4th Christmas in Thailand! That means I haven't experienced an English winter since 2002! I like that a lot! I'm thinking back to the previous Christmas's I had over here and without doubt last year stands out. Not only was it Christmas day but it was also the last day in Thailand for my dear friend JP, or Golden Brown JP Dazzle to give him his proper title. We spent Christmas day in shorts, eating turkey in downtown Bangkok and washing it all down with the first wine I'd had in years. Well, actually JP wasn't drinking, which took some resolve in the face of 3 beer guzzling Englishman! He did manage to hold out until 1 minute after midnight though! At that that point it was game on and JP made up for his abstinence in abundance as we guzzled through jugs of some mental blue drink called 'kamikaze', a very appropriate name given the outcome! By this point we were on Kho San and numbered half a dozen or so, spirits were high and as the bar shut down we made a train and walked all the way down Kho San freestyling a song about JP to the tune of 'he's a player'. Brendon and I managed to get JP in a tuk tuk around 5 and he just about made his flight a few hours later feeling very worse for wear. Come back dazzle, we miss you!!

Barrie and I had a wicked Christmas the year before too and I'm sure Barrie can never forget the gift he got that year! In 2003 I was down on Krabi Island with a couple of lovely girls from Manchester I had met on the road. We had trauma trying to find somewhere that did turkey (what the hell are yams by the way?) but it all worked out in the end and we spent the day listening to the sounds of bing crosby, watching sunset on the beach and partying hard at night!

My last English Christmas was a memorable one too. I'm grateful that it happened as it did because at that point I hadn't decided that I'd be leaving the country. It was Mum, Dad me and various guests throughout the day. Mum cooked up a traditional English dinner and I'm not sure that 10 people would have been able to get through it all, we did our best though! Every time Dad and I thought it was over, Mum would pull out some extra treats and we'd feast like Kings. We then watched footy in the living room, perfect because City had just beaten United 3-1 and the DVD was a much welcome Christmas present. It was a simple Christmas and I wouldn't have changed one second of it. I rarely miss England, it's bloody freezing for a start and it rains all the time, it would be nice to be transported back just for Christmas dinner though. I wish they'd hurry up and make that machine that was in 'the fly'!

4th December 2006
Another new job!

The first couple of weeks at the boys school were a total shell shock, I had never taught high school before, let alone 40 boys in a classroom! They took the piss big time in class at first, but once I regained my composure I had them eating out of my hands and every day was fun. What was even better was that I only had 11 hours of teaching a week and was home by 2pm everyday! Unfortunately the pay wasn't so good though, so when my friend called me to say that there was a job available at his school paying lots more, the capitalist in me came out!

I started on Friday and the school is cool. It's a multilingual school where the kids learn Spanish, Chinese, English and Thai and most of the students are Korean. My biggest class size is 6 and I only have 14 lessons a week. Unfortunately when I'm not teaching I have to stay at the school til 4, even though my last lesson is at 11.30am! I'll be using that time to read, write, chill and sleep though so it's not all bad - and I am getting paid for it after all!

It is easy to grow complacent when doing the same thing for a while. After all, even the most beautiful girl can appear less beautiful if you see her every day. It's the same for me with living over here, every now and then it's good to have a reminder of just what's so special about Thailand and yesterday was that day.

It was a suprisingly cool, sunny morning and I was on the street just after 7am. Walking down my street bleary eyed the first thing I saw was a mother taking her young daughter to school on the back of an old bicycle. Next, I passed a young Buddhist monk in full orange robes doing his daily rounds collecting for the monastery. As I turned the onto the next street, I was beeped at by a happy family of 4 driving to school on a single moped. Mum, Dad and 2 kids all happily going about their business. Just before I hit the main road I caught the eye of an old shopkeeper sitting outside her shop, looking like she had lived a hard life. A little girl, who can't have been much older than 5, passed at the same time as me and gave the old lady a wai of respect, bringing a big smile to my sleepy eyes. Just before getting to work I walked through the park, next to the local University and was surrounded by students making their way to lessons. The university outfit over here is simple black skirt/trousers and white shirt but it's fashionable to be extra extra small and extra extra tight for the girls, I became a little more alert while in the park! just outsdude work I picked up some freshly barbecued pork in peanut sauce and some freshly squeezed orange juice from a street vendor. This was all really simple, everyday stuff that I see constantly but take for granted. Yesterday I was reminded of some of the reasons why I living over here never bores me

On arriving at work I was greeted by the other side of Thai life. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm going to be a substitute teacher and the previous evening my company had told me that I'd be placed at 'some business','easy enough', 'don't worry about it'. When I was actually told the details about my assignment it turned out that i was to be teaching government officials for 6 hours, an hour out of Bangkok, without any materials or books and would have to make my own way home! Unfortunately this kind of thing happens much too frequently over here, any of you that have taught will know that freestyling an hour lesson is difficult enough, without the added pressure of government officials to worry about! As it turned out the students, like most Thais, were really friendly and things actually went alright, little thanks to my company. Coming home I was stuck in traffic for an hour but watched children pass by my taxi window carrying colourful Kratongs for the festival on Sunday. Loy Kratong is a water festival where Thais give thanks to the water for providing them with water for the year. It's also a famous lovers festival as couples that float kratongs' together stay together for the coming year, or something like that anyway. It's kind of like blowing candles out on a cake, you put the kratong in the water, light a candle and make a wish. Thailand really is a fascinating country and I feel lucky to be here, like anywhere there are ups and downs but I feel that the ups far outweigh the downs.
HAPPY LOY KRATONG EVERYBODY!!!!!

31st October
New Job

I started a new job teaching yesterday, and it's unlike anything I have done before. I left the primary school I was at for a job teaching business English, a lucrative but dull as dishwater occupation. My time there ended in pretty bad circumstances actually. I got really sick, had Bronchitis, laryngitis and perhaps also tonsillitis, depending on which doctor you ask! God knows how I got them, but I was totally out of action, couldn't speak and any movement led to uncontrollable coughing fits. For a while I really thought my number was up! For the first time since being away I actually contemplated going home! Anyway, sympathy wasn't high on the list of my employers attributes and I was fired for being unable to teach. Not an easy thing to do when you are unable to speak!!

So after 10 weeks of resting the larynx I started school again. I've only got 11 hours a week to work initially, so can't complain. Thing is though, it's not quite as advertised! I am now teaching at an all boys high school! If you can remember high school at all then you'll know that this is a shocker of an age for boys, they think they know it all and raging with hormones. My first day went alright, the job should only be til the end of the term in February. That should be long enough to get my voice working properly again and get something else sorted. As far as class control goes, this is going to be my biggest challenge yet, but in a strange way I'm quite looking forward to it. If that optimism lasts into next week though we shall see!! One really cool thing about this school though is that it's on the grounds of a famous temple(pic above), so every day I'm gonna have to walk through a glorious temple to get to work, could be worse, could be caught up in a Manchester winter walking down Market Street!

15th October 2006
Black Eyed Peas - Where is the love?

This is without doubt the song which I have heard most this millenia. It's not that I love it, or even own it, it's just that since I left England back in 2003 it has been omnipresent all over Asia, as well as being the biggest song in England the year that I left. It really is hard to go anywhere in Asia without hearing the black eyed peas and they actually drive me crazy these days!

So why take time to write about this song now? Well, over lunch with my friend yesterday we were unlucky enough to be situated right next to a karaoke bar, meaning we got to experience the (not so) sweet sounds of Thai pop songs throughout the meal. The only break in the 'pleng rak' was for the black eyed peas - where is the love. I stopped actually hearing this song a long time ago, but actually heard it yesterday. Either I had forgotten or perhaps never known what an excellent piece of music it is. This song is far from my favourite but as far as modern day social commentary goes in the form of pop music it's spot on, and the fact fact that it was succesful is excellent. What shame then that a group capable of putting together something so good have turned out absolute dross ever since..............

11th October
New Airport

I took Mum to the new Bangkok airport today, it's been open about a week and it the final disaster of the Thaksin regime. From start to finish the airport has been marred in controversy. For a start, it's built on swamp land which was declared unsuitable for development. That same land though is owned by the former PM and his inner circle, meaning that the decision to spend government money on building the airport there wasn't as surprising as it should have been.

The airport is far from finished as the opening was rushed in one desperate final throw of the dice by the (then) ailing PM. He wanted something positive to use in his October election campaign and a shiny new airport was perfect, even an unfinished one and even though the old one was just fine.

The new airport looks nice enough, kind of like how I imagine a modern German factory to look. Currently there's nowhere to buy a beer, 25% of the restaurants are open, there is hardly any space to relax prior to going through passport control and nobody that works there seem to know what they are doing.

Personally, I was sad to see the old airport go. I must have been 20 times; arriving, departing, greeting friends and bidding them farewell in the Bill Bailey pub, plus it's really quick and easy to get there from my house which the new one isn't. No doubt in time the new airport will get it's act together, but for me it will always be a symbol of the the mess the country has been in for the last year or so. Fingers crossed Thaksin gets some prison time for all this.

For anyone wanting to get there, it's 30km from my house. A taxi took 30 minutes at 3pm with hardly any traffic and cost 180 bhat. There is also the 551 bus from/to Victory monument which costs 30bhat

7th October 2006
Foley scandal

I saw this on a message board in reponse to the Foley scandal and the growing anti republican trend in the media. Interesting P.O.V........

'Sigh.....ever watching the puppet at the ends of the strings. The elite have given strong indication that they are going democratic this time round. In other words, the MASTERS of the gov't (bankers, mega-corporate giants, etc.) have indicated they are pulling support from their Repulsivecan team and backing the Demonicrat team this time round, as they claim to find the neo-cons too dangerous. Too risky. If the elite had not backed the dems this time, that email would never have "surfaced". Just like Clinton's blowjobs would have been a non-issue if the elite didn't give the go ahead to try the more aggressive (neocon) route. They got their laws on the books. They can wiretap, force implant, force an national ID card on Americans as early as 2008, hold without charge or trial, secret trial, deport.............shit at this point, they don't need the neocons for anything else. It's like a rich man with 2 bounty hunters looking for the same dude. The rough guy made too much noise, but got the right info. Now they send in the more suave guy. Voting machines will decide who wins the election for those of us who have been in a soundproof bubble the last two US elections. Good luck freedom. Have fun in Iraq (we are freeing them, right?). Maybe THEY can have real elections. Good ol' USA don't need it.......'

5th October 2006
Trip to the dentist

Back home I went to the same dentist for 10 years. He was a lovely old man who always insisted that I had perfect teeth and never charged me even when I was 20 and working! He was a nice guy but unfortunately, not the best dentist. I found this out the day before I left England. I went to see my usual guy and told him that as I was going to be away for a year I wanted him to deal with the toothache I was having. When he gave me the usual 'oh David you're teeth are so perfect' routine, in spite of the fact that they clearly weren't at this point, the veneer started to crack. My Mum recommended her dentist as she had given up on this guy years earlier. I liked him and most importantly it was free! Anyway, this new guy tells me my teeth are screwed and this old dentist of mine is a famously eccentric loony. Gotta love the NHS! The dentist told me to come in the following week and he'd sort me out, problem was I was leaving England the next day, bugger. He managed to patch me up and told me that I had to see him as soon as I got back. Three years later I still haven't been able to make that appointment.

Over the past 4 weeks my Mum has been here and like all good Mums she was determined to leave me in a better state then she found me when she arrived. I was very grateful that she totally tided up our pad, brought me crumpets, haribo starmix, books, newspapers and a bottle of Jack Daniels, as well as doing my laundry. The catch was that I had to go and see the dentist! I did and I won't be doing again for a while! During the past 2 days I have spent 12 hours in the dentists chair experiencing some of the finest equipment black and decker have ever made! I don't know why nobody has informed the dentists of the world yet but it's 2006, everything is sleek - I've got my entire music collection im my pocket for goodness sake! Is it really necessary to make those machines sound like that? Surely in this day and age the dentist can flick a switch and instead of the sound of a pneumatic drill you can choose from a selection of soothing ballads or the sound of the sea! At least give us some drugs that make you think you're having a good time, that injection in the mouth does nothing for the ears! After 12 hours and over 10 fillings it was finally over and I'm in no hurry to go back. Anyway, just for one day I got to experience a taste of Guantanamo bay right here in Bangkok! I'm not going back til those bloody machines play Barrie White!'

3rd October 2006
Coup Update

Well, you may not be surprised to hear that everything isn't going exactly as planned. It's a sad state of irony that in the rush to show the world that the military don't want to take control of the country they are jeopardising the entire justification for the coup.

When the military took over they announced to the world that they had done it to bring an end the political impasse and would have a civilian government in place within 2 weeks. They also announced that they would clean up the commissions during this time and start investigations into the wrongdoings of the previous administration. I said in my original article that the worst thing they could do is rush the appointments. They had to get this right and show the world clear evidence of why they had no other choice. By rushing through the appointments of a new PM, election commission and most notably corruption commission they have, unsurprisingly, made mistakes. Most blatantly, they have appointed 2 people with clear loyalty and ties to the former PM to the corruption commission, mandated to investigate his wrongdoings. This is a recipe for disaster and could lead to a whitewash. It seems that the military didn't do the appropriate checks on the commissioners due to the strict and unrealistic time restrictions they had placed upon themselves. If the PM gets away scot free from all of this then the military appear heavy handed in orchestrating the coup and the old PM is given the opportunity to return unscathed. A disaster for Thailand. I really hope that we come through all of this in a better position, I am still hopeful and supportive but I hope it's not just a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss

29th September 2006
Bangkok, Thailand - How did I get here!!!???

My name is Dave, I'm 25 years old from Manchester, England. Currently I am living in Thailand and working as a teacher. I'm gonna be using this page to keep an online diary of goings on in my world. Today is a good day to start as it is exactly 3 years to the day since I first left England. I'm gonna start at the beginning..............

I first decided to go travelling when I was 19. I had big plans. Round the world - Australia, Thailand, the pacific islands, New Zealand. Big ideas but small money. At that time I was big into clubbing, djing and music. Me and a group of friends used to travel around the country checking out the best clubs England had to offer. Insomniacz in Sheffield, Sundissential in Leeds and Birmingham were some of the best. They were sweet times, but going to Ibiza that summer changed everything.

Ibiza was the coolest place I had ever been to and by a long way. House music was played 24/7, everyone was chilled, the sun always shone and the clubs were shit hot. I remember lying in the sea with my friend Shaun after spending the night at Space, the best club in the world. I remember lying there without a care in the world when someone told us that that England was in chaos, there were strikes all over the country because of the cost of petrol! It's a moment I remember vividly. At that moment I made the decision that England wasn't the country for my future. It had nothing at all to do with the fuel strikes, but looking at beauty all around me I realised there was much more to life then the monotonous life and future awaiting me in England. The job, house, wife, kids it was going against the grain of what one is supposed to do but I didn't want it, I just wanted to be free.

I returned to England and decided that my plans to travel could wait. I had met a guy called Steve over there who I can't even think about even to this day without images of Ibiza flashing into my head! Ibiza Ste was a friend of a friend who had been working over there and Shaun and I decided that we just had to do the same the following summer. A year passed and in early July we quit our jobs for 4 months of full on partying and bliss. Those 3 months were unreal. It was the nearest I can imagine to how life would be as a movie star. The best parties & djs in the world every night, the coolest people in the world all seemed to be working out there at the same time, there was no pop music and there was hardly any work to be done. It was the life of a movie star. Well, apart from having 5 people living in an apartment with one bedroom anyway! I remember being at a daytime party on 9/11/01 and some drunk guy telling me that a plane had flown into the empire state building! Once we found out what had actually happened there was a sense of impending doom and Armageddon, this being Ibiza though the day was spent getting wasted. Might as well go out happy ay! At the time I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather be stranded in case of nuclear war.

Coming back from Ibiza was hard for me. I found it really difficulty to adjust back into Manchester life. It was winter, the clubs all seemed rubbish in comparison and I had no money as it took ages to find a job. It is weird but that summer in Ibiza totally killed my enjoyment of going out in England. I had one memorable night in the 2 years after coming back to England which was seeing Sandy Rivera play at Venus in Manchester, and even that was probably because he was playing all the songs which were big in Ibiza! As it turned out I got a decent enough job which payed pretty well. Things were never the same though and I never settled. I tried moving into a porn star apartment in Manchester to see if that would help, but all I managed to do was spend loads of money and get into trouble with the council! It took 2 of my friends leaving England for me to actually get my shit together. I booked a ticket to leave England on the 29th September in May and planned to resign from work a month before. As it happened that became unnecessary. The company I was working for famously went out of business firing 3000 staff without paying any wages! That was actually a wicked day though. It was a Sunny Friday when we found out so everyone went on a big piss up, part commiseration, part goodbye to old friends. As it happened I got lucky. The administrators of the company decided to bring back all management staff, which was foolish on their behalf as we spent 3 weeks spinning kwok's roulette wheel. We spent a few weeks experiencing weekly sackings every Friday like some twisted version of employee idol before the administrators finally decided to pay us to stop working there! Perfect timing with my impending trip only 6 weeks away. Thanks very much Mr Langford for helping me to pay for the best year of my life!

It was the 29th September 2003 that I departed from home Radcliffe, Bury, Manchester, England. I haven't missed it since. My parents took me to the airport for my big trip and as it happened I managed to get upgraded into Business class with Singapore airlines! Not bad this travelling life. I met up with 2 friends from home, Shaun and Lee, and we spent a few weeks partying on beaches and generally having a good time. Things took a turn for the worse though when Shaun broke his leg in an unfortunate collision with a metal fence. Soon afterwards Shaun and Lee returned to England and I was on my own. I looked at this more as an opportunity than as a disaster. I had long wanted to do some travelling on my own and this was my time. I had heard of a mythical place called Kho San Road in Bangkok. At this point I hadn't seen an Asian city and had no idea what Bangkok was like. In my head I had an image of Kho San as a mecca for travellers and I guess it is. I can't stand the place today but I had a good time back then. The initial plan had been to buy a camper van and travel around Australia with Shaun and Lee. I postponed my ticket and decided to travel around South East Asia instead. I visited Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam as well as numerous full moon parties and had the time of my life. Travelling alone meant that I met loads of interesting characters as well as having plenty of time to read. I learnt so much and started to think about everything in a different way. I hate the cliche 'going travelling to find myself', but I guess that's what happened. I developed opinions on things that previously I didn't know anything about and realised that life is pretty easy really. All you need are the ingredients that make you happy and you're in heaven already.

The following May my parents asked me to come home for my birthday. I said that I would but that I would only stay for a short time. As it turned out the European championships were on so I ended up staying for 2 months. Being away I had thought about lots of things and had certain questions I needed answering, these questions had been eating away at me and I was grateful to be home to get them answered. I wanted to know if there was anything for me in England or anything to tie me there, there wasn't. For sure there are friends and family but I hope that they will always be there. I firmly believe that each man must follow his own path and after my time in England I knew that it was no longer on my map.

I left England in July and headed back to Asia. At this point I was unsure what to do with myself. I still had a ticket to either Australia or New Zealand and the option of teaching in either Thailand or Japan was available. I meditated on it while doing absolutely nothing on the paradise Perintheian islands in Malaysia. After another 2 months travelling around Indonesia and Malaysia I returned to Thailand where I had to make a final decision whether to take my flight out of Bangkok or not. As it happened fate intervened. I had booked the flights throught a friend back home who had managed to f**k up my booking and inadvertently cancelled my flight! I had loved being in Thailand so much that the decision wasn't a tough one, the same day I started looking for work.

I met a guy named Barrie on Kho San Road just before the 2004 U.S election. I had been reading on the Internet about Bin Laden popping up just in time to guarantee bush a return to office. I found it so unbelievable that this could not be fake that I just had to mention it to the person sat next to me who happened to be Barrie. We spent the next 6 hours drinking beer leo while putting the world to rights and a beautiful friendship was born. Barrie recommend me for a job and I was teaching at a primary school within a week.

Teaching was like a dream come true. I had always thought that there must be more to work than simply slaving away to make 'the man' rich. Surely our existence is meant to be about more than just working and consuming? Teaching was the answer. I spent the next 18 months teaching to the sweetest little angels (most of the time!) and had a constant smile on my face, life was easy, life was perfect. I also had the added bonus of having a great friend teaching alongside of me. The first day I met Brendon I was supposed to be explaining all about the work we had to do over here, we went slightly off track and spent the whole day drinking large changs, talking about hip hop, life, politics and everything else that matters. That was a quality day and we've spent many many more days since then hammering the changs, battling on the playstation and putting the world to rights. Brendon is a cool geezer and true friend, even if I did think he was a bit of a wide boy at first - in the best possible way of course mate! Brendon is, alongside Barrie, my best friend over here and we have had some great times whether hitting the Bangkok nightlife, playing football on the ps2 or bbqing on the roof, it's all good.

In between my 18 months teaching I took a trip to India. I enjoyed Bombay, Goa and Hampi but enjoyed Rajastan less. Rajastan is a beautiful and fascinating place with vast, interesting history but the population view westerners as dollar signs or groping material if they're girls. I didn't see enough of India to be able to make any decisions on the whole country but I have friends who love it so I obviously visited the wrong parts, never mind. My experience in India kind of put me off travelling for a while actually. I had never had negative experiences on the road before and I was delighted to return to Thailand for my favourite time of the year, Songkran water festival. There were some positives to come out of India, I met the wise oracle that is Steve and through that connection met the dazzle master JP, who is missed.

So that brings us up to today pretty much. Living in Thailand really is a dream come true and I am so happy here. Life is so chilled and easy that I do find it hard to think about moving on although I guess that day will come at some point. I eat delicious spicy, fragrant food for every meal, which I don't have to cook and costs next to nothing, people are genuinely friendly, there are no wankers or scallies on the street, it's always hot, I don't have one iota of stress or negativity and live in a sweet bachelor pad with a great mate. All in all life is great!