Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

My relaxation this week has been the Walk for Mouth Cancer (walk against Mouth cancer?) yesterday. !0K in two circuits of the Serpentine in Hyde Park. I did it with my two sons, as noted above, in Memory of my Mum who had her op just a year ago and died on Easter Sunday. Unfortunately it was on at the same time as the anti-knife march but someone dies of mouthcancer every three hours.

http://www.justgiving.com/forjoan. http://www.mouthcancer.org

Shameless or what?

We did it in exactly 2 hours, and were the first walkers home, I couldn't have done it without the boys.

I've nursed patients with facial cancers. Agonising, disfiguring, terrible.

Well done Mary!

Would you like to see my town? I have to confess I'm about 6 miles away and there are no pics of my little village (far too beautiful) - but this is where the tourists go and where I go shopping or for a pizza or to have my toupe trimmed... (there's usually way more traffic!).


http://www.mapjack.com/HuaHin

What a great site!

I espied 2 silver pick ups in the photo when I opened. Is one the Philippo mobile?

Also noted with amusement the "Bad Krud" temple....Krud being of course our Housey Slang fro bread as in krud, flab and muck.

Now all we need is a photo of the man himself, toupe and all!

CHAZ wrote:I espied 2 silver pick ups in the photo when I opened. Is one the Philippo mobile?

Also noted with amusement the "Bad Krud" temple....Krud being of course our Housey Slang fro bread as in krud, flab and muck.

Now all we need is a photo of the man himself, toupe and all!

<cough>facebook <cough>

TRAITOR!

Love your town, love it!

Now to try and find facebook... the man himself at last... thanks, Jo. Eleven chest hairs!

Well, the thread's called 'Just a glimpse', so here's a glimpse. Valentine's Day. Just proposed. In the staff canteen.

You proposed in the staff canteen? You old romantic, you

OOOh, not at all as I imagined, you could (almost) match DBTS for hair.

I must check out Facebook, I spend nearly as long on there as I do on here.

MY first husband proposed at his departmental cheese and wine party at Uni and promptly passed out.

OK, small confession.

The staff canteen thing was a slight exaggeration.

This campus (supposedly the IT campus) of Silpakorn University offers a variety of hotel/catering/tourism-related courses. One of the pleasant by-products of that is they have a full-blown fancy restaurant controlled by pros and staffed by students. Beautiful set-up, jolly tasty international cuisine, exceedingly cheap. Oh, and crap service .

I try to make a point of not letting students know I speak a little Thai, on the basis that if they think I can speak the lingo, they'll be prattling away to me in Thai 19 to the dozen without even trying to speak any English. This can backfire in the restaurant - as a customer I'll say something like "please make sure you use the French mustard dressing, not the spicy Thai chilli one..." the student waiter will smile politely and nod without having the faintest idea what I'm on about, and the salad from hell will turn up on my plate. "Sorry, I don't understand" doesn't seem to be an acceptable phrase here - loss of face and all that... about time we had some decent English teachers, if you ask me. Oops

Another glimpse. Today is 'Loi Kratong'. I always assumed that this was a Buddhist festival, and as far as most people here are concerned it is, but Buddhism, like many other religions, has many 'schisms' and variations. Rigorous research (5 minutes via the wonderful Google) suggests it probably originated in India as a Hindu ceremony to worship the Goddess of Water.

Anyway, it's a fabulous day here. Forget tourism, this is for the Thais, and if you're lucky enough to be here at this time of year and take part, you should consider yourself very fortunate.

I think I posted something about this last year, so I won't bore you with all the details, but if you're interested, there is info on Wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loy_Krathong

and lots more with a simple enquiry on any search engine.

There is a large Thai Buddhist temple in Wimbledon, and if you happen to be in the area when any sort of festival/ceremony/whatever is taking place, it would almost certainly be worth a visit.



Photobucket has gone completely soppy on me, and won't let me post any photos other than the Valentine's Day one you've seen, a cranefly and the above; possibly the most irritating avatar I have ever seen...

Going back to the demonstrations in Bangkok mentioned a few weeks ago, it's all getting a bit out of hand now. People firing at each other, the airport completely blocked, the Parliament building still occupied, grenades being fired at the protestors (although the police seem to have riot shields but no weapons now). Total chaos, and nobody seems to know quite what to do next.

The Thaksin visa cancellation by the UK while they were abroad was a very smart move (although apparently they have Bahamian passports as well... ), but it hasn't changed anything here. The present government was democratically elected, but they are basically a very similar set-up to Thaksin's government under another name. The People's Alliance for Democracy (the opposition in yellow, the King's colour) want to oust this democratically elected government. It's all a bit of a contradicition in terms. The PM's position is 'Why won't you sit and talk with me?', while the PAD's response is 'Resign first, then we'll talk.' The odd (sorry, one of the many odd) thing(s) about all this is that the opposition are mainly middle to upper class. The most frequently wielded weapon is a golf club.

Whatever they do now is probably going to be too late for the sizable tourism industry here - high season starts in the next few weeks, and any westerner with half a brain will presumably be cancelling their bookings for whatever they can get back. And there certainly won't be any late decisions to try Thailand as a holiday destination. Frankly, that doesn't bother me in the least, but it really should be bothering the Thais very seriously.

Do you feel in any danger yourself?

Not in the least, but thanks for asking!

Try to imagine living in Brighton when there are all kinds of problems around Parliament and at Heathrow. I watch it on the news just as you probably do.

The head of the army called for the PM to stand down and have fresh elections a day or two ago. The PM has just got back from Peru or somewhere and went on TV an hour ago, probably to say 'get stuffed'. Unfortunately, he may have a mind as sharp as a razor, but in terms of charisma and public speaking he makes Gordon Brown look like Barack Obama.