Tag your it - Random Facts

I have just been 'tagged' by the lovely Sue G (Thank you hon...my first proper tag!!). So, now I have to try and think of six random things about me then tag another six people to do the same!! It is not as easy as it sounds......

First I need to include the instructions so the people I 'tag' will know what they need to do -

1. Link to the person that tagged you - i.e. me

2. Post the rules on your blog

3. Write six random things about you in your blog post

4. Tag six people in your post

5. Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

6. Let the tagger know your entry is up.

I have just spent ages trying to come up with six things that are interesting but alas that proved too much for me so I'm afraid that your just getting six things :-)

1. I love cooking but am ridiculously intimidated by some recipes. I am quite happy to cook a curry completely from scratch but the thought of making lasagne terrifies the living daylights out of me!! It's the bechamel sauce that does it - I'm convinced that I will end up with gallons of lumpy inedible gloop!!

2. Since I'm already discussing cheesy sauce I might as well tell you that I have a mild allergic reaction to some cheeses. I can't do really strong cheese or hard cheese.....they make me all shivery and cause me to pull my 'Cheese Face' which involves much gurning, shivering and hand flapping (Not my best look but very amusing to all observing!!)

3. I can't frown!! No, really, I can't....my eyebrows point blank refuse to go into the frowny position. This is not a good thing cause when I'm mad Chris just thinks I look cute and ends up laughing at me which then makes me laugh......There I am trying to be all mad with him and I end up giggling!! (I'm not very good at being angry!!)

4. The first time I was ever drunk was when I was three. My Mum and Dad held a dinner party and, once everyone had gone through to the dining room, I went round and drank what was left in their glasses. I then went into the dining room with a big silly grin on my face, announced that I had been drinking their juice and then proceeded to sing Beatles songs for an hour before passing out!!

5. When I was little my Dad hung a stuffed toy parrot above my bed so that when I lay down it was right above my head. He then told me that it would shit on me if I got up in the middle of the night........ (Ha, that'll teach you for telling everyone the welly story Dad.....revenge is mine!!)

6. I sometimes have, what my husband refers to as, 'donut moments' (I will explain that in a minute). These are moments when I really should engage brain before opening mouth. I shall give you an example.....I had been out shopping and had seen something that I wanted to buy, can't for the life of me remember what the hell it was but anyway....., I was telling Chris about it and I said 'It was a really good price too - they had it on special offer. You could buy one and get one free or get two for the price of one!!' My lovely husband looked at me and then pissed himself laughing.......he refers to me as 'donut' cause he reckons I have a hole in the middle where my brain should be!! (I choose to look on it as a term of endearment!!)

So there you have it. Six random facts about me........

I now tag JJ at Teastains, Mel at Thai Village Life, Debs in France, Jen at Spiral Skies, Hullaballoo, and DJ.

Sometimes Life is Good!!

I don't know if you remember but about this time last year I visited an area in Klong Toey slum which had been decimated by fire (you can read about it here). I was just starting in my BWG Welfare role and going there made a huge impression on me.....one which has haunted me ever since. At the time I knew I was going to visit a fire site and had prepared myself for that but still wasn't really prepared for what I actually saw!! People were living in temporary shelters under a motorway - they had no water, no electricity, no sanitation and the entire place was infested with rats. It was shocking!! (We signed a cheque on the spot and that amount has been added to since).

A few weeks later we learned that our money was going to be used to build a house. The idea was that the house would be used to teach the people made homeless how to build their own (No money for builders so it's a DIY job) and the house would then be donated to one of the families made homeless when it was completed. All the families names were put in a pot and one was selected. When we next visited we met the lady who's family had won and we were invited to come back once all the building work in the area had been finished. (This is the house in the process of being built)

Today we went back to the site........I didn't recognise the place (trust me that is a good thing!!). There were still people living in, what I can only describe as, a shanty town but the area where the fire was has been transformed!! These are the before and after photo's!! (Can you believe the difference!!). We were invited into their home where we were presented with with drawings that had been done by the two girls who lived there and they both gave a little speech. It was very very humbling.

This is the house that BWG built



This is the lady of the house

and this is her with her daughters




Sometimes life is good!!

Sawatdee Pi Maï - "Happy New Year"

It's Songkran again!! (The Thai New Year and Water Festival that lasts three days....THREE!!). It's great fun on day one, for about five minutes, by day two it has lost all it's charm - you can't take three steps from your door with out being covered in a white paste and being completely soaked to the skin!! The upside is that it cools you down....the down side is that money and mobile phones need to be put in plastic bags before you leave the house and you can't wear anything that needs to be dry cleaned or that has the slightest chance of the colour running!! Oh, and you've got to be careful what fabric your wearing or you end up really cold once you get into the air con!!

We have hibernated in the house for two days (It officially started on Sunday but that didn't stop it actually starting on Saturday!!). Yesterday we ventured out......We thought that since it was the last day it would be quieter because everyone would be suffering from hangovers after all the partying. We were wrong!!! I thought I would share our experience with you using photos - they will be able to say more than my words ever will

This is the group of partying Thai's at the top of our Soi (There really was no escaping!!).








We went to Central World in a bid to hide from the madness and we spotted this - so not only do you squirt people with water pistols but you can get rained on whilst you do it (Much giggling was done!!)










We decided to call in at one of our local bars on Soi 8 (Funnily enough the bar is called Soi 8). We got completely drenched getting there - this is what the Soi looked like.



We sat outside and I have to say it was great fun watching other people get absolutely soaked whilst we sat and had a beer!!









There was a lot of partying going on and this is a photo of one of the girls stopping a Tuk Tuk so the driver and passenger could get soaked by her group of friends.









This is our friend Chris, armed and dangerous, after he decided we looked waaaay to dry sitting there with our beers!!!

We did have really good fun but I'm glad it's coming to an end!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And I got a lovely award from Lane :-D.

I would like to pass it to Mel at Thai Village Life, JJ at Tea Stains, Sue G at Me and Others, Jen at Spiral Skies, Caroline at In Search of Adam and DJ at DJ Kirby's blog.

Hmmmm.........

I'm a little worried about Lugs.......I think he may be developing an alcohol problem!!

We've had a couple of funny nights recently

I thought I would share them with you.

The first one was last Sunday night. Monday was Chakri Day (This is the anniversary of the founding of the present Chakri Dynasty of which the present ruling monarch, King Bhumibol, is the ninth king) and was a holiday so we decided that we would go to one of the local pubs to celebrate the fact that Chris had a day off. We met up with Marrisa (Downstairs neighbour) and Mel (Thai Village Life blogger) and went along to The Robin Hood (Sukhumvit Road between Soi's 33 and 35 in case you ever want to visit). Talk about laugh!! They have a wee dude (no idea what his name is) that plays music there on a Sunday evening.....his blues stuff is great but he does tend to play a rather eclectic mix of other stuff as well.....some of which is....well.....not quite so great!!! I thought I was going to fall off my chair I was laughing so much - the singer is half Thai and half Indian and he was singing......wait for it.....The Proclaimers song 500 miles (No, I don't know why either) and was attempting to do it in a Scottish accent!! Not only that but he did the weirdest twiddly dee bit in the middle of the song. Mel looks like she can't quite believe what she's hearing and Marissa was screaming 'Make it stop!!'. (She's so going to kill me for putting that picture on here!!). Hehehehehehe



Then last night we went out to celebrate Moon's birthday (It's not till Friday but she's going up to Issan to spend Songkran, the Thai New Year and water festival, with her family - if you want to know what we did for Songkran last year click here). We took her to a great little restaurant called Anna's Garden on Thong Lor (Sukhumvit Soi 55). I love it there.....that atmosphere is great and the food is fab - we had spicy sausage, morning glory, sun dried beef, Tom Yum Goong (Spicy sweet and sour soup with prawns) and steamed sea bass with chilli and lemon (Yummy!!). Moon had half a glass of Thai wine and two small glasses of beer and was giggling like a loon......she was absolutely hilarious!! (Every time she has a drink she tries to convince us that she's not drunk by pulling the most remarkable pissed face either of us have ever seen!!). We bemused the waiter no end (he spent the evening trying to persuade us to go clubbing) and then had the taxi driver in stitches on the way home. She came in this morning and announced that her cheeks were sore from all the laughing she had done!!

Me Me

This is the first time I have ever done a 'Me Me' on this blog but there is one doing the rounds at the moment and I just couldn't resist doing my own version. The 'Me Me' is

If Your Life Were a Movie…What Would the Soundtrack Be?

Here are the rules -
1. Open your library (iTunes, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…because you’re not!
7. Stick the soundtrack on your mp3 player or ipod and listen away during the day.

I love this idea (I always have my ipod on shuffle cause I love the random mix of things you end up listening to) and I've really enjoyed reading everyone else's answers on this. It's quite amazing what you can learn about people from the type of music they like to listen to....anyway, here goes

Opening Credits - 'House Of Fun' by Madness from the album It's Madness.
Waking Up - 'I'm Not Dead' by Pink from the album I'm Not Dead.
First Day at School - 'Caught by the Fuzz' by Supergrass from the album Hot Fuzz Original Soundtrack.
Falling in Love - 'Time to Waste' by Alkaline Trio from the album Crimson
Fight Song - 'Personal Jesus' by Johnny Cash from the album Cash
Breaking Up - 'Don't Give Hate a Chance' by Jamiroquai from the album High Times
Prom/Dance/Ball - 'Big Me' by the Foo Fighters from the album Skin and Bones.
Life's OK - 'Lola' by the Kinks from the album The Singles Collection. (LOL!!!)
Mental Breakdown - 'In These Shoes' by Kirsty MacColl from the album The Best of Kirsty MacColl (Yay.....a song about shoes!!)
Flashback - 'Every You Every Me' by Placebo from the album Once more with feeling
Getting Back Together - 'Secret' by Maroon 5 from the album Songs about Jane.
Birth of Child - 'No-one knows' by Queen's of the Stone Age from the album Songs for the Deaf
Wedding - 'Can't lose' by We are Scientists from the album With Love and Squalor
Final Battle - 'Better Luck' by Scissor Sisters from the album Scissor Sisters
Funeral Song - 'Can I change your mind' by the Killers from the album Killers (LOL!!)
End Credits - 'If I had a million dollars' by Bare Naked Ladies from the album Gordon

So, there you have it - that would be the soundtrack to my life. (Thank god nothing too dodgy came out....well....apart from the Bare Naked Ladies track - but if you click on the link the video is very funny!!!! Does that make up for it?)

TAT

Yes I do have rather a lot of tat but what TAT actually stands for is Tourism Authority of Thailand. I've been contacted by them, via Steve, because they are currently looking for a handful of Thailand travel bloggers for one of their new websites (I don't need to do anything just fill in a profile) and they will take previous travel posts and put them on their website. I will get full credit for what I've written and they will provide links to my blog. I'm rather chuffed!! At the moment I have no idea what pieces they will use or even how many but they have e-mailed me to say that they really like the stuff I have written about the places I've visited here and they are definately going to include a few of my past posts :-)

It's too hot!!

We are now officially in the hot season (actually that should be HOT season) - It's a stonking 34 degrees today with 57% humidity and it's not about to get any cooler!!

It is too hot to write (If Chris were here he would probably tell me that it's too hot to read the nonsense that I write) and it's waaaay to hot to think. (We currently have a power cut so have no air con.........my computer has batteries and I'm hijacking my friends wireless network!!).

Anyway, the BWG are hosting this years CWL (Combined Women's Lunch) and it's got a James Bond theme.....I've just been told that, since I am on the committee, I need to dress up *Sigh*. It's too hot - I can't think any more......What the hell am I going to wear? (I need some inspired suggestions!!)

This is the poster that JJ and I put together for the lunch - I'm hoping that it might give you some ideas (cause I'm seriously struggling!!)

HELP!!!!