Well, you probably notice that I don’t update this blog much, hell the only reason I am now is

a) because I just renewed the domain for 2 years despitethe fact that IU’m leaving Songkhla in 2 weeks

b) because I feel terribly ashamed of those dreadful pay per post entries I did…but fukit…it paid me 25 us dinars…deleted now and won’t happen again..promise…

Well it was my last day of school today, and despite me being late fro work practically everyday for the past 2 years they had a posh leaving bash for me at the Pavillion hotel…they even bought me a genuine Adidas polo shirt…wow!

I do like the department people..they are genuinely nice, but it’s jut the same I can’t say the same thing about the petty minded penny pinching director…definitley time to move on.

As for the blog, well perhaps it will get a name change in the near future, but I’ll be keeping the posts here whatever…it’s the only blog I have and it’s survived for 4 years now…ok not well maintained…but while the 2004 posts still remain it’s something I’m proud of, from Life in The Wor Zone, to Songkhla South, to who knows what the future holds….

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I’m not sure if I mentioned this before on my blog, but I’m in the middle of a distance learning course in my perpetual attempt to get myself respectable qualifications. So I applied last year to do a BA top-up in Business and Management from Sunderland University, and it’s administered for distance learning by a group called RDI.

To start with I had to get the equivalent of an HND in Business and Management, so using my prior accreditation I was given seven additional HND modules to do. 5 essays and 2 exams later I’m finally about to start my degree top-up modules.

It can be a bit tricky juggling work and distance learning and so far I’ve managed fine, but if there’s anyone in the situation where juggling work and family life is simply impossible, it would probably be hand to know somewhere that you can buy an essay.
Some might say that it is a risky business doing so, but this organisation writes custom essays based on your own writing style and tailored to the level of study you undertake. If you are doing something a bit more involved you can also buy a custom research paper.

While I managed to get my work done ok, one sometimes has to wonder what would be the greater evil….risking financial difficulties through not being able to balance work loads or “sub-contracting it out”. Take a look at the site and decide for yourself.

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Booooring.  Thursdays week 1 start crap, continue dully, and finish on a low.

Starting out this morning were the M3’s they don’t know what to do with…so they stick them all in a class together and give them to the most junior teachers.  This morning one student was not altogether certain how to write the letter “D”.  The class includes the hulking but pleasent Harris, the boy who is only known to me a Fnarr, and there are 30 other equally vacant blank faces.  The easiest activities are beyond them, and it’s a countdown til Lunchtime.

So here we are at the arse end of the split shift.  The internet is spoadic…the proxy keeps refusing connections every 5 minutes.  Afterwards comes the M5 equivalent of the M3 class of the morning….nice but dim.   My only respite was abusing the cold calling kids book seller for only selling her books in a set when I only wanted one…a collegue stepped in and we split the order.

You can see it’s a really exciting day today right? Roll on the weekend.

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Today my classes celebrated worldwide Seven Eleven day. During rolecall instead of “present” students said “beep beep” mimicking the irritating sound made on entering a store, and we all waxed lyrical about barely edible hotdogs, slurpees and junkfood.

In honour of this special day here are 11 Seven Eleven facts courtesy of da wikiwikiwiki.

1. Since March 2007, (7/11 is) the largest chain store in any category, beating McDonald’s by 1,000 stores.

2. The company was founded in 1927 in Dallas, Texas, USA, when an employee of Southland Ice Company, Joe C. Thompson, started selling milk, eggs and bread from an ice dock.

3. Initially, stores were open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., hours unprecedented in their length at the time, hence the name. The company began to use the 7-Eleven name in 1946.

4. About 100 stores in Oklahoma, USA are independantly owned by a Roman Catholic family, and so do not carry adult magazines, contraceptives, or lottery tickets. They pay higher wages than regular seven eleven stores in the USA.

5. 7-Eleven has been consistently ranked in Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500, most recently being selected as the #4 overall franchise. In addition, they were also ranked #38 in Fastest-Growing Franchises and #2 in Low Cost Franchises.

6. In Thailand 7/11 is popularly referred to simply as “Seven” with the “Eleven” rarely mentioned in casual conversation. The franchise in Thailand is the Charoen Pokphand Group, which in turn grants franchises to operators. There are 4,055 7-Elevens in Thailand, of which more than 1,500 are in Bangkok, making Thailand have the 4th largest number of stores after the US, Japan and Taiwan.

7. An episode of Futurama showed a 31st Century version of the store, with the logo name rendered as 7¹¹ as if to denote “7 to the 11th power”. A sign beneath it boasts that the store is “open 28 hours”.

8. Supermarket News ranked 7-Eleven’s North American operations No. 11 in the 2007 “Top 75 North American Food Retailers” based on 2006 fiscal year estimated sales of $15.0 billion. Based on 2005 revenue, 7-Eleven is the twenty-fourth largest retailer in the United States.

9. Rock band 311 used to manufacture T-shirts featuring the 7-Eleven logo with the numeral “7″ replaced by a “3.” However in 2001, the band received a cease-and-desist letter from the corporation. Relient K also sold merchandise in 2001 featuring a variation of the 7-Eleven logo but eventually phased them on their own accord having never received a complaint from 7-Eleven.

10. Japan has more 7-Eleven locations than anywhere else in the world, where they often bear the title of its holding company “Seven & i Holdings”. Of the 28,123 stores around the globe, 11,500 of them are located in Japan. 1,396 are in Tokyo alone.

11. On the 7th of November in Australia, 2007, a free Slurpee will given to any customer that says Happy 7 Eleven day to the person behind the counter between the hours of 7am and 11pm. This sadly just results in blank looks in Thailand.

Happy 7/11 Anyway!

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I found a bunch of mentalism ebooks on the net the other night, and some of the effect described are so ridiculously easy that even I was able to pick them up.  Well, all good mentalists need an audience, and fortunately I’m paid to have an audience, so I tried a couple out on them.

The first effect involved a 1, 5 and 10 baht coin.  I would write down my prediction on a piece of paper and have a student pick a coin.  I would then reveal my prediction as being identical.  It’s so laughably simple but it got applause from every class I did it with, though doing it more than once is dicey as they’ll get the trick.  I won’t spoil it by revealing the method here!  Oh well, it livened up an otherwise rainy and dull day!

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I’m getting back into the notion of blogging again as a way to express myself.  I have just started a separate blog called Terrible Webwrongs to curb that urge of mine to blog stupid shit, and I’m going to give pay per post a go to see if I can’t squeeze some cash out of this thing..after all I am still paying for it to be hosted.  I’m not expecting to get rich off it, but I am curious to see how it pays…in my experience I don’t hold much hope for it, but we can but try.

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Just figured out video blogging, and since it’s ages since my holiday in Krabi, perhaps my mood at the time may sum it up better than my mood now!

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Just on another thing today we went to the as usual hot and slightly depressing Songkhla Zoo, and photos are online at my Flickr site. I’m assuming you know how to get there…it’s not hard.

The otter thing I am doing is testing out wblog an external blog entry creator. If you can read this it works amazingly enough!

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I used to be a bit disappointed about the lack of any meaningfull tropical animals roaming the streets in Thailand…tends to be all soi dogs, cats and the occaisional jingjok climbing my walls of an evening.

Last night however I ventured into the kitchen with the lights off, but in the dimness did spot a certain menacing shape sitting on the floor.

Turns out this monster is fairly hamless so I’m tentitively allowing it to hang out on our kitchen ceiling.  You can see where the inspiration for Predator comes from though!

In other home news today Mali is pretty much walking on her own.  She managed a total of seven independant steps this morning.  I’m officially in posession of a toddler. Oh and she’s just woken up..toddlersitting time again!

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Is this the end for ‘The Grind’?

It looks like the guy who wrote one of the best “anti-TEFL” blogs ever is calling it a day. Unassuming AKA Bluffer AKA Iain, is rather an unassuming sort of chap who I met in Bangkok when I went for the Thai TESOL, and along with various others from Ajarn, went out on the lash with.

He writes better than I could of the daily irritations and surreal working environment that face many teachers in Thailand, and his familiar exasperated style has made it a very entertaining read over the year or so it’s been going.

If you’ve never had a look take a dig through the archives….wonderfully written tales of Prathom woe

Songkhla South salutes you!

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