Crypto-currencies. Irrational tattoos.

Rain

There's lots of it in Hat Yai in November. Lots. Every time I make a cup of coffee at work I have to walk past this steely gaze. Did I do something to upset her? Normally Buddhist statues are golden and serene, whereas this one is cold and ominous. Are November's grey pregnant skies linked to the darkness she induces in me? Freaky man.


Cards

I've been dishing these out around town. The last time I had a business card was 1992. Me and Dave printed some off:

Fancy a shag? Call 0987654321

It was just after the first generation of cellphones had become available to the great unwashed. We bought ridiculously expensive brick-sized mobiles (using credit that took years to pay back on apprentice wages) and gave the cards to any half-decent lass in the pubs and clubs of Pompey. Must've been pretty successful going by how often Dave (and not me) visited the Royal Navy's STD clinic at Haslar. Happy days.

Protein

No need to buy tuna or soap for a while. It's good to buy bulk when things are on special. I eat a can of tuna and two boiled eggs (boiled in a kettle) everyday for breakfast ... convenient sources of protein on the cheap.

Bought 2.7kg of chocolate whey protein along with a blender (400bt - Tesco). A scoop of powder, 500ml of water, a banana and 30secs in the blender = awesome smoothie.

Followed by chicken and pork steaks at the small cafe across the road from the apartment. It's taken all this to reach 77kg - the heaviest in my life.

A 2.7kg bucket wasn't enough so I bought a second 5.4kg sack online for 2500bt.

Gym

Down this dead end

the gym with no name

If you ride aimlessly around the side streets of Hat Yai you'll eventually stumble upon the gym with no name.

In there you'll find a bunch of dedicated body builders. No advertising, no gimmicks, just a hardcore old-skool gym. 30bt a session. I normally go 3 times a week followed by 10 laps (4km) around the floodlit municipal stadium.

Canny crack - the lad in green is 53!!

Better than piss and tabs

Despite being the heaviest I've ever been, I look scrawny between these fellas. However, they'll gladly help you achieve your goals. They're keen to point out that you're only in competition with yourself as you progress along your journey of self-improvement. And the journey's different for each individual.

The thing I admire about lads like this is the amount of effort and single-minded discipline it takes to develop a physique like that. It's a complete lifestyle regimen of diet, sleep and exercise cycles that only the most determined can see through. Good effort. Or "BZ" as we used to say in the RN.

Bush

It's with this in mind that I built a pull-up bar for my classroom. I found a pile of scrap metal at school and spent a Saturday cutting and welding. I'd forgotten how crap I was at welding so PeeLek ended up giving me a hand.

Siamese Rough Bush. Rough? Whoever made that sign clearly hasn't been to a British nightclub lately.

Gash Tats

Humans, essentially, behave irrationally. I was going to write "Studies show ..." but whenever you see those two words at the start of a sentence, you can be sure that some crazy shit follows.

Studies show that newspaper articles containing the words "studies show" are bollicks.

Anyway, being an irrational being I decided to act irrationally and get another tattoo. The first tat shows "i" to the power "i" is equal to 0.2. "i" is √-1 which is an imaginary number. The surprising thing is that an imaginary number to the power of an imaginary number yields a "real" number answer. Irrational yet real.

The fact that this is the case ........ is the universe playing a cosmic joke on us?

The second tat is an incorrect version of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. It's wrong because the = sign should be ≥. This tells us that it's impossible to know, simultaneously, the exact position and momentum of a particle. If we know where it is, we don't know where it's going. If we know where it's going, we don't know where it is. This kind of stuff warps my grey matter. The more we learn about the universe the more mysterious it becomes.

Nong Bom, the tattooist, turned out to be an old student of mine. Now he's 26 but in 2009 he was in M6 in Saparachinee School in Trang while I was there. Freaked me out a bit that did.

Bitcoin

I was drinking a coconut at the beach on my birthday. Enjoying the blue sea, palm trees and tropical sunshine when I got thinking about crypto-currencies.

In November 2013 I bought $10 of bitcoin but it quickly dropped to $3 and I forgot all about it. Fast forward 4yrs and I was shocked to see that $3 had become $100. I decided to throw some more fiat coin at it.

I spent a wet weekend administering a crypto-portfolio. This involved finding an exchange, setting up bank links, verification and authentication processes. I then sprinkled some ETH onto a bed of 2F authenticated BTC built on a LTC/OMG foundation. I'm mentally prepared for this whole enterprise to go tits up .... but ... OTOH .... I'm also wondering what colour helicopter to get?

He who dares Rodney. He who dares.

I also opened a stock trading account with SaxoBank (Singapore) to offset the volatility of cryptos. Aiming for a portfolio of cash 60% stocks 35% crypto 5% now I've got something to invest after my previous epic ($200k 100% loss) investment disaster (link above).

Book

A few degenerates actually bought my book in November. They spunked one whole American dollar to embark on a literary journey through everything Asian (link above). Please let me know if you enjoyed it. You're now part of an eclectic group of intellectuals who throw around words like "elite" and "exclusive". Welcome aboard.

Floods



Hat Yai's rivers are full to the brim in November. But there's been no flooding despite weeks of torrential downpours. This is testament to HY's drainage canals working to capacity.







Bike


Finally got a green book, a white number plate and an oil change. The 20grand Suzuki rice rocket is a force to be reckoned with.









The rice rocket allows me to explore the far flung corners of Songkla Province. A sleepy Buddha on Yoh Island followed by a typical pork/rice dish.





Riding the ferry from from SinghaNakon District to Songkla Town. These Royal Thai Navy warships had me salivating with nostalgia about my old life in the UK's Royal Navy.











Another day into the wilds of Rattapum and KlongHoiKong.








Malay Chinese tourists love fire crackers.

End of Term exams. A bored lad finished early. My job is fun.





I'm happy to be 44 and single. Very happy. No nagging ball and chain. No ridiculous expenses. Women seem to pick up on this and want me slaving on the plantation again. I don't think I've ever been asked "You have wife/gf?" as much as I have since I stopped giving a shit about the opposite sex. I tell them I'm married.

However, I sometimes think about little Nong Wan back in Chiang Mai. How she used to make me laugh and how fun she was to be around. There are streets in Hat Yai named after her .... is this a sign? Well yes. But is it a sign? Fuck knows.