A day in the life...

[armstrong]

Looks nice. Great to have a computer area separate from the bed otherwise they never leave. You could maybe put a bookcase/shelves as a sort of wall to give the two room feeling while still being her space.

[Reg Dingle]

[Reg Dingle]

[Reg Dingle]

[Joe 90]

[Mendip]

^^ FFS... you must have something better to do?

Please don't encourage him, Joe.


However, in a rare morsel of pertinence contained within one of Reg Dingle's posts, yes, the aircon is indeed now under size.

Of course, I am already all over this. When I recently moved up two never-used aircon units from downstairs, one went into the daughter's bedroom and a stupidly large unit went into the identically sized room next door. All I have to do switch them over, job done. I reckon I have until next Feb/March until we'll be using aircon again so will get this done in due course, when the units are next cleaned.

Looks nice. Great to have a computer area separate from the bed otherwise they never leave. You could maybe put a bookcase/shelves as a sort of wall to give the two room feeling while still being her space.

Yes, this is a good idea. In many ways I am against the daughter having a pc set up in her room but she needs a quiet area away from the blaring tv downstairs to study, and so much of the homework seems to involve online these days. Some kind of division between the two areas is in order and I trust the daughter not to abuse having a pc/devices in her room and not let them interfere with her sleep. At some point you have to pass on the trust as at the end of the day, with me being away so much I can't enforce everything although I do keep a discreet eye on her screen time and reign her in if it becomes excessive.

The daughter may in fact change school and start boarding in a year's time, at the start of her iGCSE option years. This horrifies me in many ways but her current school has such restricted iGCSE options which do not including any of her favourite subjects; art, history & geography to name but three. If she doesn't take the iGCSE subjects that interest her she will be denied those subjects at A Level which I reckon could severely affect her future. She is well aware that an education is her ticket out of Isaan and so far she's onboard with this, in fact remarkable keen. But anyway, that's probably for a thread all of it's own.


Is Isaan really so different to other places?

My Isaan life followed me all the way to Somerset in the UK recently, when my mum asked me to try and catch a rat in her garden. She has had to stop feeding the birds as all the dropped food had attracted rats and her useless dog, Bella, just barks and wags her tail at them. Yogi would have sorted this problem out in an instant.



A healthy, clean country rat is quite a cute animal and had the wife joined me, I am sure she would have been licking her lips at the prospect of roasted garlic rat with Aunt Bessies. She always claims that the rice paddy rats she likes to eat are a different species to the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, that inhabit sewers and occasionally my chicken run, but I'm not so sure?

I ran out of time to deal with this one, but found these bird feeders that stick onto the windows and at least limit the dropped seeds for the rat to eat.

[DrWilly]

Start with the end in mind. Will she be doing art, history or geography at Uni? If not, she doesn’t need them for A levels, and thus doesnt need them for IGCSE.

Then you get two more years with her before she moves.

[Joe 90]

Art is a massive ballache with loads of time consuming coursework, it put my talented artist of a daughter off art.

[cyrille]

I was put off in 1975 by my dismally poor rendering of a recumbent deer's arse.

[Mendip]

^ Deers have notoriously difficult arses.

Start with the end in mind. Will she be doing art, history or geography at Uni? If not, she doesn’t need them for A levels, and thus doesnt need them for IGCSE.

Then you get two more years with her before she moves.

The way things are looking she will probably end up doing some kind of an art course for further education... although of course this is my hope. She may end up meeting some lowlife meth dealer and work a Korat noodle stall to pay his habit, but I like to look on the positive side.

Art is a massive ballache with loads of time consuming coursework, it put my talented artist of a daughter off art.

Yes, we are under no illusion that art will be an easy option, quite the opposite, in fact.


It's not just that by staying at the current school she will be denied many options, but also that to get a suitable number of iGCSEs she will be forced into taking options that she will struggle in. The options at her current school are so restricted. English, Maths and Thai are mandatory, but she will be forced into taking the three sciences, Chinese (which she shows no aptitude for at all) and Computer Science... there's not much else on offer. She struggles with Maths but with a lot of hard work she is now in a position of generally getting good passes for most tests/exams, and of course she needs a Maths IGCSE to go anywhere. But Physics she really struggles in, has no interest in, and it seems a shame to make her take some subjects (which she may fail) when another school offers so many more suitable subjects that interest her.

But of course... it means losing the daughter in a years time... we lose her in three years time anyway since her school doesn't offer A Levels, but that seems a long way off. She could come back weekends of course but it would be a lot of travel.

Would I even bother coming back very often between work trips if the daughter wasn't at home? Much as I love my dogs, they don't provide a full social life.

It's a lot to think about. One positive may be that if she was away, it would free me up to concentrate doing a lot more work during term time and maybe even bring retirement forward a few years, before I'm 80? I've been limiting my work for several years now for the daughter's sake.

We shall see... it all seems very complicated... when I were a lad I just stayed at the local Comprehensive until the age of 18 and naturally moved on to escape the villages. For now I'm initiating contact with a new school and we can take things from there.


Anyway, maybe she won't want to leave her swanky new bedroom with curtains hung and furniture re-arranged?



This will be her 'study' area... yeah, right!

I'll have to sort this bit out in four weeks when I return.



And a message for Dirk... once you get established and can commute back and forth from Thailand, take dried chillies and chilly powder to work... the cooks (and your colleagues) will love you for it. Most of this little lot will be heading to my new Filipino night cook next week.

[Stumpy]

Nice Job on your daughters room Mendy.

[Mendip]

^ Thanks mate, the finishing ain't great close up, but I'm used to that in Thailand and it no longer bothersme so much as it used to. The strip of tiles where the old wall was, also don't match. They're leftovers from the same batch when we built the house but the tiles have obviously faded in the daylight over 18 years.

The extra door may or may not get bricked up in due course, but to be honest I favour 'not'.

The project ended badly with an LTI so I am keen to declare it finished.

[moose65]

An LTI ?
FFS next you will be talking TIFR's etc

[Joe 90]

The project ended badly with an LTI so I am keen to declare it finished.

I feel your pain.

Bodge it and scarper.