Up Early,

with my first stop of the day,

 to the hospital for my bi-monthly check up, so weight 76.5 kilogrammes, blood pressure 133 over 67 at 80 beats a minuet, then a blood sample taken and sent to the laboratory, so a wait for an hour or so, next stop LK Metro for breakfast, this is the view from Soi Bukaow,

 the building at the end of the Soi getting bigger at every visit,

 and this was where I was heading, Kilkenny's, bar, restaurant and guest-house in the corner of the 'L' shaped Soi,

 I ordered the big breakfast, orange juice, with a choice of tea or coffee,

 two slices of bread with two pats of butter, plus a tub of strawberry and one of orange spread,

 it is opposite another well known bar and guest-house, 

the Billabong, 

  the big breakfast arrived,

two eggs, two sausages, well everything you see all for 135 baht, so breakfast finished and back to Soi Bukaow and then to the hospital for the blood results which were 133 sugar and 5.1 uric acid, the good news is that normal values range between 3.5 and 7.2 mg/dL so I am just about in the middle, the doctor seemed very pleased with the results and said to keep everything the same, so with a hop, a skip and a jump my next stop was to fill the bike with fuel as I was running on fumes to get this far, 

later in the morning Doc. Jeff called to say would I like to meet him at the Jade House for the bar-b-q- and a drink,

 it is situated in the Jomtien Nivate estate on Thappraya Road going towards Jomtien,

 although classed as a Gentleman's club this is the reason Jeff wanted to meet up there, he also invited Mick along as well,

every Wednesday afternoon at 2.00 there is basically a free bar-b-q, it works like this, you pay 200 baht for a voucher, then use that to buy drinks, say 3 or 4 sodas or beers which you most probably would have bought anyway and you eat as much as you want for free, all for 200 baht, great idea,

I did not eat anything myself as this morning I had the big breakfast at Kilkenny's, but I have to say the food looked really good and plenty of it, after saying goodbye to Doc. Jeff and Mick I made my way to Country Favourites, we had decided not to go out this evening, but we had not had an Indian meal for so long we decided to treat ourselves for a takeaway,


the restaurant is situated in Soi Bon Kai, this picture taken outside of the restaurant,

 looking towards the Cozy Resort,

outside the daily specials,

and as the sun went down here we were outside in the cool of the evening,

for our starters we had ordered poppadom masala,

 with onion bhajiyas and chicken samosa,

 then after a long break our main course,

 chicken korma,

chicken tikka masala,

 peas pilau rice,

aloo gobi,

and onion nan bread,


'Cheers!',

 a few weeks ago we were plagued by mosquitoes, but now there are hardly any, but I still lite up one of the mosquito coils when we sit outside,

then our dessert a ice cream each, the food we both agreed was absolutely delicious,

 this is the restaurants menu although I should say it is more of a take away than a restaurant as seating is limited,

as I have said before the food is first class, and we would both if you like Indian food highly recommend it, back to the evening, we were both so full, we spent the rest of the evening listening to music then some cable television and just before midnight we were off to bed.

Many Years Ago,

Laural and Hardy,

sang a song in one of their adventures, On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, well this is a post about the story of a lonesome palm which is housed in Kew Gardens in London, one day in 1895, while walking through the Ngoya Forest in Zululand, southern Africa, a British botanist, John Medley Wood caught sight of a tree, it sat on a steep slope at the edge of the woods and looked different from the other trees, with its thick multiple trunks and what seemed like a splay of palm fronds on top, from a distance it looked almost like a palm tree, and Dr. Wood, who made his living collecting rare plants (he directed a botanical garden in Durban) had some of the stems pulled up, removed and sent one of them to London, that little tree stem was then put in a box and left in the Palm House at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, it sat there, alone, for the next 98 years, named Encephalartos woodii, in Dr. Wood's honour, it is a cycad which are a very old order of tree and it turns out this one, which is still there in London, may be the very last tree of its kind on our planet and this is why, these trees cannot fertilise themselves, some plants contain male and female parts on the same individual,

 not E. woodii, it is, as the botanists say, dioecious, it needs a mate, you can of course own one of these, many botanical gardens do as clones can be made from this one plant, but only male clones, researchers have wandered the Ngoya forest and other woods of Africa, looking for an E. woodii that could pair with the one in London, they haven't found a single other specimen, so unless a female exists somewhere, E. woodii will never mate with one of its own, the one and only last of it's kind, you can read more about the lonesome palm in Oliver Sacks book, The Island of the Colorblind.

for an update on the palm, (which it is not), in 1997, the London cycad was moved out of Palm House and planted in a bed along with other South African plants at Kew Gardens, seven years later, in 2004, for the first time ever, it produced a bright orange/yellow male cone, the old boy still has what it takes, if only we could find a lady E. woodii, think of the children!

I Have Mentioned Before,

I am not a great fan of tattoos,

 but every so often I do see a few that are really neat like these from the famous tattoo artist Brian Woo aka Dr. Woo, 

who some call the Tattoo Artist for the Hollywood Set, using fine lines the tattoos look almost to good to be true,

keeping to a tattoo theme if you fancy a tattoo but lack the commitment you can have some made of your 12 favourite pictures using Instagram, facebook or your favourite pictures, an example above, to make them you can use a service offered by picattoo.com, it appears they last for up to a week,

or there is the D.I.Y. method, all you need for this to work is to have three items, a piece of paper, tape and a inkjet printer,

you can try this at home, for full instructions have a look here, but kids, ask Mum or Dad first!

There Are Many Things In Life,

 I do not understand,

 like this chair, or is it a sofa that you lounge on? OK call it a chaise lounge, it is obviously unique, called The Lockheed Lounge it was made by by Marc Newson, now this is the bit I just do not understand it sold for £2,434,500 during a sale at auction house Phillips in London, at today's rate that is $3.57 million, still somebody must have understood what it was all about, the sale cements Newson’s status as one of the world’s highest-grossing designers, even more astounding the chair was bought over the phone, I hope the buyer had a look at it first.

Straight On To Today's Post,

as I have a 08.00 appointment at the hospital for my bi-monthly check up,

 but back to today, it does not seem a month since the bug-men called but it must be, also it is 1 year since I last paid so for the next 12 months it is 4,000 baht for the monthly visits, in case anyone wants to use them the company is Eastern Service 56 Pestcontrol, telephone 038- 433143 the first visit or year is a bit more expensive as they drill holes in the floor that pesticide is injected into, but this procedure is a one off, on the monthly visits one operative sprays the outside of the house the second inside,

 after their visit we were off,

 and parked the bike behind TukCom,

 making our way past the courtesy bus if you use a car and park it in the TukCom car park,

 we walked past Soi Bukaow,

 Pattaya Tai very quiet today, especially when you think it is market day,

into Friendship we went, we were running short of rye bread amongst other things, 

 in the late afternoon we watched Deep Impact, a well made sci-fi that we had watched before,

 after our evening meal Bronson, another film we has watched before, this is what I wrote the last time we watched it, his real name is Michael Peterson, it is the story of Britain's most violent criminal, despite never killing anyone or laying a finger on a woman or a child, to date of the 37 years he has spent in prison 33 of them have been in solitary confinement, his last sentence was for 3 years, he has spent another 8 years in prison over his sentence, it appears the establishment is intent on keeping him there, click on this link to read about him and his art foundation, should he be freed? watch the film and see what you think,

to round off the evening some more episode of the excellent Boardwalk Empire, with that we were off to bed.

It Was A Sad Day,

it was time for Diana's family to return to the Philippines,

 the minivan arrived promptly at 06.00 and we were on our way,

 the sun still low in the sky,

 we soon arrived at the airport, the traffic really light,

 unloaded form the minivan,

 it was into the queue to check in,

 Diana and older sister Lyn,

then a slight problem, in my air travels I have seen hundreds of these bags being put on aircraft and watched as so many went around on carousels as they complete their journey, I am sure you too will have seen them if you travel out here at airports and bus stations, but now they are not allowed on-board aircraft in the hold, at least not on Cebu Pacific aircraft,

unless they are shrink wrapped, so a new experience for us as we had it wrapped in one of these machines, I wonder what would have happened to travellers who arrived at the airport with one of these bags before the shrink wrapping machines were here?

 all booked in and ready to fly,

 a final farewell and they were off to immigration, we all had a great holiday, it all went past so quickly, but time does fly when you are having fun,

the journey home took forever, for some reason the traffic was almost at a standstill for mile after mile, as the traffic jam started I decided to listen to Red Dwarf, a BBC television show that also has episodes for the radio that I have on my telephone, this the last one titled Back to Reality, I listened to all 6 episodes at 36 minutes each, and we were still not out of the traffic-jam! arriving home, eventually, one of the cactus had flowered,

 and nice it looked too,

we had sort of lost all track of time, it seemed like we had just settled down to have a coffee when we had a telephone call to say Diana's family had landed safe and sound in Manila after their 3 hour flight, they almost beat us home!

 Mick called in for a coffee and a chat, then after he left time for our evening meal, next feet up for the whole evening of watching Boardwalk Empire, the second series, gripping it was too, by now it was just after midnight so for us we were off to bed.