We Had A Family Reunion,

one of Diana's Mums classroom friends who lives in Thailand called in,

 Arnel and Lot came down from Bangkok where they live and spent the afternoon with us,

 and brought their daughter along as well, Joey Girl, as you can imagine they have not meet up in years, so it was an afternoon of reminiscing,

 after saying our farewells we were of to the market, well I dropped the family at Tesco Lotus to do some shopping then took the truck back home and took a motorbike taxi to the weekend night market on Thepprasit Road as usual,

 another floor or two have been built on the new building, another week or three and the Jomtien tower will be completely hidden from view,

 the traders have put up awnings, during the afternoon we had yet more showers,

 and looking inland at the grey sky there were more on the way,

 I made my way through the market and noticed this new stall selling second-hand handbags, I saw a Gucci or two in the pile and wondered if they were genuine, well you never know!

 on the other side of the bar a stall has started selling livestock again, budgerigars at 180 baht each, there were also rabbits, mice and hamsters on offer,

 not many customers in the food aisles,

 I guess the earlier rain put a damper on people leaving home,

 not a soul in the pet section,

 and I did notice a lot of stalls had not yet set up,

 there were spaces everywhere,

 sunset over the market,

 there were certainly more than a few pitches available to rent this week,

 I made my way back to the bar,

 opposite the bar this evening a couple of stalls had not yet set up,

 the sky looking grey and ominous,

 the egg seller stopped by the steps,

watched by the peanut man,

 who then saw the second egg man,

 I have to admit I had thought there was only one egg man,

 well they are both wearing blue shirts,

 then Doc. Jeff called by, who we had not seen for a long time,

 the family returned from a shopping extravaganza,

 we were also joined by Brian,

 after saying our goodbyes it was home in the baht bus, Dioshane, Sandio and Daisy May,

 Dad and Lyn,

 Mum,

 Diana and myself,

 arriving home it was time to light the barby.

 which soon caught,

 and food was served, we started with garlic bread,

 then Diana brought out some marinated pork chops, ribs and chicken,

 so on with the ribs,

 and time to start cooking in earnest,

 with a bit of help,

 then eyes down and tuck in,

 and for dessert?

 you guessed it, ice cream!

 and a glass of wine or two,

 then some fun as we started to hand jive,

 then more fun as I made some of the family trillionaires,

one hundred times over with these genuine one hundred trillion dollar notes,

they were in fact legal currency in Zimbabwe back in 2009 when the country was gripped with hyperinflation,

here is one of the notes, as an aside so often I hear that a country or organisation has lent another country say a trillion US dollars, but think about this, here are a few facts about one trillion dollars, the US Bureau Of Engraving And Printing produces 38 million notes a day, so printing one trillion new one dollar notes from scratch and working seven days a week would take just over 72 years, yes 72 years! and you would need 429,646 tonnes of ink to complete the job, stacked in one pile, one trillion one dollar notes, each 0.0043in thick, would be 67,866 miles high, put another way, the stack would be 8.6 times the diameter of the earth, running through the North and South Poles (7,901 miles), if the world’s leaders spent the one trillion dollars at the rate of a dollar a second, they would still be spending it in 31,689 years, on the other hand, if they want to get through it all within ten years, they would need to spend 3,169 dollars a second, according to the US Federal Reserve, there are just 829 billion US dollars in existence, it also costs 6.4 cents to print each notes, so it’s a good job the massive sum will be passed on electronically, otherwise there would be a 64 billion dollar black hole in the budget of whoever gets or gives the trillion dollars for printing costs alone, never mind the costs of a huge fleet of trucks it would take to deliver the money, of course all of this is for printing a single US dollar bill, but I guess for Euros it would be pretty much the same, bearing all of the above in mind I had better make more room under the bed in case I win a trillion on the lottery!

moving on we moved inside to watch Independence Day, a great sci-fi movie, then for all of us, we were of to bed.