Friday (3 July 2015)
Had a great sleep, woke up at 08H30 and after our normal morning ritual, we had a breakfast of note which consisted of eggs, cheese, tomato, fried onions, Kalamata olives and toast.

I decided that I needed to put in more hours in order to get the blog as current as possible. The process I have been following thus far is as follows. I make quick notes of the current day as it unfolds but concentrate on fleshing out the detail of the oldest notes in order to get that published. Once I am up to date I will still post a weekly blog, but will update it every day as the week progresses.

Once I reach this stage, I will start working on getting my own web site up and running, after which the current blog’s information will be transferred there. I currently use a blog web service called Travelpod, which I believe is part of the Expedia group. Travelpod is good and it has served me well but it is pretty rudimentary and not very flexible. For these reasons I have decided to go with my own web site, but more about this when I am up to date with the blog.

We worked until 19:00, i.e. until I successfully published the second week’s info on the blog, then got ready for our evening out. Having had such a great experience at Fi, the Greek restaurant, a few weeks back, we decided to go back there and relive it all over again. All I can say, everything was the same, great food, great beer, great hosts. When we had finished, I asked the owner’s wife for pudding and she said “would that be dessert sir?”. I nodded. We were presented with a fruit salad, mostly pineapple and banana with a thick Greek yogurt, with chocolate of some sorts also in the mix, delicious.

We planned to watch a Friday evening movie when we got home, but we were way too tired for that, so we just crashed out for an early-ish evening.

Adri’s dad has not been well for a while now. He underwent a number of operations during the last year and at 84, that is not an easy thing to do. He is currently in the frail care centre of his retirement village where he receives good care. Every morning, as soon as Adri wakes up, she phones the sister on duty at the frail care centre to find out how her dad is doing. Some days better, some days unfortunately not.

Saturday (4 July 2015)
I got stuck into my normal daily dose of news and the main news was that the Greek referendum will be held tomorrow, basically it seems as if this is D-Day for the Greeks. I have been following this saga quite closely and must say that I do believe that many mistakes have been made by the Greeks during the negotiations. Imagine you, coming cap in hand to your benefactor, asking for more billions of Euros over and above the billions you have already squandered, and trying to call the shots. No wonder the EU and its allies take a dim view of the current proceedings. Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Finance minister, is a joke, a sad joke, something the Greeks do not need right now.

While waking up and getting ready for the day we listened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Greatest Hits). Man, this guy has got some serious talent with some amazing hits like Learning To Fly, Free Fallin’, Runnin’ Down A Dream, You Got Lucky… too many to mention. Tom was followed up with Savage Garden which I have not listened to for a very long time. I still remember buying this album when I was in Brussels for a WCO (World Customs Organisation) IMSC (Information Management Sub Committee) meeting. Old favourites such as Truly Madly Deeply and I Want You filled the air, bliss.

Now I love my Gmail, I really do, but the online Gmail interface, which I use on my laptop, is in one word, atrocious, in my humble opinion of course. Not sure why Google have never come up with a more user friendly online interface. On my Ipad and Iphone I use the Apple mail app to access Gmail, not optimal by any stretch of the imagination, but very workable indeed.

I have used Outlook on my laptop for both business and personal emails for many years and I do not think there are many better mail clients out there. Again, in my humble opinion, maybe I am just familiar with it, but it works for me. So today I set about to try to use Outlook to access my Gmail with the proviso that it must use IMAP, and not POP3. After a fair amount of searching on the Internet and a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to get the configuration spot-on. Wow, now it just feels right, really missed my Outlook, one just feels to be more in control of one’s emails, difficult to describe, but true.

Outlook was still trying to access my old email account which I gave up at the time I had my home phone and ADSL disconnected when preparing for the sabbatical. Quite annoying … comes up with errors every time I open Outlook. I did not want to remove the account from Outlook as I was nervous that I may lose all my emails. Searched a bit further on the Internet and found a way to merely disable that account which works great. Now all the distractions for the day were complete and I could concentrate on more pressing issues.

The online TEFL course is quite tough. Getting the blog up to date is quite tough, so we decided that we will put in some extra hours this weekend. We worked for a few hours until 14:30, around the time that the Super Rugby final started. I was hoping the Hurricanes would win as they had such a great season winning 14 of their 16 matches, but the Highlanders had an excellent game and deserved to win.

Watching these guys play, I am sorry to say, our SA teams have a lot to learn. I started the game with a Singha and ended with a Tiger, while consuming copious amounts of peanuts that Adri roasted freshly for me, with garlic. You will notice that I mention “Adri roasted peanuts freshly for me”. Well, I prefer them roasted, Adri prefers them au natural, more healthy I guess, so we buy the unroasted, and the rest is history. Man, it went down well. While I was watching rugby Adri whiled away her time at the swimming pool downstairs, catching up on some swimming and reading.

We were planning on having supper at the Black Duck as I needed to restore my faith in burgers, any burger, since my run-in with a Whopper… from Burger King on Thursday. The Black Duck has a Cheese Burger special on Saturdays and we wanted to try that out but after the beers and peanuts the cheeseburger would have been wasted on me, so decided against going.

We watched a bit of Wimbledon, saw Williams beat Watson, only just, and then took a walk down to our local open air restaurant for a quick supper. I had a chicken pad thai and Adri a spicy papaya salad, served with a side salad of cucumber, beans, cabbage, which comes with ice cubes to keep it cool. The owner/chef, who I might add is very proud of his creations, came over to check whether we were happy with his latest. We asked him his name and he introduced himself as “Samui, like the island”, so now we call him chef Samui. His wife’s name is Oo, or that’s at least how it is pronounced. He wanted to know our names and thus Adri became Adli and Tertius became Teeshus. He explained, pointing to the few tables and chairs under the gazebo, that his restaurant is mostly for family and friends, and then pointing at us, he seemed to intimate that we were now part of that family/friend circle.

Today was also the start of the Tour De France. We normally used to watch the daily one hour highlights package back home, more for the exquisite scenery than for the racing itself, but of course we do enjoy the racing as well. I always yearned to see more of the race and not just the highlights, so now we were in a position to do just that, so we’ll probably spend more than just a few hours watching the race unfold over the next few weeks.

Sunday (5 July 2015)
We did our planning for the day over a steaming hot and strong mug of filter coffee out on the patio, always a good place for planning. Breakfast then shopping… that was quick planning indeed. We were not in the mood for making breakfast so decided to have someone else prepare it for us. While nursing the coffee I started making a shopping list and, asking Adri for her contribution to the list, the first item shot forth like a bullet… gin! I’m getting worried…

Rode down to the Boat Bar where we took note of their breakfast menu a few days back. The fact that they call their American breakfast an English breakfast and vice versa on the menu should not detract from the fact that the breakfast was really good. I ordered an American breakfast and received an English breakfast, as was expected. The breakfast consisted of two eggs, a few rashers of bacon, two small sausages, tomato, two slices of toast, coffee and orange juice. Adri decided to be a bit more unconventional and ordered the Asian breakfast, which was essentially a type of rice soup with prawns, delicious.

We wanted to shop at Makro and decided to take a different route this time. At first we tried our luck with a little side street we did not know. Rode on for about two kilometres and came to a dead end. Bummer. Turned back all the way to the main road, one kilometre further we turned left onto the ghost road. We reached a stop street where we turned right at the 7/11 and ended up on the ring road, a few hundred metres down the way from Makro.

This route is about one kilometre closer than going via Fisherman’s village but probably just a bit quieter, so we will use it again in future. We stocked up on… gin… all sorts of veggies, fruits, meat, chocolates, curry pastes… I was scrutinizing the beef and found a piece that looked great. The cut was a beef knuckle steak and after a quick Internet search it turns out to be Sirloin. Wonderful, with no fat, no sinews, it jostled for a position and found such in the trolley. During our spree we suddenly saw a familiar face, the lady from the Fi Restaurant, i.e. the one who asked “would that be dessert sir?”, stocking up no doubt for their Saturday night clientele. She greeted us warmly, nice to see a familiar face in a sea of strangers.

For supper, Adri found a recipe on the internet for a type of a pork mince stir-fry. Cannot give you the name as Adri could not find the recipe again, but fortunately remembered the gist of the ingredients and how to prepare it. Now I have no major issue with pork, I love my bacon, pork spare ribs, kassler ribs, but pork had never been my favourite meat so it was with some apprehension that I enlisted for this supper. The Thais of course love their pork so the quality of it is generally very good, and this mince was no exception. Adri prepared the dish from memory which contained pork, rice, lots of basil leaves, chillies, and heaven knows what else. It turned out to be truly delicious.

Maybe I will ease up a bit on my pork apprehension going forward…

But I guess there is good reason for this apprehension. I remember reading an article many years ago, and I mean many, of a scientist that did a study in a community where there happened to be a huge pig farm, which employed a large portion of the community. He found that people that worked on the pig farm, and their families, were frequently sick while the rest of the community was pretty healthy. He then discovered that the pig farm workers get their meat either free or very cheap from the farm, thus pork was the only meat they really consumed. He then went on to mention some facts about viruses and bacteria that make its way into the pork meat and that even if cooked at very high temperatures, found that some of these were still alive. Yucky. I did a quick search on the internet and found the following link quite interesting (http://draxe.com/why-you-should-avoid-pork/), you make up your own mind, but please don’t shoot the messenger.

Maybe I will still ease up a bit on my pork apprehension going forward…

Monday (6 July 2015)
We woke up this morning to the news that Greece voted no in their referendum on the austerity package negotiated by their leftist government with their creditors. I truly thought that the Greek people would come to their senses and vote yes. Now I love Greece and I love the Greek people, but somehow I think they have now lost the plot. Nobody wants austerity measures thrust upon them but they got themselves into this mess due to, I believe, systemic tax avoidance. I have never heard of anyone who jostles to stand in line to pay their taxes, but we do pay our fair share, it’s the right thing to do.

It seems though that tax evasion is all pervasive within the make-up and fibre of the Greek people, a national pastime. I have been to Greece on numerous occasions and in most cases credit cards are just not accepted, only cash. On a number of occasions when booking into a hotel I specifically asked whether they accept credit cards and if they don’t, I tended to look for another place to stay. The lengths some of these establishments go to in order to avoid paying tax are quite disingenuous.

On a few occasions I was assured that they do take credit cards but when it comes to paying the next morning, “the credit card machine just broke, cash please”. Also, there was a lovely old lady in Pylos (Peloponnese) whose apartment we rented for a few days over Christmas a few years back. “Only cash” she replied to my question whether she had a credit card machine. She then continued “I will have to charge you more if I have to pay tax, so we both benefit”. To my response that I want to pay more because I want her to pay tax she looked at me as if I had a contagious disease which I refuse to get treatment for.

Anyway, I hope everything works out for Greece and its people, I really do.

After gym we showered, had breakfast and went to feed the laundry machine. An hour or so later it spat out the washing after which it was duly hung out to dry. Our landlady said she would arrange that we receive the water and electricity bill on Monday. When returning from our laundry chores we stopped off at reception and was handed the monthly bill, 400 baht for water and 867 baht for electricity. We should be using the air conditioner more often!

Promptly at 17H00 we received another refreshing downpour so we had to cancel our planned leisurely stroll. We were going to buy some water, but not to worry, there was enough gin and tonic that will serve as a replacement. I poured those gin and tonics which settled the apparent water crises we were about to experience. We used to buy bottled water from the supermarket which is pretty much dirt cheap. The Nestle brand costs 61 baht for a six-pack of 1.5 litre bottles. We have found them a couple of times for 43 baht.

We then discovered the automatic water dispensing machines where you can take your old bottles, insert your coins and voila, it dispenses one litre of pure water. These dispensers one can find all over the place and you will find many water trucks that go around refilling them. The total cost of one litre of bottled water dispensed is one baht. One thing I must mention though, people on Koh Samui drive carefully and considerately, but these water tank truck drivers drive like there’s no tomorrow. Probably they are worried that people will switch to gin and tonic away from their beloved water if they do not fill up the dispensers quickly enough, hence the speeds they get up to. If you’ve ever seen the Steven Spielberg movie Duel, or another movie called Jeepers Creepers, you’ll have a better understanding of these scary truck drivers.

Tuesday (7 July 2015)
Normally when we go to the gym we have the place to ourselves. This morning we were joined by an Englishman who unceremoniously climbed up on the treadmill and started pounding the mill at high speed. This guy was in a hurry. He started off jogging at an easy pace, but then, after about a minute, he sped up and I could see the treadmill getting dizzy as it spun around and around. He did not seem to be the dizzy sort and continued at this unrelenting pace for about 40 minutes. Quite impressive.

The TEFL course Adri is busy with has now moved along to the grammar section with a suggestion that she acquires a book called Teaching English Grammar by Jim Scrivener. Phoned some bookshops on the island and not surprisingly they do not stock this item. Found a website with its base in Bangkok which had stock and proceeded to complete the order. The first credit card I tried simply stated “incorrect number”. How can this be, I am looking at the number on the card, have verified it a number of times. Anyway, I tried another credit card and that worked fine.

I was sent a confirmation email in Thai. Huh… I copied the contents of the Thai email into Google Translate and was presented with the following, copied verbatim “The orders list Your Tertius. Thanks to orders from DK Today Co., LTd. Here. This letter To inform you that: We have received an order from you already. Do not forget to check email and wait for the product to ensure another official confirmation from one edition to the summary of the product and shipping again. When transferring my money. Customers can check order status by logging and log in if you have any doubts. Can be contacted by”. At least I sort of knew that the order was sort of successfully placed.

There was a rustle in the leaves and it wasn’t the breeze. It was the palm tree maintenance guys ascended the palm trees, climbing up that bare trunk using only their hands and feet. When the guy gets to the desired height he takes the stick and rope that he took up on his escapade with him, then, while holding on only with his feet, he places the stick at a horizontal level against the palm trunk and then fastens it to the tree with the rope, thereby creating a temporary step used while cutting down the dead leaves.

I was quite amazed at the strength these guys have in their skinny but sinewy legs. Best of all, they love their work, chatting and bantering while they chop and cut down the dead leaves. There was a little boy of about three and a half years watching them, in total awe, admiration enveloping his face. Later when his dad appeared he said to him “go up, dad, go up”, pointing up at the tree. The dad gave him a sheepish grin and confessed “I cannot do that”. The little tyke was not impressed with his now, ex-hero.

At 16:50 it started to rain, again thwarting our walk for water, so the water emergency continued. Luckily the rain abated at around 18:30 and we got a chance to stock up with seven bottles of water, water emergency averted.

Adri advised that Kevin Anderson from SA was playing Novak Djokovic, they were level at two sets each yesterday, play was halted and to be continued today, so we had to somehow watch the final set. Supersport chose to air the match on Supersport Channel 7, which is not available on the DstvNow app, but is available on the Supersport app. As you may recall, at the time I could not get the Supersport app to work as it is region controlled.

The service that I subscribe to in order to take care of this anomaly is Unotelly, but I have not yet set this up properly for the Supersport app. I tried a few setup tricks but nothing worked. I e-mailed Unotelly and a few emails to and fro and the Supersport app was working 100%. Thanks Unotelly. Anyway, by the time I got this sorted the game was over and Kevin Anderson lost, but he did put up a good fight… At least now I have the app up and running for future events.

When you stream video from your Ipad to your TV via AppleTV, you cannot use the Ipad for anything else. This became a bit of an issue as I wanted to multitask (have not had any use for that word for some time), i.e. read news while watching the Tour de France. I duplicated the setup from my Ipad onto my Iphone and voila, now I can steam the Supersport app via the Iphone, freeing up my Ipad… to multitask.

Wednesday (8 July 2015)
The normal morning ritual took its course, also did a Skype birthday call to my ex-colleagues, no video was available though, pity, maybe next time the line will be better.

You will recall that we rented the apartment we’re staying in for an initial two month period with the option to extend. This morning I got an e-mail from Nueng, our landlady, to advise that she received a booking request for one week in August, and three months from December to February. Now it was time to make some decisions about our accommodation and itinerary for the next part of the year. We really do like the place we’re staying in, please check out the photos, so we decided to extend our stay with Nueng until 5 October 2015 and advised her as such.

The plan at this stage is that we will be going to Chiang Mai, which is a city on the mainland in the northern part of Thailand, for October. After October we intend to return to Koh Samui for the peak season. Friends planned to visit for a few weeks in December and I had to confirm whether that was still on, as that may influence our decision as to where exactly we will be staying. December and January is top peak season here, and although we will find a place to stay, we have to book early to avoid disappointment, you see. Fortunately I did get hold of my friends via email and Skype and it was confirmed that they will only make it here early next year, not December, thus we could now plan for the peak season.

We went down to watch the sunset at Plai Laem beach and once again frequented our local no-name pub at the pier. Maybe that’s what the owner should call it, Pub at the Pier. The first time we went there we were greeted friendly, but they were probably a bit sceptical as to why these farangs want to drink in their pub, now we were greeted like old drinkers, with smiles all around. We had a Chang and a Sprite, and once again, before handing Adri a glass for her Shandy, the barmen went out to the tap in the garden to wash the glass. Total damage, 70 baht.

We got back to the apartment and Adri started prepping supper while I prepped a gin and tonic. I settled in to do some work while supper was taking shape. Put on some Randy Crawford and songs like One Day I’ll fly Away, Almaz, This ‘ole Heart Of Mine and Rainy Night In Georgia rolled on by like old, nearly forgotten friends.

Supper was served. Steak, egg, chips, chunks of cheddar cheese, Kalamata olives. The beef knuckle steak, or sirloin steak, hit the right spot and, and as usual, I had too much to eat with no way of working it off tomorrow, as it is our off day. OK, so I’ll worry about that on Friday.

Thursday (9 July 2015)
Had coffee in bed, note “had”, not “got”, as I had to make it. In all fairness, I am the coffee maker, Adri is the tea maker. I would normally have one or two mugs of coffee per day, and/or one or two mugs of tea per day, but normally only one mug of coffee. This is cutting way down on the number of mugs of coffee I used to consume at work which my colleagues will attest to. I still miss those plentiful “tannie cuppas” though. Tea is usually accompanied by a couple of cookies, Orio (24 baht), Tim Tam (36 baht) or something similar.

We were now ready to start looking for accommodation for the December peak season. We could have come back to stay where we are staying now but wanted to try something else in a different part of the island. After looking at many nice places on the web we identified a place in the hills above Chaweng that looked really nice. So late morning we rode up there for a look-around and decided that we could easily live there, so we will make contact with the owner for a viewing of the apartment later today.

From there we rode down to Chaweng beach and settled in the shade under a big old tree. There was a black dog a short way from us also enjoying his time at the beach. From time to time he would move into the sun, roll around vigorously, lie there for a while tanning, and then come back to his spot next to us. Once he got tired of us he toddled off without even a sideways glance. The dogs here are something else.

After spending a few hours at the beach Adri’s palate was parched and a water emergency developed, she had to have water… like now. Normally there will be a small 7/11 or Family Mart within sight, wherever you may find yourself, they truly are everywhere, but now we had no such luck. Fortunately we quickly found another low key understated supermarket though, on the main Chaweng beach road, which we never spotted before. We got Adri’s water and it was drained even before it got itself to the counter for payment. While there we also bought another few items that we needed and I must admit that I quite liked the place.

Now it was time for ice-cream, a strawberry sundae. Adri decided instead to have an iced tea from the street vendor across the road. Iced tea is becoming a fast favorite of hers.

We beat the clock to the Black Duck, Adri had her usual San Miguel Light and I had two near freezing Carlsbergs. We watched a bit of Wimbledon which Serena Williams won comfortably. On a lighter note, the back of the Aussie manager’s t-shirt contained the following “everyone needs something to believe in, and I believe it’s time to have another beer”. Wise words from down-under.

We left and rode up to the Chaweng Buddhist temple, up a very steep hill. The bike made it easily enough but it was the most strenuous climb I have exposed it to up to now. The ride was well worth it as we were rewarded with some amazing views from there, as per the pictures. As you will notice, they are busy renovating the place but it was great to see, very peaceful up there.

Got home for a rest and a gin and tonic which helped to induce some hunger pangs, took a ride down the way to our local restaurant where chef Samui reigns supreme with his wife Oo. I had fried rice with chicken and Adri had fried rice with stir fried vegetables, delicious as always. While we were waiting another farang, Canadian from the sound of his accent, also sat down for supper. It was obviously his first time at the makeshift restaurant and we watched with bemusement his ordering process, much what we went through not so long ago.

We got home after supper and I felt that something was amiss, but what I did not know. After a while I realized that I had a serious craving for cheese cake. Huh ? Yes, that’s what I thought. Huh ? I remember that there was a cake stall at the Fisherman’s night market where they sell these delicious looking cakes, so I can silence my craving tomorrow.

I emailed the owner of the Chaweng Hill apartment complex we checked out in the morning and made arrangements to meet him at the complex tomorrow at 18:00. We watched two episodes of Burn Notice and finished off with the Tour De France.

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