Welcome to "Sunday Summary" in which I try to summarize the week that came before. This is the 89th installment, covering the week ending today, the 5th of May 2024.
Each week, we link up with The Sunday Salon, hosted at ReaderBuzz, and Sunday Post at Caffeinated Reviewer. Check out their posts and the links to see what other book bloggers have been up to in the last week.
Happy Cinco de Mayo! The day marks Mexico's military victory in 1862 over the French forces of Napoleon III. The celebration is actually more popular in the United States than in Mexico and has become associated with the celebration of Mexican-American culture. Cinco de Mayo is sometimes mistaken for Mexican Independence Day — the most important national holiday in Mexico — celebrated on September 16, commemorating the Cry of Dolores in 1810 which initiated the Mexican War of Independence from Spain.
This is the last weekend of the summer holiday -- teachers at my school will return to work on May 9 (Thursday) with the children coming to school the week after. I still have one item remaining on my "Phuket Bucket List" but I will probably save that for one of the three-day holidays in July. I feel like I have too much to do in the upcoming week without spending one day travelling the entire length of the island.
The first two days of this week were largely spent writing. I finished four articles for this blog on Monday and another two on Wednesday, scheduling them to publish at the appropriate times. I really enjoyed getting the three memes out of the way in one sitting so I could concentrate on three longer articles. This also cleared the way so I could work on additional computer work (an email purge, for one thing) and journalling.
May has seen the return of my long walks although we are still suffering from the heatwave. I started the month with a very respectable 7,784 steps while Thursday was massive at 19,054 steps followed by 11,350 and 13,390 on Friday and Saturday. I made videos for two of those walks, links are below.
All in all, Week 18 of 2024 was a good one. I read more than a thousand pages within three different books; published seven blog articles; wrote Morning Pages and entries in my Gratitude Journal, OneNote Journal and Bullet Journal every day; and even started writing my annual (and always lengthy) email to my father for his upcoming birthday. Twice, I did long walks both in the early morning and the late evening to combat the heat (didn't work -- it is still H-O-T!!) and I (almost) started climbing a mountain -- well, a deeply jungled steep hill.
Best of all, I feel that I accomplished a great deal during this holiday and am ready to get back to work. Last year was awesome although there were some growing pains acclimatizing to a new school and daily commute. This year will be even better as I now know what to expect on both accounts.
Photo A Day 30-Day Challenge
Day 29: Colors
In Thailand, they designate a different color for each day. In fact, all days have lucky colors and unlucky colors (you DO NOT want to wear those!). This is all rooted in the type of Buddhism which is the predominate religion here.
At my school, teachers wear polo shirts matching the color of the day. My shirts are lined up in reverse order (right to left):
- yellow = Monday
- pink = Tuesday
- green = Wednesday
- orange = Thursday
- light blue = Friday
- purple = Saturday
For certain special days on the Chinese calendar, a red shirt with gold Chinese symbols is recommended. A white shirt is worn during certain Buddhist holidays.
Yes, Thailand is colorful.
Day 30: My Workspace
This was the last day of my original 30-Day Photo Challenge and another hot day with extreme temperature warnings. I opted to stay at home all day as it was relatively cool inside. But I looked around my apartment and nothing inspired me enough for a good photo. I decided to show where I spend most of my time at home. Most of each day is spent on my bed, propped up by pillows, seated at a Japanese tray table with my laptop and a Bluetooth speaker. I have an adjustable fan on a chest of drawers to my left, a ceiling fan above, open windows to my back and in front of me, and a side table to the right containing notebooks and journaling supplies (as well as the occasional bottle of water, juice or soda).
This is my "workspace" while I am not at school -- I sit here reading ebooks, surfing the internet, blogging, and much more. In this photo, I am watching a recent episode of the Planner Pals Podcast, hosted by two of my favorite Bullet Journal YouTubers -- JashiiCorrin and Mark of Mark Your Pages.
Day 31: Selfie
With the 30-Day Challenge completed, I decided to try and keep up with daily photos in May. Rather than calling it a challenge, I made a Bingo grid in my bullet journal to doodle photo subjects as I come across them. I also decided that the first photo of each month should be a selfie. Over time, it will show how I age. As if I want that on record! Ha, ha.
This one has me standing outside of a bar in the Kata Beach market (I no longer drink alcohol) with the big Chang Beer logo on the wall behind me. Chang is Thai for "elephant." Product of Thailand.
Day 32: Reflection in Water
This evening, I set out on a walk to Karon Beach, arriving just at sunset. I took some photos with the sun reflected in the surf but I liked this one of the Naga shrine just off of the beach. It is surrounded by a moat of sorts and the algae cleared enough to see the statue reflected in the water below. The sky was pretty as well.
Day 33: A High Place
I set out to climb the Big Buddha Mountain (Khao Nekkard) early Friday morning. This photo was taken at the point I gave up. The access road to get to the trailhead proper was just too steep with absolutely nothing to grab onto. Thai road engineers do not use switchbacks so this went straight up the steep incline for quite some distance. The dirt of the trail would be much easier with rocks and even fixed ropes to use to help pull yourself along. Also, the "feels like" temperature was already approaching 40 degrees Celsius at 6:00 in the morning.
I turned around here. It was still dark. I was exhausted. I took this one photo towards the ocean and you can see the lights of the town below. It is high. Just not as high as I had wanted to be!
I will try again next year when I have another long holiday. In the meantime, I plan to train more (the level walks along the beach are not adequate, no matter how far I walk). Perhaps I will train by just going up and down this first access road!
Day 34: Cats
This was the first time I had seen cats outside in a very long time. They all disappeared as soon as the high temperatures descended upon us. On this particular Saturday, I went out for an early morning walk as a breeze was coming in. The Bingo spot I wanted to fill was "Menu" but then I happened upon these two cats, lounging in the shade outside of a popular restaurant near the beach at Kata. I am going to call this "tourism row", I think as it's usually wall to wall tourists on the sidewalks and an endless variety of restaurants catering to them with inflated prices, not to mention plenty of resorts along the way.
I spent all week with the same three books, not finishing any of them but coming close with one. I think I will choose another book to start tonight or tomorrow. I will write more about these in the WWW Wednesdays installment later this week.
It was a good blogging week with a total of seven articles published once I finish the "Sunday Summary". Four of these were written Monday and the remaining two on Tuesday. I had planned to have another article on Friday -- and wrote an introduction to it -- but that will have to wait until I actually complete my hike to the Big Buddha. Hopefully, that will happen in March or early April 2025.
I had been anticipating my move into a new notebook for quite some time and said a "goodbye" of sorts to my BuJo Volume 2 with a lengthy article with many of the pages shown in photos published here Tuesday evening. I plan to do a flip-through video the next time I change notebooks as taking all those photos and then uploading/captioning them was just too much work!
For BuJo Volume 3, I completely redesigned my Weekly and Daily layouts and part of my Saturdays will be spent making the upcoming week's pages. I did that last night and I was halfway through inking Monday's page when I realized that I had left out the second page of my new weekly's 2-page spread layout! I had also put in the headers for the next five days, in ink. When I make mistakes, I make them BIG! Nothing to do about it this week and I will not be able make a double-page spread next week so it will remain at one page for the time being.
Mistake aside, I really like both new layouts as they contain a wealth of information I had not previously included in my journals. At the moment, they are a bit more time-consuming to draw out but I am getting faster at doing so. I am rotating between daily shopping/bill lists, word of the day, a doodle, quote of the day, etc. as the first block below the sleep log. At the end of the week is a page for summarizing each day and then a brief reflection on the full week.
As already mentioned, I edited together two different videos from my walks this week. The first is 20 minutes long (cut down from 60 minutes of video footage, thank goodness!), showcasing a sunset walk I made from Kata Beach north to Karon Beach and filled with para-sailing footage off the coast.
The second video was filmed very early Friday morning during my ill-fated attempt to hike/climb to the Big Buddha statue, visible throughout the southern portions of Phuket. The blurry and shaky cam modes are quite in evidence!
During the week, I received a few items by post including several journaling and school supplies ordered from the local equivalent of Amazon.com, my Christmas present from my little sister (including an estimated two years' supply of stickers to put on my students' schoolwork), and an electric kettle.
The dinosaurs have returned to Kata. After being shuttered during COVID-19 and a couple of years afterwards, the Dino complex on the beach road finally reopened including miniature golf and a restaurant. The big brontosaurus and T-rex can be heard in the evening thrashing through the vegetation on the other side of a high wall (sometimes I catch glimpses of them, too!) and a velociraptor on a leash makes evening appearances out front, desiring tourists to put cash money into his mouth! I hear the dino-steaks are quite gamey, however.
For one of my morning walks, I decided to seek out roadside menus. I think it is much better to know what you want to eat before you try to order from one of these places. I also like to know the price beforehand. I have tried one or two of these eateries already. There are a number of others that I will get to someday and one that I will definitely never try anything on their menu. Can you guess which one?
My favorite day of photography this week was the evening I spent at Karon Beach, arriving just before sunset.
I always like to see murals on the side of the buildings or alongside the road. Some of it is quite good.
My favorite strolls always seem to be through local markets, however.
Around my home, there is always something that catches my eye. I just have to get out more. The temperatures heat up quickly in the morning so we are all awaiting the rainy season to start.
It is too bad these aren't Pepsi!
See you next week. . . .
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