#196 Birthday Review
My birthday was last month (63 in case the image wasn’t a clue) and as usual I use that as my time to review the last year and look ahead (rather than New Year’s Day).
I’m really pleased.
I’ve gotten my passports, renounced my original citizenship, filed my final tax return, closed down my European company that I had, arranged all new financial institutions all completely divorced from my former citizenship, got my retirement visa in Thailand, and even rented a very nice condo in Pattaya.
It took a long time, but it is truly liberating to have gotten all those things done in the last year.
And … my MRI last week revealed that my spine seems to be fine. Can’t do anything about the thinner lumbar disks, but my exercises seem to be maintaining stability.
I’m really getting after Thai, but it is frustrating. 😊 The most difficult language I have tried to learn. But the teacher is helping. Just for general knowledge …
· 44 consonants [but only 21 sounds]
· 38 vowel sounds
· There are multiple ‘T’,’K’,’L’,’N’,’F’,’P’ consonants and no clue as to when to use which one in spelling. They sound identical.
· Many words missing vowels and in some cases actual syllables and you just have to know them?
· Over 15 consonants change their sound if at the end of a word / syllable
· Spoken versus written – As per my teacher – direct quote – ‘Thais are lazy so they shorten words and drop consonants everywhere’.
· Language, especially spoken, is highly context driven.
· The tones. They say there are tones and I believe them. But they are outrageously difficult to distinguish especially at any given Thai’s normal speech velocity. I would challenge them to have their voices recorded and analyzed to see how much tones are actually being used in daily speech. – I have been studying and listening to innumerable Thai YouTube videos and I ‘think’ I am just barely starting to recognize tones. Just barely. We’ll see 😊.
I rarely do this (rant about a language – they are after all, what they are) but I think this is a very illogical language. Why haven’t they tried to clean it up a bit? This applies to most languages, but of the 9 languages that I’ve studied or dabbled with, Thai is the worst. But of course, it is part of their ‘culture’. We can’t impugn that now, can we? But in my mind, the purpose of language is communication. If you make it more difficult to learn and use, what is the purpose in that? Well, in the case of the Thais I believe it is because, other than the normal insanity of thinking one’s culture is somehow sacrosanct, they LIKE making themselves and their culture more opaque to outsiders. I would accuse the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese of this with equal vigor.
OK. Rant over. I’ll keep working on it although my goal is only really to get to an A2 level.
I’m exhausted. I had plans for more travel this year but I’m dropping them (at least at the moment). I just will spend my time between Clark and Pattaya.
It is a tad difficult to describe. My health is ok but my exhaustion just never goes away. I’m thinking seriously about trying to wrap up my affairs to permanently retire. I feel stupid saying that at 63 and I’m incredibly fortunate I am able to consider doing it, but it still feels vaguely like giving up. Guilt, the gift that keeps on giving.
I returned to the Philippines on Tuesday almost a few days ago. I had planned to return the week before, but I suffered an injury, and I then seemed to be ill a little bit (sore throat) so I just postponed my trip for a week. I did manage to travel on Tuesday but, honestly, I still wasn't feeling great. But it would be hard to say exactly what the problem was. Just general malaise. I took some anti-anxiety meds and that seemed to help. But who knows?
BKK -> HKG Cathay
I had the interesting experience in Hong Kong of being told I had not paid for my onward ticket from Hong Kong to the Philippines. I had of course, bought a round-trip business class ticket, Bangkok-Hong Kong- Clark- Hong Kong- Bangkok. And of course it had been paid for.
But when I got to the transfer desk in Hong Kong to get my boarding pass, I only had about 20 minutes to get to the flight for boarding and after about 5 minutes I finally just said “Look … if I give you the credit card right now can you get me on that flight?”. And they did. They were very efficient. I must note these were not the airline people, these were just the Hong Kong airport service people who manned the transfer desk.
But once again it is a problem with Cathay and Hong Kong Express, their wholly owned subsidiary, and I have inquiries out to both Hong Kong Express and my travel agent trying to find out what in the hell occurred here. Honestly, I'm fortunate. Spending the money to buy the ticket again wasn't a problem for me. But I can't imagine what it would have been like for some guy or family that ran into that issue that couldn't just whip out their credit card out and buy a ticket that they had already paid for.
So now I am in the position of having two residences again. One in the Philippines, and one in Thailand. It is nice being back here in the Philippines. I do appreciate the house. Mark and I after all put in over a decade of tuning it to exactly what we liked. But I still really like the condominium in Pattaya. The smaller size (100 square meters versus 140 square meters here in the Philippines), suits me right down to the ground. I love that the living room, my desk and working area, and the kitchen are all co-located. I went with a 34” monitor and wow! What a difference that makes. I may have to do the same in Clark.
My work area. Really love the desk - Yes - I need to clean up the cables 😊😊
However, in the long run I will be happy to move to Thailand and shed the house here.
I am currently working to start investing again. That has been causing a little bit of anxiety. But I am pursuing a far different strategy than I did 25 years ago when I was investing through firms in the United States. Now I am after dividend producing equities that I have every intention of buying and holding for a number of years. No checking the stock market every day to see whether it's up or down. These are low volatility stocks, extremely unsexy, that simply pay one dividends every month or every quarter. And I'm just going to reinvest those dividends into buying more of the same stock that produced them. Since it's being done in Singapore, there are no capital gains taxes, and now I don't have to worry about any other taxes either. What a freaking relief. And so much less paperwork! 😊