Just Books

Our Garden Fish Pond

A source of relaxation, tranquillity and delight!

I am hoping that our new garden fish pond will be an area of cool relaxation, tranquillity and delight for us, which will be great for writing. I could do with that as I have not written much over the last few years due a lack of stability in my life and a disappointing drop in sales, which could be the result of a culture shift brought on by Covid 19.

There has long been a movement away from reading and towards films or TV. Coincidentally or not, at the same time as the Covid 19 lockdowns, audiobook sales increased massively and from nowhere. For example, I was selling seven or eight audiobooks for each ebook. Ebook sales had fallen off a cliff! Another very unexpected change is that paperback sales have boomed. In fact, in January 2021, for the first time ever, I sold seven times more paperbacks and twelve times more audiobooks than ebooks! Admittedly, I am working off low figures, but it seems to be the trend

Those are statistics that I still find very difficult to believe.

Our Garden Fish Pond

Nevertheless, overall sales are down on previous years, and so writing new material seems next to pointless.

However, I want to keep writing, and so I am hoping that our new garden pond will be, not so much a source of the inspiration, but a quiet place to work that every writer needs. Inspiration can, and does often, come from the oddest chance occurrences... something someone says or does, whether it be live, on the screen of in print, but a writer still needs quiet moments to allow the brain to process those items and somehow come up with a story of sufficient length for the purpose required.

Garden Fish Pond

The picture shows the new garden fish pond that my wife, the builders and I have created. We have stocked it with a few Koi to see how it goes.

PS: We are currently available for international garden fish pond projects.

Availability: the drop of a hat

Vaccination status: double dosed and boosted

Daddy's Hobby - The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl In Pattaya

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

My Covid-19 Vaccination Experience

Mass protection from Covid-19

People who live in Thailand may chuckle at my COVID-19 vaccination experience in Thailand, whereas those who don't may smirk. Believe me when i say that the first reaction is the one that I wish to elicit. I am very impressed with the way that my wife and I have been treated.

It all started back in about June 2021. I started asking around about vaccination against Covid 19. My wife knew nothing, and nor did our daughter. She has a good job in Bangkok, although her employer had already arranged for her to be inoculated. Neem went to see the village nurse, but there was no programme in place. A doctor in Uttaradit said that we should have had at least one dose of vaccine by then.

As far as I knew, that was the end of that. However, that doesn't mean that nothing was going on, it is just quite normal to be kept in the dark.

My Covid-19 Vaccination Experience In Thailand

Sure enough, about a week later, at 21:00, a woman came around collecting the signatures of those who wanted a vaccination. Up until then, most people in the village had said that they did not want one.

Weeks passed by and nothing happened. Then, suddenly, Neem was told to report to a school in a town 13 km away for a Sinovacs jab the following morning. Two weeks later, I received a similar message but for 11:00 at the town hospital.

We went, but the hospital receptionist knew nothing about it. She advised us to go to the school where Neem had been, so we did that. There were about a thousand people there. Nevertheless, within about thirty minutes, we were told that foreigners were being treated in the hospital. We rushed back there, but were told that all the doses had been given out by 10:00. So, I went home a bit dejected, and unvaccinated.

About a week later, I received another urgent message. I had to be in the hospital by 08:00 the next day - in about twelve hours' time.

Pfizer Jabs

There were about fifteen of us there for the Pfizer injection, and everything went very smoothly.

I was in the system. A week later, I received a message to return to the hospital in a fortnight's time. We did that, but again the receptionist knew nothing about it. So, my wife went for a walk in the hospital grounds, presumably to calm down.

Anyway, twenty minutes later, she came back to hurry me to an area 200m away where I saw about a hundred school kids. We stood in line and were vaccinated within the hour. I was even given two Paracetamol tablets in case I had any side-effects.

Three months to the day after my second vaccination, we were again told to report to a location in town. This time we were given thirteen hours notice. Well, we don't have a car, there is no bus service and no taxis in our village. We had to wait for someone to stop working, shower etc and come to our rescue. We arrived two hours late. Nevertheless, they processed us around four 'stations', each of which took or checked some data or other.

Thirty minutes later, we had both been ‘boosted’. We were on our way out with a complementary bottle of water each.

I want to stress that we live in a small, remote village. I know only two other Europeans within 15km of my house.

Vaccines

My wife has had Chinese Sinovacs, European AstraZeneca and American Pfizer. It seems to me to give the best protection from Covid 19 you can get! I’ve had three Pfizers.

I want to reiterate that I am very impressed with my COVID-19 vaccination experience ...

The easiest way possible!

Losing Weight Quickly

Many people day-dream about losing weight quickly. I have been part of that hapless crowd. When I first moved to Thailand, seventeen years ago, I weighed a hefty 110 kilos.

After six months of good living and my girlfriend's excellent cooking, i weighed in at 120 kilos. I was way overweight, and I knew it, but I am big-built and just over six feet tall, so most non-medical people thought that I could get away with it.I felt great, and since I have never been into serious exercise, I just let it slide.

Apathy leading to weight gain

Fifteen years passed and I remained at 120 kilos with no obvious ill effects. Then we moved to Spain. We had a kitchen in our apartment there, and life and my weight continued as normal.

Then came the UK's Brexit vote, and I judged that we ought to get my Thai wife inside Great Britain before they raised the drawbridge and lowered the portcullis. We could not find anywhere to live for love nor money as we had no residential history, but a good friend let us have a room in his house.We intended staying a month at most, but we were there for nearly two years.Without a real place to cook of our own, the quality of our diet plummeted.

Losing Weight Quickly

After 21 months, my doctor weighed me in at 134 kilos. My wife and I were shocked.We returned to Thailand just before the aeroports were closed and nine months later I was back to 120 kg. Another six months passed, but I just couldn't get below 120 kg. Anyway, I went for a check up yesterday, and when I hopped on the scales, I weighed 110 kg. The scales in my house are twenty years old and giving false readings!

My Visa Application 2022

The Annual Misery

Nobody likes to have to make a new visa application, even if it is only once a year. As regular readers will already know, we recently spent four years in Europe. Well, during that time the Immigration Police opened a new office in Uttaradit. This is a whopping 200 km closer than when I had to go to Nan for it. Until a month ago, their office was in the city centre and easily accessible. However, it has been moved to an outlying village, which is impossible to find without SatNav.

Satnav

Luckily, our lift had been there before and had SatNav, because without it he would not have found his way there or back!

So, we arrived to post my visa application twenty days early, according to my memory. Well within the thirty that is permissible, and went inside. We were the only ones there, so were helped immediately.

Overstay

'You are ten days overdue', said an officer. "You are on overstay...'

I couldn't believe it! I had remembered the date in my passport correctly, but it was the wrong date! My fine for overstay was £12 per day.

Not a good start at all.

Immigration Police

The Uttaradit Immigration Police have always been more helpful than any of the other branches that I have attended. However, there were two very young, new, officers there… perhaps apprentices, and they made the visa application process extremely easy. The girl dealt with my wife, and the boy with me. His English was excellent and his manner respectful.

The last task was to draw a map so that the police could find out house if necessary. My map was very basic, as I cannot draw. Nevertheless, the officer, who I think is in charge of the station, redrew it for us personally, and our, or my, visa application was accepted.

Unfortunately, that is not quite the end of the story, as the police have to verify that we live in our house, and the head office in Chiang Mai has to corroborate the details on my visa application.

That all takes a month, but I will keep you posted.

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining!

Covid-19 Unforeseen Consequences

Covid 19 has been with us for more than two years already. However, I have not heard any predictions over that period that have come true. It was a new phenomenon for most of us. In fact, for all of us when it is seen as a global plague. So, there is little wonder that no-one could foresee any outcomes accurately.

Nevertheless, we all know that there have been consequences to the pandemic. Most people will point to the negative aspects like sickness, death, lockdowns and job loss. Nevertheless, there have also been positive outcomes too.

Unforeseen Consequences of Covid

They are probably different depending on where you live and what you used to do for a living. I live in a small, remote mainly rice-farming village in northern Thailand, so I will tell you about that. Most working people here are farmers or farm labourers. It is a hard life with the long hours and lack of holidays that most farmers around the world are aware of.

Very few of the boys and none of the girls want to become farmers like their parents. University is a more realistic expectation now than ever before. However, otherwise the youth has been flocking to the tourist destinations for decades.

Improved Job Status

Many ended up as shop or factory workers. However, those who could handle it, and were pretty enough, often dabbled in the sex-tourism industry in the hope of meeting a 'rich foreigner', who would rescue them.

However, the constant flow of foreigners has dried up because of the Covid 19 restrictions on travel... You see, most 'rich foreigners' came from Europe or America. Consequently, the vast majority of the pretty girls in the tourist traps have lost their jobs. Most have had to return to their villages, where many of them have young children. This means that because of Covid 19, many children will enjoy the constant presence of their mother, which they would otherwise have missed out on.

This often means that the former bar girl (yes, and some boys) have to go back to school to learn a skill. This is great for their self-esteem and great for their children too, because it gives them a better role model.

Covid-19 Family Benefits

Covid 19 has given many sex workers, several hundred thousand of them, and their families a new chance, and that has to be a good thing.

Behind The Smile vol 1

You can read a series of books that I wrote about a sex-worker. She, Lek, also returned home to her daughter, family and village.

Click the link below. It has nothing to do with Covid-19 as I wrote it many years before the outbreak. However, the principle is the same.

BEHIND THE SMILE by Owen Jones.

Fruit Curry

Do not try this at home!

I want to tell you an amusing story that my stepfather told me the other day about Thai Fruit Curry. He can tell it in his own words. Over to you, Dad. Thanks, Chalita.

I started to eat curry when I moved to Portsmouth as a student in the Seventies. In those days, nearly all 'curry restaurants' were Indian, or so we thought. I usually ate a moderately hot curry, but sometimes, if it was on the menu, I would choose the Malaysian curry, which was milder and contained pineapple chunks and slices of banana. I liked it with paratha or chapatis.

Thai Curry

Thirty years later, I moved to Thailand to live with my Thai girlfriend and we got married. She is the best cook I have ever lived with without a shadow of a doubt, and her curries are fantastic. Her Thai curries, that is. She won't cook Indian food because she says that the smell of the spices lingers too long. And she's right. Thai cooking smells do not linger.

Anyway, after a few years, I remembered my previous penchant for Malaysian fruit curry and asked her to make me one. 'Never!' she replied. 'If you want Malaysian food, go to Malaysia. This is Thailand!'. An overreaction, I thought, but then Thais are rightly proud of the esteem, with which the world holds their cuisine, so I never mentioned it again. About ten years on, my wife was going to an all day wedding event out of the village.

They start early, five or six a.m. and finish late afternoon, and I had long since stopped attending them if I couldn't walk home when bored. As usual, before leaving, she checked that I had clean clothes, a few chores to do, and plenty of food. The main course was a large bowl of my favourite Thai curry Penang, which is fairly hot with a coconut milk base. I have never mentioned this to anyone before, but I think that Penang is in Malaysia.

Thai Fruit Curry

Anyway, at midday, I thought I would have my curry and then go for a few beers in the village. It was Saturday after all, not that that had anything to do with it. I was just about to get my rice out of the steamer, when I had a brain-wave. There was diced pineapple in the fridge left over from the night before; there were bananas in the bowl and no wife to stop me! I mixed the fruit, two handfuls of pineapple chunks and three sliced bananas, into the Penang and ate it with toast. It was fantastic! I enjoyed every mouthful.

Happy memories of student days and nights long past! I washed the dishes and went for a shower. It was there, under the cool water, that I started to get flatulence. I was filling up with wind, but I couldn't get rid of it. It soon became uncomfortable and even painful. I dried off and lay on my bed in a foetal position in the hope of squeezing some of the gas out, but in vain. When my wife got home at five o'clock, I was still on the bed suffering, but the pressure in my stomach was causing acid reflux and the taste was revolting.

I recounted my story, but there was nothing she could do to help. 'You know that we use two or three bananas as a cure for diarrhoea', she said. 'What possessed you to bung yourself up with a stomach full of hot curry?' I couldn't think of a decent reason, but I suffered one of the most uncomfortable nights in my life. Malaysians might use bananas in mild curries, but Thais don't know what a mild curry is, so never add bananas to theirs. I don't any more either. The moral of the story is: 'Don't try to teach your Granny how to suck eggs!'

PLR Index on this blog

Our sister blog:

What most European cooks have forgotten...

Thai Food in Our House

My Thai wife will not eat my food every time that I cook because it is cooked according to whimsy. In other words, I cook what I fancy without regards to my body’s needs whereas she does the cooking in our house according to needs of health, basically of me, day by day.

That will sound strange, even unbelievable, to most European's, but, please allow me to explain.

Thai food

Thai mothers, who know how to cook old style, do not only cook for flavour, they also cook for the specific health needs of their families. The mother is a kind of shaman. Someone who used to be known as a Wise Woman in Europe, before the established churches cast them as witches. A person who uses food to keep her family at the peak of health. Sure, if someone in her care has a problem that she cannot handle, then they have to go to see the doctor, but don't forget that that luxury only became accessible to most Thais because of Prime Minister Thaksin in the early part of the 21st Century... less than twenty years ago.

He introduced a system of a nurse in every village and a consultation fee, including basic medicine, of $1 a visit.

Before that, Mum, Wise Women (and men), was all there was.

So, my wife cooks my food according to her judgement of my body's needs.

Thai Food in Our House

Two consequences of that are that we don't always eat the same food, and that she will rarely eat what I prepare, because my preparations are random... based on whimsy, not bodily requirement. I'll cook a steak solely because I fancy one, whereas she will give me a stew of vegetables that she perceives I need at that time.

This obviously means that someone can only cook for you in this way, if they know you intimately. Just picking Thai dishes from a menu according to whimsy will not necessarily benefit your needs, although, in general, they will always be better than junk food.

Owen

If you are interested in the old notion of Wise Women, you might like Fate Twister by Owen Jones. It is available from this blog, or from most online book retailers including Amazon. Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese editions are available.

Fate Twister on Amazon

How not to make friends or influence them!

I opened a Facebook account shortly after it launched, and after a couple of name changes, I settled for OwenJonesWriter. Pretty succinct, but it described me and my activities very well.

Social Media

I had various spurts of activity, and inactivity, on my Facebook account, but I gradually built up a following of about 3,000 friends, acquaintances and complete unknowns, as one does.

As you probably already know, I am a writer, and writers want to sell books, so I incorporated Facebook into my sales strategy along with Twitter, many social media accounts and my blog.

By using devices such as smarturl.it I was able to see where most of the click-throughs to my books came from. It is impossible to track actual sales in this way, but most of the clicks on my sales links on Amazon came from my blog and Twitter

There was absolutely no doubt about that. Facebook was delivering at most about 5% of those two combined.

Facebook Idiocy

Then, one morning, I turned on my computer to discover that my Facebook account had been blocked or banned or shut down, whatever you want to call it, for 'spamming'. I have never ever spammed anyone, so I sought clarification, but they would reveal nothing other than (paraphrased) '...they had to keep the Facebook community safe, because I had been accused of spamming by several of their members'.

So, it seems to me, that if you want to shut your opposition down, you just have to get a few friends to complain to Facebook about spam.

This is obviously open to abuse, and is madness... it is Facebook Idiocy in the extreme!

Part of My First Educational Trip to the USSR

My Ukrainian Icons

Part of my Honours Degree course of Russian Language and Soviet History at Portsmouth University (it was a polytechnic then) was two summers studying in the USSR. The first was in Leningrad in 1974.

USSR

In those days, foreigners stuck out like sore thumbs because of their clothing, and it was not at all unusual to be accosted by three or four Russian girls a day. They wanted a variety of things. Most wanted to know about the West and to practice their English. Some wanted to buy everything we had in order to resell it on the black market, and some wanted us to fall in love with them, get married and so get out of the country. We also suspected that at least half of them were working with the KGB.

Most of the girls were freer with their favours than even the Western Hippie girls of that era.

Leningrad

So, in that context, one day, I was walking down the Nevsky Prospect, a main road running alongside the river Neva, when a pretty, young woman of about 20, my age too at the time, asked whether she could speak to me. Relishing the prospect, I agreed.

We had a beer in a nearby bar, and she shocked me by asking whether I would like to meet her father. It was the last thing that I had been expecting, but I agreed anyway.

We went to his apartment on the corner of a side street on the Nevsky Prospect, only a few hundred metres from our hotel, the Efropeyskaya.

The old man got out the vodka and his daughter went to make something to eat. We had been warned against allowing ourselves to become isolated, but there I was – alone.

Family Treasure

He asked me about my family and my religious beliefs, which NOBODY did in the USSR in those days. Seemingly satisfied, he pulled a curtain aside, tugged at a plywood panel and revealed a shrine. It contained at least a dozen icons and several other items too, like crosses, coins and figurines.

He chose two icons, two coins and a cross, and then passed them over to me.

'Beautiful!', I remarked, and went to hand them back.

He frowned and handed them back to me. I had obviously missed something, so we waited for his daughter to return to clarify in English, as we had been speaking in Russian up to that point.

Between them, they managed to make me understand that the old man had been a lieutenant in the Red Army as it pushed the Nazis out of Russia, through the Ukraine and back into Germany.

Religious Relics

He explained that he and his platoon were ordered to set fire to every church they came across, along with its contents.

After the war, as they returned home, the same tactic was employed.

He had to do this, but his parents had been religious, and he could not see the sense in the wanton destruction of historical items, so he saved what he could.

I assumed that the contents of the shrine was what he had saved those nearly forty years ago.

The girl told me that if the authorities discovered the hoard, then it would be destroyed and the whole family severely punished.

I didn't think to ask why this was becoming an issue so many years after the event, but I was already worrying about how I would get these artefacts out of the country, since that was a serious criminal offence too.

Ukrainian Icons

Anyway,

Distant Horizons

How far do you need to be able to see to live your life, or even do your job, well?

Today was a big... an important day for me. Today, I left our village for the first time in nine weeks. You are probably assuming that the reason is Covid or even a disability, but that is not the case. The simple fact is that there is no village bus service any more, and my wife no longer feels strong enough to take me and my 120 kilos on the back of her motorcycle. The only other way out is Shank's Pony, but the nearest town is 13 km away.

Yes, I know... great exercise... until you have to do it yourself.

Horizons

However, the reason that I am bringing this up is not to complain about the lack of a local bus service, my wife's lack of physical strength, or even my inability to walk 26 kilometres.

I just want to say that, as a writer, it is easier to draw inspiration from a vast array of experience than from a narrow one.

I have written 50-odd novels, mostly in this village, but not inspired by this village. A village is great for writing in, but not for writing about.

I have used instances that I have experienced here in my novels, but nothing that I have undergone here has been enough to write a whole book about. It takes a lot to write 80,000 words on a theme.

What I am saying is that, although one can write a book about one's internal mechanism or strife, how many sequels can you add to it?

Village Life

A village is small for a writer... or it is for me... or perhaps it's because, not being Thai, I don't know everything that's going on around me.

It is true that village life is a microcosm of that in a city, but people are more constrained by their family in a village than they are outside it. Males and females alike, but especially females.

I know that people will understand what I am talking about, because youths have always flocked to towns and cities from villages for centuries.

It is for the same reason... in order to be able to experience more (OK, and make more money).

I need to get out more in order to write more. I am being stifled here... It is no-one's fault, but it is a fact.

The farther you can see, the better the chance you have of understanding more... and the more you have to write about.

It is all a question of horizons.

Best wishes,

Owen

Daddy's Hobby - The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl In Pattaya

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon