Newport

My Mum sent me an email today, a date for our appeal hearing vis-a-vis Dtock's settlement visa rejection has been sent to Mum through the post.

Despite denying us access to the UK as a family, despite my insistence in the original application that I would stay with Dtock no matter what, despite completing the form 'Bangkok' under the part where it said where do you want to have your hearing they have given us four days to prepare for an appeal in Newport, Gwent on 3rd December.

Can the Government workers not read anymore in this New Britain? Everytime I send an email to them about it they reply to me in Newspeak. What a set of jokers... New Labour, New Britain, new doesn't mean great, good or efficient, open minded, intelligent, new doesn't mean anything except exactly the bullshit Britain has inherited.

If it wasn't for Bamboo's future and my belief that my family have the right to be together and the mother of my child should have the right to visit the country of her son's father without impediment, I'd love to tell them where to stick their asinine idiotic bureacracy. To quote that supra-hypocrite Tony Blair 'We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist,' How does this work in practice Tony?

In our hour of need I will never forget how it was Thailand, the Thais, and our mutual families that came in for us. I will never ever forgive the British Government and their 1984 style bureacratic order for this fiasco. How many mistakes have they made with our application? How many mistakes must they make with everbody elses? It's those people blinded by false truths, in need who see the UK as the promised land who I feel sorry for.

With the prisons bursting at the seams and nowhere else to colonize I hope, they must be planning a very big war to cope with the results of the ghettoisation, the 24-hour boozing and the mass gambling that is the legacy of the Labour Party. [Fr.:Lynch, C., "The State of Britain,"L&TUR, (Apr. '07), p.6.]

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Take it East

A Tale of Two Countries #1 - Thailand

In the same week His Majesty the King of Thailand emerged from 25 days in hospital to a crowd of well wishers dressed in a pink blazer, Burmese troops continued their unabated aggression against their own so called 'revered' Buddhist Monks.

Whilst 'Pinkmania' engulfs Thailand, I quote from the front page of the Bangkok Post 8th November, 'Many shed tears of joy as they waited hours just to get a glimpse of the Monarch... Many well wishers dashed to shops near the hospital to buy pink shirts after seeing the King check out in pink... people said they would wear pink to express their loyalty to their King.'

Perhaps the Thai people would do well to listen to what their King said to them as opposed to rushing out to buy whatever colour he happens to favourite that week yellow on Monday, pink, green, don't forget Friday: sky blue for the Queen.

The King urges all Thais to seek the middle path and to live sufficiently. Quite how this latest craze is moderate or even reasonable is beyond me. However, it appears so much easier for them to engulf in the latest fad than to make the slightest effort to understand and/or carry out the reality behind His Majesty's fine wisdom and they do so with aplomb.

Why can't Thai people unite and show their love for their King by doing something constructive like helping so many of the homeless people that populate this country, or create and put into action plans to eradicate the cancer of prostitution in their society?

On one side of the border people are self-consumed with excessive and misdirected unnecessary homage. On the other side the very venerable, reverent monks who propound the same Buddhist philosophy as His Majesty are drowning in their blood.

How ironic, the Burmese Buddhist Monks and people are dying, suffering torture and tremendous hardship for freedom. Thais living under an obviously less brutal military dictatorship without real freedom of speech, are dressing up in pink.

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A Tale of Two Countries #2 - Burma

The junta has lifted a nighttime curfew, restored Internet access and ended a ban on assembly. But monks remain targets. The junta said recently it was still pursuing four monks who led rallies.

One of them, U Kovida, spoke to The Associated Press from the Thai border, asking that his location be kept secret for fear Thai authorities would send him back.

"At the moment you will hardly find a monk in Yangon. Monks are running away from danger. They are being arrested and sent to labor camps, tortured and killed," said U Kovida, 24.

The junta has not commented on allegations of abuse.

Taken from http://www.dassk.com/contents.php?id=1479

Selfish Genes - The Practical

In Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene he explains how different animals have genes which have the ability to control their parents behaviour. This may be by the way of a young chick's squawking with its red mouth open causing an instinctive affect in the parent to feed it. Genes that are stronger at persuading this kind of behaviour in their parents survive in the gene pool.

I'm beginning to understand Dawkin's theory in practical terms, the demarcation between awake and asleep has disintegrated to a point that I don't know whether I'm doing one or the other. Last night I was having an unpleasant dream about Kayla, my cat in the UK, then I awoke (or so I thought I had) and started thinking why I'd not seen Kayla for ages and then I realised that was because I am in Thailand, and then I awoke again, to Bamboo squawking. Sleep seems to come in small insufficient slots and then you wake up feeling guilty for sleeping, it's such a strange feeling it's difficult to explain. Work is now at home and the work I get paid for has become my hobby, when I'm at work I feel I should be home.

Dawkins went on to explain mimicry, this is when a creature from a different species can trick another creature from a different species into thinking it is from the same species for a reason beneficial to the fraudster. A good example of this is how cuckoos convince birds of other species that their eggs belong to the same hatch until the cuckoo becomes big enough to chuck the rest of the eggs and chicks out of the hatch so that the dummy parent is exclusively feeding one child that isn't even his/hers and also happened to murder all of his/her most recent offspring.

In this sense human parents have the ability to use mimicry to stall the child's crying. This is colloquially known as selling a dummy and let me tell you, at this moment in time I am very tempted.

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Beautiful Bamboo

Goodbye for Now Grandma Laos Singing 'Bamboo Kee Dta Lord'

Bamboo Kee Dta Lord

Kee Bo Mee Vita Min

Le See Luang Duay

yaaaay yaay yaay

improvised by me taken from Thailand's Carrot Mee Vitamin Song

I don't think many son in laws could honestly write that they're sorry to see their mother in laws leave their flat. After living on our sofa since Bamboo's birth, Grandma Laos left on Sunday morning not before making one last Laotian in Thailand style shopping dash around Big C. She has left me with an abundance of practical baby caring skills and a girlfriend in excellent shape mentally and physically. She (herself) left with quite a lot of shopping bags and some fantastic prints of Dylan Bamboo that I took over the weekend and am yet to release online.

Expect some post people back home these most recent prints are fantastic.

Grandma misses Bamboo and the feeling is reciprocated especially yesterday afternoon when we had a little accident with a loose turd, I'll spare you the details, it wasn't pretty but fortunately for him short-lived. Yesterday after she'd gone the ante-upped. I seemed to spend all day going backwards and forwards here, there and everywhere, but mostly in the bathroom washing, scrubbing, rinsing and pegging out. Then with Bamboo, turd watching, wee catching, wiping, more wiping, burp inducing, entertaining, cuddling, cloth changing, suit changing. Then out shopping for this pak and that pak (pak means vegetable). I love how nature gives the father the bottom end.

Even managed to get out for a game of football with some lads who live in our apartment, however that didn't get very far: an officious park security guard wouldn't let us play for the most bizarre reasons. In Thailand you can rip your motorbike down a busy footpath at the speed of sound out of your mind on Sangsom but you can't play football in an enclosed area, in central Bangkok, under an overpass with nobody about in case a tree is damaged and the authorities take it out of the security guards wages!?! In any event it's refreshing to see the locals get active about green issues for a change. I'll just have to stay an unfit Dad for now.

Today is Dtock's first day on her own with Bamboo, so we hope all goes well, I've got a private class later in the afternoon so I won't be home for poo duty till later in the evening. Keep her in your thoughts.

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Dylan Bamboo Rocking Away

Like a 'Rocking' Stone