Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's day to you Dad! You're the best daddy in the whole world for our little boy, Hyzyd.

Am I being amnesiac?..LOL! Nope, I'm just celebrating Father's Day with the Thais. Actually, December 5 is the exact date for the Father's Day here in Thailand but schools already celebrating this special event all through this week. December 5 is the day the present King of Thailand was born and, as the Thais think of him as the 'Father of the Nation', it's appropriate to celebrate all fathers on this day.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great was born on Monday, December 5th, 1927 in the USA. He is the only monarch ever to have been born in America. King Bhumibol is also the world's longest reigning monarch. This year will be his 82nd birthday and, as such, will be a day of enormous celebration for all Thais. Yellow is the King's birth color because yellow is the color of a Monday birth according to traditional Thai beliefs. So every Monday throughout the year most Thais wear a special yellow shirt to honor the King.

His Majesty is well beloved and deeply respected by all Thais- old and young. The occasion of his royal birthday provides his loyal subjects the opportunity to express their reverence for him. The shrine of the King is displayed in our hallway, love letters for the king were hanged on a man-made tree and buildings and homes all over the country are elaborately decorated and the area around the Grand Palace is spectacularly illuminated.

Here in our school , there's a morning show that all the children's families came to to celebrate the Father's Day. The little kids perform songs or nursery rhymes, and the older kids would dance traditional Thai dances in honor of their fathers. At the end of the performance, all the fathers in the audience were asked to come up on stage and were presented with flowers. Male teachers would often be called up to represent a father for a child who didn't have one present. As teachers are highly respected in Thailand, this was always a nice addition to the festivities and you'd often see an otherwise macho teacher wiping away a little tear...LOL!

Happy Father's Day and Happy birthday to His Majesty King Bhumibol!

Something's good happens today!

After posting here my ways and means to continue blogging though we don't yet have internet connection because we'll move again few weeks from now, I was surprised that when we got home, my SIL announced that we're already connected once again to internet.

Why surprised? Because last Monday we went to our internet provider and agreed with them that the technician will meet us today at 5:00 PM and install the internet to the new apartment (where we'll transfer after the electricity and water connection few weeks from now). Instead of doing so, he came an hour earlier, surveyed the area and told my SIL that he'll first install the internet in our current abode and will just transfer the connection two weeks from now to the other building (it's just a step away) so that we can use it while waiting for our transfer. Well, I'm happy for it and I hope there would be no more problems in the future in terms of the transfer...waaahhhhhh....I'm excited to finally settle to a place I could call our own.

Ta-ta for now!

can't stop blogging

I thought I could leave blogging for a month or two cause by our "moving" but I still find a way to blog. If I'm not tired or busy (or sick), I could sneak to our computer laboratory on lunch break or the nearby internet cafe (usually after work while waiting for hubby to fetch me up). So you see, I could still blog and visit you once in a while with this span of 1 month without internet connection. At night while waiting for my eyes to "drop", I write some post, save them to my USB and publish it the following day. Good thing that "scheduling of posts" works well now . I also get some writing tasks and opportunities once a week so these too keep me online. I really appreciate your time spent in visiting my blog, dropping some ECs and love messages.

Ta-ta for now. See you next time:)

Recovering From Loss

Here are five keys to recovering from loss:

1) Process your grief. Emotions like fear, anger, worry, depression, resentment, helplessness and grief are normal. It's no good to suppress them or deny they exist. God created us to feel; He doesn't expect us to act happy when we're grieving. 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted' (Matthew 5:4 NIV). Be honest with God. 'Pour out your heart before Him,' (Psalm 62:8 NIV) and He will comfort you.

2) Accept help. It's a mistake to isolate yourself in the aftermath of a tragedy. We all need the encouragement and the support of others. We're called to carry one another's burdens 'Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ'. (Galatians 6:2 NKJV).

3) Choose the right response. When you choose bitterness, you hurt yourself and shut the door on happiness because you can't be happy and bitter at the same time. During some recent California wildfires there were victims who said, 'We've lost everything and we're sad, but we'll work together as a family and rebuild.' Others said, 'My life's over! I can't go on... I'll never recover.' You can choose to believe you're on your own, or that God's with you and bounce back.

4) Know your joy comes from God. There's no correlation between your circumstances and your joy. Joy comes from within; it's based on whom you trust not what you see and feel.

5) Concentrate on what you have left, not on what you've lost. Make a list of the good things in your life, and thank God for what you still have. It's impossible to be grateful and hopeless at the same time.