Late Nights, a Sore Toe and Boring Politics, Thailand.

The last few days have been tiring, tiring as in lack of sleep. On Tuesday there was Champions League Football which kicked off at 1.45am Thai time. So that meant getting to bed around 4am.

On Wednesday it was Champions League Football again but also The Masters Golf coverage of the par 3 contest. I didn’t get to bed until around 5am.

On Thursday it was UEFA football and then the first round of The Master golf was beamed live into my room at 3am. This finished at just after 6am.

And now here I am sitting waiting for the second round coverage of The Masters to start. It is just before 2am and the coverage goes through till 6am.

Apart from this I have been busy keeping up my exercise programme. What seems a long time ago now, when I first started out running for 60 second intervals with 90 second breaks over 20 minutes.

Now I run for at least 40 minutes per night. I remember getting to 30 minutes of continuous jogging and then wanting to extend it each time a little. Once or twice a week I extend my jogging to over an hour.

My longest run has been 1hour and 37 minutes. I felt really good that day and just kept jogging. Even when I stopped I felt good and the next day didn’t have too many aches.

The one problem I have had since extending my runs is my toes. Well my toenails to be exact. About 4 weeks ago I lost my first toenail after it became infected and full of puss. The nail peeled away from the toe easily and since then hasn’t really recovered.

I have tried to keep it clean, cover it when on longer runs but it doesn’t want to heal. It isn’t painful at all, but getting the blood out of my sock is a pain in the butt.

Now my left foot has got in on the act. The toenail is just starting to get sore and a small mark has shown under the toenail. Some puss was removed the other day and it won’t be long and this toenail will be off as well. I think the big toenail is also heading for the trash can as well. I will keep you posted.

I use some ointments that are meant to help with infection and keep the wound open to the air as much as possible, is this good? I only wear shoes that are enclosed when I am jogging. Toenails aren’t that important anyway.

Apart from this life has been quiet. The Thai New Year or Songkran is about to start and this is good for about a day and then the water throwing gets a little monotonous. Over the short holiday period the insane loss of life on the roads doesn’t seem to shock anyone as the road tolls never really change. The government and other groups always talk about changing this and that but it is usually all piss and wind.

There will be a multitude of police and volunteers out manning check points but again this changes little in way of deaths. If police actually took drink drivers off the road and enforced laws strictly then maybe only 20-30 people would die each day of the holidays.

I have been sitting back watching the shenanigans of the political football games going on here. I don’t support any political party, each seem as bad as each other.

The yellow shirts or PAD crippled the country for months to oust former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s so called puppet government.

Now the Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva government is being bombarded by the red shirts or UDD. They claim he came to government illegally an wasn’t elected by the people or some boring crap along those lines.

All I can say is the two protest based groups are disgraceful for the way they have held the country to ransom at times and the way they have made many of their own people suffer in such hard economic times.

What makes a joke of this even more is when the yellow shirts were protesting way back, people from the village had been paid to go to the capital and protest. They were paid 150 Baht per day to sit there; this is what I was told when in the village and enquired to where people were.

I have personally witnessed vote buying in the village, watched villagers being paid money to cast their vote in a certain way. This is widespread and done by all the big players.

And all this I couldn’t care less; it isn’t my country that is being ridiculed by other nations who must be laughing at all the going on. I feel sad for the normal people of Thailand, the people who make this country really amazing. They are being hurt by these so called academics that seem to be so power hungry and have blinkers on to the damage they are causing.

Enough on that as it bores me will never change in my lifetime or the next ten if I had them.

Brunty