Revision, Final Tests and Golf in Isaan Thailand.

I haven’t updated for a while, one I have been busy. We have final exams this coming week and it has meant revision sheets for the students. A week of revision for 130 students meant a lot of marking.

Also printing all the final exams and getting all the final paperwork prepared to hand in and so forth. So I am really looking forward to my two month break. My patience is very short and I have to keep biting my lip when I can and just remind myself it is only 2 more days of work and I am free.

I have however been able to spend a little time relaxing. Last night I went to a mates place to watch the Premier League, I had planned on only watching the early game being his team Chelsea V’s Manchester City. He had cooked an excellent roast and the conversation just went on as the time kicked over. In the end I left at half time in the final match.

I watched the second half at home, went to bed too late 3am, and was up at 5.20am as a couple of mates and I were playing golf. My mate picking me up got lost, turned off a little early for my place, by about a kilometre. But a phone call and directions he eventually found me.

Our other mate was at the course waiting for us. We were a little late. We haven’t been playing consistently enough so the first few holes were expected to be a little rough. And they were. You can buy ten golf balls for 100 Baht $3.30 Australian and my mate did this as last time he donated a few.

So off we went, balls going everywhere, taking the piss out of each other, so just enjoying ourselves. After 6 holes I heard my mates caddy say that he had run out balls, he was on his last one. I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. So I gave two balls to her hoping they would last for the last 3 holes so he could buy another bag of balls at the turn.

I have never played with anyone who has lost 10 balls in 6 holes, well at this course. At a course I used to play at a lot in Cairns, Australia called Paradise Palms. I have seen medium handicappers shoot 120 off the stick here and high handicappers shot 150 plus and lose too many balls to count. I have even shot in the 90’s there on bad days or when the weather was tough. My highest score was 95 on a day no-one would have played if sane. The AGU or course rating is 76 or 4 over par.

In 1990 I was blessed to watch Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer, Curtis Strange and a Japanese god of golfing Isao Aoki play a skins game to official open the course. After the game there were recommendations to change some things, less bunkers and also lessen some of the undulations in the greens. There used to be 130 bunkers from memory but now there are only 94.

If you go and look at the hole by hole tour, you will see the layout and it looks daunting on paper but when you actually played it, this is when you seen the monster it could be. I was lucky to be able to play there for free or $20 for as many holes as I could play. But I lived at the practice facilities all my spare time and my golf went to another level over these years. It is when I became a scratch golfer for brief moments but played off of 1 mostly for 7 plus years. It is the thousands upon thousands of golf balls hit over these years, which still enables me to shoot an average score without any practice. The hardest part is of course pitching and putting which is all feel nowadays.

I am actually backing up tomorrow for another 18 holes of golf tomorrow with the same guys at an easier course. So it won’t be as many lost balls. Today I had an 88 which is shit, but I hadn’t played for three weeks and I pitched and putted terribly. That’s golf.

We will now have our niece for virtually the entire two months of holidays. So we are going to be busy looking after her, but we love doing this. Noot has her graduation this coming Saturday and this means a morning over craziness that only Thailand can do.

Tomorrow is a holiday, Tuesday a normal day of school and then Wednesday is the final tests. Then I am kids free until May 13th or around then, I am so happy about this. 9 months is enough and the three months of paid holidays is needed to keep the sanity of teachers, well try to keep their sanity.

Brunty