To Bangkok yesterday for my six monthly appointment with the doctor who is keeping my thyroid from exploding and taking over my body. Have been seeing him for more years than I remember (eight?) and the ritual is always the same. Go to the hospital and get a blood test. Come back several hours later and see the doctor who peruses the results and tells me to keep on taking the pills. He has already told me I will probably have to take the pills until I die or until the next ice age arrives, whichever comes sooner; so these visits are merely a formality and a chance to give him some money and stock up on more pills.

This means a day in Bangkok which is tiring, and I arrive home suitably exhausted and in no mood to write anything; so I have a gin and tonic instead, safe in the knowledge you are still wondering what the Jenny post was all about (it amused me, justification enough).

Today, as has been the pattern for the last week, it rained. In fact it rained buckets for some time, and when I went out to attempt lunch, second road was still awash some three hours after the rain had stopped.

I am a cute young girl called Jenny and I play poker on-line. So far, it has been going very well. I started with around 10,000 chips and found a type of game where nine people contribute to a pot; and then you play until everyone but the winner has been eliminated. The final three share the pot. I found I was quite good at this and eventually I had more than one million chips. Took a while, because I only play small tables. Then one evening I played a 1,000 chip table and won, only to discover that it was a million chip table and my winnings were 3.5 million. Since then I have continued to win and now I have more than 5 million chips. But I still stick to the small tables because the other players are generally stupid, people who have bought large numbers of chips and are currently on their way down to chip bankruptcy; easy pickings.

An early morning incident involving my feet and some cat vomit was not a good start to the day; but best smile forward because mother-in-law was coming for a couple of days and bringing she who must be obeyed’s (much younger) sister to stay for a little holiday. My abilities to amuse and control young children are well recognised as being completely inadequate, and it is understood that at no time during her stay will I be required to supervise her activities; which is just how I want it. Anyway, she is well-mannered little person so no real problem having her round the house.

Having made coffee for my mother-in-law (she likes my coffee almost as much as she likes me, and she likes me a lot), it was off to Chonburi. For some reason that was never explained, we had to deliver some honey to the town hall. On the way we stopped for snacks that looked like green slime but tasted really good, and some more coffee; just in case mine had not been sufficient.

Next to the town hall was a large building of such random design that it must have been designed by several committees, working independently, staffed by children, on drugs.

Missed the squall of wind yesterday, and no sign of any wind today; so what is a frustrated windsurfer to do? Go take photos of flowers of course.

Sunday was not the best of days. She who must be obeyed had planned a massive Pet Society session, and I had planned a massive keeping her company by fiddling around on the web and making banal comments session, in the absence of wind.

Then the internet disappeared. Some monster problem affecting many people apparently, and not to be fixed till Monday when the TT&T engineers (and I use the word loosely, as in “can wield a hammer”) returned reluctantly to work (and I use the word loosely, as in “arrive late, half pissed and do as little as possible”).

The B2S bookshop was running a promotion for a product aimed at children this morning. Unfortunately, they had decided to support the promotion with a purple elephant whose crossed eyes and general demeanour shouted out “malevolence” rather than “cuddly”. Most of the kids gave it a wide berth, but this future war photographer risked her life to get the shot:

Every Michael Jackson cloud has a silver lining, and yesterday this came in the form of a souvenir. As one of the first five million people to buy tickets to see “This is it”, we were entitled to a cardboard folder containing a set of three tiles depicting the great man:

Bloody miserable endless drizzle the last couple of days; like being in Europe at any time apart from the one week of summer, only hotter.

Still, at least the buildings here do their best to look cheerful whatever the weather. This is the Sabai Dee Body Massage emporium on second road.

Call from she who must be obeyed, requesting that I drop by the Central Mall cinema to pick up four tickets for an upcoming documentary about Michael Jackson.

I know from whom the apparently urgent request has come. My wife has a friend whose husband is a huge Michael Jackson fan. He actually cried when he heard that Jackson had died. However, he is French so this probably doesn’t mean much; French men weep when they see a poignantly shaped vegetable in a supermarket.

Just sorting out my Singapore shots, once again the LX3 B&W mode looks good (to me):