Adventures in Learning

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Janice Hillmer

I like learning new things. When I learn something new, it’s like a little drop of water sprinkles itself on a formerly dry part of my brain. In the spirit of learning something new today, (and having something to write about tonight), I googled “famous quotes about learning new things.”

Unfortunately, I had to stop reading when I got to the following Persian proverb, and realized I was in trouble: One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it. I can assure you that my extra 10 pounds have not been applied to my common sense.

The problem is, I don’t usually keep track of things I learn from day to day. Never mind applying the things I’ve learned, I’m hard pressed to even remember them by the time I’m finished lunch. To give myself a helping hand, I decided to write down the things I learned this week…

1. Spiders are not reliable body guards.

I have a rather large daddy longlegs spider on my bedroom ceiling. In Canada, I would have vanquished him ages ago. In my little Thai cottage, I don’t mind him. I know where he lives, so I can keep an eye on him. He chills out up on the ceiling, and eats all kinds of weird and wonderful things that I’d rather land in his web than on my head. So, we’re cool. I kind of see him as my buggy little bodyguard superhero. However, this past week, he fought 3 consecutive battles with a large, villainous Winged Thing, and lost every time. The Winged Thing would escape, plummet, recover, and head right back into the web. My 8-legged superhero would pounce, and start wrapping up the delectable treat, only to have the thing escape, plummet, recover… On the 3rd escape of the Winged Thing, it flew straight at my head. I ran and hid in the living room, my bodyguard went to bed without supper, and the Winged Thing lived to fly another day.

2. There are some really bad reasons to consider matrimony.

Many of my friends have gotten married, and I’m sure they must have had good reasons for doing so. (Perhaps to have someone more reliable than a spider around to vanquish Winged Things?) As I was driving along this week, even I thought to myself, “Hmmm, maybe I should get married… … …so someone else can drive, while I sit on the back of the bike and take pictures of weird things on trucks.” I saw so many crazy things on trucks this week, that if I could have taken pictures of them, I would have started a new blog called Stuff on Trucks that I could neglect as conscientiously as I neglect this one! Wouldn’t you be excited to see pictures of a regular pick-up truck with 21 fridges and 3 washing machines stacked and strapped on the back? Or a truck bed full of pineapples, piled 3x as high as the truck itself? Or a motorcycle tied down in the flatbed, with a person sitting on the bike wearing a helmet? Wouldn’t that be awesome!!?? Well, it’s not going to happen, because it’s a lousy reason to get married.

3. Aliens smell bad.

I didn’t actually learn this for real and for certain, but I did make an educated guess. You see, one of the nice things about being illiterate in your country of residence, is that you rely 100% on packaging to sway your decisions. “These cookies have a picture of a squid and some pickles on the package? Put ’em back.” or “I think this picture means you need to give it lots of water, and only feed it after midnight…” So, when picking out laundry detergent from a row of brightly coloured mystery packages, I naturally opted for the one with a large UFO hovering in a pink sky, with a sparkling white shirt in it’s tractor beam. How could I go wrong? Just like misreading Gremlin instructions, things can go very wrong indeed. The detergent smells awful. Rest assured, dear friends, if I small bad for the next month, it’s because I’m wearing clean clothes, washed in detergent recommended by aliens.

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers says, “When I learn something new – and it happens every day – I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.” After re-reading my list, I think Bill Moyers and I must be learning very different things.

Adventures in Regrets

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Janice Hillmer

I’ve been thinking about regrets this week. Not big life-changing things. Not even smaller live ‘n’ learn things. I’m talking about “Oooooh, drat. I knew better than that” things. On most days, if you asked me if I have any regrets in life, I’d say ‘no’… I’d also probably be lying, since I might regret having posted this photo online, and telling you how it came to pass.


I’m sure I won’t regret this…

But, for the most part, I’ve (eventually) learned from my mistakes, and am pretty regret free…or at least I was until this week. This week, I found myself adding 2 new regrets to my list. Two regrets in one week? How could that be?

#2 – Burpees.

At some point in the distant past, I agreed to join the 100-day burpee challenge. That’s 1 burpee on the 1st day, 2 burpees on the 2nd day, etc. until the 100th miserable day. On day 8, as I waddled, jumped and flopped through my 8th burpee, and my indolent body was still complaining about the previous 7, burpees had made it onto my regret list. However, since my sister’s also doing the challenge, it gives us a reason to send each other messages every day. Since I like my sister, and since burpees are good for me, and since #1 on the list is way worse, burpees will eventually be relieved of their regretful status.

#1 -Bugs.

I check everything for bugs here. I shake out my shoes before I put my feet in them, I peek in the kettle every morning before I plug it in, I check my helmet every time I put it on…but I didn’t check my mango bag. A few weeks ago, I wrapped some of the mangoes on my tree in little paper bags, to keep the bugs, birds and squirrels off them as they ripened. On Monday, I picked a bagged mango and brought it inside. When I opened the bag, I was left standing with a beautiful mango in one hand, an empty bag in the other … and 2 dozen little baby cockroaches scattering across my counter. Since then, I’ve been finding a disturbing number of adolescent cockroaches partying it up in my pantry.

That is the kind of regret I’m talking about this week!

Adventures in Rude Awakenings

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Janice Hillmer

It’s 1:30 am, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake and soaking wet. 3 minutes ago, I was lying in bed sound asleep and bone dry. In between, I was startled awake by a terrific crashing sound in my bathroom, followed by the sound of gushing water. In my haste to rouse myself, I got tangled up in my mosquito net, so that the cat, my bed sheet, my mosquito net and I all tumbled out of bed together in a giant mess of mesh, fur and limbs.

As I extricated myself from the mess, my brain was trying to make sense of the sounds coming from my bathroom. “Did my toilet just blow up? Is that possible? Is that even a thing that could happen?” I finally stumbled my way across the 5 feet to the bathroom, and discovered that the faucet in my shower had blown off. Water was gushing out of the pipe in the wall, and the tap that is supposed to be attached to the pipe was on the other side of the bathroom. I have no idea where the water shut-off valve for the house is, so I pushed the faucet back onto the pipe, bathing myself in a watery spray worthy of any plumbing fiasco scene in a comedy. There I was, spluttering and making dreadful scrunchy faces as I tried to avoid the jets of water spraying everywhere. Once the tap was back on, I jiggled it to make sure it was secure. In fact, I tested it so thoroughly that it blew off again, and I had to repeat my spluttering scrunchy-face routine. After I got it back on the second time, I didn’t test it anymore. Instead, I turned the tap on a little bit (to ease the pressure?? That seemed to make sense…) and crawled back into bed. I’m going to try to go back to sleep, and hope it doesn’t blow off again ’til morning.