'Ours is to reason why, to tell the truth and open eyes'
Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for March 2009
For my current Blog click here!
British expat amputee in Thailand
Legless Blog -I first decided to create this blog page after seeing all of the bad publicity given to and constant hounding of my fellow legless celebrity, Heather Mills on many other websites and in the media in general. This page I created as a place where I can state my personal opinions, thoughts and musings openly, and just share my views and feelings with the Internet World.
This is my legless website, I pay for it and I am the manager, owner/boss/ruler of it, so 'legless or not', as 'freedom of speech' is still a basic human right in true democratic countries where you can view this blog, then I feel that this is somewhere that I can speak my mind without recourse. This is not a commercial page, it is just my own social media page. Nobody has forced any of you to come here and nobody is holding you here, so if you don't agree or like what you are reading here, then please feel free to leave at anytime!
As someone who has exactly the same physical injuries that I have, I find that the hounding of Heather Mills by the media is disgusting. I now see how celebrities, legless or not, can never have a normal life, because they never have time to themselves without someone from the media trying to drag up any kind of dirt from what would just be a normal everyday incident to anyone else, but in Heather's case any normal incident gets sensationalised by the media. Heather's physical disability seems to incite them more, and being honest, if I personally was hounded the way that Heather is, then some of these media personnel would consider being only 'legless' a bonus after the physical injuries that I would personally inflict upon them. I am thoroughly disgusted at the treatment of Heather, I suppose you could call it a feeling of 'Legless unity', so if any of the media responsible are reading this blog, then in Paul McCartney's own words "Let it be".
'The Legless Blog March 2009 by The Legless Fool'
This evening at my usual beer break time, I met my only good friend in this apartment block, Justin, he is the only other foreigner here and he does virtually the same work that I do, he too is a website designer and spends many hours every day at his computer just like me. We only meet very occasionally, but when we do, quite obviously we have very much to talk about with our similar work on the internet. Justin is now spending many hours on his latest project which is, he is trying to create the best web directory on the internet and the dedication and time that he puts into this project I hope will bring him the success that he truly deserves.
Even in my own present dire situation now, I am still relatively much better off than Justin, at least I have my monthly RAF pension to help to take care of my basic necessities, whereas Justin only has his income from his internet work to live on and as I know from previous years of experience, it can take many years to just break even, no matter how much time you put into it. I do hope that Justin can make a success of his excellent web directory project, because if anyone deserves success in my eyes he does, he was the only person that helped me to get out of the last very tricky situation that I was in here, on Parasite Farm.
Justin had to return quite quickly back to his internet work tonight, so I just had to finish the last of my beer on my beer break alone. I had already finished my set internet work for the day today, so on returning to my room I just did what I always do when I have no urgent work to do and that is to play with keywords on the internet search engines. Thinking about my high internet profile now of 'the legless fool', I started to look just how far the word 'fool' was helping me, so I keyed in the obvious words of 'legless', 'Thailand', 'fool', and tried 'Asia' and 'Laos' too and they all came back with very satisfactory results in the search engine 'SERPS'. So then I decided to see if I came up as a fool in the UK and I was quite disappointed, I never came up in the SERPS of any of the search engines as a fool in the UK and this surprised me a little, because I use both the words 'fool' and 'UK' on most of my websites, but the search engines don't seem to acknowledge this in the searches.
Thinking about this using my usual legless logic, I have come to the fairly obvious conclusion that there must be too much competition and too many potential candidates for me to be classed as being a high ranking fool in the UK, so I shall obviously just have to wait until the amount of certified fools in the UK drops a little and try again 
.
Cheers for now 
The Legless Fool FBE- Just a fool in Asia 
I told you a little while ago on here that I had joined a couple of forums on the internet and on one of them, the RAF forum, one of the people that I met on there had been working with the British services charity organisation named SSAFA before and after a few emails to each other and discussing our situations, he suggested that I should contact the British Legion in Thailand and ask them for some help to try and ease my present financial situation. So I did exactly as he asked me and because the British Legion here is based in Pattaya, they passed my case over to the SSAFA representative who works in the British Embassy in Bangkok.
The SSAFA representative met me yesterday and we sat and talked about my situation for a couple of hours, he filled in some forms with all of my financial details and his recommendations and he will be submitting them to the RAFBF in the UK next week. The RAFBF already has my name on their records because they were the people that paid for my flight to the UK after my accident when I lost my leg eight years ago. What the SSAFA representative has basically asked for from them, is to supplement my RAF pension to cover the loss of funds due to the present poor exchange rate of the Pound Sterling against the Thai baht and also after listening to my story, he agreed with me that it would be far better for me to relocate to Penang where the immigration regulations were easier for me and it would cut my living costs down quite a lot.
So he is recommending to the RAFBF that I should be assisted with a resettlement grant to relocate me to Penang. I am not holding out too much hope for this just in case they do not agree, but if they do agree and I can move to Penang, which is the one place in the world that I would really like to live, it would be absolutely wonderful for me .
When you are struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis, you still never really consider yourself to be a charity case and it takes an objective view by someone outside of your personal situation to recognise it and make positive suggestions.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- Charity case
Yesterday I had to go to my bank to get the code from Paypal so that I can activate my internet Paypal account at long last. Because my bank is close to my friend's travel agency in Bangkok after I had finished at my bank I called in to see him and have a cup of tea in his office. It was mid-afternoon when when I got to Peter's travel agency and I stayed there for a couple of hours just drinking tea and chatting about things, including my recent trip to Vientiane. Then in the late afternoon Peter invited me to go with him for a beer at a nearby beer garden 'The Rosabieng' it was quite pleasant sitting in the garden there and drinking a cool beer in the hot weather in Bangkok now. Knowing my financial situation, Peter treated me to a couple of beers and then one of his friends came in and joined us, Peter then had to get back to his travel agency and he left me there with his friend, so we started chatting and getting to know one another and he bought me a beer too, so by this time I was feeling the effects of the alcohol. Beer Chang that I drink is quite a strong beer and usually due to my limited funds I just treat myself to a couple each evening which just helps me to sleep these days .
I hadn't been out for a while because of my very limited funds now, so whilst I was in the area I thought that I should go and say hello to my local pub landlord and just have a couple more beers. When I walked in to the 'Pickled Liver', Nick the landlord came and shook my hand because he had not seen me for a long time and he also bought me a beer. Because of the law now you cannot smoke in a pub, but they do have some tables and chairs outside at the front where you can have a cigarette so I took my beer and headed for the door, my legs were feeling even more wobbly than usual then and as I stepped outside the inevitable happened and I fell to the floor, whether it was by quick reaction or just pure good luck, I managed to keep my beer glass upright and only a little splashed out. One of the other customers outside helped me to my feet and I just blamed my false leg for the fall, even though I knew that it was nothing to do with my leg at all and everything to do with my excessive alcohol intake that day 
.
The last thing that I remember last night was paying for a couple of beers, saying goodbye to everyone and heading for a taxi, I must have made it back to my room okay because I woke up this morning fully clothed and lying across the top of my bed with my false leg still on, so I reckon that it must have been a quite good night. Maybe it is just as well that I do not have the money to go out very often these days .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- Getting really legless
I have still not finished the story about my recent trip to Vientiane yet, because having recently reviewed my websites, I felt that I needed to update and modify them a little and if I don't do things when the thought is in my mind, then I end up forgetting about it later, this is probably one of the first signs of getting old now .
A few years ago, I never had to write things down to remind me to do things later, it would just sit in a 'to do list' in my brain and I would get round to it as I worked my way down the list, but these days it doesn't quite work the same way, maybe I should try installing a new up-to-date 'Operating System' in my brain .
Well, I have to get back to my website updates now, but I shall remember to finish the story for you soon, I hope!
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- Getting old now
I arrived back on Thursday evening from quite an eventful trip this time. I have decided to write a new story about it and I hoped that I could finish it before I posted again on here. Unfortunately, it is taking me quite a long time to write, so I thought that I should post on here now and let you know what I am doing.
I should be able to finish the story later today and I shall probably post again later on this blog and give you a link to the new story. Two 'firsts' happened to me during this trip, I got a free Thai tourist visa and I got stuck in Nong Khai and ended up sleeping on the floor outside, but you can read all about it later when I finish the story.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- Back home again
I shall be leaving later today heading for Vientiane again, so there will not be a post on here again for a few days. Hopefully my trip this time will be fairly uneventful, I like going to Vientiane anyway, but I shall write a post on here when I get back and I should have time to think of something interesting to write about whilst I am away.
See you all again soon!
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- hitting the road again
I have joined a couple of forums within the past few days and I have found them quite interesting. I am now a member of the British Expats Forum and the Royal Air Force Forum. I have had some interesting discussions on these forums and on the RAF forum, I have met people that I used to work alongside in the RAF 30 years ago. I am now quite interested in creating a forum for my website so that everyone who visits here can talk to each other and I shall probably get around to doing that within the next two weeks.
The pressing thing that I have to do at the moment though is to prepare for my next trip to Vientiane. I have to leave within the next four or five days because my visa expires soon and I have to book a train later today, I hope that they have a lower bunk available for me.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- preparing for his trip
At my usual beer break this evening, I went to my normal venue at the front of the apartment block, I explained to my local shopkeeper that I needed credit again because my money hadn't arrived yet, I then got my first beer, sat down and the sun was just setting, it was quite a pleasant evening. I was just sitting there enjoying my first beer of the day and thinking about things in general, when I was suddenly surrounded by about forty young girls aged between 18 and 25 all fighting for somewhere to sit. So I moved to sit on the shop's cool box and watched all of this, I wondered where they had all suddenly appeared from and what they were doing here? I was still quite happy just sitting there on the cool box, anywhere will do as long as I have my beer in my hand. I was watching what was happening with these girls, then someone came and took control of them and moved them all off to another area, so then I could get my usual seat back again. I thought that it must have been some sort of mass outing or party or something similar, so I then just settled back on my usual perch and carried on with my evening beer break.
All of these girls were later led past me inside the apartment building by the landlady and I asked her what was going on, she told me that this was a new intake of staff for the local 7-Eleven stores and she had the contract to accommodate them all. A short while later these girls came out again and were all milling around the shop and buying things, so I just took my time with my beer, too many customers in the shop and these are cash paying customers, I am not! . The one thing that I did notice about all of these new girls though is this, even though I am the only foreigner here, not one of these girls even looked at me twice, let alone tried to target me and this I really liked and was very surprised about. I am so used to being a target for the girls here now, that this really surprised me tonight. Maybe I am too old, ugly, legless and look too poor for them to be interested, or just maybe! These are normal girls just like in any other country, very unlike all of the other girls that I usually see here in Thailand.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- queing for his beer tonight
'Read an E-Book Week' has officially started today. It is a promotion to encourage people to read e-books, there are many literary companies offering special promotions and even my own publisher Red Lead Press is offering different free e-books to their website visitors each day this week, so maybe one of you can even get my book for free sometime this week . This promotion is coordinated by http://www.ebookweek.com and hosting for the Read an E-Book Week website is made possible by a generous donation from gogreenreade.com.
Reading e-books is becoming more popular now with the availability of many hand held portable electronic devices that can display them and even download them from the internet. It is also a small step in the direction of reducing the carbon footprint on the earth and trying to balance things again. The benefits of e-books include economy, ease of purchase, portability, the amount of storage available on the reading devices, and the impact on the environment. The carbon footprint of printed books includes pulp from trees, chemicals, returns clogging landfills, and the exhaust generated by transporting books from publishers to bookstores or customers. With e-books, files are downloaded electronically and read on a reader. Nothing is printed, transported, or disposed of. For all these reasons, it makes good sense to set aside a week to consider purchasing and reading an e-book, or at least developing an interest in them and becoming more informed about their possibilities.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- promoting read an e-book week
I seem to be very quick to react to people that have done bad to me, but not quite so fast at complimenting the people that have been good to me, maybe the reason for this is that the former group of people outnumber the latter greatly.
About 18 months ago I created a webpage for the worst person in my life Noi, the 'Thai whore from hell' to allow people to see the very bad character of this person. But what I have not been very quick at doing, is creating a webpage for the best person in my life, so yesterday I created a new webpage for Phetchomphu 'Pet' who has really helped me in many ways over the last few years. Pet unfortunately died two years ago, so the new webpage is a eulogy to her so that people can view it and she will be remembered as the very good person that she was.
Both of these people are real characters from my book 'Legless in Thailand' and they both had a big effect on my life in their own very different ways.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- creating good and bad webpages
Still on the subject of music, I have always loved music from being quite young. It became a hobby of mine many years ago to compile and create cassettes of my favourite music and I made hundreds of them over many years. Although I do like to listen to music with good rhythm and melody, I have always been more interested in lyrics and the message that the writer was trying to put across through the popular medium of music. So with the advent of 'rock operas' in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was really drawn to them, but I was only ever once in a situation where I had the chance to go and see a live performance of one of these rock operas and that was 'Jesus Christ Superstar' in London in the early 1970s and I was very impressed not only with the music and lyrics, but also with the visual effects too, I was well and truly hooked then.
Now being a writer myself, I can see that these songwriters do have a story and a message from their own life experiences that they are trying to put across in their songs, but many people only listen to the sound of the music itself and miss this. I personally now only listen to songs that have meaning and many contain great words of wisdom. The title of this post today are lyrics from one of the tracks of my personal favourite musical 'Chess' and although these lyrics were written to fit in with the overall story, they also apply to everyday life for everyone and this is the one of messages that the writer is trying to put across in this musical story.
My post today may seem quite deep to many of you and I think that is because I am gradually getting back into my writing mode again after a very long lay-off.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- getting back into the write frame of mind
It is March already and I shall have to start thinking about and planning my next visa trip soon. Back to vientiane again this time, which I now quite like anyway it is very relaxing there.
Now that I am a member of the imeem website and because I like listening to music when I am relaxing, I have now created a webpage on here that links directly to one of my imeem music playlists, so now I just have to click on my own new webpage and I can listen to my favourite music being streamed down from imeem and because I have my own webpage in front of me I can plan new website updates at the same time. I find it all very relaxing and convenient for me, I shall give you my blog readers a link to this private page though just in case you would like to listen to some of the music that I like. I have called it my recluse webpage and you can check it out by clicking anywhere on this line.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- relaxing with music 
To my blog Archive for January 2009
For my Current Blog click here!
To my Legless Fool Headquarters site
P.S. "I don't remember reading the small print when I signed on for this life, in fact, I don't remember signing on at all, I was probably legless then too! So seeing as you wont let me resign, can we renegotiate the contract please?"
My first published book - Legless in Thailand
My other blog at the St Helens Star newpaper, UK
My home town St Helens, UK and their famous rugby team
Some of my short stories HERE
Biography of author John McMiken
MSN AOL Google Yahoo Netster Dogpile Excite Lycos
 |
Username: siamease Check out my CNET Profile |
