"illegitimum non carborundum"
Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for April 2008
For my current Blog click here!
Link to Legless HQ
British expat amputee in Thailand
'Let it be'
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". Listen to the music.
We are both legless!
****
You can email me anytime at: blog@leglessinthailand.com
'The Legless Blog May 2008
31 May, 2008: Back to my Asian Diaries
I did manage to write and upload a new page to my Asian Diaries today and I found that by doing so it helped me to refocus my mind a little, unfortunately, within the next few days as my Asian diaries are progressing again now, they are leading up to the encounter that brought me together with my Thai wife for the first time and that is going to bring my mind back to the encounter in Koh Lanta last week, because my former living-in partner of ten years in Koh Lanta is in fact the sister of my legal Thai wife.
Life is complicated isn't it? Well, mine certainly is!
Cheers for now 
The legless fool deeper in thought in Thailand
30 May, 2008: Time for a little recuperation and rethink
After my return from my last trip and especially the visit to Koh Lanta, I am feeling emotionally drained and exhausted now, so I am finding it a little difficult to get back into my usual routine at the moment. I shall try and post on here as often as I can, but it may not be quite as often as it was before for a while.
http://www.leglesshq.com/reedasia/Penang-Kohlanta.htm
The trip to Koh Lanta and the encounter with my former living-in partner has made me rethink about my plans for the future now and couple that with my present situation on 'Parasite farm' with no obvious way out, then my mind is working overtime at the moment and I cannot easily apply myself to my blogs or my Asian Diaries at this time. The diaries are from the past and although we should learn from our past experiences, the future is what I am trying to concentrate on at the moment and it is not looking very good. 
Cheers for now
The legless fool deep in thought in Thailand
28 May, 2008: Visa trip to Penang/Emotional trip to Koh Lanta
I have just finished and uploaded the full story about my last trip to Penang, to my legless HQ website. I took me quite a long time to write because the events that happened during this trip, especially my side trip to Koh Lanta were very emotional for me and have caused me to rethink my whole future. For you to understand fully, you would have to read the story that I have just uploaded to http://www.leglesshq.com/reedasia/Penang-Kohlanta.htm
For anyone who has already read my book Legless in Thailand, then they will be able to follow this story easily and understand the strong emotions involved with what I did, or what I was attempting to do last week in a side trip to Koh Lanta to meet with my former living-in partner of ten years, whom I have not seen or spoken to for the last ten years.
Cheers for now
The legless fool's story continues in Thailand
27 May, 2008: Visa trip - unforeseen events and spontaneous decisions
There has been no post to this blog or any of my other blogs for quite a long time now, this has been due to my recent trip to Penang to renew my Thai visa. A trip that usually takes me less than one week has ended up taking me almost two weeks, mainly due to events beyond my control and a spontaneous decision that I made to re-visit a very painful part of my life, which is also the main reason why I refer to my book as 'The autobiography of a fool'.
To talk about this trip fully would take a lot of writing and although I do want to write about it whilst it is fresh in my mind, I do not think that it would be practical to write it as a post on this blog. So what I have decided to do is just make this post a normal size and write about my recent trip as a new story in the 'Ex Post Facto true short stories' section of my legless HQ website, I shall then link to the story itself in a future post on this blog.
Cheers for now
Legless fool back in Thailand
15 May, 2008: Ticket to ride
Well I am all set to go now, I have finished another page for my Asian Diaries today, my bag is packed, I am writing this blog now, I have a little bit of SEO to do and hopefully with the help of a few beers, I can get to sleep at a reasonable time tonight. 
My next input to this blog will probably be on Saturday in Penang, at least in Penang my favourite beer, Guinness, is a more reasonable price there than Thailand. So my next input will be a Guinness induced posting 
Cheers for now
Legless fool heading for Penang
14 May, 2008: Preparations for the trip
I am working late tonight as I normally do, but this time tomorrow I have to be asleep. Friday morning I have to catch my first train at 08:00, the train station is 20 km away so I have to leave the farm no later than 07:30. The second train is not too bad it only leaves Bangkok at 14:45, so I have an hour or more to spare there, if I get the first one on time. I get to Penang usually about 15:00 local time so the total time that I spend travelling is about 31 hours. The train from Bangkok to Butterworth is a sleeper and I usually take enough beers with me to sleep quite well, so no problem! 
There is no internet on the train, so I will not be able to post on here for about two days after tomorrow, but I am sure that when I get to Penang I shall have something to write about on here.
Cheers for now
Legless fool in Thailand
13 May, 2008: Storms and my Asian diaries
I am sorry about no post on my blog yesterday. I am limited to a little connection time to the internet these days because we are having storms here at the moment and I disconnect the telephone line from my modem during the storms because I do not want another modem fried like the last one.
I have also now just started on a very interesting part of my Asian Diaries, I have just completed my latest page writing about when I went for a night out in Bangkok for the very first time. Although it is not apparent in the diaries yet, as it wasn't to me at that time also, that first night out in Bangkok was going to change my life completely and start events that would ultimately lead to where I am now, legless in Thailand.
Cheers for now
Legless fool in Thailand
11 May, 2008: Countdown to Penang
I shall be travelling to Penang again next Friday, a friend in Bangkok has just got my ticket for me and has sent it to me on a minibus that should be arriving here within the next two hours. I am really looking forward to going to Penang this time, I haven't seen my friends there at the Blue Diamond hotel for four months now and I miss them, I have no friends here on the farm, only the smiling parasites.
Another good thing about going to Penang, is that I get control of my ATM card again They also sell Guinness at the Blue Diamond hotel in Penang, which is my favourite beer To make the most of this trip, I have decided to extend it a little and stopover in Hat Yai for a couple of days on the way back, I met some nice people there last time that I would like to see again and it also delays my return to this place. I have just managed to buy a larger flash drive unit 2GB, so I can take a lot of my work with me too and still write this blog and my Asian Diaries whilst I am away in Penang this time
Cheers for now
Legless fool in Thailand
09 May, 2008: Ian Reed - Internet identity theft
Well, having told you a few days ago about people using the name John McMiken on their internet websites/webpages, doing my usual SEO work today and sometimes using my own name in the search, I now find that other people are using my real name also now. Not only using my name, they are actually copying and putting some of the posts from this blog on there for the search engines to find, they are using the words amputee, Thailand and legless too. I hope that the search engines can modify their algorithms to stop these imposters or at least not display them in their search results.
I expect this from the scammers that I play with and I know that they are using my name in some of their scams now, so if you receive an email from a Mr. Ian Reed offering you a large amount of money for doing very little, or saying that you have won a lottery or competition that you never entered, then I can assure you of two things, one, it isn't me and two, it definitely is not real, just a scam. On the subject of scams, many of the scammers that I deal with have email addresses like: pacificbank, ecobank, claimsagent, etc. @ hotmail, yahoo, myway, live, etc. why don't the email providers stop this or ban certain words for use in their email accounts? Oh well, just a thought!
Cheers for now
Legless, the real Ian Reed / John McMiken
08 May, 2008: Stumpy's birthday - 7 years old today
Checking the date today and counting the days until my next trip to Penang, today's date struck a chord with me. At first I couldn't think why, I was trying to think who's birthday it was, but everyone that I could think of didn't have a birthday today, so I couldn't understand why today seemed to be special to me. It wasn't until much later when I noticed some of the surface covering (skin) peeling off my prosthesis that I thought "I must do something with that!" It is still fully functional, but aesthetically it is not very nice, so then I was trying to work out how long I had it from new and then the reason for today seeming special came to me in a flash. Today is the seventh anniversary of the accident in which I lost the lower part of my left leg, so today is the seventh birthday of 'Stumpy', my nickname for what is left of my leg. Well, Stumpy himself cannot drink, so I shall have to have a few extra drinks for him today. "Happy Birthday Stumpy!" 
Cheers for now
Legless and Stumpy in Thailand
07 May, 2008: Blog maintenance day
Once a month, I have to put some time aside and sort out my blogs properly and this month, today is the day. If I didn't archive the blogs and just let them increase in size, then this blog would be so large that it would take a very long time to load. It does take a little time to do, because not only do I have to copy and load last months posts onto a new archive page, but I also have to create links both ways too, update the RSS feed and update the sitemap for the new archive so that the search engines can find it too.
Well, whilst I am writing this post, then I am not doing the archive, so it will have to be just a short post today, not much to talk about really anyway, just writing my Asian diaries, doing my SEO work and playing with scammers, just the usual stuff. It is hot here today, no clouds in the sky, so I think that I shall get myself a cool beer and start drinking early today.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
06 May, 2008: Termites in the food chain
We had a heavy storm here early in the evening tonight, so I took my usual precautions now and disconnected the phone line from my modem. It lasted for about one and a half hours and it was dark before I could connect to the internet again safely. I was now behind time with my SEO work so I started on that right away. Then I noticed something flying in front of my monitor and I just tried to hit it away and then I saw that the light across the room was swarming with flying bodies and I realised that the termites were back again, I had planned for it this time though, so I went across the yard to where we keep the small chickens, switched a bright light on above them, rushed back to my computer, switched the monitor off and then switched the nearby light off too. As planned, all of the termites headed for the bright light above the chickens and swarmed there and when they lost their wings and dropped to the floor, the young chickens ate them all, so they just became part of the food chain here.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
04 May, 2008: John McMiken - Internet identity theft
When I had completed the first draft of my legless book two to three years ago, even though my real name is Ian Reed, I decided to use the writing name of John McMiken, the reasons for choosing this name are given on the author page of my website 'Author' so I shall not repeat them here. I then realised that for anyone interested to find my book, then the name of John McMiken would have to be relatively high profile on the internet. So starting about two and a half years ago, I used the name on my websites, when registering on forums and when writing articles anywhere on the web. I also started my SEO work then and have painstakingly spent many hours each day ever since then trying to make my writing name high profile on the web. Well, I did succeed at that, you can just put my name in any search engine now and my websites will appear on the first results page.
Recently though, I am finding that the high profile and relatively famous name on the internet does come at a price. Other website / webpage owners seeing that my name is ranking highly with the search engines, have now started to use my name on their own websites, pages, keyword meta tags, page titles and descriptions, and also in the content of some of their pages, even using the title of my book too. As I have said already, to get to this high profile stage has taken me many years of hard work and now these people want their websites to be high ranking but without putting any work into them themselves, just by using my name. To me this is a form of identity theft and should be treated as such. More beer may help me to accept it easier for today.
Cheers for now
Legless, the real author John McMiken
03 May, 2008: Reed in Asia - Asian Diaries - RSS feed installed
I decided yesterday that because I am now working hard on my Reed in Asia Asian Diaries and producing a new page virtually every day, that it would much more convenient for anyone who is interested in reading them if I installed an RSS feed for the diaries, so that anyone who has subscribed to the feed can see on their browser quickly when a new page has been uploaded. I have been working on this new RSS feed for the last two hours and I have just finished the installation now. It is now 02:20 on Saturday morning here in Thailand and I think that after all the work that I have been doing this evening, that I now deserve to relax and have a few beers to help me to sleep.
Cheers for now
Legless with RSS feeds in Thailand
02 May, 2008: The scammers have gone very quiet 
The scam that I told you about two days ago, that said that my 40 million dollars being transferred had been delayed in Canada. Well, they came back to me a couple of days ago and asked me to contact an attorney who would sort it all out, so I sent an email to the attorney that they gave me and I was expecting a reply asking for xxx thousand dollars to do this (usual advance fee fraud scam), well he surprised me and replied saying that his fee was $100,000 if I agreed and was payable to him upon receipt of the 40 million in my bank. Of course I agreed to this and sent him an email accepting his offer, but I was trying to work out how the scammers were going to gain from this, in the many years that I have been doing this I have never had this scenario before, it is completely new to me.
Well that was two days ago now and there has been no more contact from them since then, so the only thing that I can think of that has stopped them, is that maybe one of them has found this blog and is reading about himself on here.
Cheers for now
Legless scam player in Thailand
01 May, 2008: Back in time in Thailand
You are probably getting a little bored now with me keep mentioning about my Reed in Asia Asian Diaries but I am spending a lot of time on them now and I really don't have anything else to talk about, only the weather and my scam playing games, so it is all a little boring really. Today I have just uploaded Asia18 which is the first page for the new Thailand section of my Asian diaries and although I have lived in Thailand on and off for a very long time now, going back to the time that I first set foot in Thailand 24 years ago is making me think about my feelings back then, when Thailand was just a country that I had heard about, but I really knew nothing at all about the country or the people in those days and it was quite a culture shock for me at the time.
I shall finish talking about that now and if anyone would like to know more then click on the Reed in Asia link above. The one more thing that I shall tell you about it, is that the Thailand section of my Asian diaries is going to be by far the largest section on my Legless HQ website, because just my first visit to Thailand alone will take me about two months to write about properly. Well I shall end on that note today and try to think of something else more interesting to tell you about next time.
Cheers for now
Legless back in time in Thailand
To my blog Archive for April 2008
For Current Blog click here!
To my Legless 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
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