I remember once having to sit through a two hour seminar on change management in schools given by a consultant who was earning far more than I was. To be fair, the guy did a pretty decent job of speaking much and saying little. I think most people attend these kinds of training events with …
I've always had what I felt was a sensible mistrust of people who can order the world into 'correct' and 'incorrect'. To me, that is the way of the extremist: "difference is bad, my way is good, kill those who oppose". As such, I am wary of mathematicians - or as I like to call …
I remember driving home one night from town along the Srinakarin road - a major thoroughfare running south away from Bangkok towards Samut Prakan. It was a few days before my first child was born and we'd been out with friends, enjoying zesty Thai curries and sipping soft drinks whilst our companions got stuck into …
One of the absolute joys of living in Thailand is how much the Thai people adore kids, especially blonde-haired farang toddlers. Apart from the innate sense of paternal pride at watching your youngster being doted on by numerous people it has a number of benefits. Firstly, for a brief moment in time the boy is preoccupied with …
My son is a social bean. He gets it from his mother. Not me at all. I'm not social. I hate people. Even you. Anyway, as his voice and gestures become more developed he has improved his ability to make people aware of him. Unsuspecting members of the public will be yelled at, given a …
Warning: Contains Game of Thrones and Seamus Heaney spoilers. Kind of. My wife is terrible at shooty computer games which, as you can imagine, puts quite a heavy burden on our relationship. It's not that she can't play these games, it's more the crippling emotional guilt she feels in turning a collection of pixels red. …
In which Attila the Hun and a trout's anus are used to illustrate the complexities of feeding an infant solid food and the nature of milestones. Milestones. Every part of life is fixated on milestones. They can be the intimate like that first kiss, the loss of virginity or the first time you actually understood …
There is an overwhelming compulsion in humans to create order out of chaos. It goes someway to explaining the popularity of games like Tetris and Candy Crush Saga - there is a mess which is getting worse and your job is to sort it out. It also helps to explain the sense of satisfaction one …
The boy turned one this weekend. One whole year in which we managed to not kill and/or seriously wound our offspring. As he grows older he becomes ever his own person, growing and showing hints of the man he will one day become. That man will, based on current indicators, be a psychotic being of …
A recent article on the BBC pondered on whether or not people would choose to have amputations so their birth limbs could be replaced with bionic ones. Apart from sounding like a brilliant idea in itself (who doesn't occasionally wonder what it would be like to have super strength) it opens up a huge …
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