Tag Archives: phoung

Tuesday 28th June 2016 – I HAD A BETTER …

… day today, although you might not think it.

I slept better for a start and I always feel beeter when I’ve had a decent sleep. Not that this was decent by any means. I was still up and down a couple of times during the night, and up properly at 06:00, but I’m sure that I must have slept rather better than I have done in the pst couple of weeks.

The weather brightened up too, and as far as I can remember, it didn’t rain today. That’s a first. I just went out for a slow walk to a local boulangerie and bought a rather expensive baguette. But I didn’t spend anything else – and I might have been tempted had I gone to the Delhaize.

The water retention issue hasn’t improved any, but I’ll be seeing about that over the course of the next few days.

I’ve had a good day working on the updating of the blog. I’m now up to 5th August 2010 and I’m quite pleased about that. if I can keep it up, it will be totally up-to-date by the time that I’m ready to leave here, with time to spare, I hope.

Downstairs in the kitchen at teatime I had a good chat to Phoung, the Vietnamese girl. She didn’t want to talk about life in Vietnam, which was unfortunate from my point of view, but we chatted quite a lot about loads of other things.

So now I’m going to have an early night – if I can. The girl in the next room has visitors round and they are a little rowdy at the moment. I hope that it won’t go on for too long.

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Tuesday 21st June 2016 – YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE …

… that it’s the Summer Solstice today. It’s been a cold, miserable, grey wet day today from start to finish, just like a grim February day.

Well, that’s not quite true. The rain did ease off for an hour or so round about midday – just the right time for me to nip out and buy my baguette and a few other bits and pieces for lunch. I wasn’t back all that long before the heavens opened again and that’s how it stayed. Many people have asked why I don’t get out and about and go for much more of an exploration, but in this weather, who can blame me?

I had a bad night again. It was well after midnight before I managed to doze off, despite how tired I must have been after walking to and from the hospital. And I had the odd trip down the corridor too but I was wide-awake by 05:40. I did manage to stay in bed until about 07:00 before I made my start to the day, and I’ve had a little crash-out this afternoon.

So what have I been doing today then.

The short (and the long) answer to this is that I’ve spent most of the day working on my blog, doing a lot of the updating. I’m well into the month of May 2010 and I’m finding that the weather back then was just the same as it is right now – to wit cold and wet. We even had a snowstorm on 5th May 2010 when we were all on our way home from Clermont Ferrand.

For tea tonight I’ve been finishing off the mixture of stuff that I had left over from Friday night.It tasted just as peculiar tonight as it did then, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

The Vietnamese girl was in the kitchen too so I had a good chat to her. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to be too interested in talking about life in Vietnam and that was what I really wanted to know. People of my generation were brought up with all kinds of tales about life there either in the Communist North or the corrupt American-backed South,and the unification of the country stopped our habitual flow of news. I was keen to have an up-to-date opinion, but it looks as if it won’t be any time soon.

And so tomorrow, I’m off gallivanting again. June and her husband are passing by on their way back to Germany and I’ve invited them to the fritkot for lunch. You can’t pass by Belgium and not visit a fritkot, can you?

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