Life update #3
สวัสดีปีใหม่ (sà-wàd+dee+bpee+mài) 🥳
sà-wàd+dee means "hello" and bpee+mài means "new year". 😉
It has now been 319 days since I informed you via my newsletter about the developments in our "new" life in Thailand. 🫣
And while the fruit trees we are planting continue to grow rapidly and seemingly effortlessly, I have been looking forward for weeks to summarizing the past time for you in words and pictures - which was generally uplifting for us, but also adventurous - I trust that a lot of good things have also happened in your life in the meantime.
If you feel like it, please do tell me about it - I am looking forward to the exchange! 🥰
In this, my third update:
- Foreword: From Leistungsdruck (pressure) to Leistenbruch (hernia)
- Permit of residency
- From there to here
- Construction site stop and rainy season
- Upwind language school
- Reconstruction of the recording studio
- Climate-related challenges (and lessons learned)
- Our favorite places (in the meantime)
- Too little (or no) electricity
- Restart twothousandandtwentyfour
- Staying connected
1. Foreword: From Leistungsdruck (pressure) to Leistenbruch (hernia)
When I started my business at the age of 16, I was mentally and emotionally certainly less burdened than almost 25 years later - as managing director of kubus media. 🫣
In the meantime, however, I'm pretty sure that I burned out towards the last few years of this business activity. 🤫
From today's perspective, however, this is a positive realization for me, as it is also linked to other observations - some of which date back to my childhood days.
Today, for example, I know that my constant efforts to make everyone happy and fulfilled do not automatically include myself as well.
And in culmination, this "self-disregard" that has persisted for years - driven by fears and compulsively nourished overload - has also led to my current situation with the hernia that has still not healed as of yet. 🙄
So for a while now, I've been actively practicing being loving and understanding, not just to everyone else, but especially also to myself. ☺️
And I am very pleased to be able to say today that I am making rapid progress in terms of my health. 🥳
More on this in the next newsletter. 😜
2. Permit of residency
When my wife Mónica and I decided to stay in Thailand long-term last year, we were still registered as "tourists" with the authorities here.
Due to a series of events, our language visa, which we had already booked (and paid for), was postponed several times, so we had to extend our tourist visa several times as well as a result.
Fast forward, we were no longer granted the right to stay on the last extension, which ended up with us spending two adventurous days in "quarantine" at the Puket airport.
The reasons for this are now clear to us and are actually quite simple. As a "tourist", you are only allowed to extend your visa a certain number of times. Unfortunately, neither our language school nor the visa agency drew our attention to this detail at the time. The authorities simply followed the visa rules.
Nevertheless, this "detention" was an unpleasant, albeit enlightening, experience for both of us. Not so much because of Thailand's apparently frequently changing visa rules (although we are of course happy to be able to assess them a little better now), but more because of the personal processes that we both went through during our involuntary stay at the airport.
I would like to start by saying that the circumstances were relatively mild. Everyone involved was strict but ultimately friendly in their dealings with us.
We were able to spend part of the time together in one room and the rest in separate rooms.
For me personally, this was a good opportunity to fast, but also to get to know my fears better in this - for me extreme - form and ultimately to strengthen my self-confidence with positive affirmations. 😇
This experience was undoubtedly also impressive for Mónica, but she deals with such situations in a more natural and relaxed fashion and even had a bit of fun and made some new friends as well. 😜
3. From there to here
Because the extensions to the bungalows we are renting took longer than planned (in addition to other things, we added first floors and an outside bathroom to the two simple bungalows), we had to delay the delivery of the container with our things from Switzerland several times.
During this time, the container was stored for us in Bangkok for a reasonable fee.
On July 18, however, the time had finally come when a group of friendly young men brought our things from Bangkok to Koh Pha-ngan in a truck.
The delivery was made more difficult by the fact that the truck could only get within about 200 meters of our homes. This was partly because the side roads were not wide enough and also because the power lines are laid too low (or across the roads).
So in the end, the things had to be transported to us piece by piece in strenuous work and with vehicles from our dear neighbors.
But once it was done, our long-awaited items, including Mónica's fashion collections, some furniture and my recording studio, were back with us. 🥰
4. Construction site stop and rainy season
When we traveled back to Switzerland in March last year with the aim of selling most of our belongings and shipping the rest in the aforementioned container, we paused the construction work on the two bungalows.
On our return in May, however, the conditions on Koh Pha-ngan had changed in that the construction company we had commissioned was now fully booked with other projects.
To make matters worse, the rainy season - which was quite intense this year - slowly but surely began in July, which kept us busy to say the least. 😅
The room, the first floor of one of the two bungalows, where we had temporarily stored our things from Switzerland in mid-July, was hit by several water damage incidents during this time, which we ultimately had to deal with on our own. 😅🥱
Specifically, it sometimes rained so heavily that a ditch formed around the room, in which the water collected within minutes and then pushed through the doors and windows into the room.
Mónica and I were busy shoveling paths outside in the impressively heavy (and at least as beautiful!) rainfall, in summer temperatures, so that the water could drain away. 😝
Of course, the water that did make it into the room had to be removed and the damaged objects (wet wood, mold and rust) had to be restored by Mónica and me, sometimes at great expense. 🫨
Let's put it this way; we learned an incredible amount during this time and in the end everything turned out relatively well. 😊
5. Upwind language school
After months of anticipation, our lessons at the language school finally started on November 23 and wow, are we ecstatic! 🥳😝
Our teacher, Pi Pu, is really outstanding - a very sweet, empathetic, funny human being! 😇
Learning with her is really great fun.
But she's not the only one who's great, our classmates are also a pure joy. 🥳
We meet up almost every day after class to chat and have done things together in our free time as well. Touching and inspiring friendships are forming. 🥰
If you would like to learn some Thai too, I invite you to take a look at our regularly updated vocabulary. It's best to watch a video on Thai tones beforehand, because without this basic knowledge, you can't learn Thai as a tonal language.
The same word can sometimes have up to 5 different meanings - only a trained ear can tell the difference by how the intonation is pronounced. 😜
In our list, we have been using English derivatives with tone markers for writing so far, as we will only start learning to read and write in a few weeks' time.
In any case, learning Thai is already a great benefit for us. Not only because it makes communication with the locals easier and more deep, but also because we really like the language and are having a lot of fun getting to know it a little better every day. 😊
An example:
mâi+kâo+jai means "I don't understand", where the literal translation is "not (mâi) enter (kâo) heart (jai)". 🥰
6. Reconstruction of the recording studio
I've also been in the process of rebuilding my recording studio for a few weeks now, which fills me with immense joy. 🥰🫣😜
I haven't been able to make music for almost two years, at least not beyond jotting down a few ideas on my laptop. 😵
As far as music production is concerned, however, I've been anything but idle over the past few months. 😎
Among other things, I've been working on the further development of Linux as a platform for making music - and wow, #linuxaudio is about to take off after #linuxdesktop -, working on a new user interface for a well-known open source software instrument (plug-in), which will of course support Linux (and maybe even iOS/iPadOS and Android) in addition to macOS and Windows. 🙃
I have also made many contributions to the software directory Linux DAW - as well as designing a new logo for the same website. 🤓
Next up for me are various remix jobs and work on the next album (perhaps even with singing by Mónica and myself). And I really can't wait to get started with these topics! 😝☺️
7. Climate-related challenges (and lessons learned)
In the rainy season, we had between 80% and 95% humidity here at the foot of the island's highest mountain, with an average temperature of 25° Celsius. 🥵
As we now know, such conditions pose an acute threat to life for electronic devices. Moisture collects on metal parts and, in combination with heat, quickly starts an almost unstoppable (and sometimes even more difficult to repair) corrosion process. 😱
Over the past few weeks, we have already had to repair and/or treat numerous appliances (sand metal parts and apply corrosion protection).
Although our air conditioning system had been ready for installation for a long time, nobody had time to install it for us.
But it wasn't just our electronic devices that suffered from the prevailing environmental conditions during this time; cardboard boxes from packaging also began to decompose virtually overnight. 😯
This in turn attracted microorganisms that began to effectively compost cardboard (and even plastics such as polystyrene, foam, etc.).
And last but not least, fabrics and furniture began to mold. 😵
As a result, we were constantly busy with damage control, but fortunately we were able to repair most things and learned a lot.
If you ever want to migrate to tropical regions, I will be happy to advise you. 😎
In any case, the air conditioning systems have now been installed and are only started by a controller when the humidity gets too high and then only run until it has returned to the defined target range.
8. Our favorite places (in the meantime)
The range of restaurants, cafés, clubs, stores and services is truly endless here on this small, beautiful sand bar in the Gulf of Thailand.
Incidentally, Koh Pha-ngan literally means "sand bar island", Koh = island, Pha-ngan = sand bar. 😊
And, although it's because if that almost impossible to create a shortlist of places, and also because we don't go out that much, I'm still happy to share some of our current favorite places with you:
- AUM Soundhealing (sauna, ice bath, ecstatic dancing, gong concerts and fire place)
- Amor Infinito (music school, community)
- Haad Ko Ma (beach)
- Haad Malibu (beach)
- Haad Thong Nai Pan Yay (beach)
- Haad Why Nam (beach, restaurant and party)
- Haad Zen Beach
- Kanda (massage)
- Khao Raa Waterfall (waterfall)
- KPT Language School (language school)
- New Earth (sauna, ice bath and fire place)
- Raan Deli Devi (restaurant)
- Raan Indigo (restaurant)
- Raan Pi Noi (fruit stall)
- Raan Pi Thee (fruit stall)
- Raan Street Vegan House (restaurant)
- Raan Yoga House (restaurant)
- Raan Young Son (Kefir & Kombucha)
- The Source (Ecstatic Dancing):
- Wonderland (Sauna)
Haad = beach Raan = shop
9. Too little (or no) electricity
As we are not exactly spoiled by the quality and availability of electricity on the island (voltage fluctuations, undervoltage most of the time and occasional, sometimes long-lasting, power cuts), we have been planning a solar power system for some time now.
We are currently in talks with a provider from Bangkok and in the planning phase for a hybrid inverter system with two times five kilowatts and a total of 16 monochrystalline half-cell panels, with a peak of around 8 kilowatts, as well as two batteries of around five kilowatt hours each. 🤓
This would allow us to operate the sensitive consumers (devices) from a stable battery current, while the secondary circuit would be fed from the power grid.
In the event of power failures, we could also flexibly direct energy from the battery to the circuit that is important to us at any given time.
We are carrying out practical measurements on theoretical consumption at the moment.
10. Restart twothousandandtwentyfour
In addition to all the other developments, we are now also seriously outlining a new source of income. 😊
For this we are evaluating a shortlist of our best ideas for a new Thai company to be founded soon.
More on this in the next newsletter. 😇
11. Staying connected
I hope you enjoyed immersing yourself in our world at least a bit. ☺️
If you have any questions or feedback, I'm always happy to read and answer them.
And I look forward to staying in touch with you and all of you as well – if not in action, then for sure in our hearts. 🥰
On that note,
talk to you again soon!
Many greetings (also from Mónica)! 🤗
Mónica and Amadeus at Haad Zen