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British Expat Newsletter:
13 April 2005

Hello, and welcome to those who have joined up since our last newsletter.

In this issue

  • This week: Being ill
  • Virtual Snacks
  • Sponsor
  • Bizarre Searches
  • Joke and quotation

This week

If this week’s newsletter seems a bit more disjointed than usual, it’s because Dave and I have both been suffering from dengue fever since about this time last week and we’re only up to being up and doing for short stints. These tropical diseases certainly do take it out of you.

About the first we knew of it was last Tuesday night, when I started feeling too hot and too cold at the same time while watching telly. By the next day I’d developed loads of new and unpleasant symptoms. A really splitting headache, for starters. Add to that the aches in pretty well every joint and muscle, nausea which soon turned into vomiting, a case of the runs, and a blotchy rash which spread from my chest along my arms and down to my hands – where it turned my palms bright pink and developed into a really annoying itch which kept me awake all night – and you’ll see why I haven’t been a very happy camper all week. And with classically bad timing, I had to get it in the last fortnight before I’m due to present my MSc dissertation. The culmination of three years’ work, and I can’t work up any energy or enthusiasm to get it finished. Just as well I’ve only got the final tidying up to do. Meanwhile Dave’s concentrating on doing the minimum needed to keep the site updated.

To add to the woes, it’s Songkran this week – the water festival that marks the traditional Thai New Year. So the Immigration office down the road in Pattaya will be closed when our visas fall due for renewal. We had to go on Monday to be sure of getting them done on time. That really took it out of us both. Still, Songkran at least gives us a good reason to stay at home and take it easy. The alternative is to go out and get soaked. The original tradition was for people to pour a little water on their friends’ and neighbours’ wrists as a blessing. But in the last couple of decades it’s gone from throwing buckets of water at each other, to squirting everyone in sight with “Super Soaker” water guns, to gangs of youths hijacking fire engines and knocking passing motorcyclists off their bikes. Hundreds of people are killed each year in Songkran-related traffic accidents. Not much fun for them and their loved ones.

So it’s going to be a quiet week in for us, recovering from our illness and (for me at least) getting my dissertation out of the way. Wish me luck!

Virtual Snacks

If you want to know more about dengue fever, here’s the WHO page about it:
http://www.who.int/topics/dengue/en/

This other one’s only got a tenuous link to dengue, but we liked it because it was a bit of a laugh too – and it’s a good insight into the Aussie Army mentality too:
[Obsolete link removed]

Bizarre Searches

Some strange search terms which have led people to visit British Expat recently:

  • recently present perfect dynamic
  • jokes dry cleaning
  • do ya punk lost count myself
  • jack russell ate tennis ball
  • what is the mexican in the eponymous movie?
  • hollies gin
  • sprung pork
  • german puf
  • shooting cats shit garden
  • funny signs woman
  • law of dog turds
  • dirty bare feet lifestyle

Till next time…
Happy surfing!

Kay
Editor
British Expat Magazine

Quotation

“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Joke

Playing Doctor

A seven-year old girl runs up to her mother and tells her, “Johnny in our class asked me to play doctor with him!”

“Oh, dear,” the mother nervously sighed. “What happened, love?”

“Nothing, he made me wait 45 minutes and then double-billed the insurance company.”

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