Copyright 2007-2008 Ian Reed - Legless in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Ex Post Facto Blog - By amputee Ian Reed / John McMiken en-us http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Cover1a.jpg http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 90 36 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Just a lazy Sunday for me today, messing about with my internet work and snoozing for a while, but in the late afternoon I decided that I was a little hungry and needed to eat something. I like to keep some food ready in my fridge and I always keep lots of home made potato salad in there, so I grabbed a can of potato salad and I was going to make some tea to drink with it, but I found out then that my hot water pot was empty and I was too lazy to get dressed and go and replenish my water at the drinking water machine outside. I then remembered that I had kept some lime tea in the refridgerator from a long time ago, so I thought that I would just have a cold tea drink with my food today, although usually I just drink hot tea during the day. Well, I found the plastic bottle of lime tea that I had made in the fridge and as I was unscrewing the top, at the last turn of the top there was a loud bang like a gun being shot, the bottle top hit my hand hard and the tea started foaming out, so I quickly poured some of it into a glass and tasted a little. It was quite a pleasant taste and I started thinking about the build up of gas in the bottle, the only things that could possibly have caused this is that there was a lot of sugar in the tea and some slices of lime in the bottle, so these must have been fermenting for a long time in the fridge, alcoholic tea? I am not a chemical engineer myself, but as a layman I always thought that any fermentation process had to take place in warm temperatures and not in the cool temperature of a fridge, but I am just a legless fool, so what do I know! Cheers for now The Legless Fool tea tasting! http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20040109 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm New Years Eve here in Bangkok and I just sat at my usual place at the front of my apartment block and drank beer all evening. Some of the Thai people that were still around, got together nearby, started playing very loud music and most were legless very early on in the evening. I just kept myself to myself as is my way here and I just watched all of these Thai drunks making even more of a fool of themselves than they normally do. I returned to my room one hour before midnight, I made myself something to eat, poured myself a whisky and then just sat on my front patio watching and listening to all of the drunks still making a noise and trying to outdo each other. Then just before midnight, I poured the last of my whisky into my glass, put 'Auld Lang Syne' playing on my computer, which I could barely hear with the racket going on around outside and I toasted the New Year. At midnight the legless drunken revellers outside started setting fireworks off indiscriminately and the bangs, flashes and cracks just seemed to incite them to set off even more. All of this noise does nothing for me, so I just went back inside my room, closed the door, finished my whisky and then fell asleep. When I awoke this morning, I went straight to my computer, checked my email and then started doing my search engine work for my websites, but seeing the news headlines on some of the search engines, I went to my BBC RSS input and read about a major fire at a nightclub in Bangkok. Dozens of people died here just after midnight last night at a nightclub in Thong Lor, Bangkok. I am afraid that this news incident here did not surprise me at all, when you enclose a large group of drunks, like I had seen the previous evening, in a small space with fireworks on the premises, then what do you really expect? Cheers for now The Legless Fool wishing everyone a Happy New Year http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20010109 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have had my Christmas theme websites displayed for over a month now and with Xmas this year already well past, I have been spending time over the last couple of days modifying my websites and webpages and even some of the backgrounds, to remove all reference to Xmas. For the New Year this year I shall not be changing the layouts much, just a few words wishing everyone a 'Happy New Year' and that should be fine. Talking of the New Year, it is the time of year here in Thailand when Bangkok is almost deserted, just about all of the Thais here in Bangkok make their way back to their provinces of origin for the family get together for the New Year and this year the exodus has started already, by New Year's Eve Bangkok will be just like a deserted seaside resort town out of season. I personally quite like it like this way, I feel like I have a lot more breathing space around me at this time of year and I can spend a fairly quiet night outside on New Year's Eve just getting slowly sozzled at my own pace. Well, I hope that this New Year has some good luck in store for me, because I could certainly do with some for a change. Here's to wishing everyone reading this blog 'A very happy New Year for 2009'. Cheers for now The Legless Fool wishing everyone a Happy New Year http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20301208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm My nap until lunchtime this morning lasted until 5 pm this evening, so I think that the whisky was working overtime on me. At least when I woke up this evening there was no toothache, maybe it was just a passing thing in the morning or the whisky has killed the nerve in it . So I just had time this evening to get ready and then go out to the front for my evening beer break, my Xmas dinner was already prepared in my room, but just as I liked to do in the UK, I like to have a couple of beers before my Xmas dinner, it gives me a better appetite. Sitting outside again this evening and looking at the sky, there was still a hazy cloud covering over Bangkok so I could not see Venus again this evening, I could see the clock at the cafe again so I didn't have to rely on Venus as my clock tonight, which was just as well because I couldn't see it anyway. Cheers for now The Legless Fool wishing everyone a very Merry Xmas http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%2025a1208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm After finishing my blog post last night, I immediately fell sideways onto my bed in an undisputed legless stupour, I am really not used to drinking whisky these days . Then I woke up this morning at 5 am with an excruciating pain in one of my rear broken teeth, so I quickly found my packet of paracetomol tablets that I keep handy for emergencies and I put a tablet in my mouth, but the only drink that I could find easily without putting my leg on was the remains of the whisky that I had been drinking last night, so I swilled the tablet down quickly, but the pain was still really very bad and I know that it takes time for the tablet to work, I still had quite a bit of whisky left in my glass then so I thought that if I swilled some of it over the tooth that was hurting, maybe it would help a little . The whisky did help me very quickly and eventually the paracetamol also kicked in and the pain subsided completely. The problem then, was that my glass was empty and I now had a taste for the whisky again . I don't personally consider myself to be an alcoholic, but starting on the whisky again at 5 am in the morning had me wondering, I justified this to myself by telling myself that it is Xmas now and you don't have toothache everyday, but would this be normal for anyone else? . Well, the whisky has made me tired again now, so I think that I should take another nap until lunchtime today, it is Xmas day after all and nothing really to do, so just make the most of it! Goodnight again and Cheers for now The Legless Fool wishing everyone a very Merry Xmas http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20251208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I thought that I had planned everything and budgeted for today very well. When I awoke this morning, I went to the nearest supermarket and bought some special food for Xmas dinner for myself for tomorrow, I then returned to the minimart shop in my apartment block and purchased a large bottle of whisky for myself to celebrate Christmas with Venus as I had planned for this evening. I tested the whisky in the early afternoon just to check that it was up to the expected standard and then I proceeded to prepare my food ready for Xmas dinner the next day. At my usual time in the early evening I went outside with my now full whisky and soda glass in my hand and I then made my way to my usual evening drinking venue. I wished the other people closeby there a 'Merry Xmas' and I sat at my usual seat and started waiting for Venus to appear below the overhead canopy. I could check the time easily this evening because the nearby cafe had moved the clock back to it's normal position again and when it got to 20:15 pm I started wondering why Venus had not appeared yet? I then walked out onto the road at the front of the block and there was no sign of Venus anywhere in the night sky at all tonight and taking a good look at the sky this evening I could see that it was covered in a hazy cloud, so all of my plans to wish Venus a Merry Xmas with whisky on Xmas Eve were then shattered. The night was not a total disaster though, one of the other occupants of the apartment block came to sit outside together with me later and we spent a reasonably long fairly legless night over a couple of beers talking about life in Thailand in general. Cheers for now The Legless Fool - Missing the star of the evening this Xmas - Merry Xmas to all http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20241208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm After my break for a couple of beers yesterday evening, I sat back down again at my computer and started reading through my main webpage about my book on my website and I just picked out a couple of words from some of the content on there, I chose 'Legless' from the title of the book and also the word 'trauma' from the main content, where I had mentioned that I had gone through an emotional trauma in the book and I then fed them into one of the major search engines. Well! My book came up number one on the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs) on this search engine. So I then tried the same words with all of the other major search engines and I got exactly the same results with all of them. So just like the search engines linked the words 'Legless fool' to me and that is the reason why I started using the name a long time ago, I am now also linked to the words 'Legless trauma'. I have absolutely no idea what a 'legless trauma' is or is supposedly meant to be, but the major search engines have now made me and my book the internet/web number one authority on the subject . Then just a little while later, after being quite surprised at the way that the search engines had linked these two words together with my book webpage, I tried two other words from my book webpage content on a search, 'legless' and 'mistakes' and once again my book webpage came on the first results page from all of the search engines. So trying to work this out logically now, I think that I must have somewhere in the region of about five thousand keywords to use for all of my websites now, just as long as one of the words in each case is 'legless' . Cheers for now Dr. Legless Fool - The legless trauma specialist http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20231208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm About one week ago now I dropped my wristwatch on the floor in my room and it just quickly stopped working, then shaking it about a bit I could hear that something was rattling around inside it, so I thought that I must have unseated the battery. I dont personally have the tools available in my room to take the back off the watch and reseat the battery and I was not going to travel to some watch repair shop about 1km away, pay for the return transport and probably some extortionate price for the reseating of the battery in my watch, I don't need the watch much anyway because I have the time on my computer in my room and the money that I save on not having it repaired would be far more usefully spent on beer . At about 18:30 pm each evening I usually take a break from my internet/computer work, I sit at the front of my apartment block and have a couple of beers in front of the small shop here, they close each evening at 21:00 pm, so I don't have too much time before they close for the night. I usually spend a couple of hours relaxing each evening with these beers at the front, before I make my way back to my room and start my internet work again. But, with not having my watch now it is a little bit of a problem knowing just how long that I have been sitting out there, there is a small cafe at the other end of the apartment block and I have been squinting at the small clock that they keep on a shelf there each night just to check what time it is and to make sure that I get my last beer before the shop closes . Whilst I am having this beer break each evening, I always watch Venus descend into the Western sky and eventually disappear behind some trees in a garden opposite. Over quite a few nights now, just out of curiosity, I glanced at the clock when Venus just appeared below the overhead canopy at the front of the shop and also when it eventually disappeared behind the trees opposite and I made a mental note of these times. This evening when I went out for my beer break though, I bought a beer at the shop, sat at my usual position at the front and tried to check the time at the cafe, but this evening they had moved the clock which was a little bit frustrating for me. But I sat there drinking my beer as usual anyway and when Venus appeared in the sky below the overhead canopy, I knew from experience then that it was 20:00 pm, so I still had another hour to go before the shop closed! When Venus eventually disappeared behind the trees opposite, I knew that it was 20:30 pm and that I had just thirty more minutes to buy another beer before the shop closed, so I could pace myself fairly well. Well, they say that 'necessity is the mother of invention', so I just use Venus as my evening beer clock now, it is certainly a lot cheaper than getting my watch fixed and probably more accurate anyway! . Cheers for now The legless fool - Using his Venus beer clock http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20221208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm For the first time that I can remember in my life, I am actually going to be spending Christmas alone this year, most days are the same to me nowadays anyway so Xmas is not going to be any different and it is nothing special for me these days. I am just pleased that this year for the first time in many years, I shall not have to put up with people around me falsely trying to show that they care for me and making false wishes to me for a 'Merry Xmas and a happy New Year' whilst syphoning my money off secretly in the background. As I have said in one of my previous posts, I shall treat myself to a bottle of whisky this Christmas and I shall drink a toast to Venus as it descends in the Western sky over Xmas. I don't want anybody to pity me on here, it was my choice to stay alone this year and I have achieved what I set out to do six months ago, so it is a very good Christmas for me now and I hope that everyone reading this blog has a very good Xmas too. You are allowed to get legless this holiday season, but be careful! Try not to get literally legless like me . Merry Xmas and a happy New Year! . Cheers for now The legless fool - getting even more legless at Xmas and New Year http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20211208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Even though I haven't mentioned them on here for a while now, I still have about half a dozen scammers on the go at any one time, it just amuses me playing with these sick fraudsters when I have finished my serious internet work for the day. I have stated on my anti-scam webpage at http://expostfacto.co.uk/Advancefeefraud.html that the people who operate these scams like to use uppercase characters in their email subject lines and for me now seeing this is a real giveaway, whenever I see a new email using uppercase characters in the subject, I know that I should file it in my 'scam directory' for amusement later. Well maybe some of these internet scammers have been reading my anti-scam webpage themselves already, because the use of uppercase characters by these people has been reducing quite a lot lately. What seems to be their latest gimmick now, is to use titles in front of their names like Reverend or Doctor or sometimes both together like: Rev. Dr. William Smith, they also like to use English names too! I think that in their minds these titles will give them more legitimacy when their potential victims receive and read their emails. Having received many of these titled scammers emails now, I think that I should play a new game of one-upmanship with them and in my replies I should use the title of 'Sir' or 'Archbishop', I would find that quite amusing. Or, maybe even like the scammers sometimes do, I could use both of the titles together and I could become Archbishop, Sir Ian Reed and by using a knight and a bishop together, maybe I could get a 'Checkmate' in their game faster. Well I have to go now, I have to prepare for the diplomatic courier that is arriving here in Bangkok tomorrow with my $10,000,000.00 (Ten Million US Dollars only). Cheers for now The legless fool - Sir Legless Fool to you scammers! http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20191208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm One week before Christmas and I am doing everything that I possibly can with my websites and search engine rankings to try and get my book Legless in Thailand noticed and hopefully sell some more copies over this Xmas period. My book has been available for almost two years now and other than someone informing me that they had bought a copy, I have not received one penny from my publishers yet. I know that I am not a professional writer, but for the reasonable price that my book is selling for, you can get a few hours of entertainment from my stupid actions/life in the story. If someone does receive my book as a Xmas present this year, at least after the holidays they could honestly tell their friends that they got Legless in Thailand at Christmas and at least it would be an interesting topic of conversation when they start back at work . Well I shall definitely be legless in Thailand this Christmas and probably at the New Year too, I have decided to treat myself to a bottle of whisky for the holidays and "To hell with the expence!" I have yet to spend an evening in Bangkok watching Venus set in the West with a glass of whisky in my hand, so it will definitely be a first for me, with lots of beer chasers of course! . Cheers for now The legless fool - Legless again in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20181208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm This evening I took a break from my internet and computer work to sit outside for a couple of hours and have a beer, this has become a daily routine for me now and I really look forward to this break each day. Sitting outside this evening, the climate was just wonderful, the perfect temperature for me and no humidity at all, I was sitting there drinking my beer and watching Venus disappear over the horizon when a thought came into my mind "Wouldn't it be nice to find somewhere that had evenings like this every night." Still sitting there mulling this over in my mind and enjoying my cool beer on this pleasant evening, I then started thinking logically about if there could possibly be such a place in this world. Then my world navigation systems experience kicked in and told me that there could not possibly be such a place, because of the inclination of the earth's axis and it's constant rotation around the sun, nowhere on earth could maintain a constant temperature and climate all year round. So then I started thinking about a place that would have what I personally consider a fairly reasonable fluctuation of temperature and climate and this is what I thought about for the next couple of hours until I finished my beer. Sitting outside this evening and having no computer at hand, the only conclusion that I could come up with in my head was to possibly try and live somewhere near one of the earth's calculated tropical lines (Cancer or Capricorn) at least there, I would be in a fairly warm climate which I personally would prefer, and the variations of temperature from one season to another would not be too great. Thinking about this passed the time this evening quite well and I thought that it would be an interesting topic of conversation for this blog tonight, the beer always helps me to think . I shall have to spend more time on the internet now trying to find the perfect place in the world for me, according to my new criteria and ideas . Just in passing, someone walked passed me this evening and mentioned the date, I then realised that tonight is my 22nd wedding anniversary, it is just unfortunate that we have been separated for 19 years and that my wife will not give me a divorce without a box full of money up front (Thai ---Censored!---). Cheers for now The legless fool - Musing on location http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20161208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Working with the search engines as I do and checking my keywords daily, I find it quite amazing why people who are not physically legless themselves use the word 'legless' on their websites and in their names. I would never have thought about the word if I were not literally legless myself, but now it seems to be the word most descriptive and applicable for me. Because there are so many other people using this word on the internet, then any website connected with this word is quite competitive on the web now and luckily I opened this legless blog quite a while ago, because there are quite a few others out there that would like this blog name and it's high ranking position on the search engines. I still don't really understand what the attraction of the word legless is, but if it helps me to sell my Legless in Thailand book then I am quite happy with it. My name to my close friends is 'Legless' now and I personally find it quite amusing. The way that I look at it is that I am saddled with being legless for life now, so if you have got it then use it if you can . I believe that it is a full moon tonight, well, I hope that it affects me and starts my teeth growing again because I seem to be losing them at a steady rate lately . Cheers for now The legless fool - Legless in both body and name http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20121208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Yesterday having successfully gotten my money from the UK bank for the last time, I felt that I needed a night out for a change, so I went to my Bangkok local. On arrival at the pub the staff where doing a major move around of all of the furniture in there, so I just got myself a pint and went to sit outside where I could have a smoke, a pick-up truck arrived a short while later and a group of guys started unloading musical instruments, drums, amplifiers, etc. and carrying them into the pub, one of the guys, a Westerner, came and sat down with a few of us there and it turned out that he was the leader of a group 'Tommy and the Pestle Rock Band' and they were playing at the pub that night. Tommy was quite a good character, he was originally from France but like me, he had lived in Thailand for a very long time. I like music anyway, so I thought that this was turning out to be quite a good night and I was looking forward to listening to the music. Lots of people soon started arriving at the pub and it very quickly got filled up inside the bar, so I remained seated outside which suited me anyway because I can smoke there. After a while listening to the band, someone behind me said "Hello there" and as I turned around to see who it was, I was very surprised to see my eldest son. My eldest son Douglas, I had not seen or heard from for about three years, so it was quite a pleasant surprise. He then told me that his wife and him had gone to a nearby bar that they sometimes used but found that it was closed that night, so he was going to go home when his wife suggested going to the Pickled Liver and she also said that because that day was father's day in Thailand (the King's birthday) maybe they would see me at the pub and it turned out to be right, even if it was just a coincidence. So we had quite a pleasant night talking together listening to the music and Nick the pub landlord had put some free food on that night, so we had food too. So what just started out for me as a personal treat for a couple of quiet beers, turned into a very good night indeed. Cheers for now The legless fool's good night out http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20061208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was sitting outside drinking beer alone at the front of my apartment block as I usually do last night, every night I just sit there thinking about my books, stories, life and what to write on this blog and every night I always watch Venus descend into the Western sky and gradually disappear. But last night I was treated to a pleasant and slightly amusing sight, for a few days now I have watched Venus and Jupiter together disappear into the Western sky, but last night the crescent moon aligned with them too and it gave the impression of a smiling face, so I thought to myself "Even the heavens are amused at this legless fool" Reading on the internet later, I found out that this alignment of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter will not happen again until the year 2052 and I do not think that I shall be around to see the next alignment legless or not . Cheers for now The legless fool - being viewed from above http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20021208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm It was really very cold here last night, relatively cold for here that is, for the first time since I have been in my new room in Bangkok, I had to switch the ceiling fan off last night and I even had to don the duvet on the bed, that up until now has just been an accessory that I never use. I checked on the internet this morning and the BBC temperature records for Bangkok last night showed a low of 19 C, but my automatic body thermometer and the stump of my amputated leg which is very susceptible to the cold, told me that it was around 16 - 17 C and I know which report I believe. Usually Xmas time is the coldest time of year here in Thailand and I have known it to drop to about 14 C in the nights here before, but with the cold nights starting this early, this year may be much colder than I have ever experienced here before, I think that I had better start looking for a hot-water bottle soon, if they sell such a thing here! On a more sombre note now, I have been informed on the internet that today is world AIDS day, I am not sure if it is just an AIDS awareness day or there is more to it than that, but it did remind me of something though, something that is always close to me anyway. A person very, very close to me before and one of the characters in my book Legless in Thailand named 'Phetchomphu' (the Thai name for Pink Diamond), was HIV positive and almost exactly two years ago now she died whilst I was out of the country on a visa run to Penang. 'Pet' was the last girl that I had any real feelings for and I still wear the medallion around my neck that she gave to me three years ago now. Cheers for now The legless fool - In memory of Pet http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20011208 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm The people occupying the airports here seem to be making headlines around the world, whilst they are economically destroying the country that they supposedly love. I wish that I could get that much publicity for my Legless in Thailand book, but I don't think that it would quite get the same reaction from the media if some legless westerner tried to occupy one of the airports alone waving a book instead of banners. If I had more than one battered copy of my book, I may even be tempted to give some to the demonstrators and explain to them that my story supports their cause, then maybe they would wave it for me in front of all of the foreign news cameras there. Well, I suppose I can just hope now that my internet campaign for my book picks up at Christmas and people buy my book as a Xmas present for someone, maybe for one of their friends who are stuck here because of the problems at the airports, or maybe people will now be doing more searches on the internet for Thailand and find my websites, then at least one thing good could come out of all of this extra publicity . Cheers for now The legless fool - Trying to push his book for Xmas http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20301108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have been quiet for a few days because I am still actively trying to sort out the situation that my stupid, irresponsible HSBC bank in UK has put me in. I returned to the British embassy in Bangkok on Monday and the helpful staff member there saw to me immediately and just as he promised he gave me the contact information for the UK forces pensions paymaster. So immediately I returned to my room and sent an email to them. They replied quite quickly and sent a form by attachment to email for me to fill in and return to them. The form however, was for me to have my RAF pension paid directly into a Thai bank account, this then posed another problem for me because I do not have a Thai bank account due to the fact that with the constant changes in the Thai government, they keep changing the rules about foreigners with none residential status holding bank accounts in Thailand. The only idea that I could come up with was for me to go and see my English friend Peter who runs a travel agency in Bangkok, SP Thai Connections and see if his Thai wife cxould stand as as a local guarantor for me to open a bank account in Thailand. When I arrived at their office, they readily agreed to help me with this and because Peter's wife Mon, was very well known by the bank that they use for their business, with her help and her acting as my guarantor, I very quickly managed to open a new account with Bangkok Bank, the bank was just fifty metres away from their office so it was very easy. After opening the bank account and returning to their office, Mon made me a cup of tea and Peter and I then started talking about his travel business. It was only then that I heard from him that there was problems that day at Bangkok airport with a group of demonstrators occupying the airport and closing it down, I don't have a TV and this was all new for me and for the rest of the time that I spent in their office there were many people coming in asking when the airport was going to be opened again and Peter could only answer them truthfully saying that he didn't know and neither did the airlines. On my eventual return back to my room that day, I quickly filled in the form from the forces paymaster, wrote the details of my new bank account in Thailand for them and quickly sent it as an attachment to email to them. So hopefully now my pension should be switched from HSBC bank to Bangkok bank in time for my January payment. The next problem for me is that the standing charges from my HSBC debit card for my UK website hosting will stop and I now have to find a way to pay them from Thailand, to stop them shutting down my websites, including this blog Cheers for now The legless fool - still dealing with the latest crazy HSBC bank move http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20281108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm My trip to Vientiane went quite smoothly again, I got my new Thai visa and I met some new friends staying in the same guesthouse as me doing the same thing. We spent a lot of time there just sitting around, drinking beer and telling each other about our personal experiences, many of the people had very similar stories to tell and a common denominator soon emerged which linked everyone there together, which was: 'Censored'. I eventually arrived back at my room in Bangkok from Vientiane at around lunchtime on 20th November and there was an official looking letter waiting for me in my room from my bank HSBC in UK. The letter stated that 'the bank had recently done a review of my account and they no longer wish to provide me with banking facilities and will close my account on the 10th December'. No other explanation or reasons were given for this decision and as my bank is the sole access to my pensions they are cutting off my only means of income. Living in Thailand I cannot open a bank account with any other UK bank for my UK pensions to be paid into from here. So in desparation at this totally unprovoked and stupid move by my bank again, I contacted the British Embassy in Bangkok to see if they could help me with this and also to warn them that I may need their assistance in the future if no solution can be found to this stupid, irresponsible HSBC UK bank move. The consular staff at the Embassy were very helpful and were themselves amazed that HSBC bank could act so irresponsibly with someone in my position. One of the Vice Consuls at the Embassy informed me that he also was receiving a UK forces pension and he asked me to return to the Embassy on Monday and he will give me more information and contacts with the UK armed forces pensions section to work out a solution for this problem. So hopefully I can get this latest setback sorted out before Christmas. Cheers for now The legless fool - dealing with the latest crazy HSBC bank move http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20221108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm The last two months have passed quite quickly and it is now time for me to travel out of the country again. I have everything prepared this time though, it is much easier for me living in Bangkok again now. For the first time, I have got my Laos visa in advance from the Laos Embassy here, so no problems queing at immigration on the Laos side of the 'Friendship Bridge' this time. I have my train ticket to Nong Khai already too, so today I am just packing a small bag and making sandwiches to take with me and I shall be on train No. 69 to Nong Khai tomorrow evening at 20:00. I am quite looking forward to it because I like the Laos people and everyone at the Viengsavanh guesthouse, Vientiane where I stay in Vientiane knows me now. The only thing that I shall miss whilst I am away is my internet connection, because the nearest internet cafe to where I stay in Vientiane is about 1 km distance and it is quite a walk for me on my prosthesis (false leg) (Long John Slither 'n' Stumble) . I shall also have to get my mind back into the Laos currency (Kip) again now, it always sounds so expensive when I order a large bottle of Beer Lao and it costs me 8,000 Kip, but it is only the equivalent of 32 Thai Baht and it is really quite cheap. I hope that the weather in Vientiane is the same as Bangkok now, it should be and maybe even slightly cooler because it is much further North, so it should be even more refreshing than here, I shall tell you all about it when I get back here, probably on Thursday, 20th November. I hope that I do not have too much to write about then, I just want this trip to be a good break for me and not a new adventure with lots of unforeseen incidents happening, even though that is what I am used to now . Cheers for now The legless fool - World traveller http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20151108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm The evenings here now are very pleasant indeed, the rains have stopped and the humidity is at a very low level now. It reminds me of the evenings that I used to enjoy in UK, usually around the end of May or the beginning of June in UK, I used to love going to the local pub in the early evenings and sit in the garden there with a cool pint of real ale in the unusual pleasant temperatures at that time of year there. It is the same here in Thailand now and that is why this time of year is usually the start of the high tourist season here. Although the evenings are quite pleasant now, unlike the UK in spring, it still gets dark relatively early here, usually about 18:30 at this time of year, but I still enjoy sitting outside, enjoying my first beer of the evening and watching the sun go down in this pleasant climate at this time of year. Cheers for now The legless fool - relaxing in the evenings http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20131108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Today is the 90th anniversary of Armistice day in Europe 1918. I personally always make a point of acknowledging/remembering what our forefathers did for us ninety years ago now. The total number of our forces killed and injured in that war was 2,367,000. Even though this is sometimes still referred to as the 'Great war', there was more to come 21 years later. Maybe there is a cycle to this, or maybe someone is specifically created/born to cause the human race as a whole problems every so often. In comparison, we have lived free of any global conflict for more than sixty years now, but is this just the calm before the storm? I personally attribute our present global war free existance for so many years to the development of Nuclear weapons as a deterrent to any future Hitler or the like emerging again. I know that this subject is very controversial, but I think that the existance of a nuclear deterrent is just that, a deterrent to any would be morons in any country with grandiose ideas of themselves. We do still have relatively minor wars in many parts of the world all of the time, but the vast majority of the people in the world can live their daily lives relatively unaffected by these distant skirmishes. But now we are faced with a new kind of threat to our lives, 'world terrorist factions'. Unlike the past, this is not just one country visibly threatening others, these people are masters of the covert way of war. They could be your friends or next door neighbours and you would never know until they decide, or are ordered to carry out attacks in the name of 'whatever'. Nuclear deterrance is not a deterrent to them, because they are not geographically stable in any particular location. The biggest problem that the world as a whole faces now, is if these terrorists can acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to ultimately achieve their aims. We can fairly effectively monitor countries as a threat, but we cannot monitor individuals. To give you an example of what I am talking about here, I personally have the knowledge and ability, given the required materials, to assemble/produce a tactical nuclear (thermo-nuclear) device given about three to four weeks to do it and I don't consider myself to be that unique, so if I could do it, then maybe some of these 'terrorist crazies' could too, with access to the necessary materials. Fortunately, many of the required materials to construct a nuclear device are very strictly controlled and can be detected fairly easily with the right equipment, but with the break up of some areas of a former nuclear power, maybe these materials are not as difficult to acquire anymore. I wondered off the initial topic a little there, as is my way, but I would now like to return to the remembrance of those people who gave their all for us to live our lives in relative freedom as we do today. Talking of wars around the world, the Congo has just erupted into a state of war and irrespective of the factions involved, the people that suffer the most in these conflicts are the civilians. Many people are now fleeing their homes to get away from any potential battle zones and these people still have to live and take care of their children. Even if they personally have not been physically injured, the psychological wounds from an experience like this are far more damaging than any physical wounds, last a lost longer and are a lot more difficult to heal. There are some concerned people and organisations that try to help in these situations, but they do not have sufficient funds readily available to take care of everyone involved. For the innocent people that are in danger in the Congo at this time, then one of the best things to ease their psychological wounds is just to know that other people care about them. Please click on the banner below if you think that you could help. Cheers for now The legless fool - Lest we forget http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20111108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I went to the pub again on Friday evening for the first time in about three weeks. I treated myself because I managed to get my money again before my bank got their hands on it . In the pub, everyone greeted me and asked me where I had been, so I told them that I didn't have the money to go out a lot these days. I then noticed that the barman (Lee) was wearing a poppy and I asked him where I could get one, so he then brought a box of poppies and a collection box from the far end of the bar and I bought one. This is usually something that I do religiously at this time of year every year, but the poppies are difficult to find in Thailand and nobody here understands the reason for it anyway. I woke up reasonably early this morning and started doing my search engine rankings and whilst I was sitting at my computer a tune came into my head and I started whistling it, it was only after a short while that I suddenly realised 'Hey, I can whistle again!' For Nine months now, ever since I got the Ramsay Hunt Syndrome (RHS), I haven't been able to whistle and they state on the internet about this, that when you can actually whistle again, it is a sure sign that the RHS has finally finished. Cheers for now The legless fool whistling Colonel Bogey http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20091108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have been quiet again on here for a while, because I have been trying to get back into my writing mode and start working on my Asian Diaries again. I find that I am still not quite in the right mood for it though at the moment, but I have been running through my memories about that time and on one of my returns to England after finishing a project in Thailand, I was installing a new anti-aircraft defence simulator system (ADT3) at an army base named Larkhill which was very adjacent to Stonehenge. Running over this in my mind, I remember staying at a pub/guesthouse in the nearby town and I really enjoyed staying there. They used to serve up some marvellous lunches and I would top them off with a glass of port and a large slice of Stilton which they served, 'The Good Old Days'. Thinking about this, it annoyed me that I could not for the life of me remember the name of the town and I used to stay there quite regularly. I get quite annoyed with myself when I cannot remember something that I should quite easily remember and it smouldered inside of me. Eventually, I decided to look at a map of England on the internet to clear my mind, so I did a search on Google for maps of England and it came up with many websites, I picked one that looked favourable and on this site I quite soon found 'Stonehenge' and consequently I found the name of the town that I used to stay in 'Amesbury'. I could relax then having finally cleared this in my mind, so I then started looking around this new website and it was very, very good, the large amount of information on there about many parts of England and good places to visit was very interesting and I spent a long time going over many places that I have visited before, it even had pictures of my home town 'St Helens' on there, it is a very comprehensive website and very well put together. They even have lists of the cheapest places to stay, hotels and guesthouses, in almost all locations too. So today I decided that I would tell you about this excellent website, the name of the website is: http://www.picturesofengland.com and it really is well worth a visit, even if you think that you already know England quite well, it is full of facts and useful information. I have linked to this website on all of my own websites now. Oh, I almost forgot! Today is Guy Fawkes day, watch out for strange flying objects and things that go bang in the night. Cheers for now The legless fool reflecting on England http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20051108 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I try to keep a seasonal touch on my websites at this time of year, so I am spending Halloween preparing my website backgrounds and content for Xmas at the moment. I normally implement the changes at the start of November, so I have to get them ready for tomorrow. I don't usually celebrate Halloween, but I shall have my 13 beers tonight just to be on the safe side, I wouldn't want to upset the spooks, so I shall just have to force myself to drink them all whilst I am working legless at my computer . Cheers for now The legless fool at Halloween http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20311008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I first decided to create a high profile on the internet about two and a half years ago when the final draft of my first book Legless in Thailand was completed. I figured that to try and sell my book effectively, I would have to have a reasonable web/internet presence for the book title 'Legless in Thailand' and also for my writing name 'John McMiken'. It has only recently started to really kick in properly after a couple of years of very hard work aimed at the search engines and search engine rankings for my websites and related keywords. One of the side effects of this, is that my real name 'Ian Reed' has also become quite high profile on the web / internet too and although that doesn't really help my book, one thing that it does help, is that I am very easy to find for someone looking for me. A result of this is that late yesterday evening I received an email from someone claiming to be searching for the next-of-kin to a recently deceased person in the UK and telling me that I was the beneficiary to a reasonable amount of money, about £500 ($1,000). But with my daily pastime of playing with internet scammers, I first thought that this was just another scam using a new tactic, but reading the email carefully, they stated that they were also in touch with my younger brother and younger sister and quoted their names correctly, even using my sister's married name. They went on to say that the deceased person was related to my mother and had the surname of McMiken. So hopefully I should be receiving a little bit of extra beer money soon and all because of my high profile on the internet, I just have to beat my bank to it . I shall keep you updated with further developments on this. Cheers for now The high profile legless fool http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20291008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm During the day I usually drink lots of tea and I really find lemon/lime tea very refreshing, yesterday though I ran out of limes, so I had to go tyo a nearby supermarket to replenish them. At the supermarket I routed about in the fruit section and eventually I found a large packet of what looked like large limes and purchased them, I also topped up my beer stock whilst I was there. This morning I put the kettle on, put a tea bag in my cup, opened the packet of 'limes', took one out and sliced a large portion off ready to squeeze into my tea cup, but then I got a shock, it wasn't a lime at all, it was a small orange. Why Thai oranges are green I don't know, I never usually buy them and the writing on the packet is in Thai, so I didn't try to read it, so then I just thought "Oh what the hell!" and I made myself a cup of orange tea, it was certainly different and a new taste, not one that I want to get used to though. Today I had to go back to the supermarket anyway, because it is the nearest place to me with an ATM machine and I had to beat my bank to my money again. Whilst I was there, I did buy a few packets of real limes today and I made a mental note of where they are stacked, because they are not stacked with the normal fruit, they are kept on a chiller shelf. I like to make lemon/lime tea to keep as a cool drink in my fridge too, it is really refreshing on hot days here and I restrict myself to only drinking beer after 18:00 when the sun is just going down. Cheers for now The legless fool http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%2024a1008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm It has been quiet on this blog for a while, mainly because I have had nothing of real interest to talk about, but last night I was doing my usual SEO and search engine result ranking work and I was trying some of the words in the content of my websites on them. The words that I tried were mainly from my new 'Legless Fool' website and I used the words 'legless beer drinker' which really sort of describes me and I was surprised that my site came up number one on almost all of the search engines, sometimes even number one and number two including one of my other sites. Just like the search engines came up with my internet name of 'Legless Fool' it seems that now I am also classified as the number one legless beer drinker on the web. I have mixed feelings about this though, I am pleased that the search engines are picking up on my new website quickly, but being classified as the number one legless beer drinker is not really a good reputation, but who would do a search for a legless beer drinker anyway? So maybe it is just something that I have to accept and maybe it is something that I can talk about with my friends the next time that I go down to the pub . Cheers for now The legless beer drinker http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20241008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Even though my unprofessional, irresponsible web hosts Fasthosts UK closed my web hosting down one month ago, they still have about eight of my domain names registered which are paid for one year in advance. The search engines are still picking these domain names up, but they are redirected to the now defunct Legless Headquarters website. So this evening, I decided to login to Fasthosts UK and change the redirection of my domain names that they have, but when I login, I am just redirected to an accounts page that asks me to pay for the hosting that they have already closed down and they will not let me access control over any of my domain names that are paid for in advance. So I cannot now change the redirection of any of my domain names with them because of the total unprofessionalism of the Fasthosts UK company. The domain names that I purchased from them were under their subsidiary domain www.ukreg.com and I used them for this because they appeared to be considerably cheaper for domain name registration than other companies in the UK. Well now I know why, because they are just a company that is totally unprofessional and has absolutely no idea about customer service. Why a problem with my hosting with them should cut me off from access to my prepaid domain names with them is completely illogical to me but I now expect it from this useless, second-rate outfit. So if anyone in UK reading this blog is thinking about registering a domain name or hosting a website, then from my experience I recommend that you avoid using www.ukreg.com or Fasthosts UK like the plague. Ultimately though they will pay for what they have done to me, because I shall not renew any of the domains that they hold for me when they expire, because they are relatively superfluous for me now anyway. Cheers for now The legless fool with his back up http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20181008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm It was only whilst I was tidying up some of my archives and fixing some of the links, that I realised that this blog is one year old today. I remember starting it on the farm in Nakhon Sawan a year ago, but many other things have happened since then and I had forgotten the date that I actually started this blog. There have been many revelations for me over the last year and consequently I am now residing in Bangkok. Because I just write what is in my head at the time, I can't remember every post that I have written on this blog, I do remember some of the things that were important to me, but I cannot remember all of the 'words of wisdom' that I have written over this period, much of it depends on what is foremost in my brain at the time and many things can affect that, even the surplus or lack of beer . Hopefully the next year will be different, because I am more in control of my life now than I have been for many years before. The one thing that I cannot control however, is the stupid antics that my bank plays with me, so I am not as much in control of my life as I would like to be. The only way that I can be sure of saving money these days is to take my money out of the bank as quickly as possible after it goes in, before the bank can get their hands on it. It is a ludicrous situation really, I can't save money in the bank for fear of what they may do with it, so my only way to save money now is to keep cash around me and take it out of the bank at the earliest opportunity. I hope that no burglars in Thailand are reading this blog . To the next year of this blog "Cheers!" Cheers for now The legless fool's anniversary http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20171008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Just after I had my left leg amputated a few years ago, I then started having problems with many other things. My normal logic didn't seem to be functioning as it used to before and I made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life, many of these can be read about in my book 'Legless in Thailand'. I am now trying to analyse some of the things that I did at that time and compared to the way that I think now, I was acting completely irresponsibly and without any logic at all. Reflecting on all of this, the only conclusion that I can come up with, is that part of my brain cells were lost in the left leg that was amputated and they have just started to regenerate again now, where? I am not sure, but it surely isn't in the part of my left leg that is missing, unless my regenerated brain cells are 'phantom' just like the pains and itches that I still get there . Cheers for now The legless fool in reflection http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20151008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm The scams that I told you about on a previous post, all went as semi-expected. The $X millions due into my account, came under a 'stop order' as I expected, but this time the so-called stop order was due to some government tax requirement and they wanted $7,750 to clear it, these are a very greedy group on this scam. Obviously, that was the point at which I gave up on that scam. The lucky draw scam that requested my bank details, I never heard from again, so I don't know what their game was really. The scam that wants to put some finance into my bank is still going on and I am quite surprised at the amount that they want to put in my bank, they intend to put in two installments of £48,000 that would be quite nice for me, because the first thing that I would do is clear off my credit card debt and that would get my bank off my back. I consulted my Nigerian friend about this one, because I couldn't understand why they would want to put money in my bank, but he informed me that it was a money laundering trick with some stolen funds and if I forwarded the money onwards then I would be guilty of money laundering, so he advised me to just hang on to the money when it gets in my account and let the scammers get frustrated. That sounds good to me! Cheers for now The legless fool with money in the bank, maybe! http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20141008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm This is the first time that I have intentionally lived alone within the last 36 years and I am now just realising some of the benefits of this. Because I am now retired and I do not have to keep to any particular timetable, I work on my computer and websites when I want to, I sleep when I want to and money permitting, I drink beer when I want to. Oh yes, I almost forgot! I do eat sometimes too . Because I am in a room on my own and it is quite hot here in Thailand, I keep my curtains closed, I switch the fan on and just lounge around legless and in the nude, I don't receive any visitors, so it is not a problem for me. I would imagine that if any of the Thai people around here knew about this, they would think what a strange character Legless is! Just sitting in his room all day nude at his computer, sleeping when he feels like and drinking beer when he wants to, I wonder why he doesn't want to mix with other people like we do? Well, everyone to their own! I am finding that I quite like this semi-reclusive lifestyle now, the only person that I have to answer to is myself and the only people that I ever really talk to are my readers on this blog and apart from the odd one or two of you, the conversation is quite one-sided. Cheers for now The legless recluse http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20121008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm My last pot of hotpot was drained yesterday, so today I had to go and spend some of my precious beer money on relatively irrelevant things like food and spices so that I could make a new pot to feed me for the next week or so. Eating is not something that I do at regular times these days, it is just an annoying necessity sometimes when my body tells me that it needs some food. I am sure that I get quite enough minerals and vitamins from my daily intake of beer, but maybe because beer is just in liquid form, my stomach tells me that it has other ideas at times. So I had to waste the equivalent of six litres of beer money about £3.50 ($7) on food today and start cooking again. The cooking itself I quite enjoy, I consider myself to be a very good chef and my meals always taste excellent to me. Also, whilst I am cooking, I always keep my beer mug full and handy to sip at and to give me inspiration . Cheers for now The legless chef http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20111008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Music has had a big influence on my life and whenever I think of certain times in my life, it is the music that was popular or had meaning for me at that time that I remember mostly. Conversely, whenever I hear certain songs or music it reminds me of certain times in my life when that particular music had meaning for me. Because music has played an important part in my life, very often a tune will just pop up in my head and will stay there all day, songs that I have not heard for years will just start playing in my mind and I have tried to analyse why this happens. It is not always because you are thinking of the times when the music was popular with you, but what I have found now, is that music / lyrics that have meaning, will come to me when my mind is thinking about something that this music or the lyrics has a particular meaning for and is relative to. The reason that I am writing about this today, is because today it happened again, a song that I have not heard for almost thirty years came into my head and would not leave and I found myself singing it to myself, whatever I was doing today. The title of this blog post 'Forever Autumn' is the title of the song that is in my head today, it is from a very old album by Jeff Wayne named 'War of the Worlds' it was an album that was very popular with me almost thirty years ago, when I was in the RAF in Germany, unfortunately, I do not have the album now or I would play it to clear it from my mind. Why this particular song came into my head today I do not know, maybe it is a subconscious thing linked to what I am thinking about, I am sure that any psychiatrist could come up with some obscure reason why this happens, but I like to psycho-analyse myself a lot these days and this I am now trying to understand, because this is not the first time that this has happened, it happens almost every other day with me these days. Well, enough of this Freudian analysis now, I have to get back to my missing links Cheers for now The legless fool with music on the brain http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20081008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am still playing my games with the internet scammers at the moment and as usual I have about five or six on the go. Three of them have intimated that they are going to send me money within the next few days. The first one was supposed to have been remitted to my bank account yesterday and they sent me a very official looking money wire transfer slip and informed me that the $X millions should be in my bank account on Tuesday 7th October. I have had this situation many times before with these scam games, what usually happens next is that either the day before or the day that the funds are due into the bank account, an email will arrive from some well-known financial or government institution with the subject 'Stop order' and they will say that the fund transfer has been suspended due to the lack of required documentation (anti-terrorist certificate, non-drug related certificate, etc.) and this is where they call for the advance fee, usually about $2,500 to acquire the necessary documents, which of course is all false because there is no transfer taking place anyway, it is just part of the game to get money from you. The second one due to send me some money is quite interesting, because it does not conform to what I have ever had before. I have won a draw that I never entered and I am due to be paid $500,000. Usually when I have had these lottery / draw scams before, they call for money to send your cheque and certificates to you by courier and always state that they cannot pay this fee from your winnings because it is insured and under international gaming laws it is not allowed to be deducted from, advance fee again! But with this one that I received today, all that they have asked from me is my bank account details and SWIFT number to transfer the winnings to me. Even with my years of experience with these scammers now, I cannot work out how they are going to call for an advance fee from this scenario, which I have never seen before. I shall keep you informed on here when I get an update from them. The last one that is due to send me money, is a scenario again involving millions of dollars, but because I stated in the course of the scam game that I didn't have funds to pay for the transfer fees, this scammer has arranged for a financier to loan me the money and send it to my bank. This one I can work out, they expect me to receive the money from the financier and then send it to them, supposedly to pay for the transfer fees, then they disappear with the money and leave me to pay the loan back. Well, I have my own plans on this scenario, I have been trying to get a personal loan unsuccessfully for many years now, so if this loan money goes into my bank account, then it is not going anywhere but into my own pocket. Cheers for now The legless fool scamming the scammers http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20041008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Working with the search engines most of the time now trying to get my new 'Legless fool HQ' website highly ranked with them, most of the search engines seem to be picking it up quite well now, primarily led by Google. With the keywords I use now my internet identity of 'Legless fool' works very well, but what surprised me today is that they have also latched on to the words 'Legless beer' and 'Legless times' too. I am sure that many people must go to my website expecting to find it to be a drunkard's hangout and it probably wouldn't be very far from the truth in my case these days. Another good thing here though, is that the search engines have picked up my new site in almost record time for them, just a couple of weeks, a task that usually takes months, even years for people new to this work. I know that the standing high ranking of my other sites that now link to my new site has a bearing on this, but even so, the search engines have excelled themselves with me here. Maybe now I can spend more time getting back to my stories, blogs and Asian diaries and a little less time worrying about what the stupid, irresponsible web hosts Fasthosts UK did to me. Cheers for now The legless fool having legless beer times http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20021008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm The Ramsay Hunt Syndrome(RHS)that I have been suffering with for 8 months now, seemed to be gradually declining and as from about one month ago, I can now drink straight from a beer bottle without spilling any and I can close my right eye properly when I go to sleep. But now, when I look in the mirror, the right side of my face which had dropped before, seems to have over-compensated itself in recovery, the right side of my mouth now is slightly higher than the left and gives the impression that I have a slight smirk on my face. Also, my right eye now feels like it is trying to close all of the time and appears like a slight squint, I still cannot whistle though, which they reckon is a full recovery indication, but the fact that I can close both of my eyes when I sleep and I can drink my beer without spilling any now are the best signs of recovery for me, I dont whistle very often anyway! Today's main chore for me is cooking, I usually keep a full pot of my 'Legless hotpot' on the slow cooker and it usually feeds me for four or five days at a time, but with being in Penang recently, I have to start cooking a new pot again today. My hotpot isn't exactly the same as a normal Lancashire hotpot or Scouse, I am quite inventive when it comes to cooking and having my own restaurant here a few years ago, I have come up with some quite unique dishes, my hotpot is very similar in appearance to normal hotpot, but the spices that I add to my dishes would certainly make your eyes water, clear your nose and ears and it goes down well with lots of beer. http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20011008 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Sorry about the lack of posts at the moment, I am still trying to compensate for what the stupid, irresponsible, useless webhosts, Fasthosts UK, did to me. Even though I have already corrected the obvious links on my other website main pages to point to leglessfool HQ instead of the now dead 'legless HQ website', but I have so many underlying pages and RSS feeds, that this is going to take me quite a long time to sort all of the links out properly. To build up these links and pages took me six months and they were wiped out in an instant by just the click of a mouse button by stupid, irresponsible, useless webhosts, Fasthosts UK, I just hope that it doesn't take me six months to repair it all again. A bit of good news here though, Google has indexed my new website quite quickly and it is now quite high on their search results pages for my normal keywords, the other major search engines are also following slowly, so hopefully this should all be sorted in a quite reasonable amount of time. I did eventually get to my local 'The Pickled Liver' last night, but there were none of the regulars in there. I later found out from the landlord's sister, that Nick the landlord is away in the UK at the moment and that is probably why there was nobody in there that I knew last night. I know myself from experience as a pub landlord, that a good pub revolves around people, not just the establishment itself. Cheers for now The legless fool looking for the missing link http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20280908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm After being away for so long in Penang and Hat Yai, I had missed my usual maintenance for this blog, so today I had to archive the legless blog for August and make the blog a bit more concise just for September and easier to load. I have to do the same for the RSS feed also, so I have my work cut out for me at the moment. I was hoping to visit my local 'The Pickled Liver' tonight, so hopefully I can get this maintenance finished in time to have an evening out in my legless local, something that I haven't done for a couple of weeks now. Cheers for now The legless fool looking forward to a night out http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20270908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I arrived back from Penang two days ago, but I am feeling very tired after my trip this time and I have just been sleeping for a while. I shall get this blog going again soon, but I am still tired at the moment and I just needed to let you know that I am back home in Bangkok now. The trip to Penang this time was a little different, I shall tell you all about it in a new story I have planned, but that will probably be in a few days when I am feeling a little more energetic. Stay tuned! I shall be up and running normally again soon. Cheers for now The legless fool feeling tired at the moment http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20250908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Having been badly let down by my irresponsible website host Fasthosts, UK, I am now having to start again to try and get my 'Legless Headquarters' website back up in the high rankings with the search engines, that took me almost six months of hard work to attain. Even though the website name (title) is still the same, the URL or domain name is different http://www.leglessfool.com/ and this is what the search engines register, it will probably take me another six months to get back to the same level again. So six months of hard work with the search engines has gone down the drain by me trusting Fasthosts, UK and wrongly thinking that they were a responsible hosting company. Moving the website to the new URL is easy, but the SEO work and search engine rankings take a lot of time and hard work. At least this time from experience, I know that Namesco is a trusted website hosting company, I just don't understand why I made the mistake of trying a new company like Fasthosts, UK only to find out that they are useless and totally irresponsible, six months of work lost for the sake of them not just waiting a couple more days for a MASSIVE payment of £5.69, due to a bank hiccup. Well, the one good thing that has come out of all of this is that I can now delete Fasthosts, UK from my list of hosts for any future websites that I have planned. Cheers for now The legless fool with more months of hard work ahead http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20130908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Well, this week certainly has had many surprises, not least of all, my website being shut down, but today, I phoned the Thai train information office and I was told that the train that I am booked on to Butterworth tomorrow is not operating. I asked them when it would be operating again and they could not give me a straight answer, they didn't know. So tomorrow I have to go to Hualumpong railway station and try and sort this out, I only have one week left to go on my last visa and this could be a problem for me, I am already making contingency plans, just in case they still are not running in one weeks time, but hopefully they will be, I am looking forward to my next trip to Penang, it would be a good break for me. Cheers for now The legless fool going nowhere http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20120908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm With the unexpected closedown of my leglesshq website by Fasthosts UK, I could not just let five months of my work disappear from the web at the click of some stupid host's mouse, so today I contacted my reliable host http://www.names.co.uk and asked them to transfer leglesshq.com to them, but they informed me that the name was still locked by the previous hosts and I would have to get them to release it. This was obviously going to take some time and I now have no interest in communicating with people that are totally irresponsible and not service oriented. So using my logic, I came up with a new idea, I have a registered domain name of www.leglessfool.com with Namesco which I have had for a while, but I just had it parked and redirected to leglesshq, so today I got Namesco to setup a new hosting package, which unlike Fasthosts UK, they quickly setup and took payment for in ten minutes. I then proceded to upload all of my leglesshq website to www.leglessfool.com all 170 MB of it and it is now running, the links are going to take quite a lot of time to get right again and it will take some time for the search engines to register this domain, but at least it is visible again now so I feel that my hard work has not been totally in vain and I can trust Namesco as a host to act responsibly. I had to do this today, because I am leaving for Penang again on Saturday and I needed this problem sorted out before I go, so that I don't have to worry about things too much whilst I am away. Thank you Namesco! Cheers for now The legless fool with his new domain http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%2011a0908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm My monthly pension was paid into my bank account last Friday, so I thought that I should take out enough money to cover my accommodation and upcoming Penang trip. I had just about £400 in the bank and I thought that £300 should cover everything nicely. I went to a local ATM machine here in Thailand and attempted to take out what I thought was the local equivalent of £300, but it wouldn't accept it, so I went to another ATM machine and I got the same result. I then tried to get what I thought was the equivalent of £150 and it paid out. So I tried for £150 again and it would not accept it . I had to pay £100 for my accommodation and the £50 that would be left, would be nowhere near enough for me to travel to Penang with. So I decided to try one more time to get another £100 out and it paid out. So just out of curiosity, I tried to get a further £50 out and I got the message 'Transaction cancelled contact issuing bank'. Then I thought that maybe this was due to a daily limit on my card, so I didn't try again that day. The next day I tried to get money out again from an ATM machine and I got the message 'Transaction cancelled contact issuing bank' again, for any amount that I tried to get. It was then weekend, so I thought that trying to contact the bank directly would be fruitless, but I decided to send them a message through their online banking system asking them what the problem was. I got a reply yesterday from the bank telling me that a 'Fraud marker' had been placed on my card and they gave me a UK telephone number to ring to try and sort it out. So I rang the number and I was informed that the marker had been placed because the card had been used to try and access more than my daily limit of £300, up until then, I did not know that I had a limit, I just thought that it had to be less than my bank balance and the reason that I had tried to access more than £300 was due to fluctuations in the currency exchange rates. They then lifted the marker off my card and assured me that it would work again now and just to be sure, I got them to assure me that it would work in Penang too. Today I recived an email from the hosting company that hosts http://www.leglesshq.com named 'Fasthosts UK' and they were very threatening, stating that my services with them would be suspended because of a missed payment, which they had tried to get when my card was blocked. I went to their website and when I logged in to my control page, they had an announcement for me stating that I owed them money for one month hosting £5.69 and that the normal control was not accessible, so using the 'feedback form' on there, I told them that a problem with my bank card had just been cleared yesterday and I asked them to be patient and they would receive their payment when they next applied for it. I do have another UK host for my other websites http://www.names.co.uk and even though I have been with them for three years, I thought five months ago, that I would try Fasthosts for my new domain http://www.leglesshq.com, because they seem to have a few advantages and they were very slightly cheaper. I then thought that that would be the end of it and that they would get their money in the next few days. But tonight! I started my normal SEO and page ranking work with the search engines and when I was due to display http://www.leglesshq.com from a link from the search engines, all that I got was an error message on my browser stating: This web page is not available. The web page at null might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address I tried many times with the same result, so this company has pulled the plug on me completely, I have been working on my new website http://www.leglesshq.com everyday for the last five months, so now, for the sake of waiting for a couple of days for payment of an outstanding amount of £5.69, 'Fasthosts UK' without any warning, have this evening just removed five months of my legless hard work from the web/internet, are they bad or what? I definitely would not recommend 'Fasthosts UK' for anyone to host their website with, they are totally irresponsible and have no idea about customer relations or service. Below is my last communication with Fasthosts UK: Dear Sir or Madam, Quite obviously now, you are proving to me over this temporary banking hiccup, that you are a very childish company and not worth even bothering with and I shall be stating the same on my blog tonight. To close my website down over a mishap with my bank, shows that you are purely money oriented and have no idea whatsoever about customer relations or service. I came to you five months ago because I thought that you had some advantages, but now I see that it was a total mistake. I do have another host 'Namesco' that I use for my other websites and BLOG and in more than three years, I have never had any problems with them, despite banking hiccups, so I shall be moving http://www.leglesshq.com just as soon as I can, to somebody 1,000% more reliable than you. Best regards Ian Reed (a very dissatisfied customer) P.S. All communication recorded and logged for my UK blog. (No reply yet) Cheers for now The legless fool extremely annoyed http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20110908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm As I was passing by the area yesterday at about 5 pm, I decided to call in my new local 'The Pickled Liver' and have a couple of pints and a chat with some of the regulars there and also with Nick the owner/landlord, who is a great character. The pub soon filled up yesterday evening, there were plenty of people to talk with and it was very enjoyable. The main attraction yesterday was that England were playing Andorra at football at thirty minutes after midnight Bangkok time and with three large flat screen TVs around the room it is a great place to watch sport. I was really enjoying myself and lots of friends were buying me beers, so I stayed much longer than I expected and I was quite surprised at just how long I did spend there. Everyone eventually left and the pub was closed at 5 am this morning so I had spent twelve hours in the pub last night. As I said in my previous post, the problem with this pub is that it has too good an atmosphere and attracts me whenever I am nearby or even when I am far away. Cheers for now The legless fool getting his liver pickled in Bangkok http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20070908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Now that I am back in Bangkok again, I have met friends here that I had when I lived in Bangkok before. One of my friends who has a travel agency and hotel reservation company, Peter, invited me out for a drink and introduced me to a relatively new British pub in Bangkok and I found it to be a very good pub with a good atmosphere and friendly staff, the beer and food is also very reasonably priced and it has quickly become my new 'local' in Bangkok. The name of this pub is 'The pickled liver' and as it's logo it sports a picture of the late and great footballer George Best. As I said before, the atmosphere in this pub is excellent and I have very quickly made many new friends from the regular customers in there. The only problem that I have with the pub, is that it is too inviting for me and being on a limited budget now I have to be very careful with my money, so I am trying to limit my visits to this new local to just two nights a week. The pub has it's own website and for anyone who is interested in seeing this great British pub in Bangkok, then just click on this higlighted text to go to the pickled liver website Cheers for now The legless fool getting his liver pickled in Bangkok http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20040908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am gradually getting settled in to my new residence, but like anywhere new, it takes time to get things how you want them and to get into a new routine. My new room is a good size for me, the huge double bed takes up about fifty per cent of the area, but I am using that to my advantage. On one side of my bed I have placed my computer and on the other side I have placed some cooking facilities and the fridge with my beer in it . So my room is now a truly 'legless abode', when I go into my room, I sit on my bed, take my leg off and never have to put it on again until I decide to go out somewhere. I can just sit on my bed legless and roll from one side to the other to get anything that I want. This computer is now permanently connected to the internet and when I get tired at the computer and need to sleep, I just have to fall sideways onto my pillows, I few beers helps with this too. Cheers for now The legless fool getting organised in Bangkok http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20020908 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Today having waited for about eight hours for their arrival, because they could not give me a definite time, 'True' finally installed my ADSL line. I think that I must be an internet junkie now, because the withdrawal symptoms that I have gone through being unable to connect for so long has driven me crazy, even more than crazy than I normally am! So now I am back online again, like it or hate it! I now know what it must have felt like being 'excommunicated' in days of old . I shall be back with a vengeance now, because I am now totally free from Parasite farm, no more looking over my shoulder, or checking my bank account and my bank finally got their act together and even compensated me for the mistake that they made before, thank you HSBC! Cheers for now The legless fool back online in Bangkok http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20290808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm My ADSL modem arrived on Saturday 23rd August and I paid for the line, so I thought that my ADSL line would arrive quite quickly afterwards. Well, it is now four days later and still no sign of the line, so I phoned the company today to find out what was happening. I was informed that the server that was dealing with my line was not commissioned yet, but I should be connected on 29th August. So hopefully the next post that I put on this blog should be uploaded through my new high speed connection and I can get back into my internet routines again. Cheers for now The legless fool still waiting in Bangkok http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20260808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I went to HSBC Bangkok today hoping that I could sort out this ridiculous situation that my bank has now put me in. The staff in HSBC Bangkok were very helpful, they couldn't give me the reason why my bank had blocked or cancelled my card, but at least they informed me that they could get me some money. I asked for enough cash from my account to cover my impending ADSL installation and hopefully enough to last me through until my new ATM card arrives. I was informed by the bank in Bangkok that the cost of the international money transfer was $20 US, so I have to pay for my bank's stupid mistake too! After I received my money, I connected to my bank in UK on the internet and complained again about what they had done and what I had to do to try to correct their stupid mistake and I also stated that their bank department that caused this whole mess, should cover the cost of my money transfer. Personally I doubt it, that would be much too logical for them and they would have to admit to bad practice and it would even cost them money in the process! Well, we shall just have to wait and see now if they have any scruples. http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20210808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I thought that by informing my bank yesterday about the mistake that they had made by blocking my current ATM card, that they would quickly make amends. Well, I was obviously wrong again! Today I went to an ATM machine to see if my bank had corrected their mistake and this time, the ATM machine informed me: 'Card retained, please contact your bank' and swallowed my card. So now I have no money and also now, I have no card to get any money from my account. Is this all automatic, does nobody monitor this? So now my only option is to go to the local bank branch in Bangkok tomorrow, if I have enough money to go there, and sort out this problem, hopefully. Cheers for now The legless fool broke in Bangkok http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20200808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was quite obviously now, much too quick in accepting that my bank had acted correctly by placing a temporary stop on my new ATM/debit card, I was accepting that they had done something correctly for once. Yesterday I went to my local supermarket to top up on my essentials, beer, food, etc. . There are a few ATM machines near the supermarket, so I thought that I should top-up my cash and keep enough money in my wallet to cover the installation of my new ADSL line when it arrives this week. At the first ATM machine that I went to, it came back with an error message of 'Unable to complete this transaction at this time'and at the second machine I received the same error message, but at the third machine it stated that 'This card has been blocked by the bank, please contact your bank for details', so it looks like my stupid bank has not only blocked usage of my new ATM card, but they have also managed to cut off all access to my funds from anywhere. Why am I not surprised at this stupid development? Because the idiots in my bank have done this to me before, to read the story of what happened before, please click on ths line. Cheers for now The legless fool in BKK without access to his funds http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20190808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I know that my current legless blog recently has been increasing to an unmanageable size, I have had just too many other things to do with my recent move to Bangkok, but today for the first time since my move, I realised that I should start taking care of it and start to get back into a good routine again. I am well settled into my new accommodation here now and I am enjoying being alone and just having to worry about myself and taking care of my funds by myself, I can budget again now. I received a reply from my bank yesterday telling me that a temporary stop has been placed on my new ATM/debit card, so that is another problem taken care of, things are coming together relatively well now. Hopefully my new ADSL line will be installed soon too, so that I don't have to keep going to the internet cafe to post these blogs. Cheers for now The legless fool in BKK getting organised http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20160808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I contacted True Telecoms in Bangkok yesterday and explained to them that I needed an internet connection in my new room, they told me that they would pass my request on to their sales department and that they would contact me. Well, no contact from them all day yesterday, but first thing this morning I received a phone call from a True sales representative requesting details from me and within five minutes they confirmed that a new 512MHz ADSL line will be installed in my room within the next week, so I am now gradually getting organised again. Now I just hope that my bank can sort out the mess that they have put me in, without it costing me a lot of money. Cheers for now The legless fool in BKK trying to get organised http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20150808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have been ill for a few days with a very severe throat and chest infection, so I just stayed in bed in my new room in BKK and took some antibiotics that I always keep around for this purpose. Yesterday for the first time in a few days, I felt well enough to go to the internet cafe and post my blog. I had many other things to check on the internet, not least of which, was to check that my bank had received my message that I sent to them one week ago explaining about my change of address to make sure that my new ATM card which is now due, is sent to my new address and not the old one where the parasites are. Well, I received a reply from the bank yesterday, telling me that my new ATM card has been sent to my old address, great! Just when I thought that I was actually clear of the parasites at last, the bank has now sent them my new ATM card and really thinking that I was finally clear, I have even moved some of the money from my lottery account back into my bank account so that I can have access to it myself now. Do you ever have the feeling that things are completely stacked up against you? Cheers for now The legless fool in BKK with more problems http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20140808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I travelled by train to Bangkok on 6 August and found my way to my new apartment block, the staff were expecting me and I was shown straight to my room. The room was definitely different to the norm, all of the other rooms on the ground floor at the front are shops and cafes, mine was obviously used as some kind of outlet before, because there is Thai writing across the glass sliding doors and even prices in Thai baht for something, but I am not quite sure what. My room is quite compact and the large double bed takes up about fifty percent of it, but for me it is just about the right size, I don't have to move about a lot when I am writing and I am alone now anyway. I had only brought enough clothes with me for two or three days, because my plan was just to establish myself at the new residence and then arrange for a car rental so that I could go back and pick up the rest of my belongings and most importantly for me, my computer. So on the 9th of August that is just what I did, the only automatic vehicle that they had available at the car rental was a Toyota Soluna VIOS, which they gave me a good price on because I have been a good customer with them for years. I set off for the farm at about 12:30 pm from Bangkok, I know that it is only a two or three hours drive and I arrived at the farm at 15:00 pm. I received a phone call whilst I was driving and the people at the farm knew that I was going to pick up all of my things that I could possibly fit in the car. On my arrival at the farm, before I started packing the car, I had to check my email, I hadn't done so for a couple of days because the internet cafe near where I am now staying is quite expensive, so I spent the next hour just going through my email. Whilst I was doing this, the people there started loading the car for me, so by the time I had finished with the email, all that remained to be loaded was my computer equipment. The one thing that I couldn't put in the car that I needed, was the table to put my computer on, because in my new room there aren't any tables at all. The table was much too big though even when dismantled, so I thought that it would not be too big a problem for me, I would just try and get a table at the apartment block and if there were any problems with it, I could always put the computer on one side of the huge bed that I now have. The drive back later that day to Bangkok was much longer, for some reason there were traffic jams around Ayuthaya and Rangsit, so I only eventually got back to my apartment at 22:00 that night. The security and other staff at the apartment were very helpful and they soon unloaded the car for me. My room though was full of bags, boxes and computer equipment and it took me a good hour just to arrange everything so that I could move around the room easily, the real unpacking would just have to wait until the next day, because I needed a couple of beers and I also needed to get my head down to sleep before I even considered unpacking after that drive. The next day I had to take the car back to the car rental shop before I did anything else though and I had a big lunch in my favourite pub in Bangkok, the Ship Inn whilst I was near there and it was very good, even though it was already lunchtime by then, I ordered the English breakfast in there and it was excellent and really filled me up, I was so full that I couldn't even drink all of my beer afterwards. When I eventually got back to my apartment a few hours later, I saw the owner there and asked her if she had a small table that I could put in my room to place my computer on and she quite quickly found me one. So the first priority for me before any other unpacking was to get my computer back together again and get connected to the internet. I got everything physically connected quite quickly and I thought that the roaming internet connection number of '1222' would still connect okay in Bangkok, but it kept coming up with an error message that the line was busy, I tried it again and again, with the same result, so then I dialled the same number on my phone in the room and I got a message saying that this number was not valid, so I thought that it must be different for Bangkok. I eventually found a number for internet connection in Bangkok in one of my bags of computer things and I changed the number for the modem to dial, then I got an error message telling me that the modem was either busy or not connected, so I tried this again many times and got the same result, I then shut my computer down thinking that it had got itself into some kind of loop, but when I booted it up again, it said that there was no modem. I then reseated the modem in the PCI slot and my computer still wouldn't see it, so I then changed PCI slots and again it wouldn't see it. I thought then that there must be a problem with my modem, so I would just have to go to the internet cafe and check my email there. But when I went outside it was now 8 pm at night and it was pouring down with rain, there were no motorcycle taxis around and the nearest internet cafe to me now is more than one kilometre away. So I just went back to my room again messed about with the modem PCI slots again, but it looks like the modem is now completely dead, maybe with all of the rain, the phone line got hit by lightning somewhere, but I didn't hear anything this time. I am writing this offline now so that I can hopefully upload it to my blog tomorrow using the FTP on my flash drive and then people will know why there hasn't been a post on here for a while, but I don't know what I am going to do with my own internet connection now, I shall just have to work on it. Cheers for now The legless fool trying to connect in BKK http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20110808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Well this is it! My last night surrounded by parasites on this farm, hopefully. I have to wake up early tomorrow morning and get the first train to Bangkok from Ban Takhli, so maybe I have to drink a lot of beer and whisky very quickly tonight to try to get to sleep early, it is just a concession that I have to make to be sure that I get away on time tomorrow. I may spend a couple of days relaxing in my new room in Bangkok before I hire a car and come back here to pick up my computer, so there may not be any posts on here for a few days. For eight months now I have waited for this opportunity to present itself and all I needed to make it happen was someone in Bangkok to help me to get a room and it is quite strange that I could only find that person in Vientiane, Laos. Life is very complicated sometimes! Living in Bangkok without the constant worries about where my funds are disappearing to, I can probably settle down again and finish my second book 'Ex Post Facto'. One of the ironies here is that, that was one of my reasons for moving to the farm in the first place and the other irony here, is that my other main reason for moving to the farm, was to save money. Hopefully, I have made a good decision this time with this move, and if I haven't, I shall tell you all about it on here later anyway. The life of the legless fool in Thailand continues! Cheers for now The legless fool starting life anew in BKK http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20050808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have spent more than two years building up a high profile for my writing name on the internet / web for the sole purpose of promoting my books and stories and it is working quite well now. As I have said before on here though, because my name and book is high profile on the search engines now, many other people are using both on their own website page titles, descriptions, content and meta tags for their own search engine ranking purposes and to try to get traffic to their sites from my name and my book title. I personally find this quite pathetic, you have to feel sorry for people that don't have the brains or ideas to promote their own name and products for their sites. Do a search yourself on any of the search engines for John McMiken and you will see what I mean, the only legitimate ones on the results pages, apart from my own websites and blogs, are directories, publishers, writers/authors websites, forums, Scottish district registers of births, deaths and marriages and the one web directory that I personally endorse is http://www.mexabet.biz, all of the others listed in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for my writing name are just part of the pathetic group of website owners / webmasters that I was talking about above. The good thing about all of this, is that it proves to me that my campaign to promote my name and book is working well now, otherwise people would not try to copy them. Cheers for now John McMiken - The legless fool http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20040808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have now reserved my room in Bangkok with the help of my new friend there. I shall be travelling to Bnagkok on Wednesday this week to pay my deposit, collect my keys and spend my first night in my new home. A couple of rooms were available, but being legless and for ease of access for me, I chose the ground floor room that was available. I am really looking forward to living there and having the freedom to do what I want to, when I want to and not having to think about anybody else, just living alone taking care of myself and more importantly, taking control of my own money again (no parasites). I shall heve to return to the farm on Thursday or Friday to pick up my computer and other important things, so for a couple of days this week there will be no posts on here and no updates to my websites until I get everything settled in my new home. As I said on here before, I just needed someone in Bangkok to help me to secure a new place and as it turned out, the person that has helped me, is someone that I met in Vientane of all places. If you haven't already read about my last trip to Laos yet, then you can click on this line and go to read about my trip Legless in Vientiane, Laos II . My new friend in Bangkok that helped me with this is a website developer himself and he has just completed his latest project and uploaded it to the web, he has designed a new web directory for people to list their websites under a very comprehensive categorisation listing and it is very professionally done. Why not check out this new, professional, human edited web directory by clicking anywhere on this highlighted line. Cheers for now The legless fool on the move http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20030808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am sitting at my computer this evening / morning and it is my birthday I think. I was born on the 1st of August, 1951 in UK and although here in Thailand it is now 1st August, in UK it is still 31st July at this point in time. I received one present early this year, yesterday evening I was given a bottle of whisky for a birthday present, I only usually drink whisky at Xmas, but to show gratitude for the thought, I had a drink of my only present last night, it was still not officially my birthday, but what the hell! Well it certainly started my year off well, because the next thing that I knew, I woke up in my computer chair at 03:00 am this morning and realising that it really was my birthday now, here in Thailand, I decided to have a few more shots of my only present this year. If I seem to be drivelling on a little here, you can blame my birthday present for that, it does become a little addictive once you start. I hope this year is a better one for me, I don't think that it could be worse than previous ones, but then again, I have thought that many times before and I have been proven wrong every time. Some good news, my new friend in Bangkok has found accommodation for me there, so I shall be going to check that out sometime next week, that would be a good start to the year for me. This whisky is quite nice, but a little too strong for my taste, I have to keep watering it down a lot with beer or maybe I would get drunkkkk . Well it is now 04:30 am here and it is still not really my official birthday in UK, so even though I am now starting to get tired again, I shall just have to try and stay awake so that I can celebrate my real birthday at the real time. The problem with drinking that I have, is that as soon as I stop drinnking I fall asleep, so to be able to stay awake, I have to keep drinking, well that is my excuse and I am sticking to it and drinking to it. I think that I should finish thiss posst now because the keyboard is becomming blurrred and for somme reasson it seemms to bbe moving now, musst bee magic. Cheeers for now The legless fool another year older http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20010808 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Two days ago, I let my feelings be known to the parasites on the farm that I wanted to leave here and that I needed to live alone. I have had it now living with other people here, everyone that I live with seems to have the same idea, they never look at me as a person, all they see in me is a means to add to their own monetary income without working for it. At least the air is cleared here now, but the main problem that I have now is finding somewhere else to live, I would like to move back to Bangkok again, but first I need to find some suitable accommodation there, just a room with a bed and a telephone line is all that I really require, nothing special really. Preferably somewhere there that is not too expensive, because after living with the parasites for the last fifteen months my savings are now zero. For me to find a room in Bangkok from Parasite farm here in Nakhon Sawan is very difficult, I really need the help of someone in Bangkok to do this. I have sent an email to someone that I met in Vientiane last week and hopefully he can help me with this. I just need to take control of my own life again now and much more importantly, take control of my own money again. I just hope that I can move from here within the next two weeks before my pension is paid into my bank account again and the parasites try to gain access to it again. Cheers for now The legless fool looking for a new home http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20290708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I finally finished my Legless in Laos trip II story and uploaded it today. It took a long time to write because there was a lot more to talk about this time, than the last trip I made to Laos. Being alone this time I had a better time there, I met some new friends and I drank a lot more beer too. I wish I had a digital camera that would have been useful to add some photos to the story but I can't afford to buy one at the moment. So if you would like to read about my trip then just click on Legless in Vientiane Laos II here and you should be transferred to it. I am gradually getting back into my routine again now after my trip and I need to concentrate on my SEO work again now because some of the major search engines have changed their algorithms again. The next time I have to go for a visa trip is on 20th September and I shall be heading back to Penang again and back to the gang at the Blue Diamond Hotel there. I bought a bottle of wine in Laos this time, I really like wine more than beer, but it is just too expensive for me to buy wine in Thailand. The reason that I bought the wine this time, is because it is my birthday on Friday of this week, so I thought that I would treat myself. Cheers for now The legless fool is 57 years old this week http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20270708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I arrived back from my Laos trip yesterday, but I was a little too tired to write on here then. I was going to write about my recent trip, but there are too many things to talk about and much too much for just a blog post, so I have spent most of today creating a new page for my websites about my trip and time in Vientiane. It still isn't finished yet, so I thought that I should write something on here anyway tonight. The trip was quite a good trip and much more enjoyable travelling there alone this time. I met some quite interesting people in Vientiane and made some new friends on this trip. When I have finished the page about it I shall put a post with a link on here for anyone to go and read about my latest legless venture into Laos and I did get a little more legless in a drunken sense too this time, lots of Beer Lao. Cheers for now The legless fool back from Laos http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20250708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I logged onto my bank account this evening and I was surprised to see that my missing funds had been returned to my account again. There was also a new message for me telling me that the relevant department was dealing with my case as a matter of urgency and they apologised for any inconvenience caused. Well, at least I have my money back now, that is the important thing to me at this point in time, I am still not happy with what they did or the way that they did it, but their customer support department does seem to work. I shall be away in Laos again for the next five days, I shall try and write on here if I get the chance there, but if not, I shall definitely give you a report about my trip just as soon as I return. Cheers for now The legless fool heading to Laos http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%2018a0708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Two days ago I was sent an email from the customer service department of my bank, telling me that they were investigating my complaint and that they would get back to me when they had any results. Well, that was the last time I heard from them, I still have to go to Laos tomorrow and without my funds that they saw fit to remove without notifying me, I am now having to borrow money just to make this trip. I know that what they did is completely illegal in the UK, but I am not in the UK at the moment or I would be straight around to the nearest police station. They cannot just leave you without any funds to take care of yourself, especially when the funds that they 'stole' belong to me anyway. They stated that this money was paid to a collection service for my outstanding credit card debt, well, the credit card debt is with the bank themselves, so this looks like a set up job for them, to get money off me and using someone else as an excuse, but removing almost all of my money without my knowledge cannot be excused anyway. Yes, my credit card debt has not been paid off and the reason for this is because this stupid bank closed down my bank account, again without my knowledge and this was the account that was paying my credit card off, so they did this to themselves four years ago. If you would like to read the story about why that account was shut down then you can read it at: http://www.leglesshq.com/expostfacto/shortstories/Bankfraud.html Where all of this stupid situation with my bank is going to end '^*@%*' knows, but one thing is for sure, I am going to make sure that they pay for all of the problems that they are causing me, it would be bad enough if I had two legs, but even being legless I shall fight through the UK law about this. Cheers for now The legless fool still hopping mad with His Stupid Bank Clots http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20180708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am getting ready to travel again next weekend because it is time for me to renew my Thai visa again. I went to Penang last time, so I have to go to Vientiane again this time, so I decided to check that I had sufficient funds in my bank account yesterday evening, but when I logged into my online bank account I got a shock, my account was down almost £200 less than I expected and not enough money left in it for me to go on my visa trip. When I checked the online statement page there had been a debit of £190 with just the word 'ADVISED' next to it, so I sent an online e-message to my bank asking them what this debit was for and I received the message below back from them today: To: Ian Subject: Case: 7096473 General Enquiries Date: 14 Jul 2008 Account details: 40-40-07 91691201 Message: Our Reference 7096473 Dear Mr Reed Debit Transaction Thank you for your e-message received 13 July 2008 I notice that a letter has been sent in relation to this will reach you within a few working days. Please be advised that the funds have been transferred from your account 404007 91691201 to your credit card debt 5434604053662809 currently with Metropolitan Collection Services Limited. Should you have any further enquiries do not hesitate to contact us directly. Kind regards Jason R HSBC Internet Banking Customer Support This could not have come at a worse time for me because without these funds I cannot travel for my visa and I am really mad with them, so I replied: Dear Jason R., I would appreciate it if people tell me about these things before they just do them. This has now put me in a very difficult situation, I have to leave the country this week due to immigration regulations, but without the money that you transferred, without notifying me, I cannot go and I now will have problems with immigration and be subjected to a fine of £9 per day for overstay, which I also now cannot pay, so I may end up in jail just through an HSBC stupid action. I shall be taking this up with the UK financial ombudsman now. I shall also put all of this story on my internet website blogs and my local UK newspaper blog tonight too, to show how stupid and insensitive HSBC is. Remember, I am an amputee and an invalid, so it is definitely not going to make your bank look very good and I may also contact the UK media about this too. Best regards Ian Reed I don't know if it will do any good and they have not replied yet, but I enjoyed getting it off my chest with them after their stupid action, surely they are not allowed to just take a large sum like that out of your bank account without informing you first. I have sent an email to the UK financial ombudsman about this already, so I shall just have to wait and see what develops now. Cheers for now The legless fool hopping mad with His Stupid Bank Clots http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20140708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am literally legless and I do like drinking beer and I mention about both of these things on my websites. The search engines have picked up on this and my websites come up on the first results page for the keywords 'legless' and 'beer', this must really be causing some other sites problems, because when I check these words with the search engines, I have found that there are sites like 'Legless brewery' and a new beer in the UK called 'Legless beer' and these are behind me in the search engine results page (SERP) I find it quite amusing, but I think that these other beer websites may be a little upset with me. My new legless icon, I have now given the name of 'Solo', I think that this is quite a good name for him as he is representing me on the web now alone. Cheers for now The legless fool and his web rep Solo http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20130708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I haven't written about it on here for a long time, but I still have Ramsay Hunt Syndrome (RHS). It came on very quickly, but it takes a very long time to recover, I have had it for five months now and although some of the symptoms are improving, I still cannot wink with my right eye, but I can close it now. The right side of my mouth is still a problem, I can't control my lips on the right side still and it is a nuisance, when I am hungry and eating quickly if I am not careful, I bite my lip on the right side and it hurts, I have done this many times now. I have learned how to drink my beer without spilling it now though and that is much more important to me, food is just a basic necessity, but beer is a must! I did read on the internet a while ago, that you know when the RHS symptoms have finished when you can whistle again, well I practice whistling everyday and still no sound yet, I still can't get my lips quite right. Cheers for now The legless fool wetting his whistle http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20110708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I thought that now that I am 'the legless fool' that I should design an icon, avatar or logo that people can relate to. That is why I have not posted on here for a while, I have been busy designing this and applying it to many of my websites pages. There are so many pages now though, that it will take me quite a long time to find them all and put the icon on all of them,s. It gets a little confusing at times too, because I have the same pages on my reedinter and ex post facto websites that I have on my legless HQ website now, just the wording and links are different, so sometimes I think that I have done a page already and then I realise that I have done it, but on a different website, so it has to be done again. If you noticed already, the icon is at the top of this page now, but for those of who missed it I shall duplicate it here: It is not a brilliant design, but the most important things are on there, a fool's hat, one leg missing and a beer in each hand and apart from the hat and being green, it really could be me . Cheers for now The legless fool in colour http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20100708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was working on one of my webpages yesterday that explains about how I built up my internet domains when I suddenly realised, that now I am using Legless Fool as my internet / web name, I should really back it up with a domain of a similar name to stop anyone else trying to cash in on this name as they already are doing with the name of my book 'Legless in Thailand' and my writing name 'John McMiken'. So I made the decision to register the domain name of www.leglessfool.com yesterday, which I did successfully, to protect myself against someone else registering it. As this new domain just appertains to me personally as the owner of this name now, I have only configured this new domain to redirect people to my Legless group of websites, because I cannot justify the expense of putting this new domain on a server and building a new website for it at this time, maybe later! I own many domain names now and many of them are used just to redirect traffic to my existing websites. I have written a page on my legless HQ website explaining about all of this, so I shall not write too much about it on this post today, for anyone that is interested, then you can take a look at my Legless Websites Group of Domains page. Cheers for now The legless fool registered on the web http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20050708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Now I am writing a lot, I find that I have to be in the 'right frame of mind' to write easily. Being an electronics/computer engineer for the last forty years, frame of mind did not come into the equation at all, I had a problem to solve and my mind just automatically switched into fault-finding mode, irrespective of my frame of mind. But, writing I find is completely different, I have to be in the right mood to sit down, think about the topic that I want to write about and absolutely nothing else and only then do the words start to flow through my mind. It is not an automatic thing like it was being an engineer, I find that I have to have no outside influences or distractions whatsoever when I sit down to write and my mind has to be completely clear of all other issues, which in my present situation is not very easy . I am writing about this tonight because, over the last two days I have not been able to write my usual input for my Asian Diaries and I have been trying to analyse myself and understand, why sometimes I find that it is much easier to write than other times? Even with this blog it is the same, you can see that there has been no post on here for a couple of days now and it is not because I have had many other things to do, it is only to do with being in the right frame of mind for it. Well, my mind is growing tired now and the frame is collapsing, so I think that I should end this post now . Cheers for now The legless fool losing (lost) his mind in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20040708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm It started raining very late tonight, just a constant drizzle really but also with the occasional flash of lightning, so I had to disconnect the phone line from my modem to protect against any lightning strike hitting it again. The rain does bring out a few insects and they are attracted to the lights in my outdoor working area/bedroom. The insects in turn attracted two bats tonight and they have been flying around me for about thirty minutes now, don't bats ever get tired and stop for a rest? The bats are okay though because they keep the insects down, but they do get a little close at times when I am working and it is a little distracting when they fly between me and my monitor. I shall be glad when I can get an office/bedroom indoors again, I do like the outdoors, but in heavy rain it can get a little wet when the wind is blowing strong and sometimes the flying termites come out after the rain has stopped and they are an absolute nuisance because they arrive by the hundreds at a time, I much prefer the bats, at least they dont drop in your beer . Cheers for now The legless fool and the bats in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20010708 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was wondering what to write on here today and the only thing that is unusual at the moment is the weather here, so I thought I would write about that. Then I was doing my usual search engine thing and playing with the words on my websites with the search engines and I found that I am very highly ranked on all of them for the words 'legless coma'. These two words are on my websites when I have been writing about my accident and being in a coma and the word legless is on all of my websites anyway. Thinking about these two words together makes me smile, because it just about describes how I go to sleep each night / morning, I take my leg off and after all of the beers that I have been drinking whilst working on my computer, I do tend to slip into what I term is a legless coma rather than just falling asleep and now it seems that the search engines agree with me about this . Now onto the weather! This year the weather is very unusual here in Thailand, the rainy season normally starts at the end of May and runs through to the end of October, but this year apart from the odd thunder storm, the rains haven't really started yet and it is now the end of June. For me it is good because it means that I haven't been completely infested with flying termites yet, but if the rains start late this year, will they finish late too? We shall just have to wait and see now. Cheers for now The legless fool going into a coma again now. http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20290608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have been quiet on here for a couple of days because I am concentrating on getting my new legless HQ website working properly and also updating my memoirs in the Asian Diaries section on a daily basis too. This keeps me very busy at the moment because when I think that I have just about completed my work for the day, I then find a bad link on the site. I now have more than 65 pages just on the one site alone and it can take a lot of time to check all of the links out, especially when many of my diary pages have more than ten links on each page. I am supposed to be retired now, but with my websites, diary memoirs and internet SEO work, I am putting in more than sixteen hours each day at the moment. So much for being retired! Oh well, Back to work now! Cheers for now The retired legless fool on the web http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20260608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Today I wrote a new webpage for my Reed in Asia section of my Legless HQ website, this page is something that I have had planned for a very long time, but I have just never got around to writing it before. The page is about the person that caused me to be in the situation that I find myself in today and if I had never met her, I probably would still have two legs today too, because I only had the accident in which I lost my leg when I was carrying out her wishes. The full story about my relationship with this person can be found in my 'Legless in Thailand' book and the only reason that I created the new webpage today about this person, is out of pure spite and hatred of what she did to me without a second thought before. Just as with the writing of my book, making this webpage today has actually helped me, by releasing some of the tensions caused by the hatred of this person that I have been carrying around with me for many years now. I have actually put photos of this girl on the webpage, but what I haven't done on there is state her real name and actual location now. If anyone would like to see this webpage and the photos of this person then just click on this link: The Thai whore from hell and see and read about the person that completely ruined my life before. Cheers for now The legless fool with revenge on the web http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20230608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Still writing a page a day in my Asian Diaries, I do recall some of the emotions at that time, but what has not really been apparent to me up until now, is the fact that in the period that I am writing about, I still have two legs, I am not legless yet . It only came home to me today because I have just finished today's diary entry and I am now thinking about tomorrow's page. At the end of today's page I am on board an aircraft bound for Chiangmai and then thinking about tomorrow, I know that I went to Doi Suthep in Chiangmai for the first time and walked up the many steps to the Buddhist temple there and I then realised that I could not do that today being legless now, so it is the first time that I have compared the time when I had two legs to my situation today. Cheers for now The legless fool with two legs in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20220608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Writing my Asian Diaries each day, I have to upload the page to the server each day and also update the index page, the RSS, a link on the previous page and the sitemap, then browse the site and check that they are all working okay. Well, yesterday I uploaded all of the files, but when I went to check them on the browser, they were still the same as the day before, no change, I automatically click the 'refresh' button on the browser, but I clicked it again and still no change, I also had the same problem trying to update my RSS. At first I thought that maybe it was a problem with my browser just remembering the page and not updating properly, so I opened a different browser that I keep in reserve and the problem was still the same. I then uploaded the files again to the server and checked on my FTP program that the files were actually being stored and overwritten on my server and I could see that they were, so then I came to the conclusion that my server was not displaying the updated files and was just using some cache memory when anyone browsed my site. I sent an email today to my hosting service about this and they are currently looking into the problem. I hope that they can find out what the problem is quickly, because what is the point of having an RSS feed if you can't update it? Cheers for now The legless fool with server problems, amongst others! http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20190608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Writing the page for my Asian Diaries today, I have been writing about an event that happened to me 24 years ago in Thailand. I went for my first day out driving around Thailand and went to Kanchanaburi, where the bridge over the river Kwai is situated. I went with the girl that was then staying with me and I had a very good day. It is a day that is easy for me to remember, because it was the day that changed my mind about my future and ultimately led to where I am today, I shall not say any more about it on here because I do not want to detract from the Asian Diary entry itself. I will say though, that I have now put music on some of the pages in the diary and the music relates to that particular time in my life. The music for this day in the diary is 'Magic' sung by Olivia Newton-John and when I hear that song even these days, I always remember that day before and what I was doing when this song was playing. Cheers for now The legless fool with memories in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20160608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm A bit later than usual, but I had to do the monthly maintenance on this blog today, archive the blog for May and update the links, sitemap and RSS. Well today is Friday the 13th, I hope nobody has any mishaps today, I know it is just superstition, but some people take it seriously, when was the last time you were in a lift and saw a thirteenth floor? In my life everyday seems to be like a Friday the thirteenth, so for me it is just another boring day like all the rest, nothing out of the ordinary to worry about. Being a little bit superstitious though, maybe I should drink thirteen beers tonight to placate any evil spirits around me. So I shall have a happy, legless, Friday the thirteenth. Cheers for now The legless fool and superstition http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20130608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm People who sometimes contact me from the internet like to ask me "Why do you use the word legless a lot on your websites, doesn't it embarrass you?" I just tell them that I never asked to be legless, it was just the hand that I was dealt and I find the term quite amusing when applied to me, it probably couldn't have happened to a more applicable person and if you've been dealt this legless hand, then just play it the best way that you can . More legless words of wisdom tomorrow after another night of beer, my words come easier then . Cheers for now The legless fool and his legless reasoning http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20120608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I told you yesterday that the search engines had named me the legless fool, well using the same logic, the search engines have categorised my book as the 'Legless Book' and it comes up number one for these search words on almost all of them. So basically, we have a 'Legless Book' written by a 'Legless Fool', so it should be fairly unique and easy to find on the internet now I'll drink to that! Cheers for now The legless fool and his legless book http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20110608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I wrote a post on here a few months ago now, stating that I was surprised that even though some of the search engines had problems finding my book for the normal keywords, when I was playing around with the words in the content of my book webpage, I used two of the words on the page 'Legless' and 'Fool' and then all of the search engines found my book easily. I remember then that I wrote on here at that time, that the search engines unanimously agree that I am a legless fool. Well ever since that day I have adopted the search engines' categorisation of me and I now even call myself the 'Legless Fool'. That is why you see now that I always sign off on each post as 'The legless fool in Thailand'. Well, they do say that if you can't beat them, then join them, "thank you to all of the search engines for giving me a new web celebrity name" I am now the official search engine certified, legless fool on the web. Cheers for now The official legless fool on the web http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20100608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I didn't post anything on this blog yesterday because other than talking about the scammers that I am playing with and my Asian Diaries, I have nothing of interest to talk about now. Even the parasites here are playing things low key at the moment, my money has been in the bank for four days now and they have only taken out 1,000 baht and said that it was for my beer and one box of beer arrived so I can't complain too much at the moment. The rains still haven't really set in yet this year, we get the occasional storm some nights, but the rainy season hasn't really kicked in yet this year, it is very late now, the rains usually start at the end of May like clockwork, so I don't know what is happening this year. Well hopefully I may have something of interest to talk about soon, until then have a nice day and try not to get too legless Cheers for now The legless fool in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20090608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I haven't metioned them for a while because you may get bored with it, but I am still playing with scammers everyday, I usually have about five or six of them on the go at any one time. This week has been a little interesting for me, after four years of playing with these people, even I get bored with them at times. It looks like they all go to the same scam college or read the same reference books for scams, I can almost write all of their initial emails from memory now, only the names and the amount of money offered changes each time with many of them and even their follow up emails I can guess what is in them before I read them. But this week I have had a couple of different stories, one that I found quite amusing was when 'the bank director' called for fees for procurement of legal documents to release my funds and then when I didn't send the money, they sent me an email saying that, because I have not met up with their requirements, then they think that I am not genuine and trying to defraud the bank and they will pass my details to interpol, the FBI, Scotland Yard, etc. and I could face a 21 year jail sentence. I just replied to them and said "Thanks for the good laugh, that was the most stupid, nonsensical, idiotic and illogical email that I have ever received, please send me some more emails soon, because I could do with a good laugh these days." They never replied again Cheers for now The legless fool in Thailand having fun with scammers http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20070608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm On the input to my Asian Diaries over the last two days, I have now written about a certain event that happened in my life a long time ago in Asia that started to change my way of thinking and started to put doubts in my mind about how good my life was as it stood at that time, in comparison to what it could be. For people reading this blog post that have already read my diaries, then you will see that the title of this post has a double meaning that will not be apparent to people who have not read the diaries yet and it is a hint about what will become apparent with time. Because my Asian Diaries are just memories for me, I look at them with hindsight and I don't want to write anything on this blog that will pre-empt events in the diaries. But, as I have done in this blog today, I shall give the occasional hint that will only have a meaning for my Asian diary readers. Well, I think that is enough for tonight, we have a big electrical storm here at the moment and it is pouring down with rain and as a precaution I have disconnected my modem and I am writing this offline, there is nothing else that I can do when I am offline, so I think it is now time to get down to some serious drinking for tonight Cheers for now The legless fool with hindsight in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20050608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am now writing a page a day again for my Asian Diaries and because the diaries are now quickly approaching a major turning point in my life, I am now trying to self-analyse my actions at that time: "Why did I do that? What was I thinking about? What were my plans at that time? What were my feelings?" I did the exact same thing after I finished the first draft of my autobiography Legless in Thailand and really the diaries are an autobiography too, but in much more depth and I was only slightly legless then. One good thing is, that at least I seem to have got my mind back on what I am doing again now, rather than it wandering a thousand kilometres away, like it has been doing over most of the last week. Cheers for now The legless fool back on track in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20030608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am gradually, very slowly, getting back into the swing of things again now, but I still have emotional problems that are going to take a very long time to settle down. To try and help me at the moment, I am sitting at my computer all day each day and just trying to concentrate on my Asian Diaries. Also to try to help, I have lots of music on my computer that I play whilst I am working, but I only collect songs that have lyrics with special meaning in them and I have quite a large collection now. I have always enjoyed good music/songs and maybe I am unusual (that's for sure), but I remember times in my life from certain music/songs at that time rather than the date or year itself, maybe not music that was popular for other people at that particular time, but music that I chose to play then, so most of my memories are linked to songs. And, although I have set my computer audio player to play a large selection of my songs randomly rather than sequentially, occasionally a song plays that has very special meaning for me and I start to lose concentration and my mind starts wandering again. The title of this post is the opening lyrics from an album that does have very special meaning for me and when it played just now on my computer, it completely distracted me from what I was doing and I decided to write this post tonight. I am sorry if I am boring any of you with some of my posts on here, but in my present situation and state of mind, this is my only means of communication / outlet with anyone that I consider worth talking to. Cheers for now The legless fool even deeper in thought in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20010608 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20310508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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. 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20300508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20280508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20270508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20150508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20140508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20130508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20110508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20090508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20080508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20070508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20060508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20040508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20030508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20020508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm 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 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20010508 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was waiting for further developments with the scams that I am currently playing with before I made another post on here. Well today, I have received an email telling me that the transferred funds ($40 M) are delayed in Canada and they require to contact me before they will be transferred. This is a new one on me, they haven't called for a fee YET, but I am expecting that to happen very soon, in the meantime I just continue playing the unsuspecting victim and keep asking them when I will receive my forty mllion dollars My Reed in Asia Asian Diaries I am still working on each day and I have to bring the first diary in Singapore to a close this week somehow and move on to the next one, so I shall be busy with that for the next few days and may not have time to post on here as regularly as I normally do. As usual, my writing is assisted by beer and being legless already, it does tend tohelp with my thought processes Cheers for now Legless anything in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20300408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Even though I haven't mentioned about it on here for a while, I am still playing with scammers everyday and I receive a new scam virtually every other day. I have about six on the go at the moment and two of them are due to transfer 42 million dollars into my bank account this week I have been playing with these scammers for many years now and I have been in this position many times before, I know exactly what is going to happen next. The 'bank' will send me a fund wire transfer receipt to show me that the money is being transferred now, then about one day later I should receive an email with the subject heading 'Stop Order'. This email will show that it has been sent by a government, the IMF or some other official body and it will state the following: Your fund wire transfer has been placed on hold because: 1. You do not have the required anti-terrorist or drug clearance certificate. 2. The fund requires a tax exemption certificate. As soon as we receive a valid certificate, then your funds will continue to be transferred and should be in your bank within the next 48 hours. If you do not already have this certificate, then we can arrange it for you, please just send the cost of the certificate $2,500 by Western Union money transfer using the details below: Name: Mr. Nkomo Scambo Place: Lagos, Nigeria Question: What for? Answer: Transfer MTCN No.: xxxxxxxx So I am expecting these emails to arrive within the next couple of days, because the one thing that I can guarantee with these scammers, is that there are no real funds being transferred or I would be extremely wealthy already Cheers for now Legless scam player in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20270408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Because the rains have started early here this year, so have the flying termites and I was not expecting them yet. Working at night as usual and outside on a farm, my light is the only light visible for miles here late at night, so the termites automatically head for it. I was just sitting legless at my computer with a beer last night and going over my new website pages, when it suddenly started to go a little dim, so I looked over at the neon light and it was covered and completely surrounded by flying termites, thousands of them and more arriving by the minute. There was nothing that I could do, if I switched the light off, they would all head for the only other light around, my computer monitor, so I just let them swarm around the light which is about four metres away from me and continued working at my computer and occasionally checking them. One or two ventured near me, so even though it was quite cool, I switched the fan on next to me to keep them away. Two hours later and they were still coming, the floor underneath the light was about three inches thick with swarming, dark brown bodies now, because they lose their wings after a while and all settle on the ground. I eventually finished my website work, I was quite tired and I had to switch my computer off before I switched the main light off, then I switched the main light off and quickly jumped on my sofa/bed and pulled a blanket over my body and head hoping that any termites still flying would go now and not come near me. This goes on for about two weeks now, so tonight I know that shall have them for company again, but this time I shall be expecting them and put some bowls of water under the light, so that they drop in the bowls when they lose their wings and don't swarm anywhere and I can feed them to the chickens tomorrow then. Cheers for now Legless on the farm with flying termites in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20260408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Still raining each day now, so I am limiting my internet connection time to the times when there is absolutely no chance of my modem getting hit by the lightning again. I have added two more pages now to my Reed in Asia, Asian Diaries about my life in the RAF in Singapore in the mid-1970s. Nothing much else to talk about today, I am still doing my daily SEO work and still trying to plan an escape from here, but other than that nothing unusual really. I am looking forward to going back to Penang for my next visa trip in about three weeks time and I shall probably have a couple of legless nights in the Blue Diamond hotel there. I think this time I shall also drop off in Hat Yai again on the way back to call in and see my new found friends at the 'I Red' cafe there and chat about things. Cheers for now Legless on the farm in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20250408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm The rains have started early in Thailand this year, usually the rainy season here doesn't start until the end of May, but for the last three or four days now the rain has been quite strong and starts at the same time of day everyday, about 16:00. I was caught unawares a few days ago and consequently my modem became a casualty of a localised electrical storm. The storm wasn't directly overhead at the time, but the lightning must have hit one of the telephone lines a few miles away and even though I wasn't connected to the internet at the time, my modem took the brunt of the strike and was fatally wounded. I now disconnect the telephone line from my computer when I go to bed and don't reconnect it again until the rains finish each evening, to renew my modem cost me $15 and I don't need to throw any more of my money away like that at the moment. The weather has changed here a lot over the last year, before, the seasons were fairly predictable here but this year that has changed, I think that it must be something to do with this global warming that is in the news a lot now, but not being a meteorologist/geologist, I don't understand how global warming can make some of the seasons colder here. Well, a few beers may help me to work that one out, so I shall start immediately. Cheers for now Legless logic in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20230408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I mainly work at night on my websites and also doing my SEO work for them, I am very nocturnal these days. What I have noticed recently is that I tend to get ideas for new webpages or new graphic designs usually very early in the morning when I am almost ready to go to sleep and I have to write them down or apply them before I sleep, otherwise I would forget about them. This has happened many times to me now and try as I may, during the day I just don't get any new ideas come into my brain as easily. I have tried to analyse this and the first thing that I came up with was that, during the day there are more people around and more traffic passing by and so generally more noise, but even when there is nobody around and very little traffic, I still don't get new ideas as easily as I do at night time or early mornings. Again trying to analyse this, I started looking at the other differences between day time and night time and I realised that at night I know that I always feel far more relaxed in myself than during the day, so it must be the relaxation that is helping me. Analysing this further, why am I more relaxed at night than daytime? I am still sitting at the same place legless at my computer, but then I realised that during the day I am working at my computer with a constantly filled cup of tea at the side of me, but at night time the cup of tea is replaced by a mug of beer So I have come to the conclusion now that ideas are related to beer consumption and when you reach your optimum intake of beer, then the ideas just flow through you like a river and I must reach my optimum point at the same time everyday, which for me is usually early morning. Therefore using legless logic, if I increase the speed of my intake of beer then I should reach my optimum point much earlier, so I would have to drink faster to achieve this. This seems like a very logical conclusion to me, so I shall end this post now and try to reach my optimum point much faster today. Cheers for now Legless logic in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20220408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Working with the search engines again yesterday, I was just checking the words on my webpages, feeding some of them into the various search engines and seeing which ones picked up on the words that I input. Looking at my home page for Legless in Thailand, I input the two words 'legless' and 'information' and sure enough for these two words my website appeared on the first results page on every search engine that I used. I don't advertise legless information as a service, but on the same page it has 'Legless in Thailand' and in another part it says 'Thailand information' so this just shows how the search engines can latch onto any two words on any page, wheher truly relevant to a search or not. So this got me thinking, as I always just speak my mind on this blog and use general English terms, if I were to say on here the old English expression of "I am really thirsty, I could just murder a pint of cool beer now", then if someone searched for legless murder, this page would show up in the results and maybe I could be accused of a crime that I did not commit So as I now show up on a search for legless information, if any of you need any legless information, then you know who to contact Cheers for now Legless information Guru in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20200408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I had just finished another page for my Reed in Asia site yesterday and I was going to connect to the internet and upload it, when there was a loud crack from inside my computer and it just shut down. A couple of seconds later there was an almighty crash of thunder and I thought that the electric had shut down from a lightning strike, but looking around me the electric fan was still working and nothing else seemed to be affected, just my computer had shutdown. I was thankful that I had saved everything before it shutdown, so I thought "Okay I shall just restart it, connect to the internet and upload my files now". I restarted the computer okay and then tried to connect to the internet, but I kept getting the error message 'telephone number engaged', I tried many times with the same result, so then I went to the telephone and manually dialled the same number and I got the internet 'handshake sound', so I went back to my computer and tried again and I got 'telephone number engaged'. I then knew that I had a problem with my modem, it had obviously been fried by the lightning strike. Living in the countryside, I had to get a lift to the nearest town and went to the only computer shop in town, only to find out that they were closed for the day and that they would be open again today, so no internet yesterday. I went to the computer shop again today and managed to get a modem, the last one in stock, the guy there told me that this happens a lot around here. I bought the modem, returned home and replaced the modem in my computer and I had my internet connection back again five minutes later. so my new resolution now is 'any sign of a storm nearby, take the telephone line out of the modem'. Cheers for now Legless back online in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20190408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Working again today on my 'Reed in Asia' site, I managed to complete yet another page and uploaded it to my website. The story on today's page is about discovering Singapore a little bit more, the title of the page today is Singapore our new home now. if you would like to view this new page then please click here. Nothing else of interest really to talk about today, I still have my personal ongoing problems and trying to come up with a workable idea of how to fix them, but nothing so far that seems to fit the bill. I am now just looking forward to next month when I can go to Penang again and visit all my friends there, maybe I can talk to them about it and someone can come up with an idea. Cheers for now Legless fool in Thailand, Asia http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20170408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Working again today on my 'Reed in Asia' site, I managed to complete another page and uploaded it to my website. The story on today's page is about first impressions and trying to get used to living in Singapore, the title of the page is Singapore acclimatisation. if you would like to see this page then please click here. Also, working on my usual SEO for my websites today, I try to understand exactly what the search engines are doing and try my best to analyse their results, but Yahoo in the past couple of weeks has got me absolutely stumped. The webpages or sites of mine that come up on the first page and sometimes in first position, on other search engine's results, Yahoo now has me way down in their results pages and these are pages of mine that Yahoo have shown on the first results page before for the same keywords. Today I was putting in the keywords for my legless book again and it was coming up very high on the first results pages for many keywords with other search engines, but not with Yahoo. Then I put in the descriptive comment of mine 'Legless fool' and my book came up number one on almost all of the search engine's results and this time I was even number one on Yahoo too. So I have come to the conclusion that Yahoo just has me categorised as a legless fool. Cheers for now Legless fool in Thailand, Asia http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20160408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm No post again yesterday because I was again working on a new page (asia3.htm) for the Reed in Asia section of the legless HQ website. This concerns my first trip to SE Asia and an unusual incident on the aircraft that took me there. At that time I was still serving in the RAF and I had just been posted to RAF Tengah in Singapore. This was about thirty five years ago and Singapore was still quite a pleasant place to visit and live in then. I spent three years living in Singapore and I have quite a lot to talk about, so this part of the story will probably take me about one more week to complete properly. The completed page about the eventful journey to Singapore was completed and uploaded yesterday, so if anyone would like to take a look at it then please click here. Cheers for now Reed legless in Asia again http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20150408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm After a lot of work today, I finally completed and uploaded a second page to the Reed in Asia section of my new HQ website. Like the first page that I wrote, which is mainly about Bahrain, the second page is also set in a period of time when I was still serving in the RAF and it covers the build up to my first posting and subsequent trip to South East Asia and the major personal events that were happening in my life at that time. Writing about this period in my life is sometimes quite difficult for me, because it is the first time that I have thought about this period for many years and personal emotions from that time start flowing through me, but as usual these days, more beer helps me to cope with this quite well Cheers for now Reed legless in Asia again http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20130408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm No blog post again yesterday, because I am still working on the new legless HQ websites. Yesterday I was working on the Reed in Asia section of the HQ website, this part is basically about an overall view of my life in different countries in Asia, where I have lived and worked before. Yesterday, I started with my first introduction to an Asian country and why I went there. I shall be adding to this Reed in Asia section with time and writing many of my experiences in this part of the world on there. It is still being worked on at the moment, but if anyone would like to see it now http://reedasia.leglesshq.com Well, back to my website work now and also to play with the usual scams that I have going at the moment, I have 65 million dollars due to be transferred to me this week, so party time! Cheers for now Reed legless in Asia http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20120408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm The scam that I told you about yesterday I found quite funny and as usual I have received some more today. For some reason I must look like a good target to these scammers, but I would have thought by now that I would have been on a blacklist somewhere, because they never get anything from me. I just enjoy letting them think that I am one of their usual victims and I also enjoy imagining them squirm when they don't get what they want from me and change their tactics trying to find a way to get some money from me. I am keeping a record of all of these scams, their MOs, scenarios and tricks that they use, because I have plans to write a future book about them. Playing with these scammers also helps to distract me from my own pressing, personal problems, so these scams are a little useful for me. Cheers for now The crazy legless scam player in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20100408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was awakened today by my mobile phone ringing, this is very unusual for me, because usually nobody ever phones me. The person on the other end of the line said that he was a diplomatic courier and that he was at Bangkok's Suwannabhumi airport and that he had problems at customs. My brain then started to go over some of the scam games that I have on the go at the moment and I realised which one this was supposed to be. I have had this scenario before with these scammers and usually they say that they are at Bangkok airport, but really they are in Nigeria or somewhere similar. This one surprised me a little though, because looking at my phone, the telephone number displayed was a Thai mobile number. So continuing to play their game, I asked him what the problem was, from experience I knew what he was going to say next. He said that he didn't have a required clearance certificate and that I could arrange this by sending $3,200 to a company colleague that he would send to me by email and went on to ask me to check my email now, then closed the line. When I checked my email, he had given me the name and address of someone in Uk and given instructions to send the required $3,200 to this person by Western Union money transfer. I know that this is all a scam game, even though this courier is supposed to be carrying $10,000,000 for me, so I just forwarded his email to the 'consignee' saying that if he needed his courier to be cleared by Thai customs, then he would have to sort out the clearance certificate, knowing full well that it is all just a pre-planned game to try and get money from me, but I enjoy playing them at their own game. It went quiet for a while, so I made myself my usual cup of tea and breakfast of bananas. I had already saved the telephone number in my mobile, so when my phone rang again about thirty mnutes later it was flashing the name of 'Scam' as the caller, I answered the call and the person at the other end of the line was obviously getting flustered now, he asked me quickly if I had sent the money to clear him from customs, so I just slowly replied that I had sent an email to the consignee to clear this problem, this flustered him even more and he asked me if I had any money to help, so I just casually replied that I had about $15 and asked him if that would help. He then changed tactics and said that he would have to stay longer than expected and that he didn't have the money for his expences, so I then said to him, 'Well, just pass your phone to a Thai customs official and I can sort this out in five minutes", he then asked me what I was going to say to the Thai customs, to which, I just replied that it was just between me and the Thai customs official and none of his business. At this point 'the courier' said that he would go to the customs office to arrange it and he closed the phone, that was the last I heard from him The funny thing about this story is that the 'diplomatic courier', was supposed to be English and went by the name of 'Newman Charlton' and I almost laughed out loud when I first spoke to him on the phone, because he had the thickest Nigerian accent that I have ever heard before. Well! I don't think that I shall be hearing from that scam again, but I have another five scams on the go at the same time, so I shall have some fun with them too Cheers for now Legless scam player in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20090408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was just using some of the words from my websites on the search engines yesterday, I put in the two words 'legless' and 'RAF'. These words are used on my websites because I am legless, I served in the RAF for more than 12 years and I was just checking if the search engines had registered these words for me. I was quite surprised that most of the search engines had me listed on the first results page for these words, even some of the pages from my new legless HQ website where there too. I was not surprised by the only other person listed in these results though and quite rightly for me, Douglas Bader dominated the results. Douglas Bader was my childhood hero, the famous, legless, World War II flying ace for the RAF. I personally met Douglas in the late 1960s when I had just finished studying at the RAF college, he even showed me one of his false legs then too. I never thought at the time when I met Douglas, that about forty years later I would have the same physical disability that he had already been coping with for many years by that time and I think that it is because of the influence of his attitude upon me, that I don't let my own physical problem of being legless get me down. In fact, I don't even think about it most of the time at all, I can fully understand now how Douglas just got on with what he felt that he had to do at the time and didn't even give his personal disabilities a second thought. So just by using the search engines to check my website rankings yesterday, brought back some good memories for me and prompted me to think about someone whom I hadn't thought about for a very long time and now having the same physical problem myself, it has given me an insight into the way that Douglas must have been thinking during the war and how he quite easily coped with it. Thinking about all of this 'legless stuff' has made me thirsty now. "Time for more beer!" Cheers for now Ex RAF Legless in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20080408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I didn't write any post yesterday because I am still trying to iron out all of the glitches with my new HQ site, many times I have thought that I had finished it, but then working through all of the pages, I click on a link and my customised error page appears and usually the problem is either the file extension is wrong, or it is looking for the file in a folder that doesn't exist, because on the HQ site all of the folders / directories have new names, so the files that I have copied from my other sites now reside in different folders on the new site. I still have plans to create more new pages and folders for this site, but they have to take a back seat at the moment whilst I get the site functioning 100% correctly, because this is something that the search engines check when they index / spider your site and it is very important. If anyone reading this post is interested in my HQ site, it is available now at http://www.leglesshq.com and if you find any problems whilst you are on there I would appreciate any feedback from any of you. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you, Yahoo has my HQ site in their cache memory now too. Cheers for now Legless problems at Legless HQ http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20070408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Working on my new website again today, I still have to make time to do my daily SEO work for my other websites. Today checking my search engine rankings I just typed in 'Legless HQ' to see what websites rank for these words and I got a pleasant surprise from Google again, Google has my new website ranked already. My Legless headquarters website has only been uploaded for five days and again Google has shown just how quick and efficient they are at monitoring the web as a whole. Cheers Google Legless at Legless HQ http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20050408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am very busy at the moment with the new website, but I just took a quick break to write this post. Although my new website has virtually the same content as my existing websites, the links and button destinations are completely different and also because I am relocating some of the pages it is very easy to overlook that although 'home' points to the 'index page', sometimes the index has an 'htm' extention and sometimes it has an 'html' extension, so consequently the odd one doesn't work having been relocated now. So now I am having to check through all of my new webpages and it takes a lot of time and a lot of beer to do it properly = Something that I have not spoken about for a long time is my Ramsay Hunt Syndrome 'RHS', I am still suffering with it a little but it has eased a lot, now the only symptoms are the drooping mouth and jaw on one side of my face and I am still unable to close one of my eyes properly. There has been no facial pain again for more than a month now, so hopefully it is repairing itself gradually, only time will tell! Well, back to the websites again. Cheers for now Legless with the hunt in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20040408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm When I lost my leg, it didn't really cause me any great concern and still doesn't today, I don't let physical problems get me down, just something that you have to put up with and accept. So now I am 'legless' just accept it and make the most of it if you can. I find it a little amusing sometimes that other people feel sorry or pity for my physical disability, because I don't feel any of those things for myself about being an amputee, it's just normal for me now. Living in Thailand, every two months I have to travel to Penang for Thai visa regulations and I had been doing this for a while now. When I first went to Penang, I found a good, reasonably priced place to stay, the Blue Diamond Hotel in Georgetown. This hotel also has a good food and drink area at the front and features live music in the evenings, which I enjoy, so this soon became my regular haunt when visiting Penang. The staff in the hotel are very friendly and because I am a regular visitor, fairly soon they all recognised me on sight each time I went there. But probably because they have hundreds of different guests each week, the one thing that they had problems remembering about me, was my name. So just after I received my first copy of my published book early last year, I had to go again to Penang for Thai visa regulations and whilst I was sitting in the cafe area at the Blue Diamond, just proof-reading my book, the owner of the hotel there spotted me, recognised me and came over to greet me. He was interested in my book and asked if he could borrow it to read, so I agreed and gave it to him. He then started to thank me and I could see that he was struggling to remember my name, but he glanced at the book and then said "Thank you John, I shall make sure that you have it back before you leave". I started smiling then and explained to him that John McMiken is only my writing name and that my real name is Ian, he had my book 'Legless in Thailand' in his hand, so I just pointed to it and said "Maybe it is easier if you just call me 'Legless'" and pointed to my false leg and said "You know that I am legless anyway, so it will be much easier for you to remember". So that was how my name 'Legless' started and now everyone who knows me in Penang greets me by shouting "Hi Legless, how's it going?" and nobody forgets my name anymore. Cheers for now Legless in body and name http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20030408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I have been quiet for a few days now because I have been working on a new website full time snd I have not even had time for this blog. The new website is called Legless Headquarters (HQ) and is now operational at http://www.leglesshq.com What I have been doing with this new website is consolidating all of my websites into one server for ease of use and speed for the viewer. I still have my old veteran websites like this blog and my new websites still look and feel the same as the existing ones. The time that it has taken me is because every single link on every page on all of my websites had to be changed and it has been a real legless nightmare trying to make everything perfect without hitches. It is still not perfect yet and will take some time to iron out all of the glitches that I haven't spotted yet, but the majority of the work is done now and the rest will just take regular routine maintenance. Because of the extra webspace that I have now, I have treated myself to a personal website in my new group of sites and I shall be putting a lot of personal information on there with time that I can use to refer people from my blog here to see, my new personal site is available at: http://reedasia.leglesshq.com it is just basic at the moment, because that was the last thing that I was doing before I eventually got to sleep early this morning. This blog should be back to normal now, so I shall write again tomorrow. Cheers for now Legless at legless headquarters http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20020408 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Three days ago I told you on here that I had uploaded my new Laos trip webpage to my server, well Google is finding it in it's searches already. Because I work with the search engines everyday, I am aware of their individual idiosyncrasies so really I was not overly surprised, I already expected Google to be the first to find it, but it did surprise me a little with the speed of update. With the posts on this blog I know that Google updates it's cache memory for every 24 hours, which with an active blog, this is really required and Google knows that. So I expect it now from Google with blogs, but it was a little surprising with the speed that they update new webpages too. On both counts Google is far ahead of any other search engine and has now become my standard when I am searching for anything on the web. I wish Google could find one of my friends in Bangkok to help me with my move Cheers for now Legless with Google in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20300308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm During the last year whilst I have been staying on the farm with the parasites, the one thing that they have always taken care of for me whilst pocketing my money, is that they have always kept me in beer. They have always managed to keep me in beer, probably thinking that if I have beer available all of the time then I will not check where the money is going. Well, tonight for the first time in a year, I have run out of beer, so things are definitely getting serious now I really must get out of here just as quickly as I can now, I have had no reply from my friend in Bangkok yet, so maybe I have to try to think of someone else or another method of escape soon. No cheers today Legless without beer in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20290308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Still trying anything that I can to get out of my present situation, I sent an email today to an old friend in Bangkok and I hope that he will respond quite quickly. What I need to get out of this situation are two things that I do not presently have, I need somewhere else to go to stay and I need transport to go there when I have somewhere to go to. Being legless and on a farm in the middle of nowhere now I need help to arrange these two things and because I intend to move back to Bangkok, I need someone in Bangkok to help me with these. I really need to move quickly if I can, because my pension money for April goes into my bank account on 7 April, so I need to move before that date so that the parasites that I am living with cannot get their hands on any of it. I cannot let the parasites know what I am up to, so I just smile and act normally around them, but my mind is working all the time trying to find a quick way out of this mess now. So this was my reason for attempting to contact someone in bangkok to help. ''Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!'' Time for more beer now. Cheers for now Legless with plans and schemes in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20280308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I uploaded my Laos webpage today, having finished the first draft of the page and story of my trip to Vientiane. I had to draw two maps using my graphics program for this page to help to explain the places that I talk about in my story. I tried to find the street maps of Vientiane on the internet to help, but I could not find the area that I stayed in and talk about, so I had to draw a small street map from memory and that is why it has taken me so long to finish it. I have put some information, advice and tips for others who are thinking about doing this journey on the webpage, so that other people don't have to learn the hard way like I had to. If you would like to take a look at my Laos webpage then please go to http://www.reedinter.co.uk/leglessinlaos.htm I shall try and improve on the maps later, because they are not absolutely perfect, just drawn from memory as I said before. I did enjoy my short trip to Laos and I am now looking forward to going there again in a few months time and next time I know exactly what to do, what to take and where to go, so it should be more like a short break / holiday next time. I hope those of you who take a look, enjoy the new page about my trip to Laos. Well, it is that time of day now and I have to get my first beer of the day, so I shall end this post now and get legless again. Cheers for now Legless about Laos in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20270308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Yes, the words in the title of this post today are some of the words from a classic BGs song, but they are still very true. On the internet now words are becoming very important, not just the use of business related keywords, but every word on every webpage and especially on blogs like this one. Having my own websites, doing my own SEO for them and being a writer / author anyway, I probe and research with different words, analyse the results and try to assess how this can help me and my websites. This new importance of words could easily be misused and manipulated by people now just as a means to an end, rather than being of any inherent value and this is a major problem that the search engines now have to solve. They will have to separate the wheat from the chaff and instill confidence in the people that choose to use their search engine facilities. What I have found in my research with this, is that irrespective of any order that words are entered into any search, the search engines just try to match as many words as they can with the sites that they have in their Cache memory / databases and the results are then displayed with the sites that have the most matching words at the top of the list and then working down accordingly. The syntax of the entered words does not seem to play any part in the search engine results and they tend to ignore general connecting words such as a, in, at, the, to, with, etc. To give you an example of this, if someone typed into a search engine the following words: 'I would like a good hotel in Singapore with swimming pool, music and a restaurant with oriental food' the words that the search engines would try to match are: 'hotel, Singapore, good, swimming, music, pool, restaurant, oriental, food' and they would try to match as many of these words as they can, in any order. So when the results pages are displayed, at the top of the page will first be the sponsored results that matches any of these words, followed by the results from the web search itself and because syntax does not play any part in this, then in the results you would probably get things like: ' Hotel Singapore in Florida, the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok or a pool playing room anywhere that has music and sells 'Singapore slings' and food, etc. Only much further down the lists will you actually start getting the results from hotels in Singapore that the person doing the search really wanted and all because syntax does not play a part in the search engine algorithms, only words. I analyse search engine results so that I can use words in my websites that people can find easily and that are relevant to a search. The webpage of mine that turns up most of the time for many searches is this blog and the reason for that is fairly obvious when you think about it, in a search engine's attempt to match all words entered in any search, just how many words do you think are used on my blog for this month alone? Oh well! Today's post will give the search engines some more of my legless words to play with and it is now time for my first beer of the day anyway. Cheers for now Legless with words in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20250308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Even though I finished writing my book 'Legless in Thailand' a couple of years ago now, I still read it and refer to it regularly, I also pencil in changes and additions that I would like to make in any future second edition and maybe I will rename the book in a second edition to 'A Legless fool in Thailand' or something similar! I have a lot of time on my hands these days and I use much of this time reflecting over my life and the mistakes that I have made before, and my 'legless book' I use as a reference to remind me of some of the stupid decisions that I came to before, that were mainly the result of emotionally influenced reactions in different situations. I know that it is easy to look back with hindsight objectively at some of the mistakes that you have made and many people have told me to forget the past and not to dwell on it. But, when your whole life has taken a major turn for the worse because of the stupid decisions that you made before, then I think that you should be pragmatic and learn from it. So now when any present or future situations / occurences remind you of the past, then you can use this as a signal to trigger your mind to look more objectively at what is happening at the present time and use your previous experiences to do a more careful analysis of your current situation. Foresight is not a sense that we are over-endowed with, but by being pragmatic and using your previous experiences to help you to predict what could possibly happen in any given future situation, then whatever does occur you already have many different options available in your own personal database (your brain) based upon objective reasoning, analysis and forethought, that you can use and just completely 'switch off' or block any emotions that may attempt to filter through So the above procedure is what I try to do now and consequently I spend a much the time lost deep inside of myself trying to prepare for any possible scenario that may occur. Obviously you cannot prepare for every scenario that could possibly occur, but my outlook and motto for life now is: 'always try to expect the unexpected'. So nothing ever surprises me anymore! Todays post has been quite a deep one and I felt the need to write all of this down for two reasons: 1. The realisation a few weeks ago that in my current situation I have made another mistake that was not expected or planned for, even though I do try to utilise the aforementioned techniques. 2. I have nobody else to talk to about this, so everyone reading this blog has to be bored with it. Cheers for now Legless thoughts in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20240308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I thought that I should write something in my blog again today after being away for almost a week in Vientiane. I am working on my Laos webpage now, but it is coming along very slowly, I only stayed in Vientiane for three days, but writing about it for my website is going to take me almost as long as the time that I stayed there. I would write brief details about the journey to Laos and also about finally arriving there, but then when I re-read it, somethiing else comes into my head that I should say and I start editing it again, it is the same as when I am working through my book manuscripts. Getting away from my website work now, the overall impression that I got from my Laos trip was very good, Laos seems to have a very laid back atmosphere, it is quiet and has very little traffic and is generally relaxing and peaceful, so if anyone is looking for a peaceful and relaxing place to go for a holiday then I would definitely recommend going to Laos. Trying to write about Laos objectively, I have to try and balance things, there is nowhere in this world that is absolutely perfect, so I have been trying to think about things that annoyed or upset me in Laos and I can only come up with two very minor things. The first one being that probably due to the Frebch influence in the country, Laos traffic drives on the wrong side of the road for me. My second and last complaint that I can come up with, is that the food is very good in Laos and very similar to Thai food, but the cost of eating out is about fifty percent higher than the cost in Thailand. Well after thinking for a very long time, they are the only complaints that I can honestly come up with and I can come up with about fifty to a hundred times more complaints about my own country, England. So basically Laos has made a very good impression upon me and I am now really looking forward to when I have to go there again in about four month's time, alone next time! Cheers for now Legless back in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20220308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I just returned from my visa trip to Laos yesterday and I have many things to talk about from my trip, it was quite a tiring return journey and I was exhausted yesterday, so I just feel refreshed enough to write on here today. I did a lot of walking in Vientiane and the skin on my amputated leg started to chafe against the prosthesis again, so I had to limit my walks and rest a lot of the time. Going to a country that you have never been to before is an experience in itself, but being legless in that new country was quite a learning curve for me. I learned about the border crossing and visa requirements going into Laos from Thailand, applying for a new Thai visa and the location of the Thai Embassy in Vietiane. I also had to quickly learn about the currency, which at 280 Laos Kip to one Thai Baht takes a lot of getting used to, but I developed a quick way to approximately convert it in my head out of basic necessity. The language was not too difficult because it is basically Thai and the people in general are very warm, friendly, helpful and understanding. I have decided to create a new webpage on my website about my trip to Laos, because there are far too many things to say and explain about just on this blog, so when the new webpage is completed I shall link to it from this blog so that anyone interested can take a look at it. I shall probably entitle it in my usual amputee/legless style now, like: 'Legless in Laos', 'Legless in the Orient', 'Legless in the Far East', 'Legless venture to Vientiane', or something similar. Overall though, it was a very interesting trip and the country and people made a very good impression upon me, I am just sorry that I dont own a camera, digital or otherwise, so that I could share some of the sights with you on here. Laos to me is like the old-fashioned Far East / Orient that I was first attracted to and that made a very pleasant and lasting impression upon me more than thirty years ago. The country is steeped in culture and the people are very pleasant, friendly and interesting in their own natural way, some of the attractive qualities that many other Far Eastern countries lost a very long time ago, in their futile attempt to appear 'developed' to the rest of the world. Well that is all for now, I shall have to start work on the new webpage now and I shall let you know as soon as it is finished. Cheers for now Legless in Vientiane, Laos and now back in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20210308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was quiet yesterday because I have been researching on the internet for my trip to Vientiene tomorrow. This is something new for me because I have never been to Laos before. I found many stories on the internet about people's problems at the Laos border post near Nong Khai and everyone seemed to agree about one thing, they all advise that any foreigner crossing into Laos should take US dollars with them and pay in US dollars at the border for the Laos visa which is displayed as $35 or the Laos immigration officials at the border post will try and cheat you if you try and pay with Thai baht and call for 5,000 baht or more.So I am a little fore-warned with this now and I shall take US dollars with me. Today's headline is about cats, because cats are my favourite animals. In the times before my accident many years ago I had a large house and very big garden in Naklua near Pattaya and I had seventeen cats strolling around the grounds. Whenever I sat at my computer, like I am doing now, at least one of the cats would jump up and sit on my lap until I had finished working and then they would follow me around anywhere that I went. Those were very happy days for me, but in the words of the old English saying: 'You don't know what you have got until it has gone!' this is very true for me and not a day goes by now that I don't think of those happy times and wonder why I wanted more than I already had then. I have just one Cat now that I can talk to about my troubles and she is a good listener, so it helps to take me back to the happy times that I knew before. I have to start packing and preparing for my trip tomorrow now, I shall give you a report on Laos when I get back next Friday. Cheers for now Legless and cats in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20150308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Bananas for breakfast has become a standard thing for me now as I mentioned in a post before. A hot cup of tea, bananas and sometimes a little cake, I find is very refreshing and just enough to start me off well for the day. I am usually writing this blog, eating bananas and sipping my tea, just as I am doing today. Oh! one thing that I forgot in my routine today was to put my music on, so I shall just do that now. That's better! One of my favourite songs is now playing, 'Zombie' by the Cranberries. I have what I consider quite a good collection of songs on my computer that I like, songs by: the Cranberries, the Corrs, Eric Clapton, Scorpion, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart, Ronan Keating and many older songs that I like from the 1980s. Music brings back memories for me, some good and some not so good, oh well! Time now for more tea and bananas! Cheers for now Legless and bananas with music in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20130308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I was just in the process of doing my usual SEO work today when a new development from Yahoo came to light. Now this blog has gone missing from their search results for the obvious keywords of 'legless blog', I really don't know what Yahoo is playing at this week, but their search results are going crazy. All of the other search engines are still fine, it is only Yahoo that seems to have a problem. Maybe some of the staff at Yahoo are 'legless' this week. Who knows what these search engines get up to sometimes, especially Yahoo now Cheers for now Legless in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%2012a0308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm As per usual I am still playing with scams on the internet on a daily basis and I try to remember the stories they use, so that I can play the scammers around without too much thought. Today though, I am a little confused, one email today was supposedly from a diplomatic courier that had just arrived in London with a consignment for me (supposedly millions of dollars). I thought that I could remember which scam was supposedly sending me money with a courier, so I dug out the email address and sent an email to Africa complaining to him that I was in Thailand not UK, so why had the courier gone to UK? I later received a reply from the guy that his courier has not left yet and was only leaving for Thailand later today, so he didn't understand my message. So obviously I had gotten the scams confused, but I cannot find which scam the supposed courier in UK was supposed to be from. It doesn't really matter anyway because I know that they are scams, I know that there are no real couriers and there certainly isn't any millions of dollars destined for me, but I just got annoyed with myself for losing track of the scams that I am supposed to be playing with at the moment. Both of the emails today sent me attached photos of the consignments, which I have placed below for you to see. I am just collecting all of the emails and photos for a future book that I have planned about these scammers, in my scam vault at the moment I have a collection of about 2,500 scams. Well there is one remedy for this confusion today, more beer! Cheers for now Legless with millions in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20120308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Again doing my usual SEO and keyword routine today, I was going through my list of keywords and obviously one of them is 'Ian Reed', my real name, just in case anyone is searching for my sites by name. It is just a formality, because normally I appear on the first pages of all of the search engines, but I just like to check each day. Well today I got a surprise because I can't find my page on Yahoo, a webpage that has been on the SERPs for months has now disappeared, it has not just slipped in ranking, it has totally disappeared from Yahoo. Yahoo has obviously changed something in their algorithm in the last 24 hours that has somehow caused my name and page not to register, other Ian Reeds are on there, so I am taking this personally. All of the other search engines still find me okay, it is just yahoo that has gone strange on me. I don't know why Yahoo has suddenly dropped me, maybe they just don't like the new photo that I put on my personal page Oh well! Who knows what these search engines get up to sometimes Cheers for now Ian Reed - Legless in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20110308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Doing my usual SEO work for my websites yesterday, I put in the keywords 'legless unity' and came up number one on all of the search engines. This is no big surprise to me, because I coined the phrase 'legless unity' when I opened this blog and showed my support for Heather Mills. So again, sitting back with a beer later and thinking about my keywords and results, an amusing thought came into my head and I just had to write it down on here. The very old English saying of 'united we stand', I thought that this would be a great motto for a whole bunch of legless amputees like myself and I burst out laughing to myself just thinking about a bunch of one-legged people holding on to each other, with this motto above their heads, it amused me so much that I had to have a few more beers to calm down "United we stand and divided we all fall down for sure !!" Cheers for now Legless unity for more beer in Thailand and the World http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20100308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm Sunday next week, I have to leave to get a visa again, but this time I cannot go back to Penang. The regulations here have changed 'again' and now you cannot go to the same Thai Embassy more than two times consecutively, or with the second visa you get a full-page red stamp in your passport that states 'No more visas may be issued in Penang or xxxxxxx'. So my easiest and cheapest alternative is to go to Vientienne, Laos. The problem with this for me, is that I have never been there before, so I don't know where to stay or how much the Hotels or guest houses are. I also don't know the local currency, exchange rates, or the location of the Thai embassy, or any agents that can help to do the visa for you. So this next trip is going to be an absolutely new learning curve for me and at the top of my list of 'things to do' when I get there, is to find somewhere to stay and then to find where I can buy cheap beer and check what type of beer is available there. More about this subject when the legless farang returns from Laos in about two weeks time. Cheers for now Legless farang in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20090308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I state on the intro. to this blog that the main reason for me starting this 'Legless Blog' was because of the treatment of Heather Mills in the media and that is still true, but only partially true. Working on the internet most of the time, I had seen some of the hype about 'blogs' and how 'social media' was starting to have a big influence on the web and would eventually control the web, but being more involved with my own websites and trying to promote my book on the web, I just scanned over a few posts about it, shrugged it off and then continued with my normal work. It was very much later when I kept seeing all of the links on the search engines to various blogs on the internet, that I started to take a closer look at this. I was still quite skeptical about blogs at the time, but when I read some of them and saw that many of them were criticising Heather Mills, I decided to create a blog of my own and give her a little support in what I classify as 'legless unity'. I also saw how many of these blogs seemed to be very highly ranked by the search engines, so a combination of both of these factors is the reason why I decided to create this blog. I had problems with the search engines acknowledging me when I first started this blog, even though I had linked to it from my own fairly high-ranking websites, but after a relatively short while, this blog eventually started to creep up in the search results. Being a writer now anyway, I could see that all of the words used in any blog post registers with the search engines and is used in their search for the 'keywords' input for any search. It was only then, that I saw how the power of the word was very important and that is why blogs rate so highly, because there are far more words used in any blog than there are on a normal website and this gives blogs the 'advantage' to more accurately match up with virtually any 'keywords' input. With this knowledge and knowing that the search engines algorithms are now being more tuned towards 'content' rather than just 'keywords', the blog now becomes a very powerful tool on the internet indeed. The old saying used to be, that 'The pen is mightier than the sword', well these days 'the keyboard is definitely the king', but it still depends upon the calibre of the operator in both instances. Cheers for now The Legless Blog King in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20070308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I am now actively involved with modifying my websites, but I still have to continue with my SEO work on a daily basis or my search engine rankings will fall, the SEO work takes up about six hours per day and I have a set routine that I run through. I find it much easier to work at night time, there are no distractions and I can think more clearly then. So I have now gotten myself into a routine where I just start to feel tired and my work for the night is just about complete at the time that the sun comes up here and everyone else here are just waking up and starting their day. This has become my daily routine now and I am virtually living in my own time zone and it suits me. The only problem that I have with it, is that this year the weather here in Thailand seems to have changed completely, the evenings now are very cold and because where I am staying there are no walls, when the winds pass through they really accentuate the chill factor, so I have to wear a jumper and some gloves whilst I am working now and it is still quite cold at dawn when I go to bed, so I have to wrap up well in my blankets to get warm enough to sleep properly. It gets very warm during the day and when I wake up, usually around lunchtime, I have already thrown all of my blankets off me. The one thing that helps me in this routine is the beer, I have a fridge next to my desk so that I can continually top-up easily whilst I am working, this helps me to fight the cold too that's my excuse, Cheers! Cheers for now Legless time zone in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20060308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm My URL icon upgrades to my pages has forced me to take a look at my websites objectively again, something that I have not done for a very long time now. I have been so involved with my search engine SEO work, that I have not been modifying and taking care of my websites as I should have been doing. Now I see that all of my webpages need a complete revamp, so today I started with my Ex Post Facto true short stories index page and now I have to follow up and go through all of the pages on my websites and modify them, so I have my work cut out for me for a very long time now. The modifications that I want to do, mainly involves graphic design of the backgrounds and that takes time come up with some new ideas and then hours of work for each graphic concerned. I have the time to do it at the moment, but in ten days time, I have to do my usual Thai visa trip, so I have to start planning that now too. So much for being legless and semi-retired. Cheers for now Legless with graphic design in Thailand http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20040308 http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm I haven't posted anything on here for a few days, because I was so interested in creating icons for my URLs that I haven't had the time. One of the things that I really enjoy about my computer work is graphic design, before I used to design websites for people and even company logos for some businesses , but it is something that I haven't done for a long time, before I became legless. So the last few days I have been happily creating icons for all of my webpages and deciding which icon works well for each page. So this has kept me busy doing something that I enjoy, going through all of the pages on my websites, creating the logo and writing the html code to display them. All of my icons worked well and they display if you click a bookmark on any of the pages. I have many webpages and I have put a few of the icons above for you to see. So that is why I have been busy, I have just finished now and can get back to my blog again. Cheers for now Legless in Thailand with icons http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/Legless-Blog.htm%20030308