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Just begging to be snapped, this is a welcoming lamp post in the Sukhumvit area of Thailand's capital city, Bangkok. This was taken with a Nokia Lumia 930 smartphone and converted from DNG RAW using Lightroom CC 2015/ACR 9.2 when I was there last month.
This was my second visit to Thailand this year to visit my ex-pat father there who is in a bad way after a massive stroke suffered last November. It's been a difficult year for a number of reasons and is my explanation for the lower than normal activity from me on my websites.
The good news is that my father has, remarkably, shown a lot of fighting spirit and despite major concerns about his prospects after a succession of medical emergencies and stays in about 6 different hospitals, his condition has stabilised and improved in recent weeks. He's still going to need 24 hour care for the rest of his life but there does now appear to be a reasonable chance of him having a meaningful and relatively comfortable future, hopefully at his home in north central rural Thailand.
Although not life-threating at all, I have also had a medical scare. Although now, unfortunately, very common and very manageable in various ways, being 53 at the end of last year and being told that you have type 2 diabetes was a bit of a shock and proved to be quite an inspiration to change my lifestyle which has seen me lose nearly 30 pounds and massibely improve my physical activity and fitness. Last week I walked 50 miles, for example. I am managing my condition extremely well (my last blood test was slap bang in the normal range for blood glucose) without medication, just through diet and exercise. I could bore you senseless about my diet - low carb and high fat (LCHF) and, against old-school indications, my cholesterol - already not bad - has noticeably improved.
Despite not being very visible in all this time I have been working behind the scenes and a lot has happened to the back-end of the website, including an update of the server OS, some new anti-spam/hacker measures, a new ad server and updates to many of our server applications. I also found a little time to upload some photos from my earlier Thailand trip, link here:
..and from my visit to the Goodwood Festival of Speed:
Last but not least I owe a massive debt of thanks to Pol, John Perriment and Graham Parry for keeping an eye on things while I was distracted and continuing to be fantastic inspirations and sources of great support!
Ian
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