Well the lads did ok, I arrived a little late due to a severe hang over, managed to get there at 7 minutes passed nine at which point I had missed our first goal of the tournament. Even at that early hour I’m glad I wasn’t playing it was extremely hot, we had three games to play in the round robin group stage, the first game we managed to win against the Kanto Celts from Japan 2 -1.

Our second game was played around 11 am so it was even hotter at that time this one was played against the Hibernians of Singapore team, I think the sun was getting to our team at this stage because we could only manage a draw and our lads appeared extremely tired, this one ended up as a 1-1 draw.

The third game an final game in the group stage we played Aioli United FC also from Singapore this game was scheduled for the 12:30 but actually kicked off a little later near to 1pm, I think we scored the quickest goal of the tournament during this game straight from the kick off spot we managed to slot the ball past their goal keeper, although being 1 nil up it didn’t last long the team tried but these guys were a lot fitter and better prepared than our team and they eventually hammered us 3-1. There was no disgrace in losing to this team they eventually went on to win the whole competition.

Loy Krathong festival is probably one of my favorite festivals in Thailand mainly because I don’t have to kneel for hours on end and of course the graceful beauty of the celebration. Loy Krathong literally is the festival of lights, loy means to float and krathong is a small round float made from a section of banana tree trunk and decorated with fresh flowers and leaves to represent a sort of lotus leaf with incense and a candle in the middle with a freshly plucked hair from you head and a nail clicking from a finger, optionally there will be a small amount of money normally 9 Baht place in the base just for extra good luck. You’ll witness this at just about every piece of water including large ponds, lakes and rivers, people will go with their families in the evening and under the light of the full moon light the candles and incense and release their floats, making a quiet prayer as they do so. This beautiful sight will be repeated across the whole country and creates a special kind of calm almost meditative state in the onlookers.

That is until of course your Krathong is far enough away from you and then the hoards of small children destroy the master piece whilst searching for the small amount of money that you’ve placed in there, hey this is Thailand after all and waste not want not comes to mind.

The purpose of the festival is to give thanks to the water spirits and goddess of the river and ask their forgiveness for dirtying the waters. It also marks a close of the wet season. Releasing the floats is also symbolic of releasing grudges, sins and bad thoughts, so that one can start anew in the dry season.

Well next Tuesday the 20th Uncle (Big) Gareth arrives with a couple of his friends, the plane arrives at 11:30 from Hong Kong, so I’m picking them up at the airport and dropping them off at the small but private Palm Cottage Bungalows that we booked them last week.

Haven’t seen Gareth since last year so I’m looking forward to catching up with him and drinking the nights away, Namfon and Paul are also arriving next week, Paul gets here on the 23^rd So depending on how tired he is we’ll all probably end up on Bangla Road in Patong drinking the night away.

Gareth’s bringing sausages, tea bags and some Colmans English Mustard. So Pang will be pleased she’s almost run out of mustard for the restaurant.

Gareth’s staying for 10 nights, I’m not sure how long Paul and Namfon are here for, they move about a bit in country so i guess it depends on what they have planned. Regardless of the length i have a feeling that the next couple of weeks at work are going to be really difficult to get here for 9 in the morning.

Well, tomorrow I’ll be getting up at some really silly hour (8am) for a Saturday and trudging down to Karon Stadium to watch our brave lads do battle with the other teams in the Andaman International Soccer 7’s. Our team consists of these maniacs:

1. Noppaon R.

2. Adisorn D.

3. Diggi T.

4. Kilian B.

5. Ong-art K.

6. Nucha R.

7. Gernot R.

Here’s a quick run down of who they are and where they work in the company:

Noppaon R. Or Nik as we call him around the office is one of our Training Managers and I think will be play maker for the day sitting in the middle of the field.

Adisorn or Sorn, is a developer in the IT department and will hopefully be converting as many goals as possible.

Diggi, our IT Products Service Manager will be his strike partner.

Kilian another developer is in the heart of defense because as he said “I wont have to run too far”

Ongart a customer service agent.

Nucha is our Credit control Manager

Gernot is the manager of our German customer service agents and wil be the Goal Keeper

I’ll give a full run down on their performances later

I can’t wait for version two… but seriously its ok I suppose, and it will help in the future for at least analyzing what Live Search thinks of our sites.

It’s still got a way to go to feel as good as Google Webmaster Tools or even Yahoo’s Site Explorer for that matter, but they have finally got something out there and the webmaster community on the forums are busily posting their comments. As mentioned in this WebmasterWorld thread some of the terminology they are using do define SEO Terms are actually backwards.. HeHe I’m sure it’s a small over sight and version 2.0 will be fine tuned and feel great.

So not sure where that leaves me for the near future, as he’s not the only one leaving also our content manageress handed in her notice, I’ll miss our leaders guidance but when Q goes I’ll be really upset as she has been the organiser of the majority of the last six months worth of content on the website, without her sourcing the additional writers and her organisational skills we would never of had the content online and then translated, in fact I guess we would still be writing the stuff and we wouldn’t be even close to getting back in to Googles good books.

 Bye Q best of luck in the new job and I know I’ll miss you, probably by the second day of the first week

Of course every house we came across was either too small or too expensive, it staggered me at what some people actually thought was a viable price to rent their property out at. I know I’ve not looked at house rental prices for a long time but jeez some people are just taking the mickey with the prices.

To cut a long story short after trudging around 20 – 30 houses on Thursday in three different locations on the island Phuket Town, Rawai and Chalong we finally found a house in the latter. 3 bedrooms which means every body has their own space now with a walled in garden so the dogs don’t wonder and annoy the neighbours. Two bathrooms my bedrooms got an on suite, a huge kitchen, don’t know what I’m going to do with this at the moment as most of my food consumption and everybody else’s is actually done at the restaurant, and living room with a balcony attached to it so its possible to have a sun downer on the balcony and watch the early kick off (12:00pm) footie matches.

Hopefully this place will turn out fine there seems to be no problems as of yet but we are only settling in to the area and allsorts of things could and probably will go wrong we’ll take it a day at a time and see the new Landlord seems ok so I’m hopeful that we’ll not be moving again in the low season and this will be our home for a while.