Saturday in the Park

I changed jobs 4 months ago. Changed from a language school with an evenings-and-weekends schedule to a high school with a 7:45-3:35 Monday-to-Friday schedule. It's much nicer in that respect, as well as a few others. Language school work did have its perks, but that's yesterday's news. Speaking of yesterday's news: I went to one of Bangkok's larger parks last Saturday (since I now get those off) and had a really lovely time. I forget the name of this park, but it's on Asok, just south of the Asok Skytrain station. The park is quite big, but what's wonderful is that the larger part of it is taken up by a man-made lake. A big-old rectangular one. Nothing too fancy, just lots and lots of water. Bigger than either of the lakes in Lumphini park. I sat for a while on the promenade reading the book above left (good book) then I took a canoe out on the lake for half an hour. It was a terrible little canoe. The paddle was maybe 3 feet long and had no grip. It was like trying to J-stroke with a rake. I later noticed one of the park attendants out in a canoe, and even he was paddling one stroke on the right, one on the left. It looked, as Ben (my brother) put it when I told him later, pretty pathetic. Then on the way out of the park I found these two lovely bits of flora. The frangipani flower is ubiquitous in Thailand, and smells fantastic, the branch with little seed pods is an alien species to me. I left by climbing over the fence. They have an annoying habit of fencing in all the parks here. The end.