Well, there's a lot to catch up on. And stay tuned for "the month where everything goes wrong".

Last time we left me, me was finishing my trip through northern Thailand. I got to be at home for about a week after that, just enjoying my time off. Mostly it was playing Octopath Traveler 0, which I'm a big fan of. In fact, I managed to finish it after a few days back, so I'd really recommend it. I'd just recommend all the Octopath games, they're the best JRPGs to come along since Star Ocean and Chrono Trigger.

But it was a short respite, because it was time to go back to China for Songkran / a late Chinese New Year. As expected, we didn't do too much (except eat). We did have one outing to a place called Cuishan, which doubles as a TV set where they occasionally film things. It has some other attractions you can pay extra for, like a glass bridge or alpine slide. We just took a shuttle to the top of the mountain and walked down, stopping at some temples along the way. It's quite pretty, and certainly not anything most foreign tourists would know about. In fact, I realized that I may be the only (or one of the very few) foreign "tourists" in Qujing at all, or at least one that has lived there the longest. So I felt a sense of responsibility to tell the English internet what you can do in Qujing if you, for whatever reason, find yourself there. So I created a page on WikiVoyage, which was a fun project. I didn't know the markup language for a wiki, so now I do! And now if you or a friend ever find yourself there, you'll be able to entertain yourself for a day or two. But after that week, it was back to Thailand.

I'd imagine Cat of the Mountain Temple has knowledge to dispense

And then starts the month where everything goes wrong.

We put Masala in a cat hotel before we left, which involved "smuggling" him out of our apartment. I put "smuggle" in quotes because it's an open secret that people have cats there. I've seen many myself. So it's kind of a "don't be obvious about it and we'll look the other way" sort of deal. Well, when we were bringing him back, a new employee with apparently something to prove decided to make a deal out of it, and reported it to the manager. The manager was cool about it all things considered, kind of like "Well... now that they reported it I kind of have to enforce it." So suddenly we were homeless in a sense, because we weren't allowed in the building, and he was just in his carrier outside. I thought I could wear management down with polite insistence, but they really wouldn't budge, even for one night. So fortunately, we have amazing friends with a spare bedroom who offered to house Masala while we tried to figured out what the heck to do.

And thus kicked off a week of me trying to find an apartment ASAP. Did you know that without exaggeration, 95% of apartment buildings in Bangkok do not allow cats? I do now. I never would have thought it was such a big deal, I figured you'd just need to pay an extra deposit. But nope. Looking at my phone, I have 97 places marked. So for about 3 days, I walked tens of thousands of steps, to each of those 97, and asked 1) Do you have rooms, and 2) Are cats allowed? The final count for question two was four. Four places allowed cats. Well, now we live in one of those four. All things considered, I don't think it was a bad move. We are very central in the city now, and are steps way from a mall, metro, bars, restaurants etc.. The apartment is also a bit larger, and is all in all more comfortable than our old place.

But the month where everything goes wrong isn't over yet. Not long after we moved in, Masala started throwing up. Now, he has done this before, on a one off, because hairballs and stuff. But he kept doing it, and realized, it's time for a vet visit. The vet wasn't really sure what was going on, but his bloodwork said that his liver is going nuts, almost like he ate something poisonous to him. I felt an immense amount of guilt at this. I really went over the apartment with a fine toothed comb, thinking what I could have left out that he could have eaten. But I really came up blank. We got some medicine for him, and went on our way. Except after a few days, he was worse. So, back to the vet. They sent us to another vet, a specialist. That vet said the same, that he appeared poisoned. I was really at a low point, thinking I obviously missed something, and that my negligence is responsible for all of this. But they ordered an ultrasound to be sure.

And there it is. The dummy swallowed a toy ball. And not just recently, a toy he had and we took away when he was a kitten. This had been floating around in his stomach for months, and I guess he grew enough that finally it could enter his intestine and get stuck. Now, on the one hand, I felt an intense sense of relief that I didn't poison our cat. On the other hand, the only way it comes out is surgery. To be honest, he was in real bad shape by this point. It was evening, and the vet said we should not delay this until morning. But they didn't have a surgical ward, so they phoned a colleague, who agreed to stay open if we came right away. By this time it was around 10pm, so off we went across town, followed by a very nervous few hours to hear the news that the surgery was successful.

He stayed in that animal hospital for about a week while they monitored him. And it's not really a place for visitors, it's more like an ER. I crammed myself onto a small stool by his cage, spending pretty much all day there. I'm sure they got a little annoyed that this foreigner would take up their space, but I really didn't want to leave him alone. And I'm glad to say he bounced back without complications. He actually bounced back too well, as the vet said he should take it easy for one month. Masala didn't get that memo, because about one week after he got home he was jumping on things and running around the apartment, thrilled to be out of the vet's cage. But his recovery wasn't over yet. He needed medicine or special food every 3 hours, so it kind of put us in a bind on traveling anywhere together for a while. Thankfully after he finished one of the medicines he needed attention every 6 hours, but it was still quite inconvenient. At the time of writing he's on his last day of special food, thank goodness.

It's also back to normal at work, with the new academic year starting. I don't have too much to say about that, except overall this year I'm happier than last. As a recap, I'm divided between working at two schools, some days at one some days at the other. Between School A and School B, I liked School A and thought School B was so-so. Fortunately I've been reassigned from School B, and School C is a big improvement. Not only is it a better location, but the management is more communicative and things are organized better. I'm also teaching almost all computer science classes, which is a nice change of pace from English. Since I'm not as experienced teaching computer science as I am English, it is a little more work starting out, but I'm starting to get the hang of things and getting faster at planning. At the very least, it's flexing some muscles and developing some skills that I haven't really used in a while.

Anyway, for more interesting stuff, we did manage to slip out during those limited "Masala attention" windows. One trip was to Wang Lang market, a place on the Thonburi side of the river. I had never been there before, but apparently Ella had. It is a pretty interesting market, in that it seems designed for local tourists instead of foreign ones - tucked back into a bunch of alleys, it seems like a place that someone from northern Thailand would stop by compared to an American. But that's also what made it interesting, because it had some stuff I didn't expect. Like, a bakery selling pieces of apple pie and brownies for 10 baht (30 cents) each. I also tried salak, a fruit that I've had the flavoring of but never the actual fruit (not a fan, tastes like a jackfruit, or not-sweet pineapple dunked in alcohol). Even at 10am there was no shortage of stuff to eat, and it would be a great place to visit daily if you lived nearby.

After the market and way too much coffee, we crossed back over the river to visit the Queen's Gallery. Set up by Queen Sirikit (who recently passed way) to showcase local artists, this place is right in the historical part of town. And yet despite walking past it hundreds of times, I never knew it existed. It's too bad as well, because it was remarkably cool. I know I'm not an art guy, but this is one of my favorite galleries I've visited. It's only about $1.50 to visit, and just has a lot of personality. The art is creative without being weird, and absolutely worth your time.

And unfortunately that's about it for adventures, but now I think you (and I) are all caught up on things. That will probably change in a big way starting next week - some family members are visiting Thailand for a whole month. I'm sure there will be a lot of touristing, so stay tuned for the "what to see in Bangkok with kids" rundown.