philsquest

On the Way

I am on the way. Not only in the mountains. But also in my life. I reached mid-life (what a stupid term, especially because we don't really know when we reached it). I realized that alot of what I learned over the years catch up with me and impact me for change. Change is good. I never wanted to stay in my secure little world. To be on the journey of life is never without some sort of stress or even fear. I have no idea what may come. Still I am learning so many things right no. It seems like experience and knowledge slowly comes together. This o course clashes with certain convictions as well. But in my core beliefs I feel strongly confirmed. This photo shows the Prao valley. Often when I drove through between the rice fields I felt this hope, sensed this peace that God is with me.
I don't have answers to alot of questions in my life and I feel that even though my knowledge and life experience increases I lack understanding. But what it be. I am still on the road, on my journey.

Yves Rossy - FusionMan

I know for my fellow Swiss this is probably old news. I red in the the Bangkok Post on Saturday that Ives Rossy crossed the chanel on September 26. 2008 with his jetwings. Then by coincidence I switched on the National Geographic Channel I they showed a documentary and the flight over the Chanel. It was awesome. I am so proud to be Swiss :-) For such a small country with only eight million people to come up with a person who does something like this...

Strelizia reginae

On a trip to Doi Angkhan I saw this most beautiful Strelizia. This is a very slow growing plant called the "Bird of Paradise" The picture I took is from a plant that is about 170 cm high and over a meter wide. The flowers were absolutly beautiful.

Men's challenge Weekend

Friday evening and Saturday I went to my first men's retreat ever. I actually signed up only two days before, because I have quite a hard time with deciding to bear my heart once more in front of strangers. In the past I have been in numerous seminars and conferences.

The two days were about the stages of personal and spiritual maturity in a man's life. This got my attention. I feel like when it comes to my journey with Jesus I long to become more mature and learn from others who are further on the path.

I enjoyed the fellowship and get to know some of the guys at the weekend. We had some good input and shared about each others experiences. In all it was a good time.

Working in a new village

A view months ago our team got invited by a village that was moved by the Government to a new location. This village came from the Hui Kau Laam valley. One of three Lahu Deng villages that was moved in the last five years. Most of the villages were or are involved in some drug related problems that caused the Government to take action. This new village doesn't seem to have to much to do with the drugs. There are always many problems with a new village. There is not much infrastructure except the houses where they live in. There is no water, toilets, electricity or proper roads to the village.

We started a schooling program for the children and teenagers and basically anybody who wants to come. The team teach them the Lahu language and help also with Thai. We share our faith and the love of God with them and have a meeting on Sundays for those who want to come.

The house of the village head where they were meeting got to small and a new building is needed for all the people who come. The men of the village ventured into the forest to cut the bamboo for the new building and we drove with our truck to haul the new building material to the village.

 

New Macbook?

There are rumors of a new Macbook coming out in September (Macworld issue 10/2008) It probably will have an aluminum case. I was able to fix my battered ibook G4. It has a new harddrive 160 gig. It seems to be faster as well. I found out now that my internal microphone dosn't work anymore. I guess the "book" sufferes from old age. So perhaps next year I will go for a new macbook, depending what they get on the market.
For now my battered ibook works and I am happy with it.

Update

There are times where I just kind of avoid the Internet. I get to busy with life and am to tired to also keep posting.

This week I started again with Thai studies. It's a module on Thai life. During my computer crash I lost all my iflash cards from my previous Thai studies. Even though I had a backup I somehow managed to delete this one folder. I started again too work on the iflash library. I can really recommend this program to all mac users who study with flash cards. After two month of staying away from learning Thai I was a bit rusty, but it is coming back to me quite quickly.

The last three weeks I went to the mountains every week for two days visits. Things are developing slowly but very well and I am happy with what is going on. I will post some more in the next week on that. We are working on a building project in Hui Kau Laam, the water project in Hui Ba Rai and two preschool projects. So we are quite busy at the moment.

One problem is that still our Domain name www.questasia.org does not work. The particular domain register seems to totally miss the service oriented side of business. I probably will transfer the domain name to godaddy.com where I have all my other domains and where they seem to react whenever there is a problem. Not only our webpage is down, but also most of our e-mail addresses.

It is raining alot at the moment and the rivers are bursting. There are reported floods in many places. The Prime minister of Thailand had to leave his post because of a court order. Petrol prices are down a little. We have a new fridge, a great family and I know God loves me. What more do I want.

Domain name gone?

Living in Asia I get used to all kinds of disruption. I mean coming from the perfect country of Switzerland where the people get informed when the train is two minutes late.
Here in Thailand we are used to power-cuts, Internet not working or so slow you could run faster, mail being lost, floods, no water, garbage not collected, the blocking of youtube and alot more. Still it can be annoying when things don't work. Since the first of September it our e-mail doesn't work. It is not the first time. sometimes our provider changes something without telling. But now i realized that also our domain name questasia doesn't seem to work. The webpage is down. Even though the domain name is still valid to next year.
This is probably why I have about five e-mail addresses. :-)

It has been a while

It has been a little more then three weeks since we came back from Switzerland. We are definitely back in Asia. I have been on my first trip to the mountains last week and will be on the road tomorrow for two days. I had a hard time coming back. Switzerland was so nice!

My laptops hard drive broke while we were in Switzerland and it took a while to get my computer fixed and all my data installed on it. I'm glad I didn't have to buy a new one. I want to wait for the new generation of Macbook coming out sometime in the future.

Next week I will go back to Thai studies and I will be traveling up to Fang alot more the coming months. We have several projects we want to see. I will try to update our questasia webpage more frequently on what we are working on.

Thailand seems to be in a state of tumult right now. Here in Chiang Mai we don't feel much of it yet. But if you follow the news you will know that demonstrators seized government buildings, including the Prime ministers office in Bangkok. Occupied several Airports (Phuket, Krabi and Hat Yai) for a day, and most of the railway is down. For tomorrow there is a threat that telephone, electricity and water would be cut for certain state agencies like police. I never heard of that a nation of over 67 million people can be controlled by about 10,000 demonstrators. The thing is taking on momentum.

Thailand has become more expensive. With petrol prices going up, transportation went up and so go consumer goods and everything else. With the political problems the economy will suffer as well and tourism, one of the main incomes in many places, will definitely suffer.