Peter in two + one (originally posted November, 2020)

A favourite 

I had planned to write about an ancient poem that has long been one of my favourites, but when I read Num's comment about it, cheese seemed a more interesting topic to discuss. The option of changing our minds is one of the advantages of more relaxed writing, and typically produces better writing. 

My fridge this morning 
Click them to view images full size

Cheese. I love it. I've always loved it. As my last name says, my family ancestry is Italian, so from the earliest I can remember, our fridge had a good selection of cheeses. We had cheese with at least one meal a day. When I got home from school as a child, I didn't drink a glass of milk: I cut myself a thick slice of cheese. The rural area where I grew up with my family had a lot of Italian immigrants, so there were always delicatessens selling a good variety of tasty cheeses, from creamy, soft, blue Gorgonzola to hard, strong smelling Parmesan, and lots of others in between. And the rich variety of immigrants who came to make Australia the nation it is today ensured that solid demand led to a supply of local cheese makers. There are now many industrial and artisanal cheese makers in Australia, producing Australian versions of everything from Brie and Camembert to Stilton, cheddars, and more. One of my favourite producers is the King Island company, which seems to have particularly happy cows if their cheeses, cream and other dairy products are any indication. On every visit to Australia, King Island and other products feature at the family meals my brothers and sisters put on. 

When I first moved to Thailand, cheese was something I missed a lot. Unless I went to the Oriental Hotel and a few similar places, it was impossible to get a good range of real cheeses, not the sort of synthetic cheese you get in the cheese sticks that Num likes. (Sorry, Num, I just can't love them.) Thankfully, the cheese supply in Bangkok is now excellent: Foodland has a decent basic range of cheeses, Tops has a good range, and places like the supermarket at Paragon sell most of the great cheeses from around the world. These days, there is always cheese in my fridge.  

This is 370 words, which is bit more than I had planned, but it's a topic I love, and our goal here is to introduce ourselves, so I've managed to talk about my family background, my life in Australia, and my history in Bangkok, all by relating them to cheese. Thank you Num for suggesting that much better topic than the ones I had thought of. 

Phing's suggestion to include a photograph or other image is excellent. We are writing for fluency here, not formal essays, so relax and have fun. Photographs help that. Because the writing is still the main communicator here, after inserting them with the insert image button, I usually format my images to be small and on the left of the text, but play around and see what you like. You can use the "Undo" button to undo as much as you like and try again. 

____________________________________ 

A second favourite

Loy Krathong night 2020, Surawong

Its camera is one of my favourite tools on my current smartphone, which is one of my favourite devices. Despite some pressure from the young son of a friend, who is hoping to inherit, I haven't upgraded my phone for two years now, so I've still got Samsung's Galaxy Note 9+, which still does everything I need perfectly well. But the camera particularly impresses me. 

Orchids on Surawong - 
four photographs walking home

I was an early adopter of mobile phones, and got my first one last century. Since switching to smartphones, I've had Samsung's Galaxy phones for the last ten years or so, and they have evolved enormously in that time, especially the cameras. The phone I had ten years ago could take photographs, but could not compete with real photography equipment. I'm sure that modern cameras are still better, but for my purposes, and my eyes, the phone that almost always sits in my shirt pocket or on a surface next to me can now take even better photographs than the heavy, bulky SLR cameras I used to use. This morning I whipped out my phone to take a photograph of my fridge - that's not to special, but a few days ago, as I was walking home on Surawong with the day's grocery shopping, I saw some stunning orchids in bloom; with two bags held in my left hand, it was no trouble to whip out my phone and take some photographs with the other hand. That is impossible with traditional camera equipment. Now, I often take a shot as I'm walking around. Most of my photographs are rubbish, but every now and then I grab one that I really like, and it's the ease of having a great camera on my phone that makes this possible. 

Imperfection
 - this morning

But I have to admit, having played with Samsung's latest Galaxy Note, I'm seriously impressed with its camera capability, especially the zoom options, although there are no serious imperfections in the two-year-old phone I have, which accurately recorded a personal imperfection a few minutes ago. It's a difficult decision whether to upgrade this year or wait for next year's even better phone to arrive. I could ask Ea, but have 99% confidence that I can correctly predict his answer. 

 

____________________________________ 

Not a favourite

Sometimes my Thai friends are surprised when I tell them that one of the reasons I like living here is the climate. It's never cold, and that's great. I loved living in Sydney, except that for about six months of the year, it was too cold, and for a few months every year it was very cold. My family's home is further north, so it's a bit warmer, but I time by annual visits to avoid the cold. Songkran is usually a good time to visit: it's very hot in Thailand, and there's water every where, but Australia is entering autumn, so it's pleasantly cool, but not actually cold. In fact, I think that in the last 25 years I've only visited Australia twice during winter. I had to buy a new wardrobe to do it. I think it's only twice in the last ten years that my overcoat has come out its bag in my wardrobe to keep me warm when I've been in Australia. 

I know that compared to many places, Sydney is not really that cold, but I still prefer a warmer climate to live in, although air conditioning is also a very good thing. 

____________________________________ 

Conclusion

Since each section is an independent introduction to me, its hard to come any clear conclusion: there is no thesis to restate, and no obvious main idea that has been supported — not surprising since this is not an essay. Perhaps what I realised this writing this introduction, especially as I was writing about cheese and cold weather, is that what different people like and dislike can be surprisingly different.