BFL Newsletter 2008

NEWSLETTER JUNE 08 FOR LAOS (BRIEF, CATCHY, UNCONFUSING)

SCHOLARSHIPS

Hello everyone. We hit June in the Gulf of Thailand and, assuming all has gone according to plan, the fish should have enjoyed three uninterrupted months of piscatorial fornication and the sea will be abundant with new life. As of June 1^st the big boats will be let back out to start decimating the population. Who'd be a fish? Three months of honeymoon and you end up a battered bride.

And, it's also that time of year for all you nice donors to dip back into that bottomless ocean of your resources for one more year of scholarship money. Those of you who have second or third year students on the ebb will be delighted to hear we haven't lost anyone to disease or emergency marriages, and studies are going well. The kids are all doing evening classes to prepare for next semester.

As rice and petrol prices have affected everything this year, I'd like to ask everyone for $350 (up from $300 last year) per student. If that's too steep for any of you, just pay what you can and I'll take up the slack. However you paid last year still applies unless you're sending to my account in Thailand which is now Colin Cotterill, Siam Commercial bank, Pak Nam Lang Suan, 5682179013 swift code SICOTHBK. If you've had a bit of bad luck at the track and you'd sooner not continue this year, please let me know as soon as you can so I can shop around for a new donor for your student.

For those of you desperately awaiting a student, be patient for a little bit longer. We're interviewing and vetting prospective students for Luang Nam Tha and Luang Prabang. I'll contact you individually when I have names and details for you.

Many many thanks to you all for making a big difference to a lot of people. As Siri says, "Forget the planet, save the garden."

LIMBS

If you happen to be passing Vientiane in the near future, the visitor's center at COPE is open and has become the new Hard Rock Café of entertainment in the Lao capital. Next month I'll include pictures of the new range of T-shirts, and very special brand of COPE coffee. I'm serious about doing your birthday shopping through their website

www.copelaos.org

BOOKS

Laos' own English language versions of the Dr. Siri books should be out in total (five books and a Christmas package) by the end of the year thanks to Robert Cooper at Lao Insights. The Coroner's Lunch is sliding through the presses as you read this. The initial advances should be handed over to representatives from COPE, Big Brother Mouse, and the Dr. Siri scholarship programme sometime in June. The covers look great.

And that's all for another month. I hope you're all in sparkling health.

See you next month

Best wishes

Col

Hello my fellow Lao fanciers. And where has this year gone already? One minute it’s January and we’re batting down the hatches against the monsoons, and next thing you know it’s May and the sea is as flat and uninteresting as…well, me. I am officially on southern Thai time, having written this newsletter ‘tomorrow’ for that past five days. But, for once, there is news.

The biggest of these newses is that the entire Dr. Siri series has been snapped up for a bargain price by a Lao-based publisher and will be printed in-country over the next year. English first, Lao later (see them let me back in the country after that happens). The books will be for sale exclusively in the PDR Laos at a reduced price and ALL THE ROYALTIES WILL GO TO OUR PROJECTS. A big thank you to agents Richard Curtis and Danny Baror in New York for foregoing their cuts, and a big thank you to Jessi who is allowing me to ignore the fact we can’t afford a roof for our humble bungalow and we’ll be living there al-fresco for the first year.

But it’s good news for the projects we support as they’ll get a three-way share of royalties for this year and, hopefully, regular cheques annually. They’re guaranteed a lump sum from the advances for all five books. If anyone doesn’t know who and what we’re talking about, you can find out all about Big Brother Mouse www.BigBrotherMouse.com and COPE www.copelaos.org right here. The scholarship programme we support in the north doesn’t have a website but you can read all about that over the back issues of the Books for Laos newsletters (all conveniently numbered) on my website at www.colincotterill.com.

A thank you to Emma Ward in England who steered her wedding guests away from toasters and tea sets and encouraged them to invest the money in BBM. Emma was so pleased with the result she has promised to make a similar gesture at her subsequent weddings. (Of course, I jest. Congratulations Emma)

COPE got a nice little Lao New Year present this year from Ausaid so their staff salaries should be taken care of for a while. But they still need donations for local staff and equipment. The visitor centre seems to be pullin’ ‘em in and the mugs and T-shirts are still available on-line through the website. If you’d like to send a friend a leg for their birthday, it is still possible. Auntie BBC was in town recently doing a short film on the good people at COPE so let’s hope that leads to a few donations too.

And that’s it for another month. Chantavone is still interviewing kids for this year’s intake at the teachers college and I’ll let you know how that goes and contact those of you individually who have offered to help. Many thanks to all of you for your continued support and, Margaret, you know what I’m waiting for. (Name and shame time)

All right, I confess, I can’t keep up with all this Roman numeral stuff. From now on I’ll be using the above system of bicycle inner tube registration codes beginning with the early days of the introduction of the floating valve compact Malvern Flyer, circa 1987.

Those astute readers out there (those of you who haven’t put these newsletters on the automatic trash disposal list) would have spotted that I’m playing for time here. You would have noticed that you didn’t get your regular end-of-month newsletter for March and be concerned that I’d been hit by a falling coconut or consumed by jellyfish. In fact I didn’t have anything to write. But, no news is certainly good news. The folks in Luang Nam Tha are all studying with enthusiasm and the TTS is really happy with their progress. They’re all expected to continue to the next academic year. I’ll get in touch around July for your next contributions. If you can stretch to it I’ll be asking for $350 bucks apiece as I learned too late last year that the $300 we’ve been sending was being eked out to cover everything. We added the extra fifty buckeroonies from one-off donations for the gals in Luang Prabang and it’s made a lot of difference. Don’t worry if you can’t manage it. We have reserve funds.

For those of you who are still waiting for the patter of tiny student feet, so far we have five new students identified to start the new year. Chantavone is off interviewing them as we speak. There may be more. If you’ve expressed interest in supporting a student could I ask you to get in touch and reconfirm that you’re still interested. Thanks.

Hello folks. You may have noticed everything went on hold there for a while during our move south and temporary settlement. We're nestled in now and more or less back to abnormal. As I type, the waves crunch forlornly onto the sand twelve yards from me, the sea breeze ruffles my soft, thinning hair, and Gogo the street puppy growls at a recently fallen coconut. Life II.

Chatavone is off to the TTS next week to pay the second semester fees for the young folk in Luang Nam Tha. Nobody's dropped out so far. There are five new kids on the list for next year's intake already so I'll be contacting those of you who asked to sponsor and see if you're still interested. Thanks to the existing sponsors who sent a letter and picture/pictures. I would love to send them off to your students but there is still ONE of you who hasn't sent to me. This will probably traumatize your student for life when everyone gets a letter except him/her so I'll wait for you. I won't name and shame you here in public BUT YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Check the attachment for news from Big Brother Mouse and thanks for the comments from people who saw Jessi's video of our book party excursion through her blog. The books we ordered from BBM have been collected by Room to Read and are being distributed through their network. The Aussie books continue their world tour having found their way to Luang Prabang via ass and are being translated by my old buddy Pornsawan. She'll arrange for stickers and they'll go to BBM to be distributed in their network with their own books. No more English language books, thanks.

As we've moved to rural Thailand, there are some local schools that don't have much in the way of libraries. So BFL is going Inter. I'll work on their shopping list when I go to Bangkok next month.

Cope's new visitor center opened at the beginning of the month and there are even more fun and excitingly bad taste souvenirs to baffle your friends with on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries. Check out the latest at www.copelaos.org

That's it for this month. Don't forget you can check out both of our Lao trips at Jessi's blog on http://jesscotterill.blogspot.com/ Thank you all for your continued support. Welcome to this month's new friends, some of whom didn't know they were part of our little community at all. I hope you all have a happy March.

Hello y’all. I was planning on a new professional-looking heading and format for this year but we just got back from Laos this evening and I’m buggered, so you’re stuck with all these confusing roman numerals and Verdana 16 for another year. But the good news is there’s plenty of good news. Nothing like a bit of cheer to start a new year. (Poetry…no extra charge)

We didn’t get to Luang Nam Tha this trip so I still haven’t met the new kids up there. I’m assured nobody’s dropped out yet. But we did spend a few days in Luang Prabang. There, we met the four ladies who were relocated to LP teacher’s college because LNT had reached its quota limit for those inconvenient hill tribe people. We took the ladies for lunch. They were still a bit shell-shocked about being plucked from their villages and plonked into a big (for them) city. They’ve been in LP for three months and our lunch was their first trip into the town which is only two kilometers away. We walked them down for their first sighting of the Mekhong and introduced them to the folks at Big Brother Mouse. We all joined the BBM team the next day for an excursion to a village (more later)

Apart from the BBM connection, they now have a minder in town in the guise of my good old mate Ajan Pornsawan who will be doling out the exceptionally high electricity bill expenses once a month whilst secretly keeping an eye on the gals.

Thanks to Sylvia, Melody and Nancy who have sent me letters and photographs to pass on to their students and a big boo/hiss to the rest of you. I can’t send some and not the rest so pull your fingers out.

We paid a visit to COPE in Vientiane and bought a whole skip full of assorted limbs. I mentioned Christmas shopping in an earlier missive but I was a bit too late. This time I’ve come home with several coupon/receipts for therapeutic services and equipment which I intend to give as New Year gifts to people. It certainly beats unwanted neckties and smelly stuff. Coming soon will be coupons for birthday and anniversary presents.

Some of you complained that the only Cope site you could find was a fanatical religious webpage but if you go to www.copelaos.org you shouldn’t have a problem. You can’t help falling in love with the folks at Cope. If you happen to be passing through Vientiane early March you can visit the new visitor centre with movies and mine information and a complete range of Colin Cotterill original but poor taste designs. The word on the street is that they’re fast becoming collector’s items.

Jess got a handicam for Christmas so we might even have a short documentary of the projects in Laos to throw on the website as soon as she works out how to edit the many days of film down to a neat three-minute package. 2008 has started really well for BFL and I hope it’ll be a great year for you lot, too. Renewed thanks for your continued support.