Sorry : (L to R) Liw, Bai Por, Chompoo and Bai Mon

Hi everybody

You are family, so you get to share in the beauty and the warts and wrinkles. Just like your own family, except ours might have a few more kids. But the sweetness and the bitter alike. “The Bloom is off the rose.”

By Father Joe Maier

Published Bangkok Post, Sunday, Spectrum section, May 29, 2016.

Dear everyone

There has been lots of international media coverage of the horrible fire in a dormitory in an all girls’ school the other night and rightly so.

Dear everyone,

It’s a whole new strange and scary world. A world without mum or granny, and a world outside your own slum shack. A world where you are all alone, even for a little while.

Galong, born with Down's syndrome, was of indeterminate age. He lived on the streets and worked as a "doorman" at a low-budget karaoke joint near the Pratunam market. Always a proper gentleman, he greeted us, shook our hands and in his gravelly voice asked, "How are you?"