No regular post with a lengthy history today. Your humble host spent most of today at Phuket Immigration Office here in southern Thailand, obtaining a new one-year extension on his Non-Immigrant (Business) visa. Tomorrow, I will make appearances at the Education Department and the Labour Office for my one-year work permit renewal. Bureaucracy!
Thus, I’m much too tired to try to put together 3000 or so words into a somewhat coherent article. Finland was due to be today’s topic, which would be daunting even if I weren’t exhausted.
So, for your viewing enjoyment today I give you a stamp that needs NO explanation — the Penny Black is, of course, Scott #1 for Great Britain: the world’s first adhesive pre-paid postage stamp. At some point I will write a bit more on this famous stamp over the course of several days. For now, I just want to mention that the specimen presented today may not be in the greatest condition but it does contain my own initials — MJ (for Mark Jochim) — as the control letters in the lower corners. This was the third Penny Black I’ve bought over the years; the first I sold at auction in San Francisco during the Pacific 97 exhibition and the second was on a beautiful cover that I sold about 10 years ago after I’d moved to Thailand.
I hope to be back on my regular posting schedule tomorrow (Education and Labour tends to be a faster process than Immigration) or Thursday at the latest.
Cheers!
A Stamp A Day 
Good luck, Mark! It’s a really pleasure to own your old stamps, and I feel the same with mines. I look forward to read another great posts from you! Regards, Catalin
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