Eureka!

Amid the bender of Harry Potter movies--on which there is much more forthcoming--I had one of the most fascinating experiences in a pig's age: I learned to read.

"PadPakGung"--fried peppers with prawns. And from thence I've been transcribing the menu from the little Isaan stall across the street: it's an F4 sheet with about two hundred items.

Talk about fascinating: I know many of the dishes in farang transliteration, so it helps with sounding out the characters. On the one hand, there's the extent of the menu: half a dozen sizes and varieties of beer right at the top, followed by twenty five soups and three dozen salads (little wonder I get along with these folks). Then sausage, lime cured whatnots, a dozen-plus types of lahb, and an entire column of stuff I'd never heard of but managed to sound out.

On the other hand, it has helped open the printed world: I still miss many letters, especially in the heavily-stylized fonts, but I still manage to catch a goodly number of letters, and each one gets me inordinately excited: Look! It's G! an N! another G! one of the four types of T! an R!

It's invigorating and inspiring, and the cool thing is that I'm now a language teacher. Here's hoping I can impart some of that to my students.