another one

There were security checks in NST, BKK passport, BKK boarding, Tokyo, SFO passport, SFO domestic, SFO boarding.
When I unpacked my backpack to wash the mold out (hey, look, it's orange and doesn't reek!), I found my pocket knife, a lighter, a razor-based pencil sharpener, and an x-acto knife in the front pockets.

Exploring ironies

So here we are with Thailand wrapped up. I could see returning one day for a vacation--my stock line is, "Great place to visit, extremely difficult place to live." All the same, as I flew out of the country (and then on across the pacific), there was a degree of solace in imagining all my numerous flushings getting ejected over the Thai countryside. Even over the middle of the north Pacific, those gut bombs were bullseying houses where people were cackling, "HARRY POTTY!"

When I got to the airport after a week of snow with highs in the 20s, the 90 degree air was an assault, and the 95% humidity just about flattened me--from a couple of chilly days in uncomfortably cool aircon to standing in a hot shower.
It took my boss, who'd agreed to meet me at the airport, 45 minutes and three phone calls--"Hey, I'm here/okay I'm coming" "Now I'm coming, really" "okay, this time I'm in my truck and actially rolling, so I'll be right there"--during which time three different mototaxi drivers came prowling with, in this order, "TAXI TAXI! Haha, you same same Harry Potter! Where you go? Koh Samui? Eh? Samui?" (Full moon party island.)
I actually answered the first one by telling him, in Thai, that my friend is coming to take me to my home in the city, and he spent a good ten minutes sitting on his bike, waving people down to point at the talking Harry Potter.
I played nod and smile with the others.

We went straight to the big boss lady, where I collected my bonus and left with the promise of a return in April. Next stop was a bank with Saturday hours, and I cleared my account. Enroute to the main campus to clear out my desk, my boss said, "Damn, I'm starting to sober up. Mind stopping to eat somewhere?"

I had the fortune to see all of the Thai lead teachers/supervisors, each of whom said a close variation of, "Great to see you! You look so much better! You start on Monday, right?"
Oh the ironies.
"In April, the new term, once my lungs are healthy again," was the stock reply.
But how fortunate to catch all of them and leave on good terms with an expected return.

And then the packing.
Not that there was a lot. I shipped two boxes home and traveled with a great big rolling suitcase, a large carryon, and a laptop bag. It was a matter of unearthing stashes and discard piles of things that I'd accumulated to help keep going--various drug cocktails to treat various maladies and accidents, salves and balms gadgets and distractions. In a sense, it was heartening to go through the collection and know that I have such tools in my coping box, honed by knowledge of how to avoid ever getting into a similar situation. It was hard, though, when I eventually unearthed things (expectations) I'd taken over: the tent, ultra-compact mosquito net (just imagine tossing out a pad and bag and spending the night with nothing more than a mosquito net!), headlamps, rechargeable batteries, a handful of paring knives and a sharpener.
What killed me was finding the various notes, letters, and packaging sent from home. To see that much concern and worry directed straight at you is beyond humbling. In the context--here's half of a package of pain pills my boss gave me, saying, "we used to call these Gumby drops--take one with a beer and in half an hour your legs feel like Gumby," and here's a note explaining how to take the pancreatic supplements shipped from stateside. Here's an account/ledger book with alternating squares filled in dozens of schemes of colored pencil, and here's a book on written by a man who used a natural/raw sort of diet to get out of similar physical/intestinal circumstances.
What makes me especially sad is the likelihood that my time in Thailand planted only worry, heartache, and wear on those back home.
For me, even now, even though I've lost great swaths in a haze of un-remembered discomfort, I can say it was a positive experience because I learned so much in such a relatively benign culture.
Consider: I did some things that frustrated the hell out of some students and actually got to some parents and sent a flurry of calls to the English Programme big bosses. I didn't learn about them until long after when my foreigner boss mentioned some parent being up in arms, "like she was with you."
On the one hand, my big boss lady stood up, against the mothers and against the administration that didn't think I could hack teaching in the Regular Programme, and the result was an alternate assignment with the same pay, same hours, same contract, same security. There are a lot of places in the world where similar complaints from junior or doubts from on high would be, at the very least, a ticket out of the country tomorrow morning at the latest, if not a seizure of assets and incarceration/house arrest.
It's an easy thing to say, "teach what you're expected to teach in the customary manner," just like it's easy to say, "Enjoy good health."
It's something else to experience, say, drilling the students to memorize the answers to the multiple choice final exam for three weeks, or to suddenly not be able to walk without extreme discomfort.
I've learned these things, and so much about how to survive in trying circumstances, and I've made a couple of great discoveries: I love teaching 4th grade, and I love the potential of teaching abroad.
Ultimately, I'd say my experience in Thailand was fortifying and will help me lead a fuller, richer life down the road.
My worry is that the same experience brought nothing but winnowing, graying worry to those back home.

Regardless, it happened, it's done, I don't ever have to go back, and I'm better equipped to go forward.

Here's another one: the pulmonary infection wasn't TB or some exciting fungus, but rather an extremely uninteresting and normal respiratory bacteria that was able to get through the depressed immune system and take hold.
Love it.

From Thailand

I've been back in Nakhon for almost half as long as the time it takes to get here (consider that my photography equipment, computer [and backup files], and emergency cash would--in isolation--more than offset the price of the airline tickets). My farang boss offered to pack and ship everything, but considering that I've accumulated a trunkload of trinkets to teach Thai tots and have no vision of how such things could experience practical utility outside of this country, the ease with which something might disappear, or the probability of something being broken in the process of negotiating out of Thailand's post office to it's American peer and to my house unscathed, it seemed worth the trip.
Still, it's been tough getting packed. I didn't realize how much I've accumulated. A lot of it is getting jettisoned, but there's also a lot I'd like to bring home and incorporate in a future life. My speakers/subwoofer are large and important, and while they didn't cost that much, a replacement would. Likewise the pens/colored pencils/pigmenting supplies and the running shoes I brought over. It'd be one thing to abandon a wardrobe of $5 dress shirts and a pair of $20 shoes if I were returning to a lucrative job, but that's just not the case. Which is compounded by "excess baggage" charges.
United charges $70 for a second checked bag, Air Asia charges about $15, and each gets astronomic if a bag is over 20 kilos. I'm already shipping some books, and I'll ship enough clothes to keep the bags to weight specs. So while it seems unlikely that I'll be needing another pair of running shoes, a greater variety of neckties, or shiny spider-weight dress shirts in the next month or so, it seems foolish to abandon them in the face of triple-digit-dollar charges when I can ship them via the rough road for something around $10.

It's a melancholy sort of packing: on the one hand, dozens of pirated kids/comedy DVDs are a reminder of the escapism from the daily grind. Looking at it, most of what I have is a way to get away from daily life. On the one hand, it's sad to see the detritus of so much desperation and discontent. On the other, it's affirming to realize that I've made it through and developed defense mechanisms in case a similar situation ever happens again.
What I hope more than anything is that I'm smart enough to avoid similar eventualities.

It's also been affirming to see the people: without exception, those whom I respect have assumed I'm here to teach, or will resume my post soon. The rest cackle "HARRY POTTER!" or point and stare.
We won't get into the necessity of carrying tissue and sanitizer.

On the one hand, it's sad to leave a place where the living has such potential to be easy. But on the other, Mr Wizard, beam me the fuck out.

Market-driven products

Hard to imagine this flavor of Lay's potato chips doing well in the states.
Kinda like crab curry Pringles.

On my new favorite road, and adventures thereupon

Funny to have so recently written about the WRX switch short circuiting rationality.

I have a new favorite drive in the world. It's a sidetrack of a back route down a sleepily forgotten part of the Sierras. It leaves the Tahoe basin at the southern end--not such a bad drive in itself--and wraps around the tallest of the basin's mountains before climbing up and over a beautifully barren and rugged pass to drop 8000+ feet to the valley along an emigrant route.
From lake level, where the trees are anywhere from still-green to gold to bare, the road climbs up above the color line to the painfully crisp air of late autumn with panoramic views first of the lake and then of Hope Valley, where two narrow lanes of faded and cracked asphalt wind around soft marshes, pasturelands, and through golden tunnels of aspen. At the highest point, there's a construction delay while they blast the roadway wide enough to give full sized vehicles wiggle room around a turn.
For some reason, I was impatiently peeved when I pulled up and learned it'd be close to two hours before I could get through the construction zone. And then I remembered that I had nowhere to be before dusk, so I took out my crosswords and spent the time sitting in the sun with high-Sierra air blowing through open windows while listening to some interesting music--a Hovhaness omnibus from the library--accompanied by distant blasts of dynamite. What more could you want?
After the construction, I was behind a camper doing at most 40, which had me well conditioned by the time the emigrant spur branched off the main highway.
For the first while, the road was rough and patchy around blind corners of erratic and varying severity punctuated by a general descent but without the stability and predictability of a steady, bulldozed incline. Doing 40 was plenty.
Then the turns opened up and it was just stupid fun--good enough visibility to see what and who's coming, and just enough of a descent to make it exciting even when cautiously approaching a turn (and come winter, I'll wonder why my traction isn't exceptional).
So I was cruising along, not necessarily fast but in a flurry of screeching tires and stupid smiles, when the road straightened out along the top of a ridge. I could see well over a mile of perfectly straight roadway without turnouts or spurs dropping at maybe 4%.
The WRX switch flipped.
I dropped a gear and dropped my foot.
It felt like pushing an airplane into a nosedive.
I glanced down after shifting back to fifth.
There was a wettish sound--imagine dropping a jellyfish onto wet sand from head height--as my mind sorted out the presence/absence of ones and zeroes.
Then there was a grunt as I realized that I've flown a number of airplanes that will not willingly go that fast.
And then I got enough revs built up for the turbo to really kick in.

Fortunately, Stupidity Straight fed into a series of gentle turns, and I had ample opportunity to leisurely drop a couple multiples of the speed limit. And as the wind dropped from thunder to roar to bellow, I heard a strange sound--it was about like a police siren, only an octave too low and with variable pitch and duration.
This does not do one's cardiovascular system well, even at a sedate 85.
Nothing wrong in the gauges, nothing visibly smoking or unhappy, no secondary signs or symptoms from the car, but this strange sound kept on.
Just after I decided I'd killed the turbo and keeled over, money-wise, the noise died in an explosion of percussion from the speakers.
It was whale song in a Hovhanness composition.

The trail ejected me onto a county road that wound around pastures and plots, through small-time communities with single-building schools little chanced in mindset or appearance since the gold rush. Block-by-block stop signs halted progress, tractors and bikes and costumed kidlets turned most of the countless blind corners into potential news stories, and I felt great relief at being one in a line behind a school bus.
And then I was suddenly in Placerville, on a four-lane freeway, ejected into the other California, the one marred with congestion, patrolmen, pollution, overpopulation, a global audience and nearly-universal recognition as just about the biggest, richest, most progressive and proactive, welcoming and enabling place in the world.
If only we could make it live up to the hype....

The thrill of the old

I love my car.
We all know this, but it must be reiterated.
I REALLY love my car.
It's not the most practical, namely because it has the little boost gauge measuring how far from straight thinking I'm getting as the turbo scream intensifies, and the turbo scream that can itself completely disconnect my rationality, and then I'm shifting out of 3rd gear and doing 80.
Or I'm driving home from the south, around the hairpins and switchbacks, and suddenly the turbo scream modulates to tire scream and the thunk of groceries-turned-projectiles placed unsecured with the heartfelt resolution to not, in any way, allow the boost gauge to flip on the mentally-disengaging fun switch.
But it always seems to fail. It's like asking a mother to ignore the screaming of her newborn--she might be able to put it off for long enough to take an embarrassing picture of a screaming face, but it just can't be ignored.
Even when I was fresh back from Thailand, driving Hwy 20 in the first downpour of the season, and scared the b'jeezes out of myself coming around a turn in a cloud of hydroplaning spray and smack into the stare of a deer in the other lane. It was a terrible moment, realizing that even if I'm staying in bounds while pushing myself, the road, and my car to the brink, what'll do me in is another driver or a deer in my lane, and if I'm already right on the brink, I would turn into the yahoo who T-boned me. It scared me enough to relax and enjoy the rain and fog in the redwoods, right up until the fog lifted and I had enough visibility and space for the turbo scream to flip the fun switch and then it was back to the first step of hell-for-leather.

Here lies the true thrill of the MG TD.
From miles away, it looks spindly with the narrow tyres separated from the long, narrow bonnet by half-melon lights, low-slung suicide doors, exposed radiator cap, and chrome bumpers too low to do much good against anything harder than the aged-wood frame.
From a greater proximity, "rattletrap" is a likely sensation--the doors are probably held closed by a jerry-rigged contraption (or just bungees) that also holds on the dash, from which dangle wires that can be contacted or disconnected by hand because the buttons/switches in the dash no longer work, and the levers and linkages and rods and rails are visible through the carpeting.
Once you've climbed in, secured the doors, climbed back out to track down a pillow to keep your backside above speedbumps, back in, re-secured the doors, negotiated the pedals designed for an early-tweenie's feet, deciphered which knob is the starter, pulled off the dashboard, secured the dashboard, had the starter knob come off in your hand, determined which wires it's supposed to connect, figured out how to simultaneously get contact in the ignition and starter wires, and the engine actually starts, you feel pretty damn good.
Then, to get your feet disengaged from the pedals and eventually engage the transmission, by the time you're moving it feels like a victory.
By the time you're in top gear and screaming along at 40, the steering wheel jumping almost as wildly as your insides, wind battering your ears, the road racing visibly past inches from your bum, the transmission screaming in protest with your left shoe wedged around the steering column to keep the dash intact, your right shoe melting in the blast from the engine compartment, your knuckles are white and your fingers are numb despite the weather, and that 40 MPH is a helluva lot more hell-for-leather adrenaline than anything you can find in a new car.
Even the time I tried to floor out my car and scream through the top of 4th into 5th and got too scared to keep accelerating into 5th--there are some things that are stupid enough to flip off the fun switch--even that adrenaline pales at the prospect of getting the TD into third.
How refreshing, how empowering to drive like hell and feel relief when the speed limit drops back to 25, to drive flat-out without the paranoia of avoiding a ticket.
And that's the key, the contrast between the wonder of modern technology, the magic of a vehicle that floats happily along at 120, and the grounding reality of how fast you're really going WITHOUT having to meet the asphalt. But that's another story.

Sent from Candid Brutus the iPad

On medicines

Here's a good one:
I need a chest CT scan.
Local hospital: $7500
Sutter Roseville:$3500
Reno Diagnostic Imaging: $785
Open System Imaging (Chico): $320+$50 booking fee

On the one hand, how screwed is the system when the local place is 20 times more expensive than a place three hours away?
How screwed are we that we pay it?

Then, how would it be possible to sidestep the insurance/profitability end of things? As long as insurance companies are willing to pay for it, why would the hospitals charge less? And as long as we're too scared to go without insurance, why would the insurance companies not pay?

Scary stuff.

On homecomings

I've been looking forward to the flight back home to write and reflect, erm, on home.
How fantastic to come home on vacation, and know I have my life and job to go back to at my other home. Even better, I've done the things I hoped to: visit family, drive my car, drive my car, sleep under the stars (REAL STARS! YOU CAN SEE THEM!), see family, and go to an American doctor for a checkup.
SCREEEEECH!

I gave the doc my list of questions. He went into triage mode: "What do you want to talk about first, because this list will take all day and I can't do that." (God bless American efficiency)
It turned out to be moot because as soon as he put his stethoscope on my back his eyebrows went up and he started speaking much more quickly: How long have you had this wheeze? Are you out of breath? What happens when you exercise? What do you cough up?

My cough has improved considerably since coming home, and the phlegm has gone from dark brown to white, so I didn't think much of it--this is what happens when you walk in a cloud of unfiltered exhaust and breathe smoke from burning trash piles of primarily plastic and styrofoam.
The doc didn't see it quite that way.

How nice to understand instructions from the X-ray tech!
And then to understand what the doc is talking about while interpreting the films is, well, nice but without carrying relief.
It could be something scary, terrifying, or terrible, so I should come back in a couple of days after the doc consults with a radiologist and pulmonary specialist.

This is not a comfortable anticipation.

"probably not tuberculosis, but it could be a fungus or parasite. Or cancer, but that's not likely at your age.
"after consulting with the radiologist and pulmonary specialist, we are all in agreement that you should postpone your return until we know what this is. You'll need to get a CT scan and then probably a bronchoscope, and then we should have an idea of how to move on."

So there's more waiting.
And how fortunate I am to wait in such a beautiful place as the fall colors erupt and the critters go crazy, and how wonderful to trust the medical community and be able to ask and answer, and how great to be making progress in identifying and resolving whatever it is that's set up such a roadblock to wellness.

Sent from Candid the iPad

On communications

Suffice it to say, home is glorious.

There's an odd bit, though: cellular communications.
My mom was kind enough to buy a temporary sim card for me, as I did in Nepal-in part safety, in part connectivity, and to a great extent, an unwillingness to revert to pre-cellular life.

In Nepal, a guesthouse guy took me to a friend who hooked me up and I had a sim card for my SIM 2 slot (Thai phones have one sim for the big wife and business, one for the little wife and pleasure), and I was set to go.
Had I gone to Cambodia, I would've been covered by 4G throughout the country. In Nepal, it's enough to get reception qt 20000 feet in places that regularly have power 2 hours per day.

First there was no way to buy a sim card. Then there was a sim card but it wouldn't work with my phone.
Recharge the phone I had before I left, and the sim card registers. Great.

But it only works in the middle of developed areas.
At home? Sort of.
In Fallon? Emergency only.
Fernley? Dayton?
Same.
Reno, Carson, S Tahoe, okay.
Anywhere in between? Fat chance.

In Thailand, I've found one place without cell reception: in a river raft, between the banks, deep in the jungle. But get up on the bank and it's back to full bars.
Amazing.

Sent from Candid the iPad

From Tokyo

In Tokyo, where the security snake lines run in oddly geometric patterns. But at least they're lines, right? And no screaming or durian. Although why I have to get off the airplane to go through security to get back on is beyond me.

Evidently, there's snow in my forecast. Be interesting--my lips and hands are chapped after 6 hours in an airplane.

Sent from Candid the iPad

On homecoming

It's happened. I'm in Bangkok. With my tuba and luggage intact.
It's still possible for a motorbike to knock me off before I get home, but it would take a three story flight and busting through a couple hundred feet of densely packed airport space.
It was a good moment when the low angle escalator, on which my tuba scraped at both sides, dumped me out without me being prepared enough to push out past the loading ramp and people got to stack up behind my bumping and scrabbling. One of the good things about Thais is that it doesn't mean anying as they laugh at you.
I reread one of the books about living in Thailand. It's funny that sme of the things that burn me most are what he loves. Farang are expected to pay for everything--out with the guys, out with a girl and her family, out to the family compound and there's a wedding/funeral/anniversary/reception/birthday requiring a generous cash envelope (labeled)-- and double charged for normal services and labeled a bad person if you say, "here's what the last guy paid" because it is a mark of esteem and honor to be asked to pay. They are not fleecing you but paying deference to your superior status.
Thais have spent a few hundred years isolating themselves from muddy cross-culturalism, so no matter what, you will never be a part of the culture--your best hope is a degree of tolerated novelty. The good part is that you can get away with doing absolutely nothing and not lose face. Or you can bust ass and take a ride out with the next tub of dishwater. It doesn't matter what you do or not because ultimately you don't matter.
For hundreds of years, Thailand has had a phenomenal literacy rate so people could read and memorize monastic doctrines. Not so they could think about them. Learn the words, leave the thinking to the great ones. Otherwise you'll get a headache.
And this is a good thing?
It seems it's easy to get laid or drugged or held in high esteem, even if not accepted or regarded, and that's what makes it a great place to live.

It's good to be getting out, getting a check on things.
In the airport bathroom, there was soap in the dispenser and I found myself reaching for my travel kit to top up my soap bottle. And when there were paper towels--REAL PAPER TOWELS!--without thinking about it at all, I grabbed a large handful to stuff into my bag. There are places where people would think that odd.
Or there was the last quarter of the term. For EV3 I had the students copy the final test questions and answers in their notebooks. We spent two weeks reading through. For the last week, I had them take the final test and we reviewed the answers.
40 questions, 15 to pass, and I still had dozens of kids getting below 10. And As i was fluffing 10 s and 7s up to 14 or 15' I was thinking, 'too bad one of the Thai teachers will have to stay to retest next week. I'd give more accurate marks if they just caned the kids.'
How much is wrong with this picture?

Very, very good to be going home.

Sent from Candid the iPad

On Packing

Tomorrow, I leave on a three-week visit home for the first time in well beyond a year.
After an exceedingly dramatic afternoon trying to track down a re-entry visa and dinner, I started to pack: a tuba, a duffel, a backpack (that I want to keep but not necessarily with me) and a briefcase sized shoulder bag. It took half an hour, although the room-keepup around it took an hour plus.
How fascinating to find the notebook I was using when coming here--pages and pages of notes on what to expect, what equipment would meet those expectations, checklists for interview (PAH!), for personal comfort (DOUBLE PAH!) and job security (here I just choke).
Only one bag, the shoulder bag, is intended for a return trip. It holds Candid the iPad, my passport, a journal that came from Assisi, and a tube of toothpaste I've become fond of. Note: tuba; duffel with backpack, tent, books, and some souvenir whatnots; backpack with some delicate/to-be-preserved insulation, a few presents, and medications, are not intended for a return.
Otherwise, I plan on bringing back new socks and boxers (each of which cost twice as much as they do stateside and last two months at best) and some scans of kids' books (think: Hand Hand Fingers Thumbs). And a harp.
It would be nice to buy some new pants, but they don't make pants my size, and if I bought a pair even close to fitting, my goal would be to outgrown them as soon as possible.
What's fascinating is to contrast the person who spent more time creating interrogative/dubious lists than it took me to pack, all told.
And what I wonder is which, if any, monkeys will find purchase .

On growing up

It's interesting to find myself on the eve of a trip home. While I've been hearing that the only way I'd get out of here is in a body bag for a good 14 months (and if that's what's getting straight to my ears, imagine what other people are hearing), there was a definite resistance to a homecoming fortified with 'and then what?'
The interesting part is that after enough months of fighting to be here and make it work, fighting to let go of the illusion of safety and security, fighting to get up and going on my own swollen ankles, tearing up at the thought of my dog and telling people 'it is just me, on my own, just me, no, just me,' to keep from crying at the thought of fishing with Dad, Dottie's steaks with a peacock serenade, sitting on the sofa with Mom, listening to Darrell's music, after ages of being ready to drop everything--EVERYTHING--to catch the next flight home if only I heard 'here's how to move ahead and reconstruct a life' instead of 'you're killing us with worry so get your stubborn ass home you ingrate!' after that hurting and enduring and yearning, I realize that there was also much growing.
When I left, I was very much 18, having spent the intervening decade in/around college. There was never a break from the seasonal lifestyle going back to, oh, kindergarten. There was never a need to figure out how to go about establishing my own nest when there was either school or the place I love and revere and had the fortune to grow up exploring.
Now I'm in a different place. I'm not out to build a nest, certainly--'hmm, do I go toOman or Peru?) but I realize that the place I think of as home is not anymore. Much as I dislike the thought of some punkass dude with jackhole friends living in my room, much as I wish I could babysit the dogs and snowblow Mom's driveway, that's not the reality of my life anymore. One day I hope it will be again, but for now I need to be where I am, occupied as I am, trying to find out who that I critter is and what it's after.

There's the idea of the Neolithic rite of passage being a lonely crawl through a dark cave with the gods raining fire and misery.
Well, here I am on the other side, and ain't no way in hell I'm going back through that to get to where I thought I was, or imagined I wanted to be. Something like that.
Regardless, how wonderful it will be to revel in the illusions and dreams, and then how wonderful to get back to the concrete reality I know through my own creation.

Sent from Candid the iPad

On Glossing

It's been an eventful while since anything of events made it up, so here's the overview:

I

There was a job offer. It was for a lot of money and involved teaching music to G3-6. There was no program in place, and the curriculum was up to me. They would pay my airfare there and back, provide housing and utilities, and I would be teaching and living in what I would've considered standard conditions before coming to Thailand--just imagine having separate cooking, sleeping, and studying spaces! Electricity and a computer with a projection system in the classroom!
But I turned it down, and I have felt relief ever since.
I was applying for a job elsewhere and a recruiter plugged me into this one.
During the interview, the principal could not say what she wanted beyond a world-class music programme, whether vocal, instrumental, Western, Arabian; no idea what she wants except it should be absolutely excellent. When I asked for clarification of "furnished accommodation" and "standard classroom" she seemed exasperated, and when I asked for clarification of "some keyboards and boxes of percussion things" she got snappy.
The contract listed salary, duration, an airline flight upon successful completion, and a housing provision. When I asked things like, "What is the teaching load and class schedule? How many students per class? What materials are available?" it took a full week to get a reply, and that came with an email to the recruiter on the lines of, "after the head of primary took so much time to answer the questions, I expect that there is an acceptance of the contract."
Which I never gave. The recruiter took, "I'm interested in the possibilities, but I'm still curious why the salary is relatively low, what the teaching schedule would be, and what materials are available" as "I accept" and passed that on to the school.
At the same time, I read nothing actually good about the school--the best anyone had to say is that they pay on time. And the vitriol was vile enough to be immediately discarded--seized assets, house arrest, overnight deportation, contracts changed on a whim, all sorts of fun stuff that is easy to find and easy to attribute to inexperienced teachers expecting life abroad to be just like it was in college.
My gut didn't like it.
My head wouldn't be overruled--it was a good paying gig and a short entry into the ME, where I'm looking for my next job.
But it was at a school I didn't trust with a principal I wasn't keen on in a country I have no interest in visiting with expectations for greatness but no idea how to get there,
And the safety measure of sending all possible money out of the country because everything can be seized if someone decides not to like you and complains to a well-connected daddy.

At the same time, I'm starting to do better, physically, and have a doctor who has been all the way in out and around and through me, and finally what she's doing seems to be taking effect.
I have a zero-pressure job--my own motivation and professional self-respect far exceeds my professional expectations in the workplace.
As much as I dislike it, I know the culture well enough to get around and keep myself fed.
Next term, a relatively short one, stands to be pretty easy. And maybe for once it's time to listen to my body and instead of pushing for the next goal, the next thing, stop to get caught back up with myself.

So it's not that I'm thrilled about staying in Thailand, it's that doing so is the easiest, lowest key, hassle and pressure free choice, and maybe by now I've earned it.
The job offer sounded like anything but.
And at the 11th hour, when Mom said, "I don't know why you think that if you don't take this job there won't be more in the future," it clicked and resonated all the way through, and I sent a letter of declination rather than the scanned copy of a signed contract.

II

I'm coming home for the semester break! Departure is October 1, return on the 23rd. REJOICE!

III

I was invited to dinner at a former student's house, She is a freelance graphic designer, married to a bank manager, with a daughter in the 9-11 range. Very upper crust folks, with a beautiful house they've owned forever and remodeled a couple of times.
Fascinating.
When you pull through the gate, the white coarse-sand driveway leads to a parking area near the patio or straight into the covered parking, under the house. Right, the house is on stilts high enough for a Thai person to walk under, or a normal sedan to park under with room for the trunk to open.
Why the stilts?
Because it floods. Every year. And the "foundation" level is about on the flood line with just enough draft left over to keep out most snakes (jury's out on the crocodiles--they were caught a few blocks away).
Up a flight of steps littered with flipflops and broken-backed shoes to the door, which is white-painted teak and slides accordion-style open and closed with a latch for a padlock on the outside and holsters for a large wooden plank to secure from the inside.
A great number of idols and busts stand sentinel around the entryway--the standard pictures and carvings of great monks and various kings--plus the typical fetishes to bring fortune, fertility, and virility (elephants, phalluses, actively copulating carvings, all presumably made under the great auspices and blessings of a powerful monk or brotherhood).
To the left are more ill-fitting doors on ancient hinges, whitewashed, that lead to mystery rooms where Westerners are not to trod, presumably Gramma's room and the Buddha Room (Buddhists have a separate room for prayer/meditation, usually). To the right and up a step--the floor is thick teak polished smooth by ubiquitously bare feet and riddled with cracks and joints large enough to make for some really cool games with a friend under the house (or during a flood, if you stock up on pebbles ahead of time)--are the primary living quarters, with separate rooms for Dad and Ma/Daughter. Each room has a sliding screen door to the main hall and screened windows to the outside, theoretically keeping 'skeeters out. (Side note: having been in Alaska when the blood patrol was dense enough to serve as a living coat on your back, I can confidently say that the concentrations of mosquitoes here is nowhere near the same, but the smallest jungle-grown Thai bloodsucker is about 150% larger than what I would've called a damn big mosquito before I came here.)
Each room has a mattress on the floor and an armoire/cabinet and a light next to the bed. That's all.
The living area has a refrigerator on the left a few steps from a hutch with coffee, tea, and a hot water pot (in Thailand, pump-top electric water heater pots are as prevalent as ants). Behind the fridge and next to the hutch are the bathrooms--on the left, a traditional squat pot with an urn for rainwater and two hoses--one with a backside nozzle and one with a showerhead. On the right is a western-esque bathroom with a hot shower, toilet, and sink (we are in the hi-so realms, in case you forgot or didn't notice the full-sized refrigerator).
Opposite this wall is the sitting/TV area. It's a nook with a frame for another wooden door which has been removed and presumably folded under the house. On one side is a TV/DVD on a little stand full of picture books and old school books, and on the other is a handful of pillows. This is where everyone--Kidlet to Gramma--reposes in slack-jawed comfort.
Outside the doorframe is a wooden porch fully covered by the roof, which extends to the left to wrap around the side of the house opposite the road. On the road side of the porch are the other bookshelves in the house--these full of design magazines.
Around to the back of the house, the porch opens onto a pond and has conveniently placed buckets of pellets to scoop and throw to the ravenous catfish and river-filter fish. Lots of coconut trees, fruit trees, green bursting everywhere.
And here, on the back side of the house, is the kitchen. It's an open-air deal on the wall outside the bathroom, with walls on two sides. A table has six chairs around it, the only such devices in the house (not counting the toilet).
Everything is low, even for me (I love it). Frosted glass doors under the counter slide open to dishes, all of which are tiny--in Thailand, you have one big plate mounded with rice, and then there are many small dishes of whatnots from which everyone nibbles. There's an actual oven (the first I've seen in country) with the manual still in it, on a pan with the paper label still attached. Next to this is a microwave which appears to sometimes see some use--again, very high-so. There's a workspace and a sink with a draining rack in the corner. On the pond-side, there's more drainage areas, the spice rack, and the burner area, dropped even lower, with a single propane unit that belts out about 65000 BTUs at full bore.
The spice rack has rock salt, sea salt, pepper, fried garlic and shallots, chili paste and powder and flakes, palm sugar and raw sugar and white sugar, tamarind paste and some tubs of something you can't identify but don't really want to.
Next to this is a tub with bottles of fish sauce, oyster sauce, vinegar, lime juice, sweet pepper sauce, and soybean oil.

We'll be having pop-ee-yets (eggrolls), and the setup is on the table: a plastic tub of filling, a stack of wrappers, and a little bowl of egg white. Stuff, roll, and stack. Great fun. Then fry in a special pan set aside for always holding oil, which takes about 30 seconds to heat up on the wok flame.
A deep, plastic bowl appears with a dense 'fro of greens: lettuce, something like sorrel, mint, basil, other basil, parsley, and celery sprigs.
To eat the popeeyets, wait until they've cooled enough to hold, then cut into knuckle-length chunks with kindergarten-style safety scissors. Wrap the chunk in a leaf of something, stuff it with more leaves, and spoon on some vinegary sauce with crushed peanuts (as close to my dearly-missed peanut sauce as I've come in Thailand). As a palate cleanser, just eat the veggies.
On the one hand, everything is fresh and crisp and in the best possible conditions to be phenomenally delicious. On the other, it's damn fun.

IV

Photos of the house to come, along with another story: I was invited to cook farang food. It was the first time I've used a kitchen since the bike wreck 53 weeks ago.
After carefully detailing menu requests, I decided on meatloaf with fried potatoes and gravy and a wilted spinach salad with honey mustard bacon vinaigrette.
And then they reminded me that it's the Vegetarian Time, somewhat like Lent, when Buddhists can't eat meat.
So there was some last minute juggling, but the best I can say is that Gramma left rice on her plate to finish the fried potatoes, and Pa told me I was welcome in his home anytime as long as I was cooking.

MOVIES!

A quiet drive through town

This one is even less eventful, but it's a look inside the classroom

The thing about my experience here is not that it's taught me how to tap into resources and tricks to draw and stretch more from those resources than I would ever have imagined possible, not that I'm much more confident in my ability to survive just about anything, not that I've proven anything to myself or anyone else, it's that there's no way in hell I want to be in a similar situation ever again.

So I'm getting pretty ready to get out.  Like, very ready to drop everything.
And here comes a job.  Teaching music to kidlets in a developing music program in a wealthy nation.
A salary with room to save and accommodation furnished in the Western sense; a ticket there and back at the beginning and end of contract and for every summer vacation in between.
Ostensibly, fantastic gig.
But it's in Kuwait.  That was never one of my possible, let alone desirable, destinations.  It's not a place I would want to explore without great incentive to go there (like getting paid).  If I saw the job advertised, I wouldn't apply.
When I was in Penang and couldn't walk down a block without at least two couples averting their faces and covering their noses with hankies (even through the burka), I decided that an islamic culture is not for me.  (Which is bizarre given that after reading the Quaran, the abiding impression was of acceptance and forgiveness in the beauty of the Creator and creation.)  But I'd make an exception in a few cases, namely Oman, Qatar, and maybe UAE, teaching college English on an established syllabus.
Which is what I applied for without realizing I was sending my materials to a recruiter, who directed me to the Kuwait job.
Again--how cool to teach music to kidlets, now that I've learned the lessons that lead to the position I'm in now.  So I look it up online and there is nothing positive anywhere--the absolute best claim, among stories of changed contracts, cut benefits, horrible management, living in slums, lies and misdirection, the best thing I read was that they pay on time.  But okay, I can disregard the vitriol as someone who faced greater challenges than they were expecting in places they didn't know could be challenged and reacted poorly.  I can imagine it quite easily--it would probably be therapeutic to  write such things about my current employer, but I would never get over the guilt as such an act wouldn't do anything worthwhile for anyone in the long run.
So first comes an interview: the lady is a busy Londoner who's made time and assuages a number of my concerns about the management: she doesn't breathe fire or antagonism.  Still, she explained that she wanted music to be a publicly conspicuous part of the school, but she couldn't say what sort of music she wanted--"you know, performances.  The kids performing."  So what materials are there?  "Well, I'm not a musician, but keyboards and boxes of percussion stuff.  I really couldn't say, because I'm not a musician."
Then comes the contract: basic salary, basic accommodation, government insurance, summer vacation, and your kid gets a 50% discount in tuition.
Such a contract would've brought me to Thailand, but in fact I have one detailing hours and duties and expectations and evaluations and I still got broadsided.  So I want to know what ages and classes and expectations and evaluations and accommodations and conditions and materials and curricula and coverages and generally a contractual description of the position offered.
A week after the interview, I had some confirmation that the conditions are as a naive westerner would interpret: 20 contact hours with 4 syllabi in a classroom with a computer and AV setup, an actual apartment with a kitchen and sitting space and bedroom and curtains, and a guilt-trip note about the amount of time and effort I've demanded.
Really?
So it's a ticket out of Thailand.  It's an entre into the middle east.  It's a sizable paycheck.  But is it worth it?  It's music with kidlets, happy singing time, but at what cost to the spirits?  And what toll would that take on the body?
Yes, I really, really, really want to get out of here.  But at the same time, especially as I stop paying attention to the number of superfluous steps I take, I wonder what it is that people see in Thailand.  Are the drinking and drugs and jungle/beach raves really that great?  And as frustrating as it can be in practice, would the "mai pen rai?" culture with nothing at stake be such a bad thing for me for a few months?  Especially with the baggage the position carries.
Still, that money for teaching music to kidlets....
But at what cost?  

On flooding and disasters

There's an odd byproduct of living in a relatively rural area--and traveling through some of the truly destitute parts of a developing country--is that when I see pictures of the flood victims in Pakistan, with people who've set up tarps over cots with blankets and piles of tarpaulin-packaged possessions, I think "why isn't there a vendor table?" and then, in response to the commentator, retort that there are extensive communities all over this area who lead contented lives with even less than that--a tarp roof, a sarong-style wrap for the day that doubles as cover for the night, and a little, roll-up table of trinkets or foodstufs for sale. They lead what could be called scavenging or hunter-gatherer type lifestyles, collecting fruits and greens from the local forests, fishing for protein, and seem completely contented.
That's one of the big lessons: happiness lies entirely within the approach to life, not the appointments thereof. And as much as you can intellectually recognize that, it takes confronting someone thoroughly destitute and desperate by western standards and realizing that they are perfectly happy and pity your for your burdens and attachments as much as you pity their lack thereof.

Things unseen

There was an interview. I insulted the potential employer by asking for explanations of "apartment" and "fully furnished."
Kitchen? Cooking utensils? A table and chairs PLUS a separate place to sleep on a bed with springs? Hot and cold water and a kitchen sink? Curtains?
HOT DAMN! I haven't seen those since I last saw prime rib!

And today's writing has me thinking about things I miss: potato being a staple starch, pancakes and waffles, bacon, salami, multi-grain bread with decent jelly and butter--butter period, peanut or almond or dairy butter--toffee, anything requiring an oven (it seems the only ovens in Thailand are in the pizza joints, so there are no brownies, fresh cookies, fresh bread, roasts, anything requiring indirect heat; there are boiled hunks of meat, and I dearly love parboiled intestine with fresh liver, but a meatloaf would be divine), chocolate (decent chocolate melts in the average daytime temperatures), did I mention potatoes?, or anything from Latin cuisine. And by that I mean anything from Tierra del Fuego to northern Spain: give me robust flavors slow cooked into legumes with little bits cut from big hunks of meat and I'll show you happy); cheese around here is processed at best (Asians and lactose, this population density and tropical festering with a dairy farm), and a "Sandwich" is slices of crustless white bread toasted with sweetened condensed milk. Yes, it's tasty, but even in my current state--especially in my current state--I would crash waves of solid Asian crowding aside to get to a Quizno's sub, let alone a decent French dip.
And then there are the creature comforts.
I live in one of the more exclusive and luxurious places in town. I have a mattress that's somewhat softer than coconut husk on boxsprings on the floor, a desk with a television and cable that sometimes works, a minifridge, a sawhorse for my clothes, a hot water heater that costs slightly less to run than the AC unit, and a shower curtain. Otherwise, if I were to want shelving, curtains, cupboards or cabinets, or any sort of organized storage beyond the luggage I came with, I would have to buy it. Likewise, I provide my own cleaning devices, supplies, and activities, my own towels and sheets, take my own garbage to the streetside bin, all for only slightly more than it would cost to rent a house without any furniture or fixtures from a shady woman who speaks no English and is trying desperately to fund a new neighborhood all her own by overcharging farang who don't know any better. Or I could move to a place with bare concrete walls and tile floors a ten minute walk from a ten minute mototaxi ride to campus. Rent for that would cut 20% off my current rent+utilities.
When I came, it seemed like being thrown into a rough Motel 6. Now I wonder what I would do if I actually had storage room or a cooking space. And curtains. Curtains? Tres bourgeoise!
After what it took to get to where I am, it scares me to think of what I could tolerate with a kitchen and easy chair to come home to. Curtains to sleep behind.
Would a mattress Americans would call hard have too much give for comfortable sleep?
What would I do if there was a different space to read, write, sleep, and eat?
It's been a year since I've operated a vehicle, and just as long since I've operated a cooking device (beyond a water boiler, which is to say: I've had enough soup for my lifetime, thanks). What would I do with such complications? With shopping for raw ingredients?
What would I do with a washing machine?

Funny: having learned to recognize all that I have here, which is quite a lot--trustworthy landlords, a quiet and safe building, windows with glass panes that open and close (one of which has a screen), a mattress softer than coconut husk, AC, hot water, a real toilet (even if the rim and lid aren't attached), a relatively safe and extremely convenient commute, a fridge and TV, a three-pronged outlet for my computer and internet that works a good 60% of the time--I've forgotten how to deal with many of the things I once considered an inherent component of daily life. Just imagine having a kitchen, how much time must be spent preparing and cleaning, how much money must be spent on spices and staples for a cupboard, what it would take to assuage the after-school hunger currently squashed by any of the dozens of carts on the walk between work and home.
And some of these places talk about leasing cars.
Lease a car? Something so huge and valuable? In a foreign country?
Here, a motorbike is 2 years' salary, a car the investment of a decade, and I'm a living testament to the driving conditions. What would it be like in a country that advertises "aggressive driving" as normal and accidents as customary?
Granted, I dream about the WRX, my blonde beauty back home, and those dreams rarely involve sticking to 55. But that's on American roads around American drivers, who are so paranoid of the law they drive as if St Peter were next to them and actively passing judgement.

But here goes.

I've decided that if an offer comes in, I'll go for it. My rationale is that nothing I'm looking at seems to be any worse in terms of working or living, and the pay increases by at least 300% with greater potential to improve working, living, or salary compensation by a considerable margin.

Keep good thoughts comin'
They may not be obvious, but they're very, very important

On thinking

In a previous life, it would've bugged the hell outta me. I was buying a handbasket of groceries at Carrefour, including a small sleeve of CDs and a necktie, each with a magnetic security device: the CDs had a button looking thing that sat like a bow on top of bisecting loops of wire, and the necktie had the same sort of device plugged through the loop on the back.
Each register is equipped with a shiny, round gizmo that looks remarkably like the security device, save that where the button tied to the CDs is convex, the deal on the register is concave.
Guess what happens when the two meet.

So it was nearing my time to feed and sleep, which corresponds surprisingly well with the time the deli food is offered at greatly reduced prices as the employees wrap up for the night, which is to say, it's the end of anyone's shift.
And the girl at the checkout has to call a manager for help. There's this thing blocking off the barcode on the necktie!
The manager shows her how to mate the button and its release.
True, heartfelt amazement on the checker's behalf. The manager does not seem frustrated or exasperated in the least.
We go through the bottle of coke, baggie of soup, baggie of pork, baggies of fruits and veg, and we get to the CDs. There's this thing blocking off the barcode!
Wait for the manager, who with no visible impatience shows the girl how to connect the button to its release, then how to unwrap the wires holding it to the CDs, then scan the discs and toss them in the bag. No apparent frustration or exasperation.

I figured it was an example of someone whose intellectual prowess couldn't drive her much above checker level. But then a coworker was bragging about his kid: at 18 months or so, old enough to walk and say a few words or names without reaching full sentences, the kid is the only one in the age 1-5 daycare who knows how to operate a doorknob. The other kids haven't been taught, and trying it out simply isn't done.
What to say....
No, how to say it without saying it....
um, uh....

Okay, on the one hand this culture operates under values and customs completely alien to mine. Which is fine, and I do my best to respect.
On the other, this is exactly why it's hard not to laugh when farangs ask me why I haven't hooked up yet.
Maybe it's another sign that, thus far, I'm the only person in Thailand who finds it humorous to respond to "Poot Thai, dai mai" (can you speak Thai?) in Thai, with, "No, I'm a foreigner, see how white? Of course I can't speak Thai. When I say horse it sounds like dog, when I say tiger it sounds like shirt, when I say cave it sounds like sleeping mat."

3 steps to beautiful

1)
So I tell myself, "boys will be boys" and do my best to be patient, but it's really, really nice in the classroom with 45 girls and only 13 boys--so quiet, respectful, studious, engaged, and manageable. Even when they're doping off, it's something fairly reserved and quiet--homework for other classes, some sort of art project, sleeping, doodling, or just staring outside. If one of the boys does get rowdy, he gets knocked into place right quick. And realizing it's as dangerous as a newly-transferred Catholic priest saying "I love my altar boys," I'll first say I mean nothing by it, but I love having girls in my classes. Especially ones with strong personalities.
In my 2 G4 classes, I have one with a small handful of kids whose grades have slipped below 90%, one with 20% failing completely, one with 6 boys and one with 10 girls (out of 40 students in each). It goes straight across, right? The ones failing outright are the real jackoffs in the boys' class and the ones who've slipped are the handful of boys in the girls' class.
Except it's exactly opposite: the boys' class can cogitate twice the information in any given period, and I can poke fun if someone misspells something or flips terms--"I am ten year old" or "I live with my Mother, Father, and Olivia" (Olivia helped us learn about family members). In the girls' class, it's still a matter of finding the one or two correct answers and praising the heck out of 'em.

There's an easy explanation, blatant at morning assembly. One of the homeroom teachers is the typical Thai sort of whispy and softspoken, beautiful woman.
The other is a little older, a little heavier. She has the breadth and assurance of a Persian cat, but with a muscular stoutness that gives her a stride like a bulldog--maybe a little bit pigeon toed, but you're not going to say anything for fear of getting completely destroyed by any retribution. But then, she's Thai, so she moves with the grace and ease of an open-water fish: not the flitting sort of jittery reef fish, but the fast and powerful grace of a bluefin, or a blue shark without the predatory nature.
I tiptoe around one because she's beautiful and that's what I do. I tiptoe around the other because I'm afraid that my existence will somehow insult her and she will squash me.
Guess which class has which homeroom teacher.

2)
A few nights ago, I was walking home later than usual and the free aerobics class was going on in the parking lot outside the stadium next to school. The group consisted of a couple dozen ladies of solid middle age, most of whom would be considered somewhat pudgy or plump in American pop culture. Not necessarily flabby or excessively jiggly--nobody's spandex was cutting off circulation, waistlines were still concave, but the curves were robust.
And it was beautiful.

3)
The concept of true beauty struck: after growing up in a culture where thinness and a low number on the scale are paramount, then spending a year with my ribs visible through a not-so-tight fitting shirt and my weight somewhere in the median range of the tubbier 4th grade class (and here I make the distinction between robust and tubby in kids who grow up eating and drinking the worst of the west with pastimes that include cartoons and video games), the best I can say is, FUCK SKINNY!
On the one hand, there's a grain of relief for me when a masseuse says, "your legs are so strong for being so skinny!" On the other, give me sixty pounds and I won't have to ration the number of stairs I climb for fear of tapping myself out before the end of the day.
Who do you trust your kid to: the person who collapses with a missed meal, or the person with enough energy to try to burn off extra meals?
Which is the other part of why I laugh when people ask why I haven't hooked up yet (see below).
So as I sit here with peanuts on my left and fried pork skin on my right. Give me 60 pounds--almost enough to bring me to the minimum military entrance weight--and I'll give you someone with energy to spare on things like happiness and enthusiasm. Give me 80 pounds and i'll show you someone who's either burly as hell or can burn energy on wanton activities like gallivanting through a classroom.
But get below robust and I'll show you someone whose body is stressed. Show me anatomically knobby knees and I'll show you someone whose greatest physical investment is in the body breaking itself down to keep going. Look into the eyes of someone with jutting ribs and you'll see what happens when pain and discomfort turn chronic.

So I'll reiterate: FUCK SKINNY. What's truly beautiful is depleted with the body. The only attractive thing is the model's jetsetting salary, but who wants to deal with the Ferrari crowd at the expense of the ability to live? No thanks, pass the bake-sale brownies, please. In fact, I'll take the plate.
(Add to the list of things I haven't seen since prime rib: brownies, girls whining about weight and waistline [maybe I don't understand, and thank god for that] decent cookies, home-baked anything.)
Henceforth, that's the goal: not climbing mountains or running marathons, but having the padding to be comfortable.

Moments

A small victory

At the little market store where I go for a weekend treat of Coke and potato chips, I just about floored the checker when I not only had a member card, but I could recite my phone number (which you input when you don't have your card) in Thai. It was the first time I've been able to do so despite being well familiar with the numbers (the difference between receptive and active knowledge being that I can hear numbers and understand them, but to recite one without the proper inflection is essentially blowing a linguistic raspberry, and a ten-digit phone number feels about like sightreading a piece of music that utilizes limbs not customarily associated, let alone coordinated, with one another).
It's not much of one, but at this point I'll take and run with any victory that comes my way.

On... something.

Repairs had to be made on the flagpole. From what I could tell, the top section had to be replaced. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what happened and how. This is one of those things you learn not to question as a farang: the present reality is that the flagpole needs fixin' and if you're able to find someone who understands your repeated queries of "what happened to the flagpole?" the most careful response still might make someone look bad, so the best thing for the local to do is say, "dunno, dunno" and the best thing the farang can do is let go of such confounding queries. Don't ask about what they plan to do about it, either. Here is the present; this is reality; accept it and like it enough to not make a fuss, okay?
So there were six guys working, three on the ground and three on the top floor of the admin/elementary school building, right outside the G6 classrooms. It's a good thing Thais have no concept of awkward, conspicuous, disruptive, or awareness of shame: a westerner would've been about crippled by the thousands of staring eyes.
After much screaming, getting tangled in the tree providing a shady workspace and a drop of under ten feet, the pole was lowered with fraying ropes. There was more shouting and students appeared carrying desks they slid under the pole after it was hoisted back up, this time by the vice-principal standing at the beheaded end and displaying his considerable physique in a singlehanded deadlift.
There was a great deal of shouting and many trips to a truck parked in another zip code--don't know if that says a lot for the driver or not much at all for the workers--before the new headpiece was produced, then a great deal more shouting to get more desks. Once the pieces were lined up, they were welded together (remember that there are thousands of young eyes plus the teachers and administrative staff, not to mention the workers themselves, and nobody's wearing so much as sunglasses), tested, and hoisting commenced.
Problem: remember that tree that snared the pole on the way down? Well, they're still under it, in the same fall line, and the pole is ten feet longer.
Delay hoist.
Lasso tree, drag limb out of the way, leave Worker T to hold the rope while the other two with the vice-principal get back to helping hoist the pole.
Laugh--universally--as Worker T beats the others to the pole while not letting go as the limb swings back to position.
Eventually determine that the VP is the only one stout enough to hold the limb back.
But now there's not enough muscle to hoist the pole enough for the guys on the third floor to pull it up with their ropes.
Considerable shouting as one of the guys from the third floor runs downstairs to help hoist. If they get it up above the limb, the guys remaining up top will be able to at least hold, if not hoist, and then the VP will be free to help hoist again.
Which almost works, except that once the pole clears the limb and the VP lets go to run upstairs to help hoist, everyone is getting pretty tired and the pole goes crashing back into the tree before VP can get to the top floor to help hoist.
More yelling. The guys who've sat in the shade to watch are called to the top floor to help.
The extended flagpole is too long to fall all the way down, but now it's stuck in the tree.
Meanwhile, all academic activity has stopped. The show is just too good. And then the rope snaps.
someone runs back to the truck. More yelling and flights of stairs before the pole is re-harnessed and the end of the new rope is back with the guys on the 3rd floor. But they couldn't get the rope out as far, so they need people on the ground to hoist.
Three new people run down and the VP takes pole position to hoist.
It is tremendously exciting and there is great laughter as the pole passes vertical and the workers and VP jump aside as it falls into the building.
Even more laughter when it ends up back in the tree.
Two hours after the project started, the flag is hoisted.
Long live the king.

On Muscles and Memories

I went for a massage in a place I've never been, an off-track and very local sort of place: three cots along one wall, each cot wide enough for the Brunhilda-sized woman currently sitting on one to sit and massage an only slightly-less robust person like the woman currently wincing and groaning while Brunhilda tries to connect the poor woman's knee with her opposite ear, each cot padded by a thin coconut husk mattresses under what I would've called beach towels if I didn't know them to be the local form of a heavy blanket, and a pillow. On the opposite wall, a TV blares the news and fans circulate un-conditioned air.
I walk in and there's a kerfuffle of shouting and my fate walks out from the back room: a lady with buzzed brown hair on an oversized head, the body of Brunhilda, but the stubby legs and digits of someone born somewhat askance.
On the one hand, it was an interesting session because I now have enough Thai to get through the basic biographical questions, and I realized that after 16 months of living in a non-English speaking part of the country, I understand the language and can communicate with it about as well as I would be able to if I went to Germany having learned only the numbers. Whether it's a matter of the commonalities of western or differences with eastern languages, it came as quite a surprise how little I've learned in that time, especially with the amount of work and sense of accomplishment therein.
It was also an interesting massage because she did not go, "Skinny farang, better lay off." She attacked, and as is typical, was surprised that legs so skinny could be so strong. It was impressive, though, as muscles strained and stretched and sweat broke out, and I was the one doing nothing but get a massage--she was doing the work.
There was a bad moment, though, when she reached the right foot. It's had a pretty rough go of things lately--first the pinkie toe sacrificed itself to save the ipad from a tile floor, and by the time that swelling had gone down enough to fit into my normal work shoes, that ankle had blown a pretty substantial edema which had pretty well subsided--along with the residual multi-hued bruise--by the massage. I didn't think anything about it until she grabbed the foot and did a deal somewhat like wrapping the pinkie toe around to meet the inside of the ankle. Everyone--the masseuse, Brunhilde, the lady groaning with pain as Brunhilde hoisted her by one ankle while wrapping the other thrice around places it should never reach, and most especially me--was surprised by a loud noise reminiscent of a rather large firecracker set off just down the block. The masseuse jumped back as far as is possible for someone sitting crosslegged (fine, she jerked her arms back), and asked, very meekly, if it hurt. I replied, with surprise to equal her timidity, that no, it did not hurt. She held up the foot and we all watched a hematoma spread. Really, it didn't hurt, and it hasn't swelled, it just went POP in a big way.
A surprise came when it turned out to have been a 2 hour massage. I've never submitted myself to more than an hour, but the lady whose prenatal conditions would've earned her the American career path of Goodwill, at best, had worked smoothly and intensely enough that I hadn't noticed.
THE CRAZY BIT
After the massage, during which I had my turn of bizarre contortions and wrenching stretches of the sort that drew screams from my neighbor (if I had a lady like Brunhilda trying to tie me into a knot, I'd scream, too), I didn't even think about it until I was halfway up the staircase to my room and realized I'd been taking the steps two at a time. This was my custom from time immemorial until the first month of Thailand wiped me out, and, like reciting my phone number, it was a sad sort of cause for celebration--great, I can do it, but how unfortunate to celebrate such a basic act.
Still, I'll take anything I can get.

On Survival Phrases

One of the things language books should have on the front cover, right below "Where is the bathroom?" is how to say "Occupied!"
And you would think that the head of the (Thai) Mattayom English Department would be able to realize that a bathroom is locked for a reason based on the intestinal fireworks coming from within, or distinguish a farang's "WAIT! WAIT! NO! OCCUPIED!" from what a student might say in the communal bathroom abutting the teacher toilet, but I'll bet a whole lot she'll never forget what she saw when the sixth key finally proved to be the right one.

XYZ

When I buy my breakfast, the guy who collects my money has gray hair, gnarled and leathery hands that look delicate next to feet perpetually scruffing around in flipflops, a green apron with coins, 20s and 50s in one pocket, 100s in the other (most financial transactions in this country involve a till of either an apron or a plate for coins and tupperware bin for bills), jeans or something of similar nature that have bleached and ripped and darned and mended and bleached and ripped to the indefinite style and shade of his hair, and one of two longsleeved shirts in similar condition. His teeth give the impression of post-armageddon picket fences, and they are on regular display: if he's not running full-tilt to take care of a songtau load of tech school students wanting syrupy tea with deep fried pork on sticky rice, he's smiling and laughing, and his eyes never lose a bright flash--they're the universal deep Thai brown, but they stick in the mind as bright green or the flash of sun-on-snow blue. I usually think of him as the offbeat uncle--there's a ma and pa team, each in early midlife, a crew of kids of indeterminate relation, and an uncle sliding down the backside of midlife.
So ma whips up my pau lau--a handful of maple-like leaves probably collected from her yard, a few slices of liver, spleen, intestine, bowel, and tongue, and a couple ladlefuls of the cooking stock (she knows I'm not big on the cubes of congealed blood, so she gives me extra segments of intestine) and, and....
And I just realized that I'm sunk. If there was an ihop across the street, I would go there to douse my homesickness in synthetic maple syrup and pasteurized butter byproduct but I would keep on with the pau lau (which you say like the pow in "POW-WHACK" if Batman was falling off the building, and Lau as in "allow" if you were timidly asking "is this something you'd al-low?") as regular breakfast.
So ma passes over breakfast and I pay Uncle Lou and leap--almost literally--at the chance to cross the street with almost no traffic. Halfway across, I hear, "aey aey aey, youyouyou!" Usually I avoid acknowledging these because if I did want to go for a ride on the taxi/songtau/ripoff express, I would seek it out. But this was coming from the breakfast crew, so I turned around as soon as I was reasonably clear of traffic.
Uncle Lou is running out into the street. When he sees that he has my attention, he plants his feet in the male's universal stance and lifts his apron with one hand. He's shouting something, and I'm thinking he's snapped and I'm going to see something I really, really could live the rest of my life without regretting even conceiving of, but in the nano before traffic starts blowing past and honking at him, his free hand starts wiggling up and down and I realize he's in the middle of a lane of commuter traffic, shouting "HEY! Your fly's down!" at the farang.

On bathrooms

I'm not sure where I stand on this, metaphorically, but I'm very glad to be on the outside, physically. See, there aren't any doors on the Prattom boys' rooms, so you get a sometimes unfortunate view, especially since the urinals are on the facing wall.
The first few times I saw a lineup of boys hiking up their shorts to pee out one of the legs, I was thinking, 'so THATs what you do when you don't have a fly...'
But then I realized that they do have flies.
And come to think of it, the songtau drivers who pee in the roadside bushes do so from the... Customary pose.
So one wonders. What happens between being ten and it being funny to pee out your shorts and being twelve and smearing the walls (not even writing, just smearing)?

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An economic forecast

I will be the first to tout my economic ignorance and inferiority associated therewith. Despite that, I am going to speak as an economist in reaction to Obama's speech of this morning
.
Americans have an idea of themselves as an industrial superpower. We like to think that we can make the most and it will be the best of anything in the world. At one time, this reflected reality. But not so anymore.
To whit: say it's coming up on one of the annual parties, and this year is our year to host the company across the street. Last year, their spread included a seafood buffet and top-shelf booze on every table with all the beer you wanted to wash it down, and an out-of-town band with a hot singer plus a ladyboy crooner. There is no option but to meet that precedent; this year, the party will cost 10,000.
In America, you make loyalistic and patriotic appeals to raise the money. You sell wrapping paper and brownies and advertising space and do your best.
In Asia, you divide that 10,000 by however many employees you have, round to the next hundred, and dock that amount from their pay.
In America, most insurance is based on long-term treatment and care. Cheap accident coverage is the student's alternative.
Here, if you have an accident you're covered, but as soon as there's a greater, longer term expense, you're on your own. Long-term care is a family concern; why would a workplace want a sick/crippled/handicapped worker when there are thousands of other people, generally with equal qualifications, available for the same post?
Plus, in this collective-based society, the workplace ranks just below the family. While the family is the heart of the unconscious and instinctive mind, the workplace is the seat of social consciousness. Bettering the family is an act as unconscious as stepping back from a precipice to keep yourself from falling off; doing something to make the family look bad is as contrary as slamming your face in a car door. Conversely, whatever the family says, wants, or needs is accepted without question or thought. The workplace isn't quite as sacred, but it is approached with the same mindset: what the boss says is law, and what the company asks is given without question. The bosses know this and operate with the company's best interests in mind, despite the possible effects on individual employees. I'm too embarrassed to list the examples that come to mind, so I'll just say that I rarely even think, "And you're okay with that?" anymore. And that's in a relatively cushy school job.

In America, there is high regard for the individual. Each and every person matters, and one screaming bearing can stop the works. Here, that screaming bearing is subsumed and the wheel keeps spinning.
Not to mention environmental concerns--not that they wouldn't care with the right context, but when there are people pouring cleaning solutions on a hunk of machinery held in a bare hand, then arc welding on the sidewalk without masks or anything to keep sparks from flying onto passers-by, you don't worry about what might be affected at the far end of the drain pipe. Whether it's someone stitching together salvaged jeans, circuit boards, industrial products, or raw materials, raw material is more precious than an individual person, and until Americans adopt that idea, their products are guaranteed to cost more.

What we can offer that seems to occupy a unique niche is realizing innovations, i.e. Kennedy's challenge to get to the moon by the end of the decade. Americans are tremendous tinkerers completely discontent with most everything. We approach the world looking for loopholes and flaws to exploit or explore. Legos and erector sets are fundamental parts of childhood; a childhood without Lincoln logs and wooden blocks is like a baby deprived of milk (formula, breast, bovine, or otherwise). In America, a kid who builds a Lego model without making cool emendations--the palm tree on the spacefighter or the bristling gun pod, extra engines or superfluous wheels--is as rare as the Asian kid who alters the one design for which the blocks were intended--it doesn't matter if it'd be cooler or easier or better or safer or faster or anything, if it's not as directed, it's not happening. No, scratch that example (but I like it so I'll leave it): the Asian kid who tweaks with a lego model is as rare as the American kid must follow each sequential step exactly and never thinks of which block might come next. America's strength is the malleability of concepts and adaptability of production.
Let some factory in China worry about shaving down the cost of the plastic handles for razors--that's what they do best. Let the global-scale mining and inevitable environmental disasters happen elsewhere. Is the gamble on eventual profit really worth the amount of bellyaching and litigation?
Instead, get back to the design and production of innovations. Instead of investigating new mines or new overseas markets, figure out how to make a new generation of battery in an old steel mill, how to produce better car frames at the textile mill, how to make a 400% energy return at the mine.
When I left America, ambient patriotism and pride was on a steep wane--the American dream was asleep, as it were.
Something else I've learned about Asia is that the American dream is alive and well elsewhere in the world. Hopefully it wakes up in time to catch the worm.

VIDEOS!

Just in case I've missed direct notifications, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/user/nakhontuba
Very rough, very dirty, and I hope very representative of things here.

Sent from Candid the iPad

Thai Cowboys

Videos to follow....

On headaches

Thai people don't take anything straight. Black coffee means a premix of 5% instant coffee, 60% sugar, and 30% creamer (with preservatives). Wine drinking is refined to spritzers, usually with a stick of sugar, of the Bacardi Breezer ilk. The plainest chicken you can find is boiled in tamarind syrup; pork or chicken can sometimes, rarely, if you know exactly where to look, be found in straight fried form, without extra spices or breading. Even then, the person doling it out will squirt/ladel in sauce as naturally as checking a zipper. A d even if you make enough stink to send that back and get a new, plain piece, the bag it comes in will already have a little baggie of chili sauce or fish juice.

So it came to tonight's party, when it was our turn to host the faculty from the tech school across the street. We had four entrees with twelve sauces and at least as many people ready to leap to your assistance and save you from putting the wrong sauce on the wrong item; you might not be able to taste anything after the shrimp curry, but at least your taste buds won't be assaulted by lime juice on your shrimp or fish sauce on your chicken. There were jugs of beer and litres of a locally distilled spirit. There was Thai style cowboy dancing(more on this in a moment). It was a good time.
And then I was trying to leave and found myself surrounded by a group of thai Prattom teachers, mostly the guys who work very hard to cultivate the appearance of being tough badasses. They had just filled an ice bucket with beer and mixed a brandy. Suddenly it became very important that I have some.
Very important.
A big matter of face.
Walk off and I snub them while making myself look like a weenie.
In America, this is a matter of ego and stupid. In Thailand, even if it's stupid, it has the severity of, say, a DUI back stateside. You do not mess around when this much face is at stake.
So I figured I could make everyone feel good and myself look good if I finished one of the proffered drinks, and a brandy spritzer seemed the lesser evil, so I took the glass and downed it.
Know how sometimes, say when you're chugging milk from the carton in front of the fridge at midnight, you get surprised by the milk actually being bad but don't realize it until the third big glug?
It was straight rotgut.
There was a lot of cheering.
I had some WEIRD dreams, and there is an angry something trying to fight its way out of my skull.
And somehow it's still a winning situation. Come Monday, I'll feel okay and my coworkers will all be impressed by Scrawny finishing the brandy meant for the table, not a single drink.
And boy does that do wonders for my head....

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On the voting public

It was interesting to listen to Obama's speech this morning. About all there is to say about that is here's hoping.

What I found notable, though, was the level of discourse. Most of the speeches I've heard were during his higher-rolling campaigning days, before the crippling realities of an elected office tempered otherwise great ideas and hopes. This was also the era when our President was "goin' nuculer" on our language.
On the one hand, it seems incredible that someone with notoriously poor speech, so universally regarded as poor of speech and tongue a word for mangled grammar was coined from his name, could not just win the biggest popularity contest in the country, but win re-election and hold popular esteem in the process.
On another, these supporters are the same people most responsible for the propaganda and slander to cripple anything a center or left-leaning person tries to accomplish. Okay, yes, I have a relatively soft heart in terms of social issues and tend to lean leftward, but my biggest gripe is the blind acceptance/criticism--from BOTH sides--of a person or proposal associated with a specific ideology. Rejecting an idea because it came from a conservative has roots in the same soil as rejecting a job application because the last name is Latino or cavity searching anyone with dark skin. It's all a degree of discrimination--in some cases, there's a purpose and a reasonable use, but blind acceptance and universal application is a dangerous, dangerous place. It seems bizarre to decide not to accept an unaired idea simply because the speaker is of a particular bent, yet many who have biased themselves against Obama supported Bush.
Wouldn't you think that if you're going to blindly reject an idea, it would be the one delivered in poor-to-grotesque language?

And here's where I was headed: there's a considerable population who like the idea of the President being an average person of the sort you'd meet in a bar or coffee shop. For this population, Palin and Bush were great candidates. Erudition is actually a handicap with this crowd--it's a sign of bein all high-faltuin and edumacated, and that's a BAD thing. To follow this thinking, the President of the United States of America, the leader of the free world, should be a small-town farmer or factory worke, the sort of guy whose world extends as far as the state fair if his prize hogs have a good run.
No thank you!
True, I like the idea of being able to sit and talk with anyone for whom I vote or has been chosen to represent me in a public arena. But I sure hope that if I ever were to meet such a person, I would come away feeling considerably inferior; not that I want to be belittled, but impressed by the scope and acuity of thought, the refinement of speech and interpersonal communication I encounter.

Part of my initial support for Obama was based upon his level of discourse. How great to have a candidate who sounds like his cranial density is neural, not osseous.
But now, after realizing the realities of political pressures, Obama's discourse has been compromised, too. Instead of delivering a nice speech with refined arguments and support threaded with notable quips, his rhetorical flow had frequent interruptions to explain implications and emphasize points already heavily weighted by their context.
Granted, I wouldn't expect his predecessor or many of his opponents to make a speech of equal elocution, but how sad to see the drive to stupidity elevated even that far.

Kidlets

Here's Mattayom. Note the kid with an inhaler (usu peppermint and menthol with some additives-Thais fetishize these things, all ages and classes) dangling from his nose.

On technology and hype

A zoo in the midwest, acting on an April fool's gag, gave its orangutans ipads. First they introduced the ipads from outside the compound, then passed the devices inside. The technology was an immediate success with the youngsters, who evidently love the interactive books. Keepers haven't left the ipads in the cages for extended periods out of fear someone will get frustrated and rip the gadgets to shreds (would that be therapeutic to watch?) but plan to do so once they come up with an orangutan-proof case (which I want, once it's out).

On the other hand, after a month of trying, I have not been able to communicate even a basic lesson to my mattayom kids. Maybe, if I'm especially patient and prime them with the answer in two or three explicit and detailed examples, 1 of the 60 kids will get something out of it, which is to say, one of them might stop saying, "ipad, ipad, ipad!" and recognize that there's an image on the screen and it's of a recognizable place (I've been working on "where are you going?" using photos taken around town--I'm gong to Swensen's, Pizza Company, Carrefour &c, but the kids almost never identify the picture, even after I say, "I'm going to... Swensen's!" They parrot back whatever I say, but without the lightbulbs of recognizing that place in the picture).

On the one hand, there's huge potential for jokes, and if the students could understand such mockery, I would love to throw it at them. Yes, I have sunk to the level of wishing I could mock students, and no, I feel no compunctions about it whatsoever. I think what tipped it was the class that spent the last five minutes of class saying, "fuck you teacher, thank you thank you." Or maybe the ones who followed me down the breezeway saying, "Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!" which is even funnier than "Harry Potty!" There comes a point when being twelve and stupid is not an excuse: you KNOW better, even if your hormones are raging.
But such jokes are the easy way out and sidestep the actual issue.

How sad is it that there is so much hype around the ipad--technology and the affluence surrounding it--that these kids can be overwhelmed to the point of underperforming orangutans?

On packaged meat

INGREDIENTS: pork trimmings 100%, backlast 100%, sodium nitrate, water, salt, sodium phosphate, sodium chloride, sodium nitrate, sodium erythorbate, colorings, preserves, spices: notto excess 15%. SIC.

On placement

One of the Mattayom classes just finished a health unit that culminated in posters, one of which features pictures of breast-feeding. Its placement almost convinced me there's a sense of honor and irony here--on one side, a boob is halfway covering up a pentagram scrawled on the wall, and a nipple on the other side is spouting a couple branches of a swastika (both preexisting graffitti).

Sent from Candid the iPad

Thai cowboys...

Hat Yai's Hat Day, whatever that is, involves the only horses I've seen in Thailand.