Where are you?

I can handle students checking out on me.  It just goes with teaching, right?
So I have tricks to get them participating, engaged, maybe learning--callbacks, copy, group questions, their conditioned responses to engage a mass critical enough to trickledown into the others.
So I kinda expect the back-row guys won't get it if I single one out and ask whatever the most recent question is--really, who cares about the farang droning on about whatever?  You're twelve, you're Thai, I don't want to ask where you go when I'm talking.
So we're doing the shoutbacks--"What do you like to eat?"  "I LIKE TO EAT TOM YAM GUNG!" a few times.  And I watch one of the peripheral guys, into it but just a little too cool to have fun or participate, mouthing and shouting through.  What blew me away was singling him out, saying, "What do you like to eat?" and getting an absolute flatline.
Okay, you're twelve and Thai so you check out when I'm talking, but where do you go when YOU are talking?

I'll confess to an urge to shake the baby, but when I get that in check, it's somewhat relieving when the doc's eyes get wide and it clicks that there is something seriously askew.
Nevermind that I came in the first place, the giardia or colonoscopy or visits in between, never mind the hundreds and hundreds of pills, the blood drawn or biopsies run, nevermind the abdominal palpitations or complaints of edemas, it was an afterthought glance at a blood panel next to my weigh-in numbers that had her blinking and staring: there is no protein in my blood.  Nor is there much of anything else.  In fact, there's so little, I have edemas! Wow, it's a case of malnutrition, too! And I weigh... how much?  Only that?
Unfortunately, there was so much inflamed tissue it was hard to get figure out where it started, hence where to biopsy, so the trick now is to knock out the inflammation and see what's left behind.
And isn't that a trick.
Meantime, it's a big, nasty round of new drugs to quiet things down enough to get an accurate reading.

The fun part was going to the hospital ATM: while going to an ATM is usually about as good an exchange rate as you can find, the bank set its hospital branch to just under half.  And when I brought it up, it was the "Sorry, sorry, nothing we can do."  

On beef

I would've said I'm pretty well over being surprised at what I encounter in Thai cuisine--that left somewhere around the steamed horseshoecrab egg salad served in the shell.
And then I found beef on the menu of my favorite indigenous dinnercart.  I was surprised at myself for missing it before, but right in front of me was beef, spicy boiled or spicy fried or something else.
Rejoice!

I should've taken a photo, but I was too hungry and surprised.

I had the something else version, which came as a pseudo-suki: the traditional flaming ring pot of tom yam soup, but emitting the distinct overtones of organ meat, with the traditional chipped mylar plate of raw leaves and sprouts, and another chipped mylar plate with a boiled calf foreleg hanging over each end.
It was about the size of my forearm and had scoring down its length, and the ankle and hoof had been hacked open to give access, but that was all the preparation for plating.  That and a couple of days boiling in a multi-spice organ meat stock.
So you take your spoon and fork (and fingers once it cools) and pry off chunks that go into the soup, which you then spoon into one of the tiny little mylar bowls.
Unsurprisingly, in the couple of bites I had before my tongue was too seared to accurately convey sensations, it was pretty good.  Likewise, after I gave up on the broth and picked at the leg with my fingers, it was surprisingly tender and beefy, not just tom yam spicy.
Maybe if I spent a few days simmering with cow joints and organs, I'd be nice and beefy, too.

On advertising

Part of me says, "Call it a mineral bath and up the price."

Remember, this is AFTER running the tap until it seemed clear

Most of me says, "That's just wrong."

On Paying for Things, OR the Value of Booking Ahead

My usual haunt was booked, so I made an online reservation for the place across the street. When I arrived and said I have a reservation, the receptionist shook his head and said, "Online Reservations no working. Sorry. We fully booking." So, already on the far side of the tuktuk tracks, I went down the back alley to the next place. There was another rung to climb down, but presently, traveling light takes precedence to traveling cheap/far, so I'm not equipped.
At other times, guesthouses are great: generally easy to find, and dirt cheap. But this level of accommodation necessitates flip-flops to protect you from the carpet, enough bleach to give the bathroom floor a quick cleanse and protect your flipflops from what's living there, and you probably don't want to trust the sheets and towels you can rent. And while such places save a few TB, my mind jumps to the cost of living with and treating whatever souvenirs I might contract from unprotected interactions and justify staying in a larger/newer/pricier place with AC and hotwater standard.
So I'm in the off-off hotel strip. Instead of big, bright fashion watches, toys for kidlets, commemorative tee shirts, and lucky amulet souvenirs, the curbside stands sell "designer" watches, pharmaceuticals, and fertility amulets.
Hallways are narrow and dark, walls are no longer white, corners are pockmarked, but the sheets, despite the stains and burnholes, smell clean.
I usually turn the aircon off, but the off switch had no apparent effect. Which was maybe not such a bad thing because cranking down on the hot water handle in the bathroom sink reduced the flow to a steady stream that dripped down the drain. And that in itself wasn't so bad because it helped mask the sound of rats or cockroaches in the walls (I made a point of not listening hard enough to tell). But as long as they aren't crawling over me, that's all well and fine, right? It's like worrying about proper, sterile rinsing or adequate refrigeration: don't order something obviously turning and scrape off the nasty bits, otherwise making a stink is only going to frustrate you and everyone else without changing a damn thing about the food.

But the morning broke me. Despite the sink faucet constantly running, the shower refused to, and the tub water came out a rich Ovaltine brown. After a good 8 or 10 minutes, the water appeared clear enough, so I poured in some soap--to help offset both the micro and macroscopic aspects--and hoped for a bath.
I just couldn't. Call it cappuccino, call it a mudbath, call it a mineral soak, natural water, raw or organic or sludge bearing all the detritus of the catchall sewer/canal, it's not something I'm interested in experiencing.

Icing: I picked up the phone, ignoring the grime, to call the front desk for a transfer to a room with a working shower.
I guess I can't say I was surprised, but I will confess disappointment when the phone didn't work.

On Material

It's been a goodly while since I've thought as a critical writer, but happening on some David Sedaris, I was reminded that my morning walk generally has more adventure, absurdity, oddity, context, and general literary interest than is in a great many significant works of literature.
Which is not to compare myself to acclaimed, good, or popular authors of the McEwan or Cheever or Munroe ilk, but to remind myself that the nascent literary training, techniques, and inclinations have a hyperabundance of material as soon as the act of living leaves energy to reflect thereupon.

MOICHENDIZING!

What with the sweatstains oozing off any cold bev and cold bevs being a nigh-necessity in the average workaday, I've been looking at double-walled or vacuum mugs.  So far, all I've found have been high-end luxury imports in uppity department stores, or those brought by farangs from America; no local equivalent of the Stanley-knockoff at the local equivalent of Wal-Mart.  

Were I to invest in such an item, it would increase my dish collection substantially.  For a while I had three bowls and a plate, but the plate was reinforced styrofoam that gave way once when my washing got overly vigorous, and one of the bowls was a reinforced cardboard jobbie with a packet of insta-noodles.  So now I have a two spoons, two knives, a rotating collection of chopsticks gathered from the supermarket sushi case, an uber-placisticized styrofoam mug, a ceramic bowl I bought from a potter on the coast, and a ceramic bowl that came as incentive to buy an about-to-expire jug of milk.  

For the record: at this point, when confronted with a plate, knife, and fork, I got confused and resorted to leaning close so I could bite off spoonfuls of noodles.  And I know that there was once a time, and likely will be again, that attacking fried chicken primarily with a spoon will seem odd.  Just like having two dishes in my "cupboard."

Half of my dishes, as I said, came as a buying incentive.  At the supermart, the day-end sale table is where the day's baked goods, sushi, and hot foods go to draw in a couple Baht before hitting the pig trough.  It's also where things that have been sitting on the clearance table for too long go to turn a few Baht before being passed to an even more backwater fashion culture (this is one of the first stops for the ships carrying dregs left by the Salvation Army).  

The funny thing is that the sale table works: cut-rate sushi? here? where there are no preservatives, little refrigeration, and leftovers are thrown out because they'll spoil before the next day? where food prices are carved more deeply than the stone characters that define the written language? where food is already dirt cheap and it's rare to find a food cart serving seafood that didn't hit the pan squirming? cut price sushi?  Cool!

Day old donuts taped to a bowl so plain in nature and dreary in decor that it couldn't bring in 20 TB on the clearance table?  

Six months later, it's half my dishware.

Still, I have to be careful to think about things.  

The setup is cool because it works: cheap food with free goodies?  

Bring it!

Well, okay, I don't like the rolls with sweetened mayo and ketchup drizzled over hotdogs, and I can't imagine how a 5 litre pink plastic tub with three sides and no bottom could possibly enrich my life, but LOOK!  It's so cheap!

So here I am, cruising the day-end table after it's been picked over: the first, burnt, deep fried fish of the morning, two packs of tamago (egg) sushi, and the lest appealing sorts of mashed-up donuts and hotdog rolls taped to the ugliest glasses and bowls and plastic do-hokeys imaginable.  

It's to the point the deli crew is untaping the shlotchkies to ship to Zanzibar (or maybe Sansibelt? wherever) when I see a sleeve of plain donuts--crushed--taped to a Mr Muscle, screaming orange, two-bit sort of craptastic double-walled cup that I would be appalled to see in an American store and would be inclined to ignore as too bizarre to consider here in Thailand.  

And now I am the punch-proud owner of a double-walled plastic Mr Muscle mug I would never be caught dead paying for except that it was free along with day old donuts.  

How's that for moichendizing?

On Sweat

I've never seen sweat like I've seen here.  Walking past the stadium at any time of day is an excuse to shudder and think longingly about a cold shower.  

Order a glass of ice water--a glass of ice with a capped bottle of water--and if for some reason you get distracted and don't pour, the ice will last about 8 minutes before condensing into enough sweat puddle to drown a gecko accompanied by gentle condensation billowing from the glass.  

Order a bottle of cold refreshment and you have about 4 minutes to get it entirely on ice before reaching just-over body temperature with a fleet of slug trails slithering across the table.  

And then there's teaching.  

Rather, on a day when the concrete quad is radiating heat well above 110 degrees, standing in front of a couple hundred eyeballs staring with mild disinterest (at best) while sweltering in a bare concrete room resounding with screams of unfortunately comprehensible disinterest (at best) without aircon or air circulation beyond the occasional stampede in or out of the class.

Within 5 minutes, the waistline of my cotton pants could wring out half a cup.  And I'm as sweaty as I am hairy (i.e., I shaved in February)--my coworker, teaching in similar conditions, looks like the tragic and unwitting business-casual entrant into a wet teeshirt contest.  

What really blows me away is that after accepting that I am the ever-chilled, ever-dry one, whose fingers crack in alpine summer, bleed in any winter, and never get about chilly, who can easily suck up an entire hodad bottle of lotion (and would likely break out in reaction to the perfumes and additives) in one go, and that was BEFORE losing all excess (or measurable) fat and muscle, I'm hot and clammy most of the time.  Hot and clammy enough to coat myself with special, cooling talcum powder before school, at lunch, before leaving school, and again after my cold shower.  

What's funny is that where Americans laugh about bluehairs as an accepted sort of social faux pas, here there are people with smears of powder on their faces and arms.  Covering up is beyond me: I've earned every single one of those suckers, and I'm not about to hide them; a coating of cooling powder is great.

What's bizarre is that most powders and almost all lotions have bleaching/whitening elements, many of which are more or less contrary to good health.  But locals don't buy or wear sunscreen, and the strongest available in hyper-priced farang stores is SPF 20.  

Sensations

This is probably one of those posts I shouldn't post, but it's been wanting to write itself out for a while, and it's not nearly as bad as I could make it.  Still, consider this a warning.

On Poop
It's not that you have to go, it's that without vigilance, with a surprise guffaw or sneeze or cough or letting a fart slip, there's a good chance of blasting through your pants.  With relaxation, the entire fluid contents of your large intestine will happily discharge.  With the slightest encouragement, they will launch with enough force to splatter over the other stall, the dividing partition, and three women's stalls to the far wall.
And it's quite a mixed blessing: there is a lot of relief at being rid of such a foul gutload, but rarely after a dozen or so events.

On Hunger
There comes a point it stops existing as most people know it.  I think of my stepfather, who has been "dieting" for longer than I've known him, saying, "I'm HUNGRY!"
But it's not like that at all.
Eventually you realize that loudly declaring, "I'M HUNGRY" and conspicuously going about preparing or procuring food takes a lot of energy.  There comes a point when hunger is not the gnawing but a refusal of the muscles to fire.  It's not that your belly's growling but that you need to stop and chat with students between each floor of the staircase.
And even when you've just eaten, before food passes through the initial holding tank and the roller-system goes into high gear, the thought of a nice, juicy X makes you hungry.  No matter that there's no room in the belly, no matter that it's been, oh, 50 weeks since you've seen a nice bit of juicy beef, it could be the idea of a plate of shrimp, peanuts, pork chop, pig whatnots, fried eggs, squid, octopus, marinaded tofu, or--glory of glories--a bowl of refried beans, and your system yearns.
Again, it's not necessarily hunger in the conventional sense.  It's that you would be a better, happier person if that big pile of X were injected directly into your bloodstream.
It's not so much the thought that if it weren't so hot you could ladle up a bowl full of the pig and onion bubbling in a deep-wok fry, it's that it would probably do you well.

The good news is that if the endo doc keeps on schedule, I'll be in Hat Yai for my in-country anniversary, and I'll be able to get a steak.  

On Significance?

I follow the common practice of sitting outside the classroom to quiz the M1 students 1 on 1.  What's uncommon is that I don't have a cane or the general classroom control, so the doors aren't lines so much as bulbous amoebas.  

What seems significant is that it took a couple full days of testing before I realized that I would find the sight of a student kneeling or sitting nigh-prostrate in front of a teacher somewhat surprising or outright inappropriate.  

What passing teachers find significant is that sometimes students stand in front of me, instead of kneeling or sitting cross-legged, and the well-meaning of them whap the students into form. 

And that seems significant, too

Further thoughts on music

My voice has dropped a goodly bit, especially in the mornings, which
made for a fairly daunting experience when it was broadcast over
military grade public alert speakers. It probably doesn't help things
in the participation department, but I'll confess that it was funny as
hell when I sang a low note and half the kids, many of whom have never
heard me speak, were shocked into slack-jawed silence.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

On (lengthy) Nonsequiters

On Wellbeing:
Surprise: not taking the double-double dose of anti-parasitics makes it a lot easier to feel a lot less bad

On Being Twelve:
In six weeks of Mattayom 1, I've covered, "What is your name? How are you today? What is your number? How old are you? Where do you live? Where were you born?" and the appropriate responses.  I've given up on actual teaching--instilling comprehension and application of concepts--and run the class as the students are accustomed to learning--write a dialogue on the board (what is your name? My name is Bam), read through it, copy it in the notebook, practice with a partner, move on. 
Just to say, it pains me to see how little was covered over so much time.
To keep myself engaged and break the students from the slack-jawed drawl of a full-class response, I turned each Q&A into a rhythmic chant with clapping.  First we modulate through the possible beat patterns--what is yourname, what isyour name, whatis your name--and then, for the dialogue part, I create an echo with each having its own rhythm.  "What isyour name, my nameis Bam. Howold are you, Iam twelve years old. How are youtoday, I am happy." 
We meet once a week and there's not really any way to give or moderate homework, so I tell myself that I'm doing as much as I can to prepare the students to one day not shout, "UH!UH!YOUYOUYOU!" at a farang.  Maybe, in the dozens of times we've practiced chanting and then speaking a given line, some part of it will stick. 
And then test time comes and I'm asking the students one-on-one questions and a sizable percentage absolutely flatline when I say, "What is your name?" 
It's a challenge not to take it personally.

On Music
Scene: there are 800 kids and a few dozen faculty members at morning assembly, staring at me as the speakers that are roughly the size of an elephant's head blast my voice as I wave my hands and sing "One little, two little, three little fingers," trying to get something from the kids and ignore the stares from the faculty.  Up is easy--it ends with "Ten fingers on my hands!"
It's saying something for the power of music that I ended up having so much fun I just about dropped a load on the way down when I got to the bottom and... uh... well... "One finger on my hand!"
What's really fun, though, is singing "Apples and Bananas" with my G4 kids.  Until I'm wrapping up for the evening and brushing my teeth, then breeshing my teeth, then brushing my tuth....

On Survival
I've hit a point where my goal is to live and let live.  I have learned to appreciate having the wellbeing to get all the way through the day without collapsing or breaking down, to rejoice in the days that pass without much threat thereof, and to concentrate my energies on moving forward with the greatest possible good.  There are times it's much, much more challenging to do so, but even then, when I realize that I'm walking around in a foul mood and hating the world because that is the true and natural state of things, it's a helluva lot easier to walk around after I regroup, remind myself that it's only my perception and focus that's allowing the world to be a cesspool, and if I pull my focus away from the glop in the open sewer-gutter-industrial waste drain, there are bushes and trees erupting with flowers you see in fantasy cartoons, except now I get to smell them, or, in some cases, eat them as tempura.  And sometimes, if I'm lucky, alongside some pretty killer seafood or pig whatnots.  And if I'm feeling really gumptious, when someone cackles "HARRYPOTTY!" I'll just stop, look at him, smile, hope him relief or resolution from whatever's pushing him, and 98% of the time, he gets embarrassed, quiets down, and tries to talk with me.
This is how I've learned to survive.  As the combination of unpleasant factors has coupled with the necessity and challenges of living, it's how I've been able to get from start to finish with the least effort and disruption and occasional bit of leftover reserve. 
//
A word on the multioscopy: after three days of soft food and one day of no food coupled with regular bouts of explosive diarrhea, there was very, very little left in the system when it came time for the turbo-lax with a gallon of water for a chaser. 
I read through the magazines I'd brought within the first two rounds, but I had the good fortune to be in a room serviced by the BDK--the Japanese Buddhist equivalent of the Gideons.  It was good company over the next dozens of rounds--600 pages of anecdotes and proverbs with bits of contextualization and explanation, mainly focusing on how to keep the mind in check and lead a good life.  "To avoid any evil, to seek the good, to keep the mind pure: this is the essence of Buddha's teaching."
What wierds me out is that, by the morning, I realized that I've become a Buddhist. 
Who wears a stone cross. 
And misses church.
Welcome to Thailand?

Billowing, of a sort

Prologue:
Long, long ago, a couple evolutions of life away, on the far side of the world, Irv made some of his award winning chili for the church flea market. And it truly was fantastic stuff. I just about inhaled the first bowl and Mom only got a taste, but that was enough for her to get a bowl and me to get another. It was hard not to go for a third.
So it's an average Sunday afternoon when I get the sudden and surprising sympathy for the summer sky as a cumulonimbus begins building inside my gut. But it's not the nice, puffy white sort with a black core lashing out bolts of searing electricity. There is a black core and searing bolts, but instead of puffy white there's rancid green, and the vile bolts sear the insides almost as much as the nose.
Half an hour later, while the air is still clearing, Mom comes rushing home with a similar story.

Fast forward to this morning. Without getting too graphic--that will come in a moment--after a few days on a soft diet and a long, long, long day of fasting, all punctuated with considerable spells on the squatterpits, the pre-multioscopy turbolax prep had very little to clear from the system, and when the morning dose produced a violent, expulsive reaction from the top end, it wasn't substantially different from what had been coming out the other side. By the time I felt it was reasonable to leave, dehydration completely occluded hunger--what a novelty not to be hungry.
Riding on the back of a mototaxi weaving through traffic and rowing between sideview mirrors--when there's not enough room to pull straight through, the dodging motion looks a lot like paddling a kayak--was a little more challenging than usual. But there was the prospect of an IV drip waiting for me, followed by a glass of juice and a bottle of water, probably a cola, and the prospect of food.
Fortunately, while the waiting room was already full, the flatline weigh-in boosted me directly to the bathroom, where I was to take off my pants and wrap up with a sheet, and then to a gurney in the middle of the waiting room.
Stateside, it would've felt awkward. Here, walking in front of a room full of people with my knobby twigs sticking out of a thin cotton skirt (of sorts) didn't draw any more attention than making the same trip with blond hair and white skin.
And there was that prospect of an IV.

Someone wheeled me into the same room I first had a consultation, pulled around a wall of monitors, and closed a curtain. Still waiting on that IV, there was a good moment getting hooked up to the monitoring equipment--the aide had to check the blood oxygen monitor on himself--twice--before he would believe it: still waiting for the IV, without any drugs, despite weighing in at 38K with a 91/42 BP, my pulse was a steady 52 with a 100% oxygen content. Still carry some of the mountains with me.

So they give me a half dose of valium, roll me on my side, and the doc--a tiny little lady with thick glasses and the sort of voice that echoes to the nether reaches of the classroom as she sits up front, frantically waving her hand with "Mr. Rumskelter, Mr. Rumskelter, I know the answer!"--points at the monitor I'm supposed to watch and narrates a trip a ways up into my small intestine, including numerous stops at places the average tourist would never want to stop to collect biopsy samples.
Which is where the billowing thunderbusters come in--in one hand, she has a controller that blasts air or water, depending on the need.
Irv's prizewinning chili is a warm springtime breeze compared to an industrio-medical combo water cannon/air compressor going full bore.

Meanwhile, the busy waiting room is filing through the waiting room around me. Someone keeps bumping the gurney from the curtain at my head, the curtain behind the twin peaks around the world's newest volcano keeps opening and closing and finally just opening a ways, and I'm working very, very hard to focus on the completely disassociated screen showing me a wild spelunking voyage down a passage that expands and contracts in time with my disassociated breathing.
And then they finish, change the cotton miniskirt, and wheel me back into the waiting room, where I'm supposed to spend an hour waiting for the drugs to wear off.
The good news is that despite being wretchedly difficult to pierce, my veins can take an extraordinarily fast drip, so I was able to drain the IV bag in record time. It would've been a different story had they given me a juice tray.
First we had to unhook the IV and de-pierce me. Then ten more minutes in repose in the waiting room. Then I could sit up for five minutes and someone would help me to the bathroom to change. Then I could walk around the waiting room for a while. Finally they would call someone with a wheelchair to take me down to turn in the samples for biopsy.
But first the blood pressure cuff--just enough time for me to sit up, grab my sandals, and bolt for freedom.
Could I dance, I would've done so to assuage the worried flock, but hopping from one foot to the other while touching my nose and holding my arms up or out.
Not to be a bad patient, I just want a damn drink.
Which eventually happens, and I get back to the hotel, and it returns to the joys of balancing an even greater hunger with an intestinal racetrack lubed by the previous day's turbo stuff. Which is fun.

But here's hoping that since she spotted so many problem spots she'll be able to figure out what's causing at least some of them.

On roles and definitions

The trick to being a good teacher--not to say I have it--is not to convey material as much as to connect with students.  Which is to say, I'm toast.

Thai people have a fixed worldview.  Every word has a set tone.  Never will odd inflection leave a Thai person wondering if a sentence was a question or command.  Misplaced inflection will render anything nonsensical babble.  Consider: any syllable can have rising, falling, high, middle, or low tone, and a completely different meaning with each.  And there are forty-some symbols for twenty-some sounds, so you have two, three, or four consonants producing an "S" of various elevations and durations, and each completely alters the meaning of any given syllable.  All of which is as completely self-evident as the difference between "live" and "live" (give and hive), so only a simpleton or absolute buffoon would err.  What's funny is when students are blindly repeating anything I say and end up repeating Thai phrases.  Where I find this singlemindedness most revealing, though, is in food.

A Thai menu is fantastically easy to analyze from pretty well any perspective.  Monikers like "a la King" do not exist in Thai food, save for imported dishes, i.e. "American Fried Rice" is ketchup fried rice with hotdogs and fried eggs.  Otherwise, Thai food is exactly what it says: fried vegetables with chicken; beef with oyster sauce; deep fried pork; spicy-sour raw shrimp; spicy-sour boiled shrimp; bland soup; spicy soup; stirfried rice/egg/wheat noodles with pig/chicken/shrimp in soy sauce/pan gravy; stirfried spicy pig/chicken with bamboo/palm/vegetables and coconut (or not); rice with egg; rice with beef and vegetables; rice with shrimp in tamarind sauce; chicken on rice with brown sauce; chicken with yellow sauce....
Describe a dish in Thai and you've named it.  More interesting is that each has a unique sauce.

Thai seasonings consist of fish/soy sauce (salty), oyster/tamarind sauce (sweet), chili sauce/flakes (spicy), lemon/vinegar (sour), brown/palm sugar, and MSG.  The difference between the seasoning in tom yam and oyster-fried beef is leaving out the chili paste.  Stirfried veggies with shrimp differs by swapping amounts of oyster and fish sauce.  To make cashew chicken, add garlic.  Sweet and sour: tamarind instead of garlic.
But each sauce has a definite name and purpose: chicken on rice with brown sauce; chicken on rice with red sauce; red pork on rice; boiled chicken on rice; chicken on yellow rice....
Thing is, if you change any component, it reduces to gobbeldygook.

A westerner looks at "Shrimp and corn with tamarind sauce" and "beef and mixed vegetables with oyster sauce," thinks, 'I hate oyster but I love tamarind,' and says, "I'd like the beef with mixed vegetables but in tamarind, not oyster, sauce."
To the Thai, this is, "Mable!  Gimme a blueplate with hobnobblekish!"

Consider the distinctions between seasonings for rice.  That's the American interpretation: rice, fish sauce, vinegar done.  Ya gotcher meat, potatoes, and ketchup goes with anything (God for the days....)
Consider what would happen if you ordered "Chicken with fried potatoes and gravy."  You get a hunk of chicken with sauteed, par-fried and sauteed, or deep fried potatoes and some sort of seasoning sauce.  A fancy person would say, "gravy made by shocking the pan with bouillon and reducing with ketchup and lemon pepper." It can be used on pig, beef, chicken, (maybe fish), potato, yam, or any vegetable sauteed in butter, or anything else cooked in a pan.  And it's called gravy.
The fancy person also distinguishes between species of potato--much better to bake russet and fry Yukon Gold.  Nevermind whether it's sauteed, par-fried, or deep fried, let alone what the respective oils contain.

Chicken and potatoes with gravy--it doesn't matter whether there's Worcestershire or Tabasco or Lowry's, it's gravy; it doesn't matter what species, they're chunks of fried potato.  Here's your ketchup.

But this is Thailand, so you have steamed rice, sticky rice, boiled rice, yellow rice, fried rice, toasted rice, sweet rice, custard rice, banana-leaf rice, sweet-steamed rice, soupy rice, and each grain has a distinct place in the harvest season, age since it was harvested, location in the paddy, type of paddy, elevation of the paddy, location of the farm, and quality of the year's harvest.
The Western epicurian describes three spices in a sauce.
The Thai toddler says, "This is B grade rice from a low-elevation field on an off year, grown in the middle of a shady paddy, harvested in Blahdebluk during rain and dried in Kamneblah for a little more than 18 weeks."

And while fish sauce goes on any entree, put fish sauce on sticky rice and you're up for hanging.  Sticky rice with pepper vinegar and pepper fish sauce are okay, though, as is chili powder.  To put fish sauce on steamed rice is only natural; put fish sauce on sticky rice and you're up for hanging.  Vinegar on sticky rice is okay, though, and vinegar or fish sauce with peppers is okay with fried rice.  If you're eating yellow rice, wait for a Thai person to season it for you or you'll be forced to start over.

Ketchup goes with noodles, vegetables, meat, juice, whatever else.
In Thailand, everything has a specific place.  Vinegar with peppers goes in soup vinegar with cucumbers goes on yellow rice; just try ordering fried pork with sticky rice and asking for vinegar with peppers.


Part of me really wishes to be incorporated into a culture based upon such defined values.  

On boxes

Lately, I've been doing a lot of coloring, particularly of mandalas.  Putting on mellow music and concentrating on maintaining perfect symmetry and color density is as disengaging as concerted meditation, without the effort.
When I told a friend, he went into the joy and existential necessity of coloring outside the lines.
I barely coughed in a guffaw.

FUCK THAT!

It was a surprising thought.
I'd generally consider myself anything but a conformist.  Never before would I have given two shakes to staying within the lines.
And then I stepped onto an airplane in SFO and disembarked more alienated and discombobulated than a tadpole catapulted into a rockpile.
Forget trying to stay in the lines, I'm still not really sure how to find the page.  Granted, I'm great at falling (or getting blindsided) off, but now that I've been here nearly a year, I'm almost able to identify the metaphorical paper on which my daily maze is painted.
And as far as negotiating that maze, successfully honing life through the daily grind, I do what the voices tell me and get through, but I do so with all the grace and intention of the frat house dog stumbling around the morning after being subjected to every substance available at the toga party.

Give me a set of lines I can see, distinctions I can make, the orgasmic regularity of symmetry, the opportunity to say "this zone is pink, each and every time, without fail," and to inspect and think, "Pink, not pink, pink, not pink," all the way around, and I will rejoice.

Interesting how things can change.  

On electricity

When I paid my rent I had a nasty-steep electric bill. I joked that
they were sticking me because I'm a farang-not expected here hut not
unusual in Thailand-but they pulled out the sheet to show me: I used
246 units, the next used 460, and the rest were over 500.
Still, it's nice to be back in the rainy season with the cooling
afternoon showers.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

another casualty

It's time to hit the tables: I'm feeling different inside and want something to show for it, outside.  Clothing, well, not such a hot idea.  A belt might work, or a tie, but I'm not a big fan of either as it appears in local pomp.  So I took my dear, trusty watch--the 8th grade graduation present from my grandparents that died soon after I got here, and lasted only a week after I took it to the best watch shop I had seen at that point--to a high-end retailer and asked if they could replace the battery.

A sweet and impeccably efficient lady took the watch, named an exorbitant price, and I said, "Great."  I turned away from the evisceration, pretending to look at watches, and I heard, "Excuse me, hello?"

The battery was hooked to her electrometer and reading in the high green.  But she was pointing to something that looked horribly like a miniature battery contact floating loose.

"The battery is good.  This is your problem."

I just about fell over.

Could it have been the guy who tried to change the battery?  One of the bike wrecks?  But it was okay after the first and second, I think.  How great it would be to have somewhere to charge in and say, "This is your fault!"  

Especially after fighting through my longest teaching day with some of the worst individuals I have to deal with--usually, kids are loud and disruptive because they're bored.  Sometimes, there's an individual or two who are actively and aggressively disruptive and appear to take great joy in derailing any momentum the class builds up.  And they are utterly remorseless--when most Western jackholes would shape up after some degree of reprimand, be it verbal or getting kicked out or visiting the authorities, these kids will laugh and mock through a beating.

Oh, to talk with the parents, say, "LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!"

Oh, to address the educational system and say, "LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!"

Oh, for the option to completely disengage myself from the system and say, "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

But I can't change the system, even if it wanted to change.  And even if I could communicate well enough with the kids to inspire them to change, they're already pigeonholed into set roles.  If they did actually change, they would drift around as disjointed and out of place as the little chunk floating free in my watch.   

I almost didn't wince as she used an excessively large mechanical press to rejoin the parts.  And as soon as I fought down the urge to place blame, I ran smack into, "What next?"

Could I take it to one of the repair stalls?

Wait, did I honestly just think that?

So it will go home and wait patiently (timelessly?) in a drawer until I am somewhere recognized and endorsed by a maker of timepieces "designed to be noticed."