Intelestink

Last year, my savior of a Thai teacher, PeeWee, had a student teacher
she was supervising. Toward the end of the term, the student gave
PeeWee a project report/term paper and said "help make this good" or
somesuch. PeeWee gave it to me and said "fix it" or somesuch. Which I
did. Which is to say, I kept most of the subjects and what seemed to
be the inspirations behind the verbs and rewrote the paper. And it was
still pretty craptastic as far as an English 102 paper goes, but this
was Thai grad school so who's to say, right?
I just pieced that the new, exceptionally beautiful co-teacher I have
is the selfsame one.

Maybe this is why the educational system stays as it does.
And what is there to do? What can you do?
My upstanding morals would make PeeWee look bad (about as smart as a
walker-bound geriatric going postal on a walker with a hacksaw), and
her failure to fix the paper would make the student look bad, and her
failure would make her professor look bad, or I could just spend 30
minutes rewriting the damn paper.

Uphold the status quo, support the middle path, take the easy route--
same same, but different here in Thailand where it's the core of the
dominant (yet unofficial--no taking sides, remember) religion.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

On acculturation

It's a continual challenge to stand flat-footed and accept that things are how they are.
That's the bugger: no matter what I think or expect or believe about something, no matter how it is or was or especially can/should be or was/has been elsewhere, it is how it is here, wherever it happens to be.

So... a word that ends with L and looks like, "soul" actually ends with an N sound and comes out like "son."  And if they call something coffee and that's what you get when you ask someone for "Gah-FEH," that's coffee.

Other examples.

Only two people on campus call Teacher Joel "Teacher Joel" and we're both farangs.  Otherwise, he simply IS "Teacher Jo."
A hamburger is coarse-chopped ham.
An S digraph--the S sound connected with another consonant, i.e. steak, swim, slip--has a big, empty syllable in the middle: sa-teak, sa-wim, sa-lip.  It just does.  Like a ta-ree.

But it seems like there should come a line... and now that I say that I realize it's in my perception, not the actions of another person.  I just like to think myself tolerant, rational, and reasonable enough that by the time I'm getting peeved and thinking, "sum'pn ain't right," anyone willing to observe the situation with a degree of objectivity would say,"there's been a line crossed."

Case in point: trying a new massage parlor.
My usual haunts have closed or are under renovation or simply haven't been open for a goodly while, so I went to a new place.
The masseuse was a pint-sized brunhilda of a bruiser: a goodly bit under 5" and a proud 60 kilos--130ish pounds.

There are some things to accept before the issue at hand.
FIRST: In western terms, a Thai massage is an exercise in contortion with breaks to gasp for air and regain the quest for relaxation.  For Thai people, it's a social engagement.  Rarely are there curtains between mats, so the parlor is generally open for gossip between masseuses and those victims inclined to participate.
I do my best to avoid those--when there are curtains, it's less likely that there'll be rounds of, "feel how bony this ass is!"
Still, as much as I'd like the chance to check out and let the massage do its work to re-open circulation and facilitate recuperation, that's only my desire.  In reality, the masseuse will bring her phone with her, answer every text and call and make any number herself, and I just hope she doesn't get stuck working a sore spot while she talks, because she stands to work up and down and up and down that one damn spot until her conversation runs its course.
SECOND: A customary Thai greeting goes as follows: "What is your name? Where are you from? How do you like Thailand? You eat Thai food? Where do you live now? How much does it cost? Where do you work? How much do you make? How much was your watch/shirt/necklace?"
THIRD: As a farang, I am here as a linguistic liaison.  That is all.  As much as it riles me to have people hoot and holler and "HALLO! HALLOHALLOHALLO!" until I look, then laugh and duck away, it's my job to be open to those willing to try an exchange.  And when I find someone who seems to speak English, it should be my relief to communicate.

Back to the issue: it's usually easy to sidestep the interrogation through incomprehension.  It's enough to focus on relaxing and bracing for the next contortion.
But today I found the pint-sized Brunhilda who happens to know some English and wants desperately to learn more.  So my smiling "Mai kow jai" got slow, syllabic explanations and translations.
Precisely when I care about them as little as ever.

So I suck it up and parrot back and offer what translations or pronunciations I can, until she gets stuck and can't understand my salary.
So we break while she gets pen and paper, and first I have to write my monthly salary, and then it turns into a series of writing lessons, with her teaching me the Thai alphabet.

This is the point I'm going, "There's gotta be a line."
But obviously not in her world.
Which is the law of the land.
Sigh.

More street food!

 

A quest: tom yam cow hoof.  

Destination: my standby haunt for the past year, the food cart across the street.

Proteins: par-grilled chicken on the left, pork chops on the right, and in the middle, crabs that need to be tied up or they'll crawl off.  

When a vendor meets a vendor--on the left, a guy selling grilled eggs, and on the right, a lady with skewered green mangosteen.  

The grilled eggs are on skewers over a wok full of coals in the front part of the basket, sauces and seasonings in the rear.  

The mangosteens are skewered and stacked.  

A year ago, this would've sent me for a loop.  Now it's just good dinner.  Or breakfast.  

From what I can gather, they start stewing a vat of whatnots on Friday and renew the contents through Sunday, then use the stock as all-purpose broth until the next Friday.  

The grill/fry-rice station.  From stage left: the grill with a pile of porkchop.  The three buckets are actually clay pots--imagine thick-walled terracotta--that are the local edition of the Weber grill on the side patio.  Depending on the order, pots go straight on the coals, or woks go on top.  

From the working end of things, the whatnots pot in the front right, followed by the two grills.  The big pot next to the two-flame burner table is the all-purpose-stockpot.  

All the stock for tom yam comes from here--shrimp, beef, hoof, whatnots, crab, chicken, any tom yam--as does tom saab (tom yam without complex ingredients and more spice), gaang jeut (literally: bland soup), gaang soom (extra sour curry soup with with spice levels you don't really appreciate until the next day), for flashing pans, lubing up dry sautees, helping out fried rice, anything and everything. 

Bottom line, it's the inherent flavor under every dish, like the water at a pasta shop or the strains of yeast at a sourdough bakery.   

Small problem, though: it's also where you rinse the pots.  So you finish an extra spicy tom saab and have an order for gaang jeut: better rinse the tom saab out, using the multi-purpose stock, dump the rinse back into the vat, and start on your gaang jeut.  

The styrofoam stage left: cold storage of all fresh proteins.  

Here it is: a table 10" tall with 4 legs that generally hold up, the plastic oval plate, ice, glass, and water; napkins and toothpicks (don't hesitate to wipe down the silverware and plates), a dish of finger veggies (cabbage, green beans, water sprouts, and holy basil) and a little plastic bowl for the cow toe soup (which has flaming briquettes in the middle). All on an eroding plastic mat on the sidewalk.   

Yam blah-duk-foo-ma-manao: spicy sour fried catfish salad with green mango lime

Shred a grilled catfish in with a bunch of panko crumbs, fry it, and here you go.   

Plated up with a line of dried shrimp and fresh fried cashews. And the catfish head and tail.  

More street shots

It's just... there's something off 

Here, too, but in an entirely different vein

Roller squid: sundried squid, grilled in the basket, and then wrung through tumblers like hand-cranked laundry of yore

Typical desserts: custard and gelatin with syrup toppings 

Sidelong shot of saffron robes in a department store.  I'm still not used to this.  

Trinkets cheap cheap!

Delectibility

It comes in a little tube pouch in a red, white and blue wrapper--the patriotic candy bar.  There's a stylized smiley face on it, wearing an Uncle Sam hat.
It's a tube of sunflower seeds--these alone are fairly rich and delectable.
But these, hailing the glory of the USA, are chocolate coated.
And then dusted with bacon salt.
Glory, glory, hallelujah.

If anyone from the gastro clinic comes looking, tell them I'm down the hall, booking a room in cardiac.  

Re: food safety

"You wonder how the woman at the poultry stall doesn't end up getting salmonella poisoning or something. Eek!"

No kidding.  What a can of worms.  Especially coming here from the Ritz, where the HACCP reports had to be recorded every 20-60 minutes, and every cooler had to be between 36 and 40 degrees (or some other set and narrow range), and all product had to be rotated within a certain period, and all hot areas had to be above a certain temperature, and there could be no cross contamination of butter touching milk or an open jug of orange juice in the fridge, and were a retentive scholar and devotee of Leviticus to visit, save for the blessings (I think are involved), the sterile segregation and separation of food would be without reproach.

Fast forward to the lady digging through an erstwhile-pink apron with greasy hands to pull out change, and then using the same hand that just doled out your cooked food to scoop out a big handful of raw chicken.
Enter the world where there isn't enough refrigerator space to keep meat.  Or veggies.
And why would you, when lady on the farm/butcher cart wheels through every day?

You !would_not_believe! how quickly stuff goes bad over here.
Stateside, a cabbage is fairly indestructible.  Or an apple.  Leave it in the fridge for a week and you can still cook it off.
Here, two days and it's a puddle of black goo.
The expiration date on hamburger....
Here, you have two days--TOPS--to cook the sucker off, and then you'd better finish it tomorrow or you'll be reheating some serious funk.
I once bought something at lunch, put it in the fridge, and it turned sometime overnight: the following late-morning, the bag was about to pop open with the bacterial output.

Sometimes I worry about things like salmonella or e coli or bacillus.
It's been a long, long time since I bought raw meat from a vendor, but that's a byproduct of having only a plastic auto kettle to cook in (and that elicit, I might add).  But you can bet that the vendors running the carts I haunt aren't inspecting HACCP labels and refrigeration levels when they buy the chicken whatnots or pig livers.  And cross contamination is a non consideration while they wipe fish off the cutting board that just had chicken with a rag they use to clean their hands and occasionally disrupt the various lines of ants marching toward the goodies.
And when it's standard procedure to rinse a pot in the huge vat of stock before and after cooking anything and everything, how do you say, "YOU JUST HAD RAW _X_ IN THERE! DON'T DUMP IT BACK INTO THE STOCK POT!" when that's exactly what they've been doing.... forever?
In the same vein, the person who seeks out insects from a string of deep-fry fair stalls does not complain about the presence of an ant or ten.  If it's that bad, give the food a shake and wait a minute and the ants will crawl off.

What better opportunity to evoke Buffet: it's a whole new latitude, a whole new attitude.
Sometimes I want to scream, "have you any idea how quickly your product passes through my system?"
But that would not do here.
In the Buddhist culture, there is no room to put someone on the spot with, "You're making me sick!"  Instead, you back off and disappear so nobody loses face.
And how could I point a finger at a specific individual? (Although I harbor fantasies of flying out of SE Asia on a courier spraying a drop of diarrhea for every iota of carbon in the exhaust and blanketing the place in my wake.)
It's the disquiet in eating something with ants on it, or tapping on something and giving the ants time to clear out: somewhere in my head, alarms ring.  But to avoid food that's been in contact with insects would be to starve, or live on packaged crackers.
I hit some rum luck, but most everyone else seems to do okay.

What sticks after the rest has boiled off is that bad food comes from a) extremely bad care or b) sick animals.  When you're at the fillet table, processing the day's catch of salmon, of course it's routine to carve off and eat a bit of sockeye.  And of course you don't eat the hunk with all the sea lice.  Likewise, when you're at the market, you don't worry about disease or contamination unless you see something that gives rise to that worry; the morning's butchering of otherwise healthy animals happily running around someone's yard hasn't had time or cause to become a health risk.  So you pick up and smell the fish with the same hand that picks up and smells the pork belly and digs through the wallet for cash.  And since the vendors are reliant on your return, day after day after day, it's in their own, personal best interest to make sure you have a quality product.  Otherwise there's the market just down the road or the ruralite who comes through with a cart.
Which is a huge part of the reason there's no dairy to speak of: industrial farming is unheard of and would be thoroughly unwelcome.

I guess that's one of the great ironies of W vs E culture: here, the individual, no matter how sick or deranged, is streamlined into the collective culture while the chicken of questionable character is removed from the foodchain, where in the West, the individual is pulled aside and given counseling and care while the sick chicken is processed right along with the rest.  

On Certification

I want to get a TEFL certificate, but it's prohibitavely expensive to do so the legitimate, in-class way: a full month's rent in another city, plus living expenses for four weeks, having the time to do so, and paying the equivalent of six or seven weeks' salary. It's steep.
So I went on an online quest, and figured it would work. There's a goodly bit of fine print that makes me think someone with my experience and a basic certificate would be in pretty good standing. And then I started looking at the fine print.

Now I'm waffling like a newbie candidate in the People's Choice Mayoral Coalition, but it's looking more likely that I'll sign up for the actual CELTA course.
After digging through a ton of websites, the one I found most appealing was a 140 hour course incorporating young learners, business English, hotel English, and general TEFL. I emailed them some questions, and they said they've been accepted by the Omani Ministry of Higher Education but needed to provide many supplemental materials certifying their authenticity and content.
And to be perfectly frank, it made great sense once I saw the certificate: generic .pdf saying "___(your name here)___" has completed "__X__" hours of online study with TEFL BOOTCAMP on __(date)__

I can't shake the feeling that if I were a screener and saw an application with "online" and "TEFL Bootcamp" I would sincerely question the application's veracity and wonder what sort of gibbon the applicant was expecting to review the materials.

Then again, they have a pretty robust return policy, so if an application was rejected based on lack of certification, it appears that I could simply request a refund and be up the e-book reading without being out the cash. And if they have already been accepted, maybe that bridge is fortified.
So if indeed the refund is a true "No questions asked" policy, I have nothing to risk, especially if the jobs (at 400% my current salary + room and board) are okay with the TEFL Bootcamp.
It's just so easy to imagine being in any academic office I've ever seen and hearing, "Get this--some dude is applying with credentials from TEFLBootcamp.com--how's that for ripe?"

Photos!

Wandering around looking for the escaped crocodiles....

visit to a market

Random street scenes

On... husbandry

The goal was to get to the municipality bird park.
Generally, I'd get a few blocks from the tourist zone, but not knowing where I'm going, how to get there, or any of the Thai phrases past "I go to...." So I walked to the knot of mototaxi drivers and asked about the bird park.
Much discussion, circles and circles. Bird. Park. Bird. Park. Same same zoo.
Zoo?
Zoo.
Zoo in Songkla. 30 kilomet.
No, the Hat Yai zoo. Zoo with birds.
OH!
See, is flooding last year. Had big zoo. Crocodile. Many animal. Bird and bird and bird. But many flooding, and now no zoo.
Zoo in Songkla. 30 kilomet.
Oh. Right.

So I went walking, and I stumbled into a market with my camera out and charged. Enroute, I happened across a street parade of some sort.
So no brightly hued avians, but some typical Asian market scenes.

on names

It's the week before an extended weekend, compounded by being prep for midterms next week: throwaway lessons in general. Sunday night, sometime before the neighborhood birds started waking up, I woke up with the genius idea of a worksheet: take the material we've been working on--basic biographical stuff--in the happy kidlet formula on one side, and in an official format on the other. 15 minutes later, one side has the happy cartoon bubbles asking "What is your name" (first, last, nickname), "How old are you?" (date of birth) &c, and the second page is a US visa application, edited slightly.
It's been about the best week of Mattayom I've had. The students who care about it end up clustered around the desk in the front of the room, asking for transcriptions of names and trying to get the information filled out, and the ones who don't care just wander off. The fun part is that when I orbit the room after a few minutes and take back worksheets from kids who haven't made it as far as getting out a pen, about half the time, they end up being some of the most motivated and hardworking in the class.

What i've really learned is the impossibility of Westernizing Thai. The classic example is "Sua." Or maybe Seewa. Sooah. Any of 'em could work, depending upon the Thai and farang's accent. But then there's the inflection: say it one way and "sua" is tiger. Say it another and it's shirt. Another and it's a sitting cushion. Or there's the word for pork: Muo. Or is it Hmo? Hmuo? Mho? How do you write the way you have to drop your tongue and open your nasal cavities and then scoop the sound up in the space of one very short syllable?

And then came the parade of names. Wichararoot, Chankasatong, Supaporn (I realize I've been here too long when I almost miss laughing at that one), Oyawatchakorn. A press of kids screaming to be heard over the background roar, all hoping that by screaming louder they'll get through to me and be able to hear my response more easily.
It's fun.

But then again, take an easy name like "Wichararoot." Seeing it like that, I imagine someone saying "which are uh root." Perfectly reasonable. And completely wrong.
"Wi" is a "Weee" with your tongue crimped fully forward in your mouth. "Cha" is like a British "char" or "chah" or saying "chai" like the tea but with a downturn instead of uplift at the end. "Ra" is halfway between an "L" and "D" sound: say 'la' but think 'ra' or say 'da' while thinking 'la' and it'll come about right. And "Root" is hopeless. The T is a hard stop, so no 'tuh" or aspiration; in this sense, it could be T or D just as easily, which ends up going for just about every hard consonant sound in Thai. And there is absolutely nothing that prepares the American tongue for the OO sound. On the one hand, you hold your tongue about like someone who's just learned what exactly they ate and are experiencing its return. Open your nasal passages, too, and then do a bizarre little tonal curlicue--think the basic Baroque turn on a keyboard, but constrained to ordinary speech levels. And again do the thing where you say D while thinking L and shaping your mouth for R.
Then point to the name, forget about all of it, repeat whatever whatshisname said, and be glad Thai people have nicknames like Bank, Arm, Bam, or Pang.

On nodding, smiling, and rolling with it

Each department has a summer camp--an overnight trip to a beach resort not far from here, running and playing in the sand, playing learning games, and then packing up and being home by lunch.
The lady in charge of the Prattom English Department planned out a great trip: maybe three weeks ago, she asked us to come up with games for the trip, which would happen next weekend (July 22). The students would be in small groups, 6 or 8, and the activities would have to last 30-40 minutes, then we'd switch. Last week, there was much hubbub over selecting students, and it boiled down to sheer aptitude. Only the best in terms of attitude and, secondarily, comprehension were invited, so there would be a group of sixty or eighty hand-picked students who would enjoy a free trip. Sounds great, right?
Then one of the big boss men got word of it.
No, you need to have a couple hundred students and fifteen farangs. I'll send all the new faculty from the EP.

Which brings us to the beginning of this week: 8 workdays from the camp, one weekend away, we get word that someone called the resort and it's full so we'll reschedule sometime in August.

On excitability

It might have been good to mention at some point that the school is in
the rotorwash of the airbase's runway and airtraffic is so common that
twelve year old boys don't even stop to watch.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

Ordinary Beauty

I: Invisibles

Thailand is an extremely stratified culture, although a true Thai would never want it to be known--no need to admit, especially to someone from elsewhere in the world, that there are people who simply have less "face" than others. Still, when one of the upper rung of executives is in the lunch room, ambient chatter is nonexistent. For comparison, imagine X showing up at Niagara Falls and the roar silencing.
Likewise, chatter among the lunchroom ladies silences when someone of sufficient standing to eat in the private lunchroom walks in (this includes the Thai administration, executive assistants, senior Thai faculty, Chinese faculty, and farang faculty).
And the omnipresent scrape of whisk brooms gathering fallen leaves into burn piles ceases as the lunch trolleys wheel past enroute to the cafeteria or other student dining location.

As far as I can tell, the bottom rung of society keeps the streets swept using coarse wisk brooms and dustbins made from bamboo rods wired to rectangular metal jugs cut into scoops. Somewhere in the dark, at either end of the day, they are out, cleaning the (remarkably copious amounts of) refuse from the day before. It's hard to tell age or gender behind broad-brimmed hats of either canvas or straw, thick face coverings partway between veil and breathing mask, nondescriptly worn and grimy overalls or loose long-sleeved shirt with long pants, and plastic flipflops. Always the plastic flipflops on feet worn to the brink of callused, tanned, horny hooves. Sometimes the hands, nearly as weatherbeaten as the feet, have garish nails. Sometimes the eyes, bearing the cultural inheritance of the Land of Smiles, twinkle within smears of garish eyeliner.
These people are the invisibles. They operate around the clock in broad view, they gather and haul off mountains of detritus, and, like the ladies who clean the English Programme's coffee mugs, keep the coffee, creamer, sugar, and chocolate full, stock the water jugs and milk containers, sweep the floors and take out the trash, if they receive recognition or comment it is for their inefficiency or sticky fingers.

II: Unrecognizables

Soi dogs--street mongrels--are some of the ugliest and most decreped creatures in the world. They grow up exposed to the sun, rain, humidity, territorial duels, vehicular traffic, disease, malformation, malfunction, common ire, and uncommon interest imaginable. After once mistaking a long-eared pig with sparse patches of wiry hair sprouting from ash-blask skin for a good-looking soi dog, I haven't been able to shake the impression that many soi dogs would look better if they WERE pigs. And if I see a critter rooting through piles of roadside trash (frequently smoldering) I'm still more likely to give favorable recognition--and appreciation--to a pig.
Soi dogs seem to adopt places or people, and while there are nightly brawls and regularly shifting appearances at a given street cart, the same dogs come back to the same places night after night, day after day. We have two at my guesthouse, a pudgy bitch with short tan-gray hair and a scrappy little guy with black corkscrews. Mainly, the bitch flops in the coolest available spot and plays a rather rounded doormat with swollen nipples. The other one is scrappy, attacking shoelaces and bags of dinner toted unmindfully home. One of the residents keeps his topknot tufted into a bow. A few weeks ago, I heard him yelp and scream after getting hit by a car. He spent a couple days sleeping, favored his right rear for a while, and is now back to chasing vehicles and pedestrians. I have no doubt he, or the bitch, would go berserk if bathed or even constrained to an interior space. I also have no doubt that, were either cleaned up, it would make a great pet (in the familial, American sense).
But in all honesty, concern for vermin and disease scares me away from touching even the two that call my place home, the ones I see other people petting and scratching. In all honesty, if I had a good brush with one, I would go straight to my room to change pants, then straight to the washer, no passing go or collecting a handful of Baht. And these don't even exhibit more than mild mange, let alone bizarre growths.

III
Love: beauty I

I once stumbled into a lecture by Barry Lopez. In it, he described love and its demonstrative beauty: a mother changing a baby, a tortilla-maker flattening dough, someone in a roadside stall plying an inherited trade. This is love. This is beauty.
To act with such intention and passion that the act becomes unconscious--the woman in a headscarf flipping out roti dough, the woman with bruises hacking apart roast pig, the man coordinating whisk-broom, dustbin, and garbage canister into a smoothly rotating trio, the ancient violinist tuning up, the way the janitor sweeps through students and around teachers, this is beauty.
This culture, based on physical involvement and interaction, is rife with such beauty. An Isaan emigrant working mortar and pestle while turning grilled catfish. Painters touching up a curb or street lines, a samlor peddling slowly past while enroute to the zoo, the way grizzly old fingers debone chicken, the way a first-year teacher hikes her skirt before passing in front of the administration building: these are beauty. When a mindful act is carried out to its uttermost but with mindless disregard, this is love, and it is beautiful.

IV: The middle path

In this Buddhist culture, offerings of food and incense are made every morning. A plate of food, a bowl of food, a glass of juice, an open bottle of soda, or some combination thereof is set on the sidewalk with a stick of incense in it. Usually, by mid or late afternoon, passing chirpy birds have pecked at the offerings until the incense sticks toppled.
Note: soi dogs rarely get into these offerings. Nor do cats or beggars.
Usually, they wilt on styrofoam plates until the morning sweeping.

V
Love: beauty II

There is much to say for a culture whose rejects--street dogs and dwellers--eat so well they don't attack curbside offerings of fresh food. Indeed, the standard diet of handouts and cartside leftovers, most soi dogs have the luxury of leaving behind rice or vegetables or otherwise unappealing detritus. And there's no need to argue with birds. Easier to nap until the next turnover of food carts.
There is much to say for a culture whose curb-top food offerings of one day turn into birdfood before becoming refuse and getting swept up by the omnipresent invisibles along with discarded styrofoam bowls and plates and plastic silverware and cups and fallen leaves and academic waste and industrial waste and a reeking, gooey mass of their contents.

a fashionable entrance?

Again, the Thai mind is a very different place. Whereas an itchy American mind looks at something and thinks, "How can I make this easier/neater/more effective?" the typical Thai, at very most, will think "Does it look nice and shiny?"
For instance, Thai belts come in one length for kids, one length for grown-ups, and each is designed to fit a fat person. Instead of trimming the belt, they just wrap it around and clip it in the back. Usually, they'll use an alligator clip, but some of the girls like decorative sorts of cutesy deals that would be called refrigerator clips back Stateside.
And since they use clips anyway, it's extremely rare to see belt loops on school uniforms.
But if the belt gets out of line... *THWACK*

further into the Thai mind

The farangs were volunteered to read at an judge an English contest. We read a series of questions, and the students had a set time to answer. Below is a transcript, with select responses.

1. What is the capital city of England? (15 seconds)
2. Please give at least three names of fruit that have yellow color? (15 seconds)
3. What kind of movie do you like? (20)
4. Which subject do you like to study most? Why? (30)
5. Which province has the biggest number of monkeys in Thailand? (15)
6. Which religion do you believe in? Why? (25)
[Britishist because my family believed in for a long time]
7. Do you agree with saving money in the bank? Why? (30)
[Pizza I like] [I like shopping!]
8. Forests are important to man. Please write down 2 examples of their importance with supporting reasons. (40)
9. If you can choose, what kind of political system do you prefer between democracy and communism? Why? (40)
10. What is the cause of the corruption problem? (30)
11. Should we have Nuclear Power Plants in Thailand or not? Why? (30)
12. There are many poor people in Thailand. How would you solve this poverty problem? (30)

further updates from the far side of a year

It occurs to me--with unfortunate frequency--that if the time I spent squatting was actually spent doing squats, I would have some big thighs.

(Backstory: I brought over a massive edition of "Les Mis." Hugo was one of my absolute favorites some years back--DAMN! Some decade-plus ago, almost two decades back!--and I bought this gloriously fat, new, unabridged translation to go to Italy.  It didn't make the packing cut and I rued the choice as soon as I saw the books available at the BX.
Wow--to think of the difficulties I had in Italy, the relief of stepping into the BX and ordering a Whopper to eat while surrounded by big, solid, twangy Americans.
No, best not.
Suffice it to say, I didn't make the same mistake again, even if Hugo did sit in a bag for a year.)

It made me laugh to slide onto my tippy throne--toilet seats are enough of an alien luxury that fastening them does not oft happen in this culture--and see the largest commercial volume I've seen in Thailand sitting there as bathroom reading.

One day, there will be a similar tome next to a perch that occupies similar significance, save that it will be comfortable overstuffed leather and accompanied by a fireplace and more likely than not procured by a canid.
And that will be glorious.

On rice

I figured out what it is with rice. I've not really liked it since I
grew out off thkehood and rice with insta-powder gravy. (It looks
pretty horrible from here, so I have to add that I don't think my
folks had much to do with this).
On the one hand, white rice has had essentially all of it's flavor-
granting properties stripped and what remains amounts to plain white.
Just white. White, empty starchy uninteresting simple carby white.
If there is anything in the white, it came up through the rice
paddies- this does not bear consideration.
The final straw is that the most it's gonna get from cooking is the
wholesome residue of the local water. Yum yum.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

On the Thai Mind

“You are free time after school today, yes?” is never a good way to start a conversation in Thailand, even if the speaker is cute and smily. Neutrality is the best route until you know what's in store.

“Umm, what? When?” Nurse out an explanation before the chance of commitment.

“To practice the student for the morning talk.”

Sounds fishy and frustrating.

“The what?”

“Is for the morning talk. Next Friday. You practice them today, okay? Are you freetime this afternoon?”

“When? How long?”

“Maybe about 3:30 or four o'clock, and maybe only thirty minutes, okay?”

Gulp. “Okay.”

“Teacher S too, okay? He is bad student, na? I make for you script, maybe one hour, okay?”

“Uhhh, so you need me and Teacher S at 3:30 for a script?”

“Is for students, in the morning, na? Is called The Morning Classroom, for during the flag, na?”

*Dingdingding* “OHHH! You want us to help the students for the morning talk, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I get it now. See you at 3:30.”

During the morning display of patriotism, prowess, devotion, and flag-raising, given students or departments or some other alchemical determinant get up and address the compiled student body. When the English Department (not to be confused with the English Programme, which is a separate academy entirely) is on, the farangs are naturally volunteered to make the presentation as polished as possible. Usually, we hear about it the day before and it's a matter of sitting through a couple of recitations, making sure the speech isn't too mangled, and mainly smiling and conveying encouraging enthusiasm.

For the presentations, students research something, write a short speech in English, and read it over the God mic. At absolute best, it's a thoroughly robotic progression over syllabic hurdles raised unnaturally high. The other end is absolutely incomprehensible, in Thai or English. Most fall somewhere in between, and are roughly equivalent to:

HELLO MY NAME IS PANG FROM CLASS ONE SLASH TWO TODAY I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU ABOUT ICECREAM ICECREAM IS VERY GOOD IT IS COLD AND HAS MANY VITAN FROM DAIRY BUT ALSO MANY SUGAR IT COMES IN MANY FLAVORS SUCH AS BANILLA AND CHOCOLATE AND BANANA AND I THINK IS VERY GOOD.

Except this was a new game. Morning skits. A full-blown skit with a handful of participants, a script, a moral lesson, a grammar point, and a motivational message for the day. I was to be the good student, my coworker the joker, and everybody in the department was so happy we were helping out.

Heh.

The biggest speaking role fell to an M2 girl playing the teacher. She had to explain the moral and grammatical lessons. Otherwise, it was my coworker and I in a back and forth of good and bad student speech and behavior.

My biggest challenge is to remember that this is not my place to comment, interpret, pass judgment, offer criticism, offer advice, or step beyond doing exactly what I'm told, when I'm told, without dipping into how or why. So I smile and nod through the morality lesson—don't be a bad student—and the grammar point—make v do—and the motivational sentence—let's conserve energy to save the world—without saying a damn thing. No comment on the impossibility of the acting that's supposed to happen, the thoroughly mangled grammar of the script, the number of completely unintelligible words, or the chance to create one cohesive message, let alone the relative insignificance of “I make my homework” vs “I do my homework” when half the student body flatlines at “How are you?”

So we get through the script with the Thai Teacher narrating every line and motion and the Thai students utterly bewildered. And after making it through, without pause for comment or request for input, my coworker and I are offered sincere gratitude for our helping with the next three rehearsals plus the show.

Huh?

What?

Uhhh....

“Well, that wasn't half as bad as I thought,” my colleague said.

Okay, we're playing the peachy card—of course it's great. “Yeah, good time, good fun. The students will enjoy it.”

On Friday, we were supposed to be there at 7:15 to practice before the morning show. All lines to be memorized for real, no help from teachers.

At 7:35, Thai Teacher led in a convoy of students—the half dozen usual suspects plus half a dozen more carrying neon-pastel signs; not a good sign. By quarter to 8, when my colleague rolled in, we had figured out who was holding which sign and found the wireless mics. Just before 8, we tried to do a run-through and explain the signage: complex English expressions to convey the moral/grammatical/ecological lessons.

And then we were herded to the flagpole to sing the national anthem and the King's Anthem (a Friday mandate) and listen to a Bible verse and sing the school song and chant the school motto, followed by announcements, an extended certificate distribution—a week ago, there was a music competition—and then we were on.

Kinda.

And then it was time for the last minute instructions and scrabbling for mics and giving up on mics and retrieving the God mic from the flagpole dias so the student playing a teacher could be heard and pass around the mic.

Meanwhile, my colleague had progressed from, “That wasn't as cute as it was last time” to “maybe the mics will fail and we won't have to do this,” to “maybe a branch will fall” to “shit, shit, the sky's not falling, why did I let this happen?”

It happened, with Thai Teacher whispering every motion and line, but not quite loud enough for the mic to pick up. The mic was sort of kinda passed around, or at least pointed at whomever was speaking. And there was great hilarity at my colleague and I being students. Even if the student body was still standing, so only the front score of 4000 could see us.

As we split, my colleague was in a tizzy of relief and fortitude—thank God it's over and will never happen again. There were many congratulations and pictures. A question of having to stay for a nice big happy group photo, but the Administrative Head of the English Department said, “No, no, we do this every week now, okay?”

Sounded fun to me, especially with the chance to get on board early and make something I would stand behind proudly.

It was best to keep my opinion to myself.

Thirty minutes later, we were called back for photos.

We were told we had to do it again.

My turn to get very nearly obnoxiously bitchy.

“Did they get the mics working for us?”

“No, no, not today. Sometime later, after, we do this again, na?”

I was actually a little disappointed.

Still, we got to walk through the whole thing again, this time for cameras, before we could pose for the full group shot.

And this being Thailand, the full group shot is a matter of considerable pageantry. First the sign must be unfurled, and appropriate bearers chosen—the big, manly looking guys who aren't quite big enough to block anyone out. And then all the characters must be arranged and arrayed as aesthetically as possible—the short people stand on risers but can't stand higher than the important-looking tall people, but the important-looking tall people can't stand too far above everyone else because then they'll like like they're actually important, not just important looking, and all of this is debated hotly with furious hand fluttering before the farangs are waved into place and the whole structure topples and has to be rebuilt.

Walking back, I tried not to visibly cringe as we passed a marching band rehearsal.

“I know I should be more supportive, but when every student learns the songs by rote from older students who learned the songs by rote in a long and uneven line of musically illiterate students with vastly different ideas of how the songs should go, I am very glad not to be associated with the music department.”

“Yeah, it's hard in Thailand. Like you see with the scouts, the older ones teaching the younger ones. Or like yesterday I saw an older kid teaching a young girl how to throw a shotput but doing it wrong, and the girl was complaining that her arm hurt.”

There were choice words, followed by, “Why can't we think things through the first time?”

He said something fairly remarkable--”that's why they're a third-world nation.”

Hmm, yeah. I hadn't made that link, but yeah.

“That and the fact that any ideas are not about what would improve workability or livability, but what would look good.”

To whit: we have a new PM, and in January, minimum wage will spike 40%. How? It'll be great! How? Really! 40%... how? Mmmm, tax cuts.

Which is great considering that the only entities without existing cuts of approx 100% are foreigners and multinational businesses.

But then again, for the burgeoning businesses so carefully encouraged and nurtured, the family operations that earned some success and grew beyond a storefront/living room and hired employees to manage some part of the business, it's the death knoll, straight back to a micro-scale operation operated entirely by (wage-free) family.

But once even further, who am I to say anything?  

On the importance of learning English Part Deux

It is not in seeing the girl wearing a shirt that says I WISH THESE
WERE BRAINS, it is in seeing that shirt on a guy.

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME!

It's been a year.
No comment.
Well, almost.

It's been quite a year, and I've seen and experienced (survived) many incredible things.  Most of which I would rather do without, even if they have been instructive in what I can survive, accept, and wish never to perpetrate or perpetuate or instigate or witness ever again in my life.
Still, there are things like the food--pig gut soup with fried chicken for breakfast, unripe papaya in fermenting fish juice for lunch, horseshoe-crab caviar on the halfshell--and my fourth graders, and some of the people around town, that will warm my heart as long as it beats.

What I can say for sure: there's a stringy bit of wire-tough stubbornness in there somewhere that can withstand a whole helluva lot.
The tropics are nice, but I belong in the mountains.
There are nice things in the world, but nothing's like family.

On music

Empirically, I suppose I should be in strong support of the campus
band-it consists of students who get together to make music and
occasionally meet with a conductor.
And I do appreciate that.
I also give props to the elementary kidlets who march and play "Joy To
The World" on Melodions.
It's just that the sonic reality of a bunch of kids teaching
themselves to blast and bang on elaborate noisemakers curdles the
earhair. And what matters most when it does come down to a conducted
performance is not whether the kids are playing the same song--they
play the same 3 every year--at the same time or in the same key, let
alone consistently or together or with the conductor or on similar
pitches, but the big, glittery, sequined baton. THAT sucker is key.

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On writing

Bumped into a writing page devoted to contemporary poetry and
nonfiction.
Another reminder of why I came here-sunset throwing bars of golden
godlight from behind the mountain primeval, egrets glowing pink above
a waterbuffalo grazing a flooded paddy, the remains of a day scraped
clean by the cool air, followed immediately by the pile of elephant
shit.

One day there will be reserves left over and writing will again become
a quest and pursuit, not a grasping coping mechanism. And boy howdy do
I have some material.

To think the palm reader was so apologetic for saying that my lifeline
was very short but that only meant most of the content would happen
early, not that I'd die young.

Wait, who? Where? What was that about stories?

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On Thai Politics

I think I got my head around it.
Respectable folks don't talk politics because either they don't want to expose their own devotion or rile the farang in case he/she has a devotion.  Safer to play it all off as nonsense.
But I think I finally got a toehold into the political situation.
It's red v yellow, Thaksin v Democrat.
Thaksin is the former PM exiled in a military coup.  His platform was enfranchisement.
Imagine if, in America, every person who said "y'all" was recognized and accepted as part of a section of society that did not receive education or representation or enfranchisement or taxation or cultural obligation.  If every American who said, "y'all" maintained allegiance to the family patriarch, even as the family holdings dwindled fourfold every generation, embraced a pre-industrial agrarian lifestyle, this is the swath of society Thaksin embraced.
His basic message was, "If y'all vote for me, I'll make sure to give you a vote.  Got that?  A VOTE!  Vote for me and I'll give y'all a vote!"
The yellow shirt, opposition, democratic party looked at Thaksin's career and went, "Huh?"  Here's a guy who rose to power on corrupt, good-ol-boy politics and was convicted of accepting bribes.  Maybe he represents the underrepresented, but is bringing representation to a group previously uninterested in any part of government really worth enshrining someone so greedy and corrupt he gets caught in this system?

It'll be interesting to see what pans out.    

On Fireworks

Not quite Main St with the city band playing Copland or 1812, but I went out for dinner at a farang bar and ended up getting sat upon by some huge thunder bumpers.  Just as I sat, a few soft raindrops brushed down.  By the time anyone in the region had looked up to see a remarkably ominous cloud, there was a flash with a triple bang directly on top of it.
And the storm didn't move for an hour and a half.
A couple dozen of the strikes were on buildings around the courtyard where I was.  At most, flash/boom were separated by a full second.
An empty beer bottle left on the curb filled within half an hour.

I decided to order the double cheeseburger.
The chopped beef/pork patties were microwaved to defrosted, and then heated in white bread with slices of processed cheese byproduct until the latter was almost as runny and gooey as the former.

Talk about delicious.

But what was that about fireworks?  Call it an 8 oz burger, maybe 6 oz of undercooked beef graced with dairy.  3-2-1 launch. (Why mention undercooking or improper cleaning, cooling, transport, storing, or beef or pork or chicken or seafood or flies or cockroaches or ants or any of the other Western conceits?)
Sigh.  Who needs to sleep away the 4th, right?

So the lightning began just after 5.  It did not move until after 7.
By 8:30 the rain was slacking and there was about a 6 or 8 second flash/boom delay.  And by that time, getting home was much more important than avoiding some drips.
Plus, who sticks around to watch the fireworks in the next town over, especially when a private encore is in the works?

the scary part

What seems fantastic and truly surprising is that I've essentially skipped adulthood, middle age, and gone straight to geriatric, all in the space of a few months.
If I go out, I check out the glorious menu offerings of things I can't cook in a hotpot. I'm much more interested in the bathroom facilities than the bar babes. I worry about tripping and taking a fall. And as for muscles, for any core or body strength, well, it's probably in there somewhere, I know it used to be, but right now it's hiding. My sojourns to beaches and islands have been relative flops, but I can talk your ear off about doctors and hospitals.
Granted, I've taken some good photos, had any number of incomparable experiences, explored Nepal, learned to cook Thai food, and have been wrangling Thai students for most of the year. But beyond that, it's become a sedentary and withdrawn life wherein it's important not to climb too many staircases or I won't have energy for the end of the day.

Lately, I've been on a Qui Gong circling stint, doing breathing exercises while shifting around my center of gravity. On Saturday, I was feeling spunky and after my morning circling walked to town and back. Later, not intending to, I walked to town and back again while on the phone. It's in the 4-6 Km range, each way. Doing so was an accomplishment. And I'm still paying for it.
Regardless, I was going to tell my colleagues about it, sprucing up just a bit to sound like something worth saying you've done, when they walked in with, "So, no matter what you've heard about them being easy on farangs, they're not. We got a little bit out of it on Friday and spent the night in jail."
Gee, I went a little crazy and ordered calf-foot stew. And the large handful of chilis probably had me feeling nearly as bad and almost as remorseful through the night and morning.

When I think back to the person who left, I think "college kid." As far as what remains, pfew, rough to say much there. Forced to decide, I'd say "I'm a 4th grade teacher."
What will be interesting is to see what abiding changes come out of this experience, from the vantage of an extended perspective looking back on what stayed behind while the rest boiled off.

What I miss

I think I spotted it this morning: the sense of safety and security.
The world here is, for me, a dangerous place. Catch a toe on an uneven
bit of sidewalk, fall flat on my face, and expect some horrible
disease/infection.
No mention of crossing the street.
Or waterfalls.
It's enough to know there are two meter cobras in the park. And the
omniverous Thai water dragons. Plus the insect and arachnid life with
associated infections.
Mosquitos and dengue, malaria, yellow fever, elephantiasis.
Don't drink the water. Don't eat the food. Don't rile the natives.
Don't touch the girls. Stay away from the drugs. Whatever you do,
don't pressure it. Never lose face. Just keep smiling and smiling and
laughing and smiling.

It's not like Nepal, keeping one hand on my wallet, watching my back
for the next predatious assault.
It's much softer and harder to escape--don't sleep too deeply or
you'll wake up in a puddle of leakage. Don't ask too much or the
smiling nods will mean termination. Don't drop your guard, let slide
full mindfulness, relax for more than a jolting instant or you'll get
sideswiped. Litrerally.

I guess it comes down to my hopelessly un-Buddhist nature: I really,
really enjoy being unmindful. And I dearly miss the chance to check
out and live my life without being constantly alert for threats from
inside and out.

Maybe one day....

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On recorders

It is extremely difficult to reconcile my self-image with a soprano recorder.

Lately, I've been walking around humming variations on nursery rhymes--major, minor, modal, trying to invert, all that fun stuff from music theory.
And it is somewhat easier to do that here than it would be at home--precious few folks recognize "Baa Baa Black Sheep" in its original, let alone inverted minor, form.

Still, there's something disquieting about playing a recorder.  Even if it is more conducive to playing in a shared-living facility, especially in the nether hours.

Which is the upshot.  And maybe it'll be the enduring image of Thailand.

Blues in the night.
From the ivory throne.  

Try THAT with a tuba.

Say it ain't karma

In my defense (and you know it's a losing prospect if that's my opening line) I didn't even haggle.
"What's your Thai price?" I asked.
"50 Baht."
"Okay."
It was an unremarkable little market/bazaar tucked behind a 7-11 in an alley too small to support American garbage cans.  But the lady seemed nice enough and had a good enough selection of movies, so I picked out a handful at what I thought was a decent price.

I once haggled with a bootlegger.  Not something you do twice: no matter what transpires verbally or financially, you will not win.
So I didn't haggle.  I didn't argue.  I just asked for the English language stack and picked out a small handful of movies.

Black Swan doesn't play.
Inception is a Thai soap opera.
The animated Studio Ghibli show is a Pokemon disc, entirely in Thai.
Green Hornet is a Studio Ghibli flick, entirely in Japanese.
And Tron is "KILLER DINOSHARK!!"

Next time, just buy the damn movie.

On Music and Getting What's Coming

In second grade, we had a flutaphone concert.  We played "Lightly Row" and "Hot Cross Buns."  

For third grade, we were supposed to graduate to recorders.  Instead, the school had a turnover and I ended up being the only boy in third grade.  

Somehow, I've looked down at the recorder as a silly thing ever since.  

Mrs. Anderson, one of the most dynamic and inspiring teachers I've ever seen, played Renaissance music on an alto recorder and redeemed the instrumental family somewhat, but I'm a tuba player.  Little flutey things are silly novelties at best.  

So this morning I was in B2S, which sells stationery, art supplies, school whatnots, movies, books, and magazines.  On the bottom of a sale table in the back of the store, I found a Yamaha soprano recorder.  Not even the nice, two-tone version I had way back in the day.

I bought it.  

It took a full hour before I got bored with the diatonic potential and opened the instruction sheet to figure out chromatics.  

And suddenly it's night, the afternoon's thunderous downpour has come and gone, and my butt's numb from sitting in one position for too long.  

One day, I'll have a place where playing a tuba won't disturb a few hundred highly excitable indigenous folks, and, God willing, I'll have the physiology to do so.  

Until then, how cool to make music on something so dinky--the sucker could fit into a standard music folder.  It almost makes up for the shrilling, piercing, nature of the thing.  

Maybe it's mattayom's hidden blessing: sixty pre-pubescents shrieking in a concrete room has dulled my sensitivity to previously unacceptably shrill noises.  

interesting realization

it probably says an unfortunate amount, but peanut sauce was one of the driving factors in getting me here.  

To whit: when deciding where to send applications for EFL jobs, what better criteria than liking the stateside equivalent of indigenous cuisine?  And Thai food was way up on the top, sharing delectability with maybe Japanese, the only trump being the working permit barring German food.  

Within Thai food, special emphasis must be given to peanut sauce.  Stateside, it was ubiquitous, the spicy, ginger garlic and lime with a creamy peanut paste.  Spring rolls, fried spring rolls, fried or grilled shrimp or chicken, with any entree or appetizer and most desserts, a table at a Thai restaurant ended up littered with dishes of peanut sauce.

Lucky, lucky me to go to the source, right?

I have not seen peanut sauce since I got here.  

There's massaman curry, a sweet curry that uses peanuts.  And a sweet peanut sauce that goes with khanom jeen, rice noodles with many sauces.  But I have not seen the ubiquitous and disproportionately significant peanut sauce since I left the states.  

Which about figures, doesn't it?

On perceptions

Most every night, I dream of my beloved, my big-eyed WRX, racing cross country on an empty two lane. Or plowing and slipping through a snow storm. Sometimes careening right on the verge of losing it on a dirt track.

It's been a year since I held a steering wheel.

Once upon a time getting out on the road was a significant part of life—the freedom and escape and potential of even an hour spent on an open road to somewhere else, the power and security and joy of being strapped into my dream car, the absolute joy of unfettered possibility. In my car, on the road, I can go anywhere, reach anyone, with the only limit being my consciousness.

Before leaving, it seemed like quite a turbulent year: graduation, Europe, a straggling breakup, moving home, facing down some of the monkeys on my back, finding myself smack in front of, “NOW WHAT?”

My car was solace and comfort in the process.

And the importance of the road, the freedom and potential of escape, of taking control and deliberately guiding myself from wherever I am to wherever I want to be, followed me here.

For a few glorious months I roamed about the countryside, burning through an oil change every other week while exploring the elephant's trunk.

And smearing liberal chunks of flesh and spirit across the tarmac.

Still, I have nightly reminders of the importance of that freedom and self determination (although the only bike dreams I've had have involved the horrible smash of plastic that will haunt me for the rest of my life).

It has been nine months since I turned an ignition key.

Which is the last time I used a kitchen sink, cutting board, microwave, frying pan, or bought raw meat.

Part of me wants there to be some significance to this, wants it to be important or somehow meaningful that a baby could have been conceived and born in the time since I cooked in anything but a hotpot, ate any food that wasn't raw, boiled, or bought from one of the food carts.

But there's no more significance or meaning than objective value: it is simply a byproduct of the choices I've made to negotiate most easily through present circumstances.

One day, I will likely have a kitchen again, and I will likely enjoy preparing my own food, and I will probably even prepare Thai food (there will be a lot of fried potatoes before that, though). But that's an eventuality on the far side of a lot of decisions and events, and as immaterial as my onetime concern over seeing bugs in food.

Why is it again that an ant on a piece of lettuce is so objectionable?

The person who would've thought that is the same one who walked up staircases without a bit of appreciation.

Now, I live in the guesthouse where I spent my first night in town, across the hall from the first place I've ever had on my own, or close thereto. When I moved in, I was significantly disappointed with the dirt and wear and what I took to be neglect. With the rock hard mattress. With the amount of mold and scum growing in the shower. When I moved back, I was relieved at the amount of upkeep that had been happening without me doing anything, relieved that the building would be kept up and going without me having to do anything.

Now, from the room across the hall, I know the person who came here would've been moved to comment on a toilet seat not attached to the bowl. I would've been considerably put off by the auditorium chair with a hole in the seat. I would've wondered how a guesthouse could justify not providing sheets and towels and changing them with at least weekly regularity.

Now, I'm grateful for a bed that I can sleep on without getting bruises, for someone else taking out the trash, for having access to a mop and broom so I can clean once I need to. I'm just glad to have a toilet, period, most especially one with a seat, and wouldn't comment on the seat not being attached unless I was thinking about what would've once seemed significant.

When I moved into the cabin on the Togaik River, I was considerably put off by the bare plywood walls with insulation tacked unfinished to the ceiling. I thought the single lightbulb with spotty electricity was pretty crude, the lack of shelves or dresser a considerable hinderance. The moths and mildew in the bathroom seemed markedly unpleasant, and there was liberal application of bleach and Lysol.

How bizarre to consider what was accepted as significant and worthwhile while working in the Ritz, that I came straight here from there.

It's impressive how much things can change.

No.

It's impressive how much I can change.

The reality hasn't changed, the events and conditions haven't changed, it's just my perception.

It's impressive to consider how much life I used to cut out due to some aversion or another.

It's impressive to see what can be accepted as routine, what becomes standard and unremarkable as soon as you remove the luxury of a discriminatory dismissal.   

On cognition

It's a given that when you go to a foreign country, if you get right in someone's face and yell really loud, they'll understand English.
The same is true for Thai, evidently--if you get right in the farang's face and scream even louder than the background noise, you're sure to get comprehension.  And if the initial attempts don't pan out, get a cluster of friends to help shout whatever it is, because being surrounded by ten shrieking voices does wonders for clarification.
I have to emphasize that I'm not trying to sound superior or guilt-free, especially since I spend a goodly bit of my daily life doing exactly that--shout a phrase as slowly and loudly as I can manage until someone's lightbulb goes on and the idea takes hold.  It's just interesting that something I generally associate with the stereotypical ugly American manifests itself so closely in such a foreign context.

It's also interesting that the students are so fully conditioned to not understand a farang that they do not understand me when I give an explanation in Thai.
Maybe if I yelled louder....

On appearances

Guess it shouldn't still surprise me, but I certainly walk off shaking
my head after walking into a class from the throes of severe digestive
distress, smiling and laughing and singing for the period, and walking
out smiling.

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What happens?

What happens between age ten and twelve that I can walk into a G4
class on the verge of disentigrating and "
predictably leave in love with the world of ten year olds, and no
matter how much fortitude and gumption and resolve I garner, a G7
class leaves me wishing for an easier alternative like slamming my
head in a sliding glass door for the same amount of time?

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On learning English

A girl's brightly colored, happy shirt: I Wish These Were Brains

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