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*