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?