I have to be careful about what I post on this blog. I am giving away some price moments for free. Here’s another gem coming absolutely gratis. I have figured a way to defeat Ma Song and Pocky when they gang up on me in spitfire Lao and then laugh heartily while motioning at my midriff; I only need brandish our latest purchase…the vacuum. As the woman at the store put it when Pocky asked about the usage of the vacuum cleaner, “It comes from farang. Farang know how to use it.” (Insert the word ‘foreigner’ in the place of farang and you’ll see why Thailand isn’t part of the G7.) Well, come from farang it does, and I, for one, will be putting its magic powers to fine use if I hear one more beer belly quip in any Austro-Thai language. The fact is that the vacuum cleaner is not a standard appliance in the Thai home, then again rugs aren’t either. This means that the wild whirring of the vacuum is to me what gunpowder was to the conquistadors – a thunderstick. Both Pocky and her mom were extremely reluctant to touch the suction end of the device, and jumped when they did. Ma Song has dubbed it ‘the little car’ due to the two wheels and boxlike countenance. They have just gone off to get a movie but if they come back and start in on me, I’m reaching for my Imarflex VC-807 and we’re going to learn the expression “For the love of God, No!” in the Northern dialect of Thai.

Last Thursday I was in Laos for thirty seconds, maybe a minute or maybe fifteen. It all depends on our interpretation of being in Laos. If being in Laos is receiving permission to enter the People’s Democratic Republic – no laughing – then, I was indeed in Laos for the duration of time it took me to walk around the immigration building from the incoming to the outgoing side and wait to be stamped out. On the other hand, if we belong to the geographic school of thought that has me in Laos because I occupied a piece of real-estate on the Laotian side of the Mekong, well, then, it was closer to fifteen minutes that I had to wait for my visa to be approved, so that I could enter the Democratic People’s Republic – no smirks, either – for the duration of time it takes to walk around the immigration building to the exit side and wait to be stamped out of Laos. On my return to Thailand I was granted the 30 day transit visa thanks to my trusty passport from a developed country with appropriate visa agreements with the Thai Kingdom. To ease my perilous journey I hired a visa service. For 500 baht they did all my paperwork and drove me to Laos. I remained in the car as we went through immigration exiting Thailand. On the Lao side, I had to sit in a waiting area for my visa, but my ‘guide’ submitted all the documents and did all the talking. At no point in the process did I actually have to speak to anyone, which, being a bit of an introvert, I found very pleasant. I did have to exit the car as we re-entered Thailand, but no talking again. There was really no pretense in what we were doing. The guide wore a company shirt and was obviously familiar with a lot of the officials. I’m sure it was obvious that I had not really traveled to Laos. Thinking about it though, I was technically in the right. I had exited and re-entered Thailand. There are no minimum time restrictions for what constitutes leaving a country.
I used to take a certain pleasure in telling Brits that I had been to the United Kingdom for eighteen hours. I took the ferry over from Calais to Dover, hopped on a train, arrived in London, checked into a hostel, found a pub, obnoxiously ordered “one of those warm beers I hear so much about”, went back to the hostel, slept, awoke, headed to Gatwick airport and returned to the US. It would seem that now I can wind up my Laotian friends about having visited their country for thirty seconds. Come to think of it, I don’t really have any Laotian friends. Maybe I’ll make some on my next visit.

Every time I let this blog go for even a few days it becomes intimidating to make an entry because of the amount of material I could potentially cover. I’ll relegate this entry to my most cynical experience of the week, or should it be cynisizing experience?
I had agreed to start a French class on Monday from 10am to 11:30. There were, evidently 17 would-be francophones set to embark on the apprentisage of the belle langue. I was doing this class for a paltry 250 baht, (6$), which is low even for this country. In addition, the school provided only poor photo copies of a substandard text in guise of materials. Due to this, I spent a fair amount of my own time making up handouts. I have to admit I was a bit nervous about the class as I had never taught French before, and I am not a native-speaker of the language. I woke up to a rainy Monday morning, a first in a longtime. I got to the school about a half hour early to set up. Let me mention that this was the first class I was set to teach at this particular school (not my full-time). With materials ready to go and the whiteboard filled with weather related vocabulary, I awaited my eager élèves. At ten after ten none of my students had shown yet. On the other hand this is Thailand, but such consistency is rare here, surely one or two should have arrived just to make me feel uncomfortable about when to start the class before the others arrived fifteen to twenty minutes late. At twenty past the hour I became genuinely concerned. I went down stairs to inquire with the staff. Evidently all of the students had cancelled because of the rain. Granted many of them were on motorcycles, but all 17 ditched because of the rain? Merde! I was born in March, but it was March of ’75. Suffice it to say that I will not be teaching anymore lessons for that educational establishment. They had me sign a pay slip as if they intended to pay me, but only after they attempted to get me to teach a class later in the day in ‘lieu’ of my cancelled French class. Zut alors, ces Thais sont vraiment fous!

This is vintage Thailand. Pocky quit her job three days ago. The circumstances were less than great. I already wrote a bit about the crap working conditions. Well, if any more proof was needed that the employer was completely unscrupulous, she got a call today from her ex-boss who claims that she broke the such and such and will have to pay 2,500baht (50$) to fix it. Her outstanding salary is about half of that. This must be some typically Thai ploy to further f… the employee. I suggested that we probably won’t see her money back, but there was no way in god’s creation that the lady is going to get one extra satung (cent) out of us. The best part of this whole thing is the elapsed time between leaving the job and the assertion that the such and such was broken by Pocky. Three days before anyone realized the such and such was broken because, get this, she evidently forgot to oil it. Three days before anyone noticed means non-usage. What breaks because due to a lack of oil when it goes unused? Obviously this story has no conclusion as of yet, but after the lady got nasty and threatened to go to the police (Pocky never even signed a working contract) I suggested we break off communication with her. This is an interesting digression, we actually ventured to the police station one day to make a complaint about a store that we bought curtains from. The details are boring, but the upshot is that like police anywhere the Thai police have no desire to enter into civil disputes. I think this claim by the dentist is all an ill-conceived bluff on her part to BS her way into some money from the girl with the “rich” foreign boyfriend. I don’t believe she has a legal leg to stand on and if my guess is right, she is far too lazy to pursue this once we stop communicating.

If my life now were a symphony, it would be heavy on the percussion instruments, lots of kettle drum and cymbals, none of that sissy triangle, though. My life is filled with ten times the drama as what passes for such on daytime TV. For instance, right now my girlfriend is probably quitting her job, another nail in the coffin that will send me back to the developed world for more money. I should be fair however; her boss is a “biiiaaatch” in the modern day parlance of America’s gangster rappers. It started innocuously enough. She was hired part-time and seemed very excited about the job. Then the dentist described above asked (told) her to go full-time, which she accepted for the extra money it would bring in. Let me say that she works a scant salary, even for Thailand, full-time for a month might mean 150$US. Back to the narrative, she was given one day off a week, again keeping in the tradition of female employment for Japan or Thailand (Ah hah! I have finally happened upon something that can be described as truly pan-Asian - the repression of women). Still she liked the job and the little money does go a fair ways here, plus it beats being bored at home. In any case, today is her day off, and she is… at work. I have seen this happen so many times in Japan. Employers bring up the idea of the “team” and make people feel guilty for not sacrificing their existence to their gagne-pain (bet you wished you studied more French in High School now). Furthermore, it seems as if the dentist’s initial promise of letting Pocky have time off when needed has disappeared just as quickly as any given working condition in this country should. I need to go renew my visa mid-month, which will mean a two day trip to Laos. This appears to be a point of friction. Oh well, there is nothing quite as satisfying as telling a boss to get stuffed; I hope she enjoys it. It looks like those fried locusts they sell at the market will be all that sustains us from now on.

Is posting on Thai related forums and then checking back every fifteen minutes to see if someone has replied a sign that I have now joined the world of the truly socially pathetic? The answer is an unequivocal yes. It’s not my fault I have no friends. I love (maybe ‘like a lot’) the city of Khon Kaen on so many levels, but all the ex-pats here are over fifty. I just can’t see myself at a bar reminiscing about the summer Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons became big. Or, I imagine there must be a lot of talk about how much the Thai version of Viagra is going for and whether or not it is as good as the original. Maybe I am being a bit ageist, really. Seeing as how a lot of these guys are living with Thai spouses in their twenties, they probably are young at heart. Oh, who am I kidding, no fifty year old balding man with a paunch is going to give me a second look. I feel so unloved.
Otherwise, a classic day interacting with Thai employers. The part-time job that was going to pay me peanuts for 27 hours this month has dropped the hours now to 6. They hadn’t even informed me and I knocked out a whole lesson plan for them. I am still wondering just how much of bastard I should be. New in town, I want to keep my options open, but I definitely feel the bridge arsonist in me growing stronger. At my full-time job I was yet again given my working schedule. Of course it wasn’t the same as last week, but why stick to a plan? That might cause clarity and workability. There is something good in this. They, both ladies, were present for the meeting and handed me a piece of paper with my schedule and salary explicitly laid out. Even the best of Thais is going to have trouble changing the plan at this point, though I am not laying that down as a dare. Granted the miniscule change that they made in my schedule will actually mean less money for me, but they seem to have finally locked themselves into to a promise that appears wriggle-free. Furthermore, they have given me my own desk. I am now one of the crew – I don’t know who the crew actually consists of, I think there is only one other full-timer, but I can never tell, and sticking to my policy of ask you no questions, tell me many lies I will refrain from further inquiry. My only worry about this desk thing is that it will mean forced social interaction with other people. What’s a man to do? I don’t want real relationships to come in between me and my forum postings.

Another day off for me after a grueling hour and a half of work yesterday. My lifestyle is truly decadent. I suppose there must be some overriding rule of energy in all this… I worked harder than I ever have for about a year and a half, I was lucky to get one day off a week, and here I am lazing about with a dozen or so hours of work a week. Actually, I have a bit of a positive comment on the work situation. It seems that my employer is actually going to, for once, keep their word and employ me on a fixed monthly salary as of this month. That means I will be at the school at 8:30 on Saturday, even though I don’t have a class until the afternoon. They haven’t yet opened my morning class. This is a bit of a relief – the fact that they intend to pay my regardless of their ability to fill my class. Before coming to Thailand I would never have thought that the policy of a school to pay a fixed salary regardless of teaching schedule should be something to get excited about – what a couple of months will do. I think that it is fundamental that a business assumes risk and does not make the teacher do so in regards to scheduling. After all, I am not making more when times are good, why should I take it on the chin when times are bad. What it really comes down to is assuming a professional role in what you do. Business people gain big and lose big – teachers teach and expect to eat. So, anyhow, they will have me on a schedule of about 10 hours at the school on the weekends and an hour and a half on the weekdays. It will be sufficient to
“pay the bills” but not really enough. I am also supposedly working part-time for another school I mentioned before, though the salary is laughable in light of the fact they want me to come up with a French course without material. I might give it a shot for a month and then jack up my asking price if they want me to continue.
Completely different note, the nightlife in Khon Kaen is quite good for a city of its size. Last night we went out for a couple of beers at a place that had a band. Most bars here have live music and are fairly cheap. We then hit a disco, which also featured live performances of Thai pop music, no entrance fee. I think the whole night cost us less then 25$US and quite enjoyable.

I am supposed to be “planning” several classes now, so I have decided to write an entry instead. I was taken out for lunch twice over the weekend by students. One of the students had a birthday and the other group had their last class. I had yet another chat with the administratess of the school. As in the dark as ever about my visa situation, she relented on one point by saying that if I have to do “border runs” every month she would split the cost. Jeez, Thanks. This week I am down to four hours of teaching and Saturday/Sunday off. I was under the impression that March was going to be the big month for classes and my schedule would be busy, but evidently that’s not the first week of March because the school kids are still testing. Maybe I have glossed over something – in Thailand school vacation runs March and April. Anyway, I have a quiet week in which to prepare for my thirtieth birthday. I will spend the time hiking up my pants and trying to discolor-coordinate my clothes. I believe Pocky will be working eight hour days this month, so I should have a chance to be productive with something… I am not quite sure what. A friend of mine got laid off last week – I am feeling a bit unemployed myself. It’s true about the heat, hard to work hard when it’s hot. I’m not really feeling this entry; it’s lazy and disorganized, a bit like me right now. One parting shot – I keep forgetting that it is winter in much of the world that I called home. I saw a news report on some big storm in the Northeast of the States. It looked cold. I am writing this in my boxers with the fan on me (conjures up an image, no?). For all of you working hard, making lots of money and freezing in developed countries....Suckers!