I was awoken this morning by a phone call from the Pa Tom (step-father-in-law) saying that Ma Song is in the hospital. After a morning of phone calls, it seems she is awaiting surgery on a stomach tumor. Obviously this is upsetting, especially for Pocky who has just dropped me at work and headed toward Kalasin to the hospital. I am sketchy on the details, but Ma Song is not the picture of health – she smokes and coughs a fair deal. Only last week she had been staying with us and complained of a stomachache.
At times like these the small Matt can’t help but to stick his head up and be heard. I gave Pok 5000bht (150$) to the hospital. Ma is covered by some sort of government insurance scheme for poor people, but there are always hidden costs with this kind of thing. Of course I foot the bill. I used to donate to charities and like many in the first world, felt pretty damn altruistic and noble in doing so. I still contribute to charity, though now it is a highly personal charity of my wife and her family. Sometimes I get the same warm feeling of helping people out that I got when giving to charitable organizations, sometimes it’s just a strain. Unlike the World Wildlife Fund, when the demands for money aren’t convenient I can’t just throw the donation form in the bin.
As long as I am bringing in a first world salary the cost of supporting Pok, her mother, father and by extension some others (stepfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins) who they live with isn’t much more than a couple of good nights out in Japan. Not too much of a sacrifice in Japan. But I’m not there now. It makes me question the viability of coming back here later. As long as her family is around I will be susceptible to unexpected financial burdens.
The small Matt dominates the bigger me and I probably will die having lived like most men, large brain performing small arithmetic for too many of my waking hours. A money grubber whose sole preoccupation is cerebral currency counting, I’ll pass my life hunched over a computer or calculator in a feeble chase after the dollar/yen/baht. Not much more to say on that subject. I hope Ma Song gets well.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005
I am at one of those points that further fuels the cynic in me while making a whipping boy of the small optimist that remains. Other than the fact I am unable to stop my financial hemorrhaging, I am stuck (very temporarily) in a job that brings out laziest in me. There is so little in the way of responsible administering and guidance that I fall into the rut of expecting nothing of my lessons. This is further reinforced by students who could care less about what’s being delivered as long as it is replete with games and the opportunity to use Thai as much as possible. Nobody becomes and overseas English teacher because it is a satisfactory line of work.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005
I’ve been battling a stress headache since the late afternoon. It’s a convergence of things, but the igniting spark was a response to an application to my former employer that I submitted earlier in the week. They wanted some additional information. It got me to thinking that there was the slimmest of possibilities they could say no to rehiring me. Not that I can see one reason why they wouldn’t – I have the assurance of my former boss that the ‘rehire’ box on my exit form was ticked. Still, it’s possible that someone somewhere for some reason would decide, ‘screw it, we’ve had enough of these whiney, I-want-my-job-back bastards’ and that would be that. The iceberg under the water is in part the way I was feeling yesterday, coupled with a headshaking cynicism towards my current employer. They have slated me for a TOEFL test class, which is fairly material heavy. I don’t mind doing it, but as of now there’s no material and the administrator is on about, “I wonder if we should get some material.” It’s like asking a law student if they want books to study for the bar. To delve into expletives – ri-fucking-diculous. If all goes well, I am only three months from heading back to Japan and I’ll be happy to give this job the heave-ho, despite (or due to) the fact that the working environment is so laid back.

I got back from the Songkran Festival on Friday the 15th, after four days of non-stop partying in the village of Nong Sao and the closest town, Kalasin. I took a lot of notes as I was thinking about doing a magazine article, but whether that ever comes to pass remains to be seen - I got a blanket rejection from the only rag (in print) that does Thai based stuff of this nature. Farang magazine is a joke anyway - no sour grapes of course. I am just going to post a lot of my notes ad hoc should anyone care to read... Check the pictures they are some of the more lively I have got since coming to Thailand.

Songkran is about community and respect for ones elders. It is a Buddhist holiday that marks the beginning of the Thai New Year. The ceremony of passing water from people to monks and elders symbolizes respect and enables the participants to make merit in Buddhist terms that they may improve their Karma. Songkran is a time for people to return home, relax and enjoy parades. Yeah, right. Songkran is about partying your testes off.

My packing list:

Hawaiian T-shirt 1
High volume squirt gun 1
Standard issue squirt gun 1
Baby Powder 2 bottles.

Last night the little kids were already out on the streets throwing water, mainly targeting the unprotected motorcyclists who took their splashes in good humor. The heart of the action takes place on street called, Khao San - in Kalasin, not the notorious Bangkok backpacker bedtown.

Tuesday went like this; me and a beer in front of a shitty bar, me and a beer under a tent along Khao San Rd. (Kalasin, not the Bangkok zoo of foreign species), me and a beer on the back of a pickup, me and a beer in Kalasin's hottest - and only - nightclub.

There are two clear camps between which the water is thrown; roadside tents housing beer drinking, barbecue eating adults toward the rear and squirt-gun shooting, water-throwing kids in the front, the second camp is comprised of pickup trucks sagging under the weight of one too many reveler in the back, usually with their own garbage bucket of water. The moving advantage of the trucks is often rendered moot by one of the tent attached partiers who steps in front of the pickup bringing it to a halt. There was a moment standing in the back of a pickup, squashed between a recently transformed 'woman', who was showing off her purchased parts, and a gay Thai trying to fix my hair, all the time trying to hold onto my beer and return-fire buckets of water, when I said to myself. "Maybe the American middle-class way of life with its tennis get-togethers and barbecues in the summer isn't so bad." On the other hand, if I was annoyed with all the same sex attention, I was having too much fun to really care, and then I said to myself, "Maybe the American middle-class way of life with its tennis get-togethers and barbecues in the summer is just as boring as I have always suspected."

A mere 24 hours of partying already had one of the partners oversleeping, and it weren't the author. It was 12 noon and I had neither beer in hand, on breath or even in sight. We were still in the village.

We got to Kalasin and started the Songkran routine: find pickup and driver, find water, find beer, drive through the streets throwing water and trying not to spill beer. There was an equal amount of enthusiasm on day two as there was day one. However, there was a big difference, whereas the first day had been very hot, the second was only warm at best and this made getting soaked and riding open-air cold, very cold at times.

I had brought a notepad on the first day. Ink ran and pages soaked, I dropped the whole idea of 'investigative journalism'.I was looking for a story, but all I was finding were headaches. A headache from the heat, a headache from the beer, a headache from the constant gawking attention.People kept speaking to me in the international language of drunk. Why is it that people think they can strangely master a language within the five seconds of meeting you simply because they are shitfaced? Most of the conversations went so:
Drunk: Hey you, bougpsouglkhesougdpa drink douklhgoi epuolsjhgsd happy happy you you dkjhsdu oaiyakhdf iuiahjkbklpou whiskey beer iouoihshskalh thank you happy songkran happy happy slkdhfouoiyapgou drink.
Me: Yeah...…yeah...…I see...…yeah happy...…yeah whiskey…...yeah beer...…your welcome...…ah, shut it.
For the most part I am pleased that the locals want to shower me with water and alcohol and not punches, but my goodwill toward drunks seems to fray after the second or third time they introduce themselves and start in with drunk speak. You'd think the complete lack of communication we experienced on the first couple attempts would dissuade them, but I guess in the drunken haze they seem to have remembered a new verb from high school English and want to give it a try.

Our car now looks like the victim of one of those eighties avant-garde paint splattering artists.

Pa Lom had lady luck on his side - probably the only lady on his side in a longtime. He was three hundred baht up and drunk in the am, meaning he had probably done better than three hundred at some point. Lom was sporting a Hawaiian shirt and some funked-out sunglasses. He was excited enough about his winnings to bicycle all the way to Ma Song's, but everyone ignored him and he eventually left.


Bad Songkran, bad songkran, bad songkran. Today we drove to Khon Kaen and back to find a credit card that was in Nong Sao the whole time. There were some harsh words spoken and I threw my credit card holder into the dashboard half a dozen times. We did manage to salvage some of the day. We went to watch people play "Gunkai". It is the board game that resembles a poor man's roulette. There are six symbols: fish, chicken, shrimp, crab, frog, water vessel. The game is simple enough. The players place there money on the board on the desired symbol, or between two symbols for a higher stakes version. Three cubes with the symbols are placed on a plate, covered with a basket, and shook. The cover removed reveals the winning symbols. Evidently, the game is not at all rigged in favor of the house as this year the house had lost some 30,000 baht as of today. It is rumored that last year was much better for the house. I should add that the house is decorated with strangely foiled rings.

After the gambling we went to the temple for the water ceremony where all this water tossing originated. At first we listened to the chanting that is so part and parcel with any religious gathering anywhere in the world. Some obligatory speeches. Then we lined up. Everyone had a bowl filled with water and some flowers for added scent. There was a long procession and receiving line like something you would see at a western wedding. The monks were first with their arms outstretched, forearms resting on pillows and palms filled with flowers. We poured water into their hands. After the ordained monks were the younger novices. They didn't have the luxury of little pillows for their forearms. Following the monks were the sixty year and ups all seated. We again poured water into their hands and they quite often sprinkled us with water. There was also a fire truck on the scene spraying the entire event and keeping the kids amused and elderly in a near state of diphtheria.

Pocky stayed up until five in the morning playing "Gunkai". For many of the villagers it seemed that the game was the only thing worthwhile about Songkran. Certainly Ma Song and Pok were into it. Ma Song, incidentally used 2000 baht we had given her to play the role of 'house' in several games. No odds in favor of the house, I mentioned already.

On Friday we went into one house where they performed a séance like ritual that saw all the village ladies drinking rice whiskey. I was really moved at this particular custom. It got me to thinking about something… Ah yes, my book about village life. Fascinating. I have become utterly fascinated by the village.

We drove the kids out to Lam Phao Dam. Played in the water with a horde of Thais all using inner tubes and staying very close to shore; they can't swim. The damn was absolutely swamped with people. We then went back to the village for more gaming fun. A pickup was headed out, so we jumped aboard and did a round of Kalasin. The last day was packed with pickups, traffic could hardly move.

Life may be a box full of chocolates, in that you never know what you’re going get; mine is an omelet. It might go back to the whole vacuum cleaner incident and a need for revenge, or it might have just been a spontaneous idea for fun at the foreigner’s expense, whatever the case, Pocky and Ma Song called me to dinner the other night and I sat down to an egg omelet that looked quite appetizing. It had scallions and little white beans I assumed to be some Thai ingredient that I was unfamiliar with. I pretty much subscribe to the ‘bite first, ask questions later’ school of culinary appreciation. So I dug in. The omelet yielded a mediocre taste that neither disgusted nor delighted. It was then that I was informed that the bean was in fact mot, ants. To be more precise, it was ant larvae, little white eggs, though some of them had started the metamorphosis from lice-like thing to full blown picnic predator, which is to say you could see their little ant eyes forming out of little ant heads. Put aside the whole visual and it wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t taste anywhere near good enough for me to forgive the sickening spectacle. I finished my meal, but not the omelet. Thing is, I was going to eat some of the locusts they sell at the local market as a kind of self-imposed dare, but no need for that now - plus, the bloke from Manchester, England I work with claims there are a lot of pesticides in the locusts. Guess ant larvae is the way to go for the protein deficient.

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.