#14 - Frustration

 Picture this, a scooter trolling through the off white smoke that floats down the still slick damp soi. The vendor on the curb stokes his flame and another burnt bit of air is left in its wake. The scooter leans across the orange center line of the street to pass rows of just stopped cars. The wheels roll up the pavement and onto the sidewalk where I, the man who hired this pigeon jockey, get off to go to work. At the steps of the train a legless woman waits with a cup for change from kind passersby. In a manner of speaking she sits, although it seems a cruel description of an even more cruel plight.

As I board the train waves of densely cool air fall out of the open doors and opposite my entrance, I see a mother and her nearly teenaged son cuddled closely. The son seems disengaged while the mother pets his head and runs her thumb along his cheek. Then she fusses with the yellow sash around his neck, a piece of uniform that seems better suited to a cowboy than a schoolboy. This constant fuss continues the duration of my thirty minute train ride. That it is a mother who does this is of no particular note except for the mental fact check of my brain. I've seen fathers similarly engaged. That it is a son is undeniably important. Inalienable truths, the power of a chromosome, the dissolution of the delicate shell of the ovum to yield that all important son.

I spoke with a woman once about what she was looking for in a husband. She wasted no time with her answer.

“Must love me.”

“Is that all?”

“Don't care anything else.”

“What if he drank all the time or was racist?”

“He drink or he racist he can't change, but if he love me, ok.”

I took her to mean that she didn't think someone could change themselves, and perhaps she is right. It could also be the Thai conception of love that brought her to this answer, however I don't think so. If a man is unloved he whores and parties and thought the family may not be happy with it he is still a son and a part of the family. If a woman is unwed, and thus unloved, she is a failure. If she were to exhibit similar behavior as I mentioned about a son, she would be dead to the family. Simply put, a man is more important. So important in fact that his love is valued highly enough to make or break a woman's life, even if it's the love of a racist alcoholic.

I arrive at the office and pull open my lesson plan, review the vocab, the language structure, introductions and name-tags. Then our first game, it is meant to take eight to ten minutes. The students walk around the room exchanging the question and answer pattern used in the lesson. After wards they play rock paper scissors and the loser must then hop around on one foot. I am desensitized to the children at this point, they are still cute and funny and little rascals and naughty but they don't evoke the same joy or frustration that they did when I started this job. So much of life is the search for new sensations because so much of life is the loss of sensation, the desensitization to the things that you see nearly every day. After the student loses their second game of rock paper scissors they then have to walk around on their knees. After the student loses their third game they have to walk up to the teacher and play the teacher in order to stand up again. The name of the game is legless, and today I don't want to play this game, today I remember the way it felt the first time I passed the woman at the steps of the train who, in a manner of speaking sits.   

A photo I took from a temple in Ang Thong and then did a little work on.

#13 - Who cares if it makes sense, does it work?

 When you walk into Siam Paragon, Siam Center, or MBK, the metal detectors or bomb sensors or whatever they are will probably be flashing at you with a bright red hand that I can only assume is a signal to stop, no one does though. These massive city like malls that fall somewhere between casino and flea market in design seem relatively unconcerned that nine out of ten people set their alarms off. The security guards pull people aside and search bags but I can't say that I've ever seen someone go through one of these portals to consumerism without setting it off. Why do they have them if they never stop alerting you to the supposedly dangerous elements entering your shopping center? Like so many other things in Thailand there is little sense to be made by us.

My friend Adam got pulled over on his motorbike while his girlfriend was on the back. He has no license, which is not unusual in Bangkok and after a little conversation with Adam's Thai girlfriend the officer informed them that they had to go to the police station to pay a one-hundred baht fine. They said they didn't have time and the officer offered to take the fine right there and then to save them the time. They paid and then went down to the end of the street and made an illegal U turn before heading back the way they came. They passed a different officer on that side of the road who tried to flag them down but they yelled to him that they had been stopped by the cop on the other side of the street already and the officer waved them on. I don't need to tell you that the fine never made it to the police station.

My boss Lee hurt his foot rather badly and chose to fore go a plaster cast, after a few days he could tell that it wasn't right and he went back to have a cast put on. He returned to the doctor and after a confirmation of his suspicions a lengthy conversation ensued between them. The doctor seemed to be convinced that there had been some other accident that had happened after his initial visit. Lee assured him that nothing had happened to it but the doctor kept on insisting. Finally the doctor explained to him that if he had slipped in the bathtub and injured his foot again then he could bill the insurance company for it and any time they billed the insurance company they charged double what they would charge a private party. So Lee could pay four-thousand baht or the insurance company could pay eight. Now I understand why they tell us at work that if we go to the doctor for anything we should tell them we want to stay over night, otherwise they can't bill the insurance company, and they really, really want to. No one in Thailand denies this goes on, it simply is the way things are.

I know a teacher at a school outside of Bangkok who was fired for drinking on the job. He was not, of course, drinking on the job. However the culture of saving face would not permit his superiors to admit they'd made a mistake by hiring someone with too thick of a South African accent, an accent that is definitely not sought after in Thailand. Another peculiar example of the saving face culture, are the people at my company who manage the relationship between the company and the schools. One of my schools has been continually uncooperative throughout the semester. They change our room and don't tell us, they give us no room at all, they bring our students late and then remove them from class without warning, we teach with other classes going on in the background or in the middle of the library while copy machines and activities cause constant distractions in the background. Our school manager had spoken to them about this but nothing was changed. She wouldn't go to her boss though because then it would look as though she couldn't do her job, or the school would become upset with the company and try and place the blame on our school manager and she would again be seen as incompetent. There is no reward in this culture for stepping forward and admitting a mistake, it is seen as a damning admission of failure. Even my adults that I teach business English to at night cheat when we play games in class, for the life of me I can't fathom how this is so easily accepted, and even expected.

Despite all this there are still some people and students that operate on a level of morality and respect that I find amazing. These people are few and far between though, it seems that like many religions the Buddhist philosophy of karma only applies when it serves ones own interests. However there is an explanation of another phenomenon that stems from Buddhist philosophy I find quite interesting. Homosexuality is not seen positively in this country for the most part. The city of Bangkok may be a more tolerant place then most but Thailand is staunchly against homosexuality especially when it comes to the upper strata of society. Because of this many gay men choose to become women. At first this seemed like a silly thing to me, but when the ideas of Buddhist philosophy and particularly reincarnation are brought to bear on the idea it becomes much more clear. In Buddhism there is no infallible creator who chooses the body you are put into, as a result you could very well be reincarnated into a body of the wrong gender. A family is much more accepting of a straight woman than a gay man, even if that woman used to be a man.

Now a quick funny story about a visa run.

Martin went on a visa run to Cambodia and as with all visa runs it seems he met a few very unusual individuals. This particular one was an American who was a truck driver, but not just any kind of truck driver, he drove trucks through war zones. He was on vacation for a few months and he was staying here in Thailand. He told Martin and another girl who was Filipino about how the women in Thailand had been quite cruel to him on his previous visits but on this latest visit he had reunited with an old girl he had dated and she had bore his son after his last visit, a son which he was now helping to take care of. After talking for a bit he showed Martin and the girl a photo of his child and the Filipino girl, knowing at this point that the American spoke no Thai, said in Thai, “Oh god that is not a farangs baby.” Martin was in agreement though they spoiled no ones secrets that day.

Cherrio folks, and whenever you see a metal detector think of me and how useless it's Thai counterpart is.

I asked my kids to draw elephants on the board, this is what I got.  That little mark above the one on the left is the kids signature.

Some of the schools have pets, this is Ake Authaya's pet cat.