Category: Chillin’

Thai Superheroes

Among other subjects, I teach writing at my university. Writing is a subject that really helps identify certain types of students… like the girl who just today turned in a paper about Wonder Woman’s daily schedule, which included eating somtam every morning and helping people in need from 2 to 4PM everyday because “doing too much every day good causes stress and also acne.” Reading her paper brought back the days of learning to put together rudimentary sentences in hot Japanese classrooms… And it inspired me to challenge her class with more assignments that can be properly exploited by the clever ones.
UPDATE: I’m grading papers at home and just found another version of the writing I mentioned above, but this time Wonder Woman is eating pork congee and washing dishes in the morning. Damn, I never really thought about superheroes washing dishes every day.

garfinken

I get this strange urge to slap people who sing I am a rock out loud*… It triggers my “anti-mime” reflex on some primal level.
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* Yes, this happens with surprising regularity in both Japan and Thailand (I hear that Scarborough Fair is the more popular track in China though.

Line down

Just a quick note: Our DSL at home is down after some big gusts from the big typhoon in Burma last week. Not sure what the problem is, but Friday was off so the telecom guys are enjoying a 3 day weekend.
Updates will resume when out internet service does.
Oh I almost forgot: My supervisor from school came over to see Max a couple days ago and he farted in her arms so loudly she almost dropped him. It was AWESOME WIND!!

Isan News Update

It has been raining the past week, which is a rather curious development for this area this time of year. In fact, there was a pretty serious storm a couple nights ago and it rained fairly hard last night as well. The huge tract of land (future housing lots) behind our house has been filled in with shallow ponds (kind of returning it to its natural status of swamp, except elevated a couple meters with fill dirt), from which many noisy amphibians have emerged. This sudden spate of precipitation is in stark contrast to the first year I lived here, when I saw no real rain from October 2006 all the way until June or July of last year.
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My wife’s aunt and uncle called up yesterday to say they were on a road trip and would like to stay at our house tonight. Family is always welcome, of course (most, anyway). So its fun talking to them in my very basic Thai, but mostly just sitting there absorbing the indecipherable (to my ears, anyway) utterances of their of their specific dialect. I love learning the little nuances and unique characteristics of a new language, but believe me, fart jokes and belching are universal (just thought I’d include that here).
So Nam’s aunt and uncle are well into their 70’s and have been living together so long they communicate in a kind of nonverbal gestalt; they arrived in a Ford Escort he bought new 35 or 40 years ago and it’s currently swapping war stories with my ’71 Toyota Crown out in the driveway. They are both senile as hell and continue to go on road trips every year from their current home around Bangkok up around here to see friends and family in Isan (the Northeast) and back again. When she is freshening up in the other room he tells us in a hushed voice that he’s concerned about her memory since she often repeats herself three or four times in any given conversation, forgetting that he himself has told us the exact same thing just minutes before… They are good people, and I basically trust any couple who, by choice, go on long roadtrips in cars without power steering in this day and age (it’s a salt-of-the-earth kind of thing).
Anyway, the highlight of my day was hearing Nam’s uncle tell us that he much prefers the Japanese system of government over the Thai model since Japanese government officials have to commit suicide if they disgrace their families or office… I didn’t have the heart to tell him any different either, since it would probably be better that way (plus, I think I still have a few years before I need to tell somebody that Santa doesn’t exist).

Why you never question a drunk

Via osaka bill:
I was shopping at the local supermarket where I selected:
a half-gallon of 2% milk,
a carton of eggs,
a quart of orange juice,
a head of romaine lettuce,
a 2 lb. can of coffee, and
a 1 lb. package of bacon.
As I was unloading my items on the conveyor belt to check out, a drunk
standing behind me watched as I placed the items in front of the cashier.
While the cashier was ringing up the purchases, the drunk calmly stated,
“You must be single.”
I was a bit startled by this proclamation, but I was intrigued by the
derelict’s intuition, since I was indeed single.
I looked at the six items on the belt and saw nothing particularly unusual
about my selections that could have tipped off the drunk to my marital
status.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I said, “Well, you know what, you’re
absolutely right. But how on earth did you know that?”
(punchline after the jump)

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