Category: Exploits

Volunteering in Kalasin

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Last week a few of us teachers were asked to visit some classes being taught on a volunteer basis by our Business English major students out in Kalasin. We went out without much info and assumed these were classes being taught at a school. As it turned out, one of our student’s family had created an ad hoc classroom outside their house and was hosting free lessons for two weeks since schools are mostly on holiday during October. Children from their village as well as neighboring villages attended, with younger kids coming in the morning and older ones in the afternoon, perhaps 30 kids per session.
The classes were being taught by a few of our students who stayed at the house for the duration of the project.
We went and basically had a lot of fun thinking up activities on the spot… I sweat a lot as it was a really hot day, so I can honestly say that I contributed a lot of salt to my polo shirt.
Our student’s house/farm has a shrimp pond out back, so our reward for lunch was huge platters of steamed prawns, raw prawns with garlic, and epic tom yum goong with shrimp the size of mini-lobsters in it.
We also helped out with the afternoon class and took a quick trip to a popular “beach” up the road just a couple kilos, at the Lampao Dam reservoir.
All in all it was a great day, and the dedication of our students really impressed us. When asked why they were doing it, they said they didn’t want to just waste their holidays away. Well done!

Birth of a U.S. Citizen Abroad, reported

Now all we have to do is wait for the results. If everything goes well I’ll go to pick up his passport in two or three weeks.
The entire application took less than an hour, including filling out forms for reporting the birth of a U.S. citizen abroad as well as a passport (BTW, did you know there are “passport books” as well as “passport cards” now? The former are standard passports and the latter are for visiting countries bordering the US and US territories or something like that.).
One funny thing is that the interviewer didn’t believe that I didn’t have dual Japanese/American citizenship although I thought I explained what a Japanese American is very well. Oh well, the mixing pot is sometimes hard to imagine unless you’ve been there (the interviewer in question wasn’t from the US).
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Max did fine on the plane and in the Bangkok confusion. He only threw a fit once, and we happened to be at Nam’s aunts’ house in Lad Prao at the time, so everything went very smoothly.

Rico Suuu

Have you ever stayed at a 5-star resort?
I’ve done so on a couple of occasions, and Nam has done it a few times more than me, and we both agree on one thing: It’s disconcerting to find out how completely fucked up rich people are… If Lucifer’s Hammer fell tomorrow, rich people would be among the first to be eaten, for sure.
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These are the type of thoughts that go through my head after midnight on weekdays.
Say it with me: SLEEP. DEPRIVAzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Murasaki Inu

A lifetime ago (13 or 14 years ago to be a bit more exact) I sat in a stuffy classroom in Tenri, Japan, and started penning my first essay in Japanese. Not having yet learned any kanji, I wrote it entirely in the phonetic alphabet known as hiragana. It began something like this: One day I walked to the main worship hall and saw a purple dog…
Thus, the legend of the murasaki inu (purple dog) was born. It was a recurring theme in later essays (four years worth to be exact) as well as many blues/enka jams (anata ha tashika ni aru / watashi no murasaki inu) when Cosmic Buddha would rock abandoned parking lots, smoky music studios, and our guitarist’s cram school late at night.
Well guess what?
I saw a purple dog today. A purple dog, here in Mahasarakham, Thailand. (Nam and I were taking my mom to see the fish sanctuary, so I have witnesses.)
I don’t think it was naturally purple. It looked like purple iodine solution (used for disinfecting wounds) had been liberally applied to a shaggy white dog, but that’s not the point. It was a purple dog.
That is all.

Thai ATM Horror Story

So today turned out to be a big bummer because of the stupid Thai banking system. In short, I tried to withdraw 20,000 Baht from my Japanese bank with an international (PLUS system) bank card, which is something I’ve done many times before with no real problems. This time, however, the ATM (Thai Commercial Bank) flashed an error, “Communication Error,” and spat out my card but no cash and no receipt. I figured it might be an error with this particular bank and mine in Japan (Mitsui Sumitomo), so I tried again with the ATM to the immediate right of the first one (Thai Military Bank). Same error message, same exact result: No cash, no receipt.
Then I figured I’d try a little bit later so I pulled up to a Krung Thai Bank ATM at a gas station and tried again to withdraw 20,000 Baht. This time I got an “insufficient balance” error, and a sinking feeling in my stomach (and again, no cash and no receipt). Sure enough, when I rushed home to look at my balance online, it showed that 20,000 Baht had been withdrawn today.
I immediately called my bank in Japan and explained the situation. The man on the other end was sympathetic and said I needed to talk to the banks here in Thailand first, but that if nothing could be done on this side, he could probably launch an investigation into the matter which would take weeks to find anything (if at all), but sounded much better than nothing. At this point, I was pretty sure that appealing to the banks here would end in squat.
Sure enough, both Thai banks claimed since I wasn’t sure which bank had actually made the transaction, it absolved them both of responsibility until I found out this info from my Japanese bank. Of course, by the time I received this happy reply (via Nam, who went to go find the contact info on the ATMs while I watched sleeping baby at home), my bank in Japan had already closed for the day.
So.
20,000 Baht (68,000 yen or around $600) just disappeared into the ether, and, as of now, I have fuck all to show that this is what actually happened.
My question: At times like this is it more appropriate to hate computers, the third world, or banks in general?
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UPDATE: I called my bank in Japan to tell them that the Thai banks are not accepting responsibility (big surprise!) since I don’t know which one caused the problem, and they insist that the Japan side must initiate action of some kind. The guy at my bank who is following the case advised me to wait seven working days to see if the problem is corrected automatically, then to contact him again so he can initiate an inquiry which may take a couple months to finish. This blows.

Beer Lubrication

So I want to relate a story about beer.
Last Sunday I attended a wedding of a guy who I’d met only twice before; once in a liquor store in the presence of a crazy almost-naked dude wearing a loincloth, and the second time in the deafening molam haze at a local live house.
The first time was about eight months ago. T was visiting from Japan and we were buying beer for a front yard barbecue. We bought all the Leo longnecks and loose cans of whatever, as well as a case of Archa if memory serves me right. There were two (Thai) guys behind the counter, one of who rang up the sale. The other guy was sitting down and started talking to me in English. He said his name was Patrick, and he explained he was from around here but currently working in South Carolina (although I mistakenly heard this as “Southern California”). We chatted for a couple minutes and that was that until we left the store and saw the aforementioned naked guy doing something strange in the gutter outside. I went back in a and mentioned it to Patrick, who came out to have a look and explained, simply, “Oh, don’t worry. He’s just fucked up.” In a land of non-native English speakers, it’s sometimes such a relief to hear the simplest of phrases in my native language used so naturally.
The second time was two weeks ago. I was out at the live house celebrating three of my fellow teachers who had received their MAs. It was actually the third venue of the night (dinner –> karaoke –> live house), so I was feeling… happy. A student of mine happened by the table and said she wanted to introduce me to her brother. It turned out to be a familiar face – Patrick! He must have been pretty wasted too, because we greeted each other like old friends (I almost asked what had happened to the fucked-up guy, but resisted the urge), slapping each other on the back, doing multiple hand shakes, etc. I told him my wife was pregnant, and he told me that he was to be married the next weekend…
This is how Nam and I found ourselves in the parking lot for a grungy outdoor market in a small town an hour away from home last Sunday. Patrick had been very sure about the directions and told me it was in the market, which we truly doubted, and sure enough, the venue was nowhere to be seen. But a small town is a small town, and a shopkeeper on the corner knew the house we were looking for… It was kind of hard expressing to Nam why we were going to a wedding reception of a guy who I’d only known through beer, but that was half the fun of it.
As it turned out, the wedding was a blast. The food was great and I met Patrick’s whole family (his bride, too, for the first time). Everybody was really cool. Patrick looked like he hadn’t slept for a few days, and upon asking, indeed had not. When he had a few spare minutes, we sat down and shared a bottle of Leo, on ice, SE Asia style.

Intercepted – Congrats, Nutty!

If you attended our wedding or followed our progress here on this blog, you may remember who caught intercepted the bouquet at the wedding toss – yep, our good friend Nutty is getting married this Sunday in Ratchaburi. We are catching the VIP bus down to Bangkok tonight (arrives @ Mo Chit @ 3 AM). We’ll spend tomorrow catching up on Mexican grubbage if possible, and will drive out to “Ratburi” on Sunday to join the celebration, be merry, antagonize other guests with my perfected snoring patterns, and come back the next day.