Category: Thai Society/Culture

Cows in My New Backyard

Well, more of the empty lot next door than our backyard, but hey, the important thing here is the cows, right?
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If you’ve stuck around this blog since I made my move to Maha Sarakham, Thailand, you know that I’m somewhat obsessed with the flora and fauna surrounding me (whether I end up eating it or not), and I hope for the Cows in My Backyard series to become something of a time-honored tradition. So far, it’s only been a year or so. Here’s to more cows, and maybe even more backyards in the future.

Homely

We put in curtains (cream) and grass (green) today. It’s amazing how much more this house feels like home now.
As a side note, there’s a dirt track to the rear of our house where dump trucks come to drop fill dirt at the back end of the development. I took the Crown back there today to drop off 16 bags of black loam I bought (20 Baht/bag) to lay under the grass. After throwing the bags of loam over our fence, I got back in the car and did donuts and long drifts in the dirt all the way back to the paved road. All of the laborers working on various houses pumped their fists in the air and shouted Thai arribas. I’ve changed back to 15″ wheels because I didn’t have money to buy new tires for the 17″ rims and I got tired of changing flats every other day. I know, poor white collar me. Next thing you know I’ll be drilling holes in my muffler instead of getting it done properly.

hooked up

Got my DSL hookup at the new house – currently 256/128k or some such sadness, but it’s a lot better than nothing, and I’ll be upgrading to 1Mb/512k on Monday. I think I may even bother to bring the DL speed to 1.5M for another 110 Baht/month. Thinking about the hikari line I gave up in Japan sometimes makes me sad, but I find comfort in the Apocalypse coming and killing everybody with faster connections than me (most of the developed world).
As a side note, this morning at first I could not get the Crown into gear but somehow squeezed it into second while starting at the same time, and drove it all the way to a garage without depressing the clutch. I borrowed my sister in law’s new Chevy Aveo because we are getting the Cefiro resprayed (almost for free with 1st class insurance – we only pay 4,000 Baht). They replaced a clutch cylinder part on the Crown and I just picked it up – 600 Baht, all inclusive. I love Thailand.

toluene dreams

So we spent all day cleaning up the new house, something I swore we wouldn’t have to do because labor is so cheap here. As it turns out, the problem isn’t getting people to do menial tasks cheaply (we borrowed some workers from our housing developer for free, even). The problem is getting people to do menial tasks with any degree of proficiency (none) or to the hirer’s satisfaction (ditto). So I spent the whole day painting over stains, removing sprayed furniture glue from our floor tiles with paint thinner, developing new and exciting ways of removing mysterious black stains from our bathroom wall tiles (nylon brush + concentrated dish soap + industrial strength elbow grease). I’d like to say I got really high off the paint thinner, but all I really got was a stinging, burning sensation.on my hands after a couple hours. It brought back memories of helping my parents remodel our Fountain Valley house.
Tomorrow, we pack up and start moving.

kanebo

We took a trip to Khon Kaen today to hit HomePro (the local mega home center) for various items and made a stop by our favorite mall, Fairy Plaza, on the way back for some double cheeseburger eats, and for Nam to buy some foundation. The girls at the counter insisted on doing Nam’s make up since she’s a card-carrying Kanebo loyalist. It was amazing; just like a car being painted. They stripped off the existing layers of pigment, laid down a solid primer coat followed by 2 main coats and sealant – it was even metallic pearl, yo.
As I sat and watched, I wondered how to say, “Stop painting on my pregnant wife! Only cheap harlots paint their faces with ground fish scales!”, in Thai, but I guess that level of nuance is still a few years off.

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.