I learn something every day!

Last year, while teaching my students the "Family," theme, I had a couple students mention that they had two fathers, two mothers, or both. I laughed it off, assuming, in my western mindset, that the kids were from a broken family.

I didn't think twice about it until this year, when I introduced "Family" again and received another, overwhelming response of kids claiming two (or in some cases more) fathers or mothers.

This time it caught my attention, so I asked my Thai assistant and good friend Chu, (Wichuda Kaewphibool), "What is this thing about two mothers or fathers?"

It seems that some rather large Thai families, (some are incredibly large, with as many as twelve or more children), may offer out their children (some or all) to surrogate parents for certain days of the week, the weekend, or other arrangements.

Mae Bun Tum: Means second mother.

Por Bun Tum: Means second father.

As Chu explained to me, some families may turn their kids over to the second (or surrogate) parent on certain days, or whenever needed.

The second (surrogate) parent is most often a single woman, often divorced, who has no children, or has free time to spend, giving his or her time, affection, and knowledge to the greater good of the kids.

Although it isn't as common for children to have a surrogate dad, some do, often naming their surrogate father as their father, rather than the one who is most absent from their lives.

-Jeeem-

The monsoons here are incredible. I can't say enough about them.

Perhaps it's because I came from a dry climate...The desert southwest (southwest Texas).

I've experienced rains in many locales and countries and nothing seems to compare to the rains here in southern Thailand.

After school today I decided to stop off at my favorite Thai restaurant. I ordered one of my favorite dishes, fried pork, mixed vegetables over rice with soup (pork vertebrae with bean sprouts, green onion, and flavorful broth) and a side dish of cucumber and raw green onion, all mixed with pungent, aromatic, and spicy Thai peppers...of course.

After finishing my meal at 2:15 p.m., it had begun to rain.

Five minutes later, it was a solid downpour, and by 2:35 p.m., I was soaked to the bone even though I had my umbrella with me.

It seemed as though the rain was coming in from every angle.

Now I'm home. It's 4:00 p.m. The rain is only now beginning to let up.

Over an hour and forty-five minutes of heavy rain...

This kind of rain in southwest Texas would kill people.

Looking out my front door, I can easily understand where the metaphors, "Curtain of rain," and "Sheets of rain," come from.

The thing that baffles me, is most of the soil here is clay...red clay...clay doesn't absorb water. So, I wonder, "Where the hell does it go?"

People here are used to the monsoons and seem to coexist with them well, but, I've seen pictures of past years when flooding took its toll on southern Thailand and still threatens to wreak havoc again.

What will this year be like?

The anticipation leaves me breathless.

-Jeeem

I woke up to a hazy world today.

A smoky scent tainted the air; which, although not uncommon here in southern Thailand where everyone seems to look for a reason to burn something, lasted most of the day.

By early afternoon I was getting curious about the smoky air. Suddenly it dawned on me..."The forest fire situation in Indonesia."

http://www.cnn.com/EARTH/9802/25/indonesia.fires/

Weird. I had read about it, but didn't think it would affect us this far east. I could smell the burning smell, a lot like burning grass, most of the day, until our monsoon rains came in early afternoon and cleansed the air.

But not for long.

The haze was back by late afternoon.

Sometimes the rains here amaze me. The sky will suddenly get dark, the winds will pick up, and the rain will fall at an incredible rate. Looking outside my front door, I see where the metaphor, "A curtain of rain," comes from.

Currently the kids are outside screaming, "Nueng, song, sam, see, ha, hok, jet, paet, kao, sip, sip-et, sip-song, sip-sam"...while feverishly jumping rope in front of my house. They love it when I venture out and I stop and take the time to watch their antics.

Yesterday was the Queen's birthday, but I didn't go out into town. I only participated in the festivities by watching the fireworks from my balcony last evening.

Although I know my surroundings well, sometimes I just choose to vegetate in my apartment, reminiscing about Thai life and how that life interacts with a foreigner like me...

Till later,
-Jeeem-

Sorry for the long absence, but I've been busy...Well, not really busy-busy, just pre-occupied. Not much to report lately, but then I haven't really been in the writing mood of late.

Soi 3, the road I live on, looks like a freaking war zone. The Thai utility construction drones have been working on some damn project I can't figure out and lately this has included ripping up our road for seemingly no valid reason.

They ripped it up two weeks ago and have done nothing since. It's as if they got drunk one night and said, "Hey, we eventually have to rip up the road, but let's do it WAY early and screw up all the neighborhood foot and motor traffic so we can watch people struggle!"

Now that I think of it, this appears to happen in the west too. Perhaps construction crews are close members of a worldwide union. Maybe the famous "WAR PRESIDENT" should declare war on highway construction crews worldwide, instead of interferring in the middle east and killing innocent citizens???

Anyway...

I'm getting ready to begin practice for this year's play, "Goldilocks and the three bears." This year we're making it bigger and better! Last year we only had around fifteen kids or so. This year we're presenting thirty children, a good majority of them first graders, so things ought to be fun and interesting.

I've dumped my private class because I got sick of their laziness and I wasn't getting paid enough. But, there is a possibility I might restart it again later, but under different circumstances. So now, my Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are free! My free time is important to me.

Well, enough for now. Just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive and kicking. I'm on a day off today since it's the Queen's birthday...three day weekend! Stay tuned!

-Jeeem-

Happy Birthday!

This Sunday marks the 60th birthday of the famous Myanmar pro-democracy advocate and Nobel Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Unfortunately, she'll be celebrating yet another birthday under house arrest.

Myself, as well as people all over the world, will have her in their thoughts and wishing her continued courage and strength in her fight for democracy and human rights in Myanmar.

-Jeeem-

The new term has started and what a delightful bunch of kids I have this year! The holiday was awesome, but I was getting a bit bored and restless, so it's good to get back to work again.

A new classroom was built, just for my youngsters and I. We now occupy the old listening lab upstairs in the Prathom building, so it's convenient for all my students as well as myself and my Thai assistant Chu. The other classroom was nice, but it was a special classroom belonging to the school and doubled as a conference room for important events, so you couldn't really decorate all that much.

Now I have a whole classroom to fix up. In addition, plenty of nifty ideas for drawing and painting activities for the kids. Kind of like one big refrigerator door, if you know what I mean.

I've also begun teaching private classes in the evenings. My friend Wut and his sister Bua came up with the idea for an English discussion group and so far, it's evolved into an elaborate advanced English study class. The class is lucrative, as well as enjoyable, and we've even begun an online English discussion site.

On the home front, I've gone cooking crazy. Over the holidays, I went out and purchased a slow cooker, convection oven with rotisserie, microwave, and blender. I was getting pretty frustrated with my cooking limitations, so now I have no excuses. Nevertheless, cooking ingredients remain a bit of a problem.

During the holidays, I began to poke around Hat Yai, exploring new areas and asking questions about where to obtain certain cooking ingredients. My exploits paid off, leading me to a virtual cornucopia of okra, purple eggplant, avocados, imported cheeses, tortilla chips, lentils, cilantro, fresh basil, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans, halibut, imported salmon, pitted black olives, and although I still can't find flour or corn tortillas, I've discovered a nifty little Indian restaurant that sells their Naan and Chapati (Indian flat breads) to me, in bulk.

Now when I have a recipe in hand, it becomes an adventure.

Legumes are located at the Rattakarn Road wet market, avocados and black olives at TOPS market in the basement of Central Department Store, tortilla chips at Carrefour and salsa at Tesco Lotus...then a quick motorcycle taxi ride to Namaste Orange Indian Restaurant for my Naan or Chapati.

I've got more exploring to do, as I've heard of a place where I can buy blue cheese! Buffalo wings here I come!

-Jeeem-

Do you like poetry?

If you do, you should visit the "Making Sasha," site. It's curiously gluttonous!

-Jeeem-

Hanging meat in an Asian wet market...

A Day in the Life of Jeeem in Thailand

Forging on down the road past the "Number Two Tables," I wander into our local wet market to purchase some coffee and ingredients for a stew I'm making.

Wet markets, famous in Asia, are so-named because of the water on the floor. Controversial in many parts of the world as, "Disease harboring cesspools," one has to experience a wet market to fully understand the allure that these local revelations of cultural diversity create.

My first trip to an Asian wet market was in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, Philippines. Outside the market, I witnessed four Filipino men trying to load a huge, bound, screaming, squealing hog into the back of a tiny motorella. I remember feeling sympathetic for this poor animal, but looking back, I realize that most Asian people do not share the love for animals that westerners do.

The next thing I remember about that wet market was the smell.

Wet markets sell a little bit of everything. Shirts, shoes, fruit, live animals, candy, dry goods, vegetables, cooked food and of course...raw red meat, hanging on steel hooks. Refuse is often thrown into drains or tossed about on the floor, only to be washed away at the end of the day or the start of the new day.

At first, the smell is enough to make you gag. Chickens are slaughtered on site, the blood spewing about onto the floor; fish are cleaned on tables smeared with blood, scales and assorted grime, their entrails dumped in buckets or onto the floor. Where there are live animals, there is excrement.

You get the idea.

But, having experienced wet markets in the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, and Malaysia, I can quite honestly say I'm used to them by now. Being the only foreigner here in my village, the locals know me by now and they always get a kick out of seeing me shopping in their market. You can get some pretty good deals if you know what you're doing and can speak a little bit of Thai.

Tao rai? (How much?)

Hok sip baht? (Sixty baht?)

Oh no, no, no! Yee sip baht! (Twenty baht)

(Querulous look of mock disgust)...See sip baht! (Forty baht)

(Mildly querulous look of mock disgust in return)...Sam sip baht. (Thirty baht)

I walk away with my item, having agreed on the price of thirty baht. However, in reality, if I had been Thai, I probably would have only paid, "Sip baht," or ten baht.

Oh well, that's half the fun of shopping at a wet market. You get to practice your Thai and get a little entertainment on the side.

There are some items at our wet market that you won't find in the local walk-in stores. I can purchase fresh prawns of varied sizes and even get some pretty nice fish fillets to fry up at home. I've discovered some fresh herbs, romaine lettuce, daikon radish, and fresh ginger root, which is hard to find elsewhere.

Well, time to move on down the road. Join me again for my next adventure, won't you?

-Jeeem-

I have bronchitis again.

Seems every year I come down with this annoying, semi-chronic condition...a grim reminder of my slothful days of smoking.

I've been offline for a while because the phone lines have been dysfunctional. The Thai labor crew droids have been hard at work on Soi 3, hammering, cutting, smashing, and generally destroying part of the road and riverbank. Consequently, they bundled all the phone and power lines together and strung them up in a tree, to allow passage of their earth moving equipment.

Real professional.

-J-

A Day in the Life of Jeeem in Thailand

In seven more days, I will be returning to teach after my two months of holiday time. Its been a nice break but a tad boring at times when I was down for the count with my coughing spells. Therefore, I took to the roads exploring, shopping and discovering, every chance I got.

In a foreign country, you see some of the strangest things...things that seem to defy explanation, only because they are foreign and you can't figure out what they are because you don't speak the language.

One of these "Things," are the ever-present folding tables set up on the sidewalk around Thailand, with a large red sign placed on the table and a large, white, number "2" written on it. Often these tables are unmanned, with nothing on the table other than the red sign. At other times, a Thai person is sitting there with mobile phones lying about and a notebook laid out with Thai scribbling on it.

I make mental notes of these "Things," so I can later ask someone just what these things are. I don't always get an answer, but that's usually because my description of the said "Thing," is severely lacking. However, my description of the "Number Two Tables," received a quick response.

Mobile phones, even here in Thailand, can be expensive. Some of them fetch prices in the 8000 to 12,000 baht range, depending on the bells and whistles they possess. So, enterprising Thai's will set up a "Number Two Table," charging two baht per minute for the use of their phone(s).

Mobile phone-less people wander by, spot the number two table, and stop to make a call. No fuss, no muss...no phone cards or hot phone booths. The advantage to the "Number Two Table," owner? In time, their proceeds pay for the phone itself and eventually for the phone credit cards that charge them. In my neighborhood, along the main road, I've spotted as many as four of these tables set up within a kilometer radius.

Time to move on...join me at the wet market, won't you?

-Jeeem-

Muslim Militants Move North?

This is the third time in my Asian saga in which I've encountered the subject of bombs.

The first was in Manila, Philippines, the second in Nagoya, Japan and now here in the deep south of Thailand.

Southern violence by Muslim militants, in the past, have mostly taken place in the three border provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat (all further south of me) until just recently.

At 8:25 p.m. on April 3, an explosion rocked the Carrefour department store on Phetkasem road in Hat Yai. Shortly thereafter, bombs went off at Hatyai airport (where two people were killed) and at the Green World Palace Hotel in Songkhla city, a hotel I recently stayed at overnight. All these places are fairly close to home, seeing that I travel to Hat Yai on a fairly frequent basis and have friends in Songkhla city.

What to think?

Well, I for one realize that the chance of my getting killed while crossing one of the busy roads here in southern Thailand, or from eating tainted food from one of the many street hawker stands, is most probably greater than my number coming up on a bomb...but, it's something I'm definitely going to keep my eye on in the local news.

The violence in the Deep South has not been squelched by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's paper crane episode, so I'm wondering what else he has up his sleeve. I hope it involves something a bit more aggressive than dumping trash on the heads of angry Muslims.

-Jeeem-


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