In order to construct a meaningful sentence in English, you've got to place the event you're describing in a context of time:
I speak English.
I am speaking English.
I will speak English.
I spoke English.
I would have been speaking English.
Verb tenses. Love 'em or...make no sense.
In Thai, on the other hand, every single one of those sentences above translates to:
Puut angrit.*
You can speak Thai all day and all night without ever making a decision about WHEN. This means that when I speak with my students, either in English or in Thai, I have a problem with any question or statement that depends on a point in time.
To my students,
"Have you played this piece before?"
sounds exactly like
"Play this right now."
"How much did you practice today?"
sounds exactly like
"How much will you practice today?"
Even non-verb words like before and after are confusing to them. There must be a way to say these things in Thai, but I don't know it.
There is a word that, added to a verb, means a kind of immediate future:
Ja puut angrit.
is something like "I'm about to speak English. Any minute now."
And there's a word that means something like "already."
Puut angrit lair-o.
is something like "I spoke English already. Finished."
So there is that.
As always, this difference between English and Thai makes me muse. What does it say about us, about how we think? Americans definitely think more linearly than Thai people: First I did this, then I did that, now I'm doing the other, and finally I'll scale that mountain, I'll pull myself up by my bootstraps, I'll use my Yankee ingenuity to be a high achiever.
There just isn't that kind of urgency here. Deadlines are mere suggestions. Appointments, class start times, and bus schedules are vague at best. Linguistically, everything is happening in a kind of constant present tense. Kind of like Bangkok traffic. Now, as always, I'm making the logical leap required to shoot my mouth off about a culture I don't really understand, but I think this question of language is an important one. Did the languages evolve differently because the people thought differently, or do we think differently because we think in these different languages, or does one continually inform and shape the other?
I definitely need another cup of coffee before I take that one any farther.
*The problem of gendered first-person pronouns that I discussed in a previous post evaporates in ordinary conversation, when most pronouns are omitted.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
guantanamera
This weekend was Husband's birthday. Only one more year till the big 3-0. And that means only 2 more years till I hit it! Yikes.
We went into Bangkok with another couple for some Mexican food. Now, say what you will about globalization, but any trend that allows me to have a burrito in in Bangkok is worth something. I'm grateful.
The restaurant was called Senor Pico's, and it's in the ritzy expat area of Bangkok. An expat is what I am, I suppose, but I'm not the kind of expat that Senor Pico's is catering to. It's in a fancy hotel with serviced apartments, and the food is almost as good as in Tucson, and they had a Cuban band playing a weird mix of mariachi tunes, Frank Sinatra songs in Spanish, and one verse of "Happy Birthday" every five minutes. And for what we spent on that meal, we could have eaten at our local takeout places 20 times. 20.
My parents were expats for a while. They lived in a 4-bedroom, marble-floored apartment in Singapore. They had beautiful furniture, a membership at the American Club, and a car. The company flew me and Brother out for visits.
My former student joined the Peace Corps after graduating from the university where I did my graduate work. She went to Nicaragua, where she lived in a village and taught the locals more efficient farming techniques. She bathed from a bucket, ate lots of bananas, and spoke Spanish.
What I'm doing here is somewhere in between.
I have high speed Internet at home and in my office, and that alone makes my life so much easier than it would have been, had I been doing this even 10 years ago! I can pay bills online, stay in touch with people, learn about world events that don't involve business or cricket, and, of course, maintain this sparkling literary gem of a blog.
I get around Bangkok on public transportation that didn't exist 10 years ago--the BTS Skytrain and the MRT subway, not to mention the metered taxis. Before these innovations, it was all tuk-tuks, sawng thaews (pickup trucks that you hire like taxis and sit on benches in the bed) and samlors (bicycle rickshaws, still used in smaller towns).
But a lot of things are just different here--for instance, I make a really good salary for Thailand. Husband and I are doing quite well, and our pricey burritos this weekend aren't going to cause us any real financial angst (imagine the price tag on a dinner in the U.S. that costs the equivalent of 20 takeout meals for two!). But my student, who wants to go to the U.S. for a few months and work at McDonald's while he visits his uncle (can you do that?), will make more money at that job than I do at mine.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe nowhere. It does make me wonder about the factors that affect something like the cost of living for a certain area, or an average salary.
We went into Bangkok with another couple for some Mexican food. Now, say what you will about globalization, but any trend that allows me to have a burrito in in Bangkok is worth something. I'm grateful.
The restaurant was called Senor Pico's, and it's in the ritzy expat area of Bangkok. An expat is what I am, I suppose, but I'm not the kind of expat that Senor Pico's is catering to. It's in a fancy hotel with serviced apartments, and the food is almost as good as in Tucson, and they had a Cuban band playing a weird mix of mariachi tunes, Frank Sinatra songs in Spanish, and one verse of "Happy Birthday" every five minutes. And for what we spent on that meal, we could have eaten at our local takeout places 20 times. 20.
My parents were expats for a while. They lived in a 4-bedroom, marble-floored apartment in Singapore. They had beautiful furniture, a membership at the American Club, and a car. The company flew me and Brother out for visits.
My former student joined the Peace Corps after graduating from the university where I did my graduate work. She went to Nicaragua, where she lived in a village and taught the locals more efficient farming techniques. She bathed from a bucket, ate lots of bananas, and spoke Spanish.
What I'm doing here is somewhere in between.
I have high speed Internet at home and in my office, and that alone makes my life so much easier than it would have been, had I been doing this even 10 years ago! I can pay bills online, stay in touch with people, learn about world events that don't involve business or cricket, and, of course, maintain this sparkling literary gem of a blog.
I get around Bangkok on public transportation that didn't exist 10 years ago--the BTS Skytrain and the MRT subway, not to mention the metered taxis. Before these innovations, it was all tuk-tuks, sawng thaews (pickup trucks that you hire like taxis and sit on benches in the bed) and samlors (bicycle rickshaws, still used in smaller towns).
But a lot of things are just different here--for instance, I make a really good salary for Thailand. Husband and I are doing quite well, and our pricey burritos this weekend aren't going to cause us any real financial angst (imagine the price tag on a dinner in the U.S. that costs the equivalent of 20 takeout meals for two!). But my student, who wants to go to the U.S. for a few months and work at McDonald's while he visits his uncle (can you do that?), will make more money at that job than I do at mine.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe nowhere. It does make me wonder about the factors that affect something like the cost of living for a certain area, or an average salary.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
4 more...3 more...2 more...1 more...
We have cable TV here, which means that in addition to the many Thai stations that we don't watch, we get a small selection of English-language TV. We get BBC Asia and CNN Asia, both of which report exhaustively and incessantly on business and financial news. This is generally pretty boring, but I did get to hear a BBC guy reporting on commodities say "nipple crisis" when he meant "nickel prices," so there is that. (Yeah, my sense of humor is still in the third grade. Wanna make something of it?)
We also get Star Movies, which shows a very strange mix of movies. Every movie The Rock has ever made, for one thing. Steven Seagal's complete oeuvre. "Baby Geniuses," "Three Men and a Little Lady," "All Dogs Go to Heaven 2," "Agent Cody Banks," and other movies aimed at kids. And a perplexing collection of romantic comedies starring Jennifer Love Hewitt doing a fake British accent and weighing about 70 pounds.
We also get two Australian channels. One of them looks like a cross between American network TV and PBS--there's a drama about a hospital, there are cop shows and travel shows and documentaries. On the other Australian channel, they seem to show nothing at all but this. This is not like the aerobics shows in the U.S. For one thing, the instructors all seem to be wearing thongs. (And, of course, those great big gleaming white aerobics instructor sneakers.) They do strange exercises too. There's one in which two hot chicks in thongs stand opposite each other and pretend to fight: in rhythm, one punches while the other one ducks, and then they trade positions, going up and down like pistons. There's another one in which male volunteers are pushed and pulled by the hot chicks in thongs. Presumably this has some aerobically sound premise. Husband and I wonder who, exactly, is the target audience for this show.
Anyway, we tend to eat our supper in the true traditional American way: in front of the TV. So each day we flip through our channels to see what our choices are. Generally we've got: Steven Seagal running in front of fire; CNN World Business Report; hot chicks in thongs; BBC Sport (which reports on things like cricket matches between Bangladesh and South Africa, and the interminable Juventus football scandal); and whatever is on the other Australian channel.
We're reviving the lost art of conversation.
We also get Star Movies, which shows a very strange mix of movies. Every movie The Rock has ever made, for one thing. Steven Seagal's complete oeuvre. "Baby Geniuses," "Three Men and a Little Lady," "All Dogs Go to Heaven 2," "Agent Cody Banks," and other movies aimed at kids. And a perplexing collection of romantic comedies starring Jennifer Love Hewitt doing a fake British accent and weighing about 70 pounds.
We also get two Australian channels. One of them looks like a cross between American network TV and PBS--there's a drama about a hospital, there are cop shows and travel shows and documentaries. On the other Australian channel, they seem to show nothing at all but this. This is not like the aerobics shows in the U.S. For one thing, the instructors all seem to be wearing thongs. (And, of course, those great big gleaming white aerobics instructor sneakers.) They do strange exercises too. There's one in which two hot chicks in thongs stand opposite each other and pretend to fight: in rhythm, one punches while the other one ducks, and then they trade positions, going up and down like pistons. There's another one in which male volunteers are pushed and pulled by the hot chicks in thongs. Presumably this has some aerobically sound premise. Husband and I wonder who, exactly, is the target audience for this show.
Anyway, we tend to eat our supper in the true traditional American way: in front of the TV. So each day we flip through our channels to see what our choices are. Generally we've got: Steven Seagal running in front of fire; CNN World Business Report; hot chicks in thongs; BBC Sport (which reports on things like cricket matches between Bangladesh and South Africa, and the interminable Juventus football scandal); and whatever is on the other Australian channel.
We're reviving the lost art of conversation.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
she walks like a woman and talks like a man
Lo-lo-lo-lo-lola....
Gender roles are a little different here in Thailand than they are in the United States. Painted broadly, there are a lot of similarities and Thai culture could be seen as conservative in terms of gender equality.
For example, at the university, my female students defer to my male students. Before the first student concert I organized here, I asked the students what they'd like to wear. The men decided what they were going to wear, then told the women what they should wear! Being at the same time aghast and very concerned about my cultural sensitivity (because how big a deal is this, really?), I timidly asked the women if this was OK with them. They said yes.
But in other ways, women have just as much of a chance to succeed as men. For example, again at the university, there is a pretty good mix of women and men among both the farang and the Thai teachers. And this university, at least, I think things are actually better organized for family life (read: women not having to quit their jobs to have kids) than at some universities in the U.S.
All of this is just a preface, though, to what I really want to talk about, which are those little, day-to-day differences. They start with the language.
In English, we have one first-person pronoun for both sexes, but we differentiate male and female ("he" and "she") in the third person. We also have only one second-person pronoun, having done away even with the familiar "thou."
In Thai, though, things are different. Men and women speak differently about themselves. A woman might say,
"Di-chan choop ni nang-suu ka."
A man, on the other hand, would say,
"Pom choop ni nang-suu krup."
"Pom" and "Di-chan" would both translate in English as "I." "Krup and "ka" wouldn't translate at all--they're polite words that get tacked on to the ends of things, and they vary by sex. The rest of the sentence is inane, like most of the things I say in Thai: "I like this book."
But to talk about someone else, in English we've got to know what sex the person is:
"He likes this book." "She likes this book."
In Thai, both of these sentences translate to
"Kao choop ni nang-suu (ka/krup)." (The word at the end still varies with the sex of the speaker.)
I won't get into Thai second-person pronouns, except to say that there are a lot of them, that they vary according to the status of the speaker and the listener, and that (thankfully) there is one that is always appropriate for conversations between farang and Thais.
Anyway, the lack of differentiation for other people means that Thai people, even those who speak very good English, sometimes get tripped up on "he" and "she." "Mr.," "Ms./Mrs./Miss," "Sir," and "ma'am" also all translate to the same word in Thai: "Khun," which also means "you" and is the second-person pronoun used by farang. This means that when Thai people speak English, titles like the ones I've listed get confused. Everybody is "sir." Everybody is "Mr."
There are also some differences in what is considered to be socially acceptable behavior.
In Bangkok you'll see teenage couples holding hands, but this is a new trend and is still considered to be a little trashy. What's completely acceptable, though, is same-sex friends holding hands or walking with their arms around each other. Imagine two teenage boys walking down the street with their arms around each other in the United States! "Friends" isn't the assumption we'd make.
There is also a much wider range of adornments and tchotchkes acceptable for Thai boys and men than to Americans. It's not unheard of to see male students at the university wearing makeup, for example. Thai men aren't afraid of the color pink, or of cute little cartoon characters: one of my male students wears a huge Hello Kitty watch, and many of them carry pink pencils with little charms dangling from the ends. And while it's not so uncommon for American men to have long hair, their range is styling options is very limited compared to Thai men. Thai men wear plastic hair bands, barrettes, ponytails, pigtails, French braids; essentially all of the styles that women use to keep long hair out of their faces are available to men as well. And this is just for regular guys.
Going a little farther are the katoey ("ladyboys"). These are men who dress like women. Shaved legs, tiny little miniskirts, lots of makeup. And at least to my farang eyes, they're a lot better at it than American drag queens. For one thing, it's a wardrobe choice and not theater (though they have that here too), so there's nothing over the top. A katoey and his female friends will look very much the same. Also, again to my farang eyes, there's less difference to make up in terms of body shape between Thai men and Thai women than there is between American men and American women. More than once I've been surprised by the deep voice that comes out of who I thought was a teenage girl.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, though--after all, the Thai language teaches us that others' (people we'd talk about in the third person) gender is none of our business, and that it's our job to articulate our own.
Gender roles are a little different here in Thailand than they are in the United States. Painted broadly, there are a lot of similarities and Thai culture could be seen as conservative in terms of gender equality.
For example, at the university, my female students defer to my male students. Before the first student concert I organized here, I asked the students what they'd like to wear. The men decided what they were going to wear, then told the women what they should wear! Being at the same time aghast and very concerned about my cultural sensitivity (because how big a deal is this, really?), I timidly asked the women if this was OK with them. They said yes.
But in other ways, women have just as much of a chance to succeed as men. For example, again at the university, there is a pretty good mix of women and men among both the farang and the Thai teachers. And this university, at least, I think things are actually better organized for family life (read: women not having to quit their jobs to have kids) than at some universities in the U.S.
All of this is just a preface, though, to what I really want to talk about, which are those little, day-to-day differences. They start with the language.
In English, we have one first-person pronoun for both sexes, but we differentiate male and female ("he" and "she") in the third person. We also have only one second-person pronoun, having done away even with the familiar "thou."
In Thai, though, things are different. Men and women speak differently about themselves. A woman might say,
"Di-chan choop ni nang-suu ka."
A man, on the other hand, would say,
"Pom choop ni nang-suu krup."
"Pom" and "Di-chan" would both translate in English as "I." "Krup and "ka" wouldn't translate at all--they're polite words that get tacked on to the ends of things, and they vary by sex. The rest of the sentence is inane, like most of the things I say in Thai: "I like this book."
But to talk about someone else, in English we've got to know what sex the person is:
"He likes this book." "She likes this book."
In Thai, both of these sentences translate to
"Kao choop ni nang-suu (ka/krup)." (The word at the end still varies with the sex of the speaker.)
I won't get into Thai second-person pronouns, except to say that there are a lot of them, that they vary according to the status of the speaker and the listener, and that (thankfully) there is one that is always appropriate for conversations between farang and Thais.
Anyway, the lack of differentiation for other people means that Thai people, even those who speak very good English, sometimes get tripped up on "he" and "she." "Mr.," "Ms./Mrs./Miss," "Sir," and "ma'am" also all translate to the same word in Thai: "Khun," which also means "you" and is the second-person pronoun used by farang. This means that when Thai people speak English, titles like the ones I've listed get confused. Everybody is "sir." Everybody is "Mr."
There are also some differences in what is considered to be socially acceptable behavior.
In Bangkok you'll see teenage couples holding hands, but this is a new trend and is still considered to be a little trashy. What's completely acceptable, though, is same-sex friends holding hands or walking with their arms around each other. Imagine two teenage boys walking down the street with their arms around each other in the United States! "Friends" isn't the assumption we'd make.
There is also a much wider range of adornments and tchotchkes acceptable for Thai boys and men than to Americans. It's not unheard of to see male students at the university wearing makeup, for example. Thai men aren't afraid of the color pink, or of cute little cartoon characters: one of my male students wears a huge Hello Kitty watch, and many of them carry pink pencils with little charms dangling from the ends. And while it's not so uncommon for American men to have long hair, their range is styling options is very limited compared to Thai men. Thai men wear plastic hair bands, barrettes, ponytails, pigtails, French braids; essentially all of the styles that women use to keep long hair out of their faces are available to men as well. And this is just for regular guys.
Going a little farther are the katoey ("ladyboys"). These are men who dress like women. Shaved legs, tiny little miniskirts, lots of makeup. And at least to my farang eyes, they're a lot better at it than American drag queens. For one thing, it's a wardrobe choice and not theater (though they have that here too), so there's nothing over the top. A katoey and his female friends will look very much the same. Also, again to my farang eyes, there's less difference to make up in terms of body shape between Thai men and Thai women than there is between American men and American women. More than once I've been surprised by the deep voice that comes out of who I thought was a teenage girl.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, though--after all, the Thai language teaches us that others' (people we'd talk about in the third person) gender is none of our business, and that it's our job to articulate our own.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
for inspired journaling
Notebooks with cute pictures and English phrases on the front are very popular here. Usually the pictures are of Japanese cartoon characters (or original designs that look like Japanese cartoon characters) and the text says something like "Happy is friend I feel. Life for love." Mushy sentiment, questionable syntax. I'd imagine that many of the items sold in the U.S. with Chinese or Japanese characters on them (and, I've heard, the tattoos that people get) mangle those languages in the same way. Anyway, one notebook stood out from the rest. I just had to buy it.
The picture is a series of photographs of a stuffed dog wearing a powder blue track suit and standing on its hind legs. There are ten poses, each about an inch high. The dog waving. The dog sad. The dog with a fanny pack. The dog with a giant plush bone. I'm not sure what the dog is supposed to be doing in some of them.
The eleventh picture is about four times larger. It is clearly the centerpiece. It shows the dog standing on its hind legs, wearing only the top half of the track suit. Its front paws are clasped in front of it, and it is standing before a toilet and turning to grin at the photographer. The text reads as follows:
The picture is a series of photographs of a stuffed dog wearing a powder blue track suit and standing on its hind legs. There are ten poses, each about an inch high. The dog waving. The dog sad. The dog with a fanny pack. The dog with a giant plush bone. I'm not sure what the dog is supposed to be doing in some of them.
The eleventh picture is about four times larger. It is clearly the centerpiece. It shows the dog standing on its hind legs, wearing only the top half of the track suit. Its front paws are clasped in front of it, and it is standing before a toilet and turning to grin at the photographer. The text reads as follows:
Whenever I wrap the urine with
the trouser, too ashamed.
I am tiny unpleasantly.
A tear lot hates,
but I have a dream to want to
consist surely.
It is secret what I dream right now.
I have important dream.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
and the karmic wheel keeps turning
My last post was a little over the top, I think.
I was tempting fate.
I was fey.
Today all those holes in my schedule got filled in. And then some.
I was tempting fate.
I was fey.
Today all those holes in my schedule got filled in. And then some.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
money for nothing (and the chicks for free)
The workload of a musician always ebbs and flows. Whether it's a recital, a particularly busy concert season, or guiding (dragging) my students through their performances, every event is preceded by a steadily increasing number of time commitments: extra practicing and rehearsals, plus meetings with building administrators and publicity people, if it's a concert of mine; extra lessons, schedule juggling to accommodate accompanists, and supervision of rehearsals and performances if it's a student event. The event is generally succeeded by a brief period of relative calm, when the holes in my schedule from things I don't need to do anymore haven't yet been filled with preparations for the next thing. It's during these times that I try to excavate the dunes of paper that accumulate in my office when I don't have time to think about being organized.
Last night was The Recital. It was a given that today would be a fairly easy workday for me--I practiced only a little, I had no rehearsals to attend, and not a lot of lessons to teach (it's only Tuesday--my students seem to think that the later in the week they can have their lessons, the better. Somehow it's escaped them that there are just as many practice days between Mondays as there are between Fridays). But the actual experience of this day has made me wonder what, exactly, they're paying me for. I've never had a workday quite like it.
Recently I posted a day in the life of maikaojai; this is a little different.
8:30-11:00 DIDN'T practice
11:00-12:00 practiced
12:00-1:00 DIDN'T coach the student quintet I normally have at this time
1:00-2:00 DIDN'T teach the lesson I normally have at this time
2:00-3:00 DIDN'T teach the lesson I normally have at this time
3:00-3:30 DIDN'T go to the administrative office to straighten out recital details
3:30-4:30 DIDN'T coach the student quartet I normally have at this time
4:30-6:00 DIDN'T practice
6:00-7:00 supper with Husband
7:00-8:30 attend a student concert that I had absolutely no part in organizing (YES!)
I'm no stranger to student cancellations, but this is the first time that EVERY SINGLE STUDENT has cancelled lessons on the same day. Too bad they didn't give me any advance notice; I could have been writing this in my pajamas.
What have I been doing all day? Well, I've been shoveling paper off my desk; working on the draft of a book segment (it's not really a chapter; more of an appendix) I've been asked to write; trying to figure out how I'm going to herd everyone into their appointed jury preview time slots at the end of the semester (already the tide has turned; I'll be at high water again soon enough); catching up on some correspondence; and harassing Husband.
Last night was The Recital. It was a given that today would be a fairly easy workday for me--I practiced only a little, I had no rehearsals to attend, and not a lot of lessons to teach (it's only Tuesday--my students seem to think that the later in the week they can have their lessons, the better. Somehow it's escaped them that there are just as many practice days between Mondays as there are between Fridays). But the actual experience of this day has made me wonder what, exactly, they're paying me for. I've never had a workday quite like it.
Recently I posted a day in the life of maikaojai; this is a little different.
8:30-11:00 DIDN'T practice
11:00-12:00 practiced
12:00-1:00 DIDN'T coach the student quintet I normally have at this time
1:00-2:00 DIDN'T teach the lesson I normally have at this time
2:00-3:00 DIDN'T teach the lesson I normally have at this time
3:00-3:30 DIDN'T go to the administrative office to straighten out recital details
3:30-4:30 DIDN'T coach the student quartet I normally have at this time
4:30-6:00 DIDN'T practice
6:00-7:00 supper with Husband
7:00-8:30 attend a student concert that I had absolutely no part in organizing (YES!)
I'm no stranger to student cancellations, but this is the first time that EVERY SINGLE STUDENT has cancelled lessons on the same day. Too bad they didn't give me any advance notice; I could have been writing this in my pajamas.
What have I been doing all day? Well, I've been shoveling paper off my desk; working on the draft of a book segment (it's not really a chapter; more of an appendix) I've been asked to write; trying to figure out how I'm going to herd everyone into their appointed jury preview time slots at the end of the semester (already the tide has turned; I'll be at high water again soon enough); catching up on some correspondence; and harassing Husband.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
clarification
An alert reader (hi Mom!) has asked me what that dog picture is doing on my blog.
It's one of the College of Music dogs; I just thought that after hearing about them, you'd like to see one.
It's one of the College of Music dogs; I just thought that after hearing about them, you'd like to see one.
it's shagadelic, baby, yeah
When I was in the U.S. in the spring, Cousin gave me a great haircut. It was really good. And it took her about a minute and a half--I couldn't believe it! Anyway, when I got back to Thailand, I waited as long as I could before getting another trim, and when I did, I made sure to say "Same same. Only trim." The stylist did his best, and I wound up with a reasonably similar haircut.
Last night was the End of the Good Haircut.
It was getting very unkempt, and I needed to have a trim. Husband and I went to our usual hair salon (in a mall, of course). I must digress, now, to describe the process of getting a haircut in Thailand.
First your hair is washed. The chairs that dangle your head over the sink, though, are much more comfortable than in the U.S. The shampoo girls are trained in Thai massage, at least a little, and after the shampoo you get a little scalp and neck massage. Very nice. Lots of attention to comfort; no attempt, though, at heating the water. Yikes.
Then you are placed in a chair and given a glass of water and some Thai fashion magazines to peruse.
Fifteen minutes later, the haircut begins. Thai haircutting technique is really, really different from American haircutting. There is NEVER a time when the scissors cut straight across my hair--instead, the scissors are always angled so that the point is directly aiming at my head, and the person doing the cutting sort of stabs at my hair, producing a layered, jagged effect and only cutting about one hair at a time. This takes a while, as you might imagine. The scissors are followed up by the razor, which is used to further randomize the lengths of each individual hair. After the razor, more scissors, used on very small pinches of hair which the bestower of the haircut pulls up from various places on my head.
After this, there is a second shampooing. Usually it's just Husband who gets this; for me it's another period of waiting. A stylist once explained to me that Husband has to have his hair washed again "because his head is so big." Hmm. Well, my head must have grown, because last night I was treated to the dual shampooing as well.
After the washing, you're returned to the chair for more waiting. Then the stylist (not the same person who cuts the hair) shows up with a blow dryer and dries your hair. The haircut person (Cousin, what's the right word for a person who only cuts and doesn't shampoo, style, or dye?) returns for another round of stealth cutting (sneaking up on one hair at a time and poking at it with scissors or a razor). After this, the stylist comes back and puts styling wax in my hair.
The whole process takes about an hour and a half, and that's if they're not busy.
Anyway, back to the haircut I got last night.
The woman who was going to cut my hair asked me, "Same style?" I nodded vigorously and replied with both "Yes" and "Ka," thinking, "Oh please oh please just cut it like the guy last time, even though you think it's a weird kind of haircut and doesn't involve any razors or jabbing motions." Then she got to work.
Now, when I'm getting a haircut I have absolutely no idea what I look like. What I can see in the mirror with my glasses off is a pinkish blob that's probably my face, covered with a brownish blob that's almost certainly my hair. So every haircut is a surprise and an adventure. But this time, it didn't take me long to figure out that what she was doing to the brownish blob bore no resemblance at all to "Same style."
She gave me the Thai style deluxe.
On Thai people all of this random cutting and razoring actually looks good. It adds body; they look charming and pixielike; they've got a hip, tousled thing going on. Me? I look like a Muppet that got caught in a lawnmower. I don't know if it's my big pink round farang face, or if my hair is a different texture than that of most Thai people, or if the hairstylists I've seen are united in doing this to me on purpose, but every haircut I've gotten in Thailand has had the same vertical effect. For the first couple of weeks, until it grows out enough to calm down, I've got to plaster it with styling wax just to keep it from sticking straight up like some freakish cartoon.
Oh, Cousin, you'd make a killing cutting farang hair in Thailand!
Last night was the End of the Good Haircut.
It was getting very unkempt, and I needed to have a trim. Husband and I went to our usual hair salon (in a mall, of course). I must digress, now, to describe the process of getting a haircut in Thailand.
First your hair is washed. The chairs that dangle your head over the sink, though, are much more comfortable than in the U.S. The shampoo girls are trained in Thai massage, at least a little, and after the shampoo you get a little scalp and neck massage. Very nice. Lots of attention to comfort; no attempt, though, at heating the water. Yikes.
Then you are placed in a chair and given a glass of water and some Thai fashion magazines to peruse.
Fifteen minutes later, the haircut begins. Thai haircutting technique is really, really different from American haircutting. There is NEVER a time when the scissors cut straight across my hair--instead, the scissors are always angled so that the point is directly aiming at my head, and the person doing the cutting sort of stabs at my hair, producing a layered, jagged effect and only cutting about one hair at a time. This takes a while, as you might imagine. The scissors are followed up by the razor, which is used to further randomize the lengths of each individual hair. After the razor, more scissors, used on very small pinches of hair which the bestower of the haircut pulls up from various places on my head.
After this, there is a second shampooing. Usually it's just Husband who gets this; for me it's another period of waiting. A stylist once explained to me that Husband has to have his hair washed again "because his head is so big." Hmm. Well, my head must have grown, because last night I was treated to the dual shampooing as well.
After the washing, you're returned to the chair for more waiting. Then the stylist (not the same person who cuts the hair) shows up with a blow dryer and dries your hair. The haircut person (Cousin, what's the right word for a person who only cuts and doesn't shampoo, style, or dye?) returns for another round of stealth cutting (sneaking up on one hair at a time and poking at it with scissors or a razor). After this, the stylist comes back and puts styling wax in my hair.
The whole process takes about an hour and a half, and that's if they're not busy.
Anyway, back to the haircut I got last night.
The woman who was going to cut my hair asked me, "Same style?" I nodded vigorously and replied with both "Yes" and "Ka," thinking, "Oh please oh please just cut it like the guy last time, even though you think it's a weird kind of haircut and doesn't involve any razors or jabbing motions." Then she got to work.
Now, when I'm getting a haircut I have absolutely no idea what I look like. What I can see in the mirror with my glasses off is a pinkish blob that's probably my face, covered with a brownish blob that's almost certainly my hair. So every haircut is a surprise and an adventure. But this time, it didn't take me long to figure out that what she was doing to the brownish blob bore no resemblance at all to "Same style."
She gave me the Thai style deluxe.
On Thai people all of this random cutting and razoring actually looks good. It adds body; they look charming and pixielike; they've got a hip, tousled thing going on. Me? I look like a Muppet that got caught in a lawnmower. I don't know if it's my big pink round farang face, or if my hair is a different texture than that of most Thai people, or if the hairstylists I've seen are united in doing this to me on purpose, but every haircut I've gotten in Thailand has had the same vertical effect. For the first couple of weeks, until it grows out enough to calm down, I've got to plaster it with styling wax just to keep it from sticking straight up like some freakish cartoon.
Oh, Cousin, you'd make a killing cutting farang hair in Thailand!
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
the rain in thailand falls mainly on...me
Remember this?
Father-in-Law, fount of information on such things as HTML, has come through for me again.
Father-in-Law, fount of information on such things as HTML, has come through for me again.
Your body is intercepting drops that are falling, and the impact area you present to the falling drops depends on your posture on the bicycle and the direction that the drops are coming at you. For example, lets say there is no wind so the rain is coming down vertically, and you are sitting upright and not moving. The impact area is then essentially the same as the area of your shadow from vertical illumination. So the rate at which you would be getting wet is less than if you were moving forward (you are presenting less impact area when intercepting vertical rain). However, you are making no progress so while the rate of wetting is low, the time of wetting is ridiculously long. You are making no progress and you will keep getting wet until the rain stops or until your reason for biking is gone.
If you were to proceed through the rain, you would likely present a bigger impact area (given an upright posture) and the speed of the drops relative to you would increase so that your rate of wetting would increase but the time would decrease. At the extreme case of going so fast that the time is negligible (essentially instantaneously moving from start to finish) the rate of wetting would be very high from both an increase in impact area (your larger horizontal shadow) and the extremely high horizontal speed of the drops relative to you (from traveling so fast). Your total wetting would be from the drops contained in the volume swept out by your horizontal impact area multiplied by the distance you bicycled (at super high speed).
One can draw intermediate diagrams that show the swept out volume of rain for different travel speeds (assuming vertical rain at a given rate and its vertical speed). If you draw these diagrams from a side view you will have a very tall, almost vertical column for very slow bike speed, a series of parallelograms for intermediate speeds, and a horizontal rectangle for super-high speed. With the usual rules for calculating volume, one finds that the higher the speed, the less the volume. You can further decrease the volume at high speed by crouching and decreasing the horizontal impact area.
This analysis was based on vertical rain. With rain not vertical, the advantage from going faster will generally still be there, but the payoff from incremental speed increases will depend on windspeed and direction.
Safety was ignored in this analysis. Clearly there is a danger from speeding in the rain. Also, going faster might kick up more water from the puddles.
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