the jane austen of the seven seas

Since I mentioned Patrick O'Brian in my previous post, I feel the need to explain.

Did you see Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World a few years back? You remember, Russell Crowe in an for-some-reason-always-unbuttoned shirt, pretending he's not Australian. Paul Bettany looking scruffy and wearing tiny eyeglasses. Guys in tights, oh, sorry, breeches. Poignant scene with young blond amputee.

Well, it was based on a book. A book I was aware of, but hadn't read. When I was working in a bookstore years ago, one of my jobs was to shelve the new shipments of books that came into the store. I loved this part--browsing, perusing, and alphabetizing book after book after book. It took me longer than anyone else because I always stopped to read the back covers, but my manager didn't mind because it meant I could talk intelligently about most of what the customers were buying. And whenever I got assigned to "Fiction" (Yes! So much better than "Sports" or, worse, "Computers") there would always be a copy or two of Master and Commander to replace what had been sold, as well as the other books in what was evidently a very long and very popular series.

So when the movie came out, I recognized the title. I liked the movie well enough to go out and buy a used copy of the book to read on the plane on the way to Thailand. Much to my surprise, the book was nothing like the movie! The movie was (VERY loosely) based on the tenth volume of the series, titled The Far Side of the World, but for some reason the filmmakers decided to use the title of the first book.

Anyway, the book was fabulous. Dry, subtle humor that had me laughing out loud. (Husband doesn't think the passages I can't help but read aloud to him are all that funny.) Carefully drawn characters. A maniacal obsession with historical detail. Obscure, archaic jargon. An old-fashioned structure--it began at the beginning and ended at the end, unlike so many modern novels that present their stories in jumpy, movie-scene-sized segments that can't stay in one place (lousy TV and Faulkner, paving the way for no-attention-span novels!). When I asked Husband to send me some things, I requested some necessities I'd forgotten to pack...and the next book in the series.

He sent the next two, and about a week later I was ready for number 4. When he arrived in Thailand he brought the fourth and fifth books, which I devoured, and when Mom came to visit a few months later she brought me 6-9. When we visited the U.S. a few months ago I picked up used copies of the tenth-sixteenth books, and I've already read each of those...twice. (Yeah. I have a problem. Mango and sticky rice has nothing on this obsession.)

Anyway, reviewers are always comparing O'Brian to Jane Austen, whom I'd never read, though I've seen all those film adaptations of her novels starring people like Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman. I've since started reading Austen, and I've got to say that the comparison is very apt. O'Brian is more modern in his approach, of course, and he's willing to discuss topics that Austen never would have touched, but the language and style are really very similar, and the dialogue could often have been overheard at the same supper party.

helloooo out there

I've been messing with my blogger profile a little bit. I like the search function. I can click on any of my interests and it will find for me the other bloggers who have listed the same interest. Lots of Tolkien fans on blogger; not too many clarinetists.

I was looking at first for parrot lovers--Husband is always up for a good parrot story, especially if it includes pictures, and I thought a good way to find parrot blogs for The Blogless Husband to read would be through my profile. Then I changed all of my "favorite books" entries to authors, as I'd seen other people do. I clicked on "Patrick O'Brian" (I've read SIXTEEN of the twenty books in his Aubrey/Maturin series, most of them twice. At what point should I enter a 12-step program?). How weird--the parrot lovers were overwhelmingly female, while the Patrick O'Brian readers were overwhelmingly male. What does this say about Husband and me? Probably nothing, but it's sort of funny and weird anyway.

Anyhoo, I'm always looking for interesting blogs to read, so I was hoping to find some interesting people who love parrots and/or Patrick O'Brian, but I was disappointed in my quest. Almost all of the matching profiles corresponded to blogs that either never got started, or petered out after a post or two. Phooey.

So, have I got too much time on my hands, or is this a worthwhile use of my Saturday morning? You be the judge.

i can't believe they pay me for this

From my recent posts, my faithful readers may have gotten the impression that I am not satisfied with my job. On the contrary, despite the administrative problems and the periodic lack of air conditioning, electricity, and running water, I really do love it. I get to do things I enjoy for a living, which is pretty special. Here's what I'm doing today:

6:15 alarm goes off

6:30 get out of bed

6:31 coffee

6:32-8:19 What, exactly, do I do for almost two hours? I'm not sure, but this is the interval between pouring my coffee and leaving the apartment.

8:20 get on bike

8:21-8:29 dodge traffic, puddles, pedestrians, and dogs

8:30 arrive in office

8:30-9:00 warm up for my rehearsal; check over next week's teaching schedule

9:00-10:45 rehearsal (a trio I've put together for my recital next month)

10:45-11:00 blogging, of course (and from here on out, we're going into the future, baby!)

11:00-12:00 paperwork: the program for the recital, the handout for next week's studio class, some boring admin things

12:00-12:30 teach a lesson

12:30-1:00 lunch

1:00-2:00 another lesson

2:00-3:00 the weekly student recital--this week it's put on by the Thai traditional music department

3:00-4:00 another lesson

4:00-5:00 another lesson

5:00-6:00 another lesson

6:00-7:00 another lesson

7:01 change into my "outside shoes"

7:02 leave the office

7:03-7:10 dodge traffic, puddles, pedestrians, and dogs

7:11 ask Husband, "What should we do about supper?"

7:12 reply, "Yeah, I don't know either. But I sure am hungry."

7:13-8:00 somehow, we solve this thorny problem

8:00-10:30 another block of time in which I'm not really sure what it is I do

10:31 head hits the pillow

10:32 zzzzzzzzzzzzz

from the vault

Shortly after I arrived in Thailand, I performed in an orchestra concert that included a lot of exposed solos for me. It went well, and all of my students were in the audience to scope out the new teacher.

After the concert, I was approached by one of my students, who couldn't speak English at all at the time (he's conversant now). Before he got comfortable speaking English, he would often ask his bilingual friends how to say "Hello" or "How are you" so that he could greet me in the hallway or before his lesson. This time he came up and said, "Teacher, you are very beautiful."

I was a little taken aback--I'm not used to this kind of compliment, especially from a student. I smiled and thanked him in Thai, but was still feeling just a bit confused.

Until I looked beyond him.

Three or four of his buddies were standing in a little group, barely able to contain their laughter. They were turning red, punching each other, and giggling like crazy. Could it be that they were having a little fun with their monoglot friend?

I wonder what my student really wanted to tell me.

I wonder if they ever told him what he did tell me.

Poor guy.

just in case you were wondering...

...what I look like, I've decided to come out of hiding. This is me. The real maikaojai.

Photo by Husband, as always. This was taken several months ago, when I was feeling sick.

money, it's a gas

I promise, this isn't entirely a self-indulgent whine about how little money I have, how much I deserve, and how much the university should pay me. It's a set of observations; the whininess is unintentional and I apologize for all whining that made it past the self-pity sensor (censor).

Avid readers will recall that Husband and I indulged in the purchase of a washing machine a few months back. We now luxuriate in the doing of our own laundry. Our clothes are in much better shape, and we don't have to walk all around creation with bags of laundry. However, since buying the washing machine, our electric bills have quadrupled. Yes. Quadrupled. We're now paying more for electricity than we ever did in the United States. Even discounting the initial cost of the washing machine and the cost of the detergent and fabric softener, it's costing us TEN TIMES AS MUCH per month to do our own laundry as it was to hire it out.

We have also been making an effort to prepare more of our own food. This is because I am a whiny, picky eater. We still eat a lot of local food, both in restaurants and as takeout, but I have reached the end of my tolerance for fried food that is covered with sugar. Thai food in the United States differs from Thai food in Thailand in three basic ways:

• In America, Thai food is generally considered to be fairly healthy (yes, I know about the coconut milk--but compared to, say, lard, it's not bad). It's stir-fried or simmered with a minimum of oil. In Thailand, though, the curries generally arrive with a quarter-inch of pure grease on top. I haven't been able to skim enough off to relieve the sensation that my food is sliding down a well-greased chute after the first few bites.
• In America, sugar is usually reserved for dessert and for those repulsive sweet-potato-and-marshmallow concoctions that some people eat at Thanksgiving. In Thailand, no dish is complete without a heaping spoonful of sugar. Stir-fries. Curries. Fried rice. Noodles. Soup. Everything is like candy.
• In America, Thai food resembles American-style Chinese in composition: small pieces of meat with large quantities of vegetables like baby corn, peapods, and cute exotic mushrooms. In Thailand, vegetables are not nearly so widely eaten. Many dishes consist of meat, sauce, and rice or noodles.
  

I'm really not complaining. Really, I swear. I'm not. I love Thai food. That's Thailand Thai food and American Thai food. Phed mahk? ("Very spicy?") Bring it on! Coconut milk? The more the better. And the person who decided peanuts are for sauces? Isn't there a Nobel Prize for that? But after a year, I've simply reached a point at which greasy, sugary meat no longer holds the appeal it once did. I needs me my steamed veggies!*

Thus, Husband and I have started to acquire kitchen materials and to shop for groceries at a fairly upscale grocery store in a nearby town. Again, this endeavor is much more costly than going for nightly takeout. A week of groceries (which yields 4-5 meals, plus essentials like coffee and snacks), including the outlay for the taxi ride home (because have you ever ridden a bus with eight plastic grocery bags? A thing that other people find to be perfectly possible; I, on the other hand, can't do it) comes to the equivalent cost of about ten takeout or restaurant dinners. Yep. Costs more to make our own food. And again, this is without considering the initial outlay for the oven, the pans, the kitchen utensils, and the kitchen sink.

What am I driving at? Supply and demand. Some resources in Thailand (like electricity, fresh vegetables, and coffee-for-spoiled-farang) are hard to come by, and therefore expensive. Labor, on the other hand, is dirt cheap. In America, service has to be paid for. One of the hallmarks of "having money" is having people to do things for you. Things you'd otherwise have to do yourself. A cook. A laundress. A housekeeper (which we could also have, for pocket change). A nanny. In Thailand, on the other hand, anything that can be done by a person is cheap. It's the things that will cost you. A total reversal.

*I'd like to accept the Oscar for "most first-person pronouns crammed into one sentence."

no one knows what it's like

I ran down to the canteen today to scarf a quick lunch in between lessons. (Scarfed it even quicker so that I could come back upstairs and write this!)

Generally in the canteen of the College of Music, there is a little knot of pre-college boys clustered around a guitar, strumming and singing Thai pop tunes. I don't know why the girls never do this.

Anyway, today they must have wanted a change of pace, because instead of the usual Thai songs, they were doing "Behind Blue Eyes."

Did I join in? You better believe it.

I think I was the only one who knew the words.

Maybe I should have requested "House of the Rising Sun."

father-in-law to the rescue

Hyper Text Markup Language

the ballad of husband's class

Husband is teaching six classes. For those of you counting on your fingers and coming up with 18 hours, please remember that he's also got to do several hours of preparation for every hour in front of students, and also grade literally hundreds of pages of homework a week. It's a lot of work. Watching him struggle really makes me feel for K-12 teachers (yeah, that's you, Sister-In-Law and Aunt), who are in the classroom for so many hours every day.

Husband started the semester teaching five classes. The sixth was added during the third week. That's right, the third week. Husband happened to run into the head of academic affairs while walking through the building, and HOAA informed Husband that he'd be taking over a new class. (Moral of the story so far? Never Leave Your Office.) The class was to start that week.

Husband determined that a room for the class was available, and on the day of class he went down to the administration office to request that the stereo equipment in the room be unlocked for him. (This is standard in music schools in the U.S. too--musical instruments worth thousands of dollars, belonging to students (what are they thinking?) and the university are left lying around all over the place, but that $99.00 stereo the university bought at Best Buy? You need a top-level security clearance to access that, baby!)

No, Husband was told. We can't unlock that stereo cabinet for you because you can't teach in that room. Husband looked down at his master building schedule, which clearly showed his class in that room, and asked why. Well, it turns out that another teacher had asked to use the room during one of Husband's class hours. Apparently this other teacher has more clout than Husband, or else he bribed the schedule keepers, because his request apparently trumps Husband's CLASS.

Husband then asked the schedule keeper to assign him to another room. Any room. No such luck. Apparently EVERY SINGLE ROOM in the building is busy at the time of his class. Would he like to change the time? (Yeah, that's a good idea--change the time of a required class during the third week of the semester. That won't cause any problems for students.) Husband declined. Wasn't there someplace he could teach?

Finally a room was located. It's a tiny rehearsal room, usually used for jazz, with a huge drum set and many amps of various sizes in permanent residence. And a tightly locked stereo, of course.

The time for the class arrived. Husband stood outside the room he was originally assigned, hoping to corral his students and herd them towards the new room using only a minimum of rope. Time passed; no students appeared. A student not in the class came up to Husband and said to him, "Ajarn, I think those are your students." She led him to the edge of the courtyard, where he looked down . There, in fact, was a loose group of students waiting for him. He got their attention and motioned them up; he determined that they were, in fact, waiting for his class; he led them to the new room and taught the class. Without the stereo, though, as no one had come to unlock it.

At the end of class, Husband assigned some homework. (He does like to give homework.) This was met with confusion. One of the students said, "Ajarn, we cannot come to class next week." Husband said, "All of you?" They nodded. Apparently the entire class (and a lot of other studnets too) is going to be absent for at least one day for a university activity. This is not unusual; our students are always missing school to perform in concerts, to go abroad for competitions, to attend master classes, and for other reasons never fully explained. What was unusual was what followed this announcement.

The students asked Husband to reschedule the class! Yeah, what the office people suggested in the first place. So Husband finds a time when they can all make it. This time may or may not be available in their schedules, as I've found out--the Thai way of saying "I can't make it at that time" without offending a teacher is to say "Yes, it's OK" and then just not show up; apparently if they were to say "no" to a teacher, the teacher would lose face, and the teacher/student relationship is important enough that disrupting it by causing a teacher to lose face is worse than confusing your farang teacher by not showing up when you said you would. But we'll see.

Husband went back to the office to find a room for the new time. You guessed it--no rooms available. He's going to teach the next class session in his office (not big enough for a class--they're going to have to sit on top of each other), then revert back to the old time after one class at the new time.

While in the office, he asked, "By the way, why were my students waiting for me on the ground floor?"

Are you ready for this?

The room outside which the students were waiting had ALREADY BEEN RESERVED ON HUSBAND'S BEHALF AFTER THE ORIGINAL CLASSROOM WAS GIVEN AWAY. He doesn't have to teach in the jazz rehearsal room. He never had to teach in the jazz rehearsal room. The office staff knew this when he was searching for a classroom. They thought it was important enough to tell the students, but neither when he originally came in, nor when they helped him find the jazz rehearsal room, did they think it was important enough to tell the teacher!

I saw Husband immediately after this conversation, and all he could say was, "Beer."

more farang

I've been reading this blog and thought I'd share it with the masses.

Farang Stephanie in Thailand

(So that's what a blogroll is for!)