Meritorious fish

'A friend of mine wants to make merit badly. She wants to publish a short story on Lord Buddha's adventures. Could you help her?' asked Song, owner of an internet shop where I teach English.

The woman, aged in 50s, went to a private school in Bangkok and has good spoken English. She is translating a mythical story from Thai into English and wants me to check her work.

At Song's request, to help her perform her good work, I have agreed to check-sub her story.

I met the woman at Song's shop two weeks ago.

What I find curious is that I am expected to perform this labour for free, simply because she wants to make merit.

I have taken a quick look at her manuscript. Hours of work will be needed to knock it into shape.

Is publishing the work itself a meritorious act, regardless of whether it makes money?

And if she does make money, will she give me some?

-

Bird, head bowed as he sat at the table, started to cry.

One of my students, he entered the shop moments earlier without saying a word.

His father chastised him for keeping me waiting.

Dad, who works just down the way, walked past the shop where I teach moments before, and noticed that I was inside waiting for Bird to arrive.

Bird, who loves basketball, sometimes turns up late for class. Mind you, so do I. It is a casual arrangement.

Bird lives with his parents and sister next door in a shophouse/home which is also the family's tailoring business.

Song noticed Mr Bird crying, and rubbed his shoulders. I passed him tissues, wiped his eyes, and told him not to worry.

'Thais are deferential to farang, sometimes without good reason,' I said. 'I turn up late too. How many times have I kept you waiting?'

Mr Bird was too moody to talk, so for most of the lesson we communicated in writing. When I wanted to say something, I passed him a note. He would write down his answer, and pass it back.

'Do you know how to drive a motorbike?' I wrote.

'No, but I want to learn how to drive a car,' he replied.

-
Maiyuu was baking, so I went for a walk in the market to get out of his hair.

Under an overhead bridge, I found a food stall which sold steak. I hadn't seen this woman before. She worked alone.

'Steak...chicken or beef?' she asked.

That was cunning. I didn't have time to ask myself whether I really wanted either.

'Beef,' I said.

On my way home, I bumped into Rut, young gay guy from the local school. He called over half a dozen friends, whom he introduced.

'We have not eaten since this morning,' he said. 'What's in your box?'

'Steak,' I told him. 'How many people need to eat?'

Apart from Rut, four others needed feeding. I could contribute to the meal, but we would still need to order extra.

At a food stall nearby, we took a table, and Rut ordered fried egg on rice. I gave him B100 towards their meal.

I gave them the steak. Mr Rut insisted I eat first. I took one french fry. Only moments had passed since the woman under the bridge made it, but already the steak was cold.

The youngsters were unworried: they devoured it in minutes.

As we waited for the food order to arrive, a commotion broke out nearby.

Nut and a biggish girl whom the others call chang yim (smiling elephant), ran away to investigate.

While they were away, the food arrived. Mr Rut, aged 15, made the most of their absence to tuck in.

He took a large bottle of chili sauce and tipped it over the food, until it was covered in a large pool of the stuff.

-

One of the piers at the canal where locals fish

We joined a group of young men fishing off a nearby pier.

Some were students from the local school. Oldest in the group were two men in their 50s, grizzled types with missing teeth.

One man owns a small canoe-shaped boat which he tethers to the pier.

The pier was done up recently. It is now made of metal. The old one, made of wood, collapsed.

Two signs, in English and Thai, have also been erected. They give the name of the pier, and explain the history of the area. Needless to say, we were all piling around the signs, eager to know what brought us here.

Since the new pier arrived - it took metal-workers weeks to build - it has become a popular fishing spot among local people.

Fifty metres away is another pier, made of wood, which I visit in the daytime. Long-tailed boats pick up and disgorge passengers here.

It's old, but not yet so dilapidated that it needs fixing. Locals gather on that pier to fish too, but the fishing at that end is not as good.

The fishing group used as bait long strips of bread, arranged like a shish kabab.

One man pulling in a fish wound on his line furiously, performing large flicking and sweeping motions with his hand-held rod, like a fly fisherman. The others moved out of his way.

They were rewarded with large muddly-looking fish, which they bagged.

After catching their fish, the fisherman gave them a wai.

Rut and three friends piled on a motorbike. They were off to find a friend.

Rut, who has a small body and is the baby of the group, squeezed in front and bobbed his head. Two girls sat behind Nut, who reached over Rut to get at the handlebars, and steer the thing.

I hope they were not going far, as it looked dangerous.

'Our family car,' said Mr Nut, in English, as he pulled away.

Shifty bacon

The internet is down at my place again, which is becoming a weekly event. If old people like regularity, then the weekly lapse in internet connection to my home should be something I anticipate eagerly.

I am writing this on Microsoft Word, with the intention of saving it on a memory stick, which I shall insert into a computer at an internet shop in the market.

Even when my internet at home is not working, the net available to shops in the market invariably is.

Don’t ask me how they do that. They might use a different provider.

Or perhaps we use the same company, but the provider has a clever way of distinguishing between business and domestic users.

If they need to do maintenance, they can drop the service they provide to domestic users first, because we have lower priority.

Boyfriend Maiyuu showed me how to use a memory stick once, but I have forgotten. At the moment, he is too busy cooking to give me another demonstration. I lack the wit to help myself, so like an old man in a rest home waiting for God to take him, I shall just have to sit here until he is ready.
-
The air-conditioning unit is making strange noises, and should really be inspected by an air con man.

Our last adventure with an air con man was a disaster. I can’t recall what prompted us to call him, but when he inspected the machine he found that a metal plate was rusting.

Maiyuu gave him B3000 and he went away to build a new one.

From memory, he did not return to fit it, as he became busy servicing customers in the provinces. This was in the lead-up to the hot season, months ago.

I never saw him inspect the machine, but my Thai boyfriend assures he did come. For weeks, I hectored the boyfriend, urging him to call the guy, and find out when he was intending to finish the job.

Just as I never saw him turn up at our place (the boyfriend claims he came while I was at work), I never once heard Maiyuu call him to ask when he was coming back. He may never have existed, for all know. The whole affair may have been a fabrication, designed to cover up what, I do not know.

Last night when I heard the machine making strange noises, I asked Maiyuu to take a listen.

‘Yes, it does sound odd,’ he agreed.

‘Please call the air con man ... a different one this time, as the last one took our money,’ I said.

‘Oh, he did return it in the end,’ Maiyuu announced airily. ‘I didn’t tell you, because I was afraid you’d ask me to share the money with you.’

Maiyuu says he spent the B3000 on other things.

This does not please me, as it is yet more evidence of my boyfriend's duplicity. Maiyuu tells me little about our finances. He treats me like an idiot who does not deserve to know.

As I sat on the pier watching a canal devoid of life this morning, I reminded myself of why I am unhappy.

1. The air con repairer returned our money, but Maiyuu saw fit not to tell me.

2. Maiyuu spent the money slyly.

3. He should have kept it aside and called another air con repair man, as the original problem has still not been fixed.

See why foreigners get so frustrated with Thais? In the political arena, they are shifty, duplicitous, untrustworthy, and prone to forgetting where their loyalties lie. They can be the same in their private lives.
-
Maiyuu is experimenting with bacon and puff pastry.

First, he tried bacon twists. They tasted good, but the pastry did not swell enough.

Then he made little bacon, cheese and puff-pastry envelopes. They were tasty too, though I could have done without the cheese.

Thai cheese, milk and eggs taste processed. I want to smell the grass!
-
Mr Friendly, from the 7-11, has re-appeared. I haven’t seen him for more than a month.

As I entered the shop, he gave me a big smile, and looked excited to see me.

‘How are you? I haven’t seen you for ages,’ I said.

'I have been working night shift,’ he said.

Mr Friendly, whose real name is T, has lost weight.

‘Have you stopped eating? I asked. ‘You have shrunk.’

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘I eat a huge amount. But what would you recommend, if I do want to gain weight...hamburgers? Bread?’ he asked.

‘Yes...farang food will make you fat,’ I said.

The last time I saw Mr T, he told me he was stressed...worrying about his family.

On my previous visit to the shop, he told me about his family life ...he comes from the North, and has three brothers. They live on a farm, and his mother left him shortly after birth.

He is bitter and unhappy about his mother, who renewed contact with him recently. She has a new man in her life.

‘Are you stressed...is that why you look thinner?’ I asked.

Behind the counter, a plumpish girl next to him was counting cash as we talked. She ignored us.

‘I am stressed a little...yes, I do worry about things,’ he said.

Mr T likes me to know that he worries about his family. If not, then why does he tell me about it so often?

He does not have many friends in Bangkok...or maybe they are too young to know how to listen to his concerns.

He’s a great kid...I enjoy our talks. At my age, I am old and settled enough to know how to listen. I look like an uncle. Maybe he misses older male figures in his life.

T keeps hinting that he would like to drink with me, or go out one night.

But I am not sure if we would really enjoy each other for that long. It might be better if we keep things the way they are.

Leena Jang: Campaign colour

Leena the primee teacher

Candidate for Bangkok governor Leena Jangjanja ('Leena Jang') is putting her appearance fee from acting in director Poj Anon's latest kathoey comedy to good use.

Leena takes the role of a crafty teacher in the comedy about teen football players, Taew Te Teen Rabert (แต๋วเตะตีนระเบิด).

She dresses in prim teacher's garb, two pairs of glasses, and high heels which do not exceed two inches - compared to the 6-inch ankle-busters she likes to wear normally.

'Wearing short short high-heeled shoes made me feel a little less confident,' she says jokingly.

Poj is shooting the kathoey movie in Bang Kae. Leena says she is grateful to Poj for following her career, and casting her in the film. 

She puts the B7,000 she makes from each scene in which she appears into her campaign for governor. She has already put the appearance fees into printing name cards to introduce herself to voters - as if the eccentric campaigner, who likes to wear shocking pink, really needed any introduction.

Leena also ran in the campaign for governor last September. A new election has been called after incumbent Apirak Kosayodhin quit over a firetrucks purchase scandal.

Leena is rescued from the canal

Leena, a mother of two and lawyer, who also sells beauty products on the side, was showing voters how to get off a ferry in the Saen Saeb canal when she fell in instead. 

A day later, she took her campaign team to Samwa canal - to show voters how to swim - when her team leader entered the water deliberately, but then drowned.

Keeping my head down

In the market below, bare-chested men haul about large speakers. They are setting up a small stage in a carkpark near the canal.

They have parked a truck at one end of the carpark, to stop cars coming in. When I saw them, I wondered nervously if the militant anti-government group People's Alliance for Democracy had joined us.

I suspect not...it's probably just a concert. We don't get many of them around here, even though we have a school not five minutes' walk away.

It will be good to unwind, for those of us who are here to watch it. I shall be at work.

If PAD supporters did turn up in my market, how would I react? I don't want to think about it.

The political events of the last few weeks have left me stressed enough as it is...and I am not one of the unfortunate 300,000 or more whose travel plans were disrupted by PAD's occupation of the city's airports.

-

My partner  Maiyuu had a fit a few days ago. I heard a ruckus in his bathroom and went to investigate.

He was standing with his right hand gnarled in a strange shape. His skin colour was a deathly pale, and he looked dazed and remote.

He convulsed, his body knocking things off shelves.

I helped him out of the bathroom and put him on the floor. I searched in vain for a hard object which I could insert between his teeth, if in fact it was a fit he was having.

We live in a gay household, so almost by definition we are impractical. We do not put hard objects aside in the event one of us should have a fit.

After his body relaxed, I helped him to his bed, where he spent the next day and half sleeping off whatever had made him ill.

Maiyuu still feels dizzy when he gets up from his bed ...but then he spends most of his days on his back watching television anyway, so it's no big inconvenience.

-
I self-censored a post on the PAD and the monarchy, called a Sickly Shade of Yellow. It is not the first time I have censored the political content of posts which appear on this blog...and I know other Thai-based bloggers who do the same.

In the original, I included several quotes from the Economist newspaper. After thinking about it a few minutes, I took the quotes down.

The last time an Economist article deemed offensive to the monarchy appeared, newsstand sales were banned and it was quickly removed from the streets.

This time, so far, I have heard nothing, which is encouraging. If it is banned, 'authorities' won't want vestiges of the thing remaining on blogs, webboards or anywhere else.

I learned things from that article in the Economist which we are not permitted to know here.

The media censors itself, so that content which could be deemed offensive under Thailand's strict lese majeste laws is removed before it ever gets to the public. Punitive defamation and contempt of court laws bring up the rear, stifling fledgling free speech.

As a westerner brought up in a culture of free speech, I am not used to having people decide for me what I should and should not know.

The western media doesn't tell people everything either, but nor is it often cowed into submission by laws designed to silence public debate.

More frequently, it will rail against them, or even flout them, to show its displeasure.

I do not like the idea of sharing a small cell with 60 other men for months on end without charge, for daring to speak my mind. Thai prison reform...is there such a thing?

Ghost stories

'Is there a real-life Jason?' asked Bird.

I teach English to Bird and one other youngster every week.

He is a fan of foreign horror movies, and wanted to know if the character of Jason Voorhees, from the Friday the 13th movies, was based on a real person.

'No, though some have tried,' I said.

'Well, Thailand has one,' he said excitedly, before telling me the story of See Oui, a Chinese farmer who migrated to Thailand in the 1940s, and turned to eating children to boost his fading strength (he had tuberculosis).

See Oui's story was turned into the 2004 thriller, Zee Oui (see poster above).

Thailand's most notorious serial killer, his mummified body now lies at Sririraj Medical Museum, part of Sririraj Hospital in Bangkok. You can read about what this grisly museum - which includes a museum of forensic medicine - has to offer, at the 'dark destinations' website, here (link harvested - it died).

See Oui is spelt in different ways. Some refer to him as See Uey Sae Ung; on his display case, it's Si Quey.

The 'dark destinations' website is a guide to spooky places here and overseas. The Sririraj museum also contains exhibits related to the death of Ananda Mahidol, also known as Rama VIII, the present King's elder brother.

A brief description of Rama VIII's demise gave me a start; censorship rules would normally forbid Thais from talking in such terms about royalty. Then I realised that the website is not Thai, but comes from overseas.

My students, aged 13, spent the next hour telling me about Thai ghost stories, including spirits which are thought to inhabit the market in which we live, the canal which runs past us, and even a cemetery they had visited.

When they told me creepy things, they would perform a strange gesture: smacking their lips with one hand and then tossing whatever they took from their lips out to one side.

I asked them what they were doing. 'It's a way of making sure the spirits do not enter our body when we talk about them,' said Teuy, my other student.

'Do you believe in ghosts?' she asked.

'Probably,' I said.

'Do you believe that spirits of the dead rise to heaven?' asked Teuy, who comes across as more wordly wise than Mr Bird - who earlier asked me if planes flew into the World Trade Centre towers because the buildings were built too high.

'No.'

'I don't believe in that either,' she said.

Bird and Teuy both claim to have seen ghosts. They were together when they sighted one, they told me excitedly.

Thai students in their mid-teens are evidently no strangers to blood and gore.

Each week, well before the witching hour, when all good children are tucked up in bed, we meet in an old internet shop in the market.

I turned up yesterday just as the pair were having something to eat, which they had ordered from a stall nearby.

Darkness was gathering outside. I didn't know it at the time, but the Moon, Venus and Jupiter had arranged themselves in the sky to resemble an odd grin (see image above, and thank you to reader Ukai for his comment on this post).

While I waited for them to finish, the shop owner, Pee song, put on a Hollywood action movie.

It was full of swearing, blood, and high-paced action, and not suitable viewing for youngsters their age, I would have thought. Needless to say, they had seen it many times before.

Pee Song teaches maths to these youngsters most days after school. He asked me if I would like to teach them English two days a week, as I once taught customers at his shop several years before. I am happy to come, as I enjoy their company.

Song, aged in his 50s, has himself seen a ghost in the market where we live - in an old picture theatre which used to sit opposite his shop.

The cinema was long ago pulled down. After that, it became a petrol station, and a likay (Thai vaudeville) theatre; now it's an humble moo gra ta eatery, which hardly offers the same moody atmosphere.

Where do ghosts go when there are no longer creepy places for them to inhabit?

According to my young students, ghosts can move houses, even from one province to another.

They are keen for me to learn more about Thai horror stories, and have asked Pee Song to find out when the Sririraj Horror Museum opens next.

We will go as a group. Pee Song can be head ghoul, our students junior ghosts. As a cynical farang with few ghost sightings or creepy tales to offer of his own, I'll be understudy.