Heading for trouble

For superstitious reasons, Maiyuu wants to move the head of my bed away from the window.

'Your head faces west, which is the same direction in which people's bodies are placed when they die.

'This is why you get ill so often,' he said.

I didn't know I get ill often. However, it is true that I often wake up with stiff joints, which previously I put down to age.

As part of this package, I will also get a desk for my computer. If my bed moves, the computer will have to go somewhere else, too.

I was pleased to hear about the computer desk, as the space I use at present is not ideal.

Superstition can be a useful thing after all!

Joys of Thai blogging: Another satisfied customer

An anonymous reader left this treat:

'Just wanted to thank you for the two years of wonderful posts. With the new direction your blog has taken I find it utterly uninteresting.

'What made your writing so compelling was that you wrote about your personal experience in a foreign land and some of us could vicariously experience every day life of a farang.

'Thanks for the wonderful read and good luck to you and Maiyuu.'

I am not sure what new direction the blog has taken, and the reader doesn't bother to explain. The posts about Thai stars? The pictures of Maiyuu's cooking treats?

The absence of tales from a Thai market where I once lived, or that hole of a drinking place I used to visit in Thon Buri?

As I said the other day, readers of this blog are happiest when I am writing about some domestic drama with Maiyuu.

Lately, we have not argued much, so I have plugged the gap with posts about Thai stars, most of which have a gay angle, or which I think are interesting anyway, even if they haven't.

No one blog can do everything, and if it's part of a vibrant blogging community, should not be seen in isolation anyway.

The number of Thai blogs written by Bangkok-resident foreigners has grown in the last six months, which is welcome. Readers can shop around.

We all link to each other anyway, so it is easy to get your daily dose from half a dozen or more blogs with a similar theme.

One day, I might serve up a tale about Maiyuu; on the same day, BB at his blog might talk about his pizza delivery guy, or the technician at his condo, while Kawadjan might bring us a tale from his Filipino friends, or his latest exotic travels in this region.

Those who enjoy news about Thai stars can find it here, or at Lyn's lakorns blog, or Dirtii-laundry blog. As you can see, no two blogs are alike.

If readers enjoy tales of misfit foreigners lashing out at Thais, or foreigners dogging the tails of moneyboys in Silom, then I suggest you go elsewhere.

I have been here nine years, for goodness sake! I am no longer interested.

The idea of living in a foreign country is trying to fit in. As a foreigner spends longer here, hopefully he will get better at it.

In that event, you should expect the number of stories about foreigners ogling over Thai good looks or the gaudy lights of Patpong to diminish.

After a while, it becomes repetitive and just dull. Or, if such stories distinguish themselves, it's usually in the clever or entertaining way they are written, as the subject matter has been covered so many times before.

Bangkok Pundit's blog is the grand-daddy of all Bangkok blogs - probably the most popular and respected blog by a foreigner writing on Thailand.

What's that about? Not Thai girls, the Silom nightlife, lifestyle issues, or any of that flim flam. It's about politics, plain and simple.

Here, you get a mix of what I think you will like, and what takes my interest, which I publish whether or not readers are likely to read it. It is, after all, my blog.

The posts about Thai stars or Thai music might seem esoteric to foreigners overseas, but they interest me. Among the recent additions to this blog are posts about Thai folk singer Thee Chaiyadej.

Not interested? Well, someone might be. Someone should tell these stories, and it might as well be me.

Just another brain growth

So I have suffered 20% hearing loss in one ear - it won't kill me.

Back at Chulalongkorn Hospital yesterday, I saw the ear specialist, who looked at the results of my hearing tests and gave me a list of possible causes for the loss of hearing which has occurred in my left ear. They are:

1. General deterioration in the nerves of my brain, probably related to age.

2. A piece of fat has broken off from where fatty deposits lie, and entered my brain through a blood vessel.

3. A non-malignant growth in my brain

We eliminated other possible causes. They were:

1. Disease, such as Aids, diabetes, syphilis

2. An accident, such as being knocked on the head.

3. Routine exposure to loud noises, such as a gun going off.

'If it's simply age, I can't account for why the hearing in your left ear has deteriorated, but your right ear remains the same, because in theory the should be deteriorating at the same rate,' said the doctor, a woman in her early 20s.

'I will ask you to have another test - a brain scan,' she said, looking sheepish.

If my brain scan came back normal, she would get me to come back every six months for regular checks. If the scan of my brain waves came back abnormal, then the next step was an X-ray.

Every time she refers to me to get this or that bodily function tested, I have to wait another couple of hours, which might not seem like much compared to the rest of my life, but is a drag nonetheless.

Then, once the test is complete, I have to make an appointment to see her another day.

Been there, done that. The public health system isn't worth the effort.

After seeing the specialist, I lined up with a dozen other patients to make my appointment for a brain scan.

The space where we queued is at the entrance of the outpatients' clinic. It was crowded and congested. Patients were coming in, an old woman in a wheelchair was trying to get out. The single nurse on duty at the appointments counter was handling this chaos alone.

Such indignities. Half an hour earlier, a young woman who escorted her able-bodied mother to the clinic told me to surrender my seat. 'Stand up!' she barked.

At the urging of the nurses, I came in early: 7.30am, only to find that the specialists don't start work until 9.30am.

I've had enough of this nonsense, I thought. After five minutes, I gave up and walked out.

At the front desk, I told the nurses that I could not see the brain scan people today. They made an appointment for me next week. I probably won't go, as I can't be bothered.

If my hearing gets worse, I shall visit a private hospital instead. Maiyuu will just have to find the money from somewhere, or I will sneak out with his blasted I-phone in the middle of the night and hock it off at the nearest corner market.

Do you hear me, lad?

Just joking. I'm the one with the difficulty hearing, not him.

Thee Chaiyadej: Love is...

Below is a piece on folk guitarist Thee Chaiyadej, pictured above. In a rash moment a few weeks ago, I deleted it. Thankfully, I had kept a copy somewhere, which I have now revived.

-

'I love you too darling I think of you all the time and some day I not have time for u but I still think of u and worry how u do at home อย่าเพิ่งอวกนะพูดจริงๆจากใจ BIG KISS FOR MY BIG PIGGIE and a little hug because I am a little guy, can't do big hugs.'

Maiyuu sent me that text message a few days ago. The bit in Thai says: 'Don't vomit, because I mean this from the bottom of my heart.'

The night before, he came home looking worried. I asked him to hop on the bed with me, and tell me what was wrong.

He said he was worried about his future, and what would happen if one day I decided to go back to my home country.'I don't want to go back, because I like Thais too much, and I love you. If I went home, I would miss you,' I told him.

I feel too grateful to Maiyuu to just quit one day, and leave. Good people don't do that to each other.

As I reflected on that moving text message, I thought about the other romantic things that bind me to this place.

One of them is music, and in particular the love songs of folk singer Thee Chaiyadej. Maiyuu introduced me to him. For my birthday recently, he bought me Thee's Very Best Of album.

Thee's soft acoustic sounds get under my skin, his poetic, dreamy lyrics into my heart in a way few other Thai artists do - and he does it with little commercial fanfare.

He has no website in his name, nor fansites that I can find. 

He played intimate, blues-club style gatherings including the Saxophone Club for many years, before the 'indie' Bakery label signed him up about 10 years ago.

Uncommonly for a Thai popular singer, Thee (ธีร์ ไชยเดช) is not afraid to perform in English, nor experiment with alternative genres and sounds.

Even more unusually, perhaps, is that he does not pursue a full-time career as a musician, but fits it around his commitments to work as an air traffic controller for Aerothai.  

'The job demands intense concentration and carries a high level of responsibility. If I know I have to work the next day, I cannot stay up late performing, as I need to get enough rest,' he says.

I first saw Thee perform a few years ago, on a concert VCD by Bakery label artists. Thee released his first album, Why in 1995, followed in 1997 by an album called Bakery Love 3, in which he performed covers of well-known Bakery tunes.

That was followed in 1998 by solo albums There, and Story, and in 1999 by Past. He released another solo album, After Brake, in 2001. His first two albums were virtually all sung in English.

His first album in which the songs were mainly sung in Thai was 1998's Story. Past was a compilation album of his most popular songs.

As an artist Thee is often associated with the late Amarin "Joe" Luangboribun, of the pop group Pause, of whom I am also a fan. 

Thee produced albums for Joe, both when Joe was lead singer for Pause, and then as a solo artist. In 2002, he released a song he wrote in tribute to his younger friend, called 20202.

Thee started performing music more than 30 years ago, and can play acoustic guitar in various genres, including reggae, and blues. As a Bakery artist he performed his first solo concert in 2002, where he tried out a variety of musical styles.

Thee says he wants his fans to know he could do more than just croon Bakery-style love songs. Most of his fans, funnily enough, are not listeners in the over-25 age group, which we tend to assocxiate with that label, but the young, including teenagers.

He draws his inspiration from Western folk artists such as Bob Dylan, Crosbie Stills, Nash and Young, Don McLean. He likes to tell a story when he sings; music is there mainly to accompany the story, to provide the right setting, or mood.

As a musician, Thee Chaiyadej blazes his own path. His work has an individualistic quality which he himself recognises:

'My music has changed over time. I don't want people thinking I have the same sound. I like musicians who want to be their own person. I am brave enough to do it, and the listener gets the benefit.'

Postscript:

1. Here's a quick compilation of his material. For more, try here.

2 The song which Thee wrote for his friend Joe of the group Pause: 20202.

3. Here, Thee branches out into music with a Spanish flavour: the beautiful Gypsy Moon.

4. Read more about Joe here (Thai only). Or, try his music. 

I love this line, from the moving Bang Sing: "Let us part on good terms, by saying goodbye to the dreams we shared."

Repeat after me: Fish, Policeman, Pig

A visit to the doctor in Bangkok is always an experience. Last night, I went to Chulalongkorn Hospital about my left ear.

It has felt odd for weeks, as if it is full of water. At work last night, I was having trouble hearing.

I belong to a social insurance scheme, which allows me to visit my local state hospital for free.

It has been years since I visited Chula. I had forgotten what to do. I didn't even know where it was, and was surprised to find the hospital is just around the corner from the top of Silom.

If you go to Chula after hours, you visit the emergency room, even if your problem is not that acute.

The place is stuffed with young doctors, men and women alike. I was the only foreign face there, and was quickly surrounded by doctors eager to probe me about my condition.

I jostled for attention with aged monks in flimsy robes, children with minor scrapes, middle-aged women with purple faces.

Chulalongkorn Hospital is supposedly the nation's top state hospital.

The emergency ward is run-down; the corridors surrounding it, where I went to pay a token fee, are like a rabbit's warren, poorly lit and neglected.

My case was assigned to a young woman in a white coat, who questioned me for 20 minutes. She spent longer questioning me, in fact, than she did examining me.

While she was probing me earnestly, her colleagues approached me to chat.

'Hello!' one young doctor with a pock-marked face asked me in English, not once, but twice, even three times. The others laughed.

'Farang ears! ' they must have thought. 'They are bigger than Thai ears...I wonder what goes wrong with farang ears that we don't find in Thai ears.'

My young doctor consulted a senior colleague, who looked in my ear after she had finished. 'You have an abrasion,' she said.

The doctor referred me to a specialist at the same hospital.

I went to see her at an ENT outpatients' clinic at 8am today.

I waited 3.5 hours before my name was called, which was a pain.

I complained several times about the delay, but really should have held my tongue: in the West, at least when I left the place, patients can wait months to see a specialist.

A young woman, slightly older than the doctor from the night before, saw me.

She took a quick look in my ear, and asked me to get my hearing tested at a lab across the way.

That took another hour or two. The highlight was getting my hearing tested in a sound lab, built in a sound-proofed tank.

It looked like a diver's tank. The only thing it lacked was one of those wheels on the door which you swivel around to get it open.

The lab has one window, looking out into the doctor's office. I sat inside, while the doctor stayed at her desk, talking to me through a microphone.

'Put the headphones on, and hold up your finger every time you hear a pulse,' she said.

She told me to turn away from the window, so I couldn't see when she pressed her pulse switch.

Beep!

I raised a finger.

The modulation of the beeps varied, as did the pitch. Some, I could barely make out. Judging by the results of my test, I missed some beeps altogether.

Inside the tank, I was surrounded by toys, no doubt intended for the amusement of kids whose parents bring them in to get their hearing tested.

The best part?

The woman testing my hearing - at 44, the oldest of all the doctors who treated me - asked me to repeat Thai words after her.

She put a face mask between her mouth and the microphone, to muffle the words as she spoke. Some were hard to make out.

'Fish.'

'Pig.'

'Student.'

'Policeman.'

This is the way to learn a language, I thought - repeat the words as a native speaker pronounces them.

Unfortunately, my pronunciation habits are already cast like dye into my memory. They are hard to change, even when I try.

Fortunately, I did not do too bad a job learning the pronunciation rules when I started on Thai nine years ago.

Well, that's what I tell myself. Forgive an ageing man his indulgences.

PS: The result? The hearing in my left ear has diminished 20%. I go back on Wednesday to see if we can find the cause.

PS 2: I spent the day surrounded by women doctors, which is welcome. For some silly reason, I thought the Thai medical profession might be dominated by men.