Shouzer

it holds no relevancy to the majority of you, but maybe someone out there can offer up an explanation.

how come everywhere i need to go on campus is on the third floor?

it’s ludicrous. there are five places i need to be on siu’s campus during a given week this semester, and getting to four of them involves taking stairs to the third floor. it just gets old, and actually makes little to no sense.

a secondary complaint to this is as follows: i have now taken six math courses here at the so. ill. u., and a grand total of one of these have actually been in the math building. now, i would understand if the classes were first of second year math courses that needed to be housed in lecture halls, but this is not the case. the course numbers are 250, 251, 301, 335, 352, and 472. guess which one was in the math building. yup, 250. someone explain this to me.

i am hardly the most qualified of those who write in this space to suggest anything political. in fact, i may be the least of these. you could say i have a heightened sense of “seeing both sides.” i am only just beginning to sculpt some concrete political views. this aside, i want to pass along a video i saw for the first time today. i assume i might be late to the scene on it, but maybe some of you are in the same boat. if you can watch it sans party lines, i know you will be inspired. trying to get me excited is about like trying to get a pile of rocks excited, but this did it.

I had a day in the office a few months back, and I was sitting around talking to my TT. This is actually the same TT as the story below. We were joking around, and she was helping me out some with my Thai. At this point, I was learning some words such as handsome, pretty, etc. We had a conversation, once again in Thai, that went something like this:

Me: I’m handsome, right?
TT: No, you’re fat.
Me: Yeah, I’m big.

It turns out, that went you say, “I’m big” in Thai, you aren’t talking about your body. There were about 4-6 Thai girls sitting in the office there when I said that. Needless to say, the word spread quickly.

Last Friday, I had to pick up my TT (Thai Teacher) on the way to the school at a bus stop. Unfortunately for me, the traffic was quite light that day, and I got there early. Her cell phone is broken right now, so I couldn’t call her for translation. It was up to me to convince this taxi driver to wait for her there. The following is an account of the conversation I had with the driver, translated to English of course.

Me: I want a woman here.
The woman is absent.
She is absent.
Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.
(Points at the clock) Ten, ten.
Do you understand?

Driver: A little (plus some other words I didn’t know.)

My TT arrived a few minutes later, and she and the taxi driver started laughing while discussing this conversation. It turns out, the sentence I had used “I want a woman here” has the connotation of “I want a hooker here.” Woops.

This is my second major slip up in Thai. I think I told the story before of how I announced that I had a big penis to several of my female colleagues. If not, I can share it later.

Also on Friday, I had a preschool kid (not in my class) throw-up in my shoes. It was glorious. She had incredible aim. She nailed them both, and managed to keep the floor pretty clean. I was thrilled to say the least.