Shouzer

I’ve had the opportunity to do some pretty cool stuff in the last few weeks:

First off was the Paddle to the Symphony event. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra played a concert in the park one evening, and a charity group held a dinner and canoe event as a corresponding fundraiser. It was really cool. We had dinner, and then paddled the canoe across a lake. Then, we sat in the canoe while the orchestra played a collection of marches. It was fun to see a symphony in such a relaxed environment.

The day after that concert, I took off for a two week trip to Thailand. I hung out mostly in Bangkok visiting old friends and returning to all my favorite places. Got a nice massage, saw a few movies at the fancy theater with recliners, and ate tons of good food. Walking around Bangkok felt odd because it is so drastically different from America, but at the same time, it felt like home.

I also went to the beach for 4-5 days. I stayed on a small, remote island called Koh Mak. (Koh = island in Thai). The resort was very secluded; it was basically in the middle of the jungle. The beach had the jungle on one side and the ocean on the other. The water was crystal clear as well. I saw quite a few sea urchins when I got in the water though so I didn’t swim much as my previous encounter with that animal was rather painful. I don’t think the island I was on had a hospital either. I would have sucked to take an emergency boat ride with needles sticking out of your body.

I got back to Detroit on Sunday, and then I went to Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown concert on Tuesday night. Considering my jet lag, it probably wasn’t the wisest decision to go to that concert. I almost fell asleep at the end of it. It was a really great concert though. Billy Joe is a really energetic guy. They played a 3 hour set, and he was going full out for the duration. I was really impressed.

Following my trip to Thailand, I accumulated enough frequent flier miles to achieve Silver Elite status with Northwest. The main perk of this is I don’t have to wait in line any more. I now have access to the first class check in counter and the priority boarding lane. I can get on the plane first when they call for Skyteam Elite passengers, though I have no idea why anyone would want to get on the plane first. I have always felt the last one on first one off is the best policy as I don’t want to be on the plane longer than necessary. I also get complimentary upgrades to first class on domestic flights if that section is empty. I doubt I will see that happen very often, but it’s still cool that it could happen.

I took my first vacation time of my career last week, flying to Rome for a much needed vacation. I found a great deal, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I spent about 7 days in Rome with a 2 day side trip to Florence.

By the end of the week, I was saturated by beauty, becoming numb to the abundant Italian eye-candy. Their culture puts an extreme emphasis on the aesthetics, la bella figura. Art museums there are full of masterpieces; even simple, out of way churches, would be considered behemoths of marble in other countries; and the people themselves look like they walked out of a magazine and on to the metro. The saturation caused me to change the way I looked at the beautiful world around me. Walking through and art museum, I found many great artworks to be bland and uninspired. Only world famous works like Michelangelo’s David could take my breath away. While strolling through churches with marvelous mosaics and marble, instead of standing in awe of the magnificent frescoes on the wall, I stood in pain, focusing on the soreness in my feet. These smaller churches simply could not compare to the size and scale of St. Peter’s Basilica at Vatican City.

Similarly, the food was indescribably good. Suffice it to say, everything lived up to the hype. The freshness and quality of the food was incomparable. The fresh fruits, vegetables, cheese, and bread that I bought at the market was bursting with flavor, making it easy to understand how the restaurants could make such great food.

The tiny effort I put in to my appearance became glaringly obvious to me. Walking around in short and old T-shirts amongst a nation of cover models made me question my lifestyle and fashion choices. I am a guy who has sported the same hair style for more than a decade. Maybe more like 1.5. I’m not even sure any more. I stopped in a shop at the airport to kill some time, and while browsing sunglasses, I was not sure which were for men and which were for women. Are they unisex now? How can one tell? As I stood there trying not to look foolish as I browsed the eye-wear, I realized that I needed a makeover. I know the queer eye guys don’t do that any more, but maybe they can come out of retirement for a straight guy with no fashion sense.

In the engineering world, appearance receives very little notice. It is not uncommon to see such travesties as white socks with dress shoes and slacks. Some people look like they go out of there way to look unfashionable, but I would like to distance myself from the stereotype of engineer. Perhaps it’s time to finally start worrying about the superficial.

The food aspect is worth considering as well. I do fairly well here, eating a lot of “fresh” fruits and vegetables. When I say fresh, I mean I bought them raw at the grocery store. After eating truly fresh food though, I think I need to seek out farmers markets for fresh produce. Partially green bananas and prepackaged tomatoes just don’t seem good enough any more.

I love traveling because it changes me. Thrusting myself into another culture and perspective forces a reevaluation of life as I know it. When I see other people who live life in a different mindset, I like to adjust, fine tuning my own outlook on life.

This is not to say that everything about Italian culture is fabulous. I got frustrated at times by the hours of operation on many of their shops. Many small places opened late, closed for 2-3 hours at lunch, and then shut down early in the evening. I think they were open about 5-6 hours a day. It became inconvenient. It is easy to shrug such problems off as a traveler, but it gave me a greater appreciation for the most convenient place on earth, America.

So will I turn into an Italian supermodel who only eats the freshest of foods? Probably not. I’ll probably gradually slip back into the status quo of American culture. Frankly, I’m not too worried about it. It doesn’t diminish the fun and excitement of exploring and experiencing a different way of life.

I found this site to be very, very useful:

Farecast

They forecast airfare so you know the best time to buy. Will the fare go up? Will it go down? Now you know…sort of. They also send you email updates when the fare changes on your tracked flights.

What I really like though, is the flexible search option. You put in a destination city, and then you can adjust parameters for departure date, duration, destination, and trip length. As far as I know, they are the only site doing this. Most travel places let you search by flexible dates, but flexible destination is far more useful. For example:

I want to go on vacation over memorial day weekend, but I’m not too particular about the destination. So I got this sweet map to telling me what it would cost to go where. Pretty cool, huh?

Do you guys remember how I used to write travel blogs about all the places I visited? Man, those were the days, but now I’m insanely lazy. That, and frankly, detailing every instance of the trip just doesn’t seem as important as it used to. I’m not sure why. Luckily, on my last trip, I traveled with a friend, and she did all of that work for me. I’m actually pretty impressed with the writing; it’s pretty funny. I might be biased as I lived these events, but I think you’ll enjoy.

Penang

Kuala Lumpur

I had some visitors here last week–the first of a few this summer–which was a pretty good time.  My parents, my aunt Anita, my little sister Kyla, and both my dogs (Widget & Bluto) made the drive out here.  That’s no small task, either, as I believe the drive is something like 2000 miles.

Long story short, Rock Band fun was had by all.    We also made an ill-fated attempt to go check out Mt. Rainier that basically involved us driving around staring at the clouds, haha.  One thing people like to say about this area is that it rains all the time, but that’s just not true.  Honestly, it really doesn’t rain that much, but it is cloudy damn near every day.

Anyway, I realized while they were here that my biggest “regret” (for lack of a better word) in living so far away from my family is missing my little sister grow up.  Realistically, I can’t expect to see her more than once or twice a year, and that’s pretty disappointing considering how much she’ll likely change between visits.  When I see her now, she’s always interested in what I’m doing and wanting to play games with me, but I’m sure it’s only a matter before all that starts to change.

I suppose for the time being about all I can do is try to head home for holidays and such as often as possible.

Well, I’m finally getting around to writing this post now. Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been terrible about keeping in touch the last few months. According to Juvers, it’s been two months since my last post, so I’ll start there.

The term ended at the end of February, and we’re on summer holidays now. I already miss my kids a lot, and I also miss the routine of going to my schools. Since then, I’ve been doing a wide assortment of things, including teaching holiday programs at schools, holiday club at the office, volunteer teaching, and teacher training. I suppose that’s all a bit boring though, so I’ll skip the details.

Last week was Song Kran, which is the Thai new year’s. They celebrate in a variety of ways, but the most fun is by having a nation-wide water fight. You walk down the street, and people just shoot you with water guns. I didn’t go anywhere special within Thailand for that, but I did get shot by some kids on my street. I guess you could say I enjoyed it.

I went to Malaysia and Singapore during the week I had off. During this trip, I visited Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaca, and Singapore. Penang is an island in the north of Malaysia. The highlight there was an Indian restaraunt which was highly authentic. KL is the capital of Malaysia, and the highlight there was the Petronas twin towers. They are featured in the movie Entrapment. Melaca was an old capital of Malaysia, and it had lots of historic stuff. Singapore was pretty cool, though it was insanely expensive. I was excited because they had Mt. Dew, and I have been craving it.

The big news, though, is that I will be starting work at GM, probably in July. I am going to be a controls integration engineer in a team working on the 6-speed transmission. Don’t ask what that means, because I don’t really know to be honest. I’m going to be in Milford, MI, which is just outside of Detroit. GM’s test facility is there. It’s called the Milford Proving Grounds.

I’m not sure when I’ll be coming home. It’s the million dollar question. I finish my contract here on May 30th, and I will leave Thailand shortly after that. I would like to go traveling for a month, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it. I’m trying to find some work at a summer camp or something, but it doesn’t look promising.

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.

I finally got the pictures my friend took on our trip to Vietnam. I found myself exhausted with the idea of traveling after this trip. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the people there that really tired me so much. They were quite rude to me on several occasions, but then, to be fair, they have a good reason for disliking Americans. I did some traveling in Thailand over my Christmas break, and it was much more relaxing. More on that to come in the next few days. I only feel like writing one post today, especially since I’m now using internet cafes. My laptop perished earlier this week. I’m looking for creative ways to destroy it if anyone has any suggestions.

Vietnam

The roads are horrible here right now.  Not because they’re icy or anything like that–no, it doesn’t get that cold here.  :)  Actually, it’s because there’s just too many damn cars out there.  It usually takes me about 5 minutes to get home from work, which I personally really like.  Yesterday it took me 20.  Now, granted, that’s not actually that long.  On the other hand, it is 4x longer than usual.

Anyway, I’m getting ready to leave for a couple weeks.  It’s cool that I haven’t been working at MS for even six months yet, and I can already take a couple weeks off.  That’s how we roll, I suppose.  I think next year, though, I’ll have to stick around.  My building was dead quiet the last few days, and it’s probably the best time of the year to get some serious work done if you want to.

There was a holiday in Thailand last weekend called Loy Krathong. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia article about it. I’m not going to offer an explanation about it because mine will only be inferior. Don’t worry, that one is really short.

My Loy Krathong celebration started last Friday. My regular school had a hand, foot, and mouth epidemic so they canceled. I begged my way into an outing to another school where they were celebrating the holiday. They had games, a traditional song and dance, this hot air balloon/kite, and of course, they floated Krathongs onto the swimming pool.

On Saturday, I went with a bunch of foreign teachers and one Thai to the main festival in Bangkok. We started out at a temple which is close to the canals and fairly close to the main river. I’m really not sure why we were there, but there were tons of people in the area. It had a carnival type feel to it. There were stalls all over the place selling everything imaginable as well as a few carnival rides and games. The more notable things were a freak show, a show where monkeys were all dressed up, and 2 dunking booths with “beautiful” girls ready to get all wet. Most of them didn’t look that happy to be there, incidentally.

After the carnival/temple, we headed down to the main river. There, people were floating their Krathongs. There was also a parade of much larger boats and some fireworks. It was incredibly packed here as well. Most of the action seemed to be on the other side of the river, but the bridge crossing was jammed with people so we just stayed on our side. Afterwards, most of us were pretty tired, so we headed back to our area for some dinner and chilling out. I floated my Krathong on a canal near the beer garden where we were. My candle went out pretty quickly. I think that means I’m destined for a short life. Then again, I’m also destined to meet a beautiful woman because I’ve taken the last piece of food from a dish at a community meal. So I guess I’ll have a short, but happy life.

That’s right, I’ve got more pictures for you. The first set is an update of my ever-expanding Bangkok folder. Enjoy:
Bangkok

I think the new ones are towards the end, but not quite the very last ones. The last pictures in that folder came off a different camera, and the pictures are sorted by name. I’ve tried to change it, but I’ve never been successful. Basically, I just don’t care enough to do anything about it.

I recently made all of my travel pictures public here. However, I took some shots of my kids today that won’t show up there. It seems somewhat wrong to put those on the internet for all to see, like an invasion of privacy or something. Anyway, if anyone wants to see them, I will email you the link to the private album, assuming you aren’t a known child pornographer or something, then you can’t have them.

I got my first ever massage today after work. It was a traditional (I think) Thai massage. I think that I liked it, but I’m not entirely sure. It was really relaxing, and I felt great afterwards. However, I’m not sure why because the individual bits of it were painful at some points. Part of it was the novelty. Full body massages are something I’ve always associated with loads and loads of money, and in fact, this place was pretty swank. It cost me less than $10 for an hour though. If I was paying American price for that action, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much. Oh, and before anyone says anything, it wasn’t one of those kinds of massages.

There was a lot of stretching involved. She also rolled my muscles around a lot, sometimes it felt like she was trying to pull them off the bone. It was a bit strange, and that part hurt a bit. The stuff she did to my feet felt great though. If I ever go back, I might just get a foot massage.

I’m also finding out that there are some unexpected consequences to being a kindergarten teacher. One is that every time I see a kid on the street, I just want to run up and give him/her a hi-5. The other thing is that I have found myself making sound effects even when I’m not in the classroom. This can be somewhat embarrassing when dining with friends or whatever. I can just imagine myself going to a job interview and making a little “bing” sound when I produced my resume.

Sukhothai

I’m feeling too lazy to write anything informative or entertaining about the trip. Maybe I’ll get motivated some time later.

When I moved to Thailand, I knew I would have to adopt some of their customs, but I never really expected their culture to ever rub me the wrong way. Unfortunately, sometimes it does. There is just a different perspective on what is rude and what is not here. For example, titles are quite important here. Older people should have the title “P” in front of their name (I’m not sure how it’s spelled), and those in power get the name “Khun”. They are pretty lax about this with me though. I am one of the youngest teachers, but I use the “P” prefix with very few people. Most of the foreigners don’t bother with it unless the age gap is quite big. I’ve mentioned before the necessity of “Wai”ing all the time, which can get to be a pain when I’ve got stuff in my hands. I usually don’t do it in that case. Still, I bust one or two off every time I enter and leave a school and then multiple times throughout the day when I see teachers or admin in the halls.

What strikes me as odd though are the things they find perfectly acceptable that I would normally consider very rude. For example, no one seems to mind interrupting other people. The number of times a taxi driver has interrupted me when I was having a conversation with a TT is unbelievable. I’ll be in the middle of talking, and the taxi driver will just butt in and start a 5 minute conversation. They also have no qualms about speaking in Thai in the presence of a foreigner. By this, I mean if I am sitting at lunch with 3 Thais, they will speak in Thai the whole time while I sit in silence. I never really saw this as much of a problem until I was in Cambodia with 2 Germans. They practically refused to speak in German when we (myself and an English girl) were around. There were times that the conversation had nothing to do with us, and they were having problems communicating. We had to practically coerce them to speak German to each other. It was nice to have someone be so concerned about my presence. On the other hand, the Thais sometimes talk about me in Thai. I called some girls out on that a few days ago because it honestly does bother me. They tell me its never anything bad, but I still don’t like it.

Obviously, it is my place to conform to their culture. I am living and working in their country. This is just not an area I really expected to have any trouble with. It is tiring to have to constantly adjust myself to fit into a new culture, but I love it as I like challenges in my life.