The weather has turned from blistering hot to absolutely perfect. When I wake up it's between 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit with a pleasant breeze. It goes up to maybe 80 at midday and at night I have the air conditioner turned up to 26 C (79 F) which is very pleasant. The sun is still very bright and intense; I suspect you could get a serious burn if you were outside for any length of time.

The students have started to wear fleece jackets and wool hats which we falangs find rather comical.

This is funny. Do you want an insight into how hot it gets in Thailand? The air conditioners in the classrooms are fixed so that they cannot be set lower than 31 degrees Centigrade (88 F.) 

After school I stopped at 3 little food stalls near my soi and bought 2 grilled chicken kebobs (15 cents each), a whole (small, round) watermelon freshly cut into chunks for me (45 cents), and a banana waffle (45 cents.) A well rounded meal, no?

My clothes from LLBean via Joe still haven't arrived - it will be two weeks tomorrow- but the hold up was on your side of the pond - 8 days before it left the US! Then almost two days in Thai customs (were they trying on my clothes?) But they should be here tomorrow, I'm thinking, unless they go by tuk tuk.

I had to sign 12 copies of the identical same form today to get paid. 12! All it basically said was "you're hired (good thing, I've been working 5 weeks), and this paltry amount is your salary. 12 times!!

Thais are hell on forms and protocol, to the extent that the wheels (C) can't turn because something (Step A) is keeping is keeping something (Step B) from getting accomplished. But A can't be done until C is effected, so there's the old catch 22. It borders on the ludicrous. Like I can't get a contract and get paid until I have a bank account set up, but I can't get a bank account set up until I have a work permit, and I can't get a work permit until I have a contract. Huh? And all of this is "situation normal all f*ed up" to Thais. They don't even question it.

As my cubicle neighbor says, Thais are big on form but not on substance.

I wish I had a nickel for every time the lady who is supposed to be getting me a login name and password has asked me a question about my classes - which I can't view on line until I have a login name and password.

Now let me clarify - in America, this would be a problem, and probably lead to some heated discussion. In Thailand, it's "mai pen rai" - don't worry about it. So I don't. I mean, nobody can hold you responsible for not showing up for a class you never knew you were scheduled for, right?

And for all their forms and rules and calculations and record keeping, the entire Humanities Department (maybe the entire university, who knows?) has only one generic one copy at a time copier - no collators, no two sided copies, no color copies, no automatic staplers. And they run huge documents!

I once said to Ajarn John, "Where is there a collator?" and he said, " See that long wooden table over there?"

They don't use file folders but put absolutely everything in big black binders - shelf after shelf after shelf.

When we begin classes, we offer the students three options - 1) you can buy the textbook (at $10-12 apiece, not an option for most kids who live on $30 a week and buy their own food with that), 2) you can borrow a copy (which they take downtown and xerox it for about $1.80), or 3) some teachers scan the text onto a flash drive (here they call them handy drives) and the kids load it onto their handy drive (every kid has one.)

What every kid also has is a uniform (required) and plenty of white out pens. They would never scribble something out, all handwriting is precise, and neat and perfect, nary a smudge. And Thai handwriting is so ornate and intricate.

I finally found tea bags in Big C (hard to find, they have mostly powdered instant tea and coffee with sugar and milk mixed in.)  The box tells you how to make tea and gives you exercises to do for 3 minutes while your tea brews.

I brought a "tube" of Birdy instant 3 in 1 coffee to school yesterday. I dumped it into a cup but the 'hot pot' wasn't plugged in. By the time I came back to see if the water was hot, my cup was full of those tiny little red ants that are everywhere here.

My soi leading out to the main road is between two marshes and to date I've counted 3 snake skins in the road. It is almost a certainty that one of this days I'm going to see one of those little naked snakes in my path.


I'm still studying my Thai without great success. I try to study one hour a day and I have memorized most of the 44 consonants and a few vowels. They are VERY similar looking, usually two identical forms with the extra little loop curling to the right on one, to the left on the other. I try to screw up my eyes to make a picture out of them, like d for dek (child) looks like a baby wrapped in a bundle, and kw for kwai (buffalo) looks like a buffalo's behind. But I'm running out of visuals.

Well, my tea is ready and I didn't do my 3 minutes of exercise.