Baan Jochim Phuket

Yes, Joy and I came back from Kamphaeng Phet — where we spent Songkran (Thai New Year) with her family — some two weeks earlier than expected. I’ll give a rundown of our sudden departure in a later post. Our journey home actually lasted more than 28 hours and included an unexpected detour to Surat Thani and through the beautiful mountains of Khao Sok. We’re exhausted and all I looked forward to upon returning home was a nice shower and some sack time. Alas, the running water in my apartment is not working (so, yet another bucket-over-the-head shower — which is what I had everyday at Joy’s family home) and I thought I’d check email while waiting for the air-con to cool things down. I’ll upload a sampling of the many photos I took over the next few days. Look for them in my Webshots albums…

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As I was very busy writing lesson plans, creating worksheets, and teaching last week I didn’t have a lot of free time to explore Windows 7, working in Vista Ultimate instead. But over the past couple of days I’ve had a bit more free time to discover and enjoy Win7. I especially like Aero Peek and the transparency of windows (I could never get Aero to work on my computer using Vista) along with the redesigned task bar, the Libraries, the snapping of windows, and the preview panes with the Jump Lists. And I just noticed that that old stalwart Paint has been redesigned; I might just use that for photo editing a bit more now… Anyway, there’s a lot to love and I can’t wait to try out the Release Candidate (apparently Microsoft is listing to the feedback from the Beta versions and have introduced A LOT of changes in that version).

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I am now running a version of Windows 7 Ultimate (beta build 7048) on my laptop (actually, I have it as a dual-boot system; all my important documents are on the partition containing Windows Vista Ultimate). So far, I’m very happy with the new OS — much faster and more stable than Vista with many new features. Plus, it’s kind of cool being the only one in the school using it…

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Pregnant women may not go to a cremation and may not go to visit persons seriously ill. This is probably protection against thinking too much, which might cause fear and loss of confidence. They are also forbidden to go and see other women give birth, because it will make delivery impossible, the children in the womb being embarrassed by one another and refusing to be born.

There is another belief concerned with pregnancy. If she would like to rear her child easily, a pregnant woman must seek an opportunity to walk under the belly of an elephant, but it is necessary to choose and elephant with a kind disposition. If she has passed under the belly of an elephant, the child that is born will be easy to rear.

–Phya Anuman Rajadhon, Some Traditions of the Thai
(quoted in Travellers’ Tales Thailand, edited by James O’Reilly and Larry Habegger (2003)

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I walk to school very early every morning, usually arriving shortly after six a.m. Why do I go so early? Mostly, I must admit, to take advantage of very fast internet (I don’t have online access in my tiny apartment; there’s an internet cafe directly below which I detest using due to the occupation of rowdy Thai boys playing very loud video games). It’s also “quiet time” before the arrival of other teachers during which I can truly concentrate on writing lesson plans, teacher guides, and a myriad of other projects that I have cooking on any particular day. Once those other teachers arrive it can be difficult to work as they tend to want to hold loud conversations about their evening and weekend “conquests” (unfortunately, I share my office with “teachers” of the drinking and party-going ilk rather than those who care about actual teaching).
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This Saturday — 7 March — will see an ordination ceremony at Wat Lattiwarnaram (in Tambon Chalong on Chaofa East Road between the roundabout and the turnoff for the zoo) kicking off the annual Tao Thepkrassatri-Tao Srisunthorn festival. This fair honors the two heroines named Chan and Mook who repelled a five-week Burmese invasion of island in 1785 organizing the Siamese women to dress up as male troops. The highlight of the festival each year are the historical drama presentations held at Thalang Chanasuk Memorial Field in Baan Kiang (about 1 km west of Thalang Town along the Thalang-Cherng Talay road). These are light-and-sound media spectaculars recreating the Siamese-Burmese Battle of Thalang, held the evenings of 13 through 15 March starting at seven in the evening.
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Buddhists cannot slaughter or witness the slaughter of animals; but they can eat animal flesh as long as they are not responsible for the termination of the animal’s life. As Buddhists grow older they worry a great deal about complying with the ban on killing animals, but they can always get someone else to do the dirty work. In Thailand and Burma, to be truly virtuous, one should never crack an egg. Shopkeepers routinely evade this restraint by keeping a supply of eggs that have been “accidentally” cracked. Wealthy Buddhists ask their servants to break their eggs; the master escapes blame because he didn’t do the killing, and the servant escapes blame because he was ordered to do it.

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Wow! This school year just simply flew by and now we find ourselves midway through “review week.” Final exams for the English-language courses are next Tuesday and Wednesday followed by graduation for the kindergarten and P6 students. That Sunday should also see the end-of-year staff outing, if they ever decide on what to do (a repeat of last year’s cruise in Phang Nga Bay would suit me just fine). And then it’s all over, folks…

But I am signing-on for my third year at the same school. I was one of the lucky ones to receive the “we want you back” letter (there were those who surprisingly got a letter saying the opposite) and my assignment for the 2009-2010 school year is the exactly the same as what I did this past year. I suppose I’m doing something right and the powers-that-be are happy with my constant development. I’m already creating worksheets to better assist my P3 students and am midway through writing a comprehensive teaching guide to Treasure Island for the P4 classes. The only question that remains is whether or not the reading books I’m ordering will arrive in time for the beginning of Term 1.
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There are three specifically Thai concepts you’re bound to come across and which may help you to comprehend a sometimes laissez-faire attitude to delayed buses and other inconveniences. The first, jai yen (ใจเย็น), translates as “cool heart” and is something everyone tries to maintain — most Thais hate raised voices, visible irritation, and confrontations of any kind. Related to this is the oft-quoted response to a difficulty, mai pen rai (ไม่เป็นไร) — “never mind,” “no problem,” “it’s no big deal,” “don’t mention it” — the verbal equivalent of an open-handed shoulder shrug which has its base in the Buddhist notion of karma. And then there’s sanuk (สนุก, the wide-reaching philosophy of “fun” which, crass as it sounds, Thais do their best to inject into any situation, even work. Hence the crowds of inebriated Thais who congregate at waterfalls and other beauty spots on public holidays, and the national waterfight which takes place every April on streets right across Thailand.

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An understanding of jai yen (ใจเย็น) — “cool heart” — is vital to smooth navigation in Thailand. Losing one’s temper is a sign of bad breeding and a sure way to shut the door on a social or commercial transaction. Under the old royal legal codes, the punishment for a prince striking a commoner in anger was harsher than that for a commoner hitting his patron. The law reasoned that while it was expected that an ordinary man might lose his temper, a royal was an exalted, more fully-evolved person and should be above petty annoyances.

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