Friday, August 30, 2002
Dean Allen has a link which comes up on my toolbar as CANALSATE..., which I thought might be interesting as I am sure French canals are voracious and Canal Satay mis-spelled for French consumption might be promising also. However just turns out to be CanalSatellite which is as tedious as TV everywhere.
Well we survived that. Even managed to eat before the heavens opened. How I love hot rain.
Thank you to everyone who sent nice messages
Now back to what passes for reality here: Maybe this should be in the Bangkok Diary
Family Tales 1
All of what follows is , I think, snatched from the speed of the days. I know that seems unconvincing and silly in a country where, mostly, time appears to move more slowly, and sometimes appears not to move at all; and where people have reduced the speed of activity to something approaching perpetual inertia. I must not get distracted by speed. I have learnt many things in the East. I have even learnt to walk more slowly, eat more slowly; yes, I know, think more slowly. Indeed activities that I used to dash off in a few minutes, with a carelessness that now seems criminal, I have learnt must be accorded possibly a whole morning's attention. Nail cutting, cat grooming, purchase of shampoo, eating of noodle soup, have all been known to last three or four hours; while major activities such as the purchase of a new two dollar T Shirt may well take the whole afternoon and evening . Even soap operas, while short by English standards in that they are finished in a few weeks, nonetheless manage to cram extended periods of inactivity into the evening's schedule. This is of course more than made up for by the acres of coverage the stars manage to be accorded in the TV gossip magazines. However all this seemed to happen with vertiginous speed.
It is nearly five o'clock in the morning. This is a moment between the departure of drunken boys, revelling in an unlikely and unconvincing victory by Manchester United over some Greek outfit and the arrival of my brother in law.
Leaving aside the somewhat perplexing obsession with English football in this country (-is it side-betting, is it neo-colonialsim, is it homo-erotic?) the arrival of a true blood relative-even at 5.00 am is not to be trifled with. I did suggest that he could have caught an earlier bus, a later bus, or even a plane, but no: the 21.30 from up country had been the only option.
I then, foolishly, suggested that maybe it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that a male, aged 30, in possession of a small handbag and funds, could negotiate the securing of a taxi from the bus station to the house. A suggestion dismissed with derisiveness by wife and sisters. Phi Chat* had only been to the capital city a few times. He would be as an innocent in the jaws of wolves at the bus station; he would have to be met, it appeared, by a gaggle of relatives, all female. He was, after all, the only son among five children. I wondered whether one taxi would be sufficient and, further, given that it was deluging, what excuse could be dreamed up to avoid the inevitable-that it would be I who had to walk the streets in search of one-or more.
The circumstances of his visit, which had of course been announced after he boarded the bus, were rather unusual. So it was not without interest that I looked forward to his visit. I had met him only once before, when he arrived at the airport-at 2.00 am of course, and had got to know him a little when he stayed what was left of that first night. Though he and my wife had talked the remainder of the night I had gone to bed fairly soon.
He was shorter than my wife, about five feet two inches I should say, and slightly built, like her. He had rather bowed legs like a football player and a fine square head with the delicate features of the mother. They did not share the same father. His hair was thick and curly and I should have said he was probably some seven or eight years her senior, which would have made him thirty or thirty one. Coming off the plane from Taipei he walked with a jaunty air, wearing new silver Nike trainers, new denim shirt and jeans, and with a small electric blue knapsack over his shoulders. He looked like any young man with a reasonable job.
He had come that time to bury his father.
The currently fashionable word for their family is, I think, blended. It was by far from an unusual arrangement here. Phi Chat had tried to tell me as much of the story as he could.
"My father", he said, " was a man of some substance. He had two children by my his mia luang*, though not much has been heard of them for years and I suppose they must probably be in their fifties. I do not know if they will come to his funeral."
The father, when I met him a couple of years ago was well into his eighties then. So his death was no surprise.
Chat went on. " He took a fancy to Pui, our mother, when she was only sixteen or so. It was a fancy I suspect fuelled by the fact that she was the village headman's daughter. He did not bother to observe formalities or niceties. He just climbed through her bedroom window and raped her.
Some three or four years after the birth of Nui who was her sixth child- Orn as you know died in infancy-she got bored with his indifference to her children and everything about her, except presumably her sexuality, and, to everyone's amazement and condemnation, left him. Two of us, Twm, who is the eldest of us , and I went on living with him for some reason, while the others decamped with her some three kilometres to a small house in the next village. Before not too long mother had a new admirer and a seventh child, the girl who is now your wife. My father in the meantime, not to be outdone, had acquired a new consort and set about constructing a further family. By this time of course the eldest children had children of their own; so children and their uncles and aunts or nieces and nephews are many of them all the same age. Indeed your wife is younger than most of her her nieces and nephews."
"How," I asked him, " did he support all this clan?"
"Oh," he replied," in the usual way. He was quite wealthy in the beginning. He was Chinese Khmer you know."
"When did he go to Takua Pa?" I asked.
" I am not sure", he said. " You know that there is a big Chinese community there. Indeed our mother is mostly Chinese, though she prefers to ignore the fact. Her maiden name is Saetang, so her ancestry seems pretty certain. Anyway, as far as I can gather, in the beginning he had a rice mill and quite a lot of land; about four or five hundred rai I should think. He had income from rents and the rice business. He had a lot of land, too, down beyond Chantaburi and I think in Cambodia itself, which was where his mines were, if you can call such hunting and gathering mining!"
Chat smiled.
"Why do you smile?", I asked?
He did not speak for a moment.
"I will tell you in a minute," he said.
He went on. "Later he had durian orchards as well, also in Chantaburi, l which were, I think, pretty lucrative. He had a business selling farm equipment and machinery and later, when I was small, a motorcycle dealership. As you know he then had the Toyota garage."
" It sounds a more than averagely successful story of Chinese business," I said.
" Well, it would have been," Chat replied slightly sharpishly, " had it not been for his cock."
I raised an eyebrow at this somewhat unusually crude expression by someone whose style of speaking was rather elegant.
"You probably do not know the whole saga," he went on. " Indeed, neither do I. But after Pui left I suspect he felt rejected, his manhood impugned. I should think that as of last Friday when he died he must have fathered about thirty children. Most of those have either dunned him for money, or their mothers have, or he felt sorry for them or he was attracted to the girls if they were pretty. He used to give the most amazing presents to the daughters he liked."
"Like Toyota dealerships," I said.
"Quite." He said. "And ruby mines." There was a much sharper edge to this.
I looked up from the whisky I had been nursing.
"All of the mines were given to girls. You asked me why I smiled. I think one can only smile when one thinks of the amounts of money that have run through his hands and gone who knows where."
"That seems a very philosophic approach," I said, smiling too. "Especially as it would seem no-one has much money now, as far as I know."
"Indeed," he said." I don't think there is much left. You know he used to hold up his hands in front of my face, with the palms of his hands facing me and make me look at them."
"Why did he do that?" I wanted to know.
"He wanted me to look at the spaces between the fingers at their bases. He said that a Soothsayer- had told him that unless the spaces filled up money would run away through the gaps all his life. Did you notice them," he asked.
I hadn't
"And indeed the gaps between his fingers were large and the money ran away. And," he added, " I don't suppose when I see him tomorrow they will have gone either."
He smiled again.
"Talking of spaces; Mother in law used to say that your wife had such a large space between her legs an elephant could walk through." He grinned. " I bet she never told you that."
I had to agree!
"Though," I said, "that would explain why she is sensitive on the point. I happen to think," I added, "it is particularly attractive. I don't like legs that are so plump they squish together like ill grown parsnips".
"I don't know the ins and outs of how the money all came to disappear, " he said. " Though I know he got on the wrong side of a lot of people. He wasn't that particular about whether the girls he liked were married already or not, nor about whose daughters they were, nor how old they were. I suspect he had to buy his way out of many an indiscretion."
There was much more that I had wanted to know, but I was tired. It was already four a.m, though we often did not go to bed before then. He had to go to the North later that day and would not go to bed. I wondered if I would hear more when he returned.
While he was gone, (indeed I realise now that I did not know if he was coming back; people here are not much up for revealing plans), I quizzed my wife on some of what he had said, but she was not very forthcoming.
"He was not my father," she said. "And though as a child I was fond of Phi Chat and he of me I never liked the house in Takua Pa and my mother would not go there. And it was only when I was grown up that I began to hear much of what you have heard."
I had wondered whether she would go to the funeral.
"Not likely," she said. " I don't want to see my father"; Which hardly sounded logical to me. But I was used to these kind of explanations.
"Will Chat come and stay again before he goes back to Taiwan ?" I asked.
"I doubt it", she said. "Anyway we won't know until he is on the doorstep I shouldn't wonder."
We thought not much more about it. We were busy with the businesses and my wife was pregnant too. On the Saturday she wondered aloud if the father was already made away with and rang her mother. After one of those interminable conversations that girls and their mothers have in every culture in the world she said
"Phi Chat is coming back, but I don't know when. He's had a bit of trouble."
"What kind of trouble."
She grinned. "To use his phrase-cock trouble!"
"Go on."
"Well," she said, "he told me a bit about what was going on. He has as you know been married to Tu in Phayao for ten years. I don't think it has been a great success, but they have rubbed along and he has sent her money all the while he has been away. But I think they were both fed up with not having children. Anyway he met a girl called Jak in Taiwan. She comes from Sa Kaew. And what with one thing and another they got fond of each other-so he says. She has two children already and said that she would have more with him when they come back from Taiwan. Apparently they have agreed to go and live in Sa Kaew with her family and Chat has bought land and put money into the bank there." She looked quizzically at me.
"What do you think," I asked.
"I asked him to tell me all about it. It turns out that the land is in her name, the money in a bank account of her name and the children are six and ten with the same father."
"How much money has he given her?" I asked.
"About 200,000B*
," she said.
"If it was a European who had done this," I said, " we would be saying there goes another stupid man throwing away his money on some Lao pussy who turns out to be happily married."
"That is exactly what I said to him," she continued. " I told him fairly straight that I was pretty worried by what he had told me. I don't trust Lao girls, particularly ones aged thirty with two children who want land and bank accounts. Apparently her brother is a policeman".
I laughed.
"Or the husband is. Where is he?"
"In Chonburi, so he says."
"Sounds pretty bad news."
"It gets worse. Apparently on Thursday Jak rang the house and asked Nut, Tu's sister if Phi Chat, her husband, was OK."
"What on earth did he give her the number for, " I said, "Couldn't she wait ten days?"
"I think she just wanted to cause trouble. Which makes me all the more doubtful. Anyway the upshot of that has been that Tu has burnt Chat's passports, airline ticket, bank book and ID card. So he has to come and try and get new ones."
"I should think that might be difficult," I said. I knew only too well the bureaucratic nightmare that might follow such an event. "Passports, plural?" I enquired
"It certainly will," she said, " the ID card and the passport that he was travelling on were, of course, fake. If you want to work in Taiwan for as long as he has you have to get false documents to keep going back."
Chat duly arrived and went off again quickly to the passport office.
"I should think you might have to go and bail him out," I said jokingly." He will probably get arrested."
About four o'clock in the afternoon he sloped home.
I heard my wife laugh as she talked to him in the garden
"You are a mor doo, are you?" she called indoors.
I went into the garden.
"What do you mean?"
"Chat had to give the police money to let him go," she said. " They have computerised the passport application process. You remember when I went to get my passport they took my photo with a digital camera. The picture on the ID card Chat was using no longer matches the ID card on file. Since Chat got this passport the real person to whom the ID card belonged went and got himself a new one and his photo is on file!"
"So what happens now?" I asked.
"I can't go back to Taiwan," Chat said.
"Surely you can go on your real passport? Even if you cannot work. Can't you buy another false one anyway?"
My wife smiled. "Tu burnt his real passport as well and his military exemption certificate."
"She says she does not care if I cannot go back" he said.
"What even if she gets no money because you have no work?"
"Yes."
"Doesn't sound like a normal outcome of these kind of things here," I said.
"Oh she just wants to win," said my wife, "Can't say I blame her." She looked at Chat. "Have you rung Jak?"
"Not yet," he said. "I will talk to her after work tonight."
I went out later and when I came home I asked my wife what happened.
"Jak is staying in Taiwan." She said!
"You're joking?" I said.
"No. She told him that he was stupid to let Tu anywhere near his documents. When he pointed out that, if she had not rung, nothing would have happened, she put the phone down. He rang again to ask her to come back and to propose that they would go and live now in Sa Kaew rather than next year. she refused point blank and asked him to send 10,000B to her mother!
The story, of course, has a twist in its tail. I wrote about all his some six months ago! In the meantime Chat lived with us and was good company for the little baby. He died his hair blonde, went to work in a fashionable night club and earned a pittance. One day he said to my wife. "I am going to Taipei tomorrow."
"Oh yes, she said. What happened?"
"Jak sent me 100,000B. Her mother sent me another 100,000B and I borrowed 100,000B from your sister. I have a new ID Card and passport, not so expensive!." We have bought some more land. So I will go back for a couple of years; and then I should think it will be time to become a farmer and father."
Phi is the appellation for an older sibling
Mia luang is a major or first wife as opposed to your mia noi-minor wife- or indeed your mia kep and mia chow-rented wives!
100,000B is about $2,500. A normal monthly wage is about 6000B or $150!
Thank you to everyone who sent nice messages
Now back to what passes for reality here: Maybe this should be in the Bangkok Diary
Family Tales 1
All of what follows is , I think, snatched from the speed of the days. I know that seems unconvincing and silly in a country where, mostly, time appears to move more slowly, and sometimes appears not to move at all; and where people have reduced the speed of activity to something approaching perpetual inertia. I must not get distracted by speed. I have learnt many things in the East. I have even learnt to walk more slowly, eat more slowly; yes, I know, think more slowly. Indeed activities that I used to dash off in a few minutes, with a carelessness that now seems criminal, I have learnt must be accorded possibly a whole morning's attention. Nail cutting, cat grooming, purchase of shampoo, eating of noodle soup, have all been known to last three or four hours; while major activities such as the purchase of a new two dollar T Shirt may well take the whole afternoon and evening . Even soap operas, while short by English standards in that they are finished in a few weeks, nonetheless manage to cram extended periods of inactivity into the evening's schedule. This is of course more than made up for by the acres of coverage the stars manage to be accorded in the TV gossip magazines. However all this seemed to happen with vertiginous speed.
It is nearly five o'clock in the morning. This is a moment between the departure of drunken boys, revelling in an unlikely and unconvincing victory by Manchester United over some Greek outfit and the arrival of my brother in law.
Leaving aside the somewhat perplexing obsession with English football in this country (-is it side-betting, is it neo-colonialsim, is it homo-erotic?) the arrival of a true blood relative-even at 5.00 am is not to be trifled with. I did suggest that he could have caught an earlier bus, a later bus, or even a plane, but no: the 21.30 from up country had been the only option.
I then, foolishly, suggested that maybe it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that a male, aged 30, in possession of a small handbag and funds, could negotiate the securing of a taxi from the bus station to the house. A suggestion dismissed with derisiveness by wife and sisters. Phi Chat* had only been to the capital city a few times. He would be as an innocent in the jaws of wolves at the bus station; he would have to be met, it appeared, by a gaggle of relatives, all female. He was, after all, the only son among five children. I wondered whether one taxi would be sufficient and, further, given that it was deluging, what excuse could be dreamed up to avoid the inevitable-that it would be I who had to walk the streets in search of one-or more.
The circumstances of his visit, which had of course been announced after he boarded the bus, were rather unusual. So it was not without interest that I looked forward to his visit. I had met him only once before, when he arrived at the airport-at 2.00 am of course, and had got to know him a little when he stayed what was left of that first night. Though he and my wife had talked the remainder of the night I had gone to bed fairly soon.
He was shorter than my wife, about five feet two inches I should say, and slightly built, like her. He had rather bowed legs like a football player and a fine square head with the delicate features of the mother. They did not share the same father. His hair was thick and curly and I should have said he was probably some seven or eight years her senior, which would have made him thirty or thirty one. Coming off the plane from Taipei he walked with a jaunty air, wearing new silver Nike trainers, new denim shirt and jeans, and with a small electric blue knapsack over his shoulders. He looked like any young man with a reasonable job.
He had come that time to bury his father.
The currently fashionable word for their family is, I think, blended. It was by far from an unusual arrangement here. Phi Chat had tried to tell me as much of the story as he could.
"My father", he said, " was a man of some substance. He had two children by my his mia luang*, though not much has been heard of them for years and I suppose they must probably be in their fifties. I do not know if they will come to his funeral."
The father, when I met him a couple of years ago was well into his eighties then. So his death was no surprise.
Chat went on. " He took a fancy to Pui, our mother, when she was only sixteen or so. It was a fancy I suspect fuelled by the fact that she was the village headman's daughter. He did not bother to observe formalities or niceties. He just climbed through her bedroom window and raped her.
Some three or four years after the birth of Nui who was her sixth child- Orn as you know died in infancy-she got bored with his indifference to her children and everything about her, except presumably her sexuality, and, to everyone's amazement and condemnation, left him. Two of us, Twm, who is the eldest of us , and I went on living with him for some reason, while the others decamped with her some three kilometres to a small house in the next village. Before not too long mother had a new admirer and a seventh child, the girl who is now your wife. My father in the meantime, not to be outdone, had acquired a new consort and set about constructing a further family. By this time of course the eldest children had children of their own; so children and their uncles and aunts or nieces and nephews are many of them all the same age. Indeed your wife is younger than most of her her nieces and nephews."
"How," I asked him, " did he support all this clan?"
"Oh," he replied," in the usual way. He was quite wealthy in the beginning. He was Chinese Khmer you know."
"When did he go to Takua Pa?" I asked.
" I am not sure", he said. " You know that there is a big Chinese community there. Indeed our mother is mostly Chinese, though she prefers to ignore the fact. Her maiden name is Saetang, so her ancestry seems pretty certain. Anyway, as far as I can gather, in the beginning he had a rice mill and quite a lot of land; about four or five hundred rai I should think. He had income from rents and the rice business. He had a lot of land, too, down beyond Chantaburi and I think in Cambodia itself, which was where his mines were, if you can call such hunting and gathering mining!"
Chat smiled.
"Why do you smile?", I asked?
He did not speak for a moment.
"I will tell you in a minute," he said.
He went on. "Later he had durian orchards as well, also in Chantaburi, l which were, I think, pretty lucrative. He had a business selling farm equipment and machinery and later, when I was small, a motorcycle dealership. As you know he then had the Toyota garage."
" It sounds a more than averagely successful story of Chinese business," I said.
" Well, it would have been," Chat replied slightly sharpishly, " had it not been for his cock."
I raised an eyebrow at this somewhat unusually crude expression by someone whose style of speaking was rather elegant.
"You probably do not know the whole saga," he went on. " Indeed, neither do I. But after Pui left I suspect he felt rejected, his manhood impugned. I should think that as of last Friday when he died he must have fathered about thirty children. Most of those have either dunned him for money, or their mothers have, or he felt sorry for them or he was attracted to the girls if they were pretty. He used to give the most amazing presents to the daughters he liked."
"Like Toyota dealerships," I said.
"Quite." He said. "And ruby mines." There was a much sharper edge to this.
I looked up from the whisky I had been nursing.
"All of the mines were given to girls. You asked me why I smiled. I think one can only smile when one thinks of the amounts of money that have run through his hands and gone who knows where."
"That seems a very philosophic approach," I said, smiling too. "Especially as it would seem no-one has much money now, as far as I know."
"Indeed," he said." I don't think there is much left. You know he used to hold up his hands in front of my face, with the palms of his hands facing me and make me look at them."
"Why did he do that?" I wanted to know.
"He wanted me to look at the spaces between the fingers at their bases. He said that a Soothsayer- had told him that unless the spaces filled up money would run away through the gaps all his life. Did you notice them," he asked.
I hadn't
"And indeed the gaps between his fingers were large and the money ran away. And," he added, " I don't suppose when I see him tomorrow they will have gone either."
He smiled again.
"Talking of spaces; Mother in law used to say that your wife had such a large space between her legs an elephant could walk through." He grinned. " I bet she never told you that."
I had to agree!
"Though," I said, "that would explain why she is sensitive on the point. I happen to think," I added, "it is particularly attractive. I don't like legs that are so plump they squish together like ill grown parsnips".
"I don't know the ins and outs of how the money all came to disappear, " he said. " Though I know he got on the wrong side of a lot of people. He wasn't that particular about whether the girls he liked were married already or not, nor about whose daughters they were, nor how old they were. I suspect he had to buy his way out of many an indiscretion."
There was much more that I had wanted to know, but I was tired. It was already four a.m, though we often did not go to bed before then. He had to go to the North later that day and would not go to bed. I wondered if I would hear more when he returned.
While he was gone, (indeed I realise now that I did not know if he was coming back; people here are not much up for revealing plans), I quizzed my wife on some of what he had said, but she was not very forthcoming.
"He was not my father," she said. "And though as a child I was fond of Phi Chat and he of me I never liked the house in Takua Pa and my mother would not go there. And it was only when I was grown up that I began to hear much of what you have heard."
I had wondered whether she would go to the funeral.
"Not likely," she said. " I don't want to see my father"; Which hardly sounded logical to me. But I was used to these kind of explanations.
"Will Chat come and stay again before he goes back to Taiwan ?" I asked.
"I doubt it", she said. "Anyway we won't know until he is on the doorstep I shouldn't wonder."
We thought not much more about it. We were busy with the businesses and my wife was pregnant too. On the Saturday she wondered aloud if the father was already made away with and rang her mother. After one of those interminable conversations that girls and their mothers have in every culture in the world she said
"Phi Chat is coming back, but I don't know when. He's had a bit of trouble."
"What kind of trouble."
She grinned. "To use his phrase-cock trouble!"
"Go on."
"Well," she said, "he told me a bit about what was going on. He has as you know been married to Tu in Phayao for ten years. I don't think it has been a great success, but they have rubbed along and he has sent her money all the while he has been away. But I think they were both fed up with not having children. Anyway he met a girl called Jak in Taiwan. She comes from Sa Kaew. And what with one thing and another they got fond of each other-so he says. She has two children already and said that she would have more with him when they come back from Taiwan. Apparently they have agreed to go and live in Sa Kaew with her family and Chat has bought land and put money into the bank there." She looked quizzically at me.
"What do you think," I asked.
"I asked him to tell me all about it. It turns out that the land is in her name, the money in a bank account of her name and the children are six and ten with the same father."
"How much money has he given her?" I asked.
"About 200,000B*
," she said.
"If it was a European who had done this," I said, " we would be saying there goes another stupid man throwing away his money on some Lao pussy who turns out to be happily married."
"That is exactly what I said to him," she continued. " I told him fairly straight that I was pretty worried by what he had told me. I don't trust Lao girls, particularly ones aged thirty with two children who want land and bank accounts. Apparently her brother is a policeman".
I laughed.
"Or the husband is. Where is he?"
"In Chonburi, so he says."
"Sounds pretty bad news."
"It gets worse. Apparently on Thursday Jak rang the house and asked Nut, Tu's sister if Phi Chat, her husband, was OK."
"What on earth did he give her the number for, " I said, "Couldn't she wait ten days?"
"I think she just wanted to cause trouble. Which makes me all the more doubtful. Anyway the upshot of that has been that Tu has burnt Chat's passports, airline ticket, bank book and ID card. So he has to come and try and get new ones."
"I should think that might be difficult," I said. I knew only too well the bureaucratic nightmare that might follow such an event. "Passports, plural?" I enquired
"It certainly will," she said, " the ID card and the passport that he was travelling on were, of course, fake. If you want to work in Taiwan for as long as he has you have to get false documents to keep going back."
Chat duly arrived and went off again quickly to the passport office.
"I should think you might have to go and bail him out," I said jokingly." He will probably get arrested."
About four o'clock in the afternoon he sloped home.
I heard my wife laugh as she talked to him in the garden
"You are a mor doo, are you?" she called indoors.
I went into the garden.
"What do you mean?"
"Chat had to give the police money to let him go," she said. " They have computerised the passport application process. You remember when I went to get my passport they took my photo with a digital camera. The picture on the ID card Chat was using no longer matches the ID card on file. Since Chat got this passport the real person to whom the ID card belonged went and got himself a new one and his photo is on file!"
"So what happens now?" I asked.
"I can't go back to Taiwan," Chat said.
"Surely you can go on your real passport? Even if you cannot work. Can't you buy another false one anyway?"
My wife smiled. "Tu burnt his real passport as well and his military exemption certificate."
"She says she does not care if I cannot go back" he said.
"What even if she gets no money because you have no work?"
"Yes."
"Doesn't sound like a normal outcome of these kind of things here," I said.
"Oh she just wants to win," said my wife, "Can't say I blame her." She looked at Chat. "Have you rung Jak?"
"Not yet," he said. "I will talk to her after work tonight."
I went out later and when I came home I asked my wife what happened.
"Jak is staying in Taiwan." She said!
"You're joking?" I said.
"No. She told him that he was stupid to let Tu anywhere near his documents. When he pointed out that, if she had not rung, nothing would have happened, she put the phone down. He rang again to ask her to come back and to propose that they would go and live now in Sa Kaew rather than next year. she refused point blank and asked him to send 10,000B to her mother!
The story, of course, has a twist in its tail. I wrote about all his some six months ago! In the meantime Chat lived with us and was good company for the little baby. He died his hair blonde, went to work in a fashionable night club and earned a pittance. One day he said to my wife. "I am going to Taipei tomorrow."
"Oh yes, she said. What happened?"
"Jak sent me 100,000B. Her mother sent me another 100,000B and I borrowed 100,000B from your sister. I have a new ID Card and passport, not so expensive!." We have bought some more land. So I will go back for a couple of years; and then I should think it will be time to become a farmer and father."
Phi is the appellation for an older sibling
Mia luang is a major or first wife as opposed to your mia noi-minor wife- or indeed your mia kep and mia chow-rented wives!
100,000B is about $2,500. A normal monthly wage is about 6000B or $150!
Bored? Overdose of private life? Certainly sometimes surfeit of Thailand. Then have fun withsodaplay
Thursday, August 29, 2002
HEINZ MEMORIAL BIRTHDAY
So you need to know no more about the years of variety. I have put some poems onto the RS site in honour of the occasion. Particularly the one that starts ..."It was your mother wanted you"...which always contextualises anything I might think about RS.I have changed the MEE pictures site too.
But I am lucky. Rhodri is here, Elodie too and Kunjana. Rhodri asked me if I was having a 'lazy birthday'... I reflected..this was 11.30 am.... I had washed the floor, hosed the deck, washed a rucksack of damp clothes-having to bleach all the white ones-requiring three loads, wandered around with Elodie on my arm for an hour, bathed her, nipped down the road to buy Comfort, put the poems onto the site, sorted out the 'Ancestors' link and done a couple of invoices. Also put the chicken and pork into marinade for being "Barbecuted" as we call it here in honour of the original Jamaican BBQs. Rhodri had/has managed twio cigarettes, a glass of coke and Disc 1 of Resident Evil!! Plus ca change. I am not sure of the origin of that nice phrase ..'children afford you no comfort, neither young nor old' .Of course it is not true as if he was not here I would be morose! Elodie spent yesterday entranced by Ian McKellen's Gandalf beard and indeed much of the movie and spent the evening making fishy mouths trying to imitate me singing. Now demolishing ground rice and banana.
So you need to know no more about the years of variety. I have put some poems onto the RS site in honour of the occasion. Particularly the one that starts ..."It was your mother wanted you"...which always contextualises anything I might think about RS.I have changed the MEE pictures site too.
But I am lucky. Rhodri is here, Elodie too and Kunjana. Rhodri asked me if I was having a 'lazy birthday'... I reflected..this was 11.30 am.... I had washed the floor, hosed the deck, washed a rucksack of damp clothes-having to bleach all the white ones-requiring three loads, wandered around with Elodie on my arm for an hour, bathed her, nipped down the road to buy Comfort, put the poems onto the site, sorted out the 'Ancestors' link and done a couple of invoices. Also put the chicken and pork into marinade for being "Barbecuted" as we call it here in honour of the original Jamaican BBQs. Rhodri had/has managed twio cigarettes, a glass of coke and Disc 1 of Resident Evil!! Plus ca change. I am not sure of the origin of that nice phrase ..'children afford you no comfort, neither young nor old' .Of course it is not true as if he was not here I would be morose! Elodie spent yesterday entranced by Ian McKellen's Gandalf beard and indeed much of the movie and spent the evening making fishy mouths trying to imitate me singing. Now demolishing ground rice and banana.
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Everyone should, he said bossily, be reading Cursor A news trawler that makes newspapers seem very boring. Have just finished the story ..'the mother of all clients' ...about the Kuwaiti PR effort to achieve Desert Storm. No wonder no-one believes politicians or CEOs any more. Unfortunately there is not much 'Orient' news, which would probably be even more jaw dropping
The National Portrait Galleryhave acquired from somewhere NPG6449 or maybe NPG6434 they seem a bit confused. Image not visible online. It purports to be a "portrait of RST, MEE and their son Gwydion". However since it is apparently dated 1941 one wonders what it is. Kunjana is quite interested in seeing me aged minus 4!
ONE OR TWO THINGS
Ten favourite books in no particular order!
now that is odd; because the list tripped off without much hesitation-apart from the Ishiguro which I added later!. And Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina...which I had forgotten about until an email mentioning Rila reminded me of it! And there is no plavce for it in 10 ..Maybe twelve books would be better?And then twenty! But if you asked who my favourite authors were the list would include Maria Edgeworth, Mrs. Gaskell, Jane Austen, Arlene Chai, Lawrence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Emily Dickinson, Junchiro Tanizaki, various Russians and also Chinese poets too many to enumerate, Stendahl, Jonathan Raban, Henry Thoreau, Colin Thubron, William Dalrymple., the Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, M.F.K Fisher trio........must do the ones a least like too!
Ten favourite books in no particular order!
- One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
City of Broken Promises Austin Coates
Return of The Native Thomas Hardy
Palm Of The Hand Stories Yasunari Kawabata
The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford
Science and Civilisation in China Joseph Needham
British Botanical and Horticultural Literature before 1800 Blanche Henrey
Explosion in a Cathedral Alejo Carpentier or maybe The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro!
Short Stories Somerset Maugham
Carmina Catulli Gaius Valerius Catullus
now that is odd; because the list tripped off without much hesitation-apart from the Ishiguro which I added later!. And Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina...which I had forgotten about until an email mentioning Rila reminded me of it! And there is no plavce for it in 10 ..Maybe twelve books would be better?And then twenty! But if you asked who my favourite authors were the list would include Maria Edgeworth, Mrs. Gaskell, Jane Austen, Arlene Chai, Lawrence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Emily Dickinson, Junchiro Tanizaki, various Russians and also Chinese poets too many to enumerate, Stendahl, Jonathan Raban, Henry Thoreau, Colin Thubron, William Dalrymple., the Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, M.F.K Fisher trio........must do the ones a least like too!
Saturday, August 24, 2002
Invented hyperlinking?? Funny we do not get to hear in the UK what British Telecom are up toBloomberg.com UK: Technology UK
I am revisiting this. Of course it occurs to me..belatedly..too much Jamesons on a Satuday..that, of course, this extra 250 million people or whatever have very little to do with America..wherever that maybe...if they are Latinos, Korean, Vietnamese, and no doubt eventually Russian, Albanian, Kosovan or what...that is what they will be....Originally there were some clear views about what was being abandoned and embraced...but I suspect that what will emerge is some hybrid flag waving and intense ethnic aggressiveness. We shall see.
Intoned The Poet
Economist.com | Demography and the West This nags at me. It is something to do with the 'Where to live if you can live anywhere' theme. And I am thinking about Elodie's future all the time.So "luk khreung" half Thai half European children are out of fashion are they? Replaced by some pure Han stereotypes, of course..as the paper had it..."delicate faces not out of place in Shanghai"..or something like that..I suppose round eyes to them are slant eyes to you?....But anyway the preferred ground is Sydney but I cannot see us sorting the visas!
Elodie looking very sweet today. Her eyes change colour every day, from stone to dark blue to hazel. I suppose she will end up with orange brown eyes like the boy. Maman would not be impressed as she only 'approved' of blue eyes.
She-the girl not maman- is wearing her favourite dress."Little Cats Love Club" Sorry cannot link you to that either. But even if I could they probably would not let you in Japanese Only, I should not wonder. She eats large bowls of rice and bananas and would rather stand up all day if you don't mind. Though she is improving the art of rolling every day. Should enter her for one of those West Country Cheese Rolling contests. Maybe she will just miss out the crawling stage and haul herself around the furniture. She is enamoured still of her eggs(not duck eggs) and her ducks.
She-the girl not maman- is wearing her favourite dress."Little Cats Love Club" Sorry cannot link you to that either. But even if I could they probably would not let you in Japanese Only, I should not wonder. She eats large bowls of rice and bananas and would rather stand up all day if you don't mind. Though she is improving the art of rolling every day. Should enter her for one of those West Country Cheese Rolling contests. Maybe she will just miss out the crawling stage and haul herself around the furniture. She is enamoured still of her eggs(not duck eggs) and her ducks.
Not linked...but........
A wild boar has taken up residence in the Parc du Chateau du Sceaux in Paris Sud........This is unusual said M. Bernard Lefevre.........and GET THIS!! The last time anything like this happened was when an adult male wounded four policeman who were ..trying to eject it "from a MUNICIPAL TENNIS COURT in Epinay!"
Meanwhile in Nice Les Sanglochons are unwelcome as "they like: Vegetables, Bulbs, Fruit and Worms."...well just like the Residents I suppose. Probably with a nice trough of Sancerre.
A wild boar has taken up residence in the Parc du Chateau du Sceaux in Paris Sud........This is unusual said M. Bernard Lefevre.........and GET THIS!! The last time anything like this happened was when an adult male wounded four policeman who were ..trying to eject it "from a MUNICIPAL TENNIS COURT in Epinay!"
Meanwhile in Nice Les Sanglochons are unwelcome as "they like: Vegetables, Bulbs, Fruit and Worms."...well just like the Residents I suppose. Probably with a nice trough of Sancerre.
Friday, August 23, 2002
Now here is a pretty kettle of fish I have come across. I am cross because I cannot really critique it properly as all my notes are in a box in London rather than BKK. This was research from the ur-electronic age....BUT. I think that either the reviewer, if he is to be believed, or the author are seriously missing the point. A mention of regimen would be a good start. See Barthes History of Sexuality. Diet was not a stand alone issue it was part of the the whole physical, spiritual, mental structure for the ordering of life. Secondly these books did not die out, what happened was that the whole process of advice became first medicalised, as opposed to herbalised!, and then got all mixed up with cookery books..this was already happening in the works of Muffet and Hart in the late 17th century and by the time of say Hunter in the early 19th century the transition was nearly complete. Thirdly vegetarianism was a serious issue and far from being a side issue there are plenty of works which promote the diet.It became mixed up with the whole question of the rights of animals. Fourthly the issue about longevity is skated over. The prolongation of life was a really big number....Oh for me notes Anyway must read the book myself..if you do let me knowGuardian Unlimited Books | LRB essay | Barbecue of the vanities: a short history of diet books
Here is a follow up on the killer jellyfish of Koh Phangan. Box jellyfish? Is there a coffin jellyfish? Probably. Seriously I do know they are extremely dangerous. Spoke to the boy about this...take care when swimming etc..he is IN Ko Phangan....Yea Yea Dad Cool it ...you can tell he has never encountered one...though he still bears the scars of a jellyfish encounter off Satun/Ko Krabaeng. Was not reassured.Phuket Gazette - online English newspaper for Phuket, Thailand, with daily news, classified ads, yellow pages, business listings, upcoming events, event calendar, phuket events
On chickens and tails.
Here is a nice little playground spat. You don't want my steroid laden chickens? Then I won't buy your aeroplanes..and besides the tail fell off one of them at JFK did it not. And no-one has died from eating our chemical fowl-not that we would know given what is sold in BKK. You mean people are still eating battery chickens. With love from the Kentucky Fried OwlWelcome to The Nation
Here is a nice little playground spat. You don't want my steroid laden chickens? Then I won't buy your aeroplanes..and besides the tail fell off one of them at JFK did it not. And no-one has died from eating our chemical fowl-not that we would know given what is sold in BKK. You mean people are still eating battery chickens. With love from the Kentucky Fried OwlWelcome to The Nation
VISITOR TO BURMA SPECIAL
Sorry this does not make for good cornflake reading. You want to know what is going on up there. Read thisWelcome to The NationAnd read also The Stone of Heaven by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott Clark. King Solomon's Mines and Prester Joh all in one.Not.
Sorry this does not make for good cornflake reading. You want to know what is going on up there. Read thisWelcome to The NationAnd read also The Stone of Heaven by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott Clark. King Solomon's Mines and Prester Joh all in one.Not.
There are reasons why this is not linked but they are tedious to explain. Anyway this saga continues. Death and corruption on a nasty scale. This is a strange country. When I am in the countryside I can live with the illusion that it is not that different from, say, rural France thirty years ago; and in Bangkok-well it is certainnly not a tiers-monde city like Manila or Jakarta. The boy says to me it is surreal. Everything appears OK but actually everyone is living and acting by a set of norms, rules and beliefs that have nothing to do with France or America.
Bangkok Post Thursday 11 July 2002 - This land is their land
COMMENTARY
This land is their land
Sanitsuda Ekachai
If you believe the rule of law and political repression are
incompatible, the Thaksin administration is happy to prove you
wrong.
Just look at the way Mr Thaksin's government has handled the
``people's land reform'' in Lamphun. It clearly shows how
convenient it is for the powers-that-be to use the rule of law
to punish any poor who cry for justice.
This is what the landless farmers in Lamphun did: They saw
their public land being taken unlawfully by land speculators
with help from corrupt officials and local leaders, so they
petitioned the authorities for a legal investigation.
The investigation revealed that the issuing of land title
deeds for these areas was questionable. Yet nothing was done
to punish corrupt officials. Nor to nullify the dubious
private ownership of the villagers' common.
Meanwhile, the common lay fallow as collateral on
non-performing loans at banks. So the landless farmers decided
to make use of their community's old, rightful property by
tilling the land.
They knew all along that the ``legal'' owners and the police
would be after them while vilifying their efforts as
encroachment on private land.
So, together with nationwide grassroots movements, they asked
the government to refrain from arresting Lamphun villagers and
to use their ``people's land reform'' to find common ground on
how to tackle corrupt land deals.
The Thaksin government agreed. But then shortly after, the
government gave the green light to police to arrest these
``lawless'' people.
Lightning raids snared 26 landless farmers and destroyed their
crops. Sixty-seven others are on the arrest list.
What's more, the police _ obviously with the backing of
higher-ups _ are using legal technicalities to prevent the
farmers from getting bail.
This is possible because speculators have divided the common
into small plots with individual title deeds ready for sale.
So, if a farmer, for example, occupies an area covered by five
title deeds, then he or she can face five charges.
That is why farmer Songmuang Potapan now faces 22 separate
charges. And it is why he needs 4,400,000 baht in bail money.
And it will take more than 100 million baht to bail out all 93
farmers.
Where on earth can poor, landless farmers get that kind of
money?
Mr Songmuang, meanwhile, is seriously ill. By locking him in
jail for over a month now, the authorities have denied him the
basic human right to proper medication. The police also
violate the constitution by setting an unreasonably high bail.
But who cares? Those who challenge the status quo deserve a
beating with a big stick, don't they?
Interestingly, while the Thaksin government's crackdown has
fanned outrage among farmers and civil society movements, the
public at large hardly hear about what is going on.
This is understandable. Apart from occasional reports in some
newspapers, the media have treated the Lamphun controversy as
a non-event.
While the rich abhor land reform because it hits them directly
in the pocket, many members of the middle class also cringe
because it hits at our dreams.
Don't many of us believe that if we work hard enough, we, too,
can buy some land as an investment on behalf of our children?
This dream is severely shaken if there is no guarantee that we
can own speculative land. And when everyday life is tough, who
wants to have their dreams shattered?
Few, however, realise that land speculation has made it
impossible for most of us to afford a decent house, not to
mention land.
If we realise this, we can see the Lamphun farmers as in the
vanguard of change for most of us. If not, we remain wrapped
in our apathy and our dreams _ which is exactly where the
powerful want us to be.
- Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok
Post.sanitsuda@bankokpost.net
© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2002
Bangkok Post Thursday 11 July 2002 - This land is their land
COMMENTARY
This land is their land
Sanitsuda Ekachai
If you believe the rule of law and political repression are
incompatible, the Thaksin administration is happy to prove you
wrong.
Just look at the way Mr Thaksin's government has handled the
``people's land reform'' in Lamphun. It clearly shows how
convenient it is for the powers-that-be to use the rule of law
to punish any poor who cry for justice.
This is what the landless farmers in Lamphun did: They saw
their public land being taken unlawfully by land speculators
with help from corrupt officials and local leaders, so they
petitioned the authorities for a legal investigation.
The investigation revealed that the issuing of land title
deeds for these areas was questionable. Yet nothing was done
to punish corrupt officials. Nor to nullify the dubious
private ownership of the villagers' common.
Meanwhile, the common lay fallow as collateral on
non-performing loans at banks. So the landless farmers decided
to make use of their community's old, rightful property by
tilling the land.
They knew all along that the ``legal'' owners and the police
would be after them while vilifying their efforts as
encroachment on private land.
So, together with nationwide grassroots movements, they asked
the government to refrain from arresting Lamphun villagers and
to use their ``people's land reform'' to find common ground on
how to tackle corrupt land deals.
The Thaksin government agreed. But then shortly after, the
government gave the green light to police to arrest these
``lawless'' people.
Lightning raids snared 26 landless farmers and destroyed their
crops. Sixty-seven others are on the arrest list.
What's more, the police _ obviously with the backing of
higher-ups _ are using legal technicalities to prevent the
farmers from getting bail.
This is possible because speculators have divided the common
into small plots with individual title deeds ready for sale.
So, if a farmer, for example, occupies an area covered by five
title deeds, then he or she can face five charges.
That is why farmer Songmuang Potapan now faces 22 separate
charges. And it is why he needs 4,400,000 baht in bail money.
And it will take more than 100 million baht to bail out all 93
farmers.
Where on earth can poor, landless farmers get that kind of
money?
Mr Songmuang, meanwhile, is seriously ill. By locking him in
jail for over a month now, the authorities have denied him the
basic human right to proper medication. The police also
violate the constitution by setting an unreasonably high bail.
But who cares? Those who challenge the status quo deserve a
beating with a big stick, don't they?
Interestingly, while the Thaksin government's crackdown has
fanned outrage among farmers and civil society movements, the
public at large hardly hear about what is going on.
This is understandable. Apart from occasional reports in some
newspapers, the media have treated the Lamphun controversy as
a non-event.
While the rich abhor land reform because it hits them directly
in the pocket, many members of the middle class also cringe
because it hits at our dreams.
Don't many of us believe that if we work hard enough, we, too,
can buy some land as an investment on behalf of our children?
This dream is severely shaken if there is no guarantee that we
can own speculative land. And when everyday life is tough, who
wants to have their dreams shattered?
Few, however, realise that land speculation has made it
impossible for most of us to afford a decent house, not to
mention land.
If we realise this, we can see the Lamphun farmers as in the
vanguard of change for most of us. If not, we remain wrapped
in our apathy and our dreams _ which is exactly where the
powerful want us to be.
- Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok
Post.sanitsuda@bankokpost.net
© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2002
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Elodie-the 4 month old sleeps under her Chang Noi-the Jim Thompson elephant she adores. She has learned to be a roly-poly pudding and can go three turns in either direction. She laughs aloud on seeing her face in the mirror and is also enamoured of a cartoon hybrid of a bath duck and Tweetie Pie on a tin can. But mainly she is into eggs. Kanjana has made her a mobile of painted eggs which are hung above her daybed. With these she conducts extensive conversations, when not staring at them with wide-eyed wonder.
Have got some links! They are people I stumbled across-I think surfing implies an Hawaian skill I do not have.Shall I tell them? Will they ever know? More tonight.
The poet rests
Have got some links! They are people I stumbled across-I think surfing implies an Hawaian skill I do not have.Shall I tell them? Will they ever know? More tonight.
The poet rests
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
Well you were not going to get all of those things for starters were you? But yes we live in Thailand. Lived in Phuket for some years, described by Sharon as Wales with hot rain and elephants....not far off. Now we are in Bangkok, the three of us and the fourth not so
far away today on those blasted islands. Have told him not to go swimming at tea time..he just says....yeah..yeah....just what you expect of someone aged 22 with little sense of preservation other than recourse to the Vodka and the Overdraft.
So you have worked out this is a baby blog. Well no doubt we will learn. Not sure how much XHTML I want to learn.
So we live here, we work here, sort of; the boy will be a REAL lawyer soon...and the babe..well she is 3 nearly 4 months or so old..so she has a different agenda!
And I will sort out all these links. I know this is juvenile stuff but I am not a Thai pubescent with XML in my wallet and frankly Blogger can hardly be bothered to tell you owt. So in a while I will go trawling. Fishing seems to be a sort of blog metaphor. I have come across it several times.
Intoned the poet
far away today on those blasted islands. Have told him not to go swimming at tea time..he just says....yeah..yeah....just what you expect of someone aged 22 with little sense of preservation other than recourse to the Vodka and the Overdraft.
So you have worked out this is a baby blog. Well no doubt we will learn. Not sure how much XHTML I want to learn.
So we live here, we work here, sort of; the boy will be a REAL lawyer soon...and the babe..well she is 3 nearly 4 months or so old..so she has a different agenda!
And I will sort out all these links. I know this is juvenile stuff but I am not a Thai pubescent with XML in my wallet and frankly Blogger can hardly be bothered to tell you owt. So in a while I will go trawling. Fishing seems to be a sort of blog metaphor. I have come across it several times.
Intoned the poet
WELCOME TO THAILAND
KILLER JELLYFISH
Here is a nice little snippet from The Nation to set the tone
Welcome to The Nation
KILLER JELLYFISH
Here is a nice little snippet from The Nation to set the tone
Welcome to The Nation
And then....It was on this island that Alex Garland, I believe, set his novel The Beach. The film with its fake beaches was shot elsewhere (Ko Phi Phi)
so here we have THE DEATH OF KOH PHANGAN
Welcome to The Nation
Sic transit gloria mundi
so here we have THE DEATH OF KOH PHANGAN
Welcome to The Nation
Sic transit gloria mundi
So now you are wondering why we live here??..Right! Well maybe we are avoiding this:Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Hywel Williams: A land built on blood