Pointy Finger

Zippers, buttons, bows, tags, loose threads, lint (camera lenses). It's all so interesting, especially when your little pointy finger can just about reach it, roll over it, and (if it's at all loose) pick it up!

Spot the Potential Lawsuit 7

Oh, a blog is a hungry beast. It snarls and hisses at you in the most nasty way if you do not feed it, and feed it often. Before this little guy leaps off the screen and bites the hand that feeds it, I offer you this.

Yes, another Spot the Potential Lawsuit. This one, the cauldron-of-boiling-oil variety seen daily on every block in the city. Oh, Thai people do love a good dose of anything deep-fried in palm oil. Yes, palm oil. A completely un-dietarily-reconstructed culinary culture, for sure. And, the deep frying (as with all cooking) is done outdoors, usually right on the curb inches away from passing pedestrians and baby strollers. But, we cheerfully take the risk because the reward is sweet.

Deep fried "sugar banana" and taro (totally skippable, if you ask me). Oh, those bananas. But, not often. Really. They'll kill yah, even if the cauldron of boiling oil doesn't tip over on you.

Hardware Meltdown

oi... the screen went blank a few days ago, but we're back from the little Mac shop and in working order. Nothing lost, except a precious means of communicating (for a few days only, I admit). The black-out blasted a big hole in Project 365. Have some catching up to do... more shortly.

Marketing Genius

Now, here's a clever promotion. Buy one, and... well... get one!


Somebody laid awake at night thinking this one up, sure. (Sorry, the English major in me just can't walk on by.)

A Nice Place to Visit...

As with all places in the world, there are things I love about Chiang Mai, and things I ... well, don't.


I love that I can go out at 10 pm and walk in any direction, guaranteed to find a noodle cart selling bowls of soup for the equivalent of 40 cents. I love that there's a woman selling hot, sweet, hand-made soy milk (yes, hand-pounded soy beans fresh every day) also on the street each night. And, I love that every morning I wake up to three sounds, roosters, the 5:30 ringing of the temple bell, and my landlady pouring rice grains into her rice cooker to feed the monks on their morning alms rounds. These are just a few of the things I love about this place.

The trouble is, the things I don't like about this place are pretty damn fundamental. Take, for example, the air that we breathe.


I've been laboring for some weeks to take a photo that will show you the hazy swill we are living in, and last Sunday I hit it just right. Chiang Mai is an ancient city in a mountain valley, and we are deep into the middle of dry season, both critical factors in our struggle to breathe free. Our little mountain valley is a hot dusty bowl of foul air with no outlet, and it hasn't rained a cleansing drop since November (and it won't until mid-April, at best). As the temperature rises from January to April, so do pollution levels. At present, the air is so thick you can see it, and I don't just mean when you gaze out from some viewpoint. You can see it as you gaze across the street. At night, motorbikes and cars have cones of light around their headlights. Street lamps have haloes. And, in the day belching machines of innumerable description and the witless burning of trash and leaves just keep adding to this soup we call air.

Before my recent chest cold (sure, hit me when I'm down), I had already developed a heaviness in my chest too low to reach with a cough. This year is the worst I've seen in the last five (wow, five winters in Chiang Mai!). But the real kicker is that this year our little baby is breathing the same stuff. Enough to send you to the airport for a ticket to anywhere else.

So, while we wait for the cleansing rains that will surely bring relief (and for my husband's U.S. visa to be approved), we are keeping indoors, walking in the alleys with fewer cars, avoiding rush hour, and dreaming of the fresh crisp air in upstate New York.

Feed Me!

Actually, "Feed MYSELF!" Yes, Little has mastered the art of picking up food AND (an important "and") opening up his little clenched fists to push it in.


This two-fisted eating thing is downright primeval. (I'm jealous).

Spot the Potential Lawsuit 6

I simply cannot be stopped. The Spot the Potential Lawsuit game is just too damn entertaining. Today, I offer you another in the category of vehicular-accidents-waiting-to-happen, also known as if-you-can-weld-it-you-can-drive-it.


What we have here is, well, almost inexplicable. There was once a motorcycle in there somewhere. It morphed into a three-wheel, rear-drive sedan chair with a lovely and practical over-arching canopy frame. And, of course, the previously examined make-do hitch, making possible the tow-along cart.

The whole rig is, indeed, the most ambitious of all the recycle men in the neighborhood. God forbid, a stray dog darts in front of him. It'll be a game of pick-up sticks.

Spot the Potential Lawsuit 5

Ok, so I have no restraint. It's been a Spot the Potential Lawsuit kind of week, and these are just the ones that I manage to get photos of. So many more of these lawsuits are zipping by on motorbikes and overloaded trucks, but my reaction time is a little dulled by the stroller.


Here, my handsome husband demonstrates a "Potential Lawsuit" that even he thought was funny. Two boards pounded into the sidewalk for no apparent reason. He missed the perfectly positioned "head banger" by about ten inches as we rounded the corner engrossed in conversation (with heads down pushing the stroller).

Spot the Potential Lawsuit 4

Remember, I'm exercising incredible restraint in the Spot the Potential Lawsuit game. But, the (new) mother in me just couldn't walk past this one.


I don't know what freaks me out more, the exposed rusty bolts or the jagged, rusty metal. Let's not even talk about the projecting steel pipes and sheet metal corners.


This is one of three public places that I've found for kids to play, and this is the GOOD one. (sigh)

Will This Do?

One loyal reader (one of two, I hasten to add) has pointed out that I'm so often behind the camera, that I'm never in front of it. And, so I offer you (both) this tidbit from yesterday.

(Thanks for missing me.)

Little, Bigger Every Day

Two new teeth coming in (the uppers), fascination with the index finger (rolls it over his thumb and stares at it with great interest - uses it to pick up tiny things), drinks from a cup (skipped over bottle and sippy cups - not terribly manly), and speaking Thai! ("ta" means "eye" and "grandfather" - "ma" means "come on" - and "ba" means "let's go!" too bad none of it means anything in English.) Still prefers serial rolling to crawling, but I'm in no hurry to be chasing around after him.

Flickr

Okay, maybe you're not as obsessed with Flickr as I am. I'm totally hooked. It all started just before Christmas. Nong tells me her friend has some photos on-line. We look. They're not too interesting, but the idea grabs me. I sign up. I start uploading baby photos. I invite family and friends to look. Nobody does. Whatever.

Then, Christmas hits me in the gut, and I'm feeling homesick for cinnamon and wrapping paper. When everyone is asleep, I find myself in front of the screen scrolling through thousands of photos of people decorating Christmas cookies. I feel connected. It helps a little.

You see, no matter what people are doing in the computer-savvy, camera-owning world, they are posting pictures of it daily. Thousands of them. As a former cultural historian type, I find it fascinating. As a girl half a world away from most of the things she loves, I find it comforting. Even though I don't have an oven, can't find truly fresh butter, and won't pay the equivalent of $7 for a bag of chocolate bits, I can plunk myself down and see people making cookies. People making cookies TODAY. In places where it's snowing and Christmas music is playing. It helps more than a little.

Christmas is over, and my attention has turned from food to knitting. Our little family is headed into the cold later this year, and I'm itching to finger some wool. Here we have only cheap acrylic and low grade cotton, so while I'm making the best of it, I'm getting a nightly fix of knitting WIP's (works in progress) and FO's (finished objects) by the thousands.

I even posted my low-grade cotton WIP to a knitting pool, and I GOT A COMMENT TODAY! Way cool. I'm not alone. Someone's actually looking! (891 someones as of this evening, actually.)

And, with my new camera in hand, I have given myself a project for 2007. Project 365. A photo a day for a year. A slide show glimpse of my year. A photo diary. Turns out it's not an original idea and a whole bunch of people who are doing the same thing are looking at my photos. Validation.

So, while I watch the odometer spin on my little photo page, I hope you'll take a look a Flickr too. No matter what you're interested in, there are thousands of people taking pictures of it and uploading every day.

The Queen Had a Dream

Don't ask me how we know it, but we do. The Queen had a dream. (Amnat surmises that the court astrologer got word out to his friends.)

In the dream her son (her only son) the Prince, first in line for the throne, came to some harm. The court astrologer advised her to boil nine eggs (or, in her case, have someone boil them for her) and give them to her neighbors. Why, you ask? (Silly you.) FOR GOOD LUCK AND PROTECTION. (You might wonder, "Does the Queen HAVE neighbors?" Don't get bogged down in details.)

The Queen's dreams represent the fate of the Thai people as well as her own kin. Having averted disaster with her egg boiling, all of us who have only one son are doing the same. Amnat's mother boiled hers and called Amnat to have him boil his. Thinking Amnat might not do it quickly enough (smart mother), she also called Nok and told her to do it for us.

So, one morning last week (before the camera was out of bed), Nok boiled nine eggs and gave one to our landlady and eight to the man who salvages salvagables on our street. (Feet visible here).


I can feel the Good Luck and Protection already.

Trouble

This blog is generally light-hearted and (on a good day) amusing, but we ran into some serious trouble yesterday, and stopping to take this (mediocre) photo may well have kept Jimmy and me from being right in the middle of it.


Saturdays we often head out for breakfast (who am I kidding, we eat out every meal). Yesterday Amnat came home from our favorite breakfast place on Ratvithi Road ahead of Jimmy and me. He had a massage to give, and we had a favorite coffee shop to visit. Over coffee, Jimmy grew a little anxious to get home and nap, so we poured my big latte into a to-go cup and headed for the sidewalk sooner than I might have hoped. The birdcage across the way caught my eye, so we headed for it. Coordinating camera, latte, and carriage, I got my shot. The whole process, about one minute.


In the next block, we were approaching the noodle shop, a place I've been meaning to tell you about (just waiting to get a better photo), and this is exactly what I saw.

Men yelling and confusion. A man ran out of the noodle shop in front of me. His left hand was wrapped in a tan jacket. He ran into the street and yelled at a passing red truck taxi to stop. He got the people out and jumped in. Another man ran up to the truck taxi, stopped it again, and jumped in. Then a lot of men on the sidewalk. Walkie-talkies and head sets. They moved up the street ahead of me. We walked ahead a bit. There was blood on the sidewalk. Not a lot. We stopped in front of the mango stand. I couldn't understand anything anyone was saying and didn't know what to do. I just wanted to get off the street, but there was no place to go.


From the mango stand, I could see men gathered around a point on the sidewalk ahead of us. The ambulance came (and believe me, you never want to find yourself in one of these). I saw the face of one of the (very young) ambulance drivers as he shifted weight into the back of it, and it sped off. By this point, you didn't need to speak Thai to know that someone had been shot. The mango seller's wife was standing next to me. I asked her in Thai, "What's happening." I didn't understand the answer, but she made the universal sign for shooting gun.

People were all around and seemed unaware that something was happening. Students were coming and going from the school across the street. Traffic kept moving. I even remember that people were still eating their noodles while the guy was jumping into the truck taxi.

I hurried to the opposite side and past the spot where the ambulance stopped. There was more than blood on the sidwalk, and I could see that these were cops in street clothes. Lots of them. Emotionless. I got about a half block between it and us and started to cry. I thought about that birdcage and where I and my seven-month-old baby would have been if I hadn't stopped for it.

We've been back down Ratvithi Road since yesterday and the mango seller told Amnat what he knew. Two men were walking to the noodle shop from the university at a nearby temple, where they were taking classes. A man came out of the construction site as they walked past, shot one of them in the back and twice in the head, then jumped into a waiting red car. The second man (a cop) was shot in the hand. He ran to the noodle shop for help then commandeered the truck taxi to chase the red car. The man who was shot died on the sidewalk in a place we walk (and take photos) every day. He died under this ridiculous sign.


This morning we were awakened at 7:15 by loudspeaker music coming from the parking lot of the city offices (and ambulance station) across the street. After a round of Thai pop music (which I cannot explain), monks began chanting. It was a merit making ceremony for the man who died. Feeling some connection to this person whom I never saw, I went over to the edge of the parking lot. I don't know why, but the ambulance guys have a big Chinese shrine, and it was the center of this ceremony. The ancestor papers had just been burned in the red bin and prayers were being offered. As I left, I noticed people coming up the sidewalk, each little family group carrying an envelope. One hundred baht (about $2.50) to be offered to the family to help pay for the lunch, the tent rental, and the loud speaker rental. All traditionally Thai.


Apart from the horror of what happened, something in the reactions of people to it troubles me immensely. The first person I saw when I got home was Nok. I told her what happened. I got teary and felt shakey. She laughed. The second person I told was Amnat. After listening to my laborious explanation, he said, "Did Jimmy have lunch yet?" I told our friend Jo that afternoon. He had heard about it already. When he heard how close we were to it, he laughed. When the mango seller told Amnat that he grabbed his wife and ducked behind the bins of fruit when he heard gunfire, he laughed. The two old guys who were gossiping about it with him laughed when Amnat told them Jimmy and I were there too. There weren't even any tears at the funeral ceremony. I have seen this before. Thai people, if they react (publicly) at all to something highly charged with emotion, laugh. They place tremendous value on keeping "jai yen" or a cool heart. Sometimes I wish they'd just show what they feel, instead of bottling it up until in explodes.

Minor Vice

You know you're a regular when you order your daily latte, and it comes to the table looking like this.

Water Room Protocol

In Thai, the word for "bathroom" is "hong naam" or "water room." If you've ever been in Asia (or any other plumbing-challenged area), you'll quickly see the meaning behind the words. It is, in fact, a water room. It's mostly wet most of the time, because you mostly throw water all around when you go in.


Our hong naam looks like this (exactly like this, in fact). Shower shoes keep your feet kind of dry and about a quarter inch above the wetness. The pot and dipper are perhaps self-explanatory. Throw water in the squat toilet and all over the room to flush and tidy up. Thai people often come out looking a little damp. Westerners often come out looking a little confused. Generally, in Thailand you'll find no toilet paper or hand towels either. I haven't yet met a Westerner who could get a straight answer out of their Thai friends on the actual water room protocol, so we'll just leave it as the great unanswered question.

Showering happens in here too, and after a shower its REALLY wet. We, being city people, have a wall-mounted shower hose and even a water heater for the upstairs hose (the only hot water in the house). Our country cousins just dip water out of the clay pot and pour it over their head. Actually, several of our neighbors still do this, because at night I can hear the splashing dippers around us. And, Amnat perfers a cold dipper rinse after his hot shower. You can take the boy out of the country...

So, when we Westerners meet with an actual sit-down, flush toilet, we are so happy. No wet feet. No teetering on the rim. But, if a Thai person has been there ahead of you, you may find footprints on the seat. Sigh.

My favorite coffee shop, Tiida Coffee, has a real flusher with the following explanatory sign.


Meaning, "Please press the flush until done," or something to that effect. And given the fragile sewer infrastructure here, one additional bit of direction is needed;


Or, "Don't put anything into the flush."

P.S. I felt the need to explain to Tiida why I was taking pictures in her bathroom, and I made her promise never to change the signs. Our coffee-drinking massage students have been getting a giggle out of it, and having a giggle is so very Thai.

Nap Shot

Apologies loyal reader(s). Did I ever mention that I do all this blogging at night after Little lays down and before I fall into bed myself? It's amazing I can run a sentence together. I've been learning from reading other's blogs, some of which are remarkable, and I've been slow to post.

Enjoy this recent "nap shot" while I mull over my next move.

National Head Cold Week

In Thailand, the week after New Year may as well be designated "National Head Cold Week." Effectively, every man, woman, child (and massage student) gets hit. We've all taken our turn, despite habitual hand washing and (hopelessly ineffective) attempts to keep perfect strangers and passersby from reaching for Little's hands.

My Thai family are convinced that dew falling on your head is the cause of all this trouble. I've tried to explain that there is no dew here, but I'm making no headway.

I was feeling quite robust having been skipped over by the National Head Cold, when I made a tactical error at dinner on Thursday. I ordered a squeeze of fresh lime for my soda water. It came to the table looking lovely, and then the cook turned away and sneezed into her hands. (Dew, my ass.)


So, while we spent last week wandering around feeling pretty much like this..., we did find an up side to the whole thing. An opportunity to increase our Thai vocabulary!

Did you know that in Thai "runny nose" is "naam mook" or "nose water"? And, what we might colloquially call "boogies" our Thai friends call "kee mook" or "nose poop." In this same vein, my mother's "sleep seeds" are "kee taa" or "eye poop," and ear wax is (you begin to see the pattern) "kee whoo" or "ear poop."

Well, having significantly elevated the level of conversation in our household of late, I'll leave you with one additional thought. In Thai, the word for "stinky" is "men." (no comment)

Cute Suit

Alright, already. Enough of the holidays. And to think, I used to come here every year to get away from it.


Just in case you didn't get your RDA of cute today, I offer you this sweet little morsel. As you might have guessed, this is the work of a grandmother. It's cool enough at night that he'll get a good three weeks out of this, before we fold it neatly and keep it forever (Mum is sentimental).

New Year's List

As another New Year has dawned (where I am anyway, you are still watching the countdown), it has me looking around and noticing things I'm particularly thankful for, big and small. So, in no particular order, here's my New Year's list;


1. (Well, this is locked in at a permanent #1) I am richly blessed that Amnat and I were able to bring Jimmy into the world, where he is a little ray of (drooly) sunshine.

2. I'm thankful that for two years I have lived in a place where I don't have a mobile phone, an answering machine, a date book, any use for credit cards, a car, a washer and dryer, a stove, a coffee maker... you get the idea.

3. I'm appreciative that living without all of these things has slowed my life down a bit (well, the stroller is a factor, too).

4. I'm deeply grateful to my sister-in-law Nok for taking such good care of our little family. Without her, all of this just wouldn't be possible.

5. I'm thankful that my father's ex-wife has dropped me from her Christmas cookie list, and I don't have to throw out three pounds of cat-hair-laced cookies at this festive time of year.

6. I'm grateful that I am surrounded by people who actually think I'm beautiful and tell me so often, just because I'm pale and have straight brown hair.

7. I'm thankful that my brother Pete, with the help of his remarkable wife Diana, has made it through another year with a grace and good humor that are truly humbling.

8. I'm downright giddy that having a baby turned out to be a wicked easy way to lose weight (who knew? 15 lbs less than when I moved here! sorry, bragging).

9. I'm eternally grateful to my dear friends Liz and Rick for helping Amnat get the visa (otherwise known as the "Get-Outta-Jail-Free Card") that will get us all back home this year.

10. And, last but not at all least, I am grateful to my husband Amnat for having the guts to marry me, not because he always understands what I'm saying, but because he understands my heart.