Eatin' Chicken Feet

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

I still can't get over the fact that one of the cheapest things I can do here is scarf on a bag of watermelon cut into bite-sized cubes. I eat a bowl of fruit twice a day and I have probably never been healthier. Or more regular.

That said, there are times when my most adventurous palate is tested. Usually when you go to a vendor, anything you point at and otherwise gesticulate towards in an attempt to communicate that you'd like to eat it will be varying degrees of delicious. However, you may occasionally have to tolerate the existence of cubes of cooked chicken blood in your curry. Or even an almost whole chicken foot (the worst point of this being that you must wonder where the end of that one toe went to). And you can't complain, because the chicken foot is supposed to be there. There are probably customers who would complain if there was no chicken foot.

Things on the job front are looking up a bit and I'm getting pretty busy. My job suits me fairly well. It requires me to jaunt around Bangkok all day teaching mainly Japanese students. I swoop in, teach whatever needs to be taught for an hour or so, and depart leaving a pair of smoking slippers in the doorway. Then it's across town or down the road a piece to the next lesson via taxi, bus, train, boat or shoe, the latter mode being my favorite despite the pollution I inevitable inhale. I'm pretty wiped out by the end of the day, but as far as indentured servitude goes, it's a good balance of mental and physical exertion.

A lot of bozos who happen to be born in English speaking countries think they can come to Asia and make a buck or ringhit or baht or yen by teaching. But just because a guy has been speaking it since he was in diapers doesn't mean he can show someone else how to do it. There are some huge differences between Asian languages and English, not the least of which is pronunciation. You can blather on ad infinitum in Japanese and your tongue will never exit your mouth. So try teaching a Japanese guy the difference between 'th' and 's'.

Everybody knows that Asians often have trouble with 'L' and 'R'. Teaching them how to make those noises is greatly complicated by the fact that no matter how many times you say 'light' and 'right', they will hear absolutely no difference. What seems obvious to English speakers holds no meaning at all in Asian tongues.

One of the best parts of my job is the times when I get stumped. After 4 years or so of teaching, I am still challenged on a daily basis by at least one really puzzling question. I can usually figure it out, but there are times when I am forced to admit, "I have no idea why they say that in English." While I am supposed to be a know-it-all, and that's what I'm being paid for, I think it gives a small feeling of relief to a student overwhelmed with the mysteries of this hybrid language to see that it can confuse his teacher at times. And my own understanding of English and language in general is getting pretty profound on a very basic level.

English is an exceedingly bad choice for a global language. I'm no proponent of invented languages like Esperanto. You want to start with a language that a few people are already speaking. And those people should probably have money or computers or something everybody else wants. But a language that is a combination of Greek, Latin, French, German and every race that tried to conquer England at some point in history just makes it difficult for everyone. Actually Thai wouldn't be a bad choice as it has a pretty consistent grammar and I hear it's not too difficult to learn. And there aren't a million different ways to say the same thing. Of course the keyboards on all our computers would look pretty ugly as there are around 70 or 80 symbols in written Thai.

People often wonder how Chinese or Japanese people type in languages that have literally thousands of symbols. It's pretty neat actually. One of my old students was the guy who wrote the software for the Japanese IME (Input Method Editor). Basically you type in the word you want phonetically using the Roman alphabet. When you hit the space bar, a list of all the symbols that have that sound appears. Repeated hits on the space bar moves you down the list to the one you want, and you just start typing the next word to select it. It works pretty fast and the more common readings are at the top of the list for easy access. Japanese and Chinese don't use spaces in their writing so the space bar is not otherwise needed.

My Japanese isn't great and I can write emails and owner's manuals for DVD players without too much strain. In fact it saves you from having to write all those little characters. One result of this is that vast numbers of young Japanese are losing the ability to write their own language with pen and paper. I had great fun correcting a student in their Japanese writing just last week.

OK there was not much adventure in the news this week. That's not so much because my life is boring so much as the fact that some of it it Top Secret and I would be putting millions of lives in danger if I revealed too much. Anyway, next week's column ought to be a bit more exciting, as I'm getting paid on Tuesday.

Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.