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| Prae arrives ... and has to leave - Feb. 2, 2006 | | Date Created: Feb 02, 2006, 12:06 PM |
I'm wrestling with bringing the concept of a written and graphic design style to all of AIT's publications. With people who learned English in 50 different countries, most of our published documents have a flair of spelling and capitalization that read like journals in pre-Johnsonian England. And there is absolutely no continuity to the graphic design of anything published here. It's a great mess. And the biggest problem is going to be getting people to understand the importance of style. Fortunately, there are a number of people in high positions who understand the concept and are willing to sit on a committee that I'm told I will chair. I've told them I don't want to be the style czar (or tsar, if you prefer), and that I want some others to help share the blame when I start laying down the law. It's an immense undertaking.
Tonight I'm pretty glum. Prae had to leave for her hometown suddenly. Her father, who has been in treatment for prostate cancer -- and recently I find for bone cancer -- has taken a turn for the worse. Her parents were supposed to come to Bangkok this weekend for a doctor's appointment on Monday. When I went to work this morning, it sounded as if that trip was iffy, but it sounded as if it would just be postponed by a day or so. When I got back from work tonight, Prae was packed and waiting for a taxi to take her to the bus station. She unfortunately could not get a flight, as there are only a couple each day to Ubon. But she will meet her sister at the bus station to make the nightlong trip home. It looks as if she will be gone 10 days or more.
I feel pretty terrible because I can't do anything for her. I still don't know enough about Buddhism to understand fully their thoughts on death, and they really are quite different from our views. I've even read that you're not supposed to say you are sorry when someone has died, because that would actually be almost an insult -- as I understand it, to leave this life is a privilege, and as someone close to someone who has died, you are supposed to be happy for that person's spirit. I think it makes a lot of sense personally. However, Prae grew up going to Catholic schools and I think she has a more Western view. On the other hand, she says she has never been terribly close to her father. He seems to be the stereotype of a Chinese-Thai man who ran the business and didn't pay much attention to the kids -- particularly the girls. It's a little tough to say, though, because anything I know of Prae and her family life I've had to drag out of her -- not because she doesn't want to tell me but, highlighting our cultural differences, she seems just to expect me to know how it was.
In any case, she was not acting like a proper Buddhist before she left, and I felt terrible that I couldn't do much more than to hug her and wipe away her tears. I offered to go there this weekend, even though I knew what she would say and that it would not only be uncomfortable for everyone involved but inappropriate as well. It occurred to me as well that even if I could find out exactly what one is supposed to do in such situations -- i.e. send flowers or make a donation to the temple -- I don't even know her father's name or address or temple.
So, I'm left here to just wait for her calls if she needs me. I guess too I have this nagging fear that there's some page I missed in the manual for an American dating a Thai girl that says when the father dies, the youngest daughter is supposed to throw herself on the funeral pyre (actually, they use crematoria now) -- or that she's supposed to remain home and take care of her mother until she too passes away.
In other news, the job is proving in many ways monumentally frustrating at times because of the bureaucracy and meetings. It's funny, though, because people seem to keep looking to me to shake things up a bit. The people in charge know it's needed. Most of the others do too, but everyone seems reluctant to do much about it. I have a feeling this job will work out one of three ways: I will be fantastically successful; I will be an even more fantastic failure; or I will be so frustrated that I simply give up. I'm hoping it's the first, of course, but in some respects I'm taking steps that could lead to the second while in pursuit of the first.
Tomorrow I have my first meeting of the committee appointed by the president for the Web site. It's a committee I chair, and I spent the afternoon in meetings with the technical people, so I know I can go in with their support and with an understanding of the technical side of the challenges that lay ahead in the rebuilding of what is essentially a lousy Web site. I have already warned my bosses that I think the first effects of my taking over will be a nose-dive in the quality. With the staffing situation as it is and with the resources I've been given to improve this monster, it seems to me it's only going to get a lot worse before it eventually gets markedly better. This is all because we'll be doing a redesign and switching to new software, and during the learning curve that comes with the new software, things are going to get messy. The tech guy assures me this will be only a temporary phenomenon, and after discussing it with him, I believe it will lead to the best long-term solution. But that's demanding a lot of faith of those who hired me. I'm confident it will all work out, and I'm pretty confident that the top people will go for it, but then it depends on getting those in the trenches to go along with me. |
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