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| Morning - Feb. 8, 2006 | | Date Created: Feb 08, 2006, 12:12 PM |
I came to work early this morning, a few minutes before 7, in hopes I'd be able to catch the president before his crazy schedule began. I am supposed to write a profile of him for the Sunday Bangkok Post, and so far I have not yet been able to pin him down to speak with him about this.
Sunrise comes at very nearly the same time every morning here -- just about 7 a.m. -- and it is even more peaceful on campus than at other hours. The least peaceful hours come between 4 and 8 p.m., when classes and work have ended, and the children of staff, faculty and students are out playing, as are adults in all the sporting venues. My recent mornings have not been altogether peaceful due to a mangey black kitten whose home seems to be in a little alcove outside my kitchen window where the propane tank is stored. This cat seems to have adopted me, despite the fact I have not shown it any affection and will not feed it. Nevertheless is sits under the open jalousie window, meowing constantly and loudly.
Because of the early hour and because I seem to have come down with a head cold and am not feeling the greatest, I decided not to wear a tie today and may have started down a slippery slope to more casual attire. I have been wearing a coat and tie to work every day despite the fact that in general the dress is more casual specifically because Asian culture is so deferential to appearance and uniform. While I know I could get away with hanging a coat and tie in my office for wear when I have a meeting with someone from the outside world, I think it's important to maintain this air of importance when I'm meeting new people each day. People are very meek about taking responsibility here, and they are very subservient to those with titles and in positions in authority. I suppose there is a bit of that in the U.S., but here I just find it a convenient -- if slightly hotter and less comfortable -- way to establish my place in the pecking order without actually having to do anything.
On my way to the office, the grounds crews were out doing their daily sweeping of the hundreds of thousands of poinciana leaves that fall each day. They use handmade brooms to sweep that have spiky bristles so that they appear almost like a fine rake. That is opposed to the soft handmade brooms used for a hard surface or indoors. I noted how much more pleasant it is to hear the sweep of a broom than the awful whine of a gas-powered blower, a sound almost impossible not to wake up to in Florida. The amount of manual labor that goes into things like groundskeeping here is incredible. I watched a guy yesterday watering the dozen or so planters in a courtyard next to the administration building. He was using a hose -- and hoses here are that clear tubing and come without metal attachments on the end. You buy a length of hose and then with a hoseclamp attach a fitting on the spigot end. Typically the other end has no fitting, and they simply use their thumb as a sprayer and a kink in the hose as an on-off valve. So, this guy was out there water each plant. He was there before I went to lunch, squatting beside a bed, there went I returned from lunch, squatting beside another, there after an afternoon meeting, squatting beside yet another bed. Apparently this was his project for the afternoon.
There are sprinkler systems here, and I get a good laugh out of them anytime I see them turned on. Some of the sprinkler heads are the type they used to use on golf courses, where someone goes around with the heads and plugs them into the ground, and it turns on the sprinkler. Of the automatic sprinklers, I haven't yet seen two of the heads alike or fully functional. The weather here is similar to Florida in that this time of year is very dry. I have not yet seen a drop of rain since I've been here. So things do need water, and with these half-functioning, dribbling sprinkler heads, there will be a sort of crescent of green where the water hits. That crescent intensifies in color the closer to the head, as they inevitably leak -- as do the water towers, incidentally.
A week or two ago, a memo had gone out about maintenance to the water system, and they said they were going to fill both water towers to ensure people had water all weekend long while the work took place. As I walked home past one water tower, it sounded like I was walking past a waterfall; it was leaking like a seive.
I guess my biggest complaint about living here -- except a general lack of napkins when dining -- would be that most things are very chintzy. From staplers, to notepads to table lamps and furniture, everything has a nice look to it when new, but upon closer inspection you realize it is about to fall apart. I first learned of this last year when a water supply hose to a toilet in Sea Dream broke. It looked like one of those braided stainless steel hoses you buy at Home Depot for about $5. This thing, though, broke not in the hose or where the hose met the fittings on the end -- the actual nut cracked in half. Although it appeared to be identical to one of our water supply hoses in the U.S., which have chrome-plated brass nuts, this thing was chrome-plated pot metal, and it just crubled in my hand. Of course, it did cost only 50 cents or so. Almost everything is like that, though. And there's no quality control.
I bought a bedside lamp a couple of weeks ago, and Prae asked if I'd get another, so I went back to the same place I where I bought the first one, and they had the same lamp, but the shades were all a slightly different color. So I went to another place where I'd seen the same lamp but for about $3 more. They had what looked to be the same color shade, and so I bought that one. I got in back, and of course it's slightly different. It's amazing to me that something mass-produced that way could have so much variation in it.
Well, that was a long aside.
I arrived at the office about 7, and the cleaning lady was here to greet me with a smiling "Sawadee khaa." I get the feeling she likes me, because I say hello to her. I'm told that this is a distinctly American tendency, to say hello to the cleaning ladies and groundskeepers -- when I say hello to campus security riding around on their bikes or directing traffic, they always give me a smart salute. The common practice is to treat them as if they do not exist, but we Americans do not make the distinction between colors of collar, and I have noticed the cleaning lady's smile is particularly broad when she has the ocassion now to say hello first. I also cannot imagine where she lives or what her work hours are, because I don't think I have ever been in the building when she didn't pop out of somewhere to say hello.
I meandered over to the president's office, where, sure enough, his secretary did not receive my e-mail confirming my appointment, and he would not be able to meet with me. This conversation took place with a lot of smiles, and although it was not incompetence on her part and a simple snafu that created the situation, it reminded me of a scene in a novel I just read called Bangkok 8. A thai police detective was working with an FBI agent on a case, and they were dealing with an incompetent bureaucrat. The detective was smiling all the time, as was the bureaucrat. The FBI agent asked how he could stay smiling, and the detective said that you basically have two choices: You can have a friendly, smiling conversation with someone you know to be incompetent and who is not going to help you out, or you can get nasty. Either way, you're not going to get what you want, so why make an enemy?
I think that's a pretty good philosophy to have with regard to any service industry worker in the state of Florida. |
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