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| Inroductions - Feb. 11, 2006 | | Date Created: Feb 11, 2006, 12:26 PM |
Prae arrived back here on Thursday afternoon, which was very nice, as she's had time to be here only two days since I've started work. Her father's condition improved substantially, but since his cancer has metastasized to his bones, it's a foregone conclusion, and it seems to be simply a matter of when at this point.
I had spent Thursday afternoon at the offices of two Thai newspapers, and during the drive there, Natnipha taught me how to say, "Nice to meet you," or the equivalent in Thai. I sat in the back seat, repeating it over and over again, also practicing my wai. When we arrived at the first paper, "Mattichon," there was a person in a shark costume visiting the newsroom. On the way in the building, we had passed a line of pretty Thai girls dressed in traditional dance costumes who seemed to be there also to attract publicity. Apparently the PR machines over here tend toward stunts in order to get editors' attentions. If you've never seen a shark wai-ing in a newsroom when you are dressed only in a business suit, then you have never fully experienced deflation. I made a not that AIT needs a mascot, and next time to bring it along.
We then went to the next newspaper, whose name I still do not know, because it was in Thai. Even the restrooms there were labeled in Thai, without even a silhouette to guide me. I stood there pondering it a moment, and fortunately a man brushed by me and into one door, so I followed him and crossed my fingers. At this newspaper we passed three people delivering gift baskets with their press releases, and I felt as if the few brochures and AIT pen dropped into a canvas bag embroidered with the AIT seal was no competition. The editor seemed quite happy to meet me, however, and I think my attempt at a wai and introductions in Thai proved to be as entertaining as if I'd appeared in a shark costume.
The embroidered bag by which we are giving press materials to editors has a somewhat interesting background. Natnipha and I were in the bookstore a week or two ago, taking a look at AIT items that we might give as tokens to editors we were going to meet. They had these fairly nice canvas bags embroidered with the AIT seal on one side and a thing that looked like it was sewn on to display a business card on the reverse. It was far too small to insert a business card, however, and to me it seemed rather pointless. I said sort of off-handedly to Natnipha that it was too bad they didn't make it large enough to hold a business card. Well, one of the three salesgirls in the bookstore spoke much better English than the store's stock of English dictionaries would indicate (they have none), and she must have overheard me. When we went in to purchase half a dozen bags the next week, all of them were remade, complete with a clear pocket big enough to slip a business card!
So, back to Thursday night. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my late days because I have Thai class from 5 to 6:30. I also had a cold and had had 7:30 a.m. meetings the past two days. So I was very tired when I came back to the room and see Prae. She'd come down with the same cold that was going around, so we decided to go for an early dinner to the Thai place across campus. We were walking there when her cell phone rang, and it was her brother, who had also come to Bangkok that day. He needed Prae's key to their sister's apartment and wanted to meet us at the nearby mall, Future Park. This was the last thing I wanted. After all, I haven't met any of her family, except her sister, who speaks fluent English, and I'm told is very skeptical of me. To meet one of her five brothers, who she tells me do not speak English and who are also very skeptical of me, just sounded awful -- this wasn't supposed to happen until I could say much more in Thai than "The boy is under the table." But we changed course and got a taxi to take us to Future Park, and on the way, Prae told me that her brother would be with his mother-in-law, and oh, she almost forgot, his mother-in-law happens to be the mother of her ex-boyfriend.
Oh, man, this was sounding better and better! I put on a pretty good show about being enthused to meet more of her family, while at the same time stiffening, preparing for the worst. Well, we made it to Future Park, and I met her brother, butchering his three-letter name as much as it is possible to butcher three letters -- and the amount is rather great, considering the variations in tone and pitch and length of vowel sounds. I met the mother-in-law, who spoke English of such a quality that she seemed fit for central casting in a movie about 'Nam. Curiously, she started asking me whether I liked duck and telling me it was "Number 1!" She did not, however, call me Joe. And I agreed that duck prepared properly could, indeed, be Number 1.
No sooner had we met them did another brother of Prae's appear. This was the successful brother who's a structural engineer and runs a construction company; he's always trying to get Prae to return to her hometown to run one of his apartment buildings. This was getting better all the time. We went to a restaurant called MK, which is a chain that is sort of the equivalent of a Thai fondue place. Each table has its own burner, and they put this pot of boiling broth on it, and you order stuff to throw into the pot to cook a soup of your choosing. Like sister, like brothers, we ordered almost everything on the menu and threw it into the pot. There was squid of at least three varieties, pork, tofu, and a bunch of other stuff that I just couldn't identify. And we ordered roast duck breast for an appetizer. (The duck, incidentally, was Number 1!)
So there I sat in this booth next to Prae, with two of her brothers and a mother of a former boyfriend all staring at me. Prae had told me that her brother could be quite enthusiastic drinkers, given the proper occasion, and they ordered Singha beers, which is a common Thai brand that has the effect on me of ensuring I have a massive hangover if I have only one sip the night before -- it's probably the only beer in the world I simply cannot drink, and, of course, they ordered three glasses. I think they were a bit put-out at first when I mentioned my cold as an excuse not to drink. But I think it was when I looked at the menu and ordered something that seemed like it would be healthy -- a watermelon shake -- and it came, girly pink, in this curvy glass with a straw and spoon, that they really formed a first impression of me. I had a big hole to dig myself out of.
It all actually turned out not to be nearly as bad as I'd braced myself for. Between the two of them, her brothers were close to a conversational level of English, as long as I let them control the subject matter and did not come up with any ideas of my own. By the end of dinner, her brothers and I were outside smoking a cigarette together, talking guns, and as I had just finished my Thai class that happened to deal with numbers, I could even say the calibers in Thai. We have plans to go shooting if I ever get to her hometown, and the older, sterner brother told me that he liked me by the end of the whole ordeal. I am going to practice my Thai more nonetheless, so that the second impression stands a chance of being better than the first. At least no umbrella came with my pink drink.
Regarding my Thai, I do not feel it is coming along very well, but I was very surprised last night when Prae told me, unprompted, that she thinks I am getting very good at it and that my pronunciation is getting much better. That is really the first genuine encouragement she has ever given me, and I don't think she realized it had the flattering effect on me that it did. She did say one thing a few weeks ago that I thought was funny: She wondered if I might not someday return to the U.S. speaking English with a Thai accent. I told her the chances of that were velly srim. |
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