The People in my Life:

Okay- while I tend to think of this blog as a direct link between my brain and my intimate friends it has recently occurred to me that it is indeed on the internet and therefore accessible to anyone so maybe I should change people's names, especially when they don't know I"m writing about them. Particularly because it would suck to google yoursef (you know you all do it) and find that the first hit was my wise-ass commentary about you. P.S. google me- it's funny. So anyway, here are people with altered names.

Dr. Smiley:

This is the oldest, smallest, smiliest man you can imagine. He conducted my orientation and started with a slide with a picture of two lock boxes going at it doggy style which said “Safe Sex” (Mom-ask Matty what it means, DO NOT look it up on the Internet, Dad- please do not forward this email to elderly Frye’s) Any time he’s in a room that is air conditioned he puts on this phenomenal acid-wash cargo vest that goes down to his knees.

Pee Boss:

My day to day life manager who has set up everything for me. She talks a mile a minute and is genuinely concerned for my instantaneous comfort. She is 42 and looks 30 and acts somewhere in her late 20’s. She keeps me posted on the office gossip and tries to explain to me how things work…

Ken

Yoga instructor. It is quite fitting that he shares a name with a Street Fighter character. We have had three interactions, they went like this:

1) He brought me yoga pants for the second class bc apparently my outfit was THAT BAD the first time

2) He talks throughout the session and I only recognize one thing which I interpret to mean “okay, now do this!” However, recently he has started to say “okay” at the end of some moves and then nod his head furiously at me. Even more recently he occasionally says “oh yeah!” except because Thai is tonal sometimes Thai people have the habit of giving tones to English words and when he does this is just sounds so creepy. Try it, say “oh yeah” out loud with different tones for different parts of the word, you just can’t escape the creep.

3) Today after class he came up to me, swiveled his hips and said “I am a man of men!” Yes, that’s right, on interaction three he randomly did a little dance and came out to me. I got confirmation from Pee Boss just in case it was a cross cultural mix up.

Ken’s wife

Yeah, Ken’s married. She is our aerobics instructor (side note, got so excited when they said that twice a week there are Arabic dancing lessons at work…except I showed up and it is aerobic dancing… think Jazzercise). She is really sweet and sometimes she and Pee Boss imitate her husband’s effeminate mannerisms. I’m really confused here, if someone knows a good article or book on Thai gender dynamics, hook a woman up. Pee Boss tried to lay it out for me and explained that sometimes attractive unavailable Thai men act like women to protect themselves from sex with other women. Shnu?

To me this sounds like something that women married to gay men tell themselves but I am clearly in no position to interpret any behaviors.

Cleaning Lady

My apartment has a cleaning lady who changes my sheets every Saturday. She cannot comprehend that I don’t understand Thai. When I say “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Thai” to her, she talks at me louder. She doesn’t try to mime anything, she just shouts at louder volume over and over. Eventually I just say “okay” which she seems to understand. This must end.

Pee Caretaker

He is the caretaker at work and must think that I will melt into a pool on the ground if he doesn’t get me cold water every 30 minutes and check my air conditioning every hour. Sometimes he moves me into different offices which he thinks are cooler. I washed my own glass the other day and I thought he might die. We operate on a one to one English word to Thai word exchange every day. Today he learned ‘lunch’ and I learned ‘air conditioning’.

Teacher

My Thai teacher is so happy all the time I feel like he’s going to float out of his shoes. He shows me pictures of Meg Ryan every time we talk in the third person. “Meg Ryan is beautiful right?” “Yes, she is beautiful” “Where does Meg Ryan live?” “She lives in the United States”. He often wears this blindingly yellow shirt that has long tulips growing up from the bottom and bunny rabbits sitting above them. I don’t pretend to understand. After my official lesson his brother teaches me words in Thai to flatter taxi drivers so they give me lower prices.

KL pix

Again I warn you that I am terrible at taking pictures. Here are the three I took in KL:



















Pretty awesome tree huh?














See I dig this sign because to me it says "You can't smoke, you can't bring pets, you can't litter, but please feel free to fall off the edge of the platform"




















Just me and some big towers

The Declaration of Laura Frye

I always wanted my name attached to one of those inane math principles that states “when you multiply one by anything it stays the same” or “Adding zero doesn’t change the number” but those are all taken and I think I have come across a much more meaningful rule to tack my name onto.

The Declaration of Laura Frye

Henceforth all cities and countries shall be referred to by the whole world by the names used by their inhabitants.

It really doesn’t make sense for there to be different names for the same place, it hinders communication, makes buying tickets difficult, and is wholly unnecessary. Now sometimes I realize that the names are direct translations. We go from ‘United States’ to ‘Les Etats-Unis’ and ‘Los Etados Unidos’ which is a lesser crime, but it is particularly problematic when the names are nothing alike. Who decided to call ‘Grung-tep’ ‘Bangkok’? How did people get from ‘Misr’ to ‘Egypt’? Now these are rhetorical questions because I’m sure there is a fascinating historical linguistic reason, but that aside-- it’s dumb. It confuses everything. And as to which name should be universal, it seems only fair that the people who live there should get priority. This means ‘Nippon’ wins out over ‘Japan’. ‘Firenze’ beats ‘Florence’. ‘Deutschland’ topples ‘Germany’ (poor Deutschland, could Deutschland, Allemagne, and Germany sound more different?) The list is endless. It just seems rather arrogant to make up your own name for someone else’s country. If there’s one thing that should be universal it should be names of places. I’m sorry but people are just going to have to learn how to pronounce Al-Jeza’ir and Mexico (said properly). It is a basic courtesy and perhaps a small step toward increasing language skills. Here’s my contribution to navigation and communication: The Declaration of Laura Frye.

Whatta Day

Whatta day

It’s Buddhist lent (which to my understanding has something to do with not trampling rice paddies) so I didn’t have to go to work. Had I known about this four day weekend in advance, I could have planned a fabulous trip somewhere but I discovered this holiday when on Friday a coworker said in passing, “so, what are you doing for the holiday?” to which I answered with a blank stare.

So anyway, I’m free as a bird except for my Thai lessons so I woke up early enough to go on a jog without pollution asphyxiating me, the sun roasting me, and too many people staring since people here really don’t jog. Everything was going so smoothly! I took a cab to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch (a girl can only eat so much pork) and then walked to a temple to check out their ‘monk chat’ where you get to chill with monks and speak in English for a few hours. I decided not to take a cab home since I had no pressing appointments and wasn’t too familiar with the neighborhood I was in so it was ripe for wandering. People were especially nice to me when I walked by, saying hello without trying to get me to buy anything. I figured perhaps this part of town sees fewer foreigners.

At some point on this walk I looked down and to my horror found a major wardrobe malfunction. You see, I was wearing a wrap around shirt that I bought the first weekend I was here. It’s one of those shirts that stays closed with a little tie at the hip. This tie was a dainty sea foam green ribbon which while pretty doesn’t exactly make for a secure closure. In fact, it just sort of disintegrated and pulled right out of the shirt leaving me with nothing to keep my shirt closed. I have no idea how long my shirt had been falling off of me but I turned bright red at the prospect of it being undone at the temple! Either way I was about five miles from my house with an open shirt and no way to close it.

I tried to walk while tightly squeezing my elbow to my hip to hold the shirt in place, readjusting as subtly as possible whenever there weren’t any pedestrians nearby. Thankfully I found a mall and ran inside to try to buy a cheapo shirt. With all the crappy discount shops that mushroom out all over Chiang Mai, lucky me I happen across a posh center with clothes that cost more than my monthly rent. I scoured the place and found a weird discount store with clothes in big bins. Please picture me trying to hold my shirt closed, a purse, and to dig through a bin Filene’s Basement style. I pulled out the first couple things that looked wearable and tried them on. To add insult to injury, the only one that fit me was a size XXXL. Super- Asia is so good for body image. I bought it quickly for two dollars and put it on in the bathroom. In my head the whole time I was composing how to explain this situation in Thai if I got stopped because the copious security guards noticed that I entered with one shirt and exited with another and assumed I was shoplifting.

Sidenote: The positive side is that the shirt is light weight which appeals to the psycho in me that is already freaked out that my luggage will be over weight. I’m taking a discount carrier for the first leg of my trip home (read romantic week at the beach) which only allows 15 kilos of luggage. I easily have 15k of books on my nightstand.

I ended up walking the five miles home in sandals which was a really bad idea but I wanted to explore the far side of town and the closer I got to my apartment the more it seemed not worth it to take a cab the rest of the way. Plus I was hoping to come across one of those ladies with sewing machines on the side of the street to fix my shirt but alas, they are only around when you don’t need them. My feet hate me now. I’m wearing socks for the first time since I arrived.

Of course the moment I walked into my Thai class my teacher told me to recount step by step the events of my day...

Not my Specs

My Thai teacher is a 34 year old shy man who really wants to get married and have kids. “Poo Ying Suay” (beautiful ladies) is the topic of a bout 60% of our conversations in class. Yesterday he was telling me about a date he went on but the girls was ‘not his specs’. Like she’s a computer and has specifications. I found this hilarious. In Thai you actually say “Kao mai SPECS pom” literally “she does not have my SPECS”. I love it.

So nosey me asked why she wasn’t his specs and his immediate answer was “too much self-confidence” which made me throw up a little bit in my mouth. (Dude, you’d hate American chicks). Then he went on to explain to me this proverb about how men should be the front legs of an elephant and women should be the back legs that follow, but this woman wanted to be the front legs! Furthermore she was the same age as him which meant that she didn’t have a lot of childbearing years ahead of her which was unacceptable. So his search for Poo Ying Suay continues. Maybe he could put out a newspaper ad “34 year old Thai man seeks woman with right Specs: preference for being back legs with many childbearing years ahead”. Hilarious.

Unsolicited Phone Numbers

You’ll all be happy to know that my power of acquiring unsolicited North African men’s phone numbers has not abated and knows no geographical limits. (I’ve got another one for our pile Alex…) I was standing on the street in Kuala Lampur waiting to meet up with a Johan (can I state that I really don’t understand how meeting up with people worked before cell phones) and he was late or I was in the wrong spot or something but I needed to try to call him. I went to an info kiosk and asked to use the phone which of course they wouldn’t let me and Salim comes up all distressed and says “do you speak French?” which the kiosk woman didn’t but I did so I translated for him so that he could get directions back to his hotel. Then the Mediterranean man in him entered:

Salim: “now you have done me a service, allow me to do you a service- may I buy you a drink?”
Laura: “no thank you”
Salim: “coffee? Beer? Tea ? "
Laura: "It’s really not necessary"
Salim: " Ah but it is necessary ! There must be something I can do for you "
Laura’s brain : " yeah, go away!"
Laura’s voice: “Fine, can I use your cell phone?”
Salim: “I don’t have one, but there’s a mall! I’ll buy you a cell phone!”
Laura : “No no no. Really not necessary”
Salim: “It IS necessary!”
Laura: “I’ll just go back to my hostel and use the phone there”
Salim: “I’ll come with you Miss”
Laura: “oh no. I don’t think so and it’s Mrs. I’m married”
Salim: “to an Arab?”
Laura: “no, to an American”
Laura’s brain: ‘thank God you put your ring on the left hand today’

At some point it became clear that it didn’t really matter what I said, he was going to go wherever I went. He seemed harmless and it gave me an opportunity to practice my French and Arabic. I found myself speaking Arabic but answering “ka” (yes in Thai) instead of “eh” (yes in darija) which must have confused him. He came back to the hostel, watched me call Johan, and walked me back to meet him while in the interim giving me his phone number in Algeria “for when you want to visit me” and his hotel room number. Managed to shake him only when I found Johan. Whole interaction was slightly annoying, highly amusing, and sprinkled with nostalgia for the Morocco days when this happened three times a day.

Weekend in KL

Returned from a marvelous sleepless weekend in KL, the birthplace of one Shaharris H Beh (why is H the best fake middle initial?). I was given an interminable list of things I was supposed to eat and sadly only accomplished checking off about half of them but then again there are only three meals in a day.

Day one consisted of getting myself thoroughly lost in the kind of way that only I can do. I’m so confident that with a map I can walk anywhere but KL got the best of me. Really not the world’s best walking city. Know how in dramatic desert movies the exhausted heroes at the point of collapse realize that they’ve actually been walking in circles? This happened to me, twice. I need GPS implanted into my brain.

Day two consisted of climbing high things. Petronas towers and Menara tower for bird’s eye views of the city, the latter bird being much higher up. The Petronas towers honestly weren’t that cool but what was phenomenal was waiting in line for two hours to get the tickets. Not a hint of sarcasm in Laura-who-has-the-attention-span-of-a-two-year-old’s voice. There were tourists from all over the world cramped into a small space that was supposed to have a ‘snaking queue’ without any of those little barrier things. So this was great because some cultures are very serious about their lines and orderly progression of such things while other cultures really don’t do lines at all. I watched this incredibly clash between and Indian woman who just sort of slipped in the line and a German man whose sense of self was offended by such a maneuver. He told the ticket seller on her and got her sent back to the end of the line from where she simply slid into another part of the line two seconds later. I think steam actually came out of the German guys’ ears. This went on for an hour, he’d get her sent back, she’d sneak back in. It was great. If she budged me I would totally have let her just out of shear awe of her persistence and due to the comical nature of it all. I sort of wanted to say to each of them “it’s a line! Get over it!” but instead chuckled to myself each time the event repeated themselves.

Day three involved grand plans to explore the Lake Gardens. They started with an aborted effort to walk there (didn’t learn my lesson on Day 1) and a phenomenal taxi ride to actually get there. I got in the taxi with this insanely old Hadj who gave me a long lecture on how Malaysia used to be and how it’s changing and what the future will hold. It was fascinating. So much so that when we arrived at the destination, we sat in the cab for another half hour talking (more him talking, me listening). We covered religion, consumerism, polygamy, the education system, and family planning. I forgot how much I love taxi drivers.

Upon arriving at the gardens I got my white pants filthy because frankly I’m not the kind of person who sees a tree swing and says “I better not swing on that because I have to walk through mud to get there and I’m wearing white pants”. Swing was totally worth it and I nearly had a heart attack when I realized I didn’t bring a pen with me so my romantic notions of journal writing in the shade of a tree with the smell of orchids wafting through the air was ruined!

I consoled myself by visiting the butterfly park wherein I got to see beautiful butterflies up close. The catch is they are not really beautiful up close, they look like bugs. Only when they are floating through the sky with shocks of color are they attractive creatures. Maybe Mother Nature was pissed at my sharp judgment of her creatures because it began to downpour. I found shelter under this tiny arch between the lizard cages where I stayed for the hour that it rained. I mostly had staring contests with the lizards and sang songs since the rain drained out my voice so only I could hear. I was actually quite contented. I love thunder storms and the lighting must have been right on top of us. After a full hour the staff of the Butterfly Park decided to send a guy out with umbrellas to rescue all the guests who were stranded under various structures.

My evenings were filled with the delightful company of Shaharris’s friends. Apparently all of Shaharris’s friends are named Johan with varying numbers of final N’s. They are all also wonderful and not just because Johann-two-n’s has my blog address :) If anyone is rolling through KL in August I hear there is a phenomenal play cast with rising stars about the life of the first Prime Minister.

Johann-two-n’s took me to a great dance performance of the traditional dances of different ethnic groups in Malaysia. It made me totally wish I was blessed with grace. The final piece was a modern dance about the balance of freedom and boredom which I don’t pretend to totally understand but there were some neat body movements that were particularly expressive. Fun fact: there are café’s entirely dedicated to board games. This is my kind of place. While I may be lifetime banned from playing spider solitaire, minesweeper, and boggle, there is no rule that I can’t start new obsessions.

Johan-one-n and I had a somewhat tumultuous attempt at meeting up that involved an Algerian man (see other entry) but when we finally connected we had a great time eating delicious food and driving around. Sad fact: apparently a little old man at Honda with a large sheet of paper covered in sketches and formulas did not design my car for me. Instead the company contracted out to massive firms like the one Johan works for to design different pieces of each vehicle. So much less romantic. I have also newly been inspired by him to do a proper tour of Australia for a few months if anyone’s interested.

My weekend ended with a really long wait (since I’m me and get places wicked early) in the low cost carrier terminal of the airport (read: crappy uncomfortable, cold, loud terminal). After a long delay, I flew out and when straight to work to be a zombie all day.