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...