The Waitress and the Poodle

I don’t like de dog. My frien’, Baed, he bought de dog from his friend.

But I saw de dog de firs’ time, his name “Gatee” (coconut milk). I don’t like it because smell very bad. I don’t like it. He boom, boom, boom, (bark) allatime. He de pooden dog. White hair.

After I spend time with him, two or tree day, yes, I like him because he very samaht. When he hungly, he scratch me on my leg. When I go ou’, he wan’ follow me allatime. I said, “Cannot, I don’ want you go ou’ wit me.”

When I come back, he very happy, he run roun’, he boom, boom, boom, and he jump up and down.

Before, I not wan’ spend money for dog, but I spend money on dog shampoo, soap, flea powder for him. I take a shower for him, one time per day. He lie de water. He stand under de tap while I wash him. He really lie it.

I buy towel for de dog, too.

Before I don’t lie it, every dog I don’ lie. I say is nagiad (ugly).

When I give food for him, I put steam rie and steam dry fit, make all togedder and give for him, but he don’ eat, he don’ lie. He push away.

I say, “Gatee! Why you do lie dat, I don’ lie!”

I give him milk and chip. Anudder time I buy pork and beef an’ I make stirfry with rie and he eat. But not spicy. I make beef soup and he lie dat.

[Note: You can kill your dog by feeding it human food. See YouTube video below.]

Sphere: Related Content

All Thai Ladies Are Prostitutes?

I have a friend who is a waitress at a large open-air restaurant frequented by both Thais and farangs. She is attractive, and has a happy, positive personality. She is frequently asked by farangs (never by Thai males) to go with them to their hotel. However, she is not a prostitute and is offended by these farangs. Unfortunately, it happens almost every day.

In their own country, most men would never go up to a waitress in a restaurant and offer her money to sleep with him. Why do they assume that women here are different?

It seems that many men lose all sense of reality when visiting Thailand.

She told me about one guy who was very persistent, asking her several times a day for a week, and raising the amount of money each time. He started at 500 baht, but was offering 5000 baht by the end of the week. Then he left and went back to his home country. She asked me how to handle this situation.

I told her that a guy like that is most likely a jerk, which was a term she did not understand. So I said he was probably too stupid or unwilling to understand that "no" means "no". He is not able to understand how a poor, uneducated Thai woman could resist his charms.

She laughed, and said, "He old, Doug, nah-gih-ad (ugly). He drink bee-ah alla time, alla time. He smoke cigalette. Me no like."

I said, if it happens again, tell the farang that you have a husband and two children. That brings other people into the equation, which should give him pause. If it doesn't, then you can say, "Please don't bother me, I am not a prostitute and am not interested". She wrote down these phrases in Thai phonetics.

Then if he still insists, you can say, "Hit the road, Jack!"

She did not understand that expression, either, so that night I got on the Internet, found the lyrics to the song and printed them out. I also downloaded an MP3 from a file sharing site.

Next day, I showed her the lyrics and played the song on an MP3 player, but first I explained that the song was about a big black woman throwing out this black guy from her life because he was no good. She loved the concept and when she heard the music, which was Ray Charles singing, she loved the song, too. I helped her follow along with the printed lyrics and she memorized some of the song, mainly the chorus.

A few months after this, her English had vastly improved through her own efforts; she is highly intelligent and a very fast learner. She happened to be somewhere relaxing one day with HBO on the TV and the Ray Charles Story came on. She knew who Ray Charles was because of the song I had taught her. She was fascinated with the movie, followed most of the English dialog with no problem, and sang along when "Hit the Road, Jack" was played. She said the movie made her cry several times, but she loved it and wants to watch it again.

I also told her that, if the guy still asks her to have sex after she tells him to hit the road, she is allowed to say "Just fuck off!" and walk away, but that that is the supreme insult, and she should reserve that until the end.

Shortly after that, yet another annoying farang, this one American, would not leave her alone. She used the phrase, "Hit the road, Jack!" and he stopped in amazement, with his mouth hanging open.

"How do you know that?", he asked.

"I have a good teacher," she responded. Then she said she talked about the movie and how Ray Charles was a mix of good and bad, but that she loved his music. She said the guy stopped asking her to sleep with him, but came back every day just to chat. Her English was very good, she was / is highly intelligent, and he just enjoyed her company without trying to get her into bed.

So she now considers this phrase, "Hit the road, Jack!" to be a potent weapon in her arsenal. Sphere: Related Content

Thai People and Common Sense

Having lived in Thailand for a number of years, I am convinced that Thai people lack the common sense gene. I love them, I love living here, but every farang here has seen many examples of seemingly stupid behaviour, ranging from sidewalks that are broken and barely usable to the recent tragedy at the Santika Club on New Year's Eve.

I live very close to the Nana Entertainment Plaza on Sukhumvit Soi 4, so tonight I walked around before it opened at 7:00 PM. I was checking to see if that complex had any safety features. I didn't expect much and I didn't find much.

If you haven't been there, allow me a moment to describe it. There is a single entrance to a U-shaped complex with bars on 3 levels. The first level is the ground floor; there is no basement. The structure is concrete, although there is lots of wood around. At the entrance, there are bars on opposite sides of the lane, and both are made of wood. I could not see any sprinkler system, fire hose, alarm system, not even a water pail.

I would guess there are about 30-35 bars, ranging from small to huge. All of the bars have decorations of some sort inside, they are not bare concrete. At the Santika, some people died because of the poisonous fumes from the burning decorations.

Wandering around on the two upper levels, and peeking into some of the bars, which had doors open, but were not operating yet (because it was before 7:00 PM), I saw zero evidence of safety features.

No alarms, no fire hoses, no sprinklers, not a single extinguisher in evidence.

And there is only one way out of the complex, and that's through the small lane at the front. There is often a truck parked in that lane, presumably making deliveries, and there are street vendors as well.

There don't appear to be any other entrances/exits to this complex, but I do know that there are metal fire escapes on the outside at the right. I know because I used them once when the police raided the short-time hotel in which I was passing a short time and I had to use that metal platform and climb back through a window into one of the ladyboy bars. Got some funny looks that night, as I came out of the ladyboy dressing room and walked in front of the stage in full view of 20 or so patrons. It's one of the stranger things I have done in my life.

What happened at Santika is tragic. But if a fire ocurred at Nana Plaza, there would likely be 10 times as many deaths because it's much larger, there's no safety equipment or emergency equipment of any kind, and there's only one way out.

I wonder if Bangkok city government (Bangkok Metropolitan Administration) will now clamp down on safety; clearly nothing has been done so far. I suspect most commercial buildings, other than those built by Western companies, are lacking in basic safety features.

I live on a narrow soi, one lane wide. As you probably know, traffic here drives on the left. Except motorcycles, which go wherever they please. I have seen many instances where a car or truck is trying to manoeuver around the tight corners, and a motorcycle comes roaring up and squeezes in between the vehicle and the concrete building at the corner. Common sense would say, stop and wait 30 seconds until there is more clearance, but like I said, that gene is missing.

Walking along the sidewalk near Nana Plaza in the evening is a joke. In too many places, street vendors have blocked the path, leaving a very narrow space. When two Westerners approach from opposite sides, one always gives way; it's the polite thing to do. Whenever I have done this, invariably two or three Thai people who were walking behind me refuse to stop, and squeeze through the extremely narrow opening, which is even narrower because there's a hulking great farang coming at them. No common sense.

Today I was walking along the bike path which runs between the train tracks and a service road. My apartment is within a few meters of the service road. I discovered a while ago that it was better to walk along the bike path because it is asphalt and relatively smooth and marked down the middle with a dotted line, indicating two lanes. If you walk on the right side, bikes and motorcycles drive on the left and there is no conflict. That's right, motorbikes use the bicycle path. This afternoon, however, I was walking along that path, keeping to the right, on my way to Ploenchit Centre. Suddenly there was a loud beep right behind me. I jumped into the ditch at the right, and looked back, and nearly fell over. There were two cars driving along this narrow bike path. No common sense.

A week ago, I was walking along the train track, and was amazed at the condition of the ties. They are very old and rotted. In many places, the spikes that hold the track to the ties are missing; the wood is in such bad condition that the spikes have simply fallen out. In this picture, taken just a few metres from Sukhumvit, the girl has her feet on a tie. Look where that tie meets the rail at the left. There should be a spike there, but there isn't. These ties are in relatively good condition; in other places, they should have been replaced 10 years ago.

There are a dozen trains a day along this track. One wonders how long it will be before a train causes the rails to move apart an extra few centimetres and there is a derailment. Just on the other side of Sukhumvit, many people live within 2 meters of the track. If a derailment occurred there, their houses would be destroyed and many people would die.

When I first came to Thailand in 1988, the traffic was much less and the pollution was ten times worse. One day, I was in a taxi that was driving along Ploenchit at a good clip, maybe 60 km an hour; traffic was light. I was in the back seat. When we got to the intersection with the Erawan Shrine, the driver took both hands off the steering wheel, looked at the Buddha in the shrine and made a wai. This took 20 seconds or so. We're travelling 60 kph straight ahead and he's looking 90 degrees to the left. No common sense.

There's no doubt that living in Thailand is an experience. I just wish the people could learn a little common sense.

Sphere: Related Content

Baby Elephants in Bangkok

I was walking in Sukhumvit Soi 4, sightseeing with my friend. I saw two men with a baby elephant. One of the men was selling sugarcane and cucumber to tourists and Thai people so they could feed his elephant. In Thailand, it is considered good luck to touch an elephant or to have an elephant touch you.

The men do this after the rice farming is finished. They buy the sugarcane and cucumber at the market cheaply, then sell them in small bundles at a marked up price. In this way, he makes a profit. The elephant gets fed, and the people get good luck.

Unfortunately, this is illegal, but the police seem to tolerate it.

Elephants need lots of food and water every day, but Thailand’s forests are rapidly disappearing and most elephants are now captive on farms and at tourist sites, where they give elephant rides and demonstrate how they can pull heavy logs. Sphere: Related Content

Loy Kratong

November 12 is Loy Kratong in Thailand. This festival is always on the night of the full moon of the 12th lunar month. In this festival, which is held all over Thailand, people make or buy small floating rafts, each of which has some flowers and a candle. Usually there are also three joss sticks (incense), and the person adds a small coin.

The candle and incense are lit and the kratong is placed in the water. The person makes a silent prayer for good things to happen. As the kratong floats away, it takes away the person's troubles and other bad things.

The Thai word "loy" means "to float" and "kratong" means "banana-leaf tray". In 2002, the then mayor of Bangkok told everyone to use styrofoam, as it is light, cheap, and easy to spot in the rivers, and thus easy to clean up. However, this caused an uproar from the environmentalists, and today most kratongs are made from banana leaves or from a special, hardened bread, which dissolves.

At the festival that I attended a few years ago, on the bank of the Chao Praya, small boys stood in the water about 2 or 3 meters off shore and gently pushed the kratongs out further into the river, while discreetly stealing any coins on the kratong.

It's a beautiful sight to see all these floating candle-lit kratongs on the river.

Downstream a little from where people were launching their kratongs, a power boat manned by city employees was fishing the kratongs out of the water after the candle had burned out. Presumably this was the environmental clean-up crew.

What disturbed me, though, was all the plastic bags scattered around the launching area. There are vendors on the street selling ready-made kratongs for a few baht; they put the kratong in a small plastic bag. The person carries the bag to the launching area on the river, removes the kratong from the bag, and throws the bag away. Arrrrgh! Bags everywhere. And the strange thing is, there was a large rubbish bin right there. I picked up a few bags myself and put them in the bin, but there were hundreds more.

No common sense.

Sphere: Related Content

Thailand-Related Videos

Videos about Thailand, Thai Culture, Thai Food, Learning Thai, Thailand Tourism, Thailand Ladyboys, Thailand Bar Girls:
http://www.learn-faster.org/Thai/Videos/

Also check out: I'm Live! Asian Adult Video Chat Sphere: Related Content

Real Life Thai Soap Opera

For quite a while now, I have been following with fascination the writings of Bill Yaryan on his blog located at http://wyaryan.blogspot.com/

Starting a year ago, when he arrived in Bangkok in late August 2007, he has been chronicling his life in Thailand, including falling in love with a Thai lady half his age. He has been writing about his feelings and emotions as the relationship had its ups and downs, and now in September 2008, it has ended. The primary problem was "loss of face". His Thai partner, Pim, could not tell her family and friends that she was living with an old farang. At one point, she suggested he marry her mother.

He lived on Sukhumvit Soi 4 for quite a while, and includes a lot of pictures of that area. This makes me homesick for Bangkok, as I spent 2.5 years in that area, living at Amar Garden on Soi 2 and then Nana Condo on Soi 4 while I wrote Speak Easy Thai and got it packaged and finished and into the bookstores.

Bill was in Berkeley, California, in the sixties, and got into the music business and met many famous people, such as Bob Dylan. Berkeley was the centre of the "flower-power revolution"; I was a teen in Toronto, Canada, at the time.

His story of his relationship with Pim, including the letters she wrote to him, makes for fascinating reading. I suspect his relationship is typical of many young Thai woman - old farang man relationships, but I do have two Canadian friends who married educated Thai women close to their own ages; those relationships have lasted many years. Sphere: Related Content

Isaan Blog

Today I discovered another Thailand blog; this one has a lot of good pictures about Surin and other parts of Isaan. It’s at http://isanthailand.blogspot.com/ Sphere: Related Content

New Thai Resources Site

I have been working on a Thai language section for my Learn Faster web site. I have added a lot of articles on Thai culture and Thai food, as well as a short summary of some products available to learn Thai. I will add more stuff soon.

The new site is at www.learn-faster.org/Thai Sphere: Related Content

Some Thai Food Has Six Legs

Many people enjoy Thai food worldwide: spicy soups and salads, flavorful rice dishes are abundant. But in Thailand, fried or roasted insects and scorpions are also popular, readily available, and inexpensive.

Insects have traditionally been a rich source of protein, calories, vitamins, and minerals in the Northern Thailand diet. They are also prized as delicacies. In fact, it is unusual to find an insect which is not eaten in one form or another by local people. Among the most popular are:

• cicadas, locusts, mantises, crickets, and grasshoppers which are all deep fried and are rather crunchy;
• bamboo worms, which are also deep fried;
• giant water bugs, which are steamed; they are also ground into a paste with chili and eaten with sticky rice;
• weaver ants (red ants with a painful bite) and their eggs; sticky rice is dipped into a mixture of ants, eggs, and chili;
• dung beetles; which add a wholesome flavor to curries; however, many people will not eat them because they live in and on excrement.

In addition, Thai people will eat:

• the pupae of silk moths and other moths and butterflies; you must first remove the pupae from their cocoons, then boil them until soft with a pinch of salt, finally sautée them lightly;
• the larvae of wasps and bees; these are deep-fried;

and arachnids:

• poisonous scorpions, which are grilled;
• giant tarantulas, which are also grilled.

I haven't seen other spiders eaten, but I suspect if it moves, it's considered food somewhere.

Also, termites (large white ants) are grilled and their eggs are a delicacy used to make a flavorful soup.

Where I lived in Bangkok, Sukhumvit Soi 4, every night starting around 5:00 PM, there was a street vendor with half a dozen kinds of fried and grilled insects and scorpions; her customers were mainly the bar girls in the area. Every night she was quite busy as the girls consider these insects a tasty snack, and munch on them as frequently as Western people munch on potato chips.

The lady vendor does not speak any English, but will pose with her wares for a photograph if you give her a 20 baht (about 60 cents) tip. And if you’re brave, you could always buy a bag of deep fried bamboo worms…

Sphere: Related Content

Eating insects in Thailand

The BBC has a photo article on eating insects. I lived on Sukhumvit Soi 4; there was a street vendor there every evening selling fried insects. No, I never tried any. (shudder)

BBC article

Here's another interesting article about American entomologists visiting Khon Kaen and eating insects for the first time: Tastes Like Chicken?

And yet another article. This one was published in the New York Times. Sphere: Related Content

Some Thai Girls Aren't Girls

Anyone who has ever visited Thailand will know about the beauty of Thai women. In their twenties, they are striking. In their thirties, they are looking more mature, but still most are very attractive.

The women working in the ubiquitous bars and massage parlors of Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket are mostly former housewives, believe it or not, married but separated, with two kids they left back in their village with their mothers. Most are from Isaan, the North-East corner of Thailand, which has a large amount of poverty. Some are from other parts of the country, especially Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, and a very few are from Bangkok or central Thailand.

But about 1 in 100 is not a female at all, but a "ladyboy", or katoey in Thai. Quite often, they appear more feminine than the real women. I have seen many a farang ogle and lust after a very sexy woman, not realizing that "she" is a "he".

Like the women, most ladyboys are from Isaan. I have talked to a few on a one to one basis, and asked them when they first knew they wanted to be a female. All said they knew at an early age, around 5 or 6 years old. They said they liked the female manner, didn’t like rough sports, were partial to art and music.

Katoeys are an accepted part of Thai culture, considered to be a third sex in Thailand. Several are movie stars and TV announcers. One is a national kick-boxing champion. You will find ladyboys everywhere, working as waiters, store clerks, hairdressers, couriers, etc.

In North America and Europe, a sex-change (also called a gender re-assignment) operation is considered to be a big deal, requiring many months of psychological counseling before the operation to make sure the person is committed to the change.

In Thailand, a sex change operation is quite common. There are several clinics and hospitals which perform it, and the cost is a fraction of what the western charge would be, typically US$5000-7000. Nevertheless, for a poor person from Isaan, $5000 is a huge amount of money.

There are three main areas in Bangkok where ladyboys are present in large numbers: Nana Entertainment Plaza (on Sukhumvit Soi 4), Patpong Road (off Silom), and Soi Cowboy (close to the intersection of Sukhumvit Road and Asoke Road, which has both BTS SkyTrain and MRT Subway stations).

At Nana, the majority of ladyboys are "pre-op", meaning they still have a penis. At Patpong and Soi Cowboy, most are "post-op", meaning they have had the operation to create a vagina. The operation involves cutting out a section of intestine, which will become the vagina. The penis is cut open and inserted into the intestinal tube; typically some of the scrotal sac is used to increase the length of the new vagina. The tip of the penis becomes the new clitoris, and is normally still sensitive after the procedure is finished and everything has healed. The ladyboys I talked to said they could still have an orgasm, but did not ejaculate.

Scar tissue is visible if the post-op ladyboy retains his/her public hair, but if it is shaved off, it is difficult to tell an artificially created vagina from the real thing.

However, this is typically not the end of the story in sex reassignment. The male body is typically larger than the female, even in Thailand, where many people seem to be 80% the size of western people. The ladyboy has to take hormones for a couple of years before the operation; these hormones help him grow breasts and reduce his facial and body hair growth. Thai men don't usually have much body hair, compared to Western men, but they do have some; hormones or another treatment are needed to reduce or eliminate it. However, hormones have a side effect of reducing the ability to ejaculate.

Males typically have a protruding Adam's apple, so that is yet another operation: it can be shaved by a surgeon to reduce or eliminate the protrusion. And many have electrolysis to eliminate body hair, especially in the armpits.

If you visit Nana Entertainment Plaza after 7PM (which is when it opens), you will find several hair-dressing establishments located on the decks that run around three sides of the structure. The ones at the front cater to the bar girls; the ones at the rear cater to ladyboys. You can watch some of the ladyboys preening and preparing their makeup.

Some of the bars are exclusively ladyboys. If you enter one such bar, you will find that most ladyboys are more than passable and some are strikingly beautiful. I don't think I have ever seen an ugly ladyboy.

As far as relationships go, ladyboys are just like Thai women. They want a long-term relationship, and they will try hard to make the relationship work. Many speak some English, but you really need a product like Speak Easy Thai to help you learn some basic Thai vocabulary. If you can communicate better, you have a much better chance of a lasting relationship.

A part of Bangkok's nightlife that should not be missed by any visitor, ladyboy cabaret shows are professionally done, with spectacular productions (lots of feathers and glitter, good music, and some comedy as well). You can see them at the Calypso Cabaret (Asia Hotel, Ratchathewi SkyTrain station), Golden Dome Cabaret (15 minute walk from Sutthisan subway station), and Mambo Cabaret in the former Washington Theater between Sukhumvit Soi 22 and 24. Sphere: Related Content

Learning to Speak Thai

The main problem with learning to speak Thai is that the basis of the language is not European-based. English and the other Euro languages have Latin, Greek, Viking, etc., roots; Thai does not, so you have to memorize hundreds, if not thousands, of strange and unrelated sounds. This is difficult, unless you use some sort of memory trigger.

Speak Easy Thai is a low-cost (about US$25) CD-ROM that helps solve this problem by presenting a picture and a sound file; all words are spoken by a native Thai speaker, so you hear the correct tone.

If you see a Thai word printed in a book, such as a travel guide, chances are you will not remember the word because there is nothing to hang your hat on.

But when you see a picture of something and hear it spoken properly in Thai, your brain will find it much easier to remember the word because it seems to set up more associations (hypertext links, if you will) in your brain.

It’s a fact that most people learn better visually and aurally than they do by simply reading and trying to memorize. This is, in fact, how children learn. They hear the words spoken by adults and other children, and repeat them. Young children learn to speak a language well before they can read.

Thai uses its own alphabet, rather than pictograms like Chinese, which makes it much easier to learn than Chinese. You just have to get over the hump of reading the Thai characters. The alphabet contains the same letters as English, but they are drawn differently. For example, all the common consonants and vowels exist in Thai, but a Thai G (or P or M) does not look like an English G (or P or M).

But the best part of learning Thai is the grammar, believe it or not, because there is very little to learn. There are no, absolutely NO verb conjugations, which will please anyone who has ever tried to learn one of the Latin-based languages like French, Italian, and Spanish. Future tense is handled with "ja", meaning "will", or by adding an adverb of time, like "tomorrow". Past tense is handled by putting "already" at the end, or by adding an adverb of time, like "yesterday". For example, instead of saying, "I went to the market", you use the present tense ("go") but add "already" at the end, as in "I go market already". Easy peasy.

Also, adjectives do not change form, you don’t have to worry about the sex of a noun because all nouns are neuter. Adjectives always follow the noun, without exception; you say "house big" rather than "big house".

General plurals are done by doubling the noun: "house house" instead of "houses". Specific plurals use the same construction we use in English for groups, as in "The farmer has three head of cattle". You can’t say "I have three children" in Thai, you must say "I have child three person"; "child" is the noun, "person" is the group word, also known as a "classifier".

Adverbs are easy too, no variations. You can add emphasis by doubling the adverb: "He runs quickly quickly".

The most difficult part of learning Thai is that it is a tonal language. English uses tones on sentences. Compare these three statements:

"You’re going to the party."
"You’re going to the party?"
"You’re going to the party!"

They all use the same English words, but the tone (flat, rising, falling, respectively) gives an entirely different meaning to each sentence.

Thai uses tones on words, but not on sentences. For example, "seu-ah" spoken with a flat (mid-range) tone means "clothing"; "seu-ah" spoken with a rising tone means "tiger". So you must be careful to learn the correct tone for each word, otherwise you might be saying "my tiger is dirty" when what you meant is "my clothing is dirty". There is no doubt that this is the hardest part of learning Thai, and the only way to learn the correct tone is to listen to a native Thai speaker saying the word. Sphere: Related Content

Hardware Problems

The girls at Thai Culture Publishing have been having a hard time lately, as one of their computers started acting strangely, constantly rebooting during the initial loading of Windows.

This is a sign of the Blaster worm, among other things, so I decided the best way to fix this would be to remove the drive, put it in an external box, and run a virus scan on it.

However, I am in Ottawa, Canada, not Bangkok. So I told Pad to go the next day and buy an external drive box for a 2.5" disk drive at Pantip or Fortunetown.

Next day, she told me via MSN Messenger video conference that she now had a box. Now the challenge became the removal of the drive from the laptop chassis.

Pad is not knowledgable about hardware, and her English comprehension is not 100% yet, having essentially taught herself English in the last 12 months or so. She has trouble understanding the difference between "in" and "on", for example. I told her to unplug the cables and power cord from the laptop, turn it upside down, and place it on the desk. Seemed like a simple enough command, but I was wrong.

She unplugged the cables and power cord, then picked up the laptop, and opened the top drawer of the desk.

"NO!" I yelled, and she closed the drawer and put the computer back on the desk.

"Pick up the laptop, turn it over, and put it ON the desk upside down."

She opened the top drawer again.

"No, Pad," I said, "ON the desk, not IN the desk."

Finally she understood, "Oh, OK, Doug, now I understan'," and she put the computer on the desk right side up.

"Now flip it upside down, Pad." And she did.

OK, first step accomplished.

Then I told her to look at the bottom of the laptop case, and look for the icon of the hard disk drive. These icons are impressed into the plastic, and there are five of them, for memory, CPU, hard drive, battery, and modem.

She said, "OK, I find it already." She then used a small screw driver and undid the Philips screw, then could not get the cover off. Her husband, Gen, came over to help, picked up another screwdriver and started removing the screws that hold the case together.

"NO!" I yelled, "Gen, yud! Yud!"

He stopped, and I told Pad not to let him undo any more screws, it was just the one for the hard disk cover that we wanted. So then they tried to pry the cover off, and suddenly it popped off, landing on the desk.

"OK, Doug, finiss."

Great, except I could see in the web cam video that this was the memory, not the hard drive. So I told her that, and said, "Put the cover back on and look for the icon of the hard drive."

It took 3 or 4 minutes to fit the cover back in ("Difficul', Doug") and screw it in. Finally she went looking for the hard drive icon.

"OK, Doug, I see it."

Once more attacking it with the small screwdriver, she undid the screw, and popped off the cover, and there was the CPU exposed. Sigh.

One more round and she found the hard drive.

To make a long story longer, she finally got the hard drive out and installed in the external disk box. While she was assembling the box, I asked her, "Sanuk, mai?" (Is this fun?)

"Chai, Doug, now I like boy."

Next day she took the laptop back to the office and the girls succeeded in installing Windows, which is quite difficult for people who can't read English all that well.

As a result of this episode, I have added a section to the Windows Stupidities site to tell people to uncheck the option for automatic restart on error. It's called My System Continuously Reboots, and is located near the bottom of the contents menu. Sphere: Related Content

Resources to Learn English

I have been researching English learning resources lately, as I have some Thai friends who need some help. I have consolidated what I have learned so far here:

http://www.ebooks-international.com/Languages/LearnEnglish.html

The Thai people I know fall into two categories, as far as education goes: those with a university or college education, and those who quit school at age 10 or so and had to work.

Some of the brightest people I have ever met have only 4 years of schooling. They can add and subtract but cannot multiply or divide and do not understand fractions, decimals, and percentages. One lady (age 29 with two children and two ex-husbands) that I know well was a waitress a year ago. In the past year, she has taught herself English, how to use a computer, and how to run a business with several employees and a half a dozen major customers.

Another lady took 2 years at a technical college, financed by a government student loan. She created a multi-page web site using Notepad to code raw HTML. That's not something I would do, it's too difficult. When I asked her why, she said she wanted to understand exactly how HTML worked.

However, none of these people speak English very well. The university-educated can read better than the others, but they invariably write poorly and often speak poorly.

Hence my research. Hopefully it will benefit you or someone you know. Sphere: Related Content

Busy Lately

I haven't posted much lately, mostly because I am running out of time. I ran out of money many months ago, and have been borrowing money from a bank in Canada to keep me and Thai Culture Publishing afloat. It's a new company and isn't profitable yet. I figured it would take a year.

Things weren't helped by one of the founders deciding her ex-boyfriend needed money more than the company did and embezzling more than 50,000 baht. What hurts is that I treated this girl as a daughter, as she was pregnant, and didn't want to tell her aged father. I gave her free room and board for three months, bought her a baby bed and other baby needs, and generally acted as her substitute father, and she paid me back by stealing money. "No good deed shall remain unpunished" is very true.

She also hurt the start-up of Thai Culture Publishing, as she did this in the first few months after the company was formed last July. We lost three months as well as the money. We started over again in September, with a new partnership, and had to pay the start-up expenses all over again, including new CDs and new packaging.

The good news is that the new Managing Director, Kanokporn Boonjan, has proved to be an excellent choice: highly motivated, eager to make this a success, and good at marketing besides. The company is a limited partnership, owned by three Thai people; I am neither a shareholder nor partner, I am merely their mentor: Ajarn Doug

In any case, I have to return to Canada and get a job somewhere, anywhere, just to make some money to pay down the bank loan and continue supporting the company until it's on its feet. The company is making progress; they have sold more than 500 CDs now, but have only been paid for 60 or 70 because the big book distributors here act like elephants on the sidewalk, treating small suppliers very badly. Thai Culture Publishing is coming close to breaking even this month (April), and may break even or make a small profit in May.

So around May 8 or so, I will be on my way back to Ottawa, a 36 hour trip, which I will probably break up with a couple of hotel stays in Seoul and Vancouver.

In the meantime, I have pretty much abandoned Thai software development, and have been working feverishly, 18 hours a day, on web sites and Internet marketing. The Thai Culture Publishing site now has half a dozen products listed. I have also set up an Alzheimer's site, an eBooks site, and a Windows Stupidities site, all of which will hopefully generate some additional income in the long run.

In the short run, I have been experimenting with various advertising and promotional techniques to try and generate some immediate cash, but so far I have spent a lot of money for very little gain. Sigh.

This is a particularly stupid time to leave as we are finishing the development of Speak Easy Isaan Lao and Tricky Dictionary Thingy. The goal is to get these out the door before I go, but I am not sure that's possible. If the book distributors take these up, they will generate money 4 or 5 months from now.

I have repackaged Speak Easy Thai into a subset, about 120MB, that can be downloaded as a free trial. As of today, 68 people have downloaded the trial. One person subsequently unsubscribed from the mailing list. I sent out an e-mail suggesting people donate US$25 to get the bonus files; one person did, and 66 people didn't. So what does that mean?

The program works but is crippled without the extra sound files and images. So either people aren't using it, or found it too complicated, or aren't motivated enough about learning Thai to actually pay money to do it. Sigh. If 20 people had donated, I could have paid the bank this month and would not have had to return to Canada. Such is life. Sphere: Related Content

Loving by the rules

The Culture Ministry [of Thailand] has launched the '10 Commandments of Love' in an attempt to prevent teenagers getting too carried away on Valentine's Day. They are:

1. Love with patience, so as not to become a premature parent

2. Truly love only one person

3. Love with mercy, trying not to hurt the one you love

4. Carefully love to avoid taking risks that might lead to contracting sexual diseases

5. Love with honour, waiting until the proper time to have sex

6. Love in accordance with custom

7. Love reasonably, not taking sexual advantage of your lover

8. Love permanently, without defaming the one you love

9. Love honestly, believing in your partner

10. Love with understanding, forgiveness and without anger

Culture Minister Khunying Khaisri Sri-aroon said the initiative followed research suggesting that teenagers have premature sex, more than one partner and live together without commitment. "The commandments remind them that real love does not mean sex," she said.

Dr Amornwit Nakhonthap, director of Ramjitti Institute, said society should allow teenagers the space to learn about loving, and the best way to persuade them to be morally upright was to rely on sensible pressure from their peers.

--The Nation 2007-02-12

I read elsewhere that some Thai people are upset that Valentine's Day is observed at all, because it is a western concept, not a part of Thai culture. But I personally have noticed that many Thais, both male and female, think it's a great idea, and do give gifts and/or flowers to their honey and to their boss and friends. It seems to be more of a "day of honour and respect" than a "day of love". Sphere: Related Content