Much ado about nada

Yesterday was the Matsue ekusukaashon (translation: excursion) field trip for the 2nd year students, where everyone break up into groups, and then spend a day in Matsue city backpacker-style (budget travel, public transportation, funny photos, lost wallets, etc). Supposed to build teamwork or something. While the students were busy doing their thing, I tagged along with the teachers' 食べ歩き tour and ate at different restaurants/patisserie/tea shops all over the city.

The 3rd year students are on their 3-day trip to Tokyo, and the 1st year's are on their 3-day stayover on Daisen. So, it's a whole day of cramming Japanese, online junk reading, and test-proctoring for me.

I'm bored.

(update 16:05pm) still bored.

中和違った漢字

結構 (けっこう）
Japanese: good, okay, or polite refusal.
Chinese: system, structure

勝手 (かって）
Japanese: (the state of having) freedom, (being able to) do-as-you-please, have-it-one's-way
Chinese: winner

All the same Engrish to me

This morning, I am having a tasty bacon egg and cheese English muffin sandwich for breakfast plus orange juice straight out of the carton, just to wash down the runny yolk and bacon grease. I have just made the following discovery:

English (country) = イギリス 　　　　　　　
= i-gi-ri-su
English (adjective)= イギリスの...
= i-gi-ri-su-no-...
English (person) = イギリス人
= i-gi-ri-su-jin
English (language) = えいご 　　　　　　　　
= e-i-go
English (muffin) = インぎリシュマッフィン　
= i-n-gi-ri-shu-ma-fi-n

Weird. If you don't think that this is weird, you have either not been in Japan or been in Japan too long.

On this day, which followed the night before

Post Traumatic Hangover hangs over you like a rusty guillotine and hangs onto you like a sobbing son of a bitch.

Big thanks to Simona for shutting the blinds and getting me yakisoba from Hok (which made me throw up, and gratefully so, finally around 7pm), and doing it all with a sweetly mocking smile even after all the big-baby act. Also thanks to Lebron, Wade, and the entire cast of Lost for salvaging this otherwise unsalvageably bed-ridden day.

On this day

Jeff was such a ragin' drunk, the bartender at Missile offered him an empty bucket instead of a beer glass sometime between 1 and 5am. Hilarity did not ensue. Had to be helped off the couch, off the floor inside the bar, off the floor outside the bar, and off the curb into the taxi by two guys (thanks: Tyler and Nick) and his girlfriend.

Fantasy Update - Final

- Congratulations to Infinit Monkey Smell, 1st place winner of Yahoo Public 191944 roto league. It takes an astute owner to put together a team that leads the league in blocks, steals, assists, rebounds, and points, all by significant margins that separates the Jordans and the Byron Russels of the world.

- And to the Cowbell Champs, champion of The Bush League Bushmeat H2H league. The final win/loss record does not reflect this team's dominance as accurately as its weekly record against other teams (in 21 weeks, 19-2-1). When I think about this team, I think about this.

The first week

My first week of the new (and last) school term ended on a 5-classes Sunday. Today I had yet another 5 class day. To all other ALTs constantly complaining about having nothing to do at the beginning of the school year, I've got a few 7 alphabet exclamations for you all.

- The first week did not start off so well. When I came to school I found that my desk has not been moved, but I was now sitting with a whole new group of teachers. This requires some explaining: when I first got to Japan, I was assigned to the group of 1st year teachers and we all sat together. My 2nd year, I stayed with the same group of 1st year teachers who all became 2nd year teachers together. This year I'm no longer with the same group of 3 teachers (excluding myself) moving into their 3rd year.

It's hard not to feel ostracized and left behind like a kid repeating the same grade, even if I could completely disregard and not let myself be bothered by what this might mean, given the Japanese social emphasis on the in/out group dynamic. Arrgh! To let myself be bothered even a tiny bit by Japanese social innuendo, I must be turning Japanese*--only my co-workers apparently don't really think so.

(oh my god the crazy Noguchi woman just came in the staff room. Please don't come any closer don't come any closer don't come any closer....)

Anyway, I don't mind that so much now that I've grown accustomed to my new place in the staff room after one week. I'm sitting next to Mitsushima this year, and the 2nd year students with whom I will be spending more time this year are much more enthusiastic about English than the 3rd year kids.

- The video letters I have spent so much time editing were finally done last Friday. I would post them on YouTube, but I'd probably get in trouble in a society where student uniform fetish is as commonplace as raw fish roe. Too bad.

- I got another crop of ballers for my lunchtime league out of the new 3rd year students this year. I see no superstars out of this year's group, and frankly some kids should have really stayed in school for another year instead of declaring for the draft. Though this year's group is not as talented as last year's class, plenty of them should be able to contribute at the next level as solid role players. The future of the league is bright.



* I meant the phrase "turning Japanese" by it's literal meaning--and not as an euphemism for excessive masturbation, as originally insinuated in The Vapors' one hit wonder.

Thailand: the King

Images of King Bhumipol Adulyadej were everywhere in Thailand. Regrettably I realized this too late and took only 8 pictures of The King:



It kind of reminds me of growing up in Taiwan, where every living room/shop/classroom had a picture of Chen-Kai-Shek. Or stories I've heard about people who mysteriously disappear after being visited by the Chinese Red Army, for not having Chairman Mao's mug in their dining room.

Except Thais seem to really embrace their version of The Big Brother with genuine pride and love.

Hate to be her

A woman in Tokyo jumped in front of a train at Shinjuku station (on the Chuo line, which according to Wikipedia is apparently the most popular subway line for suicides, 156 since 1995), and survived. Apparently her injuries were not life-threatening, but 24 trains were delayed for 35 minuts and 45,000 commuters were late to work but probably all received excuse-me notes from the subway. OIJ.

Hate to be the woman, not only for the non-life-threatening injuries, but also for the bills. This is from also from Wikipedia:

People who kill themselves by jumping in front of a train in Japan are often charged by the railway company for the cost of the delays and cleanup. Of course, with the person being dead, the money is deducted from the relatives' inheritance, often giving the impression that the relatives are being charged for the person's having died. This is also an attempt by the railway companies to reduce the number of suicides by train.

Ouch.

Thailand: the Germans

The Germans and the German-speaking people travelling with them were so ubiquitous in Thailand, I started to wonder if Thailand was once a former German Schutzgebiete (it was not, and surprisingly Thailand remained independent through out the colonial era--I learned this at the National Museum of Thailand History in Bangkok). And not just the Germans, but other German-speaking tourists from Switzerland and Austria were also more numerous than native English-speakers. Simona speaks German, so she never failed to point them out and translate any juicy eavesdroppings for me.

And all of them, without exception, spoke English more fluently than probably some Americans do. I have heard before that most Europeans are functionally multi-lingual, but the fact really impressed upon me in Thailand. To wit: all of my SCUBA dives were led by German divemasters and all were joined by German divers, but for this dumb-Chinese-American's convenience, all the instructions were in English. And not one German diver in my dive groups even shrugged his/her shoulders at switching to the non-native language in a potentially (but unlikely) life-threatening SCUBA situation.

There were another couple of German girls who split the taxi ride from Thong Sala to Ao Thong Nai Pan Yoi with us. The 4 of us paid 200 baht each for the ride, which evidently was enough to hire 2 taxis (the initial driver dropped us off to be picked up by a 2nd driver). Both girls spoke perfect English, one worked as an admin for McKinsey and the other one sells airplanes. We talked about everything from Bangkok traffic to Bird flu to change of address forms in the German postal system. Even as we chatted happily and smoothly without missing a beat, I couldn't help but feel inept, embarassed, and ashamed to be just an English-spitting American. Oh yeah, of all the shopping malls in all of Thailand, we ran into these two again 5 days later in Siam Square in Bangkok, right as we were about to catch a taxi to beat the traffic to the airport.

side note:

Thailand, for all its sexual tourism, is a surprisingly conservative country that finds public nudity offensive. Toplessness is discouraged on most beaches and is actually outlawed in national parks. Nevertheless, the Germans and other Euros bring their Euro brand of immodesty to Thailand with casual disregard for the Thai sensitivity. Just off the top of my head, I could recall 8.5 incidences of toplessness on beaches. The galls of these women! Simona found this inconsiderate, tasteless, and offensive. I agree too (nod nod).

Especially after I found that bottomlessness by men on inflatable floaties were just as common, and frequently obstructs the beach docking of long boat water taxi's.

Thailand: the music

The music heard in Thailand was so bad, it was good. A few memorable ones:

* At White Sand Bungalows at Ao Thong Nai Pan Yai and countless other places, we first recognized this song with a cheesy 90's Euro pop pedigree and the chorus "Take me to your heart, take me to your soul-oh-oh." I am positive that I heard 4 distinctly different covers of the same cheesy song at various other spots in Thailand.

* Thai country music, contrary to what one might expect, is not in the so bad it's good category. I can't think of another genre of music, besides Hawaian ukulele and banjo, that speaks "coconuts, hammick, and smooth white sand in your crotch" to me. I asked some of the Thai crewmen on the dive boat for the name of the singer on the radio, and they wrote down the name (in Thai, regrettably not in Roman alphabets) for me so that I might find the album. Every CD vendor shook their heads and tried to supress a laugh when I asked about the CD. One hip-looking clerk with a brow piercing and horn-rimmed glasses at a CD store near Silpakorn University told me that the singer was (not in her original words) a really, really old country singer mostly listened to by really, really old Thai hicks, and that they didn't have it in stock. At least the paper didn't say kick me in Thai

* The apex of musical irony: as we boarded the express catamaran from Ko Tao to Ko Pha Ngan, Simona picked up on the background music: Dido's White Flag, which featured the line: "Well I will go down with this ship." I was disappointed to find that they weren't playing Titanic for the on board movie (they played Master and Commander).

Thailand: the dives

(I cringed when I re-read my two previous Thailand posts from day 1 and 2, both of which gave me the impression of someone taking a memory dump and forgetting to wipe. I decided instead to chronical the trip not in a day-by-day order, but in a subject-by-subject order of the highlights and low lights as I recall)

My 14th, 15th and 16th logged dives deserve a special post aside from the other Thailand highlights.

Since my last dive was in Cancun back in Springbreak2001, my first dive in Thailand was a refresher course courtesy of Big Bubble dive center, a beach dive at Ao Leuk near Ko Tao, around a depressing reef in pretty bad shape. Divemaster was German, as were the other two girls joining the refresher dive. I was pretty nervous beforehand and fumbled with setting up my rental gear, but relaxed as soon as we got in the water. I went through all the drills like I didn't miss a day of diving, and the divemaster complimented on my buoancy control. We saw some school of small fish and damaged corals through average visibility (~10m). 60 minutes at mostly shallow depth (<10m).

2 more boat dives at Hin Bai, otherwise known as Sail Rock, a pinnacle between Ko Tao and Ko Pha Ngan(courtesy of the two German Thomases from the dive shop at Dreamland Resort). Sail Rock was listed in the Lonely Planet as one of the most spectacular dive sites in Thailand. The pinnacle was (by my estimate) no more than 60m in circumference above the surface, and we just swam around and around the pinnacle during our two dives. There was a "chimney" on the north side of the pinnacle, a tube of rock/coral where you can pop in at 20m deep and pop out at around 10. It sounded like a cool idea, but it was actually pretty boring as there's nothing to see inside the tube. I also had problem equilibriating my sinus pressure at 20m so I only went through the chimney once. The visibility was poor, and we got lost trying to find the deep water pinnacle. Only afterwards did I find out that the deep water pinnacle was THE hot spot for whale sharks. Damn.

However since the poor visibility was caused by a warm uprising current bringing up the sediments from the deep water, there was plenty of fish joining the ocean buffet line. To say that we saw a lot of fish would be unfair, as it was more accurate to say that a boatload (sorry, bad joke) of fish tried to ignore us during their lunchtime. Being surrounded by schools of 200+ tuna, the smallest of which being big enough to swallow your hand whole, was something I have yet experienced underwater. Besides tuna/jackfish schools, I also saw my first barracuda. It was big, maybe 3-4 feet long, but somehow more graceful and less intimidating when seen swimming underwater than seen frozen in the fish market.

I had a lot of problem equilibriating during the two dives, they were both pretty deep (between 15 and 18m or 50 and 60 feet) and we had to free decend without the aid of a line. I went down super slow and hovered a couple meters above my buddy pretty much the whole time, even then my eardrums were (and still are a little, a week after) still hurting like a bitch. To put things in perspective, air pressure is .5 ATM at 5000m in the air, 1 ATM at sea level, and 3 ATM 60 feet deep. Me and my chronically stuffy sinus are simply not built for even leisure SCUBA diving. I ended both dives with such a profusion of nosebleed, I wondered if I left a trail of red while I was underwater. On second thought, maybe not seeing those whalesharks and their buddies was a blessing in disguise.

But despite the nosebleed and ear pains, my 3 dives were still an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Day 2

(3/26/06)

Slept fitfully at various spots inside Bangkok international. We couldn't find the resting room with shower that the Lonely Planet raved about, and nowhere in the airport could we find comfortable benches for sleeping that was clean, mosquito-free, and far away from CNN. I even briefly entertained the thought of sneaking into the empty Muslim praying room for a nap. Somehow in this state of REM deprivation, Simona and I decided that we would save the scuba at Ko Tao for later and head directly to the beaches of Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi (I still have to look up that name even now) on Ko Pha-Ngan first.

Our flight from Bangkok to Samui was scheduled at 0600. After some asking around (everyone from info desk lady to baggage workers spoke and comprehend amazing English, the "We're not in Japan anymore" moment for Simona), we began the long walk through the tunnel to the domestic terminal. After some more asking around we found the counter for Bangkok airline, which was somehow set apart from the other airlines. We checked-in maybe 20 minutes before boarding, giving us no time to enjoy Bangkok airline's boutique lounge with internet, self-serve soft drinks and pastry, and overstuffed couches. Shoulda coulda.

The flight attendents gave us our first sa wat dee kaa
in Thailand. We were seated in row 25, with a wonderful window view of the left turbine reflecting sunrise at 30,000 feet (insert pic). I zipped off the legs of my convertible cargo pants in preparation for the hottest month in Thailand.

An hour later we were there. The weather was hot but not overbearing. We were driven in a tourist trolley (not the cable/track kind from SF, but the diesel kind from Disneyland) from the runway to the airport. There is no better place to start your beach holiday than an airport of open-air huts and straw-thatched roofs (insert pic).

We booked the next express boat to Ko Pha-Ngan from the tourist info counter, and the receptionist slapped stickers on us like we were bags. Getting around was much easier thereafter: you point to the sticker and someone points you the right way. A bit impersonal, but effective and straightforward like luggage conveyer belt. From the airport, via a taxi van with nuclear-powered AC, we boarded the 1.5 hour express boat to Ko Pha-Ngan. We sat on the deck, surrounded by a variety of Germans.

We got off at Thong Sala and were immediately mobbed by a group of Thais hawking taxi rides and beach resorts. Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi is across the island and over the mountain from Thong Sala, and it takes an hour of offroad driving to get there. We were offered 1000 baht for a sawngthaew (a pick-up jeepney with two rows of bench seats in the back), which the Lonely Planet said would cost 80 per. One driver tried to reason his what seemed like extortion attempt to us, saying that he had to charge extra because he couldn't fill his truck with just 2 passengers (no one from our boat was going there and the next one wouldn't come for 2 more hours) and he's unlikely to get a return fare from the remote beach. After nearly 22 hours of travelling, we just wanted to get somewhere. Final price: 700 baht.

Lonely Planet described the ride from Thong Sala to Thong Nai Pan as "steep, rutty dirt roads" and "shouldn't be attempted by motorcycles." True dat. The dusty offroad was flanked by shoulder-deep gullies that made me feel good about missing the Thai rainy season. Despite the road condition, it was surprisingly well travelled: trepid tourists pushing their bikes, entire Thai families riding on theirs, SUVs with tinted windows, trucks hauling chickens, cement, supplies, or people, tractors, bulldozers, big rigs (wow) hauling stadium-size speakers and woofers (wow wow) and towing generators...etc. We ignored the bouncy and dusty gong show and held on tight all the way to Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi.

We were hoping to find a bungalow at Baan Panburi, but they were all booked. We lugged our bags up and down the beach before finding a bungalow at Star Hut for 900 baht a night. With our own deck, private bath and less than 20 feet from the sand, hell yeah we'll take it!

24 hours after leaving my apartment in Yonago, I finally arrived. (insert pic)

The rest of the day was full of hectic decisions. Sit on the deck or the beach? SPF 50 or 35? Beer or mai thai? Pad Thai or Som Tam? Mid-afternoon snack or nap? Shower or the ocean? Somehow I lazed through the afternoon unscathed.

Unscathed, until the Thai message. When we first arrived in Pan Noi, Simona had noticed some Thai locals getting messaged at a little shop up the main dirt road. We went there before dinner, which proved to be a good idea with all the bending and pulling and kneading and knuckling. There was another Brit girl in the shop whose loud and impatient demands exemplified bad tourist/customer, I thought. Besides getting pounded on by the masseuse (who resembled a darker-skinned and thicker-knuckled version of Roseanne), I was also nicked up good by the mosquitos. The former felt good, the latter did not.

Thailand Recap: Day 1

(3/25/06)

11am bus from Yonago. 18:45 JAL727 from Osaka. The flight featured Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and other so-so movies with a so-so meal, at least the beers were free. Arrived at Bangkok International on time at 2250, 2050 local time. The airport foodcourt were full of college-age travelers towing their backpacks and white middle-age men towing their short-term Thai girlfriends. That was the "Yup, this is Thailand" moment for me.

sa wa dee

Back from Thailand. Come back to this post tomorrow for updates. Too tired to write now. Zzzzz....