Apologies to anyone who has emailed me recently and hasn't had a reply.
Here's my excuse: term has started and we're five teachers short, we're up to our necks in cover classes, I'm halfway through moving house and the two homes I am currently inhabiting are both in chaos, I'm trying to put together a teacher training session for a conference next weekend (me as teacher trainer? you're havin' a laugh!), and still madly applying for jobs. 
There actually isn't time to smoke cigarettes any more.  Maybe time to give up, then?  Very sensible suggestion.  I'll think it over.  To give up or not?  Tum-ti-tum.
There, I thought it over. My answer: you can't see me, but I'm shaking my head.
Christ, I've just wasted five minutes writing this.  laters.

it's that time of year again, job hunting time, the no fun time.  contrary to what I said in my last post, i am actually applying to schools in bangkok as well as in phnom penh, since i realised someone seems to have turned up the clocks to lightning speed, zoom.  where did all the time go?  maybe i could do with another year in this country after all.  I definitely WON'T be signing another contract at this school, though; apologies to all the good looking hookers and factory workers of samut prakarn, but somehow the physical environment of this little corner of the universe lacks a little, shall we say, eye candy.  In fact, it's so psychologically grey that I'm worried I'm developing ulcers in my subconscious. 

(Apologies, by the way, for the misleading picture at the top of this blog.  In fact, that was taken on a day when a massive rice paddy and a hill fell from outer space and landed on Samut Prakan, but the forklift drivers have since towed it away, so it's back to the car dealerships, karaoke joints and budget brothels.)

So, into the city, whether that be Bkk or PP.

I've decided that I will only apply for jobs that pay more than I'm getting here.  After all, it would be silly to go backwards.  That plan's been dealt a slight blow by the pay rise I've just received (damn them to hell), which makes the higher paying jobs even harder to come by.

Last night I took a trip all the way into town for an interview at  a fairly high-end language  centre.  Only to find that my interviewer had to cover a class, and I was instead to be interviewed by a highly incompetent centre manager who, it was fairly clear, had never conducted an interview in his life.  Top that off with the fact that they hadn't read my application properly and assumed I was available immediately, and pretty well lost interest when they found out I was applying two and a half months in advance (silly me! quit being so organised!), and you could say it wasn't a particularly successful venture.  Never mind. 

The fun stuff continues in all the places where work isn't, which seem to be quite plentiful at the moment what with this lazy summer school timetable and an abundance of public holidays.  Last weekend involved three days of debauchery and hot sun on Samet (Monday morning: 'Oooooh!  Mista Meeyer!  You is vely blown!!'),

and another 3 day weekend begins in an hour's time.
This time Pattaya is the destination, an infamously sleazy hellhole south of bangkok, where my friend guarantees me I'll see at least  one  80 year old man with a walking stick under his right arm and a 16 year old Thai girl on the left.  The reviews I read for the hotel I'll be staying in were complaining that the there was a 60 year old guy in a g-string at the pool. Goody gumdrops.  I think I'll have fun being abusive this weekend.  I can't claim I'm going to keep out of trouble, but wish me luck anyway (-:

it's all back to quasi-normal, the school days, with kids alternating between being irritating and delightfully huggy, cigarettes outside in the furnace that is currently Thailand (I've just seen a 2-metre-long monitor lizard swimming in the canal), drinking beer in sleazy Bangkok bars on weekends.

A lot of the faces in the office have changed, now, but those of us 'old-timers' seem to have pulled together, become closer in the face of the crap that happened.  I don't think a lot of offices would have reacted that way, and I am glad, and grateful.  Two of my favourite people are about to leave, though, and a few of us will be taking over their house when they go.

Already I've been here for nine months, and it's nearly time to start thinking about moving on.  For my next contract, I'm following leads in Phnom Penh.

I am eating chicken biryani at a corner stall under a clear early evening sky.  Elders in white robes are emerging from the mosque across the street.  That urgent Indian music -the insistently pleading men, the wailing women.  The pungent smell of exotic spices that I wish I could press into the computer.  SmellNet.

A man at the table on my right is giving his friend a back massage. The man to my left is reading a back to front Chinese newspaper from front to back.  Soon I will wander home with my own newspaper, which carries such titilating headlines as:

'Pet dog shot and owner dies of shock,'

'Thief runs off with dead rocker's toilet,'

and, my favourite,

'Nudist burnt while killing spider.'

I will wander down Love Lane, dodging mopeds ridden by black-as-night Acehans, brushing off the cyclo boys who offer me a seat in their flower-clad love seats,  shaking my head at the black market money changers. 

I will pause to look at the dilapidated European terraces with their peeling yellow paint and wooden shutters, and I will gawp at the Chinese and Indian temples, mosques and Catholic churches that co-exist here in bomb-free harmony.

I will not warrant a second glance from the sailors who roam the narrow streets in packs, dashing in their spotless newly-pressed white uniforms.  They will be too busy whistling at dumpy sari-clad Hindu women, who will giggle nervously from behind plump fingers.

A bus trundles by, 'MILAN' printed in huge letters on its side.  But I am far from there. 

 

I stopped by at Gary's for a quick beer before trudging up stairs to change out of my horrible school uniform.  Gary's this middle-aged Brit who runs a litle restaurant at the bottom of my building.  He's always having trouble with his cooks - they always leave within days of starting the job. Today there was a new chick there.  Gary introduced me to her.  She said hello and nodded politely, but she looked at me strangely. Shortly afterwards she asked him quietly whether I was male or female.
'She's a woman, of course,' Gary replied.  'She's a lesbian.'
She stared at me, not knowing whether he was joking. After a bit, she asked me, 'You are really a lesbian?'
'Absolutely,' I quipped. 'Why?  You interested?'
'Well,' continued Gary, 'She's mostly a lesbian, anyway.  She has her moments.'
I looked at Gary.  'What the hell are you on about?'
'Oh, don't worry,' he said mysteriously, 'I know all about it.'
'What do you know?'   
'It was a maths teacher, wasn't it?'
I clicked.  'Fuckin' Char!  She just couldn't keep her big mouth shut!
'No, she couldn't.  She swore me to secrecy, but I guess you can't really tell her off for it now.'
'What a fuckin' cow!' I raise my fist at the ceiling.  'I'll fuckin 'ave you Char!!'
'Ha!  But you can't, can you!'
'That's so bloody mean. She probably died just so she coud get away with it...'

matt and i found a little bird in the school today.  it flew at full pelt into the window of our office and fell to the ground, rasping heavily, eyes closed, on its side, unconscious.  matt scooped it onto a sheet of paper and carried it outside.  I thought it was done for, and was wondering how one should put such a little bird out of its misery, when suddenly up it leapt.  it stood there stock still, blinking and confused, for a minute or two, until all of a sudden it took off and soared into a nearby tree. 

what if i had killed it, killed it unnecessarily?  would i have become the victim of some buddhist curse?

I find it strange, contradictory, that buddhists place so much value on life, will not step on an ant, while at the same time displaying a cold indifference  toward death.  As far as I can tell, the Buddhist philosophy not only turns people into dispassionate monsters, but also creates an excuse for laziness and a general lack of ambition.  For, after all, what is the point in trying too hard in this life when there are so many lives ahead?  what's the point in crying over death when they have not gone, merely moved on?  Does it follow that to cry is merely selfish?  After all, it's not the dead we cry for, it's the page that gets torn from our own lives when they go.  the empty spaces.  Are we all fundamentally just selfish animals?
Of course we are.  Stupid question.
        
I've just taught my last class for the school year: it ought to be time for a celebration.   instead i'm feeling drab and dull and dusty and drained. 
thanks to all the people who've sent me hugs via email this week - it  means  a lot to me.   especially since the person i usually get hugs  from here has just been flown home in  a vaccuum sealed coffin.

i need to find a way to cheer up.  someone send me some dancing girls and a needle full of smack.  pretty please.

When one person's life is prematurely snuffed out, it feels like life ought to stop, or at least slow down, for everyone around them, but it doesn't.  There are still kids to be taught, listening and speaking tests to do, exams to write and photocopy, mountains of marking... they say it's good to keep busy at times like these, but god... not this busy.
Squeezed in between all this work are moments of intense sadness, maybe made more intense by the fact that they're only allowed to emerge for such short periods of time.  The kids, of course, don't understand any of this. 
Thais deal with death differently; while they know that we westerners are pathetic idiots when we lose someone close to us (they've seen it in all the hollywood movies), they'll never fully comprehend our wailing misery.  my students point at me, they mime a baby bawling and they laugh at me - unfortunately i wasn't able to hold it together at the memorial service at school.  Wiith a thousand children's eyes on the foreign teachers, we did our best to be hard-faced and calm, but all the thoughts of arsenal football matches in the world couldn't save me when my turn came to file to the front to place a rose in front of her picture.  it's tough.     

more photos

it's like a nightmare, the scenes keep flashing through my head, the horror of it all, your friend lying their dead, smashed head, blood, time slowing, the blaring of sirens, the strangeness and sterility of hospital . 
She was pronounced dead at 2:57am, after they'd tried to revive her for 40 minutes.  Greg, her boyfriend, stood up, thanked us, and said this was the quietest Char had been in her life.

At around 1am, char had decided she had tourettes syndrome, she was leaping around shouting 'PUMP! PUMP!' - her favourite swear word (apparently northern for 'fart', i'd just started to adopt the word myself, our school had been re-christened Pump-a-montree), so there she was leaping around the bar shouting PUMP! PUMP!, and we're laughing and telling each other she's a nutter, it was all very immature but so much fun.
char was awlays the life of the party.  everyone had to go out if she was going out ('you know that if you don't come, you're gonna be talked about ALL night!'), no-one ever dared not go.  char was an expert at taking the piss, and she had us all in stitches. 
She brought the office to life.  People enjoyed coming in to work knowing that she was going to be there.
I loved being char's mate.  I loved living in the same building as her, being able to spend so much time with her, at the pool, at restaurants, bars, or just hanging out in one of our rooms talking shit.  and man could she talk shit, and man could she shit.  she once showed a photo of the biggest turd she'd ever done. it was BIG.
where's char?  shit, what's she doing in the middle of the road?  shit, we should help her, she's going to get...

After she'd been lying there in the road for a few minutes with her head smashed, I missed it but apparently she came to, just for a few seconds.  She moved her head.  Someone said they heard her murmur the word 'pump.' It was the last word she ever said.

my best mate here died on friday night.  we were out drinking, and then she stepped in front of a car, and suddenly the liveliest person in samut prakarn was no longer alive.
bye char.  I'll miss you.