Ok, it’s really not that hard to grock.

there are some aspects of thai culture that continue to mystify me and others that i’m sure i’ll never embrace, but their deep appreciation of naps is something i must have a karmic predisposition to. thais seem to be able to nap anywhere at anytime of the day … not only is it socially acceptable to nap when you’re feeling tired, but it’s rather quite normal.

pretty much any starbucks equipped with couches usually has at least one person sprawled out sound asleep. last month i went to starbucks, ordered a coffee but when i sat down i realized that i was kinda tired. so i laid out on the sofa, slept for 30 min and then had them heat up my coffee when i woke up. my friends here think it’s beyond rude when i tell them that if you tried to sleep in starbucks in usa that you would probably be kicked out.

i’ve been at home many times just hanging out by myself when a friend would call, ask what i was doing and then tell me that he was tired and was coming over. he’d pretty much come over, wash his feet, lie down on the couch for 30-45min, get up and walk right to my fridge, then sit down and talk. the same consideration would apply to me too, if i was entertaining people at the apt and felt tired, nobody would think it odd for me to get up and go nap for a while.

**************************

my thai teacher told me that other day that she has legally changed her name three times on the advice of a fortune teller. she also told me that she woke up once and heard a ghost talking to her and that the ghost proceeded to pick her up and swing her around the room. the odd part of all of this is that it doesn’t sound strange to me any more …

the first two months of the year are when everyone seems to want to come to bangkok. i get a steady stream of visitors and then once it starts to get hot here and nice back in usa, people seem to forget about me again. the weather this year has been extra mild, not sure if that means it will be extra hot when summer starts in a month or not?

my friend michael from san francisco was in town for a few days last week, i took these when we went out to bed supper club for dinner. i had never been for dinner before because i figured it was typical bangkok over-priced attempt at fusion food, but it turned out to be some of the best fusion food i’ve had in years. it’s priced pretty close to what you’d pay in san fancisco, but well worth it …

inside bed supper club

three micahels

ok, everything seems to be sorted out now … the blog is fixed. you should be able to access it at www.luke.org blog.luke.org or www.luke.org/blog. comments should be back to working now too.

having some domain configuration problems with the site, it may get worse before it get better … might be down for a day or so. hopefully fixed by mon or tue.

back in dec p’nut invited a bunch of people out to have dinner on a boat on the chao praya river. at first i was kinda nervous about the whole thing, i like being able to control when i can go home and with a boat you really can’t leave until the boat comes back (unless you want to get wet). it actually turned out to be really fun, there were probably 200+ mostly thai people on the boat and it was a great way to see the city at night. took me forever to get pics uploaded, but here they are ….

so i finally got the results from that government thai exam that i took last december. i passed (barely) with a score of 66. a 51 is a passing score and from the 250 or so students that took the test, approximately 150 passed.

my score breakdown was 8/20 on the dictation, 24/34 on my essay about food which has benefits, 23/30 on reading comprehension, 11/14 on the part where i had to read something out loud. it’s interesting to see that my big problem with thai is pretty much the same one i have with english, i’m a lousy speller … but a great talker. i think this problem with being a lousy thai speller will change tho as thai is 97% phonetic, if your ear can properly differentiate the tones and you can memorize the grammar rules you can pretty much spell any word correctly once you’ve heard it. there are a few exceptions, most are words that came from sanskrit or pali but even the exceptions tend to follow some rules.

i took dec and jan off of thai school, but since feb 1st i’ve been back in school. i switched schools and am studying with this amazing teacher at summa language and cultural institute over on sathorn for 3 hours a day mon-fri. we’re working basically on two things, improving my vocabulary so can i become a better writer and trying to get rid of my accent. written thai uses a much bigger vocabulary than spoken thai, often involving lots of words that are really close in meaning but actually different. each day the teacher picks a theme and gives me about 5-10 words that follow the theme along with definitions in thai. the differences between many of the words don’t really translate well into english, in fact a thai/english dictionary would often translate them all as the same thing. i remember hearing once that eskimos have hundreds of words to describe different types of snow, klingons have hundreds of different battle words and so far it seems that thai’s have zillions of different words to describe emotional states. for example, one day we had 13 different words that all roughly translate into being bored. the context in which you use one over the other differs on how bored you are, if you are bored with something you like (had it too much), bored with something you don’t like, bored with someone else’s behavior, etc … we also had 16 different words about being happy. with usage varying based on the source of the happiness, if it is an all encompassing happiness that prevents you from wanting to do other things, a happiness that comes from seeing beautiful things, etc ….

as far as my accent goes, my teacher stop and corrects me every time i pronounce a word even slightly wrong. she also has me record something every day and then she goes home and listens to it and writes down common tones and patterns that i have trouble. then i re-record the passage along with a new passage the next day. at the end of the month she says she’ll burn all of my recordings onto a cd along with her recoding the passage correctly. i’ll probably upload some of them ….

here’s the results letter that i got from my thai exam, i have to go down to their office to pick up a certificate with my photo on it, but have been too busy teaching and studying to get down there during business hours. the photo i gave them is pretty scary, i’ll upload it for sure …..

mom has been asking for a subscription feature for a while and i finally got it all setup. the confirmation pages are still pretty boring, but it at least works … type your email address into the form on the left of the page and click “i’m in”. you’ll get a confirmation email first that you need to approve before you will start getting any mail from me.

ohh if you’re registered to post on the blog, this is actually a separate registration … not sure that this really impacts most people tho as my mom and brother are the only ones registered and even mom has only posted once. mme keeps saying she will, but she’s been saying that since i went to india. ohh speaking of india, i’m going back in june, july and august … i’ll get more details about that online soon too.

so i taught yoga tonight and then went out to govinda’s for dinner after … all of that is actually pretty normal, the only slightly surprising part might be that govinda’s is actually an italian vegetarian restaurant and not an indian place. normally it wouldn’t merrit a post (even tho i haven’t posted anything in ages), but i had just bought a bunch of lomography filters for my digital camera so i got to take lots of trippy pics …. i kinda feel like a kid with a new toy, i just want to keep playing with it until i figure it all out properly. hopefully over the next month, i’ll figure out how to really use them properly. until then … he’s the first draft.

ohh, so dinner sort of just happened after my 6:30 yoga class … well pank and i had planned it a bit in advance but chatt and ned came to yoga and ned’s aunt ella was in town so it kinda grew a bit.

i’ve got some more insightful stuff collecting in my head, i will likely post some more tomorrow on my day off.

all of us at the table

ned being pensive

luke, pank, chatt

more of pank, luke and chatt

chatt and pank

luke all blizzury

me trying to decide what to eat

chatt and pank again

pank with aunty ella

all blizzred

ed and aunt ella

too much of a good thing?

some people have nothing better to do

january was a pretty easy month for me. for the first time since i moved to thailand i wasn’t studying thai, so pretty much i got up early, practiced yoga, taught, had a long lunch, came home to nap and watch dvds, then back to teach an evening class and then home to bed. starting the first of feb i’m back in thai school tho three hours with a private teacher every afternoon (mon-fri) … part of me thinks i’m crazy to let myself get so busy, but i really do love studying. of course i find it all very ironic that i dropped out of college to work my ass off and now i’m trying to find a way to arrange my work schedule so that it allows me to study. i think that in an ideal world i would teach 5 or so ashtanga classes a week and spend the rest of my time studying thai and sanskrit (well napping too, i miss napping in my new schedule) … but i guess i need to make more money than 5 classes would pay.