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

i’ve run this blog for over three years now, starting when i first went off to india. i did go through a year of thinking i was a neoluddite and didn’t really post much, but other than that i have posted regularly. when i left for india this most recent time, i decided to do all posts inthai and english (there’s a switch on the left to change language). this post is the first bilingual one, the subject matter wouldn’t really make sense if i wrote in just one language, but it should make sense to people who don’t speak any thai also.

i feel very strongly that the only way to properly learn about a culture is to learn it’s language. when i learned the words thai has to express eating in a communal nature (things that we don’t really have in english), i understood much more about the communal nature of thais. as part of the bachelor’s degree in thai that i’m studying at ramkamheng university, i am taking a class called structure and usage of the thai language (TH101). part of the textbook covers thai idioms (สำนวน), things that when translated literally rarely make sense but provide an interesting view of the culture. in english, we have a saying “don’t burn the candle at both ends”, in thai the closest idiom would translate as “don’t catch fish with both hands”.

i’ve pulled out a series of idioms below. the first line in thai gives the idiom, the second line gives an explanation in thai, the third line gives a somewhat literal translation of the idiom (sometimes an exact literal translation is impossible) and the remaining lines give an explanation in english. if there is a related idiom in english i included it, but for the most part i couldn’t think of any. if anyone reading this has ideas, please leave them as comments. ohh and if anyone feels like i translated stuff wrong, leave that as a comment too.

axioms and proverbs will come soon.

1. น้ำท่วมปาก
   พูกไม่ออก บอกไม่ได้ เพราะมีความจำเป็นบีบบังคับอยู่
   watered flooded into mouth
   to be rendered speechless due to an imminent influence or one’s own fear
2. น้ำตาตกใน
   เศร้าโศกเสียใจอย่ากมาก แต่ไม่แสดงออก
   tears fall inside
   to be very sad but to hold it inside
   to swallow your feelings
3. ข้าวใหม่ปลามัน
   คนที่เพิ่งแต่งงานกันใหม่ๆ ย่อมมีควสมสุขสดชื่น
   rice new fish oily
   newlyweds who are super-happy together, to be in the honeymoon phase
4. ปลาคนเด่ียวกัน
   คนที่อยู่ร่วมกันหรือเป็นพวกเดียวกัน
   fish one together
   people who live together or are in the same group
5. น้ำหนึ่งใจเดี่ยวกัน
   มีความคิดเห็นเป็นอันหนึ่งอันเดี่ยวกัน
   water, one heart together
   to have the same opinion shared between people; birds of a feather flock together
6. ตาลุกตาชัน
   แสดงอาการอยากได้เมื่อเห็นสิ่งที่ต้องกาง เช่น เงิน
   eyes open wide, eyes lifted
   to openly express desire for something you want, generally applies to money, gold, etc ..
7. พายเรืิอทวนน้ำ
   ทำด้วยความยากลำบาก
   row a boat against the current; to do something in a difficult manner
8. เรือใหญ่คับคลอง
   คนที่เคยรุ่งเรื่องหรือเป็นใหญ่เป็นโต เมื่อตกต่ำลงก็วางตัวอย่างคนสามัญไม่ได้
   boat big tight in the canal
   someone who lost status or power but continues to behave as if he still has it; can’t live like an average person
9. พายเรือในอ่าง
   คิด ทำหรือพูดวกวนกลับไปกลับมา
   row boat in bay (tub)
   to think, do or speak in a circular, confusing manner; to talk in circles
10. เรือขาดหางเสือ
    คนที่ขาดสติสัมปชัญญะ ครอบครัวที่ขาดผู้ดูแลรับผิดชอบ การงานที่ขาดหัวหน้า
    boat missing a tiger’s tail (rudder)
    someone who lacks common-sense, a family without someone to look after them or a business without a proper boss
11. ตาเล็กตาน้อย
    ตนที่แสดงอาการว่าชอบพอรักใคร่ เป็นการทอดไมตรีในทางชู้สาว
    eyes little eyes small
    someone who expresses interest in or love for someone else; to have eyes for someone else

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12. ตา​เป็น​สัปปะรด
    มีพรรคพวกที่คอยสอดส่องดูเหตุการณ์ให้อยู่รอบข้างจำนวนมาก
    someone who is aware of things around himself quickly

zak is back from africa, and is finally updating his blog. lots of new things.

it’s interesting to see what other people like. i’ve submitted many photographs to file magazine for publication and never heard back. yesterday i was online looking through their work and noticed that they decided to publish one of mine. what strikes me is that of all the photographs that i’ve submitted, the one the published is my least favorite. i mean i like it and all, but i like the other much more.

anyway, if you’ve never read through file magazine, make it a point to do so. in a world where we are constantly overloaded with bad photography on sites like flickr, they do a great job finding quality work.

here’s my photograph.
here’s the magazine.

i made it to niskayuna, ny which is about 3 hours north of nyc by car. last year there was zero snow, really none at all. this year there has been snow since i arrived. snow can be nice if it doesn’t get in your way. when you can get up whenever, don’t have to go to work, don’t have to go to school and don’t have to shovel it can be quite nice. when you have to get up to 5am to shovel and then pull on layers and layers of clothes to go to work or school, then it can be a major hassle.

i’ve been sleeping in here most days (until 7:30), practicing yoga by the heater, going snow-shoeing most afternoons, studying my university text books, letting mom cook for me, gaining weight for sure … that’s really it. will head up to dad’s vermont on the 1st, then to nyc around the 11th and home after that.

if anyone happens to be in la now, get your ass to LACMA to see Dali: paintings and film and then to MOCA for the Murakami exhibit.

whenever i come back to the states, i try to get to as many museums as is possible. the arts scene in bangkok is definitely growing and i can’t tell you how excited i am that the 11-story bangkok arts and cultural center will open up walking distance from my apartment … but the exhibits we get in bangkok still aren’t of the same caliber that major western cities are lucky enough to have. for some reason museums have pretty much banned photography (i have no idea why) so i don’t have much to share with you except for my praise and the links above. i’d love to go back to see the murakami show with someone who can explain it to me. visually i enjoy his work, but i feel like it is full of references to Japanese Buddhism, folklore and popular culture which i don’t understand.

photographs below are from in and around los angeles.

sometimes i wonder if we create spaces for ourselves to make new years resolutions. when i got back from india, i was really worried about how i would handle practicing yoga by myself every day at 4am. it’s gone really, really well up until a few weeks ago when it has become a huge struggle … there have been a handful of days where i just couldn’t motivate myself through the whole practice. there have been other things too, old silly behavior patterns that i thought i got rid of but came back up again (really too boring to go into details). perhaps i subconsciously create these problems so that i have something to form a new years resolution around. perhaps that’s easier than having to find something really big that needs working on.

anyway … i am off to usa for a month tonight. will be on the west coast briefly, then to the east coast for a few weeks. i know i have only been back from india for a few months, but feel like i need a break again. there’s been some stuff at work that i let get to me, when i really should of just ignored it. from what i hear, there is snow back east too so that will be nice to see.

finally, i am starting a new category in this called “hairdon’t”. i called russell in mysore the other day to say hi, and he says “ohh we were just talking about you … how nice you are, what a great host you are, how to speak thai so well, how you are dedicated to your yoga practice and your studies, what a talented photographer you are, your hair, etc …” the hair part didn’t have any adjectives tied to it. no, “how creative your hair is” or “how hip it is” or “how nice it looks on you”. so in honor of russell, i’ll start to visually catalog all my interesting hair styles just did this one yesterday.

when i was cleaning the other day, i found a roll of film that i shot with my panoramic camera in ooty, india and never processed. click the image to view it full size, looks much better.

in thailand, two topics are rarely analyzed or reported on critically: the king and religion. in fact as a foreigner, they often seem even more off limits. it’s normal for people to say thing like “ohh you don’t understand, you’re not thai”. the king just celebrated his 80th birthday and in honor of it there has been a week of celebrations, many of them telling people that to show the love for the king they should live their lives by his principles. one of his main messages is that we should live our lives modestly, only taking what we need, not giving in to excess, things like that. given that the king’s teachings are usually used in a very well-respected way, i was actually pretty surprised to see boot’s (a foreign pharmacy) use it to sell things like fine fairness cream. the image below is a boot’s advertising flyer, and was also used as an ad all over town. the thai text at the top literally translates as “economize for dad”. by saying “economize” they are referring to the king’s teachings of living modestly and also their special low prices on whitening cream. the king is often referred to as “dad” or “father”, something that shows his level of respect in the country but is also a function of the thai language (i am often called older brother by my younger students).

as a foreigner, i find the ad rather surprising and somewhat funny. i guess more surprising to me is that there hasn’t been any uproar over it … then again, there may have been and i just didn’t hear about it. things are often handled in a very private way in this country.

i’ve been a fan of the writer christopher isherwood ever since i first saw cabaret performed … actually even before that, i helped my friend bob prepare for a dinner theater performance of the show (he was great, herr shultz was great and the rest of the cast was just ok.) when i finally saw alan cumming perform the role of the mc on nyc’s studio 54 stage, i was really blown away.

when i read his autobiographical work, my guru and his disciple, i found yet another reason to be impressed with his work. in this book, isherwood talked about his spirtual development alongside his guru swami prabhavananda in los angeles, starting in the 1940s. what impressed me most about this book was the way that isherwood was about to talk about his struggles between a desire to lead a dedicated spiritual life and also to explore the the new freedom that gay men were experiencing in la at the time. there were points in the book where he would spends days meditating and chanting at the ashram, and then head out and have anonymous sex on the beach. he didn’t seem to look down on himself for any of this in the book, he merely explored it all as part of his spiritual development. he also wrote a lot about pressure from his agent and the literary world to write more along the lines of cabaret, but how he felt drawn to translate sanskrit texts into english and to write about the life of ramakrishna.

besides his beautiful writing, it’s the honestly of the book that impressed me the most. that even back in the 50s, he was able to talk about his sexuality and how he struggled with finding a spiritual path that he could follow at the same time.

the following five collages combine isherwood’s translations of the yoga sutras with photographs that i shot in india. i think i’ll do at least five more before the series is done, but in the meantime i would love comments on these. you can click each image to view a larger version on flickr or see them here on my main site.