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This post marks the update of my blog to Pliny 1.0. Unfortunately, due to a fix to my session-handler, you will need to log in again.

New Features
-Correct session handling
-The ability to edit and delete your posts for seven days.
-PHP 4.3.3 compatability (lots of nasty code is now … less nasty)
-Proper I.E. rendering
-Updated footer

And that’s about it.

This morning was spent at the Chatuchak Weekend market. It’s 1,500 booth market that opens up on the weekends, serving nearly 200,000 people daily. Unfortunately, I only managed to explore a small portion of it before I had spent all the money I had brought with me, so I had to turn home early (or, perhaps, I should have kept exploring, since I was out of money… hmm).

This afternoon has been wasted on getting a few bugs worked out of Pliny before its launch. You’ll notice that things are still a little behind– the photos at the top are from Cheyenne, not Montana. Hopefully I’ll actually manage to get a photo from Thailand up there sooner or later, but right now, enjoy the view that I enjoyed from my window this summer.

I saw my first scratched/dented vehicle yesterday. I’ve been looking, ever since I arrived, for the typical scratches and dents that seem endemic to New York City vehicles. It’s been intriguing, especially because the driving in Bangkok puts New York City to shame in terms of its density, speed and closeness of corridors. It’s like New York City traffic, with the addition all sorts of small vehicles– motorcycles, tuk-tuks, etc– and about half the laws. Lanes are more like guidelines– if an oncoming lane is empty, it suddenly becomes anybody’s lane, regardless of where the yellow line is. Last night wasn’t the first time that a bus I was in nearly ran over an over-eager taxi that had made an extra turn-lane out of the bus’s lane. But the operative word here is nearly. Never once have I actually seen an accident, despite the countless times that vehicles have come within, literally, inches of each other.

Really, though, it kinda makes sense. Thailand is very much a Buddhist country (80%+, or so I’m told), and included in the Eight-fold path is right-mindfulness, which entails being aware of yourself and the things around you at all times. I have yet to meet a clumsy Thai. I can only imagine that this right-mindfulness extends into whatever a Buddhist is doing, including driving a car. As such, I think many Thais may have better spatial awareness, both inside their vehicle and without, simply due to their belief systems.

Speaking of traffic, though, I really must comment on the smog. In Bangkok, at the very least, the government at made attempts at emissions control by heavy taxation on cars with engines larger than 1.6L and motorcycles with engines larger than 150cc. As such, it’s exceedingly rare to see a vehicle with a large engine (honestly, I think 3.0L may be the largest engine I’ve seen!–). Although this is good (I can only imagine what things would be like without the existing laws) it’s far from sufficient. Buses, boats and tuk-tuks emit plums of black, lung-killing, environment-destroying exhaust. Many of the people who work in the street (tuk-tuk drivers especially) wear masks, and it’s easy to understand why. Sometimes, when riding in a tuk-tuk, I’ll open my mouth and be able to taste the millions of black particles in the air, and feel them coating my throat and teeth and my tuk-tuk driver carries us between passing busses and down on-coming lanes… Eventually, everything in Bangkok seems to get coated by a layer of black– fine at first, but eventually a suffusing, choking black. I sat down at an outside desk yesterday, and wiped off a section of the glass top with a napkin. The napkin turned black. Not a this-table-has-been-outside natural brown, but a charred-forest black.

Which brings me to academics. I have some concerns about the quality of education at Thammasat. Ultimately, it seems the classes are a blend between actual content and English-language instruction. I sat down and talked with my one of my professors yesterday (another outrageous Brit!), and I think he summed things up well. He said “I don’t know how to teach here. I can’t do a proper lecture, because the students in the class are of such varying ability– some speak English just fine, and some hardly understand a thing I say. Frankly, you’re probably going to be bored a lot, as the lectures are largely going to be spent making sure people understood the reading.” When expressing my concern that studying in Thailand would place me behind in my studies at home, Dr. Ball put it quite plainly, “if you study for a year here, you will be behind when you go home.”

Troubling. Of course, academic education is only part of the reason why I’m here. There’s also the cultural education– the personal education, the experience of being here with these wonderful but confusing people, a world apart from the home and customs that I’m used to. And perhaps that’s all the more valuable– more than anything I could gain from a book or the most learnèd of professors.

We’ll see how things go. I’m only a week into this venture. Eleven days, it’s hard to believe that it’s been that long, and it’s hard to believe that it’s only been eleven days.

I slept through my 12:30PM class this morning.

No, actually I didn’t, but I dreamed that I did. When I finally got up, my thought process was something to the effect of “I’d better get up so that I don’t sleep through my 2:00 class as well. Wait… I couldn’t have slept that long. I wonder if I just dreamed that. Where’s a clock… 11:05. Oh, thank goodness! …”

So now I’m sitting in my room in my wonderful, air-conditioned room in my boxers listening to David Bowie and eating a mad horticulturist’s experiment gone strange. Here. The facts are these:

1) I bought a cantaloupe at Makro for 47 bhat.

2) I waited a full week for it to ripen. It never did.

3) When I cut open the cantaloupe, the flesh was distinctly green.

4) It tastes rather like honeydew.

5) On the outside, it is definitely a cantaloupe. Not a honeydew.

Maybe I’ll take a picture so you don’t think that I’m insane. (I’m not, mind you!–)

By any measure, it’s not especially good, and I need to shower and eat lunch and make it to campus by 12:30. Ta ta!

This is so strange. I’m here 11 minutes before the class is scheduled to start, and the classroom is empty. Not because it’s the wrong classroom, but rather because the students and teachers here operate on “Thai time.”

My History of Western Art class is going to be great. My prof is the quintessential high-energy Brit– speaks a dozen words a second, throws in lots of subtle, dry humor, and is generally a riot, as most high-energy brits are.

Five minutes before class begins, the first student (myself aside) shows up.

I’m very concerned, though– the class is 100% lecture. Although there is “suggested reading,” there isn’t a book for the course. For a guy who likes to go to 50% of the class and do 100% of the reading, this is going to take some adjusting. Additionally, my grades will be determined entirely by a mid-term and a final. Since I won’t have any nightly homework, I’m going to need to somehow force myself to sit down and study… and that’s going to be difficult. But I’ll manage.

Ah. Two minutes before class is scheduled to begin, and the four students at came in three minutes ago have disappeared. They left their stuff, but I still can’t help but wonder– did the room get changed? Did the meeting time get changed? Oh, good. 3:29, and here come some more.

Mmm. Ice cream. The Green Tea ice cream here is… amazing. Amazing that something could taste that good.

(five hours later)

It rained like crazy this afternoon. Well, it rains here like crazy most afternoons; it’s monsoon season, after all!

Here’s a picture of the mall I mentioned in my last post:

It’s kinda a fish-eye effect… because I’m tricky like that. In actuality, everything is quite square and flat.

This is the river that I take a ferry across every morning on my way to class:

I’ve been re-working my schedule a little tonight. I’m having a hard time finding 18 credits of classes that are going to transfer back to MSU within my major, which is a little troubling.

William… you’re going to laugh at me. I had signed up for a “Basic Business Communication” class, which, you’ll be relieved to know, after one class period, I’m dropping. Honestly, I’m thinking about picking up a business minor, but maybe I’ll discuss that at some other time. It’s ironic and it’s not. I’ll explain. But later.

Anyhow. As the prof is introducing the course, she’s explaining that “the purpose of this course is to teach you how to use words to make you sound more powerful, simply by using proper business terminology. Some of you may ask, ‘isn’t that lying,’ but it isn’t– it’s just making yourself look as good as you possibly can, Because, at the end of the day, it’s a dog eat dog world out there. It’s difficult. You need to be able to get ahead, to stand out.” Ug. Somehow this is exactly what I expected a business class would be like. After the intro, we spent the entire class working on exercises where we would take a modest sounding resume item, “Five years of babysitting experience,” for example, and (by using the correct business terminology) make it sound more impressive. Thus, our example became “Five years of coordinating and supervising activities for small children.” (no joke!) “Did volunteering at battered women’s shelter” became “Actively volunteered at a community battered women’s shelter.” “Seven years as a housewife” became “Planned, administered and controlled the household budget for seven years.”

I kid you not.

Anyhow. At the end of the class, the prof decided that I was sufficiently proficient at over-inflating my resume (c’mon– I’ve been doing this for years. Even in Jr. High, when I mowed lawns, we weren’t just some lawn boys, we were “landscape engineers” or “lawn care professionals.” Ke ke ke) and she advised me to find a more challenging class.

Sheesh. Makes one wonder how people like Jade could turn out to be so cool. =)