Rattle-Boom-Bus

Up in the morning-open the eyes-rise from bed-wish it wasn't morning-eat breakfast-wash-complain once more that work is more than just a terrible dream-leave for work.

We all do this everyday and most of our stories are the same. But here in Thailand Cheryl and I have an extra flavour that makes our trek to work that much more interesting; the rattle-boom-bus.

In Bangkok there are two types of buses one can take. Some of them are very nice new buses with air-conditioning flowing icy cold. The gears shift smoothly, the doors open silently and there is usually a nice seat to sit upon. However, these buses are also the most expensive. As well, they are not a set price. You pay for them according to how far you plan to travel. Thus, the farther you go, the more it costs (air-con with a smile ain't cheap you know).

The former buses are for those with money to spare and a taste for comfort, which is the fortunate few. For the rest of the working class world that is Thailand there is the rattle-boom-bus. The rattle-boom-bus is one that has seen better days. Its paint is stripped, the gears are cranky, and the windows are forever slanted or smashed open and are repaired only with flimsy Doremon stickers (a popular Thai cartoon character). Dirt has claimed every spare inch of the engine, termites have claimed the floor, and the walls, ceiling, and handrails tell tales of over one hundred days of handholds. The brakes are shot, the air is hot and the people are pressed like sardines.

Step One: Catching the bus.
-When waiting for the bus in Bangkok one must first find the bus stop. There is no sign to help you. Most of them are indicated only by the regular patronage of people standing about with little visible purpose, which can be misleading because it is a common Thai trait to do this randomly and often. This can usually be determined as a place where a bus is likely to stop. When the bus arrives you must wave your hand in the low, limp wrist style that Thai's use, which looks a lot like a proper lady waving her handkerchief at a potential suiter (so get wooing that bus yo). Then it is important to hold your Buddha medallion (for good luck) because the bus will only stop if it decides it wants to (which isn't always).

Step Two: Boarding the bus.
-If you are so lucky this morning that the bus is stopping you must now muster your outer-circling skills in order to claim a position within the bus. If you fail to do so you will not be afforded the luxury of riding the rattle-boom-bus because you will be swiftly pushed out of the way by everyone else who is aspiring to ride the rattle-boom-bus. The most subtle way to do this is to predict the precise position that the bus will stop in thus allowing you the initial pole-position of boarding the bus. Then, you should huff out your shoulders so as not to allow anyone to pass you. Lastly, you must press forward amongst the throng of potential passengers until you have squeezed through the door and secured your transportation for yet another day. Congratulations, you have now boarded the rattle-boom-bus.

Step Three: Riding the Bus-Riding the rattle-boom-bus is just like riding any other bus except for a few subtle differences. One difference is that the bus is inevitably packed tighter than a boy’s closet after cleaning his room; with all of its contents spilling into every crevice, constantly threatening to bust through the threshold at any minute. So, when you board the bus be sure to stuff yourself into a corner where you won't be pressed out the door. Another difference is that the rattle-boom-bus is anything but a smooth ride so one must hold on with a kung-foo grip if they hope to survive the ride. To top it off, the gears are always shot on the rattle-boom-bus and the driver is usually set on making the current day the last one those poor gears will function, and so they proceed to thrash the stick to and fro in a maniacal fashion between each gear. And this, ladies and gentlemen is what makes it the “rattle-boom-bus”. So huff out your chest, push on through, and hold on tight because it’s another lovely morning in Bangkok.

The Essence of Chicken - and other False Idols

I have rarely written about the school Cheryl and I work at, however there are some things that just must be written.

In Thailand the public school system is considered adequate but many choose to send their children to private schools for a higher education. This entails enrolment in a school that can easily be considered a business and is therefore suspect to business practices such as corporate sponsorship. There are many events within Lertlah School that are somewhat open to public business finance, interest and even commercial sales. One such represented interest is by "Essence of Chicken"

Each morning the students gather outside around a large fountain complete with Buddha statue and recite many ritualistic cultural practices in the form of oaths, songs, and chants. These are done in a solemn and uniform manor each and every day.

Cheryl and I arrived at school one morning to see the students gathered for their usual morning rituals, however, this morning there was a large pyramid of boxes erected in front of the large Buddha fountain at the centre of the solemn circle.

As per most mornings, the students were going about their rituals in an appearing form of grace superceding the day, however the boxes were a startling contrast to this particular morning's events. Scheduled to follow the morning rituals was an awards ceremony for a spelling competition that had been sponsored by "Essence of Chicken"; a product which is a brand-name of chicken bullion for soup and various other cooking in which one might want an artificial chicken flavour. The boxes all sported the "Essence of Chicken" symbol and were stacked in a toweringly excessive manor so as to dwarf even the magnificence of the statue of Buddha. And gathered all around in ancient ritual fashion were hundreds of Thai students chanting, praying, and bowing their heads as if in recognition of some powerful commercial deity represented by the magnificent pyramid of cardboard in front of which they lay their blessings. One student would lead with a short phrase followed by hundreds of children chanting similarly in response and then bowing after each line. It brought to mind scenes from old movies depicting ancient civilizations of people worshipping various idols. I was half expecting Charleton Heston to descend from Mount Sinai and smash the boxes along with the Ten Commandments.

Of course not only was the seemingly religious commercial event comical but also the fact that here we were, one of the most prestigious schools in all of Thailand and our students were bowing before an idol made from recycled paper and pronouncing the goodness of cooking with chicken bullion, which likely consisted of more MSG than animal. If this is the kind of reverence produced for a pile of boxes, I would like to see what sort of brewhaha would erupt if someone parked a Coke machine in our midst.

The Virtual Sloth is Not an Endangered Species

The sloth is an animal with little muscle definition, even less locomotion, and still less cranial capacity. It is an animal that is listless, useless, and lazy. And yet it survives. In fact it survives only due to its own slothfulness. This is because its stillness has incurred the growth of a moss within its fur that serves to camouflage the animal thus leaving it without potential predators.

The word "sloth" has become the definition of indolence and laziness due to the infamous inactivity of the animal and it was just the other day that some of the true quality of this characteristic was shown to me.

Internet cafes dot the horizon of Bangkok as plentiful as fish off the coast of Newfoundland. One cannot walk half a city block without bumping their nose into at least two internet cafes. There are literally about two dozen of them within a two-block radius of Cheryl's and my apartment alone. Obviously there is a demand for this service to be so omnipresent, otherwise it would not exist. But what is this demand exactly? An army of businessmen finishing their work after the office is closed? Computer programmers run amuck? A mass internet uprising of the working class? No... its just the gamers.

They sit there with their eyes glued to the screen, their mouths agape, and their brains frothing over. The sound of the cafe is a general hum of cpu fans drowning amidst the racket of dance revolution music, virtual gunfire and startling verbal taunts between gamers. The gamers busy themselves with saving the world, levelling up their imaginary personas, and killing their virtual friends. You know, the important stuff in life.

Who are these gamers you ask? They are every school-age child in the country. As my parents noted whilst here there is frightfully little real estate in Bangkok reserved for outdoor recreation, thus leaving the school children with three options for after-school; engage in extra-curricular education, go to the staggeringly large malls to shop, or hit the internet cafe to kill your friends until bedtime. And thus, we have identified the ravenous demand for the 5.7 internet cafes per one-city-block capita.

Most of the internet cafes are exclusively for online gaming and do not carry cd-roms, usb ports, or even Microsoft Word to accommodate anyone who might actually be attempting to use the facilities for productive work. The key demographic focus here is the slothful gamer.

The slothful gamer books into the game café immediately after he has finished detention. He proceeds to play games online whilst taunting his friends around him in the cafe who are also currently online attempting to murder each other's virtual selves. Their virtual survival is contingent upon their ability to sit in the chair long enough that the survival skills of the internet will eventually settle upon them and proceed to grow similar to the moss on the fur of the sloth. This moss serves a similar purpose; whereas the sloth’s moss makes it invisible to potential predators, the gamer also becomes invisible and blind to the world around them. And I’m certain if you look close, their must really be some sort of fine parasitic life-form spreading microscopically upon their skin and slowly consuming them (at least the look on their faces certainly appears to be that of a mentally consumed individual) Once again we are confronted with an animal whose survival depends on the ability to sit still for long periods of time.

I am told that when a sloth attempts to cross the road it can take all afternoon resulting in the sloth choosing to never cross back. This is due to its complete lack of muscle definition due to extended bouts of, well, slothfulness. The internet gamer also avoids any and all mobility whenever possible. They slowly saunter in, choose their favourite easy chair, park it in front of the computer, and proceed to sit, play, eat at the computer, and generally avoid any physical movement as they tediously trek through their cyber-horizons. As a result, the slothful gamer much like the sloth itself lacks any form of healthy muscle definition shy of the strong index muscles required to click a mouse.

This is the world of the gamer and it burns roughly 2 calories a second whilst frying 1.4 million brain-cells per shot fired. But don't worry about the poor lads survival; anyone who can kill until 3 a.m. and still have virtual blood-thirst for more must have some sort of stamina. After all, even a three-toed sloth can hang upside down for hours. Of course that's only because of their trusty hooks. As for the gamers, well, their just hooked.

When running before the sun rises I watch weary gamers exiting the café after a long night of online rampages and I am thankful that unlike the sloth I am engaging in exercise. Although I do miss playing a game now and then, and plan to do so when I return home, I can only pray that the moss of the sloth will not settle on me and make me invisible to my wife.

Going in Thai Circles

As mentioned in previous blogs I think that one thing funny about falangs (*Thai for "foreigners") is the myth of "common sense" and/or "common courtesy. The reason I think it is so funny is because it is a myth. Back home in Canada this particular myth just happens to be so widespread that it is true with certain morays of sense and courtesy becoming almost universally agreed upon. For example, one would normally expect that it is rude to step in front of someone in line at the grocery store or to set up a concert bandstand on the outskirts of an otherwise quiet community and proceed to blare music throughout the night. And although this type of behaviour would seem universally irritating and considered a matter of course to be followed by all parties it is by no means common to all places.

Thailand is not Canada. It is a world away from there. Yes, it has things in common with Canada such as paved streets, 7-11 stores, and shopping malls, but that is where the commonalities cease. Assuming that the "sense" of a Canadian is common with the "sense" of a Thai is merely naive. Thai's have their own morays, values, and common social qualities for which they adhere to just like all cultures develop their own ways of being. And thus we come across the circles of Thailand.

Thai social culture appears to revolve around circles moving from the inner to the outer. The circles determine the level of respect through which a person will treat those around them.

The inner circle is that of your family and closest friends. These are the people that you reply upon in your survival. They are people that are important to hold in high esteem for everything from your personal relations to your persona survival. They are more important than all others. This may not sound so different than what you might consider "normal", but the circles widen from here.

The second circle is that of co-workers and regular associates that you may have regular dealings with. These are people that you maintain positive relations to because they affect your periodical dealings and having a smooth relationship with them will grease the proverbial wheels later on.

Then comes the outer circle. This is everyone else on the planet that does not fit into the first two circles. People in this outer circle are worthy of nothing and are not valued nor treated with value. This is where the idea of "common courtesy" gets obscured.

"Common courtesy" as is agreed upon in Canada seems to state that all people are worthy of the universal respect as outlined by the unwritten guidelines referred to as "common courtesy". If an individual steps outside of the perceived parameters of common courtesy they can expect to be verbally drawn in by their peers and gently reminded of what is considered appropriate behaviour. However most of these perceptions that are common to Canadians do not apply to the outer circle.

Thai people exercise their rites of circles by out-circling each other in lines. People do line up here but one must always be wary of all others within the line or approaching the line because they are all in the outer circle.

The others also recognize this and they expect that you understand this as part of their version of universal "common sense". Yes, that's right, they also believe in a version of common sense completely alien to us. People in the outer circle do not begrudge others who act accordingly. It is understood that it is not rude to act in total disregard to those around you that do not fall within the inner two circles.

Driving in Thailand is a clear way to observe the outer circle in action. People swerve in and out of each other with reckless abandon constantly vying for the pole position that will allow them continued leverage on the remaining traffic in their path. It is quite clear that all other vehicles on the road are not considered to be in the inner-circle. this is evident due to the complete lack of courtesy displayed between drivers.

Lining up is another one of those common sense myths that is not so common in Thailand. Many people in Canada believe that when many people are waiting for a service that they should naturally form a line and wait their timely turn of being served. However, this is particular to only certain world circles and is not necessarily the case in Thailand.

When line ups occur in Thailand they are treated only as a suggestion of who will be served first. The actuality is that the line will follow ordinary parameters but there will be outer-circle exceptions. These exceptions include people darting around those in front of them when they are not looking or quietly pushing in front of them. Another common outer-circle exception is when a person simply stands beside the line waiting for the right moment and then suddenly strikes their hand forward holding the item they wish to purchase including the money for it in hopes that the cashier will accept them first. Of course the cashier is also Thai and so does not wish for any form of confrontation choosing rather to pursue a "mai pen rai" way of being, and so, they will accept the outer-circle action without penalty. At this point you may be saying to yourself, "this sounds a bit one-sided. I'm certain these actions are only that of the young, brash, and impatient." However, when grandma pushes you aside to pay for her strips of dried shrimp and then proceeds to push the remainder of her family into the line in front of you, you may begin to understand. It is for just these reasons that I think "mai pen rai" (*Thai for "no worries" or "whatever") is an essential component to survival in Thailand. But one must forgive grandma for her actions. Her family is in her inner circle whereas everyone else is not and she expects all others would do the same. So, to not act accordingly would be to forsake the way of being that is culturally correct.

"But this sounds absurd" you say? The next time you are in Thailand rent a car and see how long it takes someone to "let you in" to the flow of traffic. After several hours you might just realize that you are in the outer circle. But when it happens, try to understand that it is not rudeness, it is merely a form of cultural social survival being exercised. And if you do get angry, then try to understand how maddening it must be to move to Canada and have to understand a system different than your own.