Incompetence

Where to start?

I am too incompetent to express to you the experience of living in Bangkok and my job. It’s nothing too great. I am no explorer on the frontier of something incalculable, mental or physical. Actually, much of what I have done since arriving has been mundane and clear cut. Shopping for supplies (towels, soap, detergent, cell phones), getting acquainted with surroundings and relearning the Thai vocabulary for foods I like (cao mon gai, guai diao moo, cao gai taot), riding buses and taxis here and there. I saw Indiana Jones and went out to bowling and a bar afterwards. Bangkok is  city like any other city, and I am a resident, though a green one.

Somehow, still, the every day knick knacks of living — the sights and sounds of experience — have drained my senses and deflated my words. I am simply here and I don’t know what to say about it. I have only poorly constructed vignettes thrown together in a notebook:

“The strangeness of a city that runs independent of you, yes, Bangkok. I woke this morning to churnining engines and child’s voices, to a city already in the full bloom of its day, and I could have slept away and the world here would take no notice – for a while at least.

The day was spent mostly in malls with unfamiliar names, Tesco Lotus, Central Ping Glao, MBK. The malls of Bangkok let you see how Western culture has patched itself into the messy quilt of Thai life. English meshes itself on almost every sign, often completely without context – crunchy shrimp snack food packages have English names, but every other text on the package is in Thai.  English is the language of the money-making class, and maybe by extension the language of the hip. Are hipness and money ever that far apart, really?

Sights and sounds: Sidewalks writhing with people, so many you think of ants, and I am a head taller than most of them. Thais are thin and I am big, so my passing certainly clogs bottle necks in the sidewalks caused by vendors’ stalls, selling everything from leather belts and watches, wallets and key chains and geode crystals and gold fish. Thais surely curse my frame in tight alleys. One advantage to not knowing the language well yet is that I am spared the ire of the small waisted.“

St. Gabriel’s has assigned me to teach writing to 7th, 8th, and 9th graders, each class with sixty kids or more. Chaos has a face and it is in a Thai classroom.

This is a great place for a cliffhanger, so I will collect what thoughts I have and put them down next time. Til then.

To my Alma Mater

• Thank you for my new robes, despite their blackness, the fabric still breathes.
• Thank you for my diploma, which keeps the living wage monster at bay, at least until the next credit crisis.
• Thank you for my editorship at the newspaper, without which my understanding of politics and public relations would be shriveled. Go LU.
• Thank you for your calls about donation to the Evergreen Fund (in advance), but for now I will be paying off what tuition I have donated already.
• Thank you for my teachers, especially those who taught me how to break rules.
• Thank you for those two alcohol violations, those were swell.
• Thank you for “the bubble,” Baltimore surely would have murdered me, my family, and my pets without it’s comfy protection.
• Thank you for Baltimore, only as I leave does Charm City begin to bloom, finally revealing itself to reluctant eyes.
• Thank you for York Road, where fear and alcohol make a great learning curve.
• Thank you for the drinking culture, my eternal guide for how not to live.
• Thank you for Spring Break Outreach, there is light in the world, and 22 hours on a bus in much too long.
• Thank you for magic carpets, even urine fades away — eventually.
• Thank you for Maryland, whose drivers constantly beg the question: “Why did he just do that?”
• Thank you for Strong Truths Well Lived, weak truths, after all, are lame.
• Thank you for Primos, sometimes you just don’t give a shit. That’ll be $12.00.
• Thank you for the Mansion, apartments in the next ten years will feign to meet its glory.
• Thank you for Study Abroad, expanding my understanding of home.
• Thank you for Pico, yes I want some. I will always want some.
• Thank you for Houndnet, a window into how third world countries experience wireless Internet.
• Thank you for 70/30, yes, just thank you.
• Thank you for Midnight Breakfast, heartburn has a face and it’s bacon and flat french toast.
• Thank you for Docu, my life has a soundtrack. Instant nostalgia

To my friends

You made every moment beautiful. Thank you.