Spreading Rumours
It’s almost Scottish this morning – a cool 29 deg. C as at 7.35 am.
This is probably the coolest it’s been since I got here . It’s almost cool enough to turn the air-conditioning off.
So I’m off for my therapeutic wallow at Saeng Chan. beach. It’s doing the scrapes from the bike accident no end of good.
Thais have a style of their own.
It often involves wild colour combinations. I see it in electronic documents, advertising, and especially the architecture.
Here’s where they’ll use vivid pastel colours you won’t find in a Dulux catalogue.
No doubt there’s a simple and widely-known explanation for how these colours are achieved, but I don’t yet know it. Each case of this technique seems to produce a unique colour, which suggests that it’s manually ‘brewed’.
Below is a small sample. The buildings shown are all within a circle maybe 5km across.
Watch this space, I’ll add images to this post as I collect them.
I’m headed back tomorrow to the Wiang Walee Hotel, the same one I landed in when I first arrived in Rayong.
It’s cheaper , basically. Rent savings will be 1500 baht / month, and electricity savings about 500 baht / month. I found out recently that the wholesale electricity rate is 3 baht / unit charged by the Government. Apartment owners typically gouge tenants at the rate of 7 baht / unit. Which is a 2000 baht / month difference, in my case.
The Wiang Walee isn’t glamorous, but it is close to the school, comfortable, and liveable. It has shelf space. I’ll have to splash out a little ( a small table maybe, etc ), but should be able to make some decent savings.
So one of my old teachers used to say, back in the previous Millenium.
And that’s the situation at the moment, with mid-term exams coming up, and certain fools ( me & the other foregin teachers, for example ) having to write the questions.
In a case of small mercies, I’ve been told they should be multi-choice, but it’s still a truckload of work. Fifteen-plus classes spread over 6 yaers ( grades ).
Not to speak of needing to mark all the assignments I set via Google Classroom so that we can belch out a mark for each student. And then matching the Thai names with ones I can actually read.
So this is where I earn my keep.
But in the words of a late great Uncle — “buy the ticket, take the ride.”
What a difference a day makes.
Yesterday the isolation of a few days off work gave rise to dark thoughts about how long I’d have a job for.
My Thai co-teacher was making ( via Line , the Thai chat app ) ominous noises about the volume of work coming up as mid-term exams appraoched. It looked like some sloppy bureaucracy from either him or the school would create a truck-load of extra admin work for me.
I was uncertain about what kind of reception I’d get after four extra days off ( on doctor’s orders ) nursing the foot.
I’d come to dislike where I’ve been living for the past two weeks – no shelving at all ( not even in the bathroom ). A marble-tiled floor which is nigh impossible to keep clean. The sacrifice of inside floor-space for a deck. Watching the power bleed through the meter..
Not enough sleep, and a foot which is improving too slowly.
So it hasn’t been all beer and skittles.
But I forced myself through the morning routine, and got to work in time, tie ‘n all as usual. And just got through the classes.
Turned out there was no committee waiting with a pink slip. Turned out that none of the classes were a total disaster. Turned out the Thai teacher had done quite some legwork patching up the record-keeping.
The Thai police clearance came through from the Bangkok run. Another hurdle cleared with bruises in the tender bits.
And so the wheels keep turning. I supplied SOM-who-must-be-obeyed with the required mugshots, and my teacher’s registration is on its way. In two months or so.
I hoped a wallow in the surf at Mae Rampehung beach today might turn a corner for the infected leg and bike accident wounds.
They cleaned out, but a few hours later are as swollen as before. Maybe it’s an overnight cure.
I had an alterior motive for going to the beach. Yesterday at Makro’s ( the King Kong of bulk food bargain stores ) I ran into a couple of English Likely Lads. They’d been in Thailand for 6 years, up North at Khon Kean.
On eyeing my cheese-laden trolley, one says he has cheaper, better cheese, which he imports in bulk. Today, I went to find out, and indeed, it was so. Blue cheese and cheddar, good quality stuff, for around the same price as back home.
Not only that, bacon galore, at bargain prices.
Meat is cheap in Thailand, and it’d be very easy to live in Pork, eggs, and fish. I almost do.
So cheap that while at Makro, I decided it was time to cash in on it. I haven’t done so already, because the only cooking equipment I have is a kettle, and microwave. So I gambled on a rice cooker, thinking that it would work like a slow cooker. And voila, perfectly slow-cooked pigs trotters last night!
A couple of days ago, I got very tired of hunting down early-opening local coffee shops. So I bought a filter coffee-maker. While it’s way better than instant, experts tell me it’s all in sourcing the good beans. So that’s next.
After pay-day this month fell on the 28th, below is an assortment of my recent extravagances.
It seems good things, as well as bad, come in threes.
And good things came yesterday in the form of news.
First, the hospital doctor who originally treated me told that I was in no danger of losing ( to amputation ) the injured leg or foot. Yes, it would have been an extreme outcome, but Mr. Neurotic over here worries about such things.
The Thai doctor showed a lot of grace and patience in explaining the situation in [ good enough ] English to this farang.
Along the way, I learned that it seems (m)any Thai public service interfaces – e.g. Hospital waiting rooms, consulates, police clearance check – operate with all the order of savannah watering holes . But despite that, they work, in a clunky kind of way, based often on numbered paper chits, as opposed to our more familiar electronic systems.
Anyway, all that aside, I also got back the rersults of the Thai police clearance check on did way back on May 27th. I didn’t insist on sighting it myself but was told by English Teachers’ sorceress Som ( a.k.a ‘God’ when it comes to anything bureaucratic ) that it was all fine. Sometimes it’s best not to question God.
So that’s one more step along the long and winding road of getting my teacher’s .. permit ( ? ), clearance( ? ).
The above Som had ordered me to get a doctor’s certificate during the follow-up. Of course, that started more fretting about what mysterious bureaucratic machinations may be afoot.
On being asked, the doctor originally wanted to stipulate something like two months’ ( or was it 6? ) rest. But when I explained to him that that would probably leave me jobless and on a plane back home, he reconsidered. We settled on two weeks ( from date of accident 19th June to July 3 ).
When I got back to the office with that, a co-worker, Janet, explained that the school takes doctor’s certficates seriously. I would be fine taking the directed rest, and paid. Janet is a Filipino who has been at the school foreever, and whose English is as good as ( better than many ) a native speaker’s. So I’m betting she can be relied upon.
So, I now have about five days to get the foot ( much more ) right. I’ll also be using the time to do schoolwork via Google Classroom.
Im a highly-strung sort, which has its own challenges.
As GrandMaster Flash said way back “don’t push me cos I’m close to the eedge / I’m trying not to / lose my head”.
That high-stringing, fuelled by an active imagination conjuring up the worst, sometimes feels close to snapping.
That’s the case with this damned leg.
I’d like a document – signed in blood and promising a first-born sacrifice – reassuring me that my ( very swollen ) leg is safe from the bogeyman of amputation.
I don’t know whether the document or the amputation is less likely.
But at times like these, far from home and with a language barrier – the imagination runs amok.
The leg feels a little better, but I’m not convinced I’m out of the woods yet.
A GP visit yesterday shed no further light.
I’m banking on a scheduled follow-up visit to the hospital tomorrow will put an end to my grappling.
Meanwhile, most things are more of a struggle than they need to be.
It may not look like it, but this is progress.
A couple of days of scrambling, with no clear plan, had left the wounds pus-filled and looking ugly, threatening.
I tried Iodine yesterday. That hurt. It’s hard to know whether that’s the good kind of hurt ( that pain when the body is working hard to fix something ) or not.
Then the landlord turns up to look at the WiFi. On his return, armed with a potion, he explains that he’s a traditional Thai doctor. ‘Leave the wound open, at least inside, and don’t put stuff directly on it, rather in the surrounding skin’. I thought so.
This morning at least the bloody things are ‘closed’ up.