Greetings Old Friend

faithful reader - It has been some time I admit. I can't say this is a return to my past frequency, but hopefully it is a sign of such a return. Many things have happened since we last spoke. I'm in something of a rut I suppose. Certain things have come to me only with great difficulty and often under great duress. There are endless things I wish to discuss, but I just haven't been able to write at all. Even this meager post is something of a struggle and only possible due to the assistance of a controlled substance. You can't even fathom the trouble I have had writing even short essays this term.

Let me sum a few things of late....

• auditioned for a small speaking role in the movie Pinkville
  
• planning to spend about 20 days of Dec/Jan in Japan assuming I don't get the role in the movie and/or the pay isn't enough
• my nursery school-like university is undergoing all kinds of problems - I worry if it will last long enough for me to graduate..or even more likely...if it will ever offer the handful of classes I need to finish so I can graduate. Its not looking good right now. I don't expect anything to improve.
• I did indeed get the hotel job, but not in the capacity I originally expected. I am working M/W/F from 14:00-16:00 there. The pay is good and along with 1-2 private students its enough to pay the bills but I am not quite yet rolling in the baht.
  
• My teachers this semester are imbeciles. This isn't really that unusual, but when the teacher doesn't give a crap about the class, it makes it much harder for me to. And this is the worst I've seen.
  

More to come when I can pull it off.

Broken Promises - Mr. โดน

Well, I have some good news and some confusing not-so-good news. First the good news: I got the confirmation call from a lady in HR at the hotel about my latest millionbahtaire job on Tuesday evening. I agreed to a slightly lower wage than I had hoped for, but its still plenty of money for the time I'll actually be working. They want me to start either on the 1st or the 6th of August, the date has yet to be confirmed. Yaay.

Next, the other news. I got a call yesterday from a different person in the HR department. He told me he had yet to confirm anything with the GM. He also mentioned that they were now considering having just 2 classes instead of 4 and would I still be interested in the job at the same rate. I said probably not. I'd need all the details first and then I would consider. Gnilb!

So I have no clue if I have this job or not. As usual, I find myself almost believing what people say only to be let down 100% of the time. Not sure why I can't seem to learn from this particular type of mistake. I never trust anybody, but I guess when I want to believe something I lie to myself or something. Oh well.

I met with a Korean couple who were referred to me by a friend of mine. I'll be teaching them privately twice a week so that will alleviate 10% of my briefly expected fortune in the event I don't get it.

I'm still going strong on my language studies of late. My browsers are either in Chinese or Japanese now and microsoft office software is all in Thai. I'm in the process of making the switch to monolingual dictionaries in all the languages that I study. I've been doing it with Thai for a while, but I just ordered a student j-j dictionary from Japan and my friend is going back to Korea tomorrow and I told her not to come back without a Korean-Korean dictionary mean for young students. Not sure where the hell I am going to find a Chinese-Chinsese one. When I asked my Chinese school about it, they said they'd never seen one nor could they comprehend what I would want with it.

Um, in other news, I bought a new badminton racked as the head of my last one broke off as it collided with the face of my partner. Black eye for him and a shiny new racket for me. Not everything bad that happens needs to be bad for me.

Winning Freedom

I got the call yesterday. They want me to start August 1st. They are trying to cut about 40B/hour off of what I asked for. I told them I needed the weekend to think about it. At their offered rate, I would still be making much more than I need, but frankly, I'm worth more. They don't need to provide a visa for me as I have one already. I'm fluent in Thai - there are very few people in this city that can explain grammatical nonsense and most importantly, I know how to learn a language. I don't just teach English. I teach people ways to learn. These methods can be applied in any field.

Now my dilemma. This job is too good for me to turn down, but I am extremely tempted to turn down their offer as I feel its not enough. I'm worth more and they realize that.

I need to go teach my kids class in a minute. Mousetrap and twister today. Its too early for twister.

Almost There

As to where I'm referring, I'm not yet certain. I'm still on my language kick. I'm making use of a few different programs at once now rather than before where I put all my languages into one program. This worked fine for a long time until my hard drive died some time ago. I've since rebuilt my Vtrain cards and twice the program crashed and I lost thousands of flashcards and countless hours of work. So while I am by no means splitting up languages, I am taking it easy not to overload any particular program. I am also using a few web-based flashcard programs. I probably spend in total 20-30 minutes doing flashcards in an average day. This is by no means in one sitting. Depending on how busy/patient I am during a day this could be anywhere from 3 to 30. Seems to be working, but it takes months to know for sure.

In other news, I had a meeting with the director of human resources at the hotel I had the 1-month teaching gig at and although I am restraining myself from getting excited...(actually I never get excited..I just get my hopes up and then dashed on a fairly regular basis) as it will be a week before I have any sort of confirmation in writing. Before the meeting I had already calculated every possible outcome about how much I wanted vs how much money I was willing to accept and I was quite pleased to come out of the meeting feeling like I can get exactly what I asked for.

The salary/schedule I designed was meant to be beneficial to all parties - The hotel would pay me 90% of what they were paying the school who is employing me temporarily at the moment and would therefore save money. I required that I be in charge of setting up the entire program within reason. Everybody studies 3 times/week for 1.5 hrs/session.

I would get nearly twice what the school was paying me. But, I'm more than worth it.

The staff would get to study with things that I chose/modified to be most efficient. The schools tend to give you a book the first day so you have little time to familiarize yourself with something new and the situation is worse if you don't like the style of a particular book as the school has already charged the students/clients for copying the books.

I have a million ideas of how I want to run things and I think this could be really good for me. Obviously, this would set me up perfectly financially. I would make much more than I currently spend while working just 18 hrs/week. The hours would be such that I would still have plenty of time to pursue most of the other things I do - Uni classes, piano lessons/practice, daily exercise, Korean lessons, badminton in the evenings and a bit of extra p/t work if felt like it. I'd have to give up my night Chinese class for good (I have kind of done this already as I have come to the conclusion that classes that I don't teach tend to be useless - and some of the ones that I 'teach' are also). Showing up for a class for a year or 2 doesn't mean shit if the teacher/book/your own effort and/or etc sucks.

I want to go more into this right now, but I gotta shove some knowledge in my brain so it will have to wait a while. I finish my work slav-a-thon on Tuesday. Then back to the gym to attempt to coax my muskles back from their month-long holiday.

***I'm going to stop there...but it just occurred to me that this could very well be just an 'up' phase in my life. I have been off of Zoloft for nearly a month with no adverse effects. I do feel like I'm dying because I can no longer breath properly and I have coughing fits frighteningly similar to when I quit smoking, but I feel mentally/psychologically fit. I'm still drinking every day, but its more of a habit than anything else. Its extremely rare that I get drunk. There has to be some situation that brings it about. Just coming down from a long day is not a good enough reason for that. I'll try to write again soon, but who knows. Certainly not me.

Possible Promotion in the Slave Pits - 10,000 Maniacs (Or just 1?)

I have 5 more 8 hour days at the Holiday Inn. I'm teaching 2 different groups now, 4 hrs/day each. One of the managers came and talked to me a bit about how he wants to have an ongoing class for the 4 groups that I've taught/am teaching. He asked how he should go about that...whether through the teacher or the school. I liked how he referred to me as well as the school in the 3rd person. I told him he was welcome to go through me as this would cost them a bit less money and I wouldn't have to fill out stupid evaluation forms with the dumbest questions, make tests for 10-day classes where I don't even have a set book in some of them and of course, I would be able to get paid quite a bit more. I pointed out that 4 hr classes are silly both for the hotel, the staff and me. Most people just can't retain much in a 'learning marathon' of that calibur. As far as classes go I think a minimum of 3 times/wk (though more is better) at no longer than 1.5 hrs is ideal. In this situation both the student(s) and the teacher can hopefully focus for a full hour and possibly a few extra minutes. The extra 30 min covers bathroom trips, loss of concentration, explanations, etc.

So if I get this job, it would be 6 evenings week for 3-4 hrs ( I think this is entirely up to me). Assuming I am satisfied with the pay, this would allow me to continue my other pursuits (Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, piano and exercise) while also having time to finish my degree albeit part-time and be able to buy stuff. As I usually get overexcited at such things I am containing myself quite well. Of course, this could just be because I'm too tired to get excited about anything. We shall see.

I've kicked my Japanese program back into shape. Using a 'new' method. Ok so its not new, in fact, I've done it before for fun without considering using it as a backbone to my other styles of learning. I'm going to learn 10,000 sentences in Japanese while I continue to use Heisigs Remembering the Kanji system to learn a respectable amount of Japanese characters. I have a good grasp of a bit over a 1000 at the moment and I've decided to review those thousand over the next couple of weeks to make sure I know them before I move on to the next 1000. Depending on the success of this mission, I will of course attempt something similar in the other languages.

We shall see I suppose.

7.5 mb

Well, I'm in the UK on an 8mb connection and its hard not to wet myself. It was even harder earlier while taking a shower and I downloaded a 600mb game which finished before I was and after a few minutes of playing it I just deleted it. Such a file would usually take me a couple on my connection in Chiang Mai. Ah, the Western world does have its perks.

I'll be here until Monday anyways.

Slaving Week 2

I survived the first week and it wasn't bad actually. I'm exhausted and I'm not too keen on giving up everything else I've got going on at the moment (Chinese, Korean, piano ,exercise), but the job itself isn't too bad. The classes are ridiculously long (4 hours), but I give (take?) plenty of breaks and somehow manage to pull through. While my morning class has made some definite progress, I was mistaken about the level of the supposedly 'more advanced' afternoon class and we have wasted a lot of time. While they are more capable of broken hotel English than the morning class (and therefore harder to fix their bad habits) in a few days I'd say a fair portion of the morning class can actually speak correctly more often than the afternoon class. I keep having to explain to them that years of studying a language in a classroom does not in any way guarantee you will be able to speak the langauge. As a prime example, I point out that I never actually 'studied' Thai and I speak it rather fluently. Sure, there are plenty of things I don't know. But there is plenty of crap I don't know in English either so I just absorb new things as they come rather than stress over the fact that I don't know everything.

Oh well. I'm tired and I'm in the middle of struggling through typing an email in Korean so I better finish that so I can try to sleep and wake up for another English marathon in the morn.

Slaving Away

I've been a bit busy lately and I haven't had much to write about. I'm going to the UK at the end of this month for my sister's wedding reception. I'll be there from the 28th of June until the 2nd of July.

Starting June 18th I will be taking on a temporary full-time job teaching English to the staff of the Holiday Inn here. Full-time as in 8-5 Mon-Fri. Aside from that I will be working M/W/F 6-8, 4 hours on Sat and 2 on Sunday. Possibly more. I suspect I will need to give up the gym, piano, Korean, Chinese and possibly even badminton during this month. I'm not really pleased about that, but I want to move, get a vehicle and a keyboard so hopefully I can survive this.

In other news, my ex-girlfriend slept over last night and we spent the day together. I was a bit surprised when she asked if she could come over, but I can't say I minded at all. While I don't expect to get back together with her it will be nice to hang out with her sometimes.

I haven't had any time to start my Thai podcasts yet so thats going to be moved to the backburner for a while.

Earthquake

I was practicing piano today a few minutes before 4pm Bangkok time and the rehersal room began to shake. At first I thought the bench was giving out and it was swaying, but then I realized the piano was swaying too and I wasn't playing that hard. I went outside the room and watched as the lights shook and it was kind of interesting. It must have lasted nearly a minute. It felt long anyways.

Podcast

I've been listening to lots of podcasts lately. Mostly Chinese - I use chinesepod.com.
I've started collecting some Japanese ones as well, but I haven't looked for a Korean one yet. I did look around for Thai podcasts out of curiousity and I found that there aren't any good ones. So I'm going to try and make some myself. I'm not exactly sure whether I will post any podcasts I do on this blog or my language blog - which I haven't posted much on yet. Twice actually, but more soon. I think it will be better to keep any podcasts seperate.

In other news - my x-girlfriend Ann messaged me yesterday. I ended up calling her in the evening (I was kinda drunk) and we talked for a long time. It was weird and I was kind of depressed at first, but I came out of it. It was right of me to let her go. I'm just too messed up part of the time to properly be in a relationship.

Update

So my dad seems to have woken up and been awake for a few days now. He can talk a bit and recognize people, but he doesn't know what year it is and he sometimes speaks nonsense. He still has pneuemonia and a fever at the moment. They want to move him to another hospital in Philly so he can get his heart checked out to see if there was a blockage or something that needs to be operated on, but they are waiting for his fever to go down first.

Also, while a bunch of people were visiting with my dad yesterday, his mother started complaining of chest pains and then began vomiting all over the floor much to everyones surprise. I think she is now also admitted at the hospital, but I'm not certain her condition.

I am still debating whether or not to go back. I am supposed to start some new part-time teaching gig next week and I'm not sure what I should do. If I went, it would really only be for a few days. Maybe 5 at most not including travel time. I'm thinking maybe I will wait until the heart check?

Bad News

Well to start off, I was in a depressed funk for a couple weeks. I had been anti-social and just hid out from the world for a while. I've been pretty much out of it for a few days now, but I just received the following email from my stepmother:

"Brett - Your dad suffered a very severe cardiac event on a treadmill, collapsed, aspirated and at this point is clinging to live. He has not regained consciousness, had developed pnumonia, and at this point, does not present any brain function."

I read that email around 3am East Coast US time so that was all I had to go on until I got called during my piano lesson.

Apparantly, he was on a treadmill at the YMCA yesterday? and had some kind of "cardiac event" and lost consciousness. This probably wouldn't have been so bad, but he hit his head and vomited. He was alone and was without oxygen for an unknown period of time. He was found by the caretaker of the gym. He was blue at the time. He is on 8 types of medication at the moment and while his heart seems to be ok, he wasn't showing signs of brain activity yesterday and he had developed pnemonia from the vomit in his lungs. I should know more soon. I certainly hope he pulls through, but its not looking very good at the moment.

Finally I Can Log In

Blogger has been awful lately. I have had login troubles for weeks. No matter the browser. You, my faithful reader(s) have suffered because I can never log in to this crap. I have written many things (mostly on the depressing side) in my notebook, but its just not the same. I am too tempted to sensor what I wrote when I wrote it. Anytime I post, its what I wrote. What should I do?

I Guess I'm Screwed

I went into the school on Saturday morning about 30 minutes early and I told the girl there that I still haven't been paid and its been over 2 months and I won't be teaching that day. She immediately got me on the phone with someone in Bangkok who said that they didn't have my bank account information. The girl in front of me said she sent it twice and when I told the girl that she made a strange face. Anyways, I gave them my info and waited until the girl faxed a copy of my bank book to the head office. Later, the wife of the owner (I think she is anyways) told me she was sorry and didn't know anything about it and I would get paid on Monday. Well I just got back from Rambo and after showering away all my Rambo sweat (from sleeping outdoors on stacks of hay all day) and went to check my bank account a bit after 8pm hoping for my owed millions, but alas, I still have but one lonely circular digit left in my account.

The Rambo money is crap and its so friggin boring. I literally get there, eat breakfast, then change into my missionary costume and then I go to sleep on some hay until noon-ish. The sleep sucks because I am awakened constantly by flies landing on me or sometimes by chickens fighting around me or by gunfire. Today I was woken by something sounding like a helicopter gun. Actually, one time today I was woken up by Stallone talking to some guy next to my haystack. It was better than the gunfire of course. Then I wait until lunch which was very late today-around 14:30. There isn't really anything I can eat so I usually just eat salad and fruit and sometimes some form of potato or rice. Erm, back to the point. I keep doing it for the money because I really need it. I am owed thousands of dollars right now and I don't know if I'll ever get any of it. There isn't really anything I can do about it either.

The next problem is that the Sonkran festival is starting up pretty soon where the country goes berserk and has water fights from about 9am until dusk for a few days. Which means if I don't get the money by tomorrow or Wed, I will have to wait a week (if I get it at all) until the holiday is over surely. I don't think even Rambo can get me out of this jam.

Oh yea, on top of that - my computer has some nasty virus that won't allow me to log on. I need a windows xp cd to fix it and of course I don't have one so I am also computer-less as well as broke. Woohoo.

Rambo whips out his pistol with a blinding flash of speed and easily dispatches with 4 of the pirates...

Sorry if this is getting boring. But at least take note that is far worse for me. I spent yet another day where we left around 5am and got back around 8:30pm and I was again not used for anything. I slept on a stack of hay until around 12:30. Then just stood around most of the day occasionally talking or watching scenes.

They torched a bamboo house and the fire burned out of control and spread all over the place so they were evacuating people down the hill en masse. I heard them mention that someone got hurt, but I never noticed anything and I don't think it was anything serious.

I saw Sly for the first time tonight. I was in the parking lot of unit 1 (the main unit - I "work" on unit 2) and this lady was fake-freaking out. "Sylvester is coming right here now!" I didn't catch the context, but the fact that she repeated this a few times seemed kind of silly. She came across as if something wasn't ready or what not. I mean, he is the director, and this is the set - shouldn't he be going there? Nobody seemed to be around to pay her any attention anyways. So he rolled up in a sleek suv with 2 Thai guys hanging on either side of the car blocking the passenger doors. Security, privacy? I can't say. It was kinda odd though. Anyways, he was like 10 metres from me and I wasn't even sure it was him as it was kinda dark until I heard him talk. Then I went back to eating my rice-porridge while waiting for my ride home.

I'm going in to the office tomorrow to sign on as a permanent extra for Rambo IV. This means that I will probably be called on 2-4 days/week to play (not do anything) a double for the missionaries who get captured in the film. I will also get paid for the days I went in and did nothing this week so I can actually pay my rent tomorrow even if my teaching job screws me over.

Rambo-izms

I did Rambo again today. It was unbelievably boring, but I need the money as it is still looking like my "great" new job will not be paying me the 50,000 baht I am owed for the past 2 months. Unfortunately, there isn't much I can do about it either. Anyways, we went to the hotel at 5am and were taken out to a different location than last time. It was some fake Karen (ethnic people who live in Burma/Thailand, but have no actual state of their own) village. I pretty much slept all day when there weren't bombs going off. I was never called to do anything so it was super-boring. I need to bring more stuff to do tomorrow.

Rambo: The Sequel

I got the call about 30 minutes ago. They want me again tomorrow at 6am. I had to reschedule my private student. Another long and boring 12 hour day for 1800 baht. Being a stand-in tends to be far less interesting than being an extra. Supposedly, I am getting a speaking part next week, but I have no clue if that will actually happen.

I still haven't been paid by my new job. They owe me 50,000 Baht as of this coming Saturday. And the biggest palm/mobile software company in the world always pays super late. They owe me around $450 US from software translation work finished months ago.

Rambo Can Fly?

So knowing I had to wake up at 4am-ish yesterday I went to sleep the night before around 9:30. I then woke up a bit past midnight feeling awfully sick (of the hot/cold/sweaty/feverish/nauseous/wondering-if-its-food-poisoning type). Due to hot/cold flashes and pretty intense stomach pains and a number of trips to the bathroom expecting to throw up, I couldn't get back to sleep. Around 4:30am I went to 7-11 to get some asprin and water and then I headed to the hotel which serves as home base for the casting crew. I was somewhat surprised to find only 5 other whiteys being taken to the location. 3 of them had already shot at least one day before. We arrived at the national park where they were shooting sometime after 6am. I was unable to sleep at all during the ride. When we got there we had "breakfast." No vegan food aside from fruit and pretty busted salad choices. So I had fruit for breakfast and salad and fruit for lunch. Not exactly filling, but my stomach was still a bit busted so it was enough to keep me moving. Well, not moving so much as sitting and waiting in one boat before we were told to move to another boat for a while and wait there. Then we went ashore for a while in the middle of the reservoir and sat there for an hour or so. To summarize, we waited all day and didn't end up shooting our one stand-in scene with 'rambo' (a chinesy-looking Thai guy with a wig and a red bandana) for a wide shot with the camera being in a helicoptor passing back and forth and circling us in our little shanty boat.

Anyways, the actual scene took a bit over an hour and then we went back, changed gear and left. We got back to CM around 5:30ish or so. The other stand-ins were nice enough, but it was by far the most boring of my foray into the world of being a human prop. I was pretty sure I was going to retire after Rambo, as things can only plummet in life from this particular apex of my life, but then it was suggested that I might be 'needed' for a speaking part 2-3 days next week. We shall see.

Oh, btw, I was a stand-in for the leader of the missionaries that get captured and/or killed by river pirates or some such. The actor portraying my stand-in character looks somewhere around 50. There is no way you can make out my face in this scene for sure, but I could probably point myself out to you if you so desire.

We never saw Sly, but I swear I heard his voice 2 or 3 times on the radios. My assumption was that he was in the helicoptor with the camera the entire time.

Another last thought, I ended up being awake for around 27 hours during this ordeal. I occasionally dozed off for a few minutes here and there, but I couldn't stay down. When I finally did actually fall asleep around 2am the next morning, I still started waking up far too early (around 7am), feeling completely exhausted.

Rambo!

I got the confirmation call. I'm going to film at 6am tomorrow. Rambo IV, my third film now. Not sure how many days it is yet, but I certainly need the money because my damned job has yet to pay me, though I have been assured it will come sometime this week.

Insanity

Today was rather hectic. I practice piano in the morning and then did lesson 2 of FSI's Cantonese program which I am studying on my own about 30 min/day. I didn't make it to the gym today unfortunately as I usually can't on Saturdays also, but I'm going to play badminton in a few so its better than nothing.

Around 14:30, I met up with a Korean guy who is going to be in Chiang Mai for a month and wants to study conversational travel English with me before he goes on to Egypt. That'll net me a nice chunk of change for a bit of my free time. Following that I studied Korean until 16:00, until my next appointment arrived; a Japanese girl who wants help writing resumes. She is planning on working at some hotel in town that gets lots of Japanese tourists and wants Japanese employees apparantly. So thats 2 nights a week after my Chinese class which ends at 20:00. I'm not charging her because its a regular chance for me to speak some Japanese which I sorely need. And shes gonna be buying my dinner. After that I met up with a guy from NY who so my "Learn Thai from a White Guy" flyer and wants to study Thai with me. I think we are starting on Sunday. Hes only here for a month or so also, so I'll just be busting my ass for a month. Not bad. Nor am I finished. I've been asked to do some silly English camp for 5-6 days in a couple months. With 700 freshman. Interesting. On top of that I got another call about Rambo today from a girl I met on the set of the French movie. They want me to come meet the director (casting d I assume) for a possible part or parts. Good stuff in the works.

Rambo

I got another call about Rambo tonight. At first they wanted me to come in tomorrow, but then she said not, but she would call me again. At least its still shooting so I hopefully will get a part.

Return to the Bronze Forest

So it wasn't Rambo IV after all. As it turns out I am an extra in some French film. No clue if its good or not. Rambo may still happen next week. We shall see. The shooting turned out to be 2 days. The first one was fun, but the 2nd wasn't so much. The money wasn' t great either, but thats typical for such things.

Thailand considers declaring emergency over haze

Smog

The pollution level is unbeliveable at the moment. At night you can see the clouds of smoke around the street lights. Even if I don't encounter smokers, I still find myself coughing up crap every day, though its not as noticeable as when I am around cig smoke.

Rainbo ?

So perhaps I was mistaken about the punk girl after all. I took a few small observations and situations and drew my own conclusions which turned out to be incorrect. Or so it seems at the moment. I saw her sitting outside her work (a restaurant in my apartment complex) and sat and talked to her her for a while.

I got called by the casting guy again today. He said we would be shooting on Wed night and he asked me to get a few more people. So I got 5 more whiteys for the Rambo IV shoot.

Escalation

Why do Thai people always stop to make important decisions about in life right after they step off the escalator. Almost every day I must dodge such people who literally stop right at the top/bottom with people having to move quickly to avoid a people collision.

So its looking like my short-lived fling with the punk girl is over. I'm not exactly sure what happened. I guess I should be bummed out, but I haven't really felt much of anything lately. Maybe just a bit dazed. My schedule is relatively full so I keep busy enough.

I've been taking piano lessons for a month or so now and I guess its going ok. I'm pretty awful at reading music, and its a problem as I inevitably end up memorizing the song and am never truly reading it anyways. So I gotta change the songs I work on all the time to force myself to improve at reading.

Showbiz

So I got a call today from a friend of a friend asking if I was free to be a double for some French movie being filmed in the nearby "jungle." Although my build, height, hair color and ability to drive a stick were enough, the hair on the sides of my head was a bit too short. The shooting conflicted with my 2 hr/week overpaid job (which hasn't paid me yet for last month actually) so I wouldn't have done it anyways. Oh well. I am still on the list for Rambo IV and they have kept in contact with me and the guy I met today is working on it too.

I got this strange job offer the other day. Some friend of the gym-girl called me the other day and asked me to translate to either English or Korean something she was trying to ask some Korean guy. So she hands the phone to the Korean guy and it turns out to be my friend Jun, who I consider to be my Korean counterpart as we share a number of anxiety-related afflictions. Anyways, this girl eventually passed on the idea of Jun and asked if I was interested in being an interpreter for some Korean person for 3 weeks while they study Thai massage. It would have me interpreting from Thai to Korean I think. My Korean is decent considering I haven't even been studying a year yet, but I'm not sure if I even have the vocab to be able to do well at this. However, the money they offered was rather tempting and the girl actually said if it wasn't enough to counteroffer at my leisure. So I mentioned it to my Korean teacher and asked if she would be interested in doing it together. It would be about 3 hr/day for 3 weeks M-F. Hopefully, she is up for it as it could work out for me as Korean lessons where I get paid (I offered to split it with her 50/50).

In the world of exercise, things are going pretty well. I somehow managed to put up 80kg the other day. I usually go to the gym Sun-Fri and I play badminton for 1-2 hrs every M/W/F night. I have trouble breathing all the time whenever I due anything that raises my heart rate which is annoying when I have to stop to cough up goo or just that I can't play hard not because my body can't handle it, but because I can't breathe. It sucks. I had problems like this my whole life, but when I was young and I ran the pain was different and there was no goo. That changed after smoking for 7 yrs. Gnilb indeed.

Life

I'm ok. Perhaps better than that, but I'm not sure. I have been feeling a bit empty lately. Devoid of emotion, but always on the brink of something heavy. As I previously mentioned, I broke up with Ann on Valentine's Day. As false as it may sound I did it more for her than for me. As hard as she tried, she couldn't put up with my faults. She wasn't perfect either, but she tried harder than I ever could. I just don't know how to have a serious relationship with a girl. Its kind of ironic; if I care/like someone too much, I will inevitably drive them away one way or another, however, if I like them on some lesser, but saner-level, the relationship tends to work. There has only been 1.5-2 times in my life when I pursued and got what I really 'wanted.' While those relationships worked for a while, they didn't last. I miss Ann, but I suppose I miss every person I cared about. It doesn't pass, rather it stays with you and usually becomes weaker over time.

I think I am probably done with the punk girl, she is nice enough, but she has annoyed me a few times and I'm leaning towards the 'friend is better' path with her.

Meanwhile, the gym girl is currently in a car on her way home. She is back together with the old boyfriend and they are going back to their hometown to resume their previous life because her mom was lonely. I really dug her for a while. She is a cool girl and her boyfriend is nice enough but she deserves better. Much better than me as well I suppose, but I can still like her, right?

On happier notes, 2 nights ago the gym girl sent me an sms saying she was at this club if I wanted to go. So I went there to discover it was her the ex-nonex? boyfriend and another guy. So I mainly talked to her and drank their whiskey than when it closed at midnight, I went with the other guy to a late-night spot assuming the gym-girl and bf were coming. We got there and were not there long before I attacked a table full of girls. I got a # from the best one and then I went home to sleep. I waited a day before calling her tonight. She was pleasantly surprised and she remembered me the first time I said my name. This is probably the first time such a thing has happened in my life in Thailand. I always have to explain the situation for them to realize who I am. Anyways, this girl is in the middle of finals, but she is certainly interested and she seems cool so far. We'll see what happens. More on this later.

I would write more often but this blogserver is awful. I can't log into it most of the time so I can't get in to write when I have things to say.

mus-kles

I broke up with Ann on Valentine's day. Since then I have mostly hung out with the punk girl, but I still find myself missing Ann quite a bit. I've been dreaming about her quite often and it can be a bit stressful. I don't feel depressed or anything, I am just bored. With my current schedule I am finding myself with far fewer friends than before. It feels strange, but I seem to be ok.

I play badminton 3 nights a week, I go to the gym Sun-Fri and I am probably stronger than I haven been in my life. The other day some guy training at the gym asked if he could switch off with me on the bench press and I said sure. When I went to max out he told me I could do more than I thought my max was and he was right. I somehow managed to put up 75kgs twice and I am extremely sore today. Today I did shoulders and triceps. And I played badmintion for about 2 hrs for aerobic-isms. I am sore all over. I drink soy protein shakes everyday and I try to take one meal at the food center near my place where I just order some dish and give them a brick of tofu to throw in it so I can get the protein. It seems to be working.

I changed my routine lately. Before I did Day 1: Chest/biceps - Day 2: shoulders/back - Day 3: \triceps/legs

It worked well for quite a while, but I've devised something more efficient.

My new regime gives me 2 days rest for chest and has me alternating tri/bi-ceps each day. Aside from that I do legs, shoulders and back 1-2 times/wk, chest 2-3 times, triceps 2-3 and biceps 2-3. It seems to be working really well but its hard to measure my progress.

Punk Jam

Picture by Jeff

Punk Rain

I am a crazy guy. I suppose this isn't news to anyone reading this. Its certainly not to me. I really wish I had a bit more control over my emotions. I broke up with Ann (previous gf) on Valentine's day. It actually went well. After I told her, I said lets go get drunk together one last time. So we went out and got wrecked and had some final physical-ness stuffs. Basically, I told her that she is a good girl, but as she already knows and isn't willing to admit, I am just not capable of giving her the attention that she requires. I need lots of alone time and I am not very outspoken in my appreciation of or my cares for people. I blame this at least partially on my screwed up childhood where rather then teach (explain to) me why we have to send thank you cards and be so polite my parents just thought it a acceptable to force me to do such things ("Because I said so!") which of course makes a child question and rebel against such a concept. So even now such situations are extremely uncomfortable for me. Its not that I'm not thankful. I just have an anxiety attack if I think I am expected to express thanks for it.

Anyways, the reason I sometimes need to distance myself from people who have grown to close is because I begin to despise them. I can become enraged over relatively trivial things. Because I am aware of these things I try to shoo away anyone I am unable to avoid. This is because I realize I just need a few increments of time to get over whatever I am preparing to blow up on. Some of the things that trigger this murderous rage inside me are obvious as I remember feeling them as I was growing up, however, many come about rather unexpectedly and even though I feel part of me is urging to kill the nearest offender, I also at the same time am completely aware of how ridiculous these feelings are, but the only way I am able to avoid taking it out on the "offender" is to get away from them (everyone?). This is usually not a big deal with friends, but girlfriends are a bit more tricky. I've tried to explain this to my previous Thai girlfriends but they just don't get it. Its just a different kind of ignorance.

Moving along... while I was hoping to be single for a while, I am no longer sure if thats a possibility. While I am feeling rather invincible on and off lately I am still hesitant. I got a few numbers last Thursday. The situation with the girl in question was rather unusual.

She is a punk. More on this soon.

Depressing Shit

The gym girl Nut has me all depressed. I was sitting at my usual spot because I have to translate this one page and I have tons of Korean homework and I wanted to study a little bit. I saw her walk out with this Australian guy who also goes to the gym and is nice enough but kind of annoying as he is always asking/interrupting my work- out to ask me Thai questions.

My mood just sunk into pretty heavy depression so I took an extra zoloft hoping to stave it off, but I couldn't do anymore work/studying so I went home and had a beer and watched the latest Heroes episode hoping that would distract me enough. It didn't really so I pressed the rounded edge of toenail clippers deep into the flesh between my fingers and eventually the inside of my elbow to get my mind out of that state. I haven't done that in a long time, but it helps. Even as that mode kicks in I know I will get over it and I know I'm freaking out over something thats probably nothing, but whether I am so conditioned to react to that kind of situation or if the seratonin levels in me are just so screwed up I couldn't say, but my little strategies do manage to at least reduce the potential for me to kill myself/someone else. Neither is even remotely likely, but they arise very strongly for a few moments until I can stop them.

Meanwhile, Ann (the sorda x-gf) keeps coming around and though its Valentine's Day, sometimes I really want to finish with her for good. I don't know how to do it and I don't know if I can do it today, but I am not sure if I can be in this relationship anymore. I just want to be alone for a few days and then possibly go out again for a couple weeks to get my self-esteem back to where it was a couple of weeks ago. I think I know how to do it now anyways.

Million-baht-aire

I started the new job yesterday. I got there 5 minutes late. There was this huge parade in the city that I didn't know about and we actually had to invade the parade and go at its pace for a while before I had to jump off the bike and clear a path so we could get off of the road on the moat much to the chagrin of the locals. It took nearly an hour to get to the mall that is about 12 minutes away.

My "class" consists of one 6 yr old boy who speaks pretty much no English. He can respond to a few basic questions and knows the typical transliterated into Thai pronunciation of some English words, but he can't really spell much and I wasn't really sure where to begin. The main problem is that I will only see him once a week and its a 2 hour class! That is too long for anybody, especially a little kid. More likely we will be studying for 20-30 min at best and playing for an hour and a half. As I am salaried, until the school finds more people and therefore more classes, I am making 3,125 Baht/hour (around US$90ish) . And I just work Saturdays. This is a completely unheard of wage for esl teachers in Thailand, or anywhere for that matter. The cost of living here is very low, so that actually covers all of my bills and then some. Good-tastic.

Я иду в Россию? Действительно ли она - тот?

There is a chance I might be going to work in Russia for a bit this summer. Well, if the money offered is enough. The CEO of the pda/mobile software company that I do freelance work for (translation, brochure writing, web site checking, etc) wants to send me there for a month to teach English to the team of translators a couple hours a day and spend some time checking over (Read: rewrite) ads, web sites and the like. Could be interesting, but it would have to be a lot of money for me to give up the new 25,000/month job that I'm starting tomorrow. I'd need to touch up my Russian a bit as I can't remember much at all. Fun stuff indeed.

Got trashed at a little Korean jam last night at my teacher's place. Her and 3 other Koreans were there and we had lots of Korean food, beer and wine. I got a few calls from the gym girl so after the party I went to hang out with her for a bit, but I'm almost ready to give up on her. While I was considering her as a potential girlfriend, I'm starting to wonder if she has any real interest in me. Sometimes it seems like it, but I'm just not sure.

Regina Girls College

This is the end of my 2nd week teaching at this school. There has yet to be one day where all the classes went according to the schedule. My first class today was supposed to start at 10:20. I just came back from the room to find nobody there. I really hope I get paid for all of these hours that I was supposed to teach, but there was some other event or test going on that nobody bothered to inform me of.

One more week of this nonsense and then I'm free. This is a good thing as I don't function very well on this type of sleep schedule. No word yet on when/if I am supposed to start that new job. If I don't hear anything by tomorrow, I will call the guy again and find out whats up.

More Schoolage

So yet again I came in expecting to be teaching 4 50 minute classes today only to arrive at the first one to find it empty save for one student who was running in to drop her bag off. "Is anybody coming to study today?" She replied, "No class today ajarn, there is a ceremony for some lady who turned a 100." "Is it going to take all day and is everyone in your grade in it?" Alas, she didn't know. It seems I will still have the other 3 classes, but nothing is certain. I better get paid for all these hours I never taught.

School of Rock

This school that I am subbing at is just plain ridiculous. I arrived around 8:45 today as I have a 9:30 class. At 9:20, another teacher happened by and informed me that all M. 3 (14-15 yr olds) classes are cancelled as they will be taking tests all day. This might have been perfect as the normal schedule I picked up only has me teaching M. 3 today, but I picked up two M. 1 classes for a Malaysian guy who went home for the weekend so I gotta stick around all day. Oh well. At least I will supposedly still get paid for the hours that I would have worked had there been a class.

In other news, I think I actually did score the best job in Chiang Mai. I got a call last night from a guy I know that works there already who said that the boss wants to talk to me. So I called the guy and he said he'd give me a trial run at it. However, he said that the students prefer British teachers for some silly reason. Most people tend to think I'm from the UK anyways so I can talk to them like a chimney sweep if they so desire.

ARgh

Ann stayed over on Sunday night. I fell asleep pretty early and I got my usual midnight call from the gym girl. Ann made the worst move ever and answered it. The girl asked to speak to me, but of course Ann told her I was already asleep. Terrible. I was extremely pissed when I found this out in the morning and I might have overreacted in my yelling at Ann.

Ahh the guy whos job I was hoping for was fired yesterday. Ironically, the day before he was going to quit without any notice. The boss told him some people didn't like his teaching methods. I had to stifle a laugh when he told me this because he doesn't actually have any teaching skills whatsoever.

Teacher Brett

Today is my 3rd day of substitute teaching at Regina Girls College in Chiang Mai. I am teaching M. 2 and 3 which is the equivalent of middle school. 13-15 yr old girls. Today went rather well so far. We finished watching Pirates of the Carribbean 2 then after they refused to make an attempt at answering my questions I had them write down a few sentences on why they liked the movie. As hard as it is to teach in a classroom of 40-50 kids, its probably worse to learn in such an environment.

The fact that I speak Thai fluently spread like wildfire, but there were a bunch in each class who didn't know so they were still plenty of surprises. Today, for the first time, one girl asked if I spoke Northern Thai. I understand it pretty well, but I can't speak very much. Its the usual language monkey scenario, but I don't mind it so much when its kids because they treat me like a celeb rather than an oddity. In the class I just finished, I walked to the back of the room and noticed most of the back 2 rows hadn't taken out any paper to start the assignment. I asked them what was up and they said they didn't have any paper. I gave them some and they all went berserk. Seriously, girls that had paper put it away. Some of them were smelling and hugging the paper after they got it. Silliness.

I've been sick for almost 2 weeks now. Its the damn pollution. Its so thick lately, I have trouble breathing when I'm walking outside at certain points of the day. I wake up with a sore throat every day and have lots of unpleasantly thick goo coming up out of my lungs. Not really sure what to do about this. Do I start walking around with a gas mask on?

New Stuffisms

I applied for the best job in Chiang Mai today. The manager wasn't there so I didn't get an interview, but the staff seemed to dig me. I have asked both of the guys who have the job to reccomend me. One of them is leaving and won't be telling them until Wed in fear of not getting paid. I tried to convince him to just tell them and let them know I am happy to be the replacement, but no luck as of yet. It could very likely still work out in my favour. As they will only have 2 days to find a replacement for him they might as well just call me! Good stuff.

I start the substitute job tomorrow morning. I am feeling a tad of anxiety, but I expect it to be a good time. I think I will spend the first class with each group just introducing myself and trying to get a bearing on the level of their English ability. I am wearing a tie tomorrow, but dunno if I will do it everyday or not yet. I'll see how everyone else is dressed.

Working Out

I've decided not to study at Payap this semester for a number of reasons. One of the main ones being that they are only offering one class that I haven't taken already. Its kind of ridiculous. I'm not sure how I can graduate if they never open the higher level requred courses. Oh well. It looks like I will be working this term.

I got a substitute teaching job at this girls high school for the next 2 or 3 weeks. The pay is less than I would usually work for, but I figure its just a couple weeks and there are plenty of hours and it might even be fun.

In other news, there is a fair chance I am going to score the best teaching gig in Chiang Mai. I'll know in a few days I suppose. 2 people have this job. They work 4 hours a week and get 25,000 baht. That may not seem like a lot of money if you think about it in US$, but thats more than I usually spend in a month here, so with that and a few more private students whom I will teach Thai to and I'll be doing great financially. A much needed boost in my life.

I put an ad in a local free magazine in English and hopefully I'll get some inquiries. I've been teaching an English guy Thai for a bit over 2 months now and the progress is pretty impressive. My methods are too simple. Foreigners tend to scoff or laugh when I tell them I teach Thai. "But your not a native speaker!" Indeed. Plenty of foreigners speak at least some Thai here, but ones who speak clearly, correctly and are able to read/write or extremely rare. My current student is essentially my protege. I want to create the first whitey that can actually speak ชัด
(clearly) before he is even fluent.

My confidence is still going strong. I've been getting numbers competely sober lately which isn't very common for me. I keep expecting to get hit with anxiety and there are a few seconds where I tense up, but I think its just a reflex. I feel invincible.

The pollution here has been unbearable lately. I was stuck in bed with some serious lung problems for a few days this week from it. I woke up in the middle of the night one day with this awful pain similar to heartburn, but much worse and this awful crap oozing up out of my lungs. I couldn't eat for most of the day as anything I tried to get down intensified the pain. Over the next couple of days it turned into a pretty bad chest cold. Its not quite gone yet as I still wake up with a bit of a sore throat and some heavy unpleasant goo coming up. My lungs are so messed up. Itwill be rather surprising if I end up dying from something unrelated to my lungs. Oh well. At least my anxiety is low and my confidence is high lately. Now all I need is money.

Machine

I went out with a bunch of whiteys last night. It was pretty fun. I thought I was gonna hang out with the gym girl, but it didn't happen so I got a few phone numbers in front of Warm Up before going to 7-11.

While I was having lunch today I went through my phone to figure out how many girls I'm talking to at the moment. The numbers were actually quite frightening. There are 17 of them if you count the three I met last night. One of them remembered me from when I tried to jeeb her some ages ago. I have slept with 4 of them already. There is no chance I'll get them all. I'm just not good at maintaining anything. What often happens is that I'll give up after a few days and not talk to them. Then sometime in the future I will run into them again and they will usually remember me and stare and/or smile at me which is the open door I need to go talk to them. Then the game begins again. I even got attacked by this one German girl last night. She came up to me and said something in German that I couldn't hear nor understand. My German is pretty limited to "Where is my hat?" and similar nonsense. I wasn't interested and I didn't know what to say. I didn't wanna be mean. She seemed pretty cool anyways. But, I was feeling more confident than I've felt in ages and I wanted to sweep through the club and see if I could either find any girls I know or find a new one.

Actually, one of the 17 girls I counted, I've never met. I ran into a friend last night and he gave me the phone # of some supposedly cute girl he met and somehow talked me into calling this person I've never met/seen (as far as I know). The conversation was pretty interesting. It went something like this:

me: Hey, where are you?
her: Who is this?
me: Its Brett!
her: Who?
me: Brett
her:Who?
me: Brett
her: Where do I know you from?
me: I just met you earlier at Warm Up (club name)
her: Oh. I don't remember.
me: Its ok. Where are you now?
her: Fashion House (club name). Where are you?
me: At 7-11.
her: Sorry that I can't remember you. I'm too drunk.
me: Haha. Its ok really.

I never met up with her, but it was kind of amusing all the same. Perhaps I'll call her tonight. Being single is refreshing, but it eventually gets old. I can't do this all year, but I try to capitalize on this odd burst of confidence I have during the first few months of the year. It inevitably tapers off around April or so. I have time.

Gym-tastc Stuffage

So the gym girl was over again last night. Her x-boyfriend called her in the morning. Here is the translation of how the conversation went.

biggymguy: Hey. Where are you?
gymgirl: In my room.
biggymguy: I don't think so. I'm outside your room. I was going to take you to work.
gymgirl: Um. I'm with Brett.

I'm not sure what he said after that, but the girl said about ten times that there was nothing going on between us (me and her) and that we were just friends. Then after that she was telling me that if he asks me, I should say a bunch other girls slept over too. She ended up telling him that we just met for breakfast I think.

He greeted me at the gym with a smile, but his eyes didn't smile. Its uncomfortable for him, but I don't think he will say anything to me about it. That would be more uncomfortable. Also, it appears the chances of me dying in a freak treadmill accident have diminished considerably.

Meanwhile, the original gym girl I was sweating is pretending to jealous much to my amusement. Life is tough sometimes.

In other news, my x-girlfriend called to see if she could stay over tonight and got pissed when I said no. She has broken up with me so many times and come back its pretty ridiculous. So I'm single as far as I'm concerned. Whether or not she keeps coming over.

Reap the Harvest

The New Year has arrived.

How ironic. I was just about to talk about how good this year was going to be. However, as I was ending the previous sentence I knocked over my drink and it spilled all over my desk while splashing my desktop and keyboard. Fun stuff.

This is the time of year where I usually shine. During the first 2-4 months of the year my confidence and ability to get things done are quite good.

I spent New Years Eve with 2 friends that live here. One is English, at least 10 years older than me and my Thai student, the other is American, 3-4 years younger and can't afford to be my Thai student. After the countdown (which is all anyone cares about here..."Where were you for the countdown?") things got better. One of the 2 girls who work at my gym (they are essentilaly pretty girls to lure people into trying out the gym. They sometimes pretend to exercise after removing their high heels - perhaps out of boredom), ended up calling me shortly after to see where I was. I have hung out with both of these girls, but I noticed that one of them had been showing strong interest in me since she broke up with her boyfriend, so I said she was welcome to join me out anytime. So New Years Eve was the first real time. She had just broken up with her boyfriend of 4 years. Of course as I am the unluckiest person in the world, this x-boyfriend is the largest guy who works at the gym. He is also the one that is most polite to me. I didn't find this out until she was already in my bed, but who am I to stop things there. I should probably refrain from asking him for a spot for a while anyways.

Aside from that girl (whom I am actually going to meet in 10 min), I met a really cute girl who is here from Bangkok last night. Actually, I've met far too many girls in the last week. I can't keep track of all of them so I often have to pretend to know who I am talking to/where I met them/what they look like. I get more numbers when I'm drunk then sober and therefore the supposedly clever names I put in my phone are limited in creativty. Many of the names in my phone look something like what you see below. Obviously, I can make more sense of it than you because I often include abbreviations of the locations I met them, but I can't always figure out what I was thinking when I typed that crap.

Ex:

DisGrlNoGd
Ice Ice
Lin Chinese
Joob Dis/
MaTa Niman
NookKawee?
?