Learn Thai from a White Guy

So here is my latest language blog.  The following is small, but steady at the moment.  Its focus is learning Thai.  

I'm working on another somewhat experimental language learning project which will take me a while, but hopefully will operational soon.

learnthaifromawhiteguy.com

Don't Post!

Sometimes I get really miserable. There isn't usually a sound or even a remotely plausible reason for it, but it just happens. When I was younger it was daily part of my life. I know each time (now) that the feeling will pass and that I should just wait it out. There doesn't need to be a trigger, but as one might suspect, such things ease the process.

Its very strange for me. When I was younger these feelings were much more common. Now they are sparse but still a hassle. Because I am aware that they will pass shortly I don't act on or stress about them. However, when I was younger it wasn't so easy. I did stupid things to ease the pain. And they worked well enough. When I smoked I often put the cigs out on my arms or in the palm of my hands. The pain created there would temporarily allow me to forget my mental pains.

Exposed

Its been a long time since I've written (read: published) an entry. It became too much of a hassle for a number of reasons. I still have much to say, but as a wise friend once told me, "Don't write down anything you don't want read." This advice may not apply to everything, but it must be considered for everything you write down. After all, when we write it, we aren't usually considering the possible consequences.

Songkran is well in the works at the moment. This is the insane lunar new years festival that is especially famous in Chiang Mai as the centre city is surrounded by a moat. I don't really feel the need to explain this holiday. I'm not even sure if I can. Its one of those things you just need to experience. I don't want to waste energy trying to describe it. Perhaps one day if I'm in a better mood.

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.