Baan Din

Less than a month left in Thailand, and thanks to the job stress I am actually looking forward to hopping on the airplane.  It's been eating me up inside and my attitude at work has been so bad lately that one of my friends at school has started calling me "Jaded Joey",  which is totally appropriate.  I'm not sure how I'm expected to stay motivated and enthusiastic about my last few weeks at work when there is this cloud of unfairness hovering above me.  I actually took a sick day today- 3rd one in two years.  It's funny, because there's a few people who've missed twice as many days in the past 2 months and it's quite possible that I've had more money deducted from my paychecks... oh wait, that's not funny is it?  While I thoroughly enjoyed not being at the office, I actually did have a Dr's appointment.  I went to the really fancy international hospital that put medical tourism on the map and it brought back some good memories from my very first trip to Bangkok (I had friends who worked at the U.S. embassy that lived across the street).  I went for an allergy test and it was pretty painful: 20 skin punctures with concentrated allergens squirted into each wound.  Before the procedure began, a nurse brought out a lengthy check-list with nearly every known allergen on it.  They suggested 20 basic allergens, but I was allowed to drop or add any allergen I wanted.  It was very much like ordering food from a menu. Despite all the pain, swelling, and redness, it was totally worth the $90.  The doctor was far more helpful and thorough than any dermatologist I have ever seen in the U.S. . . and I have seen plenty.  He said it was quite possible I am allergic to gluten and suggested a blood test.  I just bought my railpass to Europe though and the blood test must wait until I get paid again.   While it would finally be nice to know what's wrong with my skin, having to cut out gluten is a horrible sacrifice to make for one's health.  I guess we'll find out in 2 weeks. 

Anyway, thinking back to happier times in Thailand...   a few months ago, I went to a nearby province with one of my friends for a weekend seminar on making houses out of mud.  Despite it being 99% in Thai, it was quite interesting.

Can you find the farang?
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I'm not sure if this is my normal walk, but it looks like my foot is broken.
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Mixing the proper combination of clay, water, sand, and rice hulls . . . with our feet!
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The mud is poured into a ladder-like mold.
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Mud bricks drying in the sun.  Each brick takes 3-4 weeks before it is completely dry.
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The outer coating was a mixture of paper mache paste and sand.
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The Jedi-council of mudmakers.  You can barely see me in the top right.  I think I was sleeping.
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Diving with the Sharks.

I'm notorious for being late, and for those who haven't noticed, my blog is no exception.  As I mentioned in the last entry, my time in Bangkok is quickly coming to an indefinite end.  Many things have happened since my Nepal and India trip... A whole semester of school has almost passed in fact!  So over the course of the next few weeks I will post some entries that were typed, but never published because of the India/Nepal blogathon.

The first event, and probably the most exciting thing to happen in the past few months was the shark dive.  I've become a huge fan of diving over the past few years.  Unfortunately, all of the best dive sites demand at least 3 or 4 days away from Bangkok.  The solution?  Diving in SE Asia's largest shark infested aquarium!  At $150, it wasn't cheap, but a similar experience in an American aquarium would cost at least double.  It was a huge tank, but I still had problems maintaining buoyancy and found myself swimming into the walls for the first few minutes.  Knowing how incredible the ocean feels compared to the tank kind of made me feel bad for the animals inside...  Empathy turned into a shallow fear with one glance at the rows of teeth in the sharks' mouth.  I knew they weren't hungry, but being so close to something so potentially dangerous was an awesome feeling.  My friend and his wife came along for the experience and took pictures from the viewing area.  He is also a diver and he let me borrow his underwater camera... the experience resulted in the following video:

Food for Thought.

Some people like to drink their bad days away;  I stuff mine with food, and well, today, I've been gorging.  I don't want to complain because I hate complainers- unless I agree with them.  But I feel like my blogs usually give the impression that I'm living in the land of milk and honey when really it's just the land of Honey (who might be coming to America w/me).  Anyway, it certainly has its downsides and today's blog is just a notice that yes, sometimes things here are horribly irritating.

Stress has been creeping in unnoticed with each passing day, and today it stopped hiding.  As some of you know, I will be leaving Bangkok indefinitely in 4 weeks. Aside from the emotions that come with leaving a place I've come to call home, there's a laundry list of other things clogging the highways in my head; all blasting their horns demanding attention:

-  How to get all my belongings home.  Moving down the street was hassle enough- moving across the world is a logistical nightmare!
-  Filling out the correct paper work so my shipments aren't charged a tariff when they arrive in the U.S.
-  What do to with all the crap I'm not moving.  Sell, trade, give away... I dunno.
-  Test papers (hundreds) to grade.
-  Reports to write on all of my students.
-  Travel budgets and itineraries for all my stops on the way home.
-  Deciding where I am going on the way home (and how to get there).
-  Transferring money from my bank account here to my account in America without losing a lot of $$$ in the process.
-  Budgeting enough time to see all my friends in BKK before I go.

Of course the biggest stress factor is how to smuggle the monkey head back home without customs seizing it and/or arresting me.  

Actually, the biggest source of stress lately has been work.  There is currently a large amount of legitimate "good-teacher" paperwork which inevitably causes some stress, but there have been a few recent bureaucratic policies that have rubbed me the wrong way.   Here they are:

#1 - The Late Policy
Each time you accrue 5 late clock-ins you are deducted 1 day's pay.  We have to clock-in by 7:30 each morning, and as most of you know I am both a procrastinator and someone who really enjoys his sleep.  Needless to say, I've been late 15 times and have lost 3 days' pay.  It sounds horrible, but each day I was only late by a minute or two, often clocking in at 7:31.  Now, I live 5 minutes down the road from the school- there is no valid reason for me to be late... it's totally my fault and I agree there must be consequences for tardiness.  The annoying thing about this is that I've only missed 2 days of work in 2 years; both times I was legitimately sick.  I've never missed a meeting, a class, or ANYTHING even remotely relevant because of my fashionably late arrivals.  Meanwhile, I've covered numerous classes for coworkers who have called in "sick" after a crazy weekend out on the town or simply didn't feel like coming in.  To each his own... I don't care what other people do, it's their business.  BUT, a system that punishes tardiness more than absenteeism is faulty and should be changed.  Something is definitely wrong when you can call in sick rather than clock-in late and come out on top. 

#2 - The Bonus
This one is a great source of recent frustration.  Upon the completion of a contract, teachers are given a 40,000 baht ($1170) bonus.  Teachers who come in during the mid-year break are given a pro-rated bonus of 20,000 baht at the end of the year.   What does Joey get for leaving in the middle of the year?  Nothing... absolutely nothing.   Not one-half, not one-third, zilch.  It's in the contract so the school is technically right not to give me anything for working 1/2 a year.  However technically right and morally right are two very different things.

- The first semester is longer and harder than the second, however teachers leaving after the first get zero bonus while those coming in for the second get half.
- The contract is written like it is so that teachers have an incentive to finish out the year and encourages them not to bail out on the school in the middle of a contract.  I get it.   However, I've been with the school for 2 years now and my resignation is hardly a surprise.  In fact, it was agreed upon that I would only work for a semester before I even signed my current contract.  In a sense, I am very much completing the verbal contract we all agreed upon. 
- One of the main reasons I stayed on for even another semester was because my boss found my resume online last year and asked me to stay.  I was on my way to a 6-month stint at a language school.
- Earlier this year, a teacher was fired and given severance pay.  I have been a good worker for 2 years and am getting a pat on the back. (Which is appreciated, but it sure isn't $600)

I don't want to come across as a pessimistic Paul, because there are some things I absolutely love about work. However, I wanted to go out on a good note feeling happy about everything, and that isn't quite how it's shaping up.  I was in such a bad mood today that my kids will probably be thrilled to see me go.  I suppose things could change in a month.

Nepal: Everest

I woke up early and the pit in my stomach should have let me know something bad was about to happen.  I brushed aside the subtle clues, passing them off as early morning aches or anticipation for the upcoming adventure.  I rushed down the hotel stairs and caught a taxi to the airport.  Something still wasn't quite right, so I foolishly downed a cup of instant coffee in full support of the "early morning aches" theory.  After half an hour, we walked onto the tarmac and my stomach melted onto the asphalt.  I knew the plane for the Everest flight would be small, but I wasn't expecting a turbo-prop.  Many of you know about my previous fear of flying.   Well, it's essentially a thing of the past, but these odd, Flintstone planes bring out the worst in me- like the time Katy and I almost died coming back from NYC a few Christmas Eves ago during a severe thunderstorm.

To my delight, the plane took off quickly and there was zero turbulence.  The windows weren't as clear as my camera was hoping for, but they were alright.  The mountains were in view within 10 minutes and we were back at the airport in 40.  The hostess called us to the front  individually to get a "cabin view" - I was lucky and stepped into the cockpit just as we passed Everest.  To say that the view was better than from on the trail would be a lie.  But this was a very close second.