Random Thoughts and Musings

During the week I don't do a lot. Most days, I do any combination of four things when I get home from work: nap, read, bask in the air-con, or hit up an Internet cafe. I brought along the greatest invention ever--my Kindle (the iPod of books for the unenlightened)--thus, I've managed to read quite a bit since coming here. Yesterday, out of boredom, I tallied up everything that I had read since coming and found out that I've read 14 novels. I have the Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Sir Walter Scott (impulse buy) on my Kindle, and have steadily been working my way through each. I'm almost finished with RLS, and just have 3 more of his novels to read (not including short stories, travel writing, and literary essays). Once I read Sense and Sensibility I can say that I've read all of Jane's works. I've also managed to put down 2 collections of essays on the X-Men (I'm fairly confident that I am the entire demographic of the X-Men/Literary Theory industry), a few books on basketball, Dune, The Beach, and The Hobbit. Anyway, I was kind of interested by it.


Last week I noticed a funny thing about male and female phrang in Thailand: the guys tend to speak much, much more Thai than the ladies. I'm not exactly sure why this is, and there are exceptions, but among my classmates, the men's Thai is significantly better than the women's. The other week, I had dinner with Elana and Michelle, who also live in Ayutthaya. I was kind of shocked because they know no Thai outside of Sawadee ("hello"). When we got the bill, I had to ask how much and then translate it for them. I was especially surprised because I learned "how much" (tau rai) and the numbers during my first week, and we've been here 3 months now. I mean I know men's brains are bigger (/end sarcasm), but I figured that they would have picked up more by now. Because I have too much free time on my hands, I come up with theories for phenomenon such as this. My theory: all the male phrang are interested in Thai women, whereas most of the phrang women have no interest in Thai men, giving them less incentive to learn the language. This theory has holes (Kristin's Thai is better than mine, and her boyfriend Tom is with her in Ayutthaya), but I think there may be some truth to it. For my part, I've began studying Thai, and I can't deny that the thought hadn't crossed my mind (to be fair, it's not my primary reason for learning Thai, which is that I don't want to be an asshole American).


Last week, I had a revelation about graduate school. When I originally applied to graduate school, I had no back-up plan if I didn't get accepted or if I didn't get funding. When my schools started to waffle on whether or not I'd get an assistantship, I was scared because I had no other contingency. Fortunately, I stumbled upon this program and was able to say, "Fuck you, I'm going to Thailand" to them. This year is much different. At the end of the semester, I'll have a TESOL certificate that will allow me to teach anywhere in Asia (and parts of Africa and South America). Basically, I have options. At this point, the grad schools that I applied to need me more than I need them, even if they don't know it yet. Not to be immodest, but I'm a good student who can excel in any program. On the other hand, I love living in Thailand: I live very comfortably, the people are in love with me (or with my skin color), and I get to take weekend trips to fabulous beaches and ancient temples; I can honestly say that I could see myself living here for 5 years. Can any graduate program really compete with that? Admittedly, I really want to go to grad school, but if they're being ambiguous about my funding, I can just tell them to screw themselves (I won't actually do that, calm down) and go back to Thailand...or Korea, or China, or Japan. See, where I'm going with this?