Itsara

I had Thursday all planned out. Leave at 8:30 am, arrive at the Finnish consulate when they open at 9,* grab a big brunch at Burger King, then meet some friends at 10 to play some Left 4 Dead.

Everything was going great. I didn’t get lost anywhere and my timing was perfect. Until I walked back to my car after Burger King and found a lock on the wheel.

“The police came by twice already looking for you,” said the owner of the nearest shop. “We didn’t know whose car it was, so they locked it.”

“What?!” It was ten minutes until 10. My friends would be at the game shop soon. “What am I supposed to do?”

Ever-helpful, the Thai man pointed at the sign on my car and said, “Take it to the police. Or maybe there’s a phone number. Here.” (There was no phone number).

“Where are the police?”

He pointed down the street. I didn’t see anything. At this point, I was remembering my experiences with Thai bureaucracy and thinking I wasn’t going to make it to the game shop. Maybe when I was done some 2 hours later, I could pick my friends up and take them home, like we agreed.

Even more frustrating: there were no signs on the street. I made sure of it when I parked there. There was not a single parking sign anywhere, yet everyone was parked on the left side of the street and none on the right. I thought it was because the left side was shaded in the morning. Apparently I didn’t get the memo.

I told the shop owner this, though not very calmly. I was mad. Again, in true helpful Thai fashion, he tried to say something about signs, but soon stopped when he realized I was right. There weren’t any. Not knowing what else to do, he left. Maybe he went to look for the cop who locked my car, maybe he just wanted to get away from the angry farang. I don’t know.

Two other shop owners watched this exchange. They watched as I carefully read the ticket and the notice taped to my car. No phone number. No instructions other than to take the ticket to the police station. How was I supposed to do that without a car?

I asked one of the other shop owners what I should do. I was still very angry, but I realized I had to do something. He pointed down the street. From an earlier parking ticket, I knew there was a police station in that direction, maybe a mile or two down the road. He couldn’t mean there, could he?

He suggested I take a songthaew, but I was in no mood, and my raging brain couldn’t be bothered to find the words for police station anyway. I walked, half hoping I’d run into the cop who locked my car and could take care of it right there.

It was a long, angry walk. I swore a lot (I do that when I’m alone sometimes). I looked for No Parking signs, but didn’t find any. By the time I realized the owner had meant the police station, I was more than halfway there and saw no reason to stop.

The last time I had to pay a parking ticket, there were 30 or 40 people at the police station, and it took me an hour. There was nobody there that morning so I walked right up to the desk and handed them my ticket. They were perfectly nice about it, even when I complained about the signs and how I had no way of knowing I couldn’t park there — realizing, even as the words came out of my mouth, that they wouldn’t care. Why should they?

I went to another desk to pay the fine, and was about to ask about the wheel lock, when the man said, “The policeman has already taken it off.”

Really? I asked him to repeat it. Had they contacted him? I hadn’t seen them do so. Did he do it when he’d seen the ticket gone? I wondered if I couldn’t have just walked back after removing the ticket and found the lock gone, without having to go all the way to the police station.

And yet, for all my anger and swearing and frustration, I got to my car at 10:15 and the game shop at 10:30. My friends were a little late anyway, and I only missed 15 minutes of zombie-killing. Had all that really only taken half an hour? What was I so mad about? And what did I expect to accomplish with my anger?

I was still mad at the injustice of it, but in the end, who cares? Not the shop owners. Not the police. Not the hundred other people who had parked on the correct side of the street. Just me, and my trouble was over.

There’s no point to this story except that anger is stupid. I’m ashamed at how angry I got. What makes it worse is the only reason I knew where the police station was, and what to do there, was because of a parking ticket I’d gotten previously — which I was also unreasonably angry about at the time. At least I didn’t do anything stupider, I guess.

* Trying to find Nathan’s legal father so we can adopt him. Turns out we’ll have to try the Finnish Embassy in Bangkok instead. Also, I don’t think the consulate in Chiang Mai employs a single Finnish person.

Two questions were asked in addition to the one about resources. I said I’d answer, so here we go.

Clement asked how to order pizza in Thai, or at least how to say, “I’m hungry.” I’ll start with the latter.

The word hungry is pronounced like the English word “hue,” with a rising tone (look here or here to know what that means).

The rest depends on whether you’re a guy or a girl. The personal pronoun for a guy is like the word “poem,” with a rising tone; for a girl it’s “chun” with either a rising or a high tone. Then, to be polite, you need a particle at the end: “cup” for guys, “kah” for girls (high and falling tones, respectively).

So, Clement, you would say, “Pŏem hŭe cúp.” Cindy would say, “Chún hŭe kâh.” (This is not the proper anglicization of Thai, by the way. I’m writing these the way they are pronounced.)

If you want to order pizza, say “Căw pízzâ nòy cúp/kâh.” Of course then they’ll ask you all sorts of questions about what kind of pizza you want, at which point you find some pictures to point at.

Whytey wanted to know my strategies for success in Ticket to Ride. I’ll tell you how I play, but the only way I know to win for sure is to not play with Cindy and Emmet at the same time (also don’t play Europe – I can’t win on that continent). Here are some general strategies I play with:

1. Keep the biggest destinations, if possible.
2. Keep as many destinations as can reasonably go together (i.e. they share cities or are along similar routes). With 3 or 5 players, you might want to keep the minimum. With 2 or 4 players, don’t be afraid to keep them all.
3. If you don’t have any big destinations, keep destinations near the big ones – as if you did have them. You might pick up the big ones later (it helps to know what the big destinations are for this one).
4. Figure out which routes you have to have – the ones that will be the most trouble to go around if they’re taken. In the first turn, that means the 1-car routes and possibly Houston to Dallas. If you can use these, grab them right away.
5. Grab face up cards for (a) routes identified in #3, (b) colors you need that just aren’t showing up, or (c) 5- or 6-car routes (especially if (b) is also true). Otherwise, take face down, especially in the beginning. You’ll get cards you don’t need, but you’ll be able to use them later and you’ll be glad you have them. You’ll also get wilds.
6. Don’t ever draw face down for just one color. If you need just one color, you should be grabbing new destinations (in the middle) or wilds (at the end).
7. Stay out of the Midwest. All those 1- and 2-car routes just waste time. Avoid it as much as you can.
8. If Cindy says she has a terrible hand, and she’s sure she’ll lose, you should be more worried, not less. She’s not lying, but she’s probably not going to lose either.

Hope that helps!

I’m interrupting the essay on science and religion basically to complain. The pollution here in Chiang Mai is really bad. I’ve been sneezing all day. Sandra’s PE class won’t let them actually exercise for more than 10 minutes at a time. The kids’ noses have been running for days (hint: they aren’t sick).

To give you an idea of how bad it is, look at the mountain in these two pictures. The first picture was taken during the rainy season when we moved in. The second picture was taken today. When an entire mountain disappears, you know it’s bad.

Back when I built this, what I was really practicing for was this:

Of course I didn’t build this thing myself. My dad did most of the work while he was here to visit. I learned a lot from helping him. I think I could actually build something like this myself now, though not nearly as fast.

It’s a huge, huge blessing for us (pun intended). We were running out of space for books, and we needed a place for movies and games where Isaac (and now Nathan) couldn’t get to them. Plus we’ve got this large space begging to be filled. It’s perfect.

Although I didn’t build it, I did design it.

And here’s a before-and-after look for you.

I told you my parents took a bunch of pictures. Here my Dad writes about their trip, including links to four albums and three videos. Enjoy.

So today (Father’s Day), the king was too sick to deliver his traditional birthday speech, and a lot of Thais are really worried. Not so much about the speech or the king (though they are), but about the whole crisis in general. This article is a good summary on the whole situation.

What is interesting to me is how democracy just isn’t working here, how it may not be the cure-all we thought. I don’t know the whole truth of the situation, but here’s what it sounds like. Thaksin, the old prime minister, was supposedly corrupt. So a bunch of people protested until he left. Then someone else got voted in, but he was (supposedly) just another front for Thaksin’s corrupt group. So they protested even harder, airlines were closed, people were killed.

Now there’s going to be another election, I guess, but folks are afraid that the same people will just get into power again, because one of the main ways they get into power is by buying the votes of the poor.

And here’s where democracy fails entirely. The protesting party wants to change the voting system so that “a majority of lawmakers would be nominated by professional and social groups instead of being elected [by the people].” It sounds undemocratic, and it is a little, but the problem is that vote buying is real. There are a lot of poor people in this country, each one with a vote, and to them it doesn’t matter who is prime minister. Changes in the government make no difference in their lives, but 100 Baht in their hand makes a huge difference. It means they get to eat for a few weeks.

Like I said, interesting. There’s no easy solution, and I don’t envy Thais the work they will have to do to create a strong, stable country. But to me this whole situation just highlights the fact that politics – even democracy – can’t fix a broken world.

Hm, that was another note I wrote from reading Blue Like Jazz.

America’s rules can’t save mankind. Mankind can’t save itself.

Some of what Sean’s been doing and plans for the near future here on his blog.

On this trip, there were a handful of questions that we got asked repeatedly. I figured it’d be a good idea to address them here, in no particular order.

What are your kids ages/names/genders/how many kids do you have?
Because our family is large and often-changing, we keep a list here and try to update it whenever necessary.

What’s your typical day look like?
On a typical day (meaning a weekday in which all the kids are at school – this happens less often than you’d think), we get Pan and Lutiya to their schools really early (6 and 7, respectively). Matt gets himself to school around 7:30, and then we homeschool Sandra and take care of Isaac until the afternoon when the other kids start coming back. During the day we also take care of the house, shop, blog, go to worship practice (Cindy), teach dance (Cindy), and write (Adam).

How do you get kids?
We’ve never sought them out. Cindy’s cousin called us about Matt and Sandra. Pan, Alaypa, and Lutiya came through a friend of a friend. In both cases, it was only because people knew what we were here to do. We’re fully convinced that God brought them to us. We are not actively seeking out children at the moment either.

How are you doing financially? Where does your support come from?
In general, we’re okay. God has always provided and we have no doubt he will continue to do so. About half of our support comes from friends and family through Coast Vineyard. The other half currently comes from Matt and Sandra’s mom. If at any time you feel led to help out, see this page for how. We are also working on things during the day that help bring in a little income, but we cannot do anything fulltime at the moment so this income is minor.

Where do you go to church?
We go to an international church called House of Praise. It’s perfect for our family as it has both an international and Thai service, and an international and Thai youth group. Sunday evenings our two families meet with another one and do a sort of home group thing too.

How’s your Thai?
We’re not fluent, but we’re good. We can communicate most things we need to and can understand basic conversations. Watching TV or listening to sermons is difficult (maybe 60-80% comprehension). We can read and write enough to help the kids with their homework or read letters from their schools, but we’re not fast. Reading Thai subtitles, we can only catch about 2 or 3 words before it changes.

(For Adam) How’s the book coming?
The story most people know about (Travelers) is finished, and I’m querying agents to see if they’re interested. The querying is not going so well, but I’m learning a lot and writing another story in the meantime. You can find out a lot more at my other blog.

So what other questions do you have? What have we been neglecting to make clear on this blog? It doesn’t have to be frequently asked for us to answer.

We’re in San Diego now. Yesterday was the crazy day of talking to Coast Vineyard (twice) and two separate hang-outs with people. I think Isaac’s all partied out, but fortunately for him the rest of our time is hanging out with friends in small doses, which I think he can handle.

We’ve been plagued by all kinds of random, tiny, annoying health problems. Our friend’s daughter, Ava, threw up on the way down here. Isaac got a fever the other day. Cindy’s wrist has been hurting again. I cut my thumb and finger and this swelling in my ear came back after I thought it’d gone. Oh yeah, and I got all stomach-sick on the day we drove down from Napa. So good times. We’re much better now overall, and we don’t have the presentation at Coast hanging over our heads, so we’re good.

And we’re hearing things from back home too. Most of our kids are doing well. Sean and his family took Pan and Lu to Prang’s village for the weekend. He’s got a post and a bunch of pictures. It’s good to see our kids enjoying themselves (and taken care of) while we’re gone. It also sounds like Chiang Mai has gotten tons of rain, which should be real good for our new lawn.

That’s all for now. We’re in San Diego for a few more days, then we drive up to Orange County to visit Cindy’s family, and in a week we fly down to Mexico to see my family and watch my sister get married. Should be awesome.

It’s not often we get a family vacation. Last time we went to Pai. This time, we took Pan, Alaypa, Lutiya, and David (our friend visiting from Ireland) to see Bangkok. The kids grew up in villages, and have never been far from Chiang Mai, so it was exciting to take them to see one of the largest cities in the world.

We took an overnight train there on Wednesday night. It came late and we slept in chairs, so we were all dead tired when we arrived. But having only three days there, we still had to go out! On Thursday we went to see the Grand Palace, which was kinda cool – I liked the murals of the Ramayana in particular. But the kids were bored, so we went to find something more interesting at Siam Paragon, one of the largest malls in Asia. We were looking for a discovery museum, but ended up admiring some really expensive show cars and visiting the largest aquarium in Southeast Asia.

On Friday, Isaac spent the day with Cindy’s aunt while the rest of us went to Siam Park. Here the kids got to experience roller coasters and such for the first time. Everyone enjoyed it, though it was hard to find rides that everybody could go on (Cindy and I learned a lot about going to an amusement park with an all-ages family). But really we spent most of the day with Siam Park’s water slides. The last time I went on water slides was in 6th grade. They were packed with people, sometimes taking 30-40 minutes in between rides, and you always got yelled at by someone for breaking some safety rule, but at Siam Park we got a ton of exercise running up the stairs in between rides (a turnaround time of maybe 30-40 seconds), and though there were lifeguards on duty, they only seemed to care about obvious breaches of safety. It made everything a lot more fun.

On our last day, we went to Pattaya. Though not a great beach by San Diego standards, it was still pretty good. Pan spent most of the day collecting oysters, and nearly everyone got buried in the sand at some point. There was something in the water though, as both Lutiya and I got itchy like crazy and couldn’t go back in (Sean thinks it might’ve been jellyfish eggs). After a few hours at the beach, we began the long drive back to Bangkok and the longer overnight train ride back home. There’s some more pictures here.

These vacations are hard to pull off, but they’re a lot of fun and good to look back on, and Cindy and I learn all kinds of things about parenting. I was shocked to realize that, had I let them, our kids would’ve stayed in the apartment all day watching TV, but then I realized that I was the same when I was a kid. Honestly, I don’t know why my parents ever took us anywhere.