Otto and Han reached the breaking point – too much of Singapore – and decided to get off the island nation for a weekend in Bangkok, so Tawn and I had the pleasure of their company Saturday afternoon when we met them at Siam Discovery Center for lunch at Oishi Grand Buffet, the high-end restaurant of a large Thai company that operates a range of generally Japanese-themed restaurants and eateries as well as the ubiquitous brand of bottled green tea.  We were joined by Tam and Markus, who ironically had just flown back from Singapore on business.

Right: Otto, Tam, Markus, Tawn, Chris and Han midway through the first round of food.

The price is steep – 650 baht for lunch (US$20) – but the quality is extremely good.  The sushi is top-grade and there is a teppan-yaki (grill) where you can choose entire beef, pork and chicken steaks for grilling.  While we couldn’t do it every week, it is a good place for an occasional meal.

Sunday morning while I met up with Otto and Han for breakfast, Tawn returned home and spent the better part of the day with his parents.  While cleaning the koi pond with his father, they talked about the condominium that we’re considering, and whether Tawn’s father was still willing to match our down payment.  Fortunately, he is.

There is an interesting mentality going on here and I’m going to push the edge of the envelope just a little to talk about it:

Over the seven-plus years that we’ve been together, Tawn’s father has evolved (s-l-o-w-l-y) in his thinking about our relationship.  The first time he realized what was going on, I had written a postcard to Tawn from the US and signed it, “love”, forgetting that his father had received his degree in the US and was fully literate in English.

When visiting San Francisco, I met Tawn’s parents for an awkward dinner, the silence of which was only broken once we were on our second bottle of wine.  On two of my visits to Khrungthep, we went out for dim sum that, absent any social lubrication, featured stilted conversation.

But the watershed moment was New Year’s Eve 2003 (heading into 2004) when Tawn was at his parents’ for the annual family party, where Tawn’s father acknowledged in a conversation that he “knew” about Tawn’s life but that he was too old to change his mind about what was right and wrong.  While he warned Tawn away from gay relationships – “two men can’t live together; there’s too much yang energy” – he at least acknowledged that that is who Tawn is.

The interesting part is that once I moved to Khrungthep in October 2005, that Tawn’s father would not cross paths with me any more.  My presence here in the Big Mango as a resident instead of a visitor meant that I was in his territory now.  This lack of contact persisted until just two weeks ago when we made the briefest of verbal and, almost, eye contact.

Along the way Tawn’s father, being of good Chinese extraction, has felt some obligation to help his son with the purchase of his first home, the same way that Tawn’s grandfather gave Tawn’s father and siblings land on which to build their homes.  As Tawn has discussed the search for a condominium with his father, his father has repeated his desire to help Tawn with a down payment, in order to “match” the money that I would put down.

And this is where the mental partitioning, the rationalizing, get particularly interesting to me:

For some time, Tawn tried to explain that our down payment wasn’t Chris’ money but was, rather, our money.  This is true since our finances have been fully intertwined since I moved here.  But for Tawn’s father, acknowledging that fact is too large a dose of reality, so he has continued to refer to our down payment as “Chris’ money” and said that he will match whatever amount I put down so that Tawn has a down payment, too.

Finally, Tawn decided it wasn’t worth the effort to correct his father and to this day allows him to continue the mental gymnastics.  Over the koi pond yesterday, Khun Sudha continued with the plausible deniability but confirmed that he would indeed match “Chris’ money”.

The whole thing is kind of funny and kind of silly.  Looking at the bright side, though, Tawn’s father is a lot more accepting and acknowledging than many Chinese fathers are.  And as Tawn put it, we’ll take whatever help we can get!

Sunday evening we had the second marital event of the weekend, this time a wedding between Oct and Em.  Oct is the cousin of one of Tawn’s friend Tao and was also Tawn’s high school mate.  Em is the boyish-looking groom. 

This was a huge affair – the bride’s father is a retired army general – with 1,000 guests held at a large ballroom at the Landmark Hotel.  It was a bit chaotic, truthfully!  We went to the reception with Sa, another of Tawn’s high school friends, and her husband Job.  Above: Chris, Tawn, Tao, Sa and Job.

The whole affair reminded me of a film festival reception.  The bride and groom, big movie buffs, had set up several faux movie posters featuring them, based on the posters of some of their favorite films.  Kind of like what Tony does on his blog.  (Note, you need to be signed in with a Xanga username in order to view his site.)

All weddinged out, I think we were ready to head home by 9:00.

While at the reception I missed a call from Ajarn Yai, who called to tell me that Patricia Goodfriend, who had visited the school last November, had written her a letter.  Ajarn Yai had a few questions about words that weren’t in her dictionary including “road rage”, “academically”, and “professionally”.