About christao408

An expat American who moved to Bangkok in 2005 with his partner (now husband). Life is a grand adventure and each experience is worth having if for no other reason than to remind us that we are alive.

They’re Coming to America

Posted on 9 July 2009 by christao408

In the past few weeks, traffic on my blog has surged. Ever since writing about the murder of family friends in Cole Camp, Missouri last month, my daily traffic has increased from an average of about 95 to about 140 unique visitors. Lots of new people are leaving comments and I feel bad that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know everyone, or for them to get to know me, very well.

In the four years since I started blogging (well, very close – the uninspiring first entry was August 4, 2005), I’ve slowly built a community of readers, coming to know people and to consider them important in my life. Since that process was slow, I felt like it worked both ways. As people started reading, subscribing to and commenting on my blog, it was easy to find time to visit their blog and do the same. I feel like it is harder to do that as regularly as I would like to with all the new readers.

So to all of you who have recently arrived, welcome. I’ll get around to visiting your blogs and building those connections in the weeks and months to come. Meanwhile, I’ll also try to share a bit more about me. I realize that when we read others’ blogs, we slowly build up a history, an understanding of who they are based on what they share with us. As Matt wrote recently, it is interesting to go back and read the blogs in people’s archives, to see the path they’ve traveled.

In relation to this entry’s title, I’m less than two weeks away from my next trip back to the U.S. This will be my longest trip back since moving here to Krungthep – something like 26 days including travel time.

It will start out in Los Angeles, both for work and pleasure. Hoping to meet with some Xanga friends there. I’ll continue to Kansas City to visit family. Tawn will join me in KC about ten days after I arrive in the US. It looks like there will be a mini Xanga meet in Quincy, IL with Zakiah. After corresponding with her for so long, it will be nice to finally meet in person. (Meg, Judi, Matt, et al – ready to join me?)

Our trip to the US will conclude with several days in New York City, a chance to visit family and friends and, for Tawn, to stroll the streets of Carrie Bradshaw.

The real reason for the trip, though, is that we’re getting married. We’ll bring a few carloads of family and a few friends up to Iowa and finally make this nearly ten-year realtionship legal. I’ll write more about that as the date gets closer.

So much to do beforehand…

A Rubbish Bag Dilemma

Posted on 7 July 2009 by christao408

Attempting to be an environmentally-aware citizen, I try to do the right thing with my rubbish: I reduce where I can, reuse when I can, and recycle what I can. Despite the efforts, there is always some rubbish left over to be thrown in the bin. But the other day at the store, I ran into a quandary: which type of rubbish bag is the most environmentally friendly one?

Since I use reusable bags for most of my shopping – bags that are either cloth or are made from recycled plastic shopping bags – I don’t receive many bags from the store into which I can place my rubbish. That means I end up going to the store and buying rubbish bags.

This weekend I went to Tesco-Lotus, the local branch of the huge British retailer that is similar to America’s Wal Mart or France’s Carrefour. There in the household goods section were two different types of Tesco branded rubbish bags:

Tesco Greener Living 100% Recycled Garbage Bags – Made with 100% recycled recyclable plastic.
Tesco Greener Living 100% Oxo-Biodegradable Garbage Bags – Made with 100% virgin materials but recyclable and biodegradable.

I didn’t know what to make of these choices. First off, I wasn’t sure what oxo-biodegradable was but it sounded tricky to me. To top it off, why would any green initiative tout its use of 100% virgin materials?

Not having all day to ponder this, I made my choice for the 100% recycled bags and headed home, where I fired up the computer and did some research. From what I have read, “oxo-biodegradable” is the so-called second generation of biodegradable plastic bags:

PLA, or corn-based bags were the first generation. These seem to have many problems including not being recyclable through the normal process, imparting an off taste to water or other food products carried in them, and decaying so fast in an oxygen-free environment that they give off large amounts of methane.

This second generation, “oxo-biodegradable”, is made with a small amount of metal that allows it to biodegrade in a period of months or years – but only when exposed to oxygen. If it gets buried in a landfill, it won’t biodegrade any faster than a regular plastic bag. Plus, the metals added to the bag could cause problems with toxic contamination.

A third generation of biodegradable plastic bags are made from naphtha, one of the side products of the oil refining process. These bags are ostensibly more durable than the oxo-biodegradable ones, but can biodegrade fully in months or just a few years whether they are exposed to oxygen or buried deeply in a landfill, with fewer of the negative effects of PLA bags.

One thing of note about both the second and third generation bags: they need to be made with all or mostly virgin materials. Incorporating recycled materials seems to inhibit the biodegradable properties the manufacturers want to achieve.

It seems that, maybe acknowledging that “biodegradable” isn’t a perfect claim, manufacturers of these bags describe their biodegradability as an insurance policy. Recycling is best, but in case they get littered, at least they will biodegrade. While these second and third generation bags are ostensibly recyclable, what happens when those additives that are designed to speed up degradation wind up in other plastic products? Do those products begin to degrade faster, too?

With my head spinning from all this information – as Kermit the Frog said, “It isn’t easy being green” – the conclusion I’ve reached is this:

Reducing your use of trash bags is best, reuse trash bags whenever possible, and recycle where you can. And, near as I can tell, it is best to use the bags made from recycled plastic instead of the supposedly biodegradable ones.

Here in Thailand, the rubbish collectors actually sort through all the rubbish, emptying the plastic bags into the truck and then recycling the bags, so using bags that are made of recycled materials and then will be recycled again seems to go a long way to closing the loop. This manual process (documented in this 2008 blog entry) is a fascinating read in and of itself.

What about you? What plastic bag conundrums have you run into?

Four-Way Intersections

Posted on 6 July 2009 by christao408

As I travel around my adopted hometown of Krungthep, I sometimes see things and think, “Oh, that is so very Thai.” These things usually seem innocuous enough at first glance, but I think they illustrate the differences between Thai culture and other cultures. Four-way intersections are a good example.

When I drive in the US (or pretty much any “developed” country), there are rules and laws and signs and to some degree, everyone follows them. Very little is left entirely to human nature and the good will of the drivers.

Italy seems to be an exception, actually…

Anyhow, here in the City of Angels, we have many uncontrolled intersections. Much of this is a result of how the network of roads and streets developed out of a network of canals and waterways. What worked well for boats isn’t always so effective for cars.

Whether a major street like Sukhumvit or a small, twisting back soi, you encounter these intersections where the drivers’ best behavior is all that governs right-of-way.

Most of the time, it works alright. In fact, like the use of traffic circles, drivers are forced to be more attentive and drive slower because there are few rules to rely upon. Other than the occasional marks on the ground, spray-painted by an insurance company investigator after a crash, there are few signs that the uncontrolled intersections are really a problem.

Here’s a 90-second video clip (set to pleasant music) for you to see the above intersection in action:

In a chicken-or-egg dilemma, it is unclear whether these types of social confrontations (uncontrolled intersections) work so smoothly because of the Thai people’s culture of patience and friendliness towards others, or is the culture a result of having to negotiate these types of confrontations in everyday life?

In either case, it is interesting to observe and even more interesting to experience firsthand as the driver behind the wheel!

Independence Day in the Big Mango

Posted on 5 July 2009 by christao408

Edit: Video is now public. Sorry for not catching that before posting. Thanks to Gary for informing me.

It may surprise you to hear that there was a large celebration of July 4th in Bangkok. The American Chamber of Commerce hosts the annual festivities, which bring together not only the disparate American expat community, but also many Thais and people from other countries who have lived or studied in the US, or just appreciate a chance for a taste of real American tradition.

Last year was my first year attending, in the company of several other American expats who had pretty much only negative things to say about the experience. I won’t go into that episode again, suffice it to say I enjoyed it enough to not only show up for a second year, but also to volunteer for almost seven hours of working at the raffle tickets table.

While some expats take the approach of, “I don’t like the United States, that’s why I left”, I look at it from the belief that even if there are aspects of US culture for which I don’t care, it is within my ability to actively participate and influence the changes I want to see. That’s why last year I volunteered at the Democrats Abroad table, registering expats to vote and talking up the need for change in Washington. I’d like to think that my efforts contributed in some small part to moving the world’s perception of America back towards the right track.

This year’s event was held at the American School, a private primary and secondary school that is located just a few blocks from my condo, behind Samitivej Hospital. Their campus has lots of trees and the main basketball court / stage area has a large roof over it, giving celebrants plenty of shaded areas to enjoy the breezy day.

Several thousand people attended, representing every star and stripe of American culture. We had many expat families who are here on temporary work assignments, we had Mormon missionaries and young Peace Corps volunteers, we had a group of “butch” lesbians with lots of piercings and tattoos, plenty of gay couples of all ages, long-term expats who have been here for dozens of years, tourists who just happened to be in town this weekend, and of course the typical hugely overweight American men with their tiny Thai girlfriends/wives who were half their age and one-quarter their size.

Where some might have seen ugly stereotypes, I saw the diversity that is America, for better or for worse.

There were also lots of Thai families there, many of whom have children attending the American School and others of whom were there just for the fun of it. There was a large play area set up for children with all sorts of games, including all the traditional Fourth of July favorites: tug o’ war, bucket relays, three-legged races, potato (or, in this case, rice) sack races, face painting, etc.

Below, a short video look at some of the fun.

On the food side of things, the local branch of the Veterans of Foreign Wars were grilling hamburgers while the Wives’ Auxiliary were cooking hot dogs and selling the most popular item – Sam Adams beer (which is not sold here and has to be imported through the embassy!). Bourbon Street, Great American Rib Company, Roadhouse Barbecue and Sunrise Tacos were all present, selling their specialties. Another military service group was selling homemade apple pie and at the booth next door, Dairy Queen would put a dollop of vanilla soft serve on top. Of course, what Fourth would be complete without a chili cookoff?

Above, a direct hit at the dunking tank.

Most of my day was spent at the tables by the entrance where I and other volunteers hawked raffle tickets. Fifty baht (about $1.60) a ticket for a chance to win fifty fabulous prizes. First prize was two free tickets to anywhere in the U.S. that United Airlines flies. We had hotel room stays, spa visits, bicycles, car rentals and all sorts of other prizes. Best of all, proceeds went to support the chamber of commerce’s Adopt a School program, which provides support to poor schools in rural Thailand, including the building of playgrounds and providing of supplies. We must have raised at least $4,000 just from the raffle.

So it was a fun day celebrating the 233rd anniversary of America’s declaration of independence. I hope that those of you who were in the U.S. had a chance to enjoy the holiday, too. For those of you outside the U.S., I hope you had a nice weekend!

Air Conditioning Fiasco Resolved

Posted on 3 July 2009 by christao408

A week after it started, we finally resolved the air conditioning situation. You will recall that we moved the unit from bedroom A to bedroom B because it was a bit too loud for Tawn. But the replacement installed into bedroom A stopped working after exactly one night. Since the owner of the air conditioning company was out of town on a New Zealand holiday, we had to wait for his return to do anything more than have the new unit and compressor removed.

Instead of replacing the Panasonic unit that lasted only one night with another Panasonic unit, the decision was made to return to the same Mitsubishi model that we originally had installed in bedroom A – the one that we removed because it makes too much noise.

According to the sales person, the noise issue was because of how it was installed and isn’t related to the machine itself. That may be true, since I work in bedroom B and haven’t heard any noises when running the Mitsubishi until throughout the week.

In any case, this should help lower our electricity bill next month, since for the past week we had the main living room air con running all night and used fans to blow the cool air into bedroom A.

Check that off the list!

Shots from Around Town

Posted on 2 July 2009 by christao408

Let me conclude the week with a few shots I took while out and about.

The morning after we have a heavy rain storm, the skies are really clear and the sun is tremendously intense. Here at the Thong Lo BTS station, passengers huddle in the only shaded area as the sun is at such a point that during midmorning, it floods the inbound platform with bright light.

The passengers waited until the train had arrived and come to a full stop before they left the shade to board.

Walking to my Thai class on a warm and increasingly humid Thursday afternoon, about two hours before another thunderstorm set in, I was following a tourist who was carrying his toddler daughter. I felt so sorry for him, trying to navigate the unevenly paved sidewalks of a miserably warm Big Mango in flip-flops while carrying a sleeping child who looked so warm and uncomfortable with her sweat-matted hair. Add to that the pollution and noise coming from the neighboring street and the Tourism Authority of Thailand would have a fit!

Interesting billboard for an English Language school near Chulalongkorn University. The stated message: “You… can do it.” The implied message, “Unleash your inner farang.” Is it any wonder that so many Thais (especially the better-off ones such as those who might find their way to Chula U) apply whitening lotions and have plastic surgery to shape their features to be more “pleasing” (i.e. more Western)? With messages like this plastered along the street, who wouldn’t feel a bit dissatisfied with themselves?

Action Adventure Dream

Posted on 2 July 2009 by christao408

Normally, I sleep without dreams, at least none that I remember. But last night I had a rather intense dream that seemed to last a long while. Perhaps because I’ve been thinking about my primary school days recently, combined with the question of adding and deleting people on Facebook, the dream took an odd form.

Set in an action/adventure genre along the lines of James Bond or various Hong Kong cop and mafia movies, in my dream I was (as an adult) working in some half-finished abandoned office building. Several bad guys, all of whom had been bullies in my primary school, were after me, trying to kill me. I had to fight back using nothing more than my gun, my fists and my wits.

I woke up before anything substantial happened, like stepping out of the cinema mid-film and not returning.

Thinking more about it, I think the dream was partly influenced by the fact that I chose not to add a few suggested friends on Facebook who were people I don’t have pleasant memories of. One in particular used to tease me in junior high school because my jeans were a bit short – I was growing taller quite fast – making fun of my “floods”, as he called them.

Yeah, not going to add him to my Facebook friends list.

Dining on Sukhumvit Soi 38

Posted on 1 July 2009 by christao408

Our friend Jackson is in town from San Francisco, his first time back since late 2006. The other evening we took him for dinner to Sukhumvit Soi 38, a side street near the Thong Lo BTS station known for its nighttime eateries.

Both sides of this Bangkok soi are lined with food shops that spill onto the streets, offering nearly every type of Thai food you can imagine. The food is very fresh, very cheap and very authentic. Because of the location – lots of expats live nearby – some concessions have been made to non-Thais for everyone’s convenience. For example, it is increasingly common to find laminated menus that have some of the more popular items with both English and Japanese names. If you want some of the more obscure items, though, you have to read and speak Thai.

Regardless of your Thai literacy, no corners are cut when it comes to preparing the food! This is the real deal.

Fatty pork (roasted then fried in oil for an extra-crispy skin) served over rice with a Hoisin-type sauce.

A “red soup” with various pork parts including cubes of boiled blood.

Borrowed from Malaysia and Singapore: chicken and oily rice.

Wide rice noodles stir fried with egg and shrimp – kind of like pad thai but without the tamarind sauce.

Everyone’s favorite – and also a Malaysian import – chicken satay with peanut dipping sauce.

One of the nice features of Soi 38 is that if you are sitting in one vendor’s building, you can still order form other vendors elsewhere on the soi. They will deliver the food to you, collecting the money and then returning for the utensils and plates later on. Each vendor uses a different type of plate, so it is easier to identify what belongs to whom.

Here’s a little video:

While eating, the rain started to pour outside. After several hot days with no rain, we seem to be back into the typical rainy season cycle. Building humidity and clouds throughout the day, giving way to intense storms for thirty minutes or an hour in the late afternoon or early evening.

Above, Jackson dodges the rain.

Since there was nowhere to go and no way to get home without getting soaked, we stopped in at a massage parlor around the corner for a 90-minute foot massage. This was a very “old school” parlor, Chinese owned with the menthol smell of balm thick in the air. My masseuse was a blind man who was surprisingly in tune with the knots in my feet and lower legs. What the parlor lacked in ambience, the masseuse more than made up for with skill.

The Air Conditioner Drama

Posted on 29 June 2009 by christao408

It started innocently enough. We called the air conditioning service company out to move a unit from one room to another and install a new unit. A simple procedure that should have been unworthy of note. And yet it managed to develop into an unfinished saga, a tale needing to be told in a blog entry.

Unlike homes in the United States, which have central heating and air conditioning, homes in Southeast Asia have a much more efficient and tidier solution: individual units in each room. This way you are only cooling the space you occupy, instead of the entire house.

Our condo has three air con units: a large one in the living room, a medium-sized one in bedroom A (the master bedroom) and a smaller one in bedroom B (which is the area partitioned off from the living room by a pair of pocket doors).

About six months ago, the unit in bedroom A finally failed. It was probably ten years old and despite many service calls, it was time to replace it. The new Mitsubishi unit with the “smart eye” sensor was efficient at cooling, but Tawn felt like it made a little too much noise and was disturbing his sleep.

A few months later, the unit in bedroom B also stopped cooling. Since that bedroom is at the corner of the building and gets a good cross breeze when the windows are open, I’ve been content to save money on electricity and just spend my days working with a fan and the breeze to cool me off. As the weather has become hotter – a string of days in the mid 90’s with little breeze last week – I finally cried “uncle” and asked Tawn to call the air conditioning company.

We’ve used this company, based on a recommendation of a friend, for more than two years and other than the occasional lack of attention to detail – which seems typical of most manual workers here in Thailand – we’ve been pleased with their work.

Tawn arranged for them to come out and do three things: move the “new” unit from bedroom A into bedroom B (removing the broken unit in bedroom B and disposing of it), install a new, quieter Panasonic unit in bedroom A, and then clean the remaining unit.

The team of five workers and one supervisor showed up Wednesday afternoon with a new Panasonic air conditioner and compressor and set to work. It was kind of a circus act, in all meanings of the word.

They were like contortionists, squeezing themselves into the space on top of my work armoire, which is quite heavy to move. This is in bedroom B and contains my computer, printer, etc. I have no idea if it is constructed solidly enough to have two people sitting on top of it.

They were like high wire artists, improvising a scaffolding between our balconies in order to get to, remove and reinstall the compressor. What did they use? An aluminum ladder. Because of the position of the compressor, the ladder wouldn’t rest on both balconies, so they simply used a rope to tie one end to the balcony railing.

Yes, he sat out there, four stories above the car park, working on the unit. When I exclaimed that it seemed rather dangerous, he assured me that he had done the same thing the other day on the tenth floor of a building.

Even more daring, this young man is sitting on the compressor support frame that is bolted to the concrete wall. I would assume that it was installed when the building was completed ten years ago. Now, he’s a pretty small guy – maybe 110-120 pounds – but even at that weight I still wouldn’t be sitting out there!

Continuing the circus motif, they were also a bit like the clowns that climb out of the impossibly small car. They had more equipment spread around the condo, six of them stumbling over one another, dripping water everywhere and generally making a mess that didn’t get very effectively cleaned up until I did it.

All of this would be well and good if the story ended there with the new unit installed, the previous unit relocated, and the condo properly cooled. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it turned out.

Wednesday night we turned the air con unit in bedroom A on and it ran cool and quieter than the Mitsubishi unit that had been in there before, but by the middle of the night it seemed like even though we had it set to 22 C (about 70 F) it wasn’t that cool.

Thursday, Tawn called the service company and they said they would come out on Saturday and take a look. But Thursday night when we turned the unit on again, it wouldn’t cool at all. You could hear the unit drawing power as if to turn the compressor on, but it didn’t cycle on.

We had to sleep with the bedroom door open and the units in the rest of the condo running full, with two floor fans directing the cool air into the bedroom and circulating it. Not the most efficient way to cool things and I can’t wait to see how high our electricity bill is next month.

Friday morning Tawn called them again. He told them that they needed to come out that afternoon. The owner, whom Tawn had tried to track down, had just left for a week’s vacation in New Zealand, so he couldn’t get hold of anyone who would accept responsibility and authorize replacing the unit.

One thing Tawn wanted to avoid was them trying to repair the unit they had installed. In his mind – and I agree – if it is already having problems on day one, then it is going to continue to have problems even if various parts are replaced or repaired. Better to pull it out and demand a new unit.

Friday afternoon the team showed up, inspected the compressor, and pronounced that there had a fatal flaw. Tawn insisted they take the unit out entirely and bring it back to their office until the owner returned from holiday.

So here it is Monday night. Tonight will be our fifth night sleeping with the multiple air conditioning units and fans running to keep us cool. I’m thinking of dragging the mattress out to the living room, but then if guests come over that might be a bit awkward. And we do have guests in town so the likelihood of that is high.

I wish there was some neat ending to this story. Some, “and it all turned out wonderfully in the end” that I could add. Unfortunately, there isn’t, yet.

Stay tuned, though…

Virtual Friends

Posted on 28 June 2009 by christao408

Last month I did some pruning of my Facebook “friends” list. There were several people on there whom I don’t really know and definitely don’t have any regular contact with. Given the amount of information that Facebook provides me, a mostly uncontrollable flood, I finally asked myself, “Why am I getting updates about people I don’t really know, haven’t seen in more than a year, and don’t stay in touch with?”

Now, I’m the first to recognize that a virtual “friend” isn’t going to be the same thing as a real-life friend. But there are “friends” on Facebook who, even if we haven’t spent much time hanging out together, we are still regularly in contact with one another. We comment on each other’s updates and photos, etc.

Same thing here on Xanga. There are many people in Xangaland with whom I feel I’ve developed a close rapport. We share stories about our lives, comment on each other’s stories, have little dialogues. I interact with some of these people more than I do with my family. So I don’t want to suggest that virtual “friends” can’t have a lot of value.

But it does seem like a point was reached where I had to make some decisions, at least with regards to those Facebook “friends”.

I knew that doing so might come back to haunt me. Sure enough, this week I received an email from one of these pruned “friends”:

We used to be facebook friends… OK, we haven’t hung out in a while, but I’m a little surprised that you deleted me. I’m pretty sure that I haven’t done anything to sprite you.

Anyhow, not broken up over it. It’s just kinda funny.

cheers,
R

To which I thought, “You may not be broken up about it, but it must have bothered you enough to send this message.”

After a few days of figuring out the most diplomatic way to say, “I don’t really know you so I don’t feel the need to call you a friend,” I settled on the following:

Hi R,

Rest assured my deleting you doesn’t have anything to do with you having spited me. After the most recent facebook format was put into place, I’ve found it difficult to manage the amount of information I’m receiving. The flood of status updates, quizzes, photo album adds, etc. is making it difficult for me to stay up to date with those people whom I know well and stay in touch with regularly.

Because of that, I decided to start pruning my list of virtual friends. I feel that I don’t really need to be receiving updates on people I’ve only met a couple of times and haven’t had any contact with in a year or more.

I hope you’ll understand my decision to try and define virtual “friendships” less like acquaintances and more like friendships I have in real life.

Regards,

Chris

Do you think I handled it diplomatically enough? It is tough to tell someone that, but I didn’t want to wuss out and make a lame excuse like, “Oh, that must have been an accident.” If I value honesty and directness from others, I guess I should be willing to be honest and direct – and hopefully tactful – myself.

Where are you on the virtual friends issue?

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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