India: Mamallapuram, Auroville, and Chennai

Many, many, many more Flickr photos now posted, here. Stories en route from somewhere in the foggy post-India recovery portion of my brain.

Categories: Asia 2006 | India

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Ashley Bristowe, Global Snobizen

As we stepped off the plane I figured we should hit the bathroom before wading into the customs lineup. Chennai’s Anna International Airport: as I walked up the hall from the plane and through the glass hallways, I sussed it out: not bad, not bad… newish but not sparklingly ‘global’ in feel, various television screens telling us to head for the customs clearance desks and from which belt to gather our luggage, friendly-looking Indian Police officials with giant guns and miles of decorations leaning in doorways, watching us pass.

So the toilet, the toilet… where is the toilet? And then I saw a sign, toilet this way, with an arrow, just before the giant lineups to get our passports stamped, so I hung a right.  And there it was, in all its welcome-to-India glory: the shithole bathroom indigenous to every transportation hub on the Subcontinent. I can’t believe that I was expecting a standard airport bathroom: shame on me and my terrible sieve-like memory!

Oh, it was everything I hadn’t remembered and more: Despite the entirety of the rest of the airport being a sealed and air-conditioned international space, they managed to build this bathroom on an outside wall, obviously to allow for the circulation of hot jetfuel-scented air and the free passage of the obligatory 1001 flies. Single tinny fluorescent tube lighting the whole place. Water all over the floor, even way over by the door. An ill-hung mirror, the back silver of which was fading away in a sort of top-down watermark smear. And of course, in the stall itself, the lock, broken; holes in the door (though this let in some badly needed light – I should have been more grateful); dripping hose with cracked blue plastic pail underneath; and brand new toilet with stained, side-slung seat (though I should give props where due: usually there’s no seat at all). It goes without saying that there is no paper provided, ever, anywhere in India. As I did my business I balanced the baby on one hip and held the bags over my head: there was nowhere to put her or them down.

When I was a resident of India, the filth and refuse bothered me, but I could live with it. You have to. When you’re young you can sort of say to yourself, okay, they’ve got this caste system that no one will properly explain, but it seems to prevent anyone from actually caring for washrooms, except in private homes. You end up going to that place in your mind that says, “Well now Ashley, don’t be such a judgmental asshole, this is their culture and you are the outsider here.” No matter what the venue or business or locale, a bathroom with even the vaguest hint of public access in India is, always, a complete disgrace. Ainsley and I finally snapped one day on the Shatabdi train between Delhi and Chandigarh and, armed only with paper towels, a bar of soap, a credit card (to scrape up the grime), and the water provided in the basin tap by India Rail, we scrubbed that bathroom from top to bottom and emerged damp and exhausted, but jubilant and grinning: BEHOLD, THE ONLY CLEAN BATHROOM IN INDIA, AND LO, WE MADE IT SO.

But after a while – and I’m talking about a few months here – if you have any sense of cultural relativist decency, you do, finally, bow to the seemingly endless parade of revoltingly spartan and broken water closets and give up your pretentions. Without actually going “native”, as Rudyard Kipling so condescendingly put it, you do suck it up, so to speak. And in truth, this is a survival tactic, and being inured to the filth is a precious resource in the battle to preserve your sanity here. If you know me personally, I’m sure you’ve heard the ol’ busride from Leh to Manali story, which features a terrible case of the shits and me, half-collapsed and feverish at a bus station urinal, looking over to realize that a man was masterbating in the gloom, looking at my hunched and sickened self. Yeah… so. Can you see that getting to a zen place as to the quality of public toilets can save your soul? Yes. It truly can. And I know this. But it does take time, a long time.

Now, I’ll remind you that Sloane and I are only going to be here for 10 days this time ‘round. And as such, I fully realize I don’t have the dubious ‘luxury’ of attending to the whole wearying process of having my snotty superior spirit broken on the matter of public toilet cleanliness. I’m going to blame my stubbornness at least in small measure on being a mother and having my baby ‘on board’, but I’m holding firm and this is my decree on this day: good god the toilets in India are awful, and I won’t apologize for my snobbery. Wet, dank, dirty, insect-infested, unserviced, broken, neglected, abandoned: you’d hardly think that there were a billion people in this country, all of whom, I assume, have to shit once or twice a day. Really, you’d think that the Indians would’ve really had it all figured out by now on these matters. (Which, considering the age of the culture and the history of civilization here and whatnot, begs the chilling question: What if they do have it figured out, and this is it?)

So I’ll be unrelentingly bald and cold when I say: shame on you, the management of Chennai’s Anna International Airport – you are running an AIRPORT. People pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for the privilege of transportation via airplanes. And as the air terminal, you are the first and seminal welcoming can-can line when people arrive in this country – and given the uncompromising filth we’ll find everywhere else, there’s no worry that we won’t encounter “the real India” in this realm. So the very least you could do is break us in slowly. For the love of god, renovate and maintain your goddamn toilets, I beg you.

[You know, it’s only fair to report that I’ve seen and used plenty of public toilets in Canada that totally rival the Indian ones for disgustingness. The around-the-back gas station toilet at the Hwy 6 corner mart in New Denver, BC, leaps to mind (mainly because every time I end up having to use that bathroom, I think to myself: “I should never complain about the toilets in India as though Canada is so much better, because this one SUCKS.”) So I should be kinder – but for now, I won’t be.]

Categories: Ash | Asia 2006 | India

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Tamil Nadu Or Bust!

Onward to Hindustan! Tomorrow Sloaner and I get on a creaky early-morning flight to Madras, to meet up with Turner (already "in station") for the final leg of the India research.

The plan: We'll spend a few days in Mamallapuram, a temple town on the coast south of Chennai, and then head on to Pondicherry at the end of the week. On the weekend we strike (slightly) inland, to Auroville, the "experiment in international living".

         Ha ha ha - can you tell I'm no Photoshop expert?

It's all in the name of research. ...And self-aggrandizement of course. Who can resist us when we are carrying such a lovely strawberry-blonde baby? We're putting to the test the notion that you're treated "SO" much better when travelling with a child in India. Turner has been trying out the radical idea of "wearing clean clothes" and reports that the difference in treatment is marked. (Myself, I'll be testing the whole "not punching men who pinch my ass" technique, since the retailation-in-a-crowd thing on this matter once started a small riot at Dusshera in Delhi, from which we were saved by police brandishing lathis. I have never been so glad to see a lathi being swung in my direction, I tell you. In any case, hopefully the ass-pinching vector will experience a decided downswing with aforementioned baby on board. We can only hope.)

Turner is giving a talk in Auroville on February 19th at their Matrimandir - reading from the first chapter from The Geography of Hope, "Down At The Windfarm". So if, y'know, you're in the area, drop by!

You know I'll take a bazillion photos and collect up some good stories to tell. Internet access in India is, as I recall, "the shits" vis a vis reliability, so I'll make no claims on posting regularly and whatnot from the Subcontinent. We're back to Bangkok on the 24th, and I'll post stuff then, if not before.

Jaye he, jaye he... jaye, jaye, jaye, jaye, he! (Be careful this link doesn't burn your eyeballs out.)

(Crossposted with The Geography Of Hope's website.)

Categories: Asia 2006 | Book Tour | India | Work work work

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Bangkok Scenes And Burned-Out Eyeballs

New photos up on Flickr, here.

Don't eat me, Mr. Giant Shiny Garuda!

Zoom! Tuk tuk madness...

Categories: Asia 2006

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Brucio The Valiant, Part II

So, another time?  Like? The time I left Turner? We broke up? And I moved all my crap back to Calgary? Well, I was driving home across Canada in the Ashmobile, and had to ship my half of the furniture and belongings out west with a shady moving company I found out in Scarborough who would do it for me cheap.

I was not in a good way, y'all. And my family were superstars about the whole thing, very reverent and quiet and supportive about it. Even my parents, who both knew that there was a 50-50 chance their oldest child (me), aged 28 and suddenly unemployed, would end up in their basement (it was one or the other, those were the choices). Even under that kind of pressure, they were excellent about everything.

The moving company had Angela Pacini's cel phone as the contact number, because she was kind enough to accompany me to the mover to arrange the shipment and everything. About three days after I left Toronto, the guy at the shady Scarborough warehouse started calling her. Something had gone wrong. The truck was stuck in northern Michigan or something. A few days later he called to say they'd lost the laiding bill and didn't know where the stuff was going once they got to Alberta. On and on. Angela is tearing her hair out, waiting and waiting and praying I'll call from somewhere on my drive across the country so she can convey all this terrible news about my stuff. But I didn't call, all embroiled in my own breakup tragedy and feeling sorry for myself and so on, so I didn't know any of this. Which was good, because it was all apparently bullshit, we never really found out why the guy in Scarborough was calling her and leaving these messages, because my pile of stuff appeared very suddenly one day, at the end of my father's driveway.

Now. Let's backtrack. The people at the Scarborough end of things had taken all my stuff - a couch, a bookshelf, chairs, boxes, etcetera - and then stacked it in a big pile at their warehouse (I didn't see this - the guy told me this is what they'd do). Then they wrapped everything in giant sheets of bubble wrap, and then wrapped the giant bubble-wrapped bundle with giant sheets of saran wrap. Then they wrapped that bubble- and saran-wrapped pile of my stuff with giant sheets of sticky black tarpaulin. ...I dunno why. To protect it during its re-entry into the earth's atmosphere from orbit, obviously. When the guy was explaining this to me I was on my third straight day of crying and I just nodded and left the rest to fate.

Well, fate decided that it didn't need a signature on its clipboard, so the moving truck driver just found my dad's address and unloaded my stuff onto the driveway in front of the garage. Then I presume he put a checkmark beside my name and just drove away, whistling "I Gotta Be Me".

Now. You need to know that it was April. And April is spring in most parts of Canada, but in Calgary we see snow in every month of the year. (It's the tradeoff for the chinooks.) As I recall, it was also a Friday. So this Friday in April - it was snowing. Hard. But it was warm, so everything was turning to slush as it fell on the ground. My stuff was unceremoniously dumped sometime at midday, so by the evening there was a good layer of slush building up all around and on top of it.   

Aside from being a doctor, my father is what you might call a lobbyist. For years he's been on the front line of the fight between the Alberta government and doctors, wherein the former is constantly utilizing cost-benefit models and the advice of policy wonks to set priorities and budgets that, in the end, cost the system millions and generally harrass and bedevil the doctors. In the years following my parents' divorce, Dad threw himself into the political arena and worked his ass off night and day. Fought battles, flew up and down to Edmonton approximately 225 times in four years, kissed major ass, and played a lot of strategic golf games. Plus his regular day job, as, you know, a doctor. An interventional radiologist, to be specific, so it's not like he was busy or anything. At one point he was even awarded a customized trophy by his professional organization, "The Energizer Bunny Award" for his unfailing ability to keep going and going and going when everyone else had been beaten down and had packed it in.

Every time we'd call home Dad would be going on and on about The Bastards. About how Ralph Klein was going to blow up the Calgary General Hospital. About how they were going to download all diagnostics from Emerg to Radiology and the massive crisis this would cause in the hospital system. And about how private mammogram screenings were going to put his business in the shitter. And how the underfunding of support staff was putting such stress into the system that the whole spirit of goodwill and mutual assistance throughout medicine was being killed away bit by bit. ...To listen to him go on and on, year after year, you'd think the Canadian health care system was in a protracted crisis or something.

In any case, bear in mind that my Dad put his all into saving health care and keeping his partnership afloat: more than a full time job. He'd come home pretty fricken bagged at night..

So on this particular Friday in April, it turns out it's even worse than usual: Dad's driving home from a partnership meeting. He's worked a full day, after a full week, and he'd also been On Call (my father takes a truly obscene amount of Call, but in return he gets about six months off a year). Partnership meetings are long and hard and everyone is feeling the strain of the massive changes underway in the new parcelled-up Alberta health regions. And they'd ordered in some weird chinese thing that nobody could eat. So he's hungry, he's tired, he's had it. He's on his way home, thank christ.

And the LAST fricken thing on Dad's mind this night is me and my woes, I'm fairly certain. As far as he's concerned, I'm staying wtih friends somewhere in Manitoba, on my way across the country but taking my time. I won't get to Calgary for another week at least.

He makes all the twists and turns and complex navigational tricks through the dark and slushy streets of Douglasdale. He gets to his cul-de-sac - his house is the last one down on the right. Almost there. And then, as he's turning the wheel to pull into the driveway, out of the gloom he sees it, in the middle of the drive and blocking the garage door: what the hell is that...? We know that it's The Monolith Of Ashley's Stuff. An edge of the black tarpaulin has pulled away and is flapping in the wind.

The snow is falling, and so is the temperature. What was slush in the daytime is slowly turning into a chunky, sharp layer of ice. Brucio looks at the monolith. It's just a giant black-wrapped ...thing, at this point. He doesn't know for sure what the hell it is: it's unmarked. There's no receipt in the mailbox. And he's tired. It's been a shitty, shitty day.

He looks again at the monolith, unbelieving. Is that my house? Did I turn down the wrong road? He looks around at the identical pink houses on all sides. Spots a fake deer lawn ornament on a neighbour's lawn and gets oriented. It's the right street. ...Who the fuck put that fucking thing on my driveway?, he's thinking. Is that the soil I ordered from the gardeners? They would have dumped it on the lawn, would'nt've they? 

But then he slowly realizes: Ohhhhh nooooo: it's the shipment of Ashley's stuff from Ontario. He says to himself: That's everything my daughter owns (besides all that shit of hers I've been storing in the basement for years). She's heartbroken out there, somewhere on the road and headed this way. Fucking hell. He knows that if he goes in the house and changes, he'll sit down for one minute and it'll all be over and that thing'll stay where it is until the next day, maybe longer. So he sez to himself he sez: ...Okay ...I can't just leave that stuff there.

I think he probably put his head down on the steering wheel for a minute or so. I bet all he wanted to do is go inside and go to fucking sleep.

But he didn't. Go inside, that is. He opens the garage door, and starts moving stuff out of the way. He makes a space, over on one side. A space for my stuff to go. And then he staggers over to get the industrial exacto-knife from the toolbox, and wearing his leather doctor shoes and wool trousers and cashmere sweater (known as "the Brucio uniform") and no jacket, he goes to work at dismantling the monolith. The neighbours look out their windows and see him, working out there in the snow and wind. Hey Melba, that doctor across the road is out on his driveway cutting up that sculpture he ordered from Ontario! they say. Nobody comes out to offer help: it's suburbia. Everyone sees, nobody acts.

Dad tears away the black tarpaulin, and the saran wrap, and the bubble wrap. And then he gets to work at moving the entirety of my worldly possessions (remember: bookshelf, couch, chairs, boxes, etcetera) out of the icy slush, off the driveway and into the garage. All by himself. Thinking: It's my daughter's stuff. She's coming home. It has to come off the driveway. It takes him 45 minutes. He leaves the car in the road. Goes inside. Next day, wakes up and realizes he's wrecked his back, and his left shoulder, and his knee is a bit gimpy for a few days, besides. And a week later, I pull up in the driveway, in a terrible temper overall and ungrateful about being alive in general. I proceed to crash land into the basement for the foreseeable future, and am a complete mess for six months, maybe more. Dad says nothing except c'mon in, your room's ready.  

He didn't tell me anything about the monolith until a year after the fact. That's love.

Categories: Calgary | Family | Olden Days

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Brucio The Valiant, Part I

I had a hysterical conversation with my dad this morning over Skype. There're a few stories to tell. Get comfortable.

...So my dad? He'll basically follow Brother John's guidance when it comes to things-technological. You should see the shit my brother has convinced dad to buy. Sony Vaio laptops, for instance. I don't know who to blame: John or Dad. I've gotten hand-me-down Vaio lemons from both of them and still they never learn. Gentle reader, you can learn from my extensive experience on these matters: The Sony Vaio in all its forms and incarnations is a piece of shit. DO NOT BUY. I end up with these things because I am in the Beggar, Cannot Be Chooser category when it comes to laptops.

...Maybe I should just learn not to take hand-me-down laptops from the men in my family. The upkeep and ass pain that these things cost me would certainly be worth the price of a low-end laptop that could keep me in internet and word processing and photo-editing. I don't need anything else. Yeah. Maybe it's me who should learn. ...But I digress. A tangent! We never see those here.

So the newest brainstorm, after the giant tv that colonized the whole basement with its evil mind-sucking beams, and the talking refrigerator that is otherwise silent (and hence somehow scary), and the custom-built computer with the two side-by-side screens each the width of a bathtub (which begs the question: when did my father start working for NASA?); besides all that, the newest thing on John's agenda was to have Dad's whole house somehow re-wired with ethernet cables, all going all through the walls and ceilings and shit. This means exactly nothing to me, but I imagine it has something to do with internet. Maybe it will power the model chuckwagon my dad has on display in the kitchen. But probably not. I just like to tell people that: my father has a chuckwagon on display in the kitchen. Yes. He does. A model chuckwagon. To scale. With a cloth canopy and everything. I bring up the chuckwagon every chance I get.  

So anyway, the cable-rewiring guy comes for a few days' stretch last week, and pounds holes in all the walls, and is threading cable every which way. And it's a full time job to keep the cat (our cat, Rooney) from trying to widen the cable holes so he can get into the guts of the house behind the drywall. It's all a big, dusty, messy project. And on day three, Mr. Cable-Threading guy is almost done. The last thing to do is sync everything up with the telephone wires. Pound pound pound, two minutes later the whole telephone wiring system hub in the kitchen is exposed for working-on and we can see the finish line. 

But the moment this guy touches the raw telephone cable, the house alarm goes off. This is the first time the alarm has ever gone off - my father has lived in the house for seven years and by this point we'd all pretty much forgotten that there even was an alarm system.

And my dad gets this call from Uncle Leo. The alarm is going off in the background - it's deafening, meant to encourage intruders to leave the premises. Imagine the volume:

Leo:    HEEEHH! HEEEHH!...Bruce! HEEEHH! HEEEHH!

It totally sounds like an emergency is underway, full throttle. Dad's suddenly bolt upright in his chair at the hospital.

Dad:   Yes! Leo! What's happening?

Leo:    HEEEHH! HEEEHH!'s the alarm! The telephoHEEEHH!and he was workinHEEEHHH!

Dad:   Where are you?

Leo:   WHOOOP! WHOOOP-WHOOOP! WHOOOP!

Dad:   ...Sorry, I didn't catch that?

Leo:   WHOOOP!home, I'm at hWHOOOP-WHOOOP! WHOOOP!   

Dad:   [muttering] Jesus christ almighty.... Okay: go to the computer desk, upstairs. Look in the drawer there.

Leo:    HEEEHH!Which drawer?! WHOOOP! WHOOOP-WHOOOP! 

Dad:   Jesus! There's only three drawers there! Look in all of them!

Leo:    Okay, I'm goingHEEEHH! HEEEHH!... HEEEHH! HEEEHH! ... WHOOP! WHOOP-WHOOP! WHOOP! ... There's nothing heHEEEHH! HEEEHH!

Dad:   Leo, just look in the drawers. There's a manual about the alarms - it's been there since I moved in.

Leo:    WHOOOP! I can'tWHOOOP-WHOOOP! It's not here. WHOOOP!

This goes on for a while.

Dad:   Leo, I'm coming home. My cel is on.

So Dad somehow arranges to leave the hospital and all the cases he's reading and so on, and gets in the car and roars down the Deerfoot to Douglasdale, to save Leo and the ethernet cable guy from the alarm system.

Upon arrival, dad opens the door and the house is quiet. Leo's downstairs watching soccer.

Dad:   Uh, Leo?

Leo:   [calling from downstairs] It stopped!

Dad:   ...? How'd you fix it?

Leo:    [Chelsea commentator in the background] ...It stopped on its own. It just eventually stopped. ...The guy finished up and left. He said everything's all set with the ethernet.

Dad:   Well... great. ...I'm going back to work.

Leo:   [still in basement] Okay! See you later!

Categories: Calgary | Family

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Reading Material

When you come to Thailand, you'd have to be blind not to notice the many, many, many pasty & paunchy white men sauntering around with gorgeous Thai ladies on their arms. It seems sad. And... well, pathetic.

I stumbled onto this Bangkok blog last night, and lost an hour to it. Straightforward, well-written, it's everything a guy would ever want to know about Thailand's sex trade and a variety of topics concerning relationships between foreign men and Thai women. Not exactly my cup of tea, but it's clear, clean, honest writing.

Categories: Asia 2006

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Overheard At Muay Thai

So I don't know about you, but I'd heard of Thai Kickboxing before I'd ever been to Thailand. I'd heard that it was some kind of extreme sport, and the main jist of most stories centred around the fact that the boxers are allowed to basically do anything to win, including kick each other in the nuts.

Men say that women can't picture that kind of pain. I say to them: have you seen a woman go through childbirth? Yeah. No. I guess I can't picture your 5-minute doubled-over hyperventilating pain, and you can't picture my 20 hour labour. We'll call it uneven and leave it at that.

But, yes - getting canned: even if you can't empathize with the actual experience, most girls are told by their moms at some point that if they REALLY need to physically defend themselves and there's no other way out, kick a guy in the balls. They get to make bigger money and start wars and father children they don't support, but there's this one chink in the armour? DANG. That's a pretty serious gap under the armpit. Kind of makes you understand why men aren't that hot for even having their 'nads slightly jostled in the wrong way.  

So it makes muay thai sound pretty hard core, to hear that the fighters can bash each other in the crotch. Hence the infamy.

Karen and Bauer had one night left in Bangkok, and decided that they wanted to see some kickboxing. Alrighty sez I, and arranged to come along. When Thaba heard the plan, she mentioned that everyone who comes to visit them in Bangkok goes to see muay thai, and most people are satisfied with their kickboxing experience after the second or third fight. I'm familiar with the phenomenon of getting "enough" of an experience, when attendees with perhaps a more nuanced understanding of the event are just getting warmed up. Bullfighting, for example. As a tourist in Mexico or Spain, it sounds like a good idea to go see a bullfight. How daring! ¿Cómo usted dice? ...So local! So authentic! Okay, let's go.

...And after the first fight, you get it. You know what's going on, you can identify the picadors from the conquistadors, you've seen them actually kill the bull, and it's not at all like the Bugs Bunny where he should've taken the left turn at Albequerque. But you've paid $20 or $30 or even $100 for the ticket, and the true fans all around you are having a great time, cheering and yelling at each other in Spanish. So you stay, and try to stick it out.

But eventually the certainty sets in: I want to leave. And you do. You shoulda left after the first bull. So when I heard this news from Thaba, I knew of what she spoke. I wouldn't be shy about jumping ship on the muay thai early on in the rounds, if necessary.

I met Bauer and Karen at Lumphini BTS and we walked over to the venue, where we bought the 3rd tier Foreigner-class tickets (the cheapest seats at 1000B, vs. 150B for Thais in the same class of seats. Methinks they're trying to make some money off the falang) and headed into the 'stadium'. When I say 'stadium', don't think of an American college football stadium. Don't even think of McMahon stadium in Calgary before the reno. Picture instead a circular, tiered Roman stadium, but small. And with an aluminum roof. And wooden benches, erected over what looked like a decidedly malarial swamp of muddy filth and detritus from the stands. Then, fill the stadium with approximately 4000 screaming Thai men, wrigging their fingers at each other and jumping up and down, betting like mad and tearing out their hair. Also insert view-blocking advertisements, about 200 low-watt fluorescent bulbs dangling from the ceiling on wires, and a quartet of musicians in matching neon-green jackets who thump drums, a bell, and an oboe along to the tempo of the fight.

(When we chose our seats, an older guy came over to ask us where we were from and tell us a bit about the event. He pointed out that we'd chosen excellent seats: right in front of the music booth, so no one would stand in our way. Music booth? we said, expecting a dj or sound effects or something. But then the squealing band stuck up their tweedley tune and we all looked at each other: Huh? Karen: "Hey! A band! I love live music!" Approximately two minutes later, as the full force of the repetitious and honkingly grating nature of the "music" was becoming abundantly apparent, Bauer: "When Thab said people only lasted one or two fights, do you think she meant because of the fighting? Or because of the music...?")

Basically at a night of muay thai you get to watch a roster of wiry guys in fancy shorts bash the hell out of each other. Which makes it not that different from North American boxing, except in Thai kickboxing they can kick. KICKboxing, see? And use their elbows. And trip their opponent, if they can manage it. One guy actually got knocked out cold, and I had a weird shiver run through me when the paramedic chucked him on the chin to see if he was conscious, and his skull rolled around like a teatherball. We only lasted one more fight after that one, four fights total. Aside from the music, the mosquitoes were eating Karen and I alive. And really, there is such a thing as "enough" Thai kickboxing, especially your first time out.

And as it turns out, I don't think you're allowed to go for the balls. I didn't see any punching down near the family jewels, and there were plenty of opportunities. Imagine the disappointment in that small part of my brain still devoted to hating men (I had to sign out a 99-year lease on that section when I transferred into Women's Studies in undergrad).

I never really claimed to be a sports photographer. And I'll remind you that we were in the cheapest seats. But I think you get the point.

So, but really, the highlight for me was when the drinks lady came around. We were approached by a little woman calling out quietly, "Beer? ...Beer?" When she came over to show her wares, her tray held bottles of water and green tea, and then open cups of what looked like brightly coloured kool-aid. There was very clearly no beer on the tray. I don't know what I was thinking - I chose the green cup.

Ash:    How much? Thao rai?

Lady:   Thirty five baht.

I'm thinking that 35 baht is more than a dollar, but enh - supporting the local economy and all that. Plus I'd just dropped 1000B on the entry ticket; at this point, what was another buck?

Ash: Okay.

Pulls out money, pays with a 100B note. Lady starts digging for change in her waistbelt.

Meanwhile, Bauer and Karen are looking over the drinks situation. Bauer nods at the tray with a suspicious glance: you want any? Karen decides she wants a bottle of green tea, and with a shrug Bauer hands it over. Meanwhile, the drinks lady hands me my change: 65B.

Ash: Thanks.

Karen: How much for the green tea?

The lady waves us off, yes, no problem. She makes a move to leave.

Bauer: Wait. What?

Karen: Huh? How much is it?

Lady crouches down again.

Lady: ...Fifteen baht.

Karen pulls out the money, hands the lady a 20B note. But something's going on. The lady seems to be indicating that Karen has already paid. Which would make sense, if my drink wasn't actually 35B, and had been 10B or something like that, and Karen's is now 15B.

Ash: What's going on here? I think she's saying we've already paid for Karen's.  

Bauer: We're ... not... sure. Karen chose her drink after you got your change. I think there's a mistake somewhere.

Meanwhile, some of the men in our vicinity have started to take notice of our situation. They start calling out advice in Thai. Lady pulls out fifteen baht change and hands it to Karen. Everyone is confused by this point.

Ash: [sipping my drink] Why is mine 35 baht and hers is 5 baht?

Bauer: What do you mean?

Ash: [more sipping] Well, hers is packaged. It's got a recyclable container. It's made by, like, a multinational beverage company. Mine is just a glass of juice with some ice. Mine should be cheaper. ...Unless...

Ash suddenly puts the cup down. Everyone looks at my cup of green juice & ice, now 1/3 gone.

Bauer: Well... uh... well!

Ash: What the hell!

Lady suddenly comes back. Hands me a 20B note. Is talking to me in Thai. I don't know what she's saying. I'm distracted, looking around at the ceiling and pillars nearby, trying to discern if there was any alcohol in the kool-aid. I'm thinking, I didn't taste any alcohol...? But purple jesus works that way too... you can't taste it... hmmmm. Lady is still talking. Bauer is looking at her like, We got nuthin', here.

Ash: [starting to laugh] Make her go away. I just want her to go away, now.

Karen: ...Well, I paid 5 baht for mine. She gave me 15B change. And you paid a 100, but she gave you 65B back. And now she gave you 20 more baht. So yours... yours was fifteen baht, in the end. She said mine was fifteen but maybe she meant five, and yours was actually the one that was fifteen baht.

The lady is still talking to us. The men are still calling out friendly advice. The lady pulls out coins, starts to gesture with them. Bauer's still looking at her, friendly, but noncommittal. The lady stands up, still talking.

Ash: Make her leave. I just want her to go away.

Karen: [To the lady] Kap koon kah! Thank you! We're fine, we don't need anything. Thank you! [Turning to us] So yours was 15B in the end. She must have said the wrong number. Or tried to overcharge you, but it all got too confusing, so she refunded your money.

Ash: But... wait. 15 baht? ...That STILL makes mine 3x more than yours. [Absentmindedly picks up the glass of juice, takes another sip.] ...Aahhh! What the hell am I doing? [Slams the cup down with a crash, on the bench.]

Bauer: [Watching, bemused, this whole time] ...Like, I don't know! I don't know what the hell you're doing! The beer lady comes and you get what looked like a 10 cent glass of freshie, full of ice from god knows where, and it's A DOLLAR. And you paid her, and drank it up! The mosquitoes are the least of your problems! You're breaking all the rules! No ice! No open cups! What did you think you were buying!?

Everyone is doubled over, gasping, at this point, we're laughing so hard.

Ash: [Picking up the cup] I'm... I'm not going to drink this. [Goes to pour it out, under the bench, into the malarial cesspool below.]

Bauer: No kidding you shouldn't drink that! Now you know how all that shit ended up down there! 'Nice cold glass of bright green freshie for a dollar? ...Weeeelllll, yes! Don't mind if I do!'

...Lord. That made my night. And for the record, I didn't get sick or drunk or anything, so maybe it really was just green kool-aid. Very expensive green kool-aid.

Categories: Ash | Asia 2006 | Friends

Comments [0]

Wherein I Brag At Length About The Super-Accomplisher Of A Baby We Produced

This is the post that, when Sloane's future siblings are teenagers and looking through my blog archives for ammo in the "The World Hates Me, My Parents Don't Love Me, I Wish I'd Never Been Born" phase of life, will provide enormous ironic twist-the-knife comfort because this! is! it! : the post wherein I go on and on about Sloane in a way that apparently you never do about your subsequent children.

As an oldest-child, I don't know what it feels like to be one of those younger siblings. I was first, firstfirstfirst, and everyone loved me, memememeeeee, SOOOOOO much, and I was EVERYONE'S favourite. There are a billion pictures of me as a kid. And all of my parents' friends knew me and loved me and remember me fondly even now. Ainsley had to wear MY hand-me-downs. And I was always there during storytime to shout out the right answer when John and Ainsley were TOOOOO slow to answer stuff like, "Where's the sun?" and "What do you think happens next? ...NOT YOU, ASHLEY." While I, of course, have the complaint that my parents were far stricter with me than they were with my brother and sister (to quote Krishna, I broke the ice so they could waterski through), it's really the only legitimate bitch I can make about being the eldest. Otherwise, it was pretty much pure gold. I highly recommend being born first.

Now Turner, on the other hand, was born second. And he thinks that being second of two kids is really the shaft. He's not alone in this - every younger-sibling person I've ever known thinks it sucked. So I'm not pointing any rainclouds in my in-laws' direction; it seems that being the younger kid blows no matter how great the parenting. (For the record, I think Turner's parents did some great parenting. Thanks for producing the lovely boy I got to marry, John and Margo!) I mean, people get past it, of course, and go on to (in most cases) lead productive lives and whatnot.

Anyway, on with the post about Sloane and her newest feats of genius and physical skill. Which was, ostensibly, what this post was supposed to be about. She being our oldest (and only, at this point) child, it is of course earth-shaking whenever she learns something new, and certainly a day doesn't pass without many photos being taken of the darling girl. So rest assured that there'll be lots of well-founded griping when siblings come along and are able to balance spinning plates while performing amazing feats of calculus with one hand and giving Mama a footrub with the other, and get NO credit for their talents. Of course.

Without further ado, I present the list of what Sloane, aged 10 months and two weeks, has been doing of late:

• The real money: walking, which includes turning, bending down and picking stuff up and standing back up again without falling, stepping down from a slight height (the lip of floors are different heights here) and turning backwards to crawl down from Ji's mattress. I don't know how fast kids are supposed to go from first steps to full walking, but I sort of expected it to take a bit longer than it's been for Sloane - elapsed time for her being 6 days
• catching a rolled ball, and sometimes rolling it back (like, in a vague towards-Mama direction)
• can correctly answer, by pointing, the questions, "where's your teeth?" and "where's Mama's teeth?" and "where's the baby?" (thanks to Thab for this training!)
• instead of learning the signs for "water", "banana", and "more" that we've been trying to drill into her for months, Sloane finds it much more expeditious to point exactly at what she wants and then poke herself repeatedly in the chest: That. Give it to me. ...That. Give it to me.
• However, she has a great handle on the sign for "Dad" (swiping the hand down one cheek, like stroking a beard - we created this sign to signify Turner, because Sloane was fascinated with his beard from an early age), and looks around, asking for him, all the time

Oh boo, there's no way to properly convey how AMAZING it is to watch your child learn. So I'll leave it at this: Go Sloaner go!

Proud Ah-ma and Sloaner. "'...Scuse me, there's somewhere I gotta be with this ping pong ball..."

Categories: Asia 2006 | Mom-ness | Sloane

Comments [13]

Snobby! Indian! Ladies! of Soi 2

I have mentioned about the Shiva statue in our complex, but I may not have told you that probably half of the residents here are Indian. I'm talking about born-in-India people uprooted for business reasons to Thailand. Mostly families, from all areas of India - Mangalore, Chennai, Delhi. Mostly Hindus - hence the Shiva statue, and also the seperate Ganesh and Krishna shrines elsewhere on the grounds, and the spitted paan dots on the pavement near the front stairs, and the Indian sweets on sale at the corner store. But best of all, the Snobby! Indian! Ladies!

Snobby? So snobby. All those exclamation points are richly deserved.

I'll try not to go into a reminiscingly rambly post about all the perceived trespasses I've ever endured at the hands of Indian ladies over the years. Because there've been many. Scary and cruel upper-class British people have nothing on "heartless" when it comes to the Indian lady mob mentality. I'll just say this: I'm friendly. I have a big smile on my face and I'm carrying a gorgeous toddler. I say hello, I wave, I ask people's children's names and compliment their eyes/shoes/size. And yet, the ladies here Give! Me! Looks! SNOBBY looks!

...How snobby? SO snobby.

I realize that I sort of brought it on myself. See, I wear salwaar as often as not, and I wear them with regular tshirts and tank tops. Salwaar are the billowy, baggy drawstring pants women wear as part of what's called "punjabi suit", or just "salwaar kamise". In the Indian mind, they're part of a locked set: salwaar on the bottom, and then the kamise - a long, flow-y shirt-dress that falls to your knees - on the top.

(Oh, and a dupatta. That's the scarf that goes backwards around the neck. I could never really bring myself to truly accept the dupatta and only wore it under duress on special outings, in India. Despite my cultural relativist leanings, my feeling towards the dupatta was summed up quite nicely by a fellow student at the Landour Language School, my first week in India. A Swiss girl, she was in India to study meditation. She'd gone out on the advice of some of the professors and had some salwaar kamise made. I met her at Char Dukan on her way home, and she was struggling with the flimsy dupatta, flapping in the slight breeze. I complimented her on the new duds, whereupon she said, "Yess, it'z niice I guessz... But ziss sing! [pulling at the dupatta in disgust] It iz soo... stoo-pidd!" Yes. My sentiments exactly. It slips off your shoulders, it falls on the floor, and I couldn't help but picture mine getting stuck in a fan intake, leading to my inadvertant strangling-by-dupatta. I'm sure I was glaringly, obviously underdressed according to my fellow Shimla-ites. But you know what? It's not like I was going undercover or actually trying to don a disguise when I wore salwaar kamise. I wasn't fooling anyone in India: I'm white. Nobody was going to mistake me for a Punjabi lady, all up in her soot, browsing in the market: no. So I never worried too much about the dupatta.)

See: giant pants, under long dress-like top. Also scarf-like dupatta. Most women, me included, don't look this glam in salwaar kamise. But you get the picture.

I got really attached to salwaar in India, and brought a few pair home with me, which I wore until they fell apart (though their companion kamise-es are in perfect condition, unworn and packed up in a box somewhere). Very comfortable, the drawstring sits at your true waist and the rest just hangs there. Nice heavy hem at the bottom to pull the fabric earthward. A fan-like design of folds across the front hides a lot of fabric in the garment, so you can move every which-way and not worry about being constrained. They're lovely. It should be said that they kind of make your ass look big, and I can't really disagree. But I'm usually looking at myself from the front when I face a mirror, and Turner really likes them on me (like, really), so let's be honest: who else am I trying to impress?

In Canada I don't generally wear salwaar outside the house. For one, the material is too light, built for hot weather and Canada's dang cold most of the year. But also, I'm aware of the fact that Indian people would regard me as being half-dressed. Or inappropriately dressed, perhaps is a better way to put it. I'll mention it again: the salwaar and kamise are a set. They're worn together. You don't wear just the bottoms when you go out in public.

Anyway, when I got pregnant, I ran out and found a Punjabi tailor in northeast Calgary and had her make me six pair of salwaar. I got them made in heavy fabrics that would stand the Canadian winter, and I practically lived in those salwaar for the next year and a half. I got rather used to them as my standard everyday uniform.

When I was packing for Thailand, I threw four salwaar into the suitcase. Enh, I figured Thais wouldn't know the difference, they're just baggy pants, really. And these salwaar are fancy silk, shiny and luxuriant. No one would think anything untoward, except perhaps that my ass looked a little big.

But I hadn't realized, before we arrived, the nationality composition of Thab & Phet's complex. I probably would've brought the salwaar anyway, but may have just worn them indoors, if I'd known. I dunno. In any case, the salwaar are perfect for this weather, so I wore them every day in that first week of acclimatization while we were getting our bearings. And I slowly started to notice that I was getting very pointed, very snobby (So! Snobby!) looks from the ladies around the compound. They'd look down their noses at me. Then shift their gaze very obviously to my pants. And then back at my face, before turning away with a clear look of disgust. It didn't take long to realize what was up.

In Canada, on the occasions that I've actually left the house in salwaar and been called on it by Indians in the grocery store, it's been in the form of, "Ah? Salwaar? Have you been to India?" It's generally friendly, somewhat amused, perhaps a little surprised. I got the point of course, but overall it was a friendly interaction. Here, however? No. Not friendly. Pointedly UNfriendly. I stopped wearing the salwaar outside.

But then? Then. Then I realized that it didn't matter that I wasn't wearing the salwaar outside anymore. Because? Indian ladies? They're gossipy and judgemental. And they'd taken notice of who I was from the waist up, and it didn't matter that I was in jeans or gouchos. Because they'd STILL give me snobby looks (Snobby! Snobby, snobby, snobby!). There goes that asshole who wears the salwaar without kamise, they were clearly thinking. It was enough to make me finally confront two of the women, sneering at me from the stairs. By that point I'd gone back to wearing the salwaar. Because, like, it obviously didn't make a difference. I'd wrecked my fragile standing with the Indian ladies of Soi 2 and there was clearly no going back. So, fuck it: the salwaar are the best pants for this weather anyway.

I stopped on the stairs, newly surprised by their undisguised looks of distain. "Yes. Indian pants. Salwaar."

They ignored me, while still staring (a curiously Indian skill).

I looked around me, very obviously indicating that there was no one else, I was talking to them. "Hello?" I said. "Hellllooo?" My body language was all about the notion of ME talking to THEM. I was smiling, but it wasn't a fun moment.

Finally one slowly blinked, and said, "Hellllo." And turned away. The women pouted at each other, briefly: How uncouth!

Most of the time the ladies were so! snobby! that I just had to laugh. I actually laughed AT a woman in the elevator. I just have to guffaw. Because, like, C'mon you people! We're in THAILAND. This isn't my country, but it sure isn't your country either! I'm sorry that you feel you have some divine right to this pattern of tailoring for pants, but give it up already! Oh ho ho. Did I learn nothing from living in India for a year and a half? Yes, apparently I learned nothing. I will never live down this repuation, now.

Anyway. Yesterday I was heading out to meet Bauer and Karen for lunch and an excursion to the Royal Palace. I was wearing jeans and a tshirt, and a hat. As I got into the elevator an Indian man inside looked me up and down and suddenly exclaimed, "Wow, you are looking thin!"

I looked at him. I'd never seen him before. Like, I'd never consciously laid eyes on him and registered his existance before this moment. I said to him, "I... see you are wearing a purple shirt today!" Because...? Like...? ...What else do you say? The other man in the elevator, a Thai Chinese business guy clearly with the Indian guy, just looked down. "I see you are wearing a beige shirt today," I said to him, not to be boxed into a corner. The ride is short from the 5th to the ground floor; I didn't have to let an awkward (for me) silence descend. "...Yes, I am," said Mr. Thai Chinese business guy. Indian guy in the purple shirt beamed.

I was still at a total loss as to who he might be, this Indian man. I finally had to decide that yes, I'd truly never seen him before in my life. I mean, thanks for the compliment and everything, but in all my years of dealing with Indian men, I'd never received a spontaneous compliment from a knowing stranger such as this. Like, he'd clearly seen me before, knew exactly who I was: his manner wasn't that of someone who was speaking to a stranger. But how? When? He wasn't creepy about it: clearly it was a sincere comment, meant to be taken well.

Walking away from the elevator, though, it came to me: I realized... that... the ladies, they'd been talking about me at home! Not just amongst themselves - they were bringing their bitch sessions about me and my salwaar-wearing self into discussion with their husbands and families. ...And about my ass? Yeah. That it looked big in the salwaar. I bet, I'd bet $1000. This guy was seeing me at close range, in jeans, and I guess the difference between my skanky salwaar-wearing big-ass reputation and the lithe goddess of denim he saw before him was just too much. He clearly had to say something.  

...You know, we all have those fleeting ideas that people are watching us, talking about us. Once you get out of junior high though, more often than not these ideas are just paranoia. Nobody is talking about you. Everyone is far too busy wondering if anyone is talking about them to actually talk about people, themselves.

So when? People actually are talking about you? Being mean and condascending and rude? And you're an adult? It's disorienting. You think (or at least: I think), "I'm exaggerating, I'm making too much of this.They don't care as much as I think they do." But then some stranger up and tells you (me) that your ass isn't looking HALF as fat in those jeans. And you wonder: is it better to be paranoid, or to be right?

Categories: Ash | Asia 2006 | India

Comments [16]

Hey You! Yeah, All You Who Received Packages From Me In The Last Month

Hullo? Are you out there?

Did they arrive, the packages?

Like, it's not about the money, though I personally outfitted Canada Post with new braces, that's how much wallet I dumped into their gaping maw before we left for Bangkok. But I packed up all those packages and took them ever-so-lovingly down to the post office and bid them a fond fare-thee-well and skipped away from the desk thinking, "Oh, thems all's gunna be so happy when they gets thoseses!"

So, um, I'm wondering, don't mean to be rude or anything, but: did they arrive?

See, I ask because I haven't heard from any of you. And that's a lot of "you" to have all fallen behind the refrigerator all at once. So, I'm wondering if the stuff arrived. Because, y'know, I'm assuming it did. Arrive. Like, right at your doorsteps, ding dong! Package for Mr./Ms. So-and-So! Fresh off the boat from Ashley in Calgary, whatduhyah reckon! 

...How's them Hail Ants shirts, par example? How's the tailored clothing I picked up for you at Southcentre? How's all those sets of shoes I sent into the ether? Anyone? Bueller?

Usually I sit back, smugly thinking about how great I am, when I send out packages. I love nothing more than sending out mail and packages. Oh boy! Because c'mon, who, WHO doesn't like getting a package. Addressed to you and everything? With nice coloured stamps? ARE YOU DEAD INSIDE? For chrissake, you'd have to be dead inside not to love mail, real mail that's addressed to you and has prizes enclosed. It's even enshrined in song: Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favourite things... And I love being the sender of those packages.

Why? Because I have been the recipient of such packages, and I have gone exactly 9 times out of 10 ways of apeshit when they arrive. Inevitably. And I have witnesses. Now, admittedly, I was younger back then. Much younger. I don't know how I'd react now - I'm older now, and I receive far fewer packages. None, really, in recent years. ...But back then, when I was, oh, 16, 20, 25 - it was a simpler time. And I remember full well the packages I got and how much I loved them.

So, like, it's sort of an awkward place we arrive at here. Because I'm all waiting to hear what you thought of the packages, and so I'm waiting and waiting, and anticipating all the apeshittedness. (Even if it is subdued, quieter, more on the inside than the outside older-person type of apeshittedness. I can adjust my expectations.) And my brain can dream up some pretty good reactions on your faces and in your hearts, I tell you. I anticipate all the warm love that will be pointed in my direction from all you package recipients when you see what care I put into the various details: writing out the address, the customs forms; folding your things just so inside the box/envelopes; the notecard... did you like the motorhome theme? I like those cards. I enjoy them. I enjoy writing little notes on them and then sending them, inside packages, to other people who I think will also enjoy those cards.

But on the other hand, to ask if you got them is kind of fishing for a thank you. And no one likes a thank-you-fisherman. Fisherwoman. Fishwife? 'A Person Who Fishes For Thank Yous' would, I suppose would be the most pc way of labelling such a person. And - and, I don't want to be that person! Nobody wants to be that person. When you do nice things you want people to think that you do them out of the goodness of your heart, no thanks necessary. That's what you want people to think: that you're so lovely and altruistic and generous and kind - no no, don't thank me.

Can you deny it? No, you cannot. Hang your head with me. You want to be thought of that way, too. Admit it.

But... but... I can't help it and it turns out that I am weak and not so generous and altruistic after all and now I need to know.

Did you get the packages?

...Hullo?

HULLLLLooooooooo?

Categories: Ash

Comments [17]

As Seen On The BTS

I don't think I need to tell you that I disagree with the new Siam Ocean World advertising campaign on the skytrain:

Categories: Asia 2006

Comments [11]

Happy Birthday To You: The Day O' Alexis

If you like this photo, I'll take full credit. If you hate it, I should remind you about the bibble-babbling drunkenness of New Year's Eve, from whence this photo finds its provenance. (I had to de-saturate all the colour because it was a bit smeary...)

Categories: Friends

Comments [11]

Ohm Nama Shivaai

So as I told you in the previous posting about our daily routine, every day or so I take Sloane around the complex on a tour. And of all the places to visit, her all-time favourite is certainly the Shiva statue.

Shiva is one of the main deities of Hinduism, known as the god of destruction. However, Shiv "embodies seemingly contradictory qualities, being the destroyer and the restorer; a great ascetic and a symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger," or so say the various hinduism websites I consulted for a concise description of what Shiv's all about.

Most of my personal experience with Shiva occurred, not surprisingly, when we lived in India. Shiva's home is in the Himalayas, and since Mussoorie and Shimla are both situated in the foothills of same, there was no shortage of serious devotion to Shiva going on in the midst of our daily lives. Our friends with a better handle on things-Hindutastic can correct/clarify my take on all this in the comments - Carla and others, please feel free to speak up.

One of the first things you'll hear in traveller circles when you arrive in India is that pot is legal. I'm no kind of enthusiastic when it comes to marijuana, so this news had little interest for me. I realize I'm uncommon in this reaction however, and for decades there's been hoardes of eager imbibers heading for Hindustan to get a bit of ganga. For a reason that was never entirely clear, Shiva likes pot. Or smokes pot. Or created pot in the first place. Or something. I never asked for the details on this point. In any case, part of the reason why marijuana is quasi-legal in India is the legal argument of Shiva devotees requiring access to the herb in order to honour Shiv.

Before I go any further, I should mention that although people will tell you that pot is legal in India, this isn't entirely true from what I understand. Certainly foreigners travelling in India have been thrown in the clink for possessing hash and marijuana, and there are fines and deportations that come down on minor offenses. So I get the sense that there's a sort of fine line - if you keep it quiet, like a Shiva devotee would, and you don't, for example, smoke up huge coners in public places while blowing the smoke in the faces of stern-faced local folks (who might then be tempted to trot off and return with the cops), you'll probably be okay.

If you're a connaisseur and/or truly desperate, there's always the option of the bhang lassi, which is a sort of yogurt drink laced with slow-acting hash that packs a wallop. But some people get sick on those because you can't really guage the amount of hash you're injesting, and if you're sitting on a hot patio in the Indian sun and only sipping at your yogurt drink over a few hours' time, I don't have to spell out what might go wrong in the heat when it comes to a milk product. The bhang lassi was certainly something I heard about (usually in the context of a story about how the imbiber had one, it didn'