That Devil That! When the Bus Gives Birth

I spent the weekend in Ko Samet, an island about 3 hours south east of Bangkok. The beaches are like flour--completely white with sand so fine it squeaks against your feet. The weekend was fun: lots of body surfing in the waves (the water was the perfect temperature), meeting some new people (although, the older I get, the older I am when I travel. Ha. Most backpackers are the age I was when I went to Thailand for the first time and I can't really get into the loud music and over-the-top drunkenness. But I guess I wasn't into those things when I was 22-23 either. Maybe I'm not old, just quiet--? Too bad there isn't a backpacker culture--meaning affordable--for people who would prefer listening to the waves than techno, who would rather fall asleep to the sound of the crickets than repetitive reggae bass lines) , eating high-priced island food, and--once again--sweating my face off. Overall it was a good time, though I think I spent a bit too much money. I'll try to get the photos loaded soon to make everyone immensely jealous.

Many of the guest houses in Thailand that cater to foreign guests show movies in the restaurant area. The guest house I stayed at on Ko Samet, Naga, (for info on the three-headed snake, Naga, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C4%81ga#In_Buddhism) shows movies three times a day. Last night at 6:00 it was Fight Club and at 8:30, the Bourne Ultimatum, or, as the sign outside the guest house read, and which I prefer, "The Boultimatum." So the Boultimatum began, and all the ex-pat teachers on the rains retreat holiday, the tourists, the German backpackers, and me, gathered to watch the movie. Since the restaurant was open to the outdoors and had horrible acoustics, it was necessary to turn on the subtitles. When the subtitles began, it was obvious--not so much painfully obvious as HILARIOUSLY obvious--that the movie was a pirated copy that had been subtitled by someone whose first language was not even remotely in the same linguistic family as English. It was as though Babelfish had translated the Thai subtitles into English, then back to Thai again, maybe once to Japanese, Spanish for good measure, then back into English. "What the hell!" was translated to "That devil that!" And Jason Bourne instructs the soon-to-be-sniped reporter to "Get off to the when the bus gives birth! He/She not get on. He/She doesn't listen to It" (It being Jason Bourne). Operation Blackbriar was translated into "Operation Black Girlfriend." Needless to say, this provoked outrageous laughter at the many cultural faux pas made inadvertently. "Black Girlfriend is Dangerous! Does he/she know of Black Girlfriend?" The French guy and his English friend in front of me, and me, were laughing so hard I think we all had tears pouring down our cheeks. I couldn't handle it. It was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long, long time. I want to find a pirated copy of that film on Sukhumvit just to bring it home to show everyone how hilarious the subtitles are.

Anyway, I am back in Bangkok for the night. Luke and Kelly are still on the island, but I thought it would be nice to head back into the city where the food is cheaper and where for 50 baht less a night than my rustic island Bungalow (lizard excrement covered my mosquito net) I can sleep in an air-conditioned room and take a hot shower when I wake up. I can't even imagine! A hot shower! I am staying at Suk11 again, which I prefer to Banglampu (the area we've been staying in lately when we come in to Bangkok), even though it isn't as old. I like its international quality. Women in full burqas, delicious Indian restaurants, people from every side of the planet you can imagine, and of course, all the Thai staples. And Suk 11 itself is a nice retreat from Bangkok's insanity. Its gardens, its quiet little cove.

I'm fourteen pages away from finishing Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet. I really like it. Rushdie weaves all sorts of post-colonial, post-modern, post-Bakhtin theory into his novel, so it doesn't feel so much like a mindless indulgence as a support to all the theory I've been reading in grad school. I strongly suggest it. And if you're not interested in any of that theory--and who can blame you if you're not?--then you should know it's also about rock and roll and pop music and super-stardom.

Classes at Mahidol are going pretty well. My Thai vocabulary is slowly increasing, though there's still an endless journey ahead. Maybe in another life, or in this one if I decide, I'll be a linguist. I'd like to know several languages fluently. Thai, Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese. Is it too late to start? Being here is nice but I have begun, once again, to question my future. What kind of career am I searching for? Is academia really for me or am I awkwardly stuffing myself into something I won't ever fit inside? I want to study sound effects in Thai movies. I want to study representations of midgets (little people?) in popular culture, globally. I want to study the way people slide in and out of cultural identities, the way they defy locational and temporal logic, the way everyone is displaced from some place. And I don't want to write papers about it that people will read in scholarly journals (or do I?); I want to create something out of it, something that means something and that allows me to be creative. I want to put myself into it as much as academics' subjects unwittingly are put into it (or do I?).