Discontinuation

This blog hereby fires its creator, David W. Wolovsky, as writer.  He has not posted in over a month, or something like that, and even blogs have places to be.  As a result, it has been calculated and deemed appropriate that said creator of this said blog will henceforth be banned from posting.

Any and all future posts shall be written by the Central Processing Unit, a geometrically constructed electrical environment.

Although it may seem unorthodox, this computer apologizes for inconveniences caused and will accept credit for conveniences caused.

Don't Wait

Being a closet environmentalist, I like to flush the toilet only if I have to, i.e. if there's something in the bowl that could be eaten rather than drunk.  Such is not the way, however, in Thailand because even urine supports microscopic metropolises after just a few hours in the tropical heat.  And it smells kind of like steamed brown rice.  Once you do flush it, there's a brown film left on the inside of the bowl, a perfect shadow of your mistake.

A Reflection on the Journey

The days leading up to the plane ride were calm, but for the fact that I was getting sick.  My voice got deep, nose full, and throat sore, but, like a militant missionary, I didn't give a God's good fruit-basket who stood in my way.  Whether it was Nazis, the X-men, or my own white blood cells trying to stop me, I was going to Asia, grenade in mouth, pin in hand.

The plane took off at 10:30 PM.  I arrived at the airport at 6:30 and got through security in 15 minutes because there was no one there, which gave me about 3.5 hours.  While sitting and eating some gourmet pizza from the Wolfgang Puc express oven in the waiting area, an older Italian gentleman, maybe in his fifties, sat down next to me.  He didn't speak any English, while I, having studied Italian for four years in high school, remembered how to say, "I studied in high school for four years," and almost nothing else.  I managed to tell him I was headed to Thailand (Thailandia, he corrected me), and that it was my first time out of the country.  Then his similarly aged friends came and sat down, and they all started talking way too fast for me to pretend anything Italian.  It was my first experience, I thought excitedly, of not understanding what people around me were saying.  One of them had bought a doggy bone-shaped, vibrating neck pillow from an overpriced shop near the waiting area, and the others made dirty gestures with it, indicating the funniest places to stick it and how fast to jerk it, all the while nodding at me for agreement.  I nodded back, of course, but wasn't I wanted any of them to shake my hand.

I flew Cathay Pacific, an Asian airline based in Hong Kong.  The thing about Asian airlines, unlike American ones, is that they serve food continuously throughout the flight, and also about every six hours, starting half an hour after take off.  The first stop was Vancouver, about 2:00 AM local time.  Upon descent, I couldn't hear anything because I'd gotten a fever and my head, like a microwave stuffed with marshmallows, was so pressurized that thoughts, let alone sounds, could barely fit.  The next leg, to Hong Kong airport, was eighteen hours.  I watched a few movies but tried to stretch often.  I was delirious with fever, and the girl sitting next to me, who, I'd learned from polite conversation, was also going to Thailand, became more and more suspicious.  Was she really sleeping, or just trying to force me off guard?  I'd seen it too many times.  I was also blowing my nose constantly, which made me self-conscious because I was surrounded by hundreds of strangers in an enclosed, airtight cylinder.  Maybe they'd think I had a disease, that I was a health risk and would need to be eliminated.  Or if there was some kind of weight issue or something, I, being only half healthy anyway, would be the first one thrown overboard.  If that's what they call it for airplanes.

A friend of mine gave me some Ambien and diarrhea medication before I left.  I put them in a very tiny plastic Ziploc bag, the kind for cocaine, which I put in my wallet.  I hadn't taken the pills because I don't like to be adventurous with drugs when I'm already fighting a war inside my body, and when I got to Hong Kong, I had to go through another security check with illegal-as-hell looking baggie on my person.  Having not slept for more than four hours, having no idea what a Hong Kong security check entailed, knowing that I was in fact carrying them illegally (are diarrhea pills legal in Hong Kong?), and reminding myself that getting caught smuggling drugs into Asia would be pretty embarrassing, I panicked and dumped the baggie into a garbage can while waiting in line to go through the metal detector.  I was shaking, trying to discreetly cover the pills with a candy bar wrapper, failing to do so, and then just dropping them next to the candy wrapper.  The white guy behind me looked into the can suspiciously and then at me in horror.  I tried the, "Just looking around at you because this line is taking so long, right?!" look, but he wasn't convinced.  Then, I thought, there's no way to prove that it was mine.  So fuck you, buddy.  Then I thought, oh shit, this is Asia, I don't know how the legal system works here.  And the cameras.  Why didn't I think of that?  But he wouldn't want to go through the trouble of pointing me out, because then they'd arrest him too, probably, or at least it would delay his departure time, and that's, like, the worst thing that could happen to anyone.  I didn't look back again.

I got through without incident and swore to God never to take pills on a plane with me again, or something.  The next two flights were to Bangkok and then to Khon Kaen.  My ears felt like I'd had dictionaries simultaneously thrown at both sides of my head, but I finally got to a pharmacy in Bangkok and bought some ibuprofen, which did very little.

By the time I arrived at the Glacier hotel in downtown KK, it was somehow 1:30 PM.  I still couldn't hear, my muscles felt like they had yogurt in them, and I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd overpaid for the cab ride from the airport.  But I was there.  I was BK to KK, and my year had begun.

A controversial post

I know this may offend several to millions of people, but it's been on my mind lately, obviously, and I've spent years unable to publicly voice my opinion on the issue.  Now, in Thailand, I feel as though I've had some distance to really think about it, and I've come to the conclusion that I can't pretend any longer.  I hate Thanksgiving.

This year was the first year I wasn't home for it.  On the night of Thanksgiving (which, I admit, came half a day early in Thailand) I ate noodles with pork dumplings, and I couldn't have been happier.

"But DirtyDave, why do you feel this way?" you may ask.  Or, "But DirtyDave, you apple pie-fucking traitor, what makes you think you're entitled to feel this way, terrorist?" you may also ask.  And I understand.  But let me say that this by no means reflects how I feel about my homeland.  I love America.  It's all I've ever known until about two months ago.  But Thanksgiving isn't America, thank Christ, and I'm not a terrorist (trust me).

Reasons why I feel this way:
1)  Whenever you ask someone how their Thanksgiving was, they say, "Oh man, I ate a lot," and everyone accepts this as an appropriate answer.  "Oh yeah, me too.  So much."  Well fuck that.  I eat a lot when I have a goddamn snack.

2)  The holiday, as of course everyone knows and is probably tired of hearing, celebrates the beginning of the centuries-long rape and ravage of the Native American peoples.  Not that I'm against rape or ravagery in the name of white-manity.  It's just, one day feels like too short to really absorb the gaiety.

3)  Brussel sprouts.

4)  Turkey, at it's best, is not as good as these fucking pork dumplings down my block.

5)  Talking to relatives is like interviewing for job, but you don't get anything out of it.

The dangers of misunderstanding Thai

My Spanish friend Pablo bought a pin (like the kind you pin to your shirt) in the area behind the university that's kind of like a small city for the students.

The pin said this: ไห้ รัก ไห้ รอ.  Transliterated into English bastard, it's something like "hai rak, hai raw."  When he showed it to me and my other American friends, we were puzzled.  My first thought whenever I see a word in Thai that I don't understand is that it might be a word in English transliterated into Thai bastard.  And the word "hai" loosely means "give" but has many meanings related to transference when used in conjunction with other words.  So I figured the pin might say "give rock, give roll," which, I thought, was a pretty good guess and might translate properly into something like "Rock and Roll, bro!  I'm wasted!"  Later in the night, however, my friend Erin asked one of our Thai friends what it meant and reported that it read, "If you want love, you have to wait," which would have been disastrous if I had pinned it to my chest for all the ladies to see how much I'm down for whatever.  Just disastrous.

What It Means to Be An Expert

Today I was an "adjudicator" (judge) for a debate competition at KKU.  I am of course qualified for such a position because I have never seen a debate before, do not know anything about debating, and am taller than many Thai people.  For two of the three rounds I judged, I was the lone adjudicator.  At the end of each round, I had to give a speech, a comment on the performance of the debaters, and pointers about how to improve their podium game.  Now, being an English teacher in a foreign country has developed in me a taste for many things, one of which is giving speeches on topics about which I know nothing and have no desire to study.  Most of the time, mind you, I'm giving speeches on things I do know a little about.  But whenever I can slip in a bit of fact-ish improv about something no one else knows I don't know, I do.  Now, don't get me wrong.  There's no malicious intent here.  I strive for integrity in my bullshit.  And today, I left no stop unpulled-out.  I was throwing around words like "Motion definition" and "Deputy retort" while contemplatively pacing back and forth with my hands clasped behind my back.  At times, I fooled even myself.  And that, that, I think, as my main point, is what it means to be an expert.

More on the topic of Expertise later.

A short but increasing list of observations about KK

The public transportation system in Khon Kaen is basically a fleet of slightly elongated pick-up trucks with metal roofs over the beds.  This is what I use to get to work every day.  Many people use them, in fact.  It's the kind of thing that could never happen in Manhattan because on the first day, someone would fall off on purpose and sue the city, state, and every passenger who did nothing to help.  But here, women with canes, who walk about as fast as I can crawl without my arms, step up the two metal steps onto the sometimes already creeping vehicle.  The funny part, however, is the system to signal for a stop.  Like an MTA bus, the "Song taews" as they're called, have little buttons above head level that say "stop" on them.  What happens when you push the button, however, is something unpredictable.  Sometimes a buzzer goes off, loud but only a little startling, in the front of the car.  Nobody even looks, but the first time I pressed it, I jumped and almost elbowed the man next to me in the face.  The second possibility is the sound of a doorbell.  A clear, two note, ding dong.  Then there's the airhorn, which is actually an airhorn, not muted at all and in your face, just like when you're dick friend in middle school got his hands on one and whipped it out at a sleep over after everyone fell asleep.  Still, none of the Thai people on the bus look, and I stare at them one by one in disbelief.  Yesterday, however, when I pressed the button, it sounded like a car alarm, or maybe like I'd opened the emergency exit door at the back of a Sears.  "Woo oh woo oh woo oh," it said.  To my surprise, everyone looked up at me for a barely perceptible fraction of a second, then back down as if nothing had happened, but I still caught them and smiled to myself.


Every day, Every Single Day that is, there are several public aerobics classes around the lake in front of my apartment.  The background music, a necessity for all aerobics classes, is club techno remixes of songs like "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Numb" by Linkin Park.  The playlist for the class right outside my window is, in fact, always the same.  The participants are almost all women, most older than thirty I think but who knows.  Then there's the instructor, a Thai man who looks to be about forty, wearing sweat bands on his head and elbows, fingerless gloves, a lower back brace, and boxing shoes.  He has a wireless microphone attached to his head so that his voice is louder than the music, which plays through a few five foot tall speakers that are permanently installed on either side of the lake.  (On some Saturday afternoons they play smooth jazz covers of American pop songs, some of which are the same songs from the aerobics remixes.  You can't argue with the classics.)  The best part, however, is the genuine, unselfconscious participation.  These women (sometimes one or two guys, maybe one day this guy) really try.  They do the light stretching, arm pumping, and side stepping with what I can only call gusto, and they don't care if anyone's watching.  Although they might care if people actually watched them, but no one does because it's as normal as your grandma on a motorbike.


This is more of an anecdote about my growing love for the Thai language.  I went into a stationery store, of which there are about a dozen within five blocks of my apartment, I don't know, Thai people just love the stuff, and anyway, I went in to buy some stickers.  I heard they might be useful for commending students on homeworks well done.  Thai college students would actually appreciate stickers apparently which, I realized, I'd probably like too, but I'd pretend not to.  Now, my Thai passes in superficial situations.  I can talk about some everyday things, people, places, hobbies, but for this task, my was under fire.  I didn't know the word for sticker because I never thought I'd have to buy any.  "Mii gradat lek gap sii maak mai?" I asked the woman at the register.  This literally means "Do you have small paper with much colors?"  The lady looked at me like I'd just asked her to help me shave my legs.  "Uhh," I tried to continue.  "Mii gradat gap ruub mai?"  (Do you have paper with pictures?)  She took me to the photo paper, then the colored construction paper, and I started feeling bad about wasting her time.  "You know what, mai bpen rai."  (It's ok).  I stood there, not willing to move even though I'd already told her to forget about it.  In Thai, the word for computer is "com-pyu-tuh," and I wondered if maybe, just maybe...I looked up at her again.  Tentatively, I said, "Mii stick-kuh mai?" her eyes lit up.

"Ohhhhhhh, suh-tick-kuhhhhhh.  Mii, mii."  I laughed and we both threw our hands up in relief.  Then I felt the urge to explain why I was buying such childish/girly things, and that I'm usually pretty cool so don't judge me on this, but then I thought to myself, come on.


There are traffic cops around the university whose job, it seems, is to stand in the middle of the street and blow a whistle as loudly and often as possible without having any effect on the traffic other than making people drive around them.  Since more than half of the vehicles on the road are motorbikes, which can't really be stopped because of their bi-wheel weavery, the militarily clad officer puts his hand up to signal a halt only to be met with an onslaught of sneaking Suzuki Ninjas (and Hondas, etc.).  At this point, he usually gives a continuous blow of his whistle in the direction of the already victorious vehicular delinquents, which serves to reinforce for the viewer (me) how little power he has.  He usually gives up after ten seconds or so of what could only be called professional blowing.  Then steps back and shakes his head in disappointment.  Or sometimes he'll make an exaggerated movement to indicate that he's mentally noting a license plate number, which is absurd, and no one notices.


There are live musicians in almost every bar here, and every night said musician plays the "Happy Birthday" song.  Every night.  And they replace "Happy birthday to [your name here]" with "Happy birthday, happy birthday."  When I asked a Thai friend why they do this, he said, "Just in case."

You can order almost any cooked dish "hawkeye," which means encased in a plain omelet.  Like, "pad see ew hawkeye" means fried think noodles in a thin sphere of (sometimes duck) egg.  OK it's not exactly "hawkeye" but more like "haw kai" which means something like "wrapped in egg."  But eggs come from birds, and hawks are a type of bird that lays eggs, so.

Because there are bugs everywhere, there are also lizards that eat the bugs.  They're usually on ceilings and near big lights.  I have one or two in my room.  I think they're included in the rent, which is the equivalent of a little less than $150 a month.  You'd probably have to pay that much just to ship a batch of these reptilian teddy bears to America.

More later.

The Plagues of Nightmarket

Last night I went to what's called a "night market."  It is what it sounds like--a bunch of shopping opportunities under tents after sunset.  A weighty aspect of the night market, however, which isn't stated in the name, is the biomass of the insect population it supports.  Spiraling clouds of them are everywhere, particularly around bright lights, which are everywhere.  While I was sitting at a small plastic table eating my pad Thai (which came covered by a thin layer of scrambled duck egg), I realized how strong a habit I have of idly leaving my mouth open.  The bugs reminded me several times, with their dry wriggling bodies around the walls of my throat.  They also reminded me how often I leave my eyes open, and that my hair, short though it is, is still long enough to entangle those tickly little bastards.  Later, in a clothing/sunglasses tent, while looking around at the cheap and unbelievably stylish t-shirts (most of them too ironic for their own good), a moth about the size of my eye opening flew into my eye opening, fluttering its dusty wings and leaving behind a film of moth powder.  It was the most violated I've felt since being here, and I had like three urinal massages at Rad that other night.

You know the feeling when bugs get down your shirt?  On the back of your neck?  In your ears?  There's no end to the places they can infiltrate because they've got nothing to lose.  But that's not quite true.  They do value their lives, which I remind myself every time I kill one to make the death more satisfying.  There are so many of them flying in every direction, however, that I can never be satisfied.  Only disgusted, and the odds of their dangerous little games are stacked heavily in favor of pushing me past sanity.  I can feel them for hours afterwards.

The Thai people have come up with an interesting way, not quite of handling these evolutionarily unstoppable annoyances, but perhaps of handling the emotions that result.  They deep fry the fuckers, impale them on skewers, and display their mass graveyards alongside ice cream and noodle soup carts.  They pile thousands of grasshoppers, roaches, maggots, beetles, flies, anything big enough to jam a bamboo spike through, under extra bright lights, bringing out the luster of their oily coffins and attracting their flying brethren to the grisly spectacle.

But this, everyone knows, will not teach the bugs a lesson.  There's really nothing to be done except wave your hands around your face and brush them all over your body as if battling hallucinations.  If you want the night market bargains, you have to pay for them.

Barks and Bitches

There are dogs pretty much all the fuck over.  And not like in Brooklyn where they have to be on leashes and are just out because their owners don't want shit in the closet.  Thai dogs live a double life, at once pets and homeless people, begging for food, shouting at strangers, and using everything as a toilet.  Some Thai dogs have "owners" and some don't, but it doesn't really matter.  When I walk down the street, one will follow behind me for fifty feet or so and then stop as another one takes over, keeping their conspiratorial eye out just in case I have some fistfuls of ham stashed somewhere.  I've seen gangs of dogs protecting their "territory" from outsider pooches, and at night, they all howl at each other, or with each other, either arguing or foiling the murderous plots of evil old women like in 101 Dalmatians.  I want to tell them that they're perpetuating a stereotype, but dogs are pretty stubborn.

Neuki (my Thai friend) has an eight month old, medium sized cocker spaniel/poodle that will lick anything that gets within licking distance.  While I was staying at Neuki's house, and she was at work during the day, the dog would follow me whenever I went to the fruit carts a few blocks away for breakfast in the morning (1 pm).  A few days ago, I decided to take an unfamiliar route, which brought us to a house with an open gate (many people leave their gates closed so that their dogs, usually of nicer breeds, won't hang out on the streets and get caught up in a life of crime).  As we reached the opening, out bounded a small poodle with its unselfconsciously high-pitched bitty nag of a bark.  I knew Micah (Neuki's dog) could knock this curly-haired rat right over, clamp down and rip out its needly vocal chords like spaghetti without much trouble.  And she (Micah) obviously agreed with me because she started barking back, causing the poodle to sidestep wimpily and shut its squeaker.  Well done, I thought, but before I could think anything else, a German Shepherd sauntered out behind its pussified sidekick, growling with the basso of a canine Barry White.  Then I noticed it had an udder.  Six or so whopping bitch tits hung from its chest like water balloons and were swinging so hard with each step that I thought they were going to fall off.  I shuddered and jumped backwards to avoid possibly getting hit with bursting mammary fluid.  Micah sprinted back toward Neuki's house and the twosome chased after her.  At that point, the poodle was growling as well, a phlegmy death cough which I imagine is what rabies sounds like.  Micah was easily faster than the two of them, though, the poodle with pretzels for legs and the shepherd weighed down by motherhood, so I wasn't worried.  I looked up at the clear sky and remembered why I was there in the first place: I needed breakfast.  Half a watermelon and half a pineapple, two coconuts, a small canteloupe, and three bottles of fresh-squeezed orange juice weren't going to buy themselves.

A pisser in Thailand

I've been here for a week now, and I haven't posted anything yet because I hadn't thought anything worth writing about.  Last night that all changed at a Thai urinal.  It went like this: I was out with Neuki (a Thai girl who is friends with the other PiAers here and whose house I'm currently crashing at) and her boyfriend Dtoang and his friend Bak.  We were at a crazy bar/multi-wild-club called Rad complex.  I think the "complex" part is because it has four separate rooms to get drunk in.  One's a strobe/heart attack dance hall, one's a concert venue/pool hall, one's a "coyote room," which means Thai women dancing in underwear, and I'm not sure what the other one is yet, but I'm sure it's quaint and charming.  The "Rad" part of the complex's name, however, is not what it first appears to be.  In America, "rad" is an abbreviation for "radical," a synonym of "extreme," which is youthful slang for fun/exciting, something everyone wants to have/be.  Here, "Rad" is the English transliteration of the Thai word for rhinoceros, which is slang for "slut" or, equivalently, "man slut."  What a coincidence.  And at the front door of the club is a metal statue of a rhinoceros in a suit standing with his hands one over the other at his crotch, like a secret service agent but a rhino, and without sunglasses.

But that's just the setting for the event I present.  Last night, as with four of the last seven nights, we (Neuki and I) were playing pool.  I had to go to the bathroom, which is something I'll admit I enjoy doing and do do at least several times a day.


As I walked through the door, marked "boys," there was a Thai man with long black rockstar hair standing at the door, holding a washcloth.  He lowered his head to me as I passed.  I assumed this meant he worked in the bathroom and would present the towel to me when I finished washing my hands, which meant I'd actually have to wash my hands this time.  Only slightly disappointed, I was still pretty cheerful because my pool stick was pretty straight that night.  I went up to a urinal, unzipped, and gave a little push with my stomach muscles.  There was no one else near me, so it came out immediately.  About five seconds into the stream, I looked to my left and saw the rockstar attendant walking toward me.  Naturally, at first I thought he had to pee himself and was walking to a neighboring urinal, but he was getting unnervingly close, walking slowly, as if he knew I couldn't escape.  I didn't want to offend him, as I was obviously a stupid American and didn't want to reinforce the fact, so I didn't move or say anything and then he was right behind me.  He draped the warm washcloth over my neck, and I turned, throwing my shoulder up and at him.  "What the...?" I said, to indicate that his crazy bullshit required some kind of explanation.

He put up his hands to me.  "It OK," he said, making squeezing motions.  "Mashaa.  It OK."  Embarrassed at my immature Western jumpiness, I turned back and tried to keep the flow flowing, as my bladder was pinching it back a little.  Let it happen, I thought to myself, I'm in freaking Thailand now.  At least see if he knows what he's doing.  I took a deep breath as his hands grabbed my shoulders.  Now, I know massages.  I know what an expert's hands do, and his had no rookie digits.  He found a knot instantly and worked it over like a uncooperative POW.


I almost forgot where I was as he kneaded the muscles from my lower back up to my neck, and my stream started straying leftward as my hands relaxed their grip on the old hose.  He grabbed my head and tilted it diagonally just before cracking each side.  I dribbled to a finish but didn't move until he knocked on my back three times to magically wake me up again.  Then he reached around and flushed for me.  What a guy!  "Kawp kun," I said, meaning thank you.  We walked to the sink, and, after I rinsed, he handed me the now cold washcloth, but I didn't blame him for it.  I'm in Thailand now, I repeated silently.  I was becoming part of a different world, and this was one less aspect of which I was ignorant.  Then he stood in front of the door, with his hands out and his head lowered.  "Oh shit," I said.  I had no idea how much to pay him, and the smallest I had was a 100 baht bill, which is a little more than three dollars, way too much for a twenty second neck rub and urinal flush.  "Uh," I stammered, "mai mii (don't have).  Uhh, shit.  I'll be right back?  Iik maa (again come), OK?"


"Oh," he said with a smile and a bow.  This is how it should be, I thought, shaking my shoulders out as I left.

The First Post

In three weeks, I will be leaving for a year to live in Khon Kaen, Thailand. I've never left the country before or lived outside of the Northeast US.

As this is the first post, I don't have much to say, except for some housekeeping related things.

1) Cough.

2) I just watched a hilarious episode of television.  Will watch another soon.

3) I intend to edit posts long after I post them.  [This line added on 10/23/2010]

4) Regarding the URL:  For the first two years that I knew a certain friend of mine, "Red Curly" I'll call him, he loved coming up with ways to verbify (synonym: inverbinate) my name and insert it into conversation.  Things like "Go Dave yourself" and "You really Daved that one, boy."  One time, in response to his, "Man, you're really Daving the shit out of this room right now,

I laughed and said, "I'm Davin' dirrrty!"

He looked past me in puzzlement and said, "Mmmmm" as if to say, "No, this dinner has been great, Diane.  I'm just so tired from the drive over."

Ever since that moment, I've chased the phrase "Daving Dirty" through strange, dark places because I want it to be cool so badly.  I scream it out during nightmares, I've been told, like a ward against evil, and I whisper it under my breath when stroking house pets.

The first step in making this blog was to choose the URL, and the above phrase just dive-rolled onto the roof of my consciousness.  After minutes of internal slow-mo fight scenes, I decided, "Hey, I can just tell people, 'Whatever, it was easy to remember, and I don't care if it's cool or not.'"