Oddball Update

I have a ton of stuff to say on so many different topics, there is absolutely no point in trying to name this post after any of them. So I’m going for the “mash-up” theme. This entry will be about anything and everything that’s come to mind over the last week or so, with the exception of the United States presidential election, which is so utterly and completely FUBAR it deserves its own, forthcoming, entry.

Time has been passing with astonishing speed, particularly this past week, which seems to have lasted about three and a half days instead of the usual seven. Our trip, which started out chaotically as you might recall (just read my previous post if you’ve already forgotten), has gotten steadily better since, and has become one of the best trips I’ve taken to Thailand (surpassed only by that time we went to Phang Nga…man, was that place beautiful).

Apple’s surgery went perfectly, and she has greatly recovered from her ordeal already. She will have a follow-up appointment with her doctor on Sunday to make sure everything is OK, but judging by her condition and appearance, we’re all more than confident. The jury’s still out as to whether Apple will come back to the U.S. with me on our original schedule; I’ll keep you all posted.

Regardless of who returns and when, it’s definitely decided that we’re going to return to Thailand in late September or early October to begin our fertility treatments. Since this will likely require us to stay here for several months, I’ve already started making preparations to set up a more semi-permanent home for us here. Apple’s parents have graciously allowed us to stay at their new home for the entirety of the trip so far, and it’s made a world of difference. Last week, I bought a desk and office chair to put in the bedroom, transforming it into a sort of office suite. It’s really quite “de-luxe.” In fact, the chair is nicer than the one I have at home — far nicer. It reminds me that the next time I buy a chair, I should really dispense with the OfficeMax Blue Light Special and order a real chair from someplace that knows how to build them.

Additionally, I’ve decided that when we come back in the fall, I’m going to get a real desktop computer with a pair of monitors so that I can get back to my regular working speed. My typical warp speed touch-typing with a laptop keyboard is “seriously not on,” as the Brits would say, and being confined to a single monitor…well, that’s just not on, either. Additionally, I’m going to see if I can make enough money doing side jobs this summer to buy myself an Xbox 360 to keep in Thailand, so I can enjoy some game time while I’m here. Ironically, just as the side job subject came up, I had four contacts whom I hadn’t heard from recently all email me asking for help on new work. It’s like “ask and ye shall receive,” without the “ask” part.

Speaking of the new house, it’s an absolutely supreme place to work (and sleep) being that it’s situated in such relaxing and quiet surroundings. Here’s a view of the mountains (and the homes across the street) as seen from my “new office” windows:

And here’s what the front of the house looks like from street level. It’s entirely different from the homes around it; my parents-in-law had the original house demolished and built this one up custom in its place.

My mother-in-law essentially served as interior designer, directing the entire layout of the home according to usability principles, feng shui and future-proofing. For instance, all of the ceilings are higher than usual to help keep the house naturally cool even as global warming progresses. (A bit of trivia: The rush to “go green” is most certainly not a phenomenon of the western world, as such ideas can also be found quite prominently here in Thailand.)

Apple’s family continues to be just as warm and welcoming as ever, if not even more so than I remember, and many of them are becoming more confident in speaking English with me. I shamefully must report that I cannot say the same about my own talents with the Thai language, although I now know a few choice words and phrases — “dog,” “water,” “no, thank you,” and so-on.

Speaking of Thai, in the course of defining one of my favorite Thai words — manao — I also learned something interesting about the local produce. As far as I can see, there are no lemons here. If you ask for lemonade, what you’re really getting is limeade. I had thought manao meant “lemon,” but now I believe that it means “lime.” It seems that the two are used interchangeably by Thais, and Apple herself says she doesn’t notice any difference between the two fruits (except the size and color of the rind).

In fact, I insisted, there is a subtle difference between the taste of a lime and the taste of a lemon, but found myself unable to articulate what that difference is, exactly. It occurred to me that “lemon” and “lime” are like flavor archetypes, defying description in and of themselves. It’s like chicken. When people want to describe the flavor of some exotic white meat, like alligator, they often say “it tastes like chicken.” But what does chicken itself taste like? It’s like trying to describe color to a blind man; he has no frame of reference.

While we’re talking of food, I should mention that we have once again partaken in all sorts of interesting edibles since our arrival. My adventures include:

• Roasted duck noodle soup at a little cafe called — literally translated — “Fat Sister”
• Fish stomach stew with quail eggs
• Traditional Chinese dim sum at one of the region’s most famous restaurants
• A Pad Thai variation made with glass noodles
• Fresh mangosteen, guava, Shogun oranges from Yala province, and rambutan
• A variety of local snacks, cookies, crackers and oddities

My stomach has even been able to handle all of this without a hiccup, as though it were made of cast-iron. Perhaps it is.

I’ve also recently had the best Thai iced tea (essentially iced tea with milk) that I’ve ever tasted in my life, which makes sense, because, as I so eloquently put it last time around, THIS! IS! THAILAAAAND! Thai iced tea is one of my favorite beverages at home, but it’s simply never been as good as it is here — even from your typical street-side food vendor.

Also quite amusing is the sheer number of 7-Eleven stores in Thailand; they have as many of them as southwest Florida has banks and drugstores. The Passion Fruit Slurpee is simply divine. And they also have a variety of strange little snack goods, like frozen Hawaiian pizza by the slice, puff pasty with tuna salad inside, and pineapple sandwich cookies, several of which I’ve sampled.

After pressure from Apple, I also used this trip to take one of my greatest phobias by the horns and wrestle it to the ground: visiting the dentist. I may be a six-foot-one farang with an imposing scowl in his arsenal, but I’ll run screaming like a schoolgirl at the mention of dentistry. This probably goes way back to my childhood, when I had something insane like eight teeth pulled at once and then proceeded to nearly choke to death on my own blood in the elevator on the way down to the parking lot.

As if that weren’t bad enough, I’ve also been patronized, talked down to and had my teeth roughhoused unnecessarily by every dentist who’s ever touched me. Combined with the fact that my grandmother has a rabid fear of dentists too — which I’m convinced was passed to me genetically — and you pretty much see why I’m pathological about this. As Seinfeld’s Kramer once said, “You’re an anti-dentite!” That pretty much describes me.

Anyway, my fear combined with the fact that I don’t have dental insurance has kept me away from the dentist’s chair for far too long. I knew it was a problem, and that my gums were inflamed and it just generally wasn’t looking too good for my oral health, but as always, the thought of the potential solution horrified me more than the result of the neglect, so I let it go…time and time again.

In the end, though, I had to stare down the barrel of reality like a 12-gauge Mossberg. This situation simply wasn’t going to fix itself, and unless I fancied the idea of gluing false teeth to the roof of my mouth with Fixodent at the age of forty, I decided it was time to take a stand. Well, okay, Apple certainly helped get my mind moving in that direction, but it was my studious (and rather nauseated) perusal of medical texts pertaining to periodontal disease that eventually swayed me.

So Apple took me to her family dentist, just down the street and around the corner from her house. And I have to say, although it obviously wasn’t pleasant, this was easily the best dental experience I’ve ever had. The man was nothing short of a credit to his profession. Despite the difficult job I presented him, he remained professional throughout. And the fact that he didn’t belittle or patronize me wasn’t due to his only speaking Thai; he did in fact speak English competently with me. Apple had explained to him beforehand about my existential fear of dentists, and he remarked that such fears were incredibly common among farang (westerners). “It’s because western dentists have such rough hands,” he remarked. Well, yay for validation, is all I can say to that.

A mere 45 minutes later and I was ready to go, and I haven’t seen my teeth looking this good in years. Rather than spend two hours scraping at your mouth with a manual pick, here they use a sort of motorized grinder type thing to help speed things along, and use the scraper as a touch-up tool. Better yet, it seems I wasn’t in as bad a shape as I thought — the dentist told me that assuming I brush my teeth properly (apparently I haven’t been doing it right all this time), my gums will heal up in no time. You can imagine my relief. He wants to check up on me again in a week and see how I’m doing, but other than that, all looks well.

Oh, and the total cost for the dental work? Twenty U.S. dollars.

So, that’s one less thing from my past that’s haunting me. I suppose all I have to do now is drop a twenty-megaton device on my high school, and I’ll be good to go. (Just kidding. Seriously, I really have moved beyond that dumb place.)

It’s about dinner time, so I’ll wrap this up for now. As for that political rant I alluded to in the opening paragraph, if I read just one more mind-blowingly aggravating story from CNN or Drudge Report about the American political system, I swear to God, I will write it.

Topics: food, health, Thailand, travelogue