Blackadder would have us believe that there is no German word for “fluffy”. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that there is no Thai word for accountability. No word for deadline either. These are unimportant in Thai culture. But they do have a word for heart (jai), and they have a seemingly endless selection of other words that they use with *jai *to define conditions of the heart. You can have a glad heart or a hot heart or a cool heart or many other types of heart; the state of your heart is much more important to a Thai than whether you are on time for a meeting.
Jai dee is a good heart and my wife has it in spades, and when you meet her mother you know where she gets it from; just the sweetest lady you could hope to meet. Her father is less approachable, a hard-drinking army major, with a gun, with real bullets. He showed it to me once, it felt like more of a threat than an information session. They arrived yesterday to collect the sister, and the father promptly caught a fever and went to bed, which was useful in a way because we could take mother out for dinner without the risk of weaponry appearing during dessert.
Apart from detailing your emotional heart condition, the Thais have another custom which has to be understood. They have perfectly serviceable names, properly recorded on birth certificates, which they rarely use. Shortly after birth, having gone through the trauma and arguments of choosing an official name, the parents will also choose a nickname which will be used in preference to the real name from then on. The nickname is usually short and easily pronounceable, compared to the official name which can be a lengthy tongue-twister. If you are friends with a Thai, you will probably never know their real name, just the nickname will do.
A couple of years ago my wife’s family went through a bout of official name-changing having read some nonsense that converted your name to numbers and then told you which numbers were lucky and unlucky. My wife got caught up in this and her real first name was duly changed to Chonhatai, which when mixed with her family name and converted to numbers was really lucky (you get used to shrugging your shoulders at this sort of stuff and letting it go, just one of the minor challenges in a multi-cultural relationship). This resulted in a flurry of form filling whenever anything official was required, but to all her friends she continued to be called by her nickname, Oa. Note that however you have just read “Oa”, that is not how it is pronounced. I struggled for weeks before getting it approximately right, and even after five years I don’t think I have mastered it; so I usually call her sweetheart to her face or fat-ass when she is in another room. Not really. Anyway, mastering the Thai tones is a bugger, even with a little word, which is why my grasp of the Thai language has not progressed much beyond saying “good morning”, “you are beautiful” and “how much?” As experience has confirmed (by others of course), these phrases can get you into all sorts of trouble in Thailand.
As well as sharing my condo with a Thai lady, I also share it with two Thai lady cats. The breed is known as Korat, which is a province in Thailand, and I chose the breed because they have a reputation for being intelligent and wanting to be involved in family life. They have lived up to this reputation. Go to the toilet and, if they can’t get in there with you before you close the door, they are waiting outside the door when you are finished, disgruntled that they were not invited. One is sat on the back of my chair right now, checking my spelling, the other will be following Oa around in case she does something interesting that could be interfered with. Oa has spent the last two years working on an MBA, a substantial proportion of her work time was spent prising a cat off her keyboard. Attempts to keep them outside the bedroom at night have proved fruitless.
One insists on jamming herself between my legs, the other positions herself so that I couldn’t fully extend my legs even if they were unjammed. I awake every morning in a tangle of cats. But life could be worse. I am sure if you converted my name to numbers and added them up, the result would be lucky.
Comments 🔗
2011-02-02| Wally saysHi Spike - Found ‘Pattaya Days’ by accident whilst searching for ‘Cats Pattaya’. Sadly our almost 17 year old Persian cat died recently and I was searching for a replacement. We have just aquired a pure white Perianish kitten. Anyway, your musings are great and I now read them every day, plus I am now chuckling through your past articles. I too am an avid F1 fan and a keen, albeit amateur, photographer. I also like cats because my Thai wife says I must. One question - all pro phographers advise us to focus on the eyes - what did you focus on in the pic of the arse end of your cat draped over the back of the wicker chair !! Keep ’em coming. Wally
2011-02-02| Spike saysGlad you like the blog Wally. If there are no eyes available, the considered wisdom is to focus on the arse crack.