So it's come to this? A Strates clip show

Sometime over the holidays we lost our camera. I have no idea what happened to it. It may have been thrown away with all the wrapping paper, but more likely I left it on the counter at some 7-11 while I was paying for another slurpee.

There's nothing left to do now but look back at some of our camera memories...

Why I hate Grey's Anatomy:

As part of what will undoubtedly be a life-long pursuit of redemption for bring Kaddi to Thailand, I not only purchased a season of Grey's Anatomy, I also sit down and watch many of the episodes with her. There's only one way to fight back the humiliation I feel from knowing characters and plotlines from the show...by writing a scathing 3-point critique.

Why I hate Grey's Anatomy (and you should too)....


1) It's 'Ally McBeal' in a hospital:

I mean, really - haven't we seen this show before? A troupe of young, good looking, urban professionals who are somehow at the top of their game even though they do nothing at work but gather in the halls to whine about their failed relationships, or flirt with each other in the co-ed changerooms, or sit on the stairwell looking depressed while some (horribly written) inner monoluge drones on. Even during their off-hours all they can think to do is hang-out with each other at a bar across the street from the hospital. I've always wondered why does it take me eight hours to see a doctor when I show up at emergency care? Now I know it's because they're all in the supply closet performing exploratory surgery.

2) Medical Narcissism:

At Seattle Sacred...whatever, they are single handedly pushing society towards enlightenment one surgery at a time. Surgeons are like gods, constantly congratulating themselves on their ability to stave off death. There's nothing the surgeons can't fix, whether it be re-attaching an ankle or convincing empty-nest parents that it's time to let their wheelchair-bound daughter have a life of her own. The doctor always knows best. People who don't accept the diagnosis are backward, or worse - religious.

3) Dr. McDreamy

This is the 21st century sensitive hetero-male? We're only in the middle of the second season, but let's see if I've got the story right so far...

His wife cheats on him with his best friend and he tries to escape the pain by relocating from Manhattan to Seattle. There he broods and simmers, so wounded by his wife's infidelity that he waits an entire three weeks before jumping into to bed with his intern, the fake-Renee Zelwegger. Just as this adulterous relationship is peaking he re-discovers the importance of his wedding vows and goes back to his wife, who he can't stand to be around, and immediately begins pining for his intern. He's a relationship hurricane in a turtleneck, leaving nothing but human wreckage in his path. But oh - those smoldering eyes!

Patrick Dempsey should have stayed in movies. It's still not to late to shoot a sequel to Can't Buy Me Love!

A traditional Canadian Boxing Day

Since we spent the holidays here with no family and no immediate friends and no snow, we weren't exactly sad to take down the Christmas decorations. The highlight for us was probably December 26. I was excited to finally involve my children in a genuine Canadian tradition and show them how I celebrated Boxing day as a child - by going to a safari park full of exotic animals.

We spent the day with some new friends from our ward checking out the animals, watching sea lion and dolphin shows, and getting dehydrated. This park has a special platform that overlooks the 'savannah'. Once you're up there they provide you with bananas to feed the giraffes who just walk right to the platform and stare at you eye-level. It was amazing.

Not until we were finished with the day did we realize that we couldn't get a taxi way out in Northeast Nonthaburi. The park was shutting down, but at the last minute we managed to talk our way on to the employee shuttle bus. They took us down to a main road where we could get a taxi.

Safari world's version of the Jungle Cruise. It's exactly like the one at Disneyland. Except the water smells a little funny. And some of it leaks into the boat. And there's no guide or narration. And the animatronics don't really move, they just heat up and shortcircuit.

So really the only thing that's similar is the stereotype of savage African cultures.

Meg peers out into the 'river' separating Stupendousland from Superterrificworld. I estimate it took us three and a half hours to get that stroller across this wooden plank bridge.

For another eighty baht Jake got to bottle-feed a this baby, fulfilling a nine-year dream to actually touch a tiger. We're also looking into gene-replacement therapy so that he can become a tiger, but unless we can get President Bush to stop vetoing stem cell research that option remains out of our price range. He may have to just settle for tiger-stripe tattoos.

Jake with his crew. We wanted to get a picture of Meg but these giraffe's have two-foot long black tongues that can rip the buttons off your shirt if they smell like bananas. Since she generally smells like some type of dessert we thought it best to maintain a safe distance.

Am I Hot or Not?

Who's stock is up /\ and whose is down \/ in the world of 301NIB?


Kaddi /\

Nichada's top beginner tennis player is dominating the courts every Monday morning. She's been moved up to the top court and will now be battling the pros...of her category. She also has a new friend. One of her tennis partners thought she was twenty-three years old and couldn't believe she had two kids.

Better yet, we paid a visit to Panthip Plaza this week - the black market capital of Thailand. Five floors of counterfeit merchandise and software. We got Flushed Away for the kids, a copy of Microsoft Office for her man, and Season 2 of Grey's Anatomy for the Lady herself.

And yes, they did have seasons of 24 available.


Meg /\

Meg had a rought start to the week when she accidentally discovered that the plants in front of our apartment are poisonous. She spent a good half hour in the bathroom crying with her hands under cold running water. But she's better now and we're trying to put the episode behind us, except that some injury attorney from Stockton keeps leaving us messages.

She has once again started dance and also began taking swim classes today. She came home and shared with me how her teacher introduced the kids to the backstroke. He said they need to pretend their arms are like little knives and there's a big chocolate cake behind them. With each stroke they need to reach back and 'cut the cake, cut the cake...'

Using this mental imagery, Meg set a world record in 100m backstroke for the under-14 age group.


J-Dog /\

Jake has his soccer tournament this Saturday. It's going to be a pretty big event. I've heard there will be some Middle School scouts in attendance, but he's promised us he won't sign a letter of intent until we've had more time to look over his options. He's also started baseball camp this week, although I don't envy him running around that dusty infield under the Thai sun. He told us last night that he hit a home run, although I'm not sure what that means since there's no fence. He made it all the way around the bases, I guess.

He's also pretty happy about being able to ride his bike over to a friend's house by himself. Jake's perfect afternoon involves riding his bike over to his friend's, playing gamecube, then riding bikes with his friend over to baseball practice. It's as if he were growing up in the United States...back in the fifties.

Things are so good for Jake right now he has his own theme song. It was written and usually peformed by Kaddi, including the following lyrics....

"J-dog in the house, J-dog in the house...
J-dog in the house....
I said J-dog in the howwwww-owwwwwwwse. "


Shane <->

I picked up a copy of the National Library newsletter this month to discouver I'd been named Bangkok's 'Sexiest Researcher Alive' for 2006. Since this may be the only recognition I get out of this research trip I was happy to accept the designation (it'll look great on my CV). It's just a little difficult to concentrate on extra-territorial treaties when there are fifty screaming schoolgirls banging on the reading room sliding doors.


Thailand \/

Thailand has recently been downgraded from 'partly free' to 'not free' in a recent survery of global freedom by Freedom of the World 2007, joining such democratic powerhouses as Burma, China, and the Congo. This think-tank apparently doesn't take kindly to military coups that oust democratically elected leaders, juntas that threaten the press and block access to international newsproviders and websites, or government agencies that force their civil servants to wear hideous yellow shirts every day.

No good news could overcome this bad publicity, not even the knowledge that Thailand has an equivalent GDP to the state of Arizona, as well can see from the following map:

















I was a little disappointed to see Wisconsin has a similar GDP to a former apartheid state, but hey - Minnesota is equivalent to Norway.

เหตุการณ์ที่ทำให้หมดกำลังใจ

For about two weeks now I've been looking for a government pamhlet published in 1940, entitled "How Thailand Lost Its Territories to France." I finally figured out how to properly type the query into the computer (in Thai) so that I got the proper search results. It was a rare document so I had to go request it in the Luang Wichit reading room and return a half hour later to find the pamphlet waiting for me.

In my extensive research experience (ahem...) I had never been given a document in such poor condition. It was no exageration to say that this thing looked like someone had recently lit it on fire. I was afraid to even pick it up. I carefully carried it to a reading table but as soon as I opened it the back page fell off. The margins slowly crumbled with every touch, and after five minutes my work space looked like I was operating a bandsaw - there were bits of discolored paper all over me and the table. In this condition the pamphlet was useless to me.

All of this raises two issues...

First, libraries and archives are supposed contain documents hundreds of years old. How is it that something only 65 years old is in such poor condition? Most parts of the Thai library are not climate-controlled and apparently they recently had a raging wildfire, but this is still quite discouraging.

Second, how is it that they would take a document that is already falling apartand give me access to it? Not only did they let me read it, they also allowed me to take it down to the copy center (where someone finally had the sense to take it away from me so it could be repaired). In France I practically had to take a retinal scan and submit to a cavity search before they would even give me the documents, and they didn't let me photocopy anything.

So...I didn't get to read the pamphlet and I didn't get to make a copy. They say they are repairing it, but who knows when it will be done or if I will ever be allowed to see it again. After two weeks of periodically searching, I'm left with nothing.

I guess its time to tell Kaddi we'll need to stay longer than ten months.

"You should have paid it on time"

It's incredible to think that since we've been in Thailand we have not received a single letter from anyone. As missionaries, we were on a first-name basis with the mailman, we knew exactly when he should arrive each day, even though he was usually late. With the advent of email, blogs, and long-distance internet technologies such as Skype, we no longer need the post to keep in touch with friends or family. Our mailbox is a sad and lonely place filled only with advertisements from grocery stores, updates from the housing authority, or (yawn) the occassional bill. Now, I traditionally ignore the mail and everything in it, so I'm really not sure what comes through that box. But I was aware of one thing that hadn't appeared yet - the electrical bill.

When we passed the two-month anniversary in our apartment and still hadn't received any correpondence from the power company, I became slightly less apathetic. After all, it is customary in most societies to exchange goods or services for money, and electricity was the service that fueled our air-conditioners, and the air-conditioner was the one thread that tied our fraying marriage together. A gap in our power supply could mean separation as Kaddi returned to California, which would mean I'd have to give Fulbright back their family allowance stipend, which would mean I'd have to make up the difference by working as pole-dancer at a Japanese sushi bar. In the face of such potentially catastrophic outcome I decided there was only one possible course of action: ignore the problem and hope it somehow worked itself out. This approach (practiced in Japan as the Shaino-suka method of crisis management) has served me faithfully for over a decade of marriage.

By the time we did get our notice, I realized I may have to change tactics. Thai bills are a mess of words, numbers, abbreviations, ledgers, and acronyms. Just imagine trying to read your AT&T bill in a non-western language (I can hardly read mine in English). Although I couldn't decipher everything, I did understand three very important words at the top: Warning, Cut-off, and electricity. Since the we had not yet made the acquaintance of Thailand's Power Authority, I thought this quite a rude manner of introducing themselves, but it didn't change the fact that we now had a serious problem. I knew that most people paid their utility bills at 7-11, (is there anything you can't do there?) so I immediately put on my red baseball cap, hopped on my kiddie bike and pedaled my way down to the local candy store. When I handed my Notice to Disconnect to the store clerk and asked if I could pay it she immediately drew back in horror.

"You can't pay this here," she said. "They're going to cut off your power in three days, so now you have to go to the utility authority down in Bangkok. You should have paid it on time."

*sigh*

The only thing better than hearing that you've just been enrolled in a Thai version of the Amazing Race, where you have to find the utility company and pay the bill before they cut off your electricity (which may initiate divorce proceedings)...is getting that news PLUS advice about paying your bills on time. If The Mack Strate was a hero in a Thai comic book, his nemesis would definitely be the pretentious 7-11 clerk. Actually, that's pretty lame. I'll have to think of something better.

There was nothing left for me now but to return home and try to call the power company on the telephone. This was always an adventure, because in Thailand even officially listed numbers only work about half the time. They just changed many of the area codes so that now you have to dial '8' in between the first two digits to connect. Also, when you call a gigantic, amorphous corporation like the utility company, you have no idea who will pick up the phone, or even who to ask for. I decided to try try my luck in English first and pull out Thai as a last resort. Sometimes you just get tired of trying to accomodate others by speaking their language and want people to start accomodating you. After hitting my head on every branch in the phone tree, I finally managed a conversation oscillating between Thai and English and discvered that there were multiple locations where I could petition the power company to extend my electricity privileges, including one near the National Library in the Thewet (thae-wade) district. Things were looking up.

When I got off the river-taxi the next day the first thing I needed was a tuk-tuk driver who could tell me where the utility office was and possibly even take me there. As you come down the pier ramp on to the street, there is a row of tuk-tuks on one side and motorcycles on the other, waiting to transport people to their office, class, whatever. This also mean there is also a crowd of tuk-tuk drivers standing around waiting to either help or harrass you depending on their mood. I approached the group and explained that I needed someone to take me to the power company so that I could pay my bill.

"You don't need to go to the power company," he said, "Just pay it at the 7-11 there on the corner."

There are times when you really don't feel like giving you life's account to a tuk-tuk driver, but in this instance I knew my marriage hung in the balance. So I explained that it was a past-due notice and that they were going to cut our power and I just needed to get to the electric company office.

"Oh," he said, "I don't know of any office around here. You should have paid it on time."

This fatherly wisdom echoed in my mind as I walked down to a main road to find a taxi who would hopefuly have more than financial advice to offer me . I jumped into the first cab to come by and explained my situation:

"I need to go to the electric company to pay my bill AND I CAN'T PAY IT AT 7-11 because it's past-due."

It must be that everyone in Thailand is smart enough to pay their bills on time, becaue nobody, not even a taxi driver who earns his living driving around Thewet, knew where the utility company (which ended up being three blocks away) was located. As we drove around I made the mistake of showing the driver the notice in the hopes that he might recognize the logo or name or something....anything. Armed with this symbol of my procrastination, he proceeded to stop the taxi at nearby store to ask for directions. For the next few minutes I felt like a living exhibit in the Museum of Bad-Credit Consumers. One by one passers-by would stop, look at the collection notice, frown, turn to stare at me trapped in the taxi, look back at the notice, and shrug as if to say "The only way to really help these people is to just let them be." By the time we found someone who knew where it was located, the entire district knew we were behind on our bills.

Once I finally got to the utility company it was rather anti-climactic. I once again by-passed the waiting protocol by being tall, white, and incoherent - and within five minutes I was up at the window paying my money. On the way back to the library I walked a little taller knowing that both my research tenure and my marriage had been prolonged for at least another month.

But since that day every store within a mile radius of the National Library has refused me credit.

Into the Great Wide Open

We Wisconsin fans thought we were special when our Men's and Women's hockey teams both won national champions last year, but now Florida has outdone us by winning national championships in basketball and football. This confirms three things I've always believed about college sports:

1) Urban Meyer really DID sell his soul to the devil.

2) There really is a university that can out-do Ohio State when it comes to 'educating' its 'student athletes'.

3) The word 'Chompions' is probably the cleverest thing ever printed by any sportswriter, anywhere.

So, Congratulations Gator fan...on the best thing to ever happen to Gainesville since Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

...huddled masses yearning to be Thai.

Wednesday our family went to the Immigration Bureau in Bangkok to renew our non-immigrant visas. After spending a few hours and a few thousand baht, we had permission from the Kingdom of Thailand to stay until September. I know that many of you are wondering how the Thai immigration system stacks up against its American counterpart. I've spent the last week building a spreadsheet that compares the two national systems. Thailand and the United States go head-to-head in six scientifically recognized categories.

If you're trying to decide between immigrating to the U.S. or Thailand, this is one post you can't afford to miss. Here are the results...


Category #1: General Ambience of Immigration Center.

THAILAND: Hot, stuffy, congested room with plastic stadium seats, dirty floors, soiled smelly bathrooms, crying babies, and incomprehensible audio instructions constantly blaring at you over the loudspeaker.

USA: Hot, stuffy, congested room with plastic stadium seats, dirty floors, soiled smelly bathrooms, crying babies, and incomprehensible audio instructions constantly blaring at you over the loudspeaker.

Advantage: Tie.



Category #2 Elapsed Waiting Time

THAILAND: It's generally possible for tall, white, bearded researchers with perfectly coifed hair to avoid waiting by feigning ignorance as follows:

Official: Where's you number?
Shane: Number? The lady at the information desk just told me to come straight over here and give you this letter.
Official: You're supposed to have a....(sigh) just give me the application.
Shane: (quietly) heh heh...

USA: You can expect to be #87 in a line "now serving" #11. Any attempt to circumvent the process is guaranteed to result in you twitching and flailing around on the floor with several gigawatts of electricity surging through your body while federal employees enjoy a rousing game of 'Taser the immigrant.'

Advantage: Thailand



Category #3: Requirements: (What do you need to get a visa?)

THAILAND: Your money.

USA: A stack of forms and pictures explaining your unique qualifications for entering the home of the brave. You must provide proof that you've performed at least three miracles during your lifetime (and they can't be card tricks). You may also be required to provide a self-criticism explaining what sins you committed in your former life that caused your bad karma, which resulted in your being born in a country other than the United States. They also want lots of money.

Advantage: Thailand



Category #4: Fringe Benefits.

Thailand: When you complete your application they give your children pieces of candy.

USA: When you complete your application they put you in a concrete cell, spray you down with a firehouse and throw de-lousing powder in your face.

Advantage: Thailand



Category #5 Bureaucratic efficiency.

THAILAND: Forms processed within two hours.

USA: Forms fed into paper shredder within two hours. Rejection notice sent out within 12-18 months.

Advantage: Thailand



Category #6 Ultimate Reward.

THAILAND: A drab, uninspiring, blue-ink stamp in one's passport.

USA: A shiny, new alien credit-card, complete with picture, thumbprint, and super-cool hologram.

Advantage: USA!


Disclaimer: Applicants should remember that upon completing Thailand's immigration process they will have to live in Thailand.