Buying onions

Buying onions is a simple matter, isn't it? Not necessarily. Not if you live in Thailand.

I go shopping at our local Lotus Tesco. I am in a hurry and don't want to face the possible communication breakdowns that I will probably face at the market. Only have half an hour to get everything done. Must rush. Must get onions. I select the three least revolting onions . I look around for somewhere to weigh them. There is no where. I look around for someone to help out. There is no one. I wander around looking silly for a few minutes. I see a lady with a badge chatting on the phone. Does she work here? Yes she does. its a Tesco badge. I look at her imploringly. She continues with her conversation, completely dismissing me. I look around some more. Where do I weigh the onions???

The lady on the phone tells her friend to hold on and grabs the onions from me. She marches off. Disappears. I wait. Nina gets ratty. I wander around the - very limited - fruit and veggie section a little more. I check out the rambutan, the dragon fruit, the papaya. Mmmm. I wait. Nina gets rattier. Nina is sick. The wait does not bring out the best in her. I wait. Nina's nose starts running. I find a tissue and wipe it. I wait. Several staff look at me weirdly. I look weirdly at them. Still no sign of the onion/telephone lady. I have to get home. Time's up. I remember I have half an onion in my fridge, its sprouting new shoots, but its an onion. I can use it - the recipe only needs half an onion. I don't really need these onions that badly. Not today anyway. I leave with a fairly heated heart - very unThai.

As I pay for my other purchases I notice a packet of weighed and priced onions in my trolley, cunningly hidden under the box of tissues.

Next time I'm going to the market instead. Less communication breakdowns there.

Back to the Past

Feeling good after doing pretty well in my first Thai languge check in almost 2 years, and basking in the praise of my language supervisor, we went to visit our old neighbours in Lopburi: Phaayboon and his wife and Dawwipaa.

Now five years ago when we first moved to Thailand, Phaayboon took us under his wing and took it upon himself to help us learn Thai. In return we were expected to help Phaayboon with his army English and assist their daughter with her school English.

Many evenings we sat with them, struggling to get the basics out, having our pronunciation corrected, our tones set right, etc. Sweating. Struggling. But learning. And now, 5 years later with Nick having passed Level 3 proficiency (which is good) and me on my way to that goal, we fully expected to wow them with our wonderfully improved fluency in Thai, our superb range of vocabulary, and our impeccable tones.

For some reason they seemed to barely understand a word we said, just switched off when we started chatting. And when they spoke to us it was in v e r y s l o w Thai or else incomprehensible, broken English....

I realised that in their minds we are still those struggling students of Thai and so they don't expect and therefore don't bother to understand us. It was a lesson to me not to do the same to others! Fortunately they were so delighted with our children that the sub-standard communication taking place didn't marr a very pleasant evening!

How to Get Angelina Jolie lips

Emily has this endearing habit of picking flowers and giving them to me to put in my hair. So sweet. But sometimes I get a bit upset - like yesterday when she picked the one and only lotus flower in our little pond... but she is so cute about it, that I can't really show her I'm cross.

And today... oh boy! Tired of picking the flowers, she decided to pick me a wreath of chillis i.e. those tiny little bird's eye ones i.e. those extra ultra mega hot ones i.e. those ones that the people working with them wear rubber gloves to protect their hands. As soon as I saw the offering she had made I marched her off the the bathroom to get her hands washed. Too late - the chillis or the hot hands had already gone into her mouth.

She started screaming - clearly in a lot of pain. "ARNICA ARNICA, mom put arnica on my tongue!!!!!" I made her drink copious amounts of milk and water, eat rice, I rubbed vaseline on her lips, but nothing really seemed to help. She was crying hysterically. She vigorously rubbed her tongue, trying to get the "ouchie" off, all the time yelling for arnica. I had a lot of sympathy because I KNOW how hot those chillis are.

I played my trump card - my creamcheese chocolate sandwich cookies!!! Just one of those decadent delights cured her on the spot.

But she still has Angelia Jolie lips.

Something to tell you

This morning at breakfast Jonty announced that he had something to tell me... apparently Emily is not that important and we can actually give her away. Other than her lack of importance she is also quite embarrassing, so it might be better to get rid of her. She copies everything he does but she cannot get the words to the rainbow poem right - she thinks that there is PINK in the rainbow.

BUT, the main problem with Emily - according to Jonty - is that whenever he has something to tell me, she comes along and says "I've got something to tell you" and proceeds to tell the thing that he wanted to tell.

"Mommy, mommy, there's something I want to tell you," pipes up young Emily who had been listening intently to this conversation.

"What's it Emily?" I ask.

"I LOVE YOU MOMMY!" says the clever little poppet with a gleam in her eyes.

Wisdom!

We went on an adventure today. All four of us on our bikes, Nina scoring a lift with me. We went in search of water buffalo and actually found about 15 so we were pretty pleased with ourselves.

Emily kept falling behind, and whenever this happened she'd shout and scream "wait wait"... which of course we'd do. After a while she informed me that from now on she would ring her pink bell when she wanted us to wait.

We proceeded. I heard the bell ringing and diligently stopped to wait, she pedalled up and we all had a drink of water. Then she rang her bell again. "When I ring my bell it means we must go," she said.

I asked her - "if you ring your bell to stop and wait, and ring your bell to go, then how will I know what the ringing bell means?"

Jonty responded very patiently, "Well Mom, I think that if Emily is behind us and she rings her bell it means that we must wait, but if she is next to us or in front of us we should go." (I was asking for it!)

Later Jonty asked me why I am so bossy. I replied its because I am a mom, moms are always bossy. He chewed on this for a bit and then said, "No, you are bossier than a mom should be."

Jonty and Emily were invited to play at a friend's house, about 5 houses down this afternoon. I asked Jonty if he and Emily would like to go. He said no.... because if its just the two of them, he will have to look after Emily. He will have to help her cross the road, he will have to say stop and she won't stop, he will have to stop her from climbing up things, he will have to tell her to ride her bike on the side of the road and she won't listen, he will have to watch her, he will have to help her if her bike falls over, he will have to get water for her if she's thirsty, etc etc - a whole litany of all the things he'll have to do.

At the end of it all he says: "Mom I am only ONE person and Emily is TWO persons."

I know Jonty, I know! I am only ONE person, and you children are at least six persons!!!

Tarzan and Jonty's Jungle Jump

Jonty is a bit like his dad - LOVES computer games. His favourite at the moment is Tarzan and Jane "Jungle Jump". Tarzan has to leap over waterfalls, catching swinging vines, dodge crocodiles, etc, all the while collecting diamonds for Jane. He gets about 5 lives then its "Game Over". The game isn't at all easy - I tried it and my highest score was 5000 which is quite appalling.

This morning Jonty was getting into it very seriously. All was going well, but one dastardly vine kept getting the better of him. He had played the game over and over, each time "dying" his final death at this same point. This time he had done well and saved all his lives up till this spot, but now Jonty was using up all Tarzan's lives trying to catch the swinging vine. He only had 2 "lives" left.

At this point Jonty flung his arms back, and bent his head forward, slumped over the desk in desperation, and muttered something furiously. Lots of sighs and so on.

"But, you've still got two lives left," I said encouragingly.

"I know MA, that's why I'm PRAYING!!!!" He got it with his next attempt a few seconds later.

One of those days with Emily

At 04h45 Emily came to my room and asked me to find her green Barbie for her. I sent her back to bed forthwith, but it was not an auspicious start.

I fetched the kids from school at 12h00 today. Emily cried most of the way home because she said she did not want to have a nap when we got home. Five minutes after we got home she stomped upstairs and asked why I was not putting her to bed as she wanted to have her nap.

I put her to sleep on my bed as Nina was already asleep in the kids' room. Emily screamed because she wanted to sleep on her own bed, so I said, fine, sleep on your own jolly bed. So she said, no, she didn't want to wake up Nina, she'll sleep on my bed.

She has a horrible blister on her knee. When she woke up she asked me to put a plaster on it. We went for a bike ride. The plaster came off about 10 minutes away from home, and she screamed. I suggested we turn around and go home to get another plaster. She smiled sweetly and said she did not want to go home yet and that it was all better.

We had a treasure hunt in the garden and Emily screamed because Jonty was eating all the treasure (sugus sweets). Upon investigation I found out that Jonty had found all 2 of them and had in fact quite sweetly - I thought - given her one of them which she had already eaten.

There was ice-cream after supper tonight. She dropped her bowl on the floor, breaking the bowl. I scooped up the ice-cream and put it in another bowl. She screamed because she wanted the broken bowl. She said she could not eat the ice-cream out of the new bowl, and so did not want the ice-cream any more.

I said fine, Nina can have it. Emily screamed and said she DID want the ice-cream in the replacement bowl. (And asked why I was being "so stupid"?)

There was a tiny bit of ice-cream left in the tub, Jonty had already had seconds, so I put dished it up for Emily. She screamed and said she did not want any more ice-cream. I took it out and fed it to Nina. As Nina polished off the last of the ice-cream a few seconds later, Emily screamed because Nina had finshed the ice-cream and SHE actually wanted more.

Good news though - its 7.40pm and she's been asleep for the last 40 minutes. I love her dearly, but sometimes I think I love her between 7 pm and 7 am the most.

Shared Shops

I love the shared shops in this country. I am not talking about the obvious ones like coffee shops attached to book shops. I am talking about actual shared shops. Down the road from us, where I have my photos printed, the photo shop doubles as a hairdressing salon. "Have your hair done while you wait..."?. And a little further down the same road is a chemist - with an internet cafe. You could always check out your medicines and prognosis on the internet while you wait for the pharmacist to get your medicines ready, I suppose.

Today I also saw a real multitasker - a guy driving a pick-up with "Roadside Emergency Services" on the door. In the back were the boney carcasses of some animals (probably cows). So, does his roadside service extend to abbatoir services...? Or did he pick these up on the side of the road?

And then there are the shops that defy all logic. Like the printing shop that does not stock paper: you have to bring your own.

Brownies

It was Phii Nok's birthday last week. She closed her restuarant for the day as she held a special Buddhist ceremony there on this auspicious day. She wanted us to join her, but unfortunately I couldn't and Nick was away. But I did take her some home-made brownies (with extra chocolate chips and cashew nuts). Yes, I know, I know, I'm such a good home-maker... I make my own granola too!

Well. Yesterday I was looking for mozarella cheese. This is not easy here in Lampang. There is very little cheese available. The processed stuff, yes, you can find it here and there, but real cheese is the challenge. And that's just taking about ordinary cheddar or gouda, not mozarella. I had already been to Lotus Tesco, and was now climbing into the fridges in Big C. I was determined to find mozarella cheese because it is best for pizzas. Yes, indeed, I was making home-made pizza for supper that evening. The perfect little housewife. That's me.

So there I was searching for processed mozarella cheese (I had given up on trying to find the real deal) in-between the processed cheddar and gouda when a strange foreigner man comes up to me and says "Hello, do you live here?"

"Yes I do", I reply with just a hint of irritation. Why is it that westerners ALWAYS feel that they have to talk to me, just because I'm also a so-called westerner???
"Where do you live?" he asks. Great - a chatty one.
"Muu Baan Huen Saay Kham" I tell him, hoping to confuse him with my fast and fluent delivery of our "village"'s name.
"Oh," he smiles sweetly, "I tasted the brownies you made. They were delicious!"

Turns out that he's just about my neighbour, living one street down from me, in the very same village. And Phii Nok is a mutual friend!!! Small world in Lampang. Better watch my irritation levels.

Jonty's dream

On the way back from Chiang Mai this evening, we saw a rainbow. Great excitement. Almost crashed the Mu7 trying to get Emily to have a better view. But, that's not what this entry is about....

Jonty told me that he had a dream and that he had been meaning to tell me about. He said he had this dream when Nick was in Bangkok (I remember the first day Nick was away Jonty told me that he was feeling "anxious" - he had been told that he was the man of the house now, poor kid).

Anyway, he dreamed that he went up to heaven, but that he was still on earth, and that God spoke to him. God said to him "You are my son. You are my child". He told me that God said that he must stay on the earth, but that he must not be afraid as He (i.e. God) would always be with him. And God said that whenever Jonty saw a rainbow he must remember that and that there would always be rainbows. Everyday.

Awesome! I got shivers down my spine. The way that he told it was so special too - not just like a kid rambling, it was almost like someone quoting scripture. Very bold. Very authorative. Very confidently.

Unfortunately Emily brought us all back down to earth with her so-called dream. Here goes:
She dreamed she went to up to pink heaven, but was still on pink earth. A pink god told her that she was a pink son, there would be a pink rainbow and that she should not be scared. Hoo boy.

P.S. Found a silly photo of them playing a silly game pretending to be asleep - Emily in a PINK dress. It seemed appropriate.

Advice from Emily

Emily saw me kill a mosquito while playing in the tub out the garden this afternoon. The pest (the mozzie, not Emily) was biting me...

Emily: "What are you doing to that mozzie mommy?"
Me: "I am killing it"
Emily: "You must not kill mozzies. All you have to do is run away as fast as you can. Run into the house and close the door. Then you will be safe."

I wish it were true, but its not!

Later -
Emily: "Why is there no water in the hosepipe?"
Me: "Because I turned off the tap."
Emily: " Why?"
Me: "Because we don't want to waste water."
Emily: " I DO want to waste water. How can I waste water if there is no water in the tap?"

Good point.

"2"

There's cute little kid whose mom works in our "muu baan" (village) as one of the gardeners. Almost every afternoon at about 4pm, we bump into him when he gets back from nursery school. He is clearly fascinated by my three children and follows us around like a puppy. So I've been chatting to him. His name is "Um".

I asked him how old he is, and he told me "2". I was fairly impressed as he was doing "homework" - they do start that really early here in Thailand - and was actually managing to write almost recognisable letters. The Thai script is fairly complicated so this is no mean feat for a 2-year old. Was I meeting a genius here????

Then a couple of days later Um came to our house - riding his bicycle. Now most kids I know master the art of riding a bicycle at about 4 years of age. Here was little Um at age 2 doing it, with a lot of confidence, so he'd obviously been doing it for some time. Now I was more than impressed, I was amazed. This kid is something else!

Later that evening I got to thinking: Writing Thai letters, riding a bike. Mmmm... I was not so sure. But then again, he is smaller than Emily who is almost 3, so it figures that maybe he IS 2.

The next time I saw him I asked him again - how old are you. "2" he answered. Now after 4 years in Thailand my Thai still fails me from time to time, so, thinking that maybe he did not understand my question I asked him which "anubaan" level he is in. In the Thai kindergartens there are a couple of levels, usually 2 or 3, and give a good indication of a kid's age. Usually.

"2" he answered. Ah ha, I was onto something here.

"How many brothers and sisters do you have?" I asked. Yes, you guessed it: "2"

But, that's not all - apparently he has 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters. 2 younger brothers and 2 younger sisters too. If I had asked, I bet he would have told me that he had 2 mothers and 2 fathers.

Yesterday I chatted to his mom. "How old is Um?" I asked casually.

"Five."

So my little genius turned out to be a normal kid after all. Or maybe not even all that normal, but let's not go there!

Reminds me of a little girl in Jonty's class who told me that she has 9 sisters, aged 17, 15, 8, 7, 6, and 5, and a baby brother. When I asked her how old the others were she asked - "what others???"

Psalm 8 v 1 and half of 2

"O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise..."

I read these verses this morning, and they just made me think of Jonty singing God's praises. Love it!

He's a genius

Its official. Jonty is a genius. He is learning to write letters and they've got to "h". But today, I gave him a little exercise to do with colouring in e.g. the first bear, the third cat, the second tortoise, etc. He did it very well, so I told him he'd done a good job.

He scribbled something across the top of the page, and then showed me what he had written: "good". He had figured out, all by himself, how to write this word, that it needed TWO "o"'s too. I have never shown him how to write it, and I doubt that he's done it at nursery school.

Clever hey!?

What a faithful God

Jonty, I will be the first to admit, has his issues. I think they're mostly related to him being the eldest. He is a little obsessive compulsive, he stresses about rules not being followed - such a conformist, he gets hysterical about fairly minor problems, he is a tad terrified about trying new things (especially when it comes to food), he is controlling, and he really is responsible ... for a 4 year old. Oh, and extremely bossy.

Lately this has been worrying me a bit - he just seems so uptight and anxious. But today, on the way to school we were listening to the song "everything that has breath PRAISE THE LORD". Jonty was singing along so happily. Halfway through the song he says to me - "so this guy says he praises God all day long, he even praises God at work". I said "yes, and you (Jonty) can praise God at school all day long too".

"I do Mom," replies Jonty, very matter-of-factly.

And you know, he DOES! He is such a spiritual guy and loves God so much and trusts God so much. He prays more beautifully and with far more meaning and passion than most adults pray. Not a day goes by that he does not pray that "the Buddhists will return to you Jesus". Jonty thanks God several times a day for blessings he receives, and he casts all his burdens at Jesus' feet (even the ones I think are ridiculous!).

Sure, Jonty may have his hangups, and I'll do my best to help him, but the only thing that really and truly counts is that Jonty has a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ - and he's got it. WHAT A FAITHFUL GOD WE SERVE! I am just bursting with joy this morning because Jonty also has a faithful God.

Interview with Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Yesterday I decided to interview Jonty and Emily. I need to do this more often as it reminded me of how brilliant / crazy / wonderful / hilarious it is to have a 4 year old and a 2 year old around!

What's your favourite school activity?

Jonty: Playing "Loose" when you climb as much as you want and then drop!
Emily: Pink Games

What is your favourite game?

Jonty: Wrestling
Emily: Playing with pink toys

What is your favourite book?

Jonty: All my books
Emily: Pink books

What is your favourite colour?

Jonty: Green
Emily: Pink

What's your favourite DVD?

Jonty: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Emily: Twinkle

Who looks after you?

Jonty: Mommy and Daddy
Emily: Mommy and Nina

Who is your favourite person in the whole world?

Jonty: Peter.... and Mommy
Emily: Annabel

What is your favourite food?

Jonty: Sweets, chocolates, "ngo" (rambutan), tomatoes when they're chopped up and mixed up, and pizza.
Emily: Anything

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Jonty: A policeman, no, same as Daddy: a missionary, no, a Christian doctor, no a Christian pastor, or maybe not. I want to be nothing.
Emily: A policeman

What's your favourite animal?

Jonty: Monkey
Emily: Pink monkey

Where is your favourite place to go on holiday?

Jonty: The sea
Emily: To school

What is the best thing that our family does together?

Jonty: Hikes
Emily: Eat cereal

The answer to baby seats

For some time now I have been aware that a family with two kids (not to mention a family with three like in this photo I found who had to leave mom behind) only JUST fits onto a motorbike, the preferred method of transportation here. There is not much they can do about safety. But still, it gives me cold shivers everytime I see a little baby on the back of a bike, not to mention his/her 4 year old sibling sitting in front clutching onto the handlebars. Problem is what can a young family do if they cannot afford a car and must get from A to B...?

I met a granny last week who provided the answer. She is obviously in charge of her young grandson, aged about 4 months, and she must have some South African blood in her because it was a clear case of a "boer maak 'n plan". She installed a side car, with a roof, and modified it by placing an old pushchair in the side cart, and then tying the pram in, very securely, with a lot of rope. Hey presto, instant car seat.

Both baby and granny were very cheerful. I just wish I had had my camera with me!