Chinese New Year

Our neighbour (wife) is Chinese we found out yesterday. They had this table set out yesterday morning on Chinese New Year on their driveway. They were waving incense sticks around the table and around the house and letting off fire crackers (to ward off spirits?). It was a stark reminder of our neighbour's belief in other Gods and spirits.

We also found that the wife just closed down the resturant in town and is moving to Bangkok. We are not sure of the reason but we are guessing it might be due to the hard economic times. This week our neighhour next door who is a police man told our househelp to warn us about people who might want to rob us at the park due to the downturn in the economy.

Our famous son

Our son's teacher mentioned something about a photo of our son but I didn't really understand what she was saying. We only ever understand less than half of what she says as she tends to speak at a normal pace (which is a bit too fast for us) and using formal words. She pointed outside the school to the left and to the right. So when I left the school I kept an eye out for what she might have meant. Then I saw it, a couple of blocks away from the school on one of the bigger roads leading to a bridge.

The banner advertising our son's school

On closer inspection: Our son is on the left

It might have been nice if the school had asked us our permission before plastering our son's face on two huge banners. It is very common in Thailand to use foreign children in advertising for Thai schools. The girl on the right is in our son's class and her father is foreign and her mother's is Thai. At least our son isn't blond haired and blue eyed or he'd really stand out and people might actually recognise him from these banners.

It was Children's Day in Thailand on Saturday so we went to a field near the army base in Lampang and had some fun.

No, Phayu our dog is not dressing up for a starring role in a play. She was recently sterilized and the oversized collar is meant to stop her from undoing her stitches.

This is the pitbull which bit our househelp. Lisa went to the hairdresser in our street who said that this dog had bitten 10 people already (not thet 4 people I advised previously). Still no mask on the dog. We are a bit frustrated because now have to keep the kids inside the gates of the house when they are playing, just incase this beast escapes from his house.

15 minutes turns into over an hour and half

It should have only taken 15 minutes. I had taken 3 digital photos of the family, cropped them so that they were exactly as the Australia Passport office wanted them, and all the shop had to do was print them. I had done most of the work so I thought it would take only 15 minutes. Like so many other times, I was waiting around tapping my foot for over an hour and a half before finally the photos were ready. At least it wasn't as bad as the time I went to put a middle seat belt in the car. I was told an hour. 4 hours later I was still waiting (Fortunately Lisa didn't go into labour that afternoon)! No wonder the Thais are ever so patient.

Lost in Translation

Our neighbour invited us to their New Year's party. This was our first ever invitation by a Thai person to a party. To get invited into a Thai person home is a big deal so I was chuffed. Some very important people were at the party, but couldn't tell you who they were as I didn't understand the explaination in Thai. Our neighour's son-in-law who is a surgeon couldn't translate the Thai word into English. So even things are lost in translation. That's life right now. We only ever get part of the conversation. I still struggle with the Thai months of the year, even after nearly 2 year! Bit of a problem when I'm at the school trying to work out when the school holidays are.