Day 207 and 208: A minor irritation

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  Loei, Thailand
Thursday, July 1, 2010

Wednesday: In all honesty I am struggling to remember much about Wednesday except for a couple of things - 1) The 2/11 lesson in the afternoon went pretty well as they paid attention for the most part and took the computer room lesson that followed relatively seriously (some of them even stayed behind at the end to finish after the lesson was over). 2) Around lunchtime I got some text messages and calls from my dear friend Ray - it took me a couple of minutes to realise that this was the end of the month so she clearly had not go the message from my email. Sigh. I also had to cover a lesson for Hilda which consisted of playng hangman with some 4th years for an hour.

After the day was over I resent the email with an attached summary of what it said (In case it was a little too verbose for her). I went home and spent much of the evening in front of the computer, there was some work involved but a fair amount of browsing teh web also. Kym had said that I might find that having a laptop affected my diet and he was not wrong - I loked down and realised that I had sat there until closing time of all the shops and I had no motivation to head down to walking street just then so I popped to the end of the road for some guai tiao taking WTE with me.

As I sat reading about the English and their habits at work there was suddenly a strong breeze which is often a precursor to a downpour. The staff at the noodle stand obviously agreed as they immediately started moving all the vacant tables undercover. Sure enough, 5 minutes later the heavens opened and we all moved into the front area of the stall owner's house where the TV was showing one of those Thai melodrama's (this one included a woman with an eye patch who was controlling some guy using hynosis and a whistle - as usual there were guns and cheesy fights and the hero's hesitated just long enough to allow the bad guys to get the upper hand again - classic stuff. When I had finished it was still raining but the staff gave me a bag to put the book in (they offered me another one for my head but I declined.

Thursday: The first lesson with M1 was prepared last night and was an introduction to the 3 tenses; I say introduction, but they have obviously all encountered them before. I felt a little sorry for the more skillful ones, for whom this lesson was probably insultingly easy (although I still didn't expect anyone to get full marks on the sheet I gave out - oddly I wrong about this, but the ones who did get full marks were none of the ones I had expected)

I then had to go and cover a lesson with M6 in third period (meaning that I missed out on the usual Thursday brunch). It was a speaking and listening lesson for Ajarn Mayuree but unfortunately there was no lesson - so I jst spen an hour talking to them and called it a go. Some of them still found that rather traumatic and dissolved into fits of embarrassed giggles when I came over to speak to them.

Upon my return to the staff room (and in and around other bits and bobs) I received an email from none other than Ray. Her tone was wounded and she was basically saying "How could you cheat me like this?" It was clear that her written English was not as good as her speaking so I had to spend a little time simplifying my reply which focused around 3 points: 1) It's not me who is the cheat, 2) Given that all she did was tell me about the job did she REALLY think that 25,000 was a reasonable price? 3) I was fully intending to pay her until I mentioned it to the staff at which point they all (including Niu and Somtawin - whom she had purported to be in contact with) told me that I shouldn't pay anything.

2/12 got to spend more time in the computer room and most of the completed the task almost as easily - if with a little less diligence - than 2/11. By the time I got out there was a text waiting for me from Rae which was along the same lines as her email. I was intrigued to see if I could draw out her reasoning about the matter so I engaged in some banter with her by text message over the course of teh evening. She essentially kept repeating herself (but then, so was I) insisting that she was an honest peson and this was her business (in spite of the fact that no-one knows about it) eventually I got bored and ended my last message with "Goodbye Ray." - fairly emphatic I thought. Apparently it was not emphatic enough though as I then received a message saying, "So will you pay me or not?" Sigh.

I was also slightly nonplussed by one of her earlier messages, check this out: You will say sorry if you cheated on me I don't like it noone cheated on me if you dont have money then ok but not break your word to me - absent punctuation notwithstanding this sounds awfully like a threat. I almost gave a petulant response but kept the tone similar to the rest of my messages (i.e. sarcastic - I've had it being polite to this woman). What I am hoping is that she has somehow still failing to get the hang of the fact that the staff at Loei Pit know about the whole thing and she expects that making a fuss there can get me terminated - if not then I can't help but be a little concerned about whether I have a potential problem brewing.... ... sigh.

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