Public talk at NSM

Today I gave a talk to ~100 National Science Museum (NSM) staff and invited VIPs from museums, science centres and universities across Thailand.

The talk was about the Canadian Museum of Nature - our history, renovation, exhibits, and of course our research, focusing on mineralogy (what else?!). This is the first time I have ever had my name written in foot-high letters, along with my talk title, and put up on a curtain in an auditorium! It was a tad intimidating. Last night, I was wide awake until 3am with the gerbils in my head spinning hard, thinking about this talk, trying not to be nervous. It's the first time I have ever given a talk with a translator as well - I was unsure how that might go as I didn't want to bore my audience nor let the talk go on too long. I was given 3 hours in total, including welcoming coffee, a few remarks by Dr. Somchai, the Director of the Natural History Museum, and a Q&A period.

Rule #1. If you are going to be standing on stage for 3 hours, do NOT drink all the water that the very nice lady keeps putting in front of you, no matter how thirsty you are!!! It makes the last 1/2 hour very uncomfortable!

The talk went well, and it was easy to tell who in the audience was following me and who was understanding the English. Translation wasn't a problem, but I did hear later that it was a bit disruptive for those who could fully understand English (70% or so we estimate). That's all part of the game though, and Cholawit did an excellent job translating on the fly. He had seen my presentation and gone over it with me late last week, but still, it was an impressive job he did for the entire time! There were two ladies in the 2nd row who were very enthusiastic, nodding and laughing and grinning the entire time - it was very encouraging. I later talked to one of them and found out that she has a MSc in Geology and works downtown at the Science Museum/Planetarium. She is also interested in going to Sudbury (of all places!) to take the science communciations program! And go down in a mine. Small world!

After my talk, I had about 30 minutes worth of questions from a wide range of angles - budgets, funding, volunteers, endangered species, cloning of dino DNA (??), exhibit design and conception, audiences, conservation, you name it. It was quite fascinating actually. And it was so encouraging and stimulating to be in a room full of scientists who work in a museum setting! People that are interested in both research and public education. I was happy to answer their questions and very happy to chat with some of them after the talk. I wish I had had more time to do so, but by the time we finished, it was 12:15pm, time for lunch, and Somchai shuffled me out the door and off for an awesome lunch. We were joined by the husband and wife team of Eric and Danielle, a Finlander and a Frenchwoman. Eric is here to give a workshop on taxidermy to staff at the NHM. They came to lunch with us and we had a great time with a fantastic spread of food - tom yum khung, coconut curry soup, fried snapper, shrimp cakes, fish cakes, morning glory, greens and roast pork. Mmmmm....!!! I also threw down the gauntlet so to speak - I asked Somchai what the spiciest dish in Thailand is. He has decided to take me to a place in Khlong Luang to show me! Uh oh. I might have just gotten myself into more than I bargained for! Or possibly a few days of GI tract torture!! But I'm not going to back down now!!

Day trip to Ayutthaya and Aranyik

On Friday, January 14th, I took a day trip out to Ayutthaya and Aranyik with Mike and Ana. They had never been, and were leaving for the south the next day, so it was a good opportunity for a day off. We took the train from Rangsit for a whole 9 Baht (45 min ride) and spent part of the day wandering around Ayutthaya, visiting the elephants, seeing some of the ruins. Having spent almost a week in Ayutthaya last year, I was simply along for the ride so to speak.

My main interest in going to Ayutthaya was to meet up with my friend Serge, my local daab dealer! Although this year, I didn't want daab - I wanted to buy a set of hand-forged cutlery from Aranyik, the same craft village where the daab are made. Serge took us there and I selected an amazing set of 6 steak knives, 6 forks, 6 spoons, 2 large serving spoons and one serving fork for a grand total of 2600 Baht - about $90. All hand-made, bought directly from the metalsmith/artist. I'm very happy with them and although they are a bit heavy to be carrying home, they are definitely a worthwhile 'souvenir. And it means I can throw out all the cheap Ikea cutlery at home that I have had since I was a grad student!

After our shopping spree, Serge drove us back into the city and we decided to have a non-Thai meal. After weeks upon weeks of rice, noodles, chicken and seafood, I was dying for something a bit different. Cheeseburgers!!! So we went to Sticky Burger and had cheeseburgers and french fries. And Chang of course! And it was awesome. :) The farang were happy!

After supper, we went back to the Seven Seas Guesthouse where Ana and Mike were staying and decided to have another beer. I ran across to the train station to check on getting a ticket back to Rangsit. The train was delayed for 2 hours, so back across the street to the pub - yeah! By this time, it was around 7:30pm. This back-and-forth trip to the train station and the pub for more beer continued until 10:30pm. By the time I got on the train, I was slightly intoxicated, a bit sunstroked and ready for sleep! Thankfully, Rangsit was the next large station and I was able to hop off the train at the correct stop. The next morning, I discovered that drinking Chang in the hot sun without drinking equivalent quantities of water is a very, very bad thing!!

More training pics

Museum life II

An update on the gaur from yesterday. Today, he is being made into soup, boiling in a large wok outback with what I think is lemon grass and lime slices!! Although that may simply be to mask the smell of dead stinky cow being slowly parboiled!! I asked Lo, the staff member tending the soup, if it was lunch and he laughed. Aroy mae? Maybe not!!

Museum life

Working at a Natural History Museum, you can never let your guard down. Even at our building, it's not uncommon to walk into your lab and find that it has been taken over by a large, stinky blue whale skeleton. Here in Thailand it appears to be no different.

This morning I came to work and entered via the back entrance as usual, only to find 5 staff members outside dissecting a large head of a very dead wild cow! This thing's head was huge! And they were going at it with small scalpels, cutting off chunks of its face, flipping the tongue back and forth, etc. I stood and watched for a while, then decided that I had to get my camera and take a few pictures. Enjoy!

The week in review

Hi folks, sorry for the long gap in posting, but there hasn't been much to say. Well, plenty of thoughts in my gerbil-mind but none that you'd likely care to hear about! It's been a long last week filled with some homesickness, some frustration, some learning how to balance life, etc.

I was having a debate with myself about what to do after the build - come back here for a month and train and maybe pick up a fight? Or keep to my plan of heading up to Chiang Mai/Chiang Rai for a couple of weeks and tour around. Everytime I start training hard, training with dedicated fighters and in a group I feel supported in, I want to fight. I want to get in the ring. But then reality kicks in - until the end of February, I'm here for work, which means that I can train in the morning during the week, but I get home too late to train in the afternoon. Problem 1. Problem 2 is that finding a girl to fight here at 160 would hard. And to get down to 150 would mean cutting. And aside from how incredibly bitchy cutting makes me, it's not healthy and I do want to enjoy myself here - which means having a beer or something not entirely nutritious if I wish!! So although fighting in Thailand is a dream and a challenge, I suspect it's just not a good idea. But of course the snark part of my brain takes over and says I'm making excuses because I'm a wimp and lazy and fat and don't want to commit and put the work in. The snark can usually be tamed, but it never fully goes away. Thanks to all who have put up with this debate via email!! Full permission to smack me upside the head.

But the final decision is that fighting right now is not in the books for me. Work, rest, recuperation, a couple of weeks of holidays with the build and going to Chiang Mai/Chiang Rai, and then back here for another 2 weeks to finalize stuff at the Museum. All in all, a much healthier plan, mentally and physically. I wish I had found Muay Thai at an younger age - it would have made this urge to fight much easier to deal with. However, I also suspect I wouldn't have been mature enough to handle it...

Today is a full day off - no training, no running around anywhere, a bit of regrouping before my last 2.5 weeks here commences tomorrow. I'm actually sitting outside at a Starbucks at FuturePark, having paid an extraordinary amount for an hour's worth of wi-fi time, enjoying a real coffee.

Yesterday, I spent 12 hours in Pattaya. Sangtiennoi's son, Moses, was fighting at a WBC event all of us from the gym went down to watch. I took a cab down with Ana and Mike (from a TBA gym in LA) and we spent the day hanging out on the beach, eating seafood, spending money at Fairtex (new Thai pads) and then going to the fights. We were targets for every hawker on the beach, wanting to sell us fake pearls, every sort of pharmaceutical you can imagine, and even oil paintings of naked women (although when he finally figured out we didn't want the naked woman wall hanging, he showed us one of Buddha instead! Sums up Pattaya right there!). We did manage to work our way through a large plate of freshly-steamed shrimp and a couple of bottles of Beer Chang though.

Moses wound up competing in a 4-man tournament in the midst of all the regular 5-round fights. He won his first fight to a farang, but lost the final fight by split decision to a guy from Germany. A hard loss for him, but it was a close fight. If it had been 5 rounds, he likely would have won. He's had +40 fights. For someone his age, this seems to me like so many, but I guess here it isn't that many in reality. Such a different world.

It's an interesting experience sitting in a crowd of mainly beach tourists and hearing them all boo the Thai fighters who won against a foreigner. It was a bit of a shock to me actually - like watching a MMA crowd on TV or something. Certainly not the type of crowd that you would find at the big stadiums. Sangtiennoi had quite a bit to say on the subject of 'farang gyms' like they have in Phuket and Pattaya which are aimed at simply making money and coddling foreigners. The more I train with him, the more I like him - he's no bullshit and simply about the sport and hard training, whether your Thai, non-Thai or alien. I like that.

It was a late night/morning when we got back at 1:30am. I finally got to sleep around 2:30am and slept in this morning late. A few errands today (stocking up on coconut water, laundry detergent, toilet paper and protein bars for breakfasts) and then maybe some more relaxing! It's actually quite warm here today - the last days have been "chilly" - +25 or so. But today is warmer and even outside in the shade, I'm starting to feel it. I'm not sure I ever truly get used to the heat - the 5 minute rounds hitting pads in the afternoon sure don't get any easier even after being here 3 weeks!!

Pics from training at Baan Muay Thai

Tom (Thom?) who is holding for me used to train Senchai. He's a really good trainer and pad-holder - I generally work with him every day.

Afternoon training kills me - running, skipping, shadow boxing, 5 minute pad rounds, 5 minute bag rounds, then clinch, clinch and more clinch. Then abs/push-ups.

Sawasdee bpee mai 2011!!

Sawasdee bpee mai!! Happy New Year!!

I rang in 2011 with possibly the most interesting New Year’s party I have ever been to! It was held at Ajarn Chai’s place and approximately 40 people were in attendance – mainly his family (including his 7 sisters but don’t ask me to name them all!), Sangtiennoi, his wife and two sons (Bonus and Moses) and the younger teenage fighters from the gym, and 3 farang who are training at Baan Muay Thai (all from the same gym in California, including one girl, Anna, who is new to the sport). Being the Year of the Rabbit, everyone had on rabbit gear – ears, tails, flashing rabbit pins, etc. I was soon hooked up with a pink pair of rabbit ears! The evening was spent eating (awesome spread of Thai food, sushi, desserts and fruit), drinking, games, dancing, karaoke, random gift-giving (including large carrots for the rabbit in each of us), and a gift exchange. A combination of birthday party, bridal/baby shower, and New Year’s party, it was certainly animated and everyone obviously had a great time!

After some prompting, I agreed to try my (awful) singing voice at the karaoke – for the first time in my life I might add!! But I figured that really, no one was going to notice how bad I am! My musical skills stop at playing instruments, certainly not to singing! So I agreed to sing Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”, choosing something I at least knew from the limited English repertoire. Yup, it was bad! But I hung in there. Even got tipped 200 baht, although that might have simply been to shut me up before the neighbourhood cats descended on the party!

One of Ajarn Chai’s sisters decided to teach Anna and I how to do traditional Thai dance. That at least was a little more successful than the karaoke! Although my fingers do not bend in the same ways that theirs do.

It was definitely an amusing evening. Not speaking Thai except useless things like numbers, days of the week, food items, etc., it was impossible to grasp what was happening when rules of games, etc., were announced over the huge sound system. Every so often, someone would come on the mic and everyone would scream, jump up off their chairs, and start turning chairs upside down, looking underneath! Not sure what they were looking for, but there was never anything under my chair(s)! But dancing and laughing are universal languages so it was still great fun.

After ringing in the New Year, watching some of the fireworks from further off, some more frantic dancing, and another round of beer shots, it was time to head home. I got a ride back to the gym with Sangtiennoi and Pouk in the gym van. Getting back here, I discovered I was wired wide awake! A combination of drinking Pepsi late in the evening and also all the partying I suspect.

I finally fell asleep around 3:45am this morning and thus didn’t really see “morning”! I finally got my lazy butt out of bed around 11:45am and decided that I had to get out and do something so decided to head downtown. Rather than spending $20 to get back and forth to Bangkok by taxi, I took the cheap (and more scenic) route – drove my motorbike to Nonthonburi pier (20 km) and then took the boat all the way to near Khao San and walked from there. 30 baht in gas, 28 baht in boat tickets, so for $2, I was able to get downtown and back – perfect! I was feeling like something non-Thai for lunch/supper so after a few errands, including finding bug spray with 50% deet (many mosquitoes at night where I am), I headed to a pseudo-turkish place which advertised shawarma. It turned out to be more of an Indian curry, but with the hummus it was a change from rice which I was happy with.

Bong-bong is a much happier fish these last few days. My new coffee-friend at work, Lek, managed to get me an entire bottle of live mosquito larvae from near the museum. Siamese fighting fish love mosquito larvae! The poor guy wasn’t eating the pellet food and I was getting worried. But he’s quite happy to hunt for swimming larvae each day.