Whirlwind Thai News Day

The news thickens as the day goes by. My guess is that he’ll have to resign. Well, my guess is based on my observation. When he gave his 6 PM interview to reporters, he looked alone. There weren’t that many people standing behind him, was there ? Where are the “F-Fours” when he is asking reporters (*gasp!!*) for sympathy ?

The plot thickened when the police went in and tore down the PAD’s stage at their home base ( Makkhawan Rangsan bridge). Protestors that were not at the Govt House were beaten and police found guns, bullets, and “Kratom” leaves ( that will be the second cousin of the marijuana leaves ).

Mob mushrooms began appearing in other provinces where some airports were blocked ( Hat Yai, Phuket, and Krabi ). Then state enterprises jumped onto the bandwagon. We have the railway people taking 2 days leave , alternately. Then Thai Airways’ labour union popped up and announced that if the police use forces on the  protestors, they’ll be asking their people to start using their sick leaves too. Last I’ve heard is TOT is also joining in the “Support PAD!Get Sick Day”.

And the weird thing is ? The protestors , mostly women and elderlys, are dancing and singing like they are in some open-aired concert.

Oh, one more thing. I know the guy holding the mic tells you to lie down when the tear gas started taking off. Please crawl away from the gas ? I’m sure he will too if one landed next to him.

Saori for Tsunami

Couple of weeks ago I walked into a shop selling handmade bags at JJ Mall. The bags were very colorful and were made from handwoven materials. The sales, who is a volunteer from the Maya Gotami Foundation, told me that this fabric is called “saori”, a type of free form weaving that originated from Japan. Each piece of fabric is the weaver’s own work of art. I was wondering how “saori” and “tsunami” got together.

According to the volunteer, this project was started by Ajahn Gavessako from Watpah Sunan who also found the Maya Gotami Foundation. Ajahn Gavessako is from Japan.  He believes that saori weaving can be used as a form of art therapy and invited instructors from Japan to teach the tsunami survivors in Koh Phangna the method. The “fruits” of the therapy can be used to make a variety of products which they can sell and make a living. Is that a good idea or what ? At the shop, there are tshirts with saori appliques, purses, wallets, wristbands , etc.. They also sell at Khao San Road and their website is here.

Felt Playmat

Here’s the felt play mat I mentioned in this post. The kids are playing with it one to two hours a day, giving me time to do some cooking and finish off some bag orders. I sew a diagonal path onto the background, all the other pieces are removable. Sometimes the tree trunk gets turned into a canoe, sometimes carrots grow on tree. I think it is a good toy for imaginative play

Picnic at Suan Lum

The kids requested a picnic, so off we went to Lumpini Park with our straw mat, football, and most important item : KFC chickens. We set up our little picnic by the playground area. I haven’t been there for quite some years, wasn’t aware there is a playground patrol until she spoke to me through her megaphone ” Feeding the pigeons are not allowed ! Mommy please stop your children ! ” ( btw, the kids were throwing corn at the pigeons, not the KFC chickens ) I waved to her, feeling a bit embarrassed . There was a dad there who got it worse. He was pushing the swings for his kids. I don’t know, he watched too much Olympics or what, but it looks like he’s attempting a 360 degree flip over the poles. Ms. Playground Patrol promptly walked up a few feet before him and blew her whistles, like , you can see the shock waves traveling through his hair. Someone really enjoys her work there.

All in all, it was a fun afternoon. The bathrooms are horrendous so make sure everybody did their thing before getting there. The refreshments booths does not sell soda drinks, coke addicts beware. If you drive, get there before the 6PM evening crowd .

The Little Bookworm

The Kid read her first pocket book – ล่ากุญแจข้ามมิติ – a 160 pages fiction devoured within 2 days. I was so overjoyed I did cartwheels all the way to the bookstore and renewed my membership. Can say “No” to toys, but not to books.

We are having school break till beginning of next month. The plan is to teach the kids life skills and delegate as much housework as possible that kids their age can accomplish. *cough, cough*

For The Kid’s English lessons, we are working our way through a grade 2 workbook ( she’s in Por4). She can read without picture guidance but she can’t spell. To give her more writing practices, we do just 2 or 3 exercises per day, but instead of having her write an one-word answer onto the workbook, she have to copy the whole sentence into her notebook. After that, we do spelling. At first I didn’t know where to start, but after some googling I found a list of Dolch words at this site, divided into grade levels ( from pre-K to grade 3 ), with pdf downloads. There are 220 of these sight words and they make up 50 to 70 percent of any English text. Not a bad place to start.

The K2 loves homework. She completed her alphabet phonics workbook ( of which she remembered only the “c” , “s”, “r” sounds ). I gave her a new workbook and she was so happy. She hugged the book and said, ” This is for me ? Oh, thank you, mama, thank you ! “

Kids’ Activity : Flower arrangements ..

It was Mother’s Day last week and the kids did some flower crafts for their grandma. They call it ” flower cakes ” and here’s a pic…

One is supposed to give jasmine flowers ( dok mali ) on Mother’s Day , but I felt jasmines are a bit too soft for little children to handle. I don’t want to end up doing all the work so I got the more hardy flowers, the white ” dok rak ” (which means ” love flower “) and the pink ” barn mai roo ruai ” (which means something on the lines of ” blooming to eternal wealth ” <– I may be wrong in this translation, if anybody knows, please tell me).

I found out that half a kilo of each flower was way, way, WAY too much for this activity. I played around with the left-overs and make a super-easy-mini-tutorial :

I got the supplies from the flower market ( Pak Klong Talad ). The oasis ( that’s the green sponge) is 50bht for 3 blocks . The pink flower 25bht/half kilo ; the white ones 20bht/half kilo ; bamboo skewers 10bht/pack. Now I know how people here can support themselves by selling flower garlands.

Slice off half a block of oasis and further divide them into 3 blocks of varying heights. Soak them in a bucket of water. Arrange them on a plain container. Break the bamboo skewers ( they are 2 inches long ) into half and pierce flower on one end. You will have to pluck the stem and leaves off the pink flowers. Next is free form. Just fill up the oasis with skewered flowers whichever way you like. If you get tired of all the poking, you can cheat by wrapping leaves around the oasis, like in the right-most picture.

The white flowers last 3 days before they turned yellow. The pink one still looks the same , even today.

Wooden Toys

Aren’t these cute ? Found them at the Chatuchak Weekend Market. They came all the way from Chiang Mai.

I am hiding them from the kids for the time being. This will be their new toys when school break begins … in about 24 hours. I’m putting together a felt play mat so that they can play the wooden animals on them and not all over the house.

Science Fair at BITEC, Bangna

is on until August 22nd. We went there two Sundays ago . It wasn’t very crowded then so we pretty much stayed there the whole day.  This fair is geared towards the locals, so most of the presentations are done in Thai. Booths the kid enjoyed are the Science Lab ( she disappeared for 1.5 hrs there ), the Galapagos Experience , and the zone where there are mini science experiments to try out. There is an area for younger kids to play in next to the Science Lab. We didn’t get to check out the Dialogue in the Dark booth. I heard that Nong Ig-Q is one of the guides there. ( Nong Ig-Q was a freshman who was blinded in a ” rup nong ” hazing event ) . For the mommies, there is the Oriental Medicine booth by Rangsit University. They are selling their famous herbal weight loss pills, which they claim one could lose 2 kgs in a week with no yo-yo effect.

Is this LeSportSac fabric ?

Couldn’t find it in their website .

GTA Copycat Crime

I think most parents here are following this story where a 19 year-old stabbed a taxi driver to death in an attempted robbery, a la GTA style. I watched a kid play this game several years ago. I thought he gamed over when he got clobbered to death. Then I realised that he was doing the clobbering. Of course, being lacking in social skills, I opened my big mouth while the kid was doing rampant shootings and said, ” You know, kids in the states shoot their classmates because of games like this.” which embarrassed the parents. Oh well.

As usual, someone has to die before something gets done here. This game , Grand Thief Auto, actually received its license by the Office of National Cultural Commission. Is this a joke ? They should know that granting it an online versions license means it will be made cheaply available for all to play, rated or not. Internet cafes here charge 15 – 20 bht an hour. The “ethical” ones will not allow kids in school uniforms to enter their shops. The unethical ones couldn’t care less. Once they are inside, it’s money making time and kids hooked on games are a steady source of income.

These shops have become an alternative baby-sitting service for some low income families. 50bht is enough to cover 2 hours and a meal plus some assurance that they’ll know where their kids are and not out on the streets. I really doubt that the parents of that teenager have a clue about what games he’s been playing. When we parents think of shooting games, we think of police-catching-criminals games not playing as The Criminal, like what kind of freaks think up a game like that ?

Today’s news said zoning laws will be introduced, no internet cafes allowed within 500 meters of schools. Think it’ll work ? When the dust settles, everything will just be back to business. As usual, parents are left bewildered every time news like this hit us again.