shades

The airport of Bangkok, or actually all airports, is the perfect spot for watching people if you have some time to spend. Bangkok Airport is an important hub in Southeast Asia, allowing for many people to transfer there, but it is also a destination in itself attracting a vast diversity of people. The gap year youngster searching for identity; the deeply tanned couple that thoroughly enjoyed the crisp white sand beaches, “crazy how blue that sea is!“; the plastic-surgery-tourist; unevitably, the businessman; unfortunately, also many middle-aged men looking for love to buy.

The most lovable tourist I saw at Bangkok Airport was an Asian man in his early fifties. He was standing alone quietly, in the middle of the hall, with a somewhat surprised and expectant look on his face. He was wearing middle-of-the-road leather shoes and jeans, and a long-sleeved polo shirt. He had pulled a bright green shirt over his longsleeve, displaying ‘THAILAND’ in curly letters, accompanied by the outline of the country and pink flowers. The man, standing here all alone in the big hall of the airport, enjoyed Thailand so much that he encountered this shirt and decided: “I need this. I do not only need this, I want to wear it immediately and I won’t take it off until I arrive home.“

I’ve actually never read anything by Hilary Mantel. Here we go.

Every once in a while, I tag along to an adult literacy class. It’s good to see how women are progressing and to give feedback to the teacher.

At one of the lessons, Sarah showed her homework. She was told to write a list of 10 oppositions, like fat - skinny, old - new, different - same. Sarah presented her list, which was great, but the last one made me frown. It said

pray - worship

"Poppy, your name is like a eating a hot pancake. It seems difficult, but actually it's not and you might end up asking for more."

Just finished this. I’ve heard so many people talk about this book for the past years, and I’ve finally decided to give it a go. I have to say I’m not very impressed - being a fan of dystopic science fiction I surely like the themes and topic. But, I’m not too fond of the style or the characters.

“My father was driving. We were in the city centre of Melbourne, on one of the huge highways crossing the banking district. Part of the highway was split into two bridges, one for each direction. Traffic was not too busy, but my father was in a hurry.

‘I’m speeding up,’ he murmured, and hit the gas pedal. My brother, cousin and I were pushed into our seats. I glanced at my brother and saw a flash of fear in his eyes. ‘This side takes too long. We need to win time. I need to overtake,’ my dad said. I looked through the front window. We were approaching the bridge with high speed. Our side was jammed, but the other direction was relatively quiet. Would we be able to make it? It was a stupid idea. Who on earth decides to overtake on a bridge, driving in the wrong lane?

My father switched lanes. For a few seconds, I couldn’t see cars coming towards us. Then, with astonishing speed, a blue car appeared. A flash of a pretty 30-something woman, black hair, light summer dress, reached my eyes before we were launched into the air.

Everything passed in slow motion. We floated, feeling weightless, like astronauts. I clamped onto my brother. My cousin had lost consciousness when his head hit the front window.

“It was Christmas and a very hot day. We went out to the forest to hang out and chill. We decided to go there with our huge and very shitty truck and try to see if we could drive it uphill - a very steep muddy hill with loads of trees. This of course did not work at all, so we decided to go back again, because Santa was supposed to arrive at our house pretty soon.

When we came home, we all sat down in the living room waiting for Santa Claus. When he entered the room, he immediately took off all his clothes and his fake beard. He was a skinny and ugly man, wearing a filthy wife beater and torn underwear. He smelled like alcohol and cigarettes, sat down, released a deep sigh and asked for vodka.

We gave him a longdrink filled with vodka and asked where our presents were. He threw us an annoyed look, sighed again, walked outside whilst banging the doors and started shuffling through his stuff outside. He then walked inside with a huge garbage bag. He emptied the garbage bag on our carpet, said “Good luck with this, suckers” and stormed off again, taking the vodka bottle with him.

“Experiences could be traumatic, as the merchant sailor Thomas Bowrey and his friends found out when they paid sixpence for a pint of ‘Bangha’, an infusion of cannabis, in India in the late seventeenth century: one ‘sat himself down upon the floor and wept bitterly all afternoon’; another, ‘terrified with fear ... put his head in a great jar and continued in that posture for four hours or more’; ‘four or five lay upon the carpets highly complimenting each other in high terms’, while another ‘was quarrelsome and fought with one of the wooden pillars of the porch until he had little skin upon the knuckles of the fingers’.

Alright. I’ve told you about the ‘mzungu’ thing. ‘Mzungu’ means ‘white person’ and especially the children (outside of cities) shout it at you when you walk by. Sometimes they add things, mostly ‘BYE’ or ‘HOW ARE YOU’ which sound more like ‘HAWAYU’, other options include ‘take a photo’ or ‘give me my money’ (of which the my-part is particularly interesting).

Two days ago, auntie Rose showed us her new calf. The mother of the calf died and now she is taking care of the calf. She said we could give it a name, and we called it Boris. The day after, we went back to cuddle Boris (it is a very fluffy cute baby cow), but he is very skinny and he was feeling a bit sick so he was moved into Rose’s courtyard. The people there had renamed Boris to kzungu. See the resemblance to mzungu? It’s something like ‘European cow’. I find it hilarious and still haven’t figured out if it is the real Lusoga word for a ‘European cow’ or if they made it up from ‘mzungo’ and made a cow version out of it.

Then, today, we met a really nice guy in Iganga. He is originally from Korea, doing his studies in the States, and he works with vaccinations here. He told us that Asians are also shouted at for their different looks, but not just ‘mzungu’. Kids just shout ‘CHINA!’ (not even ‘Chinese’) or (...hold your horses...) ‘chingchong mzungo’. CHINGCHONG MZUNGU! That is afwul. And hilarious. But racist! But I laughed so hard. I feel a bit bad about it, but it just sounds ridiculous(ly funny). Also because imagining kids shouting ‘CHINA’ reminds me of Donald Trump.

Who of you is on Goodreads?

I love keeping track of all the reading I do. (Even though my current book, The Silk Roads, is going very slow - but it’s really interesting).