jai

A in Chiang Rai city in late Dec 2004:
phom sabai dii, tae mai sabai jai....

as he said this he thumped his chest to emphasise his point. & when I heard this, mutual sadness + sao jai + dismay + sense of shared resignation + tirng chii wit (something I kept hearing when watching e movie Satrii Lek aka. Iron Ladies I) + fatalistic attitude.

as my room mate had observed, up in e hills A was in his element, totally hyper + kii len, full of jokes & pranks & proud to show us his home & share with e city people e enormous amount he knew about Akha life & culture & survival in e wild. less than half an hour's ride away down in e lowlands, he was a quiet subdued hilltribe villager, illiterate & a fish out of water in a city full of newspapers & magazines, road signs, advertisement billboards & packaging labels, election campaign posters & flyers, internet cafes & bookstores. total role reversal - e city people had to read e restaurant menu for him. we are both e same age.

khaw mai sabai jai, chan kor meuan kan

another incident stuck in my mind: sitting at e back of a songthaew with A, with e rest wondering why he was so captivated by e vehicle that had stopped behind us at a traffic junction.

hen a lai?

krungthep (pointing to e vehicle licence plate that indicates e province it was registered in)

=|

e capital of a country that he lives in & but doesn't want him, & e capital that his people cannot travel to unless they have e necessary documents needed to exit their province, which they cannot apply for unless they have citizenship, which they cannot get unless they can prove that they were born in e country, which they cannot prove unless their birth was registered, when most were born in remote villages high in e mountains, a long long trek from any government office....one of e first questions he'd asked us about Singapore was whether we could travel around freely or did we need permits to get from one end to another.

maybe this cut so deep because of all those 2-week social visit passes that I was given on return to Singapore, e foreign student no. that I had to live with & be identified by throughout kindergarten & primary school, e half-A4 size citizenship cert that had to be produced together with e alien birth cert, e pri 6 confusion over whether I should be given a NRIC, e big fat endorsement in my passport that allowed me to stay in Singapore only up till before my 22nd birthday, e endless trips to e old immigration at Empress Place, & e year that I couldn't travel out of Singapore - if I'd wanted to I'd have to apply for a student pass to continue with e rest of uni & get hold of a employment pass after I graduated if I wanted to stay on here with my family....but then unlike A, I am literate & earn more than 150 baht (~SGD6) a day & have income for more than a few months a year....but then again, like A, I am 'wanted' only if I am of economic value....

************

sabai jai, khao jai (enter heart = understand), jai yen (heart cool = calm), jai dam (heart black = mean), nae jai (sure heart = certain), tok jai (fall heart = shock), phor jai (enough heart = satisfied), wai jai (preserve heart = trust), khorp jai (thank heart = grateful), jai diaw (heart only = faithful), jai loy (heart float = absentminded), jai rawn (heart hot = impatient) & so many other jai....everything is about jai, which is just so Thai =)

realise that despite 2 semesters of standard Central Plains Thai + 3 weeks in Chiang Rai (jao instead of kha), tendency to lapse into Bangkok Thai is still there....'r' becoming 'l', vanishing 'l's, plaaw --> bao etc. childhood habits die hard, but might be useful in learning Laotian which I heard has some similarities to Bangkok Thai =P

in case I ever forget: e dai+verb (did/done) & verb+dai grammar (can or cannot do)!!!!

somehow this brings to mind watching countless shooting stars criss-crossing e constellations as they raced across e nightsky in Ban Apa, & explaining to Jamu our fascination for something so mundane to him - he can easily sit back after dinner every night & watch them rain down above his roof

thii Singkapor hen mai dai daaw tok phraw wa fai yeut

************

totally unrelated, record before I forget....

joking with someone at Borders on 2nd day of CNY:
"....it may not be idiot-proof but it proves that you are an idiot =P"

[ filed under: thai1 + chiangrai_2004 + thewonderingstraycat ]