Breathing in breathing out.: Another week another year.

Being 79 years old in Thailand is a bit of an oddity, like having size 11 shoes. On Thursday the teachers gave me a Thai style hand made indigo cotton shirt with white stitching. In the evening the Isan Survivor mob all went out to dinner and gave me a cake, a bottle of hand sanitizer,(someone remembered my asking if it was possible to buy same in Phonphissai) and a cast metal standing Buddah. Jack explained that families would give metal to the monks who would melt it down and cast images from the amalgam of all the metals offered. So the item could contain iron, bronze, brass, lead, gold or silver. A remarkable piece of distributive justice or sharing. A lovely birthday present.

79 with Volunteers.

I took the bus, after an hour and twenty minute wait;(there are no timetables) to Nong Khai to meet Alex, a Spanish man who has taught here for some years and knows the paradoxes of the system. Alex provided quite an orientation. His main points were that most of the text books provided are unintelligible to the students, that conveying English sounds via the Thai alphabet with its 40 characters and sounds is problematic, that the education system likes to have English speakers around but they are in danger of showing up the Thai English teachers and that the system is satisfied with about 15% of students learning a smattering of English. Depressing? Impossible? Challenging?
Fortunately there is a breakthrough method, by compiling a series of essential words and demonstrating the English sound which the students then convey to themselves and write it in their Thai script. Reading is another matter and granted a sufficiently simple text they can read English.
Too much detail? Maybe I am just trying to make sense of the system by explaining it to the old mates.

Small Business. Lotus flowers and seeds for anyone?

            Don't it always seem to go
            That you don't know what you've got
            ‘Til it's gone
            They paved paradise
             And put up a parking lot
Joni Mitchel's words as true as ever; not a parking lot just, putting in a fuel station up the road from here. The road has a 120 kilometer limit and runs through the village. The fuel stop will have a franchised coffee shop, a 7/11 store and maybe more. It is less than the legal distance for a petrol station from the temple, but that will be fixed, and it will not be done by moving the temple, rather I suspect by moving shekels.
   What this will mean to the village is that locals will have access to a range of packaged products some of which have been provided by little home stores along the lanes. It is part of a bigger picture which I find disturbing, or at least puzzling.
The now impeached former Prime Minister, Taksin got into the oil business in a big way, arm in arm with Middle Eastern mates. He arranged cheap finance for people to buy cars. They needed this fore their cars eh? Traffic problems? Loan repayment problems and re-possessions? Sure, but more fuel needed along the main roads per kind favour of Taksin's company. No probs! You could say he was an infrastructure PM.
   Thai businessmen and investors know of the E Myth, that if you like making and selling a certain product, like cakes, you will never make heaps of money because if you make good cakes you will create
a massive demand and have to employ staff, then have bigger overheads and never have a moment to yourself. So what do you do? You set up a franchise, sell the formula, the recipes, the staffing and management schemes, the advertising stuff and all. Then you are selling businesses which sell your products and the growth is exponential. Maconalds is the iconic example, across the world. Each time I visit Thailand there is a batch of new franchises. Many of the latest have also found the never-fail slow poison: ingredients, sugar and salt. So come in obesity, bye small family livelihoods.