Eagle beavers

Just a quiet evening at home tonight, the first in ages. I've been to the gym, and am about to sit down and read yesterday's Bangkok Post. Phimphone, the owner of the minimart near my work, puts a copy aside for me each day and never lets me forget.
You should see Sengdara, the gym I go to here. It's a great, big, searingly modern building with a green glass dome that looks completely out of place in my neighbourhood, or, indeed, anywhere in this sleepy riverside city. Despite the hefty membership fees ($220 for the year), a lot of the equipment breaks down and no one fixes it, and often, in the early morning, you have to ask the staff very kindly to put the lights on. Also, they don't like switching on the fans, although apparently this is because you don't lose weight unless you are pouring with sweat.
[Related: The Lao also believe that drinking iced water makes you catch a cold, and drinking hot water will cure you. It's simple, really.]
Anyway, the staff at the front desk are all young and hip, but there's also an army of cleaners in grey tops everywhere you look, which you get used to after a while.
It's a great gym.
Plus, plus, you can get a massage anytime for only $3.
I'll admit it- I've been getting them once a week...

Anyway, today's post is dedicated to Sengthong, another of the younger journalists at work, who submitted a story to me today with that headline. What is an eagle beaver? I wondered, for at least several minutes. Finally I asked him. “You know, when you work really hard,” he answered, looking all uncertain and frowning, because he knew he’d written the wrong thing.
Eager beaver. Gotcha.

Oi oi oi Part II
Last week, I uttered words I never imagined I would hear myself say, and those words were: “Yes, of course I will see you tomorrow night at the Laos v Australia Under-17 Asia Cup soccer match”.
So we went that night, and screamed abuse at the poor little tackers on the field for not scoring a single goal, and again two nights later when we beat Indonesia 3-1. Anyway, the Lao soccer crowd was remarkably subdued, although maybe it was just that we were behaving like hooligans…
In case you’re interested, which I wasn’t by the third match, Laos pulverised Indonesia 6-0, and thus qualified for the finals. We didn't. But we've never been good at soccer, and playing Asia rather than South America doesn't change that.
Whatever. It was a big deal at the paper. The whole office taught me to yell “Australie- Sou Sou Sou!” which hopefully is equivalent to "Go Go Go!" because we were yelling it for the whole match.

Weather Update:
It finally rained on the weekend, a gentle rain washing away all that dust that sticks to your clothes and filling up all the holes in the roads and the caved-in pavements. It was awesome- an excuse to put on jeans and long sleeves and ride around in the rain.
I’m convinced that one of these days I’m going to fall down one of those holes.
And today it was boiling hot again.
I'm dreading April.

Funeral
There’s nothing my office loves more than to teach me all about Lao culture. The editor’s mother-in-law passed away last week. He was thrilled, actually, as was everyone else in the office, because it meant they got to show me what happens over here when someone dies.
On Friday, the whole office, in their tireless dedication to breaking the news and, you know, getting the story out there, dropped everything and drove out to the editor’s house to pay their respects to the dead, offer up a prayer and, most importantly, sit down to a hefty meal.
The coffin was the most elaborately decorated thing I’ve ever seen, complete with flashing coloured fairy lights and everything. We all gathered around it, and bowed our heads while one of the journalists said something respectful, and the widower responded. Then a silver bowl was passed around and everyone put money in.
[Actually, earlier in the week, I think I made a big faux-pas when the office took up a collection for the massive wreath. I put in 20,000 kip, which is about $2, and everyone raised their eyebrows and murmured to each other in Laos, and then when I checked the list later, I realised that everyone else had put in between 5000-10,000 kip, and I felt all embarrassed, like I'd deliberately been ostentatious, but how was I to know??]
Anyway, death for Buddhists is traditionally a happy occasion, a festive event, hence the flashing lights and great big meal. But I looked up during the prayers and the dead woman’s sister was crying a bit.
And, just for the record, yes, okay, I took photos while I was in there. But someone from the office was filming the whole thing! They film everything. They have a camera fetish. No one batted an eyelid. Okay?

Related to this is the fact that I’ve been scouting for the perfect monk shots all week, but I never seem to have my camera out at the right time. There was a monk checking his email in the Internet café below my work the other day, and another in the supermarket looking at peanut butter. I’ve seen a couple on motorbikes as well, which is hilarious.

A lot of them are just kids whose families are too poor to look after them. A temple is the equivalent of being sent away to a boarding school or a foster family, and often the boy’s families get money or land for their contribution. I’ve been gathering information on this from the boys at work, a couple of whom have done their obligatory one week stint already.

Related even further to this is that my Lao is coming along oh-so-slowly, although some people, (namely everyone in the office who think the sun shines out of my arse anyway), seem to think I'm doing ok. I'm having two lessons with Phitsamai a week, and I learn something new each time.

Chao ar gnu chack pee? (How old are you?)
Khoy ar gnu sao hoc pee. (I am 26 years old.)

I've learnt numbers, days, timeframes (years, months, days, hours, minutes) and kitchenware (knife: meed, fork: sorm etc), and I can also tell the time, although sometimes it takes me a while.
Lao is too simple to be easy. There are only three verb tenses, and very few connectors between words. No "a" or "the" or "I would have done it had I been there" type of thing. Sensible really. And that's why English is an absolute nightmare for my workmates.

Anyway, I'd like to really learn it, mainly because I'd like to live here for a while and understand what's going on. Unlike in, say, France, the locals love hearing you speak their language, however haltingly, and will wait patiently while you struggle to ask for a glass ("chork") or some water ("nam"). Just as they love it when the girls wear sins.

On that note, I've got to go and study. I just love it when Phitsamai says "geng lai!" which means "very good". Also, I've got to read the newspaper so that I can take it into the office tomorrow, where the journalists will all pounce on it. Paying $1.20 for the paper each day is completely unthinkable for them, which is why I'm buying the office a subscription.