hairy pet

OMG, have you guys ever had a clogged bathtub for days b/c your property management team is really just a gang of slum landlords who fire the maintenance team leader and so you're left with the one guy (JACK, with the front tooth missing) who, when you ask to please not smoke in your studio, he throws it out in your hallway and stomps on it, and who is averse to long term solutions, therefore brings over, the bottle of super-dosy acid that, according to him, you mustn't get even one splash on your skin, b/c it would burn right through the bone? Ouch. And that is what he's poured placidly down my baththub drain while simultaneously telling me about the guy he borrowed the acid from has a hole in his thumb that you can see right through because of his ill-handling of this crazy ass shit. I'm wonderinh... a) Don't you need like a license to handle chemicals like this? and b) What would happen if I actually poured an entire bucket over someone? Would they fry away into non-existence? Anyway, two days later, my tub clogs again. And so I, rather than bitch and complain, choose to look at the bright side of things, and use it as a motivation for me to work out at school and use the locker showers instead. It's been over a week now, and considering he's the ONLY maintenance guy in charge of 35 apartment buildings, Jack's E.T.A is looking pretty dismal. Therefore, I take matters into my own hands and try the plunger (last time i tried this, all I got was black corrosive sludge surging up and not going anywhere). But, I do that mental exercise that I do right before I'm about to eat a deep fried frog and now I'm prepared to take on whatever may creep up from my drainhole. And so after plunging away, I write this email partly out of disgust, partly out of relief, but mostly to settle my queeziness. I guess writing this email is kind of like that phenomena some of you might be able to relate to - you know, when your feet smell, you want the person next to you to smell it too? I guess you really had to be there to experience what I just did, b/c it reminded me of that same extraction I had to go through in thejungles of Peru when I had the worm in my breast. You see, as I was plunging, I noticed this black blob POP UP!... and as soon as I maneuvered my plunger to get a hold of it, it would immediately SINK RIGHT BACK DOWN the drainhole, like it KNEW that I was after it! With each round of plunging, the black blob's mass emerged more and more. Well, the rest is history, and I'm about to clean up that hairy mess, but not before taking a foto of it and disseminating it to you all...

life on the T/B border

Yo my peeps! The other day at the Mae Tao Clinic here, this K---- (ethnic group from B----) dude came in b/c his penis hurt. When the doctor and my med school friend probed the patient (no pun intended) about it, they found out that he had injected coconut oil into his schlonger to enlarge it. I guess they're late adopters of the penis pump here. so, I'm finally starting to adjust to all the bugs over here, they can't seem to get enough of me and I'm slowly accepting the fact that these bugs are here to stay. Fortunately, I don't think any of them have the potential to lay larvae in my body like Amazon bugs, thank god, but I have other things to worry about - malaria, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, cockroaches the size of mice that hopefully don't fly. And mangy dogs. dogs here suck, and they like to bite people, like me. I got attacked by a dog last week, possibly rabid, so I'm on now a month-long, 5-injection course of rabies vaccine. Really, it wasn't too bad, my leg got a little gashed up, no stitches though. As for my work, I had the chance of attending a BP District Field meeting held by my org and their collaborating agencies at a location i can't disclose. Let's just say I had to dress like an ethnic K---- and live in a refugee camp near the border to attend this 4-day meeting. So there I sat, shootin' the shit with the ------------- etc. I mostly sat and listened, but got to chime in once in a while when they mentioned human rights survey, advocacy, or they needed an explanation on some public health terminology. Got to chew some betelnut with them. Was constipated for 7 days. My work has been picking up, as I'm about to start up training sessions. I'll have to travel north for a week, then south a week later. this is because we have a bajillion logistical hurdles to go through. like having to sneak medics into thailand from b----, how to rent a truck to carry to transport illegals, how to ..one of our budget line items is bribing thai officials to permit road access...we were even trying to figure out a way to carry our printers on a boat to take to our trainings...besides all that excitement, the food is just as exciting, especially since there's always an element of surprise and I get to eat so many things out of plastic bags, even my lemonade. If I'm lucky, I actually end up getting what I ordered. And that happens when I can point to what I want. Otherwise, I just accept the fact that I might be eating fishball soup, again. ok, miss you all dearly, i gotta meeting to run to, SAWADEEKAAAA!!!

ps. i really liked to wash down fried amphibians with a cold iced nescafe in a bag on a hot summer afternoon...if you look close, the mommy frog is holding on to her baby frog when they fried the crap out of the two.