Twenty-Six Years Young.... The Pappas Chronicles

It has been a little while since my last post, again I have been really busy and a lot has been happening. Firstly, I would just like to thank everyone for all the birthday messages, it was really nice of you all to remember, and take the time out to send the love my way – much appreciated!


So, what has been going on? Well rather a lot. Once again, if you spend any length of time in Bangkok and then you will find that there is rarely a dull moment! Gone are the days where I was sitting in my room watching DVD’s until 4am and waking up late. I am now a fully fledged responsible and respectable member of society! I have been juggling my jobs like a well trained circus act, and it’s really nice to have this structure to my life again. Every day I seem to be enjoying my work more and more and that is made possible simply by the people around me. Teaching James style certainly can be a lot of fun – especially when I am given the freedom to approach things from my own angles.


The last two weeks have flown by, which is a good thing really. I have been living on next to nothing every day and somehow I have gotten into the not so healthy habit of not eating all day until I get home at about 10pm, at which time I gorge myself on about three plates of food…. Not good to eat so late, but it is the cheap option. During the day I just drink coffee in various different forms. I was quite worried when I came here because I thought that coffee was going to be something I would have to live without, but in fact it turns out that Bangkok probably has more varieties of good coffee than anywhere in the world! I was also recently given six Starbucks cash cards worth 150Baht each, so I have been milking that too, even though I usually avoid the place because I am such a pretentious chump.


Last week was really good for me - it was after all my birthday! It all started on Monday when we had a student party at Boston Bright, the week of my birthday also coincided with the grand opening of this school and because of that there were lots of extra perks! The student party was basically some fun and games – Karaoke, dancing, bum fighting (not with homeless people) and food and drinks, yes that’s right alcohol. What happens when you mix work and alcohol? Well, I will tell you! It’s strange when teachers and students are all drinking together, it’s not the sort of mix that you usually associate with the profession of teaching, but it happened! I took my duty seriously and drank a mixture of bucksfizz and red wine (though not in the same glass) diligently until standing and talking to students was a difficulty, I then decided karaoke was a good idea. George (one of the managers/teachers) and I sang California Dreaming, by the Mamas and Papas, and managed to clear the party out pretty much…. The party was good and ended around 10pm. At which point I was somehow persuaded into going to Khao San with some of the teachers and students. I was persuaded because the suggested destination was Brick Bar – a really good live Ska club – I have mentioned it in previous posts (uffff, check me out ‘posts’ I am turning into some weird internet snob who uses this type of language, for this I am truly sorry). Dancing was on the cards. Before I knew it we had destroyed two bottles of Whisky between us all and it was 2am. At which point we continued to another bar and then a club until 5am was the time on my phone. In a moment of drunken realization, it suddenly dawned on me that I had work the next morning, and at that point I threw myself into a taxi in disgust and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening! Morning came in record time, I woke up as soon as I lay down, still fully dressed and drunk, there was something wrong, I couldn’t move. I really couldn’t move! The right-hand side of my body was causing me agonizing pain. My shoulder, my arm and my wrist were swollen and I don’t know why, the muscle pain was immense! I peeled myself out of bed, and into the shower, I still don’t know how I managed to do that. I spent the whole day quite hung over, but more importantly, without being able to use my right arm! By the time I went home, I decided I would just lie in bed and watch a DVD and sleep. I opened my laptop for the first time in a few days, and then something bad happened, for some reason the screen was absolutely bollocksed! Why! What the frig? Then I remembered, a few days prior, my wonderful laptop bag – something designed to carry laptops, at the prime old age of three months decided to destroy itself. As I was walking the strap just gave way leaving my laptop to the hands of gravity, which of course caused the tragedy which I now speak of. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, it didn’t fall very far and the bag is supposed to be protective – not so! So now I am in the position where my laptop is in need of a new screen something which will cost me around 5000Baht, close to a hundred squids. But still, despite the obvious annoyance of not having the laptop at the moment, I cant complain too much it only cost me 90 – THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN KATE AND MARK! So the overall cost will still be less than 200 bob (Sorry – there are no pound signs on this computer!).


So that night I was in pain and pretty peeved with the entire situation! So for the last few nights I have been without the joy of music or movies – I compensated by playing a DVD of Hellboy2 every night to listen to the sound – the sound was the Thai dub version, I have now heard this film about 8 times! I went to sleep feeling pretty pained. Morning came and despite being well rested, I was in more pain than the day before, and this time it was both shoulders which were causing me pain. My wrist was still swollen, and I couldn’t even put my shirt on. I decided to call in sick and go to the hospital. I ended up going to four hospitals before eventually giving up. To get treatment in a hospital, you need your passport – my passport was at work! So I took some pain killers and tried to deal with it! Later that evening I went to my usual spot and ate with my Thai family, they were a bit concerned at my predicament and they took me to a late night pharmacy – one of the wonders of Bangkok. Pharmacies where you can get pretty much any drug without prescription. The pharmacists usually speak good English and I managed to get some muscle relaxants, some strong ibuprofen and some deep heat gel. Within an hour of taking the medicine I was back to top form – pretty amazing really, and to think all that only cost me 130Baht its pretty incredible really – self medicating! I’m pleased to say that the next day, I was fit for work and there was no chance of my pain ruining my birthday!


Friday then was my birthday; I worked all day and partied all night in good style. I decided it would be nice to work on my birthday and be with people I like and know rather than just stay home. I had been jokingly telling students it was my birthday for a couple of weeks and because of that I ended up getting so many nice surprises! After about half an hour of being at work I got a knock at the door and four of my students appeared bearing a small cake with a candle, they sang happy birthday to me – it was really sweet! They had taken time out from their busy exam schedule to come in, get a cake and wish me a happy birthday – I was really touched! The president was then set and the day continued in this fashion! I received congratulations from everyone I know, I think it has to be a record for the amount of times people have sung me Happy Birthday! One of my other students Gig brought me another cake, I got a ragamuffin type doll from another student and then later that day I was taken for ice-cream by some more students. One of then Pink, then gave me a beautiful leather notebook to go with the pen I had been flashing around – my good friend Es had previously bought me a really nice Ralph Lauren pen which looks and feels really expensive, and I got her a bracelet for her birthday two weeks earlier.


By the end of the day I was pretty tired, teaching and receiving gifts can do that to a man! Luckily for me by birthday also coincided with the staff party at Boston Bright! So at 10pm we all went to a restaurant/bar and celebrated the double celebration! All paid for by Khun Prasit – the multi millionaire who owns the school – in good nature, he also attended, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and dancing just like everyone else – it was strange, he just looked like a teenager not a scary millionaire businessman!. It was such a nice night! All fifty-plus staff in one place together around a big table eating, drinking and dancing. There was a live bang who played happy birthday to me about five times! Every time I had to get up on and du a little dance of gratitude! I was given a really nice birthday card signed by the marketing team soaked in lipstick kisses, and then the piece du resistance was a delicious cake presented to me in the proper tradition which included a promised kiss from one of the admin team – Ivan a really nice gay guy who I work with. The icing on the cake came when I was dragged on stage by the band and a couple of women and then thoroughly embarrassed! They wanted me to sing a song, I would love to have sung a song, but I couldn’t thing of one I knew all the words to (except Happy Birthday – and I wasn’t going to sing that to myself!). I had to awkwardly bow out and apologize; I compensated by saying a few words of thanks to everyone for being so welcoming and then passed the mic. The girls who dragged me up there felt really bad! I didn’t know them, but one in particular was very apologetic, but I really didn’t mind – what’s a birthday without a little embarrassment! The party began to finish up by about 1:30am and people started going their separate ways. Ross, one of my fellow teachers said we should go for a drink somewhere, and so we went out to Nana – Sukhumvit soi 4 for a couple of hours. We proceeded to eat my birthday cake with some bargirls and I was bought a brandy by them. We then went on to a rock club with another live band and had a few more drinks before we decided to go home – Ross was trying hard to get me to do something bad and go home with a woman, but I decided it was already a really nice night and I was more than happy to go home half stewed yet contented! I had the weekend off work to relax which was perfect.


Well I say perfect…. I had to co to Cambodia on the Sunday at 5am on a VISA run as my work permit is still to be sorted out and my old VISA was to expire on the 23rd of this month. The bus goes straight to the Cambodian border and then returns the same day. It was of course all paid for and all I had to do was turn up. Saturday evening I ate some food and celebrated a little with my family and then decided just to go out alone for a few soi beers before I got my bus. Well drinking until 5am usually spells some form of disaster, and maybe it isn’t the best idea when you have to sit on a bus full of Americans, Australians, Europeans and Japanese, but it was my birthday weekend. I met up with my friend Tukta in Sukhumvit and we got quite drunk, I realized the time and I was nearly late for my bus! I ran off down the street and said a fleeting goodbye to her whilst she was on the phone. As I registered my passport and got on the bus I sat down in the most uncomfortable seat possible and realized I was a bit too pissed to be on this bus! The bus was in a bit of a hurry to leave, but before it did I looked up and there was Tukta! She got on the bus just to wish me a good trip and then the bus left with her still onboard! Oh dear! What a disaster that was! She had to pay for her ticket and because she didn’t have her passport, it meant she was destined for a very unhappy day! We did our best to sleep in no space at all – disturbing as many people as is humanly possible! Tukta was pretty pissed off with herself and couldn’t believe what had happened, and because we were both drunk, we were also being quite vocal! Everyone had really nice seats – reclining sleeper chairs, but for some reason at the back of the bus there was a horseshoe arrangement of bench seats with a fold out table in the middle. The space was already full and uncomfortable as fuck before I got onboard, so I don’t have to go into too much detail of how uncomfortable it was with both of us onboard! We did our best to sleep, with my bad shoulder I was in agony. By 9am we had reached the Cambodian border and I had to just leave Tukta at the Cambodian border passport check, she was in a bad mood and all lone – I really felt sorry for her! As for me, well I didn’t get that much of a better deal! I, along with the other VISA runners was lead through customs and immigration and then we waited in the baking heat for a series of minibuses which took us to a casino resort! Free breakfast which was about as disgusting as it can get! I ate a plate of cold eggs, ham, pancakes and vegetables. I then proceeded to drink too much terrible coffee, chain smoke cigarettes (in an attempt to annoy Americans) and read my book.


The resort was really surreal, made more so by the sleepless hangover, the coffee and the fact I was reading Satre. More minibuses arrived bringing more people – nobody seemed to be leaving – it was like something out of Hotel California! I started thinking we were all going to be gassed or that the food was poison and that this was some Cambodian/Thai method of ethnic cleansing! I tried to sit and relax on a sofa, I stared aimlessly around, the building was trying to be grandeur, it was open planned will a high ceiling, the bellhops had a tacky charm, however the decoration was pure tack. At first glance it all looks quite well kitted out; on closer inspection the building is a shambles stuffed with cheap jackpots and gambling machines, thin, poorly cut golden coloured drapes, and badly upholstered furniture. I looked on watching Japanese tourists fruitlessly trying to win money – from this I took minor amusement, all I really wanted though was to be back home and in bed! After three hours of this waiting, the call finally came and we could go back through immigration and onto the bus. I found Tukta who started sobbing with tears of joy, tiredness and relief! I got my passport back and we boarded the bus – resuming the worlds most uncomfortable position for the return leg of the journey. The only good thing to come out of this all was that somehow Cambodian/Thai immigration made a mistake and somehow gave me three months on my VISA and not one – giving plenty of time to sort out the work permit. Once we got home we went to sleep for a long long time! With that all behind me I could now start the working week again rested. I was glad to have gotten that all over with, I am just a bit disappointed that there were no real sights of interest during the journey – although it was certainly memorable even though it was probably for the wrong reasons!


So this week, I have just been doing my thing really, working and teaching, teaching and working. Its good so far I don’t get to the point where I desire my days off, it never gets to the state where mid-week comes and I need a holiday, everything hangs in perfect balance. Tuesday saw the start of Bangkok International Film Festival, i have been doing some work with them since mid-August and so I have a free pass to all the films and seminars. I have also set up a film night at school which means I take a group of ten students every night at 7pm to see one of the screenings which is really nice – for me anyway! The films of course are from all over the world, but the main reason I am doing this for my students is because many of the films (all the ones I have selected for them) have a Q&A session at the end with the director/producer of the film, and this is a really good opportunity for the students to practice and demonstrate asking formal questions in English. So far it has been a little hit and miss, the first two films were documentaries and the students didn’t really engage – even though they were both really interesting films! The first one was made by two first time directors who worked as AD’s on Fahrenheit 9/11, the film was called Trouble the Water and was about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on a group of impoverished black Americans who lived in New Orleans. The second film was a Thai documentary entitled The Convert which was about a Thai Buddhist woman who chose to marry a Thai Muslim man and convert her faith. It was a really moving film which left the starting point of being a film about religion and became a deeply personal journey. This was made even more touching when the couple (along with their two children) joined the three directors for a talk and Q&A afterwards. Unfortunately my students walked out of the latter to my disappointment, it seems that many Thais only look for entertainment when it comes to visual stimuli, which is a but saddening – but when you look at Thai TV or even the films which are popular here it is something you realize quickly! But, that is not to say that there isn’t a proportion of the population which think otherwise. The attendance here at the festival isn’t as large as I would have thought, I can just walk into any screening I choose, great in some ways, but for the festival itself it is a bit of a shame. Last night I went to see a Feature fiction film from India – Frozen – shot in B/W at freezing temperatures in the Himalayan/Chinese/Pakistan border this film made by a first time crew was astonishing. Beautiful in its cinematography, its rhetoric and also in its soundtrack (think along the lines of Neil Young’s accompaniment to Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man), the film is breathtakingly stunning and a complete contrast to what you may expect from Indian cinema. Saying that though India is the worlds greatest producer of films at the rate of over 1000 a year and it always has eclipsed the number made in Hollywood so of course there is room for diversification. The director was also present for a lively debate, and he was a really nice guy who was able to have a joke and a very open and intellectual discussion at the same time. If you get the chance – please see this film. Tonight I will go to see Woody Allen’s new film, was going to watch a couple of films as I am in the middle of a three day break which is really nice, but I got up quite late and then went to finish this update off as well as getting some household necessities – soap, toothbrush, mouthwash and some razors.


I got paid this Friday which was really nice! A full month’s pay as well, no working in arrears which is fantastic, I had to pay back my 12000B loan from work and I also have to pay my overdue rent, but after that I should be quite comfortable for the rest of the month. Once I get my next pay packet, I will be in a really strong position which is a relief, the last few weeks have been a bit hard, but now I have the income, a bank account and a VISA which will last until I get my work permit sorted out I am in the comfort zone. At the end of next months I will pay my family back the 100 squid they helped me out with and I will be back on par! It would be really nice if I could use my internet banking so I can transfer some money every month to my English account so that I can start paying off the pure dirty debts!


I received a really nice present from Dave Jones – thank you sir! The most recent copy of VICE magazine – a free magazine which cost you an ugly 10.01 GBP to send to me! I cant believe it was so expensive! Don’t worry about future additions, just put them to one side for me if you can and I will have a nice pile to read when I get back! Also whilst I am on the topic of Dave Jones, I just want to send some more love your way and to Daliah too. I expect you to now be suffering from sore bum disease as you are winging your way around the Australian coastline on a super light bicycle – I want to wish you the best of luck and offer you grand congratulations for getting on the case – safe journey. If you are reading this and you have facebook then try and find Dave as like me he also has a Blogspot, I’m pretty sure he will have a link to it, and if he hasn’t started writing yet then he is a bad boy! I will check it out later and place a link to his site on my blog for easy access. Daliah, I hope all is going well and that you are not missing him too much already – please drop me a line if you have time!


I also managed to procure a new laptop from work this week, which I am writing to you on now. I decided that if you don’t ask then you don’t get anything in life, so I explained the problem with my computer, and made a case for why I thought it would be beneficial for me to have a computer and they accepted it. So now I am writing to you on a brand new super swanky Toshiba Satellite laptop – the pure sweet deal! At least I don’t have top fall asleep to the sound of Hellboy 2 the Thai dub anymore! But in all seriousness, I do need a laptop for work and a laptop for home…. Well okay I don’t but I’m not going to give it back now am I? I can’t really think of a time in my life where I have fallen so well on my feet, everything seems to be falling into place at an exponential rate.


Whilst I was at the internet café today I applied for a job as a screenwriter on a feature film. I don’t know too much about it but I sent my resume and background along with a long detailed message to the director about why I think I would be a useful addition to his team, hopefully I will get a reply. Ideally the point of me being here is to teach, to travel absorb some culture, get some life experience and knowledge to help me develop myself for my future goals in life – but it is also very important that I make some good contacts and work as much as I can in film related projects, so in this way I am always looking to see what’s going on and it would be really good for me to be involved in some capacity on a project like this, as I have said before, being a filmmaker is very important to me, I have a lot that I want to say and I fell in love with cinema and the medium of film a long time ago and it is a language unto itself which I feel I can convey myself in most eloquently. I am at the same time though willing to be very patient, and in this way I see myself as easing my way into this game, at the moment I want to develop myself and live, I need life experience before I can tell stories and I am happy for filmmaking to be an old mans game for me. In the mean time I will stay active on the periphery, keep writing and thinking, one day it will all pan out, that I am sure of.


If you managed to read all the way to here without quitting then well done! I’m sorry that these updates take the form of long winded catch-up’s rather than regular short updates, but it seems to be more convenient for me and suits my style better. So now that you have reached the end I would like to say one last thing… send me some comments! At the moment there are only two brave souls who are doing this – my sister Christina (welcome back to the UK), and my good friend Kate ‘the good egg’ Broughton. I don’t care what you write, but please take the time, it gives me a little hope, and tops up my ego with a bit of the old five star unleaded.