Granted, it wasn’t too much money, 250 Baht to be exact (around 8 bucks). After the official festivities of orientation finished up, someone suggested that we needed some hardcore rejuvenation to help us recover from the effects of a flight half way around the planet. This sounded innocuous enough, plus jet lag still had me in no shape to protest. I hopped in the car along with the rest of the crew and a couple of Thai grad students and headed of to an “Ancient Thai Massage Center”.
When I got there, I realized this may not be the greatest idea, since Thai massage is known for its forceful pulling and stretching of limbs. Given my recent shoulder problems (for anyone who missed it, the video is available here), I wasn’t thrilled with this plan, and decided to settle for a foot massage instead. This would’ve worked out great, except that everyone else decided to go for the full 2 hour punishment, and you know what they say, “when in Thailand….give in to peer pressure”. I asked the grad students to tell the massage people that I had a shoulder problem, and to watch out for it (I didn’t feel like trying to explain what “dislocated” meant). They seemed to get the message across easily enough, so they led us away to the torture chamber.
First we exchanged our shoes for slippers and drank some nicely urine colored (though delicious) tea. Then they marched us up the stairs to a room that looked like a bowling alley with camping mattresses on the floor and hospital style curtains that could be drawn to separate each section. They closed the curtains, and we put on the provided wardobe, consisting of bright green pants which could have fit 3 of me and an even brighter green shirt. I don’t have a picture of this, but if I ever find one I’ll make sure to put it up. I’m guessing I probably looked like the Jolly Green Giant’s unfortunate sidekick, the “slightly uncomfortable green short guy”
I won’t go through all the details of the massage itself, since I think I’ve successfully repressed most of them by now, though some highlights included the deliberate depravation of blood flow to my limbs and the audible cracking of my wrists, which made the masseuse laugh out loud, Here was a woman who was at least in her 60s, possibly older, who had hands like the jaws of life and knew how to use them on unsuspecting westerners. The real icing on the cake though, was when she went to stretch my leg by placing her foot in probably the most unfortunate location she could think of, and pulling on my leg while pushing away. Ok, so it wasn’t really a kick per se, but I’m counting it since it registered at least that high on the testicular pain-o-meter. Needless to say, after the whole process was over all the girls couldn’t stop talking about how much fun they’d had, and how great they felt, while Joey (my roommate) and I sat silently staring straight ahead and unable to say much of anything.
My shoulder ended up working out fine, though I did have to stop her from pulling on my arm a few times. All in all, it was probably not the most rejuvenating afternoon, but it certainly did keep me awake.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Orientation in the Orient
Two days ago we had our official greeting here at KMUTT. This was a little more formal than I was expecting, as the Vice President of something-or-rather met us in an officially set up conference room complete with personal microphones at every seat. Needless to say, this was a little overwhelming, especially since we were told to wear, “the best clothes we have”, and I neglected to bring a tie. No one seemed to notice my lack of neckware, and afterwards we were taken to our respective labs. I’m working in the Institute for Field Robotics (I think), part of the Mechanical Engineering department, in a lab which is eerily reminiscent of the garages of many people I know, minus the three giant Robot arms which dominate the room. Here's the view from my desk:
The grad students in the lab are very welcoming, and they all speak English to varying degrees. However, between their thick Thai accents, and my rapid and inadvertent use of American slang, communication can be tough. Still, I think I’m able to talk to them relatively well, even if sometimes I have to write down what I’m trying to say.
Following the morning’s introductions, we came back to the conference room in the afternoon for lunch and an engrossing engineering ethics workshop. I don’t have much to say about this, since I was still drunk on jet lag and stabbing myself in the leg with a pen to stay awake. More interesting (and painful) than the workshop was its aftermath, which I think deserves its own post.
Meanwhile, in other news:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/27/space.toilet.ap/index.html
The grad students in the lab are very welcoming, and they all speak English to varying degrees. However, between their thick Thai accents, and my rapid and inadvertent use of American slang, communication can be tough. Still, I think I’m able to talk to them relatively well, even if sometimes I have to write down what I’m trying to say.
Following the morning’s introductions, we came back to the conference room in the afternoon for lunch and an engrossing engineering ethics workshop. I don’t have much to say about this, since I was still drunk on jet lag and stabbing myself in the leg with a pen to stay awake. More interesting (and painful) than the workshop was its aftermath, which I think deserves its own post.
Meanwhile, in other news:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/27/space.toilet.ap/index.html
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
It’s just a jump to the left.
Actually, if you think about it, it is almost. Look at any map of the world and you can start in Boston, then make one leftward jump to LA, then another to Taipei, then another to Kuala Lumpur. OF course, then you do have to take a small step to the right again (and travel about 2 hours by plane north) before you get to Bangkok. Directions aside, the whole journey boils down to a major time warp. And, as such, I have no idea what time is actually is right now, but suffice to say that it’s late enough according to my system that I’ll be writing the rest of this tomorrow.
10 hours later, here we are again, having just returned from a sojourn to the nearby 7-11 for water, starchy snacks, and yogurt. I’ll backtrack to the flights of yesterday before I move on to today. A series of flights totaling about 26 hours is about as exciting as you’d think it’d be, so I won’t delve into gory details. However, I did enjoy certain aspects of the trip, such as the woman in the Malaysia Airlines safety video wearing too much makeup and beckoning my fellow passengers and I to, “Please join me on our journey into safety.” Afterwards, she proceeded to explain what we should do in the event of a “water landing”. Something about this phrase struck me, most importantly that, at least, the 747 that I was sitting on, was not equipped with the proper pontoons for any sort of “water landing”. I guess the phrase, “crash and burn in the middle of the Pacific” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Before landing in Taipei, the friendly Malaysia Airlines staff also reminded us that our seat backs and tray tables must be the upright and locked position, our seatbelts should be fastened tightly and, “trafficking of narcotics is illegal, and carries punishments including the death penalty. Thank you.” The way they phrased this seemed to imply that drug mules were punished beyond just the death penalty, at which point all I could think about was a crew of dead drug traffickers picking up trash on the side of the road. I think I’ve been flying too long.
After a brief stop in Taipei, it was on to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After wandering for a bit, we crashed for a few hours in Malaysian Burger King until our next flight. On the way there, I spotted this:
Viva la Globalizaçion!
Flying into Bangkok, the first word that comes to mind is “soggy”. The city is filled with patches of flooded fields, reminiscent of high tide Ipswich marshes. These areas are so prevalent that it looked for a brief moment like we’d be having one of those “water landings” the nice lady in the video had told us about. Fortunately, the runway materialized out of nowhere, and we were on the ground.
The next word that comes to mind when arriving in Bangkok is “moist”. I swear if you tried hard enough you’d be able to swim through the air. God bless air conditioning, which has been blasting in our room since we got here and has finally managed to lower the humidity level from “Turkish Bath House” to “Mercury Brewing Company”. Not much of an improvement, but it’s something. I’ve been here for less than 24 hours, and I could probably keep writing for pages. However, I’ll cut myself off here so I can get dressed for orientation and our meeting with whoever’s in charge. More to come soon.
10 hours later, here we are again, having just returned from a sojourn to the nearby 7-11 for water, starchy snacks, and yogurt. I’ll backtrack to the flights of yesterday before I move on to today. A series of flights totaling about 26 hours is about as exciting as you’d think it’d be, so I won’t delve into gory details. However, I did enjoy certain aspects of the trip, such as the woman in the Malaysia Airlines safety video wearing too much makeup and beckoning my fellow passengers and I to, “Please join me on our journey into safety.” Afterwards, she proceeded to explain what we should do in the event of a “water landing”. Something about this phrase struck me, most importantly that, at least, the 747 that I was sitting on, was not equipped with the proper pontoons for any sort of “water landing”. I guess the phrase, “crash and burn in the middle of the Pacific” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Before landing in Taipei, the friendly Malaysia Airlines staff also reminded us that our seat backs and tray tables must be the upright and locked position, our seatbelts should be fastened tightly and, “trafficking of narcotics is illegal, and carries punishments including the death penalty. Thank you.” The way they phrased this seemed to imply that drug mules were punished beyond just the death penalty, at which point all I could think about was a crew of dead drug traffickers picking up trash on the side of the road. I think I’ve been flying too long.
After a brief stop in Taipei, it was on to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After wandering for a bit, we crashed for a few hours in Malaysian Burger King until our next flight. On the way there, I spotted this:
Viva la Globalizaçion!
Flying into Bangkok, the first word that comes to mind is “soggy”. The city is filled with patches of flooded fields, reminiscent of high tide Ipswich marshes. These areas are so prevalent that it looked for a brief moment like we’d be having one of those “water landings” the nice lady in the video had told us about. Fortunately, the runway materialized out of nowhere, and we were on the ground.
The next word that comes to mind when arriving in Bangkok is “moist”. I swear if you tried hard enough you’d be able to swim through the air. God bless air conditioning, which has been blasting in our room since we got here and has finally managed to lower the humidity level from “Turkish Bath House” to “Mercury Brewing Company”. Not much of an improvement, but it’s something. I’ve been here for less than 24 hours, and I could probably keep writing for pages. However, I’ll cut myself off here so I can get dressed for orientation and our meeting with whoever’s in charge. More to come soon.
Technical Difficulties
So I've been here a few days already, and much to my chagrin the internet access has not been as available as I'd have hoped. Technically, we're supposed to be getting our official usernames/passwords tomorrow. I'm sure this will be a production, as is everything in Thai bureaucracy (more on this in a future post). Anyway, tonight I'm able to connect thanks to "borrowed" login information, and as a result, I'm finally able to post. The last few days have been a continuous flurry of activity, which I've tried to document in order and save to my computer. Instead of trying to get through everything in one magnum opus, I'll post these next few entries retroactively until I catch up. As they say on the Food Network, "Here's one I prepared earlier".
Thursday, May 22, 2008
This is only a test (T-minus 3 days)
I figure I should verify that this whole blog thing actually works before I try it overseas. Following in the rich Hamlin tradition of travelblogging (see the last poorly organized attempt here), I'll be documenting my latest travels here. And, following in the rich Hamlin tradition of bad travelblog humor, I've arrived at the above title. Anyway, this summer, I'll be working as a research assistant at King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) in Bangkok, Thailand. As to exactly what I'll be researching, I have a vague idea, but I'll wait until I know more before I make any attempts to explain it here. Fortunately though, unlike on past adventures, I'll have my own laptop with me, which means:
I can post words AND PICTURES!
Now I know how you're feeling:
Yeah, I'm excited too.
I'll be leaving this coming Saturday, flying from Boston to LA to Taipei to Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, a total of 26 hours in the air. More on that as it happens. In the meantime, please shoot me an email if you think of anything special I should mention, or just to say hello. Maybe I'll try outsourcing some of the really important decisions I run into like those old choose-your-own-adventure books ("flip to page 45 if you want Nick to eat the roasted grasshoppers, or turn to page 82 if you want him to eat the organ meats of questionable origin"). We'll see how things shape up once I get there (I don't even know if they make roasted grasshoppers, they might all be fried), but until then, stay tuned.
-Nick
I can post words AND PICTURES!
Now I know how you're feeling:
Yeah, I'm excited too.
I'll be leaving this coming Saturday, flying from Boston to LA to Taipei to Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, a total of 26 hours in the air. More on that as it happens. In the meantime, please shoot me an email if you think of anything special I should mention, or just to say hello. Maybe I'll try outsourcing some of the really important decisions I run into like those old choose-your-own-adventure books ("flip to page 45 if you want Nick to eat the roasted grasshoppers, or turn to page 82 if you want him to eat the organ meats of questionable origin"). We'll see how things shape up once I get there (I don't even know if they make roasted grasshoppers, they might all be fried), but until then, stay tuned.
-Nick
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