Stickman Readers' Submissions October 3rd, 2009

Thai Thoughts and Anecdotes Part 229

RESUME BUILDING

Well, kudus and good news to me. I emigrated to the Kingdom from Boston eight months ago and I finally got a job. Why did it take eight months to get a job? Because I didn't want to be an English teacher, that's why. I interviewed
for a job as an English teacher at four different schools:

He Clinic Bangkok

1. Replicant's Academy for Future Trannies in Suckburi.

2. High School University of Chonburi and Pattaya Hooker Municipality.

3. Grade School Number 411 for Future Slack Assed Losers in Thonburi (FSALT).

4. We Fxxx All Foreign Staff Junior High Catholic Peace Corps NGO School in Bangkok.

All four schools told me I could not discharge firearms in class. I put it to you, dear reader; how can you get respect if you can not shoot students? Exactly. Ok, maybe not shooting students. I can back down on that. But how about discharging firearms
in class? Just releasing the tension by firing off a couple of hundred rounds as the spittle flecks your lips, boogers shoot out of your nose, explosive farts fill up your pants, and your hyena cackle turns into a long drawn
out screech? I thought my firearm questions at the interviews had merit.

So anyway, I got a job with a lot more dignity and a lot more future than being a teacher. Ok, do you know where the Bottle Museum is in Pattaya? It's on Sukhumvit Road. Kinda across from the Park Hotel? Ok, my job's
not anywhere near there. Forget that.

Alright, do you know where the Naklua Food Market is on Naklua Road in North Pattaya? And there are some water bits kinda across the street? Ok, we're nowhere near there. Don't know what I was thinking. I was
at an expat's meeting and lecture last night at the Dusit Resort and the lecture was: "Absinthe and 19th century French painters". I think I drank too much absinthe.

Wait a minute, as the Bangkok BJ specialist at Lolita's Bar in Bangkok said: "It's cumming to me now."

This is easy. Do you know where the Pattaya railway station is? And do you know where the bus station is that's near the Bottle Museum? Ok, we are in that general area. Somewhere. It's not that I'm inattentive
to where I work, it's just that I am staying at the A.A.Hotel on Soi 13/0 and the mototaxi guys just know where to take me. Don't worry–you can't miss it. Look for the driving range nets on the pylons. Anyway,
I'm working at a new business that's a combination koy fish food wholesaler, durian recipe cook book retailer, and golf driving range.

My job on the driving range is to operate the ball 'picker-upper' machine. It's a gang mower that has had the grass cutting blade removed. Two lawn chairs are bolted to the front. That's where the two
Thai girls sit. I drive the machine and they sit up front in the chairs and scoop up the golf balls with butterfly nets.

Since the owner refused to open before, or stay open after, public driving range hours; we are always retrieving golf balls 'live'. The guy who had my job before me was an addled Vietnam vet who lost his voice
shouting 'Incoming'. I sometimes wonder if the owner has us out there 'live' to provide moving target entertainment for the customers, but then I remember that Thais are Buddhists so this would never happen.
Like I say, I've only been here eight months.

Anyway, we have protection. The girls and I all wear full face shield motorcycle helmets, life rings around out necks, white air bladder Antarctica Mickey Mouse boots, stove pipe ducting around our arms, hockey goalie
gloves, sleeping bags tied around our legs, and thin Bang Kwang used prison mattresses with a hole cut out in the center for our heads to stick through. The mattresses drape front and rear and have sheets of aluminum outside.
Sometimes on busy weekends we sound like aluminum temple gongs gone berserk.

Hot? Is this outfit hot? The other day a thermometer under my mattress registered 226 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the girls, Dimple (Dimple and Titleist), told me that for the first time in the history of Thai women the
inside of her love canal was the coolest part of her body. I pretended not to hear that.

Anyway, If you had never had a job like this job you might assume that the greatest danger to picking up balls 'live' would be right up near the driving booths. Not necessarily. Example: on Wednesday nights Mr.
Slice-a-Lot comes in. He is a retired Thai army general who's five feet high, four feet wide, and weighs three hundred pounds. He can put two hundred yards of Big Bertha energy into his shots with fat man whomping grunts
and farts. Unfortunately, it is not straight line energy (remember his name). His balls (golf balls that is) viciously slice, bounce off one of the steel pylons holding up the nets, then ricochet and hit me in the helmet. Makes
you start talkin' to Jesus. He does this with such regularity it kinda makes me wonder sometimes if this is a practised shot. But again, that wouldn't be Buddhist and he was a general. He always comes in with his
twin brother named, you guessed it, Mr. Shank-a-Lot. A tough day for me and Dimples and Titleist. No place to run. No place to hide. No wonder the Vietnam vet who preceded me as the ball machine 'picker-upper' ripped
off his helmet one day and started rolling around on the ground screaming.

Another example: on Tuesday and Thursday nights Mr. Missle comes in. He could have been a professional Tour player but he was a club and bag thrower. This guy brings two things to the driving range: issues and phenomenal
athletic ability. He'll buy two buckets of balls and dump them all out on the mat at once. Invariably, at that time of night, Dimples and Titleist and I will be only about seventy-five yards down range. Then it starts.
Every one of two buckets (100 balls per bucket) of balls fired at us like Exocet missiles. Spooky frightening assassin accuracy and sonic boom busting speed. Like I said, he's got issues. When the artillery barrage starts,
I just pull the spark plug wire, take my hands off the double clutch handles, and drop my head. Up front the girls put the butterfly nets over their helmets and cry. We've tried zig zagging and other avoidance manoeuvres
but that just seems to increase his accuracy, speed, and shot frequency. We are like crippled ducks being chased by a Gatling gun.

Not to digress here, but I tell you, you learn a few things about women and people at one of these golf ranges. First of all, women with no shoulders and no breasts and very wide hips can not hit the ball. Dimples, Titleist,
and I call it the ex-Buddhist nun's body. Can not hit the ball. Should be on the miniature golf course. Go to a bar where ex-Buddhist nuns hang out and you will see what we mean. No power.

Lesbian ex-mamasans, however; can crush the ball. Tear the cover right off. Always fat, low to the ground, and good grip from opening thousands of bottles. Golf ball killers. Pretty athletic too. Take instructions well,
remember what they are told, and focused. They just fxxxing kill the ball. I think if I had a professional golf tour team of these lesbian ex-mamasans I could rewrite golf history.

Trannies. Well, what is there to say? More golf ball killers. Just fxxxing kill the ball. Tall and strong and they wear the full tranny getup except for heels. They kick off their heels. They start out squeaking like girls
and end up grunting like men. Thailand. Every once in a while one of them will start parading around with the handle of a golf club sticking out between her legs. We stop that.

But the big guns in the women department are the women, Thai or Farang, who have the figures of professional Australian volleyball players. Dimples, Titleist, and I call them the Triple 38's. They are all about six
feet tall, and their figures measure 38-38-38. When we see one of these monsters coming up to the tee with a bucket of balls we just pull over to the side of the driving range. Forget slicing or shanking–the balls are going
to be right down the middle and with the speed of WWII German 88 tank shells.

Even easier, of course, to profile are all the twenty yard specialists. The dribblers, pushers, rollers, bouncers, and skitterers (the balls, not the customers). Just children? No, It's a larger group due to the charitable
intents of expat clubs, do gooders, therapists of various odd persuasions, and organizations looking for tax deductions. So we get cripples, wheelchairs, amputees, the blind, the emotionally unstable (Dimples and Titleist and
I have witnessed some spectacular club throwing), the spastic, weird social theorists, and my personal favorite–the 'staring-off-into-space' people.

Personally (I'm a thinker), I would like to see the owner install a plastic dome over the miniature golf
course (try to get the ball between the legs of the little wooden boardwalk whores with windmill heads)
and stuff all these time wasters into the thing like stuffing kids into a Funhouse for Retards. Ok, I realize that isn't very Buddhist of me. Sometimes I get these headaches . . .

Yup, sometimes I get these headaches. Never got them in Boston. They started about three weeks ago. Sure, I could have stayed in my career at the private research library in Boston (specialist in 17th century Colonial
maps) but I wanted more out of my life. I wanted to grab life by the throat and be all I could be. This golf ball 'picker-upper' job is a great job. I'm sure the pressure inside my head will go away. I'm
currently learning to phoneticize Pali chants. I'm sure it will open many doors for me. Back when I was a young man the president of Bermuda had started out as a taxi driver. Maybe someday I'll be the president of
Thailand. I'm staying positive.

Anyway, I'm at the eighth month mark as an expat. Are there any downsides to my job, or are there any downsides to my life in the Kingdom? Not really. It's all about adjusting really. In my eleventh year at the
library in Boston they oiled my chair. So I had to adjust to it not squeaking. Little stuff.

Example: the driving range is full of snakes. My first clue as to proximity will be Dimples or Titleist, or both Dimples and Titleist screaming:

"SNAY 'N HOW"

Unfortunately, there is never enough time to react and clutch left or right. They (the snakes) go under the front of the machine and come out the back and there is no grass cutting blade to take the krait, or the cobra,
or the viper out of their personalities. They come out frisky. Of course they can't hurt me because of my huge white McMurdo Sound boots, and my legs wrapped in sleeping bags; but still, it is hard not to jump around like
a contestant in a 'ferret-down-the-pants' contest in Wyoming.

Example Two: Titleist asked me come visit her and her family in Depressingburi. While there she introduced me to her pet chicken named Barney. When I asked why her pet chicken was named Barney she replied:

"I named him after the giant purple TV animal named Barney on the American children's show called Barney & Friends."

Ok, I don't want to be Mr. Expat Nitpick here but the 'Barney' of children's TV show fame is a dinosaur. I don't expect my intellectual life in Pattaya and beyond (Depressingburi) to be equal to
my 17th century Colonial maps specialist life at the research library in Boston, but confusing a dinosaur and a chicken? Sigh.

Still, it's just a matter of adjusting. I'm sure when Benjamin Franklin went to France as ambassador he had to adjust to wig lice prongs lying on the dinner table. And I am also sure that when he accepted an
assignment to go to England as ambassador he had to adjust to turds in the Thames. Travel broadens.

I suppose one day in my dotage here in the Kingdom I will look back fondly on the snakes of Pattaya and the intellectual brain stem wastelands of Dimples and Titleist. It's all about international experience, learning
the correct fxxxing tones, and the positive spin. But it's not like this driving range 'picker-upper' machine operating is all I do. I'm also responsible for ringing up durian recipe cook book sales in the
gift shop on a broken abacus, and transferring railroad cars of loose koy food into fifty five gallon drums for the wholesale trade. It's all about resume building: multi-tasking, meeting challenges head on, taking meetings
with other people who are taking meetings, asking my boss when I am going to get paid, and strolling out into the parking lot with my pearl handled chromed Glock and telling the Koreans to return the bucket of balls they stole.

Don't hate me because I'm so lucky. I emigrated from Boston to Thailand eight months ago and everything is great. Someday when I'm running my phonetic Pali chant school out of the back of my 17th century
Thai maps bookstore, my beginning days in Siam will all seem like a poignant and charming dream.

Sincerely yours,

Dana

Stickman's thoughts:

Vintage Dana.

nana plaza