Bangkok at Sunset

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some taken from my balcony which overlooks downtown Bangkok (not that there really is a downtown Bangkok) and much of its suburban sprawl.

Roti

As anyone who has spent more than twelve hours in my presence knows, I can occasionally get very excited about food. Sometimes to a degree that certain people might describe as odd. Naturally, being in Bangkok has produced in me an incessant hunger and a curiosity that is likely to result in an elderly Thai woman adding me to her menu. In four weeks this fanaticism has not waned in the slightest, but I do seem to have found an object for my obsession. My new found amor de gourmet is Roti, and everything associated with Roti--including the cart it comes off of and the guy who makes his living behind that cart. (I refer to him as male because I have no Roti woman in the vicinity of where I live, which is probably a good thing, since I would likely attempt to start a torrid affair with her.)
Roti is not actually a Thai creation or even a Thai word, as it is of Middle eastern origin and was invented by Muslims centuries ago, though Roti in predominantly Muslim countries today is apparently very different from the Thai variety I've become enamored of. The word Roti (which is pronounced "Loti" in Thai) refers to any form of fried flatbread. It's original form, as my research indicates anyway, is something akin to the middle eastern version of the quesadilla. The Thai version has evolved into something akin to a cross between an empenada, a spring roll, and a churro.

Since it is both the process and the end product with which I am obsessed, I will begin with the process.

The Roti man's cart, besides being laden with Roti-making paraphernalia, consists primarily of two major things: a stainless steel top that serves as a prep-counter, and a slightly concave, round griddle that sits flush with the steel counter-top. This griddle sits atop a recessed burner hooked up to a propane tank on the cart. (Pretty much everything here is cooked over propane.) Most carts also include some form of battery powered lighting for night operation, a large umbrella for when it rains, and several "built in" cans, containers, or racks for things like oil, butter, bananas, condensed milk, and dough.
Roti starts with a small fistfull of dough which is flattened to the desired diameter either just by pressing with the hand or by employing centrifugal force much the way a pizza spinner does. If it is banana filled Roti, the mixture of a thinly sliced banana and a whole egg gets mashed together in a vessel of some kind (one vendor uses a Lion King coffee mug) before the dough gets stretched out. Since it's my favorite, let's say it's banana filled Roti, which requires the dough to be stretched a lot, till it is paper thin. This very thin dough goes down onto the griddle which has about three or four tablespoons of hot oil already smoking hot. Immediately, the banana-egg mixture goes down in the middle of the already bubbling dough. A second after that, the Roti man begins folding in the edges over the mixture, to form a square little package. Thirty seconds later and the whole thing gets flipped, at which point one can already smell how amazing this is going to taste. Just to make your stomach rumble a little more, this is when the Roti man grabs a spoonful of butter and puts it right on top of the Roti. Then he flips it again, butter and all. After flipping it one or two more times be sure the banana and egg cooked through (the whole process takes less than three minutes) he drains it, usually by impaling it onto a piece of steel that looks like a small hangman's truss at the edge of the griddle. After a moment draining it goes onto a piece of heavy paper, gets drizzled extensively with condensed milk and then sprinkled with a heavy dose of granulated sugar. It's cut into squares and handed to you on a small styrofoam plate before it has even stopped sizzling. Then you wait several agonizing moments for it to cool to the point where you can safely put it in your mouth. Often this step is skipped, an unfortunate and unpleasant, albeit necessary evil.
But banana is not where this street food starts and stops. You can get Roti plain, just fried dough with condensed milk and sugar. You can get banana Roti with chocolate. You can get just Roti and egg. Roti with prawns. Roti with Jam. Roti with cashew nuts. Roti with onions and peppers. I think in some places one can even get Roti with ham and cheese. On top of that, the Roti man is perfectly happy to have you come back to his cart, two, maybe three times in a single night. It's been done.

And now for something completely boring...

Lately I've been running out of things to write about. This is partly because I have been very busy with grading and administering oral exams, but also because I haven't had much opportunity lately to get off campus. So in the interest of having something to write about and boring you silly, the following is an attempt at a "Day in the Life"-esque synopsis of what my day to day is like. (There's some interesting sentence construction.)

The day usually starts violently, involving an alarm and my vain attempt to roll far enough away from it so as to make it go away. This usually happens around 7:30am. By 8:30 I'm usually on my way to the bus, a seven to ten minute walk from my building, depending on whether or not I get stuck behind some slow moving Thai girls. If New Yorkers walk and move at an unnecessarily fast pace, then Thai girls (well, all Thais, but the girls are the worst.) are at the opposite end of the spectrum. It's like getting stuck behind a bus in single lane traffic.
Once on the bus, it can take anywhere from forty-five to an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the Bang Na campus. This is subject to traffic, road construction, and the sanity of the bus driver that morning. Most of that time is spent preparing my lesson plan for the afternoon, grading, or sleeping. More of the former than the latter, as sleeping on the bus is difficult for anyone who can't sleep with their internal organs vibrating.

The Bang Na campus is a monument to the spending power of the Catholic Church. The key words behind this campus' European architecture are "grand scale". The main structure of this educational compound is an edifice like building called, literally, the Cathedral of Learning. At twenty-six stories, it towers above every other building in the area and is visible for miles and miles. It is a massive marble building with huge columns around its base and sprawling marble steps on four sides. Beneath this Cathedral of Learning are massive catacombs filled with eateries, coffee shops, lounges, and a book store. (Okay, I'm the only one one who refers to them as catacombs, but it's not an inaccurate description) The Cathedral is surrounded by three long four story buildings on three sides. This, along with the Temple Monument on the fourth side forms a large courtyard around the cathedral, complete with spanish tile and a series of water fountains and architectural ponds. The whole of the grounds are impeccably manicured and beyond the Temple Monument (a term I'm using to describe a Sala Thai, which is a like temple in almost every way except that no monks reside there and no one worships there regularly) lay two very large ponds, resplendent with black and white swans and life-sized statues of four horses in full gallop across the water. I have yet to grasp the association between the horses and either the University or the Church that paid for them. Nor has the significance of the swans struck me. (This picture is of the Temple Monument at Hua Mak, not the one at Bang Na, but you get the idea.)
On most days my office is the first stop, located on the fifth floor of a building that only has four. What I mean to say is that my office is located in the "tower" at the east end of one of the long buildings surrounding the Cathedral. My "office" is one of many that go around the inside of the room in a large circle. My cubicle faces a window, so I actually get to watch the swans paddle in melancholy figure eights each morning. I spend the first hours of my day either administering oral exams to the English III and IV students, or grading whatever sad piece of work my own students labored to produce the day before.
A little before noon I make way out of the tower, across the courtyard, and into the cacophonous catacombs. Excuse the alliteration, but the sound of hundreds of students milling about in a solid marble corridor with solid marble floors (polished daily) requires precisely that description. I generally make my way to the Cafe de Paris (The international teachers lounge) and eat my lunch with some of the other Americans teaching there.

After lunch it's time to teach. My classrooms are on the fourth floor of the building opposite my office on the other side of the courtyard. They are relatively small classrooms with amphitheater-like wooden bench desks around the raised teacher's desk, behind which are the doors to the hallway and the chalkboard. In some ways they are reminiscent of prairie country schoolhouses in the American Old West. Without exception, the majority of each class arrives--at best--fifteen minutes late.
A note on absenteeism and tardiness at Assumption University: No one here cares. The syllabus, designed by the Department of English here, proscribes that each student may miss twelve classes outright, with no penalty. In a semester with 58 teaching days, that works out to a little over 20% of the class. As for being late, marking students absent for showing up late every class is virtually impossible because there are no passing periods built into the schedule! The students have no choice but to be late or leave the previous class early.
When my class finally does arrive, there's usually another five minutes or so spent on mindless questions. "Teacher, do you have a girlfriend?" "Ajarn Ryan, what did you do this weekend?" "Teacher, when can I make up the three quizzes I missed?" Things like that. The hour and thirty minutes that each class is supposed to run, is really reduced to about forty-five minutes of actual teaching time, when you boil away all of the nonsense, disruptions, and lateness. Even taking attendance is a chore because they know very well that if they do not ever sit in the same seat on consecutive days it takes me twice as long to take attendance. Have I mentioned lately that they act like sixth graders? My first class is a struggle for me because they are completely unwilling to participate and are about as active as oatmeal on a cold day. My second class is my favorite, they are well behaved and the vast majority of them are actually going to pass the class with ease. My third class, well, they're all Satan's spawn, but I think I enjoy them the most. My third class will openly admit they take advantage of the lateness of the day and my unwillingness at that hour to get angry about anything. Perhaps they get the short end of the teaching stick, but they make up for it with intelligence--when they show up and pay attention that is.
By the time I let my third class go (usually early because they've got my back against the wall with their antics) I'm feeling pretty whipped, and the hour and a half long bus ride back to Hua Mak is a welcome respite. When we finally pull in at Hua Mak, I'm starving again, so I either get deep fried chicken from the chicken guy on the corner, or I hold out a few more minutes and track down the Roti man. (See the Roti blog coming later this week!) With my snack in hand I make my way up to my room to shower and change into street clothes. I grab my laptop and make my way to the nearest wireless internet to check my e-mail. This is always an interesting part of my day, especially for someone who's used to checking their e-mail hundreds of times a day. Depending on who's written me, this takes anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. And of course, by then, I'm looking for someone who wants to go get dinner with me, which is usually not a very prolonged search. Dinner is generally had from one of the many hole-in-the-wall (I use that phrase in its most endearing fashion.) "restaurants" within walking distance of the building I live in. After dinner activities range from more grading (on a bad day) to watching TV or a movie (on an average day) to sleeping (on a long day) to going to a local bar for a beer (on a good day). Regardless of how it ends, sleep comes easily every night.

There you have it, my average day, all spread out for you in a nutshell. Since I've badly mixed my metaphors, and bored you to tears I'll leave it at that.