The Taller You Are, The Harder You Fall

As if it wasn't enough to be the token semi-tall white guy in a country of short Asians, I had the privilege of adding to my reputation with the local residents of Thonburi. Let me do you a favor and set the scene, it was a hot, muggy day [that's to say that you'd expect anything different in Thailand] that was somewhat overcast [again, nothing out of the ordinary]. Ruby, Pai, Sarah, and myself decided to occupy ourselves by throwing around the Frisbee on the field in the front of the university. We first noticed upon arriving that there was a group of six Thais setting up a stage in the middle of our playing field, but we decided that since we were an unusually small group we could just throw and do our best to keep from hitting the workers. All was going swimmingly and I was sent a throw that was flying wide to my right, towards the bushes that line the field and represent a boundary between grass and a concrete path. I took to running after the Frisbee and it got to the point where I realized that I wasn't going to make the catch no matter how hard I tried, so I look up to find out where I had run to, and found myself heading straight for the trunk of a tree surrounded by a bush that is comes to just above my knee height. It was at that point that I was faced with two options, run into the bush and tree, or try to make jump the corner of the bush. In the split second I had to make a decision, I decided the latter was the option that best suited me, so I took my leap, and the bush took a chop shot at my feet and took me from my previously vertical position and laid me, not quite gently, into a horizontal position. I've since given up my quest to become an Olympic hurdler.

It doesn't take a physicist to alert you to what happened next, but the details of the impact escape me. What I can tell you, is that I hit concrete, and my head got involved along with the rest of the right side of my body. I remember next being greeted with a searing pain in my head and a dizziness that told me standing up was pretty near out of the question. Despite my debilitating dizziness, I told myself "Stand up, it won't be as bad once you're on your feet." Incorrect. I rolled to my stomach and got to my knees before being halted by pain and dizziness. At this point the others had joined me and I took questions on the concrete, although this is still relatively fuzzy in my memory. Eventually I was on my feet and moving to the other side of the field to have a nice sit and assess the damage. I had taken a scraping on various locations on my right side, and where I had hit my head [just above my right eye] was forming a nice goose egg. Sarah left to get ice and I sat and told Pai and Ruby how I felt and how I was happy that the concrete was freshly laid, but not still wet. My dizziness started to subside once I got ice on my head, but my vision out of my right eye was fuzzy, as if my right eye was refusing to focus.

Before too long we left the field to shower and reconvene for dinner. I wandered, still dazed, back to the dorm, seeing one of the other grad students from JGSEE on the way [don't recall the exact conversation, but I do remember telling him I'd call him for lunch the following day], showered, and my vision in my right eye still wasn't back to normal. After dinner I came back to the dorm and decided to sleep on the situation, having taken Advil to dull the searing pain in my head and my side, and read with my right eye closed so I could actually focus on the page. I called home in the morning when my vision still hadn't quite returned to normal, to get an opinion from Dr. Dad. After describing my symptoms he told me he thought I had probably gotten a concussion and maybe bruised a couple ribs [accounting for my pain with breathing, coughing, and sneezing] during my faceplant onto the path. Both ailments carried the treatment of rest, taking Advil, and avoiding further head damage. Mom had the advice of "being more careful with my head from now on."

Today marks about a week since my fall and my headache and swelling on my head are gone for the most part, but I can't quite say the same for my ribs, which still hurt, pretty considerably. I can only imagine that the Thais that saw me take my fall had a great story to tell all their friends and family in the area that had inevitably seen or heard about me or our group in the past 3 months, and I'm sure they came home with a story that I imagine started something like "You'll never guess what I saw that tall white kid do today..."

Obama? Oh boy!

The fight for democracy is on, or rather the pretense of such a battle. Back home you’ve got the John and Barack drama and here in Thailand we’ve got the anti-democracy People’s Alliance for Democracy locked in an epic struggle for unrepresentative control of the Land of Smiles. But let us shelve the Thai situation for a moment and focus on the presidential campaign in the land of milk and honey.

This past week saw the Democratic National Convention come and go, the finale involving an acclimated Barrack Obama wooing 80,000 people who were already going to vote for him. Word on the street was that a group of Americans here in Bangkok were replaying Obama’s acceptance speech at a restaurant on Friday night and all Americans near and far were invited to watch.

As soon as class was out we rushed home, unloaded our backpacks packed with homework, and set our sights on Roadhouse Barbecue, the location of the event. After a quick 2 hour cab ride into Bangkok in which we lost our seats and missed the first 20 minutes of the speech, we had made it. The next half hour was spent listening to Obama charm his supporters and woo the world with the crowd in the bar filling in his pauses with the appropriate applause and whooping and hollering.

A brief digression is necessary at this point. The organizing group behind this affair? Democrats Abroad. Yeah, that’s right, Democrats Abroad. Talk about redundant. The only Republican bastions outside the US can be found in Iraq and Afghanistan. So if you organize meetings concerning the US presidential campaign outside the US and you’re not in Kandahar or the Green Zone, there’s about a 110% chance that it will be a predominantly Democratic gathering.

So after the speech was over, the back-patting complete, the self-congratulations exhausted, and customary 8-year old trotted out as an example of "what is at stake in this election", what was left? Well, the same group that entered. Now I'm all for the democratic process and I signed up for my absentee ballot like a number of other people there, but I'm realistic as well. The most important part is my token action of sending in my vote and partcipating in our country's democratic process. I have no illusions that my vote will ever be counted, especially in North Carolina, but that's not the point. The point is that it still counts.

So that's what I took away from the evening. Well, that and the fact that two hour taxi rides with 6 people in one cab are about as enjoyable as getting your wisdom teeth out. Hell, if anyone deserved a pat on the back that night it was our haggard group stumbling into the restaurant a half hour late. Then again, the bleu cheese cheeseburger I had to end the night was reward enough.