Quiet

No, I wasn't quiet, I was just away. Went to Prague with work for a few days and came back late yesterday. A few days away from the blogosphere and I just don't seem to be able to catch up with anything anymore. So much seems to have happened during the past few days: first I missed a great html lesson by Rob, then his missed date (and I wasn't even there to comfort him), Noodle's review is now out there, he's grown a beard and Rhino looks great and tanned! Oh my god, did everybody really like Brokeback Mountain? Hm... I feel like I should write a little review myself. Nomad's reports on fires in Cape Town, English people being arrested for starting them! I also missed the revenge of certain people who seem to have taken my nasty comments about England pretty badly and now make me feel guilty for the bad economical situation of a whole country;-). The only thing that hasn't changed is Marieke's view. That feels safe...

Anyway, I'm happy to be back even if Prague was great, as beautiful as ever and when I got back, this new little wireless connection card was waiting for me. I can use my laptop in every corner of my apartment! It's so great and oh! look at me writing this post while sitting on the toilet!

Wanna Porn and Kiss a Tit?

(or how to get many Google matches...)

Warning: Here comes a very long post about one aspect of my life in Thailand. For those of you who don’t give a damn about phonetics and Thai names, don’t worry, there’s a part about Porn in there as well. So you shouldn’t be disappointed!

I spent two years of my life working in Bangkok. Two very interesting years where I experienced various states of happiness, immense culture shock and total disbelief. But this will be the topic of a future post. What I’d like to focus on today is what is in a Thai name.

Thais have the longest and most complicated names in the world. To give you an example, open a Bangkok telephone book and it won’t be uncommon to find exotic but unpronounceable names such as: Uraiwan Chiwitkilliprongpang or Wittawit Chulapornkhlongtram. Add to this difficulty, the fact that Thai, like many other Asian languages, is a tonal language. This means that a word can mean up to 5 different things depending on how you pronounce the vowels, either in a flat, rising, falling, high or low tone. For example a word could mean anything from woman to horse / shrimp to happy depending on those deadly tones. Therefore, when you say something like: “Mr. Chulapornkhlontram, could we start the meeting at 8?” perhaps what you will actually say to a trained Thai ear is “Mr. Shrimp-face-anal-fart” can we start the meeting at 8?”.

Thais are friendly people and will not get offended by that as they know most speakers of Indo-European languages do not make any difference between tones. They will just laugh at you very much using very nasty nasal sounds that will make you feel like a total idiot. That’s all.

If the Thais regularly make fun of us trying to pronounce their names, they are fortunately happily unaware of what their sons and daughters’ names mean to an English-speaking ear. My friends and I would spend time laughing at the people's names. (I know it's not nice to laugh at people but since most people laugh at my nationality around the world, I thought I was allowed to). Here is a list of real Thai names that sound cute to a Thai person but quite odd to anyone else:

Ngarmpit, Turdsak, Kisatit…

And then you also have the …Porn variations :

Wannaporn, Titiporn, Pinkyporn, Wannatit, Supaporn, Pornthip, Sasiporn, Tanaporn etc…

Thai names are long and impossible to pronounce but the Thais, of course, do not have any trouble pronouncing them. In spite of that, they would agree with us that they are very long. So since it is very warm in Thailand and as warmth makes people lazy, Thais are very lazy people (which suited me perfectly well btw, although they are not quite as lazy as I am). Therefore they will try to find nicknames to everybody in order to avoid the long official names.

Thai nicknames usually have a meaning. Parents will often opt for a nickname as soon as their baby is born depending on what the kid looks like at birth or an aspect of his/her little personality. Many parents favor English sounding names, as the latter are more international and do include a somehow trendy factor.
Let me give you a few names of the people I met in Thailand and let’s see if you can picture what these people looked like when they were born:

Apple, Rabbit, Junk, Chubby, Chunky, Baboon, Banana, Michael Jackson, Soda, Beer, Pee-Pee, Pooh, Eye, Mud, Peng-Win, Ice-Cream, High, Top, Menthol, Mint, Cinnamon, Bam-Bam, Boss, Meow, Ball, Nut, Nudie, Soot, Bee, Hello, CNBC, Bit-Nee (Thai for Britney), Horny (the one who has horns), … These are real names, I know it’s hard to believe but these are the names people use at home, at work, basically all the time except on official documents. Thais are usually unaware of what their best friend’s real name is, they would just know the official nickname, that’s all. And you may tell them what their name means, they will smile and just say: Well of course, that's what I looked like when I was born!

And then you also have the nicknames that mean something in Thai but that are just sounds to us.

A few of my colleagues were named: A, Oo, Aow, Eow, Ee, Ing, Yeow… The problem with these names are the tones again. Two of my colleagues were named Oo. One with a rising tone (pronounce as if you said “Eew” in a surprised manner), the other one was Oo with a high tone (pronounce as if you suddenly got scared and said “ew” in a sissy kinda way).
Oo with a high tone was the photocopy girl, her full-time job was to make copies, she mastered the copy machine like no one else and wouldn’t let anyone come near it. However, Oo with a rising tone was one of the receptionists, she had big front teeth and small eyes and you wonder why her parents didn’t call her “Rat” at birth.

First, whenever I would call rising-tone-Oo, well high-tone-Oo would appear and vice versa. Secondly, whenever you would utter to yourself something like “eeeew, what is that?”, then one of them would show up (depending on your excitement afflicting the tone).

I was really happy when they fired high-tone-Oo because she had started some business on the side, copying whole books on the company’s photocopy machine. She was soon replaced by low-tone-Bee. This made everything much simpler for me.

Strasbourg day by day

OK, so it seems that you are eager to know about my experience in the Navy... but since you dirty-minded readers only have one thing in mind, I'll keep you waiting a little and post this very boring diary of my latest business trip instead... and then if you behave you'll know everything about Lieutenant Imbert's regular visit to the Navy base bathroom.

Day one: Left early in the morning from Gare de l’Est. 4 hour trip to Strasbourg, slept the whole trip except when old woman woke me up to ask me if I could help her turn on her mobile phone (!). Which I did, without protesting although I felt like pushing her off the train.
Arrived in Strasbourg. Weather sucked. Got to hotel. Nice room under the roof with good view of the river. Went to work. Started training. Didn’t go well, I was knackered, trainees were old and tired.

Day 2: Second training started. Went better than first one. Trained R to become the Lead-Teacher of the center. I like R. He is a former university professor from Algiers who moved to Strasbourg in order to give a decent education to his son. He went from being part of the Algerian intellectual elite, earning good money, living in a big house with a Mediterranean view and two maids to living in an ugly suburb of Strasbourg, in a little apartment with a view of the German border. I mean how depressing is that? We had lunch after training and he told me loads about Algeria. I’m actually going there this summer. That’s for sure. Walking down memory lane and see the place where my family used to live back when Algeria was part of France.

Day 3: I got an angry mail from the company’s accountant who’s really angry at me. She claims I always send my expense reports too late and that completely screws up her work. I felt bad but I immediately tried to find whose fault it was but mine. Of course I realize it’s all my fault, ‘cos I’m a lazy bastard so I spent the whole evening catching up with work that I should have completed a long time ago.

Day 4: Back to first training. The trainees are a French, a Spanish, an English and a German teacher. The German teacher likes rules, the English talks about how pissed she got last night, the Spanish one wants to take a break all the time and the French teacher complains a lot and never agrees with me. Mini-Europe in a classroom. My two conclusions are that certain people should be forced to retire and the EU is not always a good thing.
In the evening I went over to the German side to buy cigarettes. Amazing, on one side of the river you pay 5€ for a pack, then just cross the river and you pay 1.9€!!! Yay! I’m going to SMOKE SO MUCH! And here goes one of my resolutions…
Germany’s emptiness and profound germanness depressed me so I needed to be cheered up by a nice little theater play (don't misunderstand me, I usually like Germany and especially Germans but Kehl IS a shit-hole).

Went to the Théâtre National de Strasbourg and saw a “No” play. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Japanese "No" play, but for me it was a first. Strange, not always comprehensible but very aesthetic, a pleasure for the eye. Actors would say their lines in a cannon-kind of manner. i.e one starts his line and the other one starts a few seconds later with his answer although actor one is still not finished with his question. (if you see what I mean). In spite of their being totally asynchronous, this riot of dialogs sounded, just like in a song, amazingly melodious. The actors were synchronous through songs and music which probably had second meaning to it but I was too tired to figure it out.

The story is about a geisha who waits day after day, year after year at the Tokyo train station for her ex-lover whom she’s convinced will return. She waits so long that she eventually turns insane and throws things on the floor all the time, rolls herself into newspapers and bangs her head on the rails at the train station. The ex-lover finally returns and looks for his adored geisha, finds her but she’s so mad that she doesn’t recognize him and rolls herself into newspapers again. Finally everybody cries on stage and they all more or less turn insane and throw themselves off the platform.

I was totally cheered up and inspired by this play(I actually was!) and decided that I should go to the theater more often when I’m on a business trip.

Day 5: Last day of training. They all passed the post-training test. At night, we celebrated a colleague’s last working day, went to her place and got drunk, sang songs and pigged out on very fat Alsatian food. Got back to the hotel at 2.30am.

Day 6: Slept 3 hours, had to catch my train back to Paris at 7.30, sitting on the train now across from a teen-ager who coughs all the time, he’s got a bad cold and throws his vile bacteria at me. Guess who’s going to be sick now?

Now back to Lieutenant Imbert.. Where was I again?

In the Navy...

… sang the Village People at the little café opposite the Navy base while on the other side of the fence we stood straight and sang military songs at the crack of dawn, watching the French flag flapping in the morning breeze, supposedly learning to become real men by serving our country for a year.
Monday morning was hair inspection, Lieutenant Imbert inspected how neatly trimmed our hair was. His thick fingers ran across the back of our necks, smoothly but firmly, occasionally pulling the extra pieces of hair that would stick out of our ears. Lieutenant Imbert looked smart in his perfectly ironed white uniform, his well defined breast-muscles would show through his extra tight jacket and the look in his eyes made even the straightest ones of us melt and turn into the biggest Falcon video fans. The mere touch of his fingers on our neck made all of our young sailors’ juices flow in a Niagara-like waterfall of body fluids.

I was thinking I should write a post about my time in the Navy, but I don't know if you want to read more. Can't decide. hm... what do you think... ?

To be continued

Le Roi c'est Moi!

This weekend is going to be exciting! I know what you're all asking through the cyber skies: "is Mickelino going to get completely wasted on Veuve Cliquot, with fabulous friends at some fancy hotel in central Paris, meeting lots of VIPs and being one at the same time?" Well, no no no, it's going to be much better than that...

This weekend is L'Epiphanie, some obscure religious celebration that nobody really understands but more importantly the climax of mouthful orgasms: La galette des rois.

La galette des rois is my favorite! It is the simplest but the best cake in the world. Based on puff pastry and marzipan, this cake also includes a little surprise: La fève (the bean)!

"Oh Mickelino, we love surprises!"

I know you do! Basically, what you would expect of this tradition is to sit around your dinner table with your galette in the middle of it and a golden crown (take any golden crown you may have at reach). The objective is to get the piece of cake where the "fève" is hidden and if you get it then you become the king/queen and wear a beautiful golden crown. We call this "tirer les rois" i.e pick the kings (or fuck the kings in suburbian French). Anyway, if you get to be the king, you must choose your queen and vice versa and then you get or give a kiss. Which is almost as good as wearing a golden crown. Plus you get to taste a highly orgasmic cake!

"Oh my God! It's like the perfect combination: food and fun!"

I know! Favorite Mr.B and I started the celebration last weekend already and unfortunately for me he got to be the king. (I don't really like to lose, but oh well...) But oh what a surprise! I was named queen immediately!... A very special moment...

"But we want to do it too!"

Ok, so if you are bored this weekend, bake something puffy, invite someone you fancy, pick the king/queen, tell him/her that this is a French tradition and that there must be a kiss in the end. Your guest(s) will be so impressed by your worldliness that it'll guarantee you a free ticket to the bedroom... and you'll get to wear a crown too!

"Thank you Mickelino, for another great tip of yours!"

You're welcome! To get the recipe click on the picture of the galette! Finally, have fun on your coronation day!

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve at ChateauLino last night:

Champagne

Homemade goose-liver pâté

Parsley and garlic stuffed snails

Goose-liver stuffed rooster served with caramelized apples and green beans

Cheese and lettuce

Asian fruit salad

Coffee

Champagne

Wonderful friends, good food, good Champers, much kissing at midnight but my place looks like this today:

Resolutions/06

1) Smoke max 5/day
2) Go to the gym at least 3 times/week
(and actually use that expensive gym card I've purchased)
3) Lose 3 kilos
4) Stop drinking on week nights in order to lose 3 kilos
5) Start using those roller-blades I got on my B'day
(should help me lose 3 kilos)
6) Stop frowning at old bitch from the second floor
7) Learn Arabic
8) Save money to go on hols and pay taxes if any left
9) Watch less TV
10) Work less
11) Go to bed earlier
12) Pay my bills on time
13) Pout less

View all pictures here