After a couple of digging deeper blogs I thought I’d write one that was a little shallower.  Here are some random thoughts or observations that I’ve had lately.

The people behind the drink carts or at small coffee shops in Thailand are actually high tech mixologists and would give any bartender a run for their money.  Any time you order a drink, it takes at least 10 minutes to make and involves many different substances and stages of mixing those substances.  First they pour something into a measuring cup.  Then they put something else in the measuring cup and use a spoon to stir it.  Then they pour that into another cup and use a squeeze bottle to put something else in.  Sometimes there are canisters of unknown powder and sometimes a blender is involved.  If fruit is involved it’s guaranteed to be delicious.  I think they are just mixing 12 different types of sugar into water, but I’m not sure.

I have been noticing that most of my classes have similar dynamics to them to the point where it appears that each class has the same students in them.  Each class has one very small boy who is smart and outspoken.  Each class has at least one larger sized gay boy who has a constant sidekick, a short overweight girl.  Each class has a tall skinny girl who looks like I did as a teenager, all legs and no body.  She is usually very good at English.  There is always a quiet boy who appears that he isn’t pay attention or isn’t getting it, but he’s just shy and actually was paying attention.  He’s usually not fat, but bigger in stature.  There’s one or two girls with a short bob haircut that are not twins, but look like they could be sisters of the other similar girls in other classes.  These are the popular witty girls.  Then there’s a bunch of gay boys that are skinny and wiry and have fabulous dance moves.  There’s usually one overweight kid who could crush you in a fight, but wouldn’t crush a bug.  There’s the snobby girl, the boy with learning disabilities, and the future military guy.  The part that strikes me is not that each class has similar personalities, but that they physically look the same.  In Thailand, each class travels around for the day together – they all go to the same math class, then the same English class, then the same PE class, etc.  They don’t go to classes based on their individual aptitude.  When you group people like this, do typical stereotypes or architypes develop out of this?  Does the body shape and some of the physical attributes follow the personality or does the personality follow the body?  Is this what happens all over the world?  Does each city, tribe, community, family, etc, recreate similar architypes to balance out the group?  Is this nature’s way of creating balance in a human grouping?  Is this patterns of nature just repeating everywhere humans go similar to how the crystalline structure of a particular crystal will repeat its pattern over and over?  Is it more obvious in this situation because the students have been grouped like this all through school?  Hmmmm the human crystal.

Thailand has a stray do problem.  They have a stray cat problem too, but since cats are small and aren’t pack animals they seem to cause less issues.  When I started here there were two dogs that hung out at school and a few dogs that hung out near where we live.  There are some pet dogs too, but they don’t roam around so they don’t pack.  Then lately, I’ve noticed a lot more dogs around school. The female school dog is very vicious when she sees one of the other dogs.  One of the packs looks fairly healthy without the mange and only some ribs showing.  One of them has a jingle bell that is so loud I keep expecting to hear Christmas carols.  So, I assume this pack were pets not too long ago.  The other pack looks like ‘When Zombies Attack’.  They are scrawny, starving, have little to no hair, mange, and most of them only have two or three good working legs.  One night this week I was sitting downstairs and heard a low growl outside my window.  I assumed it was a dog, but wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t a dragon come to set my house on fire.  Then I heard another one on the other side of the house.  I wasn’t scared because I was in my house, but now I’m a bit sketched about going outside at night.  The growling went on for 15 minutes and then turned into a gang fight in the street.  I heard people yelling out their windows, but that didn’t help.  Then it sounded like dogs dying.  Eventually it stopped.  They must have moved on to another location because I heard the same thing, but from farther away.  It went on for hours.  It sounded like a systematic extermination of the weaker dog packs.  I expected to find dead dogs everywhere the next morning, but the only dogs I saw were alive.  I can’t even tell if any are missing because I only know four.  The two school dogs appear to be the same and the jingle bell dog appears to be the same.  I haven’t seen the black dog whose back legs are paralyzed.

Thais seem to be obsessed with money and seem to be very superstitious.  There is a lot of making a wish and then giving an offering to a specific temple to have that wish fulfilled.   Gambling is illegal, but they love their lottery.  They believe in ghosts and fortune tellers and holy water.  They are quick to give to others and in general are very generous.  They believe that if you live a good life in this life and make the right offerings and prayers then you will come back wealthy and happy in the next life.  Not once have I heard happy linked with being spiritually aware or with having great relationships or with having a job you like or any other thing.  It seems to always be linked with money.  This also kind of ties in with what I’ve been experiencing about living in the future, but in this case the future isn’t even this lifetime.  A lot of what they do is to secure a better life next time.  There is no now.  I question if the monks who are seeking or have found enlightenment actually have, as it seems that the Buddhist religion is propagating most of the superstition.  Most of the monks look sickly and have obvious musculature problems.  If they are living in True Nature most of the time shouldn’t their bodies be more free of character patterns, old stories, stress and defenses?  Or have the monks forsaken living in their bodies in search of the spiritual world and their bodies therefore suffer from bad nutrition and neglect?  Then I think on other religions and think that it isn’t much different.  Hindus pray to tons of different gods for tons of different reasons.  Christians are good in this lifetime for the promise of Heaven in their future.  The new age spiritual movement is full of things like figuring out your past lives or taking drugs so that you can find enlightenment at the cost of not being here.  Is it a religious thing or just a human nature thing?

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge”. – Daniel J Boorstin

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore