Communications

May 16, 2007 |

One thing is to communicate with your teerak across the language barrier. Another is to do it over a terrible phone line. I often get some kind of answering service instead of Nan when I try to give her a call. Usually it’s the Thai service I get.

Fine, so I try again, and after a couple of attempts I am patched trough, and I can hear Nan’s cheerful voice accompanied by the sound of chickens, the TV blasting out at top volume, and her family blasting away on top of that, exchanging the latest gossip about the farang. We tell each other about our day, and then it’s say hello to the kids, and once in a while mama her self want some sanuk (she gets a kick out of hearing me try to speak Thai), and come on the phone as well.

Yesterday and today it was the my local GSM provider who befuddled things. A nice voice told me that Nan’s number did not exist. Yet I could send her an SMS and she replied. I then tried a couple of other Thai numbers, and none of them worked. A call to my GSM providers customer service the this morning when it still did not work, sorted it however.

So technical problems can be overcome. Other things are not so easy. I have sort of managed to find a system with Nan for detecting when she approve of or hate my ting tong ideas for my upcoming trip.

Happy giggling and “good idea teerak!” = 100% approval

“Up to you, teerak” and still happy voice = 75% approval

“Up to you”, without teerak = 50% approval

“OK, can do” = 25% approval

and silence = “Are you flaming MAD!”

All in all we talk fine with each other. There is the odd word that pass us by. But we manage to agree on what was being said generally.

Nan’s English is quite good, and getting better by the day. But there are some things she is either to shy to talk about, or she feel it’s to difficult to talk about in English. And she soon gives up, ending in a “mai pben rai”. So I had a good idea. She writes down in Thai what is on her heart, and when I come over, we have it translated.

On my last visit, she gave me a 10 page letter, telling me all about herself, her past, her hopes and her dreams. She was very nervous about the whole thing, and was visibly shaking and even crying as I read it after having it translated. But it gave me a good idea about who she is, this incredibly brave lady I am falling for.

The letter also had a lot of questions about me, and I think we spent the whole night talking about that letter, and what it contained, and we both had a much more relaxed relationship with each other afterwards, and talk about a lot of things on our hearts that maybe other, similar couples have trouble finding answers to over the language and culture barrier.

What we found out, was that perhaps we are not so different, me and her after all. At least the barrier became a lot lower…

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