I hiked to seven waterfalls in Erawan National Park in Thailand yesterday. After two waterfalls, I got stopped by someone who asked me if I had water. This is our conversation.

I said “yes”
He said “you have to pay 20 baht per bottle.”
I said “no thank you. I already have water.”
He said “you have to pay for it.”
I said perplexed “I already did and I don’t need anymore”
He replied “have to pay to continue with water”

This sounds like a complete scam to me and I’ve grown accustom to being a popular mark. My response is usually to say ‘no thank you’, keep my head down, and continue on my way. But this gentleman was insistent. So we go back and forth a few times, both getting a little annoyed. I now begin to take in the larger picture that reveals that this may not be a scam. He is wearing what looks like an official looking uniform. There are other official looking people sitting at table that is a little ways off. A few other tourists begin to gather near the table. It turns out that the park makes people pay a deposit to continue on the hike with their water. They mark your bottle and if you return the same bottle later, they will give you your money back. It’s a way to encourage people not to litter. While I was convinced that it was a scam, perhaps he thought I was an obnoxious foreigner who didn’t think the rules applied to me.
I paid the deposit and embarrassingly continued on my lovely hike.

Since it was Christmas and I was in a good mood, I decided to do what I always do on Christmas…..practice my bad Thai on the girl who is tenderizing my feet. After some small and semi successful exchanges, I learned that she was from Cambodia and had moved to Thailand just three months ago. I wanted to know how to say ‘hello’ in Cambodian. So I said ‘hello… English….. sawadee kap… Thai…. Cambodian?’ She said ‘hello.’ I said, ‘Cambodian?’ She said ‘hello.’ I said ‘hello… English….. sawadee kap… Thai…. Cambodian?’ She said ‘hello.’ This happened around 5 different times during this hour long foot massage. We did finally understand each other and I learned how to say hello in Cambodian, but now I forget.

Since she had just moved to Thailand, I asked her if she missed her family. She said ‘yes.’ After a pause, I asked her if she called her family raising my hand to my ear in an attempt to mime a phone call. She looked puzzled, so I asked her if she wrote to them. After a moment, the dawn of realization came to her face and as she looked up at me smiling, she asked ‘you want number?’ while pointing to herself. Stunned, I half-heartedly said ‘sure….. yeah.’ The lack of conviction in my answer would have been obvious to someone fluent in English, but to her it was just a simple ‘yes’ answer to her question. The lady she works with, who had been in another room up to this point, now joined our conversation. These are some of the questions they struggled to ask me and that I struggled to answer….
How long do you plan to stay in Thailand?
What do you do for a living?
Are you married? Hmmm….I guess this was another way of finding out if I was a complete creep.
At one point, I asked her how long she had been working at the spa. She said she was 24 years old. They both pointed at me. I said 34. The older lady looked at my future wife and excitedly said, ‘only 10 year.’
The massage had become a lot less relaxing much earlier but at this point; I was just trying to get out of there without a wife. I half expected them to produce marriage documents or whatever is the equivalent here in Thailand. Anyways… don’t worry, I’m not married and I am not going back anytime soon. Just another little adventure here in Thailand.

My friend Peter and I decided to splurge on dinner and went to this rather nice restaurant across the street from where we live. Around half way through dinner, a Vietnamese man (i think he was Vietnamese based on the conversation), who was eating dinner with his family, started a conversation with Peter and I that lasted around five to ten minutes. He and his family left, and Peter and I continued eating. When it came time to pay our bill, it turns out that we didn’t owe anything. The man had generously payed for our meal. We didn’t know his name and he didn’t know ours. Although I have only lived in Thailand a short time, part of me wasn’t surprised.

After doing lots of research about Thailand and Thai students before I arrived, I expected them to be quiet in the classroom, not asking questions and not answering questions. I had been told that Thai culture valued memorization, and the students would be comfortable just listening to my beautifully crafted lectures. Given my minimal experience, i won’t foolishly and emphatically speak about Thai students. However, so far, they have responded to most of my questions in the classroom and they have engaged with the material and myself far beyond what I expected. If anything, they might be a little uncomfortable asking certain types of questions. They might feel comfortable asking me to slow down or asking me to go over certain material again. But they might find it difficult to ask questions that might be interpreted as questioning their teacher or the subject itself. In the U.S., we might value these kinds of questions as evidence of critical thinking development. However, in Thailand, teachers are apparently highly respected and students perhaps don’t want to risk offending their teacher by questioning them or the subject.

Of course, maybe a year from now, I will probably have a completely different perspective.

After a 15 hour flight to Hong Kong, a 2 and 1/2 hour layover, a 3 hour flight to Bangkok, and an hour drive out to Salaya, Thailand, I arrived at my hotel. With no time to rest, shower, or change clothes, we were off to lunch at the College of Music Restaurant. This isn’t a cafeteria or anything you might associate with college food in the USA. It’s a really nice restaurant in the middle of the college of music and I have no doubt I will be eating here just about every day. Unfortunately, there are Giant Lizards that live in the water nearby.  

They are the scariest living things on this planet.  I have been assured that they don’t attack people. But one look at these monsters and you know they can’t be trusted.  Although I seem calm and collected in this video (which you would expect), I assure you that these things are likely to give me a heart attack.  As I near any body of water, my heart begins to race, and if I wasn’t already sweating , I would definitely sweat. They like to live along this pathway where I’m standing.

Although a lovely walkway to the school of music, I have since learned of pathways more likely to be free of monsters. Below is a picture of the school of music (great facility) taken from a vantage point near from where I’m standing in the other picture. I will be assigned an office later this week and finally be able to start preparing for classes which begin on November 1st. I also found an apartment and signed a lease today.  I will post more pictures of my apartment and the school of music in a few days.   One last picture shows buildings that I think are going to be part of the business music school. However, I could be confusing these buildings with some others that look similar.  As you can see, they are a slightly different style than the architecture of the main music building shown above.  What is interesting to note is that there is construction going on everywhere, both on the campus of Mahidol University and the surrounding area.

The Performers….

They are often met with pieces that aren’t ready for performance.  The composers also have yet  to learn how to express their intent in the rehearsals (after all, they are students as well).  The performers, as well as the composers, are being judged at the performance.  How might a performer feel if they are constantly struggling to play the piece?  If they are continuously feeling humiliated, wouldn’t that effect they’re response to a composer asking them to perform a new piece in the future?

In an earlier post, I wrote…

“What if they play your piece at the concert and it goes very well.  The audience likes it and the performers love playing it.  Your success and future performances of the piece are now a foregone conclusion……… Only… it never happens.  The cello player, after performing your piece, remarks that it’s one of the best new pieces he or she has ever played, perhaps the best.  The trio has future performance engagements.  He or she talks about programming your piece……. But it never happens.   Why?”

Performers with vast 19th century repertoires program Beethoven and Brahms because they think that’s what their audiences want to hear.  Are they right?  Certainly there is a portion of the population that will buy tickets because they recognize those names.  But do they actually like the pieces being played?  Of course, some do.  But a portion of the audience will say that they like the pieces even if they don’t because to say they don’t like a piece by Beethoven or Brahms is to be deemed unsophisticated.   Performers are getting insincere feedback from a certain, and I would say large, portion of the audience.  If you have any doubts about this, play an unfamiliar piece of music and say it’s by Aaron Copland.   Play that same piece for a different audience (but similar demographic) and say it’s by a current student at generic state university.  Will the reactions be the same?  I doubt it.

Performers are being told by their professors and audiences that their economic livelihood is dependent on the 19th century repertoire.  They believe it, understandably, even in the face of economic realities that say otherwise.   Ensembles that focus on the traditional repertoire are struggling to survive.  Doesn’t that struggle incentivize other options.  A colleague of mine once said, referring to performers who solely perform 19th century repertoire, that “they are museum curators,” not apart of a living and breathing art.  Although I don’t agree with this entirely, it’s a catchy quote that contains some truth.

The Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists will be performing “In Dreams” on September 25th as part of the CMS National Conference.

The Saxophone Quartet at Eastern Michigan University will be performing “Chasing the Silence” for the State MTNA chamber music competition on October 10th.

I have accepted a position teaching music theory and composition at Mahidol University in Thailand, beginning in November 2010.  I’m extremely excited about this opportunity both professionally and personally, and I will be sure to update this blog with my experiences.

The Freudig Singers will perform In Dreams in December 2010.  I’m also very excited to announce that they will  also be recording and producing an album of the work, along with piece by other American Composers.   I will post more details as they become available.

The album Times and Spaces, recorded by the H2 quartet at Blue Griffin Records, was released on May 11th.  It can be purchased through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  You can hear my pieces Chasing the Silence (saxophone quartet) and In Dreams (saxophone ensemble), as well as works by Philip Glass, David MacDonald, John Mackey, and Takuma Itoh on the album.