I am reading a book by the Thai author Prabda Yoon called The Sad Part Was which is a collection of 12 stories and I recently finished chapter 1 entitled Pen in Parenthesis. There were several transliterated words that I wasn't sure about so thankfully Pichaya explained them to me.
1) wai these people nicely
Wai is how Thai people greet each other by putting two hands together and bowing, usually to pay respect to elders or monks.
2) light haired farang's classical music
Farang is basically white foreigners who come to Thailand.
3) people showed respect and called me pi
Pi is used to address an older person.
Also used to show respect to someone you don’t know,
even if that person is younger.
Often sales people will address shoppers as pi for example.
4) acquired several new nongs
Nong is used to address younger people, or those lower in ranking.
His followers are therefore his nong.
Update March 27, 2021: I have finished reading the book and have a few more words to add to the list.
5) Ei is a derogative term of address used amongst really close peers, kind of like how people may say “fucker” to their close friends as jokes
6) Khun is used to formally address a person deserving of respect
7) baht is the currency of Thailand
8) Ploang is the name of a person. To put something down, to unburden, to be a peace with letting go.
Pen in Parenthesis
"If you want to be a good person, that means you aren't."
"It's so true: wanting something means you still haven't achieved it."
"If possible, when you feel like having a child of your own, ask it first if it wants to be born. If you don't receive an answer, you can take that as a no. And if it doesn't want to be born, don't bring it here."
"Once you have 'wife' in your title, it doesn't matter much of a difference whether you're a doctor's wife, a teacher's wife, or a janitor's wife. At the end of the day, even a snake's wife is there to serve her husband. No matter how tired she might be, the wife needs to have dinner ready on the table for when the snake comes home. If the snake's muscles are stiff, the wife has to give him a massage. If the snake is thirsty, he can't be expected to fetch water for himself."
"Dracula is simply an unfortunate soul: he cannot die. He is cursed with eternal life, condemned to live like a beast. We ought to pity him, really. The Count might not actually want to harm anyone. He would probably be perfectly happy just living in his beautiful castle, on top of a hill in Transylvania, and minding his own business. Having to transform into a bat and go after people's necks is probably not something that brings him joy. He can't even go to the mall in broad daylight like other people. We are truly lucky to be able to die when our time comes. Mortality is our most valuable asset."
"Some students repeatedly borrowed other people's concepts. The professors didn't object - borrowing could be counted as a concept, too. In the end, I decided that a person's concept was the same as their 'business concern.' If other people found your 'concern' interesting, you'd go places in life. If you didn't know how to come up with your own particular 'concern,' that's, well, your concern. In the world beyond beyond the school fence, you couldn't survive on your concern alone. If you wanted to make a fistful of cash, you had to put other people's concerns first. My friends who were so darn good at concocting their concerns scattered and then dealt with other people's - helped them sell shampoo, alcohol, chips, air-conditioners, clothes, tape, this and that, too many different things to enumerate."
Ei Ploang
"That pebble has good and evil, too. But it's meaningless to speak of a pebble being either good or evil, because its good and evil are so perfectly balanced as to be inconsequential. It's doing a fine job of functioning as a pebble. If you kick it, it rolls over. But if I kicked you, you wouldn't just roll over."
"Hey, how the hell do you know that I'm a good guy? ... I put his permission slip into my shirt pocket. Behind the pieces of paper was the fabric of my shirt. Behind the fibres of the cloth was skin. Underneath the skin was a web of interconnected vessels. Within those little vessels was the liquid being pumped to sustain the body. Only a feeling tells you that it's a manifestation of being."
A Schoolgirl's Diary
"How does one plus one make two? Wait. If you have one, where does the other one come from? And why do they put themselves together? Jus that is a knotty question in itself. Suppose Dad is one, plus another one, Mom. That equals three, obviously, because when those two joined together, I was born, making three ... Suppose one is a tiger and another one is a rabbit. If you put them together, the tiger would eat the rabbit, so there's only one left."
"My house faces northwest. I've never measured it myself, but my father once said, 'Did you know, Tong-Jai, that our house faces northwest?' I didn't know. Now that I know, I want to know northwhat I face. My father said people keep changing the direction they face because animals are living things, which don't stay still."
Miss Space
"When the umbilical cord linking mother and child was snipped, one life became two."
"My nose and the ease with which it tended toward its adjective made me sneak a look at what she was writing ... "
"What was more interesting than the letters that lined up to create meaning were the areas between each thought: they were about as long as the sentences themselves. It was as if they were there to provide breathing room, so that each letter could inhale and exhale comfortably."
" ... perhaps you're suggesting that meaning and blankness have equal importance. Or you're conveying something about intervals in the thought process and how they should contain pauses to leave room for further possibilities to develop."
"Eventually, I landed on the term 'waiting period', Here, 'waiting' means waiting for the next thought. Waiting for the mood. Waiting remains a mere act of hope - what you're waiting for may never come. The word is broad and inconclusive."
"Whether or not it's a waste of paper is an issue of conflict between capitalism and environmentalism."
Something in the Air
"He's a faithful husband who's devoted to our family - that's hard to find in this day and age."
Shallow/Deep, Thick/Thin
"After all, there are no secrets in this world."
Questions to Consider
1. Was there something you took very seriously as a child but no longer matters as an adult? What beliefs did you have as a child that changed as an adult? How have you changed as a person over time?
I remember in middle school a social studies teacher saying "Life is not fair." This really bothered me, I felt that life ought to be fair.
2. The narrator considers themself as "a wit," what kind of person do you consider yourself to be?
3. What do you find wanting? What, at this moment, is missing from your life?
4. What kind of measuring stick do you use to decide if a person is "good" or "bad"? Where
did that measuring stick come from?
5. Parents made the decision to give birth to you and then made many decisions for you, how does that impact your decision to have children? What things should be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to have children?
6. Your own birth is outside of your control, likewise the time, place, and cause of your death
(barring suicide). Two incidences out of our control bookends our entire existence. How does this impact the way we conduct our life?
7. Where is the line between selfishness and compassion?
8. Where does creativity come from?
9. What does it mean to live your life fully?
10. How do we know something?
11. Where is the line between conformity and individuality?
12. What is the one item you can't live without?
During the pandemic, there is a great need for the internet.
13. How much is each individual responsible for the environment?
14. How are women portrayed in the songs on the radio in the short story "Miss Space"?
15. What do you think the girl thought of the narrator in the short story "Miss Space"?
16. Why do men think it is okay to take up a woman's time and attention?
17. Why are sex and death taboo subjects in so many cultures?
18. Why are women compared to vampires in the short story "The Disappearance of a She- Vampire in Pattaya"?
19. What kind of secrets are kept in your family? Why do people keep secrets? How do
secrets impact the secret keeper and the one the secret is being kept from?
20. Why is the book called The Sad Part Was?
