Stop, Listen... and Love

Greetings everyone,

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/R7DjnnaYjBTcw4KD6

Last time I wrote I was still recovering from my brief dalliance with cross-dressing. Apparently, the hazards I'm facing in Thailand are not only due to conditions on the construction site. I now have to watch out for venom-spitting transvestites:
http://www.local6.com/news/5322040/detail.html
Thanks for the warning Gary.

There was a huge turnout for Jeremy's farewell bash. A bunch of us went out to dinner together and they let Jeremy and me cook our own dishes in the kitchen.
Jeremy made Massaman curry and I got to make some papaya salad. The best part was that the papaya came off a tree they had growing back behind the kitchen.
After the restaurant, we headed over to the Fisherman bar, which is usually crowded on a Friday night anyway, but there were probably about a hundred people there. Anyhow, as you can imagine there was a slight bit of alcohol involved with the leaving-do, and with Jeremy being the guest of honor, he was toasted approximately every 47 seconds. By about midnight he had partaken of just about 26 buckets, maybe 8 rounds of beer, and only he knows what else (or does he?). It's at this point that he decides he wants to make a speech to the entire gathering, so English Chris, Rich, and I tell everybody to shut up while Jeremy climbs on a chair and proceeds to spout five minutes of the most rambling, incoherent, and incomprehensible nonsense I've ever heard, and I've been to meetings with Eric Siegel (inside joke). Three of us are holding him up on the chair like a tripod because he keeps swaying from side to side. Just as the audience's interest is waning, Jeremy finds renewed vigor. "I have one more thing to say!" he shouts. He takes a long breath and stares over the bar. "Just remember this. I want you to Stop... I want you to Listen...." He takes a long pause and points his finger at the audience ".... and I want you to LOVE." At this point the entire bar erupts. It was as if some higher being had channeled the drunken body of Jeremy in order to deliver this profound message to the assembled masses. This point was further illustrated by the fact that as soon as he said the word "love" he fell off the chair and into a group of about 5 people. It was madness, people were cheering for about a minute, everybody was talking about it the next day, and the thing is Jeremy didn't remember any of it, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

About an hour later, after we were all thoroughly inebriated, Jeremy decides he wants to give another speech. Well, there's no way he's going to top the one he's already given, but since it's his last night we're going to give him some leeway. As he climbs up on a chair and begins to talk, this jackass climbs on the bar starts shouting him down saying "nobody wants to fucking hear it" and other comments to that effect. So Richard decides that he's not going to have any of it and decides to take matters into his own hands, grabbing the guy around the waist and yanking him down off the bar. So now the guy's buddies get into it and English Chris starts squaring up with one of those guys. They're yelling at each other, tensions are flaring, and, as we learned the next day, turns out Rich was grazed by a punch from the first guy. So I go in there to try and break up Chris and the other guy, I manage to get Chris away from him and the guy starts to square up on me and get in my face. Now normally I consider myself a lover and not a fighter, but I suppose a few Changs and an insult to your friend can change that pretty quickly, so I find myself right up in this guy's face just talking all sorts of shit. I know, fighting is stupid and all that, but I'll tell you that I've never been that ready to throw down in my life. This idiot was continuing to talk shit about Jeremy so I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising up, my heart rate climbing, and my hands forming into fists as I'm yelling at this dude about an inch away from his face. It was kind of nuts, I just wanted to destroy the guy, and all it would've taken was a move from one of us and it was on. Luckily, four or five people jumped in and separated us, most of them being women, who are uncannily gifted at making guys feel stupid for wanting to fight, so I managed to calm myself down pretty quickly. English Chris and Rich were another story however, and I spent most of the rest of the night keeping them in one corner of the bar so that nothing would flare up again. In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have been the best idea to open up my tenure as project manager on the island with a massive brawl among the volunteers, but I have to admit it was kind of cool to see the crew rally together in that situation. Plus, those guys had it coming, I think we showed remarkable self-discipline. Well, except for the drinking until 6 am part.

That was probably the most exciting thing that's happened the last few weeks. On the island I'm getting used to my new responsibilities, I've already managed to oversee a screwed-up floor and a crooked support column, so just be thankful that you're not getting a Thai house constructed under my expert supervision. I did learn how to mix concrete this week, which is a lot of fun but physically exhausting since each of those cement bags weighs probably 80 pounds or so. One of them opened up on me as I was lifting it and spilled its contents all across my shirtless body. I don't know if you know how well cement sticks to sweat and particularly body hair, but I looked like Santa Claus' hairy Italian cousin. I'm still getting the hang of this construction gig, what can I say? What I *am* good at is screwing around, so I organized a 3 am pirate raid last week on one of the other groups. We filled the back of their truck with sand and left a coconut with a skull and crossbones drawn on it, seeing as how we're the construction pirates and whatnot. Nobody knows it's us yet and we're planning some other raids, so don't say anything.

I also managed to weasel my way into a room at Le Meridien Khao Lak on Friday through the Mercy Foundation, which was way, way sweet. Some of the Mercy folks had been building a playground with this group called Kids Around the World who were staying at Le Meridien Khao Lak and crazy Dean offered me an extra room they had for Friday night with the stipulation that I have no "female roommates." I don't know what kind of reputation I have with the Mercy folks that they feel that they would need to make that expressly clear, and it sucks because the best part of having that kind of rep is earning it so it's definitely undeserved. Also, what's the point of staying at Le Meridien Khao Lak if you can't flash around your room key and use it to pull, but that's a minor point I suppose, and just having written that last sentence completely contradicts the previous one. Let's move on.

So we get the day off on Friday because of the dedication for the playground, which was great because there were 50 or so kids there from the local school in Bang Sak. They built slides, monkey bars, and a row of about 12 swings. They also put in a basketball court, which is great because we all know how much basketball is beloved by Thais. After the ceremony I went to check into the room at Le Meridien Khao Lak, which, if you didn't know this already, is an experience unto itself. They bring you cool lemon juice and a cold towel as you're sitting on a couch waiting to check in. Then they personally escort you to your room to show you the various amenities, features, and general whatnot in your luxury pad. The bathroom is encased in glass so, if you wish, you can raise the curtains and look out across your room out to the balcony and accompanying view as you're taking a shower, or a bath, or a dump. The balcony looked out onto the enormous pool complete with waterslide, and as I was remarking on this, the woman laughed and said "That's the kids' pool. We have three of them, the large one is behind the lobby." Of course, the kids' pool! How foolish of me.

So what did I do after check-in? I went to collect the rest of my team, of course. We fit 12 people into The Shark (my car), pulled into the parking lot, and walked through the service entrance toward our block of rooms where everyone got changed. We spent the rest of the afternoon crashing the various amenities offered at Le Meridien Khao Lak in a scene reminiscent of Caddy Day at the Bushwood Country Club pool from the movie "Caddyshack." I spent the night on a plush king-size bed and woke up the next morning in time for the 600 baht breakfast which is free for hotel guests, complete with fruit station, cereal station, pastry station, Thai food station, western food station, omelet station, waffle station, and real coffee. And, to cap it all off, I have to say that few things are more gratifying than taking a dump in a luxury bathroom. So I took two. Then I spent up until one minute before checkout watching HBO.

That's about it for now, I'm sure I forgot something but this message is already long enough as it is. As always, the Dude abides, Dave

P.S. Don't forget to Stop, Listen, and LOVE!

From Dean to Queen

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/cp1HrHQsgy8DA972A

First, a clarification from my last message. I didn't mean to imply that Chan is an evil person, merely that evil things seem to happen to me when he's around or directing me to do anything. But he's a volunteer as well, he likes to giggle, and he has a cute kid so I just want to make sure that you know he's not actually evil. Of course, I've never been to his house, so he could have a pentagram and a sacrificial chamber in his basement for all I know, but he doesn't seem evil.

The same can't really be said for Dean, though. He might actually be evil. He's the head of the Mercy Foundation group that's doing all the construction here in Khao Lak and he has ADD. Seriously, he has some kind of diagnosed hyper ADD... and he likes to drive the Bobcat. Suffice it to say, Dean has acquired a reputation with all the folks working on the project as a kind of dangerous but well-meaning psycho. The first time I witnessed this in person was when a small group of us was cleaning up debris from one of the houses and putting it in piles. They burn pretty much everything here in Thailand so Dean was trying to figure out how to set fire to one of the debris piles. He decided to get a bucketful of gasoline and douse the pile in order to make sure it caught fire. I was about a hundred feet away still clearing debris when all of a sudden I hear this whoosh sound and turn just in time to see this fireball rising into the air. That was the first and only time I've seen Mica sprinting, which looked somewhat like when Scooby Doo and Shaggy were running from a ghost with a lot of shuffling but not much progress, and she was at least five steps in front of Dean. Seems as though he thought it was a good idea to light the pile from a couple of feet away. Next image I have is of him on a table with morning glory being applied to his burns by some of the Thai volunteers. As far as my personal safety goes, the worst he's done is almost sever my achilles tendon by chucking three or four shovels toward me, but I seem to have some sort of Dean shield which helps prevent injury. Of course, if both Dean and Chan are in the same area, I'm not sure which would be the stronger force. Let's hope we never find out. Anyway, last week he almost ran over four volunteers with the Bobcat. Then later in the week he took a group of us to one of the waterfalls after work, and on the way we almost got in a head-on collision with a large truck while he was trying to pass another car. Going uphill. Into a curve. This is only the stuff that I've witnessed myself. One of the other volunteers named Seth told me that he was riding back from Krabi with Dean when he suddenly stopped, pulled the car over, jumped out, ran after a mangrove viper that was hanging out by the side of the road and started poking it with a stick.

Anyway, the reason I'm mentioning this is because I'll be working a lot more closely with Dean since I've been asked to take over as project manager for the island construction project after Jeremy leaves next week. Yes, times are desperate on Koh Kho Kao, they'll take pretty much anybody. So if any of you want to come out and dig, even for a couple of days, just show up at Khao Lak Seafood at 8:30 any weekday morning and I'll put you to work. I can guarantee you one thing... you will stink. How much more tempting can I make this offer? Just think about it... most people pay hundreds of dollars for spa treatments. You get, for free, a mineral mud bath while digging out a cesspool. Not tempting enough for you? Well, have you tried our concrete facial? Come to Koh Kho Kao spa! Of course, the unfortunate corollary of this "promotion" seems to be that I'm going to have to get a cell phone. But I did find out that you can get the entire text of the bible sent to you via SMS, so you know what I'll be wanting for Christmas.

On the work front, the house construction is going very well. Last week we had a contest to see who had the most open wounds, but they only counted if they were currently hurting. I was leading the pack with 11, but Jeremy got a couple that day so I think he passed me. I'm usually very absorbed in the task at hand so I seldom stop to think about why I'm here or the people I'm working for while I'm actually working. It's nice when one of the people whose home you're building stops by and thanks you, asks you where you're from, wants to know more about you, etc. When we were digging septics one afternoon we took a break and found that our cooler had been stocked with snacks and beer by the villagers. You'll get a story here or there about what happened during the tsunami, not usually from the people themselves but secondhand. Kung, who ferries us back and forth to the island every day and for whom we're building house 13, actually found his brother's corpse the day after the wave hit. One of the Thai workers, an older woman, stopped one evening and chatted with a group of us for about fifteen minutes through one of the volunteers that speaks some Thai and thanked us for coming all this way to work for Thailand. Almost everybody asks you why you're doing it, so I tell them that I like to dig. Then every once in a while something will hit you that you can't escape from. I was digging this hole last week for a foundation, and let me tell you something that fucker was really, really pissing me off. There was all sorts of debris where I was digging so I was pulling out bits of floor and concrete. We're building over the lots where houses used to be so it's normal to be finding these types of things, but in this one I actually found a column that ended in a concrete footer. So there are two or three of us working this footer with a pickaxe and a chisel, then I get in there bashing the column with a sledgehammer, which is really fun by the way but very tiring. Anyhow, we get this footer out of there and I'm clearing the debris with a shovel while everyone else goes about their business when I step on something that doesn't feel exactly like debris. So I reach down to pick it up and I come up with this little plastic toy. No big deal, just some figurine, but clearly a kid's toy, and at that point I came really close to losing it. I mean, you guys know me, I'm usually about as emotional as a lawn chair, but I was standing there, covered in sweat, mud and bits of cement dust, standing barefoot in a four-foot pit, physically exhausted, and I was really not expecting to come up with a kid's toy. That was a rough one for the old Bresh-man. I had to just get rid of it and keep on digging to try and put it out of my mind. Those moments are kind of tough, but they're few and far between and the rewarding times outweigh them by far.

For the past week or so I've been following Jeremy around and trying to figure out what the hell it is that I'm going to do when he leaves. I figure the best thing to do would be to imitate him, so whenever someone comes up and asks me a question I'll say "It's up to you." See, it's a win-win situation because they feel like you're delegating authority and you don't have to actually come up with any ideas or answers. He's a genius! But basically I've been running around taking notes and figuring out how to do 2nd story floors. So last night for Halloween there was a big to-do since people around here will use any excuse to get together and pound beers. Of course, we had not thought of any costume ideas so it was left up to my last-minute stroke of genius to come up with something. Let me preface this by saying I'd had a couple of beers with dinner. So I said Jeremy and I should go as two ladyboys, but he said that there would already be too many guys in drag and it would be lame. So my next genius idea was for us to go as The Abusive Husband and The Wife Who Doesn't Listen, which would've worked except we didn't have the right makeup to give me a black eye. So we used the same concept and got Jeremy to dress up in boxers and a wifebeater and I went as Jeremy's Bitch, which is pretty much what I've been the last two weeks anyway. So Mica had a great time applying eyeliner (which is really, really freaky by the way), lipstick, and nail polish, and I used the curtain from my room as a dress, and I am never ever ever going to do that again. Never mind the fact that I was the ONLY guy in drag at the party. My dress kept falling down and I got felt up once. Then the dress was making my ass look big. Then everything tasted like lipstick, and no one appreciated the nail polish since it was so dark. Helloooo! I'm making an effort here! Wait... I lost myself for a minute. Okay then. Many beers later, I woke up this morning (late) realizing what I'd done and I was like Lady Macbeth trying to get that freaking nail polish off. Ugh... I'm going to see those pictures on the internet, I just know it.

Anyway, that's what's new with me. As always, the dude abides, Dave