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
