Retirement Part 1: Only on Fridays.

After spending the day at the fish farm, I’m slightly clean but still smelling of fish and mud. I pin my hair back as best I can to cover up the mud I received during the mud fight, and don my glorious attire for the evening: jeans and a pink short-sleeved button-down my host mom gave to me (I don’t like this one, you have it!). Here’s my host dad dressed in pure white police ceremony uniform, and me in jeans and sandals, smelling like fish. Very classy. (but it’s the best my host mom could find out of my clothes. my dress pant capris weren’t suitable because they showed my ankles, so dirty jeans it was.)

We arrive at the Grandview Hotel, receive a warm greeting from the police on staff that night, and are ushered down to the mingling area, complete with delicious appetizers on adorable little serving spoon-things. My family and I sit at a table and I converse with Fern as my host father greets his fellow policemen. This retirement ceremony is for all the policemen in region 5 who are retiring. For the police force, that means they are turning 60. At 55 early retirement becomes available (as so I’m told by Ajaan Wilasinee, my language teacher), although I only heard the age 60 tonight, so I’m not sure if there were younger retiree’s here or not. I notice the police wai is different than a normal wai. Similar to the military, a military member will do a sharp, ridged salute whereas a civilian will mimic a much lazier motion if they so choose to use a salute. The normal wai is very relaxed, with many smiles. The police wai is a sharp, ridged wai and some men make a short “huh!” sound, instead of “sa-wa-dee-krab”.

Fern

Fern, Fang, and I spent much of the time taking pictures of ourselves or grazing on food and drink. At one point in time a 30ish aged man in a brown police uniform (not retiring yet and not a part of the ceremony, therefore he’s in a more usual brown) approaches and asks “may I sit here?”

“Of course!” is my reply. Being the only farang amongst many native Thai’s, all I’ve head was quiet Thai chatter for the evening. I was quite excited this man spoke English. He sits and we talk about the food, the venue, America and Thailand (he’s been to America three times, and his English is excellent). He inquires about my reasons for coming to Thailand, and is curious to learn more as I explain the type of school that ISDSI is. I talk to him about the police force and where else he’s been, and if he’s seen snow (I think he has, but I don’t remember anymore. I waited too long to get to writing this blog post). I like asking about snow.

Two ladies approach and gracefully interrupt our conversation. They speak with my new friend for a few moments and depart. He turns to me and says “I’m sorry if you don’t understand. We speak Russian on Fridays. It’s an old tradition that we haven’t rid ourselves of yet.” I didn’t even notice the Russian! I get so used to tuning out conversations I hardly notice what they are saying. When I feel like practicing my Thai and I can understand some of what they’re saying, I’ll listen in. But sometimes the vocabulary and sentence structure is far above what I’ve learned, so I tune it out and use that time to think about things. Thai’s do much of their activities together leaving little time to be by yourself, so that has to come mentally even while you’re with other people. It’s a more complicated topic that I could expand on, but not in this post. Inquire further if you’re curious. Anyways… back to the story.

“Oh, I have a friend who will be studying in Russia soon!” And our conversation continues. We talk for another 10 minutes maybe until we’re interrupted by the gentlemen sitting across the table talking to my pa. They talk to my new friend (who I’m going to continue referring to as ‘my new friend’ as I forget his name and don’t know what else to call him) then turn back to one another and discus something further. I wasn’t paying attention to this conversation either.

New friend turns to me and says “See? They speak in Russian. Old police tradition, we do it every Friday. But only on Fridays.” I nod along, smiling.

“That’s awesome, I wish I spoke Russian.” I turn back to listen to the conversation this time. Miss Rachel Myers is learning Russian and has practiced speaking a few words when we were room-mates freshman year. I love foreign languages as well (actually I wanted to be a translator if I didn’t go into the sciences. But the sciences seem like they’ll hold more sure job opportunities, so I’m majoring in Biology) even if I can’t understand them.

I listen in.

“That’s Thai! I understood the words ‘X, Y, Z’. That’s not Russian.”

“Sure it is! We speak Russian on Fridays, all policemen. I’m sorry if you can’t understand it” is his reply. He’s grinning all the while.

“No, that’s definitely Thai! You don’t know any Russian, do you? Psh, I head Thai’s liked to joke, I didn’t realize it’d go so far. Yeah, that’s definitely Thai. They’re talking about ‘thing-that-they’re-talking-about’.” I feel a little silly now. Why would the Thai police force speak Russian on Fridays? English is taught in schools, not Russian. And they were talking so fast, they’d have to have been fluent. Really, like there’s a Russian speaking test before being granted into the force. And I didn’t even catch it the first few times he talked about Russian! To push a little credit my way, when he mentioned speaking Russian to the two women, I assumed they must be his sisters or very close childhood friends. Who else would know such a language as Russian in a country like Thailand? But when he said later on it was the whole police force, I nodded along and thought Oh, what an interesting tradition. How splendid! I’d love to learn (said in a British accent, of course, because just seems like it fits here).

Yes. Thai’s like to joke around. But Thai’s seldom joke to me in English, as it’s not their native language so sometimes things get lost in translation and jokes become very confusing. I felt like a fool for believing it for so long. But I smiled and laughed at myself anyways. After all, I’ve convinced people of odd things before too (I’m Canadian! -> Still haven’t figured out who I convinced of that, but I think they were an Ultimate person, and it was definitely a guy.) It’s definitely entertaining to see how far you can take something like that before the person realizes you’re joking with them (Broken Rocks people LOVE to try that on me, I’m too gullible sometimes. At least now I’ve learned think twice before I believe anything Logan or Devon say to me. Plus Logan can’t keep a straight face, so always look to see if he’s smiling).

Back to my story: So after a good laugh at myself, he has to go because the ceremony is about to start. That, you can catch in part two “Fish or Pig?”.

Me, in jeans and smelling a little like fish and mud, as well as my pa in his white uniform and my maa.