I showered, dressed, gathered all of my baggage and made my way to the lobby of the hotel all within a 10 minute period. At 11.25 a short, rounded man with a large hat opened the door the to a 1990's minivan which Red Roof Inn calls their Airport Shuttle. My Dad got to say a brief goodbye and light up a cigarette before I was ushered to the dark van and asked to sit inside. I was the only one inside, sitting in the very middle of the van. Why does an airport shuttle minivan need tented windows anyways? Sitting alone in this dark, noiseless minivan, watching from a distance as my father casually sucked down a whole pack of Marbros. The beginning of my trip home had already begun.
Airports are pretty boring, but they are better when you have a new toy to kill time with. Mine and about 10 other people's new toy at our gate was an Apple MacBook. I played around in Photoshop and charged my battery. Throughout the whole trip not one person asked me about gate-checking my guitar. It stayed next to me or above me the whole time.
After getting off the plane in Bangkok my phone ran immediately. P'Oui had come to pick me up and was waiting on the other side of a half-hour long customs line. We drove back to my place and carried the box and bags up to the third floor. I put the key in the door, turned, and it opened.
I spent a day unpacking and sleeping. The next day was the beginning of Rub Nong or freshman team building/hazing. A group of friends and I went down early in a van to setup things before the group of 80+ freshman arrived. The location wasn't as nice as last year. Both places were beaches close to Hua Hin. This particular beach was unique in that it was covered in piles of dead jellyfish. This meant swimming was out of the question.
The next day we got up early and started setting up stations for the day's activities. The largest was bai see, a game where people crawl through a long tunnel made of bamboo sticks and garbage bags. Sounds fun right? On the sides of the tunnel are holes where upperclassmen wait with buckets of wet flour dyed with food coloring which is applied to the face and hair of everyone racing their way through the course. After we finished everyone headed back to the cabin to shower before the buses came.
The rest of the day went by fast. Kids were split into teams of 10 and rotated through stations. Soda chugging, banana eating, fun with ice, and relays went on throughout the day. The trouble began with one kid who jokingly gave a sarcastic reply to one of the staff members. This sort of thing happens all day long and is a way for freshman and staff to laugh together and bond a bit. This particular incident began when a team complained why they didn't get points for a dropped banana. Bird told the leader of this team that he wanted to see the kid's underwear on the outside of his swimming suit within one minute. He could change on the spot, run to the bathroom, or change in the water. Second year Bird ordered all of this remembering he had done this the year before. What Bird didn't remember was the jellyfish problem on the particular beach. The kid came out screaming. Not because he was upset about having his underwear on the wrong side of his shorts, he was laughing about that. He was screaming because he had been stung repeatedly by jelly fish while changing clothes underwater. I left the station and took the kid up to the head of the beach to see what was going on. Luckily, only the backside of his leg had been stung but was spreading as he itched it. I gave him some cooling cream which stops swelling and sent him back to his room to change clothes. If he felt better we wouldn't go to the hospital, if it still stung we'd go. After all of this a local told me a simple splash of soda stops jellyfish poison. Ironic, because the station where he was stung require the group to drink a 2-liter bottle of Coke in under a minute. We had stacks of our sponsored product sitting close by. I thought one medical emergency would be all for the day but I was wrong.
Later in the evening the tradition is for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year students to preform skits for freshman to watch. This year my two good friends First and Sharp gave their rendition of a Four Mod song which can be found by searching Youtube for "เด็กมีปัญหา". Seeing the two macho 3rd year students dressing like teenage Japanese girls made the new class a bit less intimidated. After the preformances, we blindfold and lead them down from the hotel to the beach where a ring of 30+ candles have been setup in the middle of the beach, in the dark, far away from any lights. Each staff member sits on the outside of a candle with a pack of cotton string. each one of the 80 freshman stops at various candles and sits with the staff member one-on-one. The upperclassmen tie a string on for good luck while we give any advice that we think will be important for them in their first year. After finishing, people make their way back to their rooms to prepare for the night. Being a 3rd year student I looked for some fourth year candles to get some time in before everyone had. This is when my night became exciting. Somebody shouted out that a kid had feinted walking back to the hotel. I decided to finish talking to my fourth year adviser, as the kid who feinted had woken up by now and would likely be taken back to her room by friends and fed some water. What can we expect after being in the sun all day and not drinking much water. Before the string was tied on my arm a 2nd year student came running asking "P'Dan where is the medkit?" Ah. This is where things got exciting.
Foureyes, a second year student who was lovingly given a nickname which he could be recognized by, was laying on a beach chair along side the pool, with a crowd around him. Nobody seemed to know what to do or even knew what was going on. Foureyes was breathing but looked like he was in pain. Trying to breath hard, eyes shut, and laying back. His head kept falling to the side, lifelessly, and P'Gap a big fourth year guy had his arms under Foureye's back, pulling his chest up which was allowing him to breath. At first I though he might be choking. Maybe hit a rock and punctured a lung? Heat stroke? He was certainly shaking a lot. All I knew was that he was shaking a lot which meant he was going into shock. I had P'Gap keep his legs elevated while Bird and found out what had happened. Somebody said there was a hotel van which would take us to the hospital. Bird and I each grabbed a side and took him to the front of the hotel and into a small van. I jumped right in along with Waiwai. I remember somebody handing us a cell phone and asking if I had my phone. Off we went. I've never seen a short, stubby van go so fast. We did 150 km/hr all the way there. Foureye's head was on my lap, feet on Waiwai. I tried to keep him awake asking if he had eaten anything odd that day or hadn't had any water. He could barely talk, but whispered that he'd felt sick before he feinted. Then his head went heavy and his eyes closed. I was just praying Foureyes wasn't going to stop breathing in my lap. I kept a hand on his chest and artery, and he seemed to be doing fine. At one point his eyes opened and he reached up and pulled my neck down so I could listen. Last words? Something he remembered he ate? allergies? Nope. Foureyes wanted to say "P'Dan, I don't need to go to the hospital. I don't want to go." Hmm. This was confusing. Did this mean he wanted us to circle the hospital a couple times and let him go honorably? I just kept asking him questions and we arrived at the hospital within minutes. There was a stretcher waiting, and we wheeled him into the ER. This hospital was one room. The nurses responded as though they weren't the least bit worried or rushed. They put an oxygen mask on him and wheeled him to the middle of the empty ward. I stood close and told the nursed what I knew.
He fell, passed out, woke up, has trouble breathing, shakes, didn't feel well a couple hours before passing out. Nurses asked for Foureyes full name which he couldn't say loud enough for them to hear. I about to be confused again. Foureyes pulled me close and said "P'Dan please don't let them give me any shots I'm allergic to a lot of things." OK, good tip. When the nurse went to take his blood sugar level our freind Foureyes spoke right up, with the energy of someone who should be able to say his name clearly. "Please no needles, I'm allergic," the nurse told him the needle had no medicine and was only used to get a single drop of blood for the test. At this point I was as puzzled as the nurses. Why does somebody this sick not want to be at a hospital, being treated? The oxygen eventually made the guy under the glasses fall comfortably asleep and the nurse diagnosed him with "bad stress". The cure? Don't get so stressed. After an hour of monitoring we walked him to the van and headed back. I think Foureyes was embarrassed at this point. Every time he looked at me there was a sense he was begging me not to tell anyone what had happened this night. My diagnoses? Foureyes is by far the smartest kid in his class, but is also the most easily stressed person. After getting really stressed out, I think he took a bit of a dive into the sand. Not for attention, but for sympathy. After he was helped up people felt sorry for him, but also very worried. I think he was looking for people to care for him, but not necessarily a team of nurses with needles and bills. All of this must have made him pretty embarrassed. Waiwai bought into the "over stressed" bit, which worked out well. When anybody asked what was wrong with him, we had an answer to give them, even if it wasn't the real one.
The next morning everyone woke up hungover and stiff from the drinking and sleeping on sofa cushions the night before. We had breakfast and loaded into the 3 tour buses. On the way back everyone played cars and sung to songs on the radio. Everything was going great until a kid in a blue shirt woke up from his nap and made his way towards Beer, First, Bo, and I in the back of the bus. What was happening? He was obviously woken by a strong need to use the bathroom. If you have ever ridden a tour bus, Grey Hound, or other large bus with an inadequate system of waste disposal, you while understand this next part. At first, it came as a bad smell. Everyone ignored it. At this point in time the road had changed into a strip with continuous bumps tilts. A couple minutes later came the second burst. This one was more than a smell, it was like having your head forced into the toilet itself. Everyone was running to the front of the bus to escape it. This was not the sort of exaggeration you would see from, perhaps a bus full of fifth-graders, everyone was trying their best to be polite and understand how the person in the bathroom must feel. This second burst of gas however pushed all of that understanding right out of the bus. People were running and literally jumping over each other to get away from the smell. Finally, the smell reached the driver who immediately pulled the two story bus into a small gas station. People poured out of the bus only to find the smell on the other side! Splat, splat, splat. Raw waste was pouring from the back of the bus onto the pavement. We let the bus air out for a while, but the sewage tank was obviously full and busted. From the gas station to the university was only another half hour, which everyone spent giving the kid in the blue shirt the evil eye.
Once we got back a few of the staff members decided to celebrate finishing finals and the rub nong trip by going to Icebar that night. Good times.
Wednesday I met up with P'Fam to help out setting up a Potato concert. Universiade is a the Olympics of universities and is held every two years in a different host county. This year Bangkok hosted and paid Potato to play 6 songs in the center of the football stadium. It was nice to hang out with the crew again. All of the crew for many GMM Grammy bands share apartments in the same building, which means everyone is very close. So, when it came time to start the show, nobody is ever shy about asking me to help them get things done quickly. Wednesday the band ended up on the opposite side of the stadium from us when the loudspeaker decided we were ready to play. Win and Ohm ended up standing in the middle of the stadium with no guitar or bass. Nid took the bass, I grabbed the guitar and ran out towards the middle of the field. What happened next caused me pain both physically and emotionally. Because the track events are held on the same field as the night's football game, the 15m wide track was covered with a thick white cover. This cover was what I had to run across to get to Win. I ran, and ran, until I was 1/2 of the way to the grass before I realized what I was doing and some part of my brain told my legs to be more careful and walk not run. I listened to that voice in my head and slowed down, just enough for my momentum to take me sliding across the other half of the cover. I actually slid, hold a $2000 guitar in my hands, about 5m before both my legs slid out from under me and I landed flat on my back as 20,000+ people watched. The crowd roared in laughter. The band fell down laughing. I sat up with the breath knocked out of me and handed the guitar off to Golf who was running right behind me. The whole thing was telecast around the world. Defiantly was a memorable experience.
Only a week has passed by since I came back from the US, but so much has happened. I guess it's the unpredictable things that make living so much fun.
posted by Dan @ 9:55:00 AM
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