Joel: It's Sunday and now Rakhi and I can relax after one of the most hellish days of my life. Yesterday we helped out at an English camp at our school and it was a day of utter horror. The last camp we did was run by Mediakids, the company we work for, and since the team are so experienced and slick, the result was a weekend that I'm sure carried with it quite a bit of magic for the young students. Kevin, the guy who emceed, is a master of his craft and all the kids were absolutely buzzing the whole time. There were silly games, fun chants and a great party atmosphere in the evening. This time, the school thought they could save a bit of cash by hiring a Filipino guy they knew to organise and emcee the show and rope us in to help out. We didn't really want to do it without the Mediakids boys and from the start we warned them that unless the camp was well organised and slickly run it could be a disaster - which, despite our buckets of sweat and enthusiasm, I feel like it pretty much was.

The guy they got in was called Benchz (no, I'm not sure about the "z" either, he pronounced it "Bench"). This chap insisted on calling me "sir", Rakhi "madam" and Ting, the Chinese teacher, "Miss China" for the entire day despite me suggesting to him, for at least the first ten times, "My name's Joel, you can call me Joel". You gotta try and remember people's names, man. He talked at the kids in a monotone voice using the most complex expressions he could muster and of course was met with blank expressions and bored kids. He was utterly disorganised, the materials he had prepared were strewn with inaccurate language and he clearly did not have a fondness for kids; each time he grabbed a young arm and dragged a kid up, I cringed. And all of these cracks he tried to cover over with a smarmy smile. Despite some expected last-minute requests from the Thai teachers, Rakhi and I insisted that we still wouldn't be able to come along again today and I'm pretty sure now we'll need the time to recover. I'm not sure how much money the school saved, they paid us twice what Mediakids would, but I'm sure now they realise the importance of having people to run things who are organised, light-hearted, a bit god-damn charismatic, like kids and make things fun! Okay, rant over. It was a long, long day.

Many things have happened to us this past two weeks. Last week, I had the joy of not having to teach any classes and instead rehearse an English play with some of the students from the top matayom 6 class. Despite the concept of competitive drama seeming utterly ridiculous to me, it was a great opportunity to do something fun and hopefully interesting with a group of the best students. Saying that, rather than choosing a piece by Billy Shakespeare, I decided to go with an episode of "Friends", more specifically, "The One Where No-one's Ready" or rather, the one where Joey puts on all of Chandler's clothes at once. Anyone who says they haven't seen this farcical masterpiece is a liar.


Joey: You said you wanted the chair. You didn't say anything about the cushions.
Chandler: The cushions are the essence of the chair!
Joey: That's right. I'm taking the essence!

So, I adapted the script, showed the students the episode (which I downloaded, I don't have the box-set lying around) and set about knocking it into a prize-winning piece of theatrical gold. To be honest, the students are so good that despite not usually having the opportunity to speak English, they understand most things I say and more than a couple of them demonstrated a fair bit of dramatic flair. The six actors and I spent a few hours a day for four days in the rehearsal room and with the help of Rakhi, Joe (the older Dutch guy who teaches at our school) and a few of the girls from the same class, we got props and a set together and on Friday travelled to another school in the area to perform in the first "round". With only one other entry, and a score from the judges of 555 out of 600 we made it safely through and will be heading further afield on Friday to the next round, where seven new competitors await. Of course, despite my scoffing at the idea of competitive drama, my sometime competitive nature (really? you cry) means that I'm already imagining we're all in a film about how a group of Thai students wow the world with their stage version of Friends. I hear whooping and cheering and the Eminem track from Eight Mile and have visions of the gang of us dancing round with a trophy like Nobby Stiles. Life is very confusing for me at times.

Chandler, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, Joey, Monica and the Introduction Guy...clearly!

Also this week, we moved house. We moved into Fritz's old house on Wednesday. It's much brighter than our old place which allowed in pretty much no natural light. This place has a lovely veranda area where we can hang the hammock, a creature-tight kitchen that's beautiful and clean and Rakhi isn't too scared to go into, and bright light streaming through the windows of every room. We were putting a bit of a brave face on the old place really, it was a bit depressing. Our only concern about here was that there's no washing-machine, so we paid a visit to the owner who works in our school and yesterday she went out and bought a new one which she's going to bring over today to fit. And you can't argue with that.

Last weekend in Bangkok, we went to one of the big lady-boy cabaret shows (that's a big show, not big lady-boys... scary!) Since these performances are famous worldwide, I kind of expected a sell-out show in a buzzing theatre full of folk drinking cocktails around little tables. Instead, this huge theatre hosted an audience of perhaps only thirty to forty. The drinks were expensive and the show lasted hardly more than an hour. It was good fun though and needed to be done while we're living here. The performance was mixture of lip-synched ballads and big, high-kicking camp classics. Although the performers were clearly at different stages of their transformation there was only one who I was convinced was a girl. She looked just like Monica Lewinsky (which is perhaps why I dreamed I was out drinking with Bill Clinton last night) and I could see her giving many a man that Begbie moment. A slightly sour taste was left after a fun performance when, as we left, we were forced to pass a line of the performers who were all enthusiastically beckoning us for a photo opportunity and obligatory tip. The ticket price was huge for a one-hour show, girls. I suppose the show is most popular with tourists and they must make a bit from them, but it all seemed a bit undignified.

Next weekend we're going to go back into the city to meet up with Shano, our old pal from Korea. He packed in his job in Bucheon and is now just checking out a few places round Asia. Rakhi spoke to him the other day and he's in Hong Kong at the moment but he's decided to come and meet up with us in Bangkok. It'll be nice to catch up with him.