Number 13

Today was back to business as usual, except for people eating leftovers all day long. In the morning I worked on speeches and materials that will be presented by non English speaking
people at the GAJE Conference. It's rather amusing that I'm spell checking, grammar checking and revising context and syntax given my less then fastidious attention to detail in general.

At lunch time I walked up to the "chemist" to get some drops for my eye which is a little red and a little swollen. The Thai's have a more enlightened view of the distribution of pharmaceuticals. To begin with there are no controlled substances and no such thing as a prescription. The clerk's at the pharmacy are nurses and they consult with you about what you need. Don wrote down "eye drops with antibiotic" on a piece of paper and away I went. The first pharmacy didn't have them so they called another one and sent me there. I walked in, waited my turn, gave the nice lady my note and she handed me an American made eye drop. She told me to use 2 or 1 drops, 4 or 3 times a day. It appears I could have asked for a bunch of sleeping pills and tranquilizers and she would have sold them to me.

When I got back to the house, Moon's fiance Gary was there to have lunch/leftovers with her. I met him last night at the Thanksgiving feast and, because he's British, he agreed to explain cricket to me. After their lunch he spent a good 1/2 hour explaining it and that, in and of itself, made today a good day. I've been trying to understand cricket for a really long time.

Bruce asked me to help the staff reorganize the library. There are a couple thousand books, the vast majority in English and in no discernible order. Aom had bought 12 different color rolls of tape and the idea was to organize the books by subject and put tape on their binding. To say it was an eclectic collection doesn't do justice to it. Books on legal clinics, international law, child law, women's legal issues, legal education, paralegal materials, all kinds of seminar materials, "how to" books, fiction, non-fiction, history, sports, self-help, the Book of Mormon and at least a half dozen Haggadas. I needed a break from my real work and the library really did need to get organized so we spent a few hours and instituted the Evan Decimal System.

The staff went home around 5 and I took a walk around the soi to get a little exercise. Came back, made myself some dinner and Don came by around 8 to take Bruce and me to a jazz club. The music was good, the crowd was made up of expats from all over and a few Thai's. On the way back to the house we passed the area where the Reds are congregating and Don (who was driving) waived at a guy with a gun as we drove by. The yellows (PAD, the group that is occupying the airport in Bangkok) pretty much stay out of Chiang Mai because the Prime Minister who was convicted of something and is on the run, is from Chiang Mai and apparently very popular here. His brother in law, who is the current Prime Minister, apparently has moved up here and is staying until things cool down in Bangkok.

Tomorrow several of my housemates are going to Burma for a Visa run and it should be pretty quiet here.

It was cooler today with blue skies and a light breeze. All and all a good day in Chiang Mai.