Sunday, June 27

On Friday I went swimming in our pool and it was amazing!

They opened the pool on Wednesday and I planned to go swimming on Thursday, but that was the day I ended up working from home and didn't have time. So on Friday, after I finished working from home a bit (grrr) and before we went out for duck dinner with Sean and Emma (more on that later), I went down for a swim.

And oh, hot and smoggy Bangkok looks so much nicer from a cool swimming pool! I also just can't believe we have a pool in our building! I realize it's pretty standard for an apartment at our price point ($535/month for a 2-bedroom) but it's still pretty astonishing to me.

Anyway, I'll stop because this might be getting annoying/coming off as too braggy.

So, Roman and I have been looking for a nice crispy duck since we arrived in Bangkok. Even though duck is common here, especially in Chinatown, the skin is usually not served crispy at all. We figured if wanted to ensure crispy skin, we'd be better off getting a whole Peking duck, so the last time we saw Sean and Emma, we proposed a duck dinner. Emma, whose mom is Thai-Chinese, offered to ask the Thai-Chinese grannies for their tips on where to get the best crispy duck in Bangkok (it wouldn't be in Chinatown, Emma warned).

And so on Friday, we met up at Leng Hong, a Chinese restaurant near the Bang Chak BTS. Emma had made a reservation, but we approached a vast restaurant that was entirely empty, save one other table of guests. Oh, pandemic times.

The food was amazing, though! We got deep-fried shrimp rolls and Chinese broccoli with XO sauce and the duck meat, which was served garlic-fried. They brought us a plate of just the duck skin, served in shatteringly crisp little squares. With the duck skin came little rice flour pancakes, spring onions, cucumber slices, and a tamarind sauce, and you made little—tacos?—with the duck skin and all the accoutrements and it was so good.

When we paid the bill, we gave Emma cash and she paid with her card. She left a tip for the server, which made the young woman so flustered that she came back a moment later and gave Emma a bar of soap! Which looked like a pack of cigarettes, and which Emma gifted to me.

Emma didn't want the soap because she's paring down—it turns out Sean and Emma will be leaving Bangkok in September for at least a year. Hearing that, I got a taste of what everyone says about making friends with other foreigners in Bangkok—you have to get used to the fact that you often have to say goodbye. Sad!

Also, before we left the restaurant, we got a photo of ourselves with one of several cardboard cutouts that Leng Hong had on display of the owner and his son.

On Saturday, we headed to the Khlong Toey market, which was pretty deserted due to (I'm assuming) the Covid outbreak in May. We got some delicious coconut shakes...

And we watched guys hacking down big pieces of meat (on the left) and chopping up smaller pieces of meat (on the right, in the yellow apron).

We also picked up a bunch of pandan leaves for our drinking water, a melon, peanut brittle, some fermented sausages, and a kilo of pickled mustard greens (which, it turns out, is quite a lot of pickled mustard greens). And Roman got me a pretty bouquet of orchids (which are meant to be displayed at a temple but...whatevs).

Saturday afternoon, I was a guest speaker for a weekend theatre camp for kids. Which sounds like way more of a thing than it was. Laura, who I met though Darren (the British choreographer), runs this Saturday acting class in English for mostly expat kids. She started it with Stefan, who was an opera singer and a teacher and Darren’s partner, and who died about a year ago. Now Darren teaches the class, and Laura asked me if I could come in one Saturday and talk to the kids about what it means to be a playwright, and I agreed.

I didn’t get much feedback from Laura on what she wanted, and I was so busy with school last week that I just didn’t want to give her a call after I got home and iron out the details—I didn't really feel like I had room in my brain to think about it. And then she sent me a flyer she created, where she called my visit a Master Class.

Which made me a little nervous. I’ve never even taught playwriting before! But I spent some time thinking about it and, you know, I’ve studied playwriting and musical theatre book writing for a long time and I've read a bunch of books and taken many classes and written plenty of plays. So I started putting a little something together in the back of my head.

I figured I’d start out by asking the kids to introduce themselves and name a musical or play they liked. Then I’d talk about my own experiences as a writer (as Laura had requested), particularly as a way to talk about how I approach the creative impulse and how I process my feelings around rejection (which I think is super useful for artists to talk about!).

Then I’d ask the kids about their experiences with discovering the character’s motivation, or action, or what the character wants—whatever words Darren used with them to teach a concept that I was hoping he’d taught them. I could use that discussion to talk about how their training as actors could serve then as writers, and then I’d talk about the concept of the “I Want” song. I would play a couple “I Want” songs I had prepared and we would identify what the character wants and whether that’s also the main plot of the whole piece. Then we’d look at a couple musicals they named and we’d try and identify whether there's an “I Want” song (I was hoping they wouldn’t all pick, I don’t know, High School Musical or something else I’d never listened to). I even made a playlist of relevant songs and brought in a portable speaker.

Well, it turns out I should have talked to Laura about this first. When I arrived (during their break) and we all started chatting, Laura told me that these kids were very new to acting and had no real exposure to even the idea of what a playwright was. And, from what Darren told me, it didn't seem they'd done any work on character motivation/action/etc. Laura said she was hoping I could talk to the kids about the importance of collaboration and how lucky they are to have a teacher like Darren, and also give them feedback on the performances they were going to do for me.

I bristled a little at, well, telling some kids how lucky they are, no matter if they are privileged expat kiddos. But I revised my plan, scrapped my intended conversation on craft, and planned to just talk through my bio and connect my own experiences in acting classes to how those informed me as a writer. I told Laura that giving feedback on acting wasn't my strong suit since I’m not a director or acting coach, but that I could give them some, to at least draw a connection between what they were doing and what I do.

Then I watched them perform Shakespeare scenes for a while. It was cute at first but, uh, quickly got kind of boring for me. Honestly, why start the kids with Shakespeare? They had their lines all memorized, which was impressive, but they were terribly self-conscious. When they weren’t doing something specific, they just stood there looking awkward, poor things! The better ones could, you know, give the impression of an emotion, but none of it felt very true. And Shakespeare is just hard, man.

It sounds like I'm being harsh or just picking on these poor kids! They are all 10 to 13 years old (plus there's one 18 year-old who’s kind of there as a favor) and they just started taking an acting class this year. But I don’t say all this to criticize them—only to explain that I didn’t know what kind of feedback I could possibly give them!!!

Anyway, my talk went OK—I tried to keep the kids engaged and tried to be honest and vulnerable talking about challenges I'd faced, and I tried to link my own experiences with what they were doing in class, but man, kids will not hide it when they’re bored! I would say I had 80% of them engaged 80% off the time.

When I started the talk, I thanked them for their performances and I praised them for getting the Shakespeare memorized, and talked about how hard that is. And that was really the only feedback I had to give. But after my little speech and a couple questions from the kids, Laura asked me if I could give some feedback on their performances. And, man, was I flummoxed! I kind of bungled it, too. I meant to say something like, Make sure you’re always doing something on stage—either you’re trying to get something or you’re doing something with your body or you're listening to another character. That way you always have an action and you probably won’t feel so self-conscious.

Instead, I said something like, Well I just noticed, I think when you’re doing something like, when you’re doing something like the choreography that Darren has given you, I think for actor it can be hard when you don’t have something to do onstage, so it’s helpful for them to always have something they’re doing. Or something. Not my finest moment.

I did give some slightly more helpful feedback (I think) later in the class, after a different performance, when I talked a little bit about how each line is a reaction to something else that's happened, and how every character is hearing everything said on stage for the first time, and how they could think about what each of their lines is a reaction to.

Also...now I'm wondering...maybe one of things I should try and do at some point in my life is teach a playwriting class for young people? I love the idea of helping kids figure out ways to use language to try and express their thoughts or feelings or creative impulses in a structured form, and then maybe creating a performance from that.

Anyway, after the class, Darren and Laura and the oldest student in the class, Jason, and I went to a nearby spot for decent (though expensive) cheeseburgers and fries. And then, kind of exhausted by the long afternoon/evening, I headed home, stopping to pick up some ice cream for me & Roman on the way.

On Sunday I went swimming in the pool, then went out to do some errands. I walked to Asok, where I picked up hard-to-find Rooibos tea at Tops Market, and then stopped by Terminal 21 for lunch.

I knew just what I wanted—I’ve been eyeing the vegetarian cart, where you can get one, two, or three vegetarian options with rice. I got so excited by all the veggies on display that I ordered three—pumpkin (or some other squash?), greens with chilies, pumpkin, and bitter melon, which came with red rice.

I thought it would a good idea to include my hand for scale?

When I got my rather large meal, I worried I’d been overzealous, but it turned out the bitter melon was so bitter that I didn't want to eat it, so I’m glad I chose three. I was so happy about this meal, you guys.

And...here some more photos from earlier in the week! A view of Roman's bus to Din Daeng: