December 5th was His Majesty the King's Birthday, which means it was also Father's day, as HM the King is seen as the father of all Thai people. In the features section of the paper we run two bios of fathers on the island. One was a well-to-do expat who was making personal sacrifices to spend more time training his athlete kids. The other was our beloved "Joe".
The interview with Joe was my first attempt to conduct an interview with an individual who was far from fluent in English.
We sat down on the steps of the 7/11 in Rawai and slowly tried to talk about what it meant for him to be a father. From time to time he would have to get up and put a batch of customers skewered foods into the deep fryer. I would just turn the recorder off and enjoy the coolness of the night air as I tried to figure out how to move the conversation forward.
My interviewing skills were horrendous to say the very least. Constantly I caught myself asking very leading questions, things that maybe he could just say "yes" or "no" to. I could see that my own preconceptions of Joe and what little I knew about him had already formulated "his" story. Sadly I seemed to be just trying to get him to back up my story instead of letting him tell me what his story really was.
I know I'll get better about these things, it's embarrassing to think about running such an unethical interview, even if it was from a lack of experience and language barriers. Nonetheless, when I sat down to write the story about him I tried my very best to be honest to what he was saying and steer clear of some of the leading questions I had asked him.
Here is the story as seen in the pages of the Phucket Gazette:
Thongchai Photiwong [Joe] Photo: PG
"Thongchai Photiwong is a father of two. He runs a fried food sidecar outside of a 7- Eleven in Rawai. His wife, Monluedee, who he has been married to for six years, is currently living in Chiang Rai with their two children.
Thangchai explains that he moved to Phuket because he could only make 2,000 – 3,000 baht a month in Chiang Rai. Now he sends money back to his family every two weeks. Thangchai explains that he works everyday of the week, usually from 2pm to 5am.
'I only work – everything is for the children,' he said.
His daughter is five and talks to him on the phone when he calls home, while the newest member of Thongchai’s family is a six-month old boy.
He hopes that both the girl and boy will attend law school. Sometime this December Thangchai will be returning to Chiang Rai to bring his family to Phuket.
'I think they will be happy here. A family should stay together, not separate. Separate is no good,' he said. Thangchai explains he will have to work on the King’s Birthday, December 5, but he will get to talk to his children on the phone." -- Phuket Gazette
Absolutely nothing brilliant and perhaps even a little sloppy at points, but I thought some of you might enjoy a peek into Joe's life, since he keeps popping up on the blog. (When I was typing up the story I had to ask one of our Thai reporters what "low school" was. It sure didn't seem like the right expectations for someone to have for their children. After a little brain storming and re-listening to the interview it turned out that I had completely misheard, Joe had said "LAW school".) Unfortunately I've still not figured out a way to get Tongue Dog to give me an interview -- not even leading questions will help me on this one.
Joe sounds like a dear and dedicated young man and daddy. I hope all goes well for him and his family when they are reunited in Phuket.
ReplyDeleteAlso good that you realized you were asking leading questions about "his story." I can imagine that would be very easy to do--especially with the language barrier. In your article it seems like you filtered out your perspective and got to the heart of "his story." Good job. It is nice to meet Joe. Thanks!