Dive Column 1

Here's the first article for my dive column! I'm supposed to be turning this out once a fortnight.

All the writing is in the article: http://www.phuketgazette.net/archives/phuketlifestyle/2011/article11676.html

Movember gets the cut

"Remember, remember, the first of Movember,

The barber's chair and shop

I see no reason why the colon cancer season should ever be forgot . . ."

Phuket Gazette staff at the end of Movember

What my right hand will do tomorrow when it no longer has a moustache to stroke -- I do not know. This month has been the first time in my life that I have made even the most wispy attempt of growing facial hair. I was against it in the beginning. Given where I am in my life and where I am . . . Phuket, Thailand -- infamous for sexpats and sex tourists, I really had  no desire to look like a pedophile. However, I bit the bullet, because all the boys at the Gazette had signed up to donate 50 baht to a charity at the end of the month and to "raise" awareness about colon cancer with our moustaches. (Mind you that there is nothing in our contracts forbidding us from having facial hair, so we were safe.) So, on Movember first we started the day with freshly shaven faces. There are a series of rules that must participants must abide by: http://www.movember.com/

I have no idea why all the farangs ended up in one group.

I have no idea why the Thai guys all ended up in one group.

An entire news office of mustached men runs the line of creepy and hilarious, usually depending on if you are in or out of know. Lunch at the "Cheapy" up the street was always a smile as four to six moustached men gathered around the dinning table in plastic lawn chairs. It's still hard not to laugh about the bit of vanilla ice cream caught in the corner of Chris's moustache after we picked up ice cream cones on the way back from lunch. (Ice cream is a standard after lunch occasion.)

To balance out my own upper lip hair, I went ahead and let a soul patch grow. I have become surprisingly found of the look. I found myself constantly fiddling with it and was pleased to be compared to Guy Fox on more than one occasion, perhaps it is a look I will come back to. But as it stands tomorrow evening my moustache is headed for the barber shop's floor. Hair cut, a shave and a massage (cost: $9) are all on the books to celebrate my first full paycheck and the start of my four day weekend.

Halloween -- Thai style

Okay, I'll be up front about this, Thais don't celebrate Halloween (something about Buddhism being their official religion), but that didn't stop Jackie and I. We didn't hop on the expat "holiday" bar scene that feels like a generic appendage of every expat community in the world, from Accra to Buenos Aires to Phuket. We waited for the real holiday to roll around, we're not some fair-weather weekend celebrators. Halloween was on Monday, so we celebrated it on Monday

I kicked off the holiday by waking up and totally forgetting what day it was. The celebrations really started when I got to work, where, like any good office employee, I celebrated by browsing Halloween ecards. I eventually selected a diced up and overdubbed dancing skeletons video for Jackie's ecard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlKSEYVZ7C4&feature=player_embedded




















Putting on our Halloween Party faces!               Ghostly coconut of rum starts levitating                                      


It was also payday, so Jackie and I rolled away from the inland cheapies for a sea-view restaurant in Rawai. Sitting above the gentle black ocean water we enjoyed the sand on our feet as we tried our holiday concoction, fresh coconut water with a shot of Captain Morgan. The glow of the candle brought the darkness of the ocean and the shadows of the looming tree above us to the foreground of our imaginations.

We paid the bill and awkwardly walked out of the restaurant holding our empty coconut shells.

After a quick trip to the 7/11 and Big C we had our stock of candy, as well as rum and apple juice -- a pale comparison to good spiked cider on a cold autumn evening, but still a reasonable fit for the our night.

Ar home we poured ourselves a healthy helping of spirits and gathered all the sharp objects we could on the front porch. We were making coconut jack o lanterns!

Jackie, surrounded by the weapons of her craft

We fine-tuned our holiday spirits with the proper play lists: http://8tracks.com/dirtyshirty/this-is-halloween and http://8tracks.com/endofmarch/monsters-witches-ghosts-oh-my

Isaac getting work done with the rock hammer            Jackie gouging out some eye-sockets

Then I took the rock hammer to my coconut with surprising success. In no time at all I was left with a mostly full drink and an almost perfect jack o lantern. I fiddled and fiddled with it until I was sure that everything I was doing was just making things worse. I was forced to retire from the creative world of jack o lantern "carving" and watched Jackie create a Vegetarian Festival themed jack o lantern as I sipped my apple juice and rum.

We made an effort to dance to the Time Warp, but it turns out there's a lot of free time between the explained steps.

Without parents to tell us otherwise, seeing as we are full grown "adults," Jackie and I were able attempt to build fires in our jack o lanterns instead of using candles.

Finally, I stripped down to the weakest "Batman" costume and snuck out the side door so I could come around front and do a little trick or treating. I admittedly felt a bit sheepish (not batish) standing in my underwear, wearing a mask, and asking Jackie to give me the candy that I had bought just an hour ago.

Trick or Treat!

All in all I have to admit that it was a stellar two person Halloween party!