Ran 4 rounds of the perimeter again at 9.30 p.m. under a bright full moon. Slightly slower than on Sunday.  

Saw a huge lizard-like reptile at around 4.15 p.m. on Monday 18th February. I estimate that it was about one metre in length.

My longest training run for several months. I ran for 40 minutes and covered 7.6 kilometres on the treadmill – 20 minutes on the Fat Burn program (3.6 km) followed by 20 minutes on the Weight Loss program (4.0 km). The Fat Burn program is entirely uphill with varying gradients. The Weight Loss program is mostly uphill with gentler gradients so I was able to run faster. I didn’t enjoy the run as there was no music playing. I find it easier to run on the treadmill when there’s some kind of class and dance music playing.

Here is the Thai Meteorological Office weather report for December 2007. The report shows that the mean temperature for most parts of Thailand was 1 to 2 degrees above normal. However, in Bangkok Metropolis the mean temperature was 29.4 degrees, which is 3.1 degrees above normal! Next I’m going to search for statistics for recent Decembers in Bangkok, to see if last month is part of a warming trend or just exceptional.

Actually about an hour after sunrise. I ran 3 rounds of the perimeter, followed by 3 rounds of the lake. That makes 4 runs this week (from 13th until 19th).  Then installed the WordPress stats plugin.

Over the new year weekend we stayed in the province of Petchabun, at a village called Phu Tubberk. Due to its altitude there were many temperate vegetables being cultivated. The photo below I took of a cabbage field while running.

DISCLAIMER: Posts in this category are about my attempts to learn Thai through translating songs. In the process, I may unintentionally give incorrect information about the Thai language.  If you notice any errors, let me know!

Why have I decided to translate a Thai song?: Well I’ve lived in Thailand for over 7 years now, but my knowledge of the Thai language is still very basic. Although I know hundreds of Thai words, I can only speak or understand very simple sentences. At my current rate of progress, it will take me 24 years to be reasonably fluent in Thai. By “reasonably fluent” I mean equivalent to the standard of English of a Thai English major student who graduates with a high GPA (grade point average) from a university in Thailand.

Why have I made so little progress so far? The main reason is that I haven’t really needed to. My work doesn’t require me to speak or read any Thai, although it’s appreciated if I make the occasional attempt. And although my wife is Thai, she speaks English fluently and 95% of the time we converse in English. She is always helpful whenever I have a question about the language, but we both work long hours and at the end of the day it’s just so much easier for us to speak in English. That’s the main reason, but a secondary reason is the nature of the Thai language. The Thai language belongs to a different family of languages, and is much more different from English than Spanish is (for example). The most significant difference is the alphabet system. When I used to learn Spanish, I made much quicker progress because it uses the same alphabet as English. Whenever I learned a new word, I would visualize it in my mind and then I saw it on the pages of a magazine or on a signpost (when I visited Spain). So new vocabulary was constantly reinforced. But if I learn a Thai word, I have to represent it to myself in the English alphabet, as I still don’t know the Thai alphabet. One problem of remembering a Thai word in English characters is that the vocabulary doesn’t get reinforced, as the Thai words in newspapers and on signs are usually written in Thai characters. Another problem is that writing a Thai word in English characters doesn’t tell you how it should be pronounced. Especially it doesn’t tell you how the vowel should be pronounced, whether it is high or low or mid tone, etc. And that is critical to being understood in Thai. Many Thai words look exactly the same if you write them in English letters, but they could have different meanings depending on the tone. For example, “mai” could mean silk or fire or new or no, depending on the tone. Whereas, Spanish is very phonetic. You can just say the word the way it looks, 90% of the time anyway. Aside from the different alphabet, the Thai grammatical rules are very different from English grammatical rules. The Thai language doesn’t indicate tense by conjugating verbs, for example. These grammatical differences further accentuate the difficulty of learning Thai.

I’m not complaining about how difficult learning Thai is for a native English speaker (although it is), but just explaining the reasons for my lack of progress.

Okay, so far two reasons – not really needing to learn Thai, and the difficulty of the language. A third reason has to be laziness – I admit that I should at least have learned the Thai alphabet by now. many times I’ve started learning the Thai characters, and got halfway, and then given up. After a few months, I start to forget them again, as the knowledge is not being reinforced. So the next time, I have to start over again.

Despite not really needing to, I would like to improve my Thai language ability. It often gets frustrating, being constantly surrounded by signs that I can’t read and overhearing conversations that I don’t understand. It can be inconvenient, when ordering food in a restaurant or trying to find the right bus. Also, by improving my knowledge of Thai, I should get more of an insight into different aspects of Thai culture, as a language reflects the way its speakers think about the world.

So I want to accelerate my progress. I don’t want to wait another 17 years! For the reasons mentioned above, I think the best way forward is to start with mastering the Thai alphabet – all the consonant sounds, and vowels and tone markers. Once I have that foundation, it will be easier for me to improve my spoken Thai. How best to learn the Thai alphabet? Well, there is the Thai alphabet poem, which I have listened to many times, it’s become boring. Instead, I’m going to learn the Thai alphabet by translating a contemporary Thai song from here.

I realise that translating a Thai song into English requires a lot more skill than looking up words in a dictionary, and eventually I’m going to need the help of a native Thai speaker (or at least someone who knows Thai really well), but I want to see how far I can get by myself first. It’s a way to motivate myself to learn all the Thai vowel and consonant sounds, pick up some vocabulary at the same time, and finally when I listen to the song it will refinforce what I’ve learnt.

CHOOSING THE SONG: On the website, I found the list of new Thai songs ready to be translated. So there’s no English translation yet, at the time I wrote this. I selected and played a few of these songs at random. Finally I chose the following song:

“Perhaps Love” from the album Ost. Princess Hours by Rose and Ice.

Here is a very useful site if you live in Thailand and need information about planting a tree or any other gardening advice.

I’ve just received an email about the Triathlon Association of Thailand’s next triathlon. The events will span 3 days starting on Friday 28th and finishing on Sunday 30th March. This year, further upstream the Mekong – at Chiang Saen in Chiang Rai province. Click here for more information.

Average (I don’t know for what time period) temperatures for Bangkok in December according to the weather.co.uk site: daily maximum 31 degrees C, daily minimum 21 degrees. Yesterday (December 20th) the maximum was 35 degrees, 4 degrees above average, and yesterday’s minimum was 26 degrees, 5 above average.