Lust In Translation 2

Fa comes up to me in the office with a slip of paper. All the other teachers’ names are scrawled on it, alongside mobile numbers and email addresses. Some of the names are misspelt and it’s all in the same curious handwriting.
‘Jooooon, can you write?’
I write my name and number and it instantly looks out of place on the paper.
Sure enough later that day I get a message - ‘Jon what do you do? (Fa)’
It’s a good question and one that I should ask myself more often. But I assume she meant it in the present progressive so I reply ‘I’m at home reading a book’. She replies ‘Me also reading a book. And you?’

And this was the beginning.

She likes to send about 10 messages a day and if I don’t reply quickly enough she rings my phone and cuts off before I answer, just in case I hadn’t heard the message tone.

She came into the office one day with two bits of weird Thai fruit that I hate – the pink sort with sharp green spikes protruding out around it, a bit like the visual representation of the HIV virus. I wrapped them in paper and put them in the bin.

For my birthday I received some of the most amazing gifts – t-shirts that I wouldn’t have picked myself but look great on me, a crate of beer, a cheap but usable toy guitar to entertain the kids with…and a weird plastic inflatable cat-type thing that looked like it was made by a 5-year-old. Obviously most of these presents were from the other teachers who by now know me quite well. Alongside the cat was a note which read ‘I wish you happy always’. I was puzzling over which way up the cat was supposed to be and what it was meant to be used for (it looked kind of like a key ring) when Fa came over and demonstrated that it’s something you attach to your mobile phone. So she attached it to my mobile and I smiled and thanked her in Thai.

On Christmas day I went to a party and the cat ‘fell off’, never to be seen again.

My second date with Fa came about in a similar way to the first. Some miscommunication in the office, some mention of a ‘movie’ but then lots of frantic phone calls after I’d left work. I then realised that she thought I’d agreed to meet her at the Coliseum, so, feeling bad I rode my bike over there. There she was waiting outside. I thought we were about to go inside to the cinema but she tried to explain something else and we went in a tuktuk. By now it was nearly 5:30pm and I’d agreed to go to a boxing day Christmas dinner at another teacher’s house at 8pm. Maybe still time for a movie? The tuktuk dropped us at a main road a few minutes away and we went into a photo developing shop. It turned out Fa was on a quick work errand, putting together some photos of the teachers and students for advertising purposes. 30 minutes dragged by, with her asking my opinion on sizes and frames and whatnot. When we finally got in the tuktuk to go back to the Coliseum I had to explain to her.
‘I’m sorry Fa, I go to Christmas dinner at 8 o’clock.’
She shook her head not understanding.
‘8pm, Christmas dinner. I said to other teachers I will be there. They buy food for me’
She still didn’t quite get it.
I don’t have a watch, so I took my phone out of my pocket ‘Look, now 6:10pm, I go to dinner 8pm.’
‘Where is gift?’
‘What?’
‘Gift?’
She pointed at my phone and my heart sank.

Just you try demonstrating to someone who doesn’t understand your language that something ‘fell off’, rather than ‘was pulled off’. It’s a subtle difference and one which I couldn’t clarify, and even if I could it would have been a sodding great lie.