From country to capital…life changes

From Farming to Television…

I am supposed to start in a new direction today with stories that are more relevant to today, but without the background, there can be no today, so I must necessarily go back to the beginning. Life takes strange turns sometimes. Here I was, at 25, living in a totally alien country and culture with a language that had been tough to learn. I will admit that there had been a few times over the course of the first two years when I simply wanted to pack my bags and just get on an airplane and go home. The times this happened, I would inadvertently call the office in Bangkok, and in a few plain sentences, would make it abundantly clear that I had had enough, and they had better put me on the next plane going either east or west, whatever, as long as it was away from Thailand. And each time I was told to go to the beach for a weekend, or to go to the mountains, or to go join some event or another for a few days – which I did – and after the extended weekend away from it all, life just seemed easier and more interesting, and the job wasn’t that bad after all.

As I was nearing the end of my 3^rd year contract, I started looking for other opportunities – there was the potential of a job with a company in the north of Thailand, or the prospect of returning to Canada and re-integrating into society there. Either was not a bad option, although the potential offer for the job in Thailand was financially more interesting due to the much lower tax regime and cost of living in Thailand. So while I was waiting for a reply from this potential, September slowly came to an end, and October was looming – this would be the last month of my employment, and things were moving very slowly. There was a knock on the door, and someone popped their head around the corner and informed me there was a call for me from Bangkok. Very well, I didn’t know what it was but expected that maybe it was a friend who wanted to go for dinner or something on the weekend. I sauntered over to the front desk area and picked up the phone.

The show… Mah Tam Nad

The phone call…

It was not a friend, but a friend of a friend of one of my Thai language teachers three years earlier. I had maintained contact, but rather infrequently. The explanation for the call was an interesting one, and I couldn’t quite figure out what or how to answer. The long and the short of it was this: the person on the other end of the line was calling on behalf of the producer of the most popular television game show in Thailand at that point in time, “Mah Tam Nad”. The zany hosts had driven the ratings of the program through the roof, and every Monday through Wednesday night, nearly half the country would be at home watching the antics of the hosts and contestants of the program. The competition consisted of three nights of questions and quizzes mixed with variety and antics; the quizzes were wide ranging in topics, from language to history, culture, travel, and entertainment and a whole lot more. For this one very special occasion, they were going to have a competition between Thai-speaking non-Thais, or in other words, foreigners: “Would I be interested in appearing on and competing in the game show?” I had absolutely no idea what I would be getting into, but there was the offer. I had nothing else to do, and the first thought in my mind was “nobody knows me, so even if I make an utter fool of myself, it won’t matter, I will be gone in another month anyway.” I worried for a short while about the level of my Thai language skills, as I just felt that they were not sufficient to compete, but in the end, I just went with the flow and accepted the invitation.

The hosts of Mah Tam Nad: Setha Sirachaya (เศรษฐา ศิระฉายา) and Yani Jongwisut (ญาณี จงวิสุทธิ์)

Lights, Camera… laughter

It’s strange how life has turning points like this – but living life according to a prepared plan can be quite boring, and I hate boring (although sometimes boring is definitely more stable). I traveled to Bangkok a week later and appeared at the studio at the designated time, and in clothes that were not entirely country in style. I was sat down and introduced to the other contestants, and my heart sank: An American teacher who had been living and working in Bangkok for more than a decade, a Japanese businessman who had been in Thailand for nearly as long, another American teacher who had been in Thailand for more than a decade, and a British person who had been in Thailand for more than 7 years. I could hear their chatter as they were introduced to all and sundry of the production crew, and I started to sweat – how was I ever going to compete against this lot – I knew about cows, but hardly anything else about anything else in the Thai language.

Thailand’s most popular game show, Mah Tam Nad. (มาตามนัด)

Soon the rush was on, hair, make-up; make-up? Me? And hair styling? All kinds of sprays and clays and waxes and god knows what else they were putting in my hair and on my face – I was used to a cow turning around and licking my hair, (hence the term cow-lick), and as for stuff on my face, it was usually the soot of exhausts from lorries as I was driving around on a motorcycle. This truly was an alien world to me. A bell rang somewhere, and like in the movies, a runner appeared in the dressing room and herded us toward the studio. It was too late to leave now, and so, in for a penny, in for a pound. The lights came on, the cameras started rolling, the hosts laughed, and

I made a fool of myself.  I wasn’t gone a month later.