Our New Friend Puggy From Burma; Our New Rating System

Last Sunday the weather was perfect. Outside our balcony we have a perfect view of our communal tennis court in our condo complex. Looking down we noticed that the sun was shining brilliantly on the green turf below, making for perfect tanning conditions. Usually in the BKK, you wouldn't want to come anywhere near direct sunlight in midday. The intensity of the sun is fierce, and sweating balls is often inevitable. But this Sunday was different. The weather resembled San Diego more than anywhere in the tropics. So we headed down to play some tennis.

Because both Bear and I would be classified generously as novices at tennis, we always bring our lacrosse sticks down to throw around. This is so that if anyone laughs at our poor tennis skills, we can immediately stuptify their curiosity with kick ass lax skills. This is exactly how we met Puggy, a Burma native who speaks English with impecable proficiency. He saw us throwing a ball around with crazy looking sticks and was immediately intrigued. We hit it off with him right away making plenty of jokes about the Thai culture and discussing the Burmese politics and Buddism. His affable nature encouraged us to invite him to dinner. What a great idea.

Puggy promised his monk in Burma that he wouldn't drink alcohol, and when he told us this, we just assumed that this dude was a pretty straight laced kid. In fact, he is only in Thailand to visit his family for a short time before he heads to Ontario to begin studying at University. Well, Big P was true to his word and didn't touch a drop of alcohol. But that didn't stop Bear and I. Nothing crazy, since it was a Sunday, but we had a few brews in us and there was a "buy three get one free" deal for the 20oz bottles (that's a guess, btw... my Thai reading skills have a long way to go..). When we declined a second round, Puggy randomly says while taking a drag from his cigarette, "wow, I wish I could drink with you. I could drink about 24 of these bottles in a night."

"No way! There's no way," Bear and I retorted. Maybe drinking led to the nickname 'Puggy.' I didn't ask. But Bear did ask, "How long ago did you stop drinking?"

"For one month I stopped. I promised my monk that I wouldn't drink while I was here in Thailand," he responded. This immediately changed our view of the man. Maybe he wasn't as straight-edged as we originally thought.

Well, drinking among dudes enevitably leads to talking about women, and this Sunday night was no different. We explained our newly devised rating system. This clever system was a response to the problem of our phones having a variety of obscure names like, "Net, Nouch, and Ni" all in a row. Let me tell you, it is not an easy task to keep these names matched correctly to the faces. Hence our Rating System:

[NAME] (Number 1-10), (Number 1-10), (Number 1-10)

Example:

Net 7, 9, 4

The first number is for the face.
The second number is for the body.
The thrid is a combination of personality and knowledge of English.

The girl's name may or may not be followed by the location of the meeting place, depending on how many characters require entry. As in most systems, 10 is high and 1 is low. As we have seen in practice, the third number tends to produce both discussion and analysis of the number depending on the case. This is fun.

Enjoying the immediate benefits of our new system, we asked Puggy if he or his buddies ever rated girls. This was his response:

"Yes, but just one time... Well. In Burma there was a girl that was with a man but they stopped seeing each other. She had a shop near my house and everyday I would go over and see her, I was always there. You know, in Burma, people see each other in their own and don't go out. Something like this. So after a little while I took her out and we went out to dinner, yeah man? Then I took her back to my home, and I did you know... with her. She said no, no stop, but I knew that she really wanted it. You know because the next time I see her she doesn't ask she just does it. She was like close to me [motions someone getting close to his side] so I know that she likes...."

Slight pause

Bear says, "No, No, No... Rate, R..A...T...E... There is no P."

Puggy thinking

"OOOOHHHH !!! Yeah, Yeah, I know, I know rate... like the numbers" exclaimed Puggy.

We all started laughing hysterically. We told Puggy that he probably didn't want to tell people about this to anyone in Canada. Even if, you know, "this is the Burma way."

This was one of the better lost in translation stories for 'ya.

~ J-Dub