The movement control order here in Malaysia was recently extended for two weeks and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was extended for another two weeks after that so I doubt I’ll be able to move around freely until May and I don’t know when I’ll be able to return to my home in Thailand. Anyway not much to say other than I hope things get better soon and that people learn a few things from this crisis like the fact that people can live and many can even work without having to travel so much and burn so much greenhouse gas emitting fuel. Since there isn’t much going on here other than trying to keep the all kids educated, entertained, and following a home schooling schedule I thought I’d tell a short story from a few months ago when I was in Thailand.

There is a general store near my house in rural Thailand and one day I saw a little girl pushing a cart with a bunch of garbage on it to a nearby bridge and dumping it off the side of the bridge. The next day I went to have a look and saw that there was a lot of garbage down there. All kinds of stuff like various plastics including motor oil containers. I don’t like people improperly disposing of garbage anywhere but especially in my village. I sent an email to the relevant government department and but never received a reply. I also told my landlord about it but they told me not to say anything to the shop owners but I said I had to and that I had even more of a responsibility to say something than they did because they are locals and a local dispute between locals could cause all them kinds of problems in the seemingly semi-lawless area we live in.

A few days later I just happened to go to that shop that I have only been to a couple of times over a few years and while I was there I politely told the shopkeepers that they shouldn’t take all their garbage and dump it off the side of the bridge. They said that the garbage truck didn’t always come on time and I said if it doesn’t come this week then you’ll have to wait for the next week and that it was sure to come and that other people weren’t throwing their garbage off the side of the bridge. Then both of them ignored me and you could tell they did not like me calling them out, one was a middle age women and the other might have been her son who was probably in his early twenties. There was also a customer there so I figured if my talk couldn’t influence them at least the customer could learn something.

I really didn’t say anything bad and I wasn’t rude. In fact my hardest hitting line was “I’m not even a local and I care for the environment here more than most of the people that live here.”. I left not thinking much about it and felt that I handled it well. However that evening one of their relatives called the daughter-in-law of my landlord and told her to warn me not to bring up this matter again or there would be trouble and that he was on the record giving me a warning. Later that night when they visited me at my house they told me about the phone call and their teenage daughter was particularly worried. I was like what are they the boss of the village and she was like it’s not funny they have a lot of money and they hire people to kill people. I was like well I don’t need anyone coming to get me at my house where I’m at the edge of the forest and over 100 meters from anyone that could potentially back me up.

However her mom told me not to worry just as long as I don’t go over there and say anything about it again. A few days after that my visa was going to expire so I had to go back to Malaysia to see the kids and extend my visa. After about a month and a half in Malaysia I returned and their daughter told me that while I was gone the man that I have never met or even seen before stopped by their house and spoke with her and her Mom. This wasn’t too strange because he lives only three doors down on the same side of the street. What was strange was that after over a month he felt the need to talk about me saying I was crazy and was a bad example for their daughter who I often play badminton with. Since this guy wants to make threats and talk trash I felt I should learn a bit about him. Now if all I learned was the guy was a loan shark that hires thugs to collect money and settle local disputes I wouldn’t have been surprised however there was more to this guy, he wasn’t your average loan shark thug boss.

In addition to being the local loan shark thug boss it seems he is also known in the area for being able to channel different gods through his body which he does in different ceremonies in which people come and pay him to conduct in his amulet and shrine filled house. If this wasn’t crazy enough I was told the loan shark thug boss god man is also a father to a young daughter. However when I asked where the mother of the daughter was during all this craziness I was told the daughter has no mother so I asked “How can the daughter have no mother?”. Then she told me that the loan shark thug boss god man’s own mother acts as the mother to his motherless daughter. So I asked “How can the kid not have a mother? Where did she come from?” and I was told that the loan shark thug boss god man was not allowed to touch women so he had to use his sperm to fertilize an egg that was then inserted into a surrogate mother who was paid to carry the baby and then go away after she gave birth. After hearing all this I could only think “So I’m the guy that’s crazy and is a bad example for young people?”.