looking for Thai & JFilm friends

for Stuff I Love: Challenge 3

People - Country - Group/Artist - Album title (playlist from 1st track), song/tune (within playlist) for anyone who might want a taste.

Kurdish - Iran - Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh) & Ali Akbar Moradi (tanbur) - In the Mirror of the Sky (2004), "Showgh" (Joyful Anticipation, renamed "Delight" on the re-release apparently);  "Choupi"
Improvisations on Kurdish melodies. Kamancheh is a Persian spike fiddle & my very favourite instrument. Tanbur is a Kurdish lute.

Roma - (Hungary & elsewhere) - Besh o droM - Macsó hímzés (2000), "Mahala"
(Best of droM playlist as there isn't currently one for Macsó hímzés, only individual tracks)

Breizh - Pennoù Skoulm - Pennoù Skoulm (1994), "La valsounette et la valse des pastouriaux"

Scotland - Session A9 - Bottlenecks and Armbreakers (2008), "Sporting Paddy, Hamish the Carpenter, Hull's, Road to Erogie" The A9 is the road they had to take to get to Charlie McKerron's house when he had this idea for a group. There are a lot of turns.

Sweden & Finland - Hedningarna - TRÄ (1994), "Vargtimmen"

Muzsikás with Sebestyen Marta - Máramaros: The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania (1993)
Hungarian musicians went in search of Jewish music from the Maramures region, lost to the Shoah. They found Roma who preserved pieces of that knowledge and made this album.
"Szombateste búcsúztató" (Farewell to Shabbat);  "Chaszid tánc" (Khosid Dance)

India - Anouskha Shankar (sitar) - Live at Carnegie Hall (2001)

Cabo Verde - Cesária Evora - Miss Perfumado (20th anniversary release 2012), "Angola" (video); "Petit Pays" (from Cesaria, 1995, video)

Québécoise - Le Vent du Nord - Shrewsbury Folk Festival 2024 (live performance)

Mongolia - Hanggai - Introducing Hanggai (2008), "Four Seasons" (live performance)

For "Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition Challenge 1"

Things I love about two hour Thai movies, represented by 10 11 favourites and a couple more.

Fluidity of tone and ‘genre’. Thai story-telling flows from one tone to another as needed. There are genre norms but they’re different from western ones, and used very differently.
Tears of the Black Tiger takes this a step further. Genres - Thai and western - become a riotous palette of textures, colours and emotions to play with. It is fascinating work.

Warm hearted and accepting, There is a lot of warmth and kindness in Thai titles, one reason it is such a refuge from the deluge of tension, negativity and cynicism elsewhere. It works particularly well with youth series and coming of age.
May Who? Equal parts clever, intelligent and goofy. Super-charged teenage emotions rendered as literal electricity.
Teacher’s Diary - Quietly perfect. Humour, heart and kindness, so much kindness.

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Anki is an open-source flashcard system. The official manual is confusing and assumes far too much knowledge but fortunately there are many helpful videos.

"Spaced repetition" is a key component of the system - algorithms which change how often it shows you a card, leading to longer and longer timings. I've been able to tweak a fair bit of it to come closer it working with my complications - I have age, six decades of chronic illness and menopause adversely affecting learning, retention and stamina - but not all. In theory, since it's open-source I can go in and attempt to change something to better suit how easily I fatigue but that's rather daunting. Or I might try another system. I like the flashcard set-up I was able to set up here and how easy it is to add new cards now that it's made.

Anyway, this is the set-up I'm using. Feel free to borrow and adjust as needed (why do I keep writing as if someone might read this? It could be a psychological case study 555). All I need to do now is input three fields for each pair of cards - the Thai word, its romanisation and the English.

It gives me a Thai word, with a text to speech option and the romanisation hidden as a hint, with the English meaning on the ''back'' of the card. The text to speech is system. Putting {{tts-voices:}} in the template will give you a list of options on your device.

***
Card type - Basic (optional reversed card)

Note - using this card type means Anki will automatically make a reversed card, English -> Thai as well

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Reminded today that this was a year ago.
 

EYDC2024 Day 30: was 2024 a good drama year for you? It was all about going deeper into Thai telly and movies and learning a lot about the culture, language and ways they tell their stories. That part was good but it's also very lonely. It's been rough to be the disabled kid standing on the sidelines expected to cheer everyone else along or go home and not bother anyone. Cause the world is so busy and fannish folks make themselves extra busier so who has time to play a different game?

The nature of my lifelong chronic illness and disability makes that not a metaphor. I just wanted to join in. At best I was patted on the head, or ignored, or allowed to listen while they talked about their own things or 'splained their versions of me and my life. As for the worst, maybe I'll write about that some day. Maybe.

2025 was the year I gave up and stayed at home. The message became too loud to ignore, even for someone as foolhardy and trusting as me.

found out that the ex, who i haven't had ANY contact with in over a decade, is continuing to make up absolute shite about me. he's turned a physical limitation i have to cope with because of chronic illness into a problem with my thinking and attitude. it's likely coming from deep insecurities within himself, how he interacts with the world and what he assumes other people think of him.

and of course i'm helpless to do anything about it. i cannot open up contact with him again (which might be what he's after) and i am just not going to put the person who mentioned it to me in his firing line because the real me isn't like that and never has been. the person, who i also hadn't seen in years and probably won't again for many more, believed the yarn he's spinning about me. probably still does, regardless of what i said.

i'm frustrated with that person as well. and i know i'm giving him far more benefit of the doubt and understanding than he'll ever give me. and why would he? the real me isn't part of his life but the ex's alt version, who's become this personification of things he thinks people think about him, has more reality in their conversations than i'll ever have. his friendship with the ex is what's real to him, so the ex's imagined version of me is too. believing my ex strengthens their bond, believing me would open him up to questions about his friend's patterns and versions of things.

even when there's something as obvious as the ex claiming he never thinks about me but is talking about me with this person??? the real me is out of his life for good but this messed up alt version still lives in his mind. like just let it go. but the alt version is useful to him so it stays.

at least i was able to avoid letting on that i've moved and where i'm living now. the only person who might have given that away died of covid four years ago, this week even. i miss her. so at least i'm still physically safe even if all of this is in my own head again.

for whatever reasons from deep in my childhood i have this need, which at least some deem rather unreasonable, to be seen and understood accurately (criticise me all you want, but understand what i am actually saying first and make the criticisms relevant to my actual positions, values and behaviours) even as they want to be seen and understood accurately themselves. the ex certainly does. it is absolutely mandatory that he be understood and it was always incumbent on me to do so. which i was better than average at, even before short form social media and the stress of the world broke our attention spans and ability to listen and lowered the bar below ground on that.

but it was never enough. and hearing me? why would he do that? my role in his life was always to make him feel better about himself. as long as i was doing that directly, i was useful to him. but being my own person, with my own reality, that just got in his way. his pattern of making up shite about me and putting me down to elevate himself was already well-established by the time i succeeded in breaking off contact.

it's like poorly written fan fic from someone who didn't understand the characters but uses their names anyway. though there they could just recognise they're writing original fiction and take ownership and pride in that, while the ex needs to believe that his alt version of me is real, it's part of the structure his subconscious uses to protect himself from aspects of the world i have nothing to do with. his subconscious will always sacrifice the women in his life to protect itself.

it's out of my control, which is its own difficulty to cope with. the alt-version which has only ever existed in his head has far greater reality, and use, to him than the real me ever did. he won't change, so all i can do is try to forget what he does.

Still trying to understand why it's acceptable for some to talk about their difficulties, enough that they will be supported and understood, but not for me. Working hypotheses include how relatable those problems are and how much entertainment is provided otherwise, especially geared towards their particular interests or is relatable in some other way, like work or family. All fails for me of course. Just the way it is. Sometimes I think about trying to invent an online persona which will be more acceptable but that will only emphasise the ways in which my life isn't worth the bother for anyone.

My uses in this world are to be of service to others, which I am barely able to do any more, and to serve as a punching bag for whatever they're upset about that they can hang on me. A core component of who I am is very much hated these days, for all it's framed as something else. In the world of identity politics, all of mine require me to be silent, or invisible, or erase my own knowledge, study and lived experience and only say what they want me to say. Their emotions and emotional reactions will always take priority over anything I might contribute. That's the world we've made for ourselves.

Seem to have abandoned short form social media for good. The shifts in attention it requires are beyond my capabilities now. It's also debilitating knowing how deep subconscious cultural prejudices run, even if I don't actively see them. The neighbour who talks to me when she's outside has fucked up her knee badly and needs to not be outside making it worse. Months of rest it will need and she won't rest if she can see something which 'needs' to be done. So now I'm trying to keep up with her gardening on my own. I don't have the energy myself but it's my only hope that I'll have someone to talk with next summer. Autumn is starting early here in more ways that one.

My only use to the other neighbours is as an audience, and perhaps as someone to invent stories to gossip about behind my back, they're not paying enough attention to know anything. I might be slow, but I do get the message eventually and it's hard to ignore it when someone outright blanks me mid-sentence. Even when I'm talking about something they're interested in. Not much I can do there except erase myself and watch for opportunities to help. One was very kind in praising me for the help I gave her when she fell. Still didn't let me say more than a few words, but it was something. Anyway, it's a lonely time, which is probably why I'm bothering the bandwidth here again. Those who might see this, just join the rest in unfollowing me. I can't be entertaining in the ways you need, or offer relatable, fixable problems. It's just how it is.

May this be over soon.

1. What item would you be embarrassed for people to know you own? The embarrassment is my struggles to stay on top of housework. Aside from that, not really. I have some lingerie somewhere which brings up difficult emotions, but that's just because I was too thick and stupidly optimistic to realise my sex life had already hit its expiry date (mid 40s) when I bought it.

2. What is something you splurged on just for you? Aside from a few years of marriage, my entire adult life has been financially on my own so 'just for me' is par for the course. Difficulties working enough hours to make ends meet because of health problems engrained frugality, but I also figured out a version of Vimes Boot Theory on my own decades ago so I'm very careful about what I spend money on. If anything looks like a splurge, it's because I expect it to last and it's long run cheaper to buy once than often.

3. What is something that you own with no real world value that is priceless to you? My half-written novel. It truly has no real world value - it's not like anyone's going to read it, let alone spare the bandwidth to understand it - but I would like to finish it for myself.

4. Do you collect anything? I need to let go of my books and CDs.

5. What item belonging to a friend/family member do you covet? My situation is such that when I go into a care home or a casket, the council will give whoever one week to empty this cottage. I have no one to do that, although a neighbour has volunteered her daughter. Which isn't realistic for several reasons. After that, the council will dump everything left in landfill. Anything which might be of value to anyone else is better off with them. So no, I don't covet anything. I'm slow to do anything so it's better if I'm getting rid of things rather than acquiring them.

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1. What sets you apart from your friends? Everything. Willingness to focus on them.

2. What sets you apart from your family? Everything and then some.

3. What sets you apart from your coworkers/fellow students? N/A. Long term disabled.

4. What is the one thing about you that is most unique? How about most incomprehensible while also the most signficant? That would be the consequences of chronic illness since childhood. Everything else is just details.

5. What is your most interesting quality? Oh hell. I'm so uninteresting other people would rather make up stories about me than pay attention to what I have to say.

This is part of a lakorn (Thai melodrama) I'm writing. It's early on, around the 3rd chapter/episode.
These are useful things to know:
It's set in Thailand because lakorn.
Ratree (Rah-tree), the FL, has a very different life than what she describes. Don't worry about that.
Ti is a short form of her name.
Faen is girl/boyfriend. It's gender neutral.
Yai is maternal grandmother
A haawm หอม is a SE Asian way of expressing affection. It's like a kiss, but with nose and breath instead of lips, and can be anything from innocent to not.
Bpai ไป means to go or leave. Thai grammar runs on vibes and context, so this can mean Let's leave together. Subtitles would likely render my use at the end as "Let's go," but that has a different feel and I wanted the simplicity of ไป. It is very much what someone would say in Thai dialogue.

The friend who read this missed what I had hoped to convey in the last two paragraphs, so I'm interested in finding out how others read it. I've added a bit but it also needs to be understated. So I just want to know what you make of it please. It will help me find a good balance.

(Edit: Am interested more in how the vibes and emotions read than understanding of facts.)

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One year ago today I started a comm here on something I'm fascinated by. My wild dream was that someone wandering by perhaps from dreamwidth or a web search might happen into a post and maybe I'd be able to find an English-speaker to geek out with about Thai language and culture and learn more.
Instead I've ended up responsible for feeding prompts but otherwise irrelevant. It works best when I stay out of others' way. I really should have realised this going in.

All the steps have been completed, passing by huge margins in both lower and upper houses of government, and 120 days since the royal faffing about to make it official and legal.All references to husband and wife in the legal code have been changed to spouse. Same sex couples are able to adopt children now too.

Congratulations -  ดีใจด้วย dee jai duay
                                  ยินดีด้วย yin dee duay
(plus ค่ะ kha (if you're a woma) or ครับ khap (male) at the end to make it polite)

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2945632/hundreds-wed-as-thai-same-sex-marriage-law-takes-effect