Honoring the King with Professional Wrestling and the White String Psychologist.

On TV last night there was an English banner scrolling headlines along the bottom of the screen, one of the headlines said "The Thai Tourism Authority is sponsoring a WWF Smackdown at Muang Thong Thani in honor of his Majesty the King's 60th Anniversary of his Ascension to the Throne!" Huh!

When we went to Wat Phra That Lampang Luang in Lampang I had an experience with a White String Psychologist. There was a lady sitting outside, as I walked past she motioned for me to come over, I sort of ignored her, but she motioned me over, the feeling was, not the words, "come here don't worry." She tied a white string around my wrist and said something about good luck. Then she showed me a small basket with money in it, a 100 Baht bill was on the top, I gave her 20 Baht. I still have the string around my wrist. When Jit saw the same lady later she was told it was her lucky time and that she should think about the lottery, Jit also got a white string. The lady is doing an excellent job using psychology to make a living selling white strings.

One thing I have noticed when riding the small boats across the river is that people help each other into and out of the boat. A helping hand is always offered, it is pretty cool.

At STOU today I taught tables and mail merge in Word . The document I saw looked fine when it was printed, but when I viewed the invisible characters they were using tabs, spaces, and graphics to create the illusion of four blocks of text. They were creating graduation announcements. I created a four cell page layout and showed them how to do mail merge. It will save an immense amount of time. Not training your staff is a huge waste of time and money. The people I have been training at STOU are eager to learn, they are excellent students, they are motivated, the problem I think is one of opportunity or supervision.

Many days a couple of Indian men ride through the village on old bikes. They are selling things. Today I was talking with one of the men and he rode past, he asked me if I wanted to buy some perfume, I said no, he said you can see if you like any, I said even if it was free I am not interested in perfume. He asked where my wife was, I said in the back, but she was busy. It was a friendly conversation. Both the Indian men are like traveling salesmen. I think they also take credit and come each day to pick up a small payment. It seems like a pretty marginal existence to me.

Next semester I will only teach two courses, Excel, using the web, and Digital Photography. I will be working as the coordinator for the AA program and also doing advising and working in the advising center. The AA program is delivered through the web and also face to face. My sabbatical will provide excellent preparation for my new responsibilities.

Tomorrow I will work on my presentation on e-learning for Non-Formal Education. Jit will be going to Pantip Plaza with Ton. Ton is going to take a class on building computers, I think, from what I understand, that he will select and buy the parts at Pantip Plaza and build a computer that he can use at home. If I understand it correctly, it sounds like a great way to learn about computers. We have promised to by Ton a computer before we go. I have made him choose the computer and features that he wants, I wanted him to show me a specific computer that he found. He discovered this course while at Pantip Plaza. I hope it works.