I watched as a trio of confused-looking Thai women tried to make sense of the soup selection at the ‘Sizzler’ salad bar here in Hat Yai. All of the names of the soups were written in English, and things like ‘tuna cream with parsley’ are not taught in the schools. After they left, another woman gingerly stirred around in the hot and sour chicken soup, carefully looking for any remaining bits of chicken in a mostly exhausted pot with the patience of a country fisherwoman. It’s as if you can almost feel the haste with which modernity has slammed into this culture, and its inhabitants still seem to be reeling a bit from the impact.

Today I came downstairs in my boxer shorts while preparing to go out for dinner, only to find a 5 ft. Taiwanese lady standing in my living room. How did she get there? Well, the story requires a little background.

Some weeks ago while Isaiah and I were taking a walk, a short, elderly woman beckoned us into her house a few doors down. Having nothing better to do, we obliged. She lives alone in a town house, the same size as ours (too big for 3 people let alone 1). Inside it was easy to observe that she is elderly and without much help or company; there are open packets of medicine, half-used tissues and old fruits scattered about the place. Also present are odd clues that suggest family, such as video-game posters along the walls and odd photos of her with some younger looking people. It would be sensible to assume (as appears to be the case) that she is an old grandma set up in a furnished apartment by some generous family members, who she seldom sees. In addition, the woman seems to speak very little Thai, yet will consistently speak to us in long, rambling sentences in a language that we as of yet cannot identify, but take for some dialect of Chinese or Taiwanese. An old Taiwanese lady somehow dropped into a row of rather modern Thai row-homes. Now as we pass her house on walks she always invites us in and will not hear anything of our occasional declinations.

The other night as we sat eating tacos on our little dining table pushed way over into one corner of the room to prevent Isaiah from throwing food off of it, we heard a rustling at the front gate. We called out, “Helloooo?”
A little giggle. Female. Hard to discern her age.

“hello?”

From the lamps in the house we can make out her tiny frame and puffy hair. She is twinkling in her old black eyes as she proceeds to step up onto our porch and enter the house through our front door. She is holding a little bag of prawn-flavored, potato crispy snacks. As we stand she motions for us to sit, and pads cutely up to the table in her walking sandals, slacks and patterned, button-up shirt. She peruses the table, covered in strange foods. Tortillas, chopped veggies, salsa, beans. “Where is the rice?” she asks in the sparse Thai that she has.
“We don’t have any rice.” I reply.
Bursting into a hearty laugh, she slaps me on the back and says something like, “oh its in the kitchen isn’t it? ‘No rice,’ ha ha.”

She speaks at length to us in her foreign tongue, and we nod in alternating directions, trying to eke out the right responses from her. Its funny how a totally foreign language can sound like a total of four different syllables to you.
“Sher Jeen,” she says as she walks through the door. “sher jeen how fung?” she inquires about Isaiah. “Jeen jeen how cheurng ah?”
“Yes.”
I bring a spoonful of broccoli toward Isaiah’s mouth, and she stops me short. “He can eat it,” I assure her. “Jeen sher cheurng ah.”
“yeah.”

After hanging around for a bit, she pads out, refusing our attempts to stand and let her out the door. Fifteen minutes later, she appears again at the door with a little bag containing a sports drink and a straw.

“ Fung how ah?” she asks.
“yes, yes, come in,” we reply.

Her mission this time is merely to deliver the sports drink. No matter where we happen to meet her, she insists on showering us with gifts. In such cases, accepting them is what matters and not whether you happen to need them or not.

Back to our living room. Earlier that afternoon, she stopped by the house looking rather downtrodden. Her shoe was broken and she had a cut finger. It seems that whoever looks after her only does so occasionally. She came to the door where she collected Isaiah and took him off to play on our parked motorcycle. Though lately Isaiah has been going through a period of clinginess, rejecting most offers to be held by non-parental units, he never refuses grandma. After a nice visit, she left and we began to get ready to go out with some friends. While we were upstairs changing, I remembered my pair of pants downstairs on the couch and came down to find grandma standing in the living room, holding a packet of prawn crispies.
“Jeen sher ah?”
“yeah”