Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon

The New York Times has posted a series of summaries and excerpts from bootleg Chinese Harry Potter books. I can only assume that this is the sort of insane story we’re going to see more and more of over the next year as random reporters head to Beijing for the Olympics and have to find material for their daily reports. I could make all sorts of jokes on the topic, but I think nothing could do this subject justice aside from letting one of these remarkable books speak for itself:


Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon

Summary: Harry becomes a fat, hairy dwarf after being caught in a “sour and sweet rain”; he loses all his magic and can get it back only by obtaining the magic ring. After he does, Harry becomes a dragon that fights evil. Voldemort has an even more powerful brother who makes trouble for Harry.

Excerpt: “Harry doesn’t know how long it will take to wash the sticky cake off his face. For a civilized young man, it is disgusting to have dirt on any part of his body. He lies in the elegant bathtub, keeps wiping his face, and thinks about Dudley’s face, which is as fat as Aunt Petunia’s bottom.”

Al Talk Thai Real Good

I only moved to Thailand last week, and the last thing I want to be is one of those asinine Westerners who blither on about the uniqueness and beauty of Thai culture. Yes, it does seem like an endlessly fascinating country, but who cares what some random white guy has to say about it? Especially when so many of the white guys in Thailand seem to be mullet-haired German bricklayers on disability leave, with khaki shorts, nicotine-stained teeth and lonely, lonely hearts. I’m not sure the world is dying to hear their - or my - deep thoughts on Thai culture.

BE THAT AS IT MAY, I, a random white guy, did just see something interesting while leafing through the Thai dictionary.

You can get some insight into a culture by noticing the words that it borrows from other languages. Loan-words are often borrowed because the concept originally didn’t exist in the one country and spread from somewhere else.

For example, we borrowed the words for “ninja”, “glasnost”, “smørgasbord” and “ménage à trois” into English, presumably because those things were very rarely encountered in Merrie Olde England. Some stealthy Japanese person or filthy-minded Frenchman had to import them.

So, while perusing the English-Thai dictionary yesteree’n, what do I see but the following entries:

Lock: láwk
Lock: mâe kuncae
Key: kuncae

It seems pretty probable that the Thai word “láwk” is a loan word from English. And “kunci” (pronounced koon-chee) is frickin’ Malaysian for “key”. By the way, the expression “mâe kuncae” for “lock” is a typically adorable Asian way of defining a lock by saying that it’s... a key’s mother. Why not? As the box my desk lamp came in puts it, “Give happiness to all families”.

Results of study: Thai people had no word for “lock” or “key” until some English and Malaysian guys came over and sold them some.

Conclusions: Thais are a charming and peaceful bunch who knew no thievery until recent times? Maybe. I’m pretty sure the truth is more complicated than that, so draw your own conclusions. I’m off to feather my mullet.

They Do Move in Herds

We lived in Malaysia for the past two years. In Malaysia, there were geckos. Many, many geckos. They were speedy little greenish lizards that like to sit out on rocks, or on walls in the evenings, and eat bugs. If you come near them, they either a) freeze and don’t move a muscle, b) scurry away, or c) leap straight off the wall or ceiling in complete terror, flip and flop around on the floor, and scurry away. They only do option C if you really surprise them. It happened to me about four times in two years. One landed on my shoulder. I shrieked like a girl scout.

Those were the days. I long for the days of option C.

In Bangkok, they have MUTANT ALBINO geckos that have GENETICALLY ADAPTED TO LIVING ON PEOPLE’S PAINTED WALLS. Just think about that for a second. THEY EVOLVED TO MATCH OUR PAINT SCHEME. These things are pale whitish yellow, they’re plump, wrinkly and impudent like old Finnish men in a sauna, and they are basically like having wriggling human fingers clustered hungrily around every light fixture. They’re smart, too. These translucent monstrosities stick much closer to the light than their dull-witted jungle-dwelling Malaysian cousins. In a few years they’ll have evolved heat shields which allow them to cling directly to the light bulbs. At this rate, there’s very little else for me to do but urge you to enjoy what little time you have left before the geckos become sentient and put us to work in their vast fluorescent bug zapping mines. I give us about five years.