Are there parts of Issan without arrows?
Bear with me on the title.
I live in Bangkok, in a medium size apartment block which is more or less identical to countless many other apartments blocks in Bangkok. The building has it's own resident handyman. He is hard working, generous, always smiling....... just a general all round good bloke.
Now, the handyman has become a tad tetchy of late and not without good reason. The reason for his latest tetchy mood is "Them on floor 7" (his words, only he says it in Thai of course).
"Them on floor 7" have just arrived from Issan and from my understanding this is there first trip outside of Issan, there are four of them (I think). It is now that I should point out that them being from Issan is not in itself a problem. The problem is that they are just crappy tennants and not in a noisy, rude bad way but...... Allow me to illustrate.
Last night at about eightish the Misses, the Brat and I where just chilling at home watching TV and stuff. For some reason the lights seemed to be playing up, and just as my misses stood up to call our mild mannered handyman, the fire alarm rang. It was a very good alarm as far as they go because it made absolutely sure that it got our undivided attention, it was LOUD.
Anyway. So everybody spills out from their rooms into the corridor. Much discussion is had and I am contemplating how to hide the rabbit (we are not allowed to keep pets really), when somebody suggest that we should stop faffing about and move as we could be in a life threatening situation. Smart decision, eh! Wish I had thought of it. So everybody is quickly grabbing shit from their rooms to leave and some are halfway down the stairs already when a figure looms from the end of the corridor, the figure is that of our mild mannered handyman.
It is now that we discover that said handyman has an alter ego for he has now become Groundsman Willie, and he is ready to fight wolves with his bear hands. Everybody took a step back to the side to allow for Willie to pass through the corridor unhindered, I could swear that the light dimmed significantly as he approached. As he passed us on his way to the stairs at the opposite end of the corridor, we could hear him mutter the words: "Them on floor 7", and he was not happy...........
So the alarm was, thankfully, a false one. What happened was this:
One of "them on floor 7" decided to go and get some food, this particular member of the group is a girl in her twenties, I am led to believe. As she reached the bottom floor she encouentered the obstacle of the doors being locked, and her needing a card key to get out. Bearing in mind that the simplest of instructions on how to get out are displayed clearly for all to see in Thai and English, I think that it might be fair to assume that she is illiterate as she when in desperate search for "that" button which would release her. At one point her search even lead her into the (then empty) managers office which happens to be where the main electrical switch board thingy bit is. This would explain my lights going because it seems that she was sure that amongst a whole grid of electriclal light switches, at least one of them must open her door. I like to think that from an outside observer, the light show inside the building made it appear as though it had a poltegeist, or something better that I can't think of now, perhaps.
She must have been a soulless figure when she didn't find her switch, perhaps she would be trapped behind those doors for up to as many as 15 minutes before another tennant would arrive and open the door. Until.......... YES, there it is, THE switch. It must be as it is the only not yet tried. And how did she not notice it before, sat there on the wall in its RED box and hard but breakable plastic cover.
Sorry, I am babbling a bit now but you get the point. The stupid bitch tried every switch or button she could find in hope of opening the door and one of those just happened to be the fire alarm. Groundsman Willie was not happy, and neither was he happy when on another occassion they left their taps on causing a flood which spread to the corridor, reached the lift shaft and shorted the lift, nope, Willie wasn't happy with that one little bit. They have also done a myriad of stupid other things but these two where biggies. Things like putting metal in the microwave and leaving it where smallies in relation.
So, back to the alarm girl. She can't read and has unlikely to have been in an environment with so many many eletrical switches before. I'd have thought that a big RED button would be warning enough but maybe she actually has no experience in such things, would not have known the relevance of RED and was therefore going through a logical process, sort of like the way that a rat would findits way out of a maze.
Which leads me to this........
On entering the lift once, a couple of weeks before the above events, I noticed something inside. The buttons marked "<--->" and ">---<" each had a sticker placed above them and each sticker had a word written on it in Thai. I can't read Thai, but that was no problem as they could have been written in any language in the world and I would (as could anybody) still have known that the words meant "Open" and "Close". I was intrigued as to this seemingly pointless exercise, and so we enquired.
This was the first time that we heard the "now mild mannered" handyman use the term "Them on floor 7", and he said it through gritted teeth. The reason for the stickers above "open" and "close", was because one day he was called to an emergency at the lift because somebody was stuck inside and couldn't get out. Need I go on???
So, if it is possible that a person simply had no experience with a board of switches or fire alarm, meaning that they had no clue as to what they where for and may do. Is it not also possible that the sticker thing occurred because they had no experience with arrows.
I have thought about the chances that they did not have the intelligence to understanding the meanings of the "open" and "close" arrows by way of considering a previously seen arrow and applying it to this scenario, and I have dismissed it. I have dismissed it on the basis such a creature would struggle immensely to even survive due to the complications of processes such as talking, walking, eating and breathing, all four of which, incidentally would surely not be achievable.
So therefore, the only other possible outcome is that they simply have no experience with arrows and had never seen a single arrow up until entering the lift in my apartment building. Meaning that the markings on the button simply had no meaning to them, as with the Klingon language to you and I.
And so to conclude, there must be parts of Isaan that simply have no arrows.
