Sweet Home Thailand

I spent part of this first week in Northern Thailand (Phitsanulok; a 5 hour drive by bus) so there is not much to report on with respect to the work I have been able to accomplish over here.  I was able to stumble upon a virtual tour of the campus, which (if you are able to figure out how to take the tour) should give you a pretty good idea of the Assumption University graduate campus at Hua Mak.  The accommodations that I was given by the university is on the 12th floor of the Queen’s tower or “Q” building.  Here are pictures that someone else has taken from the building I am staying at, which are similar to the views I can see from my room.  The “studio-type” room is modest and is similarto a college dorm room, but it is very clean and comfortable withlots of space to work and store my things.  The room is air conditioned (a must here in Thailand) and it has a small patio witha wonderful view of Bangkok.  The room has a small refrigerator and a TV that has 6 Thai channels, 2 Indian channels, 1 Chinese channel, 1 French channel, and 1 English channel.  The English channel (from what I have seen so far in one day) has HBO Asia on in the morning and CNN International on in the evening.  I have been able to acclimate myself to the environment quite well here after about 2 days of feeling jet-lagged.  This was the first time that I had felt jet-lagged coming to Thailand - perhaps it is due to the fact that I arrived in Thailand at 10:00am in the morning while my two previous visits here I arrived at 12:00am midnight. 

There is ample food to eat around here as there are literally dozens of sidewalk vendors from which to choose.  The challenge that I am facing now is that I don’t speak much Thai, so instead of requesting food (all menus are in Thai and the people that cook the food don’t speak English), I find myself limited to the locations that have the food ready to eat on display.  I simply point to the dish and they can figure out what to do from there.  The food is also very cheap here.  For example, I just had lunch at one location (a plate of bamboo chicken and vegetables with rice and a bottle of water) for about 60 cents.  And the food was delicious too.  You can find American food around here, but it costs about the same as it does in the US so it is relatively expensive.  For example, a meal from KFC will cost about $3.00 here in Thailand.

I was able to start making my final preparations for my first class on Saturday, which is now less than 2 days away.  A challenge that I am facing is securing an office here on campus that has a computer.  I purposely left my computer behind in America and I now realize that that was a mistake as there is wireless access everywhere on campus here and there is an ethernet connection in my hotel room.  I have been able to contact my former colleage and classmate at UW-Milwaukee who is teaching at a university literally across the street from ABAC (Acronym for Assumption University) and he has told me that he would let me use one of his old computers.  That will not happen until he is available to see me sometime this weekend or in the coming week.  In the meantime, I have been going from office to office to computer lab to access the Internet, which is working fine now, but I worry about where (and whether I will have) my permanent office will be this semester for office hours.  Another slight issue is that my first class will be held this Saturday, May 10 from 9:00am - 4:00pm while the new faculty orientation will also be held on Saturday from 9:00am - 12:00pm noon.  I was told by the department secretary that this would not be a problem as I should not miss much from not attending the orientation.  Let’s hope she’s right!

I was able to find out that I have 31 students registered for my MBA class on Thursday nights and 11 students registered for my executive-MBA class on Saturdays, so they should have a pretty interesting dynamic to them.  I still have to learn all of the odds and ends of classes here and all of the cultural norms of teaching a class in Thailand, so I do expect some growing pains in the first couple weeks.  For example, the department secretary (who has been been very helpful) has told me that I will be given an allowance as a faculty member here (all faculty are addressed as “adjun” here) to the coffee shop down one floor from my classroom as this is the place where students hang out during the break period of evening classes.  There is also a university policy that students must have an attendance rate of at least 80% or will automatically fail the course.  I am sure that there will be a number of other items that will come up that I should be aware of, but yet know nothing about.

I have put all of my course materials online so that my students can access them, however, I have been told (so far) that I could not get an e-mail list of my students so that I could get them access to the Websites before my first classes.  One thing that I have been able to confirm here is that I have had no problem logging in and accessing BlackBoard from JSU.  I have also been shown the classrooms where I will be teaching my classes and they appear to be excellent facilities.  They consist of a two “U” shaped rows with whiteboards and a projector and it appears that all of my teaching materials will work (e.g., PowerPoint slides, videos, Website access, etc.).  I plan on spending the day tomorrow (Friday) confirming that all of my materials will load properly.

As for the people that I have met since I have been here on campus for just over one day, I have met the department secretary (Jenny) who has helped coordinate my visit (e.g., all necessary paperwork, van to pick me up at the airport, reserving a room during my stay here in Thailand, etc.) and I have also briefly met with the Dean of the school of business, Dr. Kitti, who in a short 5 minutes welcomed me to ABAC and he briefly mentioned that there could be opportunities for me to teach more classes at ABACin the future.  I have been trying to arrange a visit with the head of the Ph.D. program here so that I could speak withthe students and discuss possible research collaborations over the summer here with them.  The Dean of the department mentioned that their students could use some advice/support conducting behavioral research, so this could be something quite promising this semester.  I was also given a welcome letter from the director of the MBA program, Dr. Ismail Ali Siad, that included a paper to review that was submitted for publication at their university’s journal.  I have yet to meet with Dr. Ismail, so I don’t know if this was more of a favor, if it is intended as a “test” of my knowledge, or if it was to make me aware of their journal.  Perhaps I am trying to tell too much from this.

There is one further thing that happened since I have been here this first week - I was invited to speak to a high school class in Phitsanulok.  Funny how even in Thailand I am still making visits to high schools.  The class I spoke to was my aunt’s (wife’s side) senior English class of about 50 students, and since I really didn’t have much of anything to prepare for this one-hour visit, I simply introduced myself, spoke about why I was here in Thailand, and held an informal question and answer session.  There were a handful of students that spoke English quite well, but in general, the students were quite shy.  Apparently my visit went well as the students and my aunt invited me to come back.  There were pictures taken so I will try to share those as I get access to them.