Daily Archives: August 22, 2005

More heart talk – lessons in Jai

When I wrote my blog last week on Jai ใจ, the Thai language of the heart, I don’t think I realized potentially just how big a blog I planned to take a bite out of to chew! Writing about Christopher Moore’s book ‘Heart Talk’ I learned there are just so many really cool and uniquely ‘Thai’ nuances to express the heart. I mean tipping the scales at just over 450 different phrases to convey about 400 different kinds of feeling… that’s a lot of feeling! I was being way too optimistic to do a fairly decent write up on this and be anywhere near complete in just one blog there are just too many good examples to pick from.

Looking at the scope of what I could write about in several pretty decent blogs I was at a loss just what to do. Chop everything up into bits and blurbs of Jai like curry? Some spicy, some sweet or some hot? Write and write and write until my cracked and bleeding fingers can’t type anymore? Oui, the checks my brain writes that my body has to cash sometimes. And I have to go to bed in about 5 hours!

Therefore I decided rather than trying to tackle the whole book in one go I thought in ode to Stevesuphans ‘do and don’t’ series I’d do something similar. Yes, Virginia when in doubt or facing a deadline plagiarism (sort of) is alive and well in America, I mean just look at TV!

I’m thinking there are 13 chapters in the book so why not pick a chapter or two to write about at a time? That enough blog material for each month at least for a year! Like the saying goes, ”How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”. How do you write a blog this big? One chapter at a time. Nguu nguu, bplaa bplaa. Same thing. This way a little over time actually says a lot, perfect for a perpetual talker like me, chai mai?

That being said here now is part 2 of Heart Talk my new on again, off again (like my coffee habit) series of blogs on Jai, the Thai language of the heart so let’s get to the good stuff starting with today’s line up. However, if you’re like me and not the patient sort to wait till the end of my blog series to learn everything about Jai you can always buy the book from Richard’s bookshop. I’m sure he won’t mind just tell him Wit sent ya 😉

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