1:21’s Trip to ChiangMai

and i MEAN it.well, actually i think it really is not too bad; the ChiangMai students are very friendly and did everything they can to help and were very suggestive with their replies during the interview.Their Radio Daws are EXACTLY what we have back in Singapore; the same Macintosh computers, same kind of mixers and the MD players. It was like editting back in school; they even have the same kind of settings as well, with the daws enclosed in two smaller rooms and a meeting area right outside the Daws for us to hang out. (Sounds familar, right?)

Warm welcome by our new found friends

But doing a 25-minute show with some language barrier (host Nitha had to explain certain issues a few times before the idea got across) and a few pauses here and there (actually, every 5 seconds there was a pause) is no joke. I nearly cried when i see the amount of editting needed to make the show perfect. Instant exhaustion please.

ok, let’s start to do work..

Lunch was always fun with the Thai students; them trying to teach us to speak Thai perfectly (i think only Jorge and Lucas managed to pull it off while the rest of us just looked Thai) and us laughing at our own pronunciations. One of the students, Nat, was very sweet though. Holding up her keys, she offered me a ride up to the English department (where all our work was to be done) on the backseat of her motorbike. (Most of the ChiangMai University students own their own bikes, and it’s so common leaving your bike around that even if you leave your helmet on your bike just like that, no one will steal it.) And on the bike, she brought me to see the beauty of their campus.

Their campus is very beautiful; its beauty is enhanced by nature and it gave the feeling of “not-too-much”; unlike Ngee Ann, these buildings are spaced comfortably apart from each other and there are alot of beautiful trees all around these buildings and the natural beauty of the trees brought out the whole “relaxed” feeling of the campus. Nat showed me this huge lake that is tucked at a quiet end of the campus; it is where tired students come here to hang out, hold discussions and just to relax. This humungous lake sits quietly infront of endless rows of tall mountains, which make the whole setting looked so perfect.

A lake in school, how relaxing..

On our way back to the English department, we past by rows and rows of Bodhi trees, with the leaves dried up and flowing down at the slight breeze of the afternoon wind and this gave me the feeling of a real, beautiful autumn. As i’m typing this, others are working their lungs out doing up the radio capsules and some are busy interviewing the ChiangMai students. Hard-working people, i must say.

Just a little fact. The ChiangMai University (CMU) is symbolised by this angel-lookalike collar pin that differentiates itself from other universities. CMU students will have it up on their collars and also, they have faculty belts for different faculties. For the Mass Communications faculty, it is a brass metal buckle with the word MASSCOM and a flying pigeon, which happens to be the mass communcations faculty’s symbol, on it. The coolest part of this? They allowed us to purchase it at 79Baht for one buckle. It really is super duper cool and it symbolises Mass Communications.

One of the CMU students, Arm (or Am, i have no idea. And he’s so shy and soft-spoken he just kept smiling) showed us his photographs and it was gorgeous. His photography skills just showed us how patient as a person he is, and how much passion and love he has for this hobby. Nat, on the other hand, has a special talent with art. (she’s drawing out postcards of us with watercolour paint and giving them out, pretending to sell them at 1000Baht for one.) She is so into art that she took Art Education as a minor, so as to learn how to teach children art.

One thing i realised about Northern Thailand girls; they are beautiful. The soft, supple skin they have bring out their sharp features, and their friendly and always-smiling kind personalities make them perfect wives! Them being so nice to us, whom they just met a day back, just make me feel how wary we are of people and strangers back in Singapore and how unwilling we are to even flash a tiny smile.

It might be because of culture differences, but i beg to differ, for it really does not take that much of a person to just smile at a passerby. Who knows, you just might make their day, or even your own. Ok, back to radio capsule recording.

sa-wa-dee.