i think i'm turning japanese

or thai, but that's not how the song goes.

for your enjoyment, i present a few evidences that thailand is rubbing off on me more than i thought:

• i saw some white people making out in a park and wondered, in all seriousness and with some alarm, where the police were.
  
• in order to fight off some bad energy, i decided i needed to fireclean our room. i have never in my life cleaned out of a desire to restore balance to my brain. usually it's been only as a last-ditch effort to keep my mother, roommates, or husband from going crazy from the stress of living with me. but i felt the bad feng shui and reacted to it. ay.
  
• my eyeliner looks like a cartoon character's today, and i didn't even notice until lunchtime.
• the kicker: my mum sent me a lovely little book, the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society, which i devoured (thank you, mommy!). could not put it down. even so, the sassiness of the characters--which was, i'm pretty sure, intended to be their singly most endearing common trait--bugged the dickens out of me! all i could think was, "i certainly wish everyone would just calm themselves and be a little more polite to everyone else." and then i would think, "there is an alien in my brain."

also, you will be pleased to find out that i no longer salute security guards involuntarily. my wai instincts are finally fully calibrated, and the bowed-head-praying-hands gesture is the only one i parrot at the moment. security guards and husband alike are spared much embarrassment. i'm getting to be such a big girl!