About Janice Hillmer

Writer, grad student, traveller, accidental humourist and unwitting adventurer.

Adventures in Giant Piles of Big Things…

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Janice Hillmer

While I was busy finishing my thesis, a whole lot of other stuff got pushed into the “I’ll do it later” pile. Now, my thesis has been successfully defended (and if any of you have a hankering to read An Ethnographic Study of Language Use in a Multilingual Education Program in Thailand let me know. I’ll e-mail you a copy. It has pie charts.)

I feel like I’ve been following a snowplow home during a blizzard (just throwing in a timely reference for all my North American friends. You’re welcome.) The road was clear all the way home, but now everything that had been pushed out of the way is piled up and blocking my driveway. And I can’t get home until it’s been cleared.

My plan is to move back to Canada. But unless you’ve never met me, and have just stumbled upon this blog by accident, you already know that my According-To-Plan track record is truly abysmal.

Honestly. It’s really, really bad. I’m never quite sure where I’m going to end up, or what I’ll be doing when I get there.

Spring will come, whether I’m ready for it or not.

That makes it tricky to sort out Big Things (and yes, in my head the words Big Things are big, bold, and capitalized…but in a much snazzier font). So many things need to be sorted – like housing, and pet care, and furniture, and um…employment. Yup, I nearly forgot about employment. Planning is obviously not my strongest asset. (Unless you’re reading this as a potential employer. In which case, I’m awesome at planning. Really.)

Every single time I think about leaving Thailand, this pops into my head, dramatic music and all:

I don’t want to go.

Maybe that’s why instead of approaching the giant pile of Big Things with a sturdy shovel and a logical plan, I seem to have developed a different technique. I’ve hunkered down in the snow (picture The Little Match Girl, but hopefully without the dying bit at the end), and spend my time imagining what life might be like on the other side of the snowbank.

And I have a very detailed imagination.

Seriously – I spent two hours this afternoon browsing through a Lee Valley Tools hardware catalogue…

… looking for fancy brass escutcheons, knobs and drawer pulls…

…to decorate furniture I don’t own, in an apartment I haven’t found yet, somewhere in a city I might possibly move to.

I may have taken myself a little to seriously when I told me to buckle down and start focusing on the details. (In my defense, the Victorian reproduction drawer pulls on pages 78-79 were all kinds of gorgeous.)

Maybe I’m burying my head in a hardware catalogue to avoid all the sad, difficult stuff and Big Things that come with moving. I prefer to think that I’m growing more comfortable in the knowledge that my life is full of surprises and I trust that it’ll all work out.

So there you have it.

I don’t know where I’ll be living or what I’ll be doing by the time the snow melts, but I will have some fancy drawers.

What’s your favourite way to cope with Big Things?

Adventures in Errant Errands

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Janice Hillmer

Sometimes, I feel like I could live in Thailand forever. That feeling is usually strongest around lunch time:

The $1.20 lunch that dreams are made of.

Other times – like when I go to immigration at 5 a.m. to make sure I get a place in line to get a ticket to get a number when the office opens at 8:30 a.m. so I can see the immigration official at 10 a.m. – I’m reminded that Thailand isn’t really my home.

Unfortunately for me and my aversion to paperwork, my passport, driver’s license and vehicle registration all need to be renewed. Soon. And like a Mobius strip made of red tape, I need each of those documents in order to get the others:

I need my passport (along with 2 photos, a letter from my landlady, an application form, and photocopies of my passport pages) to get a Certificate of Residency from Immigration, which I need (along with my passport, 2 photos, an application form, a heath certificate and photocopies of my passport pages) to renew my Driver’s License at the DMV on the other side of town.

Are you still with me? Take a deep breath, there’s more.

On Monday morning, my plan was to go to the Canadian Consulate, get a quick (but expensive) Certificate of Residency, renew my Driver’s License that afternoon, so I could go back to the Consulate on Tuesday morning to apply for my new passport. It was a complex, but brilliantly efficient plan.

Are you still here? If so, you’re a trooper. Carry on.

First, finding the Canadian Consulate in Chiang Mai isn’t easy. It’s not like the American Consulate, which is right down by the river, surrounded by a giant wall and guarded 24/7. That one’s hard to miss. The Canadian one is in a little out-of-the way building with a tiny little sign you can’t see until you’re right beside it…and since it’s where two lanes merge on a highway, you might be busy looking at a stampede of trucks bearing down on your little motorbike and miss it the first 3 times you drive past.

Oh, there you are!

Eventually, I saw the tiny sign out of the corner of my eye as I was passing it, and slammed on my brakes. I coasted to a stop on the paved shoulder 2 meters past the entrance, and rolled my motorbike backwards down the highway and coasted into the parking lot.

Feeling rather accomplished, I parked my bike, grabbed my mountain of neatly organized paperwork, and traipsed through the wide open door…into an empty office.

Hello? Canada? Is anyone home?

Really – it was completely empty. For a long time.

It was deserted. Abandoned. Vacant. I could have committed mischief! Or Sabotage! Or Espionage! Or Decoupage! But I didn’t – mostly because I was busy signing the guest book.

Eventually, a shy Thai girl walked past carrying a cardboard box and trying very hard not to make eye contact with me. On her 2^nd box-carrying trip, I asked if anyone could help me. She politely explained that someone had been here. They had since gone out – but they would (eventually) return.

I sat down to wait.

After about 10 minutes, Box Girl returned and gave me a phone number to call. I hate the telephone, and wasn’t in a hurry yet, and there were magazines to read, and I had been assured that the person who had left would (eventually) return.

I continued to wait.

After finishing a rather lacklustre article in an ancient magazine, I decided to call the number Box Girl had given me.I spoke with the person who had left, and she assured me she would (eventually) return … next Friday.

Have any of your best-laid plans gone awry lately?

Adventures in Thievery

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Janice Hillmer

Most of the time, Chiang Mai feels like a pretty relaxed “Hey, I’m not gonna steal your stuff” kind of place.

Except when it comes to motorbike helmets. My helmets get stolen ALL THE TIME. (Okay, really only twice-and-a-half, but it feels like a lot.)

My first helmet was white, and it had a big Pucca sticker on the back:

I mean really, who’s going to steal a helmet with a big ~~dorky~~ awesome sticker on it? Okay, on second thought, that sticker was pretty sweet. I would totally envy someone with a snazzed-up helmet like that.

Next, I got a shiny red helmet that matched my sunglasses.

It also matched my super-red Halloween lipstick.

A helmet that coordinates so well with cosmetics and accessories? Yup, that’s just begging to get stolen.

Finally, I gave up on spectacularly ~~dorky~~ awesome helmets, and I bought a plain ol’ black one, and no-one tried to steal it…until yesterday.

Yesterday, I parked my bike in a row of other bikes, and went to get some Indian take-away (butter chicken, palak paneer and chana masala, in case you were curious…and no, it wasn’t all for me. I did have friends to share it with). As I was walking back to my bike carrying my fragrant bag of steamy dinner, I noticed a guy on a motorbike near mine, getting ready to drive away. Thinking maybe I should get out of his way, I moved closer to the curb and out of his way, but kept walking towards my bike.

When he didn’t drive past me, I looked up and saw his bike was still running, but he wasn’t on it. Instead, he was standing next to MY bike, unhooking my helmet.

I kept walking towards him.

He got back on his bike, holding my helmet. (Apparently, he wasn’t planning to actually wear it.)

By this point, I was only about a foot away from him, and my brain was finally catching up with my eyes. My eyes totally had my back on this one though, even without my brain’s help – because my eyes had been staring incredulously at Mr.Thief the whole time he was busy snagging my helmet. So even though my brain was still playing catch-up, Mr. Thief looked up and all he saw was me giving him a wrinkled-brow “Just-what-do-you-think-you’re-doing?” look.

I like to think I looked like a totally menacing bad-ass, but in reality, I think I looked more like a kindergarten teacher about to lecture him about inappropriate behaviour.

Either way, when I reached out my hand and quietly said, “Hey, give me my helmet back, please,” he did.

Just like that. He just handed it back to me with an “Okay. Thank-you” before he drove away.

“Okay. Thank you” Really. What kind of red-handed thief says “Okay. Thank you” when he gets caught?

I don’t know what I would have done if he had tried to drive away. If history is any indication, I probably would have hurled my curry at his head and hoped for the best.

I’m glad it didn’t come to that. I’d hate to lose my butter chicken AND my helmet.