Built upon the Swamp

In February of last year, before we ever imagined that we would be living in Bangkok, we were here visiting some family members who were living here at the time.  One day we went for a walk to the nearby Cultural Center and noticed that it was adjacent to a swamp.  It was at that point I remembered that much of central Thailand, including what is now Bangkok, is on bottomland—land with high water tables and likely propensity for flooding.

It is no wonder that in the original city much of the transportation was by water.  It was much easier to dig a ditch and have an instant canal than to try to build a road.

Houses along a major canal in old Bangkok

As these thoughts came to mind, I looked up at the tall buildings around me and wondered about their stability.  How big a footing is big enough to adequately support buildings that are more than 20 stories tall like the one Ingrid’s sister’s family was living in (or the one we are living in right now.)

In my past life, I worked with USDA as a Soil Scientist—making maps of where different kinds of soil are located and showing, among other things, there suitability and limitations for different uses.  The soils of Bangkok would likely have been rated “Severely Limited” for most urban uses—a term that means, more-or-less: “not impossible but has properties that would be expensive to overcome and/or prone to failure” (my own definition).

I was reminded again of this last week when we were exploring one of the nearby communities.  To get there, we had to cross under an elevated freeway.  As is quite common under many of these elevated freeways, the pillars appear to be built on mounds.

Pillars appear to rise out of the ground sinking around them

Under some highways, these mounds are quite high and extend well into the motorway underneath.  At first I thought it was a weird way to construct a highway—but then I realized that the more likely cause was that the supports for the upper highway had good footings and were stable, but the lower highway was on uncompacted ground subject to subsidence—the ground beneath the highway was sinking!

Jesus often used analogies about soil and farming to speak to his followers.  On one occasion he wrote:

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.
   But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”  (Matthew 7:24-27--NLT)

So now, when I see these sinking highways, I will be reminded to do a quick check of my own life—am I building my life on the teaching of Jesus or on the teachings of ordinary men?  I want to be able to say, as hymn writer Edward Mote put it: On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

Grammy’s Pan

Chink…chink…

We were celebrating the completion of a test in our language module by watching a couple shows from the Numb3rs TV series on our computer when we heard this unusual sound coming from the space in our apartment we call a kitchen.

Chink…chink…

It wasn’t much of a sound.  I just thought it was some dishes drying on the counter rearranging themselves.  Perhaps a gecko was entertaining himself on them disturbing their delicate balance.

Chink…chink…

We thought about ignoring the two sounds.  But Ingrid and I both share a sense of curiosity and wonder and desire to want to answer the question “Why?”.  (That’s one of the reasons why we like shows like Numb3rs and why we enjoy living in different cultures.)  So with a click of the pause button we’re off to the kitchen.

At first everything looked normal.  Then I noticed that the 9x9 inch glass baking pan that had been drying upside down on the counter was cracked into two pieces.  I don’t know why it decided to break at that moment—maybe it’s time had just come.

We have not used the pan much since we moved here as we do not have much of an oven, but Ingrid had made a recipe called “Yorky Beef Pie” that evening—a recipe we found in a free cookbook I had picked up in a Shaw’s grocery store in Portsmouth, New Hampshire about 30 years ago—probably close to the time I had acquired the pan.

The baking pan had belonged to my grandmother and I acquired it after she died in late fall, 1979.  I remember the day she died.  It was my last month at University and I was in my apartment when the phone rang.  For some reason I knew it was my dad calling (which would be unusual as typically my mom would initiate calls) and that he was calling to tell me my grandmother had died.  I don’t know why I knew this—she had not been particularly ill.  But so it was.

My grandfather had died several years earlier.  I did not know him all that well—I think perhaps that as a young child I was a bit too annoying to have around.  My Mom tells me that I am a lot like him in many ways, especially in my love of the outdoors and my curiosity about the natural world.
(Interestingly, I alone among my siblings carry the brown eyes from my mother’s side.)
 
My grandmother had a birthday a day apart from mine and we would sometimes celebrate together.  One of the few photos of my grandmother I have with me here in Thailand is one of the two of us with a birthday cake.  I usually tout this photo so as to show that I onece had hair.  Today I will show it to celebrate my grandmother and all the good things I have acquired through my parents and grandparents—whether through genes or through upbringing.



We will miss the pan—not so much for its intrinsic value but because it was a reminder of some precious people in my life as a child.

(And special thanks to my Mom who made the cake.)