Eating Sugar

A:
Remember the feeling you might have had as a child, when you got lost from your parents in the shopping centre. In the crowd to a concert or maybe on the beach. Do you remember? It is a feeling of hopelessness. But the feeling you had, when you were found by your parents again was an indescribable feeling. A feeling which made you calm down. Exactly those feelings may the Englishman Alex associate with his holiday in Thailand. Together with Alex, is his wife Eileen, who finds Thailand extremely nerve-racking. The reason why they are there is their twenty-one-year old daughter, Suzanne, who works as an English teacher in Bangkok.
The story starts out by letting the reader get into the environment where the family has lost their way. They are in a forest clearing and Eileen is crying because of their obvious bewilderment in unfamiliar surroundings, far away from their home in England. It is burning hot and Alex, the leader of the family, almost cries too. The only reason why he doesn’t is Eileen who suppresses his real panic. He’d better show masculinity, even though he is bursting with nervousness as well as she is. And even though their daughter is grown-up and has much more experience with Thailand than them, Suzanne’s mother cannot relinquish her parental role. Constantly she is confronted with a different culture, and it is sure that she has difficulties adjusting to it. She is afraid that every man is a rapist or a bandit. “Anything could happen”, Alex points out. “That was what she meant. Anything could happen. And she was right” .
Both Alex and Eileen are trapped in this narrow glass box, from where they critically judge their surroundings. Alex’s and Eileen’s openness is really put on a tough test when the four Thai men emerge from the forest. Immediately Alex doubts the fact that they are stuck in a forest with four big Thai men. Three Farangs against four natives. Luckily the Thai men prove to be okay. They are not bandits, but just some ordinary people who have also been walking in the area. One of them introduces himself as “Wirut Srakan. Engyish teasher” - an English teacher from the Eastern Thailand. “An Issan” Suzanne explains her puzzled parents. Those four men are completely opposite to the description that the American writer, Jamaica Kincaid, gives in her essay A Small Place , about the natives who do not like tourists. It is Wirut who takes the first step to talk and he even offers beers to the tourists, and he gives them a lift. He is definitely very hospitable to those strangers. Alex and Eileen look much more like the couple in the picture by Duana Hanson - inpatient and expect full, but not giving. Fat and narrow minded. If they stay standing there, staring, they will never gain any contact to the locals and they will never learn to adjust to different cultures. Then their relationship to the “others” will only get more impersonal and both parts will only see the differences between them, instead of all the similarities, which they might have. They do not need to estrange the “others” even though the language barrier makes it even more difficult to converse. William C Hunter points this out in his article Trust Between Culture: The Tourist. It is like his text totally describes the relationship that Alex and Eileen have to the Thai culture. One may think that his text is written just after William C Hunter read Eating Sugar by Catherine Merriman. One may also think that the situation is opposite. The question stays uncertain since both texts are written in 2001.
While Wirut tries to socialize with the family, Alex notices his wife walking around in the clearing. He thinks about their young wild days in the early seventies when liberatedness was ruling the youth culture. Eileen and he had an LSD trip and Eileen had needed to eat sugar together with the LSD tab to beat the anxiousness. Spoonfuls of sugar. “But after the sugar moment Eileen had gone on to enjoy herself; no, more than that- to marvel at the sensory richness of a normally invisible, unguessed-at world. She had never regretted that single experimental trip.” Alex remembers for himself. What do they need now to get a nice trip in Thailand? Probably not sugar or LSD! The perceptual door is opened, but what is next?
Maybe Alex and his wife could find inspiration in the way Wirut behaves and how he tackles the whole situation. The car is definitely coming to pick them up, but no one knows when, and in Thailand, this is completely normal. Time is an abstract idea. “Wirut waved a careless hand at the road. Yes. Car come soon” The car comes when the car comes – no need to hurry or worry. This notion of time is very Buddhist. No one cares about time. In yoga, which originally among other religions comes from the Buddhism, it is believe that life consist of a fixed amount of breath takings. The less stress, the less breathing – less breathings, the longer you live. It seems like the yellow dog has comprehended this message as well as Wirut has.
After Alex’s outburst of rage, where he only thinks about getting away from those four Thai men and get home, he sees the dog and he is amazed noticing the dog’s calmness. In a way he envies the dog for this. How could it be so remarkably calm and fearless, Alex probably thinks. The dog has the answer – it takes things as they come. Alex leads another opinion on that: That Buddhists don’t kill animal except for food.
Fortunately the whole situation turns out to be somehow convenient for Alex and his wife. Wirut’s car comes and he offers them a lift home. Happy and singing they sit stuck together in the car on their way to the hotel.
The English couple drank the beers. They ate sugar, so to speak! Alcohol often makes people loosen up in difficult situations, and the beers were the impetus for Alex and Eileen to get a good trip. After this experience I am sure that Alex and Eileen will take things on their holiday with a grain of salt. And maybe a little sugar.

B.
Science, missionaries, international trade and travel. Thank to those for being the first helping the expansion of English as a world language. In fact, you only need to learn English to be able to communicate with most of the world when you are travelling. It is quite convenient, isn’t it!? But still many people in Denmark learn more foreign languages than just English. Is it a waste of time and energy? Why not just English?
If we ask the Englishmen Alex and Eileen from the story Eating Sugar by Catherine Merriman, I am sure that they will understand why. On their holiday in Thailand they had difficulties understanding the natives. Even though the natives spoke English!
Computers are the main reason why English keeps increasing today and the language has taken the world by storm. English is spoken in a countless number of countries and by just as many people of many different cultures. They have many different mother tongues and therefore they automatically pronounce the English words in their way. They leave their own stamp on it – personalize it. English has so many dialects!
It is also the reason why Alex and Eileen found it hard understanding Wirut at the first glance. A Thai’s way of speaking English is extremely different from the way Alex speaks. If you hear Indians speaking English, it also sounds really funny sometimes as he/she might tell you words in English, but still use the Indian pronunciation.
Yes English is a world language and it is not a coincidence that 80 % of all information stored in computers around the world is written in English. You just need to remember that English has many varieties, and you might need to learn other foreign languages to get on in the big wide world when travelling.