10.02.07
I am a Guava
Here in Thailand, the commonly-used term for white people is “farang.” The origin of the word (according to the lovely old woman who instructs some of my fellow officers here in the Thai language) is from the days when the first white people came to Thailand. These white people were apparently the French, but the Thai people seem to have had some difficulty saying the word “francais.” She tells me that the best approximation was something like “farans” which was so close to the word for guava (farang) that the latter soon became the commonly-used term. And it has remained the commonly-used term. So: I am a guava. Yum.
