On being a fake Scottish Military Guard in Thailand

The first two hours were almost unbearable. The mixture of physical pain and pressure not to move, or laugh, or fall over was both unexpected and almost, at times, overwhelming. The most intense pins-and-needles flooded into your fingers and toes, and the idea of 50 something hours standing this way loomed ahead like a grey desert. But then... suddenly a rhythm develops. A calm. Your eyes focus on a single point, a tiny speck of nothing out there in front of you. The smiling Thai faces around you, the digital cameras and cell phone cameras and video cameras, the motorbikes and buses and taxis chugging past you - all of it begins to fade. Your mind empties to almost nothing. Nothing will make you smile, nothing will make you move. You stand, transfixed. Your huge hat is heavy on your head, pressing into your scalp, but you no longer notice. You are beyond tiredness. The light changes across the vortex of colour that has become your vision as you stare into nothing. Occasionally, in lapses, brief but jolting, you see small movements in your periphery - the humming, gliding skytrain above, a young woman posing with a peace symbol beside you, a cloud of smoggy polution lifting off the street. Then back to nothing.

And then, out come the others, and it is a shift change.

This job is certainly one of the strangest, most challenging, most interesting and most tiring things I have ever done.

And now, three lists of 6:

A partial list of things people have said to me and to which I have offered absolutely no reply.
1. Are you Scottish?
2. Are you hot in that?
3. Asshole.
4. Hello! Can I take your photo? Hello? HELLO?
5. Laugh. Hey, come on, laugh. Booga-booga-boo.
6. Can you look over this way? Um. Smile?

A partial list of things I am being paid to stare at.
1. A pillar
2. A McDonalds resturant across the street.
3. Four trees covered in fairy lights.
4. An advertisment, in Thai, for the Loy Krathong Festival 2005 (proudly presented by VISA) depicted two beautiful people smiling into the water, holding an elaborate krathong.
5. Cute girls walking past.
6. A different pillar.

A partial list of things that I will take away from this job.
1. An improved ability to keep patient and calm and perfectly still in moderately stressful situations.
2. A better understanding of the process of meditation.
3. An improved ability to register and process things seen solely in my periphery.
4. A very sun tanned face
5. The ability to estimate a period of 20 minutes fairly accurately without looking at a timepiece of any sort.
6. 16,000 Baht