Be careful what you say, you just might get it...

The title of this posting could not possibly be more true as I sit here writing this today. It seems that I may be a recipient of one of the best gag gifts I’ve ever seen or even heard of. Here’s how it all started.
Last week in my classes, I wrote on the chalkboard that just like every other year, 27 September would be my birthday. After one of the classes finished, a group of four especially kind students asked me what I wanted for a gift. Completely jokingly, I said that I wanted a jackfruit (for those of you unfamiliar with jackfruit, it is a fruit unique to SE Asia (as far as I know) and is the world’s largest fruit. Some pumpkins do get larger, but jackfruit has no cavity in the middle like a pumpkin, and all mature jackfruits weigh probably at least 30 lbs.) They started laughing, and then I told them to just bring me some sort of fruit, and that I didn’t really want a jackfruit.
Anyhow, Friday was the last day of class for the semester. After I dismissed all of the students in my second class, one of them came to the front and led the class in a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” And then they handed me a jackfruit, which is pictured below. It turns out that this tiny girl who likely weighs only slightly more than the jackfruit made a special trip to Pattaya, a beach resort about 2 hrs. south of BKK which could very well be the sleaziest town on earth (it exploded as a resort during the Vietnam war, when it became a center for sex tourism for GIs on R&R. The end of the war just changed the clientele, not the sleaze factor,) just to get it, as jackfruits are difficult to find in this season. They also informed me that eating too much Jackfruit (also known as “candyfruit,) can make one ill, which is nice to know when you have 40 + lbs of it that you have to get through. Keep in mind this was just my second class, which meant that I had to carry around this 40-50 lbs. behemoth for the remainder of the day. They gave me a plastic bag for it, but naturally the handle ripped off after a while. When I brought it home, I carried it on my head, much like one sees women in Africa doing with large jars of water on the National Geographic channel.
I took the monstrous fruit home and tried to cut it open with the tiny paring knife that I have. It just so happens that the outer rind has a very stick, sap-like substance in it. Naturally, I had this stuff all over everything in a short while, and soap wasn’t getting it out. So I contacted Erika, my friend from Singapore, to find out how the heck I was supposed to work this thing. She said that the only way to get the stuff off was with either kerosene or cooking oil, the latter of which worked only sometimes. Since cooking oil is much easier to find than kerosene, I bought a bit, and it worked quite well. So that part is resolved.
I mentioned earlier that jackfruit can make one sick if one eats too much of it. Well, at about 4:30 Saturday morning, I woke up and vomited (and I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol the entire day, so it wasn’t that.) Of course, I’ve had a fever ever since then, so I do believe it is likely some sort of flu, but am having trouble digging into it again. I really didn’t eat that much of it, but perhaps it just set my stomach off. Who knows?
I know that these students were not trying to gag gift me at all, but it sure feels like a good one, and I have to give them credit, because they had me laughing for the whole rest of the day. Thankfully, jackfruit smells good, so if nothing else, it is a massive air freshener, so I appreciate that as well.

Other students gave me gifts as well. The sweetheart sisters from Burma gave me a teddy bear, and a couple of others gave me cards and the like. All in all, it was a great last day, and for the most part, I’m gonna miss these kids.

The Badgers beat the hated Michigan Wolverines, which is very good news. If only the Vikings could get their stuff together...

Go Badgers! And Hail Progress!