Chris had only met her once on his first and her last day. Though he hadn’t known her beyond that, his first impression was in sync with what the grape vine had produced. Though she was polite and outgoing with him, Chris tended to read people from the way they interacted in their environment.

As he was observing her instruct what was to be her final lesson, he made a note of the resentment in the students’ eyes when she yelled at them to repeat a sentence from the text book.
“That is the train station! Not Dat is da tain say-chun! Say it again right!” The fury in her eyes and voice reinforced with the smacking of the long wooden ruler made the students fringe even more, before repeating the sentence with even less enthusiasm. “Ahhh! You are all hopeless!”
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The newspaper on the middle of the folding table of the street side eatery glowed with Grotesque and peculiar images of murder, rape, scandals and freak accidents, painting a colorful yet wicked record of contemporary Siamese existence.

Since he had called Thailand his home for the last half a decade, Christopher Stevens preferred the local newspapers as his window on the immediate world. Unlike back in the states, it wasn’t so much about the objectivity, quality and style of reporting, let alone the newspaper’s brand that triggered interest and sales; in Thailand, a country where cigarettes and guns are censored on public television, printed media relied on the best possible eye catchers to reel in impulse readers and buyers.
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As the midday sun’s rays warmed the rural Bangkok neighborhood, more locals flocked to the small eatery, eliminating vacancy of all its six tables. Aloof to the curious eyes in the packed shack-turned-lunch-spot, Nathan and Neil continued to bicker with each other—Chris’s attention sealed to the newspaper. He had unusually been attracted to the details of a particularly tragic story reaching out towards him.
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