Kop. Yes, Kop.

I officially have an address.

Granted, I have an address before I have a house, but at least progress is being made.

I signed the lease with the man who showed me the house; his name is Gai and he is a phenomenally nice human.  He's an older gentleman who works with the man who owns and rents many of the houses in the village in which I will live.  For signing, I turned up at a small grocery store and we had some coffee while we discussed the details of the paper that he set in front of me.  I scribbled my name on a few papers and watched him fill out the details, and then we went off towards a copy place.  We also stopped briefly at the owner's home and I was struck at his sincerity and genuine kindness.

This leads me to the main observation I had of Mr. Gai.  In fact, I'll call him Khun Gai, since that is a typical title of respect for both genders.  He called me this whenever he wanted to talk to me, and called any other person this when speaking of them as well.

Mr. Gai is one of the most polite people I've ever had the fortune to meet.  It is in every fiber of his demeanor and his speech, and something that I respect more than many other character traits.  It shows in his use of the word "kop," which is the male version of yes and something that can easily end every sentence more effectively than punctuation.  I suppose it is also something of a space filler in speech as well, but it is such a polite and respectful part of speech.  For women, it is "ka."  For example, when I say thank you, I say 'ka pun ka.'  Good morning is 'sawadee ka.'

For Gai, the kop infiltrates every other word of his sentences, and I find it extremely charming.  He says to me, "Yes, kop, this is the right way, kop."  "Well, kop, I think that you, kop, can do that of course, kop."  These are example sentences, but hopefully I am conveying the kop consistency in Khun Gai's speech.  I think there is a difference in his generation and the younger one, though I will need to observe many more things before I see this with clarity.  My small sample size only includes Khun Gai and another man called Somchai that showed me through a few other houses in the city.  The younger counterpart didn't use the kop with consistency, though he was very sweet and quite nice and knowledgeable about the areas.

It is one of those language quirks that I will continue to watch and learn from.  For now, though, I'll end by saying how pleasant it was to interact with Khun Gai and watch the time fall away as we dealt with the business of becoming a renter in Bangkok.

It's still hard for me to believe that I live in Bangkok, but that's more for another post.