Stories

From the chairs around the desk

These notes are from people who sat in the room. They mention a class, a chart, or a moment at the table. Nobody here is scoring the academy like a shop window.

Two adults reviewing a short stack of printed candlestick charts at a side desk — Markup hour, side desk.

Eight bars on a gold print

Wilaiporn Sae-tang, a pharmacist in Bang Phli Yai, booked the Candle Desk Course after a year of circling shapes on a gold chart and then forgetting why. On the fourth evening the room was on piercing lines. Her second body looked large enough, until Arun asked her to cover the prior body with a scrap of paper. The scrap left a wick showing, and the name came off the page.

She will tell you the tea is too strong and the room runs warm once the lamps have been on for an hour. She will also tell you she can now explain eight bars aloud, including the one she had filed as an engulfing pair. The rest of that gold print is still unmarked. She booked the return visit to continue from bar nine, not to start a new stack.

The constraint she hit was her own: she had been naming wicks. The class made her name bodies first. That is the whole story, and it took four evenings to get there.

I kept naming every small body a doji. On the fourth evening Nicha put a ruler on my sheet and would not let me speak until I had written the body and the wick as two numbers. I still rush when a long tail shows up. She still makes me write the numbers first.

Mali Chaichana, office administrator, Bang Phli — Candle Desk Course

The clinic was one evening on hammers and hanging men. I came in thinking they were the same candle. I left knowing I have to look at the swing before the shape.

Somchai Rattanaporn, warehouse supervisor — October-style pattern clinic

The markup hour was slower than I wanted. Arun would not touch my gold print until I had copied the open and the close into the margin myself. I understood eight bars and I am still lost on the rest. I had hoped he would just tell me the names.

Priya Nande, bookkeeper, rides in from Khlong Toei — chart markup appointment

I booked the six evenings because my old notes, taken years ago in Bangkok, were a list of names with no measurements. Here the names came last. The room is quiet enough to hear the pencil. The chairs are hard by the second hour.

Kittipong Lert, retired surveyor — Candle Desk Course

Read the Candle Desk Course sheet or ask for a seat.