Grain Jai

Ok, say it was your turn to do the dishes and you forgot, and your roommate went ahead and did them for you. You say, "Awe, you shouldn't have." and you kinda feel bad that they went to the effort to do something that was your job (note that you are a GOOD roommate). How would you describe how you feel? "I feel...." what? Ok, I'll tell you. You feel "grain jai".

The Thais have a word for it, but I don't know of an English equivalent, and frankly I don't know how we've gotten this far without it. It is a distinct feeling. It's a little bit of embarrassment. It's a little bit of feeling bad. It's a little bit of helplessness. It's wishing you could do something to change it so it didn't inconvenience someone else, but you know you can't. Thats grain jai.

So I'm going to start using grain jai to describe the feeling. English needs that word. When you finally see a grain jai emoticon, you'll know what that is.