So it turns out, Thailand being a Buddhist country, they have a unique relationship to alcohol and other forms of excess. Clearly, they tolerate it - vice, drinking and all sorts. One thing they don't do, however, is open a Thai run bar before 5:30 PM, or 17:30 as they say here. And I badly wanted a drink after a full morning and a light lunch. I wanted my time to sit in the semi dark, air conditioned coziness of a fine drinking establishment and write, and catch up with my fucking self.
I consciously booked an extra day on this trip. Yes, I probably could have squeezed some additional meetings in, but I got the moneymakers done. Significant money makers, although it will take some time to really make things happen. As it turned out I had a 6:30 AM working breakfast meeting that went for nearly two hours in the Thai manner, followed by a workout, followed by a quick shower and trip to an oddball museum/aristocratic residence, because one should always do something cultural. Like legitimately cultural. Soi Cowboy not being on the list of approved activities. Not that I swing that way anyway, but had I not lived in San Francisco for 10 years perhaps I would have found ladyboys intriguing. Not so much these days. Plus it was still morning and the museum was open and sparsely attended.
And speaking of ladyboys, may I just say that Australian rules football . . .
Lady bruisers?
Oh I should mention I am in an Irish Pub in the Soi Convent neighborhood. Aussie rules is on the telly.
Back to the melody
So I really wanted a casual bar to hole up in for the afternoon, and the main drag Thai mall/hotel area I am staying in didn't see fit to provide one until 5:30/17:30. But thank god for Yelp and Google+. I might have had to ask somebody otherwise. I found the expat neighborhood (the aforementioned Soi Convent) and reviews, and Irish bars that open at noon. Saints be praised. Not that I was drinking at noon, mind you, but I could not stand another goddamn Asian mall food court for three to four more hours.
I feel a bout of honesty coming on. I might be in line for another post.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Together Again for the First Time
The concept of reunion really presupposes there was a union to begin with.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Slave to Numbers
Starred's "Call from Paris" - Putting me in mind of This Mortal Coil.
Caffeine-free for over two months (a couple of iced teas notwithstanding), I fell off the wagon and into a cup of half-caf this morning at a local cafe. And to raise the chips on the rebellion, I added cream and plenty of unrefined sugar. My mind expanded at the rate of the universe. Reality brightened like the color palette in a Peter Greenaway movie, or am I thinking Ken Russell - Greenaway could be rather dark . . .
Synapses were firing like a pinball machine being gunned well and hitting all the extra points and free plays. Enlightened, I was fully understanding how this beverage ruled my days for twenty years.
Caffeine-free for over two months (a couple of iced teas notwithstanding), I fell off the wagon and into a cup of half-caf this morning at a local cafe. And to raise the chips on the rebellion, I added cream and plenty of unrefined sugar. My mind expanded at the rate of the universe. Reality brightened like the color palette in a Peter Greenaway movie, or am I thinking Ken Russell - Greenaway could be rather dark . . .
Synapses were firing like a pinball machine being gunned well and hitting all the extra points and free plays. Enlightened, I was fully understanding how this beverage ruled my days for twenty years.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Meeting
I am in Bangkok. I would like to make that a metaphor for something. I am lost.
Half a world and I would like to be lost. But I am tethered. I am not lost. My career is with me. My paunch. My desire to shed so much and walk off into this vast Asian city much the same way Jim Thompson disappeared in Malaysia in the Cameron Highlands in 1967. I want to be lost. And to bring it all with me, too.
How did all those troops get to Vietnam? It must have been by boat, but holy cow, really?
Deplane.
They have some kind of unscented, smell removing candles burning in various places in this hotel. There is a smell.
Deplane again.
Where am I? Is there a linear narrative in this?
She sat across from me marveling in the same way I was. My former sister in-law, tethered still by mutual appreciation and her need to be an aunt. Therefore justification to stay connected. My need to have connections to my past.
She was in casual, loose, black clothing, good for the tropics. I am dressed in preppy mid scale - khaki pleated pants and a collared white dress shirt, open at the neck and sleeves rolled. I want to be casual tropic in cargo shorts and pocket-tee. I want to be 23, lean and eager for life and not 46, paunchy and here to work - therefore uneager.
Still, I was bemused by how two people who have not been face-to-face in over two years while living in the US can find days, times, travel plans and happenstance putting them together in Bangkok. Provided a crow could fly this far, how far is that? We were curious about the tricks of space and time to achieve such things.
I kept thinking we had engineered another meeting in an odd place some time in our twenties, but I couldn't place the time or circumstances. I shall have to ask her by email, now that she is gone to Indonesia.
Email facilitated, surely.
"It is amazing we did this with our phones out of commission!" Neither of our phones was working in Bangkok despite our international GSM communication chips. We had to rely on wifi hotspots and email to coordinate, sporadically.
"How could anything like this happen before email?"
"We'd leave messages at the hotel, or youth hostel, and plan far enough ahead. Sometimes we even wrote letters and post cards. It happened. We lived then."
"It seems so strange now - 'meet me at noon by the news stand in Harvard Square'"
"Or the fountain across from the Louvre."
When flying in a few days ago from South Korea we passed over the South China Sea and Vietnam. I thought of an old National Geographic photo of US jets on the Tarmac at DaNang, shirtless beach volleyball in the off hours in olive drab, rip stop, tropical BDUs. Mortar rounds from infiltrators. Black pajamas.
Daphne was wearing something very like black pajamas except now we would say it is a Yoga outfit. I was sweating a steady stream in my business casual.
Half a world and I would like to be lost. But I am tethered. I am not lost. My career is with me. My paunch. My desire to shed so much and walk off into this vast Asian city much the same way Jim Thompson disappeared in Malaysia in the Cameron Highlands in 1967. I want to be lost. And to bring it all with me, too.
How did all those troops get to Vietnam? It must have been by boat, but holy cow, really?
Deplane.
They have some kind of unscented, smell removing candles burning in various places in this hotel. There is a smell.
Deplane again.
Where am I? Is there a linear narrative in this?
She sat across from me marveling in the same way I was. My former sister in-law, tethered still by mutual appreciation and her need to be an aunt. Therefore justification to stay connected. My need to have connections to my past.
She was in casual, loose, black clothing, good for the tropics. I am dressed in preppy mid scale - khaki pleated pants and a collared white dress shirt, open at the neck and sleeves rolled. I want to be casual tropic in cargo shorts and pocket-tee. I want to be 23, lean and eager for life and not 46, paunchy and here to work - therefore uneager.
Still, I was bemused by how two people who have not been face-to-face in over two years while living in the US can find days, times, travel plans and happenstance putting them together in Bangkok. Provided a crow could fly this far, how far is that? We were curious about the tricks of space and time to achieve such things.
I kept thinking we had engineered another meeting in an odd place some time in our twenties, but I couldn't place the time or circumstances. I shall have to ask her by email, now that she is gone to Indonesia.
Email facilitated, surely.
"It is amazing we did this with our phones out of commission!" Neither of our phones was working in Bangkok despite our international GSM communication chips. We had to rely on wifi hotspots and email to coordinate, sporadically.
"How could anything like this happen before email?"
"We'd leave messages at the hotel, or youth hostel, and plan far enough ahead. Sometimes we even wrote letters and post cards. It happened. We lived then."
"It seems so strange now - 'meet me at noon by the news stand in Harvard Square'"
"Or the fountain across from the Louvre."
When flying in a few days ago from South Korea we passed over the South China Sea and Vietnam. I thought of an old National Geographic photo of US jets on the Tarmac at DaNang, shirtless beach volleyball in the off hours in olive drab, rip stop, tropical BDUs. Mortar rounds from infiltrators. Black pajamas.
Daphne was wearing something very like black pajamas except now we would say it is a Yoga outfit. I was sweating a steady stream in my business casual.