Web Chic

'Tis True, 'tis True 'tis pity, And pity 'tis 'tis True. Part Two

2009-02-20T11:52:00.000+07:00

True Corp bought more bandwidth in mid 2008. I know this because a customer service rep called to tell me so. At least the 2007 visit to True Corp head office wasn't totally in vain.

The honeymoon lasted until September when my speed was back in the garbage again. I started the usual round of calling, insisting it wasn't my settings, demanding to speak to someone besides customer service. Now neither I nor my computer were getting anywhere.

For a couple of weeks in October I was too sick to use the computer. When I finally sat down to work again, every site I tried to access elicited the message"Firefox Cannot Find The Address." Reloading the page 4-20 times sometimes got me where I wanted to go. Forget about sophisticated internet maneuvers like trying to navigate from between pages or sending sensitive data like passwords. I tried calling the True "Disservice Center" and as always was fobbed off with excuses.

To reassure myself the problem didn't lie with my computer, I went to the Fujitsu service center where any customer can use their Loxinfo-powered Wi-Fi for free. My computer worked quickly and perfectly. One of the endlessly helpful Fujitsu service people suggested I address my complaints to True via their on line customer service instead of by phone. He said True take you more seriously if you post a complaint and normally call back within 24 hours.

And they did! A savvy female engineer named Nahathai rang my mobile the next morning and we talked for an hour. She wanted me to test my speeds but I'm wise to that game after playing it so often with the customer service folks. Speeds to the True office in Bangkok are always normal. Nahathai asked if I used a lot of international sites.

"What do you mean international websites?" I tried not to yell. "The internet is the internet. Who knows or cares where the host servers are located?" True does. It differentiates between customers who surf inside the country and those who go inter as they say in Thai. Inter involves using the closely guarded CAT gateway described in the previous post.

Ultimately Nahathai admitted the real problem was True's lack of bandwidth. Or rather its core marketing strategy to buy more bandwidth at the usurious Thai prices and then sell thousands of cheap packages to Thai users. Unbelievably True works on the premise that young Thais only play video games or access local chat rooms and don't clog the international lines! How can any major ISP or computer engineer believe such rubbish?

After Nahathai manipulated something on her end related to my router, speeds sped up significantly. I was so happy. She gave me her mobile number and said to call whenever I had a problem.

When I powered up the next morning, speeds had gone back to their "normal" antediluvian slowness and Firefox required 4-20 tries to access a URL. I called Nahathai. She asked if I'd turned off my router. Of course I had. Energy-conservationist me automatically turns everything off when I shut down the computer. She'd never said to leave the router on.

We were at an impasse. Nahathai said she'd forward my case on to her bosses and get back to me. When she didn't I started barraging the website again. Eventually she called back and wanted to come to my house to test the router and the routes. I thought this was unnecessary, especially since service people always have a terrible time finding my place in the bowels of Chinatown. Then again, what did I have to lose but crap internet.

Promptly at 8 a.m. a few mornings later, Nahathai and K. Poo (from the Internet section) arrived, each with their own Dell laptop. I work in a teensy space delimited by an old-fashioned wood desk with a drawer I pull out for my laptop and have never experinced so many visitors crowded into my workspace. Fortunately Nahatahai and Poo were both short and slender! I demonstrated the various problems (the "Firefox cannot find the address" message, the impossibility of streaming an NPR radio program or navigating from one page to another) and left them to it.

At 10:30 the pair were still engrossed. They'd sorted the Firefox problem which was only vaguely related to the bandwidth issue. Nahathai said she'd already sent my case along with another serial complainer, also a farang, to the head office.

"So who complains the loudest?" I asked her. "Farangs or Thais?"

Oh only the farangs complain vociferously, she told me. Great! As if the Thais don't already have a zillion reasons to marginalize us farangs as weird, demanding, loud and aggressive! Now we're internet complainers too.

"Why don't the Thais complain? Surely they must hate slow service as much as we do?" I said.

"Thais don't go inter as much you farangs," she said. "And you farangs have experience with internet in your own countries and know about fast internet." I told her I'd been in Thailand 16 years and had very little experience with the fast, well managed and affordable internet in the west so it was no good lumping me into her standard farang profile.

After the pair spent two more hours sitting cross-legged on the floor hunkered down over their computers and in endless communication with their offices, Nahathai offered to temporarily put me on a special account so I could stream video. (I quit trying to watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC since for 2 seconds of talking I had to wait 15 seconds for buffering.) Nahathai hooked me up to a lightening fast--and expensive--account to demonstrate and for 10 glorious minutes I could watch feisty, smart and cynical Rachel spout off without a single pause.

"No," I told her. "I do not want special farang treatment. I only want my standard 850 baht/month service to return to how it was three years ago before True vastly oversold its small amount of bandwidth." I refused to give her bosses fodder for turning me into a the poster child for faster internet speeds in Thailand.

So, like Cinderella at the ball as the clock struck midnight, Nahathai returned my golden internet carriage to its pumpkin-like state as a True customer with an ordinary internet account. And apart from the night a few weeks ago when the entire international connection broke down and every internet service providor in the country lost their ability to go inter, life on the True cyber highway has been more or less normal ever since.

'Tis True, 'tis True 'tis pity, And pity 'tis 'tis True. Part One

2009-02-03T14:58:00.002+07:00

I live on the 8th floor of a ratty apartment block in Chinatown. My connection to the High Speed internet service offered by True Corporation, Thailand's biggest ISP, begins with a digital line that comes in off the street. When it enters our building it becomes an analog copper wire that disappears into a metal box located under a drippy pipe near the front office. The box belongs to the Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT).

Emerging from the frightening spaghetti-like tangle of telephone/computer lines crammed into the box, my thin copper line then climbs up eight floors, undoubtedly losing electrical resistance en route. Thus before the ADSL line ever plugs into my computer, its speed is lower than the advertised 512/256 kpbs for which I pay 802 baht/month. (Plus an extra 107 baht/month to TOT for the privilege of poking my wire into a hole in that metal box downstairs.

When I first installed True Hi Speed internet four years ago, it seemed efficient enough. Of course anyone switching from a dial-up modem to ADSL is bound to be overjoyed at the speed difference, at least initially. Besides, nobody expects lightening fast speeds in Thailand because the international internet gateway to the world is tightly controlled by the rapacious Communication Authority of Thailand (CAT). Every ISP in Thailand pays huge fees over and under the table to CAT for the privilege of exiting the country. Which is one of several reasons for the expensive and slow Thai internet.

Anyhow, in early 2007 my ADSL connection became seriously slow. Like it took 1 or 2 minutes to download a single web page. Even my old dial-up connection was faster than this. Thus began a series of calls to True Customer Service. Ha, what a true misnomer that is. The default "help" mode adopted by this small band of excessively polite reps involves absolving True of any responsibility for any problem. The customer is always wrong.

No, I'd patiently explain to Khun Whoever, it can't be my smtp, pop, firewall, browser, cookies or any other setting. My speeds were fine before and I haven't changed a thing.

"Are you looking at websites within Thailand or abroad?" they'd ask.

"WHAT?" I'd scream. (After countless calls I'd finally lost all semblance of cool.) "It's the Internet. There's no difference between surfing within and without Thailand." (Except that within Thailand you don't need to pass the CAT gateway.) How could such archaic notions of intra- and international persist in the age of global communication. Thanks to the TOT/CAT duopoly, they still do. .

"My problem has nothing to do with me. YOU are advertising super cheap promotions and don't have enough bandwidth to service your many new customers." They sheepishly agreed with me but could do nothing. We'd come to an impasse. "Let me talk to a supervisor," I begged. When this person finally came on the phone she offered just one option: For 1,250 baht/month I could sign up for the SME package (for small and medium enterprises). Apparently SME package speeds were faster because it had fewer subscribers.

"But I'm not an SME. I'm just me," I protested. "Your solution to a True-created problem is to charge me 1250 baht/month (even more with tax) for the same level of service I once got with a 802-baht line?" I was righteously indignant. "You call this service?!?" Apparently she did because with a take-it-or-leave-it rejoinder, she hung up.

I was really upset. Customer Service refused to put me in touch with anyone in upper management so I switched tactics. Reckoning a writer with a work permit and press card had some measure of influence, I decided to visit the True Corp head office. It was a definite gamble because Thais don't take you very seriously without a referral or at least a contact name. And indeed the trio of smiling girlies guarding the downstairs reception counter at True Corp were totally flummoxed by my appearance (both literal and figurative).

After numerous frantic phone calls from reception, two young women appeared. We sat down at the True coffee shop and they listened patiently as I explained my problem in a mixture of Thai and English. They made various phone calls and eventually said a big PR boss was coming right over from her office across the street. In the interim they proffered smiles and coffee. While we waited, three more minions appeared, all wanting to hear my saga. Then two more. At which point I realized I was wasting my time repeating the same information because only the boss had the authority help me. I clammed up.

How long does it take to cross a street in Bangkok I wondered after nearly an hour had elapsed. If the street is the hyper congested 6-lane Ratchadapisek at the Rama 9 intersection and the PR boss is driving not walking--and no PR boss would dream of walking across the street--an hour is about average. Sure enough a profusely apologetic woman appeared soon afterward and in no time had bestowed a free SME package on me to solve my connection speed problems. I had my own password and the mobile phone number of a charming engineer in case of problems.

Wow! I flew like the wind with the SME package. For exactly one day. When I plugged in on the second day the login name and password didn't work. I rang the charming engineer who provided different ones. They too worked for a day. On the third day the charming engineer didn't pick up the phone. I was back to square one.

I left the country for three months and when I returned in October my True internet connection was slightly faster once again. On really bad days I go to the Fujitsu service center where Fujitsu owners can use their wi-fi for free.

Hi, d'ya remember me?

2009-01-23T11:51:00.001+07:00

Here's a blanket statement for everyone who walks up to me hoping I'll remember them from our previous meeting. Please don't take it personally, but I probably won't. Perhaps we met at some party a decade ago or in Istanbul in October 2006. Did I really edit a brochure for your husband 13 years ago? You saw me on the BTS, at the FCCT, at an art opening, walking near Siam, at a bar. Sorry, our interaction didn't imprint itself onto my consciousness. You say I was your best friend in high school and we hung out together all the time. Apart from your maiden name and luxuriant long wavy hair, I recollect nothing of our time together.

If you introduce yourself by asking where's my trademark big hat, I'm very happy to have forgotten you. The broad rimmed hat I sported sported around Bangkok from 1993 to 1997 (naturally I don't recall the dates) was fun at the time, but I've moved on. You, on the other hand apparently imagine people stay trapped in one signature fashion moment.

This habit of routinely forgetting so many folks who retain such vivid memories of me is a tad worrisome. I've considered early onset Alzheimer's except I can't remember a time when I wasn't forgetting. My mother had prodigious powers of recall and gleefully taunted me about my microscopic memory bank. "Don't tell me you've forgotten so and so," she'd chide and proceed to recount a short story's worth of anecdotes about my escapades with the person. I consoled myself thinking all she did was sit around remembering while I was running around experiencing life.

Two seconds after being introduced to someone at a social function I'll probably have forgotten their name. Usually one or two meetings is sufficient to imprint someone's identity onto my semi-consciousness. Sometimes no matter how many times I meet a person, their name continues to escape me. Just to let you know, asking, "Don't you remember my name this time?" won't make either of us feel any better when I admit to forgetting you yet again.

I used to hide my ignorance of people's identities behind mundane questions like, "So how's work these days?," or "What've you been up to lately?" Occasionally their answer jogs my dysfunctional memory bank and allows me to wriggle out of a mutually uncomfortable situation. Usually it doesn't.

It's nice when people say, "Who can forget you? You're so memorable/weird/distinctive" or whatever, but I still feel terrible about all the unexplainable blanks in my brain. On the positive side, if we ever had an argument in some distant and ended up hating each other, rest assured I've probably forgotten the genesis of the problem and so perhaps we can be friends once again.

Maybe it's all a cosmic solution to my much larger problem of letting go and being in the moment.

Wrong Shoe Color and Other Political Implications

2008-12-02T13:29:00.005+07:00

Normally yesterday would have been a yellow-shirt day because Monday is the birth day of the king and it's become common practice for many Thais to honor him by wearing his color. Lately few wear yellow because it's been coopted by those screaming PAD fanatics who've commandeered the airport and irrevocably altered life in Thailand.

I got on the MRT subway wearing black and grey accoutred with some cute secondhand Birkie sandals purchased recently for 500 baht from the fabulous secondhand boot guy at Chatuchak Weekend Market. For no particular reason I sat down next to an unsmiling older Thai-Chinese guy who was one of the very few wearing a yellow shirt. As the train pulled out he got up and moved to the next row of seats.

Was it because I'm a foreigner? Unless the trains are jam packed, the seats next to me are often empty and I've often contemplated wearing a "Farangs Don't Bite" sign around my neck. Was it because I wear strong smelling patchouli oil? Nobody's responded negatively to that exotic 1960s-era perfume since the mid 1970s when the owner (a former madame) of a funky Port Costa hotel and bar on the San Francisco Bay refused me entrance to her premises because she hated patchouli.

Or did the guy move because of my reddish shoes? That I can even contemplate such a seemingly insane reason indicates how all of us here, like it or not, are implicitly or explicitly affected by the gut level reactivity generated by the current political tensions. A few weeks ago my maid Noi, who's watered my plants and tidied my apartment thrice weekly for 12 years, complained that she just didn't own enough tops in non-political colors. She, like so many other Thais, has enough ordinary problems just getting by in life and doesn't need more externally created ones.

Yet with the airports closed, the political situation growing ever bleaker and the future growing ever more uncertain, almost nobody has the luxury of being an ostrich anymore. Over the past few days since the insane November 25 airport takeover started looking insoluble, at least in the short term, I began noticing how it affects various aspects of life here I take for granted.

Getting secondhand The Economist magazines at Chatuchak. Thai Airways isn't flying so the magazine guy can't buy old issues off whoever was supplying him before.
My New Yorker subscription won't arrive by post, nor will any other subscriber to overseas publications receive their copies.
Bookazine and Asia Books and other suppliers won't receive their daily newspapers, weekly magazines, or book shipments.
Noi said gorgeous flowers were being sold off at 1 baht per stem at the market near her house because they can't be flown out. I can't begin to imagine how many other exported items are affected.
Villa Market only had imported cranberry jelly when I went to buy cranberry sauce for my friend's Thanksgiving party. Villa stocks way more foreign items than even the luxury Thai supermarkets and what'll it do as this situation drags on?
Three good friends will probably have to cancel a one-month trip to Nepal to celebrate their 50th birthdays because they're due to leave on the 10th.They're literally a drop in the ocean of the people and goods whose movements have been impacted by the airport closure.
Yesterday as I waited at BNH to see a doctor, I talked to an older couple of Brazilians on a large tour. They were due to fly out on Saturday and have run out of their heart/thyroid medication.

It's hardly worth ruminating more about this. Everyone is waiting for something or someone to wave a wand and make things all better again. Perhaps nothing will change until everyone realizes things have gone too far for a simple solution and begin to take responsibility for the situation they're in. Call me negative or a doom and gloomer, but I see things getting much worse before they even start to get better.

One Stop Steps Up

2008-11-27T18:29:00.028+07:00

Rumors are flying around town about an imminent coup and everyone’s got their version of how things have come to this point, who’s behind it, what democracy means blah blah blah.

I can’t predict anything and would rather express my gratitude to the wonderful folks at the One Stop Service Centre for Visas and Work Permits. Yesterday several of them manifested the caring, helpfulness and goose bump-producing personality traits of the many ordinary Thais who don’t dress in political colors, follow rabblerousing leaders or overrun airports.

Shackled by insane regulations and archaic definitions of “work,” these low-level functionaries and bureaucrats come up with creative Thai-style solutions to seemingly intractable problems. (On Tuesday one sent me home to “reproduce” a document certifying I'd terminated with a company that technically hadn’t hired me in the first place so his paper trail would be complete and I could continue the visa process.) And one hour before closing time on Wednesday, three people conspired to jump me from 106 to 70 in a queue of applicants that shouldn’t have exceeded 100 anyhow.

I don’t know why so many women (and one awfully handsome guy) went far beyond their job descriptions to help me complete their arcane bureaucratic processes in a single day. Maybe like me, they too were worried about the rapidly deteriorating political situation at the airport and elsewhere in Bangkok. If the army had held a coup or declared martial law today, I’d have been trapped in Thailand with a visa that expired on December 2.

Perhaps it was my unusual Jennifer-esque self that provided them with comic relief from the standard business types and sycophantic agents they normally deal with. On my annual visa/work permit renewal visits I always treat staff like human beings instead of faceless minions. (After their superhuman efforts yesterday I ran around taking photos and blowing kisses!)

Maybe I should just accept my age and apply for a retirement visa. Spending one arduous day a year queuing in the Dickensian bowels of Bangkok’s main immigration office at Suan Plu sounds way easier than what I went through from Monday through yesterday to get a new journalist’s work permit and visa. (Renewing an existing work permit and visa is much easier than applying for a new one which you must do if you change your sponsor.)

But then I’d have missed another heartwarming opportunity to appreciate the innate Thai kindness that's expressed in small and meaningful gestures. Yesterday reminded me why I love it here despite the incomprehensible and terrifying machinations of political power brokers.

Great Coffee Mates

2008-11-22T09:30:00.003+07:00

I wish Doi Tung operated more cafes in central Bangkok. (The company is part of the development project started by the Princess Mother in 1988 to help hilltribe farmers in northern Thailand.) When the Doi Tung outlet at TCDC closed last year I lost the only super friendly--and super quiet--meeting place in the Sukhumvit area .

The Doi Tung cafe next to Entrance #1 at Chatuchak Weekend Market heaves with thirsty shoppers on weekends yet the staff manage to remain eternally charming. Go once or twice and they'll remember your coffee proclivities forever. An iced Americano and a chocolate cookie have become as integral to my weekly Chatuchak pilgrimages as last week's fresh-off-the-Thai-Airways-plane Economist magazine and whatever secondhand togs I can unearth.

The strong coffee makes a perfect counterpoint to the crumbly dry cookies with their subtle, barely discernible chocolate flavor. I normally avoid sweets, but these are so non-gourmet in every aspect that I cat eat one or two without feeling guilty.

I get to the market by 1 or 2 pm on Saturday and always make a beeline to Doi Tung for my coffee/cookie fix. Lately, however, the chocolate cookies have been sold out by then. The sweet smiling cashier always apologizes profusely and offers one of the many coffee-flavored cookies still available. (Clearly I'm not the only customer who prefers drinking real coffee to eating pseudo coffee biscuits.)

"If head office knows the chocolate cookies are the most popular, why don't they just stock more of them?" I frustratedly asked the cashier for a few weeks until I stopped the futile gesture. Of course she couldn't possibly be expected to know or care about her company's marketing strategy. Besides, if the Doi Tung owners didn't capitalize on the popularity of their cafes and open more branches, they were probably equally oblivious to the supply and demand issues of chocolate cookies.

The solution to eliminating my frustration at not getting a chocolate cookie was simply to stop wanting one. I lowered my expectations and deleted the item from my mental menu. End of story, thought I.

Last week I got to the market at 3 pm on Sunday instead of Saturday. As I approached the counter to order the Americano, the cashier walked off for a second. She reappeared proudly proffering the two chocolate cookies she'd put aside for me on Saturday morning! Now THAT's service! She could teach her bosses a thing or twenty about customer relations.

Insight Insight, Trying, Trying

2008-11-20T16:30:00.002+07:00

In case anybody's noticed, I haven't blogged in several months. This is due mainly to writer's block combined with the effects of a 1-week virus, a month of post nasal drip and a chronic case of Bangkok blahs.

Last Saturday (the 15th) I attended an all-day meditation lead by Jeff Oliver at the Piyadhamma Mediation Centre on Sukhumvit 81. After discovering my blog, Pandit Bhikkhu (the monk who organized the event) asked if I'd blog about my experiences. His request immediately triggered all the writing anxieties that've had me in knots since August.

I'm not sure which is harder, the thought of letting down a monk or attempting yet again to deal with my writing demons. While I'm super grateful for his nudge, I'm still trepidatious about my ability to fulfill the stringent blogging requirements I've imposed on myself. The posts should pour forth from my fingers with no hesitation or editing. They should be funny, informative and unique. Deep down I want to be a world famous blogger like Arianna Huffington with an equally huge and dedicated following in the blogosphere. Talk about daunting goals!

With all those caveats, here goes the blog entry for the 15th.......

My motivation for doing something is usually inversely proportional to the number of people saying how many benefits I'll get from doing it. For years many friends--and three psychics--have touted meditation as a way of de-stressing, feeling physically and mentally better and generally creating more balance in my daily life. Those psychics all "saw" that I'm extremely psychic myself and recommended meditating as the best way to connect with my own inner seer.

With so many documented benefits achievable from just sitting still and observing breath, thoughts, aching back or whatever, you'd think a goal-oriented over achiever like me would want to plonk herself down, cross her legs and embark on a salubrious spiritual journey. Instead, I've opted to remain in the self-destructive but comfortably familiar state of rushing around madly so I can live in every other moment except the present one.

The only serious meditating I ever did was on a 10-day Buddhist meditation retreat in 1990 at Wat Kow Tahm in Koh Phangan. Apart from the occasional private meeting with the teachers, strict silence was maintained throughout. When participants were finally allowed to talk amongst ourselves on day 10, I discovered that all the thoughts I'd secretly nurtured during the previous nine days were mental drivel created by my own hyperactive mind.The guy I just knew was secretly attracted to me wasn't; the one who didn't want to sit near me hadn't even noticed me, the woman who hated me didn't and on and on in a boring self-generated fantasy land.

Since then I've attended several short retreats in Bangkok and plenty of lectures and half-day mini meditations. None have compared in seriousness to the Wat Kow Tahm experience. Every now and then through the years I've embarked on a regimen of regular morning meditation practice, but have never maintained it for long.

From 2003 to 2007, I excused myself from even trying to meditate because both hips were arthritic and increasingly painful. Many caring friends and healers swore that meditation could significantly ease the physical discomfort, or at least my reactions to it. I skillfully managed to ignore all their well-intentioned advice throughout the pain and frustration of two botched hip replacement surgeries in Thailand (2005, 2006) and the two successful hip revisions in Belgium (2007).

During those years I did try less interactive palliatives like acupuncture and Chinese herbs. I also took private Tai Chi lessons and in typical Jennifer fashion managed to transform a potentially mind-quieting activity into a mind-consuming quest for perfection. The acupuncturist/Tai Chi teacher introduced me to Jeff in 2004 and I participated in a couple of afternoon meditations he lead at a temple in Thonburi. From the get go, I appreciated his jargon- and ritual-free approach to Vipassana.

I only heard about Jeff's one-day Saturday meditation on Friday and took it as a karmic sign that a couple of places were still available. Jeff had lived as a Buddhist monk in Burma for eight years and though he's now a layperson, he obviously knows a lot about the complex underpinnings of Vipassana (also called Insight Meditation). He travels regularly to Turkey where he holds secular meditation classes and retreats. Unlike a lot of meditation gurus, he doesn't spend time enumerating the academic aspects of Buddhist philosophy--the causes of suffering, the paths leading to cessation of suffering, defilements, etc.--which I find daunting and ultimately offputting.

Jeff transmits complicated concepts in a nonthreatening manner that encourages me into meditation once again to battle my myriad mental enemies. (Actually I do realize that Vipassana is not about conquering mental obstacles. It's about noticing them, acknowledging them, and watching them disappear in a puff of impermanence....until the next ones turn up a millisecond later.)

The schedule for Saturday posted on www.littlebang.wordpress.com promised equal amounts of theory and practice with a large chunk of time reserved for personal interviews with the participants. The day didn't turn out that way at all--call it the impermanence of schedules--but I had some great "aha" moments nonetheless. (I'm trying hard not to glom onto them because of course they're just as impermanent as everything else.)

At 9 am some 30 people, ranging from meditation newbies to old hands, sat expectantly on mats (or a few of us in chairs) in the nicely appointed and hyper airconditioned meditation hall. Jeff sat in lotus position on the bottom step of the dais and explained that keeping the hips slightly higher than the lower body helps minimize back stress and assorted meditation-related aches and pains.I knew from our previous sessions that Jeff isn't one of those no-pain-no-gain meditation instructors who believe overcoming shooting physical pains is integral to the experience. Pandit Bhikkhu was seated near him on a narrow raised platform that ran along one side of the room.

Jeff talked about focusing on one object, in this case the breath, by numbering each in and out breath from 1 to 5 and then back to 1 again. Then you stop numbering the out breaths, and finally you stop counting altogether. He lead us through a short 5- or 7-minute guided meditation to practice the technique. I know that serious meditators transcend the one-object technique, but I rarely quiet my mind enough to move beyond it.

From there, Jeff moved on to the next stage of insight meditation which involves noticing whatever sensations and thoughts come up while you're trying not to focus on anything except that particular moment. To keep things straight, it helps to label the sensation: "itching, itching, itching," or "aching, aching, aching," or "hearing, hearing, hearing." Once outed, the sensations generally dissipate. Jeff said that labeling an emotion as "frustration" when actually it's "anger" won't fool your watchful consciousness (or was it unconsciousness--I forget) into letting it go. (I thought spending so much mental energy distinguishing "anger" from "frustration" would create more of both, but was too embarrassed to pose the question.)

Next, Jeff guided us through a short meditation to put these theories into practice. I was OK with the naming sensations part, but labeling abstract mental states ("thinking, thinking, thinking," "judging, judging, judging," or "sadness, sadness, sadness,") made me totally "frenetic, frenetic, frenetic." Can an already blocked writer choose the word that best describes her emotional state while simultaneously trying to remain serene and calm?

Jeff finished off each session with a Metta meditation. Metta means sending loving thoughts first to yourself (where all thoughts originate anyhow), then to your family, your friends, enemies, and ultimately to every creature on the planet. There are many versions of Metta and this one is similar to the one he used: "May I be filled with loving-kindness, May I be well, May I be peaceful and at ease, May I be happy." I find it so much easier to think loving thoughts when someone else is reciting them for me.

As the talk-intensive morning wore on, we natives were getting restive. Pandit Bhikkhu left for lunch at 11:30 but Jeff said we'd eat at 12:30. I was looking forward to the lunch break as a relaxing social event, but instead Jeff announced we'd be observing lunch in silence. He described in detail how we'd all walk slowly and mindfully downstairs, serve ourselves small portions of food while deciding the order in which we'd eat the various items. We could start eating only after everyone was served and seated. We should also try to set down our utensils between bites, focus on the food instead of our tablemates and eat each mouthful with mindfulness.

I rarely think about the Wat Kow Tahm retreat, yet suddenly I was transported back 18 years to the island temple where our two morning meals and late afternoon snack assumed paramount importance in my daily routine. I recalled trying not look as gluttonous or excited as I felt while I filled my plate with appropriately genteel portions of the delicious Thai vegetarian fare. Eyes cast downward, I'd try to walk not run to my preferred dining spot on a big rock overlooking the sea. Raising fork to mouth, I'd begin "chewing, chewing," "tasting, tasting," "swallowing, swallowing," "enjoying, enjoying." My internal good little girl voice exerted considerable control over my actions; nonetheless I'd sometimes descend into an unmindful orgy of shoving-chewing-tasting-swallowing.

Every mid afternoon my mind would leap ahead to the copious fruit platters garnished with shredded fresh coconut meat which would be served in a couple of hours. However, on the afternoon of the 7th day, the platters held one small wholewheat bun for each participant. I was horrified and hugely disappointed ("frustration, frustration, frustration"). Of course the snack was purposely orchestrated to illustrate how a dry bun eaten mindfully and with awareness can be as delicious and satisfying as a slice of juicy mango. The bun saga encapsulates many crucial Buddhist concepts--letting go of expectations, living in the moment, acceptance, impermanence.

So here I was last Saturday, once again salivating at the platters of sauteed vegetables, raw salad greens, fresh fruit. I hoped nobody noticed how I heaped too many servings on the small plastic plate. (I learned this skill from years of eating at all-you-can-eat-on-one-plate salad bars). I obsessed about which of the three round tables to sit at and why people I vaguely knew didn't choose to sit with me. Once seated, I kept peeking surreptitiously at my tablemates and endlessly compared our eating speeds, utensil posing skills and supposed oneness with our food. Clearly, I still expend far too much time and mental energy on comparisons and fantasies. Well, at least I'm more aware of my hyperactive mental processes than I was 18 years ago, which hopefully counts as progress. I seek instant karma, whereas the quest for inner peace and serenity demands constant vigilance.

Back in the meditation hall, Jeff guided us through a lying meditation exercise which helped focus our attention on our bodies and his words instead of succumbing to the natural post-prandial desire for a little snooze. He then demonstrated the nuances of walking meditation: how to mindfully lift the foot, move it forward, place it on the ground, shift the weight to the other foot and repeat the process, all the while mentally labeling each movement. We found our various walking "paths" throughout the meditation hall and the adjoining large rooms and began.

The last time I tried walking meditation was at the Thonburi temple with Jeff in 2004. Back then I could barely focus on labeling movements because my right hip hurt so much. This time I could hardly focus on labeling movements because walking felt so fabulous and waves of happiness kept washing over me. Jeff had mentioned that if we found ourselves mechanically chanting "lifting, moving, placing" like a background mantra while a bunch of "thinking, thinking, thinking" was happening in the mental foreground, we should stop moving and refocus. I spent half of the 30 or so minutes standing in one spot and being "joyful, joyful, joyful," "grateful, grateful, grateful" and feeling an overpowering sense of openness, fearlessness and positivity.

After performing those two hip revision surgeries in 2007, the Belgian doctor assured me I could safely sit in lotus position. Nonetheless, I've continued sitting on a chair, terrified that something will screw up again. Now, glowing with positivity after the walking meditation, I returned to the main hall, built myself a raised cushion with several folded mats and followed Jeff's earlier instructions to keep the hips higher than the legs. To my immense surprise and joy, I was able to sit fairly comfortably in that position for the remainder of the afternoon.

I wish Jeff had finished off the day with more meditating and less talking but probably I was too blissed out to have devoted serious attention to either activity anyhow. Without being too "impatient, impatient," or "anticipatory, anticipatory," I await with interest whatever the meditation future holds.

Go Villa Market!

2008-08-08T18:03:00.000+07:00

"I was a farang in a previous life," Surapong "Pong" Poosankhon, a.k.a. Mr. Villa, joked to me in 1996 when I profiled him for the Far Eastern Economic Review. The former butcher for the US Commissary during the Vietnam war opened Villa Market on Sukhumvit near soi 33 in 1974 and for the next two decades his small family-run store was Bangkok's only western-style supermarket.

Notwithstanding the Danish rollmop herrings, Greek filo pastry and homemade eggnog at Christmas, the true joy of shopping at Villa was always Mr. Villa himself. With his hastily hennaed hair and a broad smile, he was a perennial presence near the checkout counter from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. Whatever you needed, he'd either find it or order it specially for you.

By the late '90s Bangkok was awash in Thai and international supermarket chains. To varying degrees Tops, The Mall, Tesco/Lotus and Carrefour boasted hallmarks of western marketing techniques. Around this time, Mr. Villa's son and daughter returned from America armed with high powered business degrees and a mission to open more Villa branches. Their biggest obstacle was imposing late 20th century management practices on their amiable dad's one-man show. They obviously succeeded because small and medium sized incarnations of the flagship Villa are now scattered throughout Bangkok as well as in Pattaya and Hua Hin.

The homey disorganization and neighborhood grocery ambiance of the stores I frequent--Sukhumvit 2 and the flagship 33 branch--make a refreshing contrast to the pseudo Whole Foods displays and other western trappings of the other supermarket chains. At Villa the aisles and products get shifted around with confusing regularity and you can sometimes sniff the unmistakable aroma of of eau de bug spray. Yet Villa staff really do try hard to be helpful; at Emporium and Paragon small battalions of guards eye shoppers' movements with undisguised suspicion. (At Paragon I was loudly reprimanded for opening a plastic 6-pack of 1-liter drinking water bottles so I could buy just one!)

Villa also stocks items like Australian black licorice which you just won't find anywhere else. When this product suddenly disappeared from the Soi 2 shelves, I asked a staff member to call head office and he promised more would be delivered the following day. It wasn't and when he called again he was told supplies were suspended indefinitely.

Today Mr. Villa spends more time hanging out on the golf courses of suburban Bangkok burbs than at Soi 33, but his commitment to customer satisfaction lives on in his manager. (Alas that guy never invites me out to lunch or calls up to say hello like his boss used to.) The manager explained how Villa was changing licorice suppliers and assured me the new product would be in place soon. Meanwhile, perhaps I'd like a free sample bag to see how it compared to the old one?

Go Villa Market!

To Blog or Not to Blog

2008-08-04T16:41:00.006+07:00

That is the question. Why do I take three days to write a couple of paragraphs on topics I can recount effortlessly--and humorously--in a couple of minutes?

Am I blogging for myself? For my friends? For that unknown person who might stumble upon my musings and decide I'm the next undiscovered New Yorker writer?

This blog was intended to free up my creativity, not turn my ideas into turgid slog that takes me days to brew and inspires nobody to read.

I can't even dash off a good blog whinge without editing it!

Reality Checks

2008-07-30T11:40:00.000+07:00

Plus ca change.....I always got photos for passport/work permit and other official documents from the nifty Silver digital store on the 2nd floor of MBK. A mere 150 baht got me six photos and a personal session with the PhotoShop assistant who retouched away the most haggard and baggy aspects of my eyes, mouth, neck etc.

I recently went to Silver for a photo to accompany the five-year Thai driving license that replaces my temporary one-year permit. Alas, Silver no long offers personalized PhotoShopping. A very unpersonalized sales assistant said I could either put my face in the hands of some back room photo editor or take my business elsewhere.

How badly could they screw up a teensy one-inch square photo, I reckoned. And even if they did, the Land & Transport Department isn't the US State Department and nobody there would notice or care. "Make me look young, but not too young," I requested and wandered off into the mall during my 30-minute rejuvenation process.

Without my assistance, the "me" in their PhotoShopped version ended up looking as authentic as Madonna in her '4 Minutes' video with Justin Timberlake. I couldn't tell whether the retoucher left my sagging eye folds as to honor the "not too young" part of my request or because he ran out of time. Either way, this Jennifer was unrecognizable.

Of course this being Thailand, none of this mattered because the list of required documents for changing a temporary to a permanent license I picked up at the beginning of the month was incorrect. Ever since the remodeling of the licensing department last year, applicants are now photographed on the spot. Illuminated by brilliant white lights against a harsh blue background, the me in their "real" photo looks as unreal as the Silver shop's "fake" one.

Who am I anyhow?

Breathe In, Breathe Out. You're Fine!

2008-07-24T17:59:00.001+07:00

Early in July 2007 I applied for a Thai driving license. Never in a zillion years would I ever consider driving here, but you need one to be eligible for an international license which I wanted in order to rent a car in California (where I went in January).

Of course only at the very end of the insanely arduous and hilarious multi-visit process did I discover that all I'd earned myself was a one-year temporary Thai permit which didn't make me eligible for an international license. Fortunately there's often a back door procedure for doing things in Thailand, and I ultimately obtained one from a different source. Since nobody at the San Francisco Airport branch of Avis read Thai they accepted my gobbledygook temporary permit and "ahem" international license and cheerfully rented me a car for a month.

Just before the temporary Thai permit expired a couple of weeks ago, I returned to the chaotic Bangkok version of the California DMV only to learn that I couldn't apply for anything permanent until AFTER the permit expired While I now have a year (!!!!) to trade it in for the five-year model, I really wanted to put this ongoing process behind me. To do so I need copies of every document vaguely relating to my existence in Thailand plus a health certificate.

Now I could present myself at to one of the many western-style Bangkok hospitals where for around 500 baht and a cursory exam by whichever doctor happened to be on call, I'd end up with the requisite certificate. OR, as happened this morning, I could stop in at an anonymous neighborhood clinic where the doctor's most pressing concern was deciphering my passport so she could correctly fill out her form. GAMPELL is my not my first name, I told her helpfully.

Having completed her primary task, the doctor took out a stethoscope and asked me to turn away from her. She put the scope on my back, had me breathe in and out three times and sent me back out to the waiting room. Two minutes and 80 baht later, I had my certificate of healthiness and was back out in the This Could Only Happen in Thailand world!

What a Pisser!

2008-07-24T15:51:00.000+07:00

If I were a social anthropologist, perhaps I'd write my dissertation on Kuala Lumpur toilets and call it Squatting or Sitting: Tradition vs. Modernity in Downtown KL. I'd discuss toilet styles and accoutrements as a metaphor for ongoing religious, social and ethnic conflicts in the contemporary Malaysian capital. I’m no anthropologist but I do have some piddling comments after spending two days in KL recently.

Like Thailand, squatting toilets in Malaysia have been giving way to globalized western “sitters.” Squatters in circa 2008 Thailand are as passé as the plastic toilet paper containers that once doubled as napkin holders in Thai restaurants. The traditional Malaysian squatter, however, lives on in various unexpectedly contemporary venues.

To wit, fancy shopping malls. Even though my return KL-Bangkok flight departed at 10:30 pm, I checked out of the hotel in the early a.m. to avoid the afternoon rush hour traffic to KL Sentral (where you catch the airport buses). The bright and airy central station boasts a convenient left luggage counter (take note Thailand) and I assumed its loos would be equally modern and highly functional. Not! Its toilets were vintage squatters with no toilet paper in sight!

I chose to spend the rest of the day in Bangsar, a once-terminally-cool and now fading-around-the-edges neighborhood located one LRT stop away from KL Sentral. Before meeting friends for lunch and afternoon coffee, I was checking emails at the local internet café when nature called. I headed for the tony Bangsar Village shopping complex located across the street from the dingy internet shop. (Living in Asia for 16 years broaden one’s toilet cleanliness criteria, nonetheless if there’s a choice I’ll opt for a shopping mall loo over an internet pisseria).

Surprise surprise. Bangsar Village II offered squatters —albeit fancy ones like in the picture—in every stall except for the wheelchair access one! (From which very young and ambulatory woman emerged as I entered the bathroom.) Is squatting a Muslim-related predilection?

Other points someone more toilet-trained than I could explore:

1. Malaysian toilet paper is quite thick and from my brief survey, it definitely clogs the “sitters.” So where should I dispose of it? I never saw any small wastebaskets like those provided in most Thai women’s toilets. The only receptacles were those blue sanitary napkin units (like in the photo) and these often overflowed with used TP as well as you-know-what. YUCK!

2. What's up with Malaysian butt spraying technology? Whenever I travel outside of Thailand I miss its handy hoses with the pressurized spray nozzles that you often find hanging adjacent to the toilets. Westerners usually cringe when I describe this modern interpretation of the traditional water bucket and plastic bowl private-part cleaner. Actually it's extremely sanitary, especially when combined with a final TP wipe-off. Those nozzle-less Malaysian hose pipes dangling uselessly near the "squatters" just aren't up to the task!

To Max Wherever/Whoever You Are

2008-07-16T16:24:00.005+07:00

You sat across the aisle from me on the flght from Kuching to KL on Monday evening. I saw you reading the newspaper with the headline about the police roadblocking downtown KL to prevent the Anwar rally. I'm always interested in Anwar-related articles, but your close cropped salt and pepper beard and hair set off against your black T-shirt, jeans, and sockless loafers were way more compelling.

"Are you an artist or something?" I asked lamely. Hoping to start up a conversation and establish my credentials, I described my June trip to KL to research an article on the alternative arts scene. "You seem like a creative type," I said trying to flatter. You laughed and said you had a day job in the hotel industry and also wrote criticism, which I thought was pretty cool since few Malaysians dare criticize much of anything in print. (They're even shyer about it than Thais.)

You write a weekly online column in Malaysia Today under the pseudonym "Max" you told me, adding that the Anwar rally was a complete fabrication by government designed to stir up anti-Anwar sentiment.

"Were you in Kuching for the Rainforest Music Festival?" I probed to keep the conversation alive. "It's a good cover for meeting certain people without drawing attention to yourself," you answered, seriously ratcheting up your enigmatic/exotic standing in my books.

I smiled at you as we waited for our bags. Sexy, smart, articulate and probably massively full of yourself, you disappeared into the crowd at the domestic LCCT terminal as soon as you hoisted your slim black leather bag on your shoulder. Yesterday I looked for you on Malaysia Today but have no idea which of the many columnists you might be.

Today they've rearrested Anwar in a move so reminiscent of 10 years ago that most people I've talked to in KL say they're too burned out to get very worked up about it."He's as hungry for for power as Mahathir and Badawi," said one former activist a few minutes after we heard the news. "He just represents another side of the same coin."

Since the arrest Malaysia Today is reachable only by proxy server. Max, if indeed that's your pseudonym, I wonder what you'd have to say about all this.

Big Noodles

2008-07-09T11:55:00.002+07:00

The taxi driver who took me back from Sunday night movies at Bob's didn't fit the classic driver profile. He dressed well in clean khaki slacks and a neat T-shirt that showed off his slightly muscled arms. He didn't barrage me with the standard littany of questions about where I come from, how many kids I have, what do I do blah blah. His affect seemed deferential without being subservient.

"You haven't always driven taxi, have you?" I asked. No, he first drove one of the small passenger vans that offer better-then-a-public-bus and worse-than-a-private-car transportation options to the thousands of people who commute from the outer Bangkok burbs. After that he chauffeured several rich Thai businessmen around until he got tired of being treated like a piece of dirt. (Moneyed Thais typically regard their staff as subhuman gofers.)

"So why do you drive taxi?" I wondered. Turns out his wife just had a baby and had to give up her cashier's job at Tesco/Lotus (9 hr/day, 6 days/wk for 5,800 baht/month!) and he had no "sen sai" to get a better job. "What's sen sai?" I asked. Most taxi drivers can't find other words to define their expressions, especially to someone with such limited vocabulary as mine. But this one managed just fine.

Sen sai means connections, he explained. And being poor and under educated, he didn't have any. Of course he was more than smart enough to discuss Thai nepotism in all it's myriad and horribly unfair guises but that doesn't count for anything in Thailand. As he said, it's not what you know, but who you know and how important they are. (Of course after 15 years here I know that, but hadn't ever learned the term for it.)

Apparently important movers and shakers get classified like noodles--lek (thin) or yai (thick). A top of the line nepotistic connection is a sen kuay chap, named after very wide rectangular rice noodles. Could this be why I've always hated the Chinese-inspired Thai dishes that feature these flaccid creations?

A Taxi Driver for Life

2008-07-03T12:45:00.003+07:00

The only time I listen to Thai radio is in taxis. Which means almost every night on the way home and very occasionally during the day. After hundreds of rides I've come to realize how shocked most drivers are by the strange farang woman who plonks herself down in the left front seat and tells them precisely what route to take to her destination and exactly how fast or slow they'd better drive getting there. I've also discovered that by initiating a discussion about their favorite music station I can usually nip any "who is this demanding bitch anyhow?" reactions in the bud.

As soon as a farang enters the vehicle, taxi drivers usually turn to one of the horrible western music stations. Perhaps a few actually enjoy the dismal circa 1970 playlists, but mainly they're just trying to be accommodating. "You LIKE Thai music?" they ask incredulously when I ask them to switch 88.5 or 95 FM, the two luk thung (Isaan country music) stations. Most Thais believe we farangs are from Mars and would never eat, speak, or listen to anything remotely Thai.

Actually I love luk thung, especially the pre-synthesizer numbers from the 1970s and 80s. I understand enough of the words to know they're all about heartbreak, unrequited love, economic woes and assorted other Life Sucks Bigtime topics. Such gloom and doom validates my own depressive tendencies. All over the dial, however, these soulful ditties have ceded their place to overproduced high-decibel modern versions of luk thung screamed out by young stars who obviously never suffered their predecessors' deprivations.

Even more than luk thung, I love pleng phua cheewit (Songs for Life). This folk and protest music popularized by the iconic Caravan band during the 1970s democracy crackdowns is now terminally out of synch with current Thai pop trends. Very occasionally a late-night luk thung DJ will play a few PCC tracks, but never one by the heartfelt crooners from that long-gone less amplified era.

Which is why I was ecstatic after climbing into a taxi yesterday and encountering a sweet gem of a driver in the midst of listening to an MP3 compilation of early PCC ballads by Caravan and the more mainstream 1980s group Carabao. "Where did you buy this?" I asked him. "I really really want a copy." Alas, the driver said a friend had given it to him and the disc wasn't commercially available.

"Can I buy it off you, oh please please please!" I begged. In these times of rising fuel prices and meter rates unchanged for over 10 years I assumed 200 baht would be more than enough to persuade him to part with his disc. But no, he enjoyed the 200 songs he said were on it and most uncharacteristically wasn't ready to make a quick baht.

"Wait. I have an idea. Can you loan it to me for a few minutes so the friend I'm going to visit can make a copy on his computer?" I proposed. I said I'd pay him the regular fare and then he could reset his meter for however long it took to copy his disc. Plus I promised him another 100 baht for his kindness. The driver agreed and I rang ahead so my friend could prepare his computer.

In the end the disc was too scratched and beat up to be copied. I brought it out to the driver who was cleaning his bright pink backseat upholstery while he waited. I paid the second fare and held out the 100 baht but he refused it saying it wasn't fair since I hadn't ended up with anything. I made him take it anyhow because his kind generosity and good intentions meant way more to me than 200 old songs.

A Booti-ful Friend

2008-07-01T18:40:00.002+07:00

OK so in previous post I trashed Thais for being untrustworthy friends. Fortunately I also noted that nothing lasts forever in Thailand which lets me backpedal from that uniformly negative pronouncement. Phew! I can therefore bestow a much deserved Good Housekeeping Seal of Stellar Friendship upon Ran, longtime purveyor of second-hand footwear at Chatuchak Weekend market (JJ).

In mid May I asked Ran if he had any red cowboy boots. "Come back next week and I'll have them for you," he promised. When I finally returned two Sundays ago, he showed me a fabulous pair from Mexico that he'd rummaged through 56 huge bags of boots to find. Then he categorically refused to let me pay for them. "Money goes out, money comes in," he pronounced, grinning broadly. In a decade of second-hand shopping at JJ, no one has ever given me anything for free!

Since my teens I've dressed myself from flea markets, garage sales, thrift and charity stores. I first discovered the second-hand stores at JJ in the mid 1990s and came upon Ran during my Doc Martens phase (which friends say lasted way too long). The permanently ebullient and slightly paunchy Thai-Indian with long curly orange locks always had an endless supply of Docs in various states of wearability. Whenever I stopped by, Ran miraculously extricated an interesting size 38 pair from amidst the dusty boots, sneakers and Birkenstocks crowded onto shelves and piled on the floor of his dingy three-stall shop. Leopard spots on brown leather, pink flowers on pale blue or basic black...Ran usually managed to find something I'd like.

Initially I focused on apparel more than footwear. Pickings were spectacular before the 1997 baht crisis, partly because most Thais never went near used garments for fear of taking on the previous owner's karma. That left me with plenty of well made and stylish European castoffs for under 200 baht. Prices started climbing once Thai women started second handing, but for a while there were enough interesting French and Italian labels to go round.

Only thanks to Ran, do I understand any of the arcane workings of the second-hand world at JJ. No other vendor would divulge anything about the origins of their stuff or why the quality and quantity of their stocks kept declining over the years. Surely after a decade of selling to me they could have figured out I wasn't a corporate spy! But no, it was their information and they weren't sharing it!

According to Ran, buyers from richer countries like Japan realized the vast commercial potential of the second-hand fad. Instead of sourcing at JJ, they started going directly to the wholesale entrepot at Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodian border. Japanese dealers could afford to pay more than the baht-ravaged Thai merchants and thus got first choice. For end users like myself, this translated into fewer European garments at JJ and ridiculously high prices like 600 baht for a single item!

"You're taking the 'thrift' out of thrift shopping," I railed at the vendors. They just smiled their Buddha-like Thai smiles. Like anyone serious addict, I'd yell and scream for a while and eventually pay whatever it took to score my 'drug.' When European stuff virtually disappeared, I changed my dress style to incorporate the somewhat interesting Korean and Hong Kong gear. Then they too vanished. Recently favorite shops have either closed, downsized or offer abysmally style-free Chinese crap at insanely high prices. Finding one remotely Jennifer-worthy or affordable outfit has become the exception, not the rule.

Until a few months ago, second-hand footwear seemed impervious to the downturn that decimated the apparel trade. Fickle fashionista that I am, I pretty much abandoned Ran and his great deals a couple of years ago in favor of two vendors who offered Camper, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu and serviceable no-name brands for around 1,000 baht. Then their shoes prices started rising as the clothes once had. Earlier this year I actually paid 3,000 baht for a pair of barely worn LV sandals!

Now great shoes at JJ have gone the way of great clothes, i.e. out of Thailand. And I've gone back to Ran who, rather than wondering where I'd been the past couple of years, welcomed me back warmly. All the other JJ vendors are grousing about no stock, no customers no money. Ran says business has never been better. He's even invited me to come along on one of his monthly trips to a second-hand wholesale market in a country I'm keeping to myself for now. He says I'm gonna absolutely adore it. Watch this space!

Go KL Arts Scene!

2008-06-24T14:10:00.013+07:00

I've been back from Kuala Lumpur since the 7th and even Bangkok's blanket of insipidness hasn't completely doused the enthusiastic buzz I returned with. During a nonstop five days of article research, I met and interviewed a variety of people in the alternative arts scene. They were universally interesting, interested, articulate, politically savvy, friendly, informative and so so smart. Everyone freely shared time and information with me and most miraculously of all, I encountered none of the nasty gossiping and badmouthing so ubiquitous to the Bangkok scene. (The guy in the photo is the fabulous Pang Khee Teik, programming impresario for the equally fabulous The Annexe Gallery Studio Theatre.)

I've been dancing on the fringes of the Thai arts scene for many years so maybe I'm just bored and jaded. But even in the mid 1990s when I first started writing about the local scene I wouldn't have ascribed such a list of positive traits to it. Here you really can't ever know who you've inadvertently offended until they suddenly stop talking to you. In the mid 1990s I received a fax saying "Fuck off Yankee, go back to your own country, Thailand is not your home." The sender is now a famous personality in the arts scene and though we now interact as if nothing ever happened, at the time I felt utterly betrayed and shocked. To this day I still haven't a clue what I did to engender such maliciousness.

Thailand is the land of nothing-lasts-forever. This Buddhist outlook on life sets up extremely positive as well as negative outcomes. The latter apply especially in the realms of trust and friendship. Maybe if I spent more time in KL my back would start feeling as stabbed as it did here when I was writing frequently about contemporary arts and culture. Somehow I doubt it. In any case I'll know soon enough because I'll be back in KL on the 14th of July. I can't wait!

Right Writing

2008-06-23T13:40:00.006+07:00

I wasn't expecting flak from my Tiesto post in late April. For starters I was stunned to learn that anyone would even READ my blog, much less be offended by being named in it. So I crawled into a creative hole and shut up for fear of displeasing you, dear reader. (If you exist.) Which is strange since in my "real life" mode I'm supposedly renowned for pissing people off with some regularity. (Though because bitchy gossiping is more the norm in Thailand than trying to mend fences, I'm usually blithely unaware of the putative affront.)

It's impossible not to piss someone off some of the time. Even Abe Lincoln agrees with me. So I'm renewing my New Year's resolution to blog. Back on 4 January I forswore to be creative on a daily basis. Now I promise only to write as regularly as I can and be as unfettered as possible within the confines of Thai political and cultural norms. I desperately need to rehone my verbal acuity skills so it doesn't take me a ridiculous TWO hours to write these two paragraphs. And just as importantly I hope to rediscover the joy I once experienced observing and describing the myriad wacky and noteworthy facets of my life.

The Color of Money

2008-04-26T11:56:00.014+07:00

Last Wednesday I was in a taxi heading from home to my dear friend Bob's for a day of movie watching. The driver pulled up to the fare booth at the Rama IV-Hualumphong expressway entrance to and opened his door--a sun visor on the side window meant he couldn't roll it down--to pay the 40-baht fare with the 500 baht note I'd given him.

Fare Guy handed the driver the change. The driver shut his door and then handed me the change which was neatly folded inside a receipt. (Whenever you pay with a large denomination bill, fare guys always give you a receipt.) We started up the incline towards the expressway. "Hey wait a minute," I told the driver. "I gave him 500 baht but he's only given me three 20-baht notes in change! He owes me another 400 baht" "Yes, I saw you gave him 500 baht," agreed the driver. I felt hugely supported by that remark because Thais generally avoid taking a concrete stand on either side of an issue unless it's absolutely necessary.

Since we'd barely moved from the toll booth, the driver carefully backed up, stopped the car, talked to Fare Guy for a moment or two and returned to the taxi. He went through a series of searching-for-money motions--checking under his seat, under the car etc. even though we both knew the change had gone directly from Fare Guy's hand to the driver's to mine. By asking the driver to check around the taxi, Fare Guy was tacitly admitting he knew I'd handed him a 500 baht bill. For all the good that did.

OK, enough of this sense diddling around. I got out on the passenger side and walked toward Fare Guy's little booth doing my irate-Farang-demanding-her-change-now routine. He summarily told us to get in the car and move over to the side of the expressway next to the office, effectively putting three lanes of slowly moving vehicles between him and us. I immediately sent the very sweet and patient taxi driver back to the tollbooth for an update. After waiting patiently for five minutes, the driver returned telling me to "jai yen" (keep a cool heart).

After 15 years in Thailand, I know absolutely that staying calm is the only viable option in these sorts of powerless situations. However a cool heart is also the LAST think I tend to keep at these moments. Fortunately just then Fare Guy emerged from his booth, holding a plastic basket under one arm and crossed carefully over three lanes. He walked silently past without looking at me and went into the office. Not pleased about being left on the hot and noisy roadside, I trailed after him.

Thai officialdom specializes in constructing large spaces wherein a couple of government employees languish in air conditioned comfort behind closed doors, while a lower-grade functionary or two sit outside at a desk and pretend to care who enters inside. I barge past them into the "office." (No Thai would ever act in this manner but since I'm definitely not Thai, nobody's particularly surprised.)

Fare Guy was laboriously counting the contents of his plastic basket, shoving bundles of 500, 100, 50, and 20 baht into an automatic money counter and jotting numbers in columns on a form. He counted the loose change and the tollway vouchers. He muttered something to the other person in the room who was adding numbers on a calculator. Then Fare Guy repeated the entire process, this time changing amounts in the margins. "How much longer will this take?" I asked impatiently. "I have a plane to catch." That was a big lie but it hardly mattered because I might as well be wrapped in Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak for all the attention it netted me. I just knew Fare Guy was trying to fritter away enough time so I'd storm out and leave him 4oo baht richer. I wasn't having it.

Finally, some 25 minutes after I first passed the 500 baht note to the taxi driver, Fare Guy put his palms together and raised his hands in front of his face in an incredibly half-hearted "wai." He muttered a barely audible "sorry" under his breath and shoved four 100-baht notes at me. I grabbed them and stormed out. He'd been guilty from the git go and deserved no thanks for not ripping me off. I've talked to about this to many taxi drivers since and none have ever seen or heard of such a blatantly dishonest tollbooth scam.

I'm Too Sexy for Tiesto, Too Sexy for Tiesto

2008-04-18T15:49:00.026+07:00

The minute I arrived at Sathorn Pier, I knew I'd picked the absolutely wrong event to attend for the second social sortie of my Thursday evening. For the first one I chose Chris Phongphit's photo exhibition at Nospace Gallery on Soi 71. I loved how he blocked the entrance gate to gallery with a green baht bus he somehow managed to commandeer for three hours (complete with the driver cum ticket taker and his very curious little son). The public entered through the front door of the bus, paid the 7-baht fare and exited out the back into the gallery courtyard. Christian's concept of standing on pedestrian overpasses and photographing the colorful and rusted rooftops of the Bangkok buses whizzing by underneath was also a first.

For the next event of the night I'd originally planned to check out Happy Monday on Ekamai 10, a bar/hangout run by the same hip and socially conscious group of artists, writers and musicians who created the fun-while-it-lasted Gig Grocery. But after a really funky Songkran (as in I was in a funk) I decided a Major Event offered potentially better mood altering opportunities.

A sweet friend kindly offered me his spare hottest-ticket-in-town so I could check out Tiesto, the hottest-DJ-in-town (or in-the-world if you believe local PR). He was performing his The Element of Life world tour at The River Promenade, the hottest-venue-in-town (at least for this week).

The glass-fronted two-storey River Promenade located on the Thonburi side of the Chao Phraya opposite the Shangrila Hotel is actually a gussied up sales office for a ritzy riverside condo by developer Raimon Land. Scheduled for completion by 2012, two-towered The River promises to be even more obscenely over the top than the myriad other condos shooting up on tiny sois around town....But that's for another rant.

Back to Tiesto. Up until I stepped onto the riverside hotel pier at Sathorn Pier for the two-minute ferry ride across the Chao Phraya, I knew zilch about either Tiesto or The River Promenade. Apparently, the former does trance; the latter does events that promote condos to rich clients and attract whichever local press, sycophants and acolytes can score an invite. Me? I'm in the Curious-Onlooker-With-Free-Ticket category.

A steady stream of Beautiful People (i.e. anyone with a coveted free ticket) arrives in attire ranging from working girl slinky (sycophant or girlfriend) to designer jeans and t-shirts (hip acolyte) and boring business suits (client). I look OK in my black ruffled Nathalie Joubert shirt and Rai Van Buren's Sexy Little Beach orange silk skirt. But schlepping a daypack while every other female dangles a teensy reticule or nothing at all is a serious fashion faux pas on my part. The one guy carrying a briefcase massively gets teased for bringing work to a party. He calls his girlfriend, who's already at the party to ensure he can ditching it in her car trunk the minute we arrive. If indeed we ever do.

It's 8:30 pm and we've already waited 20 minutes with no sign of the 18-meter River Boat, an elegant launch cruiser powered by two Volvo Penta engines. Of all the shuttle boats operated by the various five-star hotels and condos along the river, it's the only one with air-conditioning and Italian leather seating. It's also the only one that apparently never picks up its waiting passengers.

We party animals are becoming restive and by now there are way too many of us to fit into an 18-meter vessel. The organizers are frantically mobile phoning to the other side to see what's happened to the transportation. From our vantage point so near and yet so far away, we can see The Promenade ablaze in colored neon and searchlights

Eventually a longboat pulls up. No cruiser this, it's more like a gussied up tourist boat. The paint is fresh white instead of peeling blue and the comfy padded seats, arranged in pairs along the both sides, are upholstered in beige vinyl. We all settle in for the more proletariat than expected non-airconditioned journey.

Getting across the river takes two minutes but docking is more problematic because the pier access is blocked by the very same River Boat that couldn't be bothered to pick us up. Not only won't the unsmiling black-attired pier boat minions let us tie up, but they're actually waving at us to move off! Don't they know some of us (not me of course) are important guests? Don't they care that some of us (not me of course) have serious image building and partying on our minds?

Stuck in riverine limbo, my friend and I content ourselves with listening to Tata Young blaring her warmup set across the night and looking at her dancing image projected onto the gigantic screens surrounding the stage. Her set ends as we continue to tread water (or whatever idling boats do). Our hearts skip a beat as an obviously Important Person in a black suit was escorted onto the River Boat. NOW! we think. But then he walks back up the ramp to retrieve something he'd left ashore. Eventually Mr. Who-Cares-How-Many-People-I-Inconvenience reembarked and I believed our Docking Moment was nigh.

But no, Mr. W-C-H-M-P-I-I is as much dust in the wind as we are compared to Tata Young and her entourage who turn out to be the real reason for the inordinate delay and frosty welcome reception. After they've all been regally shepherded into the climate-controlled comfort of the River Boat, our comparatively tacky craft FINALLY pulls up to its destination.

It's now 9 p.m. and I'm hot, starving and immediately overwhelmed by the onslaught of people and noise. Surely an event of this caliber will provide a few sugar-free, meat-free hors d'oeuvres for its guests. But before any nourishment needs can be met, I must be thoroughly vetted at the entrance. Though I hold a "gold" ticket, it counts for naught in River Promenade hierarchy, or at least naught as much as a "VIP" ticket. An unsmiling black-attired female minion attaches a small band to my wrist and points me toward the crush of humanity packed onto the sweltering terrace.

"Can't I go inside the building?" I ask querulously, gazing through the huge plate glass windows to the spacious interior where people are milling around, dishes of munchies in hand. Nope. Like the River Boat, the climate-controlled interior of River Promenade is reserved for the upper echelons of Bangkok society like Tata Young and local VIPs. Beautiful People though some of us terrace proles may be, we're entitled to free drinks only. (I don't even drink alcohol.)

We second-tier Beautiful People can't even pee stylishly, but are relegated to the row of Porta Potties outside the main entrance. It's all very mean spirited and arbitrary. Like giving me a free ticket to the Kodak Theatre and then making me watch the Academy Awards on outside monitors near some side entrance.

Of course had this been the Academy Awards I would have swallowed my wounded pride, shrugged off the unfriendly treatment and hung around for the show (after running to the nearest loo). But to linger for two hot and hungry hours claustrophobically surrounded by people who have no desire to meet me (and vice versa) so I can listen to some DJ I've never heard of anyhow....Nah, I think not.

The most satisfying aspect of the Tiesto concert at River Promenade was leaving it. I don't have to wait a millisecond for the ferry boat which is already moored at the pier. A trio of minions smilingly usher me aboard. As I sail off into the hot night toward Thaksin Pier, the sole passenger on the large vessel, I experience my own Tata Young moment.

Security Charades

2008-03-15T16:01:00.005+07:00

Little's changed since last May when I whinged about the form-without-function bag checks at the entrances to the MRT stations. I bet nobody in the upper echelons of the MRT even remembers the original raison d'etre of this inane exercise, if indeed one ever existed. In any case, whatever the obviously bored to distraction security "guards" are looking for--or more aptly NOT looking for--could never be found during the millisecond of scrutiny they devote to the bag checking procedure.

Yet woe betide anyone who attempts to bypass the bag check for the sake of convenience. A few times when schlepping a computer-laden daypack I tried striding purposefully past the "guard" rather than laboriously taking if off and on. But I only ended up feeling guilty because my blatant violation of protocol utterly discomfited the poor guy whose job depends on casting a pseudo glance in the direction of each passenger's bag.

So now, with the speed of a flasher undoing his raincoat, I unzip a section of whatever reticule I happen to be carrying and present it for inspection. Both the "guard" and I know he would no more rifle through my bag than I would carry anything illegal. All that matters is that we dutifully play our parts in this futile exercise.

I much prefer the approach to passenger security adopted by the BTS Skytrain pooh bahs. At each station they've set up an umanned "Security Check" table near the ticket machines. Like a surreal art installation, the white formica-topped table epitomizes the actual Thai attitude toward transportation security.

First Drunken Taxi Driver

2008-03-15T12:44:00.010+07:00

My usually infallible taxi-suitability radar failed utterly a couple of Tuesday nights ago on a desolate and dusty stretch of Rama IV near Chua Pleung and the Expressway.

From afar I could tell by the shape of the headlights that the oncoming taxi was a newish model. The rooftop Taxi-Meter sign was turned on, the headlights functioned, and the driver wasn't out to set any Daytona Speedway records. My admittedly subjective exterior criteria having been met, I hailed it (arm held out at waist level, palm facing down, wrist moving slowing up and down). As the car approached, I peered into the cab to determine whether the driver looked like a reckless teenager or a catatonic septuagenarian. (My equally subjective interior criteria.) The driver's face looked ordinary enough and as always, I climbed in the front seat.

The driver immediately began asking why the beautiful younger woman waiting on the sidewalk with me hadn't come along too. I muttered that he could turn around and pick her up if he wanted only gorgeous creatures in his cab. And on a dangerous six-lane road near the onramp to a flyover he prepared to do just that!

"Are you drunk or what?" I screamed at him.

"Oh just a little," he replied with a lopsided I-could-give-a-shit grin.

My heart started pounding. "You pull over and stop this car immediately!"

He made no move to do so. "You pay first," he sneered.

Though I had no intention of paying him, I fumbled inside my pack in a show of doing so. He slowed down, pulled over and came to a rolling stop. But as I opened the door and tried to jump out, he sped up. Nobody who's had four hip replacement surgeries in the past three years and could finally walk normally again would be stupid enough to try exiting a moving vehicle. I put my left leg back in the car.

"OK, OK, here's your money." I threw two 20-baht bills at him. "Now you stop!"

I've only been that terrified in a taxi once before; when a sober but erratic idiot tried to force me out of his car in the middle of a freeway.

2. Insane Public Transport Security Checks Continue
Little's changed since last May when I whinged about the form-without-function bag checks at the entrances to the MRT stations. I bet nobody in the upper echelons of the MRT even remembers the original raison d'etre of this inane exercise, if indeed one ever existed. In any case, whatever the obviously bored to distraction security "guards" are looking for--or more aptly NOT looking for--could never be found during the millisecond of scrutiny they devote to the bag "checking" procedure.
Yet woe betide anyone who attempts to bypass the bag check for the sake of convenience. On the days I'm schlepping a computer-laden daypack I've tried striding purposefully past the "guard" rather than wasting time and energy offloading my heavy pack. But then I end up feeling guilty because my blatant violation of protocol utterly discomfits the poor guy whose job depends on casting a glance in the direction of whatever zipped pocked I choose to open. (Of course he'd no more rifle through my bag than I'd carry anything illegal.) So I play along with his futile charade.
I really love the approach to passenger security adopted by the BTS Skytrain pooh bahs. At each station they've set up an umanned table marked with a "Security Check" sign near the ticket machines. Like a surreal art installation, the white-topped table honestly exemplifies the true Thai attitude toward transportation security.

Don't Be Slender in America!

2008-01-22T11:08:00.000+07:00

Nobody could ever call me fat. The most I ever weighed in my life was around 130 pounds back in the late 1960s when I lived in London and smoked too much of that hunger-producing substance Bill Clinton never inhaled.

I now weigh 50 kilos (110 pounds) which is perfectly OK for someone 5'4" tall who stays in shape with Qi Gong exercises and a good fishetarian diet. In Thailand where I live no one ever tells me I ought to weigh more, although lately friends do say my cheeks look a bit sunken. You can't tell the aging process where to take its toll and if it wants to suck face, I'm glad that someone--or something--still does.

On the 17th I celebrated my birthday morning whale watching on Bodega Head with Annie and Thea, two fabulous women I've known since the late 1970s when we were pounding pillows in Lois's gestalt group in San Francisco. The terrible storms of the previous week had given way to a perfectly clear blue sky, a cool crisp temperature even someone who lives in fetidly sticky Thailand could enjoy, and a mini-bouquet of hardly wilted pink and yellow roses stuck mysteriously into a small outcropping of greenery on the cliffside. (I think it was a birthday present from my mother who died in 2003....a roses-on-the-beach tale for another posting.)

Anne and Thea told me later that while I chatted up cute Christopher (a 35 year-old tree pruner from San Francisco), his mom asked if I was a cancer survivor because of my short hair and slender body. She probably didn't want her son messing with such a stylish example of the aging process!

Two days later in Santa Rosa, Thea was showing me around her co-housing abode, introducing me to many of her co-residents, all dressed in their drab blue, green, or gray sensible winter clothing. "Are you a Buddhist nun?" one frumpy older woman asked me. "Your hair's so short."

I'm so happy to be back visiting my oldest and dearest friends in the world, but these kinds of stereotyping remarks remind me why I left in 1990. Thanks to the two hip replacement surgeries I had in Belgium in July and August 2007 to revise the two bad ones done in Thailand in 2005 and 2005, I feel better than I've felt in YEARS.

And just for the record, I understand lesbians too have short hair (dunno about their body size) and not that it's anyone's business, I'm not a lesbian either.

I'm just me and for the first time in ages, I really celebrate that!

Not Another Useless New Year's Resolution

2008-01-04T16:30:00.000+07:00

I am going to write something creative every day. I am going to write something creative almost every day. I am going to write something creative whenever. I am going to write something whenever. I am going to write something. Sometime. Hopefully.

Bag It!

2007-05-31T08:07:00.000+07:00

Would somebody please tell the annoying security checkers at the MRT entrances that I’m not a New Year’s Eve bomber! Although nobody in Bangkok knows, or claims to know, who planted the bombs that killed three and wounded 38 on December 31st, I can say definitively that it wasn’t me, an aging style-conscious western woman with no science skills.

On January 27th, the 19 Thai suspects picked up shortly after the attacks were cleared for lack of evidence. And after a couple more months of pseudo-serious checks at hotels and ad hoc public spaces, the bomb brouhaha pretty much died down. Like so many important issues—cracks in the new airport runways, Thaksin Shinawatra’s multitudinous malfeasances, the current coup makers’ gross ineptitudes—the bombings got relegated to wherever intractable Thai problems go to die…or be ignored.

So why are the folks at the Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand still “inspecting” their passengers’ handbags and backpacks? Assuming I even wanted to carry a bomb on the subway, how could I ever squeeze one into my thin A4-sized reticule? As it is there’s barely enough space for a wallet, PDA, scarf, makeup, cardholder, notebook, pen and the latest New Yorker.

And what if, hypothetically of course, I’d actually secreted some miniature explosive (if such a device exists) within the bowels of my black bag. Not a single so-called “guard” has ever peered inside for more than a millisecond before pronouncing me Bombless in Bangkok and sending me on my way down the escalator. The smiling and saluting component of their job description takes up way more time than security checking aspects.

Oh well, now that TRT has been disbanded I’m confident the answers to all life’s mysteries will be forthcoming.

Bitten and not by the botox bog

2007-04-12T02:37:00.000+07:00

I woke up at 4 a.m. to a horrible stinging sensation in my upper lip. Peering groggily in the bathroom mirror I watched the left half swelling up faster than I could say "Oh shit, please don't let me end up with a face like Melanie Griffiths." I stared for as long as it took for the left half of my upper lip to become so engorged it seemed to be dragging my face to the right. Ice cubes did nothing. Neither did vigorous squeezing. Out of options I watched powerlessly until the stinging subsided and went back to bed.

By morning my lip resembed a bad outcome of a Nip & Tuck procedure. Fortunately it's a national holiday today in Thailand so I don't have to go out into the world today. The swelling is gradually subsiding so I'll probably be "normal" by tomorrow.

I'd be lying to say I'd never nurtured thoughts about a wee injection of collagen or botox or whatever to perk up the no longer sharp edge of my lip line. Or the eyebrows and eyelids that are moving inexorably downward and turning my face above the nose into a fair copy of my mother's. The increasing flacidness of the below-nose portion isn't particularly felicitous either, especially first thing in the morning.

With that teensy bite, the botox bug brought me back to the reality of accepting reality. My body isn't 20 any more. Or 30. Or 40. Once again this fascinating and frustrating country has served up another practical lesson in the in the Buddhist concept of impermanence.

P.S. However not for a second am I gonna give up the idea that sleeping on a small curved wooden fold-up pillow will somooth out those neck sags!