The best time is right now

3 months is not such a long time for most people.

1/3 of the way through a preganancy

The first review of a new job or employee

1/4 of a year

For me though 3 months is a long time - i’m not used to sitting still for more than about 3 months - haven’t done in 15 years or so.

Move apartments twice

Find a new group of friends

Have a thousand conversations

Design and create 20 or so new webpages

Design a house

Finish a business plan

Design and print brochures for said business plan

Look at 1000’s of webpage

Make hundreds of phone calls

Catch 5 flights or 6

A few trains

100 or so taxi rides and motorbike taxi rides

Get depressed

Get undepressed

Drink 600 Beers

Forget that the night time sky outside of Bangkok has stars.

Which was the point of this meandering

I got back to the beach last night - and shit howdy dudy dandy - above me - all the cosmos alive and well. No mention of politics, finances, sex, war, money or anything else - just the great expansive unknown that remains just as expansive and unknown as it was 3 months ago

I can’t say why I’ve not written in weeks - more than likely has to do with the fact that I’ve been busy working away on projects and that the consuming nature of that hasn’t allowed me the mental space to concentrate on anything else. Or it might be that I just grew bored of my own diatribe or it might be something that I am completely unaware of - hard to say.

But it’s been an interesting few weeks none the less - G2 is up and running - and l’ll be looking to start shipping BOOM in a couple of weeks - which I think is quite exciting as it’s a beautiful looking thing and sounds great - at least the prototype does and I suspect that the production models will be even better - the quality of wood, and the cubic space I think have a lot to do with it - and of course it’s not some plastic piece of junk that is churned out of a mold - it’s a real thing, made by hand, crafted you might say. That’s been one thing - another thing has been the interestingly amazing collection of people I’ve had the chance to talk to in my little neighborhood over the past few weeks.
From older ladies that run gangs of professional pick pockets to dali lama like guest house owners that are quietly taking note of the ‘bad” crew of phillipino’s that have come to live at his place - what they’re up to as yet remains a mystery, but the monk like Mr Luk is convinced it’s nothing good - and by all accounts, they don’t look like they’re up to anything good.
And then the ex pat contingent of freaks and weirdo’s - the writer who spent 2 years living in Hunan province in China - in a town nestled against a backdrop of snow capped mountains, with cobbled streets and old buildings, which also happens to be the counter culture capital of china - where all manner of mood altering substances are readily available, and puffing on joints in the bar with cops everywhere is not atypical - I couldn’t believe it - how amazing I thought. He also studied classic Chinese and reads fluently Kanji - interestingly enough - most Chinese readers can read the same characters that Confucius wrote close to 2000 years ago - that in itself blew my mind - a 2000 year old written language that is as readable today as it was then. Think about reading middle English and how hard that is by comparison.
Then the Italian guy that owns the restaurant on the corner - who’s story is so crazy that know one even knows all the details, 2 wives, 6 kids, all at the same time, a litany of Buddhist Tattoos all over him, stories of harrowing drug addiction, jails, cleaning up, anger management - and now a great little restaurant, family business, with his half Thai half Italian kids pretty much running the joint.
Amazing stories at every turn - it makes it hard to concentrate on blogging, when there’s so much listening to do out there.
And then of course, the U.S elections, and the global financial melt down, the internal politics of Thailand, the border skirmishes on the Cambodian border, the never ending violence in the south, the drop of tourist numbers because of all of the above - it’s an interesting time to be around. Interesting perhaps in a nihilist sort of way. As it all starts to tear apart at the seams. But then maybe that is the fractious nature of humanity - the fact that any of it works at all is sometimes amazing in itself.
Other than that - there’s more work to be done, drawings to finish or too start, business plans to clean up, websites to finish, travel plans to be planned, food to be eaten - by the way I still love the fact that i can walk to the end of the Soi, grab a bag of sliced watermelon, and a bag of sliced papaya for 20B (U.S .58)

Wanna hear an idea - here’s one - all the troubles finacially in the world came from banks - in one form or another - G7 nations converge on Washington to discuss methods of getting the financial world moving again - how bout this - forget the half percentage point interest rate cuts they’re talking about - how bout - for the next 2 years banks agree to 1% interest across the board - ok, they dont make money hand over fist - but they tried that action for the last few years, and look what happened - lets say - hmmm - banks - you all hold “our” money - and then you play with it like it’s your money - STOP - your fucking holding cells. you hold other peoples money and you play with it like it’s your own, then you leverage it, at 30:1 and then you cry like a bunch of fucking cry babie’s when you get wiped out - but “your” not getting wiped out - just some stupid trademark, name, failing institution with other peoples money - so talk about liquidity - lets say - YOU make no PROFITS for the next 2 to 3 years, and you just work on making sure that everything gets working again - then your stupid fucking institutions that esentially borrowed my money and 10’s of millions of other peoples money and gambled with it - would actually do something to earn your keep. Bollocks to banks, Bollocks to politicians and bollocks to instituions that are crying about it - Fuck em’

G

I’m amazed at the international media spin put on the political machinations here in Thailand - sure Thai politics is a wild and zany thing - it’s hurdles along to it’s own tune, a drum beat that no one, not even the local politicians themselves seem to be able to keep step to, and there are coups here periodically, and the King has been known to get involved publicly to quell issues in the past, and yes there were protests, 100 days and counting on the streets in Bangkok, and yes one person to my knowledge died during this protest, and the then leader Mr Samak was removed from office over an indiscretion on his part, namely taking paid work while in office which was apparently something he’d agreed not to do, upon becoming leader of the country. Well that’s all true and it’s all pretty wacky, but then politics tend to be that way here.
But what I find more strange is the amount of people I know that don’t live in Thailand and who haven’t been here asking me - is it safe? Are you ok? is it dangerous? etc which I assume must be because the world media has mad a much bigger song and dance out if it, than it actually is. Embassy’s apparently releasing “don’t travel to thailand” travel advisory’s - but honestly, unless one happened to be walking outside government house you would never have any visible evidence of anything unusual going on at all. I guess it’s a act of caution on the part of the Embassy’s and if something were to happen perhaps they would be liable somehow - but it seems like a stretch.
I spent quite a lot of time in Sri Lanka this year, and of course there have been troubles there, bombs going off and fighting in the North - and that obviously keeps most people away - tourist wise. But the thing that I notice is how hard these reports damage the local economies, which rely heavily on tourists and travelers. The southern coast of Sri lanka virtually empty, the Thai beach area’s already looking like they’re in for a slow season, and when the year is made up of two seasons, one where you make money to get you through the one when you don’t i gets really hard on people. Of course there are really troubles in Sri Lanka as opposed to Thailand, but the troubles there are pretty much isolated in the far North where you can’t get to even if you wanted to, and in Colombo - which really is not where you’d be spending much time in Sri Lanka anyway as a tourist.
There just seems to be a hell of a lot of scare mongering and it effects people, perhaps there should be a little more considered reporting and little less sensationalism.

I haven’t caught the night train in Thailand in years, the last time was in 2003 I think - south down to Surathani - I always loved waking up around sunrise and looking over the green of southern thailand with the golden light casting great swathes of brilliant yellow over the trees and the rice paddys and the water buffalo - it was my own personal welcome to myself and who ever happened to be with me on the train ride.
Well this time I have gone North to Chiang Mai on a fact finding mission, that I’,m not going to get into right now - in good time.
Great ride, slept a decent 8 hours, woke up, read some pages of my book which I never seem to do unless I’m on a plane or a train and arrived sprightly and cheery in Chiang Mai. Here’s a nice place to stay up here - the Imm hotel - friendly staff, huge swimming pool, lovely gardens, nice little cafe, wireless internet - super reasonable rates - and will def be making it onto the supercoolhotels site soon enough , as soon as I spend some time and build it that is.
So I sat down as soon as I got in, quickly scanned the news to see what was going on in the pitiful world of high finance and banking - it’s been a like a macabre soap opera set on wall street all week, well longer than that in all reality, but it seems like the shit takes a while to surface fully - Asian investors getting worried about having their money tied up in american financial institutions - well not surprising - they’ve been falling like dominoes. And more look likely to tumble or at least be brought to a grinding halt, bailed out by the government (tax payers) left to live the life of a disgraced step child.
Luckily though this ASSHOLE will more than lilkely be out somewhere working on driving them again, putting the old thing back in gear and using his expertise to get the wheels turning again - obviously in the IHT they can’t use words like FUCKING ASSHOLE - but I can.
When you read that this guy was paid over a half a billion dollars in his working for Lehman brothers how can you not think that? Other peoples money, huge responsibility, complicated (greedy) “financial instruments” as they keep harping on about. A complicated financial instrument is something designed to chop up the pie in as many ways as possible, keep it so complicated that the regulators and the very companies that are selling them don’t even know what they’ve done, sit back and wait for the profits to roll in…until they all come crashing down like a deck of cards and you walk away with last years 45 million in your pocket - nice work ASSHOLE

So I should be writing about the ARUN RESIDENCE small hotel on the Chaopraya river - I should be mentioning the roof top bar with a fantastic view over Wat Arun and the river, how it’s a great place to catch a sunset, sipping on a drink, and I should be mentioning that the little soi that leads you to the hotel is a really great look at older Bangkok, the Chinese merchants, the little tucked away taoist temples, the hustle and bustle of the river trade in the tiny alleys all around you. And that Wat Po is basically at the other end of that soi - Wat Po being the giant temple with the massage school in it - where you can wander in the temple and wander out a couple of hours later after having had a decent Thai massage.
But I’m not - and why?
Because I got sidetracked by THIS - what an asshole - what a complete and utter asshole - obviously he’s rich, that’s pretty much a given, you only have to notice a tabloid picture of his “never does anything” over dressed for every single occasion wife.
The world is warming up, there’s disparity of wealth ever increasing, the banking system is about bust, there’s wars going on all over the damn place, and then you got to see pictures of soccer players driving million dollar cars with teams of goons in 4×4’s to pick the fucking kids up from school. I didn’t know there was a contract out on Becks, that the kidnappers from Sao Paulo had decided to make a trip to Los Angeles to grab his whipper snappers - but funnily enough, if they had - don’t you think they’d just walk into the school and grab the kid anyway - or would they wait outside for dad to show up in the rolls, which is about as inconspicuous as tits on a bull, and then get into a gun fight with the hired goons and Becks and then run away with the kids? Hmm? I wonder. Yeah I bet if I was a kidnapper from Sao Paulo - I’d probably just walk into the school and forget about Becks, the Rolls and the goons. I wonder why Becks hadn’t thought of that? And if he did, then the only possible reason he can be heading up this motorcade - is that he’s a FUCKING ASSHOLE!

coffee shop in bangkok

The disparity of costs is something that intrigues me. It amazes me even – say for instance a cup of coffee – for 1 cup of coffee – lets say a double shot of illy espresso –from Italy – where those beans are produced or roasted I have no idea, but they all end up in coffee shops the world over and they all arrive there in the same packaging and in theory they should all taste the same. In London I paid almost 3 pounds for the last double shot I had there, admittedly it was on Kensington high street which is a pricey area anyway, but that not withstanding – coffee seems to go through some kind of a standardization process with it comes to pricing on a local retail level. In Sydney I pay 3 dollars or 3 dollars 30 for the same coffee, In Bangkok I pay around 65Baht  - I’ll reference these all back to a standard U.S$ price in a bit  - but essentially the same coffee in London costs 5 times what it costs in Bangkok – of course rent and labor are more expensive in London – but from what I recall pay rates for retail staff in London were nothing special, I would hazard a guess and say a coffee shop worker in Sydney would make more money comparatively than the same person in london. And the Coffee all has to get to these shops from somewhere – London being closer to Europe one would think that Italian coffee there would be cheaper by virtue of it being closer to Europe…but it’s not, it’s 5 times the price of Bangkok and Bangkok is a lot further away from Europe, so the coffee is probably roasted and shipped from somewhere in Asia? Be curious to know. I had fried rice for dinner with vegetable and shrimp, 35B last night – a little over 1$ - and I assume the vendor is in business to make money – not give food away as some sort of charitable venture – and in Sydney I bought a cheese burger at Hurricane burgers in Bondi beach and it was $14.50 a few weeks ago when I was there the Aussie dollar and the U.S were at parity – so I paid $14.50 for a cheese burger (take out) in a country where they have local beef – from a hole in the wall burger joint – gourmet burger joint, but still a 500 sq ft hole in the wall which ever way you look at it. In Dubai gas costs less than a dollar a gallon – obviously because there is oil there – they could of course charge the same rates as everywhere else – for what ever reason they don’t – yet in Australia it seems that local people pay export rates for beef. At least that’s the way I seems to me. In Sri Lanka you can go into a department store and buy a Calvin Klein sweatshirt for $3.50 U.S  - the same sweatshirt costs upwards of $100.00 in America – it is the same sweatshirt because they are manufactured in Sri Lanka for export – so the store in Colombo I assume must be there because they too want to make a profit on the sale of these garments. What is the real cost of anything? That sweatshirt I would wager, based on the retail cost being typically 3 times the whole sale cost – must be made for around .75 U.S – that’s insane – you could argue I suppose that it’s good business on CK’s behalf – but to me it seems exploitive – and it is – and as soon as wages go up incrementally in Sri Lanka they’ll find another poor country and move operations to there – and all these companies do the same thing – they invest nothing in local infrastructure, they manufacture on contracts and then they up and move when there’s a minor adjustment in wages, or inflation, or currency leaving behind nothing in return. So what is the true cost of anything? The 1st world puts a premium on everything. Which means of course that it costs more and more to live in major western cities or countries, poor countries are exploited for low labor costs with no investment going back – and consumers in the 1st world are ripped off left right and center, but have no idea unless they travel a lot and investigate what the true cost of anything is. Completely outrageous – and ultimately I suspect the greed of these corporate monoliths will be instrumental in the collapse of western economies – how can people be expected to pay 500% – 1000% - over the true cost of anything? I guess this all touches on the topic of globalization – which wasn’t my intention per se – typically I guess that focus’s on the exploitation of the labor market in developing nations (3rd world may not be PC anymore) which is absolutely true and it focus’s on the pain felt by small producers and retailers in 1st world  economies – but it also should focus on the exploitation of people living in the 1st world because they too are being taken advantage of, in terms of the price they pay for goods. I’m a big believer in business - but there has to be some kind of reasonable sense in it - a profit is good, a blatant exploitation is not good

For a great PDF guidebook to the island of Phuket - here

Last night I was up late - till around 3am - not out partying, just watching videos on youtube - I got so into it that at around 2am I couldnt resist a 1 hour charlie rose interviewing Noam Chomsky - and it was amazing - Chomsky has a steel trap of a mind and a memory like all great academics - these people have 2 unique faculty’s as I can tell - one is a memory that is beyond normal, and the abilty to look at entire picture, with historical reference, cultural reference and not be swayed by emotion, they look at the evidence, study the history and remember it all and then make decisions based on that. I have a friend that is very Chomskyesque, as brilliant and has those same abilties, he happens to be a phyciatrist not a linguistics professor, but aside from that it’s hard to tell them apart. Well that was last night, and tonight is tonight - what a strange world. Tonight I went out to do a little printing as I have no printer in my apartment - having bought probably 15 of them in my lifetime I’m over buying them - anyway I went to take care of that, get a massage and a bite to eat and my intention was to hop on the river boat to come home. The boats stopped running earlier than I’d anticipated. Upon reaching the closed gate to the jetty I was faced with the dilemma - so I catch a cab and just run home - or, since I’m out anyway should I catch a cab and go somewher else? I took the latter option. Soi 11 I’ve written about before, it’s a good street, it’s pretty much tourist driven but I still like it, and I like the bar on the roof top of Le Fenix hotel - and on a stormy night like it was tonight I figured it would be a nice place to watch the storms roll over the city, have a few beers and chat with the girls that work there, they’re all friendly and hot. I sit at the bar and ask the guy next to me for a light, turns out he’s a kiwi, which is my home country  also, and the guy sitting next to him also a kiwi. We start talking etc, bla bla bla anyway at one point the one guy lefts his shirt up to show the other guy and his hot girlfriend some tattoo on his back, she pulls up her shorts to reveal almost the same tattoo - well although I sort of see what’s happening, I fail to see the significance of any of it - so I ask - “what’s the story with the tattoos”? Some movie with Ashton Kutcher had been the inspiration, dude and sweet - beats me! But when someone gets the word sweet tattooed on them becasue of a b-grade hollywood comedy - it kind of leaves me breathless. Like are you that fucking ridiculous? Well I guess you mist be cause you went and did it. So I left soon after - and arrived home to read an IHT article and so I decided to take a look at youtube regarding this mild mind altering drug - what a fucking waste of time. Really average looking teengagers shooting themselves on iphones or phone cameras - in a state of euphoria, but as interesting as looking at mould grow on a turd, I mean FUCK - when we took shrooms, or acid or GHB, or anything we were interested in the experience, we did things, we went on adventures, we talked about our experience and we didn’t have some idiotic friend there giggling and shooting bad video images of us to show the world. But what was even more disturbing/enlightening these morons had 900,000 plus hits on the youtube clip. WHY? What the fuck would possess anyone but me to look at this shit? Beats me. Then I read THIS Mate they don’t run it - they are it!! What a nightmare - now I have to try and get some sleep before I figure out what possible options there are for reasonably sane intelligent people in the world.

I can’t say for sure this is true - i’d been told by a friend that the news story was in the Phuket gazette, but I looked online and I couldn’t find it.  But even if it’s not true it’s pretty damn funny.

Apparently a group of Katoey (lady-boys) had been arressted for robbery - their technique was where the humor came in - preying on unsuspecting drivers who’d pulled over on the side of the road at night to take a nap, or to sleep through the night - to be awoken only by the soft slurping of a katoey performing fellatio on the innocent driver - oh and of course upon completion to find that anything of value in the car had been nabbed. When questioned about the blow-jobs by police, the katoeys answered that they felt guilty about doing the robbing, so it was a way of saying sorry.  Who knows?

It does remind me of another story, that was also a Phuket robbers story, a friend of mine told me about a group that were robbing houses by releasing some kind of sleeping gas, ether or cholorform or something through the air conditioning system in a house, putting the occupants to sleep and then casually walking in and walking out with everything. Again I can’t say for sure, but either someone had to sit down and come up with these stories or there must be an element of truth in them.

So - I guess if your driving home and feel the need to sleep, make sure you lock your doors before you pass out - there might be some uncomfortable explaingto do otherwise.

With thanks to the dailymind…this post has nothing what so ever to do with daily life in Bangkok - but the clip was just too good to not share