The middle of nowhere

Dubai is not, and never will be, a Singapore or a Hong Kong. I’m stating the obvious, but…

  • It shows the possibilities of making something out of nothing. And the limits
  • It has various groups of people (wildly different) with no possibility or intention of settling down, with all that it entails – accommodating others, having a stake in the place’s future, or investing somehow in it
  • Locals being a minority, there is little chance for foreigners to assimilate into the culture. Simply, one interacts a lot more with foreigners than with locals, which just does not happen in any other place I have been to
  • HK and SG are populated by Chinese mostly who are hard working and determined. Enough said
  • Chinese culture is one of mountains, … green spaces, etc. Metaphorically speaking. Local culture, whatever it is, is one of deserts and empty spaces and so on – desolation, in other words
  • This is all made visible by the following: 5 minutes left or right of the main thoroughfare with its attendant skyscrapers and you are in an area of dusty windswept roads and crooked lowrise buildings. 5 more minutes out and you are literally in the middle of the desert

The space age city hasn’t quite arrived.

Primary Colors

Having apple pie at the Singaporean Dôme in Dubai, and a bout of nostalgia hits. I’m a kid of the 90′s (hardly remember anything from the 70′s, and the 80′s I prefer not to), and the apple pie (my Proustian Madeleine moment) reminds me that 20 years ago Clinton was getting elected, bringing a promise of (well, what was it exactly? Whatever the first baby boomer prez was going to signify), Eastern Europe was opening up and the Cold War was beginning to fade from memory, the new American century was about to begin and the American way of life (wasn’t the Washington Consensus another word for this) was the Only Way Ahead, time-tested and success-confirmed, grunge was breathing new life into music, Hollywood blockbusters were just so cool. Life was simple and clear and all of us were going to ride into a predictable future of progress, prosperity, entertainment and bland happiness.

20 years on and how things have changed. I haven’t watched a ‘Hollywood blockbuster’ in I don’t know how long, I have no idea what music is popular anymore (I stopped following bands around the time that Korn and Marilyn Manson dissipated), this is the 4th year I haven’t been back in the US, and there isn’t much of an American century worth bragging about anymore.

Maybe I should read (and watch again) Primary Colors.

Soulless, it is

…Raffles Dubai. Much like its host city, it’s all style bling over substance, unlike its progenitor. I’ve blogged about cool hotels before, and this one, with its faux Egyptian style, is not one of them. In fact, I’m still trying to find something genuinely cool in Dubai.

 

Bathrooms R Us

Thankfully, it is seems to be free of hookers (that, in itself, should be a long blog). The drinks, however, are pretty fucking overpriced.

More readings

(Also) Reading:

Even the title sounds like a koan

So far, the story is really captivating. The writing style is putting my off somewhat, but perhaps the author (David Mitchell) intended it to be — it’s almost haiku-like. Or Sei Shonagon-like; it has a dreamy cadence.

Let’s see how it finishes. And then I have to return to Imajica and Early India and…


Ok so I finished it now. This is what I can say – for the most part, it’s a rather weirdly, ‘literary’-written, James Clavell-alike period piece, set in a very interesting time and place (I remember around 2009 when I first learned about the Dutch colony at Dejima, what a surprise it was). However, the final pages are almost unbearable to read – they are that good. Of course, one reads through one’s own experiences, so I’m obviously bringing my own baggage here; but the last few pages are what make the novel for me; it ceases at that point to be a thriller, ‘Asia’ story, etc. Last time I was so moved I guess was when I read ‘A hundred years of solitude’.

Which means, I will probably never read either book again (even if I find myself in Cartagena someday). Hitting too close to home.

Out-monocling Monocle?

It’s been a while since I talked about “cool things”, of which Monocle used to be one. I still listen to its podcasts (which have become quite confusing proliferated considerably) when I can find the time (1 hour or more for most!) or when I can download them (the videos in the Apple Store are a hit and miss), although I rarely fork out the $20 or so an issue costs nowadays (slightly less for Wallpaper*). My opinion of the mag has changed too – they seem to have a fixation with certain places (Beirut, for example) while ignoring others (Bangkok), which is probably the influence of the driving force behind the magazine (was just thinking about how founder-run companies differ from public ones, but this is an altogether loooooooooooonger discussion for another day).

Anyway; this might be the mag to outdo today’s Monocle, a combination of old-school Monocle and (maybe) More Intelligent Life (as I said before, Monocle could perhaps outdo the Economist). Too bad I can’t find it anywhere, at a hopefully more down to Earth price.

Speaking of, too bad RES isn’t around anymore. I used to subscribe when I was back in the US.

Reading now

This.

Not done yet. So far so good, but… I read some interviews with Clive Barker where he’s saying how he is trying to do the same as Frank Herbert (or maybe Tolkien) and create this vast world, etc. What seems to be missing form Imajica though is a description of the politics of the place. Dominions, that is ok, but how about  description of how each came to be, what are the power relations… and how about ecology and so on?

Will have to see how it ends, but the fantasy elements seem to dominate at the expense of the “realism”, which is what had made “Dune” (and the original “Star Wars”) so great for me.

 

 

 

The rise and fall of the Bangkok blogger

I remember coming across Stickman around the time I was preparing my first trip to Thailand – back in 2003 (and what a life changing trip it was!) At that time, Mr. Stick himself had been in the LOS for 5-odd years, was still laboring by day as a teacher and his weekly dispatches were, to me, somewhat funny and illuminating for the lifestyle in the (then) exotic country.

How, and why, Stickman has changed over the years might be an interesting story unto itself, but this is not what I am interested in right now; starting with the mid-2000’s and peaking in about 2009, a whole series of Bangkok-based blogs cropped up, and I was a devotee (and very rare contributor) of most. Followers of the “Asian circuit” (to use Karl Taro Greenfeld’s phrase) would certainly be aware of Bangkok Bad Boy, Werewolf, Bangkok A To Z, the Big Mango, Dean Barrett, Bangkok Eyes, Pattaya Days or even Morally Diminished; and there are others I can’t even recall now.

With my frequent trips to (and then living full time in) Thailand, I got to know most of the faces behind the blogs, and most of the pseudonymous posters. Many became friends, drinking buddies, or Thailand/Indonesia/Singapore adventure partners. They were from all over the world and having such an exclusive group of friends, whom I would meet on occasion, in one of Bangkok’s venues or another, and share our “secret” knowledge, certainly made for an interesting double life. I remember wondering at the time how come Bangkok had such a vibrant “blogger” life whereas other cities such as Jakarta didn’t have that much going on (Blog M? then Warren’s Singapore for the city state), despite offering an expat lifestyle not dissimilar to Bangkok’s.

Sure, for the most part, these blogs were dealing with girls, partying, nights out, alternative/”designer” lifestyles, but also were on occasion venues for serious multicultural discussions, and they played no small part in encouraging me to move to Asia eventually. For someone like me who until then had only met people moving in one direction (Eastern Europe à Western Europe or USA) the idea that people would actually move to unfathomable Asia wasn’t even on the map; until I met such people and realized we had a lot in common.

But good things don’t last forever, and over a 12-18 month period starting in 2009, most of these blogs went away. Today, only Stickman (slightly boring and not so readable anymore, but perhaps it is I who changed) and A To Z (but Kurt’s focus has always been on the Washington Square crowd, which I never found interesting; and his site is a mess to read – not that Stickman’s is any better!) and Pattaya Days are still active (and perhaps some new ones I am not aware of). Here is what I think happened:

-          (at least) 2 feuds started in the virtual realm that became very real (the Mango boys vs BigBabyKenny, and Stickman vs NotStickman). I think the BKK blogosphere had been “innocent” until that point, and these nasty, and long-dragging fights (some of which ended up in court and with very real threats) opened people’s eyes to the dangers of the written word. People all of a sudden realized their virtual personas could negatively affect their real jobs and lives;

-          Thailand’s unending troubles (yellow shirts, red shirts, and now floods) sombered the moods of many expats who found they were not immune to real life drama in this otherwise most welcoming country. People traveled less to Thailand, those with businesses in the country found themselves in trouble, and the overall mood just wasn’t what it had been. Maybe Mr Norris felt the same way in 30’s Berlin, or those last Westerners out of Shanghai in 1937. Open, free cities do fall prey to dark forces and happy times vanish;

-          The world crisis itself made people worry about other things and made the easy times in Bangkok seem unreal.

Some people moved on, most stopped blogging altogether and went on with their lives, in and out of Thailand. Don’t get me wrong. Troubles or not, life is still good in Bangkok. There still are many foreigners who live happily in the shadow of the Baiyoke tower, and who don’t blog, don’t necessarily go to Soi Cowboy; and a lot more Westerners seem to have found their way semi-permanently to Asia, to Bangkok and other places. So perhaps the “exclusive” club of Bangkok-based farangs “in the know” isn’t that exclusive anymore, and a new breed of Westerner, with a different profile, is the typical farang in Bangkok.

Will the Bangkok bloggers return? Perhaps the true question is, will Bangkok ever become what it briefly was, a Paris in the ‘20’s, Berlin in the early ‘30’s, or Shanghai in the late ‘30’s? Or has it gone too somber or too upmarket? I don’t know, but I am curious to find out; as for me, I still find it an immensely freeing city, although I’m certain that the me who is in Bangkok nowadays isn’t the same me who took that wide-eyed first walk at midnight around Asoke in March of 2003.

 

Under the Baiyoke Tower

Years ago I was quite the metrosexual. Lite; my watch brand mattered (Rado) and so did my jeans (G*Star). I had dreams of flying Cathay Pacific to unspecified meetings in flashy metropolises and cavorting with models in Miami.

Now I am living on an obscure street in Bangkok (Soi Rangnam) which briefly came into the globe’s living rooms two months ago during the protests. Now it’s back to its sleepy self – pushcart vendors, the local bars, the King Power office girls milling about; I go about in slippers and a ratty 120 THB t-shirt. I’ve made a girlfriend here, I eat on the street as much as I can, and – knowing as I do that it is nothing compared to, say, Rajprasong or Thong Lo – I love being here. Not sure how to describe the feeling, because very rarely I felt it – I would not really want to be somewhere else. Here, I don’t need the Rado to feel good about life; I don’t need to name drop Mongkok and Seoul and Asakusa; I just am.

And no, this isn’t for some mythical reason, some inner Thainness I found in me, or something like that. If anything, I am as stranger a here as I can be – I don’t understand the language, nor do I want to (if I understood what people said, it would most likely be the same inanities I have heard the world over; here I am mercifully spared the small talk). The native didn’t work for me (in my case, being a badly shaven and intense Eastern European, waving some imaginary flag and poring over long-ago misdrawn maps); the immigrant didn’t work either (the land of the fat and the Walmart didn’t do much for me – I could never justify to myself how my life was really that good. Safe? Sure, unless a random gunman decides to mow down an office building I happen to be in. Wealthy? Sure, if living in a carton house mortgaged to the hilt is how you define wealth. Freedom of speech? Do I give a shit? and really, mention a couple of questionable American characteristics to a down home audience and see how well that goes down and how much they appreciate your freedom of speech); however, a place that I am not of, and yet, where I can find food, shelter, and the occasional warm touch, just might be where I feel good.

So I am running out of cool things to blog about. No, this won’t turn into a sad Werewolf style blog about my ‘adventures’ in Bangkok; I am not in such a desperate need of justifying my existence. I have always had a very narrow goal with this, and at the moment this goal seems to elude me anymore. I might well resume it someday, but until then, I think I’ll be off to Baiyoke (a 40 THB motosai ride from my street; I still remember my first visit there 7 years ago, how bewildering it was – and now, it is part of my normality) for a Black Canyon coffee and an afternoon of gawking.

The exotic is the new normal. And I’m loving it so much that I don’t need to write about it anymore, even to myself.

Saturday readings

Now reading:

In the Miso Soup Ryu Murakami

Japanese psychological thriller horror pinku (SEO love)

 

Next, another Ryu Murakami, (I’ve already seen the movie and loved it), and then perhaps back to Natsuo Kirino.

Chess

I’m playing chess.
It’s a shitty software: MS’s Chess Titans, level 2, beginner.
I can undo as many times as I like.
I can read all about openings.
I play alone when office is slow, no one sees my defeats.
I still get pissed off, mightily, when the computer wins. Or just takes that pawn I wasn’t paying attention to.

And we wonder about dictators.