Of random encounters in Bangkok

K?

So, after hanging out with M a couple of months ago… (and again now)… after seeing P @ Bully’s… finally, unsuspectingly I ran into K at Starbucks on Asoke. Memories of midnight champagne at the Dream and of sushi breakfast at the Landmark. Still crazy, but still gorgeous. How do you say esta es la vida loca in Thai?

Citrus, baby

Oh yeah. The saga continues, and in a couple of days I will be checking in at the Citrus. The reviews are mixed (“tired hotel”, “dirty sheets”) but the photos are cool.

Map here.

Eccentrics home and away

Hmm, it’s been a while since I’ve encountered some British originals. Somehow I think the guy I saw at the Soi 7 Beergarden was a French dude – he had the Asterix moustache after all. But who knows?

In vino

…vinii? Or is it, vines?

“in wine, the wines”

(Grid) girl, unveiled

I have mentioned before how useless I find the ‘news feed’ in MS Live Messenger – that, when it’s not downright stupid, or unintendedly hilarious, as below:

How about 'announced'?

Not to be nitpicky, but the primary meaning of unveil is to remove a covering. Thoughts of Page3 flashing through my mind…

Culture Monday

Just finished reading “Spook Country” by William Gibson. A definite departure from his usual topics, and a writing style that is his usual but taken to an extreme sparseness; to the point where the book is incomprehensible until the last 3rd. Interesting premise, but ultimately unfulfilling; too much effort spent for a gimmick, and a couple of potentially interesting subplots and characters (Bigend) that go nowhere. Same feeling I had with Le Carré’s “Mission Song” – great writer somehow misspent.

However, I can’t believe I waited until now to read Natsuo Kirino. “Grotesque” is such a great book. Categorizing it as Japanese or crime fiction only diminishes its universaility – bullying, trying to fit in, trying to be attractive and dealing with not being, all these aren’t solely a Japanese phenomenon. It’s the first book written by a woman that I can relate to as a guy (ok maybe not the first; one of the few though).

 

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Ok it turns out that Bigend is a main character in the previous Gibson book. That makes some sense. I still think he is underused in “Spook country” and his plot is going nowhere. The book really feels like a farce (in the operatic sense).

Cool?

There are several kinds of cool places. Tokyo, New York, London are arguably beehives of global creativity, places where things start. Then you have the Singapores, LAs, maybe Barcelonas – places which take in things that originate elswhere, or perhaps originate things on their own, but without the global reach of the first tier global cities. Hong Kong and Seoul would be trapped somewhere between the two categories, creative enough to be influential but without the power to extend their influence globally.

And then you have everything else, the local, non cosmopolitan, cities – perhaps tuned-in consumers (Bangkok), or perhaps untuned, uncreative locals such as most of the US (disturbing parochialism).

Do you create, do you imitate, do you consume, do you ignore?

Not sure how this fits in Richard Florida’s work – it does on some level I’m sure

The Miracle Mile

So this time around I stayed far from the epicenter of Bangkok’s nightlife, and most definitely in a non-posh hotel. I wonder how would things have been had my first trip there been similar? In fact, I did stay for the first 3-4 nights at the not so hip and not so clean City Lodge on Soi 19, but when I completed the initial booked stay I moved just across the street to the shiny and luxurious Sheraton Sukhumvit Grande.

Hard Rock Cafe, the nightly walks on the “miracle mile”, Narcissus, everything started from there an created the image of Thailand (and Asia) that I still carry in my mind. Wonder if it would have been any different had my initial surroundings been On Nut and the (otherwise, nice) local Thai eatery S. took me to a week ago.

Fragments of Bangkok

• missing Dt… just found the pics from 6 years ago
• going to Sunrise Tacos, I found myself missing K. Crazy as a bat, but gorgeous, and kind hearted in her own unique way
• listening to Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto
• walking in knee deep water just outside Hard Rock Cafe. Where was the Telefon Band?
• met M and was more moved than I thought I would be, and I think she was too. 2 1/2 years since the wild days with C and the first encounter with her
• first time ever in Thailand that I don’t get any kinds of stomach ailments from street foods
• only one trip to the Mango and none known there
• Singapore: comfy. Bangkok: has a soul

Photos, soon.

Silence?

And speaking of Rattawut, whose book I hope to find around somewhere. We have big problems of our own. How come we have not found a voice to explain ourselves to the world? (yes it would take someone who can write English literature, and who is not afraid of slaying sacred cows and of facing the music afterwards). I’m fascinated by interactions between Thais and farangs, but tire of them after a while – as they do ‘degenerate’ to basic interhuman relations with just a bit of exoticism thrown in. Same with us, but for some reason our self hatred leads us to either try to become farangs as fast as we can, or to wash the laundry in the family, when washing is deemed allowable at all. In the meantime we put on a good show where we are anything you want us to be, or not.

This might be a tad too cryptic. But I still don’t know why we don’t have a Rattawut, a Naguib Mahfouz, a Salman Rushdie.

But this time in Bangkok, I read some (passable) sci-fi. Saving Lévi-Strauss  for Tarawa or Palau.

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This is intentionally cryptic, as are the other posts that refer to my old old country – a particular place in Eastern Europe where I hail from. It won’t make much sense to anyone else other than me. But then, this blog is primarily for me and me only. One of the great things about having 2 passports and living in a 3rd country (make that, 2 passports from 2 different continents and living in a 3rd continent) is the freedom it affords you to criticize/or embrace almost anything, anyplace – because you’re both from and not from there. Guess you have to try it to understand. Not being beholden to a flag or a culture is immensely freeing.