A Day in the Life of Chaos

Every nation has their sports.  American's love football, basketball and baseball, the world loves soccer.  This said, Thailand and sport is something I am still trying to figure out.  I do see a lot of jackets emblazoned with the names of English Premier League teams.    Chelsea, Manchester United... the list goes on.  That said I am still not sure there is a true passion for the game.   I am increasingly becoming convinced however that there is an unofficial sport here, the art of scooter riding. Perhaps it is the same way around South East Asia but with only the Philippines and a brief time in Shanghai to compare I must say, Thailand is on the cusp of this emerging sport.  Okay, maybe it will never make the big leagues but if each commute is equal to a game how many athletes can say that they survived death in the course of their match?  As a current resident of Thailand I have embraced this life or death struggle with all the veracity of a shark feasting upon a helpless swim

For better or for worse people come to Thailand to escape.  Oh some will emphatically tell you they came to find something but in truth there is a fine line between the two.  The very essence of escape allows us a chance for discovery. I grew up in the northern most outpost of the nation.   Living in Alaska there was always a long standing truth hanging over everyone's head.  With the exception of us who were born or simply raised there just about every adult moved north to get away from something.  My parents used to always joke that moving to Alaska was as far away as they could possibly get from their parents and still be in America.  I suppose Hawaii would have been farther but the logistics of crossing an ocean versus loading up their cars made Alaska the appropriate choice. As we age the weight of life tends to add up.  I think we don't really know that it is happening and many never really realize that it did.  We start to compensate in useless ways attempting to

What follows is an intensely personal entry.  I have asked myself many times why I am willing to expose these thoughts to the world. After much contemplating I decided it is because I want people to understand what is possible.  How a moment in time can give clarity to life in a way nothing else can. Despite living in Thailand, I spend my life with a work week like most others.  Monday through Friday I hop on my scooter and navigate the Thai traffic for my eight to five job.  I confess the monotony of routine is far less for me these days however, for the most part I live a normal working existence.  Weekends are my chance to be a tourist.  A chance to venture out on a path of discovery and find the hidden secrets that are all around me. This Sunday while many of my countrymen crowded the pews in their chosen churches, I ventured out of my house seeking a shrine of Theravada Buddhism that sits nestled upon a mountain behind Chiang Mai.  The mountain Doi Sutep looms over Chaing Mai

I am one of those unfortunate souls who do to some genetic quirk in life was born with hair in all the wrong places.  Whenever I feel down about it I thank my lucky stars I am not a woman. The reasons for that gratefulness will become abundantly clear as you work your way through this missive. For some reason the legacy of my maternal grandfather decided that I should have little hair on my head and all of it on my body.  Like a puzzle from the past our genetic code decides our fate like the emperor of Rome presiding over gladiatorial combat. It can bring disease and it can provide long life.  It dictates the color of our eyes and if our appearance we will be beautiful or simply like that of a toad.  In Asia people are largely hairless and my abundance of it becomes a rather quaint oddity.  I am not quite sure how they view me.  Half simian perhaps?  I like to think they find it uniquely sexy.  At any rate women touch it as if it is a delicate foreign object of great curiosity. 

Being a foreigner in a new land takes great humility.   Every day is a new challenge.  It requires a fresh mind and a new set of guiding principles.  It can feel at times like the rules are constantly changing yet in fact, you are the one changing, most everything else is constant. We are the odd ones here.  We feel it every day as life buzzes around us in a chaotic yet seemingly synchronized pace. Meanwhile, we walk around like a duck out of water.  Our webbed feet don't seem quite right to navigate the land and our quack seems to have no meaning excepting our own ears. For some reason the phone in my house has started to ring.  Honestly I didn't even remember I had one.  Now it rings and rings.  My first impulse is to hide.  Some how my mind seems to think that if I try to conceal myself the ringing will go away.  When I pick it up there is a recording.  It sounds happy but I have no idea what it is saying.  All I know is it finishes, I hang up and awhile later the phone

There are places in the world where beauty defies expectation.  Sometimes they are found unexpectedly in the smallest of things or the most unpredictable moments. When I awoke at 5:30 in the morning in my bed not far from the junction where northern Thailand, Laos and Burma meet I rolled over and looked out the window of my hotel room.  I was physically quite close to a place romantically and once nephariously called the Golden Triangle. It was place of lore, once known as the central hub of heroin trafficking across a remote section of South East Asia.  Now it was a region filled with economic development.  The jungle trails and combat fatigue clad mercenary armies have been replaced by casinos and Chinese tourists.  The men who once commanded heroin movement from their jungle bases now run multimillion dollar gambling empires.  The traffickers are still there, they are just woven into the fabric of economic development and their camouflaged clothing has been replaced by a veil o

We tend to define ourselves by our national identities.  Well that's not exactly correct.  I think first comes sex, then race and then national identity.  It is like we are members of a club.  Perhaps it makes us feel exclusive in some way and lord knows human beings like to feel exclusive.  We long to be in some way unique and a nation is undeniably unique and exclusive in its very nature. I have traveled and lived in many parts of the globe and as the years have turned I have come to view myself less as a member of a country and more as a citizen of the world.  The concept of humanity becomes much larger and all encompassing.   A citizen of the world is an alien concept to most.  It defies everything we have been taught all our lives of what it means to be a patriot.  Patriotism, the connotation of the word denotes unquestionable loyalty to a national identity.  The very essence of patriotism defies our biological similarity and harkens back to tribalism.   Perhaps it is th

The Bangkok skyline is gray and foreboding.  Less than 12 hours ago the city welcomed me with a dazzling display of light.  Today the sky weeps as if to compliment my own tears and trepidations.   They are not the result of sadness, simply a reflection of adjustment to a new and very different world. Last night after 27 hours of transit I emerged in a new place, my tired eyes adjusting to a very different life.  I felt like a cast member of the Walking Dead or at the very least like I had just emerged from a dark movie theater squinting and opening my eyes.  The process of getting from airport to hotel was not as complicated as I thought and I definitely appreciated the assistance I had from an analyst that currently works in our office here.  Trans Pacific flights seem to have a way of altering all reality leaving one to feel oddly disconnected.  I felt almost as if I entered Star Trek mode and some how become one with the Space Time Continuum whatever the hell that means. Fo

Galileo In the south they always say "blessed."  Have a blessed day or I am truly blessed.  Bless your heart they will tell you and then subsequently kick you in the ass.  Most of the time it is used as a kind of farewell wish or sense of self affirmation.  I am not sure who is doing the blessing, I am sure in their mind it is the Lord Jesus Christ.   I have always had trouble with this concept.  If there is a Lord Jesus Christ I have always assumed my life would be quite insignificant in the greater context.  Still self importance has always been the essence of Christianity.  Prior to Galileo the Sun revolved around the Earth.  Of course poor Galileo was made to recant his own teaching and discovery and forced by the inquisition to remain essentially under house arrest for the later years of his life.  Christians are allowed to speak directly to God and God will hear them.  He will bless them like a priest splashing holy water and make all their dreams come true.  Or

There is a certain amount of excitement and depression that accompanies a move and change of job.  On the one hand I am filled with energy and enthusiasm.  In the near future there is a new office, a new place welcoming me with open arms.  It is a chance to be a new person and fix all the mistakes of the past both professionally and humanistically.  As scant bits of information arrive concerning my move I find myself hanging on every new detail.  Every fragment of information detailing and describing my new life.  Like a jigsaw puzzle I seem to never get enough, each tiny piece constantly forming a larger picture.  Excitement seems to build as dates converge an new realities solidify. At the same time there is a counter process occurring.  It is almost a kind of Newtonian physics in principle.  With every action there is an equal opposite reaction.  In this case the opposite reaction is separation and letting go.  To date I have served 14 years in my current office and I am not sure