Check Please...

At that time I advanced the idea that the formation of a clear mental image of external objects is accompanied by a reflex action on the retina, making it possible to read thoughts and even to project the images conceived on a screen and render them visible to an audience. This would be of inestimable consequence on all human relations but the idea can not be realized until some way is found to lay bare the retina. Continued reflections on this subject led me to evolve apparatus for transmitting instantaneously true vision without any moving devices, and in 1900 I had already solved three of the problems which confronted me, namely: to individualize and isolate a very great number of channels or "nerves"; to convey to the receiving apparatus energy in sufficient amount, and, to make the vision of the moving images independent of distance.

- Really, Nic? Please continue. [looks around, waves hand]

Another distinction is that my system is based entirely on resonance, while in present practice reliance is placed chiefly on amplification by auxiliary devices generally consisting of various forms of vacuum tubes which have been brought to remarkable perfection.

- Fascinating, fascinating.

- Waiter!!

E@L

"... the fiscal crater in which Washington languishes was dug in enormous measure by an economic slow down that preceded [Obama] and by the tax cuts and military campaigns of [George W. Bush]."
Frank Bruni, International Herald Tribune, July 20th 2011. (and presumably the NYT)

Tax breaks for the rich and reduced benefits for the poor? Fair dinkum, are Republicans and the Tea-party extremists fucking crazy? All the evidence points to a resounding 'Yes'.



Fuck Hitler, someone should back in time and assassinate Ayn Rand. Or Leo Strauss. Or John Locke, or somebody.

E@L

Knocking The Top Off

Bruce tells E@L he had a massage, sans happy ending in Chiang Mai! WTF? It was his frackin' BIRTHDAY - thank you Facebook! - but after his rhythmical back slaps and neck pinch, nothing. He gets dressed, walks out in a huff, determined to do better.

Tromps down the street to the least likely to be honest place, in the dark heart of Loi Kroh Road, where a short, dumpy but nice personality mamasan calls out to invite him in for a "massage". She points down to a shanty room at the back of what was once (like last week) a travel agency judging by the posters of Dubrovnic on the walls.

"You wan massage? 60 minute, 90 minute, oil, Thai, foot massage."

"No, no," he says. "I want a happy ending, forget the massage. I want a blow-job or a chuck-wow. Already had a massage."

She looks at him for a second, doesn't ask him to repeat the request, but leads him by the hand inside. They go past uninterested, bored girls playing with eye-make in mirrors or plucking at a bit of guava peel caught in a tooth-gap, all too unenthusiastic and unattractive to get a job elsewhere; they don't even look up.

"Special service, for you," whipsers mamasan. "But we take our time. No rush, have 60 minutes of massage time."

60 minutes was not required.

~~~~~~~~~~~

At Club "Paradise". The usual. Reliable, predictable, professional, nice and friendly.

As the other girl was showering, one was re-energizing her skin with moisturizer (so many showers in a day) and looking benignly on Bruce as he pulled up his underwear.

"I like your cock," she says, unexpectedly wistful.

Bruce looks up at her as she stands on the other side of the bed, briskly working the cheap lotion into her small breast and thin rib-cage, looking at his package, her facial expression completely neutral: she is stating a fact, neither praising, nor criticizing.

"It's not too long."

Pause.

What do you say after that? Thanks? Yes, so I've heard?

He can't confirm her opinion as, thanks to his his belly, except for an occasional glimpse in these mirrors as it disappeared inside her and her colleague's anatomy, he hasn't seen it for years.

"Too long can hurt. Yours nice."

Nice to know, Bruce supposes.

~~~~~~~~~~~

When Bruce told us this, we completely cracked up... People in the pub, the waitresses, the bar-staff all looked at us. Crazy ang mohs.

E@L

On The Road Agin'

I had three days in Barcelona. Then I spent some time in Berlin with a friend from Singapore who's living in Lubeck. Two weeks in Croatia with Izzy et al: Split, Brac, Hvar, Korčula, Dubrovnik (clubbing with Izzy and Vicky, time of my life and no chemicals). That was OK, that was brilliant.

~~~~~~~~~~~

From those heady days in the sun and rain, I came back for two weeks work in Thailand; Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, Bangkok. Stepped off the plane then and turned around for two weeks in Australia: Sydney, Brisbane, Sydney again and back for a day in the Gold Coast.

I've just finished(? No i haven't!) packing for the next trip, five days in Tokyo. After that it's three days in Bangkok. And after that three weeks in Australia. Followed by another week in Bangkok giving training on a product I won't have played with except for one of the three days coming up...

I tried to count the Singapore (home) days in this period but I have too many fingers to get a number even close.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Once upon a time I would have been astounded by a schedule like this, and yes, the Europe trip was off the edge of the Holy Scale of Greatness, but this jumping around for work is a pain.

I can't do any tourist stuff (not that un-jaded enough to really care about that - one more night market and I'll go... somewhere else) and I am usually left to my own devices.

That is dangerous because I tend to turn my thoughts inwards and get philosophical. OK, I get a bit ... I was going to say depressed, but that's harsh. Things are sad when you are by yourself for a extended periods in the evenings in unfamiliar hotels. You feel sad. Lonely. If it wasn't for the constant sex it would be depressing.

~~~~~~~~~~~

A boy from little old Geelong going to all these places? Amazing. Sometime I lie by the pool, any pool, anywhere, but preferably and rarely by the pool at my apartment, and smile for no obvious reason, even permit myself a small giggle. This is my expat life, how can I complain?

~~~~~~~~~~

A drive to Melbourne, Colac (mother's family's home town) or Ballarat was a big deal when I was kid. When a cousin moved to Queensland, there were hushed debates and whispered discussions at family gatherings (the usual hatches, matches and dispatches). Bit funny, that. Why would you go all the way to Brisbane? Strange man.

btw: Sex for sale in Geelong was to be had at Lorraine Starr's massage parlour and exclusive (homeless bums usually not permitted) brothel. Several of my cricket team members held gold cards for the place.

~~~~~~~~~~

OK, it's midnight, enough waffling (to keep myself off Facebook), back to packing as the flight is at 9am. Trying to decide what I'll forget this time. [My Suica card - Japan rail card with stored credit.]

E@L

GSpot+

Question.

Can you link your Google+ to your phone calls to your Facebook to your Google Chat to your location to your Twitter to your Myspace to your email accounts to your txts and mmms to your ICQ to your cloud(s) to your AdultFriendFinder to your YouTube to your homework to your World of Warcraft to your Second Life to how often you get a BJ in the 4FoWs to your Flickr and Picasa to your Kindle to your web-cam to your forum to your office network to your Wiki to your blog to your iPod to your Linked-In to your Skype to your Government to the guy who knocks on your door at 4am and asks you to come with him for a little "chat"??

Or is that automatic?

E@L

Loss

I had booked a rental car for my four days in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, while I was in Sydney last week. When I went to pick the car up at the Brisbane airport, I realized that I has not brought my drivers licence with me. The Hertz guy smiled, shadenfreude, shook his head. Taxis and trains it was. I was not expecting to hire a car when I left Singapore, in fact I made a decision to not bring my licence. Sigh.

~~~~~~~

I had to zip back down to Sydney for one day in the middle of the Queensland week, and it was an early flight. I was up at 5am. I use the Xoom to check my email. Groggy, really bad cough, I put the Xoom next to the sink and lots of harsh phlegm cuts its way out with each rasping hack and retch, spit muck into the toilet. Again. Take the anti-biotics and everything else, shower, spray anti-stink, dress in yesterday's shirt and jeans (clean chinos need ironing - this a cheap serviced apartment - full laundry in the bathroom), and try to recollect, what day is it today?

As I walked or the door, I wondered if I needed my passport. No, not for a domestic flight, so I closed the door and took the lift downstairs - a Colditz like reception here, three small windows set in a faux-granite wall, each with roll-down aluminium shutters. Harsh. The people there are often surly, yawning, but this emo girl calls me a taxi.

In the correct taxi, after a bit of an inter-South-Asian stoush about whose ride I was, I looked in my man-bag, which seemed suspiciously light. Yep, I had left my Xoom in the bathroom when I was coughing. So that meant no eBooks, no Words With Friends, no sudoku - no great loss, but a pain, considering how much I enjoy playing on it. It'll be there when I get back at least.

~~~~~~~

Sunrise over Brisbane was superb, awe - real awe, fragile high clouds a brilliant burning orange/red, stippled, no more like corrugated, into waves of darker and lighter intense hues, a bas-relief effect that augmented the three dimensionality of that discrete part of the world into something beyond the artistic, beyond words, almost beyond thought.*

The spooky, mystic, weird thing is that sunset last night was exactly the same. But over there, behind me.

A thought came to me. I remember someone who was talking (in a book?) about living life to the full while you have the chance, asking, "How many more sunrises will you see before you die?"

Thinking about the taxi driver on his morning shift. Me on the red-eye. Way too many.

(* A Samuel Beckett line.)
~~~~~~~~

Anticipating yet another morning in the tea room waiting for the Doc to start the cases I was needed for, I picked up a book to read at the airport, one of Iain M Banks' Culture novels. Fell asleep trying to read it on the flight of course, something about an avatar and a forty year pregnancy, while listening to an Al Di Maeola album...

Kerthump! Did we crash? Where are we? Sydney. I wake up pale, bleary eyed and confused, like Edward Norton in the first scenes in Fight Club.

As I was walking down the aisle towards the exit, the steward called me back. I had left the Banks book on my seat. When I went back to get it from him I realized that I had left my iPod and earphones in the seat-pocket in front of me as well and had to squeeze past the surprised steward in order to go all the way to my seat at the rear (51F) and retrieve them, before they were lost.

Coming forward now down the aisle, I grabbed a newspaper from another seat so that I could do the sudoku and crossword later. I ducked into the toilet in the airport for a slash and I left newspaper on the wash-bench. Echoes of the Xoom.

Sigh.

Not a morning person.

~~~~~~~

Now I'm trying to stretch my breakfast at Micky's in Darlinghurst for three hours as the list (we doing endoscopy for the last two weeks) has been delayed until the afternoon. I could have taken the 11am flight and get things sorted a bit better in my head. I type most of this on my phone, over Eggs Benny and pot of English Breakfast tea.

~~~~~~~~

The customer was on the ball, my presence was not much use, a bit of a loss really, except for a few tips about contrast agent settings (injections for ultrasound? what next!) which the Doc did appreciate. Easy. My rep and I shook hands and we parted company on the street, he to his office in North Ryde, me to the airport to return to Brisbane, somewhat early, but hey.

A kyphotic old Nun (Sister?), tiny and shrunken, slow motion, climbed into the front seat of the first taxi to come along. She was wearing a full purple/mauve/grey (can't remember, I don't notice these things, I should, I know) gown with a wimple around her face, its veil came back over her head and down her hunched back, the old-fashioned look (these religious extremist and their obsession with sacred and profane, with head-gear, this is illegal in France you know). She was aided by a patient, smiling nurse (sister?) who then sat behind.

The next taxi went to a lady who sorta pushed in front, OK, maybe she didn't see me approaching from down the street a bit, up to where the nun had got in, and she was coming directly out of the hospital entrance. Fair cop. Another taxi lost.

A Chinese driver came along soon. I was so tired, no iPod playing, no book, my phone in my hand. I remember, I was holding it by the edge, the side to my eye, the bottom edge was on my knee, the leather flap covered the screen. I can still see it. I had just sent an email. Roaming charges through the roof. Traffic was a crawl, so the driver went off the motorway and into the web of side streets. I drifted off, lulled by the soft radio, the swearing of the driver, the comfort of the phone in my hand.

With a jerk I awoke. Had we landed? No, here was the airport departure terminal, I was in the taxi still. I scrambled under my butt to find my wallet, secret pocket (private joke), signed the credit card chit, pulled my Dryzabone from under my arm, put my man-bag over ny shoulder and went in to try and get an earlier flight. Cheap tickets, no cannot.

As I move towards the security check I go to fish out my phone, my phone, no secret pocket, not this one, not that one, it's not there, not anywhere, not in the man-bag, not in the coat pockets, not in my back pocket again, not in my man-bag again, not in my coat pockets again.

I have my receipt with the driver's code number, the taxi registration. But not the taxi company, it is not one of the common ones. The Information lady tries to help, cal your number now, but there is no international calls form her phone! The taxi coordinator outside tries to help, he calls the numbers through to the pickup stand, maybe the driver has joined the queue at arrivals. No.

Another taxi driver hands me a card with the Central Cab number, they manage a lot of companies. At Information again, she passes me the phone and I call Central. "Not this one, no we don't handle it. Call the company direct, the number is **** ****."

I call. "Our office hours are 8am to 5pm, please leave a message after the..."

Click. It is 5:05, I kid you not.

~~~~~~~~

So, I am currently 'between phones'.

~~~~~~~~

And I swear, I had already written the first parts of this post before the loss of my phone (well it's not really lost, it's in taxi 1365)

E@L


p.s. someone from North Ryde (huh? - no, not my rep!) has it. Expect to see a photo of E@L on page 3 of whatever reincarnation News Of The World, or videos of me cavorting in Wanchai, all over the internet. The SIM is blocked, my passwords have all been changed. Should I ask him to send it to me in Singapore or take it to the Olympus office just around his corner!

In the interim - which phone to get now? Galaxy S2?

The Graphographer

I write. I write that I am writing. Mentally I see myself writing that I am writing and I can also see myself writing seeing that I am writing. And I see myself remembering that I see myself writing and I remember seeing myself remembering that I was writing and I write seeing myself write that I remember having seeing myself write that I saw myself writing that I was writing and that I was writing that I was writing that I was writing. I can also imagine myself writing that I had already written that I would imagine myself writing that I had written that I was imagining myself writing that I see myself writing that I am writing.
(Vargas Llosa, 1977: epigraph of 'Aunt Julia And The Scriptwriter', attributed to Salvador Elizondo’s The Graphographer).

My favorite.

~~~~~~~~

I should be writing more. I imagine myself writing more. That's about it.

E@L

More About Hats

John Brack, Collins St 5pm


E@L has written about hats before. The significance of hats in Henry James. Himself photographed in a jaunty rakishly angled hat at a Great Gatsby themed party.

Science Fiction author James Scalzi, on his incredibly popular blog Whatever (he doesn't need my plug!), has a post up showing himself and bunch of guys wearing this newly fashionable galericulate* concealment technique to mask their MPB (and to make you look like you think you are a hipster, but actually you know you're not). The two hats on the guys (including Scalzi, wearing glasses) on the right are Panamas, correct? The one on the left, well, I'll pass, but the second bloke from left, the neo-hippy with the man-bag, that classic straw thing, that's something E@L's mother used to wear whilst gardening. LOL. Great fun was had by all I am sure.

~~~~~~~~~~~

And this photo prompted E@L to recall a mental note he made yesterday (and recalling mental notes is like remembering to take everything with him when he packs - i.e. it never ordinarily happens!) when he was looking for a café in the Queen Victoria Building here in Sydney (where he is "working" this week. It's Brisbane next week, with two hops back to Sydney, then a week in Japan, then a week in Thailand, then three weeks back in Oz! E@L will never see his new office in Tampines ever again, he hopes) and noticed a man wearing - a hat.

It was what he believes is a fedora (a type that Humphrey Bogart was fond of - at least in his movies) or maybe it was a trilby. Whatever, as Scalzi would say. It was similar to the type of hats that many men wear in old movies and probably wore at that time on the streets, at least in Melbourne (see above, Brack's absolutely brilliant painting).

Bucking the trend from the white hats of those too scared to take it all seriously, this gentleman was also wearing a dark grey suit (not the black and/or midnight blue of bankers, etc...) with a taupe (?) overcoat (bit blustery here today) and a dark woolen scarf underneath the collar, and his was a medium-dark-greyish hat. He was with two children of indeterminate, not adult who cares, age, and was leaning forward slightly to either admonish, as they no doubt deserved, or advise, which they no doubt required, them. This brought his head-gear to E@L's attention as he almost collided with the family group, and, as the man was rather tall, into his line of sight.

E@L was astonished to observe that the man looked good, natural, comfortable, at home, even, in the hat. It fit like it was meant to be there. None of this rakish, let's pretend we don't take this serious bowlers or top-hats, or white hats, such as panamas of course. This was a man of that glorious future, the 1950's! When men were tough, ready to do things mannish and they didn't push prams.

Maybe E@L recognized something of the authority figure he has been allegedly missing (according to his sister) - his father died in 1957 when E@L was merely a suckling, a mewling and puking infant. Yes, maybe it's because he relates to those old black & white episodes of Superman on TV (the TV was not B&W but mahogany with yellowish, oval speaker grill and bakelite knobs) where George Reeves would take of his trilby (or fedora?), undo his tie with his other hand and duck into a phone-booth to take off the rest of his clothes, purely for crime-fighting reasons.

Authority figure or WHAT! Someone to admire and respect and emulate or WHAT? (E@L often has had experiences of nudity in phone-booths, but hey we've all been there, right?)

Stanley Art

E@L wonders what it would look like if Superman forgot take off that hat. " Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a man in pyjamas wearing a hat!"

Yep, the man in the QVB looked exactly like how a *real man* (tm) should look. A person from the 50's.

At some point in time (probably, but maybe not, in the future) E@L is going to have to desist from wearing t-shirts, cargo shorts and sandals to work. He's going to get a frackin' fedora (or trilby), get serious, and take it dress like a man from the 50's, and yep, dress and act like someone who is 50+ years old.

E@L


* galericulate what a brilliant word!

The Rich Get Rich And The Poor Get...

Fifteen years.

via

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vote neo-con if you want this to stop? NOT!

E@L

Biting Off More Than You Can Chuwit.

"Massage Parlour King" Chuwit Kamolvisit who is standing in the election in Thailand this weekend is an immensely amusing contestant, at least by E@L's deep and meaningful assessment of his road-side posters. Tim at Cultural Snow has used these posters to point out the essential farce that floats across the surface of a particularly dangerous pond - Thai politics.

His post reminded me that I had taken some photos of Chuwit's campaign posters at the last election, just after the (for once) bloodless coup that ousted Thaskin Shinawatra, back in September 2008. And this prompted me on a mission last week to photograph as many of this current election's Chuwit anti-corruption posters around Khon Kaen and in Bangkok. Man, these just crack me up.

~~~~~~~~~~

Last election the theme seemed to be:

"Chuwit jumping from some mode of transport clutching binoculars in order to root out corruption no matter how inaccessible to public transport."





~~~~~~~~~~~

This election, his theme is more complicated and in many posters feature him holding an old-fashioned car steering-wheel:

"Chuwit confused, with road rage (palm up), tired of driving (from chasing corruption?), holding pongy baby, happy with baby-mauling dog, with road rage (pointing)."













For these posters there are slight variations in composition, hand position, frown or bulging eyes (hence degree of righteous anger), but these ones seem to be the core.

So funny. So tragic.

~~~~~~~~~~

I meant to ask one the girls at our company in Thailand to translate them for me, but never mind, she asked me out for coffee instead.

~~~~~~~~~~

The oldest coffee-shop in Bangkok, in a glorious old building at the Phramongkutklao Military Hospital, and my coffee partner / reluctant translator.





(these photos taken using RetroCam app on the GalaxyS)

E@L

Reality Bytes

Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse.

~~~~~~~~

If he had known he was going to live this long, E@L would have looked after himself better last night.

E@Hangover

~~~~~~~~

Bloody Zynga have taken away Android Honeycomb support. E@L had about ten games going on his Motorola XOOM when it locked up and kept demanding an upgrade, and then the Market said his product was not supported. Bummer. He's sitting here at Spinellis with nothing to do but get depressed. And eat.

E@aLoss

~~~~~~~~

E@L was confronted by Bruce last night at about 2:30am in The Living Room @ The Marriott. Bruce became quite heated about the direction of his (E@L's) life, and his skill at, passion for and dedication to taking it way frackin' easy.

"Challenge yourself, use that brain, see how far you can go with your talents and knowledge. You never have truly succeeded until you have failed."

Blah, blah. Chill, dude. E@L challenged him back about his suckered-in capitalist view of personal fulfillment Such success, they brainwash you, can only come by working hard for a company that convinces you to kill yourself for them in order to attain this sense of achievement but doesn't give a fuck about you and will dump you in a heartbeat if it will save them some short-term expense.

It's the old story business advisor who goes to chilled out stall-owner who works just hard enough to make just enough money: he lies in the sun when he wants to, he plays with his family. Business advisor tries to convince him to buy more stalls, hire staff, set up a bigger company, get a factory, list on the stock exchange, get rich, so that when he retires at 80 he can lie in the sun when he wants to and play with his family.

Besides, the loss of Words With Friends is going to make such an effort to achieve, and succeed or fail even harder.

E@NodsSagely

~~~~~~~~

E@L has missed the boat with his lady from a few posts ago. She is already in a "complicated" relationship, according to a Facebook spy. Hey, E@L can be complicated!

E@L

A Typical Morning's Work

What is it with breakfast?

Take the breakfast buffet as the Pullman in Khon Kaen. There is enough food here for the hungry German participants in a major convention, but there is no major convention. There are about four of us. Huge serves of veggies, salads, meats, soups, cheese, fish (last night's sushi? no thanks) are lying untouched in bain-maries and on plates all around the place. Who is going to eat all this?

Let E@L think of the mathematical description of this inverted homeopathic situation --- How about the ratio of unnecessary food to guests decreases according to the inverse exponential of the number of guests. A graph that slides from a number approaching infinity at the Y-axis (when there are zero guests) in a curve down to the X-axis (Y=0) as the number of guests approaches an appropriate number for the amount of food, and it then goes -Y when there is not enough breakfast. (Tom, am I anywhere near right?)

E@L makes barely a dent in this Siamese Babette's feast. He has a bowl of muesli, diced fruit and yoghurt, and he dehydrates two pieces of wholemeal bread in the "toaster". (What? No Vegemite?) The seventeen staff give him a Sawadee as he leaves for his 9am pick-up.

Outside, the poor struggle for 30Bht or so to get a bowl of noodle soup or a som-tam at the roadside stalls (and bloody delicious they are too).

~~~~~~~~~

E@L's sales guy has a gleaming black Beemer. It looks new, but shows 260,000km on the clock. He drives like Mark Webber in pole position, and E@L is thrown several centimetres into the faux leather seat as we accelerate up the nearly empty main street. This is OK except that the dashboard displays a *CHECK BRAKE FLUID LEVEL* warning in read-me red. E@L points this out.

"Fluid leaking, ABS dual system," he says.

"Are we able to stop?" E@L asks, somewhere between amused and fearful for his life.

"Yes," he replies and smiles. E@L wonders about emergency evacuation to Singapore.

That conversation was a lot of English for him. Almost everything E@L says to him is answered with a faux smile and "Yes." E@L is not saying this as a criticism, as his Thai, despite 13 years of visiting Thailand is a pathetic nit noi, mak.

"I couldn't get to sleep last night. There is a club somewhere, boom boom boom, music," complains E@L as a way of making conversation in the dreadfully quiet car.

"Yes."

"Are there girls there?"

He is silent.

"Girls, ladies, at the club?"

"Club? Ladies, yes," he says and smiles again.

E@L's evening is sorted.

~~~~~~~~~

True to form for E@L's hospital visits to inconveniently distant places, the customer will not be available until tomorrow. "You free morning," he says. "I pick you afternoon, we go KKU."

They head back to town, but E@L sees the turn-off to his hotel whiz by.

"Where are we going?" E@L asks.

"Service. Car brake problem."

"Well, do you really expect me to sit and wait for your brakes to be fixed?"

"Yes," he says. It that yes, I do want you to wait, or yes, as in I have no idea what you just asked?

"Can't you take me back to the hotel?"

"You want go hotel?"

E@L nods with an incredulous eyebrow raised.

"OK, I pick you up afternoon."

"What time?" E@L asks.

"Yes," he answers.

E@L holds up his watch and tap it. "What time will you pick me up?"

He smiles and nods, he gets it. "Seven," he says. He corrects himself, "Twenty o'clock." Then again, "Twelve."

E@L smiles and pats him on the shoulder. "OK, see you midday."

"Yes," he says.

~~~~~~~~~~

E@L has time to write this blog and to charge all of his gadgets. Excellently typical morning on the road in Thailand.


E@L

The Game of Thrones II - Thailand

What I have gleaned from Andrew MacGregor Marshall's articles on recent Thai history so far (I've just finished the second of four parts) is that Thailand is the land of bloody (and blood-less) coups and re-coups, vicious political intrigues, extensive corruption, rampant police and military abuses of power, a not so universal love for a not so divine royal family, free-flow massacres and an abundance of extra-judicial killings, assassinations, riots and lynchings, nasty retaliatory sectarian violence in the predominantly Malay (therefore Muslim) South and misguided attempts to quell it, incessant lies and counter-lies, and ... smiles and pleasant tourism.

Hardly any (?none) of these atrocities have been properly investigated, for reasons Andrew makes perfectly clear.

It is heart-breaking to be reminded of these incidents in such great detail if you love Thailand as I do.

It would make Machiavelli blush. He could come back and write a contemporary Thai version of his masterpiece (and he might still call it "The Prince"). George R.R. Marshall would be going to create a plot as intricate as what is going here.

OK, most this turbulent (ready bloody) history and royal intrigue was already known (check Wikipedia for a rundown on the major characters) and there are several excellent (and not so excellent) books and articles (most unavailable in Thailand) that Andrew quotes from extensively. But the key coup (choice of words?) that Andrew has made is to integrate confidential cables sent from the US embassy in Thailand that were briefs, updates, analyses and comments on the political situation. These were made available through Wikileaks. Their perspective is always interesting and was often head-shakingly ignored.

What makes Andrew's article essential reading about Thailand is that the recent history has now all been put together in one place, and it has never been been analyzed so fiercely and fearlessly out loud as this.

Andrew is longer welcome in Thailand, he mentions on FB. Well, there's a surprise.*

Seriously, I can't talk much about this here either as maybe I could get a lèse majesté rap just for linking to his site, who knows how they think. The example of Harry Nicolaides who made a vaguely derisory mention of a certain Prince in his otherwise bottom-of-the-harbour-bound unheard of novel, Verisimilitude, leaps to mind.

Game of Thrones? It's not ALL about the ascession when King Bhumipol dies, as he may do soon, but it is MOSTLY about the ascession. And therefore who is aligned to whom and who will rule Thailand (i.e. reap the benefits of it's intractable corruption) when that happens.

~~~~~~~~~~

I'll say no more. It would be employment suicide for me to go into the details as I come here about once a month. Luckily this blog is completely anonymous. Right?

As I said in my post about Nicolaides' arrest:

"Danger Danger Will Robinson, for serious bloggers and writers in foreign countries with low-tolerance laws, not just those of us with smart-arse attitudes looking for the easy laughs...

Words. People take them so fucking seriously..."

~~~~~~~~~~

As an aside, the Prince's cousin, his first wife (! ... whom he intensely disliked and finally divorced, with her as the guilty party even though he had had several children by his mistress because she could not proffer her case thanks to those convenient lèse majesté laws [Wikipedia]...) Soamsawali, now known as "The Princess Mother of the King's First Grandchild", has been at the home-stay place near Chiang Mai where I nearly got engaged (not) when I visited it about five years ago... (Her mother was devastated when I did not return with an offer of marriage!)

They have photo commemorations of Soamsawali's three visits up on the wall, wearing firstly a Rage Against The Machine t-shirt, then a Sepultra t-shirt, and finally a Rolling Stones tongue-logo t-shirt.

Now SHE would have made a great queen.

E@L

* (No more tattoo sessions with Izzy, Andrew.)

Don't

... post a link to this website while you are in Thailand...

Oops.

E@L

Eeeediot E@L. Again. Still.

There is a very pretty lady who works with our distributor and whom E@L was interested in a while ago. Well he still is interested, because she seems a very nice lady and her colleagues think she is nice as well, which is not all that common amongst the ladies in our distributor - hey girls, joking!! She is closer to 30 than 20 so no Peter Phelia accusations again please. Yes, she is slim and fit (so that's E@L's aspirations out the window then) and has a lovely, smooth, rather China-doll face without being too round, and her hair is trimmed short (no prizes for guessing the colour), PLUS her cheeks dimple up when she smiles. Aaawwww. She is lovely in fact and, E@L was given to believe, single.

For some reason, as he walked onto the booth at the conference at The Capella last year (did he mention it? This is where he had the suite for a night.), late as is usual, he saw her, and *pling!*, he instantly liked the cut of her jib, as they say. Trim-buttocked, self-possesed, and with a professional (not another nurse for god's sake!) attitude, AND (he later found out) she laughs at his jokes! It is rare indeed that on first sight E@L is so taken with anyone who was not wrapping herself rhythmically around a chrome pole. Seriously, he has high standards about non-hookers. Stop laughing in the back there.

The sensation of attraction, so unusual for him, so strong, was enough to make him think he ought to do something serious about this declining, crumbling Roman ruin aspect of his existence, his love life. For once in his, um, life.

E@L managed to get her number with a deft little manouevre when, in yet another flat-spot, booth-traffic wise, they were all comparing phones. E@L had his new Samsung and was showing off the Android interface. She liked to play sudoku it seemed, so her showed her the app. Everyone else was bored instantly and they moved away. He then asked her to check something else out on the phone. It was the contact app, which he had opened and already entered her name. The cursor was ticking over in the mobile phone link. She smiled and entered her number. E@L then moved away and sent her a few jokey little texts. She responded and smiled across. Man, he was flying here. He was smokin'! He might even get to know a real girl, up close, personal and without any cash payment at the end, for once in many moons.

This was unusual behaviour on E@L's part already, and he wondered to himself if he wasn't turning a significant corner in his human development. Very rarely, as in never, does E@L take a girl's number, nor give her his. Such an exchange of electronic fluids (moving electrons, right, flow like water, right?) might mean there is a hope of anyone seeing anyone again, might mean someone could mistake this for the possibility of it developing further, of E@L risking something, of E@L putting some emotions out there, at risk. He is Love Risk averse, surely this has sunk in your tiny minds already? So, can we keep it a simple, cold, clear impersonal transaction, thanks? Just you, me, and several million potential babies drowning in spermicidal latex and/or saliva.

This does not always work as a tactic, as sometimes he DOES want to contact someone again. ("Er, hello? It's me, yeah the trick guy you just... Hey, was wondering. Have you seen/stolen my wallet and credit cards?")

So, after taking her number, E@L waited the requisite number of days before calling, as in calling with a txt. But she couldn't make it for coffee. Again, when E@L txt'd, on the weekend, she still couldn't make it for a coffee or indeed any other type of drink Saturday OR Sunday (at Church?). She gave no hints, like jokes or anything, that she might actually have been interested, just matter of fact, "Sorry I am not able to." Two refusals, two negatory responses. E@L knows when he is licked, but just make certain he does know it, E@L confirmed this assumption with his buddy, the master-dater Indy (remember him?), and therefore he let the potentially life-saving, personally enriching, emotionally fulfilling, free sex, female friend thing slide.

The rest of her work colleagues teased E@L mercilessly when they found out that he had been interested in her (he had told them of course at the exhibition already, and like they didn't see him drooling like a buffoon whenever she was near) and this has served only to convince him to keep his distance, as he is pathetic, so completely pathetic. They all got together at the Beerfest (last year's not this current debacle) a few weeks later and both E@L and his erstwhile friend were so embarrassed by all this teasing that had been going on that they didn't talk at all. She didn't even look at him in fact. No doubt they thought they were being funny with this silly behaviour as well.

Adults can be so childish.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other week, at the same meeting at which E@L had first made his wizard-like phone move a year before, they caught up again. This time the exhibition was at Suntec, so no sake parties this time boys and girls.

They were on the same booth again, he with his new company's new machine, she with some stuff you just don't want to ask about if the words "uterine biopsy" don't take your fancy. He said an hello to her and a few other small pleasantries, but nothing more, keeping his tone equal with her colleagues as with her, pretending that all that guff is water under the bridge now. For most of the first day, E@L had not hassled her, until when things were quiet, unlike most of the time when booth traffic was merely dead, she made a surprise move on him and came across to his area (like, um, three steps). She light-heartedly slapped her hand on the machine and, with a big smile that almost looked unforced, asked E@L to tell her about out this new-fangled gadget. Which he did. In jovial, light-hearted detail, but sticking to the actual topic. She then moved away. Funny that. E@L didn't get it at the time. She didn't come back. They didn't talk again. He didn't even think about it.

Until today.

It just struck E@L today, about 2pm Bangkok time, what is it now, a month later, here on this plane to Chiang Mai, that something else might have been on her mind rather than genuine interest in the ergonomic marvels and technological breakthroughs in our new piece of plastic and tin.

E@L groaned, as his entire body imploded, and sank into his seat. He wished he could melt away. And then he leapt up and ran like a madman, at least after he undid his buckle by lifting this lever, towards the front of the plane, forcing staff to hold him down and tazer him many, many times to the testicles, where he most deserved it. Still he tried to push through them, tried to break open the door - OK a few hundred chinese and American tourists die as well, but hey, we are talking severe embarrassment here!

Far. King. Iddy. Ot.

Of course she wasn't interested in the machine. Why the fuck would she be suddenly interested in some stupid machine? This was a test and E@L had failed. Game Over man. She was trying to start up a conversation with E@L about anything *other* than this frackin' ultrasound equipment. She was testing him to see exactly how stupid, immature and thick-headed E@L really is. Very is the answer. Whether he was your typical male or not, in other words. We all can't be Proust. The slight raising of an eyebrow will only send us off in search of lost eyebrow tweezers, not into 3000 pages of emotional analysis! If you want to tell a man something, hit us on the head with a TV remote or post a sign in front of the telly with superglue. And you'd better make that VERY opaque paper.

She was trying, last ditch eh, to break the ice and make the new first move in getting to know E@L better. She wanted to find out if *he* was still interested in seeing more of her, to coin a phrase. Surely E@L, having been spoken about in glowing terms by her apologetic colleagues could not really that much of a dunderhead, that much of a man-child, so socially incompetent and naive, too shy to make another attempt to get closer to her, too shy to have an innocent (or not) chat like any normal human being as to miss this brilliant chance when it is offered, finally, surely? But instead of reading the approach as something serious, up relatively close, nice and personal, E@L took it objectively at face value. Sales pitch, not for himself, but the frackin' equipment.

Somebody hit him upside the head. Please. Harder. Again.

Perhaps she genuinely was busy last year. Perhaps last year she was in a relationship and couldn't otherwise see him. But there's no perhaps about one thing: E@L is an idiot.

He never ceases to amaze himself with this incompetence with women, young and old. Should he call her up when he gets back to town, or is it too late? As in WAY too late? Hmmph. No, don't! Of course it's too late, his bolt of incompetence has been well and truly shot.

Anyway, E@L wouldn't hold any respect her now if he found that she had not given up on him completely in utter disgust at his idiocy.

E@L


*there's a cartoon I want to use again, but I can't remember where I last posted it... Oh never mind.

Jumping Meme

Up in the air in Croatia!!

Brac
Korcula, where Marco Polo was born
Brac again
Hvar, a brilliant place, look at that water!

E@L had amazing fun on this holiday... Croatia is such a beautiful place. (Google it for better images than I could take!)

~~~~~~~~~~~

A million hugs and kisses to Izzy for encouraging me to join with a great crew. Love and hugs of course to our fellow travellers, Danijel (main photographer as I left my camera on the desk) and Vicky.

E@L

p.s. Hey crew, I got my sunglasses fixed! The lens doesn't fall out half so often... But I'm packing for Thailand now, where did I put them? In a secret compartment with the Vegemite and pig fat?

What Proust Can Teach You

I felt so keenly for Mme de Guermantes that I could scarcely breathe; it was as though part of my breast had been cut out by a skilled anatomist and replaced by an equal part of immaterial suffering, by its equivalent in nostalgia and love. (...)

Alas, if for me meeting any person other than herself would have been a matter of indifference, I felt that, for her, meeting anyone in the world other than myself would have only been too endurable.

In Search Of Lost Time: Vol III, The Guermantes Way. Marcel Proust. (1981, Scott Moncrieff & Kilmartin translation.)

E@L

Nabokov: Redux or, The Principle Of Three,

E@L does have a million things to confess to, to enlighten you with, to explain, to reveal and to review, to explicate, to examine and allow you to cogitate over, as he does himself, given the time.

Time? Things to talk about? So little, so many.

Like Tristram Shandy, E@L is afraid that the cataloguing and explanation of his life has become more and more frustratingly difficult as time slips away from him, as that evaluation of one's life is for all of us, is a task never ends, unlike the life itself, which has its inexorable termination. Incident upon incident stumble over themselves and demand to be discussed, each incident requiring more words, even though it builds upon the facts of the earlier.

Forever in E@L's blogging heart lurks the question that no blogger should ever given utterance to (well, not so much, at least lately) ...

-- Why?

-- Why bother?

OK, that's two questions but you get E@'s point. If E@L can't keep up with what's going on, what's the point of your people hanging around? Don't talk to me about the unexamined life...

For example...

~~~~~~~~~~

E@L has been on an extended tour as the previous posts might have told you, had you the wisdom to know of them, and the last 10 days have been in Croatia with Izzy, her TALL Bosnian boyfriend and another young, independent lady, of whom more, obliquely, soon.

C***-struck. Err, Croatia-struck that is. Amazing place, party time, great food and wine, old buildings, history, stoney beaches, Listerine-blue clear water. Great place to have sex, we are told. Unfortunately if you're E@L's age you better have an 80ft ocean going yacht to back up the size of your cigar if you want to win the heart and/or pussy of the lady who's lounging beside you at Carpe Diem for the evening ...

But Pussy-Struck, that's an entirely other type of story.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The tip of the tongue takes a trip down the the palate to tap at three on the clitoris, or E@L's would if it was allowed.

Yes, that sad, sad creature, the obsessed and depressed man out of his depth and mind with Nabokovian, Lolitian, illegal in some countries, desire... That was E@L for the last week or so. In the midst of all this amazing scenery and beauty, completely gone was he on the tight arse attached to the tanned legs walking in front of him.

Desire. What a word! Fuck-nutty is also a good word, little bit less serious, but hey.

Cramping over, his gut churning with physical discomfort brought on by irrational emotional disturbances, his brain reeling with completely reality-divorced fantasies. If ever there was a bust to Descarte's mind/body dualism, then sexual longing, unrequited lust, is it.

Here's this old fat bald ugly (yet mildly amusing) man, Dantean-forest-lost in self-hatred, self-revulsion and chronic self-abuse: and here's this (way too) young (but not a teenager) elfin wisp of a thing, completely in control of her bi-sex-life, completely, (or pretending to be completely) unaware of the lust and longing that gives rise to E@L's stomach acids (and his occasional bouts of depression and weeping), completely indifferent to it (as it should be) one presumes, and no matter how amusing the self-deprecating stories this Humbert Humbert may mumble out at 4am, and no matter that they are sharing a bedroom, E@L is not going to manage a successful sexual connection. Maybe if he asked politely, you say? Maybe, yes, but what can we expect, how will we ever know? E@L can't even order kopi with kaya toast correctly

And don't you lecture him. about the moral ambiguity here, about the lessons we all should have learned. Don't talk to E@L about the classics, your Dostoevsky, your Shakespeare, your Thomas Hardy, your P.G. Wodehouse, the plays and poetry, the novels and the fillums. He know, he knows. He probably knows better than most of you... He has read about it, watched appalled as other men, good men, true men, were sucked into the vortex of it. But he has also watched masters surf it with skill and joy, their used condoms falling back like the bubbles of latex with traces of toxic albumen in them that they are, onto the streets below.

Unattractive stupid old man and immensely attractive clever young woman, new? A NEW thing? Read the death notices for details. Read the applications for the restraining orders.

~~~~~~~~~

Of course E@L recognizes it. He is actually enjoying the pain of it, sucking it in, it's grist to his mill of incident. He is trying to retain the feeling or its memory, but like hunger or satiety, once it's gone, it's gone. Until the next time.

It's every love-lorn tourist's story in Bangkok, is it not?

E@L has identified the causative agent in cases like this. It is the as yet un-blogged-about "Principle of The Three".

If one goes back to the same hooker bar and talks to the same hooker for the third time (the third time is the charm they always say) then the trap has been fired. New neuronal pathways have been established. Those lines about , "You are so handsome", "You heb good heart", etc... have been burned with serotonin into a new depiction of reality. The brain is a living organism (for some of us) and is capable of almost anything (except communicating effectively with cafe staff).

And the mere proximity to a cute babe, hooker or not (as in this case) over a period of three or more days can have the same type of effect. Particularly if she is nice to you. OMG how quickly "She's nice to me" can become, "oh she's attracted to me"...

How irrational are we, I mean, fuck it's just unbelievable.

~~~~~~~~

And when you are a cute, sexually energised, in-control female and this previously nice avuncular, nearly three times your age, sister's ex-flat-mate starts drooling in your general direction, well it can get get creepy and it's best to ignore it and go out and try to fuck the people you really came here to fuck, like young international party hunks or the rich old cigar guys on their 80ft yachts, and just be polite to the creepy old guy in the bed opposite (when, if, you get home that night/morning).

But as E@L has noted before - everyone wants to fuck good-looking (or rich, if you're Singaporean) people. Even ugly people want to fuck good-looking people. But as for good-looking people wanting to fuck ugly people? (i.e. the rest of us), well ah there's your mis-match.

~~~~~~~~~

Still it's reassuring to know that his heart still beats within its copious emotional frame, that amino acids can be stirred into stomach burning action, that there is pain other than in the idiopathic neuropathy of his feet. Nothing new here, move along nothing to see. Man being stupid.

Its just that happens in the stoney cold heart of E@L so rarely that E@L has to post it, and he will apologize to the parties concerned later.

~~~~~~~~

Yes, E@L can remain emotionally detached from his intellectual confusion - um, maybe he means the other way around. Um. Maybe not. Well he can write about it here, because hey, who gives a fuck, nobody's listening, but for other reason's as well...

Because E@L has been on the receiving end, he's been in the same situation (apart from the being cute and young bit) himself.

There *are* (as in *have been*) women in and around E@L's life (and not only the 50ft Zombie Divorcees of expat-land) who have become d***-struck for him, for some Darwin-forsaken superficial reasons.

We mean that there are women who had become emotionally linked, but from their side only, to E@L. OK, when we say 'some', E@L means one or two. E@L might like these ladies, indeed he *does* like these ladies. But never in a month of first days of the month would E@L consider sleeping with any of them. Last lady on earth sort of thing. But nice people one and all. And E@L was nice back to them, which only exacerbates the situation.

And so E@L understands the complete bemusement with which the object of his obscure desire fends off any clumsy, debasing (for E@L), and creepy (for her), moves, just as he has said, "Thanks, nioce to see you, please back off now", to his own unwanted, wannabe paramours.

(There's the as yet un-written novel/chapter/page/paragraph/C&P of this sentence tale of the surreptitious stroke on the arm from one stalker lady as E@L was kissing farewell to his then genuine ex-girl-friend. Urghh. Creepy.)

~~~~~~~~

These completely incoherent thoughts are not meant to indicate anything to anybody, btw.

It's been four days since E@L had a decent sleep - more posts need to be discoursed upon concerning those days in the Croatian sun, those evenings Tequila Booming and clubbing until the wee hours. E@L needs to have more time than E@L has lifetime available, enough time to do them justice, every minute a philosophy.

He wants to do his various dances (Joyce vacuuming, the sprinkler, big fish little fish cardboard box) more. Tonight, at the Singapore Beerfest, he would have bopped and wiggled to elevator music (those jumping on the tables and chairs things during the U2 covers set, they were most embarrassing, could please E@L have this evening back), the niteclub beats were still with him (plus listening to Daft Punk TRON Legacy on the plane back) from Thursday night with the girls. Those memories are in heavy rotation in E@L's head.

As are the memories of E@L walking through the crowds outside the Singapore Flyer crying out like a preacher, calling out from his soul things like: "My life is a mere husk of truth, a sham, a lie, all is emptiness. I am not who you have thought I am. I need reality. I need truth, but I cannot find it amongst you people! Taxi driver, take me to the Towers..."

And the trip to Orchard Towers tonight with an over-emotional Bruce who may or may not have touched the scrotum sac of your truly, though in jest [oops and FB evidence surfaces of vice versa], that was 20 minutes of hell, from the great pile of someone else's crap all over the toilet seat, to the choking testosterone fumes in Ip-an-enemas. All those memories needs to be expunged as well. There is not enough time, nor the need to talk about them anymore.

Maybe the truth is that E@L doesn't need the Towers, for he certainly doesn't want them. If there was only some other way (beyond frantic masturbation). And so he left tonight by himself, carrying a $10 posie of flowers from the guy in the wheelchair at the entrance. E@L sniffed the roses, so nice. All other things OT completely revolted and repulsed him.

What he wants and what he needs (but doesn't really need, though it would be nice) is to fuck Izzy's horny little sister till the stars explode.

~~~~~~~~~

And none of this is going to happen or needs to happen.

Because the words are here now, this is the reality of it for you, dear reader. Anyone else's opinion is mere facts.

On the other hand, there's always love. A love without self-pity.

E@L


*one word from anyone involved and this comes down if that is their wish*

Split Enz Tomorrow

[It's getting late, everybody wants to go to bed, I need to get out of this room, and as tomorrow might be quite busy as we pack and ferry over to Brac, I'll have to post this unfinished and unpolished (since when are my posts ever polished?) and leave it, destined to be never finished, never polished, never even frackin' spell-checked...]

~~~~~~~~

Cafe latte in the heat, under the wide restaurant umbrellas. D and I are reading as Izzy and Vic sketch the layering stone of the buildings in the palace grounds where builders have capped the previous age's rubble with contemporary habitation, so that on the top levels there are wooden shutters drying and cracking, the paint splitting, some are open (people are living there) and some closed (are people living there?). But all my thoughts are in the book I am reading - I've already told how I prefer to read with things happening around me - I need activities to generate white noise, I need people to ignore - it is a book on Picasso's Demoiselle's d'Avignon as it happens and D is unwinding with The Wind-up Girl. But I sense comfort and holiday from the patterns of the whicker chair under my arse; whicker and torpitude, what the hell it with that?

I can ignore the chattering groups of elderly tourists following an elevated numbered flag, broad Croatian accents (I once would have said Yugoslavian accent), I can disregard some shouting, laughing, posturing and the shatter of dropped glass where an excess of alcohol at a table over square has fueled the some forceful emotions and opinions, while the camera click and the clock chimes the half-hour. It's bloody hot as well, did I mention, though weather.com says only 27 (30% chance of rain) , it feels so much more, white glared from white stone, the air's stillness, sapping energy, greenhouse effect under the umbrella says Vic. And out of a blue sky a drop or two of rain falls, huh? Out of this clear sky? Maybe (must be) some clouds we can't see, beyond the buildings, some drops borne by a wind that we can't feel.

We'd like to move, now, make plans for the afternoons sunbathing on top of the corner tower, we cannot keep sitting here without purchasing something else, but lethargy is king in the summer palace of the Emperor Diocletian.

~~~~~~~~

Textures of the stone. I must brush my hand agains the walls as I pass along the narrow deep alleys, the oncoming crowds are bottlenecking our way, and so we wander instead into the tour of the palace basement, cool, stone room to stone room, where those blocks that had been hewn from porous tuffa are pitted with decay, crumbling, and water seeps down, dripping, pooling, degrading the foundations even more, flushing away the mortar, and the walls in so danger of collapse so that we cannot enter the room with the ancient olive press, or we shouldn't but I push back the steel barrier and we pass in for a brief, up close examination - ah, that is a stone trough to catch the olive oil and not a solid block of granite.

Back up in the palace grounds we move on from square to square - though square is not the worth for these multi-sided, niched, many-alleyed open spaces - to the church tower, to the circular hole of the collapsed domed of the vestibule, and the clocks ring the hour. Under my hand I find bricks of soft stone that are flaking and dropping edges and corners, then the pebbled surface of granite and shiny smooth marbled columns shipped across the Mediterranean from Egypt. As the others climb the spiral staircase in the church-tower, I sit my arse on a slippery, arse-smoothed granite sepulcher, its inscription chiseled in AD MCCCCV.

On the lower walls of most houses the aged limestone blocks remain firm and my fingers slide across their solid surfaces. I feel their strength and resilience against the passage of time, feel them stippled with the fine cuts of the laborers chisel (or is it a band-saw?). They are still firm, strong, and shiny from nearly two thousand years of of the sweeping hands of passers-by.

Over the large blocks of the original walls are the next layer and its reclaimed arches (some bridge apartment to apartment and are flowing over with planter boxes), are some old bricks with new mortar, on the next layer up, newer limestone again. New old shutters on new old windows. And some of the layers are lateral - wide old Roman era stones still stand as the right side of the wall, but smaller limestone bricks make up the middle portion of the house and thin red bricks, rendered with crumbling stucco extend to the left. It's a hodge-podge, a melange, it's living and growing, reforming anew from the vestiges and remnants of the old, sorry, from the ancient to the merely old, and on top goes a satellite dish for the international sports channels.

~~~~~~~~

We are staying on the Eastern walls of the palace of Diocletian, the empire's divider, the first of the Eastern emperors, the most enthusiastic Christian persecutor (welcome to the Balkans). We are just near the south-east corner tower, in an nice apartment on the fourth floor - I recommend it even though it is a walk-up. We step along our path to the tower and lie on lounge chairs, lean over the edge and watch people on the promenade, watch out for the flocks of swallows that come out towards evening and chase the small flies (the swallows do, not us). The top of the tower has been gone for hundreds of years, maybe a thousand years or more but hey, the view is still nice.

~~~~~~~~

Tourists, tourists, they flock too. They throng and photograph and stand like slowly melting statues as they examine maps, slack-jawed, and reposition their glasses. Just like anywhere, just like everywhere, they tour like tourists. But us, we... ah fuck it, we tour like jaded, dizzy bus-hoppers as well, we stop for the photo-op, we wear our sun-hats and carry our day-packs (or man-bags), we eat at the hip places where only those millions of tourists in the know eat, we pass our hands along the stone and catch all sorts of e-coli and staph-A, we stare amazed at the resilience of stone and ponder our own ephemerality (as those that have any sensitivity should do), we participate in the walking that wears down, we half-read the history we are supposed learn, half-see the sights we are supposed to observe, we look on to the next place before we have finished in the pizza restaurants of the current. In the end we give up pretending to be anything else and we revel in our belonging to this flock of ducks wading in the waters of history .

So we scratch our initials in the millennia old tower ('My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings') and move on to the next blip on our itinerary...

E@L

Berlin Platzenplatz

Last few days E@L has been in Berlin with a friend from HK/Singapore who is currently staying in Lubeck on an extended assignment. There was holiday in Deutschland on Thursday so he came down on the train for a catch up as he is chronically bored in Lubeck with only a few native English speakers in the company and only so many Aussie TV series you can download through iTunes. Neither of us are particularly atherletic, more artheritic, but we did walking tours until the need for beer overcame us. This was relatively soon and relatively often. As the hotel is in a more austere shopping part of Berlin, Charlottenburg, we did not find much to do here, except a small chill bar around the corner called Gecco - aptly enough for those of us from those sultry equatorial climes where the little lizards are endemic.

(*Aside: the toilet walls in this bar are done with tiles running obliquely, a Cabinet of Dr Caligari look to them, and sure enough, from the perspective of sitting on the dunny, the door seems to be falling away from you - woah, spooky, mystic, weird - and there is nothing you can tell yourself that will allow your brain to overcome this effect, it is really disconcerting, and no E@L was not drunk at that time.)

E@L's partner in misdemeanor has a plethora of friends and family around the world, and he contacted an ex-Berlinischer who recommended a few bars and restaurants around Alexanderplatz and few other platzes. The best platz for wandering between food and drink we thought, was somewhere near Prenzlauer (I've lost, amongst other things, the email with exact address [how can you delete so COMPLETELY an email that it is no longer even in the trash bin, and accomplish this disappearing trick just by putting your phone back into your pocket?]) platz, an area with wide footpaths, lots of lindens to be unter, Italian restaurants, bars for University-types, bars with 80's music, very relaxing, very cool, very holidayish, but with a *hint* of decadence. It would be, we decided, the place to stay if we ever had to move to Berlin, which is not ever going to happen.

~~~~~~~~

So with, our matching (white) Berlin tourist caps, we walked through the Tiergarten, we photographed Gold Lizzy, -



and E@L had a piss. We walked down to the Brandenburg Gate. We had beers at small place there and E@L had a piss. We Tour-Bussed it to Checkpoint Charlie and E@L had a piss in the "museum there.

E@L's phone was by then dead (camera is on the desk at home, as mentioned in prior post) and so he is relying on his buddy to post photos of this part of the trip, which included the last remaining part of The Wall.

Is there a toilet here somewhere?

~~~~~~~

Associated Incidents of Interest (but which would require a lengthy blog post each on their own) on this Berlin leg of the trip:


Missed and pay for next one: flight from Barcelona to Berlin.

Lost and found in the laundry basket: one watch.

Missing: several hours on Friday night.

Misplaced and found under the side table: one folder of flight and hotel information.

Sat upon then bent back into an almost acceptable shape that holds the lens in for a few minutes: one brand new pair of $350 prescription sunglasses.

Not E@L's size: a pair very comfortable shoes, damn.

Confused then sorted: taxi directions to either the Stasi prison (Hohenshönburg) and the Nazi concentration camp (Sachsenhausen).

Scary and depressing and evoking a deep misanthropy: see above.

Perfect: a new man-bag that the Xoom fits into nicely.

Fracking sore: two pair of feet (E@L's and buddy's).

Very funny: the tour guide on the open-topped tourist bus (yes, as mentioned, we gave up on the walking soon enough).

Admired: the tall, gorgeous, blue-eyed girls, so many of these Aryans beauties, so attractive I just want to selectively breed with them - either that or just fuck them.

Scarred for life: the top of E@L's head where he tried to take down the steel bars of the tour bus's retracted sun/rain shelter (he blames the peak of his white Berlin tourist hat for blocking his vision of this as he came up the stairs).

Uncertain: the address of the hotel in Split that Izzy's bf has organized, and once again E@L has lost the email (resolved by the Split taxi driver calling the apartment).

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Of course the walk around the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was sobering in the extreme. What is it about our understanding of ourselves, the enlightenment and the progress of civilization, what did we miss in this alleged growth that allowed us to misinterpret the long chain of events that led to this Nazi situation, and not just in Germany, that allowed our (self-denied) complicity in such a death machine, and for us to not have seen it coming. Well, there was our acceptance of the pseudo-science of eugenics and the self-serving, profit-motivated design and implementation of technology, such as IBM's punch-card machines, the research of chemical companies... We just keep telling ourselves we're not as bad as history tells we really are, because hey, back then people were savages. Evil is banal, as it always as been no matter which country gets caught out in its bloodthirsty banality... (Belgians in the Congo, short memory, Americans in Abu Ghraib, must have a, Russians in the Gulag, sho-or-ort memory). Savages, all noble in our suits and ties.



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When we read about, hear about, see people do terrible things, we claim that they are being "inhuman". But what it really amounts to is that they are being quintessentially "human".

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Now E@L has farewelled his buddy to the Hauptbänhhof for his train back to Lubeck and is waiting for his flight to Split at an Irish Pub in Schoenenfeld . They are everywhere, those bloody Irish. He is looking forward to some time with Izzy and her part-time video director boyfriend, plus Izzy's little sister. E@L will have 12 days enjoying the sun and clear waters of the islands on the Dalmation coast, then reaching Dubrovnik. Maybe he'll get some time to report on this later**...

E@L


** Am in Split now typing the rest of this, putting in some more typos and where we are is amazing, gorgeous. We are staying, I kid you not, in a part of Emperor Diocletian's 4th century palace - the part with air-con. Photos and more blogging to come.