Farang Girl

and into 2012 we careen headlong...

2012-01-09T05:40:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

It's been six years I've been writing this blog in some form or another. Isn't that a terrifying thought? We're all six years older (well you are, not me - as I have already established, I age in reverse, like Benjamin Button).

Luckily, because I have little patience for nostalgia at 8.42 in the evening after a buttery Malaysian dinner, I will not wax emotional about all the things that have come to pass. Also because everything is obsessively documented here with no element at all of embellishment or sarcasm or any omission of any fact, and it's all clickable in links and visualise-able via stolen images and doesn't need rehashing ... I have to tell you about... drumroll, please Michael Scott...

... The Best NYE Ever

Phangan! After a rocky start that included the obligatory cab going the wrong way in peak-hour commuter traffic for 45 minutes scenario followed by a panicky motorcycle ride through said traffic at light speeds with no helmets just to make it to the gosh-darned bus station on time, everything went smoothly.

We made it to our destination beach while the sun shone (through some clouds), wading up to it around boulders at high tide, humble enclave of rustic (ie shitty) bungalows that go for 500thb a night (AUD 15). PCF and I were technically sharing the room, but as is true me-in-Phangan fashion I would spend a grand total of no nights at all in that room.

Around the boulder are the bungalows.
A bit hard to get to at night.

Day 1 - Haad Rin AKA Don'tsville

I hate Haad Rin, the main beach. I went there to see say hi to a few people I met last year who work at various drinking establishments, serving alcohol in various-sized vessels and twirling various objects set alight. PCF was in no mood for the yobbery, so I met up with Sassy, Lil Bell and Kevin - those last two of those being Sassy's sugar gliders ie. Reasons For Girls to Come Up and Talk To Us or the 'They're Sugar Gliders' 'What??' 'Su-gar Gli-ders' Show.

As all nights on Haad Rin, this night invariably wound up as a tragi-comedy. Tragic examples of humankind or I will say mankind in this instance, because it was really only the penis-encumbered people on the beach who were acting like... (I can't even think of a harsh enough insult here, which is telling, coming from me)... the hate-child of Ted Bundy and Saudi Arabia? Does that paint a bad enough picture? Cro-magnon man would have been dismayed to see his descendants act this way. Everyone there and everything they did was a 'don't'.

Even cartoon cavemen have the decency to club their women over the head before they try to drag them away but there was no such courtesy on Haad Rin beach. Anyway, annoying story short, I crashed at Sassy's nearby bungalow around 4am lest I attempt to make good on my threats of 'glassing' someone with a plastic bucket. I awoke fitfully during the night punching the air, vaguely aware I had sugar gliders launching and landing all over me.

Haad Rin, before the human garbage was washed
back ashore. Or woke up, whatever.

Night 2 - Haad Tien calls, I go

Or more accurately, I text my ex in Haad Tien, he texts backs, I go, Sassy follows, we stay and don't come back for three days and then only briefly. This first night ends up exactly as you would expect of a first night back in the fold of your ex-island home. I was so happy to be back, I actually embraced bunking in the stick room, even though it was NYE eve and I had no eye-make up remover. (And let's face it, like we were even gonna blink before dawn).

The island bar/bungalow/beach is the same legendary place as always. Much the same faces and if not, the same kind of lovely tie-dye-and-feather-wearing flouncy folk with their hippy tendencies, lack of proper tethering to reality and awe-inspiring tolerances to natural (as in sourced-from-a-perhaps-nearby-field) highs. I'm happy to be here was on high rotation in my head.

Sassy had a good time, too. She paraded the rodents about, much to the glee/horror of other patrons, depending on their mental state, she nursed a bottle of top-shelf tequila given to her by Island Ex, I spent some quality catch-up time with aforementioned Island Ex and after finally crashing out in the stick room, Sassy, the fur babies and I slept well into the afternoon in the lead-up to NYE.

Day 3 - Kevin pt 1

On NYE we paid our dues by 'working' in the restaurant, an open-air kitchen/sala area which is our base camp. After that, the usual: we ate, drank, counted down, drank more, danced, walked around a lot, spoke to many, and eventually welcomed the friends we had abandoned on the other side of the island.

In a Small World fashion we met people we know from BKK by surprise, there was revelry and smiling, hordes of people constantly at the bar and general island hedonism without the part where guys turn into disgusting slabs of mobile rape. It was nice to not be at Haad Rin.

At some point close to bedtime I was left in charge of Kevin. At some point after that, I lost him (bitch can somehow wriggle his way out of two bags). And so ensued the not-so-Happy New Year. We all passed out early like Grump Gusses in the restaurant, exhausted and worried about a runaway mouse-sized sugar glider. Sad, sad faces.

They sleep like they're dead. Also off-putting.

New Year's Day
Wake up. Look for Kevin. Call Kevin. Feel bad. Hate the new year. Drink wine and jaeger to make it better. Feel better! It's 4pm and it's raining but the bar on campus is still open, there are at least a hundred people dancing there in the wet and, operating as people on holiday on an island who have just lost their exotic pet do, we joined them.

At some point Khun Mehr came looking for us because we'd ordered food from her (come on, she likes cooking) and had forgotten all about it due to white wine and Malibu and whatever else was in our glasses (Don't Ask, Don't Tell clause invoked). Sassy and I pranced about - me in a souvenir-store-bought sarong shirt I had to buy because all my clothes were on a different beach and Sassy in the same outfit but with the sleeves rolled up to make it look like a different outfit (a foolproof disguise).

We made up a single-line song called 'We Got To Pee' that everyone in the queue for the bathroom loved, saw yet another familiar face (and torso) from BKK (who I was apparently - and understandably, come on - flirting with in an inappropriate manner), drank a lot of Malibu and enjoyed the island rain because it was refreshing and you couldn't tell what time of day it was (late) and it made us all feel like jungle witch doctors doing a raindance for the corn crops.

Remote hippy bar on outcrop

At some point, we hiked to a remote hippy bar on an outcrop over the Gulf, walking up and down a thigh-blasting trail in monsoonal rains. We drank more. Stayed awhile. Talked A LOT. Around 4am we trudged back to base camp in the harshest part of the storm, of course.

It had been an epic night, like the first week of Survivor where they're just shivering in the rain like forlorn miniature poodles, clutching palm fronds and wishing for death, only it's Opposite Day for us and we're in love with the entire experience so much we want to marry it and then take it on a honeymoon here, to have this experience with it and share it with itself.

Several times throughout the day I'd thought how cool Sassy had been about me losing her pet. I'd also had a chance to reflect on how the Island Ex is a super being, having accompanied us on our crazy hippy bar crawl through the jungle and only ever seen it as a joy and never once telling us to shut our pie holes (even on the 70th rendition of 'We Got To Pee') and just generally been amarrzing.

Anyway, we're so tired and hungry by the time we get back to base, we're hallucinating. We put on borrowed clothes - I look like a drowned-then-partially-revived whippet in a sweater whereas Sassy in the sala's candlelight looks like a cherub in white fishermans pants and flowy shirt. We're ready to eat the 'breakfast' Khun Mehr had made us 12 hours earlier, and bonus!, by now the kitchen is full of even better stuff - roast duck, massaman curry, tom yum, some kind of other Thai thing, and to top it off Island Ex makes fresh kai jiaow (omelet).

Little Bell when she was little

We're eating these Michelin-star leftovers, when a Random Friend On Acid (because what would NYD be without one?) appears out of the dark to escape the rain. We eat (hilariously, he grabs the omelet in his bare hand to eat it, then proceeds to introduce himself to all of us, who he knows). We share stories. The night has ended up pretty good. At some point after a few more wines, I literally Got To Pee, and head off for the bathroom, where, crouched and forlorn, a certain bitch-faced sugar glider is sitting on the toilet seat giving me the stink eye!

I resist the urge to flush him down the actual toilet as revenge for the horrific emotional rollercoaster he'd put us all through, but so relieved I was for him to not have wound up as cat food and me as an accomplice to murder that I just scooped him and squeeeeeeed. Hugs all round. Scolding of sugar glider. Tears. More wine. Happy New Year!

The Rest of The Time
We felt tired and down because we'd been partying constantly for four days and knew we would have to leave soon.

Everything that happened in BKK since I got back, not that it matters after the NYE we had:
- Went out with The Disappointment. So what does that make me? Disappointment-adjacent? A Disappointment Enabler? I don't even want to know.
- I caught up with Swiss, who you don't know, but who first appeared sometime in the dying throes of last year and resurfaced this weekend out of nowhere, like an orca circling a seal on an ice floe, only more foreboding. More later? The story wouldn't be as compelling as it isn't if we knew the answer to that now, would it?
- My cat just pooed and I need to stop doing this and either puke or go clean it now or possibly both concurrently....

Guess what? We Got To Pee!

countdown to phangan

2011-12-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

This is the part of my life that doesn't suck in any fashion at all. Christmas Day and the incumbent pressure to not spend the entire thing hungover in my underpants watching anime, is over (I did leave the house, and I wore an appropriately Christmassy dress) and now it's just Boxing Day detox anime underwear day with a fridge stocked full of juice, cheese, various flat breads and ham.

The next leg of Bek's Bachelorette Life circa late 2011 requires going to work twice, shopping for a bikini, fixing my phone so it's camera-ready to document whatever antics lay ahead, then taking a bus with my best friend to a magical seaside destination and partying for 5 days. See? Not sucking at all! Many of our BKK if not exactly friends then party acquaintances will be there, there will be beer, wine, swaying palms, shirtless torsos, lots of music and no 9am fucking BTS to Siam station for a full five days!

This will be our bungalow in Phangan. Yes, we were

so excited we demanded pictures.

I've already lost interest in this post because now all I can think about it the island and not hammering away at this keyboard staring into this tiny screen, so a point-form wrap of the last week/fortnight and any important plot points we may need further along the line.

* wouldn't ya know it ran into one of the to-be-avoided people by accident while leaving work the other day. I didn't recognice him at all, so one of us may be a scary chameleonic freak who randomly dons Groucho Marx-style glasses (sans nose, guys, come on) and shaves his hair to number 3 or one of us might have a bad memory after a night of free-flow Bordeaux. You decide, I can't tell you what to think all the time, it's exhausting.

View from the balcony/hammock of our future bungalow.

* The beer garden in the World of Happiness is sponsored by Chang - the local brew with extra alcohol and chemicals. The after-work pre-xmas party we threw ourselves was satisfactorily boozy - towers were drained, cups overflowed, cups dropped, spilled, crushed beneath the collective force of our inebriation. T'was joy-filled.

*the riverside Pier restaurant, motorcycle emptiness, The Balcony, Tapas and Wong's all featured in the last week of partying in a kind of year-end summary of the last 12 months of gluttony and insobriety. Thumbs up, well-played, us.

* we will be putting our minds to starting a new page soon, which will require us to stop reading the last chapter. Ad with that, adieu 2011 - here comes the Year of the Dragon. Hope it poops out a golden egg for me rather than singeing my little rabbit ears.

random ad with cute boy and kitten

it's almost a wrap

2011-12-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

Obligatory island-adjacent opening shot, by PCF

2011, that is, much like what the DJs weren't doing last night at the staff party after-party where everyone was completely and utterly smashed and dancing around with their neckties on their heads like Japanese salarymen on a Friday night and making out with anyone within flailing distance.

Actually, the trashiness was almost disappointingly unscandalous. No surprises. IT nerds got drunk and almost plucked up the courage to speak to the mousy girls, managers got drunk and did that manager dance in the middle of the dancefloor, pent-up office chicks got drunk and trans-departmentally flirty, I got moderately tipsy and danced with one of the cute Toms until I remembered my last foray into non-hetero relations and had to edge away uncomfortably. It was general office party-level revelry - the world spun on its axis.

And the party itself, if we replay the tape, was enjoyable. Amazing cheese gnocchi and free-flow alcohol all night. Coming from me, Princess JadedAboutEwents, 'OK' does not denote a half-assed thing, it's actually a stupendous compliment, and means the night - as my Facebook feed attests - was nigh on fucking life-changing for 500 or so of my less social colleagues.

There was (were??) even fireworks. iPads were prizes. People were flown in from other continents. Celebrities were booked to perform. Someone won a trip to the Maldives. I am not kidding.

my husbands

The problem with these things is always the aftermath. I was scarily well-behaved and barely made a ripple in the fabric of inappropriateness (if you don't count the proximity of me to someone who, how-shall-we-put-it, chaperoned me until they could no longer form sentences due to alcohol intake, with no discouragement at all from me), but I think it was a significantly narrower escape for others.

Actually, the most embarrassing moment for me was realising the DJ at the afterparty was the same DJ who, two Valentine's Days ago, I made out with on the dancefloor at Route 66 after being presented with a plastic rose. Mercifully, he didn't appear to remember this.

Amazeballs at our staff party - a pretty big shindig

I also might have been vaguely sleazy while talking to someone from a nearby department, but whatevs peeps, let's just be thankful I didn't fall over backwards into the shrubbery after mistaking a shadow for a seat (I have done this before, only the shrubbery was the floor of Q Bar) or get obnoxious about not being personally thanked in the CEO's ppt presentation (I accept his later-on commandeering of my Santa hat as endorsement of my role in the company) or smack-talk someone from senior management (not that there's a reason to) (disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer) while they were standing right behind me.

The thing I most dread are the FB photo uploads, happening as I type. Thais are your typical itchy trigger finger Asians when it comes to documenting every moment, meal, breath, cell division by digital means, so there was a ratio of 1:5 people to cameras last night -- much of the photo-taking happening after the official thing had devolved into the sweaty, pelvic-thrusty dance mayhem portion of the night.

Thank Judas for wedge heels that make it unbearable to dance after a point. Still, I cringe in anticipation of seeing 'xxx has tagged you in 75 pictures' ... all of which depict me with a new drink in hand, half slung over some poor colleague or another.

Oh yeh, we also went to Koh Tao- me and PCF
and some other island associates, and I made
friends with this dog. Check out her feet! Cute!

So it's been a while since the last blog. This is the point in the post where I start losing interest and do point form. Thus:

- Guy I wanted to see then hated has been lingering in the periphery - unsolicited and unencouraged. I was accidentally nice to him on the phone yesterday when the biatch of a thing failed to identify caller and the background noise made me not recognise his voice. It clicked 30 seconds later after I was my usual convivial self and by then it was too late to backpedal into snipeyness. He was the last person here at the Diamond. No great concern trying to fit anyone in - no pun intended (ew) - before the EOY.

- Nice guy is still nice. Ergo, it ain't gonna happen.

- Lately, I've been responding bluntly/rudely to people who are annoying or dense. If someone's too imperceptive to realise I'm not into them, won't buzz off, or is asking me daft questions at work or elsewhere, I feel justified bitching them out/alerting them to their asshattery/abandoning they punk ass (said in a black woman accent).

- Speaking of ego-maniacal attention-whoring adult babies, The Disappointment is swiftly becoming The Desperado. This is not all together bad, since I have emerged from this a clear winner, but it is baffling. We had a dinner together, which was tedious because he has a knack of telling anecdotes that make you feel terrible about the world. Thankfully he's barely audible over the sound of his own self-absorption, so when I see him out and about sleazing over someone, I'm more alarmed that I must be losing my edge ever having associated with his ilk than remorseful about anything.

- I saw someone I hadn't seen for a long time - a super being, I am realising too late, from Bangkok prehistory - the Belair Mansion era. We realised we both harbour post-traumatic stress from all the crazy stuff that went on during that time and can't really work through it because there's no one around from then to understand what it was like. Anyway, we drank a lot and hung out a bit. He's spoken for, but if he wasn't, I could imagine myself applying for that role. Not that, given the way our histories overlap, anything good could come of it.

- Now that I think about it, I did say some outrageously suggestive things in the throes of white wine abandon at the after-party. White wine does this, it turns me into some relentless flirt with a seemingly inexhaustible trove of double-entendre and suggestive puns that to me are hilarious. I remember putting a glowstick I had somehow acquired into some dude's shirt pocket, which to me seemed like a completely everyday thing to do, but had my gay husbands in stitches because apparently that is terribly unsubtle. It's not, is it? (Yes, there were glowsticks, too, and a flash-mob type group jumping scenario when that Black-Eyed Peas song came on, of which I was not a part.) (Oh, i just remembered in my white wine fervour I also had a tequila shot. That I can still taste.)

I would murder you and your grandchildren for a plate of this right now.

I think that sums up the last month. Here, in place of a decent outro because I need to treat my post-wine/bourbon/vodka/whiskey (jeez I can drink a lot) stomach with some fatty carbs or carby fats - an ellipsis...

... (and more, bolded and italicized)

all about guys today

2011-11-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

Scene at the Sea

Why is it that I have to do something at least half-a-dozen to scores of times before I realize I don't really want to do it? Such as: eat that seductive fried-pork-patty-and-something sandwich the lady in front of the 7-11 sells for breakfast. Or have "just one more" drink with Grandma Highkick (of getting-me-paralytic-on-soi-4-during-the-week notoriety). Or, for-Judas's-sake, seeing people I do not really want to see for a variety of reasons.

My scene at the sea

I just had a great weekend by the sea - two freebie nights in lovely resorts with a lovely person. Me. Hehe, and someone even more lovely - Person I Don't Really Want To See #1. This guy is the loveliest of lovelies - but in my evil field of vision this renders him a Nice Guy and if we check the Terms and Conditions of People Who I Want to Be With, Nice Guy is not in there.

He was so polite and respectful and sincere and ... nice... the entire time that he, like sunshine on a vampire, almost burned me to death just with his presence. He was just so effortlessly nice - as if that kind of thing comes naturally to him. Can you imagine? For me, accustomed to total douchebags, it's quite scary and surreal -- kind of like spending the weekend with a chupacabra.

Sarcasm aside, this was detrimental to the self-improvement modules of my 'solo' weekend - and not just because I needed that time in Beksheadville, but because truly, madly, deeply, I only like assholes, and having him around being all amazing and gentlemanly and not staring at his phone constantly but and actually engaging in conversations with me that weren't about any of his millions of 24 year-old ex-lovers, was irrefutable proof of this. Ergh.

Which brings me to Person I Don't Want To See#2: The Disappointment. Who, somehow, with his extra-sensory asshole powers, could tell I was with a nice guy and sought to Whatsapp me out for a drink this week. To which I did not say no. Seriously, what is my problem? Can a doctor fix this? Is there a pill or can someone hit me on the head with a hammer whenever he messages so at least I can legitimately claim brain damage when I reply? (Additionally, is he high?? Does he not remember our last conversation???)

Person I don't Want To See#3,4 and 5: Guy who vanished into thin air last Monday night after, well, after doing "an Angel" (please refer to Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode: Surprise.) Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that guy was also cursed by gypsies so that after a moment of pure bliss he turned into a soulless homicidal demon who, in the remaining moments of his humanity, flees to save my life.

Guy who was rude to me in Glow the other night. And Finally, Guy who saw me in a bar once who I exchanged BB Pins with and keeps BBing me and is probably nice (in which case, that's an automatic disqualification) but a decade too young for me (yes, he's 16, in case you were wondering.)

And because I am Libran and also can never keep these things short:

Person I Do Want To See#1 My Japanese husband. Here I go again with this thing, yes, but it's true. TUT... Notes from the Universe told me to visualize, and without going into too much detail, I am visualizing like a mofo.

Let me recap back to here, when my BB got switcherooed at that awful model's night afterhours urban Top 40 nightmare I used to go to a lot. And the reason why I fled in such a hurry and mixed up the phones, which I omitted from the story, was because I was fleeing home to make the most of my future husband's final hours in BKK before he went back to Tokyo.

While technically we're not yet married, he has proposed to me at least twice while drunk and is constantly telling me via Facebook inbox that he loves me - and because there's a clause in the Douchebags Only policy that says I'm allowed to like guys who I've only ever met once, spoken to twice and for whom I require the translation/dating services of my Japanese colleague, I know he's the one. There has never been anyone more perfect than this person I will probably only ever see again on my FB wall.

Apropos nothing, n'Sassy just bought one of these at the markets.
Yes, it's a minuscule sugar glider.

Scoff all you want, but I am visualizing my tiny woman's brain out and in a few years, when we have of course exhausted all possible love hotel/ramen/J-Pop/cosplay scenarios, I'm gonna be shacked up Yoko-style with the handsomest model's night random in Asia, in our minimalist-yet-cosy urban apartment, half-caste kids and cool designer dog competing for attention with Justice and Sylvia. He's gonna have to learn how to surf, otherwise I won't be able to compare us to the lovers in Scene From The Sea, but if he's really the one, he'll do it gladly.

My husband's exact location on Google Latitude.

On top of Tokyo Tower, apparently.

There are other people I want to see, of course, but it's late, I'm lazy, there's a SS and.. checks fridge... water with my name on it and then I need to crash into sweet sweet duvetblivion.

This one's for you, everyone who ever hurt my feelings:

it's a long story

2011-11-15T05:14:00.000-08:00

nuff said

I will attempt to be brief but brevity ain't my super power, as evidenced by all the extremely long rants here. I shall begin with Saturday night's events and their cumulative effects on today.

Today was the cliched dreaded Terrible Tuesday of yore -the type that ensues as a result of brain chemical depletion - the type that seems to have no flood-related shortage of despair and self-loathing and the type that scoffs in the face of bananas, turkey and tryptophan, and doesn't abate in its harshness even though you anticipated it with open arms. It feels like Chernobyl melted down in your chest cavity. You knew you would feel like this, you remind yourself. You even said something like, bring it on...

sexy cute Indian soft-porno

a bar called wtf
My friend J plays an instrument in a band in this bar - and it was the second time this week I'd trotted up and down the soi in front of it in my ridiculously high wedge heels trying not to fall face-first on what is a comically uneven pavement made even more untrottable with gravel, sewer grates, muzzled dogs (for real) and other people's exposed toes.

So I met him there are we were all - me, him, and n'sassy - chilling out, chatting with cute, arty strangers, swilling 120bt Tigers, going upstairs to chin-stroke about art, making drunk googly eyes at cool faux-glassed hipster types (me), trying inappropriately to crack onto the musician's J's blonde ex-girlfriend (sassy), and being super cool and popular (J).

Early on in the piece N'Sassy did what she always does and introduced me to some cute guy friend of hers in the most embarrassing manner possible ie. Hey Guy! (across the room, yelling) This is my friend, she's single!!! Hey Bek, (still shouting, unnecessarily) this is my friend, Guy, he's single!!! Ergh. That brings us to the final chapter of my stop-over in Sucksville, but we'll get to that in due course.

who the fuck is this twat and why is he bombing
our photo with attention whore?

Some hours later we are on our way to Wong's (but where else?) and we get stopped by the boys in brown. They shine torches into the cab. I know they stop everyone on this corner, because I used to live in this part of town for 3 years. I get out. I am obnoxious but OK. N'Sassy is drunk but OK. J is drunk but not OK, as in he's got a microscopic amount of something on him that he shouldn't have and this is Bangkok and the BIB see it and at that very point in time we see the baht signs ching ching in their eyes and we all collectively go fuuuuuuuuuuck as we trundle into the police vehicle.

the police station
This plays out the way we expected it to. Hours of them faffing about in their too-tight uniforms with serious faces on. Five minutes where they accused us of stealing back the minute particle of the thing they confiscated before they found it again. An hour of waiting for friends to show up with CHC (cold hard cash). Two minutes of them insisting we pee into tiny containers (nah-uh, buster, I do that for doctors because I want my urethra to stop stabbing itself with what feels like tiny acid knives), and intermittent flirting between me and the young guy in charge because I'm obnoxious, he's susceptible and kinda cute, and in some twisted combination of evolution and hormones, it helps our case. At dawn, our cashed-up friends arrive and we are let go.

Wong's
We figure we have earned a fucking beer, and a medal of honor, and a letter from Queen Elizabeth, so we go straight to Wong's for a beer. It's pretty empty but! My astrological twin is here! We all drink cold cold beers of freedom!! We cheers to freedom a lot!!! We cheers to liberty!! And to corruption! And to J learning to hide things in his underwear. Wong is super tired and not drunk, for once, or has sobered up and wants us to GTFO, so we move on...

The rest of the morning
Is full of random happenings. You only want the highlights, I know:

- my astrological twin and I sharing a hammock on a terrace roof, drinking cask wine and pontificating about how inappropriately not gay he was acting at the time (cosmology is a strong force, kids)
- everyone being chastised for saying 'awesome' (ergh, we don't say awesome, darling)
- everyone rifling through a big basket of girls sunglasses before deciding on the most hilarious pair, undocumented because by that stage everyone's phones had run out of battery.
- N'Sassy cocooning herself in a big hammock and being dubbed 'chrysalis'
- midday swim! wearing random pieces of wardrobe in lieu of proper swimwear! with wine! and sober neighbours! glad I don't live there!

The final chapter, when all the chooks come home to roost
Yesterday was fine, I guess I was still in the slipstream of the weekend, propelled along by its momentum. I even went on a date with Guy. Unlike boy, who I have re-christened The Disappointment, Guy seemed normal. Nice. Seemed, madam, nay, tisn't! I don't even know why for Pete's sake I still used words like 'normal' and 'nice'. I know these words behave as if in a time vacuum when used in the vicinity of a possible love interest.

Was expecting (and there's another mistake) a casual Sangsom-esque cheap-ass Thai dinner in a student dive with a student band (still in uniform), Thai omelet and tom yum goong but instead was tractor-beamed into a five-star restaurant, I'll-pay-for-you, free-flow-Bordeaux, fresh-sashimi-and-wagyu scenario. I can deal with this. I've had expensive wines and plum-mouthed conversations with bouffant-haired hi-so peeps ad infinitum, and even more lately thanks to boy and am now ready to slum it for a while. But I'm here and I can deal. Free-flow Bordeaux helps. And what sort of ungrateful white bitch complains about free fine dining (me).

make of this what u will

So, red wine, nice restaurant, great conversation, a Guy who has to stay at his office because his house is flooded and hey whaddya know that office is actually just across and down the road from The Diamond, which is my apartment, in fact we can see it from my balcony, didn't you know? Of course you're going to 'send me home', that's Thai Guy for 'I'm going to try to sleep with you'. And somewhere after the balcony and the dim lighting and the jokes and the playing with cats but somewhere before him heading in the direction of the door because he's got more work to do at 3am and needs to go back to the office, there was the moment where it was too late to go back in time and not be Me.

Me doesn't have the same limits as Perfect Me and Perfect Me likes to beat Me up about it when shit inevitably and theatrically blows up in Me's face. Case in point: Today, Guy was not in contact with Me. And Perfect Me thinks that maybe if Me had been more Perfect, the barrage of Guy's Monday's texts, wooing and charm would not currently be extinct, decimated by the melting of the polar Me-caps, struggling for breath under the lack of oxygen and excess ME-thane. Did Me fuck it up? Does Me instinctively cause extinction in suitors as if they were stegosaurus - like a gigantic Me-teorite shower? Did Me not be Perfect enough for Boy, or for 23, or for Cinabbon, or for blah or for him or for so-and-so who all came before?

Questions too lung-puncturing to contemplate right now. So I will leave them up here, watch some terrible sitcom and allow myself to be swallowed up in duvet, cat hair, and stuffed animals (I think there's an IKEA catalogue in there too somewhere).

Update: have received weird, scant, non-committal probably guilt-motivated half-assed texts from Guy. I should cut him some slack as a) I am a not awesome... um... fierce thing to reckon with maybe? and b) he had just as large a weekend as I did and c) he also doesn't have you, Farang Girl blog, to vent to...

And finally... we are going to Koh Phangan this xmas/nye, come hell or high-water (we already have that, btw, and so far it isn't impeding me personally at all). Much the same crew minus certain players and exes. Koh CHang Island DJ, the unrequited one, will have to remain so for another 6 months, as his wicked evil captor (ie. cute blonde Scottish girlfriend) is back in town for the high season. Hopefully to be broken up with by him.... anyway full steam ahead for a festive season in paradise... :) (that totally brought my serotonin back huzzah!)

peas out

another fine mess

2011-11-11T23:47:00.000-08:00

loy kratong cartoon

sooooo apparently my most 'talkative' time is between 5-7am, slightly prior to losing consciousness, because when i awoke this morning i did the thing where you kind of squint at your phone in a quizzical manner because it's beeping and flashing a lot, then go oh fuuuuuuck. massive headache, scant recollection of the last few hours of the night, a sleeping chinese girl and two cats in my bed and several messages from people saying "did you really text me at 7am??" yes. apparently i really did. i'm hardcore communicative like that, bitches.

so really it was just a typical night out for me, only with way more text-based confessionals. i saw my not-ex and it was convivial, meaning i did not punch him in the throat, and had a good dance right near the speakers as any rational person would do. attempted solid foods this morning with minimal success, but round two is tonight, and i read somewhere that the second night out cancels the first one, so i should be back to normal by Sunday afternoon. that sounds right, doesn't it?

This was last weekend - details also sketchy.

did i mention i have a column in a newspaper supplement now? it comes out like once a month if that, but hey, food column. so i get paid to write and feel hungry at the same time now. hopefully it comes out this weekend so i can walk around with it open to that page and when impressionable young men see my picture and ask if that's me, i'll be like, "oh yeah, my food column. it's just this little thing i do for the biggest English-language newspaper in Thailand." it's kind of hilarious since i am the opposite of a good cook and frequently eat my entree of canned tuna leaning over the sink before rushing out the door for my main meal of Sangsom and soda.

I guess i should explain the loy krathong cartoon. loy kratong is help on the full moon in november. It's quite a big festival usually, a symbolic thing where Thais float little krathongs (a tiny raft made of bread or banana leaves with incense, candles, money and a nail clipping or strand of hair) and float it out onto the canals or the Chao Phraya. It's to pay respects to the river goddesses and to float all your troubles and bad karma away from you. Because of the floods and the water goddess being a complete asshole lately, no one was really feeling the vibe this year. I suspect the river got a lot of fuck yous this year.

The crocodiles and mambas are in the picture because a bunch of them escaped and they're kind of just swimming around loose now. The Burberry boot is there because 'our' PM, the fashionable little sister of exiled Thaksin Shinawatra thought it tactful to do her flood visits to poor devastated people with no homes in a pair of $225 rain boots. And I reiterate the foreigner's common refrain: This is Thailand. (T.I.T if you're into the whole brevity thing).

camp work husband tooling about in the police boat. you can mess with police things in Thailand and they don't really care.

well just a short one from me today -- clearly i have reached my word limit today. in case you're reading this and i didn't text you last night, i want you to know that you look good and i miss you a bit. cringe

Tall Swiss's farewell drinks. boo.

love, peas and harmonies

....and then came the floods

2011-11-07T05:17:00.000-08:00

water - everything you don't want it to be and more

Every year it's something else with this city. Usually civil unrest, complete with hot soldiers, unexpected on-air assassinations, ( or Youtube if you prefer your assassinations more life-like), and social-life-hindering curfews, but this year it's water. Too much in one place, not enough in others.

In case you missed the 30 seconds News Ltd/Fairfax devotes to Problems Outside of Australia, half of Bangkok's Google check 50 provinces are underwater. Where I live - Silom - it's business as usual with the only flood in sight that of sweat dripping down the prickly neck of some sleazy old sex tourist with his ham fist around the waist of a teenage Isaan girl,steaming up the BTS through sheer disgustingness alone, but elsewhere, in the poorer parts of the city, it's flood water (or karma*) from the north.

Factories are submerged, housing estates evacuated (gated hi-so communities, too, not only the poor ones), train tracks are cut off, the domestic airport is neck-deep in sewery chemical water and suburbs are best traversed with boats, bamboo rafts and jet skis. More than 500 people are recycled into the universe (probably as rich people with condos in Hua Hin), 3 million now have swimming pools where their lounge rooms used to be, and with canals where there used to be pot holes, open drains and mangy dogs.

it's actually sad all the animals that have been left behind to whatever fate/drowned/eaten by escaped crocodiles but I will try to make light of it with this pic...

But enough of that depressing, I-lost-my-house belly-aching, what about meeeee? Well, us privileged folk in the inner inner city have a supply shortage to cope with. Now that some factories are out of play, we have a shortage of the things those factories used to supply to us.

Now I already know through experience and being lazy that toilet paper doesn't just appear magically on that homicidal spring-loaded device next to my toilet every time I reach the last square of tissue, but there is a tampon shortage. Thais don't even value them, so it's like there being a salad shortage in Prague or a liberal arts student shortage in Sydney - you know when even these critically unimportant things go missing from shelves, there's some bad shit going down. (Perhaps this is another misguided FROC initiative -- if the super-sized sandbags fail (they have) deploy a few million tampons into the overflowing khlongs to try and stop the flood.)

Water, on the other hand, is being an antagonistic bitch by hanging around too much in the one place (ie people's living rooms, dangerous chemical plants, warehouse floors, airport lounges) and playing hard-to-get in others (ie. bottles on supermarket shelves, 7-11s, my house/stomach). Evian, however, is universally present - proof that even faced with dehydration and imminent death, people will refuse to spend $2.50 on 1.5 liters of slightly slimy-tasting French water. When a street-side plate of phad thai costs half that, the economics make more sense.

Other than a shortage of everything I need not to a) feel thirsty, b) keep the cats' and my waste areas properly maintained and c) be poor (natural disasters are the enemy of free events/smiles/not panicking) life is OK. There are plus-sides.

Like:

- not being pressed against all the other humans in the BTS carriage during peak-hour because half of BKK has evacuated or is stranded on the 2nd floor of their townhouse.

- being able to walk through Paragon food court at dinner time without mentally driving a stake through the backs of all those-in-front-of-me's heads because there are no tourists anymore.

- the other cool people who stayed in BKK. We hardcore stayers can be depended upon for using any excuse - even a flood - to party, and make the most of half-filled dance floors by taking up twice as much space as usual. You also meet people you might not have had space/time to properly notice before - like someone you totally met before at launch-party fashion show thing a few months back who is like a human version of a Chesterfield chaise longue or, to be very topical, a Karlstad sofa...

...if you imagine the sofa's dimples are his abdominals and he smells like an opium-flavored Cinnabon (that doesn't exist, btw).

- the appreciation of bottled water. I once paid AUD 12 for a well in a war-torn Sudanese village so some five-year old kid wouldn't have to go on a daily six-hour hike just to make sure his family didn't thirst to death. HOLLA! I will no longer flippantly donate without first stopping to realise what I'm actually donating for - especially since my angular white ass is panicking at the thought of OMG forking out for Evian or drinking lime-flavored soda, or Gatorade, or putting high heels on to drink limitless free Moet bellinis at Sandwiches bar on Ladies Night should I feel too parched or society-starved.

Latitude on Google maps - basically for stalkers

- Friends. Who bring you 16-packs of water (ergh enough with the fucking water, i get it), or who stalk you from Japan on Google Latitude because they once bequeathed themself to you and are worried you've drowned, or who are sick of flood-talk and pressure you to drink way too many Belgian fruit beers over the weekend, culminating in a bladder infection (I personally blame this on the lack of water, but don't want to mention it again), or who are Thai colleagues and have moved into a hotel (on behest of the company) because their homes are flooded and they needed to be evacuated but who never complain ever.

- the mental notation of survival skills. Hey, I don't ever actually practice any, nor does my house even have a hand-powered torch, tinned food, a knife not made of plastic that isn't still sitting in a airline wrapper with a plastic fork and napkin, a short-wave radio, a gun (lol imagine me with a gun) or more than 12 x 500ml bottles of water but I'm thinking about all that stuff. And therefore closer to not being one of the first ones to perish in, say, the zombie apocalypse. Norman Reedus/Judas/hillbilly rescuer evocation spell now, please.

- Thailand has an IKEA now. Totally not flood-related, but worth a bullet point precisely because the opening weekend crowds proved that NOTHING can dampen the Bangkokian's desire to consume imported flat-packed furniture, 26-baht wooden salad servers and 100pc packets of tea lights.

Anyway, time for me to sleep a lot now. Do me a favour and walk over to your kitchen sink immediately and fill up a big glass of H20 and skol it, because you can.

proost!

*I couldn't be bothered explaining this

ps. Norman Reedus

bad girls gone worse

2011-10-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

That's how gay work boyfriend thought to correct me when I said on Friday that my Koh Chang weekender would be like 'good girls gone baa-dd' (that's a song, btw, possibly the worst in the history of music. If you click that, don't say I didn't warn you).

Regardless of our level of pre-existing badness or how much further down the good/bad scale you can go before you actually reach the bottom (or perhaps it loops back up to 'good'?), lo bitches, I am now cleansed. Purified through the sanctity of something-percent Thai Rum served in the holy vessel of the bucket with the five vestal straws of sharing.

If I ever doubted that a quick stint on Koh Chang wouldn't be able to pump-up-kick my douche-induced depression, I need to pump-up-kick myself in the face - and not as the accidental result of too many aforementioned buckets. Even in these chaotic crocodile-filled toilet-paper-scarce times, Chang delivered a sizzling hot ramen bowl of awesome with a free side serving of deep-fried yay.

Things were always going to be a bit insay-say. Consider what went down the second time we went to Lonely Beach. The Merman wasn't present (not enough rain, presumably, for his gills to function on dry land), the owner was (still cute btw and with a bevy of females in tow), Soda, the disapproving waiter was still disapproving, and the teacher was replaced by a traveling Gold Coast Guy, Really Drunk Guy (just one?, you ask) and The Collective of Ennui-Suffering French People. The DJ? Still there, too. He and, yes, my heart, a heavy piece of brass jewelery I left in his room more than a year ago.

To be honest, I don't even remember the teacher from last time - he didn't stand a chance of being remembered anyway since he is a) a teacher, b) farang and c) not the DJ. Then, of course, there was complications of the endless rain and electrical shorting out and green florescent squid fishing light and general kaleidoscope of wtf that nights on Koh Chang have always been. This time was all that and more.

Power nap

The protagonists

This time, it was five girls, each representing a different country, like the United Nations of Complaining About How Long The Trip Was Taking (and then the United Nations of Drunken Antics/Questionable Morality and then the United Nations of Hangovers and Complaining About Costs We Have No Control Over).

There's PCF of course, small and mighty, with footfalls on wooden bungalow floors like that of an actual hoofed creature (like what is it, does she have bionic feet?? are they made of cement??? what is in her heels other than bone and cartilage???) and a determined resolve not to complicate her mind/life/weekend with any type of male interaction beyond yelling at the minivan driver/s and ordering buckets.

Then there's Young German Girl, whose tanned, exotic-looking exterior belies a naivete worthy of its own fan club and from whom a never ending string of questions perpetually ensues. After the initial adjustment period where you want to pull your earlobes up over your head and tie them together in a bow just to be free of all the asking, the onslaught of questioning becomes 99% endearing, because seriously, how can you stay annoyed at someone who requests Justin Beiber songs at 3am at a dance party and periodically launches into the same Burmese love ballad taught to them by a Burmese boy they just helped smuggle over the border in the trunk of a car. You just can't.

A newcomer - and goer, unfortunately - is Tall Swiss Girl - on her way back to the land of cheese this week. She's 6-foot and change. Freakishly tall to Thais, with module-length limbs that did not at all fit comfortably into the back seat of the minivan nor any other confined space - stationary or vehicular - we ever entered. I suspect she is used to this now because she never hit her head on anything once.

(Horrible Swiss aside: She told us that a common form of accidental winter-time death for Swiss people is choking on partially-regurgitated cheese - because you eat a lot of it to stay warm, then get drunk, but the cheese has formed a kind of solid block in your stomach and when you need to puke, if you don't have the power to shoot the cheese block out, it gets lodged in your wind pipe or stuck half in and out of your mouth and you suffocate/choke and are found dead like that. Tell me that's not awesome.)

Fourth is my Japanese Girlfriend, who has featured before on trips, such as the ones to Hua Hin. She's the quiet achiever and probably the least likely to be obnoxious. Then there's me, at the opposite end of the spectrum.

To make a 7-hour-long story short, the trip down was a mix of pain, irritation, alcohol sweats (not me), playlists, bad jokes, sarcasm, questions (see: German Girl), flood-related talk, intermittent sleeping and frequent hitting our heads on the a) windows and b) heads of others because riding in the back row of a minivan on a Thai highway is akin to sitting on a mechanical bull as it's being launched into outer space through a comet shower, but we made it to our destination by 4pm, immediately hurling ourselves into the ocean as if on fire. Phew.

Everything but the monkey.

The first night began so normally, but ended up with four out of the five of us late the next afternoon wading in the Thai Gulf and attempting to piece together the events of the previous evening, trying to decide if we should send out a search party for the MIA group member.

One bungalow (we were sharing two between the five of us) had not been slept in. One girl had sought the company of a French boy who had gone door-knocking looking for a particular end-of-night accessory he had somehow lost (where? how?? Oh didn't we laugh at those possibilities.) One of us reports sitting on some kind of wooden structure talking to 'some locals' though she could not locate that particular structure nor identify any of these locals, even after several minutes of silent inner scrutiny, and could therefore not be sure that had ever taken place.

One of us claimed to have gone back to the bungalow, been kicked out the bungalow by French Guy on a mission, going elsewhere, and then returning home naked (???) wrapped in a blanket from that other place. The number of blankets in the bungalow does not at all corroborate this story, meaning she had also walked out - and presumably around the resort - naked.

One of us had spent some time sitting with another one of us who had befriended a Finnish guy on the beach, the three of them chilling in hammocks and ridiculing the door-knocking French guy on his quest. Even that person, though she claimed not to have drunk too much, could not put our timelines together. She was also the last person to see the girl who left with the Finnish guy, the girl who would not enter the timeline again until dinner the following evening, after which she would again disappear until check-out the next day.

Finally, one of us had been in and out of a bungalow to collect personal comfort items before watching a movie in a DJ's room - or rather trying to focus on one of several laptop screens as they spun around in a ferris-wheel-like motion. That person still doesn't know if The International stars Gerard Butler or Clive Owen or if they watched two movies that both had Naomi Watts in the lead female role, which seems unlikely, but could be true, she supposes, since MW is pretty and awesome.

That person recalls that there were a lot of long words in that movie/those movies, too.They also recall that the following day's bleary-eyed walk of shame through broad daylight's unforgiving lunch-time crowds and in front of every single person she knows there - the owner, Soda, Cheeky Server Girl, The Waitstaff and Barmen - was again done without any reason for the shame.

The next night was tame, in comparison. PCF retired early. German Girl slept then joined up later on for a dance. Tall Swiss stayed and departed when the bar closed and beer became the only option. I hung out with DJ until we passed out in a weird state of island confessionals, leaving everything open and nothing resolved, the only thing clear that he would hang onto the heart for now.

So, in short, my wishes for this getaway were fulfilled, the torsos were everywhere, their owners seemingly allergic to t-shirt material (loose, soft cotton tees are so cumbersome), one torso in particular was in very close proximity for a large proportion of the time teehee), the Sangsom was plentiful, and the good girls gone bad or worse or worse girls gone good again or whatever shared many laughs and escaped unscathed. (Oh, except PCF, who clipped one of her hooves on a sharp piece of coral/rock - or vice versa haha - and left a lovely gross-looking blood smear on the bed, and then even that was hilarious).

If the Great Bangkok Flood continues and the panic buying completely relieves BKK residents of the burden of fresh drinking water and toilet paper, I know where I'm moving...

คิดถึง แล้ว ... ('miss you/it already' FYI)

the inevitable crash

2011-10-16T06:18:00.000-07:00

Sooo, do I need to say more? No, not really, right? And so I won't, because I am no longer a morose person who dwells on depressing shit and/or needs to unload a bunch of bad karma onto the Intarwebs. Also, I did predict this very outcome and forsaw that I would smash my face up on that carousel, so at least I am somewhat vindicated by being right.

Things ended amicably. It was so short-lived, it deserves the grieving period of that of a dead pet goldfish, and so I hereby symblogically bury its dried out little corpse in a shallow grave in a patch of soil somewher, because flushing it down the toilet would have zero per cent chance of it being dug up and eaten by feral cats and part of me wants that to happen. Needless to say, I will be awoiding ewents for the time being. Like, until 3012.

my friend Laurie took this pic in Koh Chang last year

Onto a less me-being-ousted-as-mayor-of-boy'sbed related topic, I'm headed to Koh Chang this coming long weekend to cleanse myself of any lingering bad spirits with the type sold in buckets. I will not end up drunk and sobbing with running streaky mascara leaning over the bar talking to barman/DJ I Know There From Before about how the cosmos is shitting on me (because really, it's not). I may lay at length on the sand staring at the universe and thanking it in a hopefully not sarcastic manner for enriching my life with asshole-related excitement (WOW, didn't that come out wrong!) and that I gtf out of dodge before things got really complicated. Hopefully there will be glowing algae, lots of stars, guys with amazing torsos and a penchant for showing them off at all times, and maybe even dolphins. siggghhhhhh.

How to make water in a disaster/apocalyptic survival situation.

I don't really feel like documenting much about the last week as I would prefer not to remember any of it ever again at all, but I will say that it's been raining a lot and most of bkk is under water. The constant overcast gloomy weather and rain have been the perfect compliment to a complete failure of a 7-day period, which at least isn't the weather being all smug and sunny and in my face about how temperate and wonderful it is - that would just be insulting.

Good thing about this? Next week has a good chance of ranking a little higher on the My Life Doesn't Suck scale. I'm going to drink a Leo beer now with my betrothed (stilnox) and my kids (Justice and Sylvia) and listen to some angry Kelly Clarkson or something while I hang up my laundry and startle the cats with occasional hysterical outbursts of various emotional types.

namaste _/\_

snooze

2011-10-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

inner peace as quoted from kung fu panda
and visually represented via iamkohchang.com

Once when I was 9-ish and my baby cousin J was a toddler - around 2.5, you childless heathens - the extended family had an outing to some miniature train park. It wasn't even an amusement park, just a vacant grass lot where some freak had laid down a small-scale working coal-burning train engine and used to ride kids around on mini carriages for a dollar each. It was all above-board, government sanctioned for the sake of heritage or somesuch reason, but clearly before the age of occupational health and safety had kicked in.

There were a few park 'rides' there, too, like jungle gyms and a carousel and a 20-foot 90-degree angle searing hot slippery dip - all the types of kids' playground equipment that has since been outlawed as they are all basically death traps for kids. Imagine the show Wipeout, which I'm pretty sure is modeled on this kind of park set-up, only the 'obstacles' are all made of steel, none of the sharp corners are covered in foam, the participants aren't wearing protective headgear because they are children, no one has fully developed motor skills, and when you fall off something you don't land safely in water, you hit the ground neck-first and go into a coma.

exhibit a: the 'dizzy dummy' deathtrap

So imagine a scenario where there are hundreds of children crawling all over playground equipment specifically designed to decapitate or otherwise seriously maim, if not outright kill, and my bratty 2.5 yo toddler cousin wanting a piece of that and running out of my 9-yo grasp (I was frequently main custodian of her back then, as 9 year-olds make such excellent guardians) and up to the carousel (exhibit a) which had at least 300 children on it and was spinning at the speed of sound.

J bolted up to the blurry whizzing periphery and kind of stumbled at a critical moment - on a tree root, on a rock, on her own feet possibly as she was just a toddler - and CRACK. One of the steel bars - those handles meant for gripping onto lest centrifugal motion send you spiraling off into an alternate dimension - connected with her face. Not sure which part, as it was all very fast and I was already blinded by the fear of the impending parental smack-down, knowing this was going to be my fault.

You probably sensed this was going to turn out to be another of my drawn out metaphors, and you're right. This is a little how I feel right now. I'm J, a wobbly-footed, bratty, wildly careening toddler, launching myself face-first into a carousel that's spinning way too fast for anything to enter its atmosphere safely. We're in stasis at that moment just after she stumbles - or leaps - a split-second before whatever part of her face makes contact with the steel arm of the carousel.

In this frozen moment, I can visualize sticking the landing and enjoying the thrills of hanging out with the older, bigger kids, just hanging on tight until the thing slows down enough for me to get off, and possibly vomit on myself. In reality, though, I will probably end up like J, being taken home early, crying, with a bloody nose and not enough spatial knowledge to understand why I failed. Anyway, I don't want to nay-say. I am probably already back on the carousel and don't even realise it.

If this is wong's, I don't wanna be right.

My birthday week was good. Some people kind of chuckle when I say birthday week, but I tell no lie when I say it stretched the full week - from the preceding Friday night to the following Saturday ie 8 days. I was kind of killing time as well I suppose, but there were some landmark moments and it wasn't all just partying because I felt obliged to. Considerable time was had - and lost - at Wong's, where I met my astrological twin, was serenaded by Wong himself and treated the traditional flaming Sambucca shot, after which I lost my balance and fled (ie. was assisted) home. (Apparently it was actually some time after which, as there are tales of 5 more shots being done pursuant to the Sambucca. And stop clutching your pearls, gran, a normal weekend for me is like a birthday for other people, so I need to do something outrageous for it to actually be considered special and not just 'Friday').

post-one of the other shots.

Anyway, so the birthday weekend was a success - success measured in units of alcohol ingested and inappropriate things said to people who are subsequently avoiding me. I chilled out this last week in a preemptive attack on sleep deprivation, so I hope it works as tonight's ewent is going to test my mettle, being as it is on the night pre-Monday and in a place where the general vibe will be to get alcohol poisoning.

To summarise everything else that's been going on: Sassy got into a bike spill but is OK - the thing most injured being her (and my) wallet and her social life. PCF is healed - nursed back to health by the attentions of a cute boy and plenty of interesting people met through various ewents. I have an occasional column in a paper supplement that I should be working on instead of doing this. Boy is back and I have so far not transformed into Mr Rochester's crazy ex-wife , though I fear it's only a matter of time. Why? Because everyone turns cray-cray at some point don't they? Isn't that how meaningful relationships are distinguished from ones that fizzle into nothing?? Someone needs to lose their shit in a big publicly humiliating way, right? (Oh, and it will be public with us, that is a certainty - if it happens, it will be monstrous and more visible than is necessary.)

PS

(I know this, because, in throth, there was a pre-shock I like to refer to as the, well, the thing pictured above, that superstition will not let me type in actual letters. Suffice to say that isn't there just always some human remnant from your s.o's past whose sole purpose and birthright, it seems, is to test your goodwill towards humankind and single-handedly undo all the "progress" you thought you'd made towards being a rational, not-insane, normal person?

All the melodrama, the angst, the immaturity, the ultimatums, the tantrums you had painstakingly learned how to suppress or work through, via countless bad experiences - they, through some strange karmic twist -can conjure instantly, effortlessly. Like I have to deal with all that noise again.

I'm trying to make this a 'Things True Blood Taught Me' moment. 'The Disaster' is just an unwitting, unwilling conduit, a helpless and probably likeable (to other people) medium through which a crazed, homicidal 19th-century spirit I harbour wants to pass through in order to 'make peace' with something.... after creating a massive scene and scaring the shit out of everyone. Ergh. Hopefully I'm strong enough to rise above. Do as the Land of Smiles taught me and just grin and bear it. We shall see. This scenario is gonna play out sooner rather than later, so stay tuned...)

once more, with feeling: ||inner peace||

so many ewents

2011-09-24T03:04:00.001-07:00

w grandma high-kick

As a PR person, I can reasonably show up at a certain number of ewent (that's 'events' in the Thai language) without looking like a total ewent whore. Lately this has gotten to the point where staying at home and sleeping and not consuming free alcohol until security has to remove me from the bar has become an ewent and all those PR ewents are non-ewents.

This will be especially true for the next fortnight, as I am a) broke (ewents = free booze and food), b) having a birthday (25 again), and c) without Boy. He's gone for the next 2 weeks on business, and while the cat's away, I am going to play. And no, not in the way your perverted mind probably thinks, unless your perverted mind thinks I mean partying and being photographed a lot so on all my social networks it appears I still have some currency (and some fun) when not joined at the hip to another.

(Let me just vent, since this is a complaints blog, after all, that beneath my unchippable veneer of detachment I HATE that he's going away - especially on my birthday - and am in constant battle to keep my brain from indulging in a stressfest involving every single worst-case scenario the human mind can possibly conceive.)

Jagerbombs

This weekend I have committed to a DJ Shadow ewent with the girls. I also have to do freelance, which I have successfully navigated my way around all day by: 'following' people on soundcloud, 'liking' a pictures on FB, watching the facebook real-time ticker like it was the stockmarket, IMing w an old school friend, blogging, waking up the cats, making tea, whatsapping Boy and PCF, writing a short story. All I have to do is open the word document with my freelance work on it and look at it. It shouldn't be that hard.

After tonight I should be effectively fatigued for all of Sunday, wake up feeling older than my exactly 25 (haw-haw) years on the planet would suggest, drink again on Monday because it's my birthday bitches, then bounce back for ewents on Weds, Thurs and Friday.

The super awesome friends love you long time fest, planned in Koh Phangan for the very weekend Boy returns from overseas (provided none of my worst-case scenarios eventuate) may still go ahead, as I am in desperate need of some beach time away from the paparazzi, the constant refills, the air kisses, the judgmental smirk of my pubescent security guard, the dust bunnies breeding under my sofa.

When you invite a hundred people to something while drunk and/or under the influence of a popular recreational sleeping pill, you kind of feel obliged to follow through, so I will endeavor to make it happen. First challenge though, Saturday night and atempting to get through it with minimal expenditure/maximum resilience missing Boy.

As Kung-fu panda would say: inner peace.

Bali High

2011-09-20T20:37:00.001-07:00

So I kind of have a dude now. I know, so uncool. It's still in tentative stages though, and assuring him I'm safe to be with is much like coaxing a timid woodland creature out of its warren (albeit with alcohol rather than biscuit crumbs), but we've spent the last 17/21 days in each other's company, so the numbers speak for themselves, really.When did i become this.... thing?

Clearly, this leap into not being a jao choo (playboy/girl) anymore is a courageous act on both our parts, so for now, he is elevated beyond being just an honourable web log mention. Also, as not a work of fiction, I have thusly taken him out of italics and he will henceforth be known as Boy. (Until the inevitable crash and burn of our dramatic, painful and protracted demise whereupon his name will probably become something like douchebag or whatever dysphemism I haven't already used for the ghosts of boyfriends past.)

We just came back from Bali, where we attended my brother's wedding. It might seem odd to ask someone you've only known for a few weeks to something like a brother's wedding, but once you take into account that I've only known my brothers for 3 years and that my life is generally a weird mess of crazy, it makes perfect sense. Conventional time appears not to operate in the non-linear black hole of Farang Girl's Life So Far.

So back to the wedding: it was fun. It was outdoors in the tropical Balinese afternoon, so we were all basting in our own juices while the vows were exchanged, but thankfully it was brief and the open bar came to the rescue. Boy and I, like most normal people on vacation, had slept through the hotel breakfast hours, so our drinking began even earlier than everyone else's with Southern Comfort and coke where bacon and eggs should have been. But it was a wedding. With Aussies. And obliging/ong-suffering Balinese bar staff. Suffice to say, everyone was plastered well before sunset and no one noticed how drunk Boy and I were or how early it happened.

So who did I meet? Join me on a roll call: there was the mother of my brothers, who I guess is mum's arch nemesis. Her husband (not my father). His two kids from a previous marriage, all pleasant and inoffensive. My freshly-minted sister-in-law. Funny regional Australian friends and classmates of Brother. Someone called Aunty Betty. Various relatives of my sister-in-law, none of them English-speaking and most of whom vanished in a puff of incense before the toasts, even though they comprised half the bridal party. Welcome to ~~Thailand~~ Bali.

We drank until it became physically impossible to do so while expecting to remain conscious/alive and hitched a ride back to our resort with some locals before midnight. After the regulatory half-hour of sitting in damp volcanic sand appreciating various natural elements (incoming tide, distant moon, milky sky, etc) Wedding Day was over. Lovers get up and walk out of shot, carrying shoes. End scene.

The next day we finally got to a part of Bali that wasn't inundated with drunk Australians (ie. not Kuta and not my brother's wedding) – Ku De Ta bar in Seminyak. Next time hopefully we will make it to Ubud or even the northern coastline, actually if there's even a 'next time' that involves a 'we' this will be news in itself.

It's not all sweet beginnings, though. As Boy enters (no pun intended), PCF leaves. Boy is out of town for two weeks soon and when he comes back, my BKK bestie leaves. Opting out in the 'I'm-still-alive' fashion (always preferable to the 'throwing-myself-off-the-balcony' route), she's headed to some distant Middle Earth to meet up with some hobbits and throw the evil shiny object of her past into something that will hopefully destroy it – and this terrible metaphor – forever. In short, she's going to NZ to get over her ex. Leaving work and me and Thighland for greener, more sheep-inhabited pastures.

So that's the weekend that was. Next week: turning OLD.

2011-09-12T01:11:00.001-07:00

The universe has been a kerr-ay-zy place lately. The last two weeks have been ferocious. They have been up and down, in and out and hot and cold, to continue the Katy Perry theme, but right now, for however briefly, things are [redacted due to not wanting to tempt fatebut something that's the opposite of not awesome ]. The Bek-o-meter is pointing to legen-wait for it - dary (yes, I did just write reference Barney Stinson).

Before the embittered naysaying of the sarcastic realist in me drowns out the vibes, I am urgently now documenting the Good Time I Have Been Having Very Recently. There are some very scary spring in my step shout it from the rooftops good vibes emanating around me right now, from a force field of sub-atomic particles that have been firing and fizzing about whenever I'm in the vicinity of a boy. A particular one. And if it were not desperately uncool to show like for things in any more indelible way than clicking a thumbs-up icon, i would probably disclose more.

Let's do some point-form recapping of the last couple of weeks.

- PPCF's bf cheated on her then told her in an insensitive way then blamed her for it. He lies over the ocean in more ways than one now and as an infidel has had all his shit cast out of her apartment in a lengthy counseling session that involved many breakdowns, rivers of tears, several angrily-penned hate letters and a girl-power playlist.

-I haI had a Japanese concubine for an extremely brief while, in a vague, undefined sense. I ended it. Or rather, I just stopped answering the calls, as this is how mature people deal with things.

- P Nong Sassy and I had a HELLUVA weekend last weekend. So good we barely remember any of it and it took us three days to recover.

Ananda (the semi-naked guy I am always posting pictures of and quipping about marrying) is frequently now showing up at parties boy and I attend (or vice-versa - whatever). And because boy knows Ananda and likens him to Vince from Entourage (ie. sleeps with anything that doesn't have a tail in front - as my camp PR bestie would say) he has become a thing of...not ridicule, exactly, but mild amusement, as only the beautiful-to-the-point-of-redundancy can be. Also, every reference I've ever made about the man is completely inappropriate and out of context. I knew this would happen. (I so didn't.)

So that kind of brings us to the thing I most want to talk about but won't, which is boy and how insane I am currently being. In the parlance of the quadrangle of corrimal high school circa the early 90s: stoked.

2011-09-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

random hilarious memory

2011-09-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

the boiler room - dark, hard to traverse

once upon a time I was 'walking' through the darkened Boiler Room stage at the Big Day Out 2oo2, while Dave Clark or some hardcore techno like Ken Ishi was DJing and i was trying to make it across the d-floor with energetic people dancing and limbs flying all around me. I had had two large glasses or more of white wine already inside me and was happily twatted in my drunkeness. I was headed out to some other area to see New Order and had a fairly good momentum going and strode across what looked like a clear circle of nothing, like a friendly glade in a forest with people dancing at its perimeter. The clear dark space in the middle was however actually a small mountain of bags heaped together. I walked with my eyes ahead, not looking down, and moved as if to pass through this mountain, which is not possible, so I tripped at some speed, launching forwards with velocity and stretching my arms out, hands searching for something I could grab to break my fall.

Well, I found two things. They were a woman's breasts. Perfectly grabbed by me, one in each hand, cupped and latched, like the perfect 'foot' hold, a soft yet secure and safe anchor. I righted myself quickly. We shared a brief moment of shock together before I fled out of the circle and her life forever.

She is one of only 4 women whose boobs I've touched who weren't family. I'm not a boob chick. If I'm ever going to go 'there' with a woman she will have to basically just look like a dude as much as physically possible. i am super careful about navigating dark floors now.

It happened to Elaine in Seinfeld once. She tripped in the sauna and steadied herself on Terri hatcher's boobs. Elaine thought they were fake and told Jerry, which he didn't like, so he dumped Terri. Later on Terri sees Elaine and thinks she grabbed her just to find out about her bpoobs. As Terri Hatcher's character said as she left Jerry's apartment for the last time:

They're real and they're spectacular!

and in moving pics

!

2 pics

2011-08-28T04:57:00.000-07:00

why does the weekend go so fast?? *sob*

do it alllll again

2011-08-26T23:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am thirty-mumble years old and my life is almost perfectly depicted by this pop tune by Katy Perry - and what of it? There is nothing shameful in being happy with your ridiculous lifestyle, no matter how frivolous it is.

And it's pretty frivolous. Last night was typical Friday night fare: drag self home from work, bust ass cleaning apartment because can no longer endure another day surrounded by cat-related detritus. And I'm not talking about poo - I clean the litter every day - I'm talking about their hair, fur whatever, their toys, (which are actually my things they have stolen from somewhere), things they randomly decide they hate and need to tear up and leave in shreds, and disembodied cockroach parts that have been stashed under the rug, in the couch crevices and sometimes in my shoes.

Finally make it out to the first stop to meet casting agent lesbian friend Nong Sassy, who is again with some haughty sleazy agency people whose idea of humour overlaps almost perfectly with everything I find repulsive. Nong Sassy is easily dragged to the Met Bar (at the lifestyle + travel flagship store the Metropolitan Hotel), which is of course Gay Central where we happily meet up with more gay people and dance to 80s tunes that I horrifyingly know all the words to.

Highlights of the night:

- Friend with free drinks tickets for 50 people when there were only about 20 there (10 on the d-floor). More for us! Especially good at Met Bar where a drink costs you a night's accommodation in a hostel on Khao San Road.

- Acquaintance who was WAY too wired when I got there and kept chatting to me rightupinmyfacereallyfastandblinkingandswallowingalot. SHe calmed down after a few champagnes.

- Society lady(boy) who I didn't recognise since I'm not a gay Thai man, who took a liking to me and plied me with Mumm champagne. Yum. Thank you, Pi Sao. (This sounds weird, but actually it happens more often than you'd think: older drunk katoey sees me as a kind of exotic and friendly lost dolly and bids me sit near her so she can slur make-up tips into my ear, tell me how old she is and how insecure she is about this age, then like last night, warn me not to hang around with shallow people, then immediately mention and repeat a half-dozen times that she is - her words - 'someone here in Thailand.' Eg. 'I can't do my own make-up because I am someone here in Thailand.' Later on, she lifted her skirt right up a couple of times before spinning around and falling over on the dancefloor. I really like her.)

- Making Nong Sassy DJ on her iMac for me and 24, island tunes like 'Like a G6'and other painful tracks that I'm sure the neighbours appreciated hearing at 3am. 24 incidentally needs to learn to PUT HIS PHONE ON SILENT in the morning. Sassy, too, actually. I wonder if it's a Thai 'imperviousness to being woken up by anything' genetic gift.

When someone is sleeping in your bed, they should respect the crypt-like quiet of said bed and do everything within their power to preserve this perfect vacuum of noise. I sleep like a feather now I'm in my twilight years and the slightest little sounds wake me up. A phone alarm that sounds like a submarine evacuation horn (do they even have those?) could rouse me from a state of actual death. I'm surprised these things are even legal, or that they're not used in combat. And fair enough, it can go off once and then I can go back to sleep, after I peel myself off the ceiling, but it's being snoozed every 5 minutes for an hour.

There are eventually calls from people who are obviously thinking WTF is 24 doing argh work started an hour ago!! why isn't he picking upppp??? The first few will go to voice mail (there's another loud BLOOP when that message comes in) then finally there's the sound of actual answered calls saying where are you WTF and his LIES then told in order to get another 30 minutes of snoozed alarms. He also mummifies himself in the duvet, rolling right up in it like a spring roll leaving me completely without a blanket, but everyone has their weird sleep habits I guess.

Still, the phone thing needs to be addressed. My phone sounds like an old-fashioned phone in the brrringgggg-brrrringggg sense. I realise his generation might not even be aware that that's how phones used to sound when they were still stuck to the wall, but I feel like it's a valid and practical ringtone. Also, when it does wake me up, it doesn't make me leap out of bed and run for the door in a half-conscious state thinking I need to get to the upper decks because the Red October is torpedoing us and there's been a breach in the hull.

It rained today - which created the perfect excuse for me to not go anywhere or do anything, including have a shower and get dressed. I watched TV online and ate whatever was in the fridge that either wasn't out of date yet or didn't have a used-by stamp still visible on it.

Tonight, I'm going to party with my suicidal little friend in a favourite place in a semi-gay soi (straight-friendly my gay boyfriends call it). Here's hoping there's no crying unless it is from Ananda Everington here, who I bump into accidentally by the bar and he can't help but show profound love for me with tears. He can be wearing this:
It's a tad overdressed, but as long as his motivations are sincere, that's all that matters.

I need to go nap now - obviously another highlight of the day.

zzzz

the date mum made me go on

2011-08-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school my mum made me go on a date with my physics tutor. It was a disaster. Nothing bad actually befell us and there weren't too many cringy moments – the date itself was actually pleasant enough - but in my head this was like the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

For starters, he was a nerd, which is implied I guess, given his station as my physics tutor. Secondly, he was, though perfectly OK-looking, not hot, because you can be a hot nerd, a la Sheldon, and that would have excused the nerd part. It also would have negated the already negligible positive effect he was having on my ability to comprehend the laws of physics (which I now get, so go figure), but at any rate, he did not have sexiness nor 'badness' going for him.

Sheldon - or rather, the gay guy who plays him

Lastly, what made it completely sordid and repulsive in my brain was not the inappropriateness of a date with my OLDER (like 20 or something) tutor who I didn't like, but that he was my mum's friend's son and I was therefore FORCED through social propriety to endure this date on a SATURDAY NIGHT no less, in order to protect his ego.Saturday nights were when we made up elaborate alibis about sleepovers and then headed to some boy's place to drink wine cooler and make out with someone popular - the weekends weren't to be squandered on anything that didn't involve the relentless pursuit of either social status or a crush (and I had a TERRIBLE crush on someone at that time).

I've never picked this bone with mum, but I should, because when I think back on it, it was a blatant double-standard on her behalf. He was four entire years older than me and drove a car, which he was going to pick me up in and drive me to see a movie, with no imposed curfew. If it was anyone else my mum would have forbade it outright, but because I didn't like this guy and he was a physics nerd and her friend's son, she was willing to let him pretty much drive me wherever he wanted, like into the woods, where he could rape and/or stab me and leave me in a gully.

So how was the date? I hated every moment but was too nice to actually let this show. There were totally creepy moments when he drove us to the ocean-side lookout to eat icecreams next to the cars of people who were making out et cetera, and then again when he drove me home and walked me to my front door, which was two steps away from the carport at most – ie. totally not far enough to necessitate walking me. And then I had to administer the rejection/avoidance of a good night kiss/cock block.

Being 17, I had no real graces in the department of letting people down gently or maturely. When you dumped someone at school, it was done via several intermediaries – you told your best friends or wrote it on the cover of a textbook and somehow it filtered down to the object of spurn. Alternatively someone could yell YOU'RE DROPPED! across the quadrangle at the dumpee - this was how we interacted, like apes.

So when tutor walked me to the door and kind of hovered around expectantly I lost my cool and made up some lame-ass murmured comment about how I thought we should keep things on a student/tutor level. Then I vanished inside (I think mum was even on night-shift and not even there to care about my safe return), leaving him kinda of standing there in front of a closed door while I called up everyone I knew to debrief.

I'm writing this because despite being a grown up now, I am constantly getting myself into this situation. Accepting dates when I shouldn't, even when not forced though social convention, then instead of just enjoying dinner with a nice person, dreading the whole lead-up, drinking too much in the middle, then, should poor person I should never have led on try anything, over-reacting to advances like WTF DUDE ERGH I NEVER WANTED TO COME HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE WHY DID YOU MAKE ME?!?!!!!(With people I do like - on the rare occasion they ask me on a proper date, I am exactly the same way, except at the end I'm thinking WTF DUDE I REALLY LIKE YOU WHY AM I BEING ABNORMAL AND SCARING YOU INTO NEVER SEEING ME AGAIN???!!!!!)

Oh what fun it must be to know me.

OH OH and EDIT:

I have blocked out of my memory what it was like being tutored *after* the date, but i do remember the four roses he had delivered to me the following week and some of the words on the card. It read:

Dear Farang Girl,

(something about pineapple on pizza, which i like, then three other me factoids) Here's one rose for these four things I really like about you - i would have given you one for everything i like about you but i couldn't afford a million roses.'

From,
Physics Nerd

Only a million, dude? (Joking!)

Prologue

He got married like 15 years ago and had kids so there's no reason to feel all bad for him, in case you were. AND he's a nice guy, in case that wasn't obvious.

long weekend WIN head cold FAIL

2011-08-11T23:28:00.000-07:00

Oh yes I did just dust off the old win/fail meme. I so infrequently get sick for any period of time that any kind of illness is a massive, sorry, epic fail on my part, especially since it's a long weekend and I had to cancel my trip to Phangan. Boo hiss. On the upside, it's a Friday and I'm sitting in my pajamas at 1.45pm surfing the net, surrounded by dirty clothes and empty bottles of water. Win.

Sylvia ran away again this week. I'm convinced Justice is trying to get rid of her, since he's the only cat of mine heavy enough to lever the door open and he was the only cat jumping on my spleen the following morning asking for food. He showed no signs of remorse while she was gone. He also kind of had that 'sufferin succotash' look on his face when I brought her home.

The maintenance guy found her on level 19 (7 floors up). I had to coax her out of a deep gap in the building - it was 10 minutes of me going 'sylveeeee come out, baby girrrllll' in a whiny high-pitched voice, knowing the whole time the guy is praying to Buddha that in the next life he doesn't come back as a single woman with cats instead of children.

**later**

erhhhhh I'm still sick. WHY?? This should be subsiding by now. I'm SuperPerson, I never get sick like this. This is day 4. DAY FORWAR! I went out for a chilled, not at all strenuous night and URGH, I'm still feeling bleaurgh. Tonight I was coughing IN PUBLIC. A LOT. My eyes were watering. Laughter turned into spluttering. My eyes were puffy. I COULDN'T' EAT A LOT! Oh sad sad day when I have no appetite and have no impulse to photograph every morsel of every meal. We are now going on the 5th day. How am I still able to walk around and interact socially with no appetite?? How do I force myself out of bed??? Am I not an anomaly? Is this not the sign of the times? Is this not a horseman of the apocalypse?

tiffy

I feel like I should have babied this from the beginning. Instead of forcing myself out of bed the first morning, I should have hit DISMISS, rolled over and slept for 24 hours then been FINE. Instead, no, I dragged my ass to work feeling like someone pulled me out of the cadaver drawer (I'm dedicating my body to science), and sent me high on Tiffy to sit inert and thirsty at my desk for 4 days.

I have had so many OTC medications this week, I don't know what's going on. Paracetamol, Tiffy, Decolgen, some random white pills from Andrea's drawer. I've been mainlining juice - luckily coconut water is back in season - the lady at the juice stall recognized me from last year and commented: six months since naam maphraow... long time! ... yeh, i know, since i am the thirstiest motherfucker on the planet right now thanks to illness and Tiffy. If Tiffy effectively relieved my nose of moisture as it does my mouth, there might be some pay off, but I still sniff! With unquenchable thirst. Anyway, I got sick - as many people do, so I hear, with far less drama and incredulousness.

Anyway, here are some pics of me with nice people before I got sick and forgot caring about anything that wasn't Tiffy, Panadiene, juice/water and being supine on my sofa. They are super nice people, too. Except for high-kick. He will drag you on a school night into a private karaoke room and ply you with red wine while he sings and high-kicks to popular 90s tunes. someone who wants to sleep with you may also be in the room, taking advantage of the 'romance' of the situation (your drunkeness) and keep sidling up, moves to which you willingly consent as you've been there before with him and >> red wine. The next day you will have a hangover. this will happen more than once.

me, hong, hich kick, yoko

sleep now - pray for complete recovery of all facets, including appropriate mouth moistness, acceptable energy levels, healthy appetite feelings, no coughing at all, minimal eye-burn and watering and NO HEAT AT ALL emanating from my neck/throat region.

me and melanie, who is awesome

Tomorrow go to JJ -- sweat it out, maybe ?? sleeeeeeeeeeeep. urgh,.....

take face off & put self back in cadaver drawer with this thing curled up next to me :D

welcome back Sylv!

the skinny

2011-08-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

this is a bit random, but anyway,,,

i am skinnier apparently. everyone comments on it. i was looking mushy and lame and pale before and wasn't liking it. So i stopped eating ramen and pig fat every lunch, cut out the 4pm bagel , reduced cals to 1220 per day (mainly meat & salad), drank 3 litres evian at work, gnawed on almonds at my desk a la ace ventura nibbling on sunflower seeds and within 4 weeks had lost 2 k. hair skin & nails also got better - whoda thunk?

anyway, my weight was 53kg and i wasn't concerned about lowering that,- rather shifting some of it around. First, remove those fucking disgusting clumps of cellulite away from my upper arms (seriously, body, how is arm fat keeping me fed/warm? why not send it where it's needed, like my boobs/face?). Also, a little shape on my chicken legs couldn't hurt.

Most importantly - the GUTS. GOD what would the point of all this torture be if I can't get a flat stomach. Which means fat loss and sodium reduction and breaking up with poor white bread and white rice, like they ever did anything but love me. Years ago i would rely just on running - which i loved, even over the perilously obstacle-d streets of bangkok, which made it more like a steeple chase only with open sewers and rabid dogs, but running's no good for building muscles. It's great for inhaling car exhaust until one's face is slightly blueish and one has a film of black grit across their face by the time they get home, but it does nothing for upper body strength.

so after my valiant attempt to explode myself with ramen - chronicled on Facebook -i started running again,as an entry-level fitness thing. i had a sweet one-month complimentary pass at VIE hotel fitness - an over the top Babylon-esque marble/mosaics/steam rooms/private rooms/rainshowers/rosepetals/blowjobs type deal. The first day on the treadmill i was convinced i would fall forward and concuss myself on the handlebars, or trip and knock all my teeth out. i didn't and made 4k in around 30 minutes without vomiting or passing out.

After a week on the treadmill I started with my girl crush's (FYI Jillian Michaels) Making The Cut.. I've done MTC before so i know it's like 45 minutes of torture/wishing for sweet merciful death, but it worked for me before so better the hell you know!

after doing MTC for 2 weeks and sticking to 1200 cal per day, i dropped about 3 kilo. so now i am trying to gain muscle. judging by these pics, it looks like through some genius quirk of evolution, those 5 pounds just came directly from my face. making me look OLD. what the FUCK, universe? why cant i be like a squirrel and hold the fat in my cheek pockets???

fat face vs now face:

now face - where did my cheeks go??

im not going to attempt to lose more, because then my face will start to look like The Scream. plus, i don't want to be a waif, i want to be a butt kicker like Jamie Eason. She is the professional lifting woman who incidentally does not look like any of edward munchs paintings. And i obviously im not going to do roids or HGH (not that i'm saying she does, but it's likely) - and.... actually this is a bit of a scary pic of her, i'm sure there are better ones where she looks less made from wax.

She could rip you in two.

meanwhile, here are my ridiculous pasty "abs"

even more tiny abs. you're supposed to document your progress so you can see how far - or not - you've come. i had a fat pic of me too, but i cant get it it off my itouch.. it was much fatter though, you will have to take my word for it. obviously my face in that pic would have been so huge as to not even fit in frame with the rest of my zeppelin body. i dont even know how people fit my cheeks in their pictures...

two more weeks of making the cut and i will look like this:

hehe. i can't even type that with a straight face. SIGH. {{Jillian girl-crush love.}}

blood/sweat/hunger

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

2011-08-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

the best boyfriend I'll never have (he's not a lesbian)

all i have to say is what a fucking awesome night. the drama, the six packs, the drinks, the crowds, the insobriety. had to opt out of work today, but let the chips fall where they may - yeah, I'm talking to you, The Man. I met a ton of celebrities - really really nice ones, saw lots of super hot and appropriately vacuous underwear modules, had photo taken with Gene, the most fabulous CD ever. I left early under the false pretense of going to work, but then got home and had early night foiled. As soon as I put my bags down, and started at the rat nest of straw and pins and spray that was previously my hair, my friend called having a bit of a breakdown, so i ended up at hers, reminding her why killing herself would be bad. Anyway, pics!

some of us celebrity modules

never rains, it pours

2011-07-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

Death, Dreams and Dresses

what before may look like

before: weeks and weeks of nothing - scarce social events (that i wanted to go to), tumbleweeds blowing through work, romantic interest flat-lining, bad back, no holidays, zero thrills, sweet FA and now. now is out-now-ing itself, everything is happening with no warning or precedent. i have been flung back into the saddle, ready or not and things that were simmering quietly away in the periphery are now boiling over and fizzing everywhere and being crazy, confusing, fun, and that old chestnut, fatiguing. Universe. WHAT?

me now, except some plates are dropping and smashing and some are flying away and hitting people in the face

the weekend started on thursday night i guess - gin party. It's promotional, so it's free. PCF is back from Belgium and is (edit: WAS, we just had a very angsty phonecall) rather balanced and matured, which is like a great gift from Monsieur Universe, so we got a little tipsy on gin (she puked), networked a bit, then took time out in soi 38 eating isaan food at 11pm while the monsoon rains fell. Very BKK, very lovely.

Friday at work was just bleargh. Some days are like that, especially when i just want to write something insane for my own amusement, like assassin fiction, or island horror mockumentaries, but have to be Serious Corporate Person. Anyway, was tired all day, so decided to just have a quiet dinner. Which was the death knell of my quiet weekend.

Intercut cheapo quiet gay soi dinner with scenes from a whatsapp conversation. Seriously, where is my Whatsapp movie? Fuck facebook. This free messaging thing compels one to be in constant communication with someone, anyone (anyone on my phone list anyway), always. It is free and yo can instantly contact them at any hour. Great, huh?

A few pings later discussing a Freudian dream I had had concerning a French Chinese Friend and gay soi night morphs into Friday night deli at a FCF's house. FCF and I have been kind of circling each other lately, since he seems like a kind and worthwhile person to know. Also cute. So whatsapp has escalated to some form of date hotline (dateline?) and I'm hanging out on a Firday night with cheese and wine as a facade.

albeit a delicious facade

Anyway, FCF has an IMMENSE home, so coldly and cruelly only inhabited by one. Being the nomadic independent lady spinster with cats I am, I'm the LAST person to do the whole 'wow, you here on your lonesome, buddy?' thing, but please. This place is in showroom condition. The shoes are lined up neatly on the shoe rack - unlike my shoes, which form a chaotic explosion of flip flops, boots, heels, dirty socks and trainers in a haphazard arc-shape around the door, a few mismatched pairs in the shoe rack, some behind the shoe rack, you get the picture.

It looked like no one lived there. Like he'd broken into some vacationing family's house and was pretending this was his just to impress me. But had that been the case there probably wouldn't have been a GIGANTIC WEDDING PHOTO YES YES I KNOW of him and his wife hanging above the 72" plasma in the living room. Nor would there be many more photos of him and betrothed covering every other flat surface in the house, including under the glass of the living room coffee table so that presumably when the love birds set their dinners down on the table necessitating the brief aversion of their gaze from the giant hanging wedding portrait they could still be reminded of their love by the collage of romance happening on the table.

A saner woman would have probably asked WTF dude is with the wedding photos. But i am not that person. (I couldn't leave by the way, it's a gated compound where no taxis go. And it's Friday night and he's cute.) Plus, I've had half a bottle of wine, am attempting to make the most of my final salad years before performing a Joan Rivers on my face, and besides we are just here to chat and eat charcuteries, no one said anything about anything else.

Fast-forward to morning confessionals, after a vivid possible Freudian dream where I received the haa thaew - a temple tattoo. FCF grows pensive. Yes, he has something to do today, in response to my question. 'I have a daughter' (2.5) (oh, and there's a wife too - quelle surprise - separated 2 yrs). And then this crazy-big echoing untouched house that - from my perspective- hangs from his neck like the famed albatross. Sadness pervaded. Maybe another chapter on FCF later.

Then last night was my widowed friend and colleague's farewell party. Half the company was there. No one cried. But then I did leave pre-midnight due to being so very fatigued and knowing that tonight I have to look amazing and not fall over (gay fashion show). Crying would have happened later, for sure. Glad i left when i did. Do NOT need puffy eyes at gay fashion show tonight - those queens can be bitches.

And because the universe is really laying it on as thick as possible, after leaving that party to hop into my sweet dark cold coffin for 12 hours, 24 decides to drop round. Break out the emergency beers, Youtube, catch-up talk, and do some mobile phone harassment (someone stole his phone and refused to give it back) and there goes my early night. In a weird circular dream situation, 24 recounted that some days before he had dreamed of me walking away from him, while he tried unsuccessfully to catch up. Separately, I had dreamed of cupcakes and the very next day saw on FB he had posted some illustration work he had done. Of cupcakes.

No sleep in today though, cheers universe, since 24 is up at 7am to go to his uncle's 100-day memorial in Lopburi. They do that here - 100 days after someone dies there's a final send-off bash for the spirit (which was hanging around with the living getting closure). It's a party/wake. Funerals themselves - like weddings and other things involving a bunch of monks chanting and everyone sitting on their knees for ages - are quite boring. No touching eulogies. No lowering of the coffin into the earth. but the 100 day party is supposed to be good. nevertheless i declined the invitation to attend a memorial for a man i only just found out died amongst people who don't know who i am and who can't understand my version of their language.

what a gay event flyer might look like - ie the LEAST confidential thing that ever was or will be

So a few hours from now, *tips hat at universe* i have to take my tired old ass to bed supperclub where i will have my hair and make-up did and be wearing a long lacey dress and high heels and walking up and down a runway with male models in only their underwear and be furnished with fizzy French alcohol and given gifts of expensive cosmetics. PLEASE don't fall over.

Next weekend, universe, i intend to chill the fark out - do some freelance perhaps. Long weekend head to Phangan, i think with 24 in tow, since he's never been and is always bugging me about the islands. hopefully no more surprises before i rise like a bedraggled, terribly singed, dehydrated phoenix from the ashes of my weekend.

*deep breaths*

signs i am turning thai

2011-07-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

I have been here 5.5 years. i realised today that there are some things i'm so used to, i barely notice them anymore - things that were so foreign to me when i first got off the boat, i could hardly handle it. On the flipside, there are things that still, as C&C Music Factory so eloquently put it, make me go hmmm. Then there's the things about which I am perfectly ambivalent... to be revisited in another 5.5 years, (obligatory age-related joke:) when I am 25.

definitely turning thai
things i used to notice, but don't anymore because i am that assimilated.

- Nose picking. So that guy on the skytrain has his entire hand in his nose. that pretty shoe sales girl is standing right there, with her pinky fingernail scraping in a circular, whirlpool-of-doom-like motion in one nostril while she's asking me if she can help me. Or the fries dude is attempting to touch his brain through his nostril. Meh. I simply do not care.

- Vanity. In Sydney - quite ironically, since that is by far the vainest city ever - you would become the object of ridicule if anyone ever saw you check yourself out in the reflection of anything - including a mirror. Here, you can get a mirrored iPhone screen for convenience. People have framed photographs of themselves on their desk. Shiny surfaces are as fawned over by construction worker guys as they are by cigarette promo girls (girls who walk around selling cigarettes, there's another thing I don't care about). I scrutinize my reflection in the work bathroom mirrors (when I can fight my to them through the other girls) at length and un-self-consciously.

- Ladyboys. I no longer see a pretty man in a dress, I see a third sex. They fail to illicit a response from me outside of me telling them what I want at the Mac/Biotherm counter (they staff all the high-end make-up counters in the big department stores). Likewise Toms (tomboys, I guess, but with more conviction), who only get an internal surprise from me the first time I see one emerge from a ladies' bathroom stall. We have quite a few Toms at work - they're even less detectable than the ladyboys, and some of them are actually quite cute. Would I go there? Not sure. Ive been with less masculine boys, that's for sure.

- Social eating. Thais would rather stare to death that eating alone, which is social failure of the highest order. I mean, why even bother eating? Thais do not do it and neither will I, even if I have to wait around at lunch til 2pm or sit with people I have only seen in passing.

- Squat toilets. I'm surprised when we stop at a gas station and there *is* a western toilet. I would rather hover over the potential Ebola than risk come into contact with it via toilet seat. Even if you normally hover over a normal toilet anyway, there's less lactic build-up in the quads in the squat position - better for lengthy trips to Phi Phi Island as we say. (i know, i know, TMI).

- Cheap things. Excuse me? Did you ask me to pay 100 baht ($3) for fried rice?? No fucking way, dude. Knock off sunglasses are 50baht on the street. A DVD is 80 baht. A beer is 40baht. Rice with all sorts of cool meats and Asian vegetables in it is NEVER MORE THAN 35 baht. That's standard. So get your expensive-ass product out of my face.

- Cutesy. I was behind a grown woman on the skytrain today wearing what looked like a child's pajama top and carrying a pink Winnie The Pooh bag. The woman was neither crazy nor being ironic. Similarly, made-in-Thaiand dresses are usually (in addition to being 3 sizes too small for me) adorned with bows, frills, AND lace, allow for no bust room and only available in a sheer material and flower pattern. I don't buy these types of clothes, but seeing them on an adult woman no longer sends me into a rage.

- Music. Thai cover bands singing Thai cover songs - the same 20, by the way - everywhere you go. I know the words to some of them now. Cool!

- Porn everywhere. As in the name 'porn'. Many names end with porn. I know someone called Titiporn. It's pronounced 'pon', without the 'r'. Some (Asian, btw) teenaged tourists were taking a picture of the TANAPORN store sign the other day, or doing the best they could between giggling fits, and I couldn't figure out why. Porn doesn't affect me anymore. (Interestingly 'kum' still makes me smirk - kum means 'laugh').

- Pussies galore. Stray cats (and dogs) everywhere. I only don't like it when they look ill. Or when they act all cute and small and defenseless and I end up taking them home and not giving them away and they get all fat and lazy and wake me up every morning at 6am by jumping on my kidneys because they're hungry.

kinda turning thai - half taking them half leaving them.

- Tinglish. I should hate poor grammar, but adopting some Tinglish phrases is a guilty pleasure. I almost feel lost speaking to/emailing a friend outside Thailand and not being able to add a 'na' or a 'kha' to the end of a sentence. And a drawn out 'mai ruuuu' is far more joyous - and therefore more commonplace from me - than the charmless 'I don't know'. Having said that, do NOT call me 'dear' (as in 'thanks, dear' - a common thing from well-meaning Thai colleagues) and stop adding 'already' to everything (already)! In Thai the word for already is used all the time to indicate a current state of being, but hey Thai peeps, it doesn't translate that way! "I already sent that" "Hungry already?" "Already raining" is giving your observations the wrong subtext.

- Rainy season. It's nice sleeping in when it's raining and storming. It's shitty trying to make it to work with dry feet and both eyes not gouged out from umbrellas when your street is flooded.

- Bangkokians of all nationalities. I love how we're kind of homogenized into one raceless blob of people. How we all stare at the TV screen in the train even though we've watched this very phone commercial with the dog a billion times. How we all hate/fear cab drivers. How we bitch about the heat and the rain and the traffic - things no one has any control over. I hate how we get pushy at the 7-11 counter. And how we tend to walk on each others heels rather than go around. And how we're constantly jabbing at our phones instead of paying attention to shit. I hate how we barely say please or thank you or emote in any way that doesn't involve a colon and a right-side bracket. I hate how one minute we want to stand still on the escalator and the next we are barreling down that bitch as if death itself got on behind us.

- The BTS. This love/hate relationship is well documented, in my brain at least. LOVE the concept and the times I can count on one hand that I didn't just miss the train. HATE the execution and the intersecting queues at Siam station. For god's sake, engineer, did you not see that you put the change counter about 10 paces from the ticket machine, two places where people are most likely to queue, and so the cross-stream of these queues is like the Great Wall of Thailand that commuters who already have both change and ticket have to burrow through in order to get to the turnstile? Rage.

- US spelling.

Things i have always hated and probably always will - pretty sure Thais hate some of these things, too...

- Poorly-kempt older man exploiting the wealth imbalance by trotting about town with a teenage Isaan girl. I have witnessed enough of these exchanges in passing now that i have an honorary doctorate in being able to tell who is the long-term spouse and who is the misogynist sex tourist. I can hear if you are speaking nicely to that girl, or barking orders at her, or blaming her for the heat or for not negotiating a better price for the 100 baht for a songtaew ride (that incidentally costs 100 baht, you stupid moron), or for her fucking up her tenses or not properly understanding your thick accent. Go back to where you came from and learn some manners. Or be stabbed to death in my imagination.

- Hey, you have some flaw or another. My Thai is imperfect, my chopstick ability not at Mr Miyagi level, my weight will go up and down a few kilo depending on my diet/cycle, I will probably appear tired at least once per week, I have wide shoulders and a chest that won't fit most Thai clothes that I like, my toes are long and monkey-like, and yes, I am old and single - none of this is news, yet people who have spent some time in Thailand feel compelled to let me know when they notice these things.

-a farang girl's relationship prospects. I am not seen as serious girlfriend material by Thais (for whatever reason), western guys would rather pair up with a submissive Asian lass - and why not - they're young, slim, attractive, perfectly-groomed and THROWING themselves at farang dudes so by sheer ease-of-use and availability, the western girl is trumped. Then there are Asian expats, but they have the whole 'mistress' culture going on. (Not that i haven't also exploited this, but this is the HATE column, so imagine 'Mistress culture' is up in the LOVE or DO NOT NOTICE column as well.)

- Poverty. So many disenfranchised: street kids, druggies, normal working people who live on the street or in slums, disabled etc etc. Hard to know where to start/how to help. I hope my policy of always giving when asked and giving to the same people if i recognize them/they recognize me is making a difference, however small. Hm, i can't make a joke in this one.

[imagine a segue/outro here]

BED TIME

blog in retrograde...

2011-07-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

i wrote this last week but never finished it:

The fortnight that was

Contrary to the strap line of my blog, or what happens in real life, I try not to complain too much. Today, however, I am giving myself an open ticket to be a Debbie Downer. This is my little corner of the Internets, after all, and I can whine all I like.

As per most things I have to complain about, my current condition is the result of my own hare-brainedness. In a concerted third-life crisis-related effort to stave off bingo wings (or 'bye-bye arm', as one ex-boyfriend dubbed it), I starting exercising *before* work in the Grand Diamond Tower Olympia (my lounge room). Bought new weights, was excited to use them, bent over, HAULED those babies up and *CCRRRIIIICKKK* goes my back. Ever since then, things have been extra difficult and sigh-inducing.

What the fuck, back? I try to do the right thing, try to strengthen you with careful supermans and slow-motion dead lifts and you go and stab me in the... in the YOU. The one time I don't bend at the knees and POW, there goes full-range mobility and now I walk like I a) wear Depends and b) have soiled them.

I did this two weeks ago. For two long-ass weeks, I've been dragging myself between work, home, and Villa Mart taking itty bitty steps everywhere and wincing with every footfall, with tiger balm vapour lines trailing... I was going to say 'in my wake' but that falsely implies that I am moving fast enough to create a disturbance of wind or air.

Suddenly everyone on the BTS wants to jostle me or take me out with their fake LV tote and everything I try to pick up I drop, as if gravity, my back, and all my possessions are in some secret alliance to cause me pain. Things that are below knee level no longer exist to me – for example, shoes that require lacing, skinny jeans, socks, my feet, even my cats. I look like I'm curtseying whenever I put anything in the bin

How much longer, back? (Insert world-weary Napoleon Dynamite-style urgh noise.)

I did do other things in the last fortnight besides try to rearrange my spine. I made it to koh chang for the long weekend. It required a lot of transport changes, bumpy roads, bag carrying, hard beds, and sitting on wooden floors so this was probably not the smartest thing to do if I wanted to regain full use of myself. It seemed imperative to leave BKK, though, given the long weekend.

The long weekend was in honour of some Buddha Day, which of course meant no alcohol or party – a concept at odds with the very point of having a long weekend. I don't understand the thought process behind banning alcohol on any particular day for any reason. Thailand bans alcohol for Buddha days and for elections, but actually, you can go to any number of places and have a cocktail or wine in a tea cup, or drink alcohol at home, or – as is the case during the daily bans between 2-5pm and midnight-11am – commit to buying more than 10 litres – so WHAT IS THE POINT, THAILAND? Why bother with this stupid rule if you never enforce it? Why is this now turning the gaze inwards suddenly to compare it to my own lackadaisical approach to personal guidelines, rule #1: Floss every night.

Anyway, I'm sure this is just another sign of my impending old age: that is, my back, my dwindling levels of patience, my increasing levels of grump, and my lack of enthusiasm about anything that is not vegging out in front of priated DVDs. (including finishing blog posts apparently!!! Wheeeee next!)

well i am worried about this

2011-07-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

i liked amy. i identified. she had a great voice. her lyrics resonated. she liked to party, so what? she had too much talent to fuck it up. i was waiting for another album. kurt, heath, amy, brittany-- even anna nicole. i trusted that these people could handle their shit. apparently they misjudged.

น้าสงสาร

btw, it would have been Marco's birthday today if he hadn't ODed too.

a very undry july - sponsored by poorly lit and composed BB pictures

2011-07-03T02:04:00.000-07:00

Hi, from my balcony.

A few days ago I toyed with the idea of doing July sans alcohol. A number of predestined events make that impossible, as does my lifestyle in general, my lack of conviction, my love of drinking, and my genetic predisposition to want to be wasted all the time*, so that idea was RU486-ed before it even had a chance to attach itself to the metaphoric uterine wall of my psyche.

July is a particularly bad month to take a hard-line approach to alcohol . And here's why.

Why I will not be giving up alcohol this month.
1) It's the Thai general election today. Thaksin's sister Yingluck will win. (And please don't sass me like, 'I'm not voting, the govt is fucked wahwah waaaah,' because that is basically just allowing yourself to be ass-raped by politicians.) If the protesters, red/yellow/rainbow, set up outside my work and home again, I'm going to need some Sangsom to get me through - and to lure the soldiers home with (I've never done that, by the way, not even when curfew threatened to revirginize eveeryone). I don't actually care who wins, I just hope the 'winner' is accepted as such by all parties, and actually maybe does something to challenge the current classist paradigm, and helps the rural poor, and addresses the issue of LM, and please doesn't change the constitution so the exiled ex-prime minister-caretaker can re-enter Thai politics. But then I am a stupid farang girl with no right to comment. Chok Dee, Muean Thai!

2) Hot sake. On Friday night for PCF's pre-birthday dinner we finished 12 bottles of sake - TWELVE - between 16 of us. Plus four bottles of wine. And some beer. The manager, who is our friend, said his staff now see us as demi-gods, regarded with a mixture of fear and awe. Then after dinner at karaoke, two more towers of beer, then jagerbombs and long islands at DEMO, made by that comically oversexed barman, then Sangsom at PCF's place. I managed to not only not die of alcohol poisoning or text inappropriate and embarassing messages to every man in my address book, but actually made it into my bed before passing out. Others were not so fortunate.

3) Confidential Sundays. My fabulous colleague is brewing up something with the other high-kick grandmas which will involve launching a new event at supperclub. I am required on opening night to do/wear something (they are alarmingly vague on this topic when pressed for details) that will not be made of natural fibres, may require me to forgo carbs and breathing for a few days, and will prompt me to seek Dutch courage.

4) It is wet season. This means getting stuck in the most random places while a) waiting for a cab to appear, b) waiting for a cab to stop (they don't like to pick up wet people, or drive anywhere, or do anything related to performing the duties of a cab driver), and c) the rain to stop. Usually the rain will just get heavier, then start falling sideways, parallel to the ground, so it can get you even if you're standing under something. I've seen rain open 7-11 doors and fly inside just to get people, so you're generally not safe anywhere. At this stage, the best thing to do is go to the nearest pub/bar and drown yourself in happy hour drinks so no one can tell if it's rain water or vodka dripping down your face.

5) Cocktails and dreams. 24 and I had much fun last night creating cocktails out of the only drinks I had in the house on dry election night. These were: three shots of Sangsom, 100mls of 60% alcohol Chinese barley wine, M150 energy drinks, Coke, soda, and orange juice. I vowed never to have that feet-flavoured wine again after last time, but we must have done something right, because no one projectile vomited and we managed to stay up til dawn doing inane shit like youtubing American hip hop, trying to invent new fitball exercises, and, that old chestnut, tormenting the cats. Added bonus: no hangover.

Cheese-scented Chinese liquor, that I have learned to love.

In other news, I've actually been working out. With the exception of this weekend, I have been letting Jillian Michaels kick my butt regularly and am tracking the development of a discernible waistline. It ain't easy, but neither is tethering yourself to the ground with ropes so that your zeppelin-like torso doesn't get sucked skyward in the next tropical thunderstorm - and this way I get to be aggressive to people and blame it on surges of testostoerone (that's how it works, right?). Abs, I will show you them.... soon.

weekend wars

2011-06-18T01:06:00.000-07:00

random pic of sylv

more digging today -- i am about to sign a contract for another year here at the diamond. this means i will get to see mahanakorn through to completion and by the time it's finished my lease will be up and i will have won the lottery/married an old billionaire/become the mia noi of Chuwitetc p and i can just move on over.

other stuff i have to do instead of doing this:

- run
- freelance
- clean my apartment
- go out again
- mention just in case my sarcasm wasn't clear that I'm not going to get married and move to Tokyo.

let's see how many of these seemingly easy-to-do things i fail at due to sloth, procrastination, and general apathy.

cats demonstrating the weekend's main activity.

ways my life is weird

2011-06-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

- go out dancing from 9.30 to 4.02 with friends - respectable - nothing too bizarre. saw 23 while out, which never happens by accident - like once in 15 months. we have been doing this thing for 15 months and we dissolve out of context, we are all awkward when it's a surprise meeting.was he drunk? did he feel bad as was with other guys (colleagues)? i was distracted by some rude fucking bitch dancing her cunt off in our faces to try and move us in a not-so-passive aggressive way. what a rude dog. we left, that was painful to see her debase herself and her (our) gender like that. well, 23. he called twice, i failed him on both counts, im sure he's just drunk. he wont mind. if there's one thing that's lasted, its' him... my beautiful timmy. we're not over yet.

aaaanyway, avoided walking past old house, that always manages to make me desperate and weepy, got home in a cab french asian2 is a gentleman, frenchasian3 is not, (frenchasian1 is neither - thought all together they are pleasant and entertaining enough)... but i will investigate that further later, maybe, to be sure, he has been chatting w me all night why? and then,.... then... a +81 number called. and it was actually the last person i would have guessed, i thought he'd forgotten all about me jun. the japanese lover. the only new addition this year (have been recycling). he is drunk. he loves me. he wants to marry me. im not sure what this means. do i get married now? that would be weird.

he's coming back in august she thinks he said,with her mind flashing back to chicken corner in the dark, the people there, the neon, the food. if he proposes i will say yes, no matter what it means. i will go live in tokyo.

drunk husband >

i do love sunday

2011-06-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

i get to watch this thing:

which will eventually be this thing:

I live in the little pyramid building, 'diamond' (it's not a freaken diamond, obviously, cos that wouldn't even pass design stage, but whatever, T.I.T):

also wtf was i going on about last night? i should probably avoid the internet after booze, but i did get to chat to my little brother, who was doing the exact same thing as me only on a different continent-- surfing FB when everyone else had gone to sleep. clearly the inability to just go to bed after getting home from a club is genetic.

i might go watch some more digging (they're building slurry walls right now before starting work on excavating for the basement levels)(I learned that from skyscrapercity, on which there is an entire thread devoted to Mahanakhon.)

there is never a wrong time for ramen.

2011-06-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

eating it now as a matter of fact. got home at 3am. hungry. cheese ramen. cost like 55baht, which is less than 2 aud. right now, what's hot: cheese ramen (literally), empowering songs (lady gaga)(hair)(sheisse), the VIE FIT gym at vie hotel so hi-so, i love every second of my torture there, jaeger bombs, money, my fucking super clean apartment since i machine-washed all the curtains and vacuumed, my legs (even though they fucking hurt), my growing circle of awesome girlfriends, rainy season, chili (literally and metaphorically), cheesy songs like 'man down', staying awake after getting home to check facebook for four hours.

that up there is one of 24s art things. he does art. has like lots of important contracts, how we met, very indirectly. below are four jager bombs. that's what im good at. not making them, consuming them. the flamboyant oversexed bartender flicks the top brown shots into the yellow then you just drink it without caring about the little glass being in the big one. this is after a massive show and dance involving ice, four huge glasses, him standing on the bar, making hammy faces and flicking vodka on everyone while he flares. 300 baht a piece. jaeger and red bull (and vodka??)

bangkok in the heat reminds me of something i can't put my brain on. it's persistent - the humid yellow light reflected off the roofs of buildings like shimmering and everything. i can smell that shimmering almost. a real mirage. the place i'm thinking of is not now, that's all i know - but memory, or future, or dream, some other plane, i don't know but the feeling is getting stronger. it's island voodoo. it's koh chang in the wet season after 48 straight hours of rain in the dark, with rihanna and eminem playing and buckets and the black terrible ocean no one is allowed into at night, and the fluro green squid fishing lights on the horizon, or in num's dank little room. it's also on phangan with your brothers, stumbling over shit like tree roots because it's night, one scene morphing into another, coconut husks, pink lights, malibu pineapple, mushroom shakes, new neural pathways, the 12-hour ride there on the bus, and dark, dark thailand. parts no one ever sees. secrets. and dreaming of going somewhere. i can never figure out where it is...

just quietly

2011-06-04T16:49:00.000-07:00

universe, i think it might be time u threw someone in my direction. it's been years since last serious person and i ain't getting any younger.They're out there, right? He - or on the outside chance - she is out there right? or have i read too much fiction?

big long one

2011-06-04T00:28:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to the super irregular, frequently incoherent, sometimes mildly entertaining, often horrifyingly frightening ramblings of me. Because I prefer to lay motionless on my sofa watching hour after hour of America's Next Top Model when I come home from work instead of typing (or indeed cleaning or exercising or reading or anything else that might distinguish me from a corpse), I have a lot to annotate. Get an ergonomic cushion ready, put your wheat sack in the microwave, and if you're 'blessed' with cat-shaped blobs of furry hate, as I am, battle for that extra square centimetre of chair now, your butt will thank you for it (a kind of creepy thing to visualise, but anyway).

Last blog I'd just come back from Koh Samed, which is Gay Island. This time I have also just (like a week ago) come back from Koh Samed, but this time with extra gay. Petite Chinese Friend and I went with a minivan full of gay friends. MUCH more appropriate accessories for Gay Island than a toddler and husband everyone assumes are mine. These are the same friends who take pictures of every single thing that happens, from banana roti to dogs barking to people breathing, so there's not much that wasn't committed to digital eternity.

Also on the rainbow bus was our model friend, Dream, who is mesmerisingly beautiful. Her beauty acts like mind control - and not just over her boyfriend (one of an endless succession of cute yet hapless white guys), but over everyone that wanders within viewing range. People literally stare at her slack-jawed without blinking until she moves out of view and oh, honey, you do NOT want to be photographed next to that woman unless you like looking as if you've just been resuscitated after a horrific laboratory accident in which you were electrocuted, drowned, and prematurely aged. Bitch be stunning.

So anyway, Samed was fun and we had a gay old time - my lesbian friend porch-DJed again, (much to the delight of our neighbours who evidently only wanted to move it move it after we set up shop outside), we swam in the sea to get some glowing algae upon us (in limited supply this time), I got bitten 14 times in the same area (my right flank, by mosquitos, before you get any weird ideas), we ate well, drank better, and danced off all those calories in Gay Ground Zero, Silver Sand. There was actually one straight guy there who attempted to approach me but he was pretty drunk and susceptible and was swiftly dragged back into a clowder of ladyboys who all gave me the evil eye for the rest of the night.

what gay ground zero might look like

There is not much that has happened other than the island trip. PCF's boyfriend went back to Belgium for a few months, which has brought about the end of life as we know it - or you would have thought it judging by the intense drama and anguish emitted by that one small girl. It doesn't help that he hasn't been calling her every single second, so she's been feeling lost and has been a kind of relentless stress/sorrow machine.

Being the primary friendship-giver in this instance I have to 'be there' as some kind of impotent semi-mute head-nodder with nothing useful to say and no sensitive way of opting out other than getting cancer or pregnant or committing suicide (and don't think, after the fifth tearful lunchdate in a row I haven't contemplated ramming my chopsticks through my eye sockets). Here's hoping we all make it through the next two months without one of us bitch-slapping the living daylights out of the other one or shaking the other one by the shoulders and shouting FOR PITY'S SAKE, GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF!

Last night she did well, though. It helped that one of the others in our party is a real-life widow at 28. This is the same girl whose husband's rock star exit into the cosmos I lamented some months back. She's taking a world trip soon, getting on with it, even though you can tell - feel - there's a huge thing missing. People have to spend more time together, maybe, while they're able to.

A few Tuesday ago I had a nice hangover courtesy of these guys - The Drums - who hit Bangkok on a Monday night. It was really an awesome night, and not just because I didn't fall over or make out with someone ugly, or embarrass myself on live TV by giving an interview to Channel V after 6 beers (oh, except the last thing) - but because they fucking rocked it, and the lead singer really does dance like a gay Napolean Dynamite. Lots of gay in this post, might have to hetero it up a bit.

Actually, I'm back off to gay island next weekend for my gay friend's birthday. To offset the homosexuality, I may bring 24 along, since he expresses interest in joining me every time I go anywhere and just a few moments ago said he had never been to Samed in the least subtle of hints ever.

I wouldn't mind having someone straight, male, and childless there for once, just for symmetry's sake, but yeah. This calls into question the illegitimacy of our 'relationship'. If we're going to make this thing not work, we can't be accompanying each other on island trips, no matter how brief, sleazy, and meaningless. We can't jeopardise the deep lack of caring we have for each other by seeing each other in daylight hours that comprise anything more than him a) trying to find his clothes, and b) working the cats up in to a frenzy (seriously, it's like he's made of catnip, bacon bits, and crackly tinsel, they go insane.) I should not lose faith, though. Being Thai, a male, 24, and arty, he won't (or will) let me down.

I need to now clean up my apartment. It's time. If I had any possessions it would look like an episode of Hoarders. Right now it looks like an episode of Animal Fur and Human Hair Hoarders. I would also like to be able to see out of my windows again - I currently have a 180-degree view of dust. After that, Kungfu Panda 2 and Cheering Up Distraught Friend Part LXIV.

'til next time, dedicated reader. (I know you're out there somewhere).

island relief

2011-05-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

Behold, Ao Noina, Koh Samed, making life more cruisy since last weekend, 2011. I was only there one night, but since that overnight trip sums up all that's worth annotating of my life lately, it deserves a big-up.

We had a late start - PCF and boyfriend plus a friend of ours with a 2 year-old in tow (yes, yes, I know.) Someone - not me - decided we should take a cab because it would be easier and only a little more expensive between the four of us, but that turned out so not to be the case and we were still driving four hours after leaving Bangkok. This trip takes 2.5 hours in a minivan, partially because the drivers are insane/homicidal/suicidal but mostly because they don't get lost, as our cab driver did. And when I say 'lost' I mean 'deliberately going straight when we told him to turn right, because his friend had told him on the phone three hours earlier at a gas station that straight was a faster route.'

If only Thai people could admit they were wrong without suffering the indignity of losing face and potentially opening fire on everyone within shooting range as a result. Or stabbing everyone within stabbing range with a fish-gutting knife. Seriously, it happens, I read about it all the time in BK mag.

Anyway, we finally got to the island around 6, then finally got accommodation around 9 then it was too late to really do anything with the baby (who everyone thought was MINE btw, OH the HUMANITY), so we all sat around drinking 150baht cocktails at the bungalow bar while she slept. It wasn't a bad time, despite me grousing about it now. Just baby. And boring-ish/awkward-moment-inspiring couple-friends who are always either arguing or making out and never doing anything normal, like having a conversation or relaxing or in some way antagonising the other.

This is the quiet side of the island, at the cryptically named Samed Resort. Silversand and all the gay exciting things are around the other side of the island. We rode around there on Sunday for lunch but because I was holding a BABY and riding behind a dad, it was a little less freewheeling and awesome, since everyone thought I was an irresponsible, apathetic mum. (Probably as I was drinking beer and eating and not noticing while baby ran off into the ocean screaming. I just don't have the mothering instinct - especially for creatures that I'm not actually a mother to, which is every single living being in the entire universe right now.)

Other news: I have some freelance work, which is a joyous thing. I need to buy a sofa because the cats shredded the last one into tiny vibrating light particles. Rainy season has begun. In six months the downward spiral into my twilight years begins in earnest. Gay husband went back to Australia for the second time, prompting concern and upside-down smiles. 23 has been in my life for more than a year now, so I suppose I should start referring to him as 24. Balcony turned 13 and I am no longer the mayor of it on foursquare - something my gay Italian colleague - the bitch wh0 ousted me - thought prudent to BB to me while I was on a date. Life in Bangkok in general is uneventful yet agreeable. I am boring myself into a coma right now.

xoxo

blurb

2011-05-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

so i'm back from Sydney now, let's get up to speed. sydney was great, enjoyable, regrettable, discombobulating and challenging. it exceeded expectations in some areas, fell far short of them in others, met them exactly in a few. i miss mum already, but this is life right now and there is no way around it.

i had a lot of things to blog, because its been so long since the last one, but at this drunken moment i struggle to see the significance of those points. Sure, the bts-retardant people deserved to be further vilified online, for stopping in a thoroughfare to do nothing or to slalom across the platform with wide bags so as to crush as many people as possible, but now does not seem to be the correct time. similalry, taxi drivers who smile that shit-eating grin at you while saying they essentially cannot provide you the only thing that is expected of a cab driver to do: to take a paying customer from A to B.

where was I? SHIT. i was just taking a call from my promoter friend who hooked me up with tickets for a party tonight that i felt too old or just spoilt to endure. deadmau5 - credible but in this case, meh. have it on good authority he was wasted with my friends' model friends prior to the event, resulting in druggy music no one can get into unless they were similarly stupefied.

I've seen my own personal hero John Digweed play half a dozen times and interviewed him thrice, Ive interviewed, spoke with and witnessed Sasha play just as frequently, heard Underworld play live after having interviewed Karl Hyde, was there when both Kraftwerk and fucking Daft Punk played in the Hordern and the Dome, interviewed, hosted and witnessed new talent james zabiela emerge AND spent three consecutive years parading around at Space Ibiza on Sunday fueled by 10-pound drinks and a cocktail of random chemicals - - i admit i am spoiled. therefore, dont make me wait to get in, then for a ticket, then for a drinks coupon, then for a drinnk, then for actual thoroughfare to the dancefloor. don';t make me do it!
i'm sure i have more important things to document, but they will come when i'm less unsober.

may i just add that it was 42 degrees today- completely incompatible with rational mood function.

pre-sydney

2011-04-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

i am going to sydney in 3 days. this is an extremely exciting prospect. i haven't been to the homeland in 2.5 years almost, so am uber keen to see mama and family, aarron, 'thai' girl friends, EVERYONE possible. i have not ben sleeping adequately as a result of this high tension anticipation.

right now i am dealing with an unprecedented issue - in my haste to leave narz (terrible club i only go to because of the promise of free terrible drinks) i mistakenly gave my phone to yui and kept her phone. which is locked via password. i feel semi-retarded without my link to the modern world. like, i have no connection to anything (no offense, blogger). no means of effective communication. i fucking LOVE my BB. *sob*

tonight was good, as much as i hate to admit it. i loathe those loathsome models nights with the tall, boring, insipid, young, vacuous modules obstructing the bar and generally being predictably clear-skinned and radiant and towering over everyone.

i don't usually go, but my friend has a voodoo power over me it seems. so 'one hour' doesn't seem like such a bad idea. and then the shots come - which are actually better than the tall drinks, because they're over faster. (see: cheap/free vodka). and after a few of those the tragic cheesy hip hop is kinda catchy. but not quite enough, since i chose to leave hastily as i have eleventy thousand things to do before i fly south for the summer.

then there's the cab ride home. at least two cab drivers reacted as if i'd asked them to drive to the fucking moon when i said 'silom'. silom is not that far from suk - esp not at 3am. about 65 baht. 20 min at most. i tip a further 20 baht. so suck that, drama queens who refuse to drive into another suburb, as if driving to places wasn't the thing they signed up for when they became a taxi driver.

and that's it. it was a reasonably exciting night. yui and i took a tuk tuk. drinks were clashed together in merriment and the music was loud. i got home well before dawn - albeit with someone else's PRECIOUS, but whatcanyadoo. sleep. and wait until precious comes back....

vitriol

2011-04-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

you piece of fuck.ing weak shit. i hereby officially retract the caring sentiments, the benefit of the doubt, the faith and trust i put in you, the chance that i gave you , the time i spent fucking traveling to that fucking piece of shit island, the time we spent, the allowances i afforded you for this reason or the other ,the effort i put in for your family because i knew it was important to you, the compromise, the fucking sacrifice, the time investment, the residual regret. because you found, as i predicted, a replacement for me within nano-seconds, it seems. you had, as i suspected, no real regard for me. no understanding of my individual worth as i would have a partner understand it. i was right the whole entire time - that i meant nothing. and that's the shittiest part - that i knew and you denied it, you fought tooth and nail against that idea, seemed to really live it, that i was the one for you, but in the end you were the thing i feared you were. an utter waste of time. and i can't be angry at you, because i knew this all along. i can only turn the anger inwards. i let you make me think things were otherwise, when i knew better. chalk it up to experience. and never trust an island boy.

something that pisses me off more than the BTS

2011-03-23T03:32:00.000-07:00

random soothing image of cat that promptly returned, no doubt due to hunger and the fact that she is a complete attention whore
When people hack my writing to death under the mistaken belief that their ESL course and years of barking at ESL underlings have given them mastery over the English language, thus causing me extra work and raising my admittedly easily-raised hackles.

Do I wheedle my way into their work domain and tell them how to be misguided and overbearing? No, so I don't like it when a grammatically watertight document gets returned to me with so many tracked and trivial changes it looks like a spirograph. Especially when those changes make it read like an e-zine article some 8 year-old Indian shat out for 1 US cent. My horoscope told me to distance myself from pushy people, which is actually what I always try to do, but the defining feature of a pushy person is to be pushy and push their way into your shit all the time, so I'm gonna try to tactfully suggest that I am the editor for a reason. SIGH, pushy people - if you must push, at least push something GOOD!

my mac just shut my screen down - a karmic nudge elicited by excessive bitching, no doubt. i will return with sunnier tales later -- I can do more than just bitch about random shit, you know. i might even start a food blog....

ciao, pushers

homicidal tendencies

2011-03-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

Miike Snow - Silvia - Official music video from Miike Snow on Vimeo.

so i have already established that i have zero life beyond my cats. sylvia has been really testing my ability to not be homicidal with her recent 'in heat' thing that i lasted out sans q-tip procedure, as recommended to me as a legitimate stop-gap by my vet friend. but as fate (mine) would have it, she is to be a continued source of stress for me, having now escaped - again.

i stress to my friends that that they can smoke inside my apartment. this is for a reason: the balcony door does not ever need to open. but sometimes we want the fresh air or the view, which is, after all, what i'm paying for. the results are always the same - the cats jimmy open the door that was not properly closed after said viewing/smoking session and run away.

justice - now deballed - does not stray. he needed to be physically retrieved, 10 ,eters from home, but is home. but the recently devil-possessed sylvia has no such thing in mind. i saw her as i was risking life and limb on the balcony by trying to grab her - yes, she came within grabbing reach - but she liquefied as cats do when they don't want to be caught, and slipped out of grasp and ran away again. so whatever - come back when ready, gremlin.

the last few days w her have not been ideal. she went into 'estrus' and metamorphosed into some kind of noise-producing demon thing that seemingly did not require sleep or food for 72 hours. she crawled around on her haunches, futilely presenting to a recently castrated - and profoundly disinterested- justice, caterwauling (that's where they got the word, y'all!) for three days straight. three days!! and three nights!!!

if you have never been contained in close quarters with a cat on heat you will not understand it. envisage being trapped in a room with a car alarm, an air raid siren, screaming lambs (?) and a crying baby, but louder and more panicky. after 24 hours of this you dream up scenarios you would never have considered before - most of them involving the cat-demon and a full bath tub.

At her darkest moments, she lost all semblance of catness and became pure high-decibel evil. she was bone-chilling - and my bones are not easily chilled. she screamed like she was being simultaneously raped, strangled and drowned. all night. i do not exaggerate. killing her - at that point - after 3 days of not sleeping- seemed like the rational thing to do. anyway i didn't, and she went back to normal and of course is now paying me back for wanting to kill her by escaping.

right now it is time to sleep - she will return when hungry/not presenting. i have always gotten her back before.

as a totally inconsequential footnote: super rat who didn't call, i found out accidentally through indiscreet ramblings, he was out recently with ppl I know rather well who chose not to disclose this information to me. which is OK. or would have been if they weren't all at balcony. Bal.con.y. my front yard. why not just ask if they can come over and rent my room by the hour ( huh, minute perhaps - Ive been there) while i serve refreshments? i can only assume that both are extremely insensitive, ignorant and/or stupid or that this is their culturally acceptable way of telling me what the 'score' is. people, please progress. honesty: try it out. at any rate - i have been given the gift of certainty, which cannot be undervalued. but still - brutal honesty - im all growed up now, i will not dissolve into antimatter at the slightest mention of shit not going my way (though if i could, i could kill you both!) haha.

and now i'm gonna sleep until afternoon and eat ramen for breakfast with someone i care about and who cares about me. a good end to any weekend. and get sylvia back too.

r-men

delayed-response apologies

2011-03-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

so. residual regret. is that the right word? 'sadness' is more apt, but i dont like that word. it sounds sad, when in fact there is nothing really 'sad' about sadness. it's a legitimate human feeling. a real brain chemical reaction - nothing less valid about it than any other chemical-derived emotion (all of them). or should i say nothing shameful about it.

i left a lot recently. seemingly very suddenly. one minute i was almost betrothed to the island, its culture, the people there - all of them. the next i'm here and i don't go there, like that island, sea mews, the ferry, the bus, his mum, his son, the bar, the bungalow, our friends, the stars we were largely ignorant about, the longtail boat mafia, the mushroom shakes, the boxes of wine, the long days doing nothing, the lazing in the sun, the scooter rides to remote parts of paradise, meant nothing.

for the record, it meant something. for the record, it made its mark. and for the record i'm thinking about it now, at 6am in the biggest 'suck it up, bitch'-style blog post ever. it pangs. let it be known.

sorry japan, i will try to make amends for my self-absorption with some tribute ramen next week, perhaps w one of your countrymen. is it bad i used a natural disaster to re-establish contact w someone? and that it worked out in my favour (i think) ? life's too short for half-hearted deal breakers. if u feel compelled to open yourself up to potential evisceration via someone not calling, it's up to you. slow motion is ok. the person with less baggage carries some of the other person's. tonight a friend stays at my house because of a problem w her mum. so really, being earthquake/tsunami/divorce-baggage/parental-baggage-free i have nothing to complain about.

justice enjoys his last nigth w balls by humping sylvia...

it is sunday

2011-02-27T01:04:00.000-08:00

spare room

...and I have done sweet FA. Which is good! I like to do sweet FA, that's what weekends are for. I'm hungry as I'm too lazy to put pants on and go downstairs to buy food, but apparently the human body can last about a month without food and 3 days without food or water, so I will not actually die. I may feel weak, but this is the perfect physical condition for completing an entire day's worth of sweet FA-ing. At some point the glutton in me will overtake/sledge, fry up and eat the sloth in me and I'll succumb to the nearby nam tok muu vendor's delicious wares, hopefully remembering in my hypoglycemic delirium to first put pants on.

Every single work day morning I long to be able to just languish in bed with my semi-comatose pets and do nothing more than practice my Thai writing or read some some Carl Sagan (ie. check FB from my BB and play Dead Space on my ipod). I am forced to languish on my bed rather than on a lounge since my cousins stayed here and I converted the spare room into an actual functioning space instead of just a wasteland of kitty litter and dust bunnies. New lounge to be purchased this week, in what is left of my bonus after the tax department's rape-and-pillage.

Culture One was last night - it was OK rather than awesome, as highly anticipated things often are. Nice Guy didn't call (that would be so 2000), instead we send intermittent FB messages to each other, defining a whole new (for me) protocol of 'courting'. I actually don't even know if that's what we're doing. Modern relationships are so confusing. It's not like I want him to ask permission from my father before asking me to go steady (good luck with that, by the way), but if you start off at 3rd base (or 3.5th base , if there was one) going back to batter-ing up is completely disorienting. At any rate, a forthcoming in-real-life ramen date should clear up our status. Either that or our Facebook statuses will clear up our status.

After mentioning nam tok muu up there i can't focus... step 1) pants. step 2) keys and money. step 3) food.

i can't stand

2011-02-20T08:10:00.001-08:00

overt and ridiculous public displays of affection. it is OK or even expected for couples to canoodle (as my mum would say) outside the private domain if they are:

a) drunk
b) in a dark corner of a place that serves alcohol and it's between the hours of 1-6am
c) as part of a group, done quickly, while no one is looking, or everyone else is drunk
d) seeing their significant other after a long hiatus, such as: he has just come back from a dangerous peace-keeping mission in Libya or one of them was missing for years, thought dead
e) one or both of them has just made a miraculous recovery from late-stage cancer, or regrown a limb after ground-breaking stem cell therapy and this is their celebratory dinner
f) it's their wedding reception
g) they've just found our they're pregnant after half a dozen miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy

It is NOT OK to canoodle in public:

a) at length, during dinner, at 9.30pm in a gay bar when you are a heterosexual couple,
b) in front of your best friend who broke up with her boyfriend, your mutual friend, less than a week ago
c) in the middle of Silom Road, for fuck's sake
d) in 7-11 at any time of day
e) in front of the moo ping vendor
f) anywhere where your recently broken up friends (2 in this case) are likely to see

it's just fucking rude.

in addition: i don't want to see 'cute' mobile phone pictures of you or him or you both, nor be informed about your latest argument, nor be complained at over instant message because he's not doing this/saying that etc., nor hear about every single thing the two o you do, nor, like everyone else, feel awkward and excluded while you go about sharing private jokes/conversations/saliva/diseases. remember, please, who you would like to be there if and when this thing ends - which you keep opining it's imminently about to, despite all evidence to the contrary.

/rant

life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

2011-02-20T03:41:00.001-08:00

Well, I suppose the year of the rabbit has finally hobbled into action. More than a month has passed since the last blog, so a lot of things have changed with the position of the stars and I guess I should brace myself for the outpouring of astrological Chinese fortune and mystical power scheduled to shoot down out of the cosmos and transform me from zero to hero.

Importantly, while others around me remain en-coupled or continue to eject babies from their wombs, I'm now less one boyfriend than I was before, but before you give me the sad eyes, know that this is for the greater good.

I felt for a moment I had broken up with an entire island, a beach, an eight-year-old, a nice mum, the Gulf of Thailand, a ferry, an overnight coach, and the best after-hours jungle bar in the world, but I know that's nonsense. Thailand is nothing if not a hub of hot beaches, fire twirlers, fresh seafood and clearly visible constellations, all of which won't change no matter who I end up with. Not to mention opportunities to forgo banking an annual leave day by drinking too much the preceding night with colleagues (like we used to do in the old days) so that the next day is physically and mentally a write off, salvaged only by the fact that you met someone who has not yet proven himself to be a complete asshole *and* is in a nearby emotional and intellectual postcode to you. Also in a nearby postcode postcode, which, in the wake of a long-distance-relationship phase, helps. If i revert back to my table of who calls and who doesn't, however, I can expect to hear back from this nice guy who is appropriate for me, like, never. I will save the relationship karma the trouble of being too obvious and just state for the record that I will never see him again (outside a chance meeting at the 7-11 where I am wearing track-pants and no make-up, buying chocolate, cat food and tampons and and he is on the arm of some slender, hi-so super model with birdlike shoulders and celebrity hair.)

Nothing else of note. Work, my husband, will demand more of me this year, but I have nothing else, so I welcome it with open, spinstery, wrinkling, muscle-wasted, cardigan-clad arms, surrounded by a force field of cat hair and the smell of monkey balm.

Next week is Culture One night, which should rock socks as it did last year, and the weekend following that we embark on another island trip -- to Samed. Ten hours closer than the last island destination and about 1000 per cent gayer.

There are a bunch of us girls sick as shit of douches and love failures and complications and headcases and emotional-trauma-victims and we need to regroup as a bunch of silly idiots who flirt with gays, stumble over buckets and marvel at the dawn before falling power-puking into someone's frangipani grove.

and now, to balcony...

oh what a night(s)

2011-01-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

there's a lot of ground to cover (isn't there always?). so chronology is my friend...

xmas
this kind of sucked, but was in a way an effective precursor to nye, so in that respect was worthwhile. i was pms-ing like crazy, so i could have won the lottery, magically acquired helena christianson's body from 1990, been asked out on a date by ananda, married johnny depp and had the best haircut ever and i still would have been in a shitty mood, so i guess it's good that the shitty things that happened, happened at that time.

(i think this is actually in the 2010s, not even the 90s)

summed up, i was in the presence of yet not introduced by male conduit of relevant relationship to the (dun dun DUUUNNNN) ex-wife and son (he was suitably reprimanded), was not fawned over by khun mer and was accommodated in what i less-than-affectionately refer to as the 'stick room' (ie. a bungalow with no electricity or toilet.) NB at fucking CHRISTMAS i magically transform into a princess, so this was so not close to good enough for me that we left haad tien to go stay in a place called 'drop in club' which had a light, an actual bed and running (hot) water. 1000 per cent improvement.

xmas party@guys

the excuse bf gave for not introducing me to me v1.0 (the ex - note that i am the improved version) was that quite simplyhe froze, caveman style into the 'fright' status of the fright or flight phenomenon, apparently thanks in part to my pmsing and subsequent abject refusal to be anywhere in her vicinity during the yule time (the fact that she appeared the way a huntsman spider does, just there in the middle of the room - notice how you never actually see a spider walk into a room, it just always catches u by surprise?? - threw both of us.) luckily, i had the support of a few awesome people to whom i have already had the chance to ingratiate myself and i stayed in possession of face for the entire episode. calming doses of alcohol helped.

nye

well this was kind of excellent and the polar opposite of xmas. no see-sawing hormones, just friends, excellent food (my man can cook! - this was one of the stipulations i drew up for the perfect man when i was like 15 - deal maker), me serving drinks at the bar and earning a thousand bahts' worth of tips (for the bar), me giving a HOT handbag to khun mer and sucking up to her superhero style and her overcompensating for not making a huge deal out of me last time by cooking for me constantly and buying me mango sticky rice, total and utter acceptance and hyperactive love from offspring who even wanted to sleep in my bed (ATTENTION PARENTS: if you have a child from a 'broken' family who does not get to see their mama and papa a lot and spends most of their life with their g'parents, they will want to sleep in a bed with the first person they feel will be receptive to this. this will happen for the rest of heir lives - i know, i've been there!)

Long story short, 7yo toothless wonder child did sleep with me but i was unconscious after passing out from a massive nye celebration that included pcf's bf blowing half his finger off in a fireworks incident, amongst other excitements and traumas, and he stayed only 5 minutes because apparently while unconscious and nonreactive, i am boring. as a further aside, my mama spent every living moment with me possible when she could, so i do not understand why this amazing boy is not completely smothered at all times by either or both parents, who are both able-bodied, certainly not overworked, and not limited in any way by custody. seriously, why don't they spend more time with him?/end judgmental beady-eyed aspersion-casting.

what else at nye? lots of wine, lots of hammocks, i worked for my bf a lot in his restaurant and bar, then on the 2nd we fled to another part of the island to be telephonically harassed by our respective workplaces the entire 3 days we were apart from them.

still, we had an excellent time. riding around on a scooter, chilled vibes, beers, waterfront hippie bars, meeting up his family and my friends, two flat tyres in one night, baguettes from chicken corner, the heart/gut-wrenching farewell at the pier at 5pm when seatran takes me on my first leg back to bkk and i try not to wear out my bb battery. got my new ipod though, so that's some something.

summed up, nye makes me ant to go directly to island, not passing go or collecting two hundred dollars. crazy though it seems, actually what's so crazy about chasing a dream? that you might lose it, or that you might actually attain it? pcf and i are starting a plan because we want to work on our dreams, not someone else's. it will take time, but it will be worth it. the island is just there waiting, there is no reason to keep telling ourselves it's not possible.

tonight
saturday night, started out normal, was dragged into the gay soi by some friends. was poured super strong drinks by someone a friend liked. the friend wanted to meet up later and i was like 'ok, im going to my friend's house, but whatever, come with (under the impression he was gay - he wasn't). oh, also he was quite strong and when i met him on the street on the way to my friend's house he kind of was not taking no for an answer in an extremely invasive and alarming way.

i was in a relationship with a trained killer (or excellent liar - or combination of both) for 3 years but do i retain anything he told me about getting out of such situations? nope. i remember one thing my grandfather taught me. if you want to remove someone's hands from somewhere, pull back their thumbs. it works. being cautious and not meeting strangers in dark alleys to go to parties also works, apparently. i didn't end up going to that particular party, i ran (or walked swiftly at any rate) back to my condo and locked all the doors and blogged. so obvioulsy i'm safe as houses now.

more later, so many more funny and great things that happened over the last few weeks (not even including justice running away just then and being immediately found - complete with 'feel sorry for me' limp). tomorrow i pledge to annotate more if i can a)wake up b) get off the couch) and c) not watch the rest of rabbit hole which was already making me weepy after like 3 seconds of viewing.

now to sleep perchance to dream. or just perchance not to feel tired tomorrow as it's already past dawn.

time to learn kyo kushin, the most vicious of the martial arts. for potential future meetings with faux gay creeps, ex-wives and pms.

ta-ta

world, you have not lived up to my expectations

2010-12-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

....nor to anyone else's I assume. This last two weeks you were particularly under-achieving. After the last post, yes i did have money unexpectedly siphoned in my direction for no real reason and nothing bad happened, but i am definitely low of serotonin, which means you are not holding up your end of the bargain in terms of keeping my body's chemicals balanced when I am not even partying.

Work is starting to suck. I put a lot of effort in. People don't realise how much effort writing takes. Like this blog is literally whatever first pops into my head and still it takes me at least 2.5 hours for each post. And no morons are pinging or emailing me or calling two-hour meetings while I'm writing it, either. I have a pretty wide range of tasks to cover ie. I 'take a quick look at' every single thing we do in the English language, so it's not like I have a very clearly-defined role, either.

Because of work douches, 2011 may be a bit of an endurance marathon and a test of my ability to channel energy into the positive, instead of letting douches get to me when I know they are only acting according to their douche gene. Su su, me. Apparently if you work diligently and honestly, it pays off eventually. I'm not that naive but I hope at least it doesn't bite me in the ass.

Tomorrow I go back to the island for Christmas. It won't feel much like Christmas because Thailand doesn't really do Christmas beyond wiring up everything not moving with millions of fairy lights, nor does it have any of my family, nor a large roast bird, nor cherries nor wine nor tinsel nor presents nor bushfires nor friends nor anything else I associate with Christmas, but whatever. I will be with a loved one in a place with pretty beaches and lots of alcohol, so I can't complain.

What else is news? I recently played a small part in an ad for hair removal cream. It paid (or will pay) well, so I can replace my stolen iPod and hopefully resume running because I can't run without some kind of portable music player. I am fat. I have no idea why - might be the lack of running. I don't think I've been eating any more than usual, but I'm definitely more zeppelin-shaped now than I was two months ago. I blame the iPod thief.

Currently, my own life is boring me to tears, so I should probably cease documenting every last aspect of it in case someone reads it and falls into a coma. Here, some Griswalds:

merry fucking christmas

island soundtrack

2010-12-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

just gonna stand there n watch me burn --that's all right cos i like the way it hurts
just gonna stand there n hear me cry -- that's all right cos i love the way u lie

just TRY to get that out of your head now. The island soundtrack hits hard. As do the memories of people inhabiting said islands that you can nevermore contemplate because your life went in a different direction, and it probably would have been hurtful and disappointing anyway and you don't need to feel like that anymore because your boyfriend is perfect and you are the only actual source of hurt and disappointment to yourself.

such as returning home at midday on a sunday after a LOT of drinking at blah blah's place. i had planned productivity this weekend, but at least i stuck to the exclusivity clause. i will just sleep now until work tomorrow... plus i feel like i'm developing a cough. complete failure at being a contributing member of society.. ergh. just lazy, gluttonous and generally debauched.

SO i have back pain now from sitting on someone's lounge room floor for 6 hours talking crap with a bunch of friends and probably kidney failure from the 3 bottles of champagne we drank and buddha knows how many vodkas, and need STAT to retire in my icy dark boudoir.

any bipedal creatures attempting to enter will be shot in the head immediately and have their dead corpse left for the cats to chew on as they see fit until i wake up tomorrow and shove their carcasses down the garbage chute.

totally miss island boyfriend, the real one. i'm lame, i admit it. i have conversations with an eight year old now, bypassing all the cute baby stuff and going straight into the semi-awkward questions and loud LOUD proclamations of ANYTHING!!! eight year olds are so excited by the smallest shit. a bird! THE tv!! a GECKO!!!! all hilarious material. seems like every year my family grows in unexpected ways. which is obviously awesome - especially if you inherit a kid you didn't have to ruin your own body for. no actual inheriting yet, but could be on the cards. if things keep going in their current direction...

so what else in this life/fortnight is worth mentioning? Had a weekend to self (got nothing done). watched dvds. spoke to island bf a dozen times, his son half a dozen. am vowing to pick up some good freelance gigs to facilitate freedom from corporate lockdown. am anticipating the arrival of my sig oth as well, next week FINALLY. that make me happy maak.

didn't realise i was giving someone weird vibes today. could have been our fragile states and my general aloofness, but i said sorry. righted the wrong. hope i don't give out those vibes too often. i actually do really like that girl, too. full communication breakdown. we're FB friends now anyway, so it is official. we like each other and are friends.

anyway, im late for an appointment with my bed, better get to it. strange, loveless weekend now that i am used to having them love-filled. whatever, lame-o, go to bed already...

Do not invite trouble

2010-12-08T03:57:00.000-08:00

That's what (one of) my newspaper horoscopes said. Oh horoscope, that's as futile as telling me not to breathe, or pcf not to buffer, or 2010 not to suck. In my opinion, if it weren't for my innate ability to trouble-invite, nothing worthwhile in my life would have happened. Everything I regret doing was carefully thought through. Therefore, I choose to interpret this piece of advice as 'don't invite trouble any more than usual'. Flying by seat of pants status still in effect.

Something is wrong with me lately. Ever since I got back from the island (three days tii laew) I've felt nauseated. THIS is why I don’t want to even be in the same postcode as 'love'. Because love for me is not something warm and fluffy and uplifting and awesome that makes me vibe out rainbows and good cheer, it's something that makes me feel sick ALL THE TIME, with sudden disorienting invisible punches to the neck and stomach areas.

It feels much the same to me as being heartbroken. When I'm on the island, I'm sad I'll be leaving soon and when I'm in BKK I'm just completely stabby and neurotic with jealousy, doubt and at the mercy of random endorphin releases. I can't even comfort myself by stalking him on Facebook, since his profile was created and is controlled by me (he doesn't get online much. Especially now that his laptop has been stolen).

My brothers visited me last week. They arrived exactly one week ago and I met them after a gut-churning day at work where I anticipated all sorts of worst-case scenarios, including me crying, them crying, them being horrible, them hating me, them hating Thailand, them hating me and Thailand and leaving immediately and them injuring themselves or dying whilst under my care.

Anyway, after a night at Balcony with me and co and a night at Telephone (opposite Balcony) on their own (that's a gay bar, FYI, where my very straight and macho brothers went together alone and drank a beer tower *swells with pride*) which they followed with a Patpong girly show chaser, they came down to the islands to meet me.

There are so many stories, so many highlights. Point form makes it easier to digest.

• Friday night they appeared at Guy's with a strange Japanese girl (I) called Hiro and some other hippie, dusty-looking chick. After a few buckets the drunken embraces began, and if a single person at Guy's went home without hearing the story of how I met my brothers, it will come as a surprise to me because we told EVERYONE.

• You do NOT want to piss off my boyfriend, nah-uh, not on his turf. Case-in-point 1: drunk farang at bar grabs me around the waist in some kind of weird thing that no man, however drunken should do and WHOOSH, island bf is all up in his face across the bar with some kind of under-the-breath expletive, power-finger-point and laser-glare. No physical violence necessary. Intense silent warning suffices. Case-in-point 2: we get back from the beach that morning and his laptop and my iPod are stolen. More silent, intense whooshing around the premises (actually there was some heavy stomping here, too) and some terse words with some unfortunate people who happened to be walking past, then the promise that he will wait. Wait for the thieves to reveal themselves, which they can't help but do, because it is family land and nothing happens on that land without the family knowing. So next time, thieves who I now feel nervous for because there will probably be no next time, do your research and don't steal from the family – especially not on family land.

• Island bf was woken at midday by a call from sister, who works at the bar saying that my little brother was still there – the last person (bless). Island bf goes to retrieve him at my bequest and he passes out upstairs. This is why we call it family time.

• Now-long-suffering island boyfriend and I go to take brothers to the ferry pier at 10am (they have to be there by 11). Older brother is still asleep, younger brother (btw, they are both younger than me, just 'older brother' is just older than 'younger brother') is passed out on the bungalow deck. Younger brother is too scared to wake up older brother – and we soon learn why when older brother enters consciousness in a hailstorm of expletives. The previous night, after we'd had bucket family time, younger brother had woken up "in the middle of the sea" (on a bench after high-tide had come in and surrounded him on the beach) and older brother had passed out on the way home, saved by our favourite Burmese bucket stand proprietor and a mutual friend. By the time we drove shirtless, bleeding-from-the-head older brother and still-drunk younger brother to the ferry, it was 11am on the dot and the ferry was beeping its horn (LOUD!).

• My brothers are awesome *relief*

• My island bf is also awesome. My brothers are your brothers.

Now, I must away. I will try not to invite (more) trouble (than I usually do).

life is immeasureably shit sometimes

2010-11-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

We are point five of the way through November and tragedy has struck. It strikes all the time, according to the newspapers and general life experience, and here it is again, in all our faces. To cut a potentially long-ass story short, someone at work died who was married to someone else at work who PCF and I had some fun times with.

Death is sucky at the best of times, but this kind of suddenly-striking, unexplained kind is particularly heinous and gut-twisting and panic-inducing. This husband and wife pair had a perfect life together as a sickeningly happy newlywed couple with good jobs and a tastefully furnished high-rise apartment. They were trying to get pregnant. I never saw them apart, not once. Now he's dead and she's alone.

His death is pretty much proof that the universe doesn't let one person (or one couple) have too much happiness, as I suspected all along. Her life is completely decimated now. Question: after you pledge your entire heart and existence to someone, how do you continue it without them? Is it not safer to avoid making these potentially life-decimating decisions and just float from thing to thing without any VERY possibly-harmful attachments?

You can't even enjoy anything anymore because there's the knowledge lurking in the background that it will end badly. It always ends badly.

In less unfathomably bad but comparatively insignificant news, I went to Samui last weekend. Saw the bf's ex's best fucking friends who all froze me out like the cold withering ageist hags British women and their Thai wannabe-Brit friends can be. But I still had a nice time. Cruised around the island at 20 kays an hour on the back of a scooter, being shown important Samui landmarks, such as a giant gold penis statue and an even bigger gold Buddha. Got a tan – finally.

The weekend before that was the work outing. Team bonding and drinking and games. It was reasonably fun. I also bought a washing machine, which is revolutionizing my life. I have clean clothes all the time now. They're in crumpled piles on the floor and the desk and the sofa, but at least they're clean.

Nothing else, really. Everything seems unimportant when you start a blog with death. It shouldn't be because death isn't much of a story, and is in fact the only end to the movie, but still the question remains: what the fuck is she going to do without him?

October done/dusted

2010-10-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

Well, my commitment to regular blogs remains unsupported by follow-through, much like my commitment to exercise, budgeting, eating vegetables, staying properly hydrated and keeping my wardrobe organized, but at least the world yet spins on its axis - nothing overly dramatic to report for October thus far.

As many a disgruntled Bangkok-based friend has pointed out, I am going to the island a lot. I went two weeks ago and again this weekend just past and will again three weekends hence. The reason for this *is* the love interest, heavily propped up by a campaign of free and bountiful sunshine, warm seas, palm trees, affection, attention, food and alcohol. To redress the imbalance I'm going to host him this weekend, so I hope he's prepared for lots of sarcasm, street food, sangsom, smog, traffic and rain.

The last trip was the full moon party, which I expected to hate, but actually enjoyed. I drank buckets, yelled at people for walking near/threatening the state of my buckets, strongly chastened guys pissing an entire metre shy of the actual shoreline onto the sand where people were chilling out, danced perilously close to a giant wall of speakers, got a few high-fives from people trying to make me stop yelling at them for coming too close to my bucket (is the high-five experiencing a resurgence?) and upon retiring back to haad tien complained of feeling pukey due to aforementioned buckets and had to lie completely still for an hour before feeling better. Something to remember for the future: the last few sips of a bucket is likely to be sand. Avoid.

Aside from Phangan I don't think I did much else. I did ruin Wong's for myself forever - you can draw your own conclusions on that one. Suffice to say I won't be going back for at least six months and since that was my only link to Ananda I guess I can kiss my future with him good-bye, too. The gods have spoken (to quote Spartacus).

Currently, I'm waiting for midnight because I want to see if my freelance cheque is going to clear overnight or if I'm going to spend yet another day paying for things with 1 baht coins because I'm down to raiding my piggy bank. As some sort of condolence, PCF is just as destitute. We've had ~600 baht between us since Tuesday and it has to last until Friday - thusly we've discovered new places to eat that offer super generously portioned meals for 30-35 baht. A good thing, though somewhat tainted by the knowledge that we're only a few baht away from actually starving to death. Next month, we vow, we'll be more prudent.

This weekend: All Hallows Eve, the advent of the bf in bkk to see if this thing is completely contextual to the islands or is feasible in an urban environment, free booze at an industry event (and whatever indiscretions may happen as a consequence of that, possibly none) and buying a machine that washes dirty laundry, so that I may never again have to hand-wash and wring out a pair of skinny jeans, a queen-sized sheet, or an unfeasibly thirsty beach towel over the bathtub again.

gui gan

and already it's october!!

2010-10-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

party people in the house say heey yooo

Obviously, there is much to annotate. I'm not sure even where to begin because the last post was more than a month ago and one month for normal humans is equal to 7 months in bek-months as far as my memory is concerned. Let's see.... *squinting* *smell of burning rubber* *smoke emerging from ears*

September was a VAST improvement on August, which always sucks for some strange yet infallible cosmic reason. Panicking this month was reduced to less than 5%. I was down to my last few hundred baht many times but money came in unexpectedly -- high-five, universe! This was also the itchiest month so far in my entire life (super concentrated island mosquitoes) and maybe I am also about to fall in love with someone... but who? The answer is somewhere in this super long and directionless post. You might want to go pee or make a cup of tea now if you intend to make it to the end in a single sitting...

23 was the drunkest ever
This was funny. I don't know what happened between him calling and him arriving, as per my reference to him in the last post (may as well pick up where we left off, eh?), but apparently a lot of alcohol was involved. I went downstairs to retrieve him (he made it all the way to the lobby this time, which is miraculous since he usually can't even remember what side of the road I live on while SOBER) and he was literally sideways on the stairs. At first I could only see feet and they were parallel to the ground. Security guard man was not amused.

I've seen 23 twice since then and he has no memory of the evening whatsoever. Subsequent visits have involved him coming out to meet me in the drinking environment of my choosing and I've since learned it only takes him a few drinks to be completely drilled. I am impressed, however, since he passed my litmus test of cool straight guys by coming to Balcony and enduring lots of gay attention when tonnes of guys I know refuse point blank to do that.

TVC
When I ran out of money completely I did a night shoot for a Samsung Sri Lanka TV ad. It started in the night at Pattaya and finished at 5am, so I had to go straight to work after about ten monutes of sleep in the van on the way to bkk. Upside: 10K baht and new adorable Facebook friends. The models were all lovely and I kind of felt bad for them. Not one over 25, all farang living in accommodation rented by their management, contractually obliged to live in Thailand for awhile having just come from Korea or Japan and so tired because their lives are just cycles of castings and waiting and hair and make-up and posing. Seriously, that's it. I felt like an imposter with my education and my day job and my advanced age and free will.

Wongs x 4
Despite not seeing Ananda there again, WOng's just gets better with age! Especially mine. The best time was Sam getting up on the counter last Friday and singing Happy Birthday to me and throwing a flaming Sambucca shot down my throat while I was applauded for reaching my 25th birthday (as far as they know) by a full house. See? You don't have to be an insanely hot indie actor to get the star treatment, NOR to get the Special Forces behind the bar guy's number, apparently cos i got that, too, not that I want it because at the moment i feel like i have more than enough boy-derived attention.

Drinks with ex
had a few beers a few weeks ago with the ex. He tried to mac on me all night, of course, so kudos to me for a) being hot and b) not going there. In your face, punk guy who dumped me for some ugly bitch with braces.

Cats went missing but got them back
People come over, they open the balcony door, they don't shut it properly, the cats jimmy it open somehow and 24 hours later there's me combing every corner of a 22-story block of apartments going 'justeeeece' 'syliviaaa'. I found Justice downstairs hiding behind some boxes and Sylvia ten days after she went missing just chilling downstairs at the lobby stairs where 23 was previously found in a supine position. The running away thing is not funny anymore, guys!

22
The reason why the balcony door was left ajar and the cats were able to shimmy to freedom. Note to self: no giving face time to people who declare undying love after 30 minutes of knowing me. It results in heavily subtextual status messages, crazy BB messages from their Tom friend and whiny and semi-panicky (on their behalf) phone conversations for which you paid COLLECT! Just say 'no' to students.

Justice driving me crazy with his hormones
Sweet dancing Jesus, Justice is one caterwaul away from spending the rest of his life behind some boxes on level 11. I cannot fucking stand it any longer. As proof of my reaching the end of my tether with the crying and the scratching at the balcony door and the constantly trying to rape Sylvia, I will get up early tomorrow and bring him to the Chulalonkorn Student Vet Hospital for the emergency removal of his testes and peace will again be restored to Diamond Tower.

Detox
Doing a 12-day detox and have successfully completed (for all intents and purposes) Day 2. No one thinks i can do it because they don't know that the only thing stronger than my urge to party is my stubbornness and the desire to prove all my naysayers wrong. Each new scoff just adds fuel to my sanctimoniousness. Bonus: I'm going to be such a cheap drunk when I go back to Phangan.

Koh Chang Motorcycle Crew
So it was my tall friend L's birthday this month and he and his friend and girlfriend and I took off to Koh Chang for the weekend. The trip was fraught with misfortune - first of all I had no sleep prior to, thanks to 22, it rained, we went the wrong way for an hour, then the final nail in the coffin was one of the bikes breaking down. What appeared to be an epic failure of a trip turned out to be quite an awesome weekend. We ended up, through a series of ridiculous co-incidences that would never fly in fiction, at Nature Beach Resort, Lonely Beach. Yes, where I some posts ago left my punk DJ barman -- and, too, a little piece of my heart.

Suffice to say, the weather was heavenly and the party was bucket-fuelled and when everyone else had called it a night, I was still there, bucket in hand, bleeding from the knee after having stumbled down a disproportionately tall step and trying to treat the wound with salt water and sand, suitably obnoxious on Sangsom, awaiting DJ attention. And I got it.

If sitting in a dank, fucked up little room covered in graffiti and pain and suffering and passing out after several sips of bucket then tip-toeing out at dawn before the breakfast crowds arrived to witness a walk of shame without any reason for the shame is what i wanted, then I got what I wanted. We remain unrequited. And I hate that because I want to get that little wedge of heart back but instead I just left more. Also left an item of jewellery there bearing a sacred heart. Poignant!

Koh Phangan
All of the above would matter if I didn't leave the majority of my heart and other pieces of anatomy (brain cells, yo!) on Koh Phangan. Seriously, I must be approaching coronary failure or coma considering the amount of heart and brain power I throw at people. This one, I think, is deserving. Oh for sure this is going to bite me in the ass later, because it always does -- the promises, the kitteung jungs, the birthday surprises, the glowing plankton, the stars and amateurish stabs at astronomy, the sighs, the hammock of insobriety, the fireflies floating in and out of the dark, the seconds counting down to the departure of the last Seatran ferry to the mainland. These things always end in tears. Luckily, after 18 months of no boy-drama-related tears, I have them in abundant supply just ready to go, so might just suspend my disbelief and have a crack at this island boyfriend thing.

This weekend
I went to an arena dance party with friends and had a super time and hit the after-hours with someone kindred of spirit with whom I share an unusual understanding of the way shit is.

Bed-slash-talk-on-phone-to-island-guy time now! joop joop!

worlds colliding but at least it's september

2010-09-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

oh joy when you realise you've been in one place long enough for:

a) two of your stalkers to be at the one event, inclining you to avoid said event.

b) an, admittedly not uncommon, bout of confusion when someone you know in one scene befriends your ex from a totally different scene (and subsequently 'friends' on fb otherwise how would you even know this was occurring) and the two co-promote some kind of bastard child punk/dance event together and have pictures together on facebook that you can doubly see because you're friends with both of them, but and you know what? you can ask them both at the same time wtf's going down because you'll see them both at friday night's thing you're going to because naturally the two are best fucking buddies now and it doesn't matter because one is older than you and by your finicky standards too old for you to date, but it is evidence of worlds colliding, which is never good, ever.

c) to have been last weekend in the same space as four different people you had been 'very close to' in recent times, none of whom knew about the others.

d) the motorcy driver to say 'ruu laew, song bai baan took wan - jam mai dai lor?' (i know, i take you home every day, don't u remember me?' or something to that effect, in response to you telling him where to take you.

e) one of your favourite bands to come to your city FINALLY - yay vampire weekend, yay.

f) your blog to devolve into a fortnightly sequence of bullet points

g) you to be waiting up for 23 because it's easier than waking up in two hours.

h) everything is starting to irrationally irritate you, including your friends.

i) you *must* go to your local same-sex bar/restaurant for your birthday.

j) care packages from your mum send you into raptures that scare the security guy alerting you of the package's arrival.

et voila, another post about nothing.