Thailand – Page 5 – the coffee philosopher

Posted on December 28, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Bangkok Spurs

At a night market in the Ramintra neighborhood of Bangkok, I opted to skip shoe shopping to drink Singha and Chang and watch Tottenham play Watford at a pleasant bar.

A group of young men sat behind me and by their cheers and groans were evidently Spurs’ fans. When Heung-Min Son scored a rabona to win it in the eighty-ninth minute, we high fived and showed that ethnic and linguistic differences can be overcome by the atavistic bonds of alcohol and tribal affiliation. In other words, world peace can be achieved if we all agree that #Arsenalsucks.

Note: the woman in the picture is not a Spurs fan but she is my sister and doesn’t really have strong opinions on the matter.

Posted on December 28, 2015December 28, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Wat Sothorn

I was brought here because khun meh had made offerings here so that we could get a house. Well, it worked. We need to come back and make a donation of five hundred eggs, but in the meantime, we got incense and oils. The oil I poured into a lantern for the health of a family member who is suddenly and frighteningly ill. The incense was lit at the lantern and small pieces of paper used to tie the three sticks of incense together. Those papers were used to wipe Buddhas coveted in gold flake. As pieces were picked up by the paper, you returned it by wiping them onto a different statue of Buddha. Later, we paid for eight dancers to do a dance, which, like the other actions, is considered a merit making activity, similar to lighting a candle or making a confession or reciting a rosary. I did a little bit, but then got uncomfortable. I was a tourist and didn’t want to disrespect deeply held beliefs by engaging in too much spiritual tourism, backed by respect but not by belief; just as a visitor to my church can partially participate, but the Eucharist and the sacraments are only for confirmed believers.

Posted on December 24, 2015December 14, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Merry Christmas, Losers

I’m on a plane to Thailand today. Granted, spending my Christmas on a thirty hour flight is not ideal in many crucial aspects, but tomorrow, you will be wherever you are and I will be in Thailand. So, statistically speaking, I will be in a much better place than you, and I don’t mean in that Dickensian, Tale of Two Cities way. In the first place, it’s an overrated book and in the second place, his understanding of the French Revolution is like a schoolboy’s reading of Burke, filtered with a little Trumpism. Also, I don’t expect to be executed just yet. The Man ain’t caught up with me.

Posted on December 23, 2015December 22, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Good News! My Better Half Found A Fresh Notebook!

She found a nice, compact, black notebook, about 2.5×5 inches, with ruled pages. I’ll bring a back up, of course, but this is will probably be my ‘go to’ notebook for writing random stuff down while in Thailand.

Posted on December 20, 2015December 19, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Found The Perfect Book For My Trip

So I’ve been trying to figure out what reading material to bring with me to Thailand, besides the voluminous pulps downloaded to my nook.

I had been thinking about this Dover edition of Thus Spake Zarathustra that I bought in 2001 at Bridgestreet Books. And lo and behold, while unpacking, I found it!

Also while unpacking, I found this lovely hardback edition of Emerson. Positively perfect, except it is just too darn heavy. Nietzsche it is! Cicero is an outside contender, but Nietzsche holds most of the cards.

But now I need some poetry. In the past, I brought Wordsworth and he’s still my go to poet for this, but I’m hoping someone else inspires me. Tennyson would be great but I don’t actually own any Tennyson and I’ll be gone too long to use the library.

Posted on December 15, 2015December 14, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Can’t Wait

Going back to Thailand I cannot wait. Absolutely ready. One hundred percent. Too much going on: buying a house, jam packed holiday season for my better half (she objects when I say that I ‘work’ for her; she prefers something like ‘help’ or ‘volunteer,’ but let’s be realistic, I’m an unpaid employee [so maybe the correct term of art should be that I ‘intern’ with her]), work stuff, work stuff, work stuff, family stuff.

Ready for a vacation. Ready to get away. Especially, knowing that it will probably be a while before I get away again. Logistics, and all.

Perhaps this is what adulthood is like, the constant, ceaseless nervous tension (I stole that turn of phrase about tension; I think from William Gibson; google it, I’m not your babysitter). Or perhaps it’s middle age. Did I skip adulthood and go directly to midlife?

Part of it is struggling, as always, with depression, which feels like a perpetual weight on your internal organs. Something is constantly pressing down on your heart and lungs and so they don’t work properly and you can always feel them about to fail and that knowledge of their being on that precipice takes your mind away from everything else and keeps you psychically crippled, after a fashion.

Let’s hope it’s the break I want it to be. I’ve downloaded several books to my Nook and are keeping them unread for the journey (mostly fantasy novels) and I’ll take some pleasure soon in picking out one or two physical books for the journey. At least one book of poetry, something worth re-reading. In the past, I’ve taken Wordsworth, for example. Perhaps this time I’ll bring Eliot or Shelley or Clare. And something else, something in prose. Could be a novel, but I’m inclined towards something non-fictional. While unpacking, I saw my cope of Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and maybe I’ll bring that. It’s a little bulky, but perhaps if I put it away and don’t read anymore of it, Quintillian’s writings on the education of an orator. But probably not. Cicero might be better. Plato would be perfect, but I don’t have a compact copy of any of his books.

We shall see. Here’s a picture from Thailand, in the meantime.

Posted on December 8, 2015December 7, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Leicester City

When I was flying back to my dreary, dismal home from Thailand and was wandering the shops and stores of the Bangkok airport, I saw a store selling exclusively Leicester City swag. T-shirts, scarves, banners, etc.

At that time, Leicester was a terrible team. They had only just escaped relegation and aesthetically speaking, ran the gamut from mediocre to downright unpleasant to watch.

So this store, in an international airport, felt like the equivalent of an unaffiliated, single-A team from central Nebraska having a gift shop in the Yucatan (though truth though, as usual, is far more prosaic; Leicester is sponsored by King Power, the duty free vendor for BKK Airport – they even play in ‘King Power Stadium’)

Well, five months or so after I saw that fateful store, Leicester is topping to table in England and fun to watch, to boot. Feels like fate.

Posted on November 11, 2015November 5, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

In Translation, Volume 5

Can I meet with an adventure?
Director of young at the end of the way
you’re on,
salt. And a strong evidence,
intense send over Australia’s lately.

Talk to you
of salt,
a concept that will,
if you’re taken.
That is good.

At First
that will take like floating
but do you want a splash of color
cut fashion

But finally we ended up in the

Hey, you want it, so you better
street!!!.

So in the end

So let’s just say we keep walking
you down to the car

Up here to eat noodles over there.
Come over here to live.

So there were born into this world,
I know that

Many women
a street
Let’s see, Alpha..