30 September 2015

Blues Music in Bangkok

.

Blues music venues have come and gone during my short experience here in greater Bangkok. But one solid and predictable standard of excellence is always at the Saxophone Pub and restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights. Usually a mostly Jazz venue, the Saxophone features phenomenal Blues by Ped’s Band at 21:00-23:30 on Fridays and Saturdays. Highly recommended.

At the rather new venue, Nothing but the Blues, on Thonglor, it’s all Blues. Ped (above) hosts a Blues jam every Sunday and Wednesday night, and there are several other Blues bands I haven’t heard yet. Chai and the Blues Maniacs play on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Chai et al has a singer named Nurse and she can really belt out the Blues. When she sings “Rock Me Baby” (B.B King), I get goose bumps from my back to my arms to my shoulders to my neck and scalp. Whew!

.

“Rock me baby/ Rock me all night long

Rock me baby/ Rock me all night long

Rock me baby/ Till my back ain’t got no bone.”

.

Can’t get that song out of my head!

-Zenwind.

.

27 September 2015

Mid-Autumn Festival

.

Tonight’s Full Moon is an important Chinese holiday, celebrated especially in China, Vietnam, and by the worldwide Chinese diaspora. It is a harvest full moon festival.

We have had occasional clear skies lately. This means hot sun in the day but good moon viewing at night. I will look for the moon tonight.

-Zenwind.

.

15 September 2015

September Coolness, Finally

.

On this Ides of September the tropical climate here seems to be a bit more forgiving. Not exactly “comfortable,” since the humidity can still be wicked. I went out for a neighborhood march at midday, and, although it was not as horribly hot and humid as normal, I still came back home in the traditional condition of wringing sweaty wet.

But we’ve had a few rains lately, which tend to cloud the blasted blazing sun and relieve us a bit. Sometimes, only occasionally, you catch a refreshing breeze. September is usually the rainiest month of the rainy monsoon season, and in this particular rain-starved drought year we are finally getting some. The rainy monsoon that usually approaches us from the Indian Ocean’s northeastern-ward flow is being met by a west-ward flowing tropical storm bearing down on us from the South China Sea to our east. Vietnam (Quang Nam Province, my old stomping grounds) and Laos have already been hit by the cyclone, and we are next.

Tonight, tomorrow, and Thursday should bring us heavy rains – I hope. The temporary flooding will be a problem – especially for me on Thursday night when I go into town to a meet up with my libertarian friends, but I trust I can navigate through. If not, I think I can keep my head above water and survive.

Meanwhile, I sit in swim trunks and have the fan blowing on me at full-blast.

Blessed coolness. Zen delight.

-Zenwind.

.