Quiet

During the weekdays there is usually a rush of traffic going by into the main gate of the electric company just across the street, with dozens of buses, hundreds of cars, and a mass of foot traffic.  Before 08:00 and then around 16:00, it’s always noisy.  But it is much more subdued now, and most of the day is like a ghost town.  Tuk walks to work, about 200 meters, and out of her particular office crew that numbers over 40, only half a dozen are present these days.  Tuk lives close by, is “essential”, and she doesn’t find working-from-home very productive. 

After a hard morning rain, now everything is abnormally quiet.  The dripping of the eaves is all the music I need. 

-Zenwind. 

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Rain

Today we had a refreshing thunderstorm come through.  Wind and hard rain.  It cooled things off wonderfully, and the air smells fresh.  Of course, the stifling heat will come back later, especially so whenever the sun comes out, but it was a welcome difference.  More rain should grace us in the next two days.  

"When the rain comes...."  Blessed coolness.  Zen delight. 

-Zenwind. 

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Quiet Neighborhood

Even though it’s a Sunday mid-afternoon, the streets are so deserted it’s spooky.  There is very little vehicle traffic, almost no foot traffic, and hardly a vendor in sight on the empty sidewalks.  Never seen it like this.  I think Thailand has finally settled into a lockdown mentality.  All is well at home here.  The cats haven’t a clue that there is anything unusual going on, and they just sleep right through. 

-Zenwind. 

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Covid-19 in Thailand

Thailand has had surprisingly few Covid-19 infections and deaths reported.  As of today, there are still under 3,000 total confirmed cases and just under 50 total deaths, and Thailand has a population of 70 million and had the first confirmed case outside China.  Granted, they are not testing very widely here.  But one statistic that is very difficult to hide is deaths – total deaths, historical average number of deaths expected, and “excess deaths”, i.e., those that show an abnormal spike above normal average mortality.  Thailand shows no such new spike in excess mortality, unlike countries where this Covid-19 is raging and the spikes of excess deaths are obvious. 

In the world’s coronavirus hotspots, there is also the problem of undercounting deaths that are actually caused by Covid-19, e.g., from not counting deaths at home without testing, etc.  The smoking gun here is the concurrent rise in deaths labeled as “All other deaths” along with those officially testing as “Covid-19”.  What else could be causing these dramatic spikes in excess deaths?  (Please see this Chart covering some of these hotspots.)  Countries such as Italy and the Netherlands suggest quite a radical undercounting.  Spain and France also look to be undercounting.  The UK and New York City count differently but still show probable undercounting. 

My point here is that Thailand somehow is not (yet) experiencing massive increases in deaths, despite the virus landing here early with massive Chinese tourism as well as many infected Thais returning from abroad.  I cannot explain it but can try to guess.  We are in a declared emergency, with stay-at-home guidelines, night curfew, borders practically closed, holidays canceled, etc.  We have all long been wearing masks when out and we keep our distance. 

One thing:  Thais do not shake hands (or hug in public).  After ten years here, on my first visit to America I was repelled by the handshaking culture there, and considered it “dirty”.  It is also colder in most of the USA, and much of the time one is in tightly sealed houses. That December I had the worst head cold I’d had in a full decade. 

North America’s flu season is from October to April, therefore – according to some theories – there is some hope that the coming five months of milder weather may moderate the transmission of the Covid-19 virus also.  Let’s hope so, and also hope that the next flu season starting in the autumn doesn’t see a resurgence of this virus. 

Conversely, flu season in Thailand is during our Rainy Season, roughly from about June through October (depending on the year).  Some medical folks here are worried that we might see a serious increase in our Covid-19 infections then.  We’ll see.  Perhaps our hot weather – such as we’ve been having especially now in our Hot Season – has made this virus less deadly so far. 

In more cheerful news, we are all well here.  We don’t get out much, but we’re not bored.  For a hermit like me, I’m not missing much except for the occasional wanderings into the city that I used to do. 

-Zenwind. 

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Jefferson Day & Songkran

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson, one of my greatest heroes.  Your ideas and example will live on.  I intend to defend my rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” against all the prevailing ideologies that seek to collectivize us, socialize us, and tribalize us, stamping out all individuality. 

This day also is traditionally Songkran, Thai New Year with its famous water-throwing festivities.  But it is canceled to keep people from gathering during the pandemic, and all alcohol sale and use is prohibited throughout all of Thailand for well over a week.  

So much for my "liberty and pursuit of happiness"; yet their stated intention is to guard my "life", therefore I'm not ready to pitch into full revolutionary mode over it -- yet.  Besides, it is just too damn hot to move.  

It is the first time in all my years here that I have not experienced water thrown around on the streets.  In this horrid heat, it would have been welcomed. 

-Zenwind. 

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Songkran & Alcohol Ban Blues

Today would normally be the beginning of an extended holiday week around the Songkran festival, the traditional Thai New Year (which falls on April 13).  The government canceled celebration of the entire holiday in an effort to stop transmission of Covid-19, reasoning that the enormous annual mass gatherings of people would increase infection.  All mass gatherings have already been outlawed during this ongoing crisis.  And many provinces have banned alcohol for a ten-day period. 

(Tuk will go in to work on Monday the 13^th, because she can work better in her office than online work-from-home.  Her office complex now has much, much fewer workers attending daily, but she has heavy managerial responsibilities and needs to be there.  It’s the electric company, and is deemed essential.) 

This government is nuts, like all the rest.  Like all would-be central planners, they don’t have a clue when it comes to any unintended consequences of their arbitrary decrees from on high.  Theoretically, they reason that if they ban all sale and consumption of alcohol during this ten-day holiday, then people will not illegally assemble together at parties and thus pass on infections.  Plausible.  Yet as soon as a ban on alcohol was announced for Bangkok as well as many other provinces, huge masses of shoppers crowded tight together in long lines at stores to stock up – not quite the social-distancing ideal they recommend. 

So, many provincial governors here, including Bangkok, have just decreed a ten-day ban on booze.  My province of Nonthaburi is not one of them, so I have been stocking up in case they soon follow suit.  I utilize alcohol for pain relief (or, more accurately, a relaxant) to relieve my chronic fibromyalgia pain.  I can go months at a time without using it, but it helps relieve my agony most when I am not able to exercise (such as now when the heat is unbearable) and/or when I am writing and researching, typing under deadlines.  My pain can be crippling, putting me into a fetal position ball of pain.  No other medicine works as well.  So, screw the ruling elite’s ban – and I don’t even socialize when I drink. 

On that note, I hold with the great American philosopher and Blues Rock singer-guitarist, George Thorogood – just a youngster, as he was born ten days after me – when he authored and released the 1985 song, I Drink Alone:  (Imagine here the slow bare Blues beat of drums and bass, along with the phenomenal lead guitar and the vocals George belts out): 

“I drink alone.  ...

  With nobody else.  ...

  And you know when I drink alone, ...

  I prefer to be by myself.” 

George Thorogood and the Destroyers, they are definitely “Bad to the Bone”.  American party music, even if you do drink alone. 

This is going to be a long hot week and way beyond.  I hope most of us will come up intact on the other side of it.  Stay well. 

-Zenwind. 

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Prometheus Awards 2020

The Prometheus Award nominees for 2020 have been announced by the Libertarian Futurist Society in two categories:  Best Novel, and Hall of Fame.  The deadline for voting, by voting members, is 4 July.  

The Prometheus Best Novel Award goes to a science fiction or fantasy novel published in the previous year that features libertarian themes, i.e., strongly pro-liberty and/or anti-authoritarian.  The Prometheus Award for the Hall of Fame goes to older works with the same libertarian themes, but in addition to novels they can be short stories, plays, film, TV, graphic novels, song lyrics, verse, etc.

Five nominees in each of the two categories are selected as finalists out of a larger field of nominees.  The Prometheus Awards – both the winners and nominees – have introduced me to some very enjoyable reading over the many years. 

Although I am not on the finalist judging committees deciding the five finalists, I am an Early Reader volunteer helping to screen possible nominees and sometimes nominating novels for consideration by the committees myself.  I have already read three of this year’s Best Novel finalists, and I screened and nominated two of them. 

1. One of my nominees was Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, a long-awaited sequel to her 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (which has been made into a TV series recently), which I had read back in the day because it was a Prometheus Award finalist in 1986.  This sequel is even more libertarian than the original, portraying freedom-loving individuals who risk all to smuggle women out of the misogynist theocratic American totalitarian state of Gilead into Canada in an “Underground Femaleroad” – much like the abolitionist network of the 19^th century -- as well as dissidents in positions of power within the Gilead tyranny who work behind the scenes.  It is a great closure to The Handmaid’s Tale.  Very well written. 

2. The second finalist novel that I screened and nominated is Ruin’s Wake by Patrick Edwards.  On a future Earth under a dystopian tyranny much like North Korea or Stalinist Russia, several interesting characters each try to achieve freedom while uncovering the secrets of Earth’s long-ago historical collapse into barbarism. 

3. Alliance Rising by C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher is a stand-alone novel in a series about the Merchanter Alliance, a loose network of independent trader spaceship families who are way out in the black far from Earth.  They try to preserve civilization by maintaining rights, consent, free trade and cooperation, while resisting oppressive monopolistic forces such as the centralized statist tyranny of the distant Earth that wants to take control of everybody.  A very good read. 

I have not yet read the other two finalists, but will start them soon.  They are: 

4. Luna:  Moon Rising by Ian McDonald is the third in his Luna trilogy about colonies on the Moon, with struggles over control waged between factions and family dynasties.  Individual freedom is at risk, and one of the threats, of course, is from those damned Earth governments. 

5. Ode to Defiance by Marc Stiegler sounds good.  Many adventurous humans have escaped the impoverishment of the United States’ socialist regime and have gone into space, living and working on an independent fleet of seastead spaceships.  But maintaining freedom is never easy.  This novel is part of Stiegler’s “Brain Trust” Universe series. 

The five Hall of Fame Prometheus nominees include three short stories, one novel, and the lyrics of a song.  They are: 

“As Easy as A.B.C.” by Rudyard Kipling (1912).

“Sam Hall” by Poul Anderson (1953).

“Lipidleggin’” by F. Paul Wilson (1978).

A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg (1971).

“The Trees” a song by Rush, from their Hemispheres album (1978), lyrics by the late Neil Peart. 

It will be difficult to vote among all these nominees in both categories because they are so good! 

-Zenwind. 

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Life in the Heat

After a three-day weekend with nighttime curfew and general stay-at-home routine, Tuesday saw a bit of normality return to the neighborhood.  There are some changes among the food vendors on the corners and along the streets.  Some long-time vendors have disappeared, and there a lot of new ones.  There are entrepreneurs with small pick-up trucks that are stacked with produce, fruits and vegetables of all kinds, and they travel and park wherever business promises.  My reliable popcorn vendor still pops fresh corn. 

Tuk is “working from home” online as of today, and she doesn’t like it because she cannot concentrate.  The cats want her to play with them, and she keeps getting calls from co-workers. 

I just rediscovered an old tropical essential that I’d forgotten since getting air conditioning:  Snake Brand Cooling Powder, a talc for relieving heat rash in this hot humidity.  I’d used it long ago, but today I found an old can and applied it.  It works. 

Blessed coolness.  Zen delight. 

-Zenwind. 

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Tropical Essentials

In this Hot Season, one appreciates the small comforts and bare essentials.  First, a pair of shorts with pockets, then sport sandals or flip-flops, then a bandana sweatband.  Going up in tech, I love a waterproof smartphone that resists massive sweating, as well as rain later in the year.  (I have had three wives and several girlfriends testify that I am too stupid to come in out of the rain.) 

A new essential in this Time of Plague are face masks.  We have long had good N95 dust masks available to protect against the toxic smog and PM2.5 pollution during our “winter” when there is no wind or rain.  They fit tight, are hot, and I don’t like the uncomfortable fit of the loops around my ears.  Also, on long marches I wear a sweatband bandana which covers the top of my ears, so putting the mask on and off is pure aggravation; I solved that by connecting the two ear loops with elastic cord around the back of my head.  This has always been good for neighborhood marches. 

Now, with the virus scare, we wear a mask every single time we step out, even briefly.  Surgical masks, which are also easy to get here, are much easier and comfortable to wear when I don’t wear a bandana – going to the store, Immigration, a doctor’s appointment, etc. 

Hand sanitizer is now essential, and besides using it religiously at home I have small bottles of it for when going out.  I reassure my Thai neighbors when entering stores, masked up, by cleaning my hands as I enter.  All of it is part of being polite and considerate here as well as being cautious. 

Re:  neighborhood markets, etc.  The convenience stores are still open at the moment, as are Tops food markets as far as I know (although I haven’t been that far from home for quite a while).  Neighborhood street vendors are thinning out a bit because of less foot traffic.  But my popcorn vendor next to the police station was still there this last week. 

As for more traditional tropical essentials, I would list fans as high on the list.  A/C is great, if it works.  Refrigeration is a modern marvel, and I make plenty of Ice in our new fridge.  Drinks are important (stay hydrated!):  beer, tea, chocolate milk, iced coffee, good clean water, etc. 

I have a treasured collection of stainless steel, wide-mouthed Thermos bottles, by Laken (.35L, .5L, .75L).  They keep liquids cold for an incredibly long time.  For the big .75L I throw in a lot of ice & fill with a pint of Beer Chang.  

Blessed Coolness.  Zen Delight. 

-Zenwind. 

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National Curfew

Starting tomorrow there is a nationwide curfew in place, keeping everyone in Thailand, except absolutely necessary (mostly medical) personnel, at home from 22:00 hours to 04:00. 

And in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, the Songkran holiday season is cancelled.  This is like cancelling Christmas!  Songkran, traditional Thai New Year, is in mid-April at the absolute hottest time of the year, and celebrations include throwing water on folks to cool them down.  Usually there are massive street water-throwing parties downtown, and even here one expects some water thrown at you when out and about.  There are a number of additional holidays this month before and after Songkran, and they are often linked up to provide very long periods off from work.  So, because it is a time when schools are usually out and folks are off work anyway, it is not a time of great productivity and thus fits a bit more easily into this stay-at-home scenario. 

It's too hot to move, and yet April is only beginning.  This heat and humidity remind me of 51 years ago in my first months in Vietnam.  The first thing I noticed landing in Nam was that Marines all had green towels hanging around their necks.  Medium-sized towels, dark green.  (All our white clothing, skivvies, etc. were confiscated, and we were issued green substitutes.)  The towels were for constantly mopping up the sweat from your face and hands.  If possible, you never touched your weapon until drying your hands first.  Those days were my first experience with horrendously wicked heat and humidity – tropical hell. 

These days a sweatband – a bandana rolled up as a headband – is essential equipment for dealing with sweat when moving, both inside and outside.  If it is a long fitness walk in the neighborhood, I add to the headband a wide-brimmed hat, and of course shades.  Now, with the mandatory face mask, I must look like some cowboy outlaw. 

The neighborhood folks are almost certainly accustomed over the years to this strange old gray-beard farang alien who strides rapidly over the sidewalks several days a week.  If I were another person, I might feel uneasy about being so different, but I’m long used to being oblivious to most expectations, and marching to different drummers is second nature.  

I am 70 years old yet feel tremendously young at heart.  Aside from a somewhat aged body, I still feel like a kid.  I never grew up, and by this time I guess I never will.  What’s the point? 

-Zenwind. 

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April Fools Day Cancelled

And I am NOT joking.  Anyone reporting false information publicly about the Covid-19 pandemic as a joke is looking at a possible two years in a Thai prison.  And a Thai prison during this Hot season is no joke at all.  Similar bans on joking about it are announced in India and Taiwan. 

Our province of Nonthaburi has just declared a Partial (nighttime) Curfew where no one is to leave their homes between 23:00 hours and 05:00 (11PM-5AM).  Southern Nonthaburi, where we live, is part of greater Bangkok.  One can hardly tell you’ve left the Bangkok city limits until you’ve gone far enough north to reach the province’s countryside. 

We are doing fine here.  Tuk may or may not be working from home after this week.  The heat is almost unbearable. 

Meanwhile, Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second city located up in the north, has been rated having the absolute worst air pollution in the world.  Farmers burning crops are the main culprit, and a big forest fire there is out of control.  Our toxic haze down here in Bangkok has eased up dramatically because of more winds – small blessings! 

-Zenwind. 

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