Decline of the Soi Dogs

I am not talking here about the excellent band by the name of The Soi Dogs Blues Band.  (They are thriving and are back playing the Blues again, on Sukhumvit Soi 11 on Thursday nights at Apoteka.)  I’m talking about the canine “soi dogs.”  A “soi” means a back/side street, and soi dogs are homeless and always looking for a handout.  They have all but disappeared. 

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Our neighborhood used to be filled with soi dogs.  They would be around our place in the early mornings to beg food – often at the same time as the Buddhist monks on their alms rounds, soi dogs being no fools – and also in the evenings they would show up for handouts.  When I would straggle home from a late outing long, long after midnight, local soi dogs that knew me would get up off the street, stretch, and merrily follow me home where they knew I’d give them some scraps.  Waggly-tailed neighbors with big smiles.  Cosmic hobos with the wisdom of the streets. 

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But they are gone.  The Great Flood of late-2011 disrupted all street life and the communities in the region.  Soi dogs started to disappear at that time (although cats did not, perhaps because their climbing abilities put them high and dry).  But even since the end of the flooding, soi dogs that survived started to vanish one-by-one. 

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News reports started to tell of organized dog-napping operations, where stray dogs -- and even pets -- were rounded up and illegally exported to neighboring countries (the main one being that in which I once spent an unpleasant year over four decades ago).  Why were they kidnapped and exported?  Cuisine.  Dog meat.  Huge cargoes of closely-packed caged dogs were found by police – skinny, mangy and dying.  Apparently this black market demand for dog meat and the related supplier operations have continued to be quite successful, as the streets now have a conspicuous lack of soi dogs. 

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Here is an investigative account of black market dog trading, Dog-Meat Mafia. Read the full article transcript.  But only view the video if you are strong of stomach, because it is not pretty.  Here in Thailand, the blame goes not only to the villainous traffickers and corrupt officials who expedite this trade, but also to blame are the assholes who are too cheap to neuter their dogs (and cats) and thus allow so many homeless and unloved animals to come into the world. 

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May the karma of these ill-used soi dogs ever improve in their future lives.  If I actually believed in rebirth that would be a more comforting thought. 

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-Zenwind.

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Waiting for the Rains

Early May.  It is still 100*F almost every day; the direct sunlight is brutal and the sweat is constant.  The monsoon Rainy Season will come soon and be of variable intensity.  We hope it comes very soon and with enough intensity to cool us off (just so long as we are not flooded again as in 2011).  Damn, it's hot!  

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-Zenwind.

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Immigration Office Hell

It was the annual immersion into the torture chamber, the dread annual visa renewal.  We had copied and re-copied the required documents and more, rounded up statements from the bank and from the US Embassy, etc., but the Immigration Office always hits us with one more unannounced requirement – and this year it was two new ones.  Bureaucracy is a major stressor, but they are smart to play loops of “Mr. Bean” on the office’s TV monitor; his humor is universal (Thais love him) and doesn’t require language or sound; Mr. Bean’s agonies when waiting in a long queue (as all of us sitting in Immigration are doing) is spot on. 

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I decided while in queue that – if I live through this day of wrath and tears – when I got home I would promptly get wasted on the strongest Thai beer I could find:  Chang Classic!  Ahh!  A giant mug full of ice cubes and Chang! 

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It is a pain to get out into the boonies where the Immigration Office is located, and hard to get taxi service.  We tip the driver very well because he must wait a long time.  Everybody likes Tuk, and so the driver enjoyed a good conversation with her on route and back. 

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There are new buildings going up everywhere, even in the boonies, as greater-Bangkok quickly continues to spread outward.  Condominiums, malls, homes – there is construction everywhere.  (I hope there is not another real estate bubble expanding toward a burst, such as the one that started here in Thailand in 1997 and took down much of Southeast and East Asian economies.) 

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I admit that I do enjoy seeing the countryside, the rice paddies, etc.  We can still see the dirty high-water marks of the terrible flood of late-2011, over knee-high and everywhere.  I am still astounded at the immense area that was flooded.  It is amazing.  One thing I’ve noticed when going on outings like this is that while people are generally rebounding from the floods, rebuilding, there are a few species of trees that were killed by the floods.  Not many trees, but of a certain type.  I will assume, since the 2011 floods were the worst in over 50 years, that these trees were planted since then and are of a kind that is not used to being flooded – hence they die. 

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We are home safe, with major visa headaches a year away.  Now if it would only rain hard and relieve this horrendous heat. 

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-Zenwind. 

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Songkran 2556 BE/2013 CE

Local celebrations for the traditional Thai New Year, aka Songkran, are a bit subdued.  I walked to the store and back without getting wet (except for profuse sweating).  No one threw water on me, and none of the kids with water-guns squirted me.  Maybe they felt sorry for this old man.  Still the pavements and sidewalks were mostly dry, whereas in other years everything is wet.

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It is also the 270^th birthday of Thomas Jefferson.  You are not forgotten, Mr. Jefferson. 

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-Zenwind. 
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Melt Down

This incredibly intense and prolonged heat spell we are having is killing our hardware.  It is over 100*F every day and far worse than a normal April.  Our electric system is getting alarmingly hot, and we are using as few appliances as possible.  Our DVD player is dying, and I’m worried about even using my computer.  As long as the basics work, i.e., an electric fan and the refrigerator, then I still feel civilized; if they stop, then we have slid into true barbarism. 

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-Zenwind.

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Hot Season

The Thai summer is here again, aka the Hot Season.  We will be sweating it out more than ever until the wet monsoon comes in late May or so.  The temps have been pushing 100*F this week, and of course the humidity is off the charts.  The only things keeping me going are iced drinks, an electric fan, and Snake Brand Prickly Heat cooling powder.  This last one I apply many times a day, especially to my back by putting it on a dry long-handled shower brush to reach between my shoulder blades.  Ahh, the cooling relief! 

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-Zenwind.

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Reading Nietzsche on My (recent) 63rd Birthday

After finishing a long reading project, I had the great pleasure of deciding on what next to read out of many choices.  I reached for The Portable Nietzsche, edited, translated and with commentary by Walter Kaufmann.  This is a classic that I first read 40 years ago, and it is still as fresh and relevant as it was when it was first published. 

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Nietzsche is ruthlessly honest, boldly curious, iconoclastic, and timelessly in tune with the human condition from ancient days straight through into our own future.  …  The man continually amazes me. 

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-Zenwind.

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Tennessee Waltz— Patti Page, R.I.P. (1927-2013)

I was shocked today reading the news that American pop singer Patti Page died.  I was shocked primarily because I had no idea she had lived up to this point in time, but also because she was only 85 years old (a year younger than my late mother would have been).  She is one of my earliest musical memories, because my mother was a big fan of hers and had a number of her records which I grew up with. 

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Reading her obituaries, I saw that the dates of some of her greatest hits were during the years when I was a rug-rat in the early 1950s.  We had an old cabinet phonograph, and the records of that era were the big 78-rpm ones that broke so easily.  One song per side. 

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Reading of Page recording with Mercury Records reminded me of the old Mercury label on the 78s and of me playing Tennessee Waltz over and over again.  It was a sad song, and with me being just a little tike I didn’t completely understand all of the feelings involved – but I recognized, somehow, the mournful yearning expressed in her beautiful voice.  I get chills just thinking about the lyrics to this day.  A classic, it was played in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. 

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Other songs of hers that I remember from those early 78s were Mockin’ Bird Hill (an absolutely beautiful song), and Detour (“Detour/ There’s a rocky road ahead/ Detour”).  One special favorite of mine was (How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window.  I’ve been singing it in my head all day long.  ("How much is that doggie in the window? /The one with the waggley tail/ How much is that doggie in the window? /I do hope that doggie’s for sale.”)  As a little kid, I probably drove my parents crazy by singing that out loud, over and over again. 

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Patti Page.  That gal had a beautiful voice, and I thank her for the memories. 

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-Zenwind. 

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End of the World. Last Movies. Misty Mountain Hop

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I have only experienced one sweat-free day during this “winter” season thus far, while the rest of the days are still too hot and dripping humid to bear.  I know that I sound like a broken record here, always complaining about the heat (after all, I moved here), but it is such an intense, immediate in-your-face fact:  it is agonizingly hot here, all the time, even in our “cool” season.  Expatriates sizzle in Hell. 

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I’m grouchy.  Although I do not get out much, a recent trip to a shopping mall hit a seasonably sensitive nerve:  Christmas music!  It has followed me into the tropics like a hell-hound on my trail, and I fear I’ll never escape it.  Yes, I’m a classic Grinch, but the November/ December season always depressed me back there in the dark north.  It is unnerving to walk from the sunny, tropically humid outside heat into a pleasant a/c environment only to be hit with Christmas decorations everywhere and carols blaring loudly.  Why are Thais doing this?  They are less Christian than my most mercenary pet cat, Silly Willy.  It must be something about money. 

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Well, relief may well come soon.  “It’s the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine.”  The ancient Mayan calendar is said (by some) to mark this upcoming 21 December 2012 as the end of the world.  End… period.  All over.  End of time.  On the eve of this ending of all time, on the 20^th, I plan on meeting my libertarian friends downtown, so I will raise a glass with them as oblivion engulfs the world from the International Dateline on a westward march through the time zones. 

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(Wait a minute!  Did the ancient Mayans know about the Earth’s sphericity, revolution and time zones?  Nevertheless, they did know something about the rise and fall of civilizations and, rationally, they did see their own decline as a coming inevitability.  I’ll give them that.  Perhaps it is healthy for long-ruling civilizations to occasionally imagine their catastrophic ruin.  It combats hubris and puts one in touch with the Timeless.)

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One of my major regrets as the End nears is that I am not even partly through my reading list of both online readings and the piles of books I’ve squirreled away. 

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Meanwhile, I have seen the movie Cloud Atlas, and I want to see it again if possible.  I did not read the novel, but had I read reviews that told of the story’s complex plot – complex in terms of time, space, character identities and narrative continuity.  Yes, it’s a weird one, not for everyone, but it is very interesting.  I prepped for the movie by reading online summaries of the novel and its plot – a kind of modern “Cliff’s Notes” approach to a book which one doesn’t have time to read.  The cast is all-star, and they portray multiple characters (often with heavy makeup that takes a minute to see through).  Definitely worth seeing again – if I can get downtown, if the nagas be willing, if the creeks don’t rise, and if the world doesn’t end too soon. 

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Meanwhile, while waiting for Armageddon, I am eagerly anticipating the premiere this week of Part One of the film trilogy, The Hobbit.  I am rereading the novel and am using The Atlas of Middle-Earth that my sister gave me for cartographical, geographical, geological and mythological orientation.  After all, “Not all those who wander are lost.”  Some pages in that Atlas are detailed enough to call in artillery strikes, provided that the graphing of the terrain is ontologically sound. 

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Bilbo Baggins is my all-time favorite Tolkien character, although others warrant my fond respect:  e.g., Gandalf intrigued me with his mysterious comings and goings seemingly backed by arcane knowledge and a traveler’s wisdom; and the early Strider, the Ranger of the North in The Fellowship of the Ring (before he became all kingly and prettified later), appeared to me as a brother in arms, grimly tramping alone up and down the wilds of the ruined vestiges of Arnor’s former glory.  Because the world will end so soon, I am sorry we will never see parts two and three of this very promising movie trilogy. 

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Bilbo is my favorite character because he loved maps and (with some initial persuading) loved going on “adventures!”  He was an unlikely romantic, raised in the womb of Hobbit comfort but bitten by the wanderlust bug, always packin’ his bags for the Misty Mountains. 

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-Zenwind.

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New Thai Political Storm?

Yesterday I took a boat into Bangkok to see the opening here of the movie The Master, and I made a special effort to see it now because by tomorrow we may see restricted travel in the city.  This weekend’s huge anti-government (anti-Thaksin) rally has worried those in power -- the pro-Thaksin red shirt folks -- enough to enact the Internal Security Act (ISA) for three central Bangkok districts. 

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The ISA is just short of martial law and gives police massive emergency powers.  The protest rally’s leader has called for a military coup to oust the current democratically elected government, and many other groups may join in the protest.  Normally, the ISA would chiefly have the military involved in law enforcement, but this time it is the police who run the show, with military help only as a last resort.  Why?  The police are widely considered to be pro-Thaksin and the military had ousted Thaksin in the 2006 coup, thus the military is not trusted by those in power. 

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The Master, a film by Paul Thomas Anderson, is not for everyone, but I wouldn’t miss it since I’m a news junkie for weird cult/religious behavior, and this movie was inspired in part by the Church of Scientology (CoS).  I have been following the weird news of the CoS for several years, especially now that the cult has been self-destructing recently, e.g., with massive defections of top leaders, with scandals hitting the news at least weekly, etc.  Watching The Master, I saw dozens of thinly-veiled references to the CoS that were unmistakable, and I’m sure that folks with even more knowledge of CoS could find scores, if not hundreds, of direct references to it. The acting was first rate, and the music very interesting.  Caveat:  not everyone will enjoy this exploration into the bizarre. 

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-Zenwind.

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