Winter in Thailand

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This is our second winter cold snap.  I wrote about the first one two weeks ago (26 January), and then we had almost a week of normal hot weather with temps up in the mid-90s and humid – until now.  The last two nights have again been down to 61*F, and I’ve had all the fans off for a couple of days – even in the daytime.  Downright chilly.  Again, bathing is a rude awakening. 

I wrote the following yesterday while sitting outside in the shade in our small courtyard in the afternoon:  

I had to go back inside to get a shirt, since it is down to 78*F (at 2 p.m.) and my normal minimal attire of only swim trunks isn't enough.  I initially buttoned up the short sleeve shirt, but that was too hot and I had to unbutton it. This is much like fine-tuning layers of clothing in temperate or very cold climates, except much simpler.

Such extraordinarily low humidity and low dewpoint in the daytime make the air shockingly comfortable.  I still put ice in my drinks -- force of habit from 350 days of oppressive heat and humidity for the rest of the year -- today's mix in my big insulated mug being iced espresso, raspberry vodka, and Coke Zero.

A bit of wind picked up mid-afternoon, and I had to re-button my shirt. I still light a mosquito coil and place it on a plate between my feet on my lawn chair, since flies and mosquitoes still bother me in "winter", and mosquitoes carrying the dread Dengue Fever bite during the daytime.

It is Chinese New Year, and many of the vendors on the sidewalks are absent, probably visiting family. 

-Zenwind.

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Cold Snap in Greater Bangkok

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For the last two mornings the dawn temperature was 61*F (16*C), which seems incredibly cold after unrelenting hot weather.  Winter has finally arrived, although it will get hotter and hotter each day to a normal midday 95*F by the weekend. 

We had to scramble a bit to find our stored extra clothes that we haven’t used for years.  I didn’t locate any of my socks since we don’t ever wear them here, but they sure would have been nice for nighttime wear. 

Our place of course has no central heating or space heaters of any kind, nor a hot water heater.  Usually these are not problems except on exceptional moments like these.  Taking a bath now is a grim affair, and I am postponing mine today until the sun gets a little hotter. 

-Zenwind.

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Movies Seen, last half of 2015

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Movies seen in second half of 2015, from St. Swithun’s to New Year 2016:  

(Many of the older films are ones I’ve seen before but re-watched on video.)

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[Recent films in theater here since 15 July]: 

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Ant-Man (2015)

Kidnapping Freddy Heineken (2015)

Danny Collins (2015)

The Road Within (2015)

Pixels (2015)

Burying the Ex (2015)

Self / Less (2015)

Paper Towns (2015)

Amy (Winehouse, documentary) (2015)

Everest (2015) – excellent!

Cooties (2015)

Sicario (2015)

Crimson Peak (2015)

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)

Spectre (2015) good old-school Bond

The Lobster (2015) – bizarre, but with a great cast

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) very good
Irrational Man (2015) 

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[Older movies seen on DVD since 15 July]:

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Going Clear ((2015, DVD) – EXCELLENT!!! Scientology exposed

The Big Chill (1983, DVD) – an all-time favorite

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986, vd) – classic; still funny

October Sky (1999, vd) – a favorite

Jeeves & Wooster (1990-, TV series, DVD)

Foxcatcher (2014, DVD)

Con Air (1997, vd)

Mars Attacks! (1996, vd)

The Devil’s Advocate (1997, vd)

School of Rock (2003, vd)

American Psycho (2000, vd)

The Adjustment Bureau (2011, DVD)

Zombieland (2009, vd)

All the President’s Men (1976, vd)

The Breakfast Club (1983, vd)

Stand by Me (1986, vd)

Fear & Loathing in Los Vegas (1998, vd)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975, vd)

Dreamcatcher (2003, vd)

Ed Wood (1994, vd)

Say Anything (1989, vd)

That Thing You Do (1996, vd)

Steel Magnolias (vd)

High Fidelity (2000, vd)

Dazed and Confused (1993, vd)

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-Zenwind.

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Books Read, last half of 2015

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A few of the books read in 2015 since the mid-year mark of St. Swithun’s Day 2015.   Many are re-reads. 

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Aldous Huxley – Island (1962)

P.G. Wodehouse – The World of Jeeves (short story collection)

Heinrich Harrer – The White Spider (1959/1964)

Plato – Meno

Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching

Janet Reitman – Inside Scientology (2011)

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Charles Stross – The Laundry Files series: 

The Atrocity Archives (2004) with The Concrete Jungle

The Jennifer Morgue (2006) with Pimpf

novelettes:  Down on the Farm; Equoid

The Fuller Memorandum (2010)

The Apocalypse Codex (2012)

The Annihilation Score (2015)

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(And I’ve read many more not recorded here, mainly online or on Kindle.) 

-Zenwind. 

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Wild Kitten Captured

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Cat Whispering is employed once again! It's an imperfect art, but we do our best. 

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Tuk discovered a tiny wild skinny kitten a few weeks ago skulking about our outdoor courtyard. This kitten, of still uncertain gender, is obviously an orphan, so we have plotted to catch him/her. 

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Food is the classic lure, and I set up kind of box trap right out of the Boy Scout manuals of the 1950s/60s, with a weighted lid controlled by a hand-held line. (My technical engineering and carpentry skills peaked at the Pioneering Merit Badge, so I can do a lot with ropes and knots but I am helpless with any technology since the Stone Age.) 

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This afternoon the little kitten stepped into the box, and I captured them. (The pronoun "them", usually a plural one, is fast becoming acceptable for representing a single solitary mammal of uncertain gender, and this usage is being added/updated to respectable dictionaries as we speak.) The kitten was shocked and frightened by their sudden captivity, and they cried and cried. Poor little orphan. 

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We now have the kitten imprisoned/ isolated in our ground floor toilet room, giving them one room at a time to get used to. (We did this drill before with our dear departed kitten Jiuu over a year ago.) The food and water is on display; they already used the fresh litter box; and they are sleeping in a safe hiding place we designed for them. I will be on watch down here for however long it takes, talking with them when they're awake and about, remaining as still and non-threatening as possible in my lawn-chair. 

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I will sleep here, with the kitten food close to me so they must trust and venture close. It's a long nurturing process, but I'm hoping the skinny tiny little kitten will come through.
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Sad Update:  The little cat freaked completely out right from the beginning of a couple of days and nights captive inside.  Because they were so frantic to claw their way back outside and screamed so loudly nonstop night and day, Tuk decided we should free the little cat to go outside again.  The cat was absent for a day or two but then came back for food and hung around for a while.  Then they disappeared and hasn't been seen for over a week.  We hope the little feline survives somewhere.  

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-Zenwind. 

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Pledging My Time

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“I’m pledging my time

To you,

Hoping you come through, too.”

(-Bob Dylan, 1966)

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It is difficult finding the time to pledge toward contacting you, my treasured correspondents, as time goes by increasingly fast and life gets busier by the day. I am desperately behind in my writing, both in email replies and blog postings. I apologize. Part of it is my inability to find enough hours of the day when I can really focus:

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“From early in the morning

Til late at night

I got a poison headache

But I feel alright.

I’m pledging my time

To you,

Hoping you come through, too.”

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My recent routine is to completely halt most of my writing and correspondence while I am reading books/eBooks. I am a slow deliberate reader who likes to go back and re-read when necessary and take detailed notes, and it takes my complete attention in order to do these works justice.

I belong to a few local Bangkok book discussion groups, although I don’t often attend the meetings because I end up not reading the month’s book selection. I’ve always had a problem with someone “assigning” me readings, starting in junior high school and going right on through my early attempts at college. I would be assigned one book to read but I’d be drawn to another – usually one in a completely different genre and historical age. I still have that random anarchic individualistic “lack-of-discipline” reading attitude that allows me to follow my immediate intellectual interests wherever they lead. So now I also have my own hugely ambitious personal eccentric reading lists which keep me busy. I’m reading a lot of great stuff – some of it that I wanted to read four or five decades ago but never got the chance – and it’s a wonderful freedom. Pure delight.

Then, between readings, between the agonizingly complex decisions on what to read next, I try to catch up with my writing. As a bumbling perfectionist, my writing takes time to craft – though I’m pledging it to you.

Related to this, I’ve lately been ambushed by a horribly painful FMS episode, and I have lost enormous amounts of strength and energy, as well as accumulating near-crippling injuries. Back pain, neck pain – I can often deal with these everyday physical pains. But when my lower extremities are hindered, then I’m crippled. Marching is Life, but I’ve hit the goddamn Wall. I’m having acute hip pain, and simple walking around the house is difficult. I return from a simple walk to the neighborhood store (a 200 meter round trip) gasping for breath. The overall syndrome leaves me utterly exhausted and brain fatigued. On top of it all, there has been NO cool season so far, and the heat is still oppressive, without letup. I’m drained.

Well, I admit, even in the midst of my present FMS bodily pain, I no longer suffer the debilitating migraines (aka, the “poison headaches”) that I had through the first 50+ years of my existence. A much-appreciated mercy.

Time to stop typing and post this before the next wave of “brain-fog” will engulf me, bog down my writing, and delay this posting. “I’m pledging my time/ To you/ Hoping you come through, too.”

-Zenwind.

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Bird Songs, Weather Signs

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Hanging out my laundry today on the veranda, I noticed a few unique bird songs that I haven’t heard in a long time. Migratory birds from up north in China have arrived, chirping their little hearts out.

The last couple of days have been horribly hot, as the sun has no longer been obscured by clouds. I have been sleeping in swim trunks with two fans blowing on me full blast. The forecast calls for rain tomorrow, so maybe we’ll get some relief.

A curious weather difference between SE Asia and North America. In America (and several other worldwide locations) the reliable weather saying is: “red at night, sailors’ delight; red in the morning, sailors take warning”. Here it is the opposite. At sundown just now our western sky is red, which made me re-check the weather reports. Sure enough, thunderstorms tomorrow.

I skipped the philosophy book meet up in the city tonight. Plato is just too boring, and it’s a major hassle to get into town and back. Maybe next month, if the book is right.

-Zenwind.

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October in the Kingdom

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After a rather dry but cloudy Rainy Season, we ended it with a lot of rain in early October. That appears to be ending now, and on the last two nights I’ve seen the moon for the first time in recent memory.

I try to post here at least once a month in order to let anyone interested know that I’m still alive and kicking. I haven’t written much of anything anywhere lately – either on blogs or in personal correspondence – since I’ve been reading a huge amount of stuff and watching a lot of movies, both in theaters and on DVD.

I also just found a big trove of my old music CDs hidden amongst Tuk’s junk that were “lost” during the chaos of the Great Flood of 2011 when we had to scramble and move everything up to higher ground; and I’ve been laboriously transferring this music first to my computer and then to my phone’s music files. (My Beethoven 9th Symphony – the “glorious Ninth” in the words of Alex in A Clockwork Orange -- was a flawed CD so I had to buy another one to upload.)

We are doing well, all in all. I still have a fragmented blood clot throughout my entire left leg (Deep Vein Thrombosis) from last December. I take the anti-coagulant meds and see the doctor for regular monitoring blood tests and for periodic ultra-sound scans. I seem to be very susceptible to blood clots, since this is far from the first time, and I’m scared to death of any inactivity and long-distance airplane flights.

I am a member of three Bangkok book club meet up groups, but I rarely make it to any events. I’ve always been an extremely undisciplined random reader who reads what he likes when he likes. This caused problems in high school and in my early attempts at college in my early-twenties. (When I returned to finish my philosophy and history studies in my late-thirties I was very much on-task as far as readings.) Now, I’ve been spoiled since my retirement by the freedom to read randomly again. I’m ignoring most of these book club readings now, mainly because they don’t make me laugh enough. Laughter is the very best medicine!

I attended one meet up of the Bangkok Philosophy and Classical Literature book club last month, its first one. The book was On Anger by the Roman Stoic Seneca. Good book, great international group with a lot of smart young thinkers mixed with older ones with long reading experiences. The book was a good analysis of anger, and I was forced to confront my own history of anger (and violence). In this respect, “assigned” readings that I wouldn’t have ordinarily encountered can be invaluable.

This month’s philosophy reading (next week) is Plato’s dialogue, Meno. I first read this 30 years ago, and reading it again is every bit as boring. (I really love Plato’s classic The Apology, the trial defense, aka “apology”, of Socrates; and I enjoy The Symposium for its wonderful theater; but Plato generally bores me to death and I loathe his totalitarian mindset.) In Meno: “innate” knowledge as a somehow “recalled memory” from some kind of past existence? Needless to say, I’m skeptical. To be honest, I’m a bit irked to have been seduced into re-reading this – which activity hijacked my precious time for writing and for reading other things. I may go to the meet up next week, but generally I have retired from argument and may have nothing to say.

I have lately been reveling in the re-reading of the wonderful Charles Stross series, The Laundry Files. They are called “Lovecraftian spy thrillers”: bizarre horror; hard science fiction; dry British humour. Wow. (Look for a review of this series in the future on Zenwind.)

This week is my regular 90-day visit to the dread Immigration Office on Wednesday, then celebration of the birthday of Franz Liszt (b.1811) on Thursday, followed by our long holiday weekend. My main aim this week is to push my exercise regimen into a major re-start after a long spell of decline and sloth due to ill health and pain. (“What a drag it is getting old” – The Rolling Stones.)

Yet, from the perspective of H.W. Longfellow: “Excelsior!” (That is a poem!)

-Zenwind.

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Blues Music in Bangkok

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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!

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“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.”

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Can’t get that song out of my head!

-Zenwind.

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Mid-Autumn Festival

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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.

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