I need to excise stuff.

Firstly I need to excise the the fact I’ve not posted here for 5 months.

A block? I guess so, mostly cre­ated and dri­ven by the fact that my life since mid-2012 has been one of con­stant eval­u­a­tion of other’s writ­ten words, pres­sure to deliver these words and an increas­ingly over­whelm­ing panoply of extra­or­di­nary images, archival materiel and just stuff that Mur­ray Cam­mick and I are try­ing to give some order to — with vary­ing but increas­ingly pleas­ing degrees of suc­cess. All done under the canopy of an enforced and unhappy phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion from Brigid (no we have not split — cir­cum­stance has put me in a dif­fer­ent bed to the girl with whom I’m hap­pily co-dependent, for much of the last six months and it’s bloody hard).

Read the rest of this entry

Mostly this blog — The Opin­ion­ated Diner, not this post — is me think­ing aloud. Some­times it has obvi­ous shape and form, other times I per­haps post before I should, and the sub­stance is thin. I’m not sure which of the afore this post is. It may not mat­ter so I’ll continue…

It was about 35 degrees cel­sius when the above photo was taken, in the cap­i­tal of one of this world’s largest Bud­dhist nations — albeit one that cel­e­brates Christ­mas far more imag­i­na­tively (this set­ting is not part of that descrip­tor) and spec­tac­u­larly than any so called Chris­t­ian nation I’ve been to dur­ing the sea­son of goodwill.

This is a tale of a jux­ta­po­si­tion as uncom­fort­able that image: In a fairly grey and char­ac­ter­less Bangkok through street (it takes you from Charoen Krung to Rama IV), Thanon Sura­wong, which runs par­al­lel to the major com­mer­cial through­fare of Thanon Silom, but has none of that wide boulevard’s hotels, banks, mar­kets (at least not at this end) com­merce or fas­ci­nat­ing dis­trac­tions (the 19th Cen­tury Chi­nese ceme­tery and the large Hindu Tem­ple are but two) sits the Neil­son Hays Library.

It’s less than a kilo­me­tre from the ugly flesh­pots of Pat­pong, which many vis­i­tors some­how think define Krung Thep – they love to hear and repeat sto­ries of the gang­sters, knives and threat that sup­pos­edly lurks behind the gawdy doors — when in real­ity mostly it’s a just a tourist dri­ven pit, a kind of Dis­ney World with pole danc­ing for the the gullible.

A truly odd few days.

On the Thurs­day before last I get an email ask­ing if I can come to New Zealand to con­sult on a project. Sure - sur­prised - says I, when? How does Sun­day sound. Um, ok — how long for? Five days? Okay…

Ticket arrives on the Fri­day and it’s Qan­tas via Syd­ney. I re-send the email that I sent to ear­lier: Sin­ga­pore Air­lines or Thai only. I won’t fly Qan­tas, Malaysian or Air New Zealand, all for rea­sons of food, com­fort and lack of ser­vice on a very long flight (okay Air NZ are fine on the ser­vice but the food and seat­ing suck badly).

The replace­ment ticket arrives a cou­ple of hours later — Thai, but leav­ing within 48 hours.

That’s fine. I buy a few exotic Thai snacks for the par­ents and head to the air­port. At Swampy I get into an argu­ment with the Duty Free store: you can’t take liq­uids over 100ml on the plane to NZ.

Didn’t I resolve this a month ago? Yes I am — in a sealed bag.

No you can’t. I quickly work out that to staff in King Power Duty Free, New Zealand is a pair of words that sim­ply means ‘a part of Aus­tralia - we don’t know exactly where’.

I tell them I’ll take the risk — and the girl sells it to me, then a few sec­onds later chases me through the air­port in tears, plead­ing with me to go back as she’ll lose her job when Thai Air­lines throw me off. I tell her I won’t men­tion her and if there is an issue I’ll some­how get it back to her.

I leave her sob­bing, con­vinced that I’ll never make it to the city of New Zealand in Aus­tralia and that she’s unem­ployed — and with­out issue I board TG491.

Read the rest of this entry