Momentos – June 2013

These are my Momentos, short personal diary entries I write daily – since 2013 – and publish monthly. Some links are affiliate links.

1

She’s close to tears watching Allan Savory speak, a man quite literally saving the world. After that I show her Maggie Doyne’s story, which leaves her speechless. I can relate. You watch such heroes and you feel half-inspired, half-worthless. There you are, well into adulthood and nothing much to be proud of, not compared to these people. They have a calling, you don’t. They’re making a difference, you aren’t. But these feelings are good. These feelings are fuel.

2

I leave her apartment with a warm heart. In the elevator I meet a pleasant neighbor who insists I speak Thai ver’ good based on my ability to say “I don’t understand.” I jump on the steel pony and ride home listening to reggae, stopping off at the supermarket and a fruit stall along the way. Back in On Nut I fix a green smoothie and get to work on my finances. Turns out I was more than $2k in the red last month, and I feel fine.

3

The critical comments are still coming in from my post about quitting veganism. I went through many of them today and felt sincere gratitude. I got a good buzz from going back and forth with some of the vegan folk, flexing my debate muscles and identifying shortcomings in my own reasoning. I also succeeded at ignoring the trolls and not taking anything personally. I’m left stronger and smarter than I was a week ago.

4

I used to be addicted to video games. Grand Theft Auto 3 was my gateway drug. I knew my way around Liberty City better than I knew the streets of my hometown. A friend used to call me up for directions when he got lost in the game, and I’d see him right from memory. One day I woke up and tried pressing triangle to get out of bed. That’s when I knew I had a problem. I don’t play video games at all these days. I don’t trust myself.

5

Dinner has eyes. I open a carton and there’s a whole fish there staring at me. I’ve never eaten fish that looks like an actual fish before. There’s also skewered shrimp, and she has to show me how to pull the heads off. She laughs and tells me I’m like a child, which I take as a compliment. I’m quite conservative when it comes to food, adventurous in my eating if only someone else leads the way.

6

Jack seems impressed with the jumps we’re making. I point to a shorter jump and tell him how it used to scare me, jumping that gap, two feet forward. Then I point to another one, a little wider, same story but broken more recently. And now the jump I’ve just completed, a jump that was beyond me ten days ago. I don’t think I can jump any farther now than I could then. It’s mostly a mind game. First it breaks within, then without.

7

I aim to send my mother a text message every day, and have done so almost unfailingly since I left home twenty months ago. I didn’t always keep in regular contact while away, excusing myself with the belief that she should worry less and trust more. But now I think of it like this: It takes me literally two minutes to send that text, and it means a lot to her to know I’m okay over here on the far side of the world. Tiny investment, big payoff.

8

We get up later than planned, as usual, and set out for Kanchanaburi at around noon. Once we’re out of Bangkok I take the wheel, my first time driving a car in Asia. Later we catch a double rainbow and the sunset alongside the River Kwai. I was at the same spot a couple of months back regretting that I had nobody to share the experience with. This time it’s not just that I have somebody, but somebody pretty damn fantastic.

9

Beyond the park attendants, after closing time, seven levels high in the Thai wilderness, and there we are, all alone, swimming in pastel ponds at the source of Erawan Falls. We hid out of sight downstream for a half hour to beat the curfew, broke cover too soon and had to sweet talk our way past Employee of the Never. Now tiny fish nibble at our toes as we encircle, embrace, and kiss. This is fucking awesome.

10

Still not sure how I feel about zoos. The main attractions at Tiger Temple today appeared happy and lucid, with lots of space to move around. In many ways they probably live better than their wild cousins. But I also saw obese bears and grounded eagles, squeezed into small cages with filthy watering holes, looking through sad eyes and criss-crossed steel at fawns and piglets roaming free. Predators jealous of their prey.

11

I’m packed and out the door in ten minutes. I spin the scooter up to the skytrain and read Dan Ariely’s take on dating until Asok, where I change to the metro line and ride it to the train station. From there I buy a sleeper ticket to Nong Khai and eat two meals in the food court before departure. All aboard I get the hotspot hookup and respond to blog comments until the world outside begins to move.

12

I’ve been walking for almost an hour in the hazy Vientiane heat, beginning to regret passing up the tuk-tuk ride from the shady character outside the embassy. I wanted to walk and I knew the way. Or so I thought. Now, with nare a phone signal, I’m resorting to the compass app to find the Mekong. I’m sweating through my shirt and can feel my skin burning. Where the fuck did they hide that river?

13

I’m on one of those thirst-for-knowledge kicks, immersing myself in books and blogs and apps and podcasts. This morning Dan Carlin walked with me to the Thai embassy, a logical fallacies app made me less wrong while waiting in line, Michael Ellsberg schooled me on connection capital as my visa application was being processed, Patrick McKenzie kept me company over lunch, and if the wifi was better I’m sure I would have squeezed a TED Talk in there somewhere.

14

“Most people don’t realize, but Laos is the most bombed country of all-time.” She’s telling me this as we putter towards the Friendship Bridge in the back of a tuk-tuk with her husband and two sons. “Literally every day there’s a limb, an eye or a life lost in this country to land mines and cluster bombs. The mining industry should be booming here, but it takes so much time and money to clear a mining site that investment is hard to come by.”

15

We lie in silence afterwards, until she asks me what I’m thinking about. “Science,” I reply. And she looks at me like I’m made of geckos. “I was thinking about how men are more physically dominant than women, and then I was thinking about evolution, and wondering if it’s that way for all species. And then I thought of spiders, and how the females are often bigger than the males. It’s fascinating, don’t you think?”

16

It’s only been a year since I learned how to ride a scooter, a baptism of fire on the pockmarked streets of Kathmandu. That first day I sideswiped a taxi and almost drove myself and a buddy off a bridge. Now I’m teaching someone else to ride, on the open streets of a different Asian capital. My best advice is along these lines: “If someone beeps at you to hurry up or get out of the way, fuck ’em. Take your time. There’s no rush.”

17

Recording a video of yourself in public is just like any other social challenge. First you’re nervous and build it up to be a really big deal. People will think I’m weird! Then you just go ahead and do it and it’s fine. Nothing bad happens. You may get a few strange looks but then the lookers move on and never think about you again. I know this, but I still chicken out sometimes. Today I made myself record in the middle of a street market.

18

A young man approaches me, more Chinese than Thai. I look up from my laptop as he holds out a laminated card. “Hello,” it says. “I am deaf. Would you like to buy something?” He’s selling little wooden bracelets. I glance at them before shaking my head no. He gives a quick bow, smiles politely, and moves on to the next person in the coffee shop. I watch him fruitlessly approach everyone before leaving. His shoulders have sunk but that smile never wavered.

19

I’m all for voluntary euthanasia. At the hospital today they parked my wheelchair across from that of an Indian man, he a little past middle age but not very old. His mouth was stuck agape and he could only move his neck and groan at his wife who was trying to stop apple sauce from sliding down his chin. I got the impression his wasn’t a temporary condition. I can’t speak for others, but I know I wouldn’t want to go on living like that.

20

English man, Irish man, French woman. We sit and chat for four hours, first over coffee and then a late lunch. These are the types of conversations I love to get lost in. Nothing off limits, minds open and sensitivities mature. We’re talking about erectile dysfunction one minute and chick peas the next. Disagreements respected and opinions valued. It dawns on me that I’d never have met either of these people if not for blogging.

21

For the past week I’ve been trying something new on my to-do list. Every night I’m tasked to sit down for five minutes and define in writing what problems/frustrations I experienced that day. And, more importantly, brainstorm solutions. The idea is to train my brain to focus on fixes. How often do we encounter problems and just accept them, as if a cure is impossible? That’s not how an entrepreneur thinks. That’s not how I want to think.

22

We’re still ten minutes out when the grey sky fulfills its promise. Everyone hustles to the center aisle but it’s impossible to avoid a drenching. The ferry putters along, eventually pulling up to the dock alongside a half-sunk fishing vessel. We break cover once the rain proves relentless, taking shelter under the eaves of some shuttered store. Nobody’s there to pick us up and a strange lady tells us the power is out, island-wide. Happy birthday, babe.

23

I’ve got iodine in one hand, alcohol in the other. There’s gauze and cotton wool at the ready. Fuck. I wish I’d taken a first aid course or something. “Um, which do I use first?” She quits wincing for a moment and looks at me in the annoyed kind of way you look at an imbecile when you’ve got chunks of flesh missing from your ankle and elbow and blood still oozing.

24

We spend a couple of hours cruising around the lonely roads of Ko Sichang. It’s quiet here. I’m guessing the tourists stay away because the beaches are lacking, just one tiny stretch of sand on the western side. We talk about what kind of business could thrive on the island, settling on an adventure trekking company, combined with an organic farm homestay. Either that or you could make a fortune castrating dogs.

25

I used to think I was a 2-3 times a week kind of guy. That was plenty for me, quality over quantity. But recently I found myself wondering if I’d just been doing it wrong all along, and if I was actually more like a 5-6 times a week kind of guy when doing it right. Even more recently, I’m left thinking thrice. And that’s likely the crux of the problem right there: I think too damn much.

26

Hong Kong for August and September, that’s the plan. I’ll go up through Laos and Vietnam to China, stop off in Hanoi for a couple of days, give the whole journey about a week. Planning stages now: Do I need a multiple entry Chinese visa to go in and out of Hong Kong? Is there a good Krav Maga school up there to train? How much are classes? What’s the cost of living like? How will I find an apartment?

27

I step aside so the lady behind me can place her order. She comes forward and tells me that I should be more careful with my money, that it’s dangerous to have big notes out in the open like that. I walk away a bit perplexed. Six months in Bangkok. I’ve never tried to conceal my money clip when paying for something, and I’ve never had a problem. I chalk it up to that lady watching the evening news a little too often. Her worries don’t have to become mine.

28

“Sixty minutes. Twenty minutes. Ten!” This guy is both sides of the negotiation all by himself. I’m barely saying a word. Take a seat, he tells me, ten minutes. Okay. I pull up a stool and snap a few pics as he dismantles the front of the scooter. Just up the street there’s a sudden smash as a motorcycle taxi skids into a pickup truck. The taxi man stays grounded. The pickup trundles on. The mechanic keeps working.

29

I see Parkour as the flight. That’s how you get away from danger as fast as possible. I see Krav Maga as the fight, assertive self-defense for occasions when running isn’t an option. Today, at a park in Bangkok, I had an intro to the latter. Square stance, 360 fence, escaping chokes, defending against knife attacks. We used a stick in place of a blade. Which was just as well, or I’d have been stabbed and slashed to a thousand pieces.

30

I’m hungry and in a mood, hating the local offerings. Everything seems fake. Fruit smoothies laced with syrup, all kinds of meats from tortured animals, the decent side of the menu unavailable. I flash back to my recent trip to the hospital, recalling that they had a Dunkin’ Donuts and a McDonalds in the fucking building! I order something forgettable and eat in silence.