Shreds of a bizarre world

Worthy of a general - Bangkok, Thailand

2012-01-26T15:42:00.002+07:00

Fortunately in Bangkok one doesn't have to witness only ghastly shows like this. If one keeps his radar tuned and has patience he'll be able to enjoy a number of amusing and instructive little scenes.

A Korean tourist has just bought a Phat Thai, one of those cooked at the edge of the road, on a large tilted fry pan set over a gas stove and served on styrofoam trays. When he still has a third of the portion left one of those old men who collect empty bottles of beer to make a few bucks draws near him. The Korean moves aside to let him pass and then starts to wolf down what is left of his Phat Thai. Using the chopsticks with perfect skill he shoves elephant-like quantities of food into his mouth, holding his breath, letting out flooded engine-like sounds, dropping fragments and leaning forward to prevent his shirt from getting soiled. A disgusting scene. But why is he doing that? Don't tell me that he's going to...no! He can't do it!

He almost pukes when he sticks the last forkful of noodles down his throat and then, purple and choking...he does it! He throws the dirty styrofoam tray into the old man's container, on his cans and bottles, all neatly stacked, by layers, rows and columns. It's all clear by now: he mistook the case for a trash bin and the old guy for a garbage man. He turns around while he's wiping his mouth and can't see the scene that I am not going to miss. The old man is astonished: while he's looking at the Korean with an outraged expression he grabs the tray and throws it on the ground. Then he leaves, stiff and dignified.

The Korean made a blunder, deceived by the usual, misleading, sneaky appearances. The old man is a poor devil, his job might be humble, but his bearing and pride are worthy of a general.

Jumble of thoughts/16

2012-01-24T16:53:00.008+07:00

- I don't have much time to plan my future, I'm pretty busy dealing with my present.

- I don't give a damn about the money I squander, it's for the time I waste that I can't forgive myself.

- Or, on a similar note: if you have enough money but you don't have time...suddenly money becomes worthless.

- "Only details"...did you just say only details? But that's exactly what counts. Without details we all look alike.

- Being cheated by a talented genius is alright, by an ordinary bastard is not!

- Some thoughts are like mosquitoes: if you don't capture them the moment they flutter in front of you they buzz away...and you won't find them anymore.

- Exhibitionism is already sad enough, but it becomes unbearable if one has nothing to show off...

- Do you know why some people get to do such disgusting things for money? Because without money they are worth shit.

- In life anything could happen, but this doesn't mean that we have to worry about everything!

- Why does the roaring of a fountain help you fall sleep whereas the drone of a person snoring drives you crazy?

Read more thoughts here.

Photo of an old fountain in Malacca, Malaysia. By Fabio

The post I didn't want to write - Bangkok, Thailand

2012-01-21T13:56:00.003+07:00

This is a post I'd rather not write. In fact I spent hours trying to erase the memory of the following facts, but I can't. The intensity of the sensations I felt smashed me inside. I have to document everything.

It's yet another example of the blind violence that can explode all of a sudden in a country where one quickly gets used to meet affable, smiling and tolerant people, and that precisely because of this contrast when it roars in front of us with the power of a Himalayan avalanche it upsets us, scratching our soul with sharp claws.

It's late at night, I'm strolling on a busy Bangkok road, I skirt a foreigner who has just rejected the advances of a pushy ladyboy, the usual things. Then I change my mind: it's not yet time to go back to my room, I turn around and start to walk in the opposite direction. When I pass a makeshift bar on the curb I spot the same ladyboy who is discussing with the bar owner. There's a commotion, some slapping, then the ladyboy is assailed by all the members of the staff: a total of two women and a man.
They grab him by the hair and shirt and hit him repetitively with punches and kicks. I don't know what he did but I expect this is gonna be the ritual reprisal, already witnessed many times before: a minute of thrashing at the end of which the body is left motionless on the ground, then the victim comes to and retreats in a sorry state. This time, however, the beating goes on for a long, dreadfully and despicably long time. The blows are meant to inflict the worst possible damage and the great majority of them land on the head of the ladyboy, the few that hit other parts of his body (shoulders, collarbone and arms) do it just because of poor aim. They are mostly kicks. The bar owner hits rather weakly but she manages to immobilize the already passive target, keeping him from running away and making sure that he's always exposed with a favorable angle to the others' blows. The man hits with frightful power, fortunately not too often. What disturbs me most is his expression: he's obviously beating purely for fun, like a hot-headed young boy might do with a boxing bag. The second woman, on the other hand, is an unstoppable fury: blind rage is driving her. She hits hard and tirelessly for various minutes on end. In the meanwhile the ladyboy's body rolls on, bangs against and bounces off the asphalt, from one sidewalk to the other.

I'm nailed to the spot. I don't want to look. I have to look. And how about trying to stop them? You might be thinking. A noble act, apparently, but actually quite naive and masochistic. I know it, like anybody else who's been here for more than two months. Who didn't find out yet are the tourists that just landed who, thinking that things here work as they do in their countries and not minding the fact that not any Thai has yet stepped in, draw near begging or even ordering them to stop. They are chased away with insults, threats and, if needed, with a dose of violence. The tone and gestures used show that these people will deliver their goods. The message is clear: this is not your business, don't meddle with us otherwise the same thing will happen to you. The comment of a Thai guy who approaches me, probably attracted by my bewildered expression, sums it up: "We can't do anything, except staying here and looking at them..."

Everyone who tries to do something is forced to leave after few seconds, frightened and frustrated, while the merciless beating goes on. There is a middle aged western man with a white shirt and a leather bag among them: he might have just got out of an office or a school. He retreated like anyone else, but after a minute a sense of guilt, genuine as well as out of place, gets hold of him, forcing him to come back. He tries to stop the massacre by physically interposing himself between the two parties and when he's shoved away he reacts by tugging at someone's shirt and yelling: "Enough!" They take that literally and make him stop to meddle by hitting him on the head with a bottle. I'll see him later, while he's pressing a handkerchief on the wound, his beautiful white shirt stained with the bright red of his blood.

The furious woman particularly likes the idea, and in short sequence she smashes two empty bottles of beer against the ladyboy's skull. They finally abandon him on the sidewalk, unconscious. The thugs are panting, exhausted by physical activity and that senseless paroxysm of rage. They massage their sore hands and flex their wrists. You cannot spot any trace of conflicting feelings on their faces though. Only smiles and knowing glances. They are convinced of the legitimacy and timeliness of the inflicted punishment.

A customer of the bar, finally out of the state of trance and shock that was shrouding him, throws a bottle away and leaves disgusted.

After a while the ladyboy stands up. He's staggering, bleeding all over, but manages to walk away, his face, shoulders and chest soaked, dark red. He can definitely take it: the blows he received were really too many. A few meters away finally somebody helps him.

The police didn't show up, even though the station is just around the corner. The local agents are always there when they need to confiscate a few shirts of the street vendors' - a bunch of helpless people - (articles that will be donated for charity to their family members) or to search the pockets of the tipsy foreigners - also a bunch of helpless people, though for different reasons - hoping to extort a few thousands dollars from the foolish guy who got the brilliant idea to take a bag of weed or an illegal pill with him. In cases like this, however, they prefer not to spoil the mellow atmosphere with their authoritarian and not quite tourist-like presence.

I'm leaving as well. Where am I going? What was I doing here? Why did I decide to come back? Total blank. Who cares, let's get out of here, far from those assholes' faces, the memory of which I hope will be overshadowed by a drunkard's laugh or the apparition of some of those beautiful girls that were hanging around here a while ago.

Photo by Mr Magoo ICU (CC)

Funny signs/4

2012-01-11T12:14:00.002+07:00

I often come across some funny signs, billboards, notices and labels. When it happens I always make sure that I don't leave the spot without a photo. I'll post them here a few at a time.

I was walking in downtown Moscow when I noticed the sign...and I had to slow my pace down (Moscow, Russia)

"001000"
The license plate must have cost the guy more than the car (Moscow, Russia)

Keep walking...(Moscow, Russia)

"Fraschini Sisters", old renowned Italian...brothel! Ladies from Italy and Ethiopia!
Price list: 30 liras for 1h, 15 liras for half hour, 5 liras for a "simple" and 10 liras for a..."double"!? (Arquà Petrarca - Padova, Italy)

Foot + drops of water...hmmm that's a difficult maths problem (Koh Samui, Thailand)

Good health care starts with clean feet...(Koh Samui, Thailand)

Writing "Closed" in Vietnamese is no easy task! (Saigon, Vietnam)

Italian style...wrong spelling! (Bangkok, Thailand)

Open?! Maybe they mean those little holes up there...(Koh Samui, Thailand)

Guaranteed? The only thing that "Dr. Nui" can guarantee...is that it's gonna cost you 600 baht...(Koh Samui, Thailand)

A "No smoking" sign...next to a cigarette bud disposal tray! (Bangkok, Thailand)

Nhat Ha Hotel, code name "252B.C"...(Saigon, Vietnam)

You can find more funny signs here.

The bank commission riddle - Bangkok, Thailand

2012-01-08T16:22:00.002+07:00

I've hardly ever used traveler's cheques. The first times I came to Thailand I used to get cash with my European credit/debit cards. Of course the issuing banks were charging me a few euro commission, but the fees applied in Thailand were very cheap (20 baht, about 50 cents of a euro). Then, one after the other, like the victims of a virus that having undergone mutation has become deadly powerful, the local banks started to apply a 150 baht rate (almost 4 euros), basically doubling the amount extorted by the diabolic chain of the service suppliers. To let me withdraw my money. I tried the Ayudhya bank, the Siam bank, the Kasikorn bank, the Bangkok bank and many others: the same disproportionate commission was applied. When I asked explanations at a branch the employees told me that they couldn't do anything about it: the measure was part of a law passed by the Thai parliament, extended to every bank in the country.

Accidentally though, I found out that the UOB bank - with parent company in Singapore - was still charging the old 20 baht commission. According to the explanation that I had received these guys were to be considered impudent outlaws, shameless rascals, reckless pirates! That's precisely what made me like them: I continue to use their services for months. Unfortunately one day their immunity from the contagious disease that had already hit the rest of the national banking system vanished.
I can still remember the devastating feeling of disappointment that got hold of me when I saw the damned message on the screen: "Commissions: 150 baht. Continue? Yes-No" With a finger that was almost shaking I pressed "Yes" but since then I have never used an ATM of that bank again. If I had to spend 150 baht I preferred to do it with the aligned sheep that had complied with the new procedure without hesitations, not with those who had fooled me for a few weeks with the base intention of winning my trust and then stabbed me in the back like that.

Still, 150 baht was really too much: even though I was trying to distribute it over the biggest possible withdrawable amounts. One day, however, an admonition, a sort of moral slap, an insult threat that often comes to enlighten me, darted like a jet on the sky of my thoughts, dragging me out of my natural state of benevolent, lazy and meek acceptance of the boundary conditions: accà nisciun è fess' (nobody is a fool here)...if it's good in Naples it can also be good in Bangkok. I decided to demolish the local bureaucratic barriers and to open a Thai bank account, which is not an easy thing to do unless you are a resident or have a stable job here. Most of the banks politely informed me that they could not have me as a client but, as it's often the case, the procedure that for some seems to be a taboo, for others can be a mere formality. I managed to find a branch of Kasikorn Bank where, for a little fee, they opened an account for me, complete with debit card and online services.

Since then the procedures used by the banks to apply the correct commissions at the ATMs have finally become...even less clear to me! I'll try to explain this with some examples. If I withdraw cash from any ATM of my bank I am not charged any fees. And this is crystal clear. However, the same thing happens if I use the ATM of any other bank in Bangkok. And this seems to be a bit funny: how does that bank make a profit out of these transactions? If I am out of Bangkok and I use the ATM of any bank excluding mine I am charged a 10 baht fee, reasonable and not expensive at all. The problem is that I have to pay the same amount when I use one of my bank ATMs too, just for being in a different location. Recently the situation has become even more opaque, since some ATMs of other banks in Bangkok (the combination bank/area is totally random) have started to charge me a 10 or 20 baht commission. Not all of them, of course, and not the same commission at the same bank, otherwise the riddle would be too easy to solve.

This paradox has reached a level of extreme absurdity when here in Bangkok the same ATM, within a fortnight, charged me 10 (alright), 20 (hey!) and 0 (yeah!) baht to withdraw the same amount of money.

I remember the first time I came to Asia, many years ago, and I heard someone talk about cultural differences. Well, back then I couldn't imagine that they were also referring to bank procedures...

When a crucifix becomes trendy - Bangkok, Thailand

2012-01-03T13:00:00.007+07:00

While the debate over religious symbols keeps raging in Europe - ladies veils, where and how? Crucifixes in school classrooms, yes or no? - in Thailand the latter are often used as slightly bizarre fashion accessories, like colored contact lenses and fake dental braces.

In Bangkok you often come across a girl who wears a crucifix hanging from a nice silver chain or a hippier leather string over her sexy shirt.

"How come, aren't you a Buddhist?" I once asked one of them.

"Sure! My crucifix is here..." she said as she was touching her pendant with a fingertip. Then, after shifting her finger a few centimeters away, hinting at her heart, she added: "but Buddha is right here..."
Do you have a mystic debate to solve? Go to Thailand...

Photo by nathangibbs (CC)

Christmas poem, which actually is not just about Christmas

2011-12-22T18:34:00.003+07:00

So you're going shopping to kill some time,

the most stupid hobby, yet the smartest scam,

which yields its best when Christmas comes.

In this day the son of the Lord was born,

and to celebrate together this holy event

we go buy a bag, a dress and a phone.

Those jingling bells are busting my balls,

but you dream of a white Christmas,

to play with some snow.

And if you're at the tropics where it's not so white,

they are gonna spray some foam
to make it right.

Here come the Magi,

with their precious gifts,

all branded CK, LV and D&G.

Lying around the manger

are no oxen nor asses

just some devices from the Apple store.

Jesus was born today and to pay our respects,

as St.Francis taught us

we spend all we have.

Have a great and very expensive Christmas!

Photo by Funky64 (CC)

The missed prophecy

2011-12-20T04:20:00.002+07:00

Just a few days to go, then 2011 will be over and the dreadful 2012 will start. Last week I was talking with a friend about the (in)famous Mayan prediction when I suddenly had a doubt: how could the Mayas predict that our civilization would end in 2012 if they could not foresee the end of theirs a few centuries ago?

Had they minded their own business they might have lived longer...

Photo by joiseyshowaa (CC)

AirAsia: not so cool anymore

2011-12-13T17:08:00.004+07:00

Having been a rather regular customer of AirAsia - since the beginning, when they were still using old planes and few people trusted them (“They are always late...they'll lose your luggage.” was the typical refrain people were singing in Malaysia) - I can say that their online booking procedure was fast, simple, transparent and fair, their prices among the cheapest and their brand one of the coolest. Well...not anymore.

Going through just a few screens, filling a limited number of fields and clicking some buttons one could choose date, destination, number of passengers, one way or return, could select their favorite flight among the available options, enter their personal data, the credit card ones and that was it. As I said: fast, simple, transparent and fair. No free meal and no seat allocation, true, but their prices were dirt cheap, really unbeatable on some routes.

This took by surprise the traditional carriers that lost large shares of the market while AirAsia, from a small player of the low cost niche, became one of the sector leaders. A real success story for Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian who, from a Warner Music manager, after acquiring an almost bankrupt state owned airline, got to be one of the richest and most innovative Asian entrepreneurs.

Little by little the disbanded forces of the enemies managed to reorganize themselves, filling the gap, while AirAsia incredibly decided to waste its resources of know-how and excellent reputation accumulated over the years, starting to make some of the same mistakes that had forced their competitors to give up their leading positions, plus others whose copyright its management is fully entitled to claim.

Prices went up until they matched and - for some routes and time frames - even exceeded the ones of the traditional airlines, whose offer in terms of quality of aircraft and service is better, while the characteristic features of a low cost carrier where all retained: meals, insurance and seat allocation are still provided upon the payment of a fee. Topping this up with other silly stuff, often hard to understand, such as the Xpress boarding, the counter check-in and the Big shot ID (what does that mean?). Not to mention the last master touch: the credit card payment processing fee, meant to subsidize the investments made to increase the security of online transactions, something that AirAsia, being a company that processes the vast majority of its sales with this procedure, should have the duty (not just morally) to provide free of charge.

The most annoying thing, however, is that all these non-free services are automatically assigned to the user who is purchasing a flight, who, in case he were not interested, would have to deselect them manually, sometimes following procedures that are little clear and very twisted.

As I wanted to corroborate all this with an example I recorded a simulated online purchase of a one way flight from Bangkok to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). Initial price: $76.95. The final one turned up to be almost 60% greater! Insurance, meal and seat allocation strictly not included.

Just to make a comparison, websites like Edreams and Opodo, on the same date, were offering Turkish Airways and Qatar Airways flights (very high quality airlines) for the same or even cheaper price. Obviously all those services that AirAsia was charging for were in this case included. And the final price was just a little higher than the initial one.

There goes the video with comments (watch it on Youtube, not here). Enjoy it.

Photo of AirAsia plane by en-shahdi (CC)

Alone against the wave - Saigon, Vietnam

2011-12-09T19:03:00.004+07:00

We already talked about Saigon traffic, its rivers of motorcycles, the precautions to be taken when crossing the road here.

Today, however, when I was walking downtown, I noticed that there is an aspect of this traffic, some of its dynamics, a specific circumstance that deserves to be dealt with separately. It's that moment when the light turns green and the motorbikes speed up.

Crossroads in Saigon are often supplied with traffic lights for vehicles only: the ones for pedestrians, normally installed at the ends of the zebra crossing, are missing. You are walking on the sidewalk and when you reach the junction you notice the usual legion of bikes drawn up behind the white line, you sense that they have a red light (even though you can't see it) and you hasten to cross the road.

...even if the light goes green they will wait for me to clear the road first...

This is a wild guess that might cost you very dearly. Re-read these last two lines three times before you proceed.

You're still in the middle of the first lane and the signals that you're picking up are not very encouraging. Engines rev up and down, some wheels advance a few centimeters and suddenly stop. You think of a group of race horses pawing the ground behind the starting line...but it's not the same feeling that you used to get when you were a kid, at the racetrack, sitting next to your dad, holding an ice cream and the bet tickets in your hands. You speed up but there is still a long way to go. Suddenly they all move: it's as if you were a ghost, a soul equipped with a translucent body, but you don't have that feeling of invulnerability you thought you would get when you wished you could have this power. It's like a wave. Nobody seems to have noticed you, yet you are there, conspicuous: the only pedestrian, Caucasian, frightened, in the middle of the road. What more do they need to see you?

Actually they don't do it on purpose, out of arrogance or sadism. They are heeding an automatism, they do this same thing dozens times a day, every day. A Vietnamese wouldn't behave like you: you are the inconceivable exception, they are not.

Obviously, at the very last moment they will do everything they can to avoid the impact: they will slow down, swerve, maybe they will even do the unthinkable - they'll stop. This fact, together with your gazelle-like dash, should help you to bring home your hide tonight.

Don't count too much on it though: even if so far you've been lucky, next time, before crossing a road, glance sideways at the main traffic light. If you see a yellow light hold on, you still have a big portion of life to live.

Photo: traffic light in front of the Continental Hotel, by Fabio

Like a Vietcong - Saigon, Vietnam

2011-12-06T12:03:00.002+07:00

A guy jumps into a hole dug in the middle of the street to repair some pipe. There is a leak and the water is already neck-high. Come to think about it we are near Ben Thanh market, right in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, which used to be called Saigon only forty years ago (and informally still is): back then his ancestors might have been in a similar situation almost everyday, immersed in the inundated rice fields while fighting the American GIs. Some kind of loose legacy then: that might be the reason why he seems to be so completely at ease, cigarette in his mouth, chin tilted upwards, while he works on that pipe and talks to his friends, casually looking around at the passers by.

Complicated traffic - Saigon, Vietnam

2011-11-23T20:15:00.002+07:00

Motorcycles in Saigon

Traffic in Vietnam is a rather complicated matter, especially when it comes to motorcycles. When you have to face it while crossing a road at the beginning you might feel that what you are about to take on is an impossible deed. Then you put together all the useful virtues that you are equipped with: intuition, quick reflexes, previous experience in similar situations. And don't forget a massive dose of folly. So you take the first step. Every move must be accurately weighed: you can't afford any gross mistake, as you would immediately be run over; the minor ones can always be fixed with a sudden jump or an acrobatic number. Every single progression must be planned and measured with care as for timing, speed and maximum length. At the right time in fact it's necessary to resist the temptation of greed, content oneself with the space left behind, stop (even in the middle of the road) and immediately focus on the next try, just like in an American football game.

A pedestrian who dives into a typical continuous flux of motorbikes in Saigon must move in a resolute way, perfectly cutting in between the wake of the bike that just went by and the path of the one that is about to come, looking the opponent straight in the eyes. The motorcyclists, in fact, must understand at once the intentions of those who are crossing the road. Every advance must be carried out quickly but without sudden starts, which would inevitably puzzle those who have to decide without hesitation whether they should drive their bike behind or in front of us.

However, pedestrians are only one part of the problem after all: the unbroken sequence of zig-zags, abrupt braking and sudden side moves make it very likely for bikes to crash against one another.

On my first night in Saigon, ten years after my last visit, during the exploratory walk that I always take to get acquainted with a city, when I have already witnessed the usual pathetic squabble with insults and off-target slaps between an English speaking tourist and a local fake T-shirt seller I finally come across the scene that since the very first step out of the airport one keeps wondering why he has so far failed to see. Two motorbikes are leaning on the middle of a street while a bunch of people are forming a circle around a poor devil who is sitting on the asphalt holding his head. There is a puddle of blood between his legs. Fortunately everybody understands at once that it's just a scratch between his temple and eyebrow, nothing serious. The onlookers start to busy themselves with acts of solidarity both quick and extremely sensible. Obviously everybody here is used to this kind of operations. Without panic and confusion, following a surprisingly appropriate sequence, different people bring to the unlucky fellow tissues, water and finally band-aids. The poor guy's mood gradually changes: from stunned and desperate he becomes lucid and calm. When someone tries to tell a joke he laughs with everybody else. The guy who hit his bike offers him a cigarette: he takes it and the general burst of laughter that follows marks the end of this little drama. The injured guy stands up, starts his bike and leaves while everybody is still smiling: nobody complained, checked for damage or tried to obtain compensation.

A minor drama typical of this place, that the traffic of Saigon - like those old AKs that lie dusted and rusted in the Vietnam war museums - blasts away at its residents every day.

A couple of videos on the subject that I took in Saigon.

1. Chaotic traffic at a crossroads

2. Heavy traffic at twilight

Asian street characters

2011-11-15T19:32:00.001+07:00

A patient of a large mental hospital is looking outside from behind the gate. He plucks up courage, stops a passer by and asks him: "Excuse me, just a question, how many of you live inside that place?"

Old funny story about points of view

Let's start with Kuala Lumpur.

The first one is an Indian man, bare chested, flapping pants made of light fabric, no shoes. His hair is long and ruffled, his skin is dark - Tamil chromosomes mark. His bones are exposed and his muscles darting, thin and tensed. He could be a sadhu whose saffron robe has been snatched by a thief or a natural catastrophe. His face is not thin as other thin faces are: it's a skull covered with dark leather and bristly hair, and little more. His eyes are two huge floodlights, goggled, like those of a hunted down beast. You can spot him everywhere in the city center, while he walks, almost running, fleeing from the enemy, only partly imaginary, that has been chasing him for years wherever he goes.

Then there is a bearded man, who constantly holds a banknote with his right hand, turning it over again and again, making it twirl between his fingers like a magician, while he carefully looks at it, studying it as if it were a mysterious object, fallen there from another world or another time. In the meanwhile his left hand is gently stirring in the air, leading an orchestra of ghosts that, no matter what direction he is facing, is always arranged in front of him.

In another road you can meet the one who never stops talking to himself, fast, mumbling, in a low voice, in god knows what language, continuously walking along the sidewalk, transversally, from shop to road, from road to door, from gate to road...

Another one, long haired and bare chested, always walks holding his pants with one hand, as if they were loose and he didn't wear a belt to keep them up.

There is also a guy who lies down on the sidewalk, his back leaning on the wall of the building and his legs stretched out, ready to trip up the wealthy and respectable passers by. The same cigarette, unlit, in one hand, while the other one plays an invisible piano. Muttering something with a satisfied look, he's stretching out there not really with the air of one who doesn't know where else to go but as if this was actually the most comfortable couch in the coolest living room in town.

However, the leading figure among the KL street characters, their archetype, their undiscussed quintessence, is the great globe guy.

When you have left the Malaysian capital and you've landed in Bangkok, across the taxi window the most bizarre character appears. A skinny guy, with broom-like hair and tow beard, walks around wearing only a filthy t-shirt: he's stark naked from belly-button to shins, his skin protected by a thin layer of greasy soot. Two stuffed plastic bags, tied around the ankles, wrap his feet like homemade Moon Boots. With other bags hanging from his hands, neck and shoulders, he's standing on a sidewalk, waiting for the green light among housewives and office workers. It's such a surreal sight that it could well be a mirage.

I met the old lady of the picture in Hoian, Vietnam. She came begging, hunched: thousand wrinkles were twisting about her face, forming ever changing shapes around the four fixed objects while she was imploring us to give her something. I pulled a note out of my pocket and handed it to her, along with an amused smile. She got hold of it and swiftly put it in her mouth. I don't know whether she did it for gratitude, to store it in a safe place or as a talismanic gesture. All I know is that she left, holding that precious worthless gift between her lips.

11.11.11 arrogance - Koh Samui, Thailand

2011-11-11T19:20:00.003+07:00

A couple of losers got married on the beach at Chaweng on 11.11.11 because they believe it's a propotiatory date. With arrogance born of wealth and power they ordered two guards to stop the passers by on the shore-line (a public area) so that only the sea would appear in the background of their cheesy pictures.

A local old, weak peddler, sweating, bended under the weight of his ice cream case, who was just trying to make a living, had enough of that rich spoiled brat bullshit, got around the guard's baton and started to walk, ruining that fake, pretentious setting...and he made my day.

Endangered traditions - Moscow, Russia

2011-11-07T19:30:00.003+07:00

Riumochnaya na Bolshoi Nikitskoi (in Russian Рюмочная на Большой Никитской, which means "Vodka glass on Nikitskaya Road") is one of the last, maybe the very last place of its type in Moscow. It looks like an old Italian osteria: a few squared tables scattered around a fairly small room, light curtains on the windows facing the sidewalk, a counter made of wood, like the bottle shelves and the panels that cover the walls. A messy toilet and a cubbyhole/storeroom. The supporters of sophisticated modernity at all costs can say what they want: I don't need much more than this to spend a couple of those hours which good memories are made of.

As soon as you enter you choose a table (after 6pm they might all be taken), then you go and get your orders directly at the counter, where you can find the courses of the day on display: meat, fish and vegetables, both cooked and row dishes. While the lady is heating your portions in the microwave you can order your drinks. The house specialty, of course, is vodka. You order it by the gram (yes, gram, neither bottle nor glass, nor with volumetric units of measure). 300 grams can fill a cruet and it's enough to make two people equipped with well armored livers feel the maggots crawling in their brains until bed time.

When everything is set up on our table we gulp down the first glassful, in one swallow. Then, in order to create the necessary sponge effect, we gobble up a delicious chicken breast topped up with sour cream, some lentils and a good portion of bread.

"Between the first and the second glass nobody talks!" The Russian rule guarantees that the shortest possible time elapses between the first two sessions. C. and I are two incurable Italians though, and we are not able to undergo such an alcoholic-sect-ritual without indulging in a couple of comments before we drink our second glass, which we only half fill, just in case. This food is really tasty and we order a second round.

Even some customers here - conforming to the style of the place - are very characteristic. The most picturesque ones are some unknown, semi-alcoholic artists. A poet whose verses have never seen a printing house hear us talking Italian and draws near. White hair and beard, already tipsy, with rudimentary English he indulges in typical bar pastimes that could work in Italy as well: jokes about Putin and Berlusconi and comments on unrestrained immigration, that in the case of Moscow is coming mostly from the former Caucasian and Eastern Soviet republics. When this lingua franca is not helping him he speaks Russian with C., who in turn translates what he says for me.

He leaves us for a moment, pinches the can of Sprite of a man who's reading a paper a few meters away and takes it to his own table. The other guy - a younger version of our friend, with still black hair and beard - fumes and complains a little at first but finally stands up and joins him. The newcomer speaks much better English and introduces himself as an artist too, without specifying his field.

After another hour of jokes, comments, talking, translations, snacks and vodka we stand up, we say bye like respectable drunkards do - with energetic hugs, awkward handshakes, foul breath and sentimental sentences - and then with a staggering walk we go out of the place, where we enjoy the pinch of the October cold on our spirit-inflamed cheeks.

A piece of tradition that holds out in the very heart of Moscow, right in front of the conservatory. Like the popular banyas - centers with saunas and steam baths, consisting of huge, badly lighted and worse furnished rooms, simple equipments and dingy structures, where groups of friends or colleagues spend a few hours talking and relaxing, while sweating near the oven, shivering in the freezing pool, flogging themselves with birch and oak twigs or sipping tea and eating snacks in the refreshment area - hold out amid the new luxurious wellness centers.

It would have taken very little to be still able to enjoy such an evening in Italy as well: we could have avoided to replace at least one quarter of our old osterie with trendy pizzerie or - even worse - pretentious wine bars. But in most of the cities that I know of, ruining is a service provided in full, and that little conservation effort was not made. The old simple wine list (1. red, 2. white, 3. prosecco, all of them strictly "of the house") was replaced by a sequence of names that I hardly understand and that, unlike a lot of people, I don't enjoy pretending to know. Bottles with wonderful labels of high-sounding origin that have absolutely nothing to do with the local territory and culture, sold by the glass (beautifully made crystal goblets that many hold by the stem with recently developed presumptuousness, swollen like barrels but thriftily served only one-third filled) at the price of a full bottle of the good old poison.

Times change, traditions die. A good nostalgic as I am, I enjoy looking for them elsewhere.

Flexibility - Moscow, Russia

2011-10-31T12:52:00.002+07:00

Your kitchen tap is leaking, the electricity system is not working, your oven is broken or you need to install a new curtain in the living room. The expert is very expensive and busy: if you call him today he will be available in one month. No need to worry, there is the husband by the hour. We're not talking about extra-marital relations or polygamy here. You call a guy whose number you found god knows where, one who doesn't have any specialization but can do pretty much everything, just like the good old husbands. You explain what he has to do and agree on a price on the phone, he will come soon after that, with all the tools and materials needed for the task. If he didn't know how to solve the problem he asked someone else to teach him or sent a colleague who can do it. He solves the issue, you pay him (prices are reasonable), bye bye.

You need to move to another neighborhood, to send some furniture to your uncle's flat or to get rid of something bulky. You are by yourself, you'll never make it. You walk downstairs, get out on the sidewalk and look around. As soon as you spot an immigrant from the Eastern republics of the former Soviet Union - a Kazakh, an Uzbek, a Tajik - you stop him.

"Good morning, I need to move some furniture."

He already knows what you are talking about and doesn't lose his composure. He won't think that you are crazy nor crack up laughing.

"How big? How many floors? Where to?"

You explain everything, you negotiate the price and you walk him to your place. If backup is needed he will take care of that.

You went to a party that ended late, you didn't come by car because you knew you would have a drink too many and the area where you live is not well served by public transport. Taxis are expensive and need to be booked in advance. You go out, you stand near the curb of a main thoroughfare and stretch an arm, waving your hand. Not when you chance to see the first taxi...when you spot the very first car! Like that, random. If it's not a Jaguar or someone in a hurry they will certainly stop. And if the first vehicle won't, the next one will. You explain where you have to go, they will propose a price and if you think it's too expensive you can negotiate. When you come to an agreement you finally get on the car. It didn't take you more than a minute.

Who would have thought that one day we would have envied the former Soviet Union for it's flexibility?

Secret and mistery - St. Petersburg, Russia

2011-10-27T10:28:00.004+07:00

I'm following the continuous human flow of the Nevsky prospect sidewalk until it disperses in the huge space that surrounds the Hermitage, then I turn left, bound for St. Isaac's Cathedral. When I am a few meters away from this Russian version of Rome's St. Peter, I catch glimpse of a little paper stuck to a door, half hidden by the scaffolding of some restoration works. Museum of the history of political police. Basically a magnetized asteroid in front of which I suddenly turn into a tiny hair pin.

The church also exerts a strong attraction though. I stand on that place for a few seconds, my thighs shaking, following the alternating impulses that push me here and there. I process the little information that I managed to gather and I make a brilliant non-decision, postponing everything: typical of me in cases like this. The museum closes at 6pm and the ticket counter at 5.30. I still have thirty minutes left and the Cathedral is only a few steps away. I'm going there first and I'll see what she's got to say. If she whispers sweet words in my ears, gently tickling my lobe, I'm going to stay there, otherwise I'll come back here. And the latter is exactly what happens, only it takes me twenty minutes to realize it. When I open the door to the museum building it's already 5.26. After trying two dead corridors I manage to find the right one, I push the handle but the door doesn't budge. I am about to leave when I hear something creaking and I see a woman getting out of the room.

"Yes?"

"I'd like to visit the museum."

"I'm sorry, it's too late."

I put on a pitiful expression while I mutter something. She murmurs something back with an uncertain air. It's the cue I was waiting for: I move closer to her.

"5.30, closing time..." she says, while another lady pops up from behind the door and crosses her forearms like some kind of referee to make me understand that it's closed. I show them my phone that reads 5.28. Hand in d4: checkmate!

"OK, follow me!"

95% of the exhibition is explained in Russian but the lady hands me a set of plastic-coated sheets where one can find the photos mapped out wall by wall and the relevant captions translated in English. Although this is a good idea it also tells a lot about the scanty number of foreign tourists that visit the museum.

I've always been extremely fascinated by everything that has something to do with the most elusive, sinister and controversial aspects of history. I watch all the black and white photos, standing in admiration in front of those that thrill me the most, reading the explanations on the precious sheets that I turn back and forth. The old times of the tsarist spies, then the Bolsheviks and Dzerzhinsky restructuring. His death, the images of Trozky, Stalin, Bukharin and Molotov who carry his coffin. The CHEKA, the KGB, the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis and the secret prisoner exchanges with the USA. The missions in Afghanistan and Chechnya, internal terrorism and present day FSB.

In the wonderful room where Dzerdzhinsky used to work I run into a guided tour group. What a good choice, deciding to come and visit this museum I have taken care of two of my hobbies at once: history of espionage and beautiful women (in this case the hobby only consists in admiring them, of course). Now between a picture and the following one I can't help glancing at three or four specimens of these giraffes that have kept tormenting my thoughts since the moment I arrived to Russia.

Their guide is a pedantic and verbose old woman though: I leave them behind and in a matter of minutes I'm in the last room, where the lady who sold me the ticket, who had already come and helped me earlier, gives me some further interesting details. She's wearing a pair of slippers, thick stockings, a plaid-like-skirt, a felted sweater and G.P.'s spectacles. She has no make up and her hair is tied in a ponytail, of course. She reminds me of a librarian of a B-movie, and a little bit of Grandma duck as well. A very kind woman indeed. She plays down her nice gesture explaining that I owe the opportunity to visit the exhibition well after the closing time to the group of hotties that I've just seen: she'd had needed to wait for them to leave anyway. I ask her if there is a guest-book and while I'm writing my comments, choosing my words with care, she begs me not to mention the fact that she personally helped me.

"I'm not an expert."

"But you were great!" I answer thinking that it's just a display of false modesty.

"I do know some details but I don't have a good general knowledge of the subject. And then it could cause troubles with my supervisors."

It seems that she has been swallowed up by the atmosphere of secret and mystery that shrouds this place, as if she were also scheming in the web of an organization that operates in the dark.

"Well, in that case, I definitely won't!"

I end my comment writing that the staff is very kind and polite. This should be a rather discreet and neutral complimentary remark.

I steal a last look at the booted sex bombs that one after the other are flocking into the room and then I go out, while the powerful arms of the Baltic climate strike my face with a frozen whip. Fortunately it's still October. Not such a red October, but a rather gray one.

Photo "Alexander Column, chair and backpack" by Fabio

Elections and scams - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-10-10T19:10:00.006+07:00

July 2011. It's election time in Thailand. Continuous waves of people are converging toward the main arteries of Bangkok - Sukhumvit, Vipawadee, Pahonyothin - headed for their provinces of origin, in most cases located in Isan, in the North-east, close to Laos.

I'm walking W. to get a taxi that will take her to Mochit, a bus station that today is sunk in a grounding-time international airport kind of chaos. A tuk-tuk driver offers his service for 300 baht when normally, using a metered taxi, the ride should cost 100-150. We get rid of him quickly. The first taxi driver asks 300 baht as well. She lets him go and waves another down. Same story. The third cab too, as well as the fourth one.

This smells fishy. It's a stench that pricked my nostrils often in the past. I follow my instinct, as if it was one of those lines of smoke chased by the long and quivering noses of the cartoons. While she's walking toward the center of the road to give it another try I stay near the curb and look carefully around. As she's drawing near the window to speak with the driver, the tuk-tuk owner that wanted to cheat her is waving his arms about and signaling to his colleague to ask her 300 baht. The other follows his advice and W., obviously, dismisses him.

This time I got you, lousy swindler. I take W. by the arm and walk her a few meters away. She follows me - incredulous while I tell her what I've just seen - far enough from the scoundrel, where a taxi driver - honest like most of those who don't swarm around the tourists - agrees on using the meter.

"Thais should never behave like that...especially with other Thai people..." she keeps repeating until the door is closed.

"...with anybody..." I think while I wave her goodbye.

She won't be able to reach home and vote, as all the bus seats are sold out until the next morning, but at least she managed to hold on to her dignity. And a few banknotes as well.

Image by globalvoicesonline

At the alcoholics'/4 - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-10-06T18:03:00.001+07:00

The whole series "At the alcoholics" is dedicated to Jack London, author of "John Barleycorn".

Continued from here.

I'm at the alcoholics with R. We're having a drink before we let the viscous Bangkok night swallow us up. R. stands up and goes to order a bottle of soda and some ice from the girl with the face disfigured by the bags under the eyes. On the way he says something to the constantly drunk woman. Bad mistake, not usual for a wise guy like R. Upon hearing his voice, even though she doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, she shrugs off her lethargy, takes a quick look around and her blurred radar, god knows why, stops exactly when it detects me. I keep an eye on her, careful of not staring, pretending to be looking elsewhere and - like a student facing her teacher who is scanning the names in the class register to decide who to examine - hoping to become an invisible presence and go unnoticed. Vain hope, naive as I am sometimes. She struggles to stand up, staggers while walking, almost knocks down the bottles and tables on her way and lands with a heavy thud on R.'s seat, right next to me. She looks at me and smiles, with a siren charm, an old siren, devastated by decadence, street life and alcohol. Then she mumbles something. While I'm trying to understand what language she's actually speaking, a carcass-smelling whiff grinds my throat. The stench keeps wafting in the air even after she shuts her mouth: it's not only her breath, it's a smell that her cloths and skin are imbued with, that she has got on her all the time. A little like the one given off by those people who eat too much garlic.

R. realizes what is going on and comes to help me. She smiles at him as well, turning him from a rescuer into a second prisoner. Soon after that we are joined by the bag-under-the-eyes-girl who, after putting down the ice bucket and the bottle of soda, talks to her in Thai, articulating her words clearly so that even I can understand her well.

"Hey, these guys are friends!" Well, maybe not exactly friends but, as this is simply a stratagem to get us out of a mess, we'll let her do what she pleases. We obligingly nod.

"You cannot try that with them...do you understand?"

Terror gets hold of our helpless and susceptible imagination. Try to do what? The thought that some tourist, stupefied by Sangsom, might have taken her to his hotel for a handful of baht clutches my stomach, tugging it forward, backward, sideways and along slanting lines. However the admonition works and the drunkard stands up and leaves, her pride apparently untouched. The ensuing relief relaxes my guts. R. sits at my side and we start to talk again, while the breeze of the fan blows the vapor of the ice toward the trees and the wet street.

Continued?

Photo by Lachlan Hardy (CC)

Funny signs/3

2011-10-03T20:01:00.003+07:00

often come across some funny signs, billboards, notices and labels. When it happens I always make sure that I don't leave the spot without a photo. I'll post them here a few at a time.

Traditional French pizza? Yeah, they also serve authentic Italian specialties: baguettes, quiche, Croque Monsieur...(Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

Welcome...once more??? (Walmart mall, Kunming, China)

OrganisN! What a pity, they almost made it...they spelled it right up to the very last letter. By the way, this bin thanks you each time you throw away your rubbish. (Green Lake, Kunming, China)

A few mistakes...(Cafe in Kunming, China)

Reacestate??? What exactly do they sell here? (Kunming, China)

Getting a massage and holding the price list as a token of gratitude. (Bangkok, Thailand)

You have to fight a war if you want to go to the second (2ed???) floor. (Walmart, Kunming, China)

Thai Super police...never sleeps! (Bangkok, Thailand)

Where shall I append this extra "S"? Hmmm...numberS...passengerS...ofS? Who cares...it's gonna be numberS! (Thai speed catamaran)

This is creepy! (Singapore)

You can find more funny signs here.

At the alcoholics'/3 - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-09-29T20:39:00.004+07:00

Foto di Olgierd Pstrykotwórca

The whole series "At the alcoholics" is dedicated to Jack London, author of "John Barleycorn".

Continued from here.

The following scenes happened on different days and are reported here in random order.

S. keeps on depriving us of the pitiful shows that we had got accustomed to and only orders soft drinks and fruit juices. It must be the advice that the doctor gave him after diagnosing cirrhosis.

One of the few saloon-like characters who don't drink alcohol here is a fat man with a red nose, dull eyes and boozer gait, who orders his bottles of Coke and Fanta with whispers, as if it was an illegal or outrageous act. Which, in a place like this and with a face like his, come to think about it, could also make sense.

Finally, after almost a week spent drinking sweet stuff for kids, S. threw off the mask and resumed his close conversations (sometimes even literally) with his best friend: an American gentleman with dark complexion, a black suit with white embroidery, a cascade of crystal jewels, a small tight hat and spiced fragrances: Mr. Jack Daniels.

We hear a heavy thud, S. is gone. We stand up and search for him. He collapsed, he's lying under the table now, the chair next to him, upside down. Someone asks him to stand up, he is probably trying hard in his mind, but his body doesn't budge. He is not injured: he's just wasted. They help him to his feet but it's not an easy task: it seems that they are hauling a trailer truck out of a river bed by use of powerful windlasses. When he sits in his chair he's got bubble-like eyes, a blank stare, lost in the whirl of lights and shapes that he can see in front of him, and his hands shaking on the plastic table.

When he returns to the globe of distorted reality that is surrounding him he tries to stand up, then walks like a baby gorilla toward the center of the street, does a 360 degree turnaround, sways, brushes against a taxi that stopped in order not to run him over and continues to stagger until a tourist helps him to get back to his seat. A few minutes later he will go through the same procedure all over again.

The constantly drunk woman is sitting at a table, she dozes off, wakes up, mutters, yells at some person unknown even though nobody pays attention to her, then she continues to move her lips without uttering any sound, for various minutes. Finally, defeated and exhausted, she gets back to snore.

Continued...

The spring - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-09-26T19:20:00.002+07:00

The drunk foreigner has been hanging around bare chested for a while. He gets into the first of a series of mischiefs that will eventually drive him into a mess at one of those open air little bars where they serve beer and cocktails by the bucket (see the photo above). He kicked one of the plastic stool. The young owner doesn't even think about it: first he slaps him and then he gives him a big push. The foreigner is tall and stout but enfeebled by a few-hour-long spree with his mates Bottle, Can, Glass and Bucket: he falls over heavily and when he stands up he doesn't seem to know what has just happened.

I spot him again later on, some hundred meters away. He's yelling, making threatening gestures at god knows who. The street is crowded, everybody is passively looking at the funny scene, but no one seems to be interacting with him. The foreigner keeps acting funny, with mounting heat, and at a certain point he goes totally crazy (provided that what he has done so far doesn't already qualify as totally crazy). He grabs a table at the edge of the street, lifts it as if it were made of styrofoam, rips two legs, throws the rest away and starts to use those sticks as if they were katanas. He crosses them, hitting one against the other, making them whirl in the air, then poignantly poses, flexes the muscles of his arms and chest, makes faces like an angry warrior: he looks like the bad character of one of those lousy martial arts movies. Looking at him one might well feel ashamed of being a foreigner. Unfortunately for him the enemies that he is provoking are not exactly the good and fair characters of his epic imagination. He continues with his show, compressing a spring that, when released, will shoot back at him with a force that, judging by his optimism, he might not be aware of.

As far as my experience goes, the nature of the Thais drives them to avoid, whenever possible, direct and open confrontation. They don't give vent to anger and frustration by means of yelling, gestures, facial expressions, bluff threats and shoves, like some of us do: the poisonous feelings are simply accumulated in the more or less capacious patience tanks that everybody is equipped with. Until when, like a tire inflated over its limit, the system explodes, especially if one feels that he has suffered what here is considered to be one of the vilest offenses: losing face. In cases like this the so called cultural differences are not just limited to subtle incomprehensions or funny little scenes: they are expressed through values and principles totally different from the ones we cherish.

Let's see, street fighting rules:
- 10 against 1? Allowed.
- Armed against unarmed ones? Excellent advantage that should be exploited without hesitations.
- Trying to convince a friend that he might actually be wrong? This technique is not used here: just stand by your friend and hit his enemy without asking why.
- Mercy for the opponent's body, helpless, unconscious, bleeding, lying on the ground with an unnatural posture? This reaction is not provided for, and it's almost out of place: you don't stop for girlish scruples of that sort, you only let go at a signal coming from inside of you, that rings when your anger has been placated.

A dozen of them come out from a dark corner of the sidewalk, brandishing crossbars, belts, bottles and other stuff, they corner the foreigner against a wall, they push him down with kicks and keep going at it for long, way too long, until they - not him - have had enough. Then they go back to their street camp, walking slowly, smiling, cracking silly bully jokes, without any trace of regret or worry for the fate of the guy that they used as a boxing sack who, for all they know, might well be dead. At this point some of the locals might even be ashamed of being Thai: the world is full of idiots, and if one is prone to the natural but sensitive process of identification the embarrassing moment arrives for everybody.

You cannot help thinking that, as much as he had it coming, now they are the ones who deserve to be taught a lesson, and you start to dream that another gang, more numerous and better armed than this one, comes and wipes that hateful satisfied look off their faces. Then you think it over: what a silly thing, this mess would never end. It's much better to tell them to fuck off in silence and call an ambulance.

What happens now is interesting though: another tourist and a Thai girl are taking care of the messed up guy, find a chair for him, try to stop the bleeding, until the paramedics arrive, disinfect and dress his wounds. These two people are giving everybody - Thais and foreigners - a chance to stop feeling ashamed of one's own origin. It's already time for the guy to get on the ambulance and go to the hospital (I suspect they are expecting him to pay the bill as well), but he doesn't even think about that, scornfully smiles, takes off his bandages like Lawrence of Arabia uncoiling his turban, hastily thanks everybody, says goodbye to the incredulous nurses and leaves, surprisingly energetic, toward new, astonishing, ingenious idiocies.

At the alcoholics'/2 - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-09-20T19:16:00.004+07:00

Photo by Adam Foster (CC)

The whole series "At the alcoholics" is dedicated to Jack London, author of "John Barleycorn".

Continued from here.

The following scenes happened on different days and are reported here in random order.

There is a group of Spaniards sitting at a table. They don't seem to be alcoholics but they fall in with the atmosphere of the place by ordering one bottle of beer after another since the early afternoon.

Apparently they have just met here and they decide to take a picture to remember the event. They ask the constantly drunk lady to take the photo. Unfortunately it will be a bad surprise, for them of course, not for me or anybody else who has already been here. She grabs the camera and for the Spaniards this will be the last good piece of news they receive. She looks at it as if it was a pulsing fragment of a mysterious asteroid. A gray veil, a confused expression descends on the faces of the tourists, who try to dispel their embarrassment offering random advice. "That button over there!" "This angle!" "That background!" Finally she gets out of her trance and decides to give it a try. After numerous attempts, failed amid awkward maneuvers and swaying, she is ready to click. It's raining as usual and the umbrella that shelters the table has a hole through which a thick and continuous cylinder of water is falling, right in front of the camera. She doesn't see it, as she doesn't see any other detail that is not included in the set of the movie that she is watching in her mind. The Spaniards are gesticulating frantically, suggesting her to move a little to the side, pointing at the water. She misunderstands, thinking that there is something wrong with the camera, then looks at it from all sides, extremely puzzled, as if she couldn't remember how the hell it ended up there, wasting all the work that she has done so far. Fortunately a sober - well, almost - colleague of her arrives, takes the camera from her hands and in a matter of thirty seconds the picture is taken. The positive side of this permanent state of drunkenness is that it spares the subject humiliations and rancor: when the flash goes off, in fact, she has already crouched down on her chair, oblivious of everything.

The same table where the Spaniards were sitting is normally used as a meeting point by the most picturesque clients of the bar: a rabble of western drunkards who wouldn't have done badly in the most sordid saloons of the Old West. In the early afternoon the table is already full of empty bottles of whiskey and beer, and a few hours later the most pathetic and unforgettable shows are staged.

One of them is S., a North European who has been hanging around here for about ten years. S. has just got back to Bangkok, bringing with him a bag full of clothes and other presents. He's welcome with giggles, yells and greetings. The sincere and disinterested version of local enthusiasms (there are also some more or less devious ones). He repays the courtesies with fantastic, totally toothless smiles. When he has finished to hand out his gifts he sits down and orders a Schweppes. A Schweppes! This is surprising news for those who have seen some of his performances with bottle and glass, and we'll have a chance to talk about those ones as well. Probably he has just got out of the plane and he doesn't feel quite well: I cannot find any other explanation for such an unusual behavior.

A foreigner with a tattoo as big as his back stands up from his chair, only with his body though, as his soul doesn't seem to be willing to follow him. He stands still on the spot, swaying, then gets hold of the back of a plastic chair that dangerously bends under his weight. When he manages to move he leans against the body of a friend, slightly less drunk than him. He stays like that, clinging to him, for a few minutes, apparently unconscious, then he recovers, wholeheartedly hugs his friend and finally kisses him. They finally leave, connected like Siamese brothers (as in the medical-scientific meaning of the expression, not as in "Thais", i.e. from here).

Continued

Self propelled - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-09-13T14:06:00.005+07:00

You're walking next to some funny structure, and you throw a quick glance: it looks like the usual Thai street stall. This one is selling labels, banners and pennants. Football teams, countries, musicians, heroes, monarchs, naked girls, monks and gurus. Normally at night this kind of handmade structures equipped with wheels are "packed", closed and towed away with a motorbike, or manually pushed into a garage nearby. Sometimes they are even left in a corner outdoor, protected by a tangle of chains and padlocks.

You are about to leave when the stall, suddenly...moves, apparently by itself. You look more carefully and you spot the presence of a motorbike inside. The whole little shop is built around it. The shopkeeper-driver is immersed in the darkness of a narrow corridor, without any side visibility, with only a few square centimeter-wide slot in front of him, at least two meters away. He stops after the next junction, sells something to a couple of customers, then starts the bike again and speeds off towards new business horizons. When asked "can you see the road well while you're driving?" he answers "Very well indeed!"

Let's hope that he knows what he's talking about.


The stall from behind

Customers

Funny signs/2

2011-09-11T15:00:00.001+07:00

I often come across some funny signs, billboards, notices and labels. When it happens I always make sure that I don't leave the spot without a photo. I'll post them here a few at a time.

Fabio Capello (on the sign) or Fabio Copello (on the rolling shutter)? Confused...and then, why choosing Capello instead of Gucci or Ferragamo for a shop that sells shoes? (Istanbul, Turkey)

I've always suspected that fashion people were not all great poets. This should confirm it, click on the photo to enlarge it. (Bangkok, Thailand)

"The refined vision of entertainment civilization"...look at that, and I thought that it was only a cinema! (Bangkok, Thailand)

No, they don't share them because the other cubicles are all busy... (Bangkok, Thailand)

In Singapore the authorities decided to demolish most of the old colonial buildings but at least they kept some old road signs like this one. As a consequence the numerous cows and horses that roam around the city still have to swim their way to the other shore.

Exciting new landscapes? What the hell is that? (Botanic garden, Singapore)

Smoking, alcohol, durians, sex, weapons, dogs and water buffaloes are strictly forbidden in this cab. (Stuck on the window of a taxi in Bangkok, Thailand)

Click on the photo to enlarge it. We import from Germany, suspension point...exclamation mark! An example of creative punctuation. (Vientiane, Laos)

The one who has to apologize for the inconvenience caused is not a city official, nor an engineer, not even a surveyor, it's that worker who respectfully bows, probably a smelly immigrant, even though we can't tell that from the picture. Anyway, it's all his fault...bastard! (Singapore)

You can find more funny signs here

At the alcoholics' - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-09-07T15:37:00.003+07:00

The whole series "At the alcoholics" is dedicated to Jack London, author of "John Barleycorn".

There's a little place in Bangkok, half restaurant and half bar. The kitchen is open until 4pm, and after that they will only serve you drinks. Most of the tables are outdoor, under the shade of the trees or of a few umbrellas with holes. It's one of those typical family businesses, with a couple of extra people who lend a hand. A place like many others in S.E. Asia, with wobbling plastic chairs, shaky tables, English menus with funny pictures and spelling mistakes, uneven floor and unwelcome fauna. An ordinary place, you might think. Well, only apparently ordinary.
Part of the staff only works for the restaurant, while others continue until the closing time. If you look at them carefully, you will notice that, like many of the regular clients, those who are employed at the bar-section have an obvious problem with alcohol. While during the day some of them are sober - though they cannot hide some clear signs of hangover - others go from one drinking session to the next one without any break, like a song in repeat mode that keeps playing forever. There's a skinny girl whose face is disfigured by two huge bags under the eyes, an older lady who drags her feet while she moves among the tables, a group of regulars, table permanently reserved, who have their first glasses long before noon and keep drinking until they go to sleep. The most disconcerting case is a 45-year-old lady who, like many Asian women, if seen from a distance might look like a girl. Normally at noon she is already tanked up. She sits in the shade, between the fridge and the coffee counter. Every now and then she stands up to carry out her tasks, which obviously don't include taking orders or handling food. She throws the menus on the tables of the new customers, puts the dirty dishes into a plastic basket that she picks up from and puts back under a tree. When the basket is full she takes it to the kitchen. She grabs a broom and she sweeps the floor without using a dustbin, just shoving the rubbish on the street. When she cleans the space between the tables, as she cannot control with accuracy the movements of the broom, she tickles the feet of the clients, most of which are using flip-flops.

One time, when I was having lunch, it started to rain. One of those powerful monsoon showers. A Korean couple was sitting under an umbrella dripping with water. I grabbed my phone and I got ready to take a picture but just when I thought that I had found the right angle, framing the couple, the rim of the umbrella and a section of the leaden sky, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, abandoning that perfect posture, and I saw the drunk lady smiling at me - showing a pair of toothless gums that I had never noticed before and that I would have liked not to notice at all - inviting me with gestures not to waste my time with Koreans, monsoon rain and the scenery, and to take a photo of her instead. She was smiling coquettishly, changing pose, bending her head, raising her shoulders, pushing her flat breast out (dreadfully swaying at every little movement), pointing at her face so that I wouldn't make mistakes, or maybe so that she wouldn't make mistakes. I laughed as if to invite her to fuck off, or maybe with a laugh that meant a straight fuck off, and I turned again to face my subject but, as it often happens in cases like this, the magic of that moment was already gone. Just as I was about to mutter a real "fuck off!" I held my tongue, regretting my disagreeable irritation, and when I was getting ready to do her that favor that didn't cost my anything, she had already forgotten everything, like alcoholics tend to do, had gone back to her place and had already sunk in her narcotized languor. I thought this was good after all: considering how she totters whenever she's standing the photo would have come out blurred anyway. And then, some pitiful scenes should never been immortalized.

Continued...

Thai SIM cards

2011-09-06T14:33:00.001+07:00

Photo by ucumari (CC)

Once in a while the blog of a guy who lives abroad, besides bizarre stories and mental masturbations, should also provide some useful advice to those who are about to visit the same places. Here I am.

Recommendation for the tourist who arrives to Thailand: unless you don't really need it, forget about international roaming, get into the first 7/eleven that you come across, buy a local SIM card and give your new Thai number to your family and friends. As a provider I personally use DTAC, but True and AIS-1-2-call offer similar services and rates.

Alright, what kind of advice is this? I knew that by myself, you'll be thinking. In fact I haven't finished yet. If you contact the call center at the number that you'll find among your contacts after the activation you'll be able to purchase dirt cheap SMS and Internet packages as well. Cheap SMS can only be sent to local numbers but if you're traveling in group or make friends with some Thais or other tourists this will still be a good idea, especially considering the cost.

The prices of the SIM cards and the calling rates vary depending on the applicable promotions: for example at the time or writing DTAC is offering a card for only 49 baht. You can also buy another type for 199 baht, with cheaper rates and a higher initial credit (currently 1 euro = 42 baht).

As for the SMS, I normally purchase a 100-SMS-package for about 60 baht, which means 60 cents a message. Considering that without promotion you normally pay 3 baht to send a text message to a Thai number this is definitely a good deal. Sending an SMS to a foreign number will cost you 9 baht in any case.
International calling rates (IDD) also vary, depending on the provider and the ongoing promotions.

Talking about internet options I normally buy a 70-hour-package for little more than 200 baht. Shorter length or unlimited use monthly packages are also available. You can use them with a smarphone or with a laptop connected to your device via USB cable or bluetooth. Of course there are also specific promotions for Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, etc. but you'd better buy them directly from your provider outlets. You can find them in most of the major shopping malls (for instance Siam Paragon, MBK and Central World in Bangkok).

Barrage of thoughts/15

2011-09-01T11:43:00.002+07:00

Photo by gwilmore (CC)

- Inverse proportionality: if the perception of living a good life is big, worries about when and how one will die will be small.

- Asian cuisine: if you find ginger disgusting it will always be like that, but if you don't give up on coriander sooner or later you'll like it.

- Self-deception: relishing the conviction that if a little belly is still bulging after a few months of exercise then some mighty abdominals must necessarily be pushing up from below is actually very nice.

- Only one financial condition can be more upsetting than poverty: shown-off wealth.

- Nowadays fascism has lost most of its old party connotations, being reduced to the rank of a simple, politically transversal attitude: a mix of bullying, cowardice and other more or less unpleasant ingredients.

- Inconsistencies: that type of woman that looks at you as if you had tried to rape her just because you smiled at her and a few seconds later is staring with Cinderella-like eyes at a baboon who is squeezing her boobs.

- I've never really been a fan of communism, nonetheless there are a few rich people who I don't like at all.

- It takes so little to achieve success, but this doesn't mean that it's easy at all! If one has more than that little needed it actually becomes quite complicated.

- If anger, frustration, irritation, envy or jealousy get the upper hand, before it's too late give vent to them with a pen and a sheet of paper.

- How many battles can you lose before the whole war can be considered compromised?

Read more thoughts here.

Living under a bridge - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-08-26T13:03:00.004+07:00

We hear someone saying: "That guy lives under a bridge." At once we think of a cardboard box and, huddled inside, a hairy body, its skin dark, wrinkled, hardened by sweat and inclement weather, wrapped in a dirty, crumpled and patched coat, wearing two different boots, its head covered by a torn woolen hat and a frayed scarf caked with dried up drool. Scattered around there are a few bundles of rags, cans half-full of stale food, newspaper pages, three greasy pieces of cutlery, a rusty metallic mug, maybe a bottle of cheap liquor. This mental picture is enriched by the inevitable stench of piss, human and other animals' excrements, syringes, used tissues and condoms. In short, we think of a hobo life. As most of us already know though, this bizarre world can often overturn even the most widespread beliefs.

On my way to the heart of Bangkok business district - where the modern skyscrapers, the elevated skytrain railway and the shopping malls are - at a certain point I have to get off some kind of Siamese vaporetto that sails down the sordid city canals (I'll talk about this in another post), pass under a wide road and come out on the sidewalk at the other side of the street. Right under Saphan Hua Chang (Elephant head bridge), on my right, trapped between ground and roadway like a wedge under a tire, there is a little house. Thirty something square meters removed from the urban architecture and used by the latter as a column in exchange.

The concrete structure is provided with doors and windows, like any other house, and it's surrounded by a fence that encloses a courtyard. Here there are some plastic chairs, a wooden cable-drum that serves as a table, motorbikes and bicycles, rubbish bins, clothes hanging on clothslines and the usual knick-knacks that are usually hidden in the backyard of a house.

Inside the room, illuminated by a dingy neon light, a family is enjoying the cool breeze of a fan in front of a TV set broadcasting a muay thai fight.

Who's living there? A road maintenance worker? The supervisor of the vaporetto pier? A family in league with a local politician? Or maybe this is a common practice around here? Honestly I have no idea, but in order to remember that the expressions "living under a bridge" and "being a homeless" don't necessarily refer to the same living conditions I have taken some pictures that I'm posting below.

The house under the bridge

The house courtyard

The back of the house

A different view of the structure

Cinema as a Zen practice

2011-08-15T15:24:00.005+07:00

When I'm in Kuala Lumpur my days tend to follow a sequence that rotates and wraps itself up in a gauze of soft invariability. The mental weariness caused by a day of lecturing and its physical counterpart due to some jogging and a couple of push-ups come to meet me in the evening: they take me by the hand and walk me to a movie theater downtown.

Most of the times I'm not really interested in the movie itself: in Asia the multiplex cinemas often feature American and Chinese blockbusters or local stuff that you can't really trust. I rule out by default the ones of the second category and I chose the less toxic title of the first one: it often turns out to be a concoction of action, deafening noise and special effects: the usual bore meant to stimulate the production of adrenaline that ends up making you sink into a state of hypnotic daze instead. As far as I am concerned a good movie depends on: 1) story and director, 2) actors, 3) photography and music. Any other frill can only serve the purpose of concealing the lack of those main ingredients.

However, as I said, what really draws me to the theater has nothing to do with my passion for visual arts: I take care of that with some DVDs when I need to. No, what I really follow enchanted while I'm on the escalator are the notes of a different piper: getting swallowed by that black world scarred by slanting lines of white lights, being vaguely aware of the air-con blow that cools without freezing, reaching the seat next to the aisle, possibly without neighbors, carefully chosen at the box office, stretching out on the armchair - comfortable but not too soft - and letting the hum muffled by the sound-absorbing panels tickle my eardrums during the minutes that lead up to the commercials. When the show (show?) has already started, ignoring without the slightest spot of irritation those who talk and disturb a movie that is not really worth of respect, adjusting to the light air of an awkward drama or of a silly comedy, relaxing my muscles, activating my soul, meditating, slackening the reins of my brain, thinking, being pierced by such a beautiful sentence that it feels as if it was thought by someone else and jotting it down on my phone. Peeking now and then at the deer-like face of the pretty girl who's sitting a few seats away, then feeling ashamed for this fifth grader's instinct and directly jumping to the eighth grade by looking at the legs of a hot chick wearing a jeans miniskirt and high heels, while the tough guy who's sitting next to her is bewildered by a monotonous sequence of fast scenes and deafening sounds. Moistening my lips with a fake pervert air, laughing to myself for this form of self-inflicted sense of humor and while my temple is scratched by yet another sentence - somewhat less philosophical than the previous one - grabbing the phone again and challenging my creativity by trying to write some longshoreman's obscenity with the most poetic verses I can think of.

It's an alternative to Vipassana, Yoga Nidra and Tantra: the experience of a lousy movie as a Zen practice. As it turns out, the ways to reach Nirvana appear to be countless.

Funny signs/1

2011-08-07T17:43:00.005+07:00

I often come across some funny signs, billboards, notices and labels. When it happens I always make sure that I don't leave the spot without a photo. I'll post them here a few at a time.

No guys, this is definitely a big NO! (Stuck on the window of a taxi in Bangkok, Thailand)

Park safe (above)...at your own risk (below). (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

A variation of the one above. (Another taxi, still in Bangkok, Thailand)

A smoke-free...temple! (Vientiane, Laos)

Only one ticket per person. You never know, some smart ass might try to buy two, or even three! (Ferry dock, Samui island)

Drunk? Then don't drive! Otherwise... A very graphic sign sponsored by a...brand of beer! (Vientiane, Laos)

A passenger cannot do anything on this bus! Hold on, they forgot to say that you cannot get drunk! Notice the instigation to laying of information - by way of a 4000 baht reward - to pocket 16000 baht, a disproportionate sum (Tourist bus, Thailand)

Click on the photo to enlarge it. At the bottom of the Laotian immigration form you can read: "Our Tax, our Country". A fiscal variation of national pride (Vientiane International Airport, Laos)

Security vs uncertainty

2011-08-01T23:08:00.007+07:00

Photo by star5112 (CC)

A few years ago a friend of mine told me that he had just quit his permanent job at some office and started to work as a freelance. "Freelance?" I answered "You had just started in that field, how are you going to find new customers?"

It turned out that he already had two customers and they probably were the same ones that he was dealing with at the office. As an independent professional he was earning pretty much the same money, working half the time. My friend's revelation helped me to get a clearer understanding of some of the decisions that I had made myself a few years back. The calculations that he had done could have actually been done by anyone else who does the same job. Why then he's the only one I know of who got to that conclusion? Now I know the answer well, as it is in fact the same reason why I also left my job as a permanent employee more that ten years ago: he didn't care about the dose of uncertainty that the new situation would have injected into his life.

I'll leave out on purpose the other - more or less important - factors that might have made my friend feel at ease even without having a stable job and I'll focus on my point of view on the matter instead.

I don't want to be misunderstood: security is a very comfortable mattress on which I would like to lie until the last of my days. Even though it's a privilege for the sake of which I would commit (with my imagination!) the most heinous crimes, what has so far made me opt for a life which is lacking almost any of it is what you have to give up in order to have it in exchange. Piercing day after day with a skewer of repetitiveness, monotony, strict timetables, slowly roast them over a charcoal of minor depressions, of non exciting jobs, of loss of enthusiasm, to finally eat after a few decades the tasteless yet balanced meal of a planned life and hitch-proof old age, is something that rather than fuel me with security gives me vertigo. Actually there is some sort of certainty that I get from it all: the one of aimlessness and depression bouts.

It's not about instigating people to do any stupid thing one can think of as we only live one life. I've done many silly things but none of them was too bad. It seems to me that the concept actually makes sense: if I had three or four lives to live, investing one on a security fund might look like a good idea, however, having been educated to rely on the scientific method and as I still haven't come across any sound proof of a second or a third life, I prefer to handle the first one that I happen to live with great care. Maybe, come to think about it, the opposite approach has more to do with irrationality. And with some kind of phobia.

Of course this is not a criticism to those who made or are about to make different decisions. I got lots of examples of people who prefer to live an extremely secure life that I still hold in high regard. This is the way I am though, and I have learned by swallowing bitter pills and going through painful crises that it's better for me to follow my instinct. This is especially true as I know that fortunately mother nature provided me with a dose of rationality and common sense big enough to smooth the sharpest corners and to plane the most irregular surfaces of my impulsive side. Over the years my instinct has proven to be trustworthy. Obviously there are ups and downs, but if I think of what was crossing my mind, stretching my nerves and kicking my soul about(*) on some sleepless night only a few years ago, the issues that I am faced with now make me smile.

After all we're just talking about living: the only occupation for which everybody is born with the necessary prerequisites.

(*) I know, I said that I am a supporter of the scientific method and then I've mentioned the soul. Actually I have never been too good at living a life without contradictions...

Indiscriminate parking - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-07-24T20:43:00.004+07:00

There is a construction site in downtown Kuala Lumpur, just a few meters from the Petronas Towers: they are building another one of those high rise buildings. The site has taken up the old sidewalk and the supervisors decided to build a temporary one using some stakes, a thin rope and some refracting pads, occupying part of the traffic lane. The sidewalk is used by a high number of people who go to work and tourists on their way to the towers.

A few days ago an expert in creative parking took advantage of this space, safely screened from the traffic and conveniently located next to the construction site - and incredibly empty! - to park his little truck. As a consequence the pedestrians were forced to walk in single file (often in two single files, one for each direction).

I couldn't help taking a few photos.

Indiscriminate parking

A lady is forced to crouch under the rope and walk close to the cars

Pedestrians walking in single file

Vulture-like place - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-07-15T13:30:00.004+07:00

Photo by adaptorplug (CC)

One can say that every bad place is bad in its own way and when it comes to bad places Bangkok offer is one of the widest worldwide. Take the movie The Hangover part II for instance, which is based here: even though it's filled with unlikely situations it still provides a very realistic - often real - panorama of decadent joints.
Although I have been regularly coming to Bangkok for ten years I still need the assistance of M. - a friend of mine who is just a tourist, an occasional visitor - to find one that can still surprise me. I'ts not only about the bars with the theme dressed up girls, the ping pong show joints, the ladyboy cabarets, the go-go bars, the erotic massage parlors, the disco-pubs and the after-hour clubs with the free lance hookers. Not only Patpong, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy then...in Bangkok you can also find stuff like this.
As soon as I get in I shudder as one does when coming across something that charms us just as it revolts us. In a way it could fit into the last of the categories listed above, as the girls don't work for the owner of the bar, or maybe they do it but just indirectly, without getting a wage or instructions and orders. However, some of the peculiar features of the place and the dynamics of the social relations suggest to create a dedicated category in order to classify it.
Some details - the table, the movements and the sober appearance of the waiters - remind of some Bavarian taverns. The counter could be the one of a town festival, with a drink list hanging from the wall behind the panting and vaguely improvised bartenders. The widespread use of wood, tiles, neon lights and cheesy pictures of famous sites (the leaning tower of Pisa, the Coleseum, the Arc de Triomphe) bring back to mind some Italian bars of the '60s and the '70s. The ingredient that interrupts this journey of the imagination through comparisons with faraway places is obviously the presence of dozens of women. Some of them have already lived all the days of their splendor but the number of pretty and young ones - according to M. - has increased since the last time he was here.
The air is leaden with a slightly dismal atmosphere, like a cattle market in lean times. "It's a vulture-like place", is M.'s comment, and even if you are not familiar with the expression as soon as you set a foot in here you understand its meaning straight away.
Most of the ladies are arranged in a semicircle, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the walls or the furniture of the half of the room that faces the entrance. They are wearing office or evening dresses, they have nice hairstyles and are soberly made up, no vulgar or pornographic details, the hottest ones are hot in a rather discreet way. Only few of them sit at the tables scattered around or at the huge counter that curves at the center of the hall. This is where the majority of the customers are, many of them visibly bored, almost disinterested, sipping beer, chatting with friends or looking around, not necessarily at the women.
What a difference between this place and the traditional venues of the Thai sex industry! Decadence here is a matter of design more than of ethics. The indecent element is missing and the libido as well, disappeared with the exaggerated theatricality, the vulgar colors, the blinding lights and the deafening sounds. Now and then an invisible DJ plays some songs but for interminable minutes the only soundtrack of this grotesque movie is the hum, the clincking of glasses, the squeaking of stools, the background noise of a nigthclub at closing time, when the lights are switched on and the last song fades away while the patrons still linger inside.
The ladies keep trying to make eye contact. Most of the time the customers give a hint of a smile and then look away. Or they look away without even the lenitive effect of the faint smile. Probably this is only something that I feel for them though: the girls seem to be already accustomed to this kind of reaction.
Once in a while a man calls one of them. A little startled she - and sometimes also the one that stands next to her - answers: "Who, me?". And then she walks the five or six meters that separate her from what turns out to be more than a customer: he's a firefighter in a building ablaze, a Saint Bernard at the site of an avalanche, a lifeguard in the rough sea. In short, he's some kind of savior. With this pace, though, only 5% of them will be saved: they are too many and too little seems to be the attention they manage to attract. The remaining 95% will have to go back home and hold on to their poor little daily job, if they have one. As we will learn later on through a friend of M.'s, in fact, most of these part-time employees of the sex industry have very common occupations and the younger ones often turn out to be students.
The Japanese customers seem to know something that the others don't: when they call a girl, she comes over and starts to talk their language. A very enterprising approach indeed.
Once we've finished our beers, before leaving we go to the toilet, a filthy hole in the basement in line with the style of the place. A rusty gutter along the tiled wall serves as a urinar. Next to it there are two of those disgusting Asian cubbyholes for the ladies. The customers have to pay five baht per entry but with twenty baht you have unlimited access for the whole night. In order for the investment to be profitable one needs to go to the lavatory more than four times: who can resist in here for so long? Another tip will also disclose the secret that shrouds those couples that instead of walking down to the underworld of the pig pens climb the stairs in the opposite direction: upstairs there is a cheap by-the-hour hotel where more or less obscene transactions are carried out.
We leave the place and as soon as we're outside Bangkok slaps us with a blow of heat, humidity, smells and noise which suddenly delivers us from that weird torpor that had mantled us. It's as if the vulture-like place had narcotized us. Perhaps we were just stunned but it is also possible that it was another spell of a city endowed with mysterious powers.
After all they call it City of Angels: the metaphysic ingredient must be hidden somewhere.

KL fragments - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-07-05T14:30:00.003+07:00

- An ad sign at Suria-KLCC reads: "Download tomorrow's edition of the New Strait Times today at 9pm!" Tomorrow's news today at 9pm? Those guys are not journalists, they're fortune tellers! It might not be a great newspaper but its horoscope section must not be bad at all...

- Does a real VIP need to have a "VIP" sticker attached to the windscreen of his car?

- I come back to KL two months after the last time I was here and: a popular fitness club is closed, my favorite Cantonese restaurant is closed and replaced by a Taiwanese dessert place, a very popular backpackers lodge has closed down, the Italian restaurant where I used to buy my take-away pizzas is closed for renovation, other bars and restaurants in Bukit Bintang don't exist anymore, and the same thing happened to some shops in the shopping malls downtown. This is not dynamism...this is cheating!

- A sign stuck to the window of the KLIA express train reads: "Thanks for keeping your feet and luggage off the seat" How nice, they don't forbid it...they just thank you for not doing it! You're welcome!

- Typical life cycle phases of a restaurant at Changkat Bukit Bintang: 1. simple and full; 2. closed for renovation works; 3. fancy and half-empty with a pushy and annoying waiter chasing customers on the sidewalk; 4. closed for good.

- Illegal street vendors at Bukit Bintang laugh and help each other with their bags when they are chased by the police. When I saw a similar scene at Rialto bridge in Venice the fugitives were panicking and the policemen were confiscating their goods.

- Two models are posing behind a shop window at Suria-KLCC. People are taking turns to take pictures of those beauties. I take pictures of them all.

- The waiters of a Jalan Alor restaurant wear plastic bags on their heads to protect themselves from the rain.

- Dozens of immigrants hang around Bukit Bintang and Jalan Alor selling folding wooden baskets. It's a mistery.

- When asked by the organizers of the modeling contest what she would like to change about herself, one of the girls answers that she has already identified and removed an unwanted aspect of her character. Being the this the only one that she had one should deduce that there aren't any others left, which means that she basically is a perfect person.

- A taxi driver tells me that some cabs at night are driven by part time, improvised drivers on the hunt for tourists to rip off. He heard one of them boasting about charging an American sailor 300 dollars to go from KLCC to a hotel nearby, by taking a long, obviously unasked detour around the state of Selangor. Another one confided to my driver that he makes 1000 ringgit a day on average, when this guy, working 10 hours a day, can barely make 100. And because of few people like this KL taxi drivers (including himself) have the reputation of cheaters among foreign tourists.

Slanting thoughts/14

2011-06-23T05:41:00.004+07:00

Singapore skyscrapers, by Fabio

- You're saying that I am not good at selling myself. Maybe you're right, but I don't think so: I only dislike some of those personal marketing techniques.

- There are a lot of things I did that I am ashamed of. One of them is pretending not to recognize someone for reasons that might seem obvious but are not obvious at all. The fact that they did the same with me doesn't comfort me by one bit.

- Can you picture those women who stay with a man just because he's rich? I don't blame them, of course, at most you could say that they are not so romantic. Those men though...we should only hope that they are not too jealous.

- One should write when he has something to say, not just to remind the world that he exists.

- Most of those people who would never disturb you when you are writing an sms, eating, talking with someone or on the phone, will surprisingly think that you have nothing to do if you are reading, which is possibly the noblest among those activities.

Read more thoughts here

Letter to a thief - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-06-13T16:56:00.003+07:00

Photo by walkinginspace pt2 (CC)

Dear thief,
Unknown thief. I mean the profession of course, not the insult. Even though finding out that you've been robbed of 60 euros could lead you to indulge on the orgasmic pleasure that only insults can instill - insults directed to a target as yet unknown, and therefore easy to hit without complications of conscience - thinking more carefully about it you will see that it's not worth it.
I have already been vaccinated against robbery-induced-anger or shock. Many things were stolen from me in the past: money in different currencies, traveler's cheques, credit card data, cameras, a car (not mine), bicycles, mobile phones. You might say that I am naive, careless or vulnerable. Maybe you're right, but I say that I am just exposed to risk. That's the way I live my life, some sort of intuitive commandment: don't give up a curiosity, an emotion, an experience, a pleasure just because something might happen. And if you do that too often, or almost all the time, sometimes something will actually happen.
I am not rich, I cannot afford to lose such a sum every other day and just have a laugh about it. But I'm not poor either and I'll get over it, actually I already have. I will think of something worth that amount that I'll have to make without, but it'll just be a pretense, as I don't live a luxurious life and there isn't really anything that I need to give up.
But you, oh yes, you, that was such a thoughtless thing to do. Very skillful indeed, as you managed to stick two fingers into my pocket, get hold of all the 10 and 50 ringgit bills that were there and leave the smaller ones behind - as if you wanted to show off your talent and mock me at the same time - all that without me feeling a thing. Alright, the crowd that was pushing against me in that pub made it easier, but still it was a good sleight of hands. How thoughtless though, as I said, for the bad karma that you called upon yourself will chase you until it makes you pay the bill. And as you stole 60 euros that might be any 60 things that could be taken off or assigned to you: days of your life - or maybe months ? - disappointments, or sad moments, love pains...who knows, karma is inevitable, its outcome guaranteed, but its ways are unpredictable.
What did you say? You're neither Buddhist nor Hindu and karma affairs are none of your business? Oh but it simply doesn't work like that: you might not be interested in karma but karma is definitely interested in you. Look at me for example, I'm not a believer of those religions either but even in a place like this, where normally hardly anybody pays attention to me, this beautiful, tall girl is coming here to console me, and she smiles at me, and waits for me to say something, which, of course, I don't say, because I often behave like this: I miss chances, convinced that others will come along even though there is no evidence to support this shaky conviction, other than the fact that there have always been another chance, so far, at least, there have always been another one.
And in fact look at that other girl, yeah, she's not as tall as the previous one - that a silly jealous friend after noticing her movements is dragging away from here - but she's pretty, cute and petite. She's talking with that handsome Dutch guy that I met earlier but when she sees me she startles, she's saying something, I read her lips and she's saying I know you, but I've never seen her before and I step back and hide behind a column because besides being prone to missing lucky chances sometimes I am also overcome by this kind of childish behavior, but she moves and she's still staring at me and while I read again on her lips that same statement that is nailing me on the spot - out of curiosity or shyness or both - she's already walking towards me. She's in front of me now and she says that I am Fabio, and actually that's my name, not a common one in Kuala Lumpur, by the way. Who is she, what place, person or event can I associate her to, I quickly scan a messy list in my mind but I can't find anything, I don't know many people in this city and I remember the faces of the ones I know. I'm from Thailand, she's saying now, and that makes more sense because I know more people there than here but still she's not one of them. She says that I'm Italian, another thing that she shouldn't be saying to me but I to her as it's the first time we meet, of this I'm sure, and she's naming places where she saw me before and I actually used to go there as well. Finally she has to go, she leaves me dumbfounded. She spots me again outside of the joint and comes to say goodbye and see you again in Bangkok. I should have said something witty but she's already gone. Luckily she didn't greet me with that expression that some Thai girls like to say to make you laugh even though it has never even snatched a smile from my lips, see you when you see me, really a powerless joke.
Well, are you finally convinced now, young thief? You don't believe in karma? But he believes in you, and in what you've done. You'd better start thinking of things that can occur 60 times, or maybe 250, as that's the actual sum in local currency that you so skillfully picked from my pocket. You can run, you can hide, you can ignore it or make fun of it, but sooner or later karma always finds you.

Good luck and best regards,
Your victim aka occasional money box.
F.P.

A minimum of privacy - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-06-07T14:07:00.003+07:00

Photo by kindgott (CC)

In the same stretch of road where I enjoyed the accident involving the sack-of-potatoes-kind-of-woman, just a few meters away and at about the same time, I happen to witness a scene that is even more pictoresque, though lacking the same pace of action.
I've almost reached Avenue K, a fancy building that I have to walk across to get to the Petronas Towers underpass. I need to decide whether I'll use the first entrance (pros: 100 meters of additional air-con; cons: the hallway suffers from an aseptic, a bit desolate, vaguely sullen atmosphere) or the next one (pros: superb view of the KL skyline, melting pot social details, amusing little scenes; cons: such a thick sultriness that if you suffer from eye cataracts condensation will form under them). I usually choose the second one, walking slowly in order not to sweat too much, but today I go for the first one as I want to take a look at a shop that...
"Hey!"
Who's yelling? I can't see anybody.
"Hey! Hey!"
Ah, there he is, a security guard who popped up from behind a column and is walking with an unusual haste towards a small garden that separates the bulding from the sidewalk. Following his path I set my eyes on a point a few meters ahead and...I spot it! Actually I should say I spot him. A Cro-magnon kind of man, with slightly curly black-gray hair, gathered together in a couple of thick dreadlocks - which probably formed by accident after a life spent bivouacking around since he had his last shampoo - is squatting down over the freshly mowed English turf, near an open tap that is sprinkling water on his feet (which would be great news if the little drops weren't bouncing off a layer of waterproof grease that doesn't let even a particle of purifying liquid get in touch with his skin).
A short hedge is screening him from the eyes of the passers-by but not from the outraged ones of the guard, who decides not to take into account the excellent fertilizing properties of the generous dose of organic matter that the man is unloading on the ground and without hesitations urges him to leave at once. The other guy, who is right in the middle of the bowel evacuation operation, can't be bothered to stand up, perfectly aware of the mess that such an action would cause. He might well be a poor bum but he should still be granted the pleasure of a defecatio without being rushed, no matter what the god in wich his persecutor believes is.
The guard can't take this. He continues to yell while he draws near the site of the outrage, with a threatening air, and he stops in front of a low wall, wary, hesitant, as if he could see in that obstacle the perimeter of a safety circle traced around the source of the stench that he might have started to smell. Even though he has not completed the approaching maneuver he nonetheless manages to hurry the intruder, who swiftly produces a plastic bottle and empties its content on his hand in order to lubricate the rubbing movement with which he's cleaning the area of the body contaminated just now.
Then he stands up and does something that I was not expecting: he doesn't leave, actually he turns around, steps out of the garden and stands there, in neutral territory. Then, swelling his chest, he gives the guard a defiance glance, almost threatening, a reproaching look at he who violated his privacy in such a delicate moment. Maybe he comes here everyday, at the same time, and he can't bring himself to believe in this change of scenario, hence the indignation that he's not able to hold back.
The guard seems to suffer the blow, he is speechless, the vigor instilled in him by his sense of duty fades off, polluted by a dose of doubt, while some kind of fear for this unexpected bout of pride seems to have form an alliance with the stench that is keeping him at bay. But it's a short-lived impasse, as almost immediately he recovers, and after managing to defeat fear and disgust he jumps on top of the wall. The other understands that it's time to get out of there, leaving behind just that stinking present.
He turns around, doesn't run away but starts to walk fast, barefoot, barechested and with a pair of light fabric trousers, actually a vague idea of trousers, as only a hem of cloth flaps over his right leg, covering a section of thigh and calf, leaving his buttock completely exposed. He's carrying two plastic bags, which most likely - together with the shreds of those pants - make up all of his belongings.
A couple of days later, in the early morning, I'll spot him from the road while he stands on the same place, only his trunk sticking out from behind the hedge, while he's filling the same bottle at the tap and then uses it to take a rustic shower, like people in this area of the world used to do until a few decades ago in the rivers and the lakes.
He moves with energy and purpose but without haste, while his accidental dreadlocks sway over his head. There are neither guards nor cops around, someone is looking at him but nobody disturbs him. After all this is still his bathroom, a place that requires a minimum of privacy.

Motorbikes and potatoes - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-05-26T10:33:00.006+07:00

Photo by kibuyu (CC)

Finally out of the training center. I'm walking home with that vague feeling of exhilaration caused by fresh air after a day's plunge in an air-con sea when the typical metallic sound produced by an accident - its unmistakable motorcycle-against-a-4-wheel-vehicle variant - digs its nails into my eardrums.
I turn around and I see a motorbike of the Honda Dream type caroming between the queuing cars like a pinball ball among the springs of the game's rattling mushrooms. It has already hit a van when I start to watch the scene, then it proceeds between two lines of cars, alternatively bouncing against the coachwork of a vehicle on the right and one on the left, until it finds an empty space, threads its way into it like a blue fly into the chink of a window and keeps riding along the course that will lead it to a collision with the rear bumper of a Japanese sedan, it's a hopeless situation, you can read it on the face of the guy and on the movements that he's trying to convey to the handlebar: at this point he has already lost control of the bike and he won't be able to avoid it. Judging by the glittering of paint and chromium-plating this car interior still smells like new - it's a smell that one, not a bad one, but not a scent either: only gasoline and some fragrances of the Little Trees, in the world of automobiles, really smell good.
When the impact takes place the guy does what many people do in this kind of situation, even though it should be the first thing to avoid: he keeps speeding. The bike bends over and slowly falls to the ground. The man touches the asphalt with an awkward move, but he doesn't get hurt. His wife though, who sits in the back, falls like a sack of potatoes. She also looks like a sack of potatoes, by the way, but right now it's the dynamic of her movements that reminds me of this image. How she bends, hits the ground and keeps rolling when the bike has already come to a stop, while the engine revs up because the wrist of the guy got stuck on its initial position, I mean the one he had when he was shooting between two lines of cars - still along a straight path, not a zigzagging one - and that he hasn't changed ever since.
The man stands up, he can't be bothered to collect his potatoes, and starts to shout abuses at the driver of the van, the first pinball mushroom that he hit. Maybe this man was actually the one to blame, I'll never find out, because after replying to the biker with diversionary tactics, pointing and gesturing at a car that has already disappeared behind a curve, he engages the gears and after a few seconds he has also disappeared behind the curve.
The man is called for debriefing by the owners of the damaged cars, the sack of potatoes stands up just like a sack of potatoes that is being lifted by a farmer and oscillates for a moment around her point of stable equilibrium, somehow like a matrioshka, until she stops upright. In the meanwhile the potatoes that fill the sack where her bottom, torso and breast should be are rearranged according to the laws of three-dimensional geometry and gravity, occupying the vacant spaces of the new configuration. Then, dragging her feet (because even though she resembles a sack of potatoes we don't have to forget that she is still a human being and therefore is equipped with feet), she joins the lively group.

I leave them at that, after having followed the nth lesson of the Principles and elements of Oriental Societies course, a mix of couldn't-care-less attitude, male chauvinism, passing the buck, lightheartedness, fatalism, optimism and many other things that will occur to me later, while I keep walking under a leaden sky that looks like monsoon rain but could actually give us dog days sunshine. Thoughtless and indifferent: even if I still cannot act like that in a completely natural way I know that it's a perfectly suitable attitude. After all, they are the ones who transmitted it to me.

Accounts of more accidents (first hand experience) and more principles of Eastern sociology can be found here.

Not even a waiter - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-05-23T14:00:00.006+07:00

Photo by Keven Law (CC)

If one looks carefully and keeps the antennas of his sensitivity tuned in, it's possible to pick up some interesting details even in a scene of apparently little importance. I have an example of that right in front of me, at this open air restaurant. That usual sequence of moves of his, studied but carelessly and hastily executed, by instinct, as if he was a hare chased by a pack of wolves: shaking the stool, bowing his head, rolling his eyes, wiping with a wet cloth a corner of the plastic table. It's his coded message for the undecided customer, only weakly encrypted: "eat at our place, sit down here, don't keep on searching, walking past us towards the next restaurant of the huge line that stretches out for the whole length of Jalan Alor. Stay, can't you see how I'm arranging this stool for you and making sure that your table is clean?"
A message that could well be misunderstood, as the customer might spot the grease stains on the cloth and think "if you need to clean that table now it means that it was dirty one second ago, and how about the rest of the surface (the bigger part of it) that you have not wiped yet: will it be dirty because you haven't cleaned it or clean because that filthy rag hasn't touched it yet?" And perhaps he will decide to move on, only to find out that the next restaurant is not better than this one. Actually, all in all, the fact that it is located at the beginning of the street probably makes a better choice of it, if only because stopping here one is spared useless meters of chaos and nuisances, and that's exactly the reason why whenever I am in Kuala Lumpur and I come to eat around here, I choose this place without really thinking about it.
But this baby-doll, this teddy-bear, this racoon cub is absolutely irresistible: so sweet, moving, touching, almost pitiful. With his dark face, the darting, almost terrified look that pours out of those hunted deer eyes, the swift movements and the imploring pout.
You can't even call him a waiter because...well, because he isn't one. He's here just to do what he's doing right now, and that he does every day: the part of a net that the restaurant owner throws on the street to catch the highest possible number of passers-by that are looking for a place where they can eat something simple, genuine and cheap. And maybe to top that up with a beer in the fresh air. He's here to pretend that he's arranging the table and to open a menu with plastic-coated, greased pages in front of the customers. Only to run away soon after that, before someone asks him a question that he wouldn't be able to answer, letting the waiters, the real ones, who can speak English, Malay, Mandarin and two or three other Chinese dialects, take care of that.
Because he's only a poor immigrant, most likely Burmese, one of many who come here and to other countries of the region looking for a better life and that, for a few years at least, will spend thirty days a month shaking stools and wiping tables, cleaning toilets, carrying buckets, breaking roads, rummaging through rubbish. Some of them will be succesful, because they have the money to start some business or the skills required to shoulder their way through the fronds of that jungle of opportunities, corruption, organized anarchy, energy, optimism and inertial thrust that the majority of the Far East is nowadays. Others will go back home, not empty handed though, because the little nest-egg that they have managed to put aside will be worth a minor treasure in their country. This is a win-win situation after all. Especially for one who started from scratch.

Time killing thoughts/13

2011-05-14T07:33:00.001+07:00

Photo by Brandon Christopher Warren (CC)

- Between fake open mindedness and genuine backwardness I have no doubt: much better the latter.

- Listen, it's very simple: I look like a loser because I AM a loser. For your standards and values, at least, I definitely am...

- Modestly - and recklessly - speaking, I think that I am one of the most free persons that I know. Only a few of my vices enslave me and they are, after all, things of little importance.

- You're on a train, comfortable, warm, the illusion of belonging might last forever. Then you arrive to your destination and the idea of having to get off tears you away from your seat like the hand of a giant. It's an alien place, its language and culture unknown, you haven't booked a room, you don't have any information, everything has to be found out...only one certainty: for the nth time you're back into the game.

- Everybody, at least once in his life, has felt like a Robert Deniro in the movie "Casino"...taken for a ride by some Sharon Stone...

Read more thoughts here

Too late - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-04-16T05:53:00.005+07:00

An unattractive angle, by Arty Smokes (CC)

There is a counter at the end of the hall, a check-in book on top of it and a man behind it. I've just given him the money for the room fee and I'm waiting for him to give me my change. My eyes absentmindedly scan the list of names, countries, and check-in dates on the book. I'm only partly curious, mainly killing time. I suddenly sense that the man is looking at me and I think that he's trying to catch my attention to hand me the bills. When I look up I notice that he's just staring at me, a harsh expression painted on his face.

"You are not allowed to read that!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean...I didn't think it was not..."

"If it's not yours, it's not yours, and you don't read it..."

"...but it was open, right in front of me..."

"This is confidential information, by law we are only allowed to show it to the police."

He managed to shut me up. I take my money and leave, upset, hurt, without being able to express what I feel, to make him understand that he doesn't have the right to scold me like that...sometimes it takes so little to neutralize my self-defense system.

That was back in the year 2003, at a budget hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I could have forgot the incident in one hour, but for some reason - like others of the same type - it got stuck somewhere on the bottom of my mind. Now and then I find myself thinking about it, all the words that arrogant guy deserves to be told flowing out of my brain, refuting every possible argument of his.

"If it's not yours, you don't read it!"

"And if you don't want people to read it, you just don't leave it open on your desk, turned towards them."

"This is confidential information, by law we are only allowed to show it to the police."

"Well, then what you did is even worse, as you are putting on display something that YOU are supposed to keep out of the guests' reach"

And then the final touch, the one that will humiliate him to such an extent that I will almost feel pity for him, while his thick and shiny mustache will be shaking and he'll pout his lips, unable to say a word.

"Do you think that I am being hard on you? Then you didn't have to be hard on me first. You don't want me to make you feel guilty? Then you don't make me feel guilty first. You don't want people to scold you like a child and disrespect you? Then you don't scold them like children and disrespect them first. I don't think I need to continue, you finally got the trick, right?"

But I was hurt, and he was not, and as I didn't say anything he thought that he was right and I was wrong. And I hated it, and after so many years I still think of all this. And I'm not even sure that if it happened again I would eventually know what to say.

Counterpoint, by William Stabile (translated by William Wall)

2011-04-15T22:20:00.006+07:00

Image from the cover of Ghost Estate, by William Wall

This is one of the poems written by my friend William Stabile that I like the most, beautifully translated by the Irish poet William Wall and included in his latest book Ghost Estate.

Counterpoint

there are moments
precise moments in my evenings
in which I cease to be a man
I traverse seasons in a few minutes

I shed thoughts in spirals
lines of certainty half-truths
as the wheat sheds its husk
at the first biting wind of September

but then you come hair the russet of apples
& you gather just the husks
senses tuned to the thinnest frequency
the truth survives in counterpoint

William Stabile
(translated from Italian by William Wall)

Chinese oddities/2 - Guangdong and Yunnan, China

2011-03-28T16:25:00.005+07:00

- One yuan coins are often given as change in Eastern China but are hard to spot in the west - e.g. Yunnan province - where only one yuan banknotes are used instead.

- At Kunming airport a girl hangs on to the hand and the laptop case of a guy, kneeling and sliding on the floor as if she was holding a skilift, yelling "I won't let you go...I woooooon't let you gooooooo!", while the guy - visibly upset and embarrassed - walks from counter to counter with that unusual, wiggling and noisy luggage on tow, alternating polite conversations with the airlines' employees - who try to pretend nothing is going on and often stare blankly at something else - and wild screams toward the girl. Now and then they stop arguing and start to hit each other for a few seconds, then they argue again and finally the man will head to another counter, always dragging the girl whose rubber soles slide on the smooth airport lounge floor. A friend of hers talks on the phone while people are watching the scene in silence, until a cop arrives and takes them to the local station.

She's her lover? He owes her money? She wants that laptop? She's blackmailing him? I'll never know what that was about...but it was a fun way to kill time before the check-in counters opened.

- After she has checked me into the Kunming-Bangkok flight, the airline employee says: "Please sit down there and wait for the immigration counters to open"

"...ah, and when will they open?"

"When the officers are on duty"

"...no, I mean..." What do i mean? How do I explain it? "Well...alright...yeah sure, thanks..."

- The Chinese city of Guangzhou has its own version of the fake Buddhist monks: they hang around the square in front of Guangxiao temple, they hand people some cardboard charms and ask them to donate ridiculously huge sums of money (read about the Kuala Lumpur phonies here).

- The local authorities in Kunming (which is not even a major Chinese city) have decided to create a new town out of the city center. Government buildings and university campuses (many times as big as the old ones) are being moved there.

- Supermarkets, shops and some restaurants run out of iodized salt for a few days due to the panic induced by the Fukushima nuclear plants radiation threat.

- The rubbish bins at the Green Lake in Kunming automatically open their doors and wish you good luck after you dispose of your litter.

Read "Chinese oddities/1" here

Welcome to China: in just 24 hours - Guandong, China

2011-03-25T20:05:00.005+07:00

The closed pedestrian bridge in Guangzhou

Chinese oddities. They can amuse even one that used to live in China, he just needs to come back after having being away for a few years.

- My luggage is x-rayed at the Hong Kong-China border check point. It's just the first step of a long sequence of scans: Chinese authorities really love those x-rays machines.

- People are shoving about and jumping the queue at the immigration desk...some Chinese can love this even better than x-rays.
- The immigration officer asks people to remove their hair from the foreheads and then nervously, suspiciously, repetitively and perplexedly scrutinizes their passport photos.
- A long queue and an application form to fill in order to exchange HKD 1000 into RMB, which I could have done in Hong Kong in one minute hadn't I underestimated the dark side of the Chinese bureaucracy.
- I am ripped off when I buy a local SIM card, not a big deal though, as the girl who served me was very nice indeed. Niceness can also have a price here.
- More luggage x-rays at the Shenzhen train station entrance. We already know that they love x-rays.
- On the train a committee is formed to assign the seat numbers. The fact that the numbers were already written on the tickets doesn't seem to be very important at this stage.
- Even though everyone has already been assigned their seats (at the ticket counter first and by the train passengers committee later on) people keep standing, moving about and yelling for the whole length of the trip.
- A maze of fences has been built at Guangzhou station square: you need to walk for about one kilometer to reach a hotel that is two hundred meters away.
- The staff at the hotel reception is very grumpy: even though I'm paying cash for my room I feel like I am being done a favor.
- The nearest metro entrance to the hotel is closed, and the ticket vending machines are out of service.
- The hotel was recently renovated (and the prices are four times as high as last time I was here) but here and there you can still spot a few messy leftovers from the old structure: the wood of the toilet door is rotten, there is an old stain on the wall near a piece of furniture, some aged scratches on the mopboard...
- Social networks and blogs are censored (that's why I'm publishing this post so late).
- The grumpy hotel employees manage to get even grumpier when I ask if they have a map of the city. Of course besides being treated like a beggar I don't manage to get one.
- Out of the metro and into the night, I'm suddenly overwhelmed by a terrible whiff...it could be rubbish, maybe sewage or even excrements, but after few seconds I remember that smell: it's stinking tofu, surprisingly edible food!
- The hotel employees raise the magnitude of their grumpiness to level three when I ask the whereabouts of the nearest ATM machines...the answer is: "at the square!" Unfortunately Guangzhou railway station square is one of the most complex examples of urban architecture in the world...it's as if they had answered: "Somewhere out there, not too far and not too near..."
- Those ATM machines can really help you with a lot of interesting functions and services, except giving money of course.
- A group of girls are waiting for the metro standing on the area reserved for the alighting passengers. They have a point though, as they manage to board the train before the passenger who were waiting on the designated boarding area.
- Near Guangzhou East railway station a pedestrian bridge is closed. Unfortunately you find that out only when you're already on top, after having climbed a few dozens steps.
- Some rich guy with a fancy foreign car accesses a pedestrian area and honks at people so that they get out of the way. The bigger the mightier: everybody knows that...in China, that is.

Pastime thoughts/12

2011-03-07T18:38:00.004+07:00

Photo by Kevin Eddy (CC)

- The cowl doesn't make the monk, it's true...but it can disguise a fake one very well indeed.

- After much thinking I finally got it: you're in an open relationship when your bedroom door has come off its hinges.

- Being ordinary is not a fault...provided that one doesn't make a fool of himself by trying his best to appear an outstanding person.

- Fortunately I'm continuously reminded by others of how sad my condition as a single is: in fact when I am alone I never think about it.

- Some people must think that having fun is an evil act. They always seem to need some kind of excuse to get involved: charity events, theme concerts, demonstrations, web based initiatives, pseudo-political activities. I might be immature, vain, a careless selfish, but I don't need a pretext to have some fun without sense of guilt.

Read more thoughts here

Semi-nomad - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-03-01T13:54:00.005+07:00

Tibetan nomad, by falsalama (CC)

After renting it for two years I've left my apartment and got back to the semi-nomadic kind of life that I had embarked on ten years ago. I left the few home appliances that I possess at a friend's place, I packed my books, records and some objects I am fond of and shipped them to Italy, I sorted a few cloths, underwear and accessories that would fill two backpacks - a large one and a small one - I got rid of the remainder and went back to my old, rather random sequence of rooms in hotels, guest houses, places of friends', acquaintances' or almost unknown hosts and accommodation provided by some client - when I have a training course to teach, of course. I keep the clothes that I use for work in a separate bag, which I store in a private checkroom in between job contracts.
Once again I'm released, unsteady element, perpetually migrating bird, creeper without grip, pre-agricultural humanoid, uncoupled wagon, drifting lifeboat.
After having handed back the key and received my deposit I felt like when, two times in the past - actually two and a half (*) - I resigned from a permanent job, holding in my hand not a contract with another company but a ticket for a long trip instead. As if I had finally exhaled after having held my breath for a while, my chest finally relaxed and my heart floating into it, delicate and light, in complete freedom. Without knowing what to think when people were telling me that I had to be crazy and I was not feeling a thing about it.
Of course the fact that I don't have a family counts a lot. If I had it I wouldn't be able to perform this kind of stage tricks, or pricks. But the world is full of other singles like me, choked by the concern of being left without a job, without stability, without prospects, frightened by the specter of precariousness, without even a wife or kids as a pretext. On the other hand it looks like I am after all this, rather unconsciously, without plans or strategies, not so much out of fun as of necessity. I haven't had a long term job for a long time, I often don't have a job at all, and the one I manage to make a living with might slip out of my hands at any time.
I don't know what the prospect of a pension is. On top of that now I don't even have an address.
Anyway the ones I've listed are my only symptoms, other than that I'm feeling good. What ailment do I suffer from?

(*) The half time refers to when I was in Singapore and was offered the extension of a contract that I had expressly asked to be a fixed-term one. I politely thanked and declined.

A piece of soul - Singapore

2011-02-23T18:14:00.003+07:00

Old Singapore

What do we feel when we look at the pictures of a place that we know, when the images date back to when we were not yet born? I can still remember what I felt the first time I saw some old pictures of Singapore. I looked at them, changed angle and read the caption: a comment, a date and the name of a place that I knew but couldn't recognize. My curiosity aroused, I returned to those places, convinced that I had missed something, because of carelessness or bad choice of the point of view. Roads, quarters, squares, bridges, wharves: the names had remained the same, anything else was unrecognizable. I could place myself behind a column, stare at the view for minutes trying to get hold of some half-hidden detail, but there was no way to bringing back to life the foreshortened image of the photo, sometimes not even in part.

It's true that the same thing would happen pretty much everywhere if one looked at a sixty-year-old picture, but in Singapore the concept of restyling has been pushed to a level that might have never been reached anywhere else. Demolitions, renovation and restoration works, planning, experimentations, regulations, standardization, all this with only one goal in mind: the realization of a vision. The one of a hyper-modern, hi-tech, functional, organized, controlled, clean, safe, ordered city. And as none of these qualities has something to do with the past (actually they are all its children, but they don't need it anymore...ungrateful offspring), the heritage of that past has been ignored. Therefore anything that was not an obstacle has been molded and reshaped to meet the new requirements, whereas what was seen as a hindrance was removed outright. As a consequence the city-state has inevitably lost its character, got rid of a piece of soul, thinking perhaps that it could live off the body alone. The aseptic veil and the sophistication are things that you can see not only on buildings, restaurants and streets: you inhale them with the air you breathe, they brush against your face when you turn at a corner or cross a threshold. Singapore could have been a rich and advanced version of Rangoon, Malacca, Goa, Luang Prabang, Phuket town, Penang, Hoian. It decided to become the copy of some city fancied by a science-fiction writer instead. An imperfect copy, as they all are. And it did so without many scruples.

Perhaps the zealous authorities do feel some remorse though, if they love to retrieve these photos and show them in public, or if they organize some nostalgic old postcards exhibitions.

That's why I advise those foreign visitors who arrive to Singapore and are amazed by its organization, cleanliness and order, but most of all by its offer of cutting edge technology, to search for those images, watch them carefully, then turn around and look out, and ask themselves whether it was worth wiping off history in order to offer the tourists this life size scale model and lots of shop-windows filled with electronic trinkets that will arrive to their cities only a couple of months later.
As for myself, this is one of those moments when I would like one of my favorite dreams to come true: getting hold of a time machine and travel back...years...back...back...decades, to when the photographer took those shots. Even a black and white, vaguely milky world would be fine.

Catalan irony

2011-02-18T02:36:00.000+07:00

Conversation held in Thailand between a friend of mine from Barcelona (F.) and an American backpacker (A.B.).

A.B.: Where are you from?

F.: I'm from Spain, Barcelona, and you?

A.B.: I'm from the West Coast...

F.: ahhh...the West Coast! (then, to himself): West Coast...que coño es West Coast...Portugal??? (West Coast...what the fuck is this West Coast? Portugal?!)

Worse than a widower

2011-02-15T05:58:00.002+07:00

Photo by jcoterhals (CC)

There it is, another one who asks me whether I'm married. Well, as it often happens in Asia, he asks the question but actually means a statement: of course you are, tell me a little about your family then...And there it is: that face that he makes when he hears my answer. I keep meeting people like this, who are surprised when they find out that I don't have a wife. Worst than that actually: surprised to find out that I have never had a wife...as if been a divorcé or a widower, sad as it may be, were still a lot better than the highest form of damnation: being single.

To be honest in fact, the very institution of marriage does not completely convince me. Not in itself, of course, as it has proven to be a fundamental instrument in building solid societies and good growing environments for children. It's the mechanism as it is made available today that I find faulty, especially in the western world, even though the differences between East and West are getting narrower and narrower.

People seem to be anxious to get married because they are told that they have to, and actually it has always been like that. In the past though, besides being taught that they should marry, young people were also told that marriage would last forever. No matter how serious the problems they would have to face, no matter how close to hell life within the new family could turn, the couple had to find a way through it. Or put up with it, until death would part them.

Nowadays newlyweds are given options to get out of it, and on top of that they are brought to think that it's not even such a bad drama, or that it is their fault for that matter...shit happens - seems to be the message - don't think too much about it, just move on.

While I have spent a large part of my adult life as a single and I've never really got close to planning my wedding, I've seen so many friends celebrating their marriages and a few years later mourning for their failures. That's why I think that if the paradigm has changed and there is not a fairly high probability that marriage will last forever, it's better to teach young people that they shouldn't feel so anxious about it.

Convincing them to get married just to sell more insurance policies and washing machines, knowing that many of them will split up - or even counting on selling more products after a second or a third wedding - might seem an effective way to boost consumption economy: actually it's nothing more than a moral crime. Either you promise them a stable future or you don't promise anything at all, otherwise you're not guiding them: you're only deceiving them.

Enraged - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-02-09T17:27:00.004+07:00

Photo by humblenick (CC)

"Sawat-dee-krap, pai Khao-San dai mai krap?"

The taxi driver nods and I sit on the back holding a chilled can of Leo. From Major Cineplex to Central Mall it's the usual, smooth Bangkok night ride, then a car sprints out of Lat-Phrao rd and cuts across our way. My driver utters a guttural sound and slams the brake pedal down. I'm surprisingly calm - it might be because of the sedative effect of the Saturday beers, my innate fatalism, or a bit of both - while the car slows down quickly, skidding a little, until our front bumper ends up kissing quite gently the pirate car's rear one.

We came out of it rather well - or at least I did - but I know that it's not over yet: I picture the worst case scenario and I hope that the other car stops soon. In vain: the guy is speeding away as if he didn't even realize what happened, and my driver, without an official opening ceremony, has already declared the beginning of chasing time.

Speeding makes me quite nervous, especially if I don't know the driver and he's enraged. He doesn't show it much but I know he is. Unlike a hypothetical Italian counterpart of his, who would have vented his frustration through a litany of a heretical-mystical nature, he's only emitting some mono-syllabic sounds, driving nervously, accelerating and steering intermittently.

At a certain point he follows the runaway vehicle into a road that won't definitely lead us where I am supposed to go, and that's when I come out of my trance and start yelling "Stop, stop right now!" I say it in Thai, English, Italian, Chinese and Spanish. He finally stops the car near the curb and I suspect it was not because his ancestors came to the Kingdom of Siam from Toledo or Madrid.

I quickly get out. He does the same, without minding me at all, and goes to check the damage. I don't care about him anymore, he has given me a bad five-minute-time, I spot the first available cab and flag it down.

Now that I'm safe I think about what just happened. Often Bangkok taxi drivers don't own the cars they drive, they just rent them from a company, and in cases like this they will probably have the cost of the repairs deducted from their income.

I take a sip of the beer that by now has got warm and I silently wish him good luck: hopefully the car got out of it unscathed, like we both did.

Shades of angel - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-02-02T19:52:00.004+07:00

Photo by Neil Krug (CC)

I close the book, I'm about to turn off the light but I realize that I am not sleepy enough. The muffled street noise is seeping into the room through the chinks of the window frame, people are having fun outside: tomorrow is holiday in Kuala Lumpur, but I'll still have to teach.

I wear a pair of flip-flops and get out of the room. The furniture is rather lousy but the apartment is large and for once in a while I don't have to share it with anyone. I grab a chair and I take it with me to the balcony. There must be at least 25 degrees and I'm only wearing a pair of boxers, but the lights are off and I live on the eighth floor, nobody can see me and, even if they could, I am only a shadow: a dressed shadow and a naked one look pretty much the same.

I just need a look to realize - for the nth first time - that a balcony with a view is actually cool. There is a crossroads just down here, a confused knot of small streets without a traffic light: it has to bear the weight of traffic only when there's some nightlife, just like tonight. Cars, motorbikes and taxis advance with the same speed as the pedestrians, looking for parking space or for their way back home.

I almost never smoke but I light myself a cigarette. If you don't have a habit that's what cigarettes are made for. I smoke, look around and write sentences in my mind, in Italian, in English, in Spanish, with cuneiform characters and ideograms, without being able to save them, as in offline mode. Maybe, if I look carefully, I can manage to spot those Russian girls as well.

A few hours ago, when I was mooching a wi-fi signal in the lobby, they got out of the lift laughing and singing, together with those male model friends of them, some kind of self-propelled bronze statues. They were muttering when they walked past me, probably tipsy, maybe they were taking the piss out of me: I'm always by myself, writing at the PC or walking around the neighborhood, I don't open up easily like the other men in the building. What a nerd, they might think, maybe even an asshole: well, nerd is alright, and I might also be a bit of an asshole, but most of all...I'm shy! Then the one who often sits near me with her laptop - always wearing shorts and t-shirt, ponytail and no make-up - turned towards me and I almost didn't recognize her: tight black clothes, loose hair that could finally flow down her back, long and wavy, soberly made-up, just like an angel would be. Hopping as if she was dancing, nay, like a little girl with her friends at the public gardens, she smiled at me and waved her hand. All of a sudden on the contact surface between body and chair I felt some sort of liquefying sensation, not as if I was sweating or bleeding, just as if my skin and muscles were actually melting. Then it was all a sequence of changes, of temperature, of light intensity, of color shades, of perception of space, as if a new dimension had seeped into this little world of mine, and finally I understood: I was completely bonkers. I didn't really have enough time to say anything and I was afraid that she might find me quite rude, but when I got hold of the various parts of my face again, I found a smile that almost beheaded me stamped right across it: if she didn't notice that she was not only drunk, she was completely lost in a hyperspace trip. I knew better than cherishing false hopes about the future, but I sucked the present until I could almost hear the noise of a straw that drains away the last drops of a fruit shake.

The traffic jam clears, the group of tipsy guys leaves, I haven't seen the Russian angels but others are passing by: fluorescent Chinese, Indians blended with the night, alternating with Malays of different qualities of chocolate. Snazzy, with stylish hairdo, some are swaying a little, they clasp their purses as if they were afraid of losing them, or they hold on to them not to fall over: from up here, in semi-darkness, they all look beautiful.

A car alarm goes off, one of those sirens that sometimes sabotage my siestas, this time I'm not in bed but on a balcony instead, and even lounging around: I enjoy it as if it was a soundtrack slightly out of phase. Then I yawn and it's the cue I was waiting for, I pick up the stub and I put the chair in its place, then dragging my flip-flops I grope my way back to the room.

Now I can go to sleep: a balcony in the darkness and the wake of a smile have tucked the night in.

The excuse

2011-01-30T19:02:00.000+07:00

Every Malaysian can speak Malay, the national language, as they learn it at school. A good share of the population can also speak English, even if they have never been to any English speaking country. Some of them do it perfectly, others might make a few grammatical and spelling mistakes but they can express themselves fluently and their comprehension skills are good. Depending on the ethnic group which they belong to then, many of them will also know Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien even if they haven't traveled to China, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil and Malayalam without having set foot in India. In Malacca there is even a community whose members can speak Portuguese without, of course, having ever lived in Portugal or one of its former colonies.
Italians can speak Italian and...that's it. Sometimes not even that well. Who has learned a foreign language has done it abroad, through the Erasmus program or by working at some restaurant in London, New York or Sydney, on their own accord and using their own funds. The English language lessons at school have turned out to be of little use. Of course Italy cannot be compared with Malaysia, a country with a totally different history and society. Yet it seems that something better could have been - and still can be - done about it.
One of the most widely used excuses to maintain the status quo is that our national language needs to be protected. Protected...from what kind of danger exactly? From the bad examples provided by most of the TV programs? From the increasing impoverishment of the vocabulary used at home, at work or at school? From the widespread habit of using the SMS contracted spelling standard - even when one is not writing a phone message - with the sudden and premature death of vowels and upper-case letters? Not at all...what it really needs protection from is the imaginary but potentially lethal invasion of the English language.
A false pride that the common citizens put on display in order to hide the embarrassment caused by ignorance and the laziness induced by the simple thought of learning a new language. Pride that on the other hand most of those who govern us will resort to in order to hide their lack of talent, creativity, initiative and ideas, but most of all to continue to devote themselves to their favorite hobby - the struggle for power and the accumulation of wealth and privileges - without any additional useless nuisance.
And if all the movies are dubbed and Robert De Niro keeps talking Italian, sometimes with the same voice as Al Pacino, well...who cares. It will not be a perfect solution, we won't be able to fully enjoy the artist's performance, but at least we can still understand the plot. And those fanatics who are interested in the original version can always watch it on a DVD. Or else try to read the actors' lips...

The gesture - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-01-25T13:01:00.001+07:00

There is a gesture we make in Italy, with the fingers of one hand pointed upwards, fingertips joined. It can express different things: doubt, confusion, disbilief, disagreement and sometimes even mockery. I found out by chance that in the Arab world they use the same gesture, with a completely different meaning though.
The first time I noticed it I was in Kuala Lumpur, sitting at a Lebanese restaurant, with some Saudi students of mine. While the Egyptian waiter was serving our courses, two of the guests asked him something at the same time. He looked at them while he kept arranging the dishes on the table and then, after saying nothing, as soon as one of his hands was free, he turned towards each one of them making that gesture. I was surprised, I thought it was quite shamefaced of him to use with his clients a sign that might well mean: "What the hell do you want?" I expressed my doubts to my students and they explained to me that in the Middle East they use it to ask somebody to wait a moment, and it is a rather polite expression.
A few days ago, still in Kuala Lumpur, I was standing on a sidewalk, watching people swarming around the bars and clubs of the city center. A Chinese old lady was walking by, begging with a cup. An Arab man stopped her and showed the hand-sign to her face, then he turned towards a friend and asked him some cash. Finally he went back to the lady and put an enormous tip into her cup. He obviously wanted to tell her: "Wait a moment little old lady, you won't regret that". Not as they would have thought in Italy: "Hey you, cranky old witch, what are you doing? Get the hell out of here!"

The wise old man - Bangkok, Thailand

2011-01-21T16:03:00.006+07:00

Kashgar market, Xinjiang, China, by Fabio

I'm sitting at an outdoor restaurant with a Japanese girl named Ako (actually after so many years her real name escapes my memory and I've made this one up. Come to think about it, though, it might as well be correct). Ako is sitting opposite me and when we are enjoying our first glass of beer she spots a rat near the curb, right behind my chair. The poor thing doesn't move from that spot and it seems to be breathing deeply and uneasily: it's probably sick or injured and agonizing.
Ako is rather disgusted and invites me to sit close to her, an advice that I am very pleased to accept, regardless of the inappropriate presence of the rat.
After having looked at us for a while, one of those westerners with a self-proclaimed kind of wisdom which emanates directly from days on end spent traveling between airports, taxis and tropical beaches, from the false alternative air that he will shrug off as soon as he gets home, before embarking on a life lived on the edge of a knife that he will steer from the cockpit of an office desk, but most of all from that self-confident look, of one who has seen things that we cannot even imagine, more than the replicant Rutger Hauen in Blade Runner, decides that we need help and finally resolves to give us one of his precious advices.
"Don't worry, you shouldn't be scared of that rat, it's gonna die soon..."
Ako and I look sideways at one another. Once we've managed to fend off the initial avalanche of embarrassment we strive to hold back a tsunamic laugh with an exhausting activity of facial muscles, finally trapping it between nose, eyelids and forehead. It's gonna die soon? Hey wise old man, that's exactly the reason why I changed seat! It was not a cobra or a tiger, only a sewer rat. We were having dinner: we weren't scared, just moved to pity and a little disgusted.

Bangkok, Thailand, December 2001

PS Another western tourist who said a funny thing to me in Bangkok is this one

Almost worse than him

2011-01-20T16:19:00.001+07:00

After having read some excerpts from the phone tapping records of the so called Ruby case investigation (involving Italy's PM Silvio Berlusconi) and having managed to check a few retches, I've tried to put down the sentence that would better summarize the story. Here are my first attempts:

1. One great scoundrel and many little shits

2. A swarm of midges is flying over a big shit

3. Sordid fine dust orbits around the Sun King

4. He who lives by avidity dies by avidity

5. Grasp all, lose all...except this scum

6. Ghastly vultures are nibbling at a putrescent body

Mystic confusion - Siem Reap, Cambodia

2011-01-18T14:27:00.004+07:00

No temples today: I've rented a motorbike with a driver who is showing me around the countryside. He's explaining me about the crops, the Khmer Rouge, the river, the villagers. He says that most of them are Buddhist but there are also quite a few Buddhist Muslims. I smile and say nothing. He will repeat that funny expression various times. When he tells me that many Buddhist Muslims live in the village we're driving through I decide to give it a try.
"So you're saying that the Muslim community here is quite large..."
"Yes, very big, many Buddhist Muslims here!"
OK, he didn't take the bait.
A few minutes later I try with another test.
"In the bigger cities though, like Phnom Penh, there must be many Christians as well..."
Let's see what he's got to say now.
"Yes, a lot, many Buddhist Christians in Phnom Penh."
Buddhist Christians as well...alright my friend, I give up. I'll have to convert to Buddhist laicism then.

Siem Reap, Cambodia, August 2004

They are going green - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-01-11T10:15:00.001+07:00

A sign in a public toilet at the Petronas Towers reads: "We're going green: join us and save paper, please use the (electric) hand dryer"

Going green? How do they think electricity is produced...by mashing with pestle and mortar a mixture of rose petals and dew drops?

The message seems to be: "Kill two birds with one stone: save a tree and help us pollute our air!"

Ambiguous to say the least...

What if I had been... - Terengganu, Malaysia

2011-01-07T13:04:00.004+07:00

Photo by CW Ye (CC)

It's a peaceful morning, like the smile that the luxuriant scenery swelling beyond the bus window has painted on my face. It's been a long journey but finally its last stretch is about to start. The most unconfortable and exciting one, on the rusty boat that will cut a section of the gulf to reach the Perhentian islands. The last kilometers of Terengganu roads - North-East Malaysia - are paved with the flavour of the wait for a prize, not with the effort of the race run to achieve it.
A local man, dressed like all the others - long skirt, long shirt and a hat - but more impudent or angrier than them, draws near me.
"Where do you come from?"
"Italy!" I answer with an enthusiasm which is not really pride for one's homeland but an exhortation of the Let's love one another! type.
It works, but only in part.
"Ah, Italy...good. If it had been America instead...not good!"
Some people look askance at him whereas others nod. As for myself, I get the creeps. I prop up my big smile by calling up the reservists: a troop of muscles that I didn't even know were there. The serenity of the morning is gone, as well as the luxuriant scenary which seems to have been hidden by a haze that turned up on the sly. The last minutes of this trip seem to be longer than the almost sleepless night spent on a shaky train berth.
The same question keeps buzzing in my head: "What if I had been American?" In order to fend it off I try to focus on an alternative concern: hopefully the boat ride won't make me seasick.

Terengganu, Malaysia, Spring 2002

A devious tendency

2011-01-04T11:02:00.003+07:00

Photo by I am marlon (CC)

I'm not a born troublemaker, one of those aggressive types whose body get tensed and whose mind shuts down at the smallest provocation. One of the gifts I've always believed I can count on is to be able to dodge imminent problems with a shrug and an ironic remark muttered with closed lips. I need to admit that sometimes in the cold light of the day I've wondered whether this kind of behavior can be a signal of cowardice. And it didn't help me to clear out doubts being aware that in other circumstances, when facing danger or difficult decisions, I've acted with courage. Or at least with recklessness, which, if it's not courage, can be a good surrogate of it.

A recent conversation with a friend, though, has reminded me of a period of my life when latent tensions, cumulated stress and a slight impatience poured out beyond the level of consciousness, under the shape of losses of temper rarely experienced before. It is well known then that a beer too many on a Saturday night can amplify moods that are already smoldering on the bottom of our soul, pushing up to the surface what we normally manage to hold in - at least partially. And that's how liveliness, sense of humor, fun and friendliness, in that period were replaced by a dark side of myself that I had always ignored. By the way intoxication was only an aggravating circumstance, not the cause of this devious tendency. It could have happened in broad daylight, on a weekday, when I was completely sober.

I seemed to have lost - at least in part - my capacity to not give a damn in case someone happened to treat me like an ornament, bumping into me and just shoving me apart with an arrogant air. Or if a bully was provoking me with a sharp remark, or yet again if a guy was addressing me in a rude way me without a good reason.

Fortunately that time is gone and has never come back. At the end it was just an anomalous year. I returned to being my old self; actually, owing to a new discovery, I've acquired a different attitude towards my own personality: those suspicions about cowardice that I used to have when my pride failed to be inflamed by a gratuitous attack are nothing in comparison with the certainty that I behaved like an idiot when I actually reacted to provocations.

It's not important, it's not even that much but, if one can content himself with it, it's still a good step ahead.

Scattered thoughts/11

2010-12-27T19:32:00.003+07:00

Photo "Thinking?" by galo/* (CC)

- Being content with one's common life is still better than putting up with it.

- When you are in an alien place you shouldn't turn yourself into a problem: you never know how people could decide to solve you.

- Sometimes it feels like you're left with the fishbone of your heart.

- You are in Asia, sitting at some restaurant, looking at the local customers who are interacting with the waiter: there's something elusive, a cultural nuance, a linguistic detail, a custom difference. You think about it and all of a sudden you realize what it is: since you can remember you have always asked for your food, you've never really ordered it.

- I've often been saved by my ability to fill voids with enthusiasm.

You can find more thoughts here.

P.S. This year I haven't published any Christmas post. Last year though, I've written three on the topic. You can read them here.

Paradigmatic chameleons

2010-12-21T15:28:00.001+07:00

I still remember, how could I forget, those new graduates who used to write to the companies exactly what the managers were expecting to read, with their perfect resumes, their career paths drawn with great attention to detail, based on forecasts of a future that has never come true. And their great deal of information on the job market, which they almost seem to be able to manipulate. They used to praise the coming of the new economy before large parts of its body became gangrenous and finally turned into premature fossils, to lecture us on safe and profitable investments before the hail of the stock market crises, to declare the dominance of finance over industry, work, service, innovative ideas before the tricks and the rottenness of that world emerged like excrements from the bottom of the sea.
And they used to climb - they probably still do it - organigramme walls, planting their feet on rungs of human ladders, insisting on calling them "resources" when "means" would have been more appropriate, swimming like sharks that devour smaller fish in the executive private aquariums of predators much bigger and ferocious than themselves.

Nowadays they often languish on careers that are static, stagnant, stale, sta-various-other-things, floundering in the corporate mire that little by little has swallowed their souls. They pretend they have never failed, avoiding any reference to the past and wrapping the present with an enthusiasm which by now is nothing more than a trash sack. Their empty words meant for effect can't amaze us any longer and they only end up proclaiming the calcification of their approach, while our smile - mute and deafening - simply declare our unwillingness to humiliate them, certainly not fear, reverence or lack of courage.
Years back our letters have often been ignored, thrown away or shredded. We didn't even understand their false advices, confused by our innocence and dazzled by their technical nonsense. We fell back on jobs that we might not have liked, but one way or another one has to go on living.
Our lack of preparation and planning has made us vulnerable to the calamities of precariousness, but little by little we have adapted to the new conditions, we've learned, gained experience, we've grown up. A new species was born out of this process. In a world that devours today what only yesterday looked like science fiction - swallowing, gushing out, ruminating, digesting and expelling new horizons at a dizzy pace - we have managed to make some room for ourselves: the paradigmatic chameleons.
We could become extinct before we even find our space in the market biosphere. But that's not sure, not yet at least. Unlike them we still have some cards to play, and you can count on that: we will play them, some of us will do.

Relaxation - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-12-15T18:27:00.004+07:00

Beer on a table at Jalan Alor

The plastic stool is small and hard, the table is tilted and shaking, walking vendors are hassling the clients with wooden baskets, laser pens and paper tissues. The street is rather dirty and messy and at any time you can expect a rat to come out of a hole in the curb, bound for a bone that lays not far from your shoe.
Still I sit down: at once newtons of tension start to pour out of some point located deep in the center of my body, emerging to the surface, running along the skin of my limbs, the line of my spine, until they reach the plastic of chair and table, descend towards the asphalt and disappear into the city sewers. Some toxic matter sublimes from my head too, as if I'd just been walking under the tropical rain and once I'd reached a shelter thin pillars of vapor were slowly lifting from my scalp.
Suddenly I'm relaxed, I can feel it especially in my back, that thanks me by way of a gentle tickle. And I didn't even know that I wasn't.
It's not only for the variety of the food or the cheap beer, it's also to watch this reaction of my body that i come to this restaurant in Jalan Alor so often.

Only in South East Asia - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-12-10T18:00:00.003+07:00

Photo by Mugley (CC)

I'm walking along Jalan Alor, a semi-pedestrian street lined up with traditional restaurants. I look at the signs on my left, then my attention gets caught by a girl with a menu approaching me from my right when my foot slips on something: the object is slimy underneath and soft on top. It felt like walking on a rug that was resting on some engine oil. I take a quick glance at the ground. There only seems to be a spot of a slightly darker shade of gray than the one of the asphalt. I stoop and take a better look at it: it looks like some animal's fur. Then I notice two little star-shaped things, a long and thin protuberance, some chiaroscuro effects here and there...every doubt is dispelled by now: the thing I stepped on is the mashed body of a rat, disgusting.
The idea of walking into the house with the contaminated sole is upsetting me. A few meters ahead I come across a puddle, it's stagnant water from a recent storm: it's dirty, alright, but for a rat it might well be a posh Jacuzzi tub. I place my foot into it, I shake it a little and then I move on.
Some drops are falling from a balcony onto the sidewalk, forming a tiny stream between the slabs of cement: I don't know exactly what the nature and the source of the liquid are but I still use it to give the filthy rubber a second rinse. Then chance hands me the weapon for a coup de grâce. A restaurant has just been closed and the waiters are throwing buckets of soapy water on their section of the sidewalk. My trainer passes through the suds like a vehicle at the car wash.
With the tropical heat the synthetic material has dried up before I enter my building.
South East Asia is dirty, no one can deny that, but in what other place the same elements of its untidiness also provide what you need to clean up?

Homage to the pedestrian/2: the mutation - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-12-08T03:37:00.006+07:00

Photo by Steve Webel (CC)

"Green light, let's go!" We used to say it when we had just got our driving licences and our underage brothers were in the car with us. In Kuala Lumpur, on the other hand, if you are dressing the part of a pedestrian you'll need to say that sentence at any age. Actually the slower your reflexes become the more you'll have to anticipate the traffic conditions.
I'm waiting for the green light before I can cross Jalan Sultan Ismail Road, a wide city artery cutting the business district into halves. Here it is, with long strides I try to kick away a bad premonition. The green man has been blinking since it showed up and it really seems that there is no time to waste. As soon as I get past the center line curb what I was fearing actually happens: we get a red light. I reckon that it is one of the tricks of those cunning city officials, who want us to clear the junction as quickly as possible. I am still confident that they'll leave us a sufficiently long interval to reach safety before they release the vehicles that are screeching by the stop line. Hell no, they give them a green light! I'm forced to complete the crossing with three mighty chamois-like jumps.
How did they calculate the timing? Did they hire Carl Lewis as a test-consultant?
Maybe they count on the fact that people will stop at the curb, making use of two green light turns to complete the crossing. But behind all this there might also be a sordid conspiracy with a ghastly ultimate aim: the total extermination of the pedestrians, a cumbersome and annoying species, not strictly necessary anyway. They lure the biggest possible number of specimens into a trap settled right in the middle of the road, like the one that I just fell into, just to release their motorized beasts, thirsty for pedestrian blood after having been forced for long seconds into a cage made of white lines that was nailing them down to the junction.
But they didn't take into account the interposition of Mr. Charles Darwin, outstanding man of science as well as friend of every pedestrian. Natural selection will turn us into sturdy groups of two-footed gazelles paradoxically crossbred with a slightly washed-out breed of cheetahs. Under the new guise we shall survive and proliferate: through leaps, rushes and crossed lanes the fight will continue for long.
Dear exterminators, you won't make it: the genocide you're dreaming of is not around the corner yet!

You can read part one here

The missing bowl - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-12-04T17:24:00.005+07:00

"[...]The three bowls represent Malaysia's multiracial culture living harmoniously in unity. Ascending to signify the growing aspirations of the people. Serenely the water converges from all directions, an endless source of blessing and prosperity[...]"

It's written near a sculptural fountain installed at the entrance of the Pavilion, a luxurious, modern shopping mall right in the center of Kuala Lumpur business and tourist district.

I guess that the three bowls represent those Malaysians whose forefathers came from the Indonesian archipelago, Eastern China and Southern India. How funny, they seem to have forgot to add at least another bowl: the one for the ethnic group that was already here before the pioneers of the other three arrived. The Orang Asli, the real Bumiputra, the sons of the land.

The name will probably remind some of you of the famous apes that live in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra: the Orang Utan. Well, the majority of the Orang Asli also live in the jungle or in rural areas and, come to think about it, considering that the poverty rate among them is 76%, the omission of their bowl is quite appropriate, if that sculpture is meant to represent those races that share the political and economic power of the country, who live in the cities, patronize shopping malls like the Pavilion and for whom the water of the fountain is an endless source of blessing and prosperity.

Random thoughts/10

2010-12-01T11:12:00.004+07:00

A gondola in Venice, by Fabio

- Pride is a problem, not a virtue: one needs to solve it, not boast about it.

- If one goes to Venice and only notices the odor of the stagnant water he doesn't have to worry about his sense of smell: it's working fine! He might need to see an eye specialist though.

- In order to gauge a person's stinginess level the rate of loyalty to consumerism is not a good indicator, the income/expenses ratio is much better. Between one who earns 100 and spends 100, and another one who earns 1000 and spends 200, who is the stingier?

- Some handphones and laptops are great electronic devices. As conversation topics, though, they are quite dull. Using them is much better than spending time talking about them.

- Single=solitary=alone=sad...this sequence of equations is largely overrated. If one wants to know what real sadness is, he just needs to look carefully at some couples' lives.

For more thoughts click here

Those nice guys - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-11-25T17:20:00.002+07:00

Photo by slimmer_jimmer (CC)

There is an illegaly parked vehicle at Bukit Bintang Road. A police car approaches it from behind and when it stops just few centimeters from its bumper the officer at the wheel starts to honk. Actually, rather than a horn this sounds like a siren. A piercing howling that captures the attention of numerous people who are crowding the area, including the owner of the car, who quickly opens the door and gets on. For a few seconds he nervously fumbles with the key, under the amused gazes of the onlookers, while the officer keeps teasing him intermittently pressing the horn button. After a while he manages to ease his panic, he starts the engine and drives out of there. The police car also starts to move, finally silent. When it's passing in front of me I look at the four cops who are laughing their bellies off.
I still don't understand whether they are really bored or patrolling this area is lots of fun.

The solitary traveler's nightmare/2 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-11-21T14:04:00.003+07:00

"Nightmare", by brentbat (CC)

Continued from here

The nightmare materialized again in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at an open-air restaurant. Two minutes after having ordered a soup and a fruit juice a doubt got hold of me, I put a hand into my pocket with that usual scared-cat-jump of mine, I didn't take out money but my cellphone instead and while I was pretending to read an urgent message I called the waiter and canceled my order.

Once I was outside, shame and sense of guilt suddenly fell on me, like a monsoon rain. How can it be - I kept saying to myself - such bad manners. Leaving like that, after having ordered. And how I did it...with that ridiculous coupe de theatre.

Half an hour later I was already back, my pockets full of Ringgit. I apologized and ordered again.

"Did you actually make some of the things that I ordered earlier?"

"Well, your juice, but don't worry about that..."

At the end I asked to be charged for the fruit juice as well and I left a good tip.

They knew me at that restaurant, I could have explained the situation, stay, eat and later on come back and pay. I could have but I wouldn't have been able to, because embarrassment, paranoia and ancestral complexes are often more difficult to face than those rebels in the desert. Well, perhaps not the rebels, but the kids in the dark alley, maybe...

Homage to the pedestrian/1 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-11-15T15:25:00.002+07:00

Photo by sinkdd (CC)

I join the crowd that is waiting for the green light at the pedestrian crossing. Bukit Bintang is a busy area. Cars, motorbikes and people of various nationalities are competing for those precious square meters.

It's time for the vehicles coming from our right to cross the junction. When they finally stop, the ones in front of us start to move forward, turn right and drive past us (in Malaysia, a former British colony, they drive on the left hand side). Shortly it should be our turn, I look at the vaguely anxious expressions of the people who crowd around me. I turn to face the junction again. What happened? The cars coming from our right are advancing again! Maybe our turn started and ended while I was absentmindedly looking around. Weird, nobody else has crossed the road either.

During the next cycle I focus and carefully follow the sequence of the green light turns. The cars coming from our right stop now, alright, the ones coming from in front of us start to move forward, as expected, red light for them now, they stop, a little suspense and...they fooled us again! Damned cheaters, just because you think we're the weakest? We'll see...

Together with two young Arabs and a Caucasian man, I lead the counter-attack, a couple of girls scream but finally everybody is walking behind us. We advance along the zebra crossing with careful but resolute steps. The red man look at us from the top of his road perch, haughty and glittering. We defy his authority and disobey his order with the pride of someone who has had to endure injustices for years and finally rose up, has already set off and now can only keep going with inexorable madness. Lots of vehicles arrive very near us, but there's many of us, determined and irritated. They stop to let us cross, no one honks, nobody complains with grimaces or puffing.

We made it, we got to the opposite sidewalk. The formation disperse, the braves exchange knowing looks. Today's battle is won, but this war is tough, dirty and still long. Many will have to interrupt their advance, forced to withdraw and take shelter in the trenches of their starting sidewalk. Others will fall, run over by cars or by the invectives of those who drive and don't recognize their right to cross. We shall remember them, we shall respect their fervor and courage, we shall honor their sacrifice by fighting to the end to reach the other shore, the longed-for-sidewalk. And we will fight again, always, everywhere.

Other battles lay in wait for us, but today we can enjoy the glory for our conquest: the well deserved landing to the other side of the road.
Our barricade. Our front.

You can read part two here

Aung San Suu Kyi, I'm begging you: don't sneeze in public!

2010-11-15T01:25:00.002+07:00

Photo by Breff (CC)

Like thousands of other people around the world I was also moved when I saw Aung San Suu Kyi walking out of the house where she has lived as a prisoner for so many years, finally free.

I don't trust those old rogues of the Burmese military junta though. In the past they found the most grotesque excuses to jail her. I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to put her back under house arrest the first time she catches a cold, for the sake of her own health.

Aung San Suu Kyi, I beg you: don't sneeze in public!

The solitary traveler's nightmare/1 - Tokyo, Japan

2010-11-10T20:56:00.005+07:00

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781

What is the most common nightmare of a person who travels alone, far from home, in an unknown place, where people speak another language and think in a different way, a country with alien customs, traditions, values and laws? Is it being assaulted in a filthy and dark alley by a gang of kids, high on crack, with bulging and wet eyes, empty bellies, holding shiny blades in their hands? Or that someone slips two hundred grams of heroin into your bag, a few meters away from the customs, in a country where drug dealing is punished with death penalty? Or perhaps it is boarding a flight of a secondary carrier in a developing country and starting to notice creaking, squeaking, vibrations, failures and draughts when the hatches have already been locked? Or will it be running into a group of armed rebels in a desert area, a hundred kilometers away from the nearest town?

Not for me. Not that I am what you would call an intrepid globetrotter but this kind of misfortunes - maybe because I haven't personally experienced any of them - seem quite unlikely to happen to me.

The nightmare that can cover my forehead with beads of cold sweat, my inexhaustible source of panic, the only reason why I might not want to hang around alone or out of my customary routes, what really frightens me most is the thought of being in a restaurant and after having ordered my dinner - just when I'm about to relax, looking forward to tasting one of my favorite dishes - realizing that I don't have even a cent with me.

It happened to me twice. The first time in Japan, in the outskirts of Tokyo, fortunately not far from where I was staying. That time I managed to finish a whole bowl of beef and rice before putting a hand in my pocket only to fish out the hope to possess a bundle of Yens. As it's often the case in Japan, the cook/waiter/cashier who was standing behind the counter at which I was sitting couldn't speak a word in English: he was just looking at me with a baffled expression while he kept chopping his vegetables with a large knife. I rummaged through my bag and I thanked my good luck when I found my passport inside. I handed it to him and with theatrical and slow gestures I tried to explain that I would be back in no time.

I got home without breathing, I grabbed all the money I could find and I rolled down the stairs. When I entered the restaurant I was purple-faced, soaked with sweat and on the verge of dying of asphyxia, holding a tangled mass of Yens as if it was a relay baton. After I paid, the cook, with the impassible expression of a Kabuki mask, laid down the machete, took my passport from under the table and gave it back to me.

I gave him my passport, I kept thinking while I was walking. My passport...well, in Japan you can trust them, here at least. But then I was at that again: I gave him my passport, my passport...well, if you don't trust somebody even in Japan, then...how could I do that, my passport...

Continued on another post...

URL change

2010-11-10T20:48:00.000+07:00

As you have probably already noticed I finally decided to get a custom URL. The new blog address is now: http://www.english.fabiopulito.com

You can update your links and bookmarks!

Barriers of an (almost) intangible type - Bangkok, Thailand

2010-11-02T23:53:00.008+07:00

Bangkok Government Center

World citizen, cosmopolitan soul, international attitude, free spirit. All of these are very evocative expressions. They recall images of poets and thinkers sitting at a table, a glass of absinthe near the notebook and a goose quill pen in the hand. Self proclaimed as such as you can be, you still have to face the ones who don't agree with you...and there's loads: lawmakers, members of central and local governments, police officers, immigration officers, customs officers, independence and separatist movements, chauvinists, extra-parliamentary groups, xenophobes, religious fanatics, nationalists, localists, regionalists. Everyone, in their own fashion, will tend to make you feel like an alien, a stranger, a citizen of a faraway place, not yet of the world but of a small town, a district, a neighborhood or a block.

I currently hold a Thai student visa, which I got by joining a language school, after having paid the fees for a whole year in advance, as it's normally done here. It's not so bad though: at least here I can pay the rent every month, whereas when I was in China I had to settle the twelve-month account, plus deposit, on the spot - with a stack of filthy 100 RMB notes - before the keys were handed to me.

Let's not stray from the topic though: in order to give you an example of how the aforementioned saboteurs will act in order to make you feel like a (not too) welcome guest all the time, I'll tell you about my latest visit to the Bangkok immigration office.

I need to kill two birds with a stone: an extension of stay and a re-entry permit for an upcoming trip to Malaysia (for an explanation of these terms you can refer to the addendum at the end of this post). In brief, two applications, two numbers, two queues, two counters, two stamps, two pains in the neck, two everything you can think of. I need an almost perfect combination of events and an auspicious alignment of stars not to be forced to spend the whole day at the office.

I choose the time of arrival with rather accurate randomness: not too early, to avoid the annoying queue in front of the closed door - all those people throwing defiant looks at each other and silently scheming - and not too late, in order not to be given a three-digit number.

A number is not handed out unless a form has been correctly filled. I get the proper one, I fill it and I stick my photo on it, using a glue that smears my passport and the school papers. Every time I try to remind myself to use just a little of it, but it's always too much, too watery, too greasy and smelly.

I still haven't got the passport copies (they're essential! The original document is never enough for some people...), but I decide to try my luck and I face the guy who hands out the numbers anyway, otherwise a lot of people will get ahead of me. I'm lucky, I get number 37, then I go to the photocopy shop and after I'm done I reach the counters.

A newly installed screen is broadcasting a video explaining the procedures and why every application needs about fifteen minutes to be processed. The possible reasons for a delay are also listed (to make it short: it's always the applicant's fault).

It's a complicated routine and an application has to go through a considerable number of hands before it can be approved by the supervisor, but taking into account the quantity of open counters and the number that I got I should be able to make it in the morning. It's better not to count too much on it though, unexpected events are always lying in wait: when I'm in the hands of bureaucrats I never fail to feel like a partridge in a wood beaten by poachers.

The situation is fluid, the sequence of numbers is running smoothly, when number 30 is called there is still a long way to go before the dreaded twelve o'clock deadline, lunch break time. A woman is given a passport, but instead of leaving happy and relieved she gets back to her seat. After a few minutes they give her another one. And she sits down again. Damn! She represents a group of Burmese immigrants, which means that she's submitting many applications with only one number. I'll have to wait much longer than expected. But I should still be able to make it.

In fact my moment of glory arrives very soon: I hand passport, documents and cash, and as everything is alright I can go back to my seat. The employee will enter some data into a computer and check them. I keep an eye on her, there doesn't seem to be any problem and everything is passed on to the Financial Officer.

From now on it is difficult to monitor the progression of the process as the applications are piled up and a lot of people are bustling about the table. I can just use my intuition.

When I reckon that my passport is already on the supervisor's desk - the final step of the procedure - the machine calls the number of a lady who walks with an arrogant pace and a threatening look, the obvious signs of a person who has got a problem but is poised to fight to the last breath before giving up. In fact the greener who is in charge of the first procedural step slightly shakes her head and starts to say something, but the other shuts her up with a couple of sharp remarks and has her call her manager. And he happens to be the supervisor who was about to stamp my passport.

I fear the worst. The supervisor sits at the greener's place, takes a look at the papers and then, smiling and without haste, starts to explain the regulations to the woman. She answers point for point, haranguing, pointing at some place, referring to something and quoting someone. I walk around, hop and mumble to give vent to my irritation. They go on like this for a long time, before the supervisor decides to give her one more chance, sending her to a colleague of his. Why didn't he do that earlier?

It's my turn, they give me my passport with the extension stamp on it, but it's already twelve o'clock. I try to get started with the re-entry permit application before everybody goes out for lunch, but it's too late, I'll have to get a number after one o'clock.

I get down to the basement of this brand new and imposing Government Center, which looks like the airport of a main Chinese city: a parade of might and wealth, a striking showdown.

I stroll, look around, eat something, have a coffee and then I go back to the immigration office. One more form, the glue, the photos. Where are my photos? Damn, I must have lost them this morning: I'll have to go downstairs again. It doesn't take long: God bless the digital era. A few years back I heard somebody using a curious expression: "digital crisis". It was the owner of a photo developing and printing shop. Those people are the only ones who could call it like that.

I get back to the office. This procedure is easier than the previous one and by two o'clock I'm already done.

When I'm getting on the cab I take a last look at the building and a painful thought crosses my mind: I will have to return here soon, way too soon. The veggies and rice patter on the pit of my stomach. World citizen, free spirit: I wonder if Diogenes and Voltaire also had to extend their visas every three months.

Addendum
In order to clarify some doubts on the first part of the post I will make a (partially serious) digression into the different types of Thai ED (education) visas.
My visa, having being issued by a Thai Embassy at a bordering country - in my case it was Laos - is of the single entry type and even though it's valid for one year the period of stay must be extended every three months at the immigration office.
Furthermore, in case the single entry ED visa holder needs to leave the country a re-entry permit must be obtained first, in order to keep the visa "alive" while abroad.
If I had applied for the visa in Europe I would have been able to get a multiple entry one and there would have been no need to go to the immigration office every three months for an extension.
Even this type of visa presents some inconveniences though, as the holder will have to leave the country not less than once every ninety days, without applying for a re-entry permit though, in this case. Do you think it makes no sense? Don't worry, it probably doesn't, unless you manage to get into the details of the logic of a South-East Asian country's bureaucracy.
By the way, there are some additional complications. Let's assume that your current extension will expire on the 31st of the current month. As we have already said you need to show up at the immigration office before that day to get an extension of stay for ninety more days. You follow the advice of the Immigration Department and of your school and you report a few days in advance, let's say on the 25th. The extension will obviously start from the expiration day, which is the 31st, but unfortunately there is an annoying catch. Every three months it is also necessary to report for address notification. Fortunately these two things (extension of stay and notification of address) can be done on the same day, in our case on the 25th. As already said your stay will be extended for ninety days starting from the expiration day, which is the 31st, but the clock for your next address notification will start to run on the 25th! In brief, before your one-year visa expires you will have to go to the immigration office an extra time just to notify your address for the last time. It might seem useless to you, but only to you. Judging by the pieces of paper that they stuck to your passport, by the use of CAPITAL LETTERS, bold font and a considerable number of exclamation marks!!!, for them it must be a very crucial point.
Anyway a student visa is still better than a tourist one, as its holder is spared from having to embark every two months on one of those jolly journey generally known with the name of visa-runs.

The tap - Burma

2010-10-22T14:06:00.004+07:00

Photo by malla_mi (CC)

The last supper in Pagan took place at a restaurant facing a dirt road, in the tourist district. Few customers, no apostles, just some fellow travelers that I recently met. But a Burmese Judas hidden somewhere in the kitchen had already betrayed me.

Fortunately the coach stops at a rudimentary filling station, a few more kilometers and I wouldn't have made it. The passengers are slowly getting off, they light up their cigarettes, stretch their backs, buy something at the small shop. In a downhill position I slide towards the toilet in the back. I shut the door with haste, nervously fiddling with the rusty bolt. I tear my pants away, rip up my boxers and squat over the toilet. I look at the wood of the door in front of me, its wide grains and its ruts polished by the years. It looks like the doors of the stables that I used to see when I was a child, during the weeks of summer holidays at the Southern Apennines. Impromptu thoughts of an uncomfortable position. This state of absent-mindedness is interrupted by a sound: like water gushing out of a tap and falling into a capacious or very deep container, causing an echoing sound. Actually there is a tap: it's supposed to be used to fill the bucket for the flush. But it's tightly closed right now: not even a drop is pouring out of it. How strange. I quickly look around but I cannot spot any other ones: then a very light sensation located somewhere near my lower back raises a surprising doubt. What the hell...the tap is me! This diarrhea is so watery and smooth that I can hardly feel it. The flow keeps going for a while, giving me the impression that I've become a full goatskin and that someone has just opened the nozzle. Then - all of a sudden, without reducing its speed first - it stops. When I stand up I look at the china and I cannot see any trace of the stuff.

When I go out the drivers have just finished fixing some technical problem (there will be many more later on, and all the foreign passengers will get mad about it, except me, of course, for obvious reasons).

We stop two more times because of some other damage and I punctually open the tap and let go the pressure that is swelling my guts.

Unfortunately the next attack doesn't match a mechanical failure. I hold on, clench my teeth, as the unwritten traveler's textbook says, but after a while I cannot stand it anymore. I ask the driver if he can stop the bus. He cannot speak English but an old monk helps me out. In a country of devote Buddhists like this, his words sound like an incontrovertible order and the driver stops the bus at the edge of the road. The crowd disperse over a large field, under the shade of some huge tropical trees. While everybody is looking for a trunk or a bush to pee, I find a hidden corner and re-open my valve.

I've become a celebrity among the passengers, who have seen me talking with the monk. Back on the bus he recommends me to be careful when I choose where and what to eat. I am also approached by a Thai businessman who starts to whispers because he doesn't want to be recognized - the Siamese, even though a few centuries have passed since the devastating Burmese invasions, are still very suspicious - and tells me that some Burmese restaurants can be extremely unhygienic, as if this was actually a secret.

Halfway through the trip - which will last almost ten hours more than expected - all of a sudden I feel well again. I even manage to sleep, waking up in the middle of the night when the bus is parked once again and the driver is hitting some piece of metal with a hammer. The Burmese endure it in religious silence, the other tourists wake up and swear. Finally I can focus on this kind of details without having my attention jerked by my guts every five minutes: I turn towards the window, I look at the moon that light up the rice fields, the palm trees and the desolation of this service station, I lean my greasy forehead against the glass, I mist it up by breathing out a long sigh and then, without being noticed, I start to giggle with extreme pleasure.

Burma, September 2002

This post is part of the of the Saga of the runs, the other episodes can be found here

It's here, among us, all this - Northern Laos

2010-10-04T03:17:00.001+07:00

The Plain of Jars is already behind us. The journey from Phonsavan to the main Vientiane-Luang Prabang route is many hours long. Actually it's only a short distance, more or less a hundred kilometers, but it will take a day to the Korean bus to cover it. These roads have not been asphalted yet, they are made of a clay that becomes a bog with the rain, and weave with curves and switchbacks in and out the mountain range that wrinkles the body of the country. The roadway is very narrow, like an ordinary lane that has to accommodate the traffic going both ways. Looking out of the window, on one side you're faced with the rugged wall of an excavated mountain, on the other your eyes can span across the landscape that dominates a steep and deep ravine. There is not any protection and it looks like the soil is going to yield at any time. When we cross another vehicle the bus is forced to proceed along the edge of the road, with its wheels dangerously playing between the rim and the air. The passengers often get off the bus, partly because they want to stretch their legs and partly because of the apprehension caused by the acrobatic maneuvers. Sometimes the bus drives so slowly that it is possible to follow it on foot at a normal speed.
The aisle is jammed: sacks, bags, baskets and boxes are heaped on the floor. I'm sitting in the back and I'm thinking that walking all the way to the door is like advancing upstream on the rocks of a creek. I take a look around, I open the window, I climb up the seat and jump outside. We have to proceed side by side with a column of cars, bulldozers, trucks: the traffic jam will last for a while. Together with the other passengers I walk along some kind of path that runs along the flank of the mountain, one meter from the road. We chat, walk and look around. Only a few old people and a bunch of ladies are still on the bus. The driver is steering the wheel with care, just missing the other vehicles, utilizing the narrow space between metal, soil and slope, making the bus slide like an eel amid rocks. He manages to get past the difficult parts of the route without complaining or making faces, while he's eating a cucumber without even chopping it, as if it was a banana. The remaining passengers advance along the path with the same sort of fatalism.
The sky is shiny, your eyes need to get used to the light before you can look at it right in the heart. Even the clouds are of a fluorescent shade of gray. The scenery helps to fend off boredom, which at any rate is - and must be - present as an excipient in the composition of traveling.
Luang Prabang is still far, but Laos is here, among us, all this.

Northern Laos, November 2001

What makes the difference - Angkor, Cambodia

2010-09-28T18:22:00.007+07:00

Angkor Roads, by Un rosarino en Vietnam

60 dollars for a weekly pass. A heavy blow, well, at least if you're trying to stretch your budget - a tight one - on a two-three-year-long bed of travels. On the other hand I don't feel like visiting Angkor like the majority of the tourists that I've met so far does. Just one, two or three days. Wake up at dawn, sprinting from a hill to a temple, panting from a hut to a monument, back to the hotel at dinner time, with confused memories: where were the roots of those centuries-old trees, that wrap up the walls and the statues? And the bas-reliefs? What was the name of the four-faced-heads temple? Wat...Wat...Wat something...
Well, I'm willing to leave the "Wat something" experience to someone else. The weekly pass will allow me to take it easy - which, by the way, is my favorite hobby. I can see the temples at dawn today and at sunset tomorrow. I can focus on Angkor Wat one day, on Bayon and Ta Phrom another, on the circuit of the minor temples later on. Easy, relaxed, spending the morning or the afternoon at the guest house, reading, studying and planning my next visit. Or in Siem Reap's colonial quarter, taking photos, scribbling, peeking, nibbling, browsing, chatting, getting lost, watching, daydreaming - which happen to be my other favorite hobbies.

To tell the truth, I will start to use these tactics only on the third-fourth day. At the beginning the charm of Angkor will get hold of me and - victim of an irresistible greed for experience and atmosphere - even i will be swallowed up by the dust and the heat that choke this place. The first day I follow the standard procedure: I rent a motorbike with a driver who leaves me at the temples and picks me up once I'm done. I feel like a bag with arms and legs, hat and camera, only lacking brain and totally character-less. At the end of the day I feel uncomfortable: it's an indigestion of notions without the experience seasoning.
In the evening I meet a Japanese backpacker, dressed up the typical way: sunglasses and a small white towel wrapped around the head. I'll call him Akira, after an animation movie that I watched many years ago. Akira is visiting the temples by bicycle. Everyday he rents one downtown, rides it along the road that leads to the site and pedals his way around the temples.

"What's the difference?"

"You try first, then you'll let me know!"

"Alright, I'll join you tomorrow then..."

Obviously a bicycle is cheaper than a motorbike, good news for my savings. I'm not fit and the bike is not like the ones they use at the Tour de France, so I can only progress very slowly. Akira is right though, compared with the motorbike this is another story. I couldn't imagine that the sound is what makes the difference. It's as if I were in an old recording studio and a technician had turned off the engine's frequency switch, turning up the others. I can listen to the birds chirping, the children playing, a man who is sawing a piece of wood behind his house, a dog barking at a mole. Angkor, in perfect oriental style, is an archaeological site surrounded by people who keep living their lives, with houses, small shops, schools. It's a magical atmosphere that I would have completely missed hadn't I listened to all those sounds. It takes long to reach each temple, but the journey is not boring at all. I have time to look at the vegetation, at the fauna, the life, the colors, the shades. Sometimes i sink into this new Angkor, its hypnotic atmosphere, so deep that I cannot re-emerge before I get to a temple, and I proceed to the next one.

I get back to Siem Reap in the evening. I look at myself in the mirror: it's as if I had crossed the Sahara on foot. I'm soiled like a ridiculous chimney sweep of the fairy tales. The blanket that is covering me is not made of soot but of dirt-road's dust hardened with sweat. My shirt, which I would normally put in the washing machine, is beyond reclaim: I take it off and directly throw it away. I take a half hour-long shower, and I have to scratch very energetically to take off the crust that is wrapping me up.

Starting tomorrow there will not be any more day-long expeditions. I'll enjoy the temples two-three hours at a time. But the bicycle, that simple and clever idea that I owe to Akira, well, nobody is ever gonna take it away from me.

Angkor, Cambodia, March 2002

A new breed - Mae Hong Son, Thailand

2010-09-22T02:33:00.011+07:00

Japanese bridge, Pai, by Fabio

September 2001. The Twin Towers collapsed a few days ago, as well as my prospect of a solid career, a secure job, promotions, a guaranteed salary, a pension at the end and all the things like that. When I say collapsed I mean that I tore it down with my own hands, not that it came down by itself or that someone else helped me to demolish it.

Let's not stray from the point though. September 2001, we were saying. I've just landed in Asia, determined to visit as big a portion of it as I can before my savings run out. The road that connects Chiang Mai and Pai is the same thin and winding path marked by the Japanese along the hills and the valleys of Mae Hong Son province during the second world war. Pai is starting to develop: there are a few guest houses, some agencies that organize trekking tours and rent bicycles, a number of restaurants and a couple of bars with Siamese cowboys playing live country and folk tunes. Waves of Thai tourists will start to flood this small town in a few years, for the moment only a few dozen foreigners a day arrive. And they do it by means of a run down micro-bus, probably built to accommodate baby midgets, gaudy colored and rusty, loud, burning-hot and full like a constipated bowel. The air-conditioned minivan service doesn't exist yet, let alone the small airplanes that land nearby nowadays. Unless you have a car or a motorbike the Playmobil bus is the only option available. The foreign passengers are mingling with a disproportionate number of Thais, who are not Thais in the real sense of the word, as almost all of them belong to the various minorities that inhabit the area: Shan, Karen, Akha, Lisu, Lahu. They are divided - or united - by sacks of rice, food, boxes of electrical appliances and utensils, poultry, fish and other mysterious objects. The one-and-a-quarter-person-seats are accommodating three-four people on average and the standard-sized foreigners have to find a way to handle the uncomfortable presence of their own knees. Others are sitting on a sort of big scorching bench that covers some mechanical parts of the bus, right next to the driver. The remaining ones are cramming the aisle.

I offer my seat to a woman overwhelmed with a huge basket that she carries on her shoulder as if it was a school-bag. Smiles and compliments are flooding me. It's low cost popularity, luxury that one can indulge on just in situations like this. After a while the bus starts to sputter, it slows down, then catches up, coughs again, jumps and halfway through a rather steep slope it finally comes to a stop. The driver is working hard on the ignition system and the starter is assisting him by screaming out loud, trying to wake the engine up, but there is nothing to do, the latter is deaf. We have to get off and considering the temperature, space and smell related issues none of the foreigners really take it badly. The locals, as it often happens in Asia, endure the events without any noticeable changes of facial expression. After half an hour though, the initial relief gives way to some puffs, that in a few minutes turn into outright restlessness. Then something happens. A Japanese pick up drives by, the only Thai tourist around (with hindsight I should call him a pioneer) stops it, asks for a lift and then waves to the bunch of people behind him. A dozen foreigners manage to find a place on the truck that a few seconds later has already disappeared behind a switchback. The ones who were left behind got the trick and are planning to stop the next car. I'm stunned by the heat and the cramps and I haven't decided whether I'm going to stay here or follow them. As usual I postpone the decision and I wait for something or someone to give me a cue. The oracle presents itself under the appearance of Makoto, a Japanese guy, all smiles, energy and clear ideas. Ten seconds next to him work better than a jar of Redbull.
"I'm definitely gonna stay. Can you see how they are working hard to repair the bus and take us to Pai? I can't possibly leave them like this!"
For a moment I don't react, then the power of the sentence and the purpose hits me like a Mike Tyson's punch. I think that it would be nice to start crying when facing this kind of demonstrations of humanity, but this doesn't seem to be the most appropriate situation, so I opt for a smile.
"Well then, I'll stay as well. There's no hurry, nobody is waiting for me..."
It doesn't take long to fix the problem and in a couple of hours we're already in Pai.

Normally, when we think of stereotypes, negative images tend to occur to us. Italians are cunning fellows, Germans are boring, French are snobbish, Japanese are credulous tourists who take photos of everything. Well, Makoto represents a stereotype of Japan that I'm crazy about. Sticking to an idea, to a principle, not necessarily related to politics or nationalism but, as in this case, to human solidarity, good manners, gratitude, understanding and compassion. Resisting temptations, avoiding easy ways, not making excuses, even when dealing with oneself. Maybe it's a legacy of the samurai culture, or at least that's how I like to think of it. And all of this is always accompanied by smiles and positiveness. That's why after five seconds of bewilderment I was almost moved to tears.

The Great Makoto. We'll continue traveling together for a few days. He's the one who will organize a mini-party at a restaurant for my birthday, involving the waitresses who will contribute with a succulent and colorful fruit platter, free of charge. And he's the one who will make me laugh again when, on his way back from a rush to the toilet of a bus station, breathless, panting, the forehead covered with beads of sweat, holding his belly while his mouth was twisted in grimaces of pain, to apologize for the delay he will come up with: "Sorry Fabio...it was an e-me-ru-gen-cyyy!"

The Great Makoto, exceptional stereotype. Representative for South East Asia of a new breed of samurai.

Mae Hong Son province, Thailand, September 2001