Chris and Koi's Magical Night

I met Chris about 7 years ago when I first came to Thailand. He and his crew of friends were a big reason I chose to live in this country. I mean they were so friendly and so welcoming to me I found myself feeling at home within months of moving here. Over the past 7 years this group has been my support and teachers about this kingdom. I'm so happy for he and Koi, she's a special lady and they deserve the happiness they have found together. 

It was a crazy night of old friends, families, three live bands, John singing some of his hits, wine, and in the end Tequila. Yikes!

I really apologize for the sound quality, especially for John who is a professional singer and star here in the Kingdom of Thailand, but my camera is just a little point and shoot so his voice is not done any justice. I will say it sounded great live.

Congrats to the bride and groom! Best of luck and all the love!

AIG can burn

F.U. AIG

Here's a little story I've got to tell about one lovely company we know so well, they started way back in history and now we all own a piece of them 'oh why me?'

Our government says let's bail them out,

if we don't have AIG then we have no clout.

With all our tax money going into their account,

they began to dance, scream and shout. "We're rich again on US money, this is so easy and oh so funny."

"We never paid off when people needed us, but now we need the people's cash and they just wrote us a blank check."

"Ha ha ha USA, we're the boys of AIG and we're here to say, our bonuses are big and we deserve every cent, because in a socialist state it don't matter what you spent. We got the cash, the courts, and bonuses too. So step off citizens we are in charge, that's why are bonuses are so damn large." 

"If you want some success we can show you the way, screw up, blow all your cash, and some government guy will say, 'we need AIG they insure my yacht how we gonna live with out them I need them a lot.' So in comes the money oh it really can't be."

But if you don't believe you don't have to listen to me, take a journey to America's car city. Up in Detroit nobody drives, in Washington by Jet every car executive arrives. "Oh we're broke, our cars don't sell if we don't get the US money my G5 I'll have to sell."

But we all know its the US socialist state and we're going to bail you out and without any wait. executives shouldn't worry they are the ruling class and in the USA it's all about the cash. Even if you lose someone else's money, it's okay, it's alright, it's all so funny. We'll reset the game, start you off fresh, that's why we send out the IRS.  They'll collect the money from all those poor drones, and none of them will do anything but bitch and moan. Ask Mr. Snipes in his prison cell, if you don't pay for bailout's you go to hell.  

Bangkok's Floating Market GATEWAY STYLE

Last weekend Marisel de Guzman of Gateway High School fame, arrived in Bangkok for a bit of rest and relaxation. I was never Marisel's teacher, but we have many mutual friends and have known each other since she was in high school and I was teaching high school. It was amazing to see her all grown up and happy. She has been traveling Asia with her boyfriend Paul and they left their final leg for Bangkok. I was very excited to see her and her gentleman caller. Paul was very nice and I thought very quiet until I got to know him a little bit better. By our final day together he was feeding fish out of his mouth and chucking bread rolls at Chinese guys trying to eat some soup in peace. I guess people from San Diego are not as conservative as I thought.

Enjoy the video above. We shot it while floating around the water canals of Bangkok. If you are ever in Thailand I highly recommend you get up early one morning and enjoy this river cruise. You'll see the river people's lives up close and enjoy 3 different food markets. If you need some information on how to go, simply drop me an email and I'll help you set it up.

Enjoy!

Kindle me this and Kindle me That

So the coolest feature of Amazon is probably the KINDLE device. This thing allows you to download books immediately. The KINDLE list is growing daily, as more and more best selling authors are offering their novels on this technologically advanced venue. But, who cares about those guys, the cool thing is they are putting up my novel THOSE WHO HEAR and ECHO POOL for electronic purchase. 

I am very proud to be a part of the KINDLE family. Check out my 2 listings on Amazon's KINDLE offerings by clicking on the title of this article. It's really great because many people are a little short on cash and can not afford to buy my book, but with KINDLE I can offer it for about half the price. Basically all the shipping is taken out. So please, be the first to download and enjoy my books! Kindle me baby, YEAH!

Chinese Class

For the past 4 years I have been asked to teach an English survival class to Chinese agriculturalists who come over to do research in Thailand. Thailand is the #1 exporter of rice in the world and one of the top fruit exporters in the world, so they come to study with the Thai professors. It is always a pleasure for me to get to work with them. I learn so much about Chinese culture and about the Chinese mind set as they emerge as a global power. This years group was full of spirit and in general they were a very fun group of students. The work ethic of Chinese people has always amazed me and it makes me feel like I'm a really good teacher when they improve so fast, even if it was more do to their hard work than do to anything I presented. I hope all of these students will stay in touch during their year in Thailand and when they return to their homeland. 

The final point that we came to in our best discussion is this: China is rapidly becoming a free market society in which people who work hard believe they can find their way into the class above them. In other words, the Chinese are socially mobile as the poor work to move into the middle class and the middle class is endeavouring to become rich. And we decided that the United States, my homeland, has become a socialist state in which the government owns all banking and supplements all jobs by owning huge shares in all major manufacturing companies. So when I was in high school and Mr. Miles described communism and capitalism I think he made a critical flaw, given time all white becomes black and all red swirls into blue and all capitalists will turn communist if their capitalism is failing. 

TV Dead and Well

"I have never been one for inaction," Malcom X. I have given this quote to my students for years because I believe it makes a very bold statement and reminds them that the key to success or to even living life instead of waiting for death, is action! Action is the difference between the passivity of TV watching and the more self directed addiction of the internet. I will not completely defend surfing the net all night as far too many of us do, but I will say that it is a drastic improvement from the brain dead who sit idling watching TV for hours. Science has proven your brain is less active during TV viewing than sleeping and in essence while you WATCH your brain goes into a state of mild hypnosis. "What, sorry, I didn't hear you I was watchin' this." Sound familiar?

Many people are wondering just what it was that brought down the American empire, which many social scientists are calling the shortest lived empire in the history of the Earth. I believe it can be best described as addiction. Now drug addiction isn't helping anything, but as a society Americans are sickly addicted to flat screens, plasma screens, bigger and bigger their viewing technology gets -- fatter and fatter they grow -- and now suddenly, like a balloon being filled with a tire pump, the empire is BURSTING!

Look no further than passivity. Passive viewing, 26 minute stories sum up life problems with quips and giggles, canned laughter and guffaws and then roll credits. TURN YOUR TV OFF!

This is not a joke it is a public service announcement. At least if you are on your internet you are directing your experience. You select what you want to investigate, you read what you want to learn about. You can watch programs on the internet, but at least you searched them out. Sitting passively and allowing program directors to shuffle through their tired list of sleepy false reality TV shows is sad. Do people really care who got voted off what island? I'd like to vote the entire lot off of planet Earth to be honest.

Turn off your TV or simply throw it in the closet. I put mine away a couple years ago now and honestly I do NOT miss a thing! 

NO TOURIST VISA NEEDED IN THAILAND

Thailand may be the best shopping place in the world. It certainly can brag some of the biggest venues for this in the world. These mall  monstrosities are usually between 4 and 6 stories of everything from name brand rubbish to locally made imitations of name brand rubbish. I myself am not much of a shopper, unless you consider being lost in bookstores for hours shopping -- actually that is more about my poverty as I usually am reading parts of books for free and then putting them back. But a new law is going to allow people into Thailand without a tourist visa. For the next 3 months it is gates open to the city of Bangkok. With no tourist visa restrictions the government is trying to stimulate some shopping growth. Great plan and good for all the guests of the Kingdom. So SHOP SHOP SHOP you consumers, and please dress nicely because I just might be in the mall and I'm not there to buy Gucky or Louey Sting Stong, I'm there to observe the beautiful people walking around in their little fantasy world. Very entertaining to watch them consume! It is like watching chickens pecking in the dirt for seeds, they strut around with their heads wobbling about as if they were searching for the holy grail, and then when they think they have spotted something they peck, peck again, peck and then begin the strutting again. Shoppers are very entertaining, the dance of the chickens pecking away. 

Video #5 Peacemaker from Thailand

This is the first Thai song I ever learned. It hit me so hard for some ineffable reason. I didn't understand any of it except the melody which is basically "I MISS YOU" and yet somehow the way it is said is so poignant, so heartfelt that it made me want to learn how to sing the song. I shocked my Thai friends one night in a Koreoke room when I took the microphone, something I almost never do, and sang this Thai song.

If you are not Thai you will not get the meaning of the song, which in truth is just one of a myriad of  Thai pop songs which revolve around love. From what I understand the record labels here in the Kingdom don't encourage anything but love songs in the pop music world. It does get a little bit sickening to hear nothing but sappy and often sugary sweet songs of love, lost love, and yearned for love. 

Detailed information about THOSE WHO HEAR

unpublishedink.com/directory/article.php?id=15 

The Astropaths series has struggled to get off the ground because book stores in Thailand are not sure what to do with the book. Asia books barely placed an order informing Bangkok Book House that YA and fantasy novels just don't sell. I had to laugh when I heard that considering Harry Potter is poised to pass the Bible in book sales in the next few years. Fantasy and YA doesn't sell? This seemed incomprehensible to me when we think of all of the block buster films out there based on novels in the fantasy or YA genre. Lord of the Rings and Narnia are two of the best examples of loved YA stories that have turned into gold mines for the film industry. Still it is their book stores and their shelves and so they have the right to put the books that they like in their stores. But I sincerely disagree with their assessment of what young readers and English readers here in Asia are looking for. 

Now having griped enough about this, I'd like to mention that I hold the North American Copy Rights to Those Who Hear and the Astropath series. So I have begun looking for a publisher in the west who might be able to produce the book and get it on the shelves over there. 

Please take a look at the link which my agent has put up to promote my book proposal. Click on the headline of this article to go directly to the publisher's promotional site. If you are interested in the series but have not yet purchased THOSE WHO HEAR on line, you can get lots of information about the book by looking at this book proposal. 

S.N.U.G.G.L.E.

Well I have been trying very hard to be the new me. I even came up with a nice acronym to better label my quest. The acronym is SNUGGLE and it stands for: Sims, new, universal, good, given, lovingly, everyday. So what this is about is the fact that everyone right now is feeling horrible, broke, and in a state of despair. We all need to give good feelings and give smiles and try hard not to get down or give a lot of our anger and frustration out to the world. Let's face it, when we glower at others it is a glower we are going to get back. Let's try to smile. Let's try to offer a kind word. Let's try to SNUGGLE our way through this global depression. 

So day one of my quest went something like this. Bad luck for me. I have long feared that if I ever lowered my guard to the teeming masses around me that bad things would happen and sure enough, they did.

It began when I heard some people outside my front door. In front of our gate we had put our trash can out for the garbage collection. I have some plants close to there and so when people look through my trash I usually water the garden with my supersoaker and if a few sprays of water go errantly onto the people looking through my trash well I say "get away from my rubbish", but today I did not get out the water gun. I walked out to see who was out there. 

A young girl of about 5 began to shout, "the farang (foreign devil) is coming grandmother run." She might have been sprayed before I can't be sure. "No," I said, "what are you looking for?" She held up a cardboard box. I knew this was my chance to do something nice. I ran inside and dumped out all of my wife's things, anything that was in a box and took the boxes out to the bewildered old woman. She nodded and smiled and I felt very good.

Later I was driving to badminton practice and saw the little girl and her grandmother going through the trash of one of my neighbors. I rushed to the V-SHOP and purchased 2 cokes because it was boiling hot out and I knew they would need something to drink. I took them the cokes and was thanked. The old lady then dumped out the coke, crushed the cans, and put them in her recycle cart. But okay, she seemed happy with my donation.

So now, as the Thai folks would say, I had offered some nice boons to the universe and it would seem that I should have a better day or perhaps some good luck. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

At badminton I purchased 1 water and and a tea to quench my thirst after working out in 95% heat. I had a racket bag, my gym bag, and was trying to make change for the drinks. My hands were full, so I payed and then gathered my things and walked out to my truck. After I had pulled away and was nearly dead from thirst, I reached into my bag to find nothing to drink. I had left the drinks on the counter and the Thai workers, being too shy to say anything to me, had watched me walk out without saying a word.

It got worse. Monday I caught my first head cold of the year. I take about 2 sick days a year, and usually these are sick days where I need to get something done and just can't make it in, but by Tuesday I was so sick I couldn't breath. I missed work, and stayed home to rest. But it gets worse. It is currently HOT in Bangkok. I decided to recover in my movie room. Where better than this?  But when I turned on the air-conditioner I heard a whirling sound and then a BANG. The motor had blown. 

I guess the moral of the story is this, no good deed will go unpunished. If you want to snuggle those around you, don't do it with hopes of something good happening for you because it won't. Do it because you want to help others, because actually since I started this things have gone horribly. I am still sticking with it. I've got to try. 

Leprosy is not Contagious

I think we all know just how hard the year 2009 is going to be. The year of the ox may as well be known as the year of the goose egg, as in zero. It seems nearly every nation all of the world is declaring 0 or 1 % fiscal growth for the upcoming year. Zero is a more accurate descriptor also of the level of hope most people are feeling about their jobs, investments, retirement, ability to pay for health care, college funds, or just about anything related to our economy. Some oil baron got drunk, oh but not any more wink wink, and now an entire planet gets to enjoy his hangover. Thanks George Bush, we all needed a lesson in humility and your global policies have ensured us that no one is safe from your lesson.

But This is not about GW, this is about all of us finding a way to help everyone get through this mess. I have decided that I need an attitude adjustment. I am a teacher and try very hard to be nice to my students, some of the time, like when they are not being annoying. But I must admit at times I am a bit stand offish with my fellow man. 

My friend Speedy was not very happy with me recently when a woman suffering from Leprosy butted in front of me in line and sort of rubbed up against me, I shouted "Leprosy!" and pushed everyone away from her as if I was rescuing them from a speeding bus. Leprosy is not something I give a lot of thought to, but I must admit I did think it was catching and that it was totally uncool of this woman to be out in public with her skin condition. But Speedy informed me that Leprosy is not contagious. Should I have shouted Leprosy and rushed to get away from this poor woman? Popular opinion with my friends is that I was rude and narcissistic. So I did a bit of checking and found out they were right, Leprosy is gross and disfiguring, but it can not be transmitted by touch. So I am going to try very hard to improve my attitude in dealing with people.

We are all in this sinking ship together, so we must try hard to be cool with each other and make everyone feel connected united. 

I have decided not to cover my face with both hands when other people cough or sneeze. I will not run away and walk quickly around people with exploding acny problems or who are horribly obese. I will allow others, well those who have some basic grooming habits, to stand within arms reach, and in general I will do my best to simply keep my composer in dealing with people. Honestly I do like people, I mean like the ones that bring me a coffee in a coffee shop, or the people who give me a massage, or the laundry lady, or the cleaning lady, or the accounting women at my work who assist in the processing of my monthly pay, so it is obvious I have a lot of love for the common people. But I want to really go beyond this and attempt to offer a smile to all -- even people with skin diseases who cut in front of me in food lines. 

But of course when I mean people, I don't mean the rich. Those monsters are on their own during this economic melt down. F*** them and their SUVs and their BMWs and their F****** hedge funds. Of course for the rich who are on their way back into the humanity of our planet do to bankruptcy we welcome you back with open arms. 

Amazon Has Siminoe's Books

Amazon dot com is the largest single books seller in the world. So I was really happy when I was able to list my books with them. The great thing is that they have the look inside program, so people can take a look at a couple of pages and see if the book is what they might be looking for. Right now I have 1 of my three novels, Notes from Manhattan, set up on look inside; however, within the next week both Echo Pool and Those Who Hear will also be look inside ready. So if you haven't purchased all of these books, go check me out on Amazon! The economy is ugly, but you deserve to read a good book! JUST CLICK ON THE TITLE OF THIS ARTICLE AND YOU WILL BE THERE!

Orchestra in down town Bangkok

I love Bangkok, it really is a great city. We enjoyed this free performance of the Bangkok Orchestra last Sunday night. They did a lot of movie tunes. The music was splendid, and the company a lot of fun. Writers and tourists love to hype all of Bangkok's nasty little secrets, but not enough is written about the simple life here in one of S.E.A.'s biggest cities. There really is a lot to see culturally, museums and ancient temples abound, and there is a very international feel to the metropolis as people from all over the world work and travel here.
Of course, this was just a simple night with friends, but what's better than that?