Imagine the north

I thought friends from overseas might like to know what everyday things look like.

You all know what temples and tropical beaches look like, don't you?  So when you close your eyes and think of me in Thailand you might get a whiff of that context... palm trees, reclining Buddhas possibly the more edgy among you imagine a hot chick gyrating around a silver pole* and the ubiquitous Bangkok traffic.

Unsurprisingly my life rarely contains any of these things, however the supermarket aisles you see above are a (at least) bi-weekly feature of my life.  This is my local supermarket - Villa, a chain known for being reasonably well stocked with the more western type produce and organic fresh veg compared to the more typical Thai supermarkets like Tops. It's a decent supermarket but when I say stocked, I use the term loosely as when they run out of something they sometimes replace it with that item, and sometimes with something else.

In fact I think the one thing that I notice about …

Facebook.

You know I don't really like it?  I did at first.  I played Human Pets (yeah I am weird like that) met lots of new people - bought and sold them, and I loved it.  I also played (fluff) friends (let weird, unless a forty year old feeding pixel bunnies bothers you) met lots of new people - petted their critters, and I loved it.

But now?  Not so much.  Most of the games I enjoyed died and although a few friendships have lingered, without the weirdly addictive activities to support them, they are somewhat mundane.  Which leaves me with the people I actually know and their status updates - and they are just witty ways of telling the world what you did today.  Some people are really good at status updates, and others just seem to use them as a vehicle for psychosis and neurosis.  But either way it is mostly what I did today / saw today, or sadly what my more interesting friend did today / saw today.  Nothing wrong with it, except it is real.  And real isn't always much fu…

My desk. We are not usually this cramped but we are undergoing a refurbishment which means we are a bit squeezed together and there is very little natural light.

I spend so much of my free time online and now in this new job my work is pretty similar, my manager is in Hong Kong, a colleague in Japan most of the team-working and discussion done by phone, email or
skype. It is a big change after 20 years of very present and embodied teaching and managing.

The devices we use to access our world become increasingly invisible until we photograph them.

I look back at my blog with so much pleasure and regret having stopped posting.

I has such a consistent record of life Chiang Mai style, I have no idea why that wouldn't work just a well in the rich eventful Bangkok we now live and love in.

Originally technology let me down, my blog was synched automatically through my Sony Ericsson with a particular number and when I lost the number I lost the connection. Re-syncing required a better data package, which I now have, and have had since November 2011. I also have, courtesy of my new job, a very cool Samsung Galaxy SII.

No more excuses, let's get caught up with life in Bangkok in 2012.