Business Classy

Okay, new life goal: become fabulously wealthy and never fly coach ever again!

I'm back on the road for the holidays, and thanks to a nearly empty business class on my reserved flight from Bangkok to Dubai, I got the best upgrade I've ever had in my life for a song! Happy birthday month to me!

Seriously, I'm ruined for air travel now. How can you expect me to go back to the riff-raff now that I know what goes on upstairs?? A welcome aboard glass of champagne. A three-course meal with a tablecloth and real cutlery. Red wine. More champagne. My own personal minibar with water and mixers. More champagne. A lie-flat seat long enough to fit my 5'10" frame and then some (we're not in Thailand anymore, Toto) Someone even came by and offered me a mattress! Did I mention the bar/lounge area near the bathrooms? Emirates, you've created a monster!

Don't get me wrong, I've seen the photos and heard the stories of how the ther half lives. (I've even flown on private planes before, which is a whole other ballgame.) I knew all of these things existed, but until you actually experience it, you have no idea just how much of a massive difference it makes. I still had to suppress panic attacks anytime we hit even a little bit of turbulence, but at least I had the luxury of doing so in the privacy of my own little cubicle.

And now I'm in Dubai, a city that feels like Beverly Hills on steroids, where every building looks just fancy enough that I probably can't afford to even step inside. Nonetheless, my celebrity treatment continues. I got fast-tracked through immigration, and I was upgraded again at my hotel to a room with a direct view of the Burj Khalifa by a woman at reception who fawned over me like I was Kim Kardashian, for no other reason than the computers were down when I arrived and I had to wait 10 whole minutes in their comfortable and stylish lounge before checking in. The horror!

Joke as I might about not being able to go back to the riff-raff, the last 24 hours have been the kind of whirlwind of luxury service that always leaves me a little bit squirmy when I happen to stumble into it. I'm a big proponent of equality when it comes to dealing with people in general. I am inherently uncomfortable with being treated as though I were "less-than" or "greater-than" someone else. Whether you're rich or poor, world-famous or completely unknown, we're all human beings at the end of the day; subject to the same basic wants and needs, and equally at the mercy of our own mortality. I try my best to recognize that in everyone I meet, no matter who they are, and to treat everyone with the same level of basic kindness and respect. Particularly with the aforementioned hotel receptionist, who is clearly  a rock-star at her job, my own aversion to being waited on left me almost feeling guilty every time I declined to accept one of her helpful offers: Can I get you a drink from the bar? Dear God, no more booze! Would you like a bottled water? Well, I have one here, but since you brought it over, okay. You can leave your bag there, you don't have to carry it. It's a 10lb backpack... I think I can manage. It's just as well I'm not famous. I'm much more comfortable blending in with the "regular" folks.

Anyway, I'm beyond thankful for the extra privacy, the lie-flat seat, and the complimentary food and drinks that my time in business class afforded me. They will be sorely missed on the next (and longest) leg of my journey, and if I ever get the opportunity to (affordably) join the ranks of the business class again, you bet your ass I'm going to take it. For now, I'm off to do some shopping... cuz, you know, that's kind of my life now. Later, peasants! 😉 

Happy Birth Month to Me!

This is an Unalome.  It’s a symbol familiar to any Thai person, usually associated with Buddhism. I don’t ascribe to any form of organized religion, Buddhism or otherwise, but what I find interesting about this symbol is the fact that what it represents could be interpreted as rather atheistic.  It’s not some sort of mystical incantation that promises protection, guidance, or good fortune. It’s simply an abstract representation of the course of a human life. The dots at the bottom represent the consciousness (or the soul, if you prefer) coming into being. The center of the spiral marks the moment of birth and the beginning of the madness of existence that proceeds to toss us around like rag dolls in all manner of indiscriminate directions. Nothing makes sense. We’re never really sure if we’re moving forward or backward. All we can do is hang on… until we manage, through our gained wisdom and experience, to find that “thing” we’ve been searching for, and the chaos gives way to an inner confidence and peace. Buddhists would call this Nirvana, or Enlightenment. I think it’s anything (a person, a place, a profession) that gives you enough of a sense of belonging and purpose to calm the storms swirling around you. Finally, the dots at the top of the unalome represent the end of our journey, as we fade away back into the same nothingness from whence we came. It’s a simple and beautiful reminder that this existence, chaotic and stressful and confusing though it may be at times, IS the main event. It’s precious and it’s fleeting and it’s all we have, so we should dive in and make the most out of every single second we’re given, even if we’ve not yet found what it is we’re looking for.  

December is my birth month, and traditionally one of my least favorite months of the year. Not only is there the annoyance of having to (nearly) share a birthday with Jesus (who is a real buzzkill closing all the bars and keeping people home with their families when I wanna go out and get my birthday drink on), but the holidays are also not exactly the most singles-friendly time of year, which is a category I find myself in more often than not. As such, my typical December survival strategy is to keep my head down and wait for it to all blow over... but not this year. This year I decided to take back my birth month (that’s right, Jesus, I’m claiming the whole month. Suck on that!) and to kick it off I bought myself a little present, to commemorate Thailand as an official part of my story.

Because sometimes it's good to have a reminder that life is short, and if we spend all our time waiting out the storms, we’ll never know how much fun it could have been to play in the rain.  

Hello? Is this thing on?

Guess who’s back…. Back again…. Yup, after a year and a half of radio silence I’ve decided to give this whole blog thing another shot (and am already off to a cracking start, opening with a dated Eminem reference).  To anyone who doesn’t actually know me in person who may have been following this blog and who had assumed from my unexplained disappearance that I’d probably died in some kind of bizarre elephant/cycling/cliff diving/tuk-tuk related incident, you can officially release that breath you’ve been holding in for the past 17 months. I am alive and well.

The truth is, building and maintaining a successful blog of a personal nature such as this one requires a certain type of personality: one unaverse to the idea of self-promotion and so unwaveringly confident in the objective value of their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences that they’re willing to regurgitate anything and everything that pops into their minds into the public sphere… I’m looking at you, basically all of Twitter.  I’m much more your classic “tortured artist” type: possessive of a nagging, insatiable desire to create while at the same time convinced that at least 95% of the resulting creations have absolutely no societal value whatsoever. (i.e. this is all a bunch of shit!) In fact, I nearly binned this whole blog post after that last sentence, because who really cares what’s going on in the inner workings of my mind, but then thought well, that pretty much illustrates my point, doesn’t it?  Might as well keep going, and now I’m basically just writing out my own internal dialogue as it happens, which isn’t weird at all. This is why I’m so much fun at parties. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy enough to write about all the wild/funny/scary/crazy things that happen to me while I’m out there on the road, but once I settle down into any sort of domesticity and those types of situations give way to a comparatively mundane existence, the demons of self-doubt come out to play and I no longer feel like I have anything meaningful to contribute. As a result, the blog falls by the wayside.

And that’s basically what’s happened over the last year and a half. I’ve settled… sort of. After a few months spent back in the States I took the plunge and relocated to Chiang Mai. For the last 13 months I have been living the good life of cheap rent, cheap food, cheap booze and weekly massages.  While it has been calmer than the previous year and a half on the road, it’s not been completely without blog-worthy incidents. I visited Myanmar, Malaysia, and Singapore; took a three-month winter break to explore Australia and New Zealand (because I’m a New Englander at heart and I miss snow!); and just last month nearly died in a freak floor fan explosion (say that five times fast) in my own condo in Chiang Mai. That last one might be a little bit over dramatic, but I assure you I’ll never own a circular fan again!

Beware the spinning blades of death...

So that’s where I’m at. Adjusting to life in a new culture; trying (and failing miserably) to get a handle on the Thai language; and now, finally, giving in to that voice that’s been keeping me up at night, yearning to create something – anything – even if it’s shit. What that all means for the future of this blog, I can’t say. Maybe this is a turning point, and from here on out it’ll be all regular updates and shameless self-promotion. Maybe I'll even post some photos to Instagram while I'm at it! Or maybe I’ll mysteriously vanish in a few months’ time. I make no promises either way. That’s perhaps not the best marketing strategy in the world, but you know what, screw marketing! I’m an artist and I don’t give a fuck what you think!  Okay, nope. Dial it back, Kanye… How about this: I’m just gonna write whenever and whatever I’m moved to write, and if anyone wants to read it and maybe have a laugh along with me every now and again, I’m happy to have brightened your day. For now, I’m off to play some Eminem cuz that shit is stuck in my head and it’s not going away…