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I wish I could say this has been a great year. Or a challenging year. Or a year that’s changed the way I look at life, the world around me, or myself. I’ve passed from 18 to 19– nineteen proving to be fully the bleak and desolate age it promised: caught between the romance of 18 and the maturity of twenty. Oh, you’re 19. I see. they say. I wish I could say that this has been a hard year, or I guess, in any way an exceptional year.

I can truthfully say it’s been a memorable year. Though perhaps not the best or most fond of my memories, studying in Bangkok, and now traveling in India has assured that this year won’t be one easily forgotten. But as I look back, and ask “what have I learned? What have I gained?” the answers are not as forthcoming as I’d like them to be– if they’re forthcoming at all.

If I haven’t learned anything– a few historical dates and figures aside, and maybe that Singapore is just a displaced American city– then the crowning feature of the year is that I’ve lost faith– or further lost faith. I’ve long since given up any notion of a god or deity or afterlife. I’ve long since realized that there’s no meaning or “purpose” to our time here– that there’s no to that age old narcissistic question: why are we here? No, that’s a lie: there’s no shortage of answers to that question: long-winded answers, optimistic answers, pessimistic answers, philosophical answers, religious answers… but in the end, none of them amount to more than a greater or lesser mastered sophistry. That’s not the point. The point is that I’ve not spent 2005 in search of a “transcendent meaning.” I’ve not spent the year reading crusty old philosophers, or analyzing their claims. No, my quest has been more modest. Simply: what makes me happy? Or, more accurately, what makes me feel contented, regardless of happiness?

I had thought, for a while, that I could gain my own contentment by helping others reach theirs, or simply helping others. Of course, the irony of this is that, while holding such a conviction, I did very little toward that end. A few Saturdays volunteering, or an impromptu park clean-up or two doesn’t stack up to a hill of beans on the Everest of human suffering. But what staying in Asia has provided me with has been an opportunity to observe is just how much international aid– whether motivated by greed or idealism– is a failure. Of just how petty and trifling it is. Of how, for its altruistic intentions, it can be more damaging and undermining than beneficial. And of how superfluous and unnecessary it often is.

I could (and probably should, but won’t) spend paragraphs elaborating the evidences that have led me to this conclusion, but that’s outside the scope of the question: 2006. What now? The long and short of it is that I don’t think people can be helped. In many cases, I don’t think they should be helped. I don’t believe in panaceas.

Talking with Sagar, I managed to list quite a tirade of things I no longer believe in. I don’t believe in God. Or “a god.” Or an afterlife. I don’t believe in good, and I don’t believe in evil. Or “bad,” unless an adjective to describe taste or the quality of an object. I don’t believe war to be good or bad, or killing, either. No more than I believe charity to be good. I don’t believe in progress: human progress, or progress in general. At best I believe in evolution, which is a neutral and unavoidable process. I don’t believe that people can be helped, nor should they. I don’t believe in language, and I can’t bring myself to love science. I don’t believe in so many of the vaunted human sentiments or emotions that Hollywood says we’re all supposed to experience on a daily basis. I do believe life absurd, but I don’t find laughing at its absurdities a sufficient raison d’etre. I believe in mountains, and I believe in the ocean, though the latter will soon be destroyed by human industry and “progress.” I’m deprived of idealism, and barren of hope. Hope for myself, for my future happiness, and hope for the happiness of humanity. Whatever “humanity” means. Whatever “trust” and “love” and “anger” and “sorrow” and “hope” means. Oh, I hear all these terms, thrown about here and there, but just as food has become tasteless in my mouth, these terms have become meaningless in my mind. I’d say “meaningless in my soul,” because that sounds more profound, but for “soul:” another thing I don’t believe in.

So. 2006. What now? The beauty of it all is that life doesn’t require a reason. Regardless of happiness or purposefulness, I’m going to spend the next six weeks of my life at the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, teaching orphans and street-children math. Then I’ll spend the next six months of my life working, and return to Montana State in the fall. I’ll pass a delightful fall semester trying to chew as much as I plan on biting off, and then it’ll winter break, and such will be 2006. Wow.

2005 has been a year without charm. But also largely without event. And I should be grateful for that, I suppose. Regardless, it’s come and gone, and another year is upon us.

From Kochi, India, I wish you all a:

Happy New Year.

Since Hyderabad, we’ve been through Hampi, Bangalore, Kollum, and are now settled and enjoying the beachs at Varkala.

Apologies that I’ve been less than communicative– we’ve covered a lot of kilometers, in a rather short amount of time.

Needless to say, I’m enjoying myself, and will, perhaps, post a decent update when I make it back to Bangalore and settle in.

Arrived in Hyderabad at 7:40 this morning, despite nearly missing my flight (my wake-up call came an hour late) and the pilot nearly missing the end of the runway (heh– our Boeing 747-800 came to a screeching halt some 20 feet before the end of the runway).

Sagar met me at the airport. Needless to say, it’s great to see him again.

Spent the afternoon wandering around, partially lost, eating amazing food, exploring a huge museum, and eventually ended up at a huge Mosque– large enough to accomodate 10,000 people.

Hyderabad is much more of the India I expected, and much easier to digest and take in than Kolkata.

This isn’t a proper post, and I apologize. I’m still looking for a power adapter for my lappy– when I have that, you’ll have a decent update, and maybe a picture or two.

We leave for Hampi tomorrow morning by bus.

In Kolkata, alive and well. I leave for Hyderabad at 5:40AM tomorrow.

I’m completely overwhelmed. It will likely to a while before I’m able to collect my thoughts or post them; I’m painfully watching the battery life disappear on all of my electronic devices, while I look for a plug-adapter.

Singapore great. I was totally unprepared for what I found there.

It looks like I may actually leave Bangkok one of these days. According to the original plan, I would have already been in India by now… rather than waiting outside the Indian Embassy in Bangkok. Oh well. These things take time. In two hours, I’ll have my Indian visa. In 20 hours, I’ll fly out.

I feel like the last two weeks have been a lot like the end of The Return of the King– it keeps ending, and ending, and ending. One goodbye is followed by another goodbye, followed by… But it’s probably better this way: unlike leaving Cheyenne, the goodbyes I miss now I can’t take care of 9 months from now. I’ve been mostly packed for a week now. I plan on finishing packing tonight… probably late tonight, knowing how I roll. It’s all good, though.

In other news, I’ve been placed with the Involvement Volunteers Association (http://volunteering.org.au/) in Bangalore, India. From the 4th of January to the 17th of February, I will be assisting with an organization that teaching students from orphanages, slums and the streets subjects about math, art and sports. I’m a little nervous, of course– I don’t know what exactly is in store for me, but at the same time I’m excited– excited by the idea of doing something tangible to help make the world a little better, and I’m excited just to be living in India for a few weeks.

This might be the shortest, and most thoroughly boring blog post in the history of short, boring blog posts. My advice: deal with it. =P Time for me to go hang out at my favorite embassy.

New drink of choice: Coke & RedBull. The RedBull here in Thailand (the original, before some brilliant Austrian tourist came to Thailand and said “gee, this would be really good, if it was carbonated” and then introduced it to the West with carbonation and flying competitions…) isn’t carbonated, and consequently it tastes a lot like… syrup, really. In the middle of an all night paper-writing session, however, I tripped upon a stroke of genius: mix the nasty flat RedBull (which I had purchased in anticipation of a crazy all night paper-writing session) with Coke. The result has proved quite palatable, tasting rather like American RedBull with a hint of Coke. And best of all, my concoction costs just under $0.50USD, making it a little easier to swallow than a $2.29 8oz can of American RedBull. Mmm.

Foolhardy optimism. Everything is for the best, eh Pangloss? I dunno. Maybe “foolhardy optimism” is just a clever euphemism I’ve coined for myself to replace the more truthful terms of “outright foolish,” “irresponsible,” and “unprepared.” Or maybe it’s just a result of an honest misunderstanding. I can’t say. (Where’s Freud when you need him? I’m sure he’d know.) Regardless, my stay in Thailand has been extended by a few days as I wait for my Indian visa application to go through. I think I misunderstood the kindly (which is to say perfectly rude, but I guess everyone that works at an embassy is rude) Indian gentleman at the embassy when I called a month or so back. I thought he said “don’t worry about getting it now. Just come down a few days before you leave for India and bring two passport photos.” At least that’s what I gathered from the conversation. But I don’t trust myself, really– especially as of late, I’ve been too willing and eager to project the answer I want to hear on to ambiguous phrases of broken English. Sometimes it becomes a necessity– especially when a person’s English is sufficiently broken that the only way try to understand said person is to guess as to what s/he might be trying to say, and then compare the words s/he actually using to what your guess. Guess and check. Usually it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe this is a case of the latter. Regardless, rather than a single-day turn-around process, it takes five business days to get a visa from the embassy. To my credit, I did try to get this taken care of a full week ago, but the informative gentleman at the embassy must have simply assumed that I knew to show up between the normal business hours of 9:00 and noon. Well, I didn’t. When I showed up, the only person around to answer my questions was a few sheets of paper posted outside of the embassy, which tipped me off as to the hours, but not my five-day-predicament. I tried again last Friday, but once again didn’t make it on time– this time not because I didn’t know when I needed to be there, but rather because 1) I didn’t wake up on time (imagine that..) and 2) I got stuck in Bangkok traffic (heh– yeah, that was a little strange. After 40 minutes in a taxi– what should have been a 30 minute ride– it was nearly noon and we were weren’t nearly to the embassy, so I asked the taxi-driver to take me back home. Although rather confused, he was rather amused. I really didn’t want that last sentence to rhyme, but I can’t think of a better way of expressing it, and it’s really not worth it. Look at that: topic hi-jack!). Back outside of the parentheses, I finally made it to the embassy this morning. After lots of waiting (this is an embassy, after all I submitted my application and I asked the kindly woman who took it if I should return between 3:00 and 4:30 this afternoon to pick up my visa– the stated “visa collection time,” according to the paper taped to the wall. She mumbled something incomprehensible about 3:00, and then very kindly yelled “NEXT” and hit her “next-person” bell. So I came back at 3:00, gave my slip of paper to the gentleman behind the glass, who pointed to something on the piece of paper and said “no, no. Wrong day. Come back tomorrow between 12:00 and 1:00. NEXT!” Anyhow. The end result of this ridiculously long paragraph is that it usually takes five business days for the processing of a visa. Anyhow. I suspect it’ll all work out in the end. Josh isn’t leaving until the 18th, so I’ll have a place to stay, and it looks like I’ll be able to shuffle my flights such that I’ll arrive in India only three days later than planned, with a shorter stay in Singapore. Eesh.

I’m learning, anyway. =)

But going back a while… exactly a week ago was the celebration of the king’ birthday. Surprisingly, as opposed as I am to the concept of a monarchy, the king has grown on me. The rest of the royal family aside, the king seems to genuinely care for Thailand and the welfare of its people. He is intelligent and seemingly articulate, and his list of humanitarian programs and activities is genuinely impressive. The rest of the royal family, from what I can tell, and from talking to some other Thais, are pretty worthless: incalculably rich and typically selfish, living the high-life off the sweat of Thai people and the bounty of Thailand’s inconceivably high import tariffs. But the king: he seems like a good guy. I can understand, in part, why the Thais love him. Of course, it’s probably pretty easy to be a good guy in his situation: he doesn’t have any official political power, can’t be voted out of office, has unanimous and enthusiastic support for everything he does, has have no business interests whatsoever, and is fabulously wealthy. So what else is there to do, besides be a good guy?

Anyhow. About his birthday: the whole of Bangkok was decorated with lights (like Christmas, almost– I never seen so many clear lights, dangling down like creepers from trees, criss-crossing above the streets, outlining Chairman-Mao sized pictures in the middle of every major road… Here’s a really blurry picture (tripod? I don’t need no stinkin’ tripod!):

There was a parade and a huge selection of festivities, in addition to a series of fireworks displays (both before and after his actual birthday). I happened to be directly below the fireworks display on Monday (the celebration day proper), which was just fantastic:

Being directly below the explosions, I and everything around me was completely covered in a rain of charred bits from the brilliant explosions of color above. This is a picture of a sheet that was on the ground behind me. The black things are the same things that I was washing out of my hair, later on that night:

I finished my last final and handed in my last paper (which you can download here if you’re interested in a rather dry analysis of Paul Cezanne’s influence on the Cubist movement– heh. Didn’t think so. =P) on Thursday. It’s a strange feeling: knowing that I’m done with school until next September. That’s nine months. It’s kinda exciting, actually.

There’s a dog walking around in my internet cafe right now. I’m not surprised, though. The front doors are propped open, and dogs generally wander where they like without much interference. The doors to the classrooms were usually shut (because the individual rooms, not the buildings, are air-conditioned), so it only happened once that a dog wandered into class– but they certainly wandered around campus enough. Sometimes a dog decides that it wants to cross the river. I’ve never seen a dog try to swim the river, but I have seen a dog or two take the ferry across. Like monks, they get free passage on boats and ferries. No joke. =)

This weekend was spent hanging out with people I’m going to miss when I leave Bangkok and spending time in the city. I took a few photos, which you can find here, including pictures of the new monster shopping center that just opened, and pictures from the aquarium inside:
www.eateggs.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1184

That’s about it, for now. If there’s anything I’m forgetting, let me know.

Enjoy your -6 degree weather. But hey– at least it’s going to warm up into the single digits today. A high of 7 degrees!

In the mean time, I’ll keep working on my tan. 82 today, 86 on Friday, and 90 by Saturday.

Heh. Actually, I’m jealous of your snow and cold, but I’m going to pretend like I’m not by rubbing in the fact that, at 11:00PM at night, it’s at least 70-something degrees outside. And that’s 10 times warmer than it’s going to get for you tomorrow. =P

—

Oh, in other news, I’m DONE WITH MY THAI CLASS! I had the most wonderful prof (or ajarn, as they’re called)– I don’t think I’ve ever met a nicer woman– but it’s still a huge relief to have the class over and done with. Tonight I still need to write that paper I’m putting off, and study some for that final tomorrow… but if it’s 11:00PM now, I still have 13 hours to do both. Plenty of time, eh?

It becomes an obsession. Becomes an obsession. An Obsession. Obsession.

Narrated in a deep and raspy voice, haggard almost:
—
How did I end up here, living in the future?
I’ve said this before: maybe a dozen times to
some. And yet the profundity– the gravity of the
sensation grows every time I step outside of my
concrete box I call home.

I see the future. And it scares me. And it draws
me in. It’s not a healthy attraction, not a
joyous attraction. It’s the attraction of the
femme fatale, the attraction of
destruction, of disease, of ruin, of glorified
death! It’s the attraction of selling one’s soul
— a promise of immortality, in exchange for your
life. A new life. A brighter life. A trendy,
happy, fast life. Life full of people, places,
moments, places and brands. It’s brighter, here.
More exciting here. Happier here. Just don’t go
down there.

In time, too, the stars are forgotten, Their dull
shine is sometimes visible through the haze of
pollution, but even at their brightest, the man
made stars shine brighter: and shine a rainbow of
colors such as those god fashioned could never
have across the millions of miles. The man-made
stars are closer, brighter. Mommy, were stars
always red and green? Once, before the glory
of man, they were plain and faint and white.
Mommy, who made the stars? We did, honey.
We did. We turn them on, we turn them off, each a
testament to our glorious accomplishments, to our
glory! to our glory!
—

Strange: my obsession with understanding the filth and poverty of Bangkok has been completely replaced with an obsession of understanding its wealth, its booming expansion, its inconceivable opulence. The former distressed me, but the latter terrifies me. The former is history. The latter seems our destiny. It’s only a matter of time.

It happens every once in a while that, listing to a song I’ve heard a hundred times, I’ll suddenly be struck by it profundity. Cake’s Tougher Than It Is, for example. The chorus (some people like to make life / a little tougher than it is / some people like to make / liiife / a little tougher than it is…) has long been embedded somewhere deep in my subconscious– a jumbled mess, no doubt, with every other chorus I’ve heard over the last ten years or so– but suddenly, on its 101st repetition, Cake’s deft gifting for tangible and well adapted imagery brought the staggering message of the song home. Check out these lyrics:

the more you try to shake the cat
the more the thing will bite and scratch
it’s best, i think to leave its fur
and listen to its silky purr

Ha! Outstanding. It’s so clear, really. And Cake is certainly a band that doesn’t shake the cat, so to speak. They take life, as they find it (with stick shifts, safety belts, race-car ya yas, short skirts and the like) and the sing about it. There’s nothing contrived about it, no underlying political or moral message, but rather just a simply reflection of life’s silky purr. I think we all could learn a little about life from Cake.

Um. Yeah.

*ahem*

No, I am not procrastinating again. I most definitely found myself inspired by those lyrics. I mean, who wouldn’t be? And being so inspired, I was instantly overcome by the desire to share my inspiration. Of course, sharing my inspiration means putting aside those pressing school matters, but sometimes, oh reader, sacrifices must be made!

In fact, I may be in a bit of trouble: by the standards of those Bovard-esque super-over-achieving students who can study for six finals and still manage to get in a game of Warcraft III, all in the same night, well… what I’m up against is nothing. But you have to keep in mind that I’m completely out of shape, academically. In fact, to speaking metaphorically, I haven’t had to run in months, so this upcoming metaphorical 10K (god! could he BE! any more heavy handed??!) is looking more like a marathon, and all I seem to remember about academic endurance is how to stretch out and warm up– posting on the blog, checking all my favorite websites and, say, is that my guitar over there?.

Yup. I’m in trouble. And my head hurts. And, damnit, I’m addicted to Chrono Trigger again, too. In fact, I beat it twice yesterday. And once the day before that. In an unrelated note, my American History class has been especially enjoyable as of late. My notes, though, seem only to consist of an incomprehensible string of A’s, B’s, X’s and Y’s. I can’t quite make out what it says… something about McCarthyism, or Lavos, or Vietnam…

Edit:
I’ve uploaded some pictures of my apartment (in order to try to guilt trip the rest of you into sending me those pictures you promised, of course =P )
http://www.eateggs.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=1121