My circle of friends is a narrow one, comprising of less than a dozen individuals. Each was exhaustively selected, processed and acquired during a lifetime of wandering and growth. Nothing esoteric unites them, except some form of association with me; none, as far as I know, are particularly well-known, endowed with special talent, especially unique or unreasonably kind. None, up to now, have changed, or significantly contributed to, the course of world history.

They are, nonetheless, all intrinsically good people, with a goodness that washes away sullen souls, always. Happily, this process of friendly acquisition is a mutual exercise, and I feel quietly privileged for it; not the privilege of granted status, but that wrought from daily toil and the struggle of personalities.

This diaspora of friends - this Thomaspora - encircles our world, from Bavaria, to sunny California, London and the English Midlands, Rome, once again war-torn Lebanon and here in Singapore; it extends beyond our terrestial form, extending to envelop the Heavens.

It sometimes feels as if I am an expatriate, distanced and disentangled from these fellow creatures, my fellow creatures, and I am longing for a moment when time can be halted and space compressed, when this circle can surround me again.

The Simorgh is one of Tehran’s finer hotels. Its friendly staff contrasts conspicuously against the gloom that most Tehranians seem to carry. A restless first night, anywhere, is never a surprise; some might even say it is a prerequisite: one has to accustom oneself to the folds of the chosen pillow and observe its fluffy vagaries, not to mention the nervous acquianting between body and mattress . The novelty of the room - how it descends to darkness, how early light infiltrates the drapes to defeat the guardians of night - is another factor in determining how Sleep will conduct itself.

That the first night was disturbed by dreams of a bout between two twisted partners came as a mild jolt; that the second and third nights continued with this torrent of nightmarish images of loves betrayed and lovers destroyed questioned my psyche. This was not a welcoming sign. As if this Persian verse was meant for me:

Mayhmaan gar che aziz ast walayken cho nafas
Khaffa maysaazad agar aayado waapas narawad

A guest is very dear but like our precious breath, it will suffocate us
if he comes and does not go back to where he came from.

Does this bed carry the conjugal history of unhappy loves? Or is this antagonistic Sleep a corollary of daily screenings on television each evening: one which reminisces the overthrow of the Shah through a series of montages interspersed around old news footage; the other lauding the sacrificial deaths of young men during the Arab-Persian War.

Perhaps the bed had to share its memories; a catharsis to shed itself of its heavy weight. Perhaps it was Michael Clanchy’s Abelard: a medieval life, on the bedside table, motioning toward the denouement between Abelard and Heloise. Perhaps it is time to find another room.

Seldom one to read “travel books” - I’d rather just go - Peter Moore’s Swahili for the broken-hearted came as a surprise. Together with Annie Caulfield’s Show me the magic: travels round Benin by taxi, these two were my first foray in to this genre. Sadly, the diagnosis is not good: strictly toilet reading. Read the rest of this entry »

The clinical early morning shuttle from Singapore’s Changi to Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta could never match the charm of the Berlin to Frankfurt run; Tegel with it’s unique architecture, design and history, on par with the city it deserves, with the greatest number of pickpockets per capita in the world (bar Riga) while the flughafen at Frankfurt, Lufthansa’s flight base with its 50,000 employees and countless planes, dwarfs over Tegel. The urbanscape as over Berlin as planes climbed to cruising altitude was always eventful, with occasional glimpses of the Siegessäule, and Bundestag and beautifully layered during the snow-covered months.

The Singapore-Jakarta run, by contrast, is everything that Berlin-Frankfurt isn’t; Changi Airport, that consumer mall that masquerades as the region’s busiest air traffic hub, is a model of efficiency, busyness and business. It is an airport as you would expect in EveryMan’s nightmare. Take-off carries you over the eastern corner of the island nation and briskly over the straits of Singapore - there is no monumental architecture, no life; this is confirmed during the descent on the return trip. There is a feeling of returning familiarity, but only the kind of familiarity that welcomes a return to an unhappy home.

It is as if there is purpose for this particular route, in this haste: as if you are prevented from acquainting yourself with the sameness of the public tower blocks that houses the majority of its populace. Much as you wish for novelty and fascination, once, one day, someday, for one moment to be marked by wonder, you are slapped down in disappointment. This is true of every sighting of the island, and of every day in Singapore.

further reading:

Jakarta to
Aceh

With such a maddening gap between posts, I had better be prepared with a legitimate reason; perhaps a catastrophe of some sort, or a bankruptcy, or the onset of the Saviour’s Season. Or a simple affliction perhaps. Thereby hangs a tale. The annual metamorphosis of digits into its sequential sibling, in an entirely predictable orderly manner inherent in the Gregorian Christian calendar, is cause enough to evoke a crisis.

That most personal, yet at once eternal, moment took place as if an ethereal, passing intangible took form. This fleetingness that materialized as the doors of the elevator opened into the rabid workaday morning decided to cling on to my company, much as a hungry kitten would. I immediately recognized this creature, of course, for who it was: that half of me that longed to rid itself of this island nation’s hold.

Long confined in expectancy, it, too, at last has a birth-time and date: Friday, 16th December, 2005, close to a quarter to 8. I wonder if the birthing of this originary instant, full of wishes and claims, would be better imprinted according to where longs for; in that case, and to be precise, it properly occurred late one Thursday afternoon (Pacific Time).

So now I scheme for my other half’s well-being: that it will survive its non-descript birth to become the person that I had hoped to fashion of myself, much as any well-intentioned paternal being aims at perfecting the specimen. Much as how popular Darwinism understands itself.

This island has been a home of sorts for four adult years, a relationship longer than any other I’ve developed with any random stack of bricks, in any town, country, region or continent; we have endured each other as would co-workers in a firm – professionally, which is hardly the basis for a symbiotic relationship at the heart of a home, or of any “belonging”. It is (far too readily) possible and necessary to write venomously of this place; to dispense all pretense of balance or fairness, and instead write in beautifully sadistic tones, with full sincerity, of soul-numbing barrenness.

Wednesday evening’s hours at the LA Opera’s production of Tosca was, if not supremely performed, then supremely enjoyable. Such a story of rape and murder, hypocrisy and deceit, mis-identities, and the epiphany of death cheated (with the obligatory suicide) all make for a boisterous night, set against an ever-flowing, imaginative set.

People-watching constitutes a legitimate sport here in “Hell-A”, as Bill Hicks calls Los Angeles. It is an odd crowd that inhabits the Los Angeles cultural terrain - neither bohemian nor crusty; grounded, yet with a sprinkling of nouveau riche. I have never seem so many geriatrics simultaneously leaning against urinals; perhaps they otherwise stand little chance of balancing themselves, much less make it back to their seats for the second act. I was so not tempted to utter a “May I help you with that?”

Writing this in Seattle’s Online Coffee Co. seems negligent, an abuse of time and disrespectful of the city that awaits exploration.

I can’t talk to people who are … disabled

Sales guy at “Miss Sixty”, 3rd Street Promenade.

How’s the lice? … [in raised voice] How’s the lice in your hair?

Barnes & Noble customer to older, hard of hearing (?) friend. Is that what friends do?

LA has been fun for now. 5 days into the vacation and I’ve done all the major bookshops left in this part of Hollywood, with only three purchases. The best by far has been Dutton’s, one of a growing number of “community bookstores” in the trenches fighting against the brutality of Big Conglomerates.

I’ve too much time on my hands but seem content to remain unproductive. Found this site, though, that charts one’s travels and justifies the collection of 12 used passports that lies piled amongst unused airline tickets, annotated phrasebooks and unsent postcards. It seems my mortal memory cannot contain the wonders of Istanbul’s mosques, nor of breakfast on the Bosporus. The sight of gas being flared in the middle of the Romanian countryside, as a heavy fog envelopes the midnight air, and the bursts of blood red clouds that colours the terrain. Or speeding on Ghanian roads while dodging metre wide craters. Or the beggars who press their infant’s faces on car windows as you stall and snake your way through Jakarta’s mean streets.

Try it, courtesy of World66. My preference would be to show cities visited as opposed to the entire country; after all, countries are but names, while cities are the actuality of countries, displaying the life-blood of their inhabitants.

This is what I wrote during my 12 days in Tehran; it should have been posted then. Now, in the lobby of the Surabaya Marriott , a mere 7970 km away, it no longer seems familiar, as if a lie, a memory deadened by distance. As if memory’s judgement is susceptible to the diktat of physical distance. Yet it is.

It’s been six years since I first set foot in the ex-Intercontinental Tehran, now re-christened the Esteghlal Grand Hotel. Not one iota has changed, except maybe they drained the Olympic-sized swimming pool. I know this because the pool is dry, though quite impossibly drained on account of some inherent need for maintenance. Its bottom is chiselled and brownish thru neglect and irrelevance - women are not allowed to swim, so what would it look like for a dozen male hotel guests to strut around exhibiting themselves?

So nothing’s changed, except they drained the pool. And maybe also they changed the sheets in the interim. Twice. Oh, and they laid a new layer of concrete on the mattresses.

At some point in its life the Inter-Continental stood adjacent - and proudly - next to the Tehran Internationa Conference Centre. That point stands in the bygone pre-revolutionary age, around some historical corner beyond our direct line of recollection. That point stood in light of a different vision, one unshrouded by the qualms of piety. Then uncloaked, it must have stood at the centre of Tehran’s high life. Now it’s more of an unsightly sibling, much as how the decrepit East tower of the Esteghlal stands in relation to the charming and new old-world warmth of the West tower.

What a world of difference! Here in the Marriott lobby, I catch a glimpse of a 40-something sitting less than gracefully and offering an unwelcome glimpse up her skirt; here, in the Marriott lobby, food and drink are plentiful, whereas in Tehran infidels are also subject to fastinglaws. Here, stewardesses professional flight attendants of various hues parade their wares as if it mattered, when, in truth, their plain sameness - of dolled up faces, bunned hair, trolley hand-carrys - would not be out of place in a 1950s Fascist-American fashion parade.

further reading:

Three roads open up in trying to understand modern Iran. Answering Only to God by Geneive Abdo & Jonathan Lyons, The Iranian Labyrinth by Dillip Hiro and Formations of the Secularby Talal Asad.

Three of the four are as far from academia as two of the authors are close to Oprah on “The Oprah Show”. Does that worry me?

Phuket: an amazing race II