198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

I’m out of school with no job prospects. I’m slacking along day to day making no real use of myself. My newest personal philosophy is that I have to appreciate the moment I’m in and what I’m doing in it. Whatever I’m doing is what I’m doing and I ought to be satisfied with its value. I can’t be living my life fretting over what I should be doing, or if I’m wasting my time, or if I could be doing something better. Whatever I’m doing, I am doing because it was my decision and it must have some value.

My relationship with Josephine is feeling more secure, but it’s strange how much things have changed in the past few months. I feel that I’ve re-invented myself and I’m a completely different person than I was several months ago.

I was in the law library and I just closed my eyes and thought about the alternate reality I was in over the summer in Bangkok. I was a completely different person there. The reality of the hotel is so distanced now; the air of Bangkok, the feel of Bangkok. I was not who I think of myself being when I was in Bangkok.

I close my eyes and imagine the space I occupied while in Bangkok: the hotel room, the furniture, the air conditioner problems, the windows, the view, the heat and humidity, all the places I went, all the spaces I filled. My second time there, all of it vivid, but still so far from me, so detached. And it is so easy to forget that at the beginning, when I went to Bangkok, Josephine and I had called it quits. So even though our relationship was on the road to recovery and reconciliation, the word was that we were over and any future relationship had to be earned, and our growing process had to be continuous. Any complacency would be the death again.

The death of our relationship as it was. I guess that was the major change, because our relationship occupied my entire last year and it became who I was. When we killed the relationship, we killed my entire past year, and the summer was the time when I was recovering and readjusting to having an entire year lost. When I finally landed on my feet, I was starting anew, the nearest thing to what I “was” was over a year prior.

The destructiveness of the relationship was so subtle that I feel that I was re-invented without a crisis, but the whole relationship was a crisis of sorts. But it wasn’t a personal crisis, and that’s what’s missing from my life; what I need to break through to something different or new, something that is not predictable and constrained in my old patterns.

Series VIII, Roll 9 (Pentax ZX-5n, T-Max 100):

Taipei, Taiwan: I don't remember if Josephine and I flew to Taipei on the 3rd or the 4th. I don't remember leaving Kaohsiung or flying to Taipei. I don't remember if we flew to Taipei. But on the 4th, we were in Taipei. I bought cheap glasses frames. We may have gone places that I might have recognized years later when I was in Taipei in March 2005. That night, she took me to the airport to fly back to Bangkok to catch my flight back to the U.S.


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Bangkok, Thailand: All I remember about the one last night in Bangkok is from photos. I went to a bar that had live music. I don't remember where I stayed or if I stayed in the YMCA (I must have), or how I got from and to the airport, maybe bus.


Frame 32 - I did talk to this singer to tell them they were really good, but that's all I remember.

Bangkok, Thailand

Series VIII, Roll 6 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2):


Frame 28 - And still, the traffic this year was so much better than the year before.


Frame 29 - See? This emptiness was unheard of the year before.


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Frame 32 - Although you could still get stuck in traffic.


Frame 33 - If you travelled via canal, you were home free.

Series VIII, Roll 7 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2):


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Series VIII, Roll 6 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

Frame 7 - Tuk-tuk in front of the infamous red light district


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Series VIII, Roll 6 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

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Series VIII, Roll 5 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

Lumphini Park:


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Series VIII, Roll 5 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

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Bangkok, Thailand

Series VIII, Roll 4 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2):


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Series VIII, Roll 4 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

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Series VIII, Roll 3 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

Lumphini Park:


Frame 22 - Every evening music would start blaring over loudspeakers and everyone would stop what they were doing. It may have been the national anthem.

Series VIII, Roll 3 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

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Series VIII, Roll 2 (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2): Bangkok, Thailand

Frame 11 - Construction on the elevated rail system.


Frame 12 - Abandoned alley.


Frame 13 - Traffic in Bangkok in 1998 was much better than in 1997 after the economic bubble burst, but there were still instances.

Supplemental - Taipei, Taiwan

Yai and Yui picked me up at the hotel this morning and took me to the airport. Neng was there, Jiu, and Ja, I think. Kuk couldn't make it but she called. We had some food at the airport and then I went through the gate that I had already seen so many of the summer participants go through, then it was me and I was gone, too.


Series VI, Roll 8, Frame 35 (Pentax K2, Ilford XP2)

Josephine met me at the airport in Taipei. She came running to greet me once I cleared the Customs doors. She looked so happy to see me and it felt so much like home to see her. Everything was going to be just fine. I love Josephine. She loves me. The weather was gorgeous! Taipei, near the peak of summer was wonderful after Bangkok's heat. It was late in the afternoon. We drove 30 or 40 minutes into Taipei and she took me to the Taipei YMCA where she had reserved a room for me. The room was dinky compared to the Y in Bangkok. But to be with Josephine again. Alone. I didn't care about anything else.

Bangkok, Thailand

My last full day in Bangkok. I had a few things to do and went about it, trying to appreciate the surroundings that would soon fade into memory. I took in the atmosphere, the people, the activity; Bangkok. Bangkok, capital city of Thailand. Industrial city, developing, construction everywhere, choked in traffic.

I set out in the morning and looked for and found the office of the NGO that publishes a newsletter called "Burma Issues". My travels made me change the topic of my paper for Professor Sompong's class. Instead of writing about the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone, I decided to write about Burma and its membership into ASEAN.

I had some copies of Burma Issues from Madoka, and I saw that the address was in the neighborhood of the YMCA. So on such short notice, I had to scrounge for whatever resources I could get my hands onto regarding Burma and ASEAN. There were English speaking people at the Burma Issues office, and they gave me copies of the monthly newsletter going back to 1995. I walked out with quite a pile.

It was an overcast day, looked like rain. I went to pick up laundry that I had dropped off yesterday after Madoka left. I was going to meet Yai and Yui later that day for dinner. We were going to meet at the Chulalongkorn library, but there was a bit of a mix up as to which library. We eventually met up, they all conveniently carrying cell phones. They took me to the same restaurant that Kuk had taken me, Rey, and Philip the day after I arrived in Bangkok! I didn't recognize it at first because we came in a different entrance. I thought back to that first time, when Bangkok was new and unfamiliar, and these people I’ve grown to know were complete strangers.

I showed Yai and Yui the photographs of the camps. They took me back to the hotel and I went to Silom for the last time to wander about the night market. Until then I had pretty adamantly refused to patronize the night market because it also hosted and fed a rather seedy red light district, but I figured what the hell. No one else was around, I had nothing to do, and it made no difference if I went or not.

Bangkok, Thailand

The train ride took about eleven hours, then we were back in Bangkok at the same train station from which Josephine and I went to Ayuthaya. I think it was just past six in the morning when we stumbled off the train and found a phone. Madoka called the Kawasaki's who were staying at a hotel in Chinatown, the Burapa. I think we woke them up, but they told us to hop a cab over nonetheless.

We got to the Burapa Hotel and made our way up to their room. It looked like they had moved in; their stuff cluttered the room and I couldn't even figure out where to sit. I settled for a spot on the floor. The Burmese doctor that Madoka and I had met at the Burmese Lawyers Council was there, apparently staying with them. While Madoka and I were up at the ABSDF camp, the Kawasaki's were visiting another refugee camp further south. The clutter in their room was merchandise they had bought cheap in Thailand and were going to sell in Japan for a whopping profit, much of it returning to Thailand in the form of aid to the refugees.

We spent the morning hanging out in the hotel room, waiting for some other contacts that the Kawasaki's had. I forget who they were exactly, one of them was attending the same environmental conference that Madoka had to return to Bangkok for. We spent the time discussing our respective adventures and experiences. We also went to get Madoka's film developed, and after we got the pictures back we headed out to a Buddhist temple that the Kawasaki's worshiped at whenever they came to Thailand, and then we went for brunch back near the train station.


Series VI, Roll 8, Frame 28 (Pentax K2, Ilford XP2)


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This was the last day that Madoka and I would be together. She was going that day to the hotel near the airport where she was supposed to translate for two Japanese lawyers who were attending the environmental conference. I wouldn't get a chance to see her again before I left. After brunch, I bid farewell to the Kawasaki's, and Madoka and I and the person who was also attending the conference went back to the YMCA.

I had a travel guitar that I had bought for the trip to Thailand, but after visiting the refugee camp and experiencing how important music was to them, I decided to send it up to them via the Kawasaki's since they were headed up in that direction. I got housekeeping to open Brenda's room where I had left the guitar and gave it to Madoka to give to the Kawasaki's. I walked them to the main road to catch a cab. We bid our farewells and that was that. I was alone in Bangkok.

I walked back to the hotel and got a new room at the same discount rate, and I stopped. It was over. I finally had privacy. If it wasn't Josephine, it was everyone else. All summer. Then traveling with Madoka for a week. I could finally stop.