Bangkok Stupor
Always begin at hotels
Where at 4 in the morning
You wonder about
The service, the class, the history
Of bellboys and cleaning maids
Nicking your room
Have you been
Robbed today
While being ripped off
By tee shirt vendors
By a hundred baht or so
In Pratunam?
Or was it
Platinum?Locals have their own way
Of saying everything,
Meaning extremely
Different things
To a
farang like me.
Like their s’s and their ch’s
Pooch instead of Push
Their r’s and their l’s
Load instead of Road
V’s and their w’s
Wan instead of Van
While S’s at the end of words
Disappear like the French’s.
(By contrast,
Thais know
PilipinBy their rolling r's)
So, how does one say
Back to Radisson Hotel on Rama 9?
It’s
Ladisson Hotel, Lama 9.To Emerald Hotel?
Emelald, Ra!cha!dah!Central World, Siam?
Centerwould, See-am.Once the driver mistook my
Paragon and asked
“Poseidon?”Absolutely off their chart
Of quirks and syllables!
I corrected him by saying
See-am, PalaGone.But
Had I not, it must have been
At the least
A wely intelesting lied
Bringing Out the Garbage
ADRENALINE
You keep a think for it to see
You see the think the light to be
The shore is starting to cohort
With links to out sides male the port
We show the way to live is fine
The time is right to hold the tide
There runs a road of glass and beads
The famine of a million seeds
The bricks are doing plenty time
The woman bathes in running slime
The babies catch the early fog
We keep the cats and kill the dogs
The letters tumble like the rain
We shoot for pictures out in maine
The wires are hard and switch cannot
The plates tectonic into rot
The orange switches turns the on
We hope that no one reds the song
The jeep is packed with winsome lies
The train is milling forty miles
The mind would like to pack the wind
The wind would like to fuck with me
I see the it begins to schmuck
The lit that shows is awesome luck
We can’t object the object fill
And when forget the will’s the bill.
The Price of Beauty
Thousands of tiny red ants crawling and biting all of my facial nerve endings.
-- That was Today at derma peeling, pricking, and multiple steroid injections.
Montage-A-Trois
UN: PHYSICAL VIOLENCE in THE PLANNING CONFERENCE
I was immensely pissed last Thursday in the briefback after the brainstorming session.
All four groups were tasked to come up with the Next Generation Thingy, and I guess everybody got giddy at trying to outdo the other groups with their hip ideas. There was one group that got TOO excited. As I was going up the front to setup our group's presentation, Lisa from Brand was protesting in her annoyingly perky voice that it was *their* turn to present. I was already plugging my thumbdrive into the port when Lisa rushed up front, grabbed the mike, and inadvertently PUSHED me off the stage. It was a good thing a chair was nearby to catch my fall. Once I flicked on my slides, I walked across the platform to my seat on the other side and said, "Since you're so desperate to present, go ahead and have the floor."
Everybody was crazy on the whole thing. Some were chanting "Lisa! Lisa!" while I was trying to appear cool and unmiffed. (Later Drew tells me how transparently cross I looked with my tightly-knotted eyebrows.) It was like the WWF smashdown, with me, smashed-down, in the ring.
Anyway, Lisa carried on, and their ideas weren't as mindblowing and do-able as ours. I don't think anybody remembered what they presented. I'm not saying ours was better (although that's quite true), but the violence on Lisa's side was completely unnecessary for the quality of their work.
DEUX: LOST IN TRANSLATION
Been having troubles with the new brochures. We can't seem to check the final drafts properly because of the Thai texts. Unfortunately, when the translation comes in, the Local Mktg team have a lot of issues with the merchandizing being lost, literally, in translation.
'Ple from the Thai team suggested that we should study Thai so we could catch the errors earlier.
With 44 letters that resemble squiggles more than the Roman alphabet, I don't think so.
TROIS: REJECTION & ACCEPTANCE, ALL IN TWO WEEKS
My sci-fi story "The Black Coat" for the Specfic anthology (PSFV2) edited by D. Alfar didn't make the cut, suffering from structure problems and a need for polishing. However, my other little project "Highly Confidential: The Electric Journal of Ana Banana" under a penname Sally Magdangal, happily got in to Cozyreads first antho HEARTBREAK.
Both news kept me grounded. Winsome, Losesome.
Life goes on.
C'est la vie.
Carpe diem.
Bonna cera.
Adios, patria.
Saramhabida, Bo.
