#30 - 30 for thirty

Monday morning 8:30 ish and the office which usually is occupied by roughly forty people at any given time is party to only half a dozen. The bald Australian and the balding Frenchman walk through the office one direction, then through the office the other direction, round a corner and disappear. A minute or two later they round the corner back into the main area of the office and I see in the corner of my eye they're heading over to me. There's no one else near me they could possibly be heading towards.

Bald Guy:¹ "Uh...I'm sorry, I met you but what's your..."

Me: "Adam"

Bald Guy: "That's right, you're a Javascript developer, right?"

I give a quick sideways look so as to appear less confident than I am because I know generally I'm perceived to be stupidly over confident regardless of my true feelings.

Me: "Yeah, that's what I'm here for."

Bald Guy: "Do you know Angular?"

Me: "I worked with it about a year and a half ago. I've brushed up since I found out I was getting this job."

Bald Guy: "There's a really important project that we need you to work on right now, are you busy with anything else."

Well if that wasn't a trick question I don't know what is. Either I say no I'm not busy and he knows that I'm a free loader or I say yes and I lie.

Me: "I'm just working on this and that but I'd be happy to help."

Bald Guy turns to Balding Guy.

Bald Guy: "See, I just got you another developer."

They about face and walk out of the office I'm in and begin poaching developers from projects in the other offices on the floor. My company has rented nearly every office on this floor of the building and in all we have populated it with nearly two hundred people, almost all of them developers.

Practically to the hour five days later...

Balding Frenchman walks through the office, "Ce est de la merde! This is not fucking happening!" He walks into his personal office.

Snarky Canadian: "He doesn't want us to see him cry."

The office is completely empty except for our little troupe of fighters, A Frenchman (Head of IT Practices) and a Canadian (Business Analyst, everyone else is a developer [dev]) whom you've already met, a Thai a Norwegian, a Nigerian and yours truly the soul holder of a USA passport amongst the bunch. Oh yes, and the Thai maid showed up at about seven but she isn't helping us to figure out the OAuth issues we're trying to overcome to deploy this app we've spent hundreds of hours on in the last five days.

The stakes.

Bald Guy was trying to be motivational and said in a brief meeting Tuesday morning with the new core team that is now up from two developers to eleven...

The Dude in Singapore is the head of Asia Pacific (for  my parent company) and he has a meeting next week with the other regional heads and he want's to show a bit of magic and this app is his magic. There were problems with the management of this project from the beginning, some of them are our fault and some of them are not but none of that matters. 

Also next week the CEO of [aforementioned parent company] will be at the meeting, he makes decisions about what happens to 1.7 trillion dollars of [the parent companies] money². He controls more money than most countries so this isn't some sort of joke pressure, this is what we're dealing with.

The Dude has said that if we don't deliver then he's going to fire the people in the Singapore office who are on this project (business analysts and project managers, no developers) and then he's not going to send any more work to us. (Us being the company that hired me last week as part of a hundred plus employee expansion that is taking place over the next eighteen or so months.)

There is no other project of a higher priority in this company right now. I need all of you on board to work every hour that is needed. You get overtime and time off for this. There can't be any random disappearing, this is vital.

Some perspective.

The app we were supposed to dedicate the coming days of our lives to was a business analysis app that would help the exec's better review and predict the market. And now in counter balance to that an excerpt from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, you know, that guy who won a Nobel Prize and shit.

The experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply assigned equal probabilities to each of the three potential outcomes. In other words, people who spend their time, and earn their living, studying a particular topic produce poorer predictions than dart throwing monkeys who would have distributed their choices evenly over the options. Even in the region they knew best, experts were not significantly better than nonspecialists.

Cool, so I'm going to help CEO's think they're making better decisions when clearly they're not. This is the ultimately fucked up back handed pat on the back that they're looking for of course.

Over the week leading up to my Friday morning which was actually still my Thursday night I worked late every night. My team lead and the other senior developer in my team worked till two am regularly but I, being the relative new guy was sent/volunteered to go home around nine or ten most nights. I was not nearly as productive as these guys who either were very entrenched in the project or just stupid good at what they did. I still managed to help out but I felt a bit disappointed in my contributions.

A brief rewind to Monday morning.

Balding Guy, myself and three other devs are sitting around a desk while Balding Guy goes over the app on an Ipad pointing out things that need fixing. PM #1 (Project Manager) writes down notes on what needs to be done on post its, one note per task and then sticks them on the desk. After filling the desk with post its we break for two minutes while Balding Guy and PM #1 stick all of the post its on a wall.

We reconvene at the wall where the post its have been organized by generalized categories of development and phases of done. The phases of done are: To do, In progress, Verify, Done, Failed. The team lead points to the various areas we will each be assigned to. There are five sections of development and he assigns everything in one section to me. WTF? Oh wait, that makes sense, no one in the team is familiar with this branch of the dev, of course it makes sense to put the new guy on it. If I fuck it up then no one else can get blamed and since none of the other devs have any experience on it he's not wasting any resources getting someone up to speed because there will be no getting me up to speed. It felt like a lightweight training on how to raise a child. Here's this thing, there's no manual and it's already pretty fucked up so just do the best you can and if no one get's killed you've done a good enough job.

That's how the next few days unfolded. A mad scramble to get the post its which seemed to be endlessly multiplying from the left side of the wall to the right, but not too far to the right because that was failure. As we move them across the wall, the pink, neon green, yellow, blue and orange post its felt like a herd of some new age animal migrating across the wall of our office. Everyone in the office could see it for the entire week. They saw us in the office when they arrived and when they left and they knew that if this project were a fire fight we'd be pinned down and taking casualties. The Norwegian had a kid a few weeks earlier, the kid was born two and a half months premature and was still in the hospital on a breathing machine. He didn't see the kid for three days straight that week.

Thursday morning the team lead announces to us he's going home because he feels ill. I suppose working till two am every night will do that to you. The Norwegian did too but unlike the Norwegian the team lead was in every day before ten. Despite this though I was astounded, this was crunch time, the moment of truth, the home stretch the final frame the last inning, whatever you want to call it this was the defining moment and the leader was abandoning ship. Now to be fair he'd worked harder than any of us, and his departure didn't diminish my respect for him in any way. We wouldn't be where we were at that moment without him, but it was a moment not unlike throwing your child into the deep end of the pool. Either they figure it out or they drown and ultimately you'll be blamed for throwing them in.

He goes home, the business analysts are sweating. They're down to twenty hours left to deliver and although we're close they won't settle until we're there.

Four am and we've finally decided the last changes have been made. We package the files needed to release the app and send them to the deployment server which was configured by a co-worker a few days earlier. There are always issues with the deployment but eventually we always seem to figure things out. It's four am, we start trying to figure things out.

It's seven thirty and the maid just arrived and we're done trying to figure things out because it's clearly not working. Right now in Singapore the people are waking up and looking at the day old version of the app, we're all clearly fucked. Then the Nigerian has an idea. Convert this to that package that this way, modify that code to do this and release. We split up, two on this and two on that. Now is when the Balding Guy walks through cussing in French. Now is when the Canadian says for the fourth or fifth time if he downloads the app and sees a white screen (again) he's going to cry, now is when despite complete exhaustion we rally and start trying anything to save our asses.

Eight forty-five and the Nigerian is putting together the last of the code needed for our new approach to side step the deployment issues. The Norwegian and the Thai are frantically searching documentation on various access rights, I have just put forward a bit of helper code as directed by the Nigerian and I'm pretty sure the business guys are in the office crying because they're going to lose their jobs. One of the German's from Singapore walks into the office with his suitcase and it's as though the business analysts knew he was coming because before any of use say hi (not that we want to) they burst out of the office and greet him warmly telling him how everything is going great and we're just solving the last little bit of release code. (What bullshit, there's no such thing as release code) and that we'll be up in no time. I sit and listen to the bullshit slingers as they serenade the idiot German businessman about how exciting the whole night was and how the app will be a big hit. Of course inside they think we're about to get decapitated.

Me: "Anyone want muffins, I want some muffins."

Them: ...

I send the last bit of code to the Nigerian, nothing special just some restructuring of the data processing code that will support our new idea. Then I go get muffins.

Nine ten, I return, the air of success in the room is unimaginable. The developers of course are still glued to their computers because they don't believe their eyes. The Nigerian walks up to me straight away, "We did it, our idea worked." I hand him a muffin. I walk over to the other senior dev and ask him which idea finally worked in the end. He looks at me and shakes his head. Oh yeah, I forgot this is business, we're all ass holes and can't reveal our secrets in front of the German business man for fear he'll know we were holding on by the seat of our pants. I walk into the Balding Guy's office and hand him a muffin, "Congratulations." I say, "Yes!" He responds.

Truth is I went home shortly after that, no idea how the presentation to the CEO's went that day. I didn't get called in to the office once over the weekend and am now caught in anticipation of what tomorrow will hold. Did the app bomb and get scrapped and that is why we didn't get called in for fixes this weekend. Was it so damn perfect that there's nothing left to do but present it to the CEO? What's going on? I guess we'll all figure that out tomorrow.

---

1 I'm pretty sure this guy is the CTO (Chief Technical Officer) but I'm not entirely sure yet. So basically the only guy in this company more important than him is the CEO, which is like saying the only person more important than person X is God. Oh capitalism, how I hate thee.

2 This number is roughly true but not exact. Bald Guy was clearly trying to impress us but what's actually really impressive is that this number wasn't far from the truth.

#29 The Pigeon on the Stoop

Domesticated more than 5,000 years ago
Tits keyboard ass typing
!happy !sad [<][equals][>] Unfortunate REALITY
separatist shmeparatist
lionize
If I only had a brain...
eye sea yore shenanigans

The shower was cold and the bird unexpected. Do you ever expect a bird? Perhaps if there were bread crumbs?

Papy was a drunk, he didn't recognize me at first. Sat at the table next to mine. Good friends all around, a couple new friends, perhaps. I have to go to work. I just left work. Papy recognizes me.
"I didn't recognize you!" I know.
"Can I join your team?" No.
"Yes." I say.
I warn my friends, they think I'm being cautious. They're right but for the wrong reasons.
Minutes later...
"So you're testing people for AIDS in three places in Thailand, don't you mean Bangkok."???
"Papy, listen to what we're saying, you're not listening, listen or..."
I didn't Finnish my sentence, I'm not enough of a dick, yet. Soon my dick will come out, large and in charge.
Papy, he's a druggie, not a bad one but a druggie. There may be no good kind but let's not split hairs, we're all druggies.
the pigeon gnaws at the brush
stained in bleach
I wash my armpits.
"Papppppppyyyyy" she screams as I explain the nuanced approach of the expert and the document object modelingisforpussy.
drink spilled DRINK spilled fuck.
The Crayfish is angry, too rich shoes and hand bag ruined, not my fault but still my fault. Papy you need to get yourself under control.
Papy is a nice Brit with a capital B. He was once a very nice man (I'm told) but now mostly just obnoxiously spills drinks on people's nice handbags. Once upon a time in a far away land he was an upstanding citizen, before the blow. Now he's talking about buying a new handbag, new shoes, new life? No. He's ATMing it and coming back crying like a human, like we all should cry. Because he's broken, because we're all broken. Some of us more than others.
The Crayfish is not OK. She has a spare [&#36]15,000 dollars [redundant] to spend on some project that she just couldn't handle dealing with and now the [country not to be named] whose [department not to be named] is going to take back the money. She can't even conceive of the steps to get to what she wants but at least she wants, better than Papy.
Crayfish doesn't ask me to do the job she just asks for contacts. Six months of my salary and all she wants is contacts? Fuck.
Maybe I'm no good? Maybe that's why Papy is here?
half a wing
a full wing
head bob and weave
garbage on the porch, pigeon might shit on it
I wash my stomach.
I have to go to work, still...forever, I loathe but have to do the due and dew the Dew. Walk threw the school, look at the power cables, talk to the psycho whom life has gifted with enough money to be a jerk to me.
It's not enough that Papy ruined [shoes and handbag] now he's waving his arms around like a fucking homeless man talking to god with a cigarette in Crayfish's face.
"Why can't I gesticulate?" Because you're annoying.
"You can gesticulate but stop putting your hands in our faces. Do you like this?" Hand in the face.
"I didn't do that."
Eventually Papy is paying for the second round of drink he's spilled on himself and others. Crayfish is kind and sweet and that's so out of character for her.
Pemberton is engaging his old friends
our new friends who aren't friends
except for this one night.
I love Pemberton,
he's not gay,
I'm not gay,
he's probably gay,
we're in love.
Dark cynical nihilist love.
Papy returns from ATMing [again], sobbing like a broken human paying for drinks his other Papy spilled. Two for too and we're off. Walk Papy out of the place [again] and this time he stays gone. Probably will have to explain this to him at a later date. Can't stand the thought of explaining this to him at a later date.
Fuck the world don't ask me for shit, everything you git you got to work hard for it.
--Biggie Smalls [&] Method Man

Mostly I read and write and type. the apartment is gaining dirt but the fan is clean. I took it apart.

There seemed like little else to do after it stopped working but now it's working again.

I think I've completely lost sight of the point of it. I see rich (I accidentally typed "right" originally, that's a scary thought) people succeeding at stuff in capitalism and I'm convinced more than ever that capitalism isn't actually doing anything that's getting us anywhere except fucked. Does that make me a player hater? Of course my convinced is tantamount to selecting a breakfast cereal and my passion for action is on a par with the subtle grade of the floor in my apartment which isn't even mine.

That's right folks! Nana is in NYC doing what she loves and I'm here doing what I love and there in lies the crux of the matter. How to resolve two variables that you're sure should be equal but aren't. Even when you've gone through all the code that codes anything. Type checking?

She's loving it, I'm enduring it. I had a heart to heart with a co-worker the other night. Thailand is "forever" for him. Not really surprised I must say. It's forever for a lot of people, and not just the Thais either. In fact less so for the Thais. Yes more of them live here but plenty of them would skip town if they could. I did.

In closing, this post was meant to remind that I'm alive and to respond to a particular request by a particular person that I write. Thank you.

Love, Adam

#28 - Chiang Mai Thailand and what IS interesting

In two days it will have been exactly one year to the day since my last blog post...

What's changed?

Hard to remember it all, and I'll do you all a favor and not try because doubtlessly the joys and trials of my life aren't necessarily all that interesting.  What is interesting however is the beautiful northern country of Chiang Mai, a place I recently visited.  What is interesting is running around a city with a team of people dressed like Spartan warriors from the movie 300 and shooting people with water guns. What is interesting is a French man named Mr. Bellamy who gets me lost in the forest. What is interesting is THIS.

I'll tick the boxes in reverse order.

THIS is actually a theatrical performance I wrote that has now been completely reimagined by the lovely Nana Dakin

Nana Dakin

of B-Floor Theater Company and is to be performed in early June.

IT looks something like this...

The poster

The French man who gets me lost in the forest looks something like this...

The one on the left of course.

The forest we got lost in looks something like this...

The French man was telling me lots of stories about saving Cambodian refugees from the Khmer Rouge and the etymology of words like Cesar, Tzar, Maharaja and Maharacha, so I decided to tell him the only story I could think of at the time. A few years ago I climbed a palm tree that was on an island in the gulf of Thailand which resulted in this...

The French man (I swear this is true) then asked me to recreate the scene so that he could document it.

I wore shoes on this climb and gave up after about three meters. Both factors that contributed to an uninjured vacation. (mostly)

The lakeside reward for getting lost in the woods.

The next day we biked 40 kilometers to a waterfall that we could have driven to, but NO! 

The French man told us it wasn't that far.

This is what that looked like...

I could not resist climbing (of course)

Dirty

Then of course there were the Spartans, which looked something like this...

This is for anyone who posts pictures of them self 

with a gun on Facebook.

Before

If you can't look tough with a water gun then you can't look tough with a real gun.

After

This is SPARTA!!!

 The most important part of this picture is the awesome arm clasp.

And lastly the beautiful country side of Chiang Mai...

A seventeen second video of a very interesting plant.

I cooked!

It was too salty

#27 - Safety Precautions Fail!

Back to check in with all you crazy kids and your newfangled gadgets. I don't have a smart phone. I've lived in an apartment for six months and don't know if the TV works because I've never turned it on. I don't know what Dropbox is and my Linked In profile looks like I just graduated from high school. My CEO, who's only a few years shy of being double my age, reprimands me because he knows more about Pinterest than I do. I still prefer hand writing to typing and when asked what my favorite art form is I most certainly reply, “The printed word.” Why am I working for a tech company?

Binumi in Thai Esquire Magazine

It's time for the Thai new year which actually comes from an Indian festival which really has quite little to do with the festival that is now raging outside my apartment building. The death toll on the highways is high as drunk and distracted drivers mix with wild water throwing shenanigan makers creating an inevitable collision with that so sought after upwards movement in the reincarnation chain. It was described to me by a Thai person who isn't Buddhist at a party a few nights ago that she was told it's more OK to eat ten shrimp rather than one cow because if someone is reincarnated as a shrimp then their soul is small and they deserve to be eaten but if they are reincarnated as a cow then they have a large soul and perhaps did some good things in their past life and therefore should not be eaten. I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about what the ramifications of such a theory means.

I took this while taking a corner on the back of my motor bike
taxi. I consider capturing the superheros glued to this guys
helmet well worth the risk to my life.

This is what Songkran is all about. An entire
city in a water fight.

Also last week we had a late evening “brand strategy meeting” in which we discussed various aspects of the direction of the company. Nana had a casting call for a TV commercial that would have paid her half a months salary for one days work but the meeting ran late and she could not make it to the casting. I guess being a general manager sometimes means you have to forgo certain other opportunities.

I was standing on the sky train platform waiting to go home from work the other day when I saw in the midst of a construction site, right between a cement mixer dumping cement into a huge ditch and a crane, four construction workers playing with a Takraw ball. If you're wondering Takraw is a game like volleyball except you kick and head the ball over the net. This sounds somewhat unexciting but think about this, good Takraw players smash the ball over the net by kicking the ball in the middle of a back flip. They idly kicked it through the air amongst the heavy machinery. It seemed to me that this was a decided failure in safety precautions.

Bye bye for now.

So before we play soccer we have to shew all the frogs off
the pitch (and there's a few) lest we commit little froggy murders.

Say it quickly and see what happens. Supanniga,

The strawberry and whipped cream stuffed waffle.

#26 - Confidence

     It's the end of the month and that means pay day. That also means it's the perfect time to ask people for money. The accountant at work who takes care of everyone's pay personally distributed pay stubs yesterday. This is highly unusual. Attached to the pay stubs were envelopes that asked for a donation for a temple. The way that a Thai Buddhist asks for a donation is by saying, “Do you want to make merit?” Merit is the focus of nearly all Thai holidays and in fact is the focus of many Thais' decision to become monks. These merit based monkhoods are not lifetime commitments. The usual monkhood for a person not dedicating their life to the institution is three months although longer and shorter terms do exist. If you're at all confused simply think of it as giving your karma a boost. Give 100 baht to the temple, get good karma. That temples ask for money is not unusual. Every religious institution needs money. However I would like to relate to you the following events of last night so that you can judge for yourself what kind of influence this sort of institution or practice has on peoples actual corporeal selves and the “karma” they garner in the world.

This German dance troupe who came to Bangkok
was actually an Israeli and a German who met
in Amsterdam and an Australian they recruited.
It was an interesting show.

     We saw a dance performance and then went and got dinner and after that we flagged down a taxi to get our buts home and in bed. Not the most exciting Friday night but it was a long week of hard work. (Nana started at Binumi on Wednesday.) The taxi driver was older and it took him only a few blocks to ask Nana if she would like to make merit. I will translate that which has already been translated, “Do you want to donate to my temple?” Nana politely declined, after all she had already donated to Binumi's accountant's temple that very day. In order to accurately represent her donation I believe that you should all be informed she did this only to curry favor as Nana's role at the company requires close connections with everyone and this donation greatly increased her chances of establishing that connection with the accountant. Shortly after Nana's polite abstinence a phone began to ring. It was not mine nor Nana's and the taxi driver didn't flinch. The phone was sitting in the backseat floorboard, an iphone complete with bunny ear case and all. I picked it up and Nana asked the taxi drive what to do and he said not to answer it. Nana decided that was a bad idea and answered the phone. It was of course the previous occupant of the taxi. She was at a club right next to where we caught the taxi. We were by this point halfway home and so going back was not something we were interested in. The taxi driver suggested that the owner of the phone could pay him the metered fare to take the phone back to her. This fare sounded quite fair, if not even a nice gesture. What a kind old man. Nana handed him the phone and he said he could go back to Ekkamai but not all the way to where the woman who owned the phone was. Ekkamai is about 80-90% of the way to where she was. If she wanted him to go the extra little bit to where she was it would cost her 200 baht. Our entire fare to go from where this woman was to our apartment was 71 baht. How in the hell did he figure that extra 10% was worth 129 baht? I know how he thought it was worth it. He had her iphone, literally almost a months full pay not to mention the contacts, pictures, videos and all the other personal information one can pry out of these mini diaries we carry around with us. This kindly old man who was collecting donations for his temple, himself proposing only the opportunity for you to make good on your karma was in fact completely unconcerned with karma or as I prefer to call it, “Being a decent fucking human being.” He wanted MONEY. We paid our fare at the apartment and he pulled out bills and said he had no change, he would squable with me over 9 baht and so I overpaid him a little just to get out of the cab.

     Where religious institutions and wealth intersect there is a problem. They extort and blackmail people into giving them money and then turn this confidence scam over to their victims who then perpetuate the scam onto others around them and very quickly we have the greatest pyramid sceme ever conceived of in human history.

Flyer from a Butoh dance show I saw

Flyer from a Butoh dance show I saw

     On a much brighter note Nana's performance in “The Giordano Bruno Project” was absolutely splendid, and a Catholic organization (the same organization that burned Mr. Bruno at the stake) donated boxes upon boxes of proseco to the show in an effort to help the Camillian home, which provides a place for disabled and HIV positive children to grow up in a community where they are neither stigmatized nor shamed for things they have no control over.

     So what do we have? Is it Buddhism vs. Catholicism, West vs. East, Prohibition vs. Boozers...no. We have organization and the power that comes with that organization. Institutions that can flex their muscle in the millions and who's budgets measure in the billions and who's actual worth is in the trillions which need only become populated by people who actually want to make good on their promises to help humanity. Or we can start small. We can make each other feel confident that we're not here to ply with confidence tricks. We can accept a decent fair to bring a girl her phone who (I hope) paid her fair fare to get where she was going.  

The Pridi Banomyong Institute's Envlace on a night where two performances
will be viewed. I went to the Butoh performance on this night. 

#25 - Singapore

How peculiar that one month after meeting a former resident and rather jovially critical fellow who resided for many years in Singapore I find myself on those very shores.

My first impression of the city state was a rather two faced one when the presentation of the strict values that dictate so much of its laws came quickly and rather squarely in conflict with the realities of a wealthy citizenry. The woman back at the office who booked my hotel had managed to put me smack dab in the midst of twenty-four hour eateries, late night karaoke clubs and street side beer vendors, that's right folks I was staying in the red light district.

To quote the football firebrand Mario Balloteli who's as likely to rally against racism as he is to get in a fist fight with his manager, “Why always me?” Well, what else was I to do but take a two am jaunt around the neighborhood to see my temporary neighborhood in its finest hour?

The whole of Singapore appeared to present itself in a very secular way, but this shabby looking neighborhood had a real and definite poor Muslim feel to it. Nearly every shop featured a crescent and star somewhere on its front and the meticulous manicuring and fastidiously cleaned buildings and streets I had seen on the way to my hotel had disappeared to make way for the grimy sky walks and dilapidated store fronts one would expect to see in the south side of Chicago or the Arab neighborhoods just off Las Ramblas.

I wouldn't call these people friendly but they were accommodating. At one point I found myself watching a football match surrounded by Singaporeans of every color when a trio of scantily clad ladies emerged from a doorway just beneath the television. It was at this point that I realized that the TV I was watching was placed directly above the domicile of these ladies of the night and that there must have existed some relationship between this all night coffee shop and the housing establishment that seemed to be a strictly ladies only club. I never saw a man either enter or leave through this entrance or in fact the building as a whole. And of course sure enough there was a collection of no less than a dozen women speaking with equal parts coy flirtatiousness and self assured salesmanship to a collection of men that came and went and grew and shrank but never seemed to outnumber the women. I don't mean to either glorify or belittle the people employed in the business of prostitution, only to show it as it appeared to my eyes. I woke four hours after I had laid down in my hotel bed and quickly departed for an embassy who's location I only vaguely understood. If last night was Singapore all stuble-faced and scruffy then this morning was Singapore clean shaven and ready for work.

Chinese new year decorations in a mall

Once the day had just begun to depart I ventured out again. I was determined to find a good watering hole and meet some locals, or at least be near them and observe. The previous night I had drank only one beer and then swore it was my first and last as its price was just over double the price I would have paid for the same beer back in Thailand and nearly ten times the price I pay for my usual swill. However, earlier in the day I sat myself in a coffee shop on the main drag in Singapore to do some work and found that I was paying just a couple bucks less for the coffee than I had for the beer I'd so prematurely sworn off the night before. So...as you could probably guess I ended up drinking Thai beer (it's the cheapest) and loving every minute of it.

The perfect meal...wait, where's the beer? Waiter!

So that evening I found myself eating and drinking and watching a “Celestial Classic Movie.” The subtitles were all very clear except that they kept saying heck this and heck that and I'm from heck and that monster's from heck and all of the sudden it occurred to me that you can't say the word hell (in English) on Singaporean television. You probably can't say it in Malay or Mandarin either but Japanese I suppose is ok as it didn't sound like there was any censorship of the Japanese in the movie. Overall the movie was a riot (even though I'm sure it was intended to be a thriller) as it came complete with a wooden body double for the heroine that was eaten by the demons and old school Japanese martial arts choreography for all the fight scenes. I'm sure Kurosawa rolls over in his grave every time anyone watches that movie.

The next day I picked up my passport and settled down in a coffee shop to do some more work when another thought occurred to me. I hadn't seen a single cop anywhere. No police cars, no police motorcycles, no signs marking police territory (as is very important to maintain corruption in Thailand) no bike cops, horse cops or cops walking the beat in the busy retail districts or shady red light districts. Where were the police? To quote a very sarcastic segment of an Omali Yeshitela speech (thank you Dead Prez) “...I can tell you well you know you've got to have the police, because if there were no police...uh look at what you'd be doing to yourselves, you'd be killing yourself if there were no police...” If I were to continue that quote it would say something along the line of police only become necessary where crime exists. Just for fun lets draw some parallels between Singapore and a city in the US, Chicago.

                                                                                  Singapore              Chitown

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Population:                                                      4.5 million             2.7 million

Singapore is sixty percent bigger

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Civilians per police staff:                                          360                    190

Chicago has nearly twice as many cops per civilian

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Acronyms:                                                                     SPF                      CPD

Singapore has a cooler acronym

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Budget in USD:                                                   1 billion               1.3 billion

Singapore's police budget is thirty percent smaller

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Homicides in 2008:                                                     8                        513

Hmmmmm...no explanation needed.

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In summary Singapore's combination of a social safety net and frighteningly strict punishments probably does a pretty sweet job of making sure that Singaporeans don't commit violent crime. For example you can get the death penalty for firing a gun, even if no one is injured. On a side note they also have been consistently listed as one of the most restrictive countries when it comes to freedom of speech.

There certainly is crime in Singapore it's just nothing that will get you killed...or hurt...or really anything. While I was in Singapore the big thing that was happening was that the government was up in arms because it had noticed a slight uptick in traffic accidents and people needed to start driving more courteously. I wonder if they shouldn't take a taxi ride in New York sometime and then re-evaluate the safety of their roads.

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I began this blog post on the day of my arrival in Singapore (Feb 3^rd) and have just now (Feb. 22^nd) managed to pick it up again. I attribute this not to laziness nor lack of motivation but to my work. When I was working at the French restaurant in Oakland there were weekends when I would work a Friday night shift then a double on Saturday and a double on Sunday which amounts to about thirty-five or forty hours in a three day span. That was something that happened a couple times a year. With Binumi I've been consistently putting in ten hour days and this week in particular did fourteen hours on Saturday and then fourteen more on Monday. I've also performed in two performance art shows over the last couple weeks and before that was deeply embroiled in the process of creating Survival Games. I have no idea when I'll find the time to write to you all again and ponder the meaning of life because if the website doesn't kick off and become successful I'll be working my ass off trying to make it successful and if it does kick off and become successful I'll be working my ass of trying to keep up with the new demands that will come with success. Oh what a conundrum.

Click here to see the Binumi for Education sales tool I and my team made.

I'm not the only one whose busy though. Nana is directing an opera, creating and performing in a show slated for a series of performances in Italy in July and now spending her mornings trying to keep me and a host of other nutters at the website organized. Oh yeah, she also recently found out she's listed on IMDB.

#24 - Do you make the bed you lie in?

Sometimes a millionaire will argue over spare change, a genius will forget to tie his shoe laces, a lawyer cheats, a doctor doesn't exercise and a poor man will loan you a buck, after all how else did they end up that way.

I suppose what I mean to say when stripping poetics from intentions is that we all made our own bed...didn't we?

Chris looking dapper

Chris isn't dead yet. A few days ago they drugged him up and flew he and his mother back to South Africa where they can get some degree of medical insurance coverage to help him. All of you who managed to contribute to the cause have my thanks in triplicate. Between the efforts of his friends, some strangers and former employers and former former employers ie the students and teachers of Triam Udom government school we managed to raise 27,000 USD. His expenses as of leaving as best I can tell were somewhere in the neighborhood of 38,000 but the exact number is difficult to calculate. Thankfully his former boss and a good friend of all of ours managed to cover the disparity in funds. His death was narrowly avoided a couple of times and now thanks to all of us he's back home getting more treatment. Chris is an example to all of us that being a good person bears greater dividends than we may at first think. No one that I know of who knew Chris so much as flinched at the thought of helping him despite their own financial difficulties, he was just that kind of guy. I have little doubt that had he been a lesser person he would be dead already and it would have been none too pleasant a departure. Many thanks to all of you.

Survival Games went off without a hitch. All in all we got about twelve hundred people to see it and as far as I can tell according to every rubric except for one it was B-Floor's most successful show. What Survival Games lacked was exacting execution. What it did not lack was originality and so to my eyes Survival Games was a smashing success. I'll speak no more about it and I'll let the forthcoming full length movie and my little video representation from photo shoots and rehearsals do the rest of the talking.

Regarding Binumi it's difficult to hide my enthusiasm for my work. It's going really well. My co-workers are sterling individuals with their own quirks and neurosis to be sure but ultimately we all realize we're a part of something that could very quickly be something truly great. As Anthony (the boss) has said, “the website has been launching next month for the last year.” Still, we're coming up on exciting times and the evolution of the website is nothing short of miraculous and the possibilities are nearly limitless.

On a slightly different note I've noticed that I'm famous now. If you search google images for “this cute little cat has ringworm” the picture from my very first blog entry “Soi Cowboy” comes up. There are a myriad number of other searches you can do to find that cat (or any other picture from my blog) but for some reason people in Holland keep clicking on that cat and getting directed to that blog entry. Also I got 28 page views from Russia last week...WTF? I don't know anyone in Russia.

The next time you see what was once called a “moving picture” think of me because I'm seeing moving pictures all the time.

-Adam

#23 - December's Times

A documentary, two music videos, a restaurant promo, tutorials, ten story templates, multiple educational lessons, a facebook photo album, an animation project, a vacation video and those are just the ones that I can remember, I didn't even look at the list. Additionally I have a host of administrative tasks and lists to keep and update. I'm busy.

Then there's the play which opens tomorrow night for it's run of ten shows in twelve days. It sort of turned into a bit of cluster fuck as it was conceived of and executed in a way unlike any other B-Floor show, oh yeah and did I forget to mention it's also the largest technical undertaking they've ever had. I guess that it's one thing to put on a show with actors and a stage crew but when you add moving scaffolding, an exhibition in the courtyard, shadow puppets, Italian set and costume designers and a high profile composer for sound design you kind end up needing eight arms but only having seven...or as it actually is, two.

As Nana pointed out in her comment on #22 - Christopher it is somewhat surreal to be working on a play about survival when actual death in more ways than one has visited me in the very recent past. Still, the overall message of the play has been somewhat perverted from it's conception and I fear the serious as well as the comedic points of the show have been somewhat dulled by a lack of artistic vision. Still, I'm speaking after a lengthy rehearsal process that has completely skewed my objectivity of the show. In addition to that I also just watched a truly awful dress rehearsal of the show. But dress rehearsals are always bad so who knows, maybe I'm totally wrong, I hope.

Aside from all this work there has been some fun to be had. Christmas on the island of Samui with Nana's family was nice if not a bit awkward at times. They're all nice people and interesting but apparently Nana's boyfriends get a cold shoulder from the men in the family. I shudder to think what the other boys endured since Nana told me they were nicer to me than she expected they would be.

Nana at Crystal Cove

The first day on the island we went on an all day trip that took us out to a small group of minor islands an hour and a half from the main island. We snorkeled, kayaked, had lunch on a deserted beach and climbed up to the viewpoint of crystal cove, the image that inspired the book The Beach of which a movie with the same title was made staring Leo D. The second day we went zip lining amongst the tree tops. It was fun except that when the wind blew the platforms situated in the tree tops, upon which we stood, swayed quite unsettlingly. 

The pool party

The climactic day of Christmas was spent at a pool party at a resort (not our resort, we stayed at a family friends home) where Kevin Hart the comedian and Ludacris the rapper appeared for a short swim. I felt bad for them though. It was easy to see the downside of celebrity as they were bothered by a number of people for pictures. They didn't stay long once people recognized them. People can be such lemmings, such absolutely brainless self centered idiots. Did you even know the last movie Kevin Hart was in? Can you recite more than one song lyric from Ludacris? No??? Then don't take a fucking picture with him. It doesn't give you some magical bond to him and no one is going to think any higher of you just because he was a nice enough guy to indulge your idiocy. Anyhow, we flew home the next day instead of taking the thirteen hour train and ferry trip that got us to the island.

New years was nice too. We joined a small house party at a co-workers and chatted to a guy who lived in Singapore for a long time and had a very interesting set of anecdotes and experiences to share about the dictatorship of the country with the highest percentage of millionaires at one out of every six households possessing one million USD in disposable wealth. Of course they don't call themselves a dictatorship but any time a government has been run by the same political party for over fifty years and the popularly elected president is seen largely as ceremonial you pretty well can be sure it's some type of dictatorship. Some examples of interesting policies in Singapore: Cars cost two to three times normal and you're only allowed to own them for ten years before the governments repossesses them. When you get married the government sells you an apartment at an extremely low price. They built a park in Singapore which they modeled after Hyde Park including the speakers corner Hyde Park is famous for. They announced that speakers corner would be a safe haven for freedom of speech. The first person who went there to speak was taken to jail. Now no one even goes in the park to take a walk.

Ah well, time to leave you all for a short while. I hope to see you soon. Be HEALTHY!

The quaint little family house we stayed at on Samui

The actual Crystal Cove

-Adam

#22 - Christopher

I had been writing a long, eloquent and very stylistic post but then I woke up this morning feeling like there must have been some disaster in the world last night. Was there an earthquake and catastrophic tsunami, perhaps a wild fire or plane crash or another idiotic mass shooting or civil war or anything that would justify feeling like the world is a truly soulless place. No, as it turns out when someone is going to die the world keeps on going and not much changes. I've read enough writing about death that I should have known that perception is only the reality of those who share that perception. Christopher Hitchens died from esophageal cancer and now it seems another Christopher will be passing on very soon. My friend Chris has been diagnosed with colon cancer and has gone from having a stomach ache two weeks ago to looking quite sickly and being nearly bedridden. I'll spare you the gory details (of which there is no shortage) and just tell you he's not long for this world. He's my fucking age. I'm not old, I'm not even middle aged. Chris and I are both generally rather healthy tall blonde Casanovas and if it can happen to him it can happen to me. When Lia D. passed away a couple weeks ago it was a sobering experience but at least she bore children and had a career and got married. What's Chris had time to do with his life? I remember talking with him as he told me he still managed to have no STD's which is a tribute to his caution in the gay community in Bangkok. Now I'm sitting here thinking why didn't he just go and fuck everything that moved if he was going to die young anyway? I suppose if he knew then what he knows now he very well may have.

There's plenty more to write about, Survival Games, Binumi, Christmas and New Years and and and but right now I don't really feel like it.     

#21 - And They Call This The Cold Season

I'm sitting here at B-Floor watching rehearsal at eight minutes to nine at night. We're all sweating despite the fans blowing and they say this is the cold season.

The official poster for the play.  Before you laugh, no I did not choose the title.

I finished my second week at the new job and thanks to the new schedule I've been participating in the rehearsals with B-Floor. Participating is a bit of a strong word, maybe it's really just observing and advising.. I've definitely helped in the writing but the majority of the total performance is created by the directors and the company as a whole. Nana rightfully so keeps pushing for a more contiguous story than B-Floor usually puts together. Rather than a series of loosely connected theatrical dance scenes she wants to convey a real story and I'm her main tool in getting that done.

A promo shot I've been working on for the play.

The new job has been a roller-coaster affair. One day I'm certain we're going to accomplish amazing beautiful exciting things and the next I'm convinced we're headed towards failure. It's all a challenge though and I'm thankful that I trust and respect my new boss. I usually work about ten hours a day and though some days I have to be creative for nine of those hours there are other days where I deal almost completely with administrative tasks. Over the next two months I should be cranking out a number of films including but not limited to, a vacation/tourism video, a music video or two, a documentary on the Binumi staff, a comic film short, an EFL lesson for young learners, a couple of business promos, a video book report and the list goes on and on. On some of the films I'm actually the writer and creative force but on others I take on the role of a producer. Needless to say ten hours a day is hardly enough time when you consider I'm also charged with getting an entire years worth of educational curriculum ready for sale by the end of January.

My girlfriend is awesome.  She brought me beer back from Cambodia.

A cute bathroom sign.

 The flooding in the apartment was just as I expected, pissed off girl friend left the faucet running and hit the road while the husband was on a business trip. I'm pretty sure the official story is still that a pipe burst but at the end of the day the damage doesn't affect us so really what do we care...as long as it doesn't happen again.

Can you tell which ones my student drew and which
one I drew?

As one of my final lessons at Wall Street I had to do a directions lesson. I made this city complete with Sam's Bank, Fern's Garden, Murray's Concert Hall, Max Sound, Lia's Studio and so on and so on.

Nana cares quite a lot about Christmas and it just so happens her entire family is going to be in Thailand during the holiday. We are all planning a little island get away and with my new job I'll be able to make it. If I was working at Wall Street still there's no way I could've gotten the time off so she's very happy about the new job. After toiling away at things that are only half worth working at but necessary I finally have a place and a purpose that feels vital.

Adios mi familia, I love you all.

They got me birthday cake at Wall Street.

-Adam