Heidiland

So the Christmas break is almost over. We will go back to school on Monday and I'm still going crazy over trying to finish a couple of papers due next week. Well, obviously someone has not been putting his break to good use, instead it was mostly spent on hedonistic pursuits.

The biggest thing I did over the break was visit Heidiland... and I don't know how to start writing about it because it was such a massive trip for me. First, I should thank Heidi la Seoul for making the trip possible. He was already talking about inviting me to Heidiland when we last saw each other in BKK last year but I was not even sure if I would be granted a visa or if I could afford the trip. So it was surreal when in mid-December I stepped off the airport in Basel and the gorgeous Hye Kim Park in his 22-inch waistline was there to meet me.

Oh, let me get this out of the way before I proceed. I finally saw... SNOW, bitches. Yes, the thing that drives us people from the tropics wild. Did I go wild? I sure did. It was snow all over the place. Everything was just blanketed in white, cold, crisp snow; I wonder how many cups of halo-halo and mais con hielo we could make out of them, no?

Hye Kim Park then showed me around Basel and climbed to the top the spire of one cathedral. Oh stunning views! It was certainly the fastest way to see Basel because we had such limited time. And then we took the train to Bern, the capital. Every building was green there. Color-coordination, a dream place for anyone with OCD. We finally met Heidi la Seoul and we greeted each other with the loudest kathoey shriek we could muster.

In the next few days we drove a bit around Heidiland. I don't how to give justice to the scenery, especially the towering mountains that kept on taking my breath away. They all looked so postcard perfect, I could stare at them for hours. We also visited the lakeside cities of Neuchatel and Lucerne, and then Zurich. It was a pleasure walking down the narrow alleys of these cities that often lead to a square, always with a fountain as its centerpiece.  I'm just also completely amazed by how each city always has the most awe-inspiring views, mainly consisting of grand, old buildings facing a river or a lake and with the mountains in the backdrop. Divine, divine, divine!!! I just don't have the words to describe them.

Winter Update

I'm still alive. Cold, but definitely still alive. We're now transitioning to winter, a season people have warned me about. The last few days we've seen temperatures drop to single digits and then finally we were hovering just a little bit above zero. I'm freezing most of the time but there's really nothing much one can do but OWN winter. 

Perfect, now that we've talked about the weather - what else could be more important, aber? - we can move on to trivial stuff.

Oh, let's talk about school. I've actually managed to survive the first term, which ends in a week (and then it's the winter break!). There was a period during half-term when I asked my self what I was doing in masters school. I felt I didn't belong here… with all these brilliant kids in class! Really, they're pretty much kids but who know a great deal more than I do. 

And then came the first essay of the year (and I'm doing another one at the moment). It was all big drama doing it because for more than a decade now I haven't done any academic writing. Most of the time I was running around the library grabbing whatever stuff I could possibly use for my essay. I was tensed like crazy, I finished a first draft two weeks before it was due. I'm not saying I suddenly became brilliant, but really it was more because I panicked and rushed to write like my life depended on it (which might have been the case, actually). For a paper entirely built on panicking I managed to get a decent grade, although it could have been better (because I'm NEVER satisfied). 

Well, school is not always that dramatic. Mostly, I spend my time being alone, like most students I guess, poring through loads of assigned readings. That's school for you!

There are just days though when I feel like I need to extricate my self from my desk and take a long walk, especially when the sun's out, a precious moment during winter in London, it seems. Often I go to a museum to diffuse my mind or just walk down Oxford street and gawk at clothes I can't afford. 

On Friday nights I go out with Tyty and Fatima for some wine and Chinese food (the cheap kind, if that ever exists in London). That's all the "fun" I could do because I really can't afford going out more often, chai mai?

Speaking of finances, it's no secret that London is shockingly expensive. So I'm mainly subsisting on microwave food, bland soups in particular… something like 2 pounds per cup, which is still atrociously overpriced compared to a yummy bowl of noodles in Thewet for only less than a pound. 

At first I had to constantly remind my self that I'm not in Bangkok anymore. And then eventually I get used to the prices and I just basically have to live with it… meaning having a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. Oh, I applied for a temporary sales job in a department store but I didn't get it. On the one hand, I really need the money, but on the other I don't know where I'd get the time to do school work had I got the job. But I still need money, so I'd figure out how to whore my self somehow.

The Bayot Goes to School

So it's back to school. Last week was "welcome week" during which we had several orientation sessions in our faculty and department. I met several Thais who are also doing my course, which is of course great. And then I spent the rest of welcome week attending talks on such things as eating healthy (I know, I need to learn a great deal on keeping a 30-inch waist), managing money (oh, this too), and finding a part-job (which should happen now).

This week I started my courses. As we are required to take three courses, I picked politics, anthropology, and history. I hope somehow I'd be able to tie the three together, especially in writing my dissertation.

In one of my courses, I met a couple of farangs who used to live in Bangkok, too. It's amazing to find all these Thailand connections all the way here in London. Of course we instantly dived into sharing our experiences from living in Bangkok.

It's still a bit early to get a good grip on what my professors and classmates would be like.

However, I feel pretty old in class. Most of my classmates have just graduated from their BAs. So being fresh from school, they really are good on "academic speak", a skill I've lost a long, long time ago. And they seem to know what exactly they want to focus on in their study, say, migration, the politics of such and such, etc., whereas, I still don't know exactly what I'm interested in. Oh, kids these days!

The past few days I've just been trying to read as many of the required readings as I could. This brings me memories of my BA. I'm a slow reader so I need a lot of time to go through the text and then I quickly make notes... all these boring bits. I just really need to pace my self so that I don't cram the day before the lectures.

Which means I've got to discipline my self in sitting down to read at least a reading a day over the course of the week... instead of watching America's Next Top Model, no?

My first week in London

There are still a lot of times when I couldn't believe I'm actually in London. I've been here a week and still there's something surreal about being in a place I've always dreamed of visiting. Until about three months ago I wouldn't have thought I'd be here.

The past week had been tourist mode. My aunts had been amazingly kind to show me around. My first day alone we were hopping from one bus to another until midnight just to see the basic sights, e.g. Oxford Street, Harrods, Kensington Gardens, and Tower Bridge.

The highlight of my first day here was watching "Billy Elliot", a treat from my aunt. I wish I have the words to describe the musical, simply put I was completely astounded by it all. I was listening to the songs a few weeks before I watched the show but the music still moved me on performance night. The choreography was of course flawless.

The following days were more touristy stuff, such as the Olympic Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, China Town, and Covent Garden.

The next day, I met an Oxford-based Pinay Fairy ("Lady Chatterley") who brought me to the National Gallery. It was stunned when I saw my first Van Gogh, my reaction was summed up into a loud gasp. And then there were a number of Cezanne, Monet, Klimt, and Turner, among others. I'd definitely keep on going back there.

Last Thursday, I met two Pinay Fairies who showed me around Soho, supposedly one of London's gay areas.

Yesterday, I went to the British Museum, which was packed with tourists, so I have to visit again on a quieter day. I then hopped on a bus and walked the Millennium Bridge to reach Tate Modern where I saw a handful of Picassos (yet again another transcendental experience) along with some Matisse, Rothko, Pollock, and Dali. That was such a dream!

Today I went to Harrods to attend the book signing of Scott Schuman's new book, "Closer". Garance Dore was there as well to sign the pages where she appears. I was shaking the entire time I was in front of them. Yet another surreal moment right there.

Oh, I also dropped by the venue of London Fashion Week last Friday. I just hung around outside the tents, watching those fashionable people snapped up by street style photographers. It's a bit amusing to observe the fashion scene, but that's all I could do.

So that's basically a rapid rundown of the things I've been up to over the past week. There are still so many impressions of London I want to write about but that's for next time.

Iskul Bukol

Exactly a month from now I'd be back to school. The thought of it scares the shit out of me. I haven't been to school in over ten years now and I'm not exactly sure if I still got what it takes to be a student, a masters student at that. I wonder if I still have the same discipline and drive of my undergraduate years.

After graduating from university I had planned to take my masters in a couple of years. Schools in Las Islas Filipinas usually require masters students to have some work experience. That's what I did; packed my stuff and left for Davao City where I worked in an NGO.

The plan then was to get a scholarship to study abroad, and I applied to a school in the Netherlands, got accepted, but never received a scholarship. I applied to the same school the next year, and the same thing happened. I also applied to a few other universities but, after about five years of trying, the scholarships were always elusive.

Just when I was about to give up, someone harassed me into applying for yet another masters program. He graduated from the same school and thought my personality fits with the school's culture. Just to shut him up, I applied: wrote a study proposal and a personal statement, took the IELTS, and the whole deal.

It's pretty much a dream school for me, but I never tried applying before because I thought it is way out of my league. Besides, after the disappointments over the years, I thought I would never get a scholarship, thus, it would take a miracle for me to be able to afford an education abroad (I can't even afford the international programs in Thailand!).

Well, the first miracle happened. I learned in November 2011 that I got accepted to the program. BUT, the tuition fee is almost a million pesos, which would take me years and years of selling my body if I were desperate. Well, I was desperate, I seriously asked for a loan from some of my friends.

Also, I scrambled to apply for a couple of scholarships, which are always VERY competitive and you'd never know what the scholarship committees are looking for that year. I got a rejection from one of  the scholarship programs I applied for, and I thought that was it, I'd just go home and plant kamote. Until in June, I received news that I was granted a tuition scholarship by another committee.

(My story's not complete yet because I have to tell you about how I'm going to afford living in an extremely expensive city. I can't afford it to be honest, but through the amazing kindness of friends I could manage to survive somehow. I'd write about that in another post.)

So anyway, the whole process of applying to the school and then going through the whole scholarship drama took about a year or so. There were times when I thought it's never going to happen but somehow it's going to happen.

I have so many people to thank for making it possible, and I haven't held back in thanking them like crazy (I wouldn't be surprised if they're already annoyed with me). The challenge now is to prove to them that I'm worth betting on.

And then, I have to prove to my self that I somehow deserve all these. Bitch is going to work her ass off at school.

(Obviously, the photos don't have anything to do with this post.)

Letting Go

In preparation for my next big leap into the unknown, I've been slowly getting rid of the stuff I've accumulated during my stay here in Bangkok. I'm far from being a hoarder, but clearly my stuff just keeps on piling up nonetheless.

I still can't believe I've amassed so much shit over those years, considering I regularly threw away clothes, bags, and shoes I hardly used. I also gave some of my books away whenever I went home to Las Islas Filipinas.

Out of necessity this time, I had to be more thorough in paring everything down to the most necessary things. Or to be more precise, making sure all my possessions would fit in just one large suitcase.

Surprisingly, it's not hard to let go of my clothes and shoes. I just couldn't be bothered losing some of them. I realized I hardly wear sixty percent of my clothes anyway. Either they're way too small, too big, or have bad quality (which was mostly the case). I'm just happy to get rid of them.

There are pants for instance I haven't worn for years. I just hung them inside the closet hoping that (1) I'd wear them someday or (2) I'd lose weight. Both never happened, especially number 2, but that's another blog post.

I gave perhaps fifty percent of my unwanted clothes to some friends and colleagues, while the rest of the clothes had to be thrown away because they're not meant to be worn anyway, say, a polyester shirt (why did I buy that in the first place?).

The hardest to give away are my books. Obviously, they are of no practical use after I read them, but I collect them anyway. I like how they look. I take pride in my carefully arranged book shelf. And whenever I see one book for instance it stirs up thoughts about its contents and memories of where and when I read them.

Every time I give away a book I feel like I'm saying good bye to one of my babies (not that I actually know how it's like to be a mother, but who cares; I'm a drama queen after all). I try to match the person's interest with the book I give them so that they can be good "foster parents".

The things I'm not letting go are my travel mementos. They are by no means expensive keepsakes. Most of them are cheap cliches bought at the airport souvenir shop or some tourist market. But most likely I'd never go back to the places where I bought them, so they are irreplaceable. And of course it's the memories that count.

I have a clique of dolls from Yunnan, Hanoi, Yangon, and Seoul... they're snooty little bitches in ornate costumes and heavy make up. I have masks from Singapore and Sri Lanka watching over me while I sleep. I have cheap paintings from Kolkata, Chiang Mai, and Yangon huddled together above my bed. A quilt from Jakarta, scarves from Laos and Siem Reap, pottery from Ban Chiang, an umbrella from Yangon, etc. Gosh, there are just lots of them lying around my bedroom.

The challenge is to fit them in one suitcase, which I will banish into the darkness of the office's storeroom for the time being. I hope by the time I come back to pick them up they haven't turned to dust yet.

There's something cathartic about throwing some of my stuff away. It's a way to release things that I shouldn't own anyway. The questions I keep on asking my self are: do I really NEED any of them? do they have any practical use? can they be replaced? It turns out, I can get rid of probably eighty percent of what little possessions I have.

Five Years in Thailand

Today marks my fifth year in Thailand. When I arrived here I knew for sure I'd be staying for a year as my first work contract stated. And then when my first contract expired I was given two years and then another three years. (My current contract expires in 2013.)

It's surprising how the years piled up, and true to the cliche, I hardly noticed time passing by. Probably it shows how much I like my life here. Well, I can't complain about most of my experiences and I owe it to Thailand that the past five years had been nothing short of great.

Everyday I still find many fascinating things about Bangkok... its small streets, its ever changing landscapes, and the kindness of the people... basically the same things that have enamored me since I arrived in Bangkok.

Kalerks

OMG, it's almost the end of June and I haven't posted yet a single entry this month. Well, let me do this post out of obligation to my two readers.

Here are two major updates this month...

First, I turned 25 a couple of weeks ago. I know, it's my seventh time to turn 25, but who is counting, aber? As far as I'm concerned I'm a 25-year old boy trapped in a paunchy, wrinkly body.

But no, I'm not celebrating my birthday. I haven't celebrated my birthday since I turned 21. I just cannot be bothered, really.

What I'm celebrating, however, is the news that I'm moving soon. Moving on with my life, moving from Bangkok, moving to a better future. Charaught! 

In three months I'd be somewhere else, living a poor student's life, but hopefully intellectually richer.

There's still a gazillion things to do, including how to get rid of the shit I've accumulated during the last past five years in Bangkok. And then there's the visa. And then there's raising enough funds just to survive as a student.

Other than that, I'm basically on my way to (hopefully) greener pastures. Who knows...

With this great opportunity, I just keep telling my self that I shouldn't fuck this up. 

A Trip to Lampang

I just came back from a ten-day official trip to Lampang Province in Northern Thailand. Our office brought a team of archaeologists, historians, and the like there to an excavation in a rock art site, and basically I just hung around.

Not exactly a pleasant experience being in the mountains as I'm not an outdoor person. Ugh, the mosquitoes feasted on me, I probably need a blood transfusion now.

Anyway, aside from complaining incessantly (which must've driven my colleagues nuts), I also had the chance to visit a village, talk to a few people there, and checked out Lampang's old houses and temples.

Here are some photos... I experimented with black and white in this trip.

The Waves of Hikkaduwa

We arrived in Hikkaduwa, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, at nearly midnight after a 16-hour drive. We were quite pleased with our hotel because it was right on the beach, the sound of the waves practically lulling us to sleep.

The next day we of course put on our swimming shorts, lathered a thick layer of sunblock on our faces, and headed to the beach. Gosh, the golden sand is immaculate! The beach front is quite wide and long... it is just endless sand, sand, sand. Hikkaduwa is a famous surfing beach, so it was waves galore too.

We played in the waves, which were strong, along with the current. I can swim quite well but I was still not comfortable in the waves. If you don't watch out they can in fact send you screaming for your life like you're inside the washing machine, which happened to Ms C and me several times. It was fun but exhausting (and dangerous).

So we lounged on the beach, under the shade, and drank beer. We watched several surfers riding on the waves. No, we were not brave enough to get a surfing lesson.

As it is a surfer's destination, I expected Hikkaduwa to be filled with surfers who go on endless drinking binges and parties. But it was pretty quiet there, and far from being overwhelmingly crowded. The atmosphere was just right for relaxation, in fact.

In the afternoon, while in an internet cafe, the manager of the place told us there had been a tsunami warning after a strong quake hit Sumatra. In two minutes the cafe was emptied of its patrons, who were all tourists.

Ms C and I waited another ten minutes because we had still to update our Facebook profiles and tweet about our wonderful vacation. What can be more important, aber? Tsunami what?

The manager had to shoo us away from the cafe, urging us to go back to the hotel and wait for evacuation instructions from the hotel staff.

On our way to our room the other hotel guests were rushing out, lugging heavy backpacks, and hailing tuk-tuks left and right. We were still undecided on what to do. We felt it was too soon to evacuate (we were told we would have two hours to flee once a tsunami has been confirmed).

We took precautions eventually when we realized everyone had left!

We quickly packed our bags and hopped on a tuk-tuk. The driver took us to a hilltop Buddhist temple, about two kilometers inland. Surprisingly, the temple grounds were practically empty. I don't know where the other tourists went...

We tried to get in contact with the travel guide (who was already back in Colombo) but the SIM card we bought did not work. A Sri Lankan family that was also taking refuge in the temple helped us call our travel guide, who then kept us abreast of the tsunami warming.

About four hours of waiting on the temple grounds, our kind travel guide told us that it was safe to go back to the hotel.

The next day, we went to the fort of Galle, half an hour by bus from Hikkaduwa. The old town of Galle (pronounced like gall in gall bladder) was put on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1988.

The Portuguese founded it in the 16th century, and then in 1640 it fell into the hands of the Dutch, who eventually handed it over to the British in 1729.

We walked on the fort walls, enjoying the sea views together with joggers and other tourists. There was a lighthouse and a tall clock tower, and several bastions. Venturing into the streets, we stumbled into a couple of Christian churches, a mosque, government buildings, and some old mansions and museums.

It's easy to get lost in its streets and gawk at the old houses. There are lots of hotels and jewelry shops within the town walls, but the overall feel of the place is just old-world charm (as opposed to blatant commercialization).

We had to drive four hours the next day to reach Negombo. As our flights were in the morning, we needed some place near the airport, so to Negombo we went. We had a few hours on Negombo's beach, enjoying our last Sri Lankan curry and rice, and watching the sunset. We bought some souvenirs in the evening.

Seven days in Sri Lanka is very short to see the amazing country. Nonetheless, we experienced its heritage sites, old towns, tea plantations, and beaches in such a short time.

There's really more reasons for me to go back there, particularly visit more of their old capitals and kingdoms as well as enjoy the beaches in the east, which I heard are much better than the ones in the south.

Oh, if there's one reason to go back to Sri Lanka, it's really to experience again the people's hospitality and warmth.

It's funny that several times Ms C and I were mistaken for a Japanese couple. When they learned we are Filipinos, some of them would say "kumusta?" or "salamat" or "pare". These are the guys who have worked with Filipinos in the Middle East, who have somehow picked up a Tagalog word here and there.

In a lot of ways, Sri Lankans are like Filipinos. Like us they are generous with their smiles, they are curious and they like to talk, and they have a good sense of humor. Maybe that's why it was easy to feel at home there.