please excuse the red ribbon - that was an unfortunate costume malfunction.
the full display (me on the left)
... and we keep on going, right through the night.
me, with Honey and Jikky, two of the wonderful, beautiful staff of the promotions company putting this thing on - who, in our rest breaks, provide us with endless drinks, food, massages and pep-talks.
The first two hours were almost unbearable. The mixture of physical pain and pressure not to move, or laugh, or fall over was both unexpected and almost, at times, overwhelming. The most intense pins-and-needles flooded into your fingers and toes, and the idea of 50 something hours standing this way loomed ahead like a grey desert. But then... suddenly a rhythm develops. A calm. Your eyes focus on a single point, a tiny speck of nothing out there in front of you. The smiling Thai faces around you, the digital cameras and cell phone cameras and video cameras, the motorbikes and buses and taxis chugging past you - all of it begins to fade. Your mind empties to almost nothing. Nothing will make you smile, nothing will make you move. You stand, transfixed. Your huge hat is heavy on your head, pressing into your scalp, but you no longer notice. You are beyond tiredness. The light changes across the vortex of colour that has become your vision as you stare into nothing. Occasionally, in lapses, brief but jolting, you see small movements in your periphery - the humming, gliding skytrain above, a young woman posing with a peace symbol beside you, a cloud of smoggy polution lifting off the street. Then back to nothing.
And then, out come the others, and it is a shift change.
This job is certainly one of the strangest, most challenging, most interesting and most tiring things I have ever done.
And now, three lists of 6:
A partial list of things people have said to me and to which I have offered absolutely no reply.
1. Are you Scottish?
2. Are you hot in that?
3. Asshole.
4. Hello! Can I take your photo? Hello? HELLO?
5. Laugh. Hey, come on, laugh. Booga-booga-boo.
6. Can you look over this way? Um. Smile?
A partial list of things I am being paid to stare at.
1. A pillar
2. A McDonalds resturant across the street.
3. Four trees covered in fairy lights.
4. An advertisment, in Thai, for the Loy Krathong Festival 2005 (proudly presented by VISA) depicted two beautiful people smiling into the water, holding an elaborate krathong.
5. Cute girls walking past.
6. A different pillar.
A partial list of things that I will take away from this job.
1. An improved ability to keep patient and calm and perfectly still in moderately stressful situations.
2. A better understanding of the process of meditation.
3. An improved ability to register and process things seen solely in my periphery.
4. A very sun tanned face
5. The ability to estimate a period of 20 minutes fairly accurately without looking at a timepiece of any sort.
6. 16,000 Baht
Last night the company who I am now employed by gave me and the Israeli guy 100 baht each (A$3.30) to catch a taxi back to Kao Sahn road, so we decided to take a bus instead (6 baht each) and keep the extra cash. With that sudden, and entirely unexpected financial windfall I bought myself a new t-shirt, which is totally ace, and says FAHRFRÜMFALLEN - SCS Cheerleaders, and has these little stick figures doing some special cheerleading move... oh, here you go, a picture, taken an hour ago:
I actually spent a while last night before I went to the marching practice taking self portraits in the mirror in my skinny railroad car of a room. Here is one, I like the shadows made by the hooks on the wall, mostly:
In addition to large quantities of John Updike, I have been reading large quantities of William T Vollmann, a 'Reader' (or 'Best-Of' if you will) of whom I just bought, and who is, hands down, the most inspiring and influential person to read while you are travelling. Just picking up the book and flicking to any page makes me want to head, immediately, to somewhere violent and dangerous and spend a month with a translator and my ipod microphone, interviewing militia men and terrorists, whores and pimps, beggars and madmen. I don't know where yet, but I think this will now be my main purpose for going to Cambodia (because I felt I needed one beyond visiting Angkor Wat and renewing my Thai visa), to write some sort of article, to start taking this journalism thing semi-seriously and to try to dig some sort of investigative hole, somewhere, anywhere.
Please, understand: Vollmann is a crucially important and overwhelmingly incredible author. You must give him a try. AND, woah, it seems as though he is finally, perhaps, getting some of the recognition he totally deserves- he has just this week been awarded the 2005 National Book Award for fiction for his new book, Europe Central. Holy Smokes!
Oh, wow, good people, this job is just about ready to KICK MY ASS.
It's gonna be so good. Get this:
The whiskey we are advertising is 100 Pipers malt whiskey which is apparently just coming to Thailand and this is some big-ass marketing stunt to get people going what are they here for and then on the last day there will be the big press conference and explosive launch party, etc. No one is supposed to know the product is 100 Pipers, so shhh, if any Thai media folks come up to you, don't tell them nothin', alright?
So, we are in two groups of five people each. Each group will be taking turns at guarding this massive cask of malt, brought out straight from Scotland especially, apparently. We are outside a major hotel and shopping mall complex called President Towers, right near the swanky business area of Bangkok. We will be guarding this puppy *24 hours a day* for five days. Basically because we are in two groups we will be working, like, 7-9 hours on, then 7-9 hours off, etc, with a 10-15 minute break every hour (on rotation). Its complicated, but basically understand that one day I will be 'guarding' this thing from 8am-5pm, and then maybe from 2am until 9am, and then 6pm until 2am. Etc.
Every day at 6pm there will be an official 'changing of the guards' ceremony, where this four piece bagpipe band will play and we will all march on, looking stern and military, and change over. Throughout the day, when we are on shift, we are not supposed to talk to anyone, or move around, we should stand 'at ease' and try not to laugh when Thai girls try to make us laugh/eat icecream/look under our kilts, etc. So, yeah, basically we just stand there, like military guards really do, and look serious. We will be wearing black shoes, kilts, bobbins, little hats, the whole kit & kaboodle, yo.
They are giving us a hotel to stay in nearby (so we can rest between shifts) and food and drink for all five days of the job. They are paying us 16,000 baht for the whole thing, which is about 400 US dollars, which definitely goes a long way in Thailand. Plus, we can choose to go to two evenings of *exclusive* launch parties, to pose for photos, basically, and we get paid an extra 4000 baht. Which all in all, my good blog-reading friends, is totally goduke, in every possible way.
It's gonna be hot, tiring, frustrating and boring, of course, at times. But five days is definitely do-able. Oh I am so excited.
A number of the other guys seem to be 'professional' caucasian actors/models in Bangkok, but thankfully most of them are in the other group because a few of them really seem pretty much like idiots. My group seems sizably more personable, and I have already made semi-friends with one of them, an Israeli guy from Haifa.
We start in two days time.
The whole thing totally reminds me of high school, what with the pipe band and the marching. I do believe I am the only 'model' in the gang who can sing along to 'Scotland the Brave'. Not that I am allowed to - stern face!!
In other news last night I totally involuntarily almost got caught up in a weird sexual fivesome with a male Indian martial arts loving MBA student, a Thai girl who "hates Indian people", a ladyboy with short bleached blonde hair and another Thai girl who really just seemed to want to go to sleep. Fortunately, using my cunning powers of trickery, I got away, by offering to go and buy condoms at the petrol station, then running, running like the wind.
Oh, and I read Rabbit Redux by John Updike and its so awesome it makes me what to cry. Read the Rabbit books if you haven't already, and if you have - read them again.
Goodnight.
Today, at dusk: a thin little snake, hanging out in the gushes of tide on the shoreline. It looked inert, drowned, but then it moved, swimming further out, disappearing into the grey water.
Books I have finished reading on this island:
1. Out of Place: Edward W. Said
2. 13 Stories and 13 Epitaphs: William T. Vollmann
3. Civilwarland in Bad Decline: George Saunders
4. Rabbit, Run: John Updike
5. Platform: Michel Houellebecq
Tomorrow I return to Bangkok, for kilt-fitting and 'practice'.
Oh, and a newly arrived Canadian, who spent a while last night talking to me about his mid-life crisis which involves his inability to escape the desire for 'success', which he has more or less achieved in his less-than-fulfilling career as a salesman of plastics with which to wrap packing boxes, a job which makes him feel worthless and a liar, when what he really wants to do is teach business English to newly arrived immigrants to Canada, fully qualified professionals who have to resort to cleaning hotel rooms etc; this Canadian, sad and frustrated, apparently ended up shacking with my friend Pom last night and today, as well, throughout, presumably paying her the requisite one or two thousand baht required, thus rendering her unavailable to hire a motorcycle with me today and head to a nearby waterfall which was our loose plan, which actually was totally alright by me, given that it allowed me to read, in total, the Houellebecq book, which was fairly outstanding, and particularly good to read here, what with its subject matter being the Thai (and worldwide) sex-tourism industry, an element of tourism which I did not at all notice when here as a 16 year old, noticed in passing, at times, at age 21, but which now, this trip, is so glaringly omni-present and ingrained it is almost entirely and unfortunately, unavoidable, but hugely, gigantically, facinating.
