writings

Do you even know where you are?

Alan Watts described a funny feature of the English language. Our nouns (at least the countable ones) need determiners, which means that you can’t say “cat” without say something about the reference of that word. It could be “a cat”, “my cat”, “the fat cat”, and so-on. Of course you could call your cat “Cat” if you wanted, but that’s a name and not a regular countable noun.

This is why Apple, in their marketing material, like to refer to their products without a determiner. They say “don’t let iPad get wet”, when that really should be “your iPad”. They cut the determiner to make it seem like your Apple product is actually a personality, that your product actually has a name. Calling your iPad “iPad” is just as silly as calling your cat “Cat”, but I expect their marketing executives predicted people wouldn’t think about it that much.

Now Alan Watts was famous for talking about the deeper meaning of things, and he pointed out that if your arm hurts then you need to give arm a determiner. It’s my arm. And if your arm belongs to you, in the same way that your iPad belongs to you, then it means that what you are is definitely not your arm. It means that the core of who you are cannot be rooted inside the body. It’s somewhere else.

But look at these sentences, which at some time or other have all be relatively common in English:

My mind is playing tricks on me.
Awake my soul.
My head hurts.
My spirit soared.

If mind, soul, body and spirit are all things that belong to me, then where and what is me?

Is it any surprise that people feel disaffected, cut off from themselves, when the language that we use is a constant reminder that we don’t know how to feel at home in our bodies?

Building a House in Thailand: From Dream to Digging

My wife Pooky and I started thinking about building a house in 2010. Pooky has a patch of land in the rural outskirts of Bangkok, and it’s beautiful out there. In 2014 we investigated options for getting a house put on that land in the simplest way possible, since neither of us are very interested in construction or house design. The simplest option, I imagined, was a prefabricated house which arrives on a truck. I would point to where we wanted them to put it, have lunch, and come back to see it finished. However when we started investigating costs, we saw that baht-per-meter, prefab is a very expensive option in Thailand.

The next avenue was hiring a house building company. The way this works is by looking at a catalogue and some scale models, choosing the one you want, giving them some money, and waiting about a year for it to be built for you. We found a company that seemed reliable, and got to the stage of discussing with their architects how we would be customising one of the stock plans. However when we realised that we wanted some heavy customisation, including a separate building in which I could teach English and Reiki, we felt that working with their stock designs was too restrictive. And we also discovered that by desigining and building the house ourselves we could get even more for our money.

In 2015 an architect drew-up initial plans for a modern one-storey house with a flat roof and lots of glass that felt minimalist, spacious, and open. This was exactly what we were looking for. Unfortunately, when I researched the ecological aspects of the design, it became clear that in the tropics lots of glass means lots of heat passing directly into the house. It would act like a greenhouse, and would require massive amounts of electricity to keep cool with air conditioning. We were also put-off by the architect’s high fees, and so set-about desigining the house ourselves.

The process of designing the house made us consider what we actually wanted from the house. Through countless redesigns we arrived at a one-storey house design that would function well, only to change our minds and opt for two stories. We bought books of stock designs for two-storey buildings, which were much more varied than the ones presented by the house-building companies, and found one that we really liked. The blueprints for these houses are available, but given the their price, and the amount of customisation that we required, we ended-up finding a new architect who would take our initial concept and make a working house design out of it, including all necessary blueprints and structural calculations.

At this stage of the project we were already in 2016, and things started to speed up. The architect was free to devote all of his time to our projects, and after a couple of revisions we had the complete set of drawings in our hands. While I began drawing-up the model in 3D, we were also researching as best we could how to find a trustworthy contractor. We arrived at a long-list of five, which we soon reduced to a short-list of three. We met these three contractors once, again, and then suddenly we had got to the end of a meeting with a contract negotiated and an offer of his team moving to the site in three days if we felt ready. Three days!

Setting-up the site layout

The contractor came to the site for an initial inspection on October 30th, and on the same day the builders started setting-up their accommodation for the six months that they will be living and working on our land. They will start digging the foundations within the coming week.

How are we feeling about all this? One Thai word, ตื่นเต้น, covers it pretty well: nervous, yes, but excited.

Don’t Forget Your Centre

Sometimes it’s only when you lean back in the water and be still that you realise how hard you’ve been thrashing your arms and legs about to stay afloat.

I’ve just started a new semester of teaching at university, and have been immersed in so many projects over the last few months. It’s an exciting time for me, but often I forget to invest my energy in a way that grounds and centres me, and instead I end up scattered and exhausted. We all need things that bring stability to the mind and body.

This evening, after a busy day at work, I took twenty minutes out to practice calligraphy. And now I feel calm, focused, and ready to keep walking forwards.

I’m working my way, chapter-by-chapter, through the Tao Te Ching:

My Diary

I’ve just made a change to this blog which means you can choose what you want to subscribe to. There are now four separate sections in the mailing list:

Diary
Journal
Technology
Photography

The diary is for general updates about my life here in Thailand. The journal is for deeper reflections about life, like this piece about losing faith. Technology and photography are self-explanatory. If you decide that you want to opt-out of any of these sections, just click on ‘edit your subscription’ at the end of any email that you receive.

We’re now in late June, which means all of us have been alive, every single day, for more than half of 2016. We will always be able to make more money, but we will never be able to make more time.

While I can say that I’ve spent a lot of time in stuff that wasn’t worthwhile, I’ve also had some great experiences so far in 2016.

First off, I was invited to be master of ceremonies for a TEFL conference in Bangkok. The invitation made me nervous, but I make a point of saying ‘yes’ to opportunities to practice my public speaking skills. Despite getting nervous every time, I really enjoy them. For this, I also had to learn how to be an MC, and I always like learning new things.

Second was my birthday. Pooky and I took a short trip to Kanchanburi, which is a beautiful part of Thailand that until now I have mostly ignored. It is most well-known for the bridge over the river Khwae¹The spelling Kwai is totally not how it is pronounced., which was built in World War II.

On the morning of my birthday I did some calligraphy by the river:

There are large national parks with waterfalls and caves to explore. And there are also some restaurants in town that float on the river:

Pooky enjoying fried fish in Kanchanburi

I whole-heartedly recommend Kanchanburi.

One more thing. For a few months I’ve been working on a new website for the National Library of Laos. When the site was completed, they asked me to go to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and train their staff in how to use the site. I’ve never taught technology formally before, so preparing the course took a long time, but my heart was full of joy when I saw the library staff understand how to write updates and take control of the site for themselves.

outside the National Library of Laos, Vientiane

I had a wonderful week there. On the way back to Bangkok, since it’s the rainy season, we were treated with views of amazing cloud formations from the plane.

The Darkness of Disbelief

At one point in my life, in fact it happened on a particular morning on a particular day in 2005, I realised I didn’t believe in God anymore. This wasn’t an intellectual thing. It was something I suddenly felt, or rather it was the lack of a feeling. Until that morning I had felt the presence of God every time I prayed, and from that morning I could no-longer feel it.

This ruptured the core of my life. It left me lost and viscerally depressed, deprived of my life’s meaning and purpose. Since my family were Christian and almost all of my friends were Christian, I also found myself feeling alone. But I could not hide from it, and I couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t happened. I wasted no time trying to warm myself on a fire that no-longer gave heat, and I stepped out into the darkness of disbelief.

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