All These Things That I've Done

When there's nowhere else to run

Is there room for one more son

One more son

If you can hold on

If you can hold on, hold on

I wanna stand up, I wanna let go

You know, you know - no, you don't, you don't

I wanna shine on in the hearts of men

I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand

Another head aches, another heart breaks

I am so much older than I can take

And my affection, well it comes and goes

I need direction to perfection, no no no no

Help me out

Yeah, you know you got to help me out

Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner

You know you got to help me out, yeah

And when there's nowhere else to run

Is there room for one more son

These changes ain't changing me

The cold-hearted boy I used to be

Yeah, you know you got to help me out

Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner

You know you got to help me out, yeah

You're gonna bring yourself down

Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier
I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier
I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier

(Time, truth and hearts)

Yeah, you know you got to help me out

Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner

You know you got to help me ou, yeah

You're gonna bring yourself down, yeah

You're gonna bring yourself down

Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner

You're gonna bring yourself down, yeah

You're gonna bring yourself down

Over and out, last call for sin

While everyone's lost, the battle is won

With all these things that I've doneAll these things that I've done

(Time, truth and hearts)

If you can, hold on

If you can, hold on

Kinda scary how some songs hit the spot.....

Krung Thepisation

It was the summer Californication came out. Busby, Nolan, James, Shoko, Tim, Rob, Jana and I…we had been meaning to go and had been talking about it for the entire semester. Wakeboarding at Tako (I think that’s how it is spelled). A man-made lake created exclusively for wake boarding….too much fun. Jana didn’t really know or care about what we were doing, she was visiting from Germany and was just there to have fun. I remember Rob trying to hit on her and how she would complain to Nolan and I about how annoying he was getting. James and Shoko were dating back then, Nolan, Busby and Tim making up the trio of bachelors. I was in a long distance relationship at the time which was silly because I was 17 and I really should have just been having fun.

Nolan was the only one out of all of us that had a car to drive. Some of us drove but not all. I learned to drive in Bangkok and if you can drive there, you can drive anywhere! So, Nolan drove us to this lake on a lazy day. He drove a four door sedan and there were eight of us. Three in the front, the rest in the back. I remember the feeling of just meeting up and going. I think we were hung over, yet the idea of being out in the sun and just having fun all day was such a promising thought that it banished any nasty feelings. Sunglasses, board shorts, cigarettes, alcohol, and a few other accessories…oh yeah, water.

The facilities itself were not impressive, changing rooms, showers, a rectangular lake with wires running around it, and of course the deck with the knee boards and wake boards. It was my first time on a wake board, actually it was pretty much most of our first times on a wake board.

‘It’s just like surfing man, trust me its easy!’
‘Yeah just make sure you distribute more weight to the back end.’
‘Oh and don’t forget, when you get to the turns make sure you go wide!’
‘Wait what happens if you…don’t…’

Too Late…

I made it about five meters before I plunged my board into the water and the cables dragged me across the water for another 3 meters before I let go.

‘That was AWESOME!’ was all my teenage mind could come up with. A few tries later and I finally made it to a turn…unfortunately due to my excitement earlier I neglected to reiterate my inquiry as to what happens if I don’t go wide on a turn. Experience truly is the best teacher.

I made it to turn 1 (there were only four turns) and I forgot to go wide. When the cable goes around the turn it looses tension and therefore you loose momentum causing you to sink in the water. Once the cable completes the turn and heads for the straightaway it regains the tension almost immediately. So when I get to the turn I begin to lose speed and my board begins to sink…a giant “?” appears over my head as I notice the cable slacken, the “?” is quickly replaced by a “!!” as I notice it begin to get VERY taught VERY fast. I did not let go of the cable and suddenly I am ripped right out of the water at an incredible speed, off of my board… once again I am body skiing across the water. I let go and swim back to retrieve my board, I pass by a pair of shorts, realize they are mine and quickly put them on hoping no one saw me, unfortunately as I grabbed my shorts one of the girls kneeboards by me and issues a quick ‘Meow!!’ as she boards right by my exposed bottom.

We all had a great time, and there were definitely more funny moments. I remember it was either Busby or James that ended up planting his face across the moving water, as in he went down face first and then his body followed…ouch! Unfortunately for us guys the girls were graceful and experienced no wardrobe malfunctions despite the fact that they were wearing bikinis.

By the end of the day our bodies were exhausted, it was the feeling of having been swimming all day long. Our faces were radiating with heat, we were so hungry and just wanted to chill out. Despite this we were happy.

The ride home was one of the best parts of the day, it definitely held my favorite feeling of the day. We all crammed back into Nolan’s car. We were tired and hungry but not cranky. We weren’t cranky because we had so much fun and everyone was just full of positive life. It was a long trip back to downtown Bangkok seeing as we were on the outskirts of the city. Steve and Tim passed out almost immediately; Shoko passed out on James and in the front seat Rob, tall ass Rob, was strictly instructed to stay up with Nolan as he drove. Jana and I talked most of the way but eventually she too fell asleep.

As I mentioned earlier, Californication had just been released, and being big fans of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, we played the tape over and over again…yes, I said tape as in cassette tape. Scar Tissue was playing while there was a calm silence right before everyone passed out. It felt almost like the video, we were exhausted, the sun was shining right in our faces, I watched the Bangkok city scene unfold before me as we drove…I remember looking at all of my friends and asking myself if this was ever going to happen again. Inside I knew the answer was no. We were all leaving Bangkok that summer to go to college. I was leaving within a couple of weeks actually and just being with those people, not saying anything but enjoying life, was such a great feeling.

The city itself was our other friend. I watched as we went from one scene to the next. Watching life in the city pass by. New buildings, broken buildings, the newest Mercedes model parked in front of a nondescript noodle stand, homeless people, children playing on the street and out of nowhere an old shopping mall with a movie theatre that must have been the place to hang out so many years ago. The billboard displaying a hand painted poster of the featured Hollywood movie dubbed in Thai, a movie which came out almost a year before.

That day was my last full serving of feeling young. Not just feeling free, but feeling like there was nothing in the world that could make me feel sad. I was so happy and so content knowing that there was so much I could do with my life. So much potential, so many unwritten pages…I was in love with life at that moment. I breathed it in, I enjoyed every second of existence without feeling like I was going to lose or gain anything. It was the calm before the storm…

Travelling Through Time, I Lost Myself...

A new year. Time for a fresh start. Thank God! I kinda wish that you could actually feel it though. Like taking a shower and feeling clean right after. Looking back over the past six years that I have been here in the States blows my mind. So much has happened, the world I knew most of my life has changed so much since I have been here. From the most general issues like the socio-political climate, to more specific things in my world like the people in it and my dreams.

I was such a different person when I first came to the US. I left Bangkok around the end of June/beginning of July ’00. I spent a month is Switzerland learning German, funny thing is I actually met Ms. Ocean and her sister during this trip for the first time but the world had other plans and we weren't to be friends yet. I am not sure exactly why I went or even agreed to go considering I hated Switzerland so much back then. I guess I was at a point in my life where I felt like I needed to move on and continue progressing. Sound familiar? Well, as similar as it sounds there is a solid and pressing reason why I was feeling so antsy at that time. I was pulled out of college due to a health concern, the results showed that there was nothing wrong with me, which in turn resulted in my traveling around Thailand for the better part of the year. Not such a bad sentence I know, but understand that as great a place is, it is not what you thought it was without the people you enjoyed it with. It can also work in the other direction, you think a place is shitty until you lose the people you hang with and realize how shitty it really is...I guess I should point out that places can get better by losing the people you were with as well…ANYWAY…

So I traveled. I went to island after island, beach after beach, temple after temple, and got messed up night after night…Naturally I did not feel like I was going to amount to much continuing on the way I was. The pressure of knowing that my friends were going to continue in life without me also played a factor. So I left it all behind in pursuit of my future, it was inevitable anyway…

I was in Switzerland for a month…it seemed like the longest month of my life. By the end of it I was speaking decent German, another month and I would have gotten it down. Unfortunately, I lost all of it in the US despite going back to classes for a little bit. My first year in the US was very hollow and uneventful characterized by me watching a lot of TV, eating Tostitos and playing soccer with the Swiss Embassy team. I had missed the deadline for University applications for that semester and as it turns out, I missed the deadline for the next semester as well because I was an international student and I needed to apply earlier. Bollocks!

By the fall I was ready to start Uni again. 9/11 happened and the whole world changed overnight. Every international person’s life in the US just got a lot harder and more stressful. International students graduating would find it harder to find work, students coming in from abroad would find it more difficult to get into the country, and those going home would risk not being able to complete their degrees.

During my first week into Uni I instantly I found friends and got right into the thick of undergrad life. I met my Indonesian friends within a few weeks of the fall semester. In late September I ran into a girl from my high school in Bangkok, I remember it as clearly as if though it happened yesterday. I was walking down the hall in one of the Uni buildings and I heard someone call me by a name that no one else called me by in the US at that time (only in Bangkok). By the end of October I was in a relationship which would last the remainder of my college career and into my first year of the “really real” world. That encounter and the resulting relationship was my saving grace and there would be no way I would be where I am today had that not happened.

In the summer of 2002 I went on my first road trip. Earlier in the year I got my first car. It was a 1995 Ford Taurus station wagon, it was also known as the boat, the tug, or Betsy. (One time I pulled up to a '62 Eldorado and found out that Betsy was longer that it counting the fins!)That road trip brought me to NY, to North Carolina and Florida for the first time. I also was fortunate enough to have gone skydiving on a beautiful day over the Florida coast. It was my first long haul and I did all of the driving. I remember having to smoke cigarettes almost every 20mins just to stay awake. I downed Red Bulls and anything there was to keep me up. We camped out of the back of my Taurus wagon in a camping lot by the beach in the Outer Banks, NC. That was fun. We stayed with a friend and his family in Vero Beach, FL. There we were completely spoiled. From the east coast of FL we went across to the west coast where there were beautiful clear blue waters and white sands. After that it was back to DC.

My college years were not the typical crazy college years. Well, at some points they kind of were actually. I went here and I partied there and it was cool for a bit. My first job in the US was at a McDonald’s. By the time I was in college I got another job in a CD store and I loved it. It was a very carefree time for me back then, school, work three times a week at a music store and partying. I needed more cash and I wanted to work more hours for it but the CD store could not afford it. So I quit and jumped industries. I got a job as a sales associate at Louis Vuitton. I spent about a year and a half there before I made my move to Tiffany & Co. I left T & Co. at the beginning of my second semester of my senior year. I saved up as much cash as possible and I joined UBS Private Banking as an intern. In any case I graduated eventually, after a considerable amount of jumping through hoops. It kills me to think about how I transitioned from a very carefree and broke nature to a stressful and materialistic existence.

After I graduated I went through six months of unemployment. I never knew how bad unemployment and the stress of the whole job search process could be. It is such a spirit breaker to have to go through so much and be beat down and then get your hopes up again only to be dashed again. I was practically broken by the time I finally landed a job where I am now. It is very hard to get a company to sponsor you for a freakin’ visa!

Before my current occupation,t my first job out of colege was with an IT consulting company. I really did not want to be there but they were passing out visas like it was Halloween and I was running out of time, plus I needed the cash. I worked there for about four weeks, one of which was in NY. My buddy Mr. Lovin’ came to visit me one night and we went out on a Wednesday or something. We got completely trashed and spent too much money. We went to Scores, which is a strip club that Howard Stern always talks about. Quite frankly it was expensive and not worth it. I guess it is awesome if you are Howard Stern. The next day my friend was supposed to leave at around 8-ish and I was supposed to be at work by 7:30am. We woke up at 8 and I did not get to work until 8:30. It was bad because I was supposed to let people into the building and instead I walk into a quiet room full of people giving me a nasty look...and I smelled like a bar…anyway, I quit by the end of the week, especially when they informed me that the US had run out of visas. A month and a half later I found a company which took me in. For a moment everything was alright…

I was informed by my company that I could not be paid for the time my work permit expired to the time my visa took effect. That total time was 3 months. On top of which 1 ½ of those months had to be back home in Switzerland. By this time I had moved in to a new apartment with my ex-girlfriend and dog. All of this stress was topped off with a car crash that I got into. Just peachy.

So, once I finally got everything in line, all I have to do is get the visa, come back and Ta-Dah! You crossed the finish line! Apt, car, g-friend, dog, visa & a job. I leave to get the visa, three months later it hits me…after all of that…it hits me…where am I going with my life? I have moved so far away from who I was…am I ready to be this kind of person? I guess not.

Now, here I am.

So much has happened, so many faces come and go, so many places lived in and seen, so many memories made and forgotten and so much to look forward to. Was it the right decision to end it all? Does it matter at this point?

Time for a fresh start…a second chance....into the unknown we go...Happy New Year!