Live To Win

Isn't it funny how time can stretch and pull away from your comprehension depending on where you are and what you're doing. 9.5 hours on a plane seems like agony when you've read half a book, listened to a few albums, eaten two meals etc etc. In the same way ten days in a new place can stretch away from you like an odyssey of adventure, when every day holds a bright promise of fresh experiences. And then in retrospect it seems like you took a mere gasp of air in that place, and in your memory it becomes like a shiny bauble or trinket to ponder over and treasure, filled with wonder and kept close to the heart. Sam, with said palm fronds.. Thailand seems to have passed by in the blink of an eye, but really it was ten days of packed in activities and travels, and best of all many good conversations. Arriving in Chiang Mai was a very pleasant change from the overbearing concrete smog of Bangkok. I spent half a day wandering around town in the company of my new ...

The sun sweats down out of an azure sky as i pick up speed down the superhighway on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. The grumbly hire bike looks imposing, but it's front tire is bald, and the oil is as black as it's tank. It burps, and backfires everytime i release the throttle, which smells like burnt peanut butter farts. With my cracked red ray-bans, my newly stencilled leather and a swag of bodgy tattoos i'm in the perfect mood to add to my already dodgy appearance. I have a date with the dentist. In 200six (f***en dodgy keyboard) Thailand's "medical tourism" industry was projected to take in 3six.4 Million Baht (around 1.2 Million Australian dollars). The rising cost of health care in first world countries, and the ease of international travel is driving this phenomenon, sending medical dollars to dozens of developing countries across the world. Me i just wanted a gold tooth, so i figured that Thailand would be a suitably warm destination. The clinic stand...

"You see, what people without facebook don't realise", the french man i have just befriended is explaining to me, "is that they worry about being monitored online, but they all have cellphones!" he throws up his hands and begins laughing, which turns into a cough and a hacking of phlegm onto the warm street. "Every conversation is recorded and kept for One Year. At least! That is why i like writing. With writing you simply have more control over your expression." I couldn't agree with my new friend more, (although some of his stories about his prolific sex life were more eyeopening than convincing) which is why i am excited to begin my first real overseas adventure story with these, his parting words. After a mammoth 9 and a half hour flight from Melbourne, i stepped into the muggy Bangkok heat last night a little bewildered, very tired and of course keen to get straight into it. Although I am worried about being so easily identified as an Aust...

I 'm still shedding tears for you, my brother from a different mother. You were such an excellent generous man, and i aspire to live up to the words you left behind in your diary - "make time for everyone". We miss you. See you further on up the road. All my love and light, M

There's something beautiful about comics - the way they freeze and crystalize moments of crisis like nothing else can. The spastic jump of objects knocked from a table as a body is hurled through a window. The look of awe on a face as something epic is revealed before it's beholder.  What is the way without artifice to capture the moments and places and scenes of life in this city that seduce with their temporary brilliance. It's difficult to avoid the (capitalist) logic of progress while documenting a time - the implicit idea that all things must/will develop and grow bigger, firmer, more exposed to the appreciation of a wider audience, so that we can look back with feigned respect to when they were small and "real". Appreciation here has a financial ring to it.  Placing a moment into a sellable capsule must inevitably starve and kill off the creative vibrant energy which made it burn so bright in the first place. Instead I seek a lasting means for admiring that...

Hong Kong Skyline - The spaceship of international capitalism has landed! So i'm feeling a little sour about asia at the moment, cause i got ripped off by a fortune teller last night in Hong Kong at the very end of the famous temple street night market, full of plastic crap (wonderful, amazing plastic crap mind you), msg, smoke, noise and hectic rushing crowds. The wind was blowing her tent around her, and i thought why not? $70 later and the little i'd learned was basically summed up by the idea that i'll have good luck after the chinese new year in february. Great. As i was leaving, an aging prostitute balancing on stilts of high heels, deftly stepped across the prostrate beggar with one massive tumerous leg to try and capture my attention. Suddenly i do feel lucky after all... Actually Asia, or at least the few parts of it that i saw in this trip, have captured my imagination in a unique way. While not always inspiring, Kaohsiung was a smoggy, dirty, beery paradis...