After a month or so on the road, I have arrived back in Cambodia (Siem Reap, for now).
I have spent most of the last quarter-century in East Asia, and nearly a dozen years now in South-East Asia. For the last six years I have been mainly based in the Lao P.D.R., which has many points of appeal; and I've spent a fair bit of time in Vietnam and Thailand, for which I also have a considerable fondness. But somehow,... Cambodia chimes with me that bit more than any of its neighbours. Arriving back here after a spell away - even stepping off a bus or a plane into the noise and stink and tumult of Phnom Penh - always feels strangely reassuring, comforting to me,... like a big warm hug for the soul.
And so it does again. I've been having a bit of a stressful time over the past year or two; and especially in the last few months. But now, back in Cambodia, everything suddenly feels all right again. (It isn't. But it feels like it, for now - and I'll take that.)
My laptop suddenly died on me. Very suddenly - no warning signs of any distress in its operations: working just fine in the afternoon, then utterly unresponsive in the evening.
The worst possible timing too! I'd just started a period of travelling in southern Lao: an area I'm not so familiar with, and where I'd be shifting locations frequently, with little opportunity to look around for possible assistance with computer ailments; small towns, with not much English spoken, and not much prospect of there being any decent computer shops anyway. The day before the catastrophe, I'd still been in the capital, Vientiane, which I know my way around very well, and where it should have been relatively straightforward to get a repair done - and/or buy a new laptop. (I almost invariably have a second as a back-up, but I'd just sold my older one, and hadn't yet had time to think about getting a replacement. It is particularly vexing that the defunct one is less than a year old, and has hardly been used. With careful management, I am usually able to squeeze at least 7 or 8 years of useful life out of these babies; I've never had one quit on me like this after such a short time.)
Hence, I have been cut off from my blog here for nearly three weeks. My weekly 'Zen' bons mots are mostly prepared some weeks or even months ahead, and a few other shorter posts are also sometimes 'pre-baked'', but most of my content here is written 'live', in the moment, day by day - and there's been none of that since mid-April. I've missed TWO whole Gameweeks! Sorry.
While losing touch with the title race at such a crucial juncture has been vexing (no TV available to me either in these parts; although I did rather fortuitously catch a full re-run of the epic Everton v City game when I arrived in Siem Reap the other day), the enforced digital detox has been rather refreshing.
Alas, this externally imposed virtue of Internet abstinence seems to have been compensated for by a notable lapse in virtue in other areas of my life. (I blame the weather too: the rains have been late to arrive this year, and the whole region has been sweltering under a 40+ Celsius heatwave for the past several weeks - that does rather militate against trying to do anything very active...) I have spent a fortnight mostly just sat on terraces overlooking the Mekong, steadily slinging back cold beers and Long Island Iced Teas....
A terrace overlooking the Mekong
Putting my feet up
A prize for anyone who can identify my exact location in these snaps!
Now, that idyll of rustic simplicity - a blissful recreation of a pre-industrial, pre-Internet life - is over, and I must return to my habitual grind. I suppose I'll start enjoying it again before long. But at the moment, I am still missing having all day to read a book....
Today is the eve of the Buddhist New Year across the countries of South-East Asia, where I have been enjoying an idyllic 'semi-retirement' for the most of the last dozen years.
A few years ago, the Lao Brewery Company produced commemorative cans for its flagship Beer Lao brand reminding us all of the number of the new year in the Buddhist chronology; but they haven't repeated that useful notice again since. If Google is to be believed (which it generally isn't these days, on almost anything; just a few days ago, it was trying to persuade me that Arsenal were knocked out of the FA Cup in the 4th Round this year [by Wigan??!!] - and that was just the good old fashioned regular search function, not the demented new 'AI' version....), we are about to enter the year 2,570.
I'm in the Lao capital of Vientiane at the moment. I'm hoping it will be the quietest place to ride out the festivities. The water-fighting in the streets, a custom, I gather, only fairly recently exported from Thailand to neighbouring Lao and Cambodia, gets more protracted and boisterous each year, and quickly gets a bit tiresome if you're any older than 25; but the major hazard of this period - especially in this country - is the maudlin all-night drinking parties, usually with interludes of caterwauling karaoke at ear-shredding volumes, that break out everywhere over the next few days, and can make sleep (at least at regular hours) all but impossible. The good thing about the bigger cities in this part of the world is that almost no-one's really from there, they've just migrated from other parts of the country for work or study; and for big holidays like this, they all return to their original home for a few days or a week Thus, the big cities empty out, and can often be relatively tranquil at such times - at least, compared to most of the rest of the country during this frenzy of batshit-crazy celebration. I'm hoping that will be the case again. (Although the last time I spent the holiday here, we were still under the shadow of Covid, so that may not have been fully representative. The festival does seem to have become hugely more raucous across the region in the last two or three years!)
Anyhow, Sabaidee Pi Mai - as they say around here.
Or, in the local script,.... ສະບາຍດີປີໃໝ່
Or in Thai, Sawasdee Pi Him - สวัสดีปีใหม่
And in Khmer, Rikreay Chhnam Thmei - រីករាយឆ្នាំថ្មី
Now,.... I must sort out my earplugs and my rain poncho before braving the 150-metre dash to the nearest convenience store to pick up a couple of beers... It might be the last time I dare to go outside for the next three or four days.
Here's a funny thing: although I have a great fondness for the late Shane MacGowan and his songwriting,.... most of my favourite Pogues songs are in fact written by other members of the band. This one, a rather beautiful love song by banjo-player Jem Finer, is from their later era in the '90s, after the band had finally been worn out by Shane's looney escapades and had to sack him.
The Pogues have a special place in my heart because they rose to prominence - indeed they were, somehow, one of the biggest bands in the world for a while back then! - during the 1980s, the period when I was transitioning from high school to university, and then from university to 'the world of work' (ha!), that age when we tend to listen to music most, and be most affected by it.
Although this song was released on their penultimate album, Waiting For Herb, in the mid-90s, I always associate it with a rather earlier moment in my life (funny how the mind works!). Back at the end of the '80s, I was doing a teacher-training course in the north of England, and was attempting a long-distance relationship for the first time, with a devastatingly beautiful young woman I'd just met who was at art college in London. (I always seem to fall for creative types: actresses, dancers, writers, musicians...) And although she never stood me up at a bus station, as in the scenario of the song, there were a number of times when hoped-for visits were cancelled, or when we had awkward conversations from a payphone at a bus station (one of the most readily available to me at the time, since I was living in a small village some way outside of my university town, and having to take a bus home almost every evening). Because of these associations, several years later, this became for me, retroactively, 'our song'.
The song is notable musically for being an instance of the use of 'Infinite Guitar' - a feedback effect that allows a note to be sustained indefinitely at constant volume, here producing a melancholy and haunting background. The device was apparently invented by a Canadian guitarist called Michael Brook in the 1980s, but it is most associated with his countryman, Daniel Lanois, who did a lot to develop, or at least 'popularise' the innovation. Also a talented musician and songwriter, Lanois became best-known as a producer, particularly for his work on a number of U2's most successful albums. He introduced the 'infinite guitar' gizmo to The Edge, who was quite besotted with it for a while, and used it most memorably on the hit single With Or Without You - which probably creates some additional resonance with this song. (I'd never been much of a fan of U2 or The Edge, but I got to meet him and hear him perform at a private music biz party in the '90s, and found myself very impressed: he is a rather cool dude, and a much better player than I'd realised.)
I particularly like the opening lines, repeated as chorus:
Listen to me, baby: Once upon a time....
My heart, it was an ocean,
But you swam against the tide.
It's a song about acceptance, about moving on - without enmity or regret. How many of those are there?? It might be unique.
It's a good lesson, for life - and for FPL. Sometimes - often, most of the time - things don't work out the way we want them to. We have to try to understand how these setbacks happen, without apportioning blame - to ourselves or others. And we have to learn to bear these disappointments with good grace - and summon the will to keep moving forward.
And yet, of course, I can't escape the conviction on occasions that the girl was wrong, that life is often wrong; that the tide of my feelings was 'right', and that the girl - and the world - would have done better to have gone along with my flow, rather than opposing it.
Yes, EVERYTHING can become a metaphor for me. Life is a metaphor for FPL, FPL is a metaphor for life.... Life is FPL....
Forgive these idle musings. I am making rapid progress into a bottle of Tullamore Dew this slow Tuesday evening....
A couple of months back, I griped about Facebook having randomly locked me out of my account around Christmas time - this time, seemingly permanently. I am still locked out, and now fear this latest 'interruption of service' is going to prove irreversible.
Hance, this blog's companion Facebook page remains inactive - and, indeed, it is 'blocked' from view altogether (I have no idea why...). I don't suppose anyone's going to miss it, but.... My apologies, anyway.
I still remember my last password; but it is only intermittently 'recognised' and accepted by the site. And whether I am able to log in with the password or not, I am always required to go through additional 'authentication' steps.
I am usually challenged to retrieve a verfication code from my linked email account. Fair enough. You'd think that would be sufficient to confirm my identity and restore access to the Facebook account. But NO: I've done this countless times now, but further steps are also demanded.
I'm usually asked to try logging in from another device. But when I tried that, they still weren't satisfied, and demanded again that I log in from another device,... and another.... and another. I suspect they in fact mean 'another device recognised as having been previously used to log in to this account' - but they don't say so. I've only ever used one other device - an old, now rarely used 'back-up' laptop - to access the account; but that didn't work. Then I wondered if perhaps they meant a mobile device (smartphone, tablet....?), since that's what most people use for accessing Facebook these days. But I tried borrowing a friend's phone to retreive the additional verification codes and that didn't work either.
Then they started telling me they would send a verification code to my Whatsapp number. Even though I don't have one!
Only after much floundering around through various obstructive screens in the log-in process did I finally manage to stumble upon an option to send an additional verification code to my phone by SMS. Unfortunately, the phone number I have linked to the account is an old Cambodian one, which I now rarely use, and which I only top up intermittently to avoid having the number deleted; it isn't actually 'active' most of the time. I topped it up again to reactivate it, but.... for some reason SMS often fails to work on SMART Cambodia's roaming service (this is why I've actually switched my contact phone number to my Lao one for my bank accounts in Cambodia and Vietnam). However, I did try this again recently, and this time was able to receive the SMS verification code. Facebook still wouldn't accept it, still wanted to insist on yet further verification steps - that were impossible. What is this INSANITY?!
So, to recap,... Facebook doesn't want to recognise my password; it won't recognise the only two devices I have ever used to log into my account; and it won't recognise verification codes sent to my linked email or my linked phone number. And there is no other recourse available, no means of contacting them to complain or appeal against the suspension of access.
Why does anyone bother with this awful, awful, stupid, obstructive, perverse, evil service??? I am really quite glad to be rid of it.
I've just endured a rather unpleasantly fraught few weeks (in the real world, rather than the relatively benign realm of FPL), after my batty landlady decided she wasn't going to extend my lease after all (though, of course, one generally assumes that this should be a mere formality; and we did appear to have reached an agreement in principle to go ahead on much the same terms as the past year, back in the middle of January), but dawdled about telling me, and - really - didn't give me any proper notice at all.
Suddenly faced with unexpected homelessness in a little over two weeks, I have had to scramble rather to.... sort out the next phase of my life.
And, since I didn't feel I had enough time to both househunt and pack,... I took this unpleasant surprise as a cue to revamp my life rather dramatically. Instead of packing up my life into boxes and finding another house to rent, I have.... sold (or given away) everything I own, and laid plans to hit the road. As of tomorrow, I shall be a vagabond again.
If I have one greater love in my life than football, it is music. My parents had quite an extensive and diverse collection of records (though mostly rather middle-of-the-road), and a wonderful old 'gramophone' in a walnut chest with which to play them. During my early childhood, I would sit cross-legged on the floor in front of this marvellous device, in utter rapture, for hours at a time. And one of my great favourites from those early listening sessions was this mid-60s hit by the country singer Roger Miller: King of the Road, a defiant celebration of the hobo life - humorous, and oddly inspiring. I often wonder if my love for this song hasn't led me astray in life. Not only am I unafraid of having no fixed abode, no steady income, and few personal possessions; I actually tend to view such a situation as a desirable ideal.
I noted at this time last year that, while I do not think it remotely bears comparison with the grace and artistry of real football, I do nevertheless have a longstanding soft spot for the American gridiron game. And I confess this weakness has become bound up with my other great moral frailty - an occasional fondness for drinking heavily at breakfast time (usually only on this one occasion each year, I promise!). I look forward to the Super Bowl every year because, when living in East Asia, the game gets under way for me at around 6.30 or 7am - and this is just such an exquisite time of day to crack open one's first beer. (With any luck, one of these - since I've finally tracked down a store that fairly regularly seems to have it in cans.)
Super Bowl LX (and I do love that they're doing their bit to keep Roman numerals alive!) is between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks tomorrow morning (in my part of the world). I have not the slightest shred of attachment to either team (and have hardly seen anything of the games this season!), so.... I will pledge my allegiance according to the time-honoured principles of random sentiment and playful rancour. I spent a very pleasant few days in Seattle back in the 1990s (although, true to the city's reputation, it did piss with rain most of the time), and I've had a bit of a soft spot for it ever since (though I've never previously taken an interest in any of their sports teams). Extra bonus points to the place for being the setting of Frasier!! And one of my old drinking buddies from my Beijing days is a diehard Pats fan - so, it will be fun to root against him during the game. (If I had the money, I'd flit off to join him for the event. He's going to be watching it in a beach bar in Thailand - lucky sod! Only a few hundred miles away; but in my current state of penury, it might as well be 10,000 miles....)
When I launched this blog nearly 18 months ago, I set up a parallel Zen and the Art of FPL Facebook page.
If you've never visited it, you haven't really missed anything. I only used it as a platform to share links to posts here on the blog, and it didn't really include any 'original content' (except that in providing short introductory summaries to each linked post, I would occasionally frame its topic or purpose in a slightly different form of words than I had used in the original piece...). I was only using the Facebook page to try to gain a slightly wider exposure - to try to increase the blog's prominence in search-engine results, and perhaps to make it easier for folks to share any piece of mine that they happened to like.
I'd only just remembered to put a link to the Facebook page in the sidebar here a month or so ago....
And almost immediately I'd done that, I got shut out of my Facebook account... again.
Now, this has been happening more and more frequently over the last year. Indeed, just lately, I seem to have been getting 'locked out' once or twice a month! Most of these exclusions are rescinded within a day or two, sometimes after just a few hours; but more often I'm cut off for a full week; and, in the worst cases, once or twice for a month or so.
This latest interruption of service looks like being a particularly bad one - so, I've given up, for now, even trying to get back in; I'm expecting that I won't be able to regain access until at least the end of January.
Hence, there have been no posts on the Facebook page since just before Christmas. Indeed, at the moment, it doesn't appear to be visible any more - which may be an escalation over Zuck the Schmuck's previous persecutions of me.
Now, the loss of this rarely-visited-by-anyone page does not grieve me all that much. But I also maintained an FPL info page for my country of residence - which I saw as being a useful public service, and which put me in touch with a small community of fellow enthusiasts for the game. (That page still appears to be visible; but it's effectively now 'dead' since all posting rights seem to have been suspended.) The loss of that second FB page galls me considerably.
The loss of access to every other Facebook page, however, and to my account details, my list of contacts, the messaging service - that is little short of a disaster.
In East Asia (and in many other parts of the 'developing world', I shouldn't wonder), Facebook is enormously popular. Most small businesses can't be bothered to set up and maintain their own website, so rely on a Facebook page instead; thus you can't readily keep abreast of openings and closings of local restaurants etc., special offers and promotions, special events like concerts and parties and such, without Facebook. The dratted site has also become the default option for setting up mutual support forums for various interest groups, especially among the expat community; so, you can't access 'buy & sell' groups, property rental listings, or general advice on how to deal with health issues, noisy neighbours, or whatever... without Facebook. And, worst of all for me, Facebook Messenger has become the preferred means of communication for just about everyone out here (I imagine there are alternative messaging services in the local languages of the region, but these perhaps don't support the use of English; so, anyone who wants to communicate with anyone else in English uses FB - not SMS, not even Whatsapp,.... Facebook!!); hence, when I'm shut out of my account, I can't contact my landlady or my visa agent or my doctor... or the handful of friends I have out here....
Being cut off from all of that is not just an enormous hassle, it is potentially life-threatening. It is downright irresponsible of Facebook to shut people out of their accounts (without warning or explanation; and without providing any avenues for seeking redress!).
I hate you, Mark Zuckerberg, and all your incompetent minions! And most of all I hate your botlets of Artificial Stupidity which repeatedly judge me (oh, the irony!) to be potentially 'not a real person' - which is why I keep getting locked out.
Christmas has become strangely popular in East Asia over the last few decades - especially in China; but really, everywhere across the region.
The seasonal decorations started going up in my sleepy little hometown last weekend (and they'll probably stay up till around March!). And I got Whammed! for the first time on Sunday afternoon last week in a local supermarket. Come on, people, we're not even out of November yet! Cruel and unusual punishment indeed!
I see the official challenge doesn't actually start until tomorrow, so I suppose I'm still in with a chance of survival. But the omens are not good....
It is, somehow, an Iron Law of the Universe that, if you live in Asia, you are never more than about 150 metres away from some sort of construction project.
There is an unfortunate corollary to this Law - that if it's 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning, you are probably within 50 metres of someone using an angle-grinder....
I've long had a peculiar fondness for the American holiday of Thanksgiving - largely because I've so often been able to celebrate the occasion with American and/or Americophile friends, and a few times even in America.
This year, alas, I shall probably be making do with a turkey sandwich on my own. And maybe I'll make myself a pumpkin cheesecake for a sweet treat tonight...
Anyhow, a Happy Thanksgiving to any American readers who may stumble upon this obscure corner of the Internet (probably looking for content about the Fantasy version of their own gridiron game - the one that rather conspicuously involves very little playing of the ball with the foot....).
[And apologies to any Canadian readers who feel overlooked. But you're probably used to it! I am well aware that your version of this holiday falls much earlier, on the 2nd Monday in October, as I lived in Toronto for a year-and-a-half in my youth. However, that holiday never embedded itself in my psyche, even when I was a resident in the country. You Canucks are not so, um, culturally assertive as your American cousins, I suppose.]
For some reason, Linus's pitiful obsession with The Great Pumpkin - an autumn-themed deity of his own invention - was always one of the things that most resonated with me in the classic 'Peanuts' cartoons. This superstition of his was actually associated with Halloween, but it is Thanksgiving, with its own emphasis on pumpkins, that always recalls it to my mind.
Linus, of course, was convinced that The Great Pumpkin would appear only to him, if he created a pumpkin-patch that was worthy of the demi-god's attendance; and he'd wait patiently every year, full of expectation - but it never happened. In much the same way, we FPL managers convince ourselves that, if we only take enough care over our selections, one day The Great Gameweek or The Great Chip Play will manifest itself only for us. Like I said, pitiful.
It is one of the peculiar perversities of the English national character that we choose to 'celebrate' a terrorist who tried to blow up the King and the government (um.... and to overlook the unfortunate fact that the origins of this dark festival were rooted in anti-Catholic paranoia....), but so it is.
For people who grew up in England, November 5th - Guy Fawkes Day - is probably second only to Christmas in the emotional resonances it conjures from childhood. It is the only day of the year on which we let off fireworks, one of the few in which we may have a barbecue,... and probably the only occasion on which we'll have large outdoor parties at night and build BIG bonfires. The fact that it happens just as the days are getting short and the nights are getting chill, as autumn starts to transition into winter, adds to the special mystique of the event. I haven't actually been to a Bonfire Party for years, but the recollection of them still brings on a swoon of nostalgia.
I think I will try to buy myself some nice big potatoes for baking today, and cook up a pot of chilli con carne to pour over them. I might even brew up some mulled wine...
It is hard to celebrate the traditional holidays of home on the opposite side of globe. But these occasions are mostly about the emotions, the memories - a few little prompts like the smell of baking potatoes are all that's needed to bring on the feeling...
And if there is a Fantasy Football tie-in here, it's probably this: I do like to see myself as a constructive anarchist, an irreverent upsetter of apple-carts, a swashbuckling 'freedom fighter' - striving to blow up the corrupt edifice of FPL fetishism and superstition. Yes, I can finda metaphoranywhere!
