GMT+8:00
Thursday, February 17, 2011
I'm Back
So. What happened with the job? Well, first, you should know that I didn't just quit my job. I'm now in month 7 of a 12-month break from working. So it might be more accurate to say that I quit my career path/social trajectory as a seemingly successful person.
I think it was combination of burn out from 4 years of Doing-Business-In-China hard labor, the job somehow morphing from an adventure into endless/pointless Power Points and endless/pointless meetings, being no longer willing to make the kind of sacrifices (to my health, sanity and personal life) demanded by the job, having lost any semblance of ambition, and finally realizing after 15 years that corporate lawyering with limbs attached to a computer and phone for 12 hours a day under white polystyrene suspended ceiling tiles and fluorescent tubes is not only a meaningless pursuit but also a soul sucking one – I got to the point where I thought to myself, as Milan Kundera puts it, life is elsewhere.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to have felt this way. Sometimes I think to myself: what I went through is what 99% of other white collar workers go through and they keep at it, and 99% of Chinese laborers would kill to suffer those same paper cuts, so why am I so damned special? Am I just a lazy ass punk who reads too much Milan Kundera? (Well ok I used to read a lot of Milan Kundera but stopped about 15 years ago because it got boring, but you know what I'm trying to say.) Shouldn't I just keep showing up at the office, collect generous paychecks, drink compulsively and/or smoke compulsively and/or reach for another shrink-wrapped bag of highly processed highly sugar'd pre-packaged semi-food and/or buy something/anything (especially things coveted by other seemingly successful people) to make myself feel better, whenever nausea/doubt creeps in about how I'm spending 80% of what remains of my waking life?
I don't really know how to answer that. And maybe my recent marriage and attendant adult responsibilities will eventually change how I answer that. But for now, I say, Fuck That!
So. What's up with me getting married? That's for another post, coming soon.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
I, Punisher
So how do these traffic externalities get internalized? This is where I come in. I do my utmost to help solve the problem of externalities on
I'm convinced that I'm on the right path, that in the end, Shanghai traffic will be better for my efforts, that perhaps civic virtue may even begin to flower. But, if all else fails, if nothing else, I will have at least introduced Shanghai drivers to the concept of The Finger, adding this colorful gesture to the local lexicon...
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Blogging Relapse
Sorry folks, I’ve gone off the wagon and fallen into blogging relapse. Actually, not much of interest has happened to me recently, primarily due to my job taking up about 97% of my f*cking miserable waking life, and that includes bathroom time (thinking about job crap on the can and in the shower), so you and me both, we’re not missing much. (Well, I did go to Hawaii for a few days for a family reunion, and stopped through Tokyo for 48 hours (pics above) on the way back, but I slept through most of the trip due to work-induced fatigue...)
And so I’ve started a sort of mini photo-based blog, where I upload 1 pic a day taken from my iPhone. I’m trying to do it every day for 365 consecutive days. Check it out here.
But do check back here occasionally for my periodic lengthier blabbers.
Monday, February 2, 2009
World According to Khemra, Part 2
Khemra, how are you feeling today? Aren't you tired after our bender?
Yeah very good, I sleep only a few hours a night anyway during the high season. All customers want to see sunset at Pre Rup or Phnom Bakeng temples, so I get home around 10 p.m., then I study English until midnight, then I wake up at 3:30 a.m. because all customers want to see sunrise at Angkor Wat. So I am fine, feel good today, only sleep a few hours.
Yesterday, you told me everything about yourself, and took me to see your master, your grandmother and your best friend who is now the associate head monk at Angkor Wat. Why did you do that, for a complete stranger?
Maybe you find it strange, but I grow up in temple, not many chances to make friends aside from orphans and monks, I don't know any other way to make friends. I do this with people I meet, sometimes they call me the next day and say "Khemra, I cannot be friends with you, you come from bad family and poor family". Sometimes they become my friends.
I'm not a monk anymore, I want to enjoy life. There are 33 levels toward heaven and 33 levels toward hell. What I do in this life simply determines where I come out in the next life.
Perhaps my Buddha is more forgiving than your God. Perhaps my Buddha better understands human frailties, that it is not easy to abandon the flesh and forsake the wants of the flesh, and that there is nothing inherently bad about getting drunk or chasing girls, it is more a matter of what consequences these acts have on the journey toward nirvana. If I do not lead a good life, then the consequence is simple, that my karmic wheel continues to spin, but I have maybe 33 or 65 or even an infinite number of more chances (if I can put up with the suffering of all that is entailed). You on the other hand have no margin for error -- your God seems wanton and cruel, he doesn't even allow for the sampling error of one short lifetime!
And I am an honest person. My master tells me honesty is the most important thing. Am I a bad person because I get drunk? I do not understand why (very occasional) drunkenness is worse than lying. I do not understand why giving in to the wants of the flesh is somehow worse than deceiving another man.
Umm, ok, you said yesterday that your friend stayed in the temple to become a monk, because he is uneducated and cannot survive outside of the temple. But what about the spiritual component, that he must also want to pursue a spiritual life?
Yes it is true, my friend will spend his life helping orphans. He already set up one orphanage. He wants to help kids like us, poor and desperate, without any other means to survive. But you cannot deny the practical. My best friend is illiterate and is blind in one eye, he has no skills to get a job, if he did not have the temple he would be a beggar and starve.
In practical terms, you can look at our temple as your orphanage and nursing home and hospice equivalent. The villagers give temples food and drink, and pay money to the monks for funerals. The temple in turn takes in the orphans and the ill and the old and the feeble. The temple is our village safety net. It is not so different from the role of medieval monasteries in your world.
Ok, so what's on the schedule for today my friend?
We eat amok fish and lok lak beef and drink beer. Yeah very good!
Ppl
World According to Khemra
My tour guide was Mr. Khemra, a 20-something ex Angkor Wat monk, ex laundry boy, ex casino cashier and ex Angkor Wat ticket controller. He wasn’t much of a tour guide. I think he learned his tour guide shpiel from Lonely Planet. And he has an achievement oriented approach to temple-ing -- see temple, climb temple, next temple. I would have enjoyed it more on my own.
I only make US$200 a month, this only allows me to pay $40 a month for a room, pay my grandmother’s debt to the bank that she took out to pay for my tour guide license, some English books, and maybe 1 or 2 nights a month when I go out for fun. [Ed.: more on these nights out for fun, later…] I always worry about my future. I have no education, I learned everything from monks at the temple, and studied English on my own. I go to English school only when I save enough money. I want to get better at English, and go abroad, and find a European girlfriend!
I take you to hotel, you take shower, I pick you up and we drink beer ok?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Chinese New Year
But I'll be spending the week in Siem Reap, Cambodia, to see Angkor Wat. I had thought about staying in Shanghai this Chinese New Year, but in the end, the freezing nasty cold weather made the decision easy -- I just don't do well in cold weather...