“Beautiful” —the word elbows my tired mind with force. It feels like a horseman spurring his exhausted mare to get going. It's useless. After a restless night, my mind cannot understand the scene at all: a hairy forearm, white skin, obviously mine, cuddling a female torso. The lower part of the female body is cut off from view by the bed sheet at the waist, right where it curves and becomes the hip. The legs are invisible, mere bumps under the cover. What I'm seeing is a strange, distant image, as if looking through a telescope and watching someone peacefully sleeping in a sandstorm. I rub my eyes to get all the sand, dirt, and grit out. Almost immediately, I start to see clearly. The sandstorm has petered out, and I realize that my wife is sleeping in my arms. Read more…

The snow virgin, so sad I worried my arms would fold themselves around her on their own, was sitting on a chair in front of the window. With the curtains drawn, she was looking at passersby on the street, dressed in winter clothes. I knew she wasn’t aware of my presence, and I didn’t mean to let her know about my being there. If I had, I would have risked breaking my train of thought. Read more…

My eyes flicker open. I awake in a bed that I have never slept in before. A young Chinese woman is above me. Where am I? Read more…

Arrival in Shanghai Read more…

Back in September 2018 John published my blog entitled 'Traditional Misery' Now, in February 2019, I am even more at a loss when it comes to understanding so-called 'tradition'. Read more…

I'm asleep, I'm sure of it, and this has to be a dream. The realization gets through my mind slowly and wearily, gasping for validity in spite of my sureness. Read more…

"There's so much inside us that can't be erased. It's our blueprint of who we are. Our past, present and future." Read more…

We discussed in Part 1 of this blog that once people reach middle age, their metabolism slows down. Activity levels often decrease. Yet eating patterns typically remain more or less unchanged. This means threatening clouds looming on the horizon as far as weight issues are concerned. Oh joy. More calories going into your body with less being burnt or otherwise negated in some way, only means one thing. Trouble. Amidst the rubble and the unending stubble of our inevitably ageing and often lonely lives. Read more…

After spending some time in the intriguing kingdom of China, here are some further random thoughts about the place. This article is a continuation from Part 1 of this series. Please try to contain your excitement. Hold any applause till later. Read more…

"Deceptive and deceiving, the human mind

feigns forgiveness and outward love

Maleficence reigning supreme inside

humanity condemned, woe betide" Read more…

Visiting China always cracks something open inside me. If I want to describe this thing, I close my eyes, and it will appear as a hotel room that has just been put back into operation after being unused for a long while. Its door and windows are wide open to air the place out. Furniture is dusted off, floors swept. After the final once-over, the room is ready to do the only thing it's supposed to do: accommodate fresh memories. Read more…

The day of the marriage arrived. It had all been arranged by Noi and Som, her sister. I drove Noi and Som to the small town near to where their father lived. First, we all three of us ate breakfast then the girls left me in the restaurant. They walked around the corner to the store that sold silk wedding dresses then the beauty salon.  I had about two hours to kill. That was made easier by the presence of a bunch of bikers in the restaurant. Read more…

As I was saying in the last instalment, one more important aspect of Asian wedding traditions, or in Thailand in any event, is sin sod. Noi had quietly mentioned the subject of sin sod to me before our village wedding. I decided to play dumb and pretend I had never heard of it before. I had. It was a topic I came across while researching the different Asian cultures. I feigned ignorance because I wanted to know what Noi had to say about it. Read more…

The more I read about the Chiang Mai company, the better it got. It was owned and operated by an American guy. I know that in itself did not prevent being ripped off but there was something reassuring about dealing with him. I did not relish spending money on a car with a Thai dealership. That isn’t a racist sentiment. It is a fact. There are too many cross cultural issues and the language barrier in dealing with Thai businesses.  Besides, I was looking for a used vehicle. If it had been otherwise, then I would have trusted the Thai main dealerships to buy a new car. Warranties are warranties, right? Read more…

Nelson Mandela apparently said words to the effect of - 'There's nothing like going back to a place that's never changed in order to realise how much you have altered' Read more…

The rest of the remaining month soon passed. Why do happy times seem fleeting? Yet, bad times seem to linger. I had to make plans to leave the villa in Kanchanaburi. Noi and I both knew the time was fast approaching for me to fly back to England. She understood the reasons why I had to leave. I assured her I would return as quickly as possible. Certainly, once I had attended to outstanding business back there. Read more…

So Yong wanted flowers. Usually this is one of her easier requests of her life in the West to fulfill. Certainly much easier than her request for “real” Chinese food, which requires a seventy-mile trip to Chicago’s Chinatown. Read more…

The remainder of the day took in all the sights of the southern end of Phuket island. Che drove us to the Big Buddha, Wat Chalong and Rawai Beach. It was a pleasant and memorable day out. The only drawback was that it was difficult to talk to Noi one on one when surrounded by her friends and the kids. I guess this was a part of Asian dating culture. She appeared to be happy so that made me happy too. Read more…

There are some, many or numerous foreigners who often make an interesting comment about Chinese people and their social behavior or thinking .  I have heard (and in the beginning years of living with Chinese I also used the same comment ... ) -- Chinese have no logic!!  In other words, these foreigners assert that Chinese social behavior is devoid of rational logical thinking ... So, I am going to write more than enough blog posts to consider this assumption .   Read more…

I recently told a really good Chinese friend of mine ..  maybe one of the myriad of reasons for the misunderstandings between Chinese and Westerners belong to Ethnocentric social behavior on both sides of the proverbial fence.   Read more…