Today is the last day of winter in strict calendar terms, for tomorrow will be hailed as the first day of Spring. I speak from the Southern Hemisphere, of course, where my fruit trees have long been tricked into flowering before their allotted time. The date is of no consequence to them and still less to my hayfever, which has played havoc this week.

The nights and mornings continue to be cold and this is always difficult for poor Ann, who is dressing at the break of dawn and disappearing for college or work shortly after. I know that for a Thai person our colder weather must be a constant scourge, though the same conditions for a Northern European must seem positively balmy. Such is the planet.

I have been immersed, as I am inclined to from time to time, in cosmological matters. There is nothing like a dose of astronomy or related studies to give one a sense of perspective. Human affairs seem insignificant, in fact, entirely inconsequential, when measured in galactic terms. Human struggle may seem noble but is lost like an anthill in a vast and unceasing desert when compared to just a fraction of what there is, or what we know, about the universe. It is a tonic to hubris and arrogance. It is also a spur to ambition.

Our importance might be marginally swelled though if The Fermi Paradox is true. The Fermi what? I hear you ask. At the most basic level, the paradox posits this. The universe is so vast and filled with billions of stars, a decent percentage of which could support planets on which life might thrive. So, given the odds, which are generous, shouldn't we see signs of aliens by now. Even in our own galaxy, where tens of thousands of potential habitats exist, why don't we see signs of activity? Where are they?

Now that is a poor attempt at a description of a more complex idea and I encourage you to read up on it. The point I am making is that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that humans are a rare event in cosmic history and perhaps worthy of some congratulation. Or maybe not.

The flight of former Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra should not come as a huge surprise to anyone. She has been subject to vilification, massive financial penalties and the threat of imprisonment since the overthrow of her Government three years ago. The climate in Bangkok does not favour those disposed towards provincial largesse, since the Bangkok elites now appear to be back in control. Miss Shinawatra's brother, former PM Thaksin, is also in exile with little chance of return.

There is talk that even as they berated Shinawatra, the regime was facilitating her flight. Yingluck behind bars would have been a red rag to the, em, Red Shirts, who may well have taken their ire to the streets again. Many would have seen a conviction as a political judgement, not unreasonable given the current climate. Perhaps the Shinawatra era is over, though as for that, I am not so sure.

Speaking of blossoms, Ann and I attended a cherry blossom event in Auburn on Tuesday. If the words Auburn and cherry blossoms sound a tad incongruous, you would be forgiven for saying so. I think that until fairly recently, the Japanese garden in Auburn has been a bit of a secret, though as for that, the cat is now out of the bag. Even on this weekday, crowds were flocking to see these delicately poised and sublimely short-lived flowers. The garden is laid out along the lines of a traditional Japanese garden, with the usual raked stone gardens, carefully-sited rocks, pools, pathways and trees. In the centre is a small lake, home to noisy geese, fringed by pruned and well-tended trees. Amongst all this wove the sightseeing and photo-seeking public. No flower remained unphotographed, so selfie untaken.

Exhibit A.

a plum tree approaches spring

blossoms by the window
mute in the ginger sunrise,
eloquent with light

The key insight of Gautama Buddha some 2,500 years ago was that the cause of suffering was our attachment to worldly phenomena. All humans suffer because the desire for good things in our lives, whether it be food, consumer items, a relationship, a nice house or car, good health, peace and so forth, will always be thwarted by the transience of these very things. Suffering arises from this contradiction - what we want must change, nothing is permanent. Even the universe, which is in constant change, will one day be nothing more than a sea of remote unlit particles. Most of all really, we are attached to ourselves, to the permanence of our beings, the desire to go on beyond death. It might well be the central problem of the human condition.

The solution in simple terms is to practice non-attachment, gradually freeing ourselves from each attachment. At the extreme edge of this is monasticism, in which the monk has let go of the world - his family, friends, possessions - completely, the loss of which mitigates against suffering. You can't miss what you don't have or anything you have freely given up.

Strangely enough, this ancient faith is a doctrine for our times, for this period in which unchecked consumerism is creating so many stumbling blocks to happiness. The buy is a momentary illusion, a blip of joy before a precipice of suffering. The talk is always of owning, buying, having, a doctrine set up to fail in the light of human psychology.

I have started a new term of English classes at Thai Welfare in the CBD and enjoying it muchly. The class is small (4 students) and the materials that I use at this level are not exactly riveting, yet still it's a worthwhile project. A small class clustered around a couple of pushed-together desks is intimate and there is nowhere for either the teacher or the student to hide, so in some ways, it is easier to teach a class of thirty set out in a proper classroom.

After the Liverpool Street class has finished I sometimes like to wander the busy streets of Sydney, an activity that means tussling with hungry well-dressed lunchtime crowds, who pour ceaselessly from office buildings. Like all modern cities, Sydney bustles and shines and creaks, so it's a wonder the pavements can handle the sheer foot traffic. This is also a time when trams are being reintroduced to parts of central Sydney, so major roads resemble quarries and available space is further squeezed.

One delight from my Japanese past happened a few weeks back when I popped into the George Street Daiso. There in the fridge I saw bottles of Dekavita, a drink I had not seen nor tasted in a dozen years. Back when I was living in Sanda, I would often stop at a vending machine to buy a bottle, the cold, sweet, slightly medicinal taste a contrast to the summertime heat.

And now, here it is, close at hand, for the meantime.

awake now by sharp rapping
I lie sleepless in the cold dark,
wafer moon my lamp.

The sun is growing warmer now, though the nights and mornings are cold. By cold, I mean Australian cold, which to a person from Northern Europe might seem positively balmy. Still, most mornings find a white glaze of frost upon the grass. The rooms in this house are chilly and the insulation value of the cladding is virtually zero, so it is not uncommon to find inside and outside temperatures virtually the same in the early dawn.

Thinking of cold means thinking of its opposite. The three weeks spent in Thailand were very hot indeed, with little respite outside the evenings and mornings. Cloudy skies kept the mercury lower too, though only by a couple of degrees. It is little wonder (though not necessarily good policy) that Thai's are busy air-conditioning everything. I was grateful for it but also wondered, often aloud, whether getting used to the heat and humidity, aided by electric fans, wasn't a better long-term solution. A lot has changed in my 20-year absence.

One evening Ann's family and I went to a lovely al fresco restaurant on the banks of the Chayo Praya. The air from the river was cooling and the place was buzzing with diners. This photo is a memento of that time.

perched in the hand
they preen and flash and sing,
too late for the sky

I do not aim my last post in the manner of a misanthrope, but rather in exasperation at the age of excess we find ourselves in. I can think of no real good that a disproportionate life may be lead into, though I am sure that the reader can find exceptions. In that case, I will provide the rule. And so...

In what kind of world does a majority group of elected politicians, in this case, the US Congress, seriously propose taking health care away from over 20 million people in order to give tax cuts to the top 1%? Well, it must be this one. The United States might not be the best example, but is it not supposed to be a shining one? The same country feels that it's fine for its citizens to be armed, even heavily armed. Freedom and liberty are touted as the justifications (surely a strange distortion of these noble ideals) whilst the profits gained by the manufacturers and the political power wielded by the NRA remain murkily in the background.

I think that there was probably a time in recent history when there was a sufficiency of things. Houses were modest but adequate, meals were nutritious and homemade, families had a single TV and hi-fi, kids shared bedrooms, the locals schools were just fine, aspirations were set lower, within reasonable bounds. This age in Australia was probably in the 1960's and 1970's. Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan came along with a host of policies to liberalise economies. Life became more competitive and aspirations grew vastly. Inequality began to increase and is now the serious issue that it is.

I have been blessed to have been sheltered from the worst ravages of this storm, this strange mania. Public sector pay may not match the private sector, but the tradeoff is greater security. Young people these days face a far more fragmented job market and may be forced to take several part time jobs, without any real security nor any obvious material benefit to compensate.

It is not so far from the world we are in now to the kind of laissez-faire realm of Victorian England. In Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit (one of my current books) the gap between rich and poor is stark. The poor really are poor, there is little or no welfare and the political class talk high-mindedly about free enterprise and hard work. Those who do work the hardest and longest do so for a pittance. Let's not fall so far that we need another Dickens to remind us of the costs.

Fun times for children at the factory.

This is a short filibuster (surely some oxymoron? - ed.) against avarice and its near cousin, affluence. The warnings against avarice go back to ancient times and cross many different cultures and religions. Too much of a good thing and the desire to have more it, which seems almost axiomatic, is likely to be visited by disaster. There is a pretty strong case that this is so. How much deception, how many murders, what quantity of theft, bribery, false witness, how many wars, are the result of avarice?

Affluence may strike you as but a pale shadow of avarice, but the former is the fertile ground for the latter to grow in. Today we have too much of everything except those qualities that add genuine value to life. I don't need to be swatting at you from a pulpit to extol the likely benefit that healthy doses of patience, forebearance, generosity, kindness and the like can have. Nor is there anything wrong with being humble,though the excesses of hubris and narcissism that inform the modern sensibility make that seem positively Dickensian. I am tired of the flagrant exhibitionism, unwarranted celebrity and self-infatuated dullardry of the times. The genuinely talented, noteworthy and hard-working get swallowed up in a sea of mediocrity, a sea that has no event horizon.

Does this all sound a little like jealousy? Maybe.

One unmissable aspect of being in Thailand has been the collective grief for the former monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Public and private buildings have been festooned with black and white bunting, small sanctuaries devoted to the man have been set up in shopping centres, train stations, photographs are everywhere.

Ann wanted to pay her respects to the late King whilst we were there, and we had planned to join the throng at the Grand Palace waiting for admission to the pre-funeral chamber. I bought a black shirt for the occasion and, late one afternoon, we made our way to the adjoining park, through security checkpoints and into the queue. By great good luck, the line was only a couple of hundred people (only weeks before it had stretched for hundreds of metres) and it was a mere 20 minutes before we were ushered into the small room that contained the closed sarcophagus of Rama IX. A prostration later and we were leaving. It was very efficiently and respectfully handled. I am glad that I went.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej was clearly a much-loved King. There is one photo of him that captures the kind of tenderness that he felt for his people and they for him. It is reproduced below.



In preparation for the solemn event.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post how much I enjoyed reading through The Bangkok Post during our trip to Thailand. Produced in broadsheet form, the pages bend and fold in their own peculiar way, something that it not shared with the tabloid. It was during these reading sessions that I became more acquainted with Thai politics and current affairs. Politics in the Kingdom is an opaque matter, for even Ann is unable to articulate a clear position and Thai's seem reluctant to talk about it.

The Government which arose from the military coup of some three years ago is headed by the former General (now PM) Prayut Chan-o-cha. The regime goes by the name, National Council For Peace and Order, which makes no pretence of being faintly democratic. There is little doubt that the Government has worked earnestly towards solving some of Thailand's problems, but it seems unlikely to me that military men are the best equipped to do so.

A few weeks ago the Prime Minister issued four questions for general discussion in Thailand and they have been widely discussed, though also widely ridiculed. It should come as no surprise that if a question is asked with an answer already in mind, then the exercise is largely moot.

You can judge for yourself.

1. Do you think the next election will bring a government with good governance?

2. What should be done if it fails to do so?

3. Elections are an important element of democracy. Is it right to (give importance to) elections alone without consideration for the country’s future such as national strategy and reform?

4. Do you think political groups with inappropriate behaviour deserve a chance to run in elections? If they are elected, who should solve the problem and how?

I am coming into one of those periods of my life politely called a crossroad. This is the place where one has choices to make which will redound for a decade or more. Not making a choice is a choice in itself and so, the crossroad must be negotiated in one way or another. Put simply, this house is too little for two adults and two children, where the latter are male and female and teenage and not related by birth. Should Ann come through the complicated PR process unscathed, then we are hopeful of bringing her daughter JJ here to live.

So there are some decisions to make over the short term. Do we get a bigger house a little further down the mountain, together with a new mortgage. In that case, I will have to find some paid work to do to ameliorate the repayments, not easy when you are the wrong end of your fifties. Or, perhaps, I could build a small dwelling (read, a room) that would accommodate one of the kids, probably Tom. Or maybe put a little caravan in place for the same purpose, subject to NSW regulation, of course.

I know that Ann would like a clean move, for lots of reasons, so that option is the first cab off the rank. I am loath to get a new mortgage but I may have little choice in the matter, ultimately. Ann likes to say that you can never know what is around the corner, which I know to be true, even if I don't like it. Sitting with uncertainty is difficult, but it must be done.

It is hard to miss temples in Thailand, and perhaps even harder to miss Buddha images, statues, iconography, paintings etc. It is a Buddhist country, after all, and even though some farang like to point out inconsistencies in word and deed (absurd, if you think about it), religious practice informs most days in ways that the outsider might miss.

I have Ann to thank for immersing me more deeply in some of the daily rituals, such as giving food to monks in the morning, making sacred offerings at temples and shrines, visiting different and sometimes obscure parts of temples and so forth. As a foreigner alone in Thailand, I would not have participated for fear of making an error, but when your wife is Thai....

One morning we drove into town (in Petchabun) to buy the daily papers. We pulled over at the newsagent and before I could grab the Bangkok Post from the stand, Ann had me on my knees with a floral offering in hand for a passing monk. The pavement had been set up with rugs for the occasion. It's one of those times you are momentarily thrown by a sudden diversion from routine, though I am guessing Ann had planned it out and just not told me. It pays to be a mind reader, though I am not one.

Back in Australia now, I feel terribly cold pretty much all the time. Somehow I must have acclimatised to the constant heat and humidity of Thailand, or perhaps this is just an overly cold winter. In any event, I don't like it and now I have a head cold.

There is a lot we have to do over the coming months. Ann had a medical for her visa application last Tuesday in Parramatta. Wheels are turning, albeit slowly, concerning all matters to do with immigration, with more documentation required now and in the future. The process is like being near a giant whirlpool, with all manner of flotsam being sucked down and no apparent means of escape.

Just before leaving for Thailand, I was waiting for Ann to finish college in a nearby Wynyard foodcourt. It was peak hour and the whole area was teeming humanity. I wrote this.

rush-hour crowd-
like an ant I push and push
set in winter honey

This is our last night in Thailand for the time being. Today was a tale of many modes of getting places. We caught trains, old and new, a songthaew, a canal boat, a taxi and a tuk tuk, as well as a couple of buses. We walked to the top of a golden mountain in the late morning heat.

Tonight we strolled from our hotel room to a local shopping centre, buying some fish cakes and a prawn noodle salad from street vendors. Bags are pretty much packed and off at 5.30 in the morning.

Our return to Australia inches closer. Tuesday morning we fly out of Bangkok. Ann is growing increasingly sadder as the time nears because this is her natural home and her family live here. But I will support her through the grief that I know she is already manifesting.

A few days ago before we left Phetchabun, Ann's mother tied a white woollen length of string around each of our wrists to symbolise our union. It was very sweet and she wept throughout. It was terribly difficult for Ann to say goodbye to her daughter JJ, knowing that she is unlikely to return anytime soon.

This morning we did a little souvenir shopping at the Chatuchak Markets. Thai arts and crafts offer a pretty creative range of inexpensive options.

Phetchabun is a middling-sized city in the plains north of Bangkok. It is bounded by a mountain range whose ghost-clouded slopes can be seen from anywhere in town. Phetchabun puts me in mind of any similar sized Japanese town, except that it's hotter, dustier and less well maintained. Thai towns are also more disorderly, with road rules created on the spot by every motorist and revised several times a day by every motor cyclist. But it's a nice town and has a real sense of place, with day and night markets, a number of Wat and soi that meander into rice and banana fields.

This is Ann's hometown and I could not have made this trip without the help of my loving wife, who has handled money, language, accommodation and much else besides with aplomb. My friends know only too well that I am quirky at times (stark raving-ed.) and she has been my most faithful companion. I love you darling.

Most days I buy the Bangkok Post. It's a great pleasure to open a broadsheet on the table and read from page to page.Unencumbered by flashing banners and screen-mediated text, one can sit with the texture and content of the pages. It is intelligent and it is tactile. But I digress from the central purpose of this post. I buy the Bangkok Post and Ann usually buys Thai Rath, a Thai national newspaper.

Every day she asks me the same question, "Is it today's newspaper darling?" It's an odd question, don't you think, for who would not buy the newspaper of the day and who would stock yesterday's news?

Today I got an explanation. Upon pointing out to Ann that the Post was dated today's date, this being Wednesday 14th June, she astonished me by saying that her paper was dated June 15, that being tomorrow. Thai news is very fast and constantly updated, she informed me by way of explanation.

Now I may just be a dumb foreigner but it strikes me that the Thai press are trying to subvert the laws of physics, as I understand them. I thought it prudent, however, not to press Ann on the issue. It's just one of those quirky things.

It makes no difference to me whether tomorrow's news can be had today. I am happy enough with the black print spilling across the table, the omnipresent fan lifting the sheets like gentle sails, the creases forming where I have read, where I imperfectly turn the pages.