On August and meaning
The in-between moments in Bangkok
My friends have departed and I’m sitting alone in a café, with a strawberry smoothie, in Bangkok, writing.
It’s August. In some countries the kids are already back in school. In England the children and teenagers are enjoying and enduring the expanse of summer.
For a freelance journalist summer is traditionally a bit of a tough stretch. Newspaper editors are away for holidays and they’ve booked in pieces to fill the schedule. In the summer there should be less news. There’s also “pressure” to take time off during August.
For the past week I’ve been going around Bangkok with three friends. They’re all academic researchers living in Fukuoka, Japan. I met some of them when I got trapped living in Hana hostel in Fukuoka, Kawabata Arcade, due to Covid-19, in 2020.
I’m a big fan of Thailand and so when I heard they were planning to visit it for the first time I thought it was a good enough reason to buy a flight there.
It was a nice reunion — after four (long) years — and also to see Bangkok as if for the first time again. It’s a unique opportunity, to see that wide-eyed glamour, as they see and experience new things — the sights, the smells, the tastes — and you, even if you’ve seen it all before, have no choice but to take on some of that glamour, that novelty.
Watching my friend try mango with coconut milk and sticky rice, seeing her devour it. Riding the ferries on the Chao Phraya river and witnessing the marine biologist savour being on the water. A look of peace and relief on her face. Drinking bottles of Chang and the beer connoisseur of the group gives her seal of approval.
But now that they have left, I remain, and an abyss opens up. A hollow, empty feeling.
It’s okay. I’ve experienced this before. I fall back on what I know: writing, reading, walking around, looking at things. I like looking at things. And people. The hollow feeling diminishes.
For many folks work swallows that emptiness: busyness; routine. Yet too much work, too much routine can also create an emptying feeling.
Happier people tend to have a sense of overarching meaning to their lives. Meaning/fulfilment/purpose. This can come from your relationships and a sense of accomplishment. Often it comes from forgoing easy pursuits, instant pleasures, and instead doing something frustrating and difficult that’ll make the world a little bit better. Or serving others rather than devoting yourself to yourself.
On one of our final nights, in the coastal city of Pattaya (which I’d never been before), I asked the academics if they ever felt lost or unsure of where they are (in their lives). They confirmed that they did. They are doing hard things, pursuing something difficult that requires studious work. But the feeling of instability does not leave them. The insecurity. The doubt.
I was consoled that I was not alone. A freelance writer knows ever the valley of doubt.
However, I’ll bet that when they’re intensely focused on their work, absorbed in their research, they do not have those doubts. The feeling of flow is powerful. Doing something challenging, not too difficult, not too easy. Recently, I also read something about the importance of in-between moments.
These moments can be unspoken, yet you recognise it. A writer especially should recognise them. The act of noticing. Such as when I shared in the feeling of awe at the Sanctuary of Truth, in Pattaya, with my friends. All of us quiet; caught in the discovery of teachings that emphasise not the self but a more cosmic appreciation of our insignificance, made manifest in a building that is yet incomplete, like Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, but like that building full of detail and wonder. For that duration we breathed the same patterns.
Seeing my friends fall in step, as they wander the grand palace, and in the gardens of Jim Thompson’s house; their busyness amongst the supermarket aisles hunting for snacks. They’re a tight little group: all South American, although with an interesting Portuguese and Spanish divide. They’ve travelled together many times now. I joined them on one of their first trips together. When we went to Sasebo and Nagasaki prefecture. A dynamic forged in adventures, drinking, and many jokes. A little hardship — from living overseas, far from home — the cement that makes the friendship more concrete.
Here’s to more trips in the future!
What I’ve published recently
In the world of video games the major release is Black Myth: Wukong, from Chinese developer Game Science.
It’s a significant launch and I wrote about why for Nikkei Asia: ‘Black Myth: Wukong release could redefine China’s game industry’.
The significance of Black Myth: Wukong is related to an informal hierarchy in video games, which considers so-called AAA games the highest caliber. The most prestigious "triple-A" games tend to be high budget, graphically impressive, and contain a major single-player component.
I have another commission for Nikkei Asia, which is a publication based in Japan. Its parent company happens to own The Financial Times, which they acquired in 2015 for $1.32 billion — a substantial amount for a newspaper, but testament to how some media brands still carry prestige.
I was commissioned for the above piece after I spotted an editor at Nikkei calling out for pitches on Twitter. I noted his email address and pitched him. It was a cold pitch since I’d never worked with him before. He liked my pitch and the rest is history. I made sure to follow up with a new pitch after he commissioned the first one.
I’m currently staying in a “luxe co-working hostel” as I type this (yes I didn’t finish writing all of this post from the café) and it’s a comfortable place. I’ve stayed in worse hotels.
It was a bit of a tough switch changing from travel mode to living mode. An abrupt change of pace that I had to adapt to quickly. I guess it makes sense since I was in full tourism mode with my South American friends. A few things helped me make the switch:
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