wow, i am such a terrible blogger, but today i am major motivated. I just got up my courage to call mike piromporn, my favorite male morlam singer and a big star here in thailand, where i am right now. thanks to andy rickler - the owner of pok pok restaurant in portland, and also an avid morlam lover - i had three numbers to call and on one i got right through. our friend fern was here and helped by speaking with piromporn in thai, and then let me reconnect in my bad thai. BUT BUT BUT, he has a concert in nan province on the 15 of this month, and so i am driving over and will meet with him there!!!! WOW!
i am working on an article for AFAR magazine in california about morlam, so this is doubly great.
i should blog about how wonderful the cooking class went, and how nice everyone was, and about how all i had to do was to provide and drink dr. leo and sang-coke, but right now i am still too buzzed about piromporn.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Sunday, December 21, 2008
stage two - dec 21, 08
back in toronto, still learning how to post a blog. naomi is so far ahead of me in this blogstuff that now i have to get going.
okay. i have this novel. i turned it in to our editor here in canada before going to thailand, and also to our cookbook agent in the states. getting back to canada (ten days or so ago), i have now had a chance to talk with both people about the book. agent didn't like it. spent 30 minutes or so telling me such on the phone, telling me how the characters didn't work for her, etc etc.. but part of me never really thought she would like it. and i was aware while we were talking that she didn't read it very closely. oh well. not everyone will like it.
our editor here in toronto read it much more carefully, as a friend and as an editor. we talked several hours together about it, over lunch. she is not interested in publishing the novel, but was very constructive in her criticisms. when i got home from the lunch, i didn't feel bad. i've never written a novel before, so all this is a "first time" for me. when we work on our cookbooks, the process is very very different.
our friend Anne came over that evening, and we discussed it again. she has read the book several times (thank you! thank you!), and has read it extremely closely. so we talked and talked.
one thing that happens: one reader really likes a character, and for that person the character really 'works." another reader will dislike the same character, and for that reader the character "doesn't work." hm? i guess that my next job - stage two - or three or four - is to sit back, and read back through, now with more voices in my head.
meanwhile, in thailand recently i started on book number two. and already i am "missing" it, because here for a month or so there is too much other work to do, like paying overdue bills and all that garbage.
it's NO FUN when someone doesn't like my novel. but that's life i think. a little thick skin is always a good idea in a freelance life. fingers still crossed about getting this book into print.
okay. i have this novel. i turned it in to our editor here in canada before going to thailand, and also to our cookbook agent in the states. getting back to canada (ten days or so ago), i have now had a chance to talk with both people about the book. agent didn't like it. spent 30 minutes or so telling me such on the phone, telling me how the characters didn't work for her, etc etc.. but part of me never really thought she would like it. and i was aware while we were talking that she didn't read it very closely. oh well. not everyone will like it.
our editor here in toronto read it much more carefully, as a friend and as an editor. we talked several hours together about it, over lunch. she is not interested in publishing the novel, but was very constructive in her criticisms. when i got home from the lunch, i didn't feel bad. i've never written a novel before, so all this is a "first time" for me. when we work on our cookbooks, the process is very very different.
our friend Anne came over that evening, and we discussed it again. she has read the book several times (thank you! thank you!), and has read it extremely closely. so we talked and talked.
one thing that happens: one reader really likes a character, and for that person the character really 'works." another reader will dislike the same character, and for that reader the character "doesn't work." hm? i guess that my next job - stage two - or three or four - is to sit back, and read back through, now with more voices in my head.
meanwhile, in thailand recently i started on book number two. and already i am "missing" it, because here for a month or so there is too much other work to do, like paying overdue bills and all that garbage.
it's NO FUN when someone doesn't like my novel. but that's life i think. a little thick skin is always a good idea in a freelance life. fingers still crossed about getting this book into print.
Monday, October 27, 2008
october 27 2008
Immersethrough.com, like I guess so much in life, got started as a result of several different things happening at the same time. Naomi and I went to a Travel Writers and Photographers Workshop in Marin County, organized by Book Passage (the 17th annual), held from August 14 -17. I was a little bit dreading going, even though it sounded fun, because I’d been travelling a lot on domestic flights and the thought of getting on an airplane wasn’t very appealing. But sure enough, right from the first minute the workshop was fabulous. We met photographer Robert Holmes, and instantly we liked him so much. And the next day, we sat in on a talk by travel writer, Don George, and came out of the room with our heads bursting with ideas. Then at lunch I met a friend who I hadn’t seen in many years, Mary Risley (who said as we met: “you may not remember me, but I first met you when your hair was still brown”)(ouch...) Mary started the very highly-regarded Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco over twenty-five years ago. We launched in, talking food, and without even thinking, I asked Mary’s advice about a plan that had been swimming around in our minds, a plan about a cooking school in Chiangmai. I asked her if she thought it was crazy. What if we organize the whole thing and no one shows up? Marie said DO IT, and gave us confidence to keep going with the idea. Her support was (is) huge.
In the session we attended by Don George, he talked about “new media”. George, a veteran travel writer and an immensely engaging teacher, explained how he’d made the switch to new media five years earlier, seeing the writing on the wall. Curiously, in most all the photography workshops, the message was the same: “new media.” Naomi and I think of ourselves as people who totally appreciate the impact of “new media”, but maybe we also thought of ourselves as a bit old for new technology. “Don’t want to spend even more time on the computer......”
BUT at that conference something clicked, something changed. We’d already asked our good friend, Deb Olson, if she would want to be a partner on the Chiangmai cooking school, and she was intrigued. But in great Deb fashion, she flew up to Toronto from Wyoming, we sat two days around the kitchen table at the farm, and another two days in the city, and Immersethrough.com was born. A collaboration.
There is one more part of the mix. In June I was in Chiangmai for two weeks, again a trip I wasn’t much looking forward to making. But the apartment across the hall from us was for sale, and it was a price we could afford (about 23,000 dollars, 800,000 baht). We’d thought many times that if it was ever available, we’d buy it. And suddenly it was. So off I went, arriving in Chiangmai dead tired but okay. I drank a Leo beer, then went to sleep around 8 pm. In the back of my mind I thought, well, if I wake up with jetlag, I can always walk up the street and go to Spicy Bar, a dance bar that opens at 2 am. Sure enough, at 2 am I woke up, and off I went.
I love dancing, more than almost anything, and even though Spicy is a bit on the sleazy side, I love love love Spicy because it’s a place where people go to DANCE. No attitude, no big fashion, just dance for three hours straight. Dance dance. The foreigners drink beer, but many of the Thais don’t drink that much at all. Beer’s expensive. Dancing’s free. I walked in the door, and dependable as ever, people were already dancing, almost everyone. So I danced my way onto the dance floor, then through to the other side, heading for the john. And okay, so the john is also a bit sleazy, but whatever. I’m at the urinal, and suddenly there are four hands on my back, four STRONG hands. For an instant I’m braced, but then I realize that it’s a massage, and I relax. Four strong hands and a great massage, and then one pair of hands turns my head, crack, and the other way, crack, and I turn around with a smile facing two men, my age maybe, smiling. I gave each of them fifty baht, then I left the john heading for the dance floor.
Spicy was now really hopping. Other places close at 2 but Spicy opens at 2, so everyone converges. There’s no place to dance, but it doesn’t matter. Someone is dancing on a stool, someone else on countertop. I find a bare spot to call my own, and start dancing. The person next to me extends the top of a beer bottle, and I extend the top of mine. Click. Then three others. We’re all dancing in a group, and now I am REALLY happy. At five a.m. the dj plays two or three popular Thai songs. Everyone has their arms the air. And then it’s over.
The five of us, sometimes six, got together many times in the days that followed. We had a barbecue, we shot pool together. Lots of joking, lots of fun. Just Thailand. But one night, as everyone was gathering, one of our group came in having been beaten up by her ex-husband, and as it turns out, not for the first time. So......long story which I won’t write here, but we rented a car and drove, together with her son, aged two, twelve hours across the country to her parents’ farm, just on the Cambodian border. We left her son with her parents, so that he would for sure be safe, and then drove twelve hours back. In the car we had a lot of time to talk. She’s a street vendor, an exceptional street vendor. Her husband died suddenly from cancer just before her son was born. She married a second time, but it wasn’t good. Now she has the reality of selling food on the street at night, and preparing it all day, and raising a two-year old. Dancing’s good (sometimes), and friends, and most of all, parents.
A few days later I was on the long plane flight back to Toronto. In Beijing, the airplane had mechanical problems, so I was stranded for 24 hours. The whole time I kept thinking about my last two weeks, about how generous everyone was, about how warmly I was welcomed, and about what sometimes crappy lives people endure with so much dignity and grace. Surely, I thought, there is a way to start something, like a business, even small small, that can help.
And now there’s a website!!
In the session we attended by Don George, he talked about “new media”. George, a veteran travel writer and an immensely engaging teacher, explained how he’d made the switch to new media five years earlier, seeing the writing on the wall. Curiously, in most all the photography workshops, the message was the same: “new media.” Naomi and I think of ourselves as people who totally appreciate the impact of “new media”, but maybe we also thought of ourselves as a bit old for new technology. “Don’t want to spend even more time on the computer......”
BUT at that conference something clicked, something changed. We’d already asked our good friend, Deb Olson, if she would want to be a partner on the Chiangmai cooking school, and she was intrigued. But in great Deb fashion, she flew up to Toronto from Wyoming, we sat two days around the kitchen table at the farm, and another two days in the city, and Immersethrough.com was born. A collaboration.
There is one more part of the mix. In June I was in Chiangmai for two weeks, again a trip I wasn’t much looking forward to making. But the apartment across the hall from us was for sale, and it was a price we could afford (about 23,000 dollars, 800,000 baht). We’d thought many times that if it was ever available, we’d buy it. And suddenly it was. So off I went, arriving in Chiangmai dead tired but okay. I drank a Leo beer, then went to sleep around 8 pm. In the back of my mind I thought, well, if I wake up with jetlag, I can always walk up the street and go to Spicy Bar, a dance bar that opens at 2 am. Sure enough, at 2 am I woke up, and off I went.
I love dancing, more than almost anything, and even though Spicy is a bit on the sleazy side, I love love love Spicy because it’s a place where people go to DANCE. No attitude, no big fashion, just dance for three hours straight. Dance dance. The foreigners drink beer, but many of the Thais don’t drink that much at all. Beer’s expensive. Dancing’s free. I walked in the door, and dependable as ever, people were already dancing, almost everyone. So I danced my way onto the dance floor, then through to the other side, heading for the john. And okay, so the john is also a bit sleazy, but whatever. I’m at the urinal, and suddenly there are four hands on my back, four STRONG hands. For an instant I’m braced, but then I realize that it’s a massage, and I relax. Four strong hands and a great massage, and then one pair of hands turns my head, crack, and the other way, crack, and I turn around with a smile facing two men, my age maybe, smiling. I gave each of them fifty baht, then I left the john heading for the dance floor.
Spicy was now really hopping. Other places close at 2 but Spicy opens at 2, so everyone converges. There’s no place to dance, but it doesn’t matter. Someone is dancing on a stool, someone else on countertop. I find a bare spot to call my own, and start dancing. The person next to me extends the top of a beer bottle, and I extend the top of mine. Click. Then three others. We’re all dancing in a group, and now I am REALLY happy. At five a.m. the dj plays two or three popular Thai songs. Everyone has their arms the air. And then it’s over.
The five of us, sometimes six, got together many times in the days that followed. We had a barbecue, we shot pool together. Lots of joking, lots of fun. Just Thailand. But one night, as everyone was gathering, one of our group came in having been beaten up by her ex-husband, and as it turns out, not for the first time. So......long story which I won’t write here, but we rented a car and drove, together with her son, aged two, twelve hours across the country to her parents’ farm, just on the Cambodian border. We left her son with her parents, so that he would for sure be safe, and then drove twelve hours back. In the car we had a lot of time to talk. She’s a street vendor, an exceptional street vendor. Her husband died suddenly from cancer just before her son was born. She married a second time, but it wasn’t good. Now she has the reality of selling food on the street at night, and preparing it all day, and raising a two-year old. Dancing’s good (sometimes), and friends, and most of all, parents.
A few days later I was on the long plane flight back to Toronto. In Beijing, the airplane had mechanical problems, so I was stranded for 24 hours. The whole time I kept thinking about my last two weeks, about how generous everyone was, about how warmly I was welcomed, and about what sometimes crappy lives people endure with so much dignity and grace. Surely, I thought, there is a way to start something, like a business, even small small, that can help.
And now there’s a website!!
Saturday, October 25, 2008
saturday october 25
first posting! turned in novel yesterday, and drank beer with jon last night to celebrate.
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