Trip Report, Part 2

The cool innovations I heard about in the U.S. were mostly new ways that Americans, consummate joiners that we are, have figured out to hook up with the like-minded. For better or worse, networking really is boldly going where no network has gone before.

So many people mentioned facebook in casual conversation that I began to suspect I was about the least hip person on the planet because I hadn’t signed up. That suspicion was confirmed when I got an invitation to join from my nearly 80-year-old uncle.

Websites like caringbridge.org and patientslikeme.com sent their founders to the health communication conference I attended in Atlanta. The connections people make with these tools help them heal.

So if my impression is correct that the country needs to pull out of a slump, then, as the saying goes, we have the technology. Whether its uses will ultimately unite or divide is another question.

Trip Report

America seemed a nice place to visit, but after three years away, I didn’t need to live there. It wasn’t that I felt out of place or even turned off. I found lots to like—the comparatively cool weather was great for sleeping and running, my teams won both of the professional baseball games I got to see. I was even pleasantly surprised a few times—not one of my nine flights was late or cancelled.

But the country seemed a little down on its luck. Fraying at the edges. Not as bold and bright as I remembered. Sort of gray.

Occasionally somebody I met with would mention some cool innovation, and I'd be filled with that sense of the youthful cutting edge that I took for granted when we lived there.

Maybe I’d still feel that if we still lived there. It’s possible that I’ve changed, not the country. It’s possible.

Thaksin Bails

In the latest chapter of the long political saga here, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra apparently decided last week that corruption charges against him were getting a bit too warm, so he and his family headed for England. His wife had recently been sentenced to three years in jail for tax evasion.

Orderly street protests continue, but are now held outside the British Embassy (“Return Thaksin Home!”) rather than near the current prime minister’s office. Some people say the real issue is what kind of democracy the country wants. Lots of versions have been tried in Thailand, from business-friendly to king-friendly to army-friendly, but none have really stuck.

Welcome Back

Jip seemed fine with my being gone. I spoke to her on the phone every day, and found her either upbeat or a little bit bored (a first—she generally expands her activities to fill the time she has). She asked me to arrange visits from friends, which delighted me.

Last year her reaction to a long trip I made was very different. Her sense then was that she had no time for anything but making sure the caregivers followed the schedule. She also may have wondered whether or not I would really return. We hadn’t been apart that long for many years.

This time she was nonchalant when I walked in from the airport, as if I’d hardly been away at all. The caregivers, on the other hand, excitedly (and alas, correctly) pointed out that I had enjoyed a few extra helpings of home cooking while in the U.S. “Khun John grew breasts!” cried one. “His are bigger than Khun Jip’s!”

Dixie on My Mind

I’ve been in the States for two weeks. Day after tomorrow, I’ll return to Bangkok. I spent time with friends and family in Seattle and the Midwest before arriving in Atlanta to attend a CDC conference.

This city is new to me, so my antennae are up and my first impressions are doing battle with my stereotypes. Nothing so far has made me feel I’m in the South especially, but then again what I don’t know about the South could fill lots of blog entries.

Outside the South, do young black men ask legal advice of white tourists from Thailand as they exit the train together? I have no idea. But there we were, taking the elevated in from the airport. Dude wondered about the limits on free speech.

“Can they lock you up for talking smack on the train?”

He was earnest and polite. Maybe he picked me to ask because, dragging luggage, I might have been neutral, or at least unlikely to cross paths with either party again.

He told me he’d been innocently flirting (“I mean, what do you expect, her just sitting there with her stuff all hanging out?”), when out of nowhere another woman passenger, apparently a friend of the first, turned two’s-company into three’s-a-crowd.

“They’re both talking about how if they snitch to some Jane Wayne, my ass gonna be locked up. Can they do that?”

I wish I could say I helped him out. He wasn’t just making conversation—he really wanted to know. I mumbled something about the Golden Rule. He looked up, saw his bus coming, and apologized for not being able to talk longer.