Goodbye, Thailand

Wandering around the Warorot Market, I flashed a photo to a vendor, who pointed me toward a narrow stall to my left. Down the aisle, I lost momentum, and presented my picture to someone new, who gave me my next direction. After wandering downstream like a lost pinball, I found myself underneath some foreign overpass (again!) amongst the treasures I had been searching for: grani...
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How Am I Here?

This afternoon, I perched at the edge of an elevated “human nest” tucked into a pocket of Northern Thailand’s green mountains. Three elephants grazed vaguely before me. I sipped Thai iced tea, and it began to drizzle upon the tin roof. Sometimes I wonder how I am where I am. Last week on Wednesday at 1 AM, I lurched beneath a freeway overpass in Bangkok, stray dogs at my hee...
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Bangkok

Part of me felt as though I’d dislike Bangkok.  Some notion embedded itself in my mind that my stay on the coast of Thailand was rustic and authentic, that its thatched roofs and rugged cliffs embodied some personality essential to Thailand as a country.  On the coast, I spent quiet days listening to the waves crashing on the shore and struggling to find English-speakers to fil...
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The Coast of Thailand

Sitting in a bed of lush-lush-green-green plants, I looked under a gigantic banana leaf at the waves beyond the sand before me.  (Having traveled exclusively to coastal cities so far, I half-believe Thailand revolves around the aquatic—the ocean, long tail boats, monsoon rains, and perhaps even the air [which I’m inclined to describe as such since it’s so humid I feel like I’m ...
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Thailand–I’ve Arrived!

Note: I'll be spending the first half of my summer in Thailand on behalf of Pomona's Pacific Basin Institute.  If you'd like to read a little more about my project and PBI's documentary grants, see my previous post about it here! Dear summer readers, Hello!  I’m writing from a place farther from home than I’ve ever been before: Bangkok!  I am surviving my second layover a...
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The End

“I’m spending my Fall 2012 semester in Edinburgh, Scotland.  My process in choosing this program may be optimistically described as “holistic” because of what I half-jokingly identify as crippling indecision (I’m at Pomona because a Canadian penny landed on tails, after all.  But that worked out well!)  And although I have perhaps never been so excited in my entire life ever ev...
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Alumni Weekend

I spent last Saturday morning manning an archival table for alumni weekend, and found myself greeted with premature nostalgia, if there is such a thing.  First, a group of ’08 alums bounced in for their five-year reunion, looking at old diaries and laughing about how long the sponsor program had been around.  One talked to me about collecting Pomona memorabilia from Ebay.  Anot...
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Donuts

Last night, I sat in the middle of a semi-circle of books and shut them one-by-one like dominos. Goodnight Kripke, goodnight Putnam, goodnight Frege, goodnight Russell. I flipped through my notes one final time before shoving them to the side, grabbing my keys, shutting off the light, and bouncing over to my roommate. We hopped out the door and down the stairs behind our dorm a...
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