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Bangkok 2, originally uploaded by 160507.

From the Suan Lum night market in Bangkok, 160 baht (about 220 pesos). I didn’t haggle. Dammit why are their graphic tees wittier and cheaper than the stuff sold in  Manila? Why is Thailand clean? Why are their roads wide and smooth? Why does Bangkok work? And why, when you return to Manila and emerge at the airport, do you immediately feel a depression coming on?

“. . .from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the President of the United States. And that is truly remarkable.”

I watched the live telecast of Hillary Clinton’s concession speech. I found it exceptionally moving, and I’m not exactly a fan of hers. Days earlier I watched her “I’m not deciding right now” speech. I found it ungracious, I thought she should’ve declared her support for Barack Obama right there, but now that I think about it, it usually takes candidates weeks and months to concede defeat. She took a few days. That concession speech washed away the bad taste of the previous one. I like the way she reminded women of the things we take for granted, things which earlier generations of women had to fight for. Yes, she was addressing Americans, but these issues affect everyone. It would be foolhardy of us not to pay attention.

Many people dislike Hillary Clinton because she has an air of grasping ambition about her. She stood by Bill Clinton throughout his trials, but one got the impression that she did it for her own political career. She did not have her husband’s charm and warmth; she was simply not likeable. A friend of mine avidly detests Hillary because she reminds her of our own president. (Speaking of remarkable, the Philippines is often viewed as a patriarchal society, but we have had two female presidents. Neither of whom have exactly advanced women’s rights, neither of whom have so much as mentioned family planning.)

And yet no one disputes that running for PUSA requires massive, vaulting ambition. We forget that ambition is a good thing. Look at the current PUSA. By many accounts his youth was marked by a distinct lack of drive and ambition. Did he even want to be president? It’s as if he just landed in that office after a long binge, and look where he’s taken America, dragging the rest of the world with it.

Ambition doesn’t guarantee competence, but at the very least it indicates true desire and preparation. Some people are just better at concealing what they want. Maybe Hillary was disliked because she’s too direct, and we prefer ambition that is couched in coy, pretty terms.

Next question: Will the Fil-American voters choose Barack Obama?

Guga reading Bangkok Haunts in a Bangkok hotel, originally uploaded by 160507.

My old boss Teddy Boy taught me that the best way to prepare for a trip to a city you don’t know is to read a detective novel or mystery set there: at the very least you get an idea of its topography. Hence Michael Dibdin for Venice and other Italian cities, Andrea Camilleri for Sicily, Georges Simenon for Paris and other French cities, and Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind for Barcelona. Arthur Conan Doyle for London, that’s elementary. For Bangkok I read John Burdett’s Bangkok Haunts, the third of his much-praised series in which the protagonist is half-Thai, half-American policeman Sonchai Jitpleecheep. (I couldn’t find the two earlier books in Manila stores, but I just got the first, Bangkok 8, at Bangkok airport.)

The Thai Buddhist background gives Jitpleecheep and his co-workers a different perspective on crime and human nature. At the start of Bangkok Haunts, a pathologist explains to an American FBI agent why the woman in a snuff movie did not seem terrified at her impending death. Later Sonchai patiently tells the same agent why his partner on the police force, who is not gay, is about to get a sex-change operation. Bangkok Haunts is Brilliant and Riveting, Dark and Sleazy. Let’s just say it won’t reinforce your cheerful view of human nature. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it right before my first trip to Bangkok, but it made the experience more intense.

The book describes something called “the elephant game”, a nasty form of execution used by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The executioners make a bamboo cage in the shape of a large ball, and put the condemned man in it. Then they bring in an elephant and encourage it to play football. The elephant starts kicking the ball, and when it gets annoyed–elephants are irritable–it starts whacking the cage with its trunk. Then it gets bored. Humans are quite fragile.

So I arrive in Bangkok and practically the first thing I see is an elephant.

Marat 2003, originally uploaded by Koosama.

For this French Open I decided to make like a tennis player and be superstitious. Like all sports, tennis is full of rituals and strange beliefs: lucky underwear, amulets, not getting up during the timeout until your opponent has left his seat, lining up your water bottles so the labels are all facing the same way. I did not say a word about somebody’s chances, in case I jinxed him. Weeks ago I said I would root for Richard Gasquet, and I meant it only half-seriously, but he still withdrew from the tournament on account of injury. I did not discuss the matches with anyone, and I’m not watching the men’s final, which is on right now.

I quietly cheered for Dinara Safina, who was on a winning streak that saw her dispose of Justine Henin and Maria Sharapova. It can’t be easy being Marat’s sister–from birth she’s probably heard people say, “You’re Marat’s sister?” followed by a significant pause as questioner ponders the vagaries of genetics. They look alike, but look at him. Then he became a star for winning grand slams and being nuts, and she was mid-level in the Russian girl invasion. So she made it to her first grand slam final, and there’s no reason why she can’t win majors. Post-Henin, with the Williams sisters no longer playing full-time, women’s tennis is an open field. Will Marat and Dinara be the Donnie and Marie of professional tennis? The Osmondovs.

2323h. Ha! I was right not to watch the men’s final! Aiieee, straight sets, bagel in the third, so I spared myself some hyperacidity. And I did not jinx my chicken, though it could be argued that not watching was the jinx (Superstition being opposite of logic). Explanation by superstition: The Fed is chasing slam number 13.

For years my friend Bernard-Henri Not Levy has been railing that Occam’s Razor–the principle that the simplest explanation is probably the best–does not work in the Philippines. He is terribly disappointed that no one disagrees with him. Now he goes around railing that we fail the Turing Test, and if no one has disagreed with him it may be because no one is sure what the Turing Test is.

Occam’s Razor Does Not Cut Here in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

I’m in Room 1826 at the Amari Watergate on Petchburi Road in Bangkok, a 5-star hotel surrounded by shopping malls, furnished with a huge bed, a flatscreen TV, and a bathtub with three rubber duckies. Very nice, but I have a strange feeling I’m being bugged so I whisper “I am not a crook” into the orchids, which are everywhere.

As luck would have it, nearly all the Muppets are in Bangkok for work-related stuff. I just missed Bert, but Ernie and I met up last night and Cookie Monster and Telly are arriving on Friday. At 11 all the hotel restaurants were closed except for Henry Bean’s American Bar and Grill, where Ernie had to explain what an extra-thick milkshake is, but they got it right.

A band took the stage, and the big shock was that it was not Pinoy. Their first song was Achy Breaky Heart, and I immediately had the urge to confess that I ordered the wiretaps. The male vocalist pronounced it “Eight-chee breaky heart”. The female vocalist was from what we call the Teena Marie school of singing: she skips most of the consonants. For example, the Alicia Keys song If I Ain’t Got You goes like this: “Sapeeyowaaneeooh/Baaahdowannaeeeaaooooh”. The male vocalist sang a song that sounded oddly familiar, but as he stressed odd syllables, only towards the end did I recognize it as something by R.E.M.

The one advantage of having been an American colony: Our cover bands could rule the bars of the world. (As Ernie put it, “Kayang-kaya yan nung banda sa Binalot.”) Or even take over established bands–look at Journey. I shall add this to my plan for World Domination.