February Review

The past few days I have focused on bringing a certain standard into our social media profiles which account for more than 12 platforms and include uploading thousands of pictures but yet has to include the mammoth task of describing and tagging all these pictures. Besides that, I’ve finally managed to upload another little blog on bangkokvanguards wordpress on the occasion of Chinese New Year but there are yet so many more blog topics on Thailand in the pipeline which are also waiting to be written in German for the German bangkokvanguards blog.

Actually way to much computer work given the sunny days that we’ve been enjoying ad infinitum. But despite having the sun smiling at me every single day I’ve spent only a meagre three weeks exploring Samut Songkhram and parts of Ratchaburi for scenic biking trails and spots for video documentation and interviews. That alone was worth a number of blog entries and I will come to that later. Besides that I also managed to venture out with Tim, a photographer and urban explorer and Bangkok expert on some interesting urban exploration tours. All the findings are still jammed up like Bangkok’s traffic waiting to get across in the virtual world. I have enough of organizing and structuring the database and building the social media front but I know it’s necessary for I want to show you guys out there what experiences you can have in Thailand.

To manage that I had to reduce my teaching workload which lowers my income to a level where I just get by but which frees time for “vanguards-ground-work” as well as getting me through this semester. But I’m also aware that it’s not enough if I want to build a decent foundation for bangkokvanguards especially if I want to achieve that before leaving to Germany in May. So, this as a summary of the past weeks and today during my first day at university I received some great news. First I’ve missed the first four days of the course but I was still accepted, second they’re half day courses stretching until end of March and culminates in a presentation on a topic I’m passionate about. So you guess what topic that may be. What a great opportunity to combine bangkokvanguards with my academic stuff but more on that in the next entry.

“Gong xi fa cai” Yaowarat or Happy Chinese New Year Yaowarat

Like so often, I’m sitting here in old town Bangkok, on the patio of Baan Dinso, an 88 year old colonial-style boutique hotel in my neighborhood, this time writing a blog entry about Yaowarat well at least that’s the initial idea before my writing flow has me drift away. So, what’s Yaowarat? Yaowarat is known to Thais as what we call “Chinatown”, so if you say Chinatown, many Bangkokians may ask:”What’s China Town?”

http://www.baandinso.com/

Yaowarat or Chinatown is known not only for being the largest Chinese community in Thailand (if not south-east Asia) but for all the goodies, food, buzz and cultural sights that one can enjoy as in most of the Chinatowns around the world. A fact that might be lesser known is that Bangkok’s Chinatown is the oldest Chinese community outside China and since it’s Chinese New Year today, what better day if not today to write about my favorite part of Bangkok and the Chinese in me?

Meet the dragon

Usually it would take a fire alarm, water sprinkler and thick smoke to get my brother out of his bed but this “morning” there was another way to shake him out of his sleep!! Setting off fire crackers in front of, next to and behind my apartment building (I’m glad that despite their fire-cracking-frenzy my neighbors spared the interior and the roof). It was a miracle that my brother didn’t scream: THE RUSSIANS ARE COMINGGG!!!

So that was the start signal to welcome “the year of the rabbit” and in Yaowarat the total firecracker inferno breaks loose, with the entire district decked out in red whilst dragons are dancing and parades are marching during two days of festival, religious worship, ancestry and family-time and thousands over thousands of Chinese, half-Chinese or quarter-Chinese stream into the 99 Chinese temples and shrines that you can find in Yaowarat or better say Samphanthawong (the name of the city district).

Yaowarat is the name of the main road that flows 1.5km through China Town like the body of a dragon and by that embracing the Feng Shui principle which apparently has brought great commercial success to the area since 1891 when the road was built. Well, actually the Chinese immigrants were already successful prior to that. Chinese have been here since the early Ayutthaya period around 12^th to 13^th centuries and they lived in a village call Baan Kok (here we got the root of the name Bangkok which was easier for western foreigners to pronounce) on the site where now the Grand Palace sits.

The real wave of immigration started in 1767 and with the founding of Bangkok as the capital in 1782 the Chinese were relocated to what is today’s Sampeng (a narrow market alleyway running parallel to Yaowarat) Hence Sampeng was the first main road of China town and thus the Chinese community began to sprawl from an area at least as old as the old historical center of Bangkok. With increasing trade between Siam and China as well as pressed hard by natural disaster and famine Chinese immigrant population reached roughly 30% of total city population by 1907 and controlling most of the trade. Many of the 1.3 million Chinese however settled along coastal towns such as Samut Sakhon and Samut Songkhram, intermarrying with locals and thus setting off a wave of “Luk Krueng Jin Thai” half Thai – half Chinese or at least a quarter or a third Chinese like myself, since my grandfather was a Chinese immigrant too. Whether he was Tai Chiaw, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hokian or Hakka or whether he came by boat or via land route will be something I have to find out but what all Chinese immigrants had in common was that not only were they Buddhists or Taoists but there was no “Hartz 4” awaiting them (the term for the generous German social security). They started their lives from scratch or, to use the Thai idiom from “one pillow and mattress” to now the dominant players in the Thai economy and for that matter in the economies of most Southeast Asian countries.

Now, I’m an immigrant as well, I’m not from China but from Germany but still besides German and Thai I also have Chinese ancestry. I did not fled famine everyone could tell right away from my shape and I did not arrive by steamship but I arrived by Emirates Flight EK 504 and I was driven by my passion for Thailand and the idea that my skills are of better use there. Instead of a pillow and mattress I had traveler’s checks and an MP3 player with me, yet l slept on a thin mattress and a pillow for the first 1.5 years with no more than a fan and a small table no AC or hot shower. My status is not tattooed on my wrist nor do I wear a token around it, I have no owner maybe only with the exception when I had a girlfriend and my status is definitely higher. I’ve brought my education with me and yet, the field in which I seek to realize my potential requires me to start from scratch and despite all boons and benefits of globalization, I’ve got to work hard if I want to stay here for good especially if you’re considering to have a family. So, work hard is no big deal for me, what else do I need? Spiritual support? Last year’s Year of the Tiger was a rollercoaster ride. It had the fierceness and force of a tiger with the country descending into chaos and with that my life as well. I’m not a Taoist, I’m a Buddhist and yet I’ll be going to the Chinese New Festival in Yaowarat, joining the full-,semi-,quarter Chinese in their blessings-seeking so to hopefully hop through a successful and fulfilling year of the rabbit with my “Chinese genes”, hard work and a bit of luck.

For further information on Yaowarat follow the bangkokvanguards blog or enjoy our picture sets and descriptions on Flickr or join me on Facebook for the latest from Bangkok.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangkokvanguards/sets/72157622754375179/

http://bangkokvanguards.wordpress.com/

Btw. I’ve wondered why are many Chinese minorities so successful? Is it because of the “tiger mothers”? To see how Chinese mother prepare their kids read this article: Do you think it is better to raise kids that way?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

Last days of 2010

Today’s Christmas Eve, but the homey, cozy feel of Christmas doesn’t want to settle. It wouldn’t even settle if Santa would fly right passed me, dropping off his gifts. There’s no romantic decoration of Christmas trees or the smell of the roast being prepared in the oven while the outside world is covered in white just like the Bed Supper Club. I could give the coconuts in my grandma’s garden a seasonal touch by painting them red and try to form ginger bread houses from sticky rice to tell everyone that the December 24^th has arrived. But in fact the most precious thing that has arrived is a lovely Christmas greeting card from my mother which radiated so much love while I was reading it. It made me really sentimental and had me value those things I have, despite being far from here. It also prompts me to increase efforts to advance bangkokvanguards.

My brother’s been here now for over a month and progress has been little. The first weeks consisted of a string of continuous meetings, parties and taking care of friends on visit which is a nice thing but now it’s time to continue with the vanguards project. Where ever I could I squeezed time out to work on our social media platforms to standardize all photo albums on the social networks as well as on my hard disks, clearing out countless Gigabyte of photo material, editing, choosing, resizing, reorganizing for hours and hours, spending up to 18 hours on the computer with only a lunch break in between. I’ve systemized all of the old photos mostly into albums of 50, 24 albums in total reduced from 26 whilst leaving more comprehensive albums with up to a few hundred pictures in on Flickr for those who want to see more. That was the necessary, sleepless evil to provide a visual foundation of bangkokvanguards and to be part of a greater overhaul of my current system to manage data. Now all this has to be tagged and thoroughly described since pictures only don’t tell the entire story behind it and we want to deliver stories. My project to devise a system that absorbs the avalanche of data that is rolling down as fast as the pace of my life in Bangkok (and that’s pretty fast compared to my laid-back life in Germany) is highly important since we’re only a small team we require to work with utmost efficiency. Thus all the explorations, project progressions, researches, etc. in photo, text and video are to be systematically archived as well as systematically spread in an effective, fat-free way that combines various tools to max out our productivity and help to ensure a seamless and constant provision of information that would be beneficial and relevant for our target groups.

I was hoping to get it done by December but I underestimated the workload. I sacrificed my goal of a healthy lifestyle with plenty of sport and sufficient sleep and the yield has still been only slow progress and I only have a few more days left, and I hope to have the system more or less ready by the start of 2011. The bright, sunny peak season smiling through the window makes it not easier for me but office workers may not feel much different after all (though they wouldn’t work during their holiday and I’ve got almost three weeks holiday… I hope I won’t spent them in front of my computer)

Actually I wanted to start with video documentaries on Samut Songkhram but Christin unfortunately forgot our 1,000 Euro + camera in a taxi which is a setback to our financial situation to get things off the ground but that’s life. Things like that happen and we’ll see what we can do best in this situation and don’t focus on the loss. Once Christin’s back and I can’t wait for it to happen we’re having our brainstorm sessions to get our flagship – our website up and running I think that’s our first big aim for 2011. For the remaining days, it means working with bits and bytes to go with full digital swing into 2011.

November 01

It’s 5.30 in the morning, my brain’s been up and running for some two hours now and there’s no way I could fall back into a cozy sleep. Today is a defining day, in about three hours I will head to the local district office to hand in the last piece of paper necessary to acquire the Thai citizenship, it seems that this is the last barrier between me and my Thai ID card… but I don’t want to be too overly optimistic. It seems there’s no clear rule on whether I’m entitled for it or not, it appears to me as if everything depends on the mood of the officer in charge. He may approve or send you back where you came from. The last piece of paper is my original birth certificate, flown in all the way from Germany, express and insured by DHL for 65 Euro!!

Now, I’m sitting here in my friend’s living room not far from the local district office, writing this entry and hoping that everything will turn out well for me and consequently well for bangkokvanguards. October ended six hours ago, it ended with a visit to my uncles funeral, seeing many of my relatives again, cousins and dozens of people with curious eyes whom I have probably met before but never exchanged a word with.

I also talked to my family in Germany and it’s confirmed that my brother is going to arrive Thursday next week and that it will be my job to take him under my wings. Once I have my Thai ID card in my hands this day will mark the beginning of a new chapter, it will be a total reboot, a reconfiguration of how things can be done. There won’t be an “I’m tired today” or “I’ll sleep long”, there won’t be “I’ll do it tomorrow” or “wasting hours on the internet”, neither for me nor for my brother. Once I’m Thai by law, I want to be a highly productive citizen and contribute my knowledge and skills to this country. My brother’s here to do the same, to do something meaningful with his life. I know he will need my help and guidance and I know if we are to see results by mid next year we will have to work hard but we need to find the balance as well. There’s already an endless to-do-list in my head that has been spinning since 4a.m. I need to sort and structure it, that’s why I start the first day of a new month with a blog entry before the sun’s even up, a good start!

The season too has changed and so has my determination go throw and commit myself 200% to the things ahead. Considering the scope of our business fusing tourism, media and NGO support in an intelligent, creative and interactive way and all the things in involved, the word discipline will have a new meaning to me. All I can say, I start this month with an unprecedented determination, drive and focus and that I’ll do all I can to push ahead with our projects. No time to be wasted but only to be used for a meaningful purpose.

October

This year has already been quite a roller coaster and October in the good old tradition fits superbly into the category most crucial month. Basically I’ve been rotating between so many places in and outside Bangkok (but mostly in the city) hampered and slowed by the fact that my beloved bike got stolen. I’ve started at least three blogs of which I haven’t finished even one, I’m struggling to keep up the input since I’m able to write entries only when I’m hitting the road, usually squeezed into minibuses steered by suicidal driver attempting to set a new speed record between Samut Songkhram and Bangkok, after 20 min. of semi-blind typing I usually feel so ill that I have to shut my netbook. See, I’m able write during the entire trip in an express boat but not for 15 min. in a van that says a lot about the driver!

Anyways, October was a month full of incomplete entries, each entry half way finished or three quarters close to the end became quickly outdated in view of the onslaught of things. Now my freshest attempt here takes place in a secluded classroom somewhere on a high floor of one of the over 1,500 highrise buildings in Bangkok, an airconditioned shelter from the relentless heat and noise gives me a hard time to keep my eyes open, though the sky is blue and the view over Bangkok is awesome with dusk slowly settling over the skyline. I feel it’s time for a power nap… 5 minutes…

Where was I? Well, October mayhem, right. October was a month in which I saw my two best friends and business partners in a bad crisis, having me placed in between, requiring cool heads and leading to a new constellation and reaffirmation of my future business plans. However that’s life, things can break apart any time and we need a plan B, we have to adapt, show flexibility and the ability to resolve problems and stay positive, that’s all I can do and that’s what I focus on.

This month also deserves the award for most upsetting month since some dirty.. +@@# stole my bicycle, as I mentioned in the beginning. Not just a bicycle, it was my first bike and daily companion for almost four years, which I have modified to suit Bangkok’s traffic was gone! Everyone who is a fervent cyclist can probably imagine what that means. The reality of an empty bike rack under the BTS Station Thonglor struck me like a hammer and had me upset for days to come. It has also thrown me back into the daily reality of millions of mortal commuters depending on a transportation system that can be anything from adventurous, to convenient, to death-slow, to upsetting, to cheap and expensive. I’ve wasted at times sooo much time and often a lot of money to get from A to that the whole consequence or difference of living with and without a bicycle in Bangkok is worth another blog entry but I will with that till I buy a new baby and I’ll get you some ideas on where to get your bike, which I strongly recommend if you’re a Bangkokian.

For now I want to further bemoan the dramas of October, in which I again so any attempt to get back onto the sports track shattered by the heavy influence of the lazy bastard in me or really by the sheer lack of time. I’ve never been in a worse physical shape, since May I’ve made five or six times into the park for a run and my average sleeping hours slipped to roughly 6.5 hours 1.5hrs short of what I need to function. How long does it take you to get back into your sport rhythm once you’re out? I find it sooo hard, are there any tricks? Probably just doing it. Let’s put that on my ever growing to-do-list.

Well, as my belly grew so did my knowledge of websites and our prospective competitors in the market. Christin and I have undertaken the first decisive steps towards setting up a website in which we can portray and combine all our ideas and which will be the backbone of our company. We have spent long nights researching analyzing websites, met some of the smartest developers in Bangkok, discussing and brainstorming our concept, developing, molding, shaping and crystallizing our concept. This process will go on till we squeezed out all the brains along the way which is great fun since all the developers we have met are really cool and smart people who think along and contribute in a fruitful brainstorm. We’ve gained a lot from these talks and it’s always great to see the different angles and possibilities. I have a deep respect for these people, for people who know what they’re doing, people who have a deep knowledge and understanding in their respective field. It will be a hard decision with whom to further work since all of them have their different strength but in the end I want to feature all of them here in my blog for you if you need or information about the techies and creatives of Bangkok.

So our foundation has tremendously been shaken as well been firmed, our networks have expanded and ideas grown. We have become more determined and confident in our mission and stronger as friends and in our endeavor to bring out our potential. Another wish has come true that my younger brother Daniel finally makes his way over to Thailand to do exactly that, finding his passion and supporting us with bangkokvanguards. It’s been over two years since I last saw him and now it’s only a few day left till reunion. So there will be three Luk Kruengs (Half Thais, half Germans) working on bangkokvanguards, my brother Daniel, my best friend Daniel and I. Daniel (number2) has also revolutionized his life this year and finally stepped into the field of his passion – media, working with a professional production team from Germany and getting his first main task of taking care of a music video production by German Hip Hop artist Marteria. Dani stayed overnight and I gave him a list of locations which we planned for this project as a thank you I got their CD with an autograph of Marteria.  

Apart from that struggled through a bureaucratic mesh to attain my Thai citizenship after being in Thailand for seven years. It has required patient and optimism but I have set the course to finally become a Thai citizen as I drive forth and back between Bangkok and Samut Songkhram, so is my hope of eventually becoming Thai citizen rising and dwindling with each new information that I receive at local district offices and foreign ministries. Hopes and disappointments, are always with me on the passenger seat and I have learned to turn down my expectations and refuse to reboot hope in view of the unpredictability of things. Still, I cross my fingers that November 1, 2010 will mark the beginning of my Thai citizenship, which will lead into a new chapter of being in Thailand, a chapter in which my brother will be by my side, helping to build the foundation that will eventually unify my whole family and that sees Daniel successfully taking off in the field of media and thus enriching and giving the media dynamics that bangkokvanguards needs in order to grow and with it we will grow coz as John Ruskin has put it:

 “The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it”

Contemplating a website

Saturday, cancelation in the morning, hoped to sleep long but all in vane, the Chinese vegetarian was officially launched with a long parade starting at 7am, accompanied by what sounded almost like mortar fire, first I was woken by gentles Chinese chants and beautiful melodies seeping through my window but then with the first bangs and explosion I was almost catapulted out of my bed. The noise reached its peak somewhere in the middle of this hour long procession and I imagined dragon dances and people dancing in this hour long festival of chants, drums and Chinese fire crackers.

Now still half asleep I have 2.5 hours left to get to work. I have only a few days left to develop a clearer concept of the bangkokvanguards database which will be a substantial part of the website. As I’ve already mentioned in another blog entry I have a database based on years of collecting and storing information on Thailand and thus I would have a lot to feed into our website but for me it’s not only about providing a Bangkok database for users to rate, share and comment on. For me, it’s equally important that as Bangkok”vanguards” we stand for development and change.

I have just watched TED.com and listened to Bill Gates and his projects and vision on energy, I have just read Thomas L. Friedman when I was sitting on the loo and Friedman called it the Energy-Climate Era that we’re entering. It’s not that the implications of mankind’s development or human consumption behavior, etc. has just begun to dawn on me but it has been spinning in my mind for quite a few years now.

As I said, we’re going to develop a website www.bangkokvanguards.com an interactive travel platform that is at the same time our company flagship on the net. Vanguards here as I wrote at the beginning of this year in the bangkokvanguards blog is not only a synonym for people exploring new areas or introducing new technologies and ideas but it’s also a synonym for those what I would like to call “changemakers”. In times like these, in times of tremendous changes, the need for every individual to be a responsible and an aware citizen has never been greater. The responsibility for the young and technologically versed generation to contribute their part to counteract the forces that a detrimental to our planet. And these forces, the issues of climate change, the widening gap between rich and poor, population growth, energy poverty, environmental destruction, health care, resource shortage, lack of education, etc. have never been so urgent, destructive and present like these days.

I think for all those who genuinely address these problems they genuinely deserve all the support possible and I can clearly see a role that we as bangkokvanguards can play in it. Since this website will not only be specialized on Thailand/Bangkok but since we are also based in Bangkok, it is exactly here where we can contribute to it. The website should not only attract people who are looking for tourism related information but also individuals who fans and supporters of this wonderful country. They should find great value on our platform other than sharing some travel related tips they should also find a place where people who make a difference get a platform to voice their ideas, present their projects, provide their knowledge and resources and collaborate with one another. Thus I envision this website to be a hub not only for Thailand explorers but also for all the changemakers of Thailand and beyond, a bridgehead in the world wide web where intelligence meet and collaborate for the betterment of Thailand. For it’s another vital interpretation of our name “vanguards” meaning to be at the forefront of making Thailand a better place!

Friday

October 8, 2010, the greatest challenge I face is to maintain relative frequent blog entries. This week, things have leaped forward like a typical Bangkok-style blast wave which I have to absorb in the coming days…

A student card in exchange for the visitor badge - security first!

 

Room change again??

Today is Friday again, it feels as if last Friday was yesterday. I’ve Just finished my class at Exxon Mobil and bombed through 2.5km of “medium level Sathorn and Rama IV road rage” to meet my hairdresser Lux at “Art Hair” Siam Square, the largest hairdressers in that area.

Sathorn Road's state of normalcy

Anyways, Art Hair is a place I would quickly like to recommend, I’ve tried countless barbers but here the people know their work and you won’t look like Robin Hood’s friend friar Tuck or like you’re on your way to a “Full Metal Jacket” casting. Moreover you pay only 140-160B for the same haircut as the famous Chalachol branches which go for at least 350B and MBK barbers are the worst rip off with over 600Baht and talking customers into stuff they don’t need to present them bills of over 10,000Baht!! As happened to my friend’s mom. So avoid MBK if you need a haircut!!

Anyways, my writing’s briefly interrupted by a big mama by three rounds of shampooing and head massage and now with a towel tied around my head, I’m back on my chair like Bin Laden with a netbook. I’m squeezing  the maximum out of my time since time is the most valuable resource in Bangkok.

The relentless blogger in Bangkok

Monk's blessing the hairdressers

I thank Frau Schuhmacher who taught me typing at the Hoeheren Handelsschule Erkelenz I got my hands a towel  to protect my netbook from all the hair that is sprinkling off my head while Lux snipping my mane like Zohan. The barber with its comfy chairs, cool water, shampooing and a head massage makes a good pitstop. You chat, read mags, doze off or write a blog while the hairstyle evolution is taking place. I get my head sprinkled with holy water from the monks are blessing of the style factory’s 8^th anniversary and I’m off to Central World Plaza -lunch time- meeting Remi and checking how Central World’s reconstruction is coming along. One section is back in place together with my beloved SFX cinema but still it’s not fully back with one side of the complex still in shambles.

Parts of Central World are back on stage

It’s good to see Ramie, she’s a freelance journalist / writer and is currently working on an interesting project about the exploitation of Burmese workers on the shrimp farms in Thailand. The working and living conditions of illegal Burmese are generally an interesting and important topic and I’m looking forward to see the results of her projects. Meeting Remi meant letting steam off my brain since I’m in the process to set up a biking club with Pin which we call “Bangkok Wheelers”. We’re planning a website (the third website I’m currently working on) and drawing up a marketing plan, writing content and developing the logo. Apart from that I need to enhance and conceptualize my personal brand: ”Bangkokian4life” and most importantly work on our main project “bangkokvanguards” which has led me to be in the creation process of three projects/brands:             1. Bangkokvanguards          2. Bangkokian4life         3. Bangkok Wheelers

What do they have in common, well all begin with B, all revolve around Bangkok/Thailand, all have different purposes and yet they are interconnected and the coming weeks, months or even years (who knows) I’ll have to create, foster, nurture and finetune a system that connects these brands to strengthen and enhance one another…  What will be the end result? As with so many things in life… who knows what happens in the future? What counts is: Now and for the coming days this all involves a myriad of smaller projects which I’ll try to keep up in this blog.

Some of the first practical steps in our current mission are: continue working on a number of concepts, content writing, investment planning, finding a web designer who is able to bring our ideas and visions into the world wide web in a durable way so that we can provide people around the world a great platform specialized on Thailand and Bangkok in particular and to promote the best city in the world. And guess what? Gosh, I’m late for class again!!!

knowledge is a collective enterprise

While I was writing this entry my initial purpose in providing information on library and to help promote reading resources in Bangkok inflated into a behemoth of personal reflection which I want to name after an African proverb “knowledge is a common enterprise”.

For me a common enterprise means to share my insights and assist people in search for information, knowledge and ideas that are related, similar or the same interest as mine and before I go into my topic here an interesting link for those who want to share their knowledge in Bangkok

http://bk.asia-city.com/city-living/article/knowledge-connects

What I found through my little research on libraries in Bangkok is that the infrastructure for intellectual and creative stimulation gets nowhere near to the choice of places and opportunities dedicated to consumerism. But it is also not true, as some people often claim that there’re only shopping malls and clubs and hardly any museums or libraries in Bangkok and that on the long run you tend to become dumb in this city. Well, I want to prove them wrong and show them there’s more than at first glance can made out on the surface. Like with so many things in Bangkok you have to look closer, you got to switch your perspective on Bangkok into macro zoom, you have to make an effort, you gotta dig and then you will find something and that’s what I did and what I’m still doing and I want to share my findings in this blog entry.

Why do I do this? Well, as I said promoting reading resources since the benefits are too many to list them here in this blog. My last entry was about building a bridge between the country we grew up (Germany) and the country we chose to live (Thailand), the two countries in which both of us are rooted and our job to prepare (what I called) the “construction material” in order to build that bridge. This is our mission, which could enable us to create a connection between our two countries (and beyond) in which we can realize our full potential as half Thais half Germans and be in touch with our families and friends on both sides. The “building material” I talked about is of course not cement, bricks or wood but a resource that all of us have access to: -knowledge- . This is the very substance, the raw material that that will hopefully help us to realize our vision. Actually I’m very positive since we’re living in exciting times, never before did we have so much access to information and knowledge. As the saying goes “knowledge is power!” In this sense this access to information harbors a potent booster of self-empowerment, which could mean that in some cases without a classical or formal training or apprenticeship one is able to educate himself in the field that he is passionate about with the “potential” to either make a living, cause change or even both. I see knowledge as the decisive and principle source of personal progress and consequently that of society in a broader spectrum which is an important topic.

Anyways, I’ve spent 15 years accumulating and archiving data on Thailand and especially Bangkok. What I simply do is acquiring and systemizing knowledge on something I’m passionate about and working towards monetizing my knowledge and creating a positive impact. Personally, I’m overwhelmed by the information out there but also inspired and excited by its potential and new perspectives it offers. In this vast sea of information and armies of resonators, there’s a lot of crap floating around but I want to focus on the genius of our times and that is that many interesting and great individuals, the gifted and prodigies whether dead or still alive in all fields imaginable are out there, more ubiquitous and accessible than ever before, talking to you and sharing their stories, their knowledge for free in all media available pictures, audio, text and video, enriching our view and understanding and creating new ideas in our minds. Of course some information on the internet has varying degrees of accessibility, not everything is for free as not everything is credible or displays in-depth knowledge hence apart from the internet I found Bangkok’s libraries more than just a great supplement. When it comes to libraries there are some interesting developments and I’m looking forward to see how it will influence Bangkok’s book resources. People are working on it to make knowledge free to all and available to everyone – creating universal access to knowledge, which is discussed in the following talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_library.html

However, with increased knowledge all around us it does not mean that everyone is able to educate himself successfully, of course people say the internet will revolutionize education but we should not just grab the knowledge that is laid out in front of us but we need education also to learn how to work with certain information or literature, how to interpret, analyze and question it critically and in some matters even going down the entire academic runway to provide a credible scientific backup.

Even for something like the history of China Town of course you need to compare resources but the great thing is, we do not only have the tools for further research but to collaborate and exchange with other people on stuff that interests us, making us not only mere bystanders but active participants in the process, self- motivated and self-driven agents of change in an unceasing evolution of things, in an ever faster and increasingly complex world, accelerating inevitable change and hopefully nudging change into the right direction. That sounds great, doesn’t it? But are we receptive for it?

Anyways back to the libraries of Bangkok again. I often hear people, mostly foreigners complaining that there are so many shopping malls but apparently no decent museums, galleries or libraries. Ask them for libraries, most of them won’t be able to name you four in a city of over 12 million the same goes even for the Bangkok Tourism Division Office right by the Phra Pinklao bridge, a well organized branch of the governments tourism service machinery with many leaflets and brochures on anything from temples to food, maps, spas and entertainment yet upon asking their staff whether they could name me a few interesting libraries the question mark spread from one face to another. Wasn’t there anybody who knew about Bangkok beyond what is printed in their brochures? I mean apart from the most obvious suggestions like the National library which I have visited and the libraries of Thammasat and Chulalongkorn there was no mentioning of places like TK-park (Thai knowledge Park) at Central World Plaza or TCDC (Thai Creative Design Center) at Emporium, great projects, advertised and sponsored by the government to foster and nurture creativity with state of the art technology, media and a great selection of books and the uniformed staff had no idea about them… I think the Bangkok Tourism Division should hire at least one Bangkok nerd.

So, nobody knew much about libraries, so since I need libraries, I have dug them up, followed every soi and uncovered the bookworm refuges of Bangkok to extend my resources and provide a comprehensive list of the libraries within the inner city area. I’m going to post the list complete with pictures that I took and descriptions on our bangkokvanguards blog. The list is not complete but will be gradually become longer and hopefully draw more people into Bangkok’s libraries and if they do so I’m sure some of these places will fulfill their appetite for books in a city that has reportedly no more than three libraries ;o)

http://bangkokvanguards.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/book-worm-refuges/

T -2

Never had I so many friends and acquaintances on visit in Bangkok, this and last month’s packed with birthdays, farewell parties and other party occasions, alternating with university classes, work, assignments and other dramas with neither pause nor end in sight and the Monsun now pouring over the city. They’re accompanying me on my last drenched sprint, sidelining the homestretch towards the end of the sixth semester, a straight shot through an eight-day intentsive British and American Literature course… goshhh… I to present now… Benito Cerino I’m comingggg!!

Gateways

10.30pm, it’s raining like most evenings, but the rain is no big deal since our refuge is the MBK Movie day, watching the hall fame of action heroes, “The Expendables”, before we’re back outside in the streets of Bangkok and reality slams (drips) into our face and knowing of all the things ahead, reality is also back in our heads which causes Daniel to light a cigarette as a counter remedy.

Worry number one tonight: Daniel needs to get back to Germany to close the final curtain, to jump off the German cruise ship and onto the Thai rice barge for good, easing the burden for his mom, leaving anxieties about retirement funds, widow’s pensions, rent, cancelations, registrations, the apartment in Germany, insurances, and money being flushed down to nowhere all the while still being beleaguered in Thailand with projects in the pipeline and finding some sort of stable income. That’s the current situation after a comfy seat, coke and popcorn.

It’s all a matter of timing, getting things initiated in the bureaucratic mammoth Germany will take months, which can be coordinated from here before heading over in person becomes essential. It would require again being away from Thailand for an uncertain time, time that has to be taken advantage of. Nothing’s gonna be wasted!

What advantage though? Well, we consider ourselves gateways, gateways between Germany and Thailand. We want to build that bridge between the place we were born (Germany) and the place we are also rooted in (Thailand). We have in front of our eyes, we want to make the best out of it and realize our potential. We see potential, we have developed ideas and initiated things on no less than three frontlines: Tourism – Import/Export – and education. Export/import and education would be a moneymaker (don’t get me wrong, not necessarily getting rich, just easing the burden to free resources in order to gain time so that we can tackle the main project: Tourism and Development). I know it sounds insane and it won’t work like: Hey let’s do export or wait! Hey let’s do education for a hobby”. We’re realistic but still we can’t tame this feeling… this fire… the coal beneath our butts… that we can move something.

We’re fully aware of the need to set priorities if we want to build that bridge between Thailand and Germany. We need to be relentless on us, we need to be as smart as we can be, and as hardworking and courageous as we can be and maybe even that won’t be enough for what we want to achieve. Daniel has been jumping forth and back between Bangkok and Berlin for the past few years as if the world was a playing field, as if he was a stewardess, moving freely but in case not always ecessarily carefree. Now with another step back to Germany looming, we need to get the construction material ready to build that bridge on the other side, hence building a bridgehead there, no matter how. We have excellent networks here, we’re in the midst of everything , we know so much about this place Bangkok-, Thailand, we are part of the culture, we have family here, we speak the language, we have access to so many resources in Thailand, we do not only think in many ways but are enhanced by the best we take and get from our Thaiside but most of all we have our heart in it!

We need to show those interested in what we can offer what we got and that’s the construction material I’m talking about, we have to get it together and we have maybe five or six months left before our next trip to Germany which means lots of ground work and lots of pressure. The notion, the hope, the inspiration and the energy we derive from this has us walking in circles, talking faster than Eddy Murphy, pushing ourselves, dreaming, laughing, planning, sorting out and trying to stay calm and realistic whilst puffing one cigarette after another somewhere in a nook of the MBK Center and I’m already so sure if we are to get only one of these projects off the ground, Daniel and I will look just as marked, battered and distinguished like the old guard of action heroes we just saw on screen.

To be continued