Interlude: Amazing Thailand

Dear Ones:

Early Monday afternoon the electricity went out. This is not a frequent occurrence but when it does happen, it usually comes back on in a few minutes. Rarely does it take more than an hour. After an hour, the early afternoon heat was becoming unbearable. AJ and I decided to seek heat relief at the Seacon Square Cineplex. So we hopped in the car and took off down the street towards the wat, the temple at the end of Soi 93. As we approached we saw a tangle of wires, a light pole, and two transformers blocking the street. Parked across from the 7-11 was a big cement mixer-truck. AJ said, I bet that's what caused our power outage. We had to turn around and take another route to Seacon where we saw Madagascar 2, not exactly high culture, but we weren't looking for anything too educational either.

It was late in the afternoon when we got home to feed Gigi. It was getting dark but there was still no electricity. Since the pump wasn't working we had no water pressure. No bathing, no cooking. I fed Gigi and left her munching her dinner in the evening shadows. We went to the Club to have showers and dinner. After dinner, I bought two bags of ice at the supermarket to stuff in the freezer.

As we approached the turn into our cul-de-sac, we could see strong spotlights at the end of the street where the repair crews were still working. But the whole cul-de-sac was eerily quiet and dark. Usually you see lights and hear the sounds of television and voices talking. This time, I was truly glad to have Gigi to watch the house. Her bark is always worse, but no one knows this. Unfortunately, the cool weather we had enjoyed for so many days has dissipated and the mosquitoes who enjoy the cooler weather as much as we do were out looking for a blood meal. I could see it would be like that sweltering summer night in New York City when our a/c broke down. But this is Thailand. Hotels aren't that expensive here and thanks to the PAD for chasing away the tourists, the hotel occupancy rate is down too.

AJ and I packed up our jammies and toothbrushes, got back in the car, and drove to the Dusit Princess near Seacon Square. We just parked at the front door, walked up to the front desk, and checked in. It was that easy. We got a comfortable double room with twin beds, a/c, cable tv and buffet breakfast the next day.

All this time we had no information on the progress of the repairs, no report on what caused the power outage, or when power would be restored. It turned out AJ was right about the cause. Somehow, the low-slung power lines got tangled up on the cement mixer. According to the Bangkok Post, eight power poles were pulled down. That was an exaggeration. The newspaper carried a photograph of what happens in the narrow streets of Bangkok when moving force meets stationary object: something's got to give. It said vaguely that the power outage lasted "several hours" when AJ and I know for a fact that it lasted at least 8 hours and certainly more. Amazingly, no one was hurt or killed.

*****

So Tuesday evening, AJ and I were settled back in our house, thankful for the gods of electric light (and bless the crew of the MEA) when we heard the most fearsome commotion. The front door rattled and shook. At first, I thought someone was trying to break in. But why didn't Gigi bark? AJ and I approached the door wondering what to do. Then AJ said, I can smell Gigi, and I could hear her whining too. I opened the door; Gigi was in quite a state. Her tongue was hanging out and she was panting heavily. She had broken a dew claw and rubbed off a patch of fur on a hind paw. Then I heard a distant bang and a whistle: fireworks. Gigi is afraid of loud noises like exploding fireworks and thunder. I was so mad when saw the damage. She had gnawed and scratched the door. And I had to hose off her yucky slobber too. I reclaimed the door as "mine" then I took her out for a walk/run in the empty cul-de-sac so she could get rid of her nervous energy. In due course she relieved herself of all her pent up feelings. Silly Mutt.

On this New Year's Eve, AJ and I wish everyone health and happiness.

Walk good,

Jo Anne

A Christmas Letter from Thailand

Hope is that thing with feathers/that perches in the soul/and sings the tune without the words/and never stops—at all. ~Emily Dickinson

Dear Ones:

After school, the air crackles with energy as the seventh graders leave my classroom. Speaking English all day should be exhausting but it seems to have energized them. To my seventh grade language learners, the world is an awesome place for friendships, new experiences, and discovering the intricacies of English. Yet they are sometimes afraid to fail, afraid to reach too high and be punished for daring. They must be prodded and encouraged. For them there are only possibilities. For them, hope is a lively tentative thing, mysterious and exciting.

For some people, though, hope is a thing that is ailing. Broken dreams and dreams that have been put on hold litter the landscape with their jaded finery. You know these people. It is someone who has lost a home or a job. It is someone you know who has cancer. As Langston Hughes once said, their struggle represents a dream deferred. That’s particularly difficult, especially around the holidays. You can’t really express joy when fear is screeching in your ears.

Somehow that separates us into the Lucky Few and the Poor Fools. The Lucky Few may think, How unlucky to be them. So they turn away in embarrassment. Indeed, it must be so, that they are ashamed to have it all: a home, family, food, money, and good health. The Poor Fool does not envy you; only asks you to have compassion. Listen to me. Pray with me, if you can. But don’t pity me for I am richer than you think, for I have hope.

If I am hopeful, surely it’s foolish to hope, because hope is all you have when you are beaten down. But you live to fight another day. If I am hopeful, but it’s foolish to hope, because hope is trying when there is nothing left to try. If you had never tried, you would never know you could succeed. If I’m hopeful, and it’s foolish to hope, because hope is going for a desperate cure even though the odds are against you to begin with. But at least you took the chance.

I’d rather be a fool and have hope. You are not alone, if you have hope. Listen to hope singing.

Merry Christmas to all and Walk Good in the New Year,

Andy, Jo Anne, Taranee, and AJ

In Quest of a Cure

Dear Ones:

This week Andy flew to Israel with Titi to meet the doctor in Tel Aviv who has agreed to perform a haploidentical stem cell transplant where the donor is only a partial match. Lek and Nicky went, of course, and so too did Mimi, the back up donor.

Andy is the donor. The literature says the transplant process is actually more painful for the donor than for the recipient. But Andy is willing to do this; he never had to think twice about it. To give this gift is to give the gift of hope to his brother. I cannot think of a better gift during this holiday season. As Taranee said, going to the Holy Land for a stem cell transplant you cannot get closer to God than that.

Getting out of Bangkok required meeting and satisfying every single expert's conditions; the doctors, the airlines, and security--even the Toilet Police. The first requirement was making sure Titi was healthy enough to travel. That meant getting his butt checked--his hemmorhoidectomy scar hadn't quite healed yet, that he had all his antibiotics and pain medications, and of course, there was El-Al to contend with, the most security conscious airline in the world, and now, probably the most stringent in terms of allowing the critically ill to fly with them. Their conditions: first, the patient's red blood cell and platelet counts must be within normal ranges; second, he must be on continuous oxygen, though he never needed it all the time he was in the hospital. This oxygen machine, which makes oxygen, had to be shipped in from Israel since there was no machine in Bangkok. El Al's final condition: a physician must accompany him on the flight. Of course the family agreed to everything; these are desperate measures to save a life, for without the transplant, Titi has only months to live.

Lek is a marvel at logistics. She orchestrated the move out of the hospital to the airport. She thought of everything, including offering seafood noodles to us as a pre-flight meal. Up until an hour before departure from the hospital, Titi was getting platelets. They look curiously like butterscotch sauce, not like blood products at all. When he left the hospital he was wearing a surgical mask to travel in an ambulance that would deliver him directly to the airplane. Two of the family's drivers carried the passengers to the airport. YJ drove his Citroen van because it was big enough to accommodate all the luggage, especially the two suitcases of food Lek packed for the stay in Israel. With all that she prepared, she could easily withstand a siege anywhere. Among other things, there was a rice cooker and Mama noodle packets. I am quite sure she also packed pork products. Since Israel follows Jewish dietary laws, she was right in thinking pork might be hard to find. To find out about the Toilet Police and to follow what's happening in Israel, you can read Andy's blog by clicking on the link Letters from Israel in the menu bar on the right.

Half a world away from Israel, Thailand's governance is in quest of a cure for what ails it: a lack of credible leadership. We have our fourth prime minister in a year, the 27th in a direct line of prime ministers dating back to 1932. The opposition Democrats were able to cobble together a coaltion to form a government. Abhisit Vejjajiva is a soft spoken pol born in Britain and educated at Oxford. Of course, the western-educated literati think he is just fine. But he is not PM of Britain. Aware that he has his skeptics, especially in the Thaksin strongholds of the north and northeast, he thought it politic that his first walkabout should be in the Isaan region. To complete just one term in office he needs to be a man for all political reasons.

I have stayed behind in Bangkok because AJ is coming home this week. YJ and Mikey also stayed behind. YJ has the additional responsibility for the two old ladies at home: Mama Wang and Mama Hong. Mama Wang is no trouble, a gentle soul with a sometimes clear-eyed gaze that pierces the veil of Alzheimer's; unlike Mama Hong, full of fight, who sometimes takes the notion that she wants to go home to Taiwan now. She's frustrated by the lack of mobility compounded by the inability to speak either Thai or English.

It will be a quiet Christmas and New Year's without Andy and Taranee. Andy and I will also miss two anniversaries we have always spent together; the day Malika died and our wedding anniversary. Lek, bless her, with all that she had on her mind, even remembered to shop for a gift for our anniversary-cum-Christmas. She gave us a soy milk maker. She remembered that I once asked her how she made the soy milk for Titi, and she knows Andy likes it too. You're never too busy to show you care to the people you love.

Walk good this Christmas and the New Year too,
Jo Anne

Resolution?

Dear Ones:

An immunologist in Israel has agreed to perform the stem cell transplant for Titi. How do you fancy Christmas in the Holy Land?

However, Titi has developed a hemorrhoid and the doctor here is concerned it may become a source of infection as his immune system becomes compromised. Titi's white blood cells, which deal with infection, have been crowded out by the cancer cells. It's important for him to be in a healthy condition for the transplant, so he has had a procedure to take care of the hemorrhoid. Now he's a real pain in the butt!

All he wants is his life back, he says. Lek says she wants him back the way he was. Nicky needs his father. Cancer has taken over their every conscious moment. Sleep is blessed oblivion. I don't tell them that things will never be the same again. If the transplant is successful, survival will be on a day-to-day basis. In effect, cancer becomes a time-marker. There is life Before Cancer, and then, life After Diagnosis. You wonder how much you can take without breaking, and it surprises you that you can still bend, even with all this weight.

On the continuing political crisis: the courts decided that the ruling People Power Party is guilty of electoral fraud and must be dissolved. That means Somchai Wongsawat is out of a job after 77 days as Prime Minister. His deputy is Acting PM. Still the country faces a leadership crisis. The next-in-line for the Prime Minister's post is not well-known for having iron-clad moral leadership skills. So far this year the country has gone through two prime ministers, is currently on its third, and about to get its fourth. I wonder if that qualifies as a Guinness world record?

The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has announced it will now graciously depart from Government House and the two airports they have occupied. They have reached their objective, they say, even though it was a judicial "coup" of the pen that removed Somchai from office. It was an opportunity to save face, I suspect. A recent public opinion poll says most respondents think the PAD have "embarrassed the country." To understand this comment you have to realize that in Thailand a collective consciousness is valued. The actions of a few can have repercussions on social harmony. So it is important to balance how much boat-rocking you can do without actually inconveniencing the other people sitting in the same boat. It's not easy.

A lot of people were inconvenienced. They say 100 flights are leaving Suvarnabhumi each day to move 350,000 tourists stranded in Thailand. Taranee's flight home was cancelled just 3 days before the PAD announced they would withdraw from Suvarnabhumi. She immediately started looking at flights again. Incredibly, a seat that cost US$1,500 two weeks ago is now $4,300. Go figure. It looks doubtful Taranee will come home for the holidays.

At home, the nay chang is proceeding with the home improvements at a brisk pace. The repaved front yard looks pretty good. Today he installed a big new window to enclose the laundry area. I will still get plenty of sun out back but without having to contend with anything that flies, climbs, slithers, and crawls. I won't miss the tokays too much.

Walk good,

Jo Anne