Time to bring out the big guns

With infections of Covid-19 rising on a daily basis, the Thai government strongly advised people to stay at home. Like many other countries, non-essential businesses have closed. People are panicking—buying toilet paper and praying—or…

Offering an entire pig’s head and a bottle of liquor at the local spirit house. (Note: the man on the motorcycle zooming by just to the left of the altar)

…wearing face mask on his chin… and eye glasses on his forehead… 

On that note, we’ll need another pig’s head and a case of liquor to help us through this crisis.

Studying at Home

The Nomad, Student of Life, Around the World Bicyclist, and Coffee Enthusiast.

This dude is so cool—Sawan Tongdee—owner and founder of Nomad Coffee, where he sells coffee out of his bike and trailer.

Then he traveled the world—on his bicycle—to study the craft of all things coffee: beans, cultivating, growing, roasting, and brewing. His coffee infatuation took him to India, Tibet, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, South America, and to Panama, where he worked on a coffee plantation

The World’s Worst Air Pollution in the World: Chiang Mai and areas northward

Apparently, angry villagers set hundreds of fires that are still raging out of control.

Which has sky-rocketed air pollution levels to “hazardous”, and prompted respected foreign media Richard Barrow to tweet his concern and support from Bangkok!

With Chiang Mai sold out of face masks, myself and many other locals have improvised. Here, using a cloth face mask and safety pins to attach an anti-bacterial wet wipe to act as a filter.  N95 mask it ain’t. But with stores requiring customers to wear a face mask, I go around wearing this ghetto-mask. Martha Stewart I ain’t.

Facing the Pink Elephant in the Room

Covid-19 (and for northern Thailand—the toxic pollution)—has forced us to face our own mortality, and the mortality of family and friends. It was in this sentimental space that I emailed my father, who lives in the heart of Silicon Valley, CA—which is exploding with Covid-19 cases—suggesting that we could video chat via Skype some time. After all, since moving to Chiang Mai in 2018, we haven’t seen one another. He replied to my email, but said nothing about agreeing to video chat. Well, that’s dad—he’s so absorbed in the chaos that’s going on, he doesn’t have time to video chat. But actually, we do have time. That’s what we’re fighting.

We don’t want to face the orders to “Stay At Home To Save Lives”—which I still question: On the one hand, I understand the intent to “flatten the curve” by reducing the number of people with whom one comes into contact. But as I discussed in my previous post—Pick Your Poison—regarding Thailand’s lower hygiene behavior compared to what I’m used to in the US, staying at home doesn’t necessarily reduce my personal risk of getting infected.

For example, yesterday, I went out—I only go out once in the early morning to buy my food for the day. Without a kitchen or refrigerator, I depend on buying fresh food daily. The worker grabbed a plastic bag, then proceeded to plunge her entire hand inside the bag to inflate it and open it up—and then spooned in the sautéed vegetables. Gorgeous broccoli, carrots, two kinds of mushrooms, red and green peppers. I paid for it, and then threw the entire bag away. I could not bring myself to eat it knowing she had not washed her hands before handling my order; knowing how she rummaged in her pocket to give me cash back. Her hands had touched many items, possibly infected, and then she touched the inside of a food bag. My food bag.

According to Thai culture, you must never cause someone to “lose face” by causing them to be embarrassed or ashamed. And as a foreigner, I doubly have no right to correct her unsanitary action. This is reinforced by the fact that hardly any Thai person would think twice about this worker’s action, and they would have eaten the food that could be infected. That’s why I said nothing, paid, and tossed the entire bag.

Staying at home in this case would not have protected me. If I had had the food delivered, I would not have seen what happened, and would have eaten the contaminated vegetables. Maybe I’d be ok, maybe I’d be in the hospital.

My point—what is my point? While it’s easy for me to get lost in the details of staying at home and keeping things clean by religiously wiping everything in a diluted bleach solution—it isn’t fail proof. Additionally, even if I do everything “right” and manage to not get infected, my respiratory tract is taking a beating from the toxic poison I breathe on a daily basis thanks to the hazardous pollution here.

The point is, I’m not going to beat it. I can wear a face mask, sanitize my belongings, stay at home, move to a pollution-free environment, and I’m still going to die. We all are. We know this intellectually, but now we are knowing it viscerally—by having our usual escape routes blocked.

Around the world, the mandates to Stay at Home are causing emotions from anxiety to rage to surface (eg. spikes in domestic abuse calls). Why? Why is it when a prisoner is locked in solitary confinement, he shrieks in terror for hours on end, setting off an echoing chain reaction in the prison—while a monk, nun, or other contemplative happily seeks solitary confinement?

Why? They have already faced their mortality, and have discovered the peace that neither birth nor death can ever touch. This type of peace can only be discovered in the depths of solitude and seclusion.

I honor all of us doing our best during this pandemic. Even those who smear unwashed hands inside of food bags. After all, even the Buddha could not escape being poisoned by contaminated food offered by a devotee. His body died. He did not. The Buddha knew he was consciousness.

Consciousness remains untainted, unharmed, ever pure.

Monks being transported to the main temple. Will they chant to reduce pollution and Covid-19?

No, they are checking their social media accounts while hunched over their begging bowls. One is using his hand as a face mask…

…back to pig’s head and liquor…