Sun Salutations

Sun Salutations
So I stumbled out of bed for a complimentary 6 am Yoga class at the hotel’s health club. The instructor was a small, lithe little Thai man who didn’t speak a word of English. The class was pretty low-impact, but there’s really no better way to start a day than to do something nice for your body, and Yoga is high on my list of activities your body will thank you for. Managed to shake off a little jet lag, ran a few kilometers, ate a fantastic breakfast, and headed off to the office again to finish up GPC preparations. Considering how productive we were yesterday, it looks to be a relatively short day, which means we might get a chance to catch some late afternoon sun by the hotel pool… I think we’re all keeping our fingers crossed that all our tech issues work themselves out…

…3:30 pm…poolside…
bronze, baby, bronze
make me brown again, birth me anew
lathered and baked by heat waves,
flesh awakening from beneath the whiplash bite of cold Chicago winds
I watch my fellow sun worshippers as they watch me
a sunkissed waiter in white brings me a tall glass of Thai iced tea
Slowly under sweat I labor to comprehend the connections that brought me here:
a commingling of market-savvy and an accidental adman career
the paths we took are varied but the drive is the same:
to manifest the mysterious power that suffuses brand names…

Food for thought quote:
“It is possible that an Asian entity might emerge in the future, just as the beginnings of European unity have emerged. Nevertheless, as recent problems in Europe have shown, unity requires agreement on some form of shared identity, or at least voluntary progress in that direction. Is there such an identity in Asia’s case? The answer to that does not lie in triumphant generalities about the rise of the TransPacific and Pacific Basin economies…. The very idea of Asia is clearly a mirror-image based on the idea of Europe: the East as conceived by the West, as Edward Said trenchantly argues. Said also points to the fact that, for Europeans, the term “East” primarily denotes the Near East, which they believe should fit their own conceptual framework, while the very term “Far East” reflects the region’s remoteness….
Francois Godement, from “The Asian Renaissance”

After a few hours at the pool, various members of the GPC started turning up. Flights from Europe get in to Thailand in the late afternoon, and as I headed back to my room after a few hours of late afternoon sun I came across Miguel Angel Furones, el Jefe himself. Miguel is quite the charmer, the suave Spaniard alpha-male in greater scheme of Burnett’s creative hierarchy, an accomplished writer, leader, problem-solver, and, it turns out, quite the Sushi connoisseur. He insisted on treating Rosalie, Duncan, Sarah Okrent, Alexandre Okada and myself to a rather expansive meal at Shintaro, the hotel’s deluxe Sushi restaurant. It was quite the spread. I must confess some of the Sashimi pushed my threshold – raw fish, no matter how well cut, how tender, how exquisitely prepared, never really feels like a natural choice. The Bengali river boy lurking in my bloodline would rather see fish covered in spices and fried. But regardless of my tastes, the meal was challenging, the company refined, and the service endearing. A fine way to start the evening…

After dinner Rosalie, Duncan and I took a quick wander up the street to the open air markets lining the road, in the hopes of doing a little shopping. We weren’t disappointed. Everywhere, along both sides of a crowded street, stalls and tables were set up, manned by a solitary artisan or merchant, hawking their wares to passersby. I picked up a few t-shirts, some ornaments, a gift or two, and came across some very intriguing Buddhist wood carvings, and my buddies bought a few items as well. Bangkok, it seems, is still running strong at 10:00 pm. There’s money to be made, tourists to take advantage of, and in countries where culture is a commodity commerce rules the roost. Capitalism looms over everyone struggling to make a living, and in Thailand the necessity of hustling to get by is writ large on the face of all the folks selling their wares to a carefree world. All of us need our clientele, don’t we?....