Gardening is usually seen as an opportunity to nurse a mid-life crisis, learn your childrens’ first names, or take up knitting. Now, I already know my kids’ names (Bizzy Snifflenerd and Patricia Marie), I know all the knitting I’ll ever need to get by, and my mid-life crisis came and went the day I realised I no longer had any chance of becoming known as a child prodigy. So I decided to actually go gardening. Not prize-winning roses or turnips. Something with a little more oomph in it. Grapes.
It so happened that Kristian and Stine from the marina know a Thai/British couple who a couple of years back invested in about 24 hectars of agricultural land in Petchabun in Thailand not far from the border to Laos with the intention of developing it into a winery. It was previously used as a chicken farm, but the frequent bouts of chicken flu in the region has made that business sadly unpredictable. Saphin used to run a restaurant in Hongkong and is quite familiar with the wine industry. They bought irrigation system in Israel, vine saplings in Australia, sought out a partner who could take up the first batch of grapes – it is not economical to make your own wine with barely enough grapes for 100 bottles… All went well, in fact the vines threw off two harvests the first year. It is nothing if not fertile this area. But as is always the case these things cannot be run as a hobby; especially not living in London with only her parents looking after the vines. So now they look for partners to scale it up, with plans for chalets in addition to more land under vine. Eau de Vie de Poulet, or a bottle of Chateau Cantenac-Cluck anyone? (Note that cluck is an onomatopoeicon).
You’d have to be some sort of superman to turn down an opportunity like that so I trotted off to Bangkok Monday morning. I started with a medical at Samitivej (Vimmersvej in Danish) and got the all-well message, thank you very much. Note that the correct answer to 'Alcohol consumption' is 'yes', followed by 'one bottle per day, sometimes less'. Next on the schedule was the 19:35 rapid express train to Phitsalonuk. Gardeners don’t fly. I have not taken a six-hour train trip since 1983 when I went to France to – come to think of it – learn about wine in Bourgogne! Coincidence? Is there such a thing? I shared a sleeper cabin with a nice Thai guy and his 3-year old son. He was coincidentally (is there such a thing?) a master of science in economics, trained in Delhi, but was now working for an IT firm in Chiang Mai. Half an hour before I disembarked (@02:00am) I bumped into a young British backpacker cum history graduate with whom I had an animated discussion about the Invisible Hand. He was quite passionate about market economy and globalisation, believing they lead to poverty and evil corporations taking advantage of the poor brown man. Oh, to be young and foolish again. Unintuitive science like The Wealth of Nations unfortunately has to be re-learned by each new generation. He was holding on to my sleeve yakking away when we pulled in to the station. I don’t think I had him convinced, but hey, his professors have to earn a living, too.
Wednesday morning Saphin’s brother picked me up and I spent an enjoyable couple of hours checking out the place; “Can you eat this mushroom?” “No.” “How do you know?” “Look at the bottom, see the root? You can’t eat that.” We also discussed rotation of the land (I’m guessing it must have been used for poppies once, so that’s quite promising), fertilisers, machinery, irrigation and so on. Of course I know bugger all about the subject, but that has never been an impediment so far; one can cover a lot of ignorance under the pretext of not understanding the local terms.
Back at the hotel I unpacked the real reason I came to Petchabun: the really quite amazing book by Betty Edwards: Drawing on the Right Side of your Brain. Now those that know my abilities in that respect will know that my artistic development ended in 1969 with, if I have to say so myself, a quite respectable cartoon dog which I have bored my kids with since they were born. Go Etch-a-Sketch! But my lovely wife’s achievements spurred me on to see if there wasn’t something that could be done after all. Of course Richard Feynman’s career as a Nobel winning physicist, bongo drummer, safe cracker and amateur draftsman inspired, too. The techniques involve drawing the object upside down, drawing an object without looking at the paper and your drawing utensil, drawing only the blanks around and inside the object, and many other tricks. I have only one word to describe it: fascinating. And of course engrossing; you don’t notice the passage of time. I find it immensely satisfying to shut up my forever yakking left brain, just for half an hour... I have produced a small movie of the trip:
At the hotel there was a big group of people who appeared to have travelled from god knows where with the sole purpose of watching the Olympics together on a big screen in the restaurant, and a jolly good time they had, too. A (quick, promise!) word on the Olympics: Is it a wonderful gathering of athletes giving people an opportunity for exuberant celebration of all nations, to enjoy the display of gritty human determination to improve at all cost? Or is it a platform for jingoism and commercialism. [Editor: he owns out-of-the-money Nike put options. Don’t pay any attention to him.] Well, have a gander at these pictures of the Olympic torch’s reception in Shenzen:
Maybe I’m just a jaded old cynic, but I see very little of the joyful celebration of humanity in Beijing Olympics 2008. I see loud nationalism and bigotry everywhere. And since I haven’t digressed much so far in this journal, now would be a good time to draw the parallel to supporters of football clubs.
Given the sizable externalities associated with the sport of football – ask any emergency ward attendant after a cup final - I would argue it is in the state’s interest, nay its obligation, to regulate the activity. The cost of such regulation must be borne by the principal economic beneficiaries of the activity, in other words the ladies and gentlemen of the press, turf accountants, advertisers of all stripes, beer merchants (bless them), merchants of brightly coloured t-shirts with numbers on the back and so on and so forth.
How would we go about this in practice? We could start by introducing a licensing system: anybody that seeks permission to support a football team must pass an exam; the main thrust would be to write an essay about the biggest rival, explaining why they are worthy of support. Any sarcasm, irony, or overbearance and you fail. So a Southern Baptist must write an essay about why being a Hindu may be a source of joy and comfort, and Muslims must explain why Scientology may be a perfectly reasonable belief system. Let’s start now, once people hear about it, everybody will immediately see what a great idea it is, and support it wholeheartedly [Editor: our neighbour's half-witted pet orangutan Philip just grabbed the computer, and scribbled a couple of sentences in what at first sight appears to be correct English, but which upon closer inspection makes no sense whatsoever. We have returned Philip to his cage, and handed the computer back to your usual correspondent. We apologise for any inconvenience.]
The ability to emphasise with supporters of the opposite team is a supremely valuable asset for society as a whole, much more valuable than teaching leadership to our business executives, learning the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, or learning to Draw on the Right Side of Your Brain for that matter. So without the licence, you will be denied admission to Anfield Road, Old Trafford, to your church, synagogue, mosque [Editor: "Go away, Philip! And stay away!"].
I am now at a boutique hotel called The Davis in Sukhumvit. Pre-research factoid: boutique is French for ‘small’. The 40-room hotel I stayed in Monday was also a ‘boutique hotel’. Now, I know you won’t get the required occupancy rates by advertising yourself as a ‘small hotel’, but I always come out in a rash when people overpromise and underdeliver. Not that Davis does that: it’s actually an absolutely gorgeous, albeit small, hotel.
One final indulgence I had reserved for this trip was to let myself be accosted by the Indian confidence men in Sukhumvit; like a clockwork, the following took place this morning:
"Sir, you are a lucky man!"
