Goodbye Anno Equus

This was, in the end, a blog with a built-in expiration date.  It began on January 31st, 2014 (the official first day of the equine year) and ends on this last official day.  

Onward with the Year of the Goat.

I think it's smart to have solid deadlines in place.  Shows like Breaking Bad and The Wire had the right idea.  One must capture a certain amount of synergy, and know when to conclude things at the right time.  Nothing lasts forever, and the avowed goal for this blog was simple enough: provide a space for me to write about everything and anything within the confines of this Chinese zodiacal year.  I have done that, 30 times.

5 Months in ...

It's always useful to stop and look about as we cross the intersections, flying above the time zones, in our busy lives.

This weekend's intersection, for example, will find me traveling (via planes, trains, and other mobiles) two time zones, starting from my small South Korean city of Daejeon, up to Incheon Airport, for a flight to Hong Kong, and onward ... back back back ... to my adopted home of Thailand.

The Road Out of Town

It has been five months, more or less, since I've landed here in "The Land of the Morning Calm."

And what have I learned?

For one thing, I've come to understand that many of the "Asian-Buddhist rules" I already absorbed in Thailand apply here (among them ... avoid conflict, smile a lot, take it easy, and learn a little language to facilitate things).

Tanks (Of Metal and Man ... and Children)

I am ... and always have been ... fascinated with tanks.

I mean the large, rumbly, dangerous kind, not the underground water storage units.  

I'd like to argue that tanks have a certain mechanical beauty if you can ignore their intended purpose for long enough, and these manufactured monsters intrigue me in the way that I guess one becomes fascinated and comes to study the malignant, ugly forces of nature - the disasters, the wars, and crimes of man.      

Movie Poster for White Tiger
courtesy of Letterboxd

There are particular reasons why I'm pondering metal war machines this weekend.  One was last night's viewing of "White Tiger," a Russian movie about a mystical German tank on the Eastern front (for the Russians, really, the Western front).  

"White Tiger" was at its heart, an engaging portrait of the ongoing quest of one Russian man vs. a rampaging metal German ghost (with shades of Moby Dick), with a third act that went completely off the charts into a metaphoric treatise on madness, European history, and the idea of war being an integral part of the human condition.  It was thought provoking at the very least, with a lot of attention to detail, a very European feel, and a seeming fearlessness for narrative choices.

10,000 Steps ...

Every morning, the counter on the "Walking Mate" App on my Samsung S4 begins at zero.  And every evening, for at least five days now, I have met my goal - 10,000 steps.

Steps Goal Reached

Like the rest of the world, I can't get abide without my phone for very long.  It has everything I need - LINE (for instant chatting), an alarm clock that wakes me up in the pre-dawn winter gloom for class, and the all-mighty camera, which I can use to upload pictures instantly onto Facebook or Twitter, into the babbling internet void.

And it has the aforementioned "Walking Mate" App, which not only processes my footsteps, but creates instantaneous charts via which you can track your daily, weekly, and monthly progress.  A bit of limited exercise, goal-setting, without the gym fees.