HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARBRA STREISAND

It just turned 24 April in my part of the world. Today is a big day for someone on the other side of the world. The Barbra is going to celebrate her birthday together with her friend Shirley MacLaine who also has her birthday today. Barbra was born on 24 April 1942 in Brooklyn, New York as Barbara Joan Streisand, but she prefers to have her name spelled incorrectly. The old girl has inspired me since we were both young.
A world without The Barbra would make me all farklempt, it would be a total chorbn, a fahkakte kappore.
It’s not just her singing or her acting and directing that I love, but I love her for who she is. I also love her more than a bisel. I love her more than all people that I love combined.
I think she’s beautiful. Everyone who talks bad about her gets cursed by me in my best Yiddish: A broch tzu dir! A choleryeh ahf dir! A shandeh un a charpeh!
Since I live in Thailand I even grow my nails like The Barbra. A farshlepteh krenk but I wanted to pay tribute to her nails by creating a similar hand-look. Our fingers are equally long, very long and if there’s something about me that looks just a little like The Barbra, it’s my hands. Every time I see my hands I think: Barbra, our Barbra, The Barbra. I love you.

God created many voices, but She was most proud the day she created the voice of The Barbra. God listened and thought: wow, this is my best work of art so far and it will be difficult to top this one. It’s perfect.
God created the concept of beauty and then created The Barbra. And God had a look at it and listened to Her creation at saw and heard that it was good.

Dear Barbra, I know you love to read my web log, so I am saying to you: A gezunt ahf dein kopf, Barbra! Bei mir hust du gepoylt. You’re not a dummy and you made it and everybody is shmeichling you now. A leben ahf dir! Mazzletov.

I collected a few photos of the old girl. I love it that she doesn’t give ein bisel about her aging looks. Good for you! Gezunt!

Barbra not wearing a bra

Oy!

Oy Oy Oy!

This is my hand, shot on New Year's eve 2008/9 on Silom Soi 4, Bangkok. The nails are real. I dislike fake stuff.

NO COMPLAINTS PLEASE. THIS IS THAILAND

For a while now I have been following the very active bloggirl SHE in China. Almost every day she posts elaborate stories of her experiences in China. She speaks basic Mandarin and works in a big city and her posts often focus on the cultural differences and the way we Westerners respond to that. It doesn’t take long before you will encounter something in your daily live in Asia that makes your hair stand straight up (is this an expression?), and those stories always make a good read. I have done pretty well myself by stuffing a number of those things in my book Pantau in India. Those crazy Indians nah?
I now live in Thailand, and really, I could post new stuff everyday about those Siamese! But I haven’t. Why not? Because writing about the unusual habits of the people in our host country doesn’t make me feel good. It feels like complaining. Also, I think after over 9 years in Asia I got used to unwestern habits. I spit in public too.

We Westerners don’t mind complaining. I don’t often meet Westerners who need to go through the culture shock, but I currently spend time in a touristy area and the only thing I hear on the beach are white faces complaining about the crazy antics of the Thai. Four Dutch guys were sitting behind me on the beach. Complain complain complain complain.
I don’t let myself go very often but I couldn’t help myself. I turned round. “He! Als jullie het zo verschikkelijk vinden in Thailand, waarom hoepelen jullie niet terug naar Nederland!!”
Or in English: “If you hate it here so much, why don’t you go back to Holland!!”

I realised I have become almost Thai. Thais don’t complain. They rather keep quiet. Complaining isn’t a nice thing and is considered not done, not appropriate and someone who complains loses face. I hear Thais complain about one thing only and you hear it every day, even in winter.

“Ron!”

“Hot!”

Yes, it's bloody hot these days with temperatures close to 95F. I don’t even complain about that because it doesn’t really get hotter in Thailand than 95F and I have spent time in Delhi in April and temperatures were close to 120F (whilst 2000 Indians would just drop dead in the street every day). Mai pen rai!

Thais don’t complain, they don’t let off steam. They keep their own frustrations to themselves. Always. They smile when they feel even more frustrated. They also drink like elephants. Chang, Singha and Heineken do very well in Thailand. Put enough beer in a frustrated Thai and you get an explosive coctail of a small Asian body brewing big trouble inside.

Plenty of people kill those who frustrate them, women cut off the penises of their cheating husbands etc. Welcome to Thailand. I know a surgeon who specialises in putting back penises onto men, and I am not talking about frustrated Thai transsexuals with regrets.

If I had been more like a Westerner I would be able to post every day, I would be able to get all my little frustrations off my chest. I could complain about these bloody Thai smiles that mean nothing, because they may think the opposite of what a smile is supposed to be the result of. (I think this is a bad sentence). I could complain about the fact that I get a smile when I tell someone that I know they’re overcharging me.

“I am not a tourist. I know about prices.”

The first sentence I learned in India was: “Me tourist nee he hun!” or, “I am not a tourist!”

I am a little ticked off as I ate something bad in my favourite restaurant last night and got ill, vomited all over my bathroom floor and had to clean it up myself. I never get ill, I can lick an Asian street and drink water from the tap and don’t get sick. I can eat Thai food from the street! I don’t get sick. I don’t complain.

Okay, now I get it! Westerns girls in Asia need to complain in their blogs because if they would drink a beer, they would start shooting down Asians.

Anyway, I am glad I postponed my vow not to complain, which resulted in a new post and a Thai life saved. Now I need to check my photo archive for some appropriate photos of Thai food.

A nice serving of cockroaches perhaps? Hold the mayo!

Okay, perhaps chicken feet? Lovely snack when watching the tele

Oy, lovely snot still dripping from our snack.

Frogs perhaps? Yummie.

She's still smiling...

Crickets? No?

A sweet to finish it off. It will chip your teeth' enamel.

Okay, she's no food, but she certainly likes it, so to see.

THE PAINTER INSIDE THE WRITER

Some people who blog have full-time day jobs and still find time to post new stories every day, including photos, and they’re not even professional writers. How impressive!

I have the luxury of being able to spend 23 hours a day in bed working on my laptop (I use my bed for working such as writing as I prefer working horizontally). I have the luxury of just asking our staff to take care of everything and bring me some water or food, and yet I am too busy to post on Blogger on a regular basis.
I could tell you about the state of emergency and the heavy fighting in my home town of Bangkok but I don’t like to write about politics or violence.
Also, I am working my sheets off my bed carrying out research for the next novel I want to produce and I prefer to concentrate on that now. Spiritual stories about India then? Not right now.
So apart from research, what did I do this past week, locked up in my home to avoid getting killed? I made a painting. I haven’t yet mentioned that I do paint in order to avoid Repetitive Stress Injuries from working on a laptop all day long. If I paint, I move the pain from my wrists to my shoulders, as painting causes me pain too but in different places.
What do I paint? I am not a painter; I know children who can do better than I do. But I like to paint bamboo and fish and unusual erotic scenes inspired by Japanese Shunga art. Here are some of my recent paintings.

The above one is an Asian version of my favourite painting Sunday in the Park by George Seurat. If I copy, I do give it a twist.

Brace yourself for the next few paintings.

Or I keep it simple and just use a pencil.

Cheers!

Kinnaree and The Valley of the Gods

Last night I was working on a new chapter of my new novel. I thought it was time for one of my Thai characters to pay some attention to one of Thailand’s main symbols: kinnaree. Kinnaree is a half-human/half-bird-like figure believed to live in a mystical forest in the Himalayas. Wherever you go in Thailand, it won’t take long before you will encounter a statue of kinnaree; at temples, in restaurants, in parks etc. Even the motorway from Bangkok Airport into the city is lined on both sides by dozens of bonze statues of kinnaree.

I have always felt a fascination for this mystical creature, not only because of its appearance, but also because it is believed that the real live version of kinnaree lives in a Himalayan valley.

As you know I have lived in the Himalayas for 7 years but I have never come across a kinnaree (I thought). Much of Thai’s beliefs originate from Hinduism, and as I lived in India, I thought I had some knowledge of all the Hindu deities, however, I have never come across an image of kinnaree. I have spent time in every nook and cranny of the Indian Himalayas but never realised I have actually crossed the path of a real kinnaree. Last night whilst writing my new chapter it suddenly clicked in my mind. I HAVE been to that mystical valley of kinnaree!

These days more and more people find their way into the remote valleys of Ladakh and Zanskar. There are people who manage to travel to the valley of Spiti, some even manage to get into the valley of Sangla, the former kingdom of the King of Sangla. But only very, very few people have been able to make their way into (perhaps) the most beautiful but most inaccessible vallies of the Himamalayas, a place called Kinnaur. Hidden behind the majestic peaks of Mount Kinner Kailash on the border of Tibet, lies a green valley full of flowers. When the only motorable road is intact, it is possible to steer a four-wheel drive jeep over it an set your eyes on the mountain slopes of Kinnaur Valley, the land of Kinnaree.

In the summer of 2001, I visited this most beautiful valley. Eight years on I had almost forgotten all about it.
Kinnaur is also called The Land of Gods. The slopes are covered with thick wood, orchards, fields and picturesque hamlets. The much religious Shivlinga lies at the peak of Kinner Kailash mountain. The beautiful district was opened for the outsiders in 1989. The old Hindustan-Tibet road passes through the Kinnaur valley along the bank of river Sutlej and finally enters Tibet at Shipki La Pass. And it is not only the scenic beauty which appeals but also the life styles of the people, their culture, heritage, customs and traditions.
The Kinnaurees generally follow the Buddhist and Hindu belief that the Pandavas came and resided in the land whilst being in exile. In the ancient mythology the people of Kinnaur are known as Kinners; half men/half gods. Thousand-year-old monasteries still exist in the area. Both the Buddhists and Hindus live in perfect harmony symbolising the traditional brotherhood and friendship of the people of both faiths.
After my visit in 2001, I often wanted to go back there. I have made a few attempt but every time I steered my jeep towards the mountain pass, the local authorities would tell me that the road was blocked by landslides and that it would take months to have it restored. In 2001 I even had difficulty to get out of the valley as a 6 km long stretch of the only available jeep-track had disappeared into a ravine. If I would tell my mother what I managed to do to steer the jeep out of the valley, she would call me insane, but with the prospect of abandoning my jeep in the valley and walk back to civilization I decided to do the impossible and risk my life many times. Compare it to moving across a rope with a balancing pole in your hands; not by walking carefully, but by balancing a two ton jeep.

Kinnaree/Kinnara, a statue of the mystical creature that is half woman/half man/half human/half bird/half God. It is believed to live in the Himalayan valley of Kinnaur.

Me sitting on the bonnet of my jeep with Kinnaur Valley behind me.

Conquering bad roads into the remotest of remote valleys in the Himalaya.


Kinnaur Valley

The former kingdom of Sangla, the castle of the King on its summit.

Another image of the village.


I was witness of a rare (once in 12 years) religious ceremony during which three deities were shown to the villagers and redressed. The ritual included the sacrifice of a goat.
A hamlet in the mystical valley.

MONKEY BUSINESS

The Tibetan residential area on the summit of McLeod. My home is in the right upper corner.
View of the building I used to live in. The spiral staircase leading to my room.

Some macaques in the process of grooming on the rooftop of my home.

My jeep, the target of much monkey vandalism.

The type of long-tail langure macaque that I actually like.

A bunch of monkey todlers in an abused tree at arm-lenght from my balcony.

A beautiful male snow monkey outside my room.

The view from my balcony.

From the first day I lived in Dharamsala I wasn’t only surrounded by monks, but also by monkeys. There were two types of monkeys in upper-Dharamsala, better named as McLeodganj, the hometown of the Dalai Lama. Looking at the homes in McLeod I noticed that every room and door was protected by metal bars. Why? Did I have to fear thieves of the human variety who were interested in stealing my Dalai Lama books and Buddha statues? No! The metal mesh protecting windows and doors were all about keeping out monkeys. There were two varieties. The majority of monkeys were rhesus macaques. They were rude, obnoxious, often violent little thieves with a high IQ and many creative ways of stealing food or other items from homes. The other type of monkeys were very kind, shy, long-tailed langure macaques. They would just sit in tree tops and shy away from people most of the time. Those were the ones I actually adored.
I have had many personal encounters with the first variety; the obnoxious rascals.

Soon after I moved to McLeod in 2000, I decided to buy a soft top Suzuki jeep that I was able to park close to my home. The next day I noticed that the soft-top was gone and that an entire gang of monkeys had taken up residence in my jeep. After cleaning out all the monkey poo I had the jeep remodeled for 100.000 rupees in Delhi with a 5 mm thick bullet proof hard-top. The monkeys were no longer able to get into the car, but they would still enjoy jumping from tree branches onto the roof or bonnet. They would defecate onto the jeep, use their poo to write their names onto the windows, rip off the windshield-wipers and mirrors, nibble away or even tear out large pieces of the rubber that keeps the windows in the door frames, rip off the mud flaps and even let out air from the tires. My white jeep always looked like a toilet on wheels. Driving the thing pass the Dalai Lama temple always elicited a feeling of terrible embarrassment. My only consolation was that even the cars of the Dalai’s motorcade of the Tibetan Government in Exile got defecated on.

I tried many ways to protect my jeep from monkey business. I would cover it completely with dried tree branches with inch-long thorns, which was helpful to some extend. After some time the monkeys would just pull the branches off the jeep and wave them at me.
I invested 800 rupees in a so called monkey-resistant thick plastic car cover with unbreakable nylon straps. I used it only once. It took me 10 minutes to cover the car up and thought it would work well. Not! Within one minute the monkeys had ripped the cover in pieces and, looking at me with big smiles on their faces, waved the individual plastic parts above their heads. “Look Pantau, we just fucked up your 800-rupee monkey-proof jeep cover!”
Whatever I did to protect the jeep from monkeys, nothing worked. The only thing I could do was practicing Patience and Acceptance according to the Buddhist teachings of the Dalai Lama.
My third and last home in McLeod that I lived in for four years was on the third floor of an apartment building about 100 metres above the bazaar. It was a very small and simple room in a large building with a small balcony, a window and a door. The door could be closed with a metal bar and secured with a padlock. I would padlock the door with a 200 rupee 10-digit Sanyo digital lock. Now, it would take a human two years to figure out the right combination to open the padlock, however, it took my monkeys only a few weeks to figure out the 5 numbers that needed to be pressed in order to open the lock. You better believe that I am not exaggerating here. Monkeys just know how to open digital padlocks.
The monkeys would sit in a tree across from my door observing me pressing the 5 digits every time I would unlock, and to my surprise, after some time I came home to notice that the lock was gone and the door open. About twenty monkeys were throwing a party inside my room. My television was smashed to the ground, my foam mattress ripped apart and shat on. There were feces on practically every inch of the white washed walls and every can and bag in my kitchenette was opened for inspection. A bag of milk powder was used to make an impressive piece of art by mixing the powder with monkey shit. The stinky mix made a very creamy and slippery wall and floor paint. My bookshelves with Buddhist works of the Dalai Lama were remodeled and the books of His Holiness had been ripped apart and shat on.
The moment they saw my shocked face in the door opening, they tried to flee my room, but as I was standing in the door opening I was blocking their way. My mistake. Big mistake! I should have stepped away from the door to let the 20 or so monkeys escape. The alpha male decided to burry his canine teeth about an inch-deep into my right leg which almost made me tumble over the railing of my balcony and fall twenty metres down onto the roof of the small monastery below my building.
After 7 years, I was really fed up with the monkeys, especially with their shit and piss that they would throw at me. They would sometimes just piss me off by peeing against my windows or onto my head from the balcony above me. They would fling their poo at me, smear their feces onto the railing of my spiral staircase, resulting in many poo-on-hand-situations. They would just sit on my balcony with their legs spread wide and let their urine flow all over the place. Unfortunately, the balcony slanted towards my front door.
I miss the monks of McLeod but if there’s one thing I don’t miss about McLeod, it is the monkeys.

FAREWELL TO THE LOW LANDS

It took me a while to figure out how to write a spiritual post about my recent visit to the Netherlands. This is my conclusion: the universe decided that Holland must be too cold to be comfortable for 11 months out of a year. Also, the country has so many people living on such a small space that you only feel alone when you’re inside a toilet. Even when you’re walking in the middle of a forest with a friend you still need to raise your voice to be heard over the noise of a nearby motorway. You think India is crowed? Think again. I read that Holland is the most crowded country in the world. I guess that observation is true. It’s also one of the most expensive countries in the world. One small bag of Dutch grass has doubled in price over the past 9 years.

According to the editor of the gay krant (gay newspaper) the best days for LGBT-people in the Netherlands are behind us; more gays are being beaten up again and discriminated against compared to the 1990s and more gays are secretive about their sexual orientation.
The only celebrity transsexual in Holland (a stunning looking young girl whom I met at her house in 2004) has been ridiculed for years to such extend that a popular Dutch band decided to release a love-song for her, hoping to change things around for transsexuals. Yet, she is still the subject of ridicule. Poor Dutch transsexuals!
Dutch people appear to be stressed and tense and things have changed so much for the worse that I didn’t feel anything nostalgic. I didn’t miss my country.
Although I unregistered myself as a Dutch resident in 2000, last week I went to the town hall to pay 10 Euros in order to receive an official document stating that I am no longer a Dutch resident. With this statement I can now apply for a new drivers’ license in Bangkok (or get a new passport in any country other than the Netherlands).
“If you leave our country, you are in the hands of God,” said the Dutch-Moroccan employee working at my old town hall.
In the hands of God? Finally something spiritual, I thought.
“Which God? The Christian God or Allah?” I wanted to reply, but I remained silent and paid the 10 Euros and got the document.

I am a Buddhist. Buddhists don’t believe in a God-creator, thus technically I shouldn’t believe in God either. Regarding this I am a little bit of a rebel too, as I love to talk about God to Buddhist monks in Asia.

My visit to my parents place was lovely. They are very sick and in the process of dying (aren’t we all) and I fear this was the last time I saw them alive. Their penthouse is so big, it has a domestic phone system and it takes 5 minutes to reach the nearest toilet from the living room. Finding my father anywhere in his home was easy, as I just needed to follow the trail of urine on the parquet floor. His adult diapers seemed not very effective. In order to find my mother, I just needed to use my nose, as she is still a chain smoker.
I was surprised they both have the energy to still stuff themselves with candy and other fatty fibreless factory produced food items, and they are so angry with the lack of health that they tend to bicker with each other all the time in a most unpleasant manner.
I spent most of my time at their home in the freezing cold of their palatial outdoor rooftop terrace smoking Dutch laboratory grown government approved cannabis in order to speed up my connection to the root of the universe. I had to smoke outdoors as my father didn’t allow me to smoke in the west wing.

The real highlights of my visit had all to do with being reunited with my old Dutch friends. I never realized I never said goodbye to any of them when I left for Asia in 2000. My friends learned about my immigration by reading about it in the media a few years later. Nine years on I thought of reigniting our friendships, but I soon realized they were more interested in experiencing a proper goodbye from me, rather than a proper hello again. Their lives are so different from mine that they no longer feel a connection to me. After saying farewell to all of them, I felt I was ready to go back to Asia.

Another highlight was my visit to my old rowing club in Utrecht. When I walked into the club house I got recognized by all club members and was warmly welcomed. It was here that I agreed to meet with a former junior world champion with whom I had a six-year relationship. I spent an entire chapter on him in my book Pholomolo called “My Loyal Lover Lars”. We never officially broke up our relationship, which we finally did in a very elegant manner in the west wing of my parents’ penthouse. There were plans for him and me to row in a double sculls competition boat a few days later, but the weather changed for the worse and I decided to cancel. My reasoning was that if I enjoyed our rowing session, I would feel bad when realizing that I would not be able to row again, as Thailand has no rowing clubs. If I wouldn’t enjoy the rowing session, I would feel bad too. So I said goodbye to the man I called Lars in my book, and wished him and his new girlfriend, his two cats and his mortgage all the best.

There was a lot to do about the Dalai Lama and his 50 years of living in exile in India around the 10th of March. I had hoped to be invited by the Dutch media to share my thoughts on the matter, but nobody was interested in my ideas either. I received one email from a journalist who wrote extensively about me in the past years. She was interested in meeting me but she finally decided that she was too busy with more urgent matters. My God-fearing Christian Dutch publisher didn’t return my email with my request to meet him. Since I offered him my proposal for my book Pholomolo in 2004, he appears not to be interested in talking to me anymore. I hope he has a good time when he’s visiting church on Sunday mornings. I also hope he realizes he hasn’t been paying my royalties for 5 years now.

I wonder how long it will take before some famous Dutch band writes a love song for me…

So I guess I spent 32.000 baht and 36 hours of traveling just to say goodbye to my country of birth and the people I used to be friendly with, including my parents. I couldn’t wait to travel back to Asia to be reunited with my family.
Last Thursday, 26 March, I travelled from Amsterdam to Hong Kong dressed in a Free Tibet T-Shirt. You should have seen the faces of the Chinese transfer employees at Hong Kong Airport. After a few hours I got on a plane to Bangkok. I showed my passport to the nice Thai gentleman at passport control at Suvarnabumi Airport. The moment he saw my non-tourist visa he said to me: “Welcome home, Miss Renard.”
I nodded. “Kap khun kha. Thank you. It certainly feels that way.”

GOD AND THE PYRAMID OF AUSTERLITZ

A little over 9 years ago I had a life altering experience. It was weeks before I got on a plane and started a new life in Asia. It was a cold, windy, rainy day in February 2000 when I visited the Pyramid of Austerlitz. I even decided to write a little about it in my book Pantau in India.

This is what I wrote:

The next day I drove over to Austerlitz to sit on top of Napoleon’s Pyramid. They had made a start to restore the Pyramid to its former glory. It was Wednesday, February 2nd, 2000. I had made an important decision. I had decided to make this day the Day of my Death.
I climbed up to the top of the pyramid, climbed the ladder that gave access to the plateau and the obelisk. The sun had just come up over the forestry horizon of the Utrecht Hill Ridge and she shone tender yellow bundles of rays through small openings in a dark grey blanket of clouds. I sat in lotus position, rocking and shaking like an oriental monk, staring at the rapidly passing clouds. Like Napoleon, I had stuck my hand in my coat, feeling my heartbeat in the palm of my hand.
Throughout my life I hadn’t met anyone who was truly happy. I had never met anyone who could show me the way to happiness. I was tired of taking my Prozac three times daily. I was tired of not knowing what kind of future I should have. I wanted to end the misery, the pain, the restlessness, the anxiety. I wanted to end my life. Today was the day of my death. Tonight. In the waterbed. I had already switched off the heating system in order to let the water cool down. Sleeping pills. Collected over a period of five months. Enough to kill all the residents of my apartment building. The CD-player switched on. Streisand in random and repeat-mode.
I directed my face to the sky and saw a blue opening in the clouds. I was caught in a bundle of light. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was as if I received a positive message from the ether. As if lightning struck me from a clear sky, a divine voice seemed to talk to me. I could hear it very clearly.
‘A soldier ought to know how to overcome his grief and the melancholy of his passions; that there is as much true courage in bearing mental affliction manfully as in remaining unmoved under the fire of a battery. To abandon oneself to grief without resisting, and to kill oneself in order to escape from it, is like abandoning the field of battle before being conquered.
‘Napoleon Bonaparte once spoke those historic words, my dear Véronique. It was Me who inspired him to say them. There is no need for you to kill yourself. When you listen to your heart, the stars in the universe will conspire to make your dreams come true. Go. Véronique. Go! GO! Travel through the world and find your destiny! It’s out there for you. You can experience everything you want as long as you listen to your heart and do what it tells you to do.
‘Listen to your feelings. They’re the language I communicate in. As I take an interest in your happiness, I have been trying to send you messages of wisdom, but for years you’ve been ignoring me. And as I fly above you like a crow, my view is much better than yours. I can see good and bad things coming your way. If you listen to your heart, I can let you know in advance what choices to make and which path to take. I know the outcome of every decision you make. Ye be warned. Let me help you, so I can promise you a happy ending. Walk with Me and Thou shalt find happiness. Amen!’
I shook my head. Many people had gone mad after taking drugs and I had been smoking my butt off as well as pumping professionally prescribed chemicals into my brain for almost half a year now. I couldn’t trust my own brain or these strange voices from the sky, no matter whether the voices had good intentions.
I shook my head again as I had felt the strange feeling and hearing the divine voice to be the combined effects of the high amounts of THC and anti-depressants in my blood. I denied hearing the voice.
‘You’re not real. It’s my brain that’s gone mad!’ I shouted at the sky.
The voice disappeared and it immediately started to rain. I descended the pyramid, went back to my car and drove home. I agreed that my life was like the Chinese circus act with the white porcelain plates rotating on flexible sticks. It was meant to fail at some point. My life was like a house of cards that was doomed to collapse. I didn’t need anyone anymore. It was the day of my death.

So, now 9 years on I can look back to that day and conclude that I didn’t kill myself. That night I decided that it was the first day of the rest of my life. Last Saturday, I visited the Pyramid for the first time in 9 years. Now fully restored, it was an interesting experience. I even decided to take a picture of the thing. Goodbye Pyramid of Austerlitz. And thank you God.

IK HOU VAN HOLLAND

I love Holland. That is: it isn’t a bad place to spend a 3-week holiday, despite prices that shock the bloody Jesus out of anyone who’s used to Indian Rupees and Thai Baht. As a former resident of a farming village located only a cow-spit away from the city of Utrecht, I had a wonderful day in that most beautiful city of Holland. The sun was shining lovely, the air was crisp and near freezing point, and the people of Utrecht appeared happy and welcoming. Some of them actually recognized me as that woman who (used to) live/s(d) next door to the Dalai Lama. My immigration from India to Thailand was never headline news in Tulip-country and they still think I live in the Himalayas.
My head protected from the cold by my English bowler hat, I walked through the city centre as a tourist with my digital camera. Interestingly, people don’t tend to take photos of their hometown. When I lived in Utrecht I never bothered to document my city. I had zero photos to show my Asian friends of my hometown. Today I took a hundred of them and I took many photos of stuff Dutch people wouldn’t take photos of: bicycles and tulips.
Completely strange Utrecht-folks invited me into their homes, they offered me joints, coffee, gevulde Koeken, sauzijsenbroodjes and so on, and welcomed me back as if I were a celebrity they had been missing for years. Thanks to all those nice people that were so friendly to me. (Ralf, I wish you well and good luck with your music career.)

The Old Canal in Utrecht City (Oude Gracht, Utrecht)

Something you don't see much outside Holland or China.

Real Dutch tulips, on the Utrecht flower market.

I guess I am the only Dutch passport holder who takes pictures of bicyle parkings. I miss bicycles. It is a Dutch thing I guess, and I miss cycling. Everybody in Holland owns at least one or two bicyles and it's the first choice of transportation in the country. Bless the Dutch and their bicyles.

.

Yesterday was a sad day for me and my parents. Papa needs some more tests and a few weeks of waiting before he finally knows how bad his body has been affected by cancer. I don’t think my mother handles her aorta-problem very well. She requires a lifestyle with healthy food and little stress and that lifestyle doesn’t appeal to her. I fear that my next and last trip to Holland will be one to say my final goodbyes to them.

Also, it’s been 50 years that the Dalai Lama fled into exile. The European media are covering the plight of the Tibetans 24/7 which gives me a good feeling. My heart broke when I saw His Holiness speaking firm words about the mistreatment of his people inside Tibet. I recognised most Tibetan faces that appeared on NOS-News. Dharamsala has been my home for 7 years, the Tibetan refugees have been my friends ever since and they never left my heart. I had the intention to be in Dharamsala on the 10th of March 2009. Unfortunately, because of my parents absence of health, I chose to travel to Holland instead. But the 10th of March is special day for the Tibetans, as on this day, 50 years ago, the Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation occurred. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans were killed (some believe over 1 million), and still they need to fear for their lives. Last year, as we all remember vividly, on the 10th of March 2008, the young Tibetans in Lhasa started burning down Chinese businesses and fighting the Chinese security police and armed forces. It all started with a peaceful demonstration by a few monks. Lhasa was on fire and ever since, the Chinese government has closed down Tibet for the media, travellers and tourists. Chinese troops march the streets and Tibet has become one big prison where people cannot go in, nor go out.
Though still holding on to his non-violence policy, I hope that one day Tibet will be free, preferably by means of sincere negotiations with Beijing. In Holland we have an expression: Wie niet luisteren wil, zal het moeten voelen. In English: If they don’t want to talk and listen, they will need to feel it. In other words: If you don't listen to me, I'll smack you in the face. I believe in karma. Beijing will one day get a big smack in the face.

MONKEY BUSINESS (KIND OF)

I woke up at 10.30 this morning after a night of not sleeping well. I left the guestroom in the west wing and walked to the living room in the south wing where I found my mother behind her computer playing a digital card game.
“Good morning, Mama.”
“Good evening. Jesus Holy Christ Veer, it’s half past ten.”
“Yeah, I know. Papa and I drank too much last night and combined with the Valium and the Dutch grass that I was smoking with my head out of your guestroom window, I just sank into a coma. Where’s Papa?”
“He went to the hospital to get the result of the cancer radiation treatment.”
“So today he’ll find out whether he’ll live or die? I mean, whether he’ll live a little longer, as we all die some day, whether we like it or not. Tomorrow I could get hit by a tuktuk and die at 44.”
“For Christ sake, Veer, there are no tuktuks in Holland. It’s more likely that you’ll get hit on the head with a hammer by one of those Muslim foreigners who rob old people from their money at ATM machines. Or those other immigrants from Romania and Yugoslavia and that trash from Morocco.”
“I am not old and I am strong enough to beat up a guy of any nation. Well, I can’t believe Papa didn’t ask me to come with him to the hospital. I could have driven him in his Mercedes. If he gets the bad news, someone needs to be with him. Why aren’t you with him?”
“Jesus Holy Christ, Veer, I just got out of the bloody hospital myself. I am not allowed to strain myself or stress myself out of my life.”
Mother stuck a cigarette in her mouth while another one was still burning in her ashtray.
“If you want breakfast you can get it yourself, Veer. There’s still coffee in the pot, but it's two hours old.”
“I drank 4 glasses of hot water already and I don’t eat before I do my yoga. I’ll have something later. Do you have any healthy food in the house? I can’t eat junk food after yoga.”
“O. Yoga. Is that the reason why you’re not dressed yet, walking around in your underwear in my penthouse?”
“Mother Fucking Christ, you pulled me yourself out of your vagina, and now you have a problem with me walking around in my underwear? We’re in Holland, not Thailand.”

I started with 44 sun greetings, some seated twists, low lunges, hero virasana, my favourite pigeon kapotasana, followed by pashchimottanasana and a bunch of half prayer twists. I ended with a left and right tree vrikshasana, balancing myself on one leg with the other one in an intricate position placed against my inner thigh, and hands in Namaste.”
“You’re too skinny,” Mama said while watching me.
“Well, if I looked like a pig I wouldn’t be able to put both feet in my neck at age 44, Mama.”
“I know. At your age I was already fat like a…. well…”
“Pig.”
“I don’t understand why you are torturing yourself by doing all those exercises every day and denying yourself tasty food.”
Still balancing in tree-position, I said, “Tasty food? Junk food you mean, Mama. Papa and you have been fat as long as I can remember. I don’t want to be like you two. I can do things with my body girls half my age can’t even do. My husband is much younger than I am and he looks like a movie star so I need to work my arse off because he can get any girl he wants. Until now he hasn’t found anyone better than me. That is why I am working my arse off and eating healthy food. Capice?”
“I can see your pussy when you position yourself like that!”
“Jesus Holy Christ on the cross, Mama, can you please just remain in silent position behind your computer so that I can finish my yoga, please?”
“But I can see your pussy.”
I looked down. “You can’t see my vagina; I am wearing underwear. I think you see things that aren’t there. Well, I take that back. It’s there, but I am wearing underwear.”
“Jesus Christ Veer, I saw your pussy, for Christ sake.”
“So what? The day after tomorrow I am going to the Family Spa Sauna in Houten with my girlfriends so everyone can see my pussy; men, women and children. I don’t give a shit if people see my pussy. It’s beautiful enough to be seen.”
One minute silence.
“Well, at least you don’t have to feel embarrassed about your body. You look good. Like a model. By the way, how is your pussy doing? Still happy?”
“Very well, Mama. Very happy.”
“So you’re happy with it?”
“Yes Mama. I am happy with her.”
“So it was worth the operation and the pain?”
“Jesus Mama, it’s been 30 years ago, for Christ sake. I don’t even remember. And yes, I am very happy with my pussy and my young flexible husband and my skinny flexible yoga body and you can’t begin to imagine what kind of fun we have with our bodies. Do you know that we can do every position of the Kama Sutra without the need to be hospitalized afterwards? Tantric yoga is absolutely fabulous.”
“Well, I am happy for your Tantra. I can’t remember the last time I had had sex with your father.”
“Yeah, must have been years before I was born.”
“O shut up, Veer, for Christ sake, Jesus on the cross. I have never cheated on your father. Stupid, I know, but true. Could have had so much more fun. I only had your father inside me and now he doesn’t even have balls anymore because they castrated him. Prostate cancer, bladder cancer, testicle cancer, tumor in leg, they took everything away. Not that it matters because we hadn’t had sex in ages anyway, and actually I never enjoyed it. Not with your father. Do you enjoy it?”
“Yah. Very much. I spend 4 hours a day doing it. For free.”
“Four hours, for Christ sake?”
“Three hours at night for my sake, and an additional one hour when I wake up. I like sex in the morning. It recharges my battery. And my dearest little heart is like a 17-year-old boy. Insatiable. Oy!”
“You could have made some serious money with that activity if you’d been a prostitute.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Those Thai Kathoey earn more money per hour than I do. I need to sell an awful lot of books to get the same kind of money they do in only one evening. And they just have to lay on their backs staring at the ceiling.”
“Veer?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Is it possible for men to see the difference between your pussy and those of other women?”
“No, mine looks better. I had a great surgeon. At 44, my pussy still looks like that of a 16 year old girl. I have shown my pussy to some befriended top surgeons in Thailand and they all thought that my Dutch doctor has done a great job in 1984. It was my surgeon who taught many Thai surgeons in later years.”
“I have never seen your pussy.”
“Mama, Jesus Fucking Christ on the cross, Maria, Joseph and all the apostles, you’re not going to ask me to show you my pussy.”
“Well, I am just curious what it looks like. You’re my daughter. I gave birth to you. I pulled you out of my womb myself because nobody was home because your father was getting the doctor out of his bed, for Christ sake. You are my own flesh and blood. I want to see your pussy.”
I unpositioned myself out of my half warrior position and walked towards mother and her laptop computer. Standing in front of her, I pulled down my underwear.”
“Holy bloody Jesus, that looks so real.”
“Beautiful, huh?" I demonstrated my private parts. "And see this, I have a clitoris and a clitoral hood as well.”
“And does it hurt when you have sex? Do you get wet or do you need lube?”
“I have a mucous membrane, so my vaginal lining is very much like vaginas of other healthy sexual active women. It gets wet when it gets stimulated. And believe me, I get a lot of stimulation in Thailand.”
“Is that guy of yours good for you? Is he cheating on you?”
“No mother. He loves me, believe it or not. I adore my man. I always tell him how beautiful he is, I adore his penis, I never nag and complain, I am always nice and respectful and I never fight with him. I make him laugh, I dance for him naked, I make him feel proud of himself and me. If I were a grumpy old fat pig of a complaining bitch like so many other women, I wouldn’t have such a great relationship and my husband would be sticking his penis into young Thai concubines. But I know how to make a relationship work and I work on it every day. It doesn't happen all by magic; it is hard work. But I love my job of loving my man. And that is why you have a happy daughter and a happy son-in-law and happy grandchildren.”
“Well, that’s nice. I need to rest now. You know, my aorta is still not okay and I need to lie down on my bed in the afternoon. You can use my computer if you want. Are you going to write something today?”
“Yeah, I thought of writing something about monkeys. I used to have a lot of monkeys in and around my home in India.”
“Monkeys. I see.”
“How’s your English, Mama?”
“Pretty good but I don’t read it very well.”
“Do you sometimes read my stories on my weblog?”
“Nah, too difficult. My English is not that good. I tend to fall asleep after reading one sentence in English. And why would I read your weblog, you always tell me what you experience anyway, in Dutch.”
“Good. You won't miss a thing, honey. My weblog stories are all boring, I only write about religion and the 8-fold Buddhist path. Nothing you would be interested in.”
“Jesus Christ, Veertje, thank you for showing me your pussy. You know I love you. Pussy or not, but I love you. I hope you know that.”
“Yeah. I love you too, and the Holy Goddamn Christ knows it too, for fuck sake.”
“And your father loves you too. Maybe he doesn’t always tell you that he does, but he does love you.”
“That’s nice to hear. Have a nice rest, Mama. And please wake up, because I am not ready to have a dead mother yet. I will wait for father to get home and hear him out about his cancer-thing.”
“I hope he doesn’t piss on the floor like yesterday. He can’t hold up his pee anymore and he refuses to wear diapers.”
“Mama, I'd rather pee on the floor too rather than in a diaper. Just ask the domestic help to follow him in his wake with a sponge and latex gloves.”

I am not sure how my mother would react if she would be reading my cliterature, but what the fuck, I am old enough now to decide what to put on my weblog or not.

I am planning to write something about monkeys tomorrow.

SOME THINGS LIKE GOD ARE JUST INEXPLICABLE

Since Friday I am in the Netherlands to visit my very terribly sick and very aging parents. This morning my mother decided to run over a tiny spider with her walker in the kitchen, complaining about those bastards son of a bitch-spiders that find the outside too cold and manage their way into their million dollar penthouse. I was shocked. Killing an innocent spider with the wheels of your walker? Mother! So I had a conversation with my Mama about Indian wildlife before lunch. I think it wasn’t very beneficial to Mama’s recovery and she said she needed a few hours of solitary rest in her deluxe bedroom in the east wing, which gave me the opportunity to sit behind her laptop with internet connection to type up this story.

Last night I already shocked the Bloody Jesus out of my parents by eating Dutch Hutspot with chopsticks and by verbally offering them Reiki treatments in order to scare the cancer out of them. Reiki? Are you going to touch us? With your hands?
“Veer, no thank you. You’re not going to touch us in any way, we’ve got a nurse for that.”
“Who’s Veer?” I thought. O ya, I used to be called Veertje by the Dutch (short for Veronique). It means Little Feather. A lovely Native American Cherokee or Apache name (I guess) for a Dutch girl. My last name “Renard” is French for Fox, so Little Feather Fox sounds pretty exotic for someone who's surrounded by cows, tulips, cheese, windmills and wooden shoes.
For the past nine years people call me Pantau or Tau or Tao and these days Veer sounds like a different person to me. To make a long story short, I was talking to my mother about my wildlife in India. I told her that, once, I lived together in my room with Jimmy; a large female spider, the size of a Dutch male hand. She lived behind a tin trunk opposite of my mattress. In my trunk I kept my traditional Tibetan costume, boots, shirt and hat, one of those with four fur flaps, which I would wear on special occasions, thus little need for me to open the trunk every day and disturb Jimmy.
I called her Jimmy, not because she was a female-to-male transgender cross-dressing spider, but because she was a very large spider that never revealed her true gender to me until she popped out a thousand or so petit mini-spiderlettes. Anyway, Jimmy and I bonded. Am I not scared of spiders the size of hands? O hell Jesus, I surely am. But after living in India for a while you get used to things, including spiders and other wildlife. When you see a scorpion in your bathroom you don’t call 911, you just observe the scorpion, you arrange for a piece of cardboard and a bowl, catch the scorpion and release him in nature, which was only one foot away in my situation. I also believe there is no 911 in India. 911 in India comes in the form of a bucket of sand near a stove or an auto rickshaw to the nearest hospital.
I was surrounded by nature on my mountain top-town of Dharamsala, India, the hometown of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Jimmy would spend the entire day behind the tin trunk and not show her face until I would switch on my little television to watch one of 45 satellite channels provided to me by the local Himalayan cable-television project for 150 rupees (a few dollars) per month. I enjoyed watching a Chinese-type version of MTV, watching lovely Chinese singers of the female and male variety sing pop ballads, but I also enjoyed watching V Channel Asia that tends to focus on Japanese and Korean singers and pop groups such as Super Junior, Ken Hirai, Angela Aki, An Café, F.T. Island, and Howl.
If I would not use my TV as a music producing device, I would watch American Idols on Star World. And I must say, I love American Idols, and so did Jimmy. Every evening we watched television together, and when we were done, Jimmy would hide behind the tin trunk and I would blow out my candle stick or switch off my Tibetan lamp. I can’t believe we lived together for over 6 months.
One day she suddenly had a lot of children sitting on the back of her hairy back (her back was the size of a Dutch egg) so it could hold a lot of spiderlings. And then, one day, she was gone. She had disappeared from my petit room. Rather rude; she didn’t even shake hands, she had 8 of them; she didn’t Namaste me, or thanked me for accommodating her for such a long period of time for free. I always wondered where she got her food from, because there was little to eat in my room. What do spiders eat? And is it possible for a pregnant spider to go without food and drink for such a long time? Perhaps something for me to Google up.
Interestingly, that day I discovered she had accidentally left behind two of her children. Accidentally I say, because I don’t think she was a bitch of a spider. The two little spiders were the size of fleas and they found their way to my little washroom/bathroom. It had a sink with a little metal thing above it to put my toothbrush on. Against the wall was a very unusable mirror as well as a water heater and shower-thingy. Very luxurious for Indian standards. There was even a device to pee and poo in.
Anyway, two of Jimmy’s children had found a new place to stay in that little bathroom, in the right upper corner very close to the ceiling. I noticed one time that they actually drank water. They would come down from the ceiling at night and go to the metal thing above the sink that always had some drops of water on it. They would drink from the water droplets and then climb back to their right upper corner and stay there in a very little web-like housing.

Dear reader, I have been meditating a lot on what goes on in the minds of insects, whether they enjoy their lives, how they find their fulfilment, or if they are just happy by doing nothing for 6 months behind a tin trunk, be happy with a little slurplette of water every evening or watching American Idols on television. Life behind a tin trunk doesn’t sound appealing to me, but having said that; living in India with a monster-spider in your room doesn’t sound very appealing to most people in the West either. Yet I am a happy person, still. I was never bothered by the two children of Jimmy. They grew up in my bathroom, catching little fly-thingies from the air, and drinking water from the area around my toothbrush. I have never seen them in my sleeping area, and they never bothered to watch TV together with me. One day, when they were about 6 months old they left my home. They were the size of a peanut and probably had had a look through the little air vent at the wonderful pine trees that surrounded the building I lived in and thought: that would make a better and more exciting accommodation, perhaps we can find some girlfriends in one of those trees and catch some food in our spider webs to offer to our spider chicks.

For some inexplicable reason I always thought that the two little spiders were male; two brothers. I don’t know why, there were no spider penises visible to the naked eye and believe me, I had better things to do than looking for penises on very small spiders. Nevertheless, they always occurred to me as males, but I can’t explain why. Some things, like God, are just inexplicable.

Next time I am going to tell you a little more about Indian wildlife. I have a few monkey-stories that will blow your mind.

For now, greetings from a freezing cold Holland. Oy vey.