Sitting in a leafy canopy's shade, I place my finger to hold the spot in my book, and turn my face into the breeze blowing across the lake onto the deck of a restaurant in the Bangkok suburb we call our second home. The location of the newly-opened establishment is brilliant, taking advantage of the atmosphere's obligatory observance of the laws of thermodynamics. Warmed by a San Miguel buzz, I bask in the pleasures of just being: this zen moment is nestled in the barks of distant dogs and the rustling of leaves overhead. Murmurs of conversation drift out from the bar where wide screen TV displays the Buffalo Bills-New England Patriots game, and wind chimes jingle in the trees.
Although our technological world has doomed us to an unpleasant ecological future, it nonetheless has afforded the willing to live in any corner of the world of one's choosing. How oddly comforting it is to sit in a tropical garden, conversations in Thai, English and French floating about, the NFL and Premier League playing simultaneously on TV screens, and in a strangely surreal twist, songs by The Monkees and John Denver begin to seep from speakers suspended overhead.
I watch airliners slowly descend into Bangkok's airport in the distance, one thread in the techno-web that physically links us in an increasingly global society.
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