Japan to Seattle to New York to Bangkok

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

At the beginning of 2003 I had just returned from four years in Japan. The US and Japan are not significantly different and visits to the States during my stay in Japan had not been much of a transition, but when I returned to the US with the intention of staying permanently, I was hit pretty hard by culture shock. Or perhaps, the shock of just being another American in a country lousy with Americans and therefore, not at all in demand.

After visiting my family and meeting my beautiful and hilarious new nephew in Seattle, I went to a driveaway company and offered to take one of their cars across the country. For six days in the middle of winter I drove across the northern states. I remember the huge stretches of snowy fields. There are not huge stretches of anything in Japan except maybe contcrete. The other distinct image I have from that drive is being enveloped by clouds of snow everytime a truck passed me on the icy roads. I had managed to stay just in front of a storm most of the way. It caught up with me when I got to New York and I moved into my new apartment in Brooklyn during a blizzard.

For two months I made a go of New York. It was a lot less cheerful and fun than the city I used to love. Maybe it was the bitter winter or the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center, but I was very disappointed with the place. I used to think it was the greatest city on earth. I sure hope it comes back someday.

I didn't find anything I wanted to do after scouring want-ads and sending resumes, until I found an ad for a corporate English trainer in Bangkok. The moment I started to consider a move back to Asia, my spirits began to lift. I'd been to Bangkok once before and loved it. Within two weeks of seeing the ad, I was on a plane back to Asia.

I've been here for almost a year now and it's been very nice to me. I still suck at the language, but I know where everything is and I can even find unsweetened peanut butter (impossible in Japan).

After teaching for most of the year on a more and more freelance basis, I randomly answered an ad calling for a journalist for a tourism industry magazine. I ended up with the dreamiest of dream jobs, basically taking vacations and writing about it. It's actually a lot of work and I've had to learn to write news-style.

But the man who is my immediate superior is an amazing journalist. He's one of those phenomena that really make me wonder if reality is just a movie that I'm making up. If I had to invent a reporter, I'd make him a slightly jaded guy in his fifties wearing glasses, with sandy, permanently-mussed hair, who hunches over a keyboard and pounds at it with two fingers. And he'd have a British accent. The man is a great journalist, trained at an upper-class school in England, and for some reason he has decided to take me under his wing and patiently train me.

I haven't shown any man the respect one would accord to a mentor with the possible exception of Dr. Ron Shaffer, the phenomenology professor at Western Washington University, and even then I don't remember actually showing him any of the respect I felt. But my boss at the magazine comes as close to owning the title of Mentor To Jeffrey as anyone. A 39-year-old male has a good parcel of experience under his hat and maybe I can flatter myself that I have more than the average man of my age. It's not easy to admit that another guy of any age might have something, in fact quite a lot, to teach me. But such seems to be the case.

In any event, following odd strings of improbability has led me to a point where I'm actually taking vacations for a living. In fact, before this winter vacation, I had to go to Pattaya, a resort town near Bangkok well-known as Asia's sex-tourism capital, to interview twin brothers who own Asia's only real Spanish horse-riding school. After winter vacaction, I have to go to Phuket, another resort town, and visit a meditation retreat. So for my vacation, I'm staying home.

The Island of Koh Larn, viewed from the Royal Cliff Beach Resort's Catamaran.

The Pattaya trip was fine, since I managed to avoid the areas where prostitution was rampant (i.e. the beach). I was put up at a couple of five-star resorts in return for writing about them, and one of them threw a party for all the industry people and sent us out on a catamaran to an island where I got in a healthy swim and a healthy sunburn. I don't care what any scientists say, a good sunburn once or twice a year is healthy and pale skin looks just plain sick.

On the boat trip I met a young Russian salesman for the resort, whose job it was to talk to media dogs like me. He had been educated in California and it was pretty funny hearing a guy say, "Duuude! What's up?" with a Russian accent. After an hour on the island he realized he had to go back to the hotel and the brave man hired a jet-ski driver to take him back - over an hour's ride across very choppy seas. I hear he's still alive.

The twins with the horse riding school turned out to be wonderful guys. They were the first rich people I've met who use their money in a way that I could call responsible. They are animal lovers and have saved over a hundred horses from the glue factory. They adopt horses which have been given shots to make them run faster at the racetrack and were subsequently partially paralyzed from the drug. They took a liking to me and what was slated as a 30-minute interview turned into a whole morning and part of an afternoon. They introduced me to every single horse on the property and I was bitten by wild colts. We got to talking of lofty subjects and they took me to their library to show me some of the writings that were left to them by their deceased father.

Sometime next year I turn 40

I remember when I was about to turn 30 and all my twenty-something friends were mourning my passage into boring adult life. As it turned out, my 30's far exceeded the previous decade in all ways, including excitement, fun, surprises and laughs, with far fewer dramas and disappointments. And 39 has been one of the best, most extraordinary and interesting years of my life. One of the toughest too, but I'm finding out that I like tough. I also found out that I like to work hard, which is really weird.

Sometime next year I'll be turning 40 and I have to say that it means absolutely nothing to me. Putting a meaning to one's numerical age is just pathetic and silly. A century ago it would have been the last decade of my life. Fifty years ago, 40-year-olds were only halfway through with their lives. The numbers are changing so fast that there's really no way of naming the stage at which one is supposed to be anymore. With medical advances and healthy lifestyles, the definition of age is being reinvented by each new generation.

So what's on for next year? Experience tells me that having expectations of reality is like offering straight-lines to Groucho Marx. I hope to continue with the magazine, of course. Beyond that I have a few other plans, but none that I'm willing to embarrass myself with by mentioning them on the internet. I'll just try to keep an open mind, open eyes and a healthy respect for Groucho's sense of humor.

Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.