Sunday, February 20, 2022
7:53 a.m. Room 1102, Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
I feel quite a bit better this morning. The reason? I slept. I can’t think why, but I slept better. I even woke up out of some intense dreams occasionally. And that is always a good sign. For the last couple of weeks, I haven’t been aware of dreaming. And that is a bad sign. It usually means I haven’t gotten any of that good, deep, REM sleep. But I dreamt last night. Not surprisingly, my dreams were largely my usual stress dreams. But they weren’t exhausting ones. And I feel better and refreshed.
There was nothing unusual about yesterday overall. I continued to work on videos. I posted the extended cut of my Pai Canyon video. I uploaded a video about visiting a historical bridge in Pai. And I nearly finished editing the video about visiting the bamboo bridge near Pai. I haven’t exported it yet. I have to go over it again this morning and add music and other finishing touches.
As far as my Mae Hong Son Loop experience goes, I have as many as eight more videos that I can make. Only one of them is based on a somewhat big experience. This will be a video about visiting the Lod Cave. All the others are somewhat inconsequential. I shot a video about visiting the famous Walking Street in Pai, but that whole experience kind of fell flat. I also shot a video while walking up to the large white Buddha statue on a hill above Pai. But that is something everyone does, and it’s not exactly dramatic. I think I talked about movies the entire time during the walk. And then I rode my scooter to Chiang Dao, and it rained heavily there, and I didn’t do much. And then I rode my scooter back to Mae Sot over the next four days. I could put together a separate video about each of those days, but I don’t know if they will be worth the effort and the time.
In fact, I’m thinking this morning that I might even go back and rework my last two videos. In an attempt to make my videos shorter and therefore more entertaining, I’ve been dividing up the experiences. What I mean is that in one day, I visited the Memorial Bridge, a special coffee shop, and the bamboo bridge. And that was all shot together. But then I carved out the Memorial Bridge and coffee shop visit and made that into just one video. And my visit to the bamboo bridge is in a separate video. But I’m starting to think that that is a bad idea. I think I’ll go back and try to stick them together. Thematically, the whole day fits together. And the video will end up being overly long, but I should keep the day together rather than divide it up.
My main goal for today, however, is to step back a bit from the video projects and do a bit of housekeeping and Doug-keeping. I have to take care of this room and take care of myself a little bit. I need a break. I have one funny reason for wanting to do the housekeeping: I was electrocuted yesterday. This room came with an electric kettle, and I’ve been using it to boil water for my coffee. And everything was fine for a while. But four or five days ago, I started noticing a burning smell. I knew it was coming from the kettle, but I couldn’t track down the exact source, and it didn’t seem that serious. It seemed like the kettle was overheating a bit, but I didn’t know why.
Then yesterday, the smell got much stronger, and I investigated more seriously. I know from experience that nothing good can come from delaying when you notice a burning smell. If you smell smoke, find out where it is coming from. Otherwise, things could go very badly. I remembered that rule of thumb and paid attention to it. But I was electrocuted because I ignored another basic rule of thumb: when you are checking over an electrical device, unplug it first. Always unplug it.
This kettle has two parts. It has a kettle and a base. And the base stays plugged into the socket, and when the water boils, you can lift the kettle off the base. And yesterday, I saw that a hole had developed in the base. THAT is where the overheating and burning smell was coming from. I couldn’t see exactly what happened, but something had gone wrong inside the base, and the wires had heated up to the point that they had melted all the plastic and rubber around them, and this had melted right through the base. I was happy that I caught it when I did, because I realized that this short circuit, or whatever it was, meant that the unit was hot all the time. Electricity wasn’t flowing ONLY when I turned on the switch on the kettle. It was flowing and burning through the rubber and plastic all the time, even when the kettle was off. And that meant it could have burst into flame at any time, even when I was out of the room and not using the kettle. I could have gone out for one of my noodle lunches and then come back to find the hotel on fire. And then like a dummy, I reached down with my hand to touch the hole and to see how hot it was and otherwise just try to see what was happening. But the base was still plugged in, and I electrocuted myself. It felt like something large and powerful had grabbed my left arm and tried to tear it off. You never hop around a room in a panic quite like after being electrocuted. It’s such a foreign feeling. Your brain and body go into a kind of shock. The current went through two of my fingers, and their tips are still red and sore this morning. Anyway, that particular rule of thumb has been reinforced: remember to unplug anything electrical before you start messing around with it.
And now I need to tell the hotel staff about this kettle. And that might mean the staff will want to come into this room and investigate the wiring and stuff like that. And THAT is what has given me the impetus to clean the room and make everything presentable.
I also gave up completely on the PowerDirector program. I wrote to them to request a refund, since it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. We’ll see how that goes.
As for pop culture, I watched another episode of Raised by Wolves. This most recent episode is the fourth episode of the second season. This show is definitely not for everyone. It would appeal largely to true science fiction fans. I enjoyed this last episode because it picked up the pace of the show and some big things happened. Despite a strong beginning in season one, the show has been worrying me. I’ve been worried that it will all end up being about nothing. This happens all the time lately, especially when people like Ridley Scott are involved. And Ridley Scott is an executive producer. It often happens that they will include all kinds of fascinating and mind-blowing imagery and events. And then they never provide any answers for what is going on. It all looks cool. That’s why they put it in the show. But it means nothing in the end and the story goes nowhere. I was worried that this show was going in that direction. But this latest episode brought it back on track, I think. We got some answers and some strong suggestions that the story is actually going somewhere.
I also watched the first episode of a new series from Apple TV called Severance. This is another show that appears to have been designed specifically for me. It’s like someone sat down and tried to think up a story that would appeal specifically to Doug hanging out over there in Thailand. It has a Black Mirror quality to it and deals with subjects like technology and memory and identity. It is listed as a thriller, and I guess there will be thriller elements. I can see that happening. But it seems more like a sci-fi think piece to me. It reminds me strongly of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in that a technology has been developed that allows humans to control what they can and can’t remember. Eternal Sunshine (one of my favorite movies) was essentially a love story as it dealt with the idea of choosing to wipe out the memory of a painful relationship. It’s a fascinating idea. If you could choose to completely forget painful memories, would you? And what would be the significance of doing so? Severance also explores the implications of altering your memories but in a work and life setting. There are fascinating ideas in the show. I’m most intrigued by those that deal with awareness and identity, mainly the idea that we are made up of several different people at the same time. We all think of ourselves as one person, but there are so many identities co-existing at the same time. In my case, I find this tendency is quite strong. I feel like I cycle through ten different people throughout a day. And there is competition between those people. And which one is really in charge? There’s a very real power struggle there, and this TV series shines a very bright light on that idea. I find it fascinating. At some point the thriller plot has to kick in, and that will probably derail the thoughtful side of the show, but I’m hoping that the same tone I saw in the first episode will continue as much as possible.