On my way home . . . .

I wasn't able to make it directly home after a long day of work yesterday - up at 6 or 7am and home by 7ish, is a long day no matter how you through the dice. Having said that, I suddenly imagine being blackened with coal and slaving away100 meters underground with lord-knows-how-many miles of coal tunnels between me and fresh air. I'll taking joking around in an air-conditioned office and editing news stories over that any day. (It's probably important to keep my perspective about these things.)

However, transferring from the life of a marginally profitable and totally self sustaining online poker player to working a 9-6 with a 40 minute commute each way isn’t the easiest change in lifestyle.

15 – 30 minutes early to work and leaving at least 15 -30 minutes late is already pretty standard at the moment and all I wanted last night was to go home, shower, eat my pad Thai at Halal, and call it a day. As I was passing Jackie’s school (about halfway home) I noticed emergency vehicles on the other side of the road – behind a thick wall of tall grass were the flickers of flames. Fuck. I just wanted to go home.

I pulled the moped over and slowly crossed the street – rule of traffic here in Phuket is: if you do anything slow enough it’s fair game.

There was a dirt and grass path that had oviously been created as an emergency vehical tried to push out towards the field fire. The flames, no more than 10 – 15 feet tall were spreading through the chest high grass. I tried to make my way to the fire, but a trashy creek, the dark and the desire to just go home turned me back.

I asked if anyone in a small group of people by the road, one with a radio, spoke English – nope. Well, it didn’t seem like it was a big deal, but then again I could be wrong. I tried to snap some pictures with the camera, but in the dark it seemed like it was impossible to get a newspaper worthy photo. B,ehind the fire there was the flashing lights of a firetruck. There had to be another way to get were the action actually was. On our side of the fire there was only one man with a “flapper” trying to keep the fire at bay.

I mounted my moped, and after a great deal of guilt tripping I talked myself into turning around and trying to find how the fire truck got to the other side of the field. It was my “responsibility” as a “journalist” that kept guilt tripping me. I tried to remind myself that news doesn’t necessarily wait for the working day . . .

There wasn’t a single road that would go in the right direction as I looped back and looked for a left hand turn. No left hand turn, even at the first stop light I hit. I kept moving farther and farther from the fire. Finally, I found a left and took it. The small section of back alleys I had just found were all dead ends, which is typical of Phuket streets and also why I wont be spending more than two years here – can’t spend too much of my life living in a place where all the roads seem to be dead ends.

Back out on the main road I started looking for a new left (after a little more guilt tripping), by the time I found the next left I realized there was no way I would find my way back to the fire, so I turned back around.

Guilt hit me as I passed the school for the second time that night. I drove past, then I turned around. I got off the bike, grabbed the camera, a pen and a notebook and headed back out to the brush. The fire had burned out on the other side of the nasty creek. I hoped over and started making my way through the burnt grass, using my phone "torch" function.

The grass had burned down to the hard stiff stems, about shin high. There was a delicious malted grain smell to the fire, like freshly toasted barely.

A fire truck stood alone in the field as the firefighters put out a trickle of flames that were still alive. In it’s entirety the fire had probably consumed no more than 4 or 5 acres of uninhabited land. After being guided towards the fire by a firefighter, I was mostly ignored as a clicked away with my camera. (A very nice camera has made it’s way up on my list of things to buy when I stop being so “poor.”)

One man, braced by two others held the fire hose and sprayed the retreating flames. Others wandered around calling out what I assumed to be directions for the stream of water. With the last flames out I tried to find someone who spoke English with no success. Eventually I was able to get one of the younger men to write down his name and the name of the man holding the hose (in Thai). Trudging back through the burnt field I was felt good about following up, even if there wasn’t really a story at all (after reviewing the photos, there wasn’t really anything for the paper).

Finally, I made it home. Jackie and I ran a couple errands, visited Joe (tongue dog was oddly missing), and watched two episodes of Modern Family, all before I passed out and started the “grind” anew.