By David Simmons
If the past year has a theme, it is
milestones – those met, and those just missed.
My first post on this blog was titled
simply Ten, and was a
short consideration of how our reckoning of historic milestones is
influenced by the accident of evolution that gave us 10 fingers. This
year our family noted two decimal milestones – and one just missed.
In August, I successfully completed my
sixth decade. There was nothing remarkable about this accomplishment;
one of the few events that made it significant was that it occurred a
few months before my adopted daughter Natnicha achieved her first
decade, in December.
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| Nuannoi |
I had been a bit concerned about her
birthday, as for her ninth she got an iPad, and there was no way
she’d be getting anything that pricey this year. But evidently she
has not yet learned to put dollar (or baht) values on satisfaction.
Much of the neighbourhood showed up for her party, and that was fun.
They brought enough gifts that my wife Nuannoi, who does the accounting for
our household, thought their value about equal to our costs for food
and drinks.
So, we broke even.
In life’s game, or lottery, or
enterprise or whatever it is, I broke even long ago. By about the age
of 50, I had travelled the world, found a rewarding career, done
everything I needed to do. From that point on, everything would be a
bonus. If I got hit by a bus or eaten by a monitor lizard this day or
the next, I would exit life’s stage with satisfaction.
As it turned out, of course, I dodged
the bus and avoided the lizard, and even the great Boxing Day tsunami
of 2004 did nothing more than knock me off my feet. And in the
10 years since I realized I had it all, life has got even better:
marriage to a fine, loving woman who is a great cook, a few more
amazing travel destinations, a few cats and, of course, Natnicha.
In dollar terms, I’m much worse off
than I was in my 40s. But I never cared about that in those days, and
still don’t. Like Natnicha, I don’t see how the great things in
life can be quantified in that sense.
Most people are like us, with the same
understanding of what is really valuable and what is not, which is
sometimes hard to remember when every day there is more news of yet
another scam or ripoff or Ponzi scheme perpetrated by the Masters of
the Universe, the CEOs and bank executives, and their pet
politicians. Huge banks laundering money for drug cartels, rewarding
themselves while robbing seniors’ pension plans. “Globalized”
manufacturers fattening themselves by exploiting grossly underpaid
workers in firetrap factories, while the gulf between workers and
bosses in the “developed” countries expands exponentially, young
people can’t afford good educations and can’t find work, as the
Masters fret from the back seats of their chauffeur-driven S-Class
Benzes about the insupportable cost of “entitlements” like care
for the sick.
I’m richer than them. For example, do
they have friends like Tony Allison?
Tony Allison was a South
African journalist, whom I first met in late 2001 when I moved to
Thailand and took a job with the very cool news website he and fellow
South African Allen Quicke operated, called Asia Times Online. Allen
and I fell out eventually and I regret we were unable to mend our
differences before he was murdered in 2010. But Tony, who became
editor-in-chief of Asia Times after Allen’s death, and I remained
friends throughout the decade.
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| Tony and me in Hua Hin, Thailand |
Our friendship was fuelled by
similarities – we were about the same age, both journalists, both
expatriates in Thailand who had acquired Thai families, both
fascinated by world events, both widely travelled – but also by
differences. He was a sportsman, who cycled every day, played soccer
with his young son, and loved kayaking. In the late 1980s, when he
was an editor at Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, he
was part of a five-man team who set a world record paddling non-stop
from Hong Kong to the Philippines. In contrast, my idea of exercise
is lifting a glass, preferably one filled with a certain amber
beverage. Tony and I had as much fun with our differences as with our
similarities.
But life’s lottery pays little
attention to any of this. It was not my flabby body that failed
first, but Tony’s toned, well-exercised, properly cared-for one. In
2011, he was diagnosed with a heart ailment that although it was not
yet life-threatening, would require surgery eventually. Extremely
annoyed, he nonetheless had the operation at a hospital just outside
Bangkok early this year, and it appeared to be successful.
Several months later, in June, he asked
me if I could edit some stories for Asia Times by remote from my
home; he would be off work for a while, as his son Simon was getting
married in Africa and he was going to the wedding. Sure, I said, have
a good time and give my best to Simon and his bride.
Then, on Thursday, June 21, my wife
woke me up and said Tony was not in fact in Africa celebrating with
his son but was in Mahachai Hospital, the same one where he had had
his surgery. There had been a setback, and he was very ill. The
hospital was considering another operation, but was concerned about
its supply of his blood type, which is quite common among Europeans
and Indians but quite rare in Thais. Tony knew I also had that blood
type, and was wondering if I could spare a pint if the hospital
indeed came up short.
My wife and I went out to the hospital,
and I was shocked at how he looked. He seemed to have aged years
since I had last seen him a few months earlier. Even speaking sapped
his strength. I said sure, I’ll give you some blood if you really
need it, but I have a better idea.
We rushed home, and I contacted Jim
Pollard, a colleague at The Nation, the Bangkok daily that is
my primary employer, and asked if he could use his offices as a
director of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand to send out a
blood appeal. He did so immediately through his electronic links with
the club members, advising them to phone me if they could help. For
the next two days, my phone did not stop ringing. Scores of people
wanted to help.
None of them knew Tony. None of them,
to my knowledge, had ever been chauffeured in an S-Class Benz.
Looking back, I now think that there in
fact was no blood shortage. Thailand has an excellent medical-care
system, and the Red Cross runs an efficient blood-donor program. If
Jim and I could scare up gallons of blood in a few
hours, surely a hospital could do the same, and more. I now believe
that the doctors already knew it was too late. The earlier surgery
had got infected somehow, and the poison had spread through Tony’s
body, finally hitting his lungs. My phone was still ringing when he
stopped breathing that same day, June 21, 2012.
He was 59.
Less than two months later, I reached
the six-decade milestone that he just missed.
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| Natnicha |
And now as I write this, more months
have passed. The world has known more evil, as little girls who want to learn have acid thrown at them, or are shot in the head;
as a failing superpower wastes what few real resources it has left on
pointless wars; as greed and injustice and jingoism and fanaticism
create misery and premature death for tens of millions.
Natnicha knows little of this. Her
world is only occupied by the kind of people who would give their
lifeblood to help a stranger. She snuggles up at night in the fuzzy
pink blanket with bears on it that one of the neighbours gave her for
her birthday. She is driven every morning by her Buddhist mother to a
school run by Hindus and staffed by Catholic Filipinos, and her
friends are Thais and Indians. She is having a little trouble
learning to read well, and does not yet know how to spell racism, or
intolerance. She will eventually, I know. But for now, we live for
what we have right now.
It’s enough.
Nuannoi Phumphok (Pong), Natnicha
Simmons (Lukyi) and I wish all our friends and family another year of
genuine prosperity.
