A Psycho in a Psychotic Environment

The year 2007 started like any other, full of confusion and directionless momentum.

My name is Terry, but don’t let that single name fool you - I am a schizophrenic and that means having multiple personalities and that in turn means there are many people living inside me. My contribution to advancement in mental and psychological science is only that all these people that makes up Terry - they all live in peace and so outwardly I appear sane and not dangerous to others and myself.

Yes, definitely, you may think this is a story about a delusional self important psychopathic - but then again Thaksin, the former prime minister of Thailand, quoted me in his book, Thailand: 24 Hours after the Coup, as being the one who first warned him of an impending coup, and you can check the wiki on the Thai coup to confirm this.

Inwardly, inside of me, however, all those people in me wander about. There was a movie about the Tai Pan - or big boss - of Hong Kong and the Tai Pan, played by Pierce Bronsnan, when confronted with so many challenges, said his brain was like a filing cabinet - in that he simply filed away things until it was time to deal with them. In the mean time, it is in normal and ordinary operational mode. Well, my mind also works like a filing cabinet. The only difference is that for me it is not a filing cabinet, but in the realm of the unknown that the people that make up me go off roaming.

So to sum this up, there are a few of me, living in a single body.

One of those selves is a killer of a journalist. And more unfortunately, that journalistic skill was put to use where I live and that is Thailand. Unfortunately for me, Thailand for the past few years has developed a case of split personality, which is a mild case of schizophrenia.

So a nut like me was practicing journalism in a very nutty environment.

You see Thaksin, the former prime minister of Thailand was a billionaire master of the business world who became a master of Thai politics through populist policies - and that is just spending money right and left. Fortunately for Thailand, Thaksin knew where to spend it and the country benefited and the people love him for that.

But Thaksin didn’t see that many people were jealous not only of his wealth but also the love Thai people gave him - and so it ended in a military coup that left him exiled from Thailand with loads of criminal charges against him. If you are new to Thailand, don’t be alarmed. In Thailand, a guy like Thaksin usually gets treated exactly the same way and there is a string of former prime minister to attest to that.

Well the military finally got its way and installed a new prime minister, Abhisit - with a great deal of help from the yellow shirts - an ultra royalist right wing bunch of fascist thugs.

So that is the Thai split personality for you - on one side are the Thaksin fans and his focus on modernism and advancement, and on the other side, the Thai military and its crazy love for country, king and religion.

Right in the middle of that split personality of the Thais, stood me - a killer of a journalist with a mental disorder of his own.

Well, maybe I deserve Thailand or Thailand deserves me - I don’t know. But it came to be that I was “Wagging the Dogs Tail” like no one else was able to in Thailand - all through my writings. But then again, if you were to say nothing I have said or are about to say really happened and all of it is just in my mind - well like a good journalist will say - think for your self and don’t take my word for it.

Well, if you buy in so far, what I have said may not really depict much. But just for start, understanding journalism, Thailand and what I am - are very crucial to understanding the clash of the three main cultures or environment of this story - that again takes place amidst a crazy person and a crazy country.

So what is journalism? The best answer I can give is that it is an addiction, a rush, and a competition without a finishing line. What journalism is about is critical thinking and that means a journalist is a cynic who is critical of everything. What makes it fun of course, is like James Bond with a license to kill, a journalist has a license to blast away at anyone he deems  “should be blasted away.” Then there are journalists- like me - who use that license to blast - to play games.

So what is Thailand? The best answer I can really give is that it is a very uptight country. Something about the Thais tells them they never can admit wrong and that they must save their faces at all costs. They are also a great people for being  hypocritical - always saying and telling other people something while they go about hiding and doing something else - and that means they don’t really have a concept of finding themselves. Everything here is about hiding behind Buddha and putting a smile upfront - for the love of any currency that is. Only the bar girls comes close to understanding and accepting foreigners for what they are.

So what am I? Well, apart from the multiple personality thing, there was a time, for example, that I liked Lady Boys, and so I e-mailed all my friends telling them that. And when I got bored with Lady Boys, I e-mailed them to tell them I was back to liking cute chicks. And I would do things like taking a bunch of really nasty low-class hookers, to one of the highest-class bars in Bangkok, Thailand’s capital - and let them loose. Like the DJ could not help it but to crack jokes at me for the crowd, but I just laughed having fun dancing - pitying about a hundred high society types, who just stared in disbelief and disgust.

So the three explanations, maybe might give you a better insight and clue about what this story will be about. Clash of culture and environment, clash of personalities and events - sure - but the story is also about what comes after all of that chaos and turmoil. All of that compacted in the year 2007 to somewhere in 2008. This story is about how I spent that year, or really, about how that year spent me.

Many who have read this book, tell me that I raise too many questions and give so little few answers - like Peter, a British businessman in Thailand who loves Thailand so much he left his great big house in London empty. Then there are those who said they appreciated my respect for them and let them decide what to think and what the answers were - like Stuart, who has a very wealthy father but tells me he had been working for 15 years straight without a long vacation, but Thailand just gives him all the energy he needs to keep going forward.

Many said they had to think very hard about this book and finally realized that it is really not about the Red Shirt vs the Yellow Shirt or Democracy vs Totalitarianism at all, but about “Redemption.” I thought about that and all I can say is that there is an element of truth to that, but that is just part of it.

You see, since my days at the Bangkok Post I was told by practically all around me that in Thailand, everyone thinks of themselves first - meaning screw the rest.

Pam, my first wife freaked out one day some 20 years ago, because I refused to take a bunch of under-the-table money that came with my job. For those who don’t know, a newspaperman at an influential paper like the Bangkok Post, would get a lot of freebies - as a way of bribing the journalist into writing with a positive angle. So I declined about US$10,000 in the incident that Pam found out about. She obviously gave me a long lecture that in a country like Thailand, where everyone was on the take, to be honorable is in fact being odd and crazy.

You may think I did the right thing not taking the money. But in fact, I got training from Reuters Foundation and saw the  high standard of conduct the wire service instills into its people. But apart from that, when you go and take freebies, in most cases, those giving them out will require that the journalist sign for the money.

I thought about that for a long time and honorable or not, it is really this fact that stopped me from taking millions of baht in freebies. You see, it scared me to think that some big institutions like a brokerage house that were giving out free IOP shares to journalists, would have my signature in the act of taking money from them. It looks to me more like an opportunity for blackmail than an opportunity for a lifelong relationship.

Years would pass before,Thaksin’s media people would expose that the military coup people had paid out about US$20 million to buy journalists. The list finally leaked out - probably bought by Thaksin’s money from an exposed Thai journalist who took money from the coup. Well, if you think I was thinking too much that the millions that could have come my way was just ripe for blackmail - you are right.

That is because even with the list of hundreds of journalists on the take from the coup leaking out for everyone to see, those journalists are still “totally” entrenched at their papers and shoveling out crap as usual. All this is to say that I now think I was totally mad not to take the millions that came my way - because no one gives a damn in Thailand about honor or doing the right thing.

So you can see, I am a true nut for not doing what the Romans do in Rome.