Number 25

Written Tuesday night and posted Wednesday morning.

I realized today that my purpose for being at the GAJE conference ends tomorrow afternoon so I’ve decided to go back to Chiang Mai on Thursday instead of waiting until Sunday. Everyone whose presentation I worked on will have presented. I’ve had four meetings with the Vietnamese, who I like more every day, and there’s no more preparatory work to do. Also the students leave tomorrow night and the rest of the conference is geared towards GAJE organizational matters (elections, scheduling the next conference etc.). So I told Bruce and Wendy I wanted to head back to Chiang Mai where I have a printer and access to our library so I could refine the proposals I worked on now that I’ve spoken extensively with the Vietnamese about their specific needs. Wendy expected I would get bored and had no problem with me leaving. Bruce felt a little bad that there wasn’t anything for me to do but I assured him I preferred Chiang Mai (and for that matter Anoka, Fridley and New Brighton) to Manila. So in the end everyone was cool with me going back and we all went out to a BABSEA sponsored dinner which was bland Filipino food but a wonderful, loud, laughing, gathering. I sat next to Giao who shares my fascination with the Filipino concept of putting sugar on everything. When ice cream was served for dessert he asked the waitress to bring me some sugar to put on it. May not sound that funny but it was a real knee slapper!

It’s about 9:30 and in a few minutes, I’m meeting one last time with 4-5 of the Law Professors here at the hotel to go over their presentations. Bruce announced at dinner that their presentations shouldn’t all sound the same so now they want to all get together and see that they don’t.

While I don’t really relate to many of the conference delegates, I really enjoy the Southeast Asian Law professors and I’ve had a tremendously fun time with the Law Students. The hotel and much of Manila is covered with Xmas decorations and the students have taken to calling me Santa Claus which invariably makes them all laugh. I of course have renamed all of them, much to their delight. There’s Al and Myron and Rhonda and Carl and Toots and Butch and Tiffany, to name a few.

Anyway, Manila is hot and humid, it smells and the traffic is tedious and unending. The experience has definitely been a good one but, for the most part, you can have Manila.

Had an email from the BABSEA house and it appears it was another fine day in Chiang Mai.