Today is Purple Day (On Tuesdays we wear PINK.)

I've only just left Bangkok (this blog has proved a nice added activity to entertain myself with during the 6-hour layover in Taiwan), and already I miss plenty of bits about it. (Noticeably missing from that list: squatting toilets. Thanks.) What I'm missing at the current moment includes the formidable conversion rate (I really am going to regret the first time a bottle of water DOESN'T cost me 30 cents in the States) and the crazy Thai sense of culture and humor- notably, things like the color days.

Saturday is purple day in Thailand, for example- meaning, if you've got a purple shirt, today is the day you should wear it (fifty year old men included.) Each day of the week has its own color, and the Thais really do honor the system- if you know enough to know that Wednesday is Green Day (pun intended), you'll notice hundreds of BK citizens in green that day.

Pink day is, I think, their favorite, because they certainly do ALL turn up in pink on Tuesdays. Coincidentily, pink shirts also show loyalty and love for the king (it used to be yellow, because the king was born on a Monday- have you figured out yet what color Monday is?!)- but a few years ago, one of the political factions seized upon yellow as "its" color, so now yellow shirts either mean loyalty to that party, or, a case of the Mondays.

So, to recap, pink means Tuesday, or, I love the king, or, I'm a fifteen year old girl, or, I'm a forty year old Thai man who just appreciates a little COLOR, thank you very much. Matt Conrad, you've started a revolution.

But we don't HAVE this kind of weekly systematic dressing code fun in America, and thus I will probably end up in black and grey when I'm back at work in two days with a case of the Mondays myself.

The salt in the open wound of my departure from Thailand- or perhaps in this case, the chili pepper in the open wound- is the fact that Robbie Williams was playing on the radio as my taxi driver headed towards the airport. On the RADIO. Man alive, do I love foreign countries.

My final thought in this rambling, mid-plane trips and thus mid-sleeping aids layover, is the realization that the death of JD Salinger marks the third time I've gotten on a plane and someone rather important has died (MJ this past summer, and Reagan in 2004 while I was in Germany.) It's weird catching bits of news via facebook streams and television screens as you pass by them; but I kind of like it more than the constant coverage you're bombarded with while at home. The same for the Haiti situation- I haven't seen a speck of visual coverage of it and have had time to read minimal press surrounding it. I actually like being removed like this- you have time to process the story and its importance without the watering down it receives when the US press has seized upon it, fiending for every minute detail and feeding them to you piecemeal. It makes me laugh, too, and think about the way we've had to feed my sister news in the past during her time in London, or my brother during his years in Dublin. (Dear Chad, You have missed this, but it is important. Please review and get back to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JMOh-cul6M Love, Dianna.)

At any rate, disasters happen, great people die, and cultural phenomenons continue; even when people go away. I have no idea what this entire Brett Favre "pants on the ground" thing is about, but I'm sure I'll find out in about t-minus 16 hours.

See you back in the land of normal toilets, and where Tuesday is just a regular old clothes day.

XO,
Di