Today, whilst sitting in the student lounge pretending to be reading about community design techniques, a one Pitch Ponsagawt entered the room looking altogether befuddled, sleep deprived, and woefully overbundled up.

He'd just arrived from Bangkok a few hours earlier, and had to be at school today to get some things set up and to meet with his committee. Pitch is here for the academic year to finish his doctoral dissertation in City Planning at Berkeley.



Earlier this summer, while I was in a studio in Thailand, I met Pitch. He's well known in Bangkok, sort of a political opinioneer. He has some TV show kind of like Crossfire (or so I heard). He lectures at Chula in the Faculty of Poli Sci. And now he's just arrived at Berkeley, in October, wearing a scarf and a beanie cap to stay warm in this chilling 62 degree, sunny, breezy weather of ours. Poor Pitch, it will be hard weatherwise on him. What will he do when it really gets cold, say like the mid 50's?! Can Thai people freeze to death from that?


Here's an excerpt from an email he sent this morning:

"...the weather is crazy, i am to old for this. i used to
love the cold weather but the weather here is too
much. california weather is the coldst weather cos
mostly the building here is not up to the standard to
protect the cold weather, unlike the building in the
cold place. the weather here wakes me up in the early
morning."

So next Wednesday, the 12th, we are having a little get together to recall our month long trip to Thailand under Pitch's tutelage. He is going to cook "spicy Thai food" for us. Wow, I can't wait. You know, because it's really hard to get spicy Thai food in Berkeley. Nearly impossible.