Nine days of meditation were passed in silence — on the tenth, we were allowed to speak, and a cast of extremely diverse characters was introduced to each other. If you'll forgive my re-use the overdone trope of the overdone joke format being used to describe a situation: the people who sign up for a meditation retreat in the Thai mountains could also form the beginning of a bad-sounding joke (the ones that go like, a Frenchman living in Shanghai, a Birmingham native who slings ayahuasca in Cambodia, and a Lithuanian who decided to later practice as a Laotian Buddhist monk walk into a bar). The better part of the joke is that we actually did, in fact, go to a bar after ten days of meditation (in other words, immediately disobeying several of the primary guidelines that governed our meditation retreat). Most of us drank; some of us were still following the guidelines. As the Frenchman encouraged me to, I focused on my pineapple juice. ~ I predicted one of the most difficult aspects of the retreat would be the no social interaction aspect — and partially to prepare, I passed the bus ride there in silence, despite my natural inclinations. I had intended to pass the bus ride back in a similar fashion, filling the somewhat dangerous addicting nature of internal silence. Things rarely work the way you expected — and this ride was no different, because I met Prach (born & raised in Bangkok) in that time. One thing led to another, and Prach and I explored Bangkok (rather, he returned to his childhood home and showed me around; I followed). On one of my last days — following excursions to various temples, a Polish choir show (??), and trying local spots[^2] that Prach's food blogger friend had posted online[^1] — I met two of Prach's friends. --- Full disclaimer: I'm writing this post in April, whereas this happened in February. I'm coming off my time in [[houston, texas|Houston]], where in the airport, I met an ex-senior NASA engineer (senior enough to be the single-handed reason the Mars Rover can, well, move) whose life advice was to "avoid assumption, as much as possible". There are usually coatings that conceal who a person really is, and further internal layers — which are similar in texture to coating, but distinctly different — add up to who we are. The earlier one stops unraveling, the more assumption is made. Lines are drawn, and the rest of the person is explained — compressed — to fit into those lines. Prach and his friends were wrapped up in a few things that *could* have made interaction harder: a language barrier, an age gap, an experiential difference with growing up in different countries. And yet — again, this could come as a shock — I look Asian, so any observer who didn't hear the language we spoke may have thought we were all local Thai friends. And so, sitting around the sticky yellow plastic in Bangkok's Chinatown, slurping down red pork and noodles, we tried our best to support the assumptions of any observers by chattering away like old friends. Even though the four of us met under the pretence of discussing Buddhism, I learned the two were both schooled at Thailand's premier medical university. One is now a professor & surgical resident, the other is a dermatology resident. Slowly, the chatter broke down all the wrappings. For the final appearance-related deception of the night, I learnt they were all in their 30s (even though we all looked like a bunch of undergrads grabbing dinner after class). I feel very fortunate to be put into situations — throughout this gap year — where I've been able to encounter such a wide range of people, enough to tell a pretty bad joke. All I'm saying is that there are a lot more layers under the wrappings, with the right amount time spent. Or, perhaps, I've just learnt that Thai dermatology is onto something. Time will tell. [^1]: By the way, this also included possibly the best meal of my life, which was cooked by a shirtless ex-deep sea diver in his backyard, surrounded by his chickens and stickers from his son's high school. This restaurant had no name, but was apparently where all the local government ministers would eat breakfast (we arrived at 10:20am, and about 20minutes earlier we wouldn't have been able to get a table). [^2]: The main result of this activity was imparting genuine amazement at the capacity of Instagram bloggers to glamorise the appearance of something. Most things look pretty tasty in person — but food bloggers seem to take them to another level. Genuine artistic talent in my view.