Mysterious Skin

Back in town, back at work, stomach in turmoil, the quiet times and hell bent, I didn't know where I was going. Reading Altered Carbon, where people are sleeved in and out of bodies and you never quite know whether the person you are talking to is the person you're looking at; or some clone out of a vat; or someone that's been unstacked and put into another body. Lots of people feel that way, fragile within their own body; strangely at odds with the world. He couldn't have been more slow to offend. He wanted to be back in Pai, where there was plenty of company and the views were spectacular, where everything was new yet everything felt right.

The morning is full of people saying goodbye at the door, smiles on their faces as they walk off into the street, all night passion, I've basically forgotten what it was like, well it's been a while, let's say, random acts of kindness not all that frequent, although it doesn't really seem to matter right now. There is nothing but darkness, he laughed, because he wasn't depressed at all. The farm looked beautiful after the rain, but there is so much work to do. We could be harnessed, but we weren't.

This is another picture from the Chiang Mai flower show, 80 hectares of exhibitions, the largest in the world. Millions of visitors. Dedicated of course, like everything in Thailand, to the king, who seems, in some cosmic way, to represent all that is positive and good about the country. We are all part of the country and the king is the country, so we are all part of the king, one Thai in a cafe tried to explain to me. They're all wearing yellow tops, well not the girls wearing "I'm just happy to be with you" t-shirts, but a lot of them, signifying their loyalty to the country and the king. And this was the bug exhibition, which after tramping all day we spotted and had to go to; Sam being keen on bugs.

Mysterious skin. Yeh, well I loved the film, too. It reminded me a lot of kids I used to know.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

(CBS) The scandal over the substandard care and poor living conditions for veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center continues to shake the Bush administration and the military establishment. But, as CBS News correspondent Joie Chen reports, swift, sure reaction by the new defense secretary has signaled new and different leadership at the Pentagon. If anyone had somehow missed the point, the new Pentagon boss ended the week with a sharp jab at his own team. "I am disappointed that some in the army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation," Robert Gates said told reporters Friday. In an unusually blunt and swift – by Washington standards – reaction Gates ousted army chief Francis Harvey over Harvey's handling of a spiraling scandal at the nation's premier military hospital. News reports last month exposed filthy conditions facing Iraq war veterans at Walter Reed hospital.