How many people would circle once, twice, thrice, just to take pictures of a speed bump?
How far have we come, from Thong Lor to Taupo. For us, there’s always Waiheke, a white wedding on a summer day. Olive trees and an endless vineyard. The blistering blue sea, the cloudless blue sky.
For you, there was The Motorcycle Diaries, where Che Guevara played by Gael García Bernal comes of age and then so did you: coming out of the past and into a new age.
For me, there was gentrified Glockenbachviertel, and the surreptitious walk from Viktualienmarkt to Sendlinger Tor. What a thrill, what peril! (Though in hindsight, there was none; Rosa München is staid, utterly sedate.)
For us, there is telling the taxi meter driver, “Sukhumvit soi yi sip hok” and hopefully we’ll be driven to our favourite café, Baker Gonna Bake, where everyone is welcome. Have our Americano ron and your spaghetti krapao.
Everyone is welcome, whatever their colour, creed or stripe.
We finally find parking. And walk over to the speed bump. It’s sandwiched between two rainbow flags painted on the asphalt. This is the road not taken, not taken easily at any rate. But it’s “the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost knew. And after all these years, we understood too.
Every stripe a story, every life more colours than we’ve ever dreamed.