Jane played some Thai pop music, cheerful energetic bonging and strumming. There’d been a time, back in design school, when Thai pop music had meant a lot to her. When it seemed that a few dozen wild kids in Bangkok were the last people on earth who really knew what it meant to have some honest fun. She’d never figured out why this lovely burst of creativity had happened in Bangkok. With AIDS still methodically eating its way into the vast human carcass of Asia, Bangkok certainly wasn’t any happier than most other places. Apparently the late 2020s had just somehow been Bangkok’s global moment to shine. It was genuinely happy music, bright, clever music, like a gift to the world. It felt so new and fresh, and she’d listened to it and felt in her bones what it meant to be a woman of the 2020s, alive inside, and aware inside.