according to the birth certificate , i was born in the city of chaingrai , thailand in 1964 , a millennium ago , or so it seems , as it is now 2014 , although my earliest memories not induced and thus to some degree fabricated by later viewing of black and white photographs would have been of surat thani , the grandson of a small rambutan orchard farmer before being reclaimed and ripped from symbiotic lives that once made up a family .