Happy Saturday!
The sun is shining most-awesomely today, the Bangkok smog has relented making it a bit cooler and brighter, and consequently, people seem a bit happier. Maybe that’s just because it’s Saturday though…
Anyway, I’m currently being stalked by two people from our guest house in Bangkok. The first and most intrusive, is a retired schoolteacher from Canada, who lives in Japan. She kind of resembles a dumpy, blond, wicked witch of the west, with a nose to match. She’s currently working on a teaching-material delivery solution that she can sell to schools, and is therefore on her computer most of the time. She originally asked me if I knew how to get online–as she was having trouble, and I wasn’t–and then concluded that when I fixed it for her, that I could troubleshoot any issues she has in the future with her MacBook Air. So far, she’s followed me to the health spa, the restaurant down the road, and almost out to dinner last night (Susie an I ran away like school kids when we saw her creeping down the stairs of our guest house). She also moved rooms to be OPPOSITE ours. None the less, conversation is always of a technical nature, and usually boring, because - as is the way with most people who use technology but don’t understand it - she tends to dispute what I say to her, like she knows better. Usually I just politely nod and agree, and then wonder why the hell she’s asking me in the first place.
Next, is the mid 30’s, balding, Scottish “Happy Mondays” old-school raver who insists of talking to me about the copious amounts of drugs he’s doing, in an obvious attempt to appeal to my “youth”. Again, I politely nod and agree when he tells me that “the Khao San Road isn’t what it used to be” and “it used to be so much easier to get drugs into Thailand”. Im guessing it was easier because the Thai officials at Suvarnabhumi Airport didn’t conduct cavity searches during his early smuggling days, which was another interesting conversation that I’m not divulging at this point. He also proceeded to tell me about his dead father (he’s obviously still mourning, so I let him talk) and the house that he left him In Hatton (which he sold to buy drugs and a camper van, in which he now lives, on the rare occasion in which he’s back home). I know I’m trying to be polite, so I listen and nod when I’m supposed to, feel sympathy when told about the loss of parents and / or foot bunions when you wear western shoes for 60 years, and pretend to be interested when told about upcoming technological advances in academia.
What makes people think they can open up to me and expunge their woes unto me? Maybe I’m just pretty, answers on a postcard please. Susie, meanwhile, is doing the sensible - if less social - act of making herself scarce while the torrents of unwelcome history are being divulged. What is she doing I hear you ask? Probably more interesting things like reading, or going to the Dusit Zoo without me. Sigh. Even as I write this, I seem to be attracting attention from an overweight native, drinking Leo Beer at 9am, who can’t talk a word of English, and who is ominously staring at me and my iPhone. I think he is mental; he keeps talking to no-one and making funny “tourettes-like” sounds and twitches frequently.
The laws of attraction state that “Like Attracts Like”. I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m seen as a mental, overweight drug addict, with foot problems, and a tendency to twitch at random.