Usually when I visit the hospital close to my home it is still dark. This morning, the sun was out - the first time I have seen it shining at that hour it in a long time.
'You have to see daylight occasionally, you know,' my friend farang J told me the other night.
I said I seldom rise before mid-afternoon. I work at night, then go to Mum's shop, where I can drink until 5am or later.
I would like to try waking in the morning like everyone else, and spend less time drinking in the small hours.
Mum's shop appears to be dying. I have not met any new Thai guys there in weeks.
Maybe it's because the new university term has yet to start, but the place is deadly quiet. Everyone has noticed. It's depressing.
Walking to the hospital, I saw a young man in black trousers and a white shirt, polishing the windows of a restaurant. As he knelt down, the top of his white underwear rose above his trousers.
That's nice. Even in daylight, we can witness interesting things.
The waiting room at the hospital was quiet. After a few minutes, I was ushered in.
I had seen this doctor before. Even before we start talking, we both know that I will get what I want - more sleeping pills.
They can be psychologically addictive, and I am afraid I might be hooked on them now, but I am paying to see the doctor, so I expect to get something out of him. He obliges, because if he stopped giving me pills, I would stop coming.
I told the doctor that I had been drinking, but it failed to make me sleepy. In fact, I returned home feeling more agitated than I was before I left.
'If you drink a little, it can have a sedative effect. Drink too much, it can over-excite your mind, and even act as a hypnotic,' he said.
I did over-excite myself last night, talking for hours to farang J and his girlfriend Isra, whose relationship is beset by troubles.
The foreigner, who lives in Britain but visits every few months, distrusts his girlfriend, whom he believes wants him only for his money. I try to help him overcome his fears, as there is no point in the relationship continuing otherwise.
It is an uphill task, battling ignorance and prejudice. I don't know where he gets his ideas, but someone fills his ear with this poison. It is the same story I hear from many farang.
They can't see anything positive in Thais or this country, and yet they persist in staying.
Neither farang J nor Isra communicates well with each other, and both like to use me as an intermediary.
I am sick of that. Rather than trying to fix other people's problems, I want to take refuge in my own world occasionally.
Just watching this place can be exhausting (and exhilarating), after all.
Living in Thailand is a highly visual, kinetic experience. I am afraid to pick up a book or watch television, in case I miss some of the excitement and eccentricity taking place on the street.
The man who parks his car right on the street corner - or even in the centre of the road - then walks away oblivious to the danger, or the road rules.
The restaurant owner who drives his car right into the eating area of his (walk-in) restaurant, oblivious to the fact that people are dining there.
The kids on bikes who drive on the wrong side of the road, or in the opposite direction down a one-way street.
These crazy things can happen here, because anything's possible in such an eccentric, easy-going land, where the prevailing ethos appears to be: 'Don't think too much!'
Watching the frenetic activity is what we do here in place of quiet intellectual pursuits, possibly because it's too hot to do much else. Reading books might be more of a cold climate thing, because I hardly ever do it, at least over here.
Yet when I was a child, I loved to read, because I could lose myself in someone else's adventures.
It might be time I revisited parts of the old me, the person I knew before I was exposed to this extreme, hyperactive place. Even after living here for years, there must be a few quiet places left in the soul where one can reflect quietly to oneself rather than being contantly fixated by the world outside.
For the sake of my own peace of mind, I shall have to seek them out.
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