Me, new phase, Thai life!

The boyfriend is back, after two days at work. His employer alters or adapts clothes, lampshades, and shoes to order.

Customers bring in clothing or furniture items, wanting braid, flowers or other decorative bits and pieces put on them. Can do!

That information is more than six months old, dating from the last time I asked the boyfriend about his work.

When he goes to work, he tends to go for at least a day and night. This time, he went for two days and two nights. He sleeps over at his boss's place.

I tried calling a few times on the phone, but he was too busy to answer. Until recently, we sent text messages to each other. I used to send one just before coming home from work, prompting him to do whatever household tasks I asked him to perform while away, such as washing the dishes.

Now, I don't bother. I know the job will get done eventually, and life is made of bigger things.

We must have reached a new level of understanding in our relationship, where we both know that those tiresome SMS messages are no longer necessary.

Apart from that, I have made a new farang friend at work, who calls regularly at night, after our shifts end and we have returned home.

We work the same shifts, on the same days. We have hit it off, even though he is irredeemably straight. We have been drinking at Mum's shop a couple of times, and talk almost every night during the working week.

He is the first foreigner I have befriended from work in years - maybe the first ever. Before, I turned up my nose at the company of foreigners. I wanted to immerse myself in Thai life, so all my friends became Thai.

Later, I realised that this was not working. Most of my Thai friends are at least 10 years younger, are still studying, or busy carving out careers.

We have nothing in common, outside Mum's shop.

When Thais see two farang, laughing and enjoying themselves, they want to join in the fun.

They come over, hold up their glass, and say 'Cheers!'

We clink glasses - then they walk back to their drinking table, to rejoin the relative safety of their Thai friends.

My Thai friends and I talk better when my farang friend has gone home, and we are alone. But I don't call my Thai friends during the week, and they rarely call me.

Before, I relied on the boyfriend for company, when not with my drinking friends at Mum's shop. Now, thank God, I have found someone else, who couldn't give a toss about my boyfriend, or life outside work.

We haven't reached that topic yet. We are still too busy talking about life in the West, good novels, work, our shared profession...