Pain in the back, hawking bakery

Maiyuu's workaround for a hard seat 1

We have bought new office seating for my home computer. I sat on the old one too hard, and it broke...first one plastic leg, then another.

The new seat has a plastic bowl for parking my bottom, and a splay-legged arrangement underneath. It is set at a silly, fixed angle: the bowl is tilted backwards rather than forwards, which pinches the underside of my legs, and hurts my back.

No one wants to hear this, I know. But it upsets me, as I spent B1500 on the chair, and the thing is next to useless.

Maiyuu's workaround for a hard seat 2

For years, I took a painful 40-minute bus trip to work in central Bangkok from the wilds of Thon Buri.

The seats in the German-made bus were the same: set too high, and tilted backwards, which hurt the legs.

Now, my old seat nightmare is back again.

Maiyuu and I have tried out various cushion arrangements to ease the pain of sitting on the thing, but nothing works.

We strapped a cushion to the thing, to help prop me forward (see picture).

That was no good, so I swapped the new chair for one we use on the balcony.

This one was also tilted too far back. For padding, we stuffed two cushions into an old woollen vest.

When propped up on the seat (see picture), it looks as if a person is sitting in it.

That one was no good either. Now I am using a chair which normally sits at the dining table. It is also no good for typing purposes or office work (I can’t adjust the height, or tilt it forwards), but it will have to do.

I have given the new office chair to Maiyuu, who has no problem with it. ‘It doesn’t hurt my back, or my legs,’ he said happily.

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Maiyuu has offered to supplement our income by looking for baking work in the tourist area close to our place. One shop has just opened. Run by a European, it sells Danish-style bakery.

In the next day or so I will pay a visit, and ask the staff if they would like to buy in bakery from a new supplier (us).

Maiyuu wasted several hours today looking for work on the internet: the type of labour where you get paid for clicking aimlessly on websites.

‘You will never make money doing that. Why not focus on something you are good at, such as baking,’ I said.

I doubt Thais could bring themselves to look for work in the way we do in the West. If I was really keen, I would walk the streets, asking at restaurants or eateries if they have vacancies. Thais, however, have as sturdy sense of entitlement. They'd rather just starve.

I have offered to look for him instead.

I might copy pictures of some of his cooking and bakery treats on to a memory stick. Then, as I do the rounds of shops around here (two or three should be enough humiliation for one day, I expect) I can show the boss some examples of his creative work in the kitchen. If a shopowner is interested, he can get in touch.

It never works that way, of course. If Maiyuu as the job seeker is interested, he should make contact with the shop himself, not wait for a call from his would-be employer.

I give the job-search experiment 24 hours before I retreat into failure.