Free leg rub, job search struggle, healthy baby on way

A farang colleague and I stopped at a small open-air store for a few drinks after work.

The store is squeezed between a railway line and a truck yard but does a busy trade with customers from the slum across the road.

Pong, a short, plumpish woman in her 30s taking a drink at a nearby table, greeted us.

‘I am a regular customer, and know the owner,’ she said, as if explaining her interest.

Pong, who works at a fuel depot nearby, fetched our drinks, and – as the mosquitoes started to bite – offered to apply soothing anti-mosquito balm to our arms and legs.

‘Stick out a hand...and a leg.’

Normally, when the mozzies start to bite, the owner brings out a mosquito coil. Pong, however, said she could do one better.

We had only been seated a minute when Pong brought out the mosquito repellent. We extended our limbs obediently as she gave us each a rub-down.

My friend farang T and I decided she probably fancied us, but we couldn’t work out who she likes more.

Farang T is straight, lanky, and looks vulnerable, so perhaps it was him. He is just as popular with a girl who serves at an open-air eatery across the way.

When he wants to catch a taxi, she gives him a ride down down the road on her motorbike. Farang T reminds this girl that he is married, but she persists regardless.

As for Pong, she had a ready explanation for her helpful behaviour. ‘Thais are always kindhearted,’ she said chirpily.

At our invitation, she took a seat at our table. 'I should warn you – I never stop talking,’ she said.

And so it was. Pong told us chattily that she works two jobs, and is a single parent, bringing up a six-year-old daughter.

An hour later, as we were leaving, a rainy-season-style downpour arrived.

Pong brought out an umbrella, and escorted farang T down the road. They waited for 15min for a taxi.

‘I have a feeling that she wanted to join me,’ farang T told me later. ‘I jumped in the front seat as fast as I could, and thanked her for her help,’ he said.

Pong returned, looking sodden and bedraggled. She asked if she could also find a taxi for me.

I declined the offer, as I had borrowed an umbrella from the owner, and decided I would walk home.

However, we have swapped phone numbers, so perhaps we shall meet kind-hearted Pong again.

-
‘What do you think of me now?’

Ball, with a plaintive but pained looked in his eyes, wanted to know if my opinion of him has fallen over the past three months that he has been without work.

Actually, it has, but I am getting over it.

Up until a month or so ago, I believed he was deliberately dragging the chain, sitting at home all day rather than making honest attempts to find himself a new job.

His old one, for an insurance company, folded.

However, since New Year he has been to at least half a dozen interviews, so far without success.

Lately he has applied for work as a typist, even though he can barely type; and serving in a Silom restaurant popular with farang, even though he can’t speak English.

At the interview for the restaurant job, he was asked to sit a 30-question English test. He passed, though I wonder how when I recall one slip-up he made. Given the Thai word for ‘chicken’, he was asked what it meant in English, and Ball replied: ‘Snake’.

Usually, he attends interviews with one or two of his slum friends who are also without work.

No employers have called them back. Ball believes it is because he is too poorly qualified: he left school with a third year leavers’ qualification, when most employers offering semi-skilled work are demanding a sixth year leavers’ certificate at least.

When I dropped in to see Ball the other day, he was smarting after his elder brother Boy had taken him aside for a quiet word about his lack of work.

With furrowed eyebrows, Boy told Ball that he wasn’t doing enough to help their mother, who runs the household and finds it hard to make ends meet. He suggested Ball go back to work as a security guard, a job he loathed last time he did it a few years ago.

Ten people live in their cramped slum home, but not everyone works.

Boy himself has only recently returned to the labour force. He spent months at home idle after leaving the military last year, so can hardly complain to Ball that he is bludging off mum.

Ball is feeling the pressure. His elder sister has nagged him previously, and his mother and girlfriend have also told him to go back to work.

‘I do want to get out of home and find a job. I am tired of feeling guilty,’ he said.

'My elder brother shouldn't give me the furrowed eyebrows treatment. I am grown up, and can make my own decisions,’ he said grumpily.

I told him not to worry, and that my opinion of him hasn’t fallen.

‘You are doing your best...but you might have to try a little harder,’ I said.

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Ball will be a dad in just three months, all going well.

He took his pregnant girlfriend Jay for an ultra-sound test last week.

Jay is carrying a baby girl, they learned. The child is due in early June.