Getting to know you

I am spending more time with the boyfriend, and enjoying it.

Once, I went to Mum's shop in Pin Khlao on both nights off every week.

Boyfriend Maiyuu was often home but I felt like a break anyway. In my absence, he has to entertain himself.

Now I go to Mum's shop just one night a week. Unless I have a friend to go with me, I get bored over there.

Now that I am 'home-based' on one of my nights off every week, I can explore the market where I live at a time of day when I do not normally get to see it. Last night I visited a food stall to try their khao mun gai (chicken on rice).

Maiyuu visited a friend. When he returned a couple of hours later, we watched television.

It was relaxing, and fun. We have been together more than seven years, but I feel it is only in the last 12 months that I am really getting to know him.

Bursting the language bubble (1)

'I would like to learn English,' said Mr Friendly at the 7-11.

I walked in the other day to buy some supplies for home. Mr Friendly was there, the first time I had seen him in several weeks.

His real name is T. He works at a 7-11 close to my home.

'Then why don't you try talking? You might want to befriend a farang first,' I said.

That sounds like blatant self-interest, because T, who comes from the North, is good-looking.

'It's not as hard as you think.'

T pointed to a pack of chewing gum.

'How do you say that in English?'

'One pack of gum,' I said.

'I would like to be fluent, but I never get the chance to talk,' he said.

We talked a while longer, before someone turned up at the counter wanting service.

When I walked in, T greeted me by name. Thais have a terrific memory for names, and T is no exception.

Once upon a time, I might have followed up my visit by taking him in a textbook for Thais learning English. I would suggest he borrow and study it.

I thought about it briefly, but decided not to bother. Thais teach themselves basic English if they are really interested. Instead of playing computer games in the internet cafe across the road, as T likes to do in his spare time, he could read English-language websites instead.

Thais feel guilty about English when they see a foreign face. They forget about it again when the foreigner walks away.

Learning a second language takes years of dedicated study. No one wakes up one day and finds themselves miraculously able to speak. Unlike the tooth fairy, it does not dance across your pillow sprinkling gold dust as you sleep.

now, see part 2

Low life in Bangkok

As the month winds down, so does our income. In the last few days I have given my Thai boyfriend B1,000 to help meet expenses.

He spent most of it buying food, as he likes to bake and cook.

Today the man from the power company paid us a visit to turn off the mains supply, in a friendly warning to pay the bill. It was due some time this week, I suspect, but as I don't get paid until tomorrow, they just have to wait.

The computer was off at the time, thankfully, as it does not enjoy power outages. The television was on, but I hardly noticed, as I was in the shower. Boyfriend Maiyuu turned the power switch back on, restoring supply.

Three days ago the telephone company cut our home telephone line, though Maiyuu insists it is for repair work, not because he forgot to pay the bill. He called the company again today, and was assured service would be restored by tomorrow noon.

In the absence of a telephone, I have been visiting an email cafe for the last couple of days. As I returned at midday, I found boyfriend Maiyuu in the lift with a pile of magazines.

He was using the lift to take magazines from our condo. He left a large pile of magazines stacked in the condo carpark.

Maiyuu has found two new methods to raise money. One is to sell his collection of men's fashion magazines, which go back several years.

Yesterday, he called a man who sells second-hand magazines. He picked them up at the condo, and paid Maiyuu B200 for them.

A day earlier, Maiyuu took overseas currency left over from trips to see my family to a man who exchanges coins for Thai currency.

Banks refuse to take coins from overseas, but Maiyuu found some traders in Bangrak, Bangkok, who do accept coins - at a discount to the exchange rate prevailing at banks, of course. He raised another B300 from that source.

Tonight as I prepare to leave work I have B200 in my wallet. If I finish late, I shall have to take a taxi. That will eat up B100, leaving me with just B100 to my name.

Roll on pay day tomorrow!

Jeffrey Bernard

Postscript: Does anyone here remember the British writer, Jeffrey Bernard? He wrote a weekly column for the London Spectator magazine, called Low Life, about his exploits as an ailing alcoholic in Soho, until his death in 1997. Are these tales of penury and financial woe turning my blog into the same thing?

Leaving, vs the BF's briefs

My workplace has an official retirement age of 60, and my immediate boss, who is about to reach that age, will soon lose his job, unless the firm re-employs him at cut rates on contract.

They would expect him to perform the same tasks, of course, even if they pay him half price, as they have one or two foreigners before him, who have been here for years and have life-long visas.

They were issued back in the days before the government realised that living here, to some foreigners, was actually worth something.

A contract deal seems unlikely in the case of my boss, as he does not have a life-long visa, and the company can't be bothered applying for an annual visa extension for him after 60. They would rather hire younger (cheaper) labour.

My boss, who has a Thai wife, has little money saved, and does not know how he will survive. 'I should have left Thailand years ago, but never did. No one would overseas want to employ me any more,' he says.

Grimly, I have been wondering whether I will ever share his fate. I am now in my early 40s.

I cannot earn a significant amount more than I make now, as my workplace holds out few prospects for career advancement. We barely manage to save, at least on our present expenses.

The firm views its foreign staff as migrant labourers. It employs us to do what it suspects its own staff cannot.

So what keeps me sane? For the last two days, my boyfriend has been wandering around home wearing the briefest pair of briefs.

Yesterday it was black. Today it is white.

He spends his time sleeping, or cooking. Today he has made pork meatballs, egg soup, and a chili and onion paste for canned fish.

When he steps out doors, he puts on shorts, which again slip low on the waist.

I am not really allowed to touch, though I will steal as many discreet cuddles and kisses as I can. 'You are kissing me too much. It's annoying!' he grumbled last night.

Maiyuu leaves piles of unwashed clothes lying about. Some are stuffed in travel bags which he brings home from overnight visits to work.

When he is away from home, I get lonely. If I open one of his travel bags, the mingling scent of after-shave rises to greet me. Obviously it has been a while since he washed them. On missions to work, he might have worn the same clothes several times, in fact.

I put his clothes to my nose and inhale.

My boyfriend can calm such restless thoughts, and give me the energy to carry on working in a place with little future. 

Making the money stretch

Maiyuu has gone into a sulk, after I questioned him rigorously about our finances.

Maiyuu holds the ATM card to my main bank account, and has responsibility for paying bills and buying most of the groceries.

Yesterday I flew into a small panic as I thought I would not be able to get through to next pay day without an injection of funds - and I hate asking him for extra money.

Maiyuu transfers B6000 to me every two weeks. I live off that until my next pay day.

Most of the time, I manage, but lately I have lost two part-time teaching jobs. Prices in the market where we live are also going up.

The husband and wife couple who make several servings of food for us every night - which usually keep me fed through the next day - closed her shop inexplicably a few nights ago, which forced me to buy food from a different stall nearby.

Normally I order from the same couple every night, and Maiyuu pays the bill at the end of the month. In their absence, I had to start paying nightly food bills myself.

I also suffer from vagueness. I find it hard to remember on which day I get get paid. The boyfriend, of course, never forgets.

I sent Maiyuu several insistent text messages, asking where it had all gone. It was hours before he replied, because he was busy at work. By then I was contemplating drastic schemes, such as cancelling the ATM card.

I asked him how much he normally pays for various bills, and worked out how much he should have left. I under-estimated almost all the bills, because I do not pay them myself, and forget to look when they come into our home.

I am pleased that I didn't cancel the card, as he would regard that as a gross insult, and pout for days.

When he finally called, I felt relieved. He set me right about pay day. It falls sooner than I thought. I can probably make my money stretch.

The husband and wife couple who makes our food have also re-opened their shop today, after a two-day break over the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival inexplicably became a five-day no-show. I should tell them that their unexplained absence almost caused our divorce.

The boyfriend has refused to give me any more money, saying he has spending commitments, including a pair of work shoes he has ordered for me.

As I left work, he was still feeling hurt that I questioned him so closely in my text messages, and that in my crude attempts to draw up a household budget, forgot to make any allowance for his own expenditure.

'Do you expect I can just live off thin air?' he asked angrily. 'As it is, I have had to go back to work more often, to earn money to meet my expenses, as sometimes there is virtually nothing left by the time the bills are paid.'