Cheese-paring mission, braving floods, sparkies take pity

Two days before pay day, we have virtually run out of money. I am down to my last 500 baht, which I am rationing out.

Maiyuu cut his finger while cooking yesterday. Outside, it was raining. We had run out of plasters at home, so he put a condom on his finger as temporary protection, until the rain stopped and he could go out to buy medical supplies.

I am pleased I had a few extra baht handy, or he'd have to go without.

Maiyuu made a tray of brownies. They are now sitting on the kitchen table, along with two cakes he made the day before.

In retrospect, I would rather he had kept aside the money for more important items, like regular meals, as he must have known that money was getting scarce.

I suggested we go to the supermarket, to buy cheese. If all else fails, I can eat cheese sandwiches, I thought, as we have plenty of bread in the fridge.

Maiyuu and I set out in mid-afternoon. The low-lying streets around our place were flooded. We waded through thigh-deep water to reach the main road.

On the way, we passed centipedes and millipedes floating past. 'Watch out for dog poo....that's here too,' warned Maiyuu.

At the supermarket, Maiyuu cashed in a voucher which gave us B80 worth of credit.

I bought Swiss cheese, for B180. The guy serving behind the counter must have thought I was some poor farang on a benefit.

On the way home, we visited a flea market which opens twice a week on a large piece of vacant land next to a dormitory.

Maiyuu bought som tam for B30, and a large bag of garlic cloves for B25; I bought a large bag of tomatoes for just B20, to go with the cheese sandwiches.

Actually, things are not so desperate. We did manage to buy a few other things from the market...I just can't remember what they were.

I was delighted to find the place, even though the ground was covered in mud. 'They set up the market here twice a week,' said Maiyuu.

'We must come here again, especially if the money runs out,' I said.

The problem is not that we have too little money. It is that Maiyuu misjudges how much we have left, or forgets that we need to live on basic foodstuffs, not just baking.

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Maiyuu is talking about creating his own blog, but undecided what to put on it. Pictures of naked guys? His recipes?

More seriously, he is also thinking about selling his cooking and baking on the internet.

Customers who like what he makes could place an order, which we would deliver.

'I would have to come up with unusual recipes: Thais like recipes that are different and eye-catching. They are not interested in what everyone else has,' he said.

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On the way back from the supermarket, we met two guys in a truck, who gave us a lift on the final stretch of winding, narrow roads so we could avoid the floods.

Maiyuu and I were standing at the head of a low-lying section, about to wade back into the thigh-deep floodwaters which we had earlier braved on the way out of our condo.

A truck stopped in the middle of the road next to us.

'Where are you going?' a young guy in the passenger seat asked Maiyuu.

He gave the name of the condo.

'Hop on,' said the guy.

We clambered onto the back of the open-bed truck.

Sitting on the sides up there, we could watch the floodwaters swoosh by. We were also higher than people in ordinary cars...it felt great.

The men stopped just before our condo to let us off.

They are electricians working at a building site 20m away. We thanked them, and walked the rest of the way home.

Blog turns 3, Mario wilts, glam girl Kawadjan

This blog is now 3. Happy birthday, blog!

How much has it changed?

When the blog started on this day three years ago, it contained stories with a gay theme which I originally posted at a Thai webboard.

I grew tired of the trolls on that board, so decided to move the stories to my own blog instead.

Regular posts about Thai film, gay life, and the boyfriend were to come later.

At first, I wrote mainly about my friends of the night, and Thai entertainers.

Boyfriend Maiyuu and I enjoy following Thai entertainers, especially those we fancy might be gay. I thought I would write them up on the blog.

Back then, few English-language sources were available. The internet contained the odd fansite, and one or two web forums.

But the coverage was patchy and irregular, as most contributors were just fans, like us.

If I knew little about a particular star, I would have to ask Maiyuu to fill in the gaps, as the stories I found in the Thai press rarely told me everything I needed to know.

Fast forward to the present. Today, we are spoiled: readers can turn for daily coverage of Thai entertainment news to Lyn’s Lakorns blog, the Man of the Rose blog, and Dirtilaundry blog, to name but a few.

Three years down the track, I am no longer so interested in the antics of Thai stars.

If I write about them at all, it's usually because the story has some gay theme, or because their fame makes them interesting.

I complained yesterday that research for blog posts can take hours, and at the end of that I still can't be sure if readers will like it. Solution? Write stuff that interests me, and hope others will understand!

This blog probably has a mix of readers in their early 20s looking for star gossip, and another group aged 30 and above, interested in stories about Thai gay life.

Most readers who Google the actor Mario Maurer, for example, are probably young themselves.

They might be interested to read about Mario here, but I doubt they want to know about the new sofa I have just bought. That stuff probably sounds too domestic, and - well, old.

If those posts sound like a man in his 40s wrote them, it’s because he did.

I still write about Thai stars occasionally, as they provide a source of new readers to this blog. However, I also enjoy writing about 'old' stuff as well, because I am getting old, and can't help the way I think.

These days I write much more about my boyfriend, and our lives together in Bangkok.

Stories about the homely side of Thai life draw many more reader comments than those about Thai entertainers. They also give the blog a more personal feel, which I like.

I want to keep up that balance, so will continue writing regularly about the boyfriend and life in Thailand, with the odd post about Thai stars thrown in.

However, the best part about blogging for me is feedback from readers. Posts now get an average of eight responses each, which is great.

Please keep them coming. As I have said before (though it took me a while to learn it), a blog is nothing without you.

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My favourite Thai-based blogger over the past 12 months is Kawadjan.

Like mine, his blog is three years old, though he started it before he arrived on these shores.

Kawadjan, who comes from the Philippines, lives and works in Bangkok.

He has a distinctively gay voice as a writer, is funny, and blogs with a sense of excitement about this place.

He also visits out-of-the-way places in Bangkok, and travels in the region. Could you ask for more?

I like the look and feel of his blog: it is a good place to be. He sounds as if he is talking to intimate friends, even though he is also writing for a wider audience.

He posts pictures he has taken, MVs, and reviews books which have taken his fancy. Kawadjan’s blog is distinctively his own, much more than mine has ever been.

In the next 12 months, I would like to make my blog's 'stamp' more personal, like his. I can't promise to travel, as I hardly go anywhere. I will bring you more tales from Maiyuu's busy kitchen instead.

Broken lift blues

The lift at my condo breaks down often, but it is good to know that the office is on top of the problem.

Maiyuu has been stuck inside the thing at least once, when the doors failed to open.

I was trapped inside briefly another time, when the lights and the feeble air-conditioning also gave out.

Two other tenants were in the lift with me. If the doors had taken much longer to open, we would have been in trouble.

The other night, the lift was broken when I came home from work. I had to walk up seven flights of stairs to get home.

After the recent series of break-downs, the condo office has now hired a lift repair firm to fix the thing whenever the need arises.

It has posted three notices in the lift for tenants' inspection over the last week.

They are written in Thai, and direct occupants who encounter problems to call the repair firm.

The first notice which went up gives three numbers. The second notice gave a number where a repair man can be reached 24-hours a day.

The most recent notice urges tenants who encounter lift problems not to 'reset' the lift themselves.

'This can make it hard for the repair man to identify what is wrong, so please leave the lift alone,' the notice reads.

Reset it? The lift has only so many buttons which tenants can press.

As for the notices with all the phone numbers, I assume they have gone up in the lift so that we can call for help should we get stuck in there. Let's hope we can still get a cellphone signal out.

Yet still the problem persists. A hand-written sign telling me the lift was broken was posted on the ground floor when I went down yesterday afternoon.

Someone forgot to remove the sign. The lift had been fixed since the notice went up, as I had just travelled downstairs in the thing.

Nor is the problem confined to our building. The lift in the car-parking building at the far end of the complex has also broken several times in the last week.

Do lifts go peculiar in hot weather? Perhaps the condo needs to change its lift repairers. At this rate, they could move office to our condo, and rarely be out of work.

Swimming surprise

Maiyuu and I have gone swimming together in the condo pool twice over the last two days.

What's going on? Once, he couldn't be bothered even leaving the condo. Maiyuu appears to be opening up to the world, and even to his boyfriend, which is always welcome.

We have lived together in Bangkok for nine years, but until our first visit to the condo pool the other day, I had never seen Maiyuu swim.

In fact, I didn't think he could swim.

Years ago, when visiting Sataheep on the Chon Buri coast together, he declined to enter the sea with me. I had to go in alone, while he stayed on the beach, smoking with his friends. 'I am not a strong swimmer,' he said.

Since then, we haven't been near a beach or pool together - until he asked me the other day if he could accompany me on my morning swim.

Actually, I rarely do strokes. As befits an old person, mainly I just soak my bones.

However, I was delighted to find that not only can Maiyuu swim - freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke - he's actually rather good.

'How did you learn to swim?' I asked. 'Did you take lessons at school?'

'No lessons...I just watched the way other people do it.'

'I thought you told me you couldn't swim...'

'I can swim, I'm just not good at it,' he replied.

Maiyuu has worn a different pair of swimming briefs to the pool each day. He also dons a pair of Louie the Fly-style swimming goggles.

On day one, he let me put my arms under his body, to guide him through the water like a torpedo.

'This way, you don't have to swim at all,' I said.

The pool is mainly free of people during the day, which is the way we like it.

Condo staff barely look at us...they must be used to the sight of us by now. One middle-aged tenant gave me a long look as we walked past her place to the pool.

If I owned a gay wedding ring, I would have flashed it at the nosy woman, to let her know we were a couple, not just casual friends of the night.

Actually, I don't own a ring from Maiyuu. Nor am I married to him.

We are not about to get married. Still, we might be able to do something about the ring.

Stuffed squid, vacant looks

'You never knew my mother, but you are lucky - you get to taste her best recipes, through me,' boyfriend Maiyuu told me.

Maiyuu last night made a dish of stuffed squid, just like his mother used to make it.

His mother, who was a terrific cook, used to make it when Maiyuu was a boy.

Maiyuu remembers how good it tasted, and last night set about making the dish himself.

In the afternoon, we went to the Central department store on Rama 3 to buy the ingredients.

Maiyuu says our local Tops supermarket did not have everything he needed. He cycled down there in the morning to buy the squid from a fresh market opposite. He bought the mince, coriander and other things he needed at the Central supermarket.

Like the Tops supermarket, the one at Central is also within walking distance, as Maiyuu discovered yesterday. We argued while I was there, which resulted in him having to walk back alone. He had run out of money to get home, and stormed off before I could give it to him.

I went home by taxi, while he walked. He turned up 10 minutes after me. We argued again, he locked himself in his room, but within another two hours, it was over.

Before making the stuffed squid dish in the evening, he whipped up a Mexican tortilla for us each. Those ingredients also came from the supermarket at Central.

Why did we argue? After finishing at the supermarket, we walked around the shops on the upper floors.

Maiyuuu reckons I was walking in a daze, which annoyed him. I told him I would window-shop in any manner I chose - dazed, fully alert, or whatever.

As I say, we put that argument behind us. It just wasn't worth dwelling on.