Savings scheme in a box

We have embarked on a household savings scheme - B1,000 every pay day - to create a small income buffer should one of us need an urgent visit to the dentist, or meet some other unexpected big-bill expense.

It is something we should have started years ago. Previously, I would ask my parents to send me savings from overseas.

I don't like using that money for anything other than truly deserving cases. A dentist's bill, for example, while no doubt important, is still just routine spending, even if a toothache does arrive unexpectedly.

Maiyuu went shopping while I was at work last night.

Today he presented me with a simple handmade wooden box.

Not knowing what it was, I opened it - and found a B1,000 note inside, which he offered as the first instalment in our savings plan.

'You lovely kid,' I said, and gave him a big kiss.

Maiyuu says he understands the need to save, and is willing to help me do it. I wasn't sure I'd be able to get him to agree...it is so much easier to just live for the day, after all.

I know I should deposit the money securely in a bank, but I want to see the notes piling up every week.

Deposit interest rates are so miserable these days that whether I keep it in a bank, hidden under the mattress, or left in my little box really makes little difference.

Patient, medicate thyself

A reader emailed asking for the names of the medicine which the doctor prescribed to treat my fungal rash.

I replied saying I didn't have the names, as doctors here (at least at the slummy clinics I visit) don't tell you what you are getting.

They scribble something on a notepad, which staff at the prescription counter process.

They put your pills in clear plastic sachets, such as those pictured here. The sachets will usually tell you how often you have to take pills, but not what they are.

My doctor gave me a month's prescription for three types of pills, and a small container of ointment, which you can see pictured (sorry, I have since deleted the pics by mistake).

In the West, some GPs (we have no GPs here, either - just doctors who work in hospitals) can send electronically a patient's prescription to the pharmacy across the road. It will be there before the patient is.

Needless to say, the patient knows what he is getting. Doctors usually say so, and if they don't, the pharmacist will.

Thailand is years behind, but never mind. That's why we are here, right? For the innocent olde world charm of the place. As patients, we don't mind being kept in the dark.

I told the doctor the names of the store-bought skin creams which I had been applying to my rash.

'Don't take them! They are for surface allergies, 'he said.

'The more you put those creams on, the worse your rash will get!'

I didn't know. At the slum chemists where I bought them (I visited two places in a shophouse close to my home), I described the rash briefly, and the owners recommended I buy those those creams.

How were they to know that it was a fungal rash, not an allergy-related one or mere surface skin abrasion? How was I to know that rashes come in different stripes?

In this case, despite the inadequacies of the Thai public medical system, I am pleased I eventually visited a doctor, rather than attempting to self-medicate any longer. It just doesn't work, unless you know what you are doing.

PS: Yes, the rash is getting better.

Dashiell Hammett rides again

I have been the doctor, and am now walking normally again. That was a dramatic opener, wasn't it?

Still, it's true. My groin rash had become so bad last night that I was hobbling about the place, stooped over like a mossy old man. 'Go the doctor!' Maiyuu implored.

At 7.30pm, I dressed myself, slowly and laboriously. Even doing up the buttons on my shirt was a chore.

Maiyuu kicked me out the door, so I had no choice but to limp out to find a motorcycle guy. I felt like a detective hero in a corny crime novel - a lone guy struggling against a windswept, hostile universe.

I had planned to visit the doctor when his clinic opened at 6pm, but then the savage rains came. I waited until they had abated, then staggered out into the unfriendly night.

Oops, there I go again. I really must stop this gay man's tendency to over-dramatise the simplest of things.

On the back of the motorbike, I held up my small portable umbrella to give us cover from the rain. We were going too fast for the poor thing, which turned inside out against the force of the wind.

I folded it up and tucked it under my arm instead, then thought of myself: I am like that helpless umbrella.

At the medical clinic - an outreach centre run by my old friends at Chulalongkorn Hospital, in a slum area close to where I live, I waited with nervous anticipation until my name was called.

Relief! The sole doctor on duty was a man, who had treated me on one previous occasion, for a grisly eye growth.

Okay, I exaggerate. From memory, it was a mere skin tag. On the same eyelid, I had also developed a cyst, caused by an infected sweat gland. He plunged a needle into my eyelid, and the problem went away.

Normally, young women doctors staff the place. While they are always pleasant company, I did not fancy taking off my pants to show a woman my groin rash. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to strip for a man.

'Give me a look?' said the doctor, a chirpy man in his 30s who despite his youth had greying teeth.

I showed him my horror rash. Red, angry, and swollen, it had spread beyond my groin and was now climbing up my legs like a rodent up a drainpipe in Bubonic-plague era Europe.

'It's a fungal infection,' he declared cheerfully, while writing me a lengthy prescription of skin pills, ointment, and shampoo.

Hammett

'Is it diet-related, or perhaps an allergic reaction to chlorine from the condo pool?' I asked anxiously.

The doctor tapped his brown, stumpy teeth. 'Chlorine? The stuff on our teeth?'

No, I thought. The doctor's question brought me crashing back down to earth. Gone were the fanciful thoughts that I was stuck in some hardboiled detective novel set in 19th century England, or even one in mystery writer Dashiell Hammett's era, 1930s America (I read him as a kid). This could only be one place.

Only in Thailand, the cynic in me thought, could a doctor mistake fluoride for chlorine.

No matter. A day after starting my treatment regime, the rash is much better, the stoop is gone, and I am walking almost normally again.

Now I will have to find some new problem to fret about. Global warming? The sorry state of the blogosphere?

Bring it on. I'm ready for anything, sir. Just let me fetch my dirty trench coat and fedora.

Silom darkness closing in, speck of light from the BBC

No food pictures today, but images (through the bird netting) of the early evening view from our place instead.

Boyfriend Maiyuu took these shots of the Silom skyline last night as the skies were closing in and rain approached.

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Thai-based blogger Western Observer has a post up for foreigners wondering how to watch BBC TV channels in Thailand. He rents space on a UK-based VPN hosting provider, which allows him to watch BBC programmes via its iPlayer service.

The BBC normally bars people outside the country from watching its shows on the internet.

However, if you rent space on a UK-based VPN hosting provider, you can log in to your account and gain access to iPlayer via the server instead.

I tried getting access to iPlayer at the BBC's website yesterday using an ordinary proxy server, which didn't work. It knew I was trying to get access to the programmes from outside the country, and told me to go away.

You can read Western Observer's post here (link harvested - it died).

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Martin Scorsese's The Departed gave me bad dreams last night. I didn't start to get decent sleep until about 5am. I stopped watching soon after Jack Nicholson's character, Frank Costello, gets shot. That unpleasant scene by the dumpster haunted me all night.

The only character I enjoyed in that film was the comically foul-mouthed Sean Dignam, played by Mark Wahlberg. I could have done with more of him, and much less of the blood and guts. I could also have done with a better night's sleep.

Escaping the heat, flying farang, Beeb revisited

'I am just sitting inside waiting for the electricity men to finish fixing the pole,' a Thai woman said.

My neighbour was chatting on the phone. I heard her conversation through an open window, as I leant out my own window to take a picture.

The young woman was hiding indoors to escape the heat, after the power company yesterday cut our power for five hours.

To get the picture, I held my hand out the window and pointed the camera in the general direction of a group of electricity workers, who had mounted a power pole and were doing things with the wires.

Unfortunately, you can't see the power workers in the picture - I can't have leaned out far enough. They were the whole point of my taking this image, but never mind. Still, you get a good view of the side of our place (I posted the pic here, but I since deleted it accidentally - sorry).

The power men were fixing several poles in a side street. I heard them calling out orders to each other, so they could get the repairs done at speed.

My neighbour Farang C went out to a local eatery to escape the heat. I visited the condo pool, on the 10th floor of the car-parking building. The power cut also cut power to the lifts in the complex, so it was a good day for exercising our feet.

On the way back, I met one of the cleaners.

'Did you walk down?' she asked.

No, dear - I jumped.

We stood outside our condo building, one of many in the complex. The cleaner knows I live on one of the upper floors, almost as high up as the pool on the other building.

'Will you walk up?' she asked.

No, dear - I shall fly.

After my swim, boyfriend Maiyuu and I asked how we might put the day to good use.

Being good Bangkok citizens, we decided to pack a bag and make a day of it: take in a movie, then walk to a park and visit a local temple.

I lie. No, we didn't. We're not that bloody earnest.

Maiyuu's pizza

After my hour or so by the condo pool, I came home to find Maiyuu cooking.

Howzat? I had forgotten about our gas cooker. You can't keep a good cook down, Maiyuu included.

He made Japanese-style pizza, which you can see nearby. The soft base was made with two types of flour, mixed with vegetables.

By lunchtime, the power was back on.

In mid-afternoon, he made a Korean-style pizza with kimchi (pickled vegetable). Last night, I took another one with me to work.

Back from the office, I found Maiyuu had been busy in the kitchen again. He made a wholesome tomato and vegetable soup for my meal before bed.

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Since the True satellite TV service pulled BBC Entertainment, some foreigners who want their daily dose of the Beeb have found inventive ways around the problem.

True's Platinum package included BBC entertainment before the provider axed the channel from its line-up.

Some creative foreigners have now cancelled their Platinum package, but are still watching the BBC, with a little help from technology.

Farang C has a friend from Britain, who, refusing to concede defeat, now watches BBC programmes here via BBC's own iPlayer, which only works in Britain.

He lives in Bangkok, so to get around the problem, rents an IP address in the UK.

He pays for one with a Paypal card, for the equivalent of just B300 a month. The BBC thinks it is sending the programmes to a local IP, even though it is not.

Farang C visited his friend the other day. They watched BBC programmes on his computer which aired in Britain just the night before.

For a small investment, he can buy a cable connection from his computer to his TV, so he can watch the BBC on the big screen instead.

As I understand it, he can download files from the BBC and watch them any time he likes, though downloads (as opposed to live streaming) have a shelf life of just one week.

As I say, BBC's iPlayer only works in the UK, but if you rent a UK-based IP address, then the Beeb doesn't know any different.

I need more information. At the moment, the boyfriend sounds less than enthused. Unless I can watch the shows easily on a TV screen, then I probably won't bother either. I spend enough time in front of a computer as it is.