The farang nester: No, Thais don't need more houses

My computer has developed VDU problems.

This blog post, which I am writing on boyfriend Maiyuu’s machine, may look terse. I am having trouble getting used to his keyboard, the mad angle at which his VDU is tilted in relation to the desk…

I have taken some terrific pictures of dishes he has made over the past couple of days – including a Thai delicacy based on an old recipe which is virtually unique to the province where he was raised – but they will have to wait until my own computer is repaired.

Brief description? The VDU will not display. Occasionally it flashes small, alternating messages on the top left: ‘Analogue…Digital’…

It also tells me to check my signal cable, which of course I have done.

Last night I Googled the problem: ‘HP computer, VDU won’t display’…

I found instances of other HP computer owners reporting the same VDU woe, but the circumstances were different, and the cure too techy-sounding for me.

Maiyuu will look for a computer repairman who fixes computers at the customer's home. I am tired of lugging the hard-drive into town; let him come here.

The last repair guy who came to our home to repair my computer charged a flat B1,000, which is reasonable. However, his swag-bag of fixes to computer ills was light. ‘Reboot…reboot!’

Most problems do not require such a drastic solution, but for many Thai technicians, it is the first one which presents itself. I wonder why?

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'I am in love with a Thai guy….we have just met, but I want to buy him a house.’ I read that somewhere.

The sheltering instinct among farang must be strong. We want to protect, provide for the ones we love.

Yet a house?

We don’t yet know what the Thai expects of us. He has his own friends and family, his own life.

We assume he expects the same things, but it may not be true. Never mind, the farang thinks: Few sensible boys would say no to their own home, especially when the person buying it visits only occasionally.

Status! Freedom!

Yet is it really necessary to invest so heavily in the relationship?

The farang should ask himself why he wants to buy a house for someone he barely knows. It could be any of the following:

1. For his own convenience (somewhere to stay)

2. To provide

2. To ensure the BF's loyalty

Most farang know what they can expect of relationships in the West. We don’t buy a house for a guy as soon as we have met him.

Perhaps because we do not understand Thais as well as we do fellow farang, love in the Land of Smiles holds out more hope. Surely the same rules do not apply?

And even if they do – if I just throw a house at the problem, maybe everything will sort itself out?

Crepe diet-buster, pean to pea sprouts, English awfulisms

Yes, I know...something about me being on a diet.

I recall mentioning it, and in fact yesterday made a dedicated effort to eat less.

Normally, like Thais, I graze. I could probably do with less grazing, I thought, if I really want to cut weight.

So, out goes afternoon grazing. I allow myself a reasonable meal in the morning. Then I go for exercise. After that, I eat tiny amounts until evening when I leave for work.

At work, I eat two proper meals, and then have another when I get home – but I excuse that eating, as I am using my brain at that hour and need the food for energy.

Boyfriend Maiyuu made the dish you see above for dinner. Being a good dieter, I ate the crepes.

I saved the other portion (which you can't see above), minced pork and basil leaf served on rice, for breakfast this morning.

Okay, now for the crepes: They are home-made, as is the salad stuffing inside. The stuffing was made from pea sprouts, carrot, spicy Chinese sausage, and avocado. Maiyuu drizzled a sauce on top, made of mayonnaise, lemon, sugar, spring onion and olive oil.

In Thai, ‘pea sprouts’ go by the beautiful name tor meiow (โต้วเหมี่ยว). The first time I heard Maiyuu say it, I had to ask him to repeat it, as I had not heard it before. He fished the container from the fridge. In Thai writing, the words look as pretty as they sound.

I looked it up on the net. The Thai author of this (link harvested - it died) illustrated webboard post agrees: it is indeed a snazzy name for a salad vegetable (ผักชื่อเก๋ โต้วเหมี่ยว).

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Dieting plays around with the head. My body knows I am playing tricks, and not feeding it enough.

When I arrived at work last night, I was so hungry I felt frantic. I bought kaow pad naem (ข้าวผัดแหนม – fried rice with fermented sausage) from a corner shop.

It tasted so much better, after hours of eating virtually nothing.

Last night I fancied my appetite was contracting, if not my stomach. How long does it take for the stomach bag to start shrinking, if you regularly deprive it of its usual fill?

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‘I feel annoyed. Very annoyed.’

This is a blog, not a style guide to the English language. However, I would like to sound off about those writers who insist on adopting silly melodramatic tricks such as the one above when they want to create emphasis.

In recent weeks, I have found this device in blogs, in messages at work, even in emails.

No one speaks in this constipated, immature manner, but they do adopt the device when they write. Can they think of no better way to express themselves?

Here’s another Illustration:

‘I feel very bad about this language device. Very bad.’

The writer must think we are stupid. He wants to create emphasis, but the only way he can think to do it is to break off the intransitive verb 'feel', hive it into a separate sentence with its own intensifier ‘very’, then repeat it – as if we were too dim to get it the first time.

What happened in between the first sentence and the second – or did he just forget the ‘very’ part the first time he wrote it?

Why not keep it simple?

‘I feel bad about this English device.’

Or, if you really must:

‘I feel very bad about this English device.’

How do you measure 'very’ anyway?

After that, of course, you can tell us why.

Coming down with a bug

Maiyuu and I both appear to be coming down with a bug. We do not feel too ‘functional’ at the moment.

When I am sick, I like to talk about it. The boyfriend prefers to shut down and sleep.

After spending the last two days sleeping on and off most of the day, today he declares he is feeling better. I hope it lasts.

My bug is still coming, I fear.

When I am sick, I also like to talk to myself. Last night I was sitting in bad chattering to myself once every few minutes, which is up from my usual rate of a few times an hour.

‘You must be getting sick,’ I told myself. Why else would I be chattering alone in such a busy fashion?

I hope my brain has some good topics lined up. An old wives tale says ‘Three days to get a bug, three days to have it, and three days to lose it’.

I am only on day three, which means I have another six days left to go. Will the stock of conversation topics last? If it doesn’t, I might have to start repeating myself. But if I am that sick, probably I won’t notice.

Persistent gym caller

‘Does your power keep going off? My neighbour Farang C asked in a text message.

‘No...but then we get our power bill, and pay it,’ I replied.

Farang C and I rent places next to each other in the same condo building. He says the owner of his place gets his utility bills, pays them on his behalf, then asks him for a refund later.

However, she's overseas at the moment, so the job has fallen to her boyfriend. He rarely shows his face at farang C's place.

Farang C would rather get the bills and pay them himself. That way he can make sure they are actually paid, and that his utilities won’t get cut off. ‘I haven’t seen a power or water bill in months,’ he grumbled, as he checked his mail slot next to the lift.

He’s not sure if the owner has been paying the bills, as he won’t send them by mail, or bring them around for his inspection.

One day, he could wake up and find his utilities have been cut off because the owner forgot to pay.

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Boyfriend Maiyuu likes to keep our home phone unplugged. I like to keep the jack inserted.

We both fear bad news, it seems, but I can’t see the point in delaying it. What if my family were to need me suddenly?

For the benefit of my Thai boyfriend, I put these things in stark terms.

‘My father is getting old. I have to keep the phone plugged in, in case he dies and my mother needs to call,’ I tell him.

He is unconvinced. Whenever he wants to use the phone, usually to order food from a nearby restaurant, he plugs it in.

As soon as his transaction is finished, he pulls out the plug again.

Maiyuu does it so quickly, and with such deftness of hand, that he thinks I haven’t noticed.

But my trained ear has become good at distinguishing the sound of the handset hitting the cradle (‘thud’) and the ‘click’ of him yanking out the cord at the back.

I just know he’s done it, and I am seldom wrong.

While he was out yesterday, I plugged in the phone, just in case someone wanted to make contact.

A few hours passed, and the thing rang.

‘Hello?’

A Thai answered.

Relief. Dad’s day will come, but this was not it.

‘Gabble, gabble...’

The right side of my brain can’t have been working. When I held the phone to my ear, I couldn’t understand what he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Yes? I thought I may as well sound final about it. He sounded like a salesman, so I harried him off my phone.

I regretted my assertiveness when I heard his parting words.

‘...service charge.’

God, what had I just agreed? Wild thoughts filled my head.

Thai: ‘Oh, this is the power man. Your bill is unpaid. We want to cut off your power. Is that okay?’

Farang: ‘Yes.’

Maiyuu was out most of the day. When I saw him again late last night, I told him about the mysterious caller who wanted his service charge.

‘That will be the gym. I have an outstanding bill of two to three months, going back since I last visited the place more than a year ago,’ said Maiyuu matter-of–factly.

He was cooking. Reluctant as I am to interrupt the master while he is at work, I pressed on.

‘How much is that?’

‘About 4,000-5,000 baht,’ he said.

No wonder they are keen to get it back, I thought. How could Maiyuu leave such a large bill outstanding for so long?

‘I have told them many times that they should deduct the bill from the deposit I left with them when I took out my membership, but they refuse,’ said Maiyuu.

‘They say I have to go in there myself, but if I do that they will try to persuade me to join for another year.’

‘How much was the deposit?’ I asked. Maiyuu used the Thai word for ‘insurance’, but I am sure it amounts to the same thing.

‘The same amount, within a few baht,’ he replied.

Shortly after we moved in to our new place, someone started calling our home number regularly. Maiyuu would mutter a few words, and quickly hang up. Then he would unplug the phone.

Now I know who it was – the same pesky caller from the gym, trying to get Maiyuu to pay his bill and renew his membership.

‘I don’t know how they found our new number, but they have been calling for months, and won’t stop,’ Maiyuu grumbled.

This is one Thai muddle I shall have to let him sort out himself.

Maiyuu stopped visiting the gym more than a year ago - and with fees as steep as those, I am pleased he did. Now I know why he likes to keep the phone unplugged.

If I was Maiyuu, I would still want to visit the gym and clear up the problem. But then I am a tidy farang. Thais don't always think like us.

'Tell them some handsome farang has offered to take you overseas, so you won’t need to renew your membership,’ I suggested.

‘They won’t believe me,’ he said.

Recycled reader reaction

Anon the Shrink sent a message disputing my assertion that according to him, gay blogs should all be set in a sauna. I deleted him.

Another courageous anonymous poster sent me a bitchy message telling me how to write an interesting blog (by implication, this is not it).

1. No cooking. Really.
2. Entertainment news...no more than 10%
3. ...

I can’t remember the last part, but it was something about my not leading an interesting life. I deleted him too ('recycled' his comment, if I am being PC).

Anon, I suspect, assumes that I am writing a gay blog. I am not writing exclusively for this group; if I was, I probably would have to set it in a gay sauna, and make sure at least one Thai guy I meet there licks the back of my ear.

I am also writing for young people who like reading about Thai stars. To their credit, they are not interested in whether this blog has a gay theme; they are prepared to read my entertainment news regardless. This is a large and growing reader ‘cohort’, and many of them are women.

I want more women readers; I want fewer bitchy queens with nothing better to do than complain. Can someone arrange it, please?

As for the tales of domestic life with my boyfriend, including the posts on his sumptuous cooking, they are there to impress upon the jaded gay farang readership that a Thai/farang couple can enjoy each other’s company happily, without the need for sauna or gay bar distractions. They can lead a settled, stable life.

Am I making fun of my readers? Not all of you, because not all of you are nasty, bitchy queens with an axe to grind.

Am I challenging stereotypes of what it means to be a gay foreigner in Thailand? Of course. Why should gay life here be any different from elsewhere?

A gay website which ran my piece on Thai boxing star Worapoj Petchkoom (วรพจน์ เพชรขุ้ม) the other day sent me more than 100 readers yesterday. Most are new visitors, and I am sure couldn’t give a toss whether I run cooking pictures, or what my ‘take’ is on Thai life.

They just want to see the boxer take off his clothes. Blogs cater to many diverse groups of readers; not all are foreigners who rarely step outside the sauna or gay bar.

And even if they are that type, so what? Most visitors read this blog without complaint, and if they do get sick of it, act as any sensible, discriminating person would: they leave.