One side of Bangkok you don't want to see

I found him lying prone in this soi, down by the second power line

Maiyuu has now picked up my head cold.

I will return the interest he has shown in me over the last few days as I myself suffered with this bug.

He has not asked me once how I am feeling, and only mentioned the subject twice.

It is no fun being ill, as we all know. But if a loved one asks after our health, it can make us feel so much better.

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I was about to step over what I took to be a pile of household or shop waste when I heard it moan.

Thais leave their waste on the sidewalk for rubbish men to remove. It was late at night, and visibility in the deserted street was poor.

I looked down and found I was actually stepping over a thin, bare-chested man.

He was lying face down on the road, making hoarse, gasping sounds.

This was not the groaning of a drunk, sleeping off a hard night on the footpath, but a hair-raising, deep in the soul noise which sounded almost inhuman.

As he exhaled, his spindly chest heaved. ‘Hooooaaaarrr...’

I have never heard anything like it, except in dogs.

Occasionally I come across lame street dogs so racked with disease they can no longer move.

They look beyond help, though probably not beyond sympathy.

The man looked in his 60s and wore a loincloth, but nothing on his feet.

He was lying outside a dilapidated shop, about 50m down the road from a 7-11 store I had come to visit in urgent need of grocery items.

A woman in her 50s sat inside her aged shop, watching him sucking dust.

Perhaps she knew the man, or perhaps he had crawled down the street and ended up there.

'Leave him alone, dear,' she advised. She watched him intently, but showed no other interest.

Where in some circumstances I might stop and offer help, this was just too far gone.

Before sunrise, someone will have packed him up and taken him away, just like those mounds of rubbish on the street.

Back at home, I told Maiyuu about my slum-side encounter.

‘He’s mad...there’s plenty of them around here. Don’t go messing with him,’ he said.

Christmas cheer (not)

I have a head and chest cold, which is no way to celebrate Christmas. Maiyuu and I have also run out of money, so will have to scrimp and pare until pay day arrives in the middle of next week.

I worked yesterday and on Christmas Eve. Walking down the condo entrance towards home last night I noticed a Christmas tree standing proudly in the window of an upper-storey unit. The fairy lights blinked at me from above.

We have no Christmas tree ourselves this year, possibly because we threw the old one out when we moved months ago. So, no cheery reminders of Christmas there.

My office held its Christmas party the other day. As the beer flowed, I felt some seasonal cheer towards my colleagues, but not much. We are in the midst of a restructuring exercise, which could drag on for months yet.

On the day of the office party, I left home at 12.45pm, getting home about 10pm.

I felt sorry for Maiyuu, sitting alone in the condo all day. He does not work, so has to miss out.

This is the season to be jolly, or so they say. I am trying to imagine how my parents, brother and sisters are spending Christmas in the company of their friends and families.

I wish I could share the festive season with them too, as my family and I have spent too many years apart.

One day, we will have to do a ‘catch up’, as the young like to say. Lives are passing by. Where am I?

Beef/pineapple BBQ disaster

A small disaster at Maiyuu's birthday party!

We grilled beef strips on a gas-powered, tabletop hotplate. Maiyuu had prepared the beef in advance by sautéing it in pineapple. Unfortunately, he left the beef in with the pineapple too long...it turned to mush when we tried cooking it.

Maiyuu made another trip to the supermarket and bought more beef to replace the other stuff, which he reckons he can turn into hamburger meat.

He invited as guests his friend Golf, her younger sister Som, and their elder brother Bee. Jumbo the Chihuahua accompanied them as special guest.

They also brought birthday cake, with Maiyuu’s name written in icing on top, along with the number ‘35’.

‘What’s the 35 stand for?’ Maiyuu asked.

‘I didn’t know your age, so I just guessed,’ said Som.

Does Maiyuu, who turned 32 yesterday, really look so old?

Kong, Phiwit make soppy exit

The romantic gay coupling between Kong and Phiwit has ended happily, viewers will be pleased to hear.

The final episode of Tomorrow, I’ll Still Love You aired last night. Kong and Phiwit shared a brief scene at the end, as their story really drew to a close the night before.

As in any good soap opera, the bad people get their deserts, the heroes win out in the end. Kong’s sister Aom, the female lead, survives a jealous rampage by evil witch Pattamat.

Phiwit’s dastardly brother Phipat ends up paralysed, though thankfully for Phiwit, he will have to spend the rest of his days in hospital rather than under his own care.

Phiwit tells Kong that surgeons in the US are sure they can restore Kong’s sight back to normal.

‘But will you still want me in your life once you can see again?’ asks Phiwit jokingly.

Kong, who is blind, trips, and Phiwit arrests his fall. Kong ends up in his arms.

‘You are tripping up all over the place,’ he scolds Kong playfully.

‘So you don't like it...tripping [falling head over heels] in love,’ Kong replies.

Watch their final scenes together here.

Sweeping out work worries

When work gets stressful, I like to reach for a broom.

No, not a management broom, the type which executives use to sweep out unwanted staff...but an ordinary household broom which we use to remove dirt.

The Thai-owned company which employs me is embarking on a restructuring and modernising phase. We have been through several of these in my time, but none seem as potentially wide-ranging as this one, which is brought about partly by the recession, and partly by the internet age, which is changing the way many companies do business.

A handful of Thai staff has been shown the door. One staff member dissolved in tears when the company told him he was no longer wanted. Like one or two other names on the list, he drew a wage every fortnight but hadn’t been seen in the office in years.

My company has an internationalist perspective, in that it employs foreigners and values what we do. It has also asked us to contribute to the debate over the company’s direction, which is welcome.

In my industry, it is probably one of the more far-sighted companies in Bangkok, if not the region.

Some of my foreigner colleagues have worked elsewhere in Asia. They say they were treated little better than poor migrant workers.

That said, we do have our problems. One is a lack of staff morale, which is inevitable in times of change. Worse, they axed our mid-year and end-year bonus, which upset my boyfriend as much as it did me.

‘Why don’t they just fold the company altogether, if they can’t afford to pay their staff a miserable two weeks’ extra?’ Maiyuu said bitterly.

In times like these, as I say, I like to clean, starting with the floors. I can work out my frustration on them.

I swept the floor of the main room this morning, and tackled the bathroom. Later today, I am likely to get the bedroom itch.

‘It’s another form of exercise,’ I tell the boyfriend, who looks baffled when I tell him that I want to sweep. It also helps keep my work worries at bay.

’Why bring your work problems home...you’ve finished for the day,’ says Maiyuu.

True, I have. But to be good at my job, I have to think about work most of the time. It is always with me, even when it isn’t.

My foreigner friends are the same; it’s just the way we are. Do Thais think about work even when they are not at the office?

I have never asked, but I bet some do. It occupies a big chunk of our lives after all.