Please don't make me a soldier

'I am sure they won’t pick me as a soldier,’said Ball.

'I won't be...I can’t be.’

My young friend from the slums is trying to convince himself that when he reports for the conscription draw early next month, he won’t be among the unlucky lads chosen to serve the nation for two years.

Thai men in their 21st year must report to the military. If they pass the height requirement and a health check, they are eligible to take part in a conscription draw.

The military asks for conscripts in districts where the number of people applying to enter service as soldiers fails to reach quota.

If a young man pulls a red slip, he has to serve as a conscript, in most cases for two years. If he draws a black slip, as most do, he can breathe a sigh of relief and resume his normal life.

Ball’s elder brother Boy recently finished his conscription service, and has returned to his old job as an air con engineer. Life was so tough as a conscript soldier that he doesn’t want Ball to have to go through it himself.

Ball’s girlfriend Jay is pregnant, expecting their first child in four months.

‘Soon you will be a father, and your brother has served before you...do they not grant exemptions?’ I asked Ball.

‘The military doesn’t care that I am about to start a family, ‘ he said sadly. Few exemptions are granted, other than on health grounds.

He just has to hope that few conscripts are needed in his district. Hopefully, many slum lads want to sign up, so the military won’t need many more soldiers to fill quota.

His friend Y wanted to be a soldier, but fell short of the military’s height requirements, so was rejected. Ball, who is 160cm tall, is tall enough to serve, so cannot hope for mercy there.

Dental patient needs ears cleaned

As part of this blog's fifth anniversary celebrations, I thought I would try something a little different. Starting today, I will experiment with writing daily posts.

Posts will appear as short, concentrated shots, like strong coffee.

My blog tracker tells me that 10 % of readers view the blog on mobile platforms, including telephones. I am sure they will appreciate shorter pieces, as they will have to do less scrolling down to get to the end.

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As I get older, I need to have things written down.

I visited the dentist in the Thon Buri market where Maiyuu and I used to live.

We moved into town 18 months ago, but I still visit my old dentist because he is so good.

Anyway, I went to see him with an aching molar on my right side. It has been throbbing away for weeks, and I didn’t know what was wrong.

'I wish you had come to see me earlier...you have left it so late, you have a huge infection,’ he said.

The dentist diagnosed me with an abscess under the tooth. I was so pleased to hear that it was just a gum infection, rather than a problem with the tooth (which was filled years ago), that I gave him a jovial thumbs up.

‘Actually, it’s not such good news...not good at all,’ he said.

I should have taken heed.

After lancing the boil, or whatever dentists do with infected gums, the dental nurse told me not to eat on the tooth for half an hour.

Well, I thought that’s what she said. In my old man’s fug, I misconstrued her direction.

It was actually: ‘After half an hour, you can rinse your mouth. But try to avoid eating on that aside, and we’ll see you next week.’

In succeeding days, I did eat on that side, with the result that the pain spread to my tooth. I was in so much pain, I called the dentist and made an appointment to see him one day early.

‘You have cracked the tooth, which we will now have to extract. The roots are long. It’s such a difficult job, you will need surgery,’ he pronounced grimly.

‘Why didn’t you listen?’ he asked.

I did...well, I thought I did. Can ‘t you write these things down?

As I get older, I can only take one sentence at a time.

Surgery is on Saturday.

Drowning worries at the rat tent

‘At the moment, she has no money...not even to eat. She doesn’t want to show her face at a time of such suffering.’

That cheery message popped up on my phone after I texted a woman friend, Pong, asking if she would like a drink.

We meet at a small rat-infested, mosquito-bitten shop close to my work.

The shop has a truck yard on one side, and a decrepit railway line on the other. Let's just say it has atmosphere.

That curious text message about suffering, written in the third person, arrived on my phone moments later.

Was Pong, a plumpish woman aged 35, trying to tell me she has no money, and needs my help?

Pong has a young daughter, and also looks after her mother. She lives in the slums, works at an oil depot, and finds it hard to make ends meet.

I recall our first conversation: ‘I look after my mother and a six-year-old daughter. The father is no longer with us, as I threw him out. He liked alcohol too much,’ she said.

We met two weeks ago when a farang friend and I dropped in to the rat tent, as we call it, for a quick beer after work.

She must like farang, or their money...I am not sure which. She applied mosquito repellent to our arms and legs almost without asking, fetched us our drinks, and asked if she could join us.

My farang friend is married, and apart from that has no Thai, so the task of communicating fell to me.

Pong and I met at the same place two or three times last week.

Boyfriend Maiyuu noticed changes in my behaviour, as I started turning up home later than normal.

‘You’re stuck on a man or a woman...I am not sure which,’ he said.

I told him about Pong. Maiyuu listened patiently, and asked me why I don’t mix more with farang friends, or at least well-off Thais.

‘Most Thais will want something from a farang they meet. There are hardly any who would mix with you for the sheer pleasure of your company,’ he said.

I started avoiding Pong.

For the next two nights, when I walked past our usual haunt on my way home, the place was empty.

At work last night, when my phone started ringing, I knew it would be her.

All girls like an entrance. How could she not follow up an SMS as angst-ridden and dramatic as the one she sent me a few hours before?

I did not take her calls, as I was busy. However, I was not surprised to find her sitting at the shop when I walked past an hour later.

‘Why don’t you take my calls? Even a simple message saying you are busy would be enough,’ she said.

‘I don’t like phones,’ I said.

For most Thais, my explanation about disliking phones is rarely enough, as they believe answering the phone should take priority over everything else, even work.

We drank a couple of beers as Pong told me about her financial problems.

‘I have a couple of close friends who help me whenever I have run out of money for food,’ she said.

‘My mother is ill, with heart problems, blood pressure, bad knees. She is a big woman and visits the doctor three or four times a week, but because of her size, she has to take taxis. That’s expensive,’ said Pong.

Pong wants to snag a mate who can help her alleviate the burden. She knows about Maiyuu, but doesn’t seem to care.

Three empty bottles were sitting on the table. ‘Who do they belong to?’ I asked, hoping she would not ask me to pay for them.

‘When I am stressed, I like to relax with friends. I was sitting with a couple of friends before you arrived,’ she said.

That was her way of saying, ‘Mine’. Not bad for a woman who has no money to eat, I thought.

‘I have a tab at this shop worth B1,000. Actually, it’s closer to B2,000,’ she said.

When I went to pay the bill, the woman running the shop turned to Pong, as she always does, to ask her what I should pay.

The intention is not to ask Pong whether she wants to help me pay for what we have just consumed.

It’s to ask her whether she wants me to pay for imbibing she has already done that night, even before I turned up.

‘Two bottles,’ she said.

Fair enough, as that’s what we drank. The other ones, she can add to her blasted tab.

Slum wall comes down

The flimsy block wall erected between my condo and the slum next it it is no more, after a group of slum teens knocked it down in the dead of night.

'It fell down by itself...the cement hadn’t yet dried,’ resident Tong insisted yesterday, as he told me the tale of the ill-fated wall.

I met Tong a few days ago amid a heightening drama between the slum community and owner of the land adjacent to the slum.

I knew what he meant. The wall needed a little help to come down, as it shouldn’t have gone up in the first place.

The slum wall stops slum residents getting out, and prevents residents from my condo gaining access to the slum. It also stops fire trucks getting access in the event of fires, which have broken out before, razing many homes.

A large piece of vacant land lies at right angles between the condo and the slum. Previously we could walk across the land to gain access to our closest shops, but they are sealing off that area off too.

The owners have hired a gang of workers from Esan to clear the land, the first step before housing goes up. One of their first jobs was to seal off with barbed wire access to the vacant land closest to my condo, but for a small gate.

The idea was to stop residents cutting across the vacant lot to the shops.

Then, two weeks ago they started sealing a wall they are building on the opposite side as well, which is home to an small open-air market, grocery shops and the local 7-11.

Once those gaps were sealed, gaining access to the shops was all but impossible, unless residents from my condo are willing to risk an excursion through the adjacent slum.

I am used to the slum, as Ball and his family live there. But for some residents, it is a different story.

I have found a few picking their way down narrow slum alleyways they would never once have dared visit, as they try to find another way across.

They gained their access from a narrow road which runs alongside the condo car-parking building.

When the workers on Monday put up a block wall at the end of that road sealing off the entrance to the slum, even that access route was closed off.

Fortunately, the wall was not up for long, as teens from the slum found their voice.

When I paid a visit to the site early yesterday, I found the nascent wall in ruins (see picture).

Tong, who has lived in the slum all his life and has kept a watchful eye on the wall goings-on, was sitting near the ruins when I came upon him and a middle-aged woman. She told us the story of what happened.

‘Last night, the spirit of a woman dressed in black visited the workers who put up that wall,’ she said, pointing to a row of builder’s huts on the vacant land, which the itinerant Esan gang erected to serve as their lodgings while working on the site.

‘She visited them in their sleep and forbade them from putting up the wall again.’

Tong, aged in his late 20s, looked as if he didn’t believe the woman.

‘Today the slum committee is meeting the land owner for talks about keeping the alleyway open,’ he said.

A few hours later, I heard a message broadcast over the slum loudspeakers. 'Residents are gathering a petition opposing the wall being erected again,' said the message, broadcast by the residents' slum committee.

I visited Ball’s place last night. While I was there, a resident from the committee dropped in with a petition, which she asked Ball’s mother to sign.

‘We’ve all signed it now,’ Mum said. ‘We want access to stay, as fire engines would need to use that route in the event of a slum fire,’ she said.

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Busy Ball spent the day in Bang Kapi, a good hour away on a bus, pursuing some hopeless work endeavour.

A Bangkok company hired him and his friend Y to set up booths selling flavoured milk in department stores.

The firm asked them to travel to Bang Kapi. After taking the bus, they had to hire a motorbike to take them to the place.

Ball quickly exhausted the B50 which his mother gave him for the day, and had to ask Y to help pay for their transport home.

‘We did not have enough money to eat, so had to go without food all day,’ he said.

Earlier, Ball applied to work for a company installing air conditioning machines. However, this was casual work only, and did not offer the prospect of a permanent job. He turned them down.

‘The flavoured milk people say they will look for work we can do closer to home, as Bang Kapi is too far,’ he said.

‘However, I do not expect they will call us back with anything. I could tell they were not really that interested,’ he said sadly.

‘I will top up the money your mother gives you to find work,’ I said.

‘I don’t want you going without meals. That’s ridiculous.’

Jumping slum walls

A large vacant piece of land next to this condo is being prepared for sale. Once, we could cross it to gain access to the closest shops around here, which do not amount to much, but are better than nothing.

They include the local 7-11, a small hairdresser’s where I have my hair cut, and a tiny shop where I buy whisky.

Now, the new owners – a group of local investors who are clearing the land for sale as housing sections – have put up a block wall blocking access closest to the shops.

In the last few days, they have also walled up access ways between my condo and the vacant land lying between us and the shops, which gave us quick short-cut access to the other side.

This threatens to make my forays into the slum area to see Ball and family an infrequent thing at best, as I will now be forced to take the long route...out the front of my condo rather than down the side, and a long hike along Pra Ram III before I can reach his place or the shops.

I stood and watched yesterday as a three-member gang put up a cement block wall across what was once a public road running alongside the side of the condo, which I could once take to give me direct access to the slum.

A man, woman and teenager put up the wall, possibly in contravention of city bylaws.

I can’t imagine it will be there long, as fire engines need this route to gain access to the slum in the event of fires. But it was annoying to watch them brazenly erect the thing nonetheless.

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I jumped the wall, while they were still building it, to pay a quick visit to the slum.

At Ball’s place, I found not the master himself, who was visiting a friend nearby, but his girlfriend Jay instead.

‘Ball was preparing to start work at a company installing air conditioning units this morning, but didn’t go,’ she said.

‘Last night a friend of his mother’s turned up. Mum bought ya dong, and Ball drank it with them. He drank too much, and this morning could not rise in time for work,’ she said.

I listened to Jay unload about her problem boyfriend for 15 minutes. Three months after he left his job as a bank messenger, he has yet to find new employment, because he appears to lack the willpower to work.

Jay is pregnant with their first child. When Jay went for an ultrasound test a few weeks ago, Ball took a blood test.

When the results came in, the doctor asked Jay if Ball worked with alcohol. ‘His blood alcohol level is way too high...if he’s not careful, this will be his first child, and his last, as could end up sterile,’ the doctor told Jay.

I have stopped providing money for him to drink, but he has found other sources, as I knew he would.

Now he drinks lao seua (pictured), a cheap and potent Chinese concoction widely available in the slum for 10 baht a shot.

Ball’s mother is seldom around, as she plays hi-lo during the day to supplement the family’s earnings.

‘Ball has plenty of role models at home...everyone but himself is working, some of them two jobs, but Ball does nothing,’ she said.

‘If I were you, I would consider going back to your own family in the North,' I replied. ‘You do not have much of a future here, as long as Ball is unwilling to work.’

I may have to pay a return visit, to reprimand my young man.

He has a child on the way, and has complained that his family is turning against him as he fritters his days away.

'His sister and her partner work hard, and their room - right next to ours - has a fridge, TV and laptop computer which they have bought with their earnings,' Jay said.

'Our room has nothing. Even the bedspread was bought by someone else.'

I left Jay just in time to jump over the near-completed wall between the slum and my place, which the builders were still assembling. Another five minutes, and I would have been too late.

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A teenager with sagging pants and big arm muscles was building the wall with two other workers.

He is handsome, and could be good company.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the young man who helped put up a wall between my place and the slum, where hapless Ball lives, ended up being my next pet project.