Öhrn Life Management

I lost my Debit Card the other day (well, night) I realized it the following morning. I log on to my Kasikorn Internet Bank in order to suspend my card. The service was unavailable but they give me a telephonenumber to call instead. I call them up, give them my account number and tell them that I need to suspend my card. No problem, my card gets suspended and I am being told that I can go to any K-bank branch and get a new card. 

I go to the branch at the beginning of our soi, I tell them what has happened and I sign an application form. 15 minutes later I have a working debit card in my hand.

Thailand is fantastic.

Earlier tonight we ordered McDonald’s. We phoned them and they delivered – in less than 10 minutes. Must have been a record. 

I asked them for a vegetarian burger. I was informed that they did not have any vegetarian burger per se, but I could order a Big Mac and have it done vegetarian. So I did. 

The vegetarian Big Mac arrived and I was curious to see what they had used to make it vegetarian. The answer was – nothing. They just took the meat out of a regular Big Mac… So it came with salad, dressing, cheese and bread. 

Vegetarian indeed.

Thailand can be fascinating and very interesting at times.

We have a maid. She comes to our house twice a week, and she is great. Absolutely terrific.

Usually she gets here around 10 in the morning which is fine. Today she arrived before eight… When I enter the kitchen she asks me:

“Ari make noice?”

Ari (Arirat) is of course her name and she uses that instead of “I”, all the time. She found our globe today, so takes it off the shelf and brings it to me and says:

“Ari, work here, far from Thailand!”

She points at The Cayman Island.

“Ari work, very far. I go alone. 24 hours on an airplane. Twelve hours to United Kingdom and twelve hours to Cayman Islands also. Very far.”

Me: “No one came with you?”

“NO ONE, Ari go alone”

“Wow, what an adventure.”

“Ad… what – Ari don’t understand…”

“Well you see Adventure is when you go and do something and you don’t really know what will happen or where you will go.”

“Ohh, but Ari read, Ari read sign. No problem.

I don’t know whether Facebook is good or bad. It takes up too much of everyone’s time, and what do we do? – do we keep up with old friends? Or do we only add thousands of applications?

I have two pending friends requests that I don’t know what to do with. People that I haven’t spoken to in fifteen years. And we hardly spoke then. Why didn’t we speak then? Why should we speak now? It’s not that I don’t really like them, or maybe it is… I just don’t dislike them, I am neutral, and here they come and knock on my door asking if they can come into my living room, sit down, look at my furniture, eat and drink while they look at pictures of my friends.

I think I will set up some criteria on who I will reconnect with and why.

I have started making a list.

Half way through the list – at least I think it is half way through – I am starting to think “is this snobbish?”

I stopped making the list and we’ll see if I’ll take it up again some day.

Today we went back to the police station to settle the agreement over the accident. We were going to meet the Policeman, Khun Natthapon, both insurance companies and the driver.

There are two insurance companies, one for health care and one for my bike, my clothes, sunglasses etc.

So Monday, we got to meet with the insurance company that deals with health care, and today both of them were there.

After a while I should say, we had agreed to meet at 10.30 at 12 the police man showed up and at 12.30 the insurance company handling the bike and stuff came in…

They were asking questions, taking pictures of my shoes, sunglasses, shorts and me. Again. Once again I had to strip out of my clothes – well, partially – and let them take pictures of the bruises and the wounds.

Then they were pretty fast, filling out the forms, having me sign the new report, where it said that the total for repairing the bike was 19150 Baht instead of them replacing my beloved Felt F55 with a new one to a value of 100 000 Baht. They should be happy.

The longest discussion was on where to meet for our next meeting – and where. The police man was rather funny, clearly stating that he would like to have the next meeting at the Swedish Embassy.

So, there will be a new meeting at the Swedish Embassy, Thursday September 27.

Very ironically I recieved my new FastForward Seatpost today.

Three days after the accident and about three weeks before I can use it… 

Oh well, life in the tropics I guess.

I was asked to write something for a Runner’s magazine. I accepted and said I would get back to the editor in chief.

So she tells this to one contributor to the magazine, he looks at me and says: “What are you gonna write about..?”

“About trains of course, small trains that children play with. Ehh Running maybe, what do you THINK I am going to write about?”

It’s funny how, when it rains here, it just feels good. When I was younger, living in Europe or America it would almost always upset me. 

I went down soi 4 tonight. It does not happen often, this time it was for a Social event with Bangkok Triathlon Club aka. “The Trinerds”

Hookers everywhere and next to them there is usually a fat farang. Not able to find love in the motherland so he comes here where you can find one at special price.

I had to walk about 150 meters into the soi to reach the bar where this Social event was taking place. After about 80 meters there is a short Thai guy standing in my way, putting up a box of Viagra tablets in my face.

“For sale”

Today I was on the skytrain, the train was not full, not at all. Mostly thais but also a couple of foreigners.

I look at one of the foreigners, she has a strange looking necklace, on which I am staring. She looks back and I realize that she probably thinks that I am looking at her breasts. Which I am not!

I could possibly have been looking FOR them, definetly not AT them. You think too much of yourself old lady.

Later when I enter Central World I walk behind a group of Germans or maybe they were Swiss. No definately Germans. One of the girls had a t-shirt on that said “Is it a crime to be this cute”

I wanted to tell her, “you’re safe honey, no one’s gonna arrest you.”