In a previous life I spent many years living in different countries, each for a period of around three years. At the end of each assignment, my worldly possessions were dumped into a container and despatched to the next country earmarked to gain the benefit of my minimal skills.
Such an existence forces you to minimise the retention of rubbish. When packing to move to another country you are forced to ask yourself whether you really need to keep the last eleven years issues of Practical Wall Building (and the answer would be ‘yes’, of course). There was always an element of pruning involved, so when I finally moved to Pattaya, it was with only the essentials to support life. Unfortunately, my life support includes a number of stuff-intensive hobbies, all of which contributed to the filling of the two store rooms in my condo.
In the five years I have been here, things have only got worse. Partly my fault, but also due to the burgeoning bag and shoe collection of she who must be obeyed; plus several forests worth of MBA documentation which still lies around the place, even though she finished the course months ago.
So we have two full store rooms, plus a “computer room” which is overflowing with junk. There is a plan to refurbish the computer room. My plan is to install a Mac Pro in it. Her plan is to replace the floor, paint it, and install custom furniture; all of which I am in favour of if it includes space for a Mac Pro. But before we can start we have to sort out our storage. To give you an idea of the extent of the problem, here is the carefully ordered storeroom at the back of the condo.
All this is a precursor to a telephone conversation I had this morning. She who must be obeyed called and told me she had been up at the crack of dawn and was just leaving the temple to go and buy food for the family.
“And what are YOU doing?” she asked, in a voice that implied that, if I couldn’t be arsed to go to the funeral, I better be doing something useful back at home.
There was a slight pause. “Err, I have cleaned out one of the store rooms and I am painting it” I said.
She was very pleased with me, called me a good boy, and we parted on excellent terms.
Just a small problem. In reality I had finished breakfast,made a coffee, and I felt I deserved a break and was settling down to a game of Battlefield: Bad Company on the Xbox. Why the hell had I told her I was fixing the storeroom, now I would actually have to do it.
Step one was easy. I dragged the contents of the storeroom into the living room and piled everything on the floor. The cats enjoyed this process immensely.
Step two, acquire paint. So I went to Home Works on Sukhumvit which is the most overstaffed and least stocked store in Thailand. Before you walk in, you are being greeted, and then you are pursued around the store by eager employees who, if you pause for an instant, will rush up to you and offer assistance, even though they are not capable of giving any. If you want to buy anything that comes in a separate box, be assured they won’t have it. The store is full of display-only items. But I assumed I could get some paint. And indeed I could.
I chose a shade called Nevada Sunrise, which was an insipid off-white colour that would certainly not encourage you to rise to see the dawn in Nevada. A cast of thousands took a can off the shelf and placed it under a machine. After much thinking, the machine dropped a small puddle of black into the white-ish paint in the can; and another machine stirred the can for about a week.
Swinging my can of Nevada Sunrise and humming a Bee-Gees tune, I headed for the check-out where one cashier and three hangers-on waited to serve me. The paint crew had placed two bar-coded stickers on my can, in addition to the generic sticker already there. Naturally, each sticker gave a different answer. A phone call was made to the paint army; I would like to say it was a frantic call but it was actually bordering on the dismissive. Nothing happened for five minutes and then I started to make agitated foreigner noises, so the call was made again and eventually a paint-splattered assistant arrived to sort things out. Home Works sucks.
Back home and I spread paint on the walls, me, the kitchen floor and one of the cats. But progress has been made.
Tomorrow I am going to empty the other storeroom and paint that. Then I will have two clean storerooms and a house littered with piles of crap. So when she who must be obeyed comes home on Sunday, she can see that I have been really busy and not playing on the Xbox. Like what I am not about to go and do now.
Comments 🔗
2008-07-25| Jock saysJeez Spike you have been a good boy - did you do all that by yourself or did you find a local girl to do that for you … I know the Thai guys are lazy ars*oles.
2008-07-25| Spike saysYou know the wrong Thai guys. The ones I know, or rather the ones I used to work with, were extremely hard-working.
All my own work and I have the paint splatter and aching back to prove it.
2008-07-25| mart saysProves nothing. You could have the splatter and aching back from the local girl too.
2008-07-25| Spike saysBeing covered in paint by local hookers is indeed a problem; but they never use Nevada Sunrise.
2008-11-26| Pattaya Life: Shopping Will Drive You Crazy at The FARANG Speaks 2 Much says[…] Thai guys does it take to sell a bucket of paint? Or anything else for that matter. Spike over at Pattaya Days recently encountered the other amazing thing about shopping in Thailand. You either get no one with […]