My Mundane Life

You can see from my two previous blogs (Where’s the rubber? and Out With Jack) that I drank a lot on Wednesday night and drank less — but for a longer time — on Thursday night.  In between I had sex with two girls in a short space of time, and laid eyes and hands on dozens of scantily clad dancers.

The Where’s the Rubber? blog was also posted on another website.  Here on my site, it drew a sharp comment from a reader who warned me that I drink too much.  I got a similar, albeit more playful, comment from a reader on the other website where this blog was posted.

It’s not the first time that I’ve been warned by readers that I am a hopeless drunk.  I blame myself for this misunderstanding. 

On days when I don’t do anything personally interesting, I usually write pieces about Bangkok in general (The Miracle Mile,The Rise & Fall, Spinners, Ooh That Smell, Ropey Old Slappers, Farang Physics, Street Food, Bangkok’s a Small Town, Loi Kratong).

When something interesting happens in my life (by this I usually mean when I go drinking, have sex, or both) I write about it.  This means that all of my personal stories are about drinking and getting laid.  This creates an unrealistic picture of my life as an unrepentant drunk, especially as many readers only read the blogs in the Sex Stories category.

To provide some balance I once wrote a blog called Working for a Living, thinking that this would explain and provide balance. 

I now realize that a single blog is insufficient to do the job; I need to do a great deal more.

For that reason I’m making a commitment to write about my mundane life.  Prepare yourself.

Friday 30 November

Thursday night I had been out drinking until 3 a.m. so on Friday I woke up mid-morning (around 10 o’clock).  I’ve been doing a job writing a website for a client in Sydney Australia, and there was some editing required, so I did that.  I sent an email to the client to let her know that the edits had been done.

I had some somtam for lunch, and then got dressed to go out.  Downstairs I dropped off a pair of slacks at the dry cleaner.

I had a business meeting on the other side of Bangkok, so I jumped on the BTS and went to the other end of the line.  My business meeting lasted only about an hour, but was very productive.  I walked away with a lot of material required for a project that starts on the 17th of next month.

I have a friend whom I’ve known for all the time I’ve been living in Bangkok.  I made arrangements to meet him for dinner in Silom area.  Another friend, Som, whom we both know just started working at the restaurant as a waitress (I mentioned her in the Loi Kratong blog) so we ate in her restaurant. 

During dinner the subject of internet blogs came up.  My friend had never read Werewolfs Lair, and asked about it.  He asked if I’d ever written about him, and I explained that his appearances had been limited to sentences like, “I had dinner with a friend before going drinking at Patpong….”  He seemed slightly disappointed by this.  He is a big fan of the movie, The Big Lebowski, and suggested that I could refer to him as “The Dude“.

There you go; henceforth he will be known in this blog as the Dude.

The Dude ate nachos.  I had a salad.  He drank three beers, while I managed to down two glasses of milk.  After dinner, the Dude bought a DVD from a lady at a small folding table next to the Sala Daeng BTS station.  The Dude says that this lady has one of the most successful businesses in Thailand, with her folding card table swarmed night and day with people buying movies for 100 baht ($3) each.

We hopped the BTS and I was home by 9:30.  I checked my email, watched TV for a while, and went to sleep about 10:15. 

My phone rang at 11:30.  It was Som (the waitress) calling to say thanks for coming by and goodnight.  After she woke me up, I found it hard to go back to sleep so I watched more TV and read a book, finally drifting off again about 3 a.m.

Saturday 1 December

I was determined to have a relaxing day off, starting by sleeping late, but at 10 a.m. my ex-girlfriend called and woke me up. 

After I got off the phone with her I rolled out of bed and decided that my room needed to be cleaned.  I spent about 2 hours organizing, dusting, and wiping down dirty surfaces.  I washed a load of clothes, and ironed a load that had been ‘drying’ since Monday.  By the time I finished, it was after 1 o’clock, and I decided I needed some lunch.  I went down to the street and bought some rice & pork and a sala pao (steamed pork bun).

After lunch I read a book for a while and managed to drift off for an afternoon nap.  My ex-girlfriend called about 4:30 and woke me for the second time today, but I managed to get back to sleep. 

I woke up around 5:30 and attacked the one place I hadn’t cleaned earlier — the toilet.  It was filthy and it was a big job.  When I was done, I took a shower and then turned on the TV and watched a movie.

I hadn’t used the internet all day, and when I tried I found I couldn’t connect.  I went through the usual trouble-shooting steps and finally called the ISP help desk.  It took about 25 minutes, but they got me re-connected.

My email inbox was fairly empty, and not much else of interest today, so I decided to write this blog.

There you are!  My mundane life… the one that takes up most of my time.  The one that doesn’t involve alcohol or sex, but the routine stuff of earning a living and taking care of myself. 

I realize that this blog is unbelievably boring, but I feel duty-bound to present a balanced view of life in Bangkok.  It may be painful, but I’m willing to inflict as much misery on readers as necessary to make the point.  Life here for me — as for most people — isn’t one never-ending party.  On the contrary, it is a regular life of work and normal activities punctuated by enjoyable nights out and regular sex with lots of young beautiful women.

But it’s definitly not a party every day.  I don’t want to get you too excited, but in a few minutes I’m gonna go out and eat a bowl of noodles for dinner, come home to read a book, then turn out the lights and go to sleep. 

Another mundane Saturday night in the city of angels.