Car Story

I've never owned a car till now. When we first moved to Chiang Mai, we managed a year without one because we lived in the city.

When our house on the outskirts was ready, and before moving there, I went on this newfangled internet thingy to research on the optimal car to buy.

Being a man, I went straight to the Porsche site to drool over cars I couldn't afford. Only, there was no drooling; turns out I don't care much for cars, except as a necessary mode of transport. The only car that came anywhere near making me drool was the new Volkswagen Beetle. I bought a book about it's development and re-learned something about successful industrial design: letting designers lead, engineers follow, instead of the other way around. And the importance of paying attention to detail.

Anyway, this internet thing has some useful info besides all that porn (did you know there were these 'race-queens' - scantily clad girls that hang around sports cars and get photographed?). I learned about the most fuel efficient cars, least polluting cars, about airbags (and I don't mean mothers-in-law) and, a most interesting tidbit, that, all things being equal, red cars are the least likely to be crashed into.

So I decided to get a red car. Wa (the wife) consulted her Feng Shui manual and argued, waving the book in the air as logic irrefutable, that since I was born in July, I should get a grey car. I put my foot down, insisting that safety was non-negotiable. Besides, red is cool.

We bought a grey Honda with dual air bags, ABS brakes and a wicked Hi-Fi. Hey, I got my way on the dual airbags.

Thai drivers are pretty reckless, but in a nonchalant, friendly, Thai sort of way. It's scary enough so that Wa doesn't want to drive here. That doesn't stop her from sitting beside me and constantly telling me how to drive. This is the reason for domestic violence. I swear, there are times when I'm THIS close to manually deploying that second airbag!

Wa has an uncanny sense of direction and always knows which way is where, so when she's with me, I'm able to complete my errands quickly. On my own, I'm constantly getting lost. I once found myself at a police lot where they tow crashed cars. This turned out to be useful as I later took the whole family there to show my daughters what would happen if they kept distracting me while I was driving. Wa got the message and is now mercifully restrained, though still far short of being completely un-annoying.

On the other hand, I'd be lost without her.

Being a Man

After months of successfully avoiding any kind of gardening, I was finally roped in.

Wa (the wife) had tried nagging, threatening (both easy to ignore in a seasoned marriage) and Cajoling (which was fun while it lasted). But then, an unexpected and exasperated statement came out at me from left field:

"BE A MAN!" she said. Strangely, that had the desired effect.

Hell, I could be a man; I could garden. So I set out to prove it.

I began by taking a nap. It's the middle of the afternoon, f'crissake and only a fool would go out in such heat.

I awoke, some hours later, refreshed and ready to make myself a snack.

"Be a Man!" said a voice inside me, a voice I'd learned to ignore. Except this voice was really coming from the garden.

Dammit, it was Wa.

My procrastinator engine was cranking up and words were about to spew forth, but one look at the expression on Wa's face threw a spanner in the works.

I shuffled out slowly to the garden, just to show her I'm not the kind to jump when she snaps her fingers, but not so slow as to make the volcano building on her reddened face erupt. Don't try this with your wife till you've had years of husbanding experience, 'cause it's a delicate balance.

I mowed, I dug, I snipped and cut. Whatever being a man felt like, this couldn't be it.

"There, that wasn't so hard," said Wa as she approvingly surveyed the results. Laying exhausted and sweaty on the ground with angry garden insects crawling all over me, all I could say was: "beer!"

She brought me a long, cold brew and treated me like royalty for the next half hour. All in all, this was the only part of gardening I liked.

So you guys out there, if you wanna be men, go putter with some plants.

--

Earlier in this series:

Who says gardening isn't exercise?
I just spent an exhausting half hour watching Wa dig in the garden. She was sweating profusely as I gulped down a large glass of iced tea. I tried to help by suggesting we hire a gardener, but she brushed aside the suggestion saying "the garden's our baby and we should take care of it ourselves." I found the use of the word 'we' quite disconcerting and quickly went inside.

Silicon surprise

The family and I attended a "lip singing" contest at a shopping mall in Chiang Mai. At the end of the contest, there was a "lucky door" for the audience who had filled in forms.

Many of the contestants (the really pretty ones, anyway) turned out to be Ka-Thoy (men who had had sex change operations). Some of the prettiest women in Thailand are men. Abia, my elder daughter (age: seven at the time), was fascinated with this and sat eyes-fixed throughout trying to guess which of the contestants were real women.

One contestant inadvertently let one of 'her' (silicon) breasts show during a dance number. Most of the audience was too polite to say anything and just embarrassingly pretended nothing was out of the ordinary.

Not Abia and Gigi (age five at the time). It took them a while, but when they realised what they were looking at, they pointed and screamed "Nom! Nom!" (Boob! Boob!), "It looks like a real Nom, papa, look do you see it, LOOK!" At which point the dancer noticed, and without missing a stride, slipped the thing back into her dress. The audience sighed, relieved they didn't have to pretend everything was normal anymore.

I tried to find a place to hide. Luckily there was a computer mall on the next floor I could escape to.