Day 40 (Wed, March 23) - BKK: Blogging Day 3: Flooding! & The King's Speech

Woke up to a wet drizzly day -- only to discover the street outside, and the whole neighborhood, had flooded in under an hour of heavy rain around 7am! Awi left to pick up a friend to help him with his taxes, and didn't return for several hours; apparently the flooding was even worse in other neighborhoods...

Blogging.

The Nanny offered me some noodles for lunch, with Shain translating for us.

More blogging.

Watched The King's Speech with Shin, and Naew and Awi and Shain popping in and out.

Played some card games with Shin and Shain -- Halli Galli (a card game based on adding or subtracting to five), Snakes (a game with magnets) and Aquarius (like dominoes but with more permutations).




Ah! Found some contemporaneous notes I'd made off-line, and am adding them in here:

9am up. Yoghurt and cereal for breakfast. Awi just leaving to pick up Phong. Street was flooded, took pix. Blogging in study. Awi returned with Phong to do his taxes in the study. Moved downstairs. Nanny came over at noon and Shain asked me if I wanted something to eat; she served me a bowl of noodles. Awi & Phong came down around 1.30pm and went to lunch. Upon return, they played a card game with Shain in the living room, then went back to work. Naew came back from work early (about 4pm) and surprised Awi. Awi gave everyone a ride to the garage or to pick up Shin or something. Came back with Phong, got changed, and left for work. House quiet and I moved back to the study. Called to dinner at 7pm. Naew WAS home, and dinner was on the table. Somewhat quiet meal. (Is she pissed at me? I feel guilty). Afterwards assembled the two fans she’d bought. Then played cards with Shin and Shain: 5 Fruits, Snakes, Cosmic Cards. Shain to bed; Naew uploading photos to FB; Shin practicing Speed Stacking; me blogging. Shin went to bed. Neew was posting pix of me at the temple and asked, ‘Is your Mom religious’ and we got talking about fanatics and Christianity & Islam vs Buddhism, and Buddhism being a dying ‘religion’ (Thailand is the only Buddhist country today). I took the opportunity to say I felt bad about staying so long, I felt guilty, was there anything I could do to make it up to her, I could imagine she might just like to come home and have the house to herself, was I getting in the way of anything. She didn’t say anything and I couldn’t tell if she was nonplussed or too reserved to let it rip. She said she was not a very chatty person, so it was normal for her to come home and go straight to her room. She was also not ‘service-oriented’ (she doesn’t cook and such for the family), so isn’t that way for guests either. She was psyched Shain is speaking English to me; and she’s also psyched that I read Shain some bedtime stories in English and that I sometimes play games with the boys. Anyhooo. She went to bed about 10.30pm, then popped back in and announced that Elizabeth Taylor has died as she collected some papers. Figured out how the scanner worked, and blogged till midnight. She went to bed about 10.30pm, then popped back in and announced that Elizabeth Taylor had died as she collected some papers. Figured out how the scanner worked, and blogged till midnight.