Wednesday September 22, 2021
7:08 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
Yesterday was another lost day, I’m afraid. I had big plans, but I was so tired that I didn’t accomplish much. I think the excitement of getting the vaccine was so great that my brain simply wouldn’t shut off at night, and I wasn’t able to sleep.
Circumstances also got in the way. I had plans to shoot a couple of videos, in fact. And I packed up all my camera gear and went to the BK coffee shop. My idea was to set up the camera in their back garden and enjoy a good coffee while babbling into the lens. I just wanted to get out of this guest house room for a while. But that didn’t work out. For some strange reason, BK was buzzing with customers, and it wasn’t a comfortable setting for my video plans. Plus, the car wash next door was extremely busy, and so much noise poured over into the coffee shop garden that I was unable to record anything.
A certain amount of clumsiness is a sure sign that I’m in bad shape. It’s a sign that I’m not myself. And, as I wrote before, I pride myself on not dropping things. And on those rare occasions when I do drop something or knock something off a table, I like to think I have the cat-like reflexes to catch it before it hits the ground. And if I ever fail to catch that item, it’s a sign that it’s a bad day, and I should be careful. It would probably be best to just go back to bed. And while I was at BK, I decided to give up on the garden video recording session. And if I wasn’t going to be filming anything, there was no point to sitting out there in the heat. So I decided to move into the air-conditioned interior. It was a bit of a complicated move, because I had all my camera gear plus a hot latte and a hot cup of tea. I moved my latte first, and I guess I did it wrong. The door into the interior is very heavy, and I had to lean my whole body weight into it with my shoulder to open it. And while I did this, the door jostled my arm, and I spilled some of my latte. I was embarrassed about that. I hate spilling things and making a mess. Spilling anything is another sign that I’m not in the best shape.
Then when I returned to the guest house later on, something else happened. I first parked my scooter in a narrow spot. But it was too narrow, and I decided to move it to a new spot. And because I was so tired and out of it, I neglected to flip up the kickstand while I moved the scooter. So I put my feet on the ground and pushed the scooter backwards, and the kickstand slammed into the top of my left foot and cut it open. It was a painful moment. I lost my balance for a second, and the full weight of the scooter went through the metal of the kickstand onto my foot and crushed it as well as cutting it open. I was definitely not awake enough to be out there in the real world. I was a danger to myself, and that overwhelming fatigue stuck with me throughout the day.
And that’s pretty much it for the whole day except for some unwelcome tension surrounding my visa status. A guy named Richard Barrow runs a popular Twitter channel. He’s lived here in Thailand for years, and he posts a lot of helpful information for foreigners. And yesterday, I was delighted to see that he posted a notice that immigration had extended the covid-19 visa program for another 60 days, which would allow me to stay in Thailand until the end of January. I hadn’t seen this news anywhere else, but Richard is extremely reliable and has exceptional official sources for everything he reports. He’s always right. So I was very happy about that.
But then I saw other articles online saying that the covid-19 visa program was going to be cancelled. And Richard left another post saying that the Emergency Decree in Thailand was going to be rescinded in October. And because of that, immigration might reverse course on their decision to extend the special visa program. So, the day was a roller coaster ride of optimism and then pessimism about my official status in the country. I haven’t checked the news yet this morning to see if anything changed overnight. I’ll do that now.
I just checked, and there is no new information.
Over the last few days, my pop culture interests took a quick dive into comedy-horror. I watched the new movie Malignant by James Wan. It is 100% bonkers. But I was intrigued. I think as a movie, it would work best for people that are already deeply steeped in the horror genre and can see the inside jokes and insanity for what it is. I saw a bunch of YouTube reviews where the person hated the movie because it was so cheesy and campy in places. But I guess they didn’t realize that the cheesiness was done on purpose as a kind of joke and homage.
And in this horror mood, I also watched the new Candyman. And that made me rewatch the original Candyman so that I could put all the pieces of the puzzle together. And I watched the latest offering from M. Night Shyamalan, Old. I knew it would be awful. And it was. But I was intrigued by the premise. Since it was an M. Night Shyamalan movie, it was no surprise that it made no sense and that the dialogue was very unnatural. But I’m glad I watched it just because it made a pretty big splash in pop culture circles. I like to keep up with what people are talking about.