Not in Thailand

I have mentioned before the sensitive noses of Thais, and their preference for heavily perfumed products. This has, until now, merely been an annoyance. But Jim’s sensitivity to smells has recently ratcheted up to a zero tolerance level. This is a problem. Jim needs to breathe, but I need to bathe and the house needs to be cleaned as well.

I can’t use Jim’s shower gel, because *I* react to that. So I went looking for the one thing that I know from experience will not bother Jim: pure, unscented soap. Kirk’s Castile soap comes in both a liquid and bar form in the US, as does Dr. Bronner’s. They are not available in Thailand. I smelled every bar of soap on the soap aisle, both sides. I brought home 6 different kinds, from inexpensive Thai brands (6 bars for $2) to imported brands ($1.50 for 1 bar).

When we got home I had Jim test-sniff them. 4 of them, including the Ivory, got sent home with the cleaning lady. Ivory is unscented in the US, but it’s scented here. I was left with the most expensive soap, the Pears, which is only slightly scented, and a Thai specialty soap that, although scented, didn’t seem to bother Jim. If these don’t work I’ll be bathing with $10 bars of Clinique soap. They are unscented.

Baby Mango

In this, the fourth year of our mango tree, we hoped for a profusion of fruit. For the first time it burst into luxuriant bloom instead of featuring scattered blooms here and there. A visual inspection a week or two later revealed numerous tiny fruit beginning to grow. But mango trees are sensitive to overwatering, and wind, and will just plain drop their fruit for no apparent reason. We are down to three mangoes, about the same production as in previous years.

So much for me canning mango.

No mango cobbler. No mango preserves. No mango pie. I’ll be forced to buy my mango with sweet sticky rice.

Too Good to be True

About a week ago I walked into IBeat, the authorized Apple reseller at The Mall, and told them I wanted to buy a new iMac. I built the iMac I wanted on the ordering screen. They saved the info in a webpage capture, telling me it would take 3 to 5 weeks. About 4 days later, I got a phone call telling me my iMac would be ready on Friday. When I went to The Mall Thursday to get my teeth cleaned, Jim and I checked at IBeat. My iMac was in!!!

They seemed anxious for me to pay for it and take it home. No offer to open the box and set it up for us. They open the box and plug in every single electrical object I have ever bought here, including light bulbs. Does this raise any alarms or questions in your mind? It did in ours. Upon checking, we saw it was indeed one of the newest iMacs (1 Firewire port, 4 USB ports). We insisted it be started up so we could check the system specifications. They dutifully booted it up to the hardware diagnostics screen. Sure enough, it was the stock high end model of the new iMac, not the one I ordered.

The only difference is the video card, but I definitely want the ATI Radeon 4850 instead of the NVidia GT130. Why? Because I was wholly unable to find any information about the GT130 (or the GT120) on the NVidia website. This causes me to suspect it is for the iMac only, and won’t be well supported by PC game manufacturers. does it even support DirectX? I couldn’t find out. The ATI Radeon 4850 was available for both PC and Mac, and had excellent reviews as the sweet spot of price vs performance.

We pointed out that this was not the computer I had requested. They acted as if they had never read the specification list. I had specifically pointed out to them, several times, the upgrade to the video card. So now they say I will get my computer in 21 days. I think it will be the right one this time.

Raisin Bran

I have noticed that you can buy a good selection of American cold cereals in Bangkok. They generally cost about $10 a box, and I don’t mean the large boxes, either. Cheerios and other such things have not been a part of our life for almost three years now. Who wants to pay that much for cereal?

I was at the supermarket at The Mall, Freshmart, cruising the farang food aisle, when I saw some new cereal boxes on display. There were two brands of organic cereal, Barbara’s and Cascadian Farms, with a variety of types in each brand. I have never heard of Barbara’s, but I have had Cascadian Farms before. Checking the prices, I saw a box of Cascadian Farms Raisin Bran was a mere 220 baht, or about $6. Still a steep price, but recalling that organic cereal is more expensive than regular, and that the price of food has been climbing, I decided it was close to the same price as in the US.

I just ate my first bowl of cereal in three years. The raisins were plump and plentiful, the bran flakes were crisp, and the milk was from a local dairy. It may not become my standard breakfast, but it’s going into the routine rotation with the peanut butter on toast, the yogurt with muesli, and the occasional scrambled egg. Color me content.

Of course, this does not mean I will ever again see Cascadian Farms cereal once this supply is gone. Sometimes I think they buy their farang food from overstock discounters. The result is that if you see something you like, you’d better buy it, because you may never see it again. Right now they have a lot of organic farang food. I may try the Amy’s brand salsa.

Lent

When I chose to give up coffee for Lent, I didn’t expect it would be easy. Coffee is more than an early-morning wake-up beverage for me. I normally do drink coffee in the morning, two cups. But coffee is also my soothing ritual beverage. A cup of coffee and a place to sit quietly are all I need to calm myself when things are getting stressful. I am missing my coffee, but more I am missing the soothing effect it has on me. Today we went to The Mall, and I was confronted with another situation where I normally drink coffee. Every visit to The Mall I get an iced cafe latte -no-sugar- from one of the coffee stands. Today I got an iced tea. It’s not the same at all. Tea does not do whatever it is that coffee does for me that calms me.

No caffeine withdrawal headache so far, though.

Lifestyle Upgrade

This is as good as it’s going to get. Note that it slows down substantially after 3PM when school lets out, on school holidays, and of course on weekends. Believe me when I tell you just how large an improvement this is.