Brickwall and Bargains

So here I am, newly returned from Bangkok. Wanted to start the visa application and ran into a brickwall. The online form requires me to have a US address and of course, right now, I don't have one. So with the countdown already happening and no progress made on all the different fronts - visa, housing, schooling - the adrenalin is starting to ramp up and the throat is starting to constrict a little. Better start calling on my colleagues for help - as soon as daylight hits the coast of California and folks starting logging in from their offices. In a few hours. Hopefully, I can get hold of some of my colleagues who have been through this. I need to be very focused next week. I have to be or August will come and go and my family will still be here and my new bosses may give up on me. Scary thoughts.

Internet access in Bangkok hotels are very expensive. Baht500 for a day - that's over S$20 for 24 hours when at home, I pay about $50+ a month for unlimited access and even this is already expensive by international standards. I remembered internet access in the Cape Town hotel (Commodore) was very expensive too. Except for when I have urgent work, I never want to incur such expenses. Fortunately, now I have the Blackberry so replying email was not such a problem except for reading attachments. So I postpone acting on the visa application till today and now I am stuck.

Did some shopping in Bangkok - I went back to a shop in Amarin Center that I ran into on my last trip to pick up some Guy Laroche clothes that were on sale. My existing wardrobe are getting hopelessly old and most of my clothes are frumpy. Managed to get some good deals. Another journey after class ended on Thursday to Siam Center yielded nothing. Siam Paragon is brand new and seems to be just chocked full of restaurants. It has a big new supermarket. The few shops there selling merchandise obviously do not cater to bargain hunters like moi. I am el cheapo, always looking for sales. Celia told me once she too is like that - a CIO no less. The connecting Siam Center seems to stock mostly street clothing which has no appeal to me - I will look like a hag pretending not to be a hag. And the clothes are not all that cheap when I whip out my trusted Blackberry and convert the Bahts into Sing dollars. You can get pretty good deals in Singapore too. Seems only streetside clothes that you can buy for about Baht100 are bargains but then I cannot wear those to work, or can I?

I made a small mistake in my last posting. The Malay boy actually has muscular dystrophy. I had been thinking of another Malay child - a girl called Siti - who has celebral palsy. Both of them have lovely cheerful dispositions despite their disadvantages. Suffer the children for their resilience put us whiners to shame.

House is so quiet right now. Husband is nowhere to be found, son has gone to a 3-day school camp for Primary 5 children and daughters have all gone out, one to the library to study (she says) and the other to dinner. This could be a foretaste of what an empty nest feels like...