Reunited

March 1, 2024

I somehow finished the workday, don't ask me how. The sun came out for maybe an hour then it was back to the usual grim overcast weather. In the freezing cold, I made tracks for the airport and checked in with plenty of time to spare. It was a weird sense of deja vu while waiting for a flight to Bangkok at this particular time, and it would feel even stranger when landing -- like I never even left the place.

The flight itself was cramped with a middle seat but made more bearable by the fact it was Thai Airways and the people beside me were Thai nationals. I could also hear the sound of the beautiful Thai language while walking on the plane. This was another homecoming.

It was a scramble getting through Suvarnabhum airport but the system was a lot more efficient now. No more filling out paperwork, just hand over the passport which is a huge improvement. Today also happens to be the start of when Chinese citizens no longer need a visa for Thailand. I didn't notice any immediate differences at the airport, and the immigration queue moved fast. After taking a bunch of shortcuts to avoid all the chaos, I found a taxi. Then the driver didn't know where he was going. Thanks to a bit of improvising and using Thai I could direct him to the Sananwan guesthouse which is, admitedly, very hard to find.

After checking in, a bowl of muesli by the poolside. All told I was completely on point for my daily calorie deficits but feeling hungry as fuck the whole week. Breakfast today was a simple meal of fruit and bread, lunch was a reduced portion at my school cafeteria, and dinner was airplane food. No snacks, only water. The fact that I avoided any and all food at the airports was a first time ever in my travels.

So far I had lost nearly 3kg in a mere week which is a completely unsustainable pace. Most of it was water loss, thanks to finally following my doctor's orders and drinking the 2L daily allottment. This was becoming a habit. Interestingly enough, drinking more water leads to the body flushing out all the excess water it holds onto for survival in a state of perpetual dehydration.

There was actually significant fat loss too. Feeling very accomplished, I went into the lobby to say hello to the guesthouse boss. Along the way I greeted two ladies who I presumed worked at reception but they actually didn't. They were in fact complete strangers to me, actually a team on a business trip. This greeting and smile I gave led to them inviting me for drinks. Not quite having assessed the situation, I wasn't fully sure what was going on. Besides, I wasn't in the mood for drinks with the travel exhaustion and the fitness challenge. Sensing all this, one lady said, "What's wrong with you? Why? You're drinking with us!!"

Ok then, drinks it is.

There were about six of them on the team, four guys, two women, and celebrating some kind of deal. The boss was still sleeping in the room but one of the ladies went back to grab him out. The two ladies were both rather chubby and experienced drinkers. Whether that's a correlation or not, we don't judge. The other woman with the short hair who was already deep into the whisky asked me "Are you shy?". If they ask me that I always say no, which I said. But I would be lying if I wasn't familiar with shyness. This simple and unintended NLP experiment was one more piece of proof that if I change the way I approach people and take the initiative, it opens up a world of possibilities. My brain didn't register these people as strangers. If I did register them as such, the greeting would have been shy and reserved or the interaction wouldn't have happened at all. So it's very simple: reframe the idea of seeing people as strangers.

Not surprisingly, she asked if I was shy because they both said they didn't have a boyfriend or a husband. They were joking of course, but I told them I had a wife and that was the end of it. The boss was dragged out from his room shortly after and he explained what they did for a living. Basically they go around supervising health clinics near Bangkok and Pattaya. The work hours were pretty sweet: 5pm to 8pm every day. The rest of the time they can sleep in and do whatever.

I then told them I'm a teacher in China and here on a business trip. Naturally they asked what kind of business. It's none of their business but I told them anyway.

This reminded me of the documentary I saw on the airplane about how messed up we are as a society with the idea of work and the rat race. It is slavery in the sense that we sell our time and our bodies in exchange for money. Evidently we learned nothing from the covid pandemic. The Thais, or at least the ones I met tonight, had the game figured out: just work less and have more fun. Everything from the trip was all coming back into focus. Those two weeks in Shanghai at the end of February were already feeling like an aberration.

The woman who tried to hit on me was actually quite a professional drinker. Besides the whisky, she would mix in lots of water and pace herself to last a very long time. It was all about getting drunk but keeping mental faculties, and yes that is 100% such a skill that I've also become an expert on. It was already well after midnight on a Friday night and this "business meeting" was way off the rails. I opted to pace out drinks of Leo beer with lots of ice and made the bottle last equally as long.

This ended up being a lot of fun, and a successful balancing act between saying fuck this fitness challenge, but also wanting to preserve the progress I had made already. If I can keep this momentum going, there's a very good chance I can win the challenge in April. Eventually an excuse was found to get out of this situation once they all spoke Thai and actually had a business meeting. I realized that one bottle of beer wasn't going to ruin this challenge. If anything, that should be built into it.

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