Daily Report: 79 Baht Well-Spent

Not a very good day of work... but not the absolute worst. I had spaghetti for lunch, and a salad.

In the late afternoon, it was back to the pool for another dip in the bath-like water. It's funny, but when I was a kid, I would have just loved a pool with water as warm as that. Now, as an adult, I'm looking to cool off, and don't enjoy it.

In the evening, it was out with Go, Mike, and Riza (Pui was out with friends) to the 79-baht all-you-can-eat Thai bar-be-que on Soi Nerm Pleubwan (the street that is almost directly across from Pattaya Central Road. When you see this big sign on your right, pull in and drive all the way to the back.

The restaurant was originally a 99-baht all-you-can-eat joint, and had what was probably the best selection of meats and veggies and noodles in Pattaya. However, the owners of the restaurant found that this was not profitable enough, and raised their prices to 129 baht.

When nobody came to their restaurant anymore because of the increased prices, they realized their mistake. So, they took off about half the meats (mainly the jellyfish and lizard tails), and most of the vegetables (carrots and imported zucchini, et cetera), and dropped their price from 129 to 79 baht. Then they raised the prices of their beer by 20 baht per bottle, and — presto — they started making money hand over fist.

Anyway, since it is only a few miles from my house, I go there to eat. If you are a person for whom saving 20 baht on a meal is a priority, well... you are more than welcome to stop by, of course. Otherwise, the place is pretty much the same as the other 20 or 30 all-you-can-eat Thai bar-be-que joints in Pattaya.

After dinner, Mike and I sat and watched TV. We watched a program on a crane collapse in San Franciso and Mike, a mechanical engineer and old QA fellow, was absolutely outraged about the conclusions and findings. Man: I thought I was a hardcore Discovery Channel watcher. Mike puts in 90 minutes, and he's like a soap opera addict watching his leading lady have a love affair with the villain.

But fortunately, after that came CSI, which Mike had never seen before, and he thought it was some of the best TV he had ever watched. So thusly mollified, Mike called it a night, and I came upstairs to type this before going to bed.