Daily Report: Epril's First Day In Thailand, Busy Busy

After getting home from the airport at 3:00 in the morning, I was up to work at 9:00, with Epril sitting beside me looking bright and chipper. (Being her first day with me in Thailand, she had never seen me work before.)

Somehow, the foot pedal that connects to my computer that I use for transcribing had broken, which is a big problem. (The had been giving me hints of getting ready to go bad over the past few weeks, which I didn't realize... but went kerplooey in a big instant after about 10 minutes of work. All of my shit is breaking lately... camera, phone, now foot pedal.) I really cannot work without it, and (although I had never looked before now) there are no replacements to be found in Thailand. Still though, I needed to make an effort to obtain a foot-operated USB switch of some kind or another so that I could work. I had originally scheduled Epril's first foray into Pattaya for noontime, but since a trip to the Tukcom Computer Center was in order, we moved up the schedule a little bit.

So with foot pedal stowed under the seat, we hopped on my motorcycle and headed out with high hopes...

... and ran smack into a police roadblock on Sukhimvit Road.

Unfortunately in my hurry to get to Tukcom, I forgot to put my passport in my pocket. So Epril's first experience in Thailand was me getting a traffic ticket.

Of course, Tukcom had nothing even remotely close to what I needed. Fortunately, I do have a backup option: To revert to my old computer system, using an old foot pedal not compatible with my current computer system, which upon returning home is what I did. (Epril visited her neighbor Filipina Riza at this point while I messed around with my computer, marking the beginning of what seems to be a good friendship.)

By the time I finished mucking around with my computer, it was after noontime, and so I headed back out with Epril to show her around Pattaya. We stopped at Bob's BBQ for lunch and met Bob, went to Big C where I bought Epril a very pretty white sun dress and sent some money via Western Union to The Philippines. (More on that will appear below on the last day of my trip report, when it gets written.) After that it was leisurely drive down Beach Road, and then over to visit with Stan. Oh... we also passed by Franky, who was sitting in a roadside bar having a beer and shouted out to us, and we stopped and visited with him as well.

In the afternoon, I finally sat down and got some work done. Mike has a friend, Peter, visiting from Australia who needed to access his e-mail for a few hours, so the two of them came over to my place and used the non-work computer in my office, turning the place into a bustling little business center for a while.

In the evening, Go, her son and daughter-in-law, Riza, Epril, Peter and his wife (a Thai lady named Rose), Mike, and myself all sat around Mike's house and had a good time. Epril drank 2 Spy wine coolers, declared herself "so drunk", and I escorted her back to our house for bedtime.

Got the first day of my trip report up... you can scroll down, or read it here.