Thursday, January 03, 2008

Daily Report: Jil In The Dark

I was up at a pretty early hour for my first day back to work. Back in America, this morning represented the evening of January 2nd... the end of the first day where there would be patients visiting doctors offices since breaking for the holidays a week-and-a-half ago, or at least for before New Year's last Friday.

Unfortunately, just as I was logging on, the last of the work was being finished off by my coworkers in America at 6:00 p.m. No work left over for the night shift.

Well, there was a scattering of emergency room work trickling in, and I started work on that, just happy to finally have something to do.

Then the electricity went out... and stayed out.

I'm pretty sure that the reason God invented women was to help guys like me remember when things like the electric bill are due.

Go came to me about 2 weeks ago with the bill and told me it needed to be paid, and I told her I would take care of it after I got back from vacation, and that was the last she mentioned it to me. Good execution, but poor follow-through.

Now when I was living in the mansion up on Pratumnak Hill, I also had forgotten to pay the electric bill a few times, and when the moment came for the electric company to turn off the juice, they sent a friendly fellow with a clipboard around to the house to let me know he was turning off the electricity if I didn't pay. I paid the guy the money I owed, and that was the end of it. Now, it seems the electric company just has a button with my name on it that they push somewhere. Zoop... out goes the lights. No friendly guy with a clipboard.

Fortunately, in the afternoon, after a long nap, I finally figured out that it was only my house without electricity, and I sent Maid Go down to pay the bill and get the power turned back on. My neighbors let me run an extension cord over to their house, and I had electricity to do work for the afternoon. The power company turned the house back on right around 6:00.

In the evening, it was over to visit Geoff and Honey Mae for drinks (and egg sandwiches). We sat around chatting until 10:00, until it was time to come home and watch "24".

3 comments:

TheMindFantastic said...

You know, thats a really quick turn around time, I mean in North America we have a good day or two wait before they flip the power back on, plus a huge surcharge for having the audacity to request they actually do their job.

Jil Wrinkle said...

I think that they probably disconnect thousands of people every month: The power is turned off approximately 2 weeks after the bill's due date, so tons of people must get switched off and back on every month... they probably have it down to a science. I believe the reconnection charge was 50 baht.

Jil Wrinkle said...

Harris Black still hasn't read the post about no insulting comments.