Monday, April 26

Elevator pics. It's a thing.

We were going to volunteer in Khlong Toei on Sunday, helping to distribute free food, but they called off the volunteers. There's been a Covid outbreak in the Khlong Toei slum and one their volunteers has tested positive for Covid, and the organizers didn't want to bring in a bunch of people to all interact with each other.

We invited Daow, one of the people from the volunteer group, out for a coffee with us instead, but she ended up part of a small group that distributed the donated food in Khlong Toei. So we headed to Silom instead, where we got a lunch on the street—fried chicken over rice served with cucumbers and big hunks of raw chopped ginger and chilies.

We also went to a guitar shop and picked up a new cheapie guitar for Roman (his old cheapie guitar is starting to bow).

Spot the difference! Roman holding the guitar he bought on our
first trip to Bangkok and the guitar he bought today.

On Sunday evening, Roman got a text from a job agency, offering him a teaching position with one of the schools he interviewed with. The location is pretty close-in, the pay is 40,000 Baht a month after agency fees, and the start date is in May. He accepted the position!

He hasn't gotten a contract or been to the school yet, so I'm sure I'll have more details to share soon. Still, pretty awesome news!

On Monday, a "soft lockdown" went into place in Bangkok. Gatherings of 20 or more people are prohibited, parks and gyms and cinemas are closed, and you can be fined 20,000 Baht for not wearing a mask in public. The opening hours of malls and convenience stores have been shortened.

This doesn't change our lives hugely, except that schools will likely either delay their start dates or begin their semesters with online learning (which is an intimating prospect, but I'm going to wait to freak out about that until I actually have a job).

Mostly I just feel for the people who live here and haven't had a chance to get vaccinated—people are scared about this new outbreak, and worry that the government and hospitals aren't equipped to deal with the rising case numbers. And it seems like Thailand is still many months off from getting the majority of the population vaccinated.

So, we're going into a different phase of things. I'm sure I will have more to report on this, too.

Anyway, on Monday we went to the Terminal 21 mall and picked up some small bowls and normal sized spoons, because I just didn't want to eat one more breakfast of hot cereal out of big plastic bowls, using big stupid spoons.

Later in the day, I did some job interview prep while Roman checked out ChangChui, a "creative park" with lots of public art, shops, restaurants, and event spaces (though much of it was closed due to the lockdown). Roman took lots of pics for me.