Simple Pleasures

Simple Pleasures

I enjoy the slow leisurely walk to and from the skytrain station everyday. Takes about fifteen minutes from my apartment to the Ratchadamri station and another five minutes or so from the Chong Nonsi stop to the office. It is not an easy walk because I have to lug my 15.4 inch notebook with me and have to make a couple of steep ascends up some stairs to reach the station.

It is fun observing the hawkers doing brisk business by the roadside in the morning, selling cakes, noodles and sandwiches. I'm also beginning to believe that there are more pretty women per square foot in Thailand than anywhere else in the world.

This particular trip to Bangkok has been relatively relaxing compared to my previous one: I only leave for the office at 15 minutes to nine and arrive before 9.30am. I wish all my assignments are this cozy.

But a couple of my expatriate friends here lead an even more blissful existence: they reluctantly unwrap themselves in the morning from the arms of their Thai mistress to go to work at ten, and booze every night at the local bars until way past midnight. Perhaps if I were ten years younger, I would have been like them.

Why do I often write as if I'm so old? Why is it that I have this premature world-weariness in me? Most of those expatriate friends of mine are even older than me--they still possess the enthusiasm to party and and have fun. If it is not wine and women, what then is my idea of fun?

Maybe I'm just a passive person who enjoys observing the world from the sidelines. Or perhaps, I've taken this morbid worldview that behind every pleasure lies some hidden pain to the extreme? Or perhaps I am what I am today because of some long forgotten pain?

I really don't know. All I know now is that the simple pleasures in life mean a lot more to me now: the fresh smell of incense from the roadside shrines, a productive day of work with my clients, a quick lunch of green curry rice at the foodcourt with my Thai friends, a slow glass of Singha beer after work at the restaurant with a good book, watching Hardtalk with Tim Sebastian on BBC and finishing another blog entry for the day. What more could one ask for?