Koolpunt & the Gang

I want a job writing almost-coherent Thai tag lines.

I get around.

One day blends into the next. Lian jogs as I ride my bicycle through the architecturally themed neighborhoods of our gated community, or past its brand-new golf course. We promise ourselves that sometime soon we'll try (insert Thurston Howell III voice here) "dinner at the clubhouse."

"Buddy!"

Most days we stop in at the Buddy Mart around the corner for bread or frozen passionfruit bars or whatever. For lunch we might visit this fine little guittio (noodle) joint off the main drive, just a five-minute walk from home.

Soup is good food.

Crews of thickly dressed landscape workers in rice paddy hats groom the public areas and sweep the sidewalks with fan-shaped straw brooms. Uniformed security personnel man the cross-barred checkpoints every quarter-mile. Need a lightbulb changed or a toilet fixed? You call the Main Office and a handyman arrives 10 minutes later. (The service is free but we tip the guy anyway.) Private landscapers are available to spruce up individual yards, for a price. In my case, that price is eighteen bucks. And they do a damn fine job!

English spoken here.

One or two evenings a week while Lian cooks dinner, I wander up to the Buddy Mart for exactly one beer with the rotating cast of ne'er-do-wells who gather at the wooden tables out front to solve the world's problems. Occasionally I buy a frozen package of farang chow from the Sausage Man, Tom, whose storefront is two doors down. Chorizo, andouille links, lasagna, cottage pie ... it's all good, and a necessary relief from my life sentence of rice-rice-rice with no possibility of parole.

Somewhere in this hectic schedule I manage to pencil in a few hours of work ... and dream of the blessed day when I can finally retire.

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My charitable side wants to interpret this as a deliberate play on words, a clever way of exhorting readers to "Be Living." But likelier it's the work of a HomePro marketing editor who alllmost knows English.